MONDAY, MARCH 9, 2020 Volume 7, Number 48 EIR Daily Alert Service P.O. Box 17390, Washington, DC 20041-0390

• Zepp-LaRouche Updates Appeal World to Leaders Trump, Xi, Putin and Modi To Urgently Implement LaRouche’s Four Laws
• Biden’s Cognitive Problems Are No Joke
• Trump Emphasizes World Scientific Cooperation for All Nations to Share Benefits in COVID-19 Fight
• Putin Did, Indeed, Put the Squeeze on Erdogan in Moscow Meeting
• Trump Speaks Out on Afghanistan, Get U.S. Out, No More Mass Killing
• Bolivia Descends Into Chaos, as May 3 Elections Loom
• Afghan Government Crisis Could Derail U.S. Deal With Taliban
• A Spooked Fed Prepares to Unleash ‘Helicopter Money’
• Saudi Crown Prince MBS Declares Oil War, Arrests Top Royals
• Ryabkov Talks to Kommersant About Russia’s Policy on Arms Control Talks
• German Farmers Besieging Centers of Green Ideology

EDITORIAL

Zepp-LaRouche Updates Appeal World to Leaders Trump, Xi, Putin and Modi To Urgently Implement LaRouche’s Four Laws

March 8 (EIRNS)—Urgent update of the Appeal of February 28, 2020, to President Trump, President Xi, President Putin, Prime Minister Modi, and leaders of other countries for the emergency implementation of the Four Laws of Lyndon LaRouche

By Helga Zepp-LaRouche, President of the Schiller Institute

Most health experts are now calling the coronavirus officially a pandemic, and only a few are avoiding this term in order not to rattle the markets and the investments in the “Pandemic Bonds”.  It is also apparent that this pandemic will be the deathblow for the otherwise already bankrupt financial system, of which the largest stock market collapse since 2008, the unprecedented plunge in the yield on 10-year U.S. Treasury notes, and the announcement of Boston Federal Reserve President Eric Rosengren to go for “helicopter money” are alarming and undeniable signals.

Instead of learning from China, which according to the WHO has set a new standard for dealing with such a crisis, most governments (Italy and Japan are exceptions) did not use the three months warning time they gained due to the efficient intervention by China to go into a crisis mode.  It is shocking, but not surprising, how completely incapable the liberal establishment has shown itself to be of reflecting on the fact that it is their policies which are the cause of an unprecedented threat to the entire human civilization, and of drawing the conclusions to change their ways.

Already in 1974, Lyndon LaRouche set up an Ecological-Biological Holocaust Taskforce, to investigate the effect of the policies of the IMF and the World Bank to slash food and energy consumption, as well as health expenditures in the developing countries—showing that this would lead to biological catastrophes, the emergence of old and new diseases and pandemics.  In the following decades, LaRouche and his movement published many more warnings, as well as offering concrete development programs for all continents, the implementation of which would have prevented the present crisis from spinning out of control.

Sure, the so-called industrialized countries may somehow cope with the crisis, but at what price?  Due to the privatization—i.e., profit-orientation—of the health sector, there are now far too few beds for ICU treatment.  The Belgian critical care doctor and head of the national trade union of doctors, Dr. Philippe Devos, has just warned that this shortage will lead to the triage of old people for the sake of young ones, when the number of cases surpasses the number of available ICU facilities, which he expects will happen.  Are we getting back to the slippery slope of ending “unworthy lives,” as condemned at the Nuremberg trials?

And what about the poor countries, which have not even the capacities for tests, let alone treatment?  What about countries like Haiti, Nigeria, and Bangladesh?  What about Iran, where the sanctions denying medical supplies are clearly already causing the loss of many lives, unnecessarily?

What about the locust infestations in African and Asian countries, a danger which has been known for many months, and where the ridiculously small required financial help of $76 million has not been given, so that now the danger is that the locust swarms develop into a full-fledged plague, threatening millions of people’s lives in a short period of time?

