WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2020

Volume 7, Number 35

EIR Daily Alert Service

P.O. Box 17390, Washington, DC 20041-0390

• World Cries Out for Solutions
• Bloomberg ‘Oppo’ Files Open, as He Surges to Democrats’ Second
• Judges Publicly Reveal That Many in the Third Branch Are Fully on Boards With ‘Resist’
• Trump Turns Down U.S. Restrictions Against Selling China GE Jet Engines and Parts
• Soros Continues Push Against Zuckerberg and Facebook, But His Target Is the President
• Taliban Announces Peace Agreement With U.S. Will Be Signed by End of February
• Russia, Turkey Still Reach No greement on Syria’s Idlib Province After Two Days of Talks
• Pompeop Smacks Russian Oil Trading Firm With Sanctions For Brokering Venezuelan Oil
• HSBC Bank To Cut 35,000 Jobs Worldwide
• German S & Ls, Economists Expose ECB Cheating on Inflation Rate
• Food and Drug Administration Activated on Supply Chain Breakdowns for Medications
• Trump Affirms China’s Xi ‘Loves His Country, and He’s Doing a Good Job’ Against Coronavirus

EDITORIAL

World Cries Out for Solutions

Feb. 18 (EIRNS)—Situations such as the cluelessness at last weekend’s Munich Security Conference, or growing ungovernability from place to place, such as in Thuringia, Germany in recent times, demonstrate that the politely-named elites and establishments are so stuck in their old ways of thinking that they cannot reflect on, or change, their views; or worse, they promote evil deliberately. Look at the debacle of the U.S. elections process, in terms of the Democratic Party’s crack-up, in this way.

“The world cries out for solutions,” was the point stressed today by Schiller Institute President Helga Zepp-LaRouche, reviewing developments.

This is dramatically shown in the mass-scale vulnerability to infectious diseases and pests, as seen in recurring coronaviruses (COVID-19, SARS, MERS), the locust scourge now spreading in East Africa and South and West Asia, and in the African swine fever outbreak that reduced 2019 world pork production by more than 25%. With full-scale international collaboration and advancing to a directed energy economy, these occurrences could be contained and minimized. Statesman Lyndon LaRouche for decades promoted both the scientific method and policies to move ahead in this direction. What is urgently needed now is “a change in paradigm” Zepp-LaRouche said. Fighting for LaRouche’s exoneration is the very same battle as fighting for solutions to the crises.

In the U.S., the spectacle of the prominence of Sir Michael Bloomberg in the election arena, is not merely “old paradigm,” but a filthy, years-long operation tied right into the networks—with British provenance—seeking to subvert the Presidency and institutions of the nation itself. The green billionaire will be in the Feb. 19 national Democratic Party debate in Nevada (only because the party changed their rules to accommodate him), and on the multi-state Super Tuesday ballots in two weeks. All the so-called “rules-based order” and “civic behavior” and other oft-referred-to “norms” have been bent and trashed to accommodate Sir Michael’s surge. Even without the damning oppo research results of the past few days, showing Bloomberg trashing factory workers, minorities, farmers, old people, women, and more—Bloomberg is on record for his straight “New Fascism” policies to destroy cities and nations, and kill people.

On the foreign relations side of this same coin are the war-hawks of neo-liberal, neo-con and other imperial stripes. For example, today, the U.S. State Department announced it would intervene in the name of the people and resources of Venezuela, to put sanctions on Rosneft Trading S.A. (Russian-owned, based in Switzerland), which brokers oil for Venezuela. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo imperiously declared, that the U.S. took action “to secure Venezuela’s natural resources.”

John Bolton, the national security advisor fired by President Donald Trump, spelled out a whole perspective on ways to start “World War Six”—just as Trump had accused him—in a speech at Duke University yesterday. Bolton asserted, for example, that China “is the number-one security issue for the rest of the century.”

There is no time to lose, for the U.S., Russian and Chinese heads of state to come together in the kind of leadership summit Helga Zepp-LaRouche called for in her Jan. 3 appeal.

U.S. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC

Bloomberg ‘Oppo’ Files Open, as He Surges to Democrats’ Second

Feb. 18 (EIRNS)—The opposition research files on Michael Bloomberg began systematically floating through U.S. media and social media on Feb. 17, following some initial entries last week. Polling also released yesterday shows Bloomberg now in second place in the battle for the Democratic nomination, just behind Bernie Sanders.

The would-be American Bonaparte was portrayed on various archival videos in his own words:

• Defending “Stop and Frisk,” by declaring that the only way to get guns out of the hands of young Blacks and Hispanics was to “throw them against the wall and frisk them,” and claiming that all crime in New York City occurred in Black and Hispanic neighborhoods, requiring you to put all the police there, you can just xerox the description of all criminals as 18- to 25-year-old Black males and simply hand it to the police;

• Stating that anyone could be a farmer or a lathe operator and that he could teach someone how to do this quickly, but that what he called “technology” in the new economy required “more gray matter” than those now-obsolete professions that require no intelligence;

• Telling a group of Jewish mourners with whom he was sitting shiva that “healthcare is going to bankrupt our country.” Instead, he proposed, as an example, that a 95-year-old with prostate cancer should be denied treatment and that the country had to find the guts to tell the elderly they weren’t going to be treated.

• Then, a major Washington Post article published Sunday profiles of the non-disclosure agreements from women lurking in the background of Bloomberg LP, the company women employees characterized as a “predators’ playground.”  A woman, announcing her pregnancy to her boss, Bloomberg, was asked, “Are you going to kill it?” When she said, no, he said, “Great that’s number 16,” meaning the number of women to whom he had to offer maternity benefits.  He also, according to the same Post story, questioned a young mother’s inability to find a nanny with the following: “It’s a fucking baby! All it does is eat and shit! It doesn’t know the difference between you and anyone else! All you need is some Black who doesn’t even have to speak English to rescue it from a burning building!”

There will be more, which is why when Bloomberg has previously toyed with running, he ultimately pulled up short.  What is lost is why this is happening now—the country is divided on class lines, and the working and lower middle classes are in revolt; the elites are desperate to impose their bankers’ dictatorship ahead of the next financial reckoning, and to defeat President Donald Trump. The oligarchs are both reckless and brutally determined to meet their goal.

Judges Publicly Reveal That Many in the Third Branch Are Fully on Board with ‘Resist’

Feb. 18 (EIRNS)—The RESIST story of the day, Feb. 18, across all media is that the Federal Judges Association called an emergency meeting of its executive committee to address Attorney General Bill Barr’s intervention into the Roger Stone case.

It is unclear whether this group embodies all federal judges and whether its executive committee which was holding a conference call today agrees with its president, U.S. District Judge Cynthia M. Rufe of Philadelphia, that some sort of judicial independence emergency is represented by the Attorney General correcting a clearly unjust sentencing memorandum submitted by people who work for him.

Previously, Chief Judge Beryl Howell from the U.S. District Court for Washington, D.C. had issued a public statement supporting Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who will sentence Stone. Both Howell and Jackson did as they were told throughout the Mueller prosecution and siege of the Presidency.  The continuing RESIST occupation of thisDistrict Court is a major impediment in bringing prosecutions against those involved in the coup.

Trump Turns Down U.S. Restrictions against Selling China GE Jet Engines and Parts

Feb. 18 (EIRNS)—President Donald Trump today blasted proposals to restrict U.S. companies’ ability to sell jet engines and other components to China’s aviation industry, declaring that he had instructed his administration to block any such moves. He is thus opposing certain members of Congress and others advocating blocking General Electric, co-producer of jet engines, from selling them to China.

Trump tweeted today: ““The United States cannot, & will not, become such a difficult place to deal with in terms of foreign countries buying our product, including for the always used National Security excuse, that our companies will be forced to leave in order to remain competitive. We want to sell product and goods to China and other countries. That’s what trade is all about. We don’t want to make it impossible to do business with us. That will only mean that orders will go to someplace else. As an example, I want China to buy our jet engines, the best in the World. I have seen some of the regulations being circulated, including those being contemplated by Congress, and they are ridiculous. I want to make it EASY to do business with the United States, not difficult. Everyone in my Administration is being so instructed, with no excuses. THE UNITED STATES IS OPEN FOR BUSINESS!”

It is reported that the President is also considering lifting limits on other components for Chinese commercial aircraft, such as flight control systems made by Honeywell International.

The U.S. Semiconductor Industry Association welcomed the President’s tweets, “supporting U.S. companies being able to sell products to China and opposing proposed regulations that would unduly curtail that ability,” said SIA President John Neuffer, in a statement. “As we have discussed with the administration, sales of non-sensitive, commercial products to China drive semiconductor research and innovation, which is critical to America’s economic strength and national security.”

Soros Continues Push against Zuckerberg and Facebook, But His Target Is the President

Feb. 18 (EIRNS)—Today’s Financial Times carries a letter from George Soros demanding that Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg be canned as executives of Facebook due to what he calls a conspiracy to re-elect Donald Trump.  Soros originally made this demand back in January of 2020 in the New York Times. Those who have followed this story closely know that Facebook embedded with the 2016 Trump Campaign—an offer to use their digital tools which they also made to Hillary Clinton.  Clinton told Facebook forget about it, she already knew all about it, as with all things. Trump’s digital director, Brad Parscale welcomed Facebook in and credits the use of this tool with significant aspects of Trump’s 2016 victory.