What about the barbaric scenes at the Turkish-Greek border, where police from both sides are using teargas against refugees, where one side may “instrumentalize” these people who have absolutely nothing, but the other side is no less barbaric trying to keep the “outer borders of the EU” protected?  Does the EU establishment really think they can build a new Limes Line around Europe, while Southwest Asia and Africa implode with a coronavirus pandemic, a locust plague, starvation, and desperation?

This establishment turned a blind eye to the interventionist wars by the Bush and Obama administrations, which were, after all, the main cause for the refugee crisis.  They have had no interest in building infrastructure in Africa over the last decades, mainly because of their neo-Malthusian ideology. Have they, in reality, accepted the idea to let this pandemic and this locust plague run their “natural course”?  Is this not fitting with the Green ideology, which preaches that having fewer people is good for the environment?

There is a solution for this existential crisis, but when the so-called “elites” are morally unfit to introduce the necessary reforms, we need a broad mobilization of the population, who must become “state citizens” (Staatsbürger). There has to be a broad, popular demand that the leading countries of the world—starting with the U.S., China, Russia, and India, supported by others—must implement the following steps in the reorganization of the present financial system:

1. There must be an immediate implementation of a global system of bank separation, modelled exactly on Roosevelt’s Glass-Steagall law of June 16, 1933.  Under this system, the commercial banks must be put under state protection, and must be completely separated by a firewall from the speculative investment banks, which can no longer be allowed access to either the assets of the commercial banks, or the privilege of bail-outs through taxpayer money.  The toxic paper of these banks, including outstanding derivatives contracts, have to be written off. Legitimate claims, which have to do with the real economy or the pensions and other assets of working people, are to be marked as valid in the new system.  Some categories of demand for payments have to be frozen for the time being, to be evaluated in terms of their validity by state institutions.

2. There must be the creation of a national bank in every country, in the tradition of Alexander Hamilton’s Bank of the United States or the Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau in Germany after World War II, so that state credit for productive investments can supply the physical economy with the necessary funds.  The issuance of these credits must be guided by the principles of high energy-flux density and an optimal increase of the productivity of the productive capacities and the powers of labor, through an emphasis on scientific and technological progress.

3. Among the participating countries, a system of fixed parities must be established, and cooperation treaties must be established among sovereign states for the purpose of well-defined infrastructure and development projects. These treaties together represent factually a New Bretton Woods system as it was intended by Roosevelt, with the explicit intention to provide credit for the industrial development of the developing sector.

4. The urgent increase in the productivity of the world economy to accommodate a world population of presently almost 8 billion people must be facilitated through an international crash program for the realization of thermonuclear fusion power and other advanced technologies, such as optical biophysics and life sciences, in order to find solutions for challenges such as the coronavirus; as well as international cooperation in space technology and travel, which can establish the necessary next higher economic platform for the world economy, as this has been developed by the economist Lyndon LaRouche.

The Belt and Road Initiative initiated by President Xi Jinping, which already has been joined by 157 countries, offers a concrete perspective to bring the urgently required industrial development to Southwest Asia and Africa. China has offered to cooperate with all countries on this planet in a win-win cooperation to extend the New Silk Road to Southwest Asia and Africa, and in this way provide a concrete development perspective, which is the only human way to solve the refugee crisis. The United States and all European nations must cooperate with this plan.

We, the signers, are making this urgent appeal to the governments mentioned, to act in this moment of an extraordinary challenge to the safety and existence of all of mankind, to correct the mistakes of the present system which led to this present crisis, and return to the principles of the common good, of sovereignty of the nation-state, and food and energy security, while we adopt a vision for the common aims of mankind and a community of the shared future of humanity.

U.S. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC

Biden’s Cognitive Problems Are No Joke

March 8 (EIRNS)—Among the strange phenomena taking place in the world today, none is stranger than the Democratic Party driving all secondary candidates out of the race and mobilizing behind Joe Biden. The fact that he is suffering severe cognitive problems, almost certainly signs of the onset of dementia, and yet the fact that other candidates (other than Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard) have dropped out and endorsed Biden, is truly astonishing.