As a result, Zuckerberg and Facebook were immediately targeted as tools of Russian propaganda and required to hire an army of censors lest the company itself be vaporized. Zuckerberg has drawn a line by continuing to allow Facebook political ads in 2020 with minimal or little censorship.  This is the major tool used effectively by Trump in 2016. By contrast, Google and Twitter have responded to those seeking to wipe out Trump’s ability to communicate with his supporters by banning all political advertising from their platforms.

STRATEGIC WAR DANGER

Taliban Announces Peace Agreement with U.S. Will Be Signed by End of February

Feb. 18 (EIRNS)—For the first time, Taliban leader Abdul Salam Hanafi said yesterday that a peace deal with the United States will be signed by the end of the month. Also, Afghanistan’s acting Interior Minister Masoud Andarabi told a gathering of provincial police commanders in Kabul today the “reduction in violence” period “will begin in the next five days, which will be based on the negotiations between the U.S. and the Taliban,” Reuters reported today. Some Afghan officials said that the reduced violence would be countrywide and that all parties to the conflict would halt planned offensive operations, according to the Washington Post Feb. 17.

Meanwhile, the Afghan government has begun work on forming the peace-negotiating team with the Taliban, said Waheed Omar, director general of the president’s office of public and strategic affairs, today. “The government will determine authorities of the negotiating team. The team will have about 15 members,” Omar said. The peace negotiating team will handle the technical aspects of the talks and the final decision will be taken in Kabul, he said, reported Afghanistan’s TOLONews.

In his first public comments, yesterday, since the peace talks breakthrough, U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, the chief negotiator with the Taliban, said he’s “cautiously optimistic,” according to the Washington Post. Khalilzad, speaking from Islamabad, Pakistan, said that, while he had received security guarantees from both the Afghan government and the Taliban, the potential remained for “spoilers” both inside Afghanistan and outside the country to upend months of diplomatic progress. “I believe that, maybe better than any time in the last couple of decades, there is an opportunity for peace,” he said, on Feb. 17, where he was attending a United Nations conference in Islamabad on refugees, marking 40 years of conflict in Afghanistan.

Russia, Turkey Still Reach No Agreement on Syria’s Idlib Province after Two Days of Talks

Feb. 18 (EIRNS)—Russian and Turkish delegations of diplomatic, military and intelligence officials met in Moscow for the second straight day, today, to continue discussions on how to resolve the situation in Syria’s Idlib province. The meeting, however, apparently ended without agreement. As with earlier sessions, including two last week in Ankara, the Russian side has issued no public statements but the Turks have repeated their demand that Syrian forces withdraw back to the lines as they existed at the time of the September 2018 Sochi agreement between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

“Our main objective is to return to the terms set forth by the Sochi agreement for Idlib,” Turkish Presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said late today, reported the Daily Sabah. “Russia’s proposals during the Idlib talks have so far proved unacceptable for Turkey. What’s important for Turkey is the recognition of borders set by our observation points, and the cessation of attacks by the Assad regime.” Since Nov. 1, the Syrian army has liberated approximately one-third of the territory in Idlib and Aleppo provinces that were previously occupied by Hayat Tahrir al Sham and other terrorist groups at the cost of much blood, and Damascus is unlikely to agree to relinquish that territory.

Pompeo Smacks Russian Oil Trading Firm with Sanctions for Brokering Venezuelan Oil

Feb. 18 (EIRNS)—Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced today that the U.S. was imposing sanctions on Rosneft Trading S.A., a Swiss-incorporated, Russian-owned oil brokerage firm, for operating in Venezuela’s oil sector. Board Chair and President Didier Casimiro was also sanctioned. This action, Pompeo claimed, was taken “to halt the former Maduro regime’s theft of Venezuela’s assets and continued usurpation of democracy….” According to Pompeo’s statement, Rosneft “has propped up the dictatorial Maduro, enabling his repression of the Venezuelan people.”

The Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement in response blasting the U.S. use of unilateral sanctions, which it said will only aggravate the crisis in U.S.-Russia bilateral relations and will not cause Russia to change its policy on Venezuela. “The U.S.’ destructive sanctions policy is more and more dramatically jeopardizing the freedom of global trade, despite Americans’ claims they favor it, and it also increases international tensions,” the statement said. “Politicians in Washington should long have understood that they will not achieve anything through putting economic and military pressure on Russia, but will only deepen the crisis in the bilateral relations.”

COLLAPSING WESTERN FINANCIAL SYSTEM

HSBC Bank To Cut 35,000 Jobs Worldwide

Feb. 18 (EIRNS)—Following a 33% decline in profits, London’s HSBC bank announced it will cut 35,000 jobs, or 15% of this global workforce, over the next three years according to the Guardian. The former Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corp. also issued a warning that the coronavirus outbreak in Asia could impact its performance in 2020. HSBC’s interim chief executive Noel Quinn said the job cuts were part of its radical overhaul. Their profits before tax for 2019 dropped 33% to $13.3 billion (£10.2 billion) and the bank said the job cuts are part of a plan to reduce costs by $4.5 billion by 2022.

German S&Ls, Economists Expose ECB Cheating on Inflation Rate

Feb. 18 (EIRNS)—The European Central Bank has motivated its zero and negative rates policy with the argument that inflation in the Eurozone has been lower than 2%, and that its monetary expansion policy aims at reaching that low-inflation target which is considered by monetarists a stimulus for investments. However, the ECB has cheated on inflation figures in order to keep providing cheap money to hedge funds and zombie corporations.

Prof. Liane Buchholz, head of the Westfalen-Lippe Saving and Loans Association (Sparkassenverband), exposed the ECB fraud in a speech at the association meeting Feb. 17.

“In the 28 EU countries we had a 1.5% inflation rate last year,” Mrs. Buchholz said. “Experts calculate that if real estate prices are included, the rate would increase by 0.5%. 1.5 plus 0.5 makes 2. The European Central Bank would therefore reach its inflation target of 2%. To make it once more clear and explicit: As soon as you include real estate prices in calculating inflation, the zero and negative rates policy of the ECB no longer has reason to exist.”

The 1.5% official inflation rate given by the ECB is the EU average. Germany reported a 1.7% inflation rate for January. But Leipzig-based economist Gunther Schnabl believes inflation in Germany is over 5%. According to his calculations, reported by Focus weekly, inflation in 2019 was 5.1%. Schnabl’s calculations include, among other things, housing prices and the inferior quality of products for the same price.

Schnabl has also criticized the ECB’s new Green Finance shift as being a pretext to expand the ECB’s balance sheet.

SCIENCE AND INFRASTRUCTURE

Food and Drug Administration Activated on Supply Chain Breakdowns for Medications

Feb. 18 (EIRNS)—A statement was issued Feb. 14 by U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Stephen Hahn, that “We are keenly aware that the [coronavirus] outbreak will likely impact the medical product supply chain, including potential disruptions to supply or shortages of critical medical products in the U.S.” The FDA has been contacting suppliers for updates. U.S. pharmaceutical supplies, like other basics, have been heavily outsourced for both inputs and final products. The coronavirus, or COVID-19 situation calls the question on this practice, which has been enforced by Wall Street, through lending, corporate ownership and thuggery, for years. Even without the COVID-19 emergency, episodic shortages of critical medicines have been occurring regularly in the U.S., with hospitals and medical personnel having to decide how to substitute and ration short supplies.

Some 80% of the raw materials to produce drugs come from China and India, according to researcher Rosemarie Gibson, cited in Science, the publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), on Feb. 17 in “ ‘The Disruption Is Enormous.’ The Coronavirus Epidemic Snarls Science Worldwide.” Called active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), these raw materials go into all ranges of medicines, from anti-bacterials to treatments for heart and kidney disease.

Michael Osterholm, PhD, MPH, director of Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota, told Science, “This is a very acute issue now.” He reckons on 153 medicines as in the category of highly necessary, but vulnerable to shortage.

FDA chief Hahn said in his statement, “It’s worth noting that there are no vaccines, gene therapies, or blood derivatives licensed by the FDA that are manufactured in China.” Yes, “Raw materials used in manufacturing do come from China and other locations in Southeast Asia and we are in contact with biologics manufacturers to gauge any supply concerns regarding raw materials.” It is estimated that some 40% of generic drugs used in the U.S. come from India.

THE NEW GLOBAL ECONOMIC ORDER

Trump Affirms China’s Xi ‘Loves His Country, and He’s Doing a Good Job’ against Coronavirus

Feb. 18 (EIRNS)—It has become typical at President Donald Trump’s informal press gaggles that someone inevitably asks a question about China, be it Hong Kong, coronavirus, or what have you. President Trump seemed a little concerned that the press would ask such a question about trusting the data from China, which is clear from his reaction today, on the tarmac, as he departed for California.

A reporter asked, “Are you still satisfied with the way President Xi is handling the coronavirus?” President Trump responded definitively: “I think President Xi is working very hard. As you know, I spoke with him recently.  He’s working really hard.  It’s a tough problem.  I think he’s going to do—look, I’ve seen them build hospitals in a short period of time. I really believe he wants to get that done, and he wants to get it done fast.  Yes, I think he’s doing it very professionally.

“We’realso working with him and helping him, as of the last few days, as you know.”

In a follow-up, the next question, with less than no reason, was that, “Some people don’t seem to trust the data coming out of China. Are you worried about that?” The President reaffirmed his outlook on his colleague: “President Xi loves the people of China, he loves his country, and he’s doing a very good job with a very, very tough situation.”

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