Caitlin Johnstone posted an article on Consortium News on March 6 under the title: “Stop Calling It a Stutter: Dozens of Examples Show Biden’s Dementia Symptoms.” She ridiculed the current Democratic Party meme that Biden has a life-long “stutter,” showing that his lapses of cognition have nothing to do with a stutter, and everything to do with the well-established signs of dementia.

President Donald Trump, in his rally in Charlotte, North Carolina on March 2, after reporting some of Biden’s strange utterances, made the following comment, which is no joke: “Maybe he gets in, because he’s a little more moderate. So maybe he gets in. But he’s not going to be running it. Other people are going to. They’re going to put him into a home, and other people are going to be running the country. But they’re going to be super-left radical crazies. They’re going to be super-left radical crazies, Joe’s going to be in a home. He’ll be watching television. Everything will be just fine.”

And, of course, there is also the fact that Biden is likely to be facing serious criminal charges very soon. Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s lawyer who has been researching the crimes of the Biden family, appeared on Fox News Saturday night, March 7, saying the following about Biden:

“The man has something wrong with him. And it is serious. Not only that, his family has been stealing for 30 years. There are at least eight cases in which the family made hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars by selling his public office. It is possible that when he says ‘I didn’t know about it’—he’s so out of it that he didn’t know about it. I don’t believe that. The kid has a terrible drug problem, and he becomes a multi-millionaire. Any father would want to know how…. I also have witnesses who know that he knew.”

Giuliani said that, besides the Ukraine and China scams with Hunter Biden, Joe’s brother got a bonanza out of an Iraq deal, and there were other smaller deals in Romania and within the U.S. Giuliani concluded: “This is an ongoing criminal enterprise.”

Trump Emphasizes World Scientific Cooperation for All Nations To Share Benefits in COVID-19 Fight

March 7 (EIRNS)—Addressing reporters during his visit to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, yesterday, President Donald Trump again urged support for U.S. health professionals and scientists who are working on the novel coronavirus, who are doing so, he emphasized, in cooperation with their colleagues and fellow scientists around the world.

The South Koreans “are dealing with us all the time,” Trump said at one point. “When you mentioned Italy, they’re dealing with us all the time. We’re working together with China. We’re working together with everybody,”

Trump came back to this same point a few minutes later, saying U.S. public laboratories “they spotted something going on in China. They started working on it immediately just in case it should come here, and also to help China.  I mean, if we could find something that’s beneficial, we want to give it to China like they’re going to want to give it to us.  China is working very closely with us—South Korea, Italy, all of them.”

STRATEGIC WAR DANGER

Putin Did, Indeed, Put the Squeeze on Erdogan in Moscow Meeting

March 7 (EIRNS)—The ceasefire agreement reached March 5 between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Idlib, Syria is a big step back for Erdogan’s geopolitical designs for Syria. Except for the ceasefire as such Turkey made no gains, but only losses. The Russia-Syrian military operations over the last month were totally due to the fact that Turkey did not implement the main points of the Sochi agreement that Putin and Erdogan signed on Sept. 17, 2018.

In their March 5 Moscow meeting, first, Putin made it clear that the struggle against terror groups on the UN list of terror groups, most especially Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which Turkey has fully protected until now, will continue. As in the 2018 Sochi agreements, Turkey must separate the HTS from the legitimate opposition in Syria. The most important part of the agreement is the control of Highways M5 and M4, one of the objectives of the anti-terror offensive and which in the 2018 Sochi agreement Turkey was supposed to open, but did not. Although M5 was not directly mentioned in the agreement, Turkey has nonetheless de facto recognized Syrian control of Highway M5, a vital link between Aleppo and Damascus, which will now be open for Syrian civilian traffic.

M4, which runs from Latakia to Aleppo through Idlib, and which intersects M5 west of Saraqib (now under Russian control), will be jointly patrolled by Russian and Turkish troops for its full length, allowing for civilian traffic between Latakia and Aleppo. M4 will run through the buffer zone which lies 6 km on either side of the highway.

Syria will remain in control of the part of the Idlib enclave it liberated during the offensive, which reduced it by half. Turkish observation posts will remain in the demilitarized area of Idlib, only “for now.” Many of these observation posts will now be surrounded by Syrian troops.

The deal does not mention the need for a safe or buffer zone along the Turkish-Syrian border, although it had been one of the top Turkish demands.

Also of importance, Putin said the agreement “will help establish dialogue between all sides to the contention” which is seen as Russia’s intention to insist that Turkey establish dialogue with the Syrian government.

If anything, the agreement in effect gives Turkey time to decide how it is going to end its involvement in this 9-year conflict.

Trump Speaks Out on Afghanistan, Get U.S. Out, No More Mass Killing

March 6 (EIRNS)—In the Scranton, Pennsylvania town hall this evening, sponsored by Fox News, President Donald Trump was asked about his deal in Afghanistan and his phone call to a Taliban leader, said to be Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar. Fox News asked: “You said it was a good conversation, in which you said you both didn’t want violence.  However, on that same day, the Taliban launched some 50 attacks in Afghanistan, 40 of them in one province.  There are many Americans really wondering—and the U.S. struck back against the Taliban.  There are many Americans … wondering where the ‘peace’ part of the peace plan is.  And can you trust the Taliban?”

The President: So, these are warriors.  We’ve been there for 20 years.  We’re really serving more as a law enforcement group than a military group.  We could win that war very easily, but I don’t feel like killing millions of people in order to do it.  We don’t want to do that.  You don’t want to do that. Nobody wants to do that.  People are tired.  Even the biggest hawks are tired of being there.

I had a very good conversation with him.  There was a group that formed. And, again, you know, they have many tribes and they have many different—it’s hard for one.  There’s like perfectly one control. I spoke to a certain man who is the leader, but the leader has not—it’s not the easiest leadership position. … And the structure is … tribes all over the place. A group formed that was going to attack certain soldiers—Afghan soldiers—and the military heard about it, and the military went and they took them out….

I think after 19, actually, going very close to 20 years, they’re also tired of fighting, believe it or not. But they are warriors and they are fighters and that’s what they’ve done for a thousand years.  You know, just ask the Soviet Union, which became Russia because of Afghanistan.  You know, it’s a tough place.

Fox: But what about the conditions on the ground?  Because, you know, General Mattis had a disagreement with you about pulling troops out of Syria and Afghanistan.

The President: Well, I was right.

Fox: If the generals say to you, ‘Mr. President, we need more people, not fewer people right now,’ what will you do?

The President: Well, Mattis said that and I gave him more people for a short period of time, and it didn’t work out.  And what we’re doing is policing….

Fox: But if it takes more troops to keep the Taliban from taking over Afghanistan, is that something you would be willing to do or no?

The President: Well, you know, there’s a big question about the government of Afghanistan.  There’s a big question about that whole situation in Afghanistan.  We’re getting along very well with everybody.  We have to get our people back home…. Eventually, we have to leave.  We don’t want to stay there for another 20 years.  We don’t want to stay there for 100 years.  We want our people to come back home.  (Applause.)

Bolivia Descends into Chaos, as May 3 Elections Loom

March 8 (EIRNS)—Predictably, the Bolivian government of “president” Jeanine Añez, which illegally seized power Nov. 11, 2019, following the coup d’état against President Evo Morales, is in a state of disarray, just two months from the scheduled May 3 general elections. At least three of Añez’s cabinet ministers face censure by the Senate, controlled by Morales’s MAS party, and may have to resign.

Añez has “governed” with the blessings of the U.S. State Department and its toady Luis Almagro, the corrupt Secretary-General of the Organization of American States, and the State Department USAID, among others; but her fascist repression of political opponents—hundreds of MAS members have been jailed on charges of “state terrorism” and “corruption”—and dismantling of Morales’s dirigist economic policies in favor of Wall Street and City of London’s murderous free-market policies, have sparked a rebellion among sectors of the population.

Reflecting this, on March 5, when Añez showed up in El Alto, Bolivia’s second most populous city (1 million), and a base of Morales’s indigenous support, to celebrate the city’s founding, she was run off by an angry crowd screaming “assassin!” and had to be whisked away by her security detail, while police lobbed tear gas bombs at protesters, RT reported. Following the November coup, the Senkata district of El Alto was the site of a police massacre of Morales supporters, in which 10 people were killed and 30 wounded. The government has never taken any action against the perpetrators of that massacre, or one in Sacaba, Cochabama in which police also killed 10 peasants.

On March 4, COB Bolivia’s largest trade union federation declared a state of emergency, warning that the government plans to privatize state sector companies and fire their workers, La Razón reported March 5. The state-sector utility ENTEL, the state-run YPFB oil firm, and the flagship Boliviana de Aviación airline, are all in danger the COB stated, as the government claims these companies all have large deficits and are “inefficient.” Privatization won’t be tolerated, the COB warned.

Infighting within the right-wing parties backing Añez is meanwhile reaching fever pitch. Her erstwhile ally, Luis Fernando Camacho, the fascist religious fanatic who was instrumental in Morales’s overthrow, has now abandoned his own presidential candidacy and is attacking Añez for mismanaging the government. There are at least six other right-wing candidates running, all fighting each other, while polls show that MAS candidate,  former Finance Minister Luis Arce, has a potential 49% of the vote.

Afghan Government Crisis Could Derail U.S. Deal with Taliban

March 8 (EIRNS)—With the talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban scheduled to start on March 10, from the deal brokered by the U.S. and the Taliban to get the U.S. forces out of the country and out of the war, it is not clear just who the Afghan government is.

The election last year was contested, and it was not until February that the Election Council declared Ashraf Ghani the winner. But his opponent Abdullah Abdullah never accepted the result. On Monday, March 9, the day before the scheduled talks with the Taliban, Ghani will be sworn in as President, and Abdullah has announced that he will hold a swearing-in ceremony at the same time at a different location in Kabul, reported Al Jazeera today.

U.S. Special Envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, who brokered the U.S.-Taliban deal in Doha, Qatar, is holding talks with both Ghani and Abdullah representatives to try to resolve the issue before Monday.

ECONOMY

A Spooked Fed Prepares To Unleash ‘Helicopter Money’

March 7 (EIRNS)—Two weeks ago saw the single largest weekly drop in the New York Stock Exchange since 2008, in part responding to the coronavirus crisis. This past week the panic grew and expressed itself in an unprecedented plunge in the yield on the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury note to its lowest rate ever, under 0.7%.

Federal Reserve Bank of Boston President Eric Rosengren admitted to a New York panel discussion at the Spring Meeting of the Shadow Open Market Committee yesterday that the tricks and sleight-of-hand that had bailed out the bankrupt financial system since 2008—quantitative easing, in which the Fed bought trillions of dollars of Treasury notes and other government-backed paper—would not work this time around. “[T]here would be little room for the Federal Reserve to lower rates through large purchases of long-term Treasury securities – like it did to make conditions more accommodative in and after the Great Recession—if a recession occurred in this rate environment,” Rosengren regretfully stated. This might require the Fed to start buying a “broader range” of securities or assets—in other words, any piece of financial crap that is lying around in the market—which could only be done if Congress expanded the Fed’s mandate to be able to do so.

This lunatic hyperinflationary approach is otherwise known as creating “helicopter money,” a quaint phrase coined by Milton Friedman in 1969 and popularized by Ben Bernanke in 2002, to describe the policy of simply throwing money at a bankrupt speculative bubble. It was supported by prominent bankers and financial top rollers at their last at Jackson Hole meeting in August 2019, cognizant that a blow-out was just around the corner.

Saudi Crown Prince MBS Declares Oil War, Arrests Top Royals

March 8 (EIRNS)—Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) has declared an oil war, following Russia’s rejection on March 6 of the Saudi plan for both OPEC and non-OPEC members  to further cut oil production, in order to stop the precipitous slide in oil prices sparked by the global slowdown from the coronavirus. Financial Times reports today that Saudi Arabia will “raise production and offer its crude at deep discounts to win new customers next month, according to two people familiar with the country’s oil policy, which risks sending prices tumbling further. Oil prices had already dropped by a third since January to near $45 a barrel.” The plan is to raise Saudi production from 9 million barrels/day to 10 mbd, or even 11 mbd, and give discounts of between 10% and 20% in certain major markets.

FT considers this a Saudi attempt to “punish Russia, while squeezing the U.S. shale industry and other higher cost producers.” They also point out that the cuts implemented earlier by both Russia and the Gulf states had not raised the international price, since the U.S. raised its output from shale. Mikhail Leontiev, press secretary for Rosneft, made a statement that the earlier Russian deal with Saudi Arabia had become “meaningless.” “The true result of the arrangement is that the total volume of oil that was reduced as a result of the repeated extension of the OPEC-plus agreement was completely and quickly replaced in the world market with American shale oil,” he said, reported TASS.

Saudi’s Aramco traded below its original IPO price for the first time on March 8, down 6.36% on the day.

If the price of oil drops below $40/barrel, the shale companies, that are propped up by a huge Wall Street debt bubble, could totally collapse—another possible spark to a pending market disaster.

Crown Prince Mohammed also moved to silence the primary rivals to his leadership and to his expected elevation to King when the current ailing King dies. Four senior princes were detained on March 6, including Prince Ahmed bin Abdulaziz, an uncle of MBS, and one of his cousins, Mohammed bin Nayef, who was previously the Crown Prince. The princes were charged with treason, according to the Washington Post.

THE NEW GLOBAL ECONOMIC ORDER

Ryabkov Talks to Kommersant about Russia’s Policy on Arms Control Talks

March 6 (EIRNS)—Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov, in an interview with Kommersant on March 5, commented on arms control issues, in light of President Donald Trump’s proposal to have arms control talks with Russia and China, reported TASS. “We have repeatedly stated, and the President has said this, that the security of the Russian Federation is ensured for decades to come. Americans know this. Their NATO allies know this as well,” Ryabkov replied to a question on what Moscow could lose if the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) is not extended in February 2021, when it comes due.

“In the political-diplomatic sense, the predictability and understanding for the future of what we can expect from our opponents, let’s call them this, will significantly decrease in the absence of a treaty. Of course, what American experts say are benefits of the New START—transparency and predictability—are important for us as well. We will admit that the treaty built on the principles of parity and balance of interests, provides the same things for us,” he stressed.

“In fact, Moscow and Washington face similar choices when it comes to how we will proceed with the issue of arms control,” Ryabkov said. “We are ready to extend the treaty without any preconditions and think that this would be the right decision for everyone, including the United States.”

Rybakov also expressed concerns with U.S. military policy and planning: “In particular, we could deal with the issues that concern us. This, of course, includes their global missile defense system that continues to develop, their plans to deploy offensive weapons in space, and many other things,” he remarked.

“It is clear that Americans have their own questions to what we do. We are ready to have a substantive conversation on every issue instead of exchanging mutual reproaches and accusations or trying to force unilateral decisions on others, as it often happens from the U.S. side.”

The full transcript is available in English on the Russian Foreign Ministry website.

German Farmers Besieging Centers of Green Ideology

March 6 (EIRNS)—Among the protests during the German farmers’ national day of action yesterday, were also special deployments to bring their tractors to besiege the offices of Germany’s notorious, green environmentalist institutes and outfits, including: the Federal Environment Office in Dessau, the Lower Saxony HQ of the radical NABU in Hanover, and the Water Economy Office in Ansbach. In Dessau, 300 tractors took part in the all-day blockade.

Farmers also targetted for blockade the logistics bases of the leading food store chains like Lidl, Aldi, Edeka, REWE in numerous locations. Farmers demanded direct talks with the chains’ management on their price-dumping.

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