EDITORIAL
Two Paradigms, One Choice
Aug. 13 (EIRNS)—The strategic significance of the Aug. 11 telephone conversation between President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, as emphasized at the time by Schiller Institute chairwoman Helga Zepp-LaRouche, was further evident in yesterday’s publication in Xinhua of China’s “readout” on that call. It emphasized the same essential points contained in the earlier White House readout—including the need for a peaceful, negotiated solution to the Korean crisis—but added in conclusion that, “on the Korean nuclear issue, Trump said the United States fully understands China’s efforts in resolving it, and is willing to continue to keep close contacts with Beijing on major international and regional issues of common concern.”
So not only did the “extremely close” relationship between the two leaders—forged at their personal meetings at Mar-a-Lago and the G20 summit—come into play to try to cool out the current Korean crisis, and prevent a British-instigated war from exploding; that relationship is also a stated, strategic factor for addressing other “major international and regional issues of common concern” as they come up.
What would happen if President Trump were to develop a similar working relationship with Russia’s Vladimir Putin? What if the Big Three—of Trump, Xi and Putin—were to jointly work for global infrastructure projects based on the Belt and Road Initiative, and for combatting the enemies of humanity such as London’s terrorism and drug apparatus?
The British Empire and their lackeys in Wall Street and Washington know the answer to those questions. And the very thought of it makes them fear for their very existence, and that of their system of financial looting and genocide.
That is why they will not give up on their house of cards fabrication about non-existent “collusion” by Trump, with non-existent Russian “hacking” of the DNC’s computers, to further their non-existent interference in the last U.S. Presidential election. Never mind that there was never a shred of evidence to prove any of those charges; never mind that there is now a growing avalanche of evidence of the British Empire’s controlling hand in all of those lies, and of the plot to overthrow the Trump presidency, either by coup or by assassination.
The LaRouche movement’s role in achieving the breakout of coverage of the VIPS memo has been at the center of exposing that British intention, with positive results to date.
To which the British Empire’s only answer has been “silver or lead”—the tried and tested technique of Dope, Inc.’s drug capos for bringing about obedience. How else to explain the totally lopsided votes in the House and the Senate on the Russian sanctions bill? Only five individuals voted their conscience: the remainder voted either the “silver” they were offered as Wall Street backing for their election campaigns; or the “lead” of FBI blackmail and scandals; or both.
In short, we are living and organizing in the midst of the battle between two paradigms, two systems of what Mankind is and shall become. The old paradigm is going under, and the problems in the world all come from that, and their desperate, doomed drive to survive.
So don’t get caught up in the details. Present people the big picture—which is the only thing worth fighting for, in any event.
STRATEGIC WAR DANGER
Presidents Trump and Xi Discuss Korea Peninsula Crisis
Aug. 12 (EIRNS)—U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping held a telephone conversation on North Korea last night, an exchange which Schiller Institute chairwoman Helga Zepp-LaRouche considered as of the utmost strategic importance to derail the drive for World War III coming from the British Empire and allied circles. Taking note of the largely rhetorical—and not yet military—nature of the recent escalation of attacks between the U.S. and North Korea, Zepp-LaRouche nonetheless emphasized: “Don’t kid yourself; the situation is extremely dangerous,” since the British are trying to provoke an actual war on the Korean Peninsula, and globally.
China’s CGTN television network reported that, on the call between Trump and Xi, both leaders stated their interest in maintaining peace and stability on a nuclear weapons-free peninsula. CGTN quoted President Xi saying: “All relevant parties must now exercise restraint. The Korean nuclear problem needs to be resolved through political reconciliation and dialogue.”
The official White House read-out on the call also noted that the two leaders agreed that it was urgent to take steps toward “achieving peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula,” including the “denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.” The White House account then concluded by noting that “President Trump looks forward to seeing President Xi in China later this year, a meeting that will be a very historic event. The relationship between the two Presidents is an extremely close one, and will hopefully lead to a peaceful resolution of the North Korea problem.”
In addition to this direct communication between the leaders of the United States and China, the U.S. reportedly also has a back-channel of communication with the North Korean government. According to a report published yesterday by the Associated Press, the so-called “New York channel” between the U.S. and North Korea, which had been broken off by then-President Barack Obama in 2016, has been revived as of this year under the Trump administration. This involves Joseph Yun, the U.S. envoy for North Korea policy, and Pak Song-il, a senior diplomat at the North Korean UN mission. Yun, who is also the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Korea and Japan, worked under the direction of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, to secure the release from North Korea earlier this year of the American student Otto Warmbier, who subsequently died upon his return.
According to AP, there is little substantive negotiating going on through the “New York channel” at this point, given the level of distrust between the U.S. and North Korea, but it remains open as a means of sending message and information.
Russian Foreign Minister Warns that ‘Risks Are Very High’ around Korean Peninsula Crisis
Aug. 12 (EIRNS)—Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, speaking at the Aug. 11 Terra Scientia on Klyazma River National Educational Youth Forum, warned of the dangers associated with the escalating threats and counter-threats regarding the Korean Peninsula.
“The risks are very high, especially regarding the rhetoric [between the U.S. and D.P.R.K.],” Lavrov said. “We hear direct threats to use force. At the same time, U.S. Secretary of Defense Mattis stated once again: Yes, this will involve a huge number of human casualties, and yet talks about a pre-emptive strike on North Korea; and talk in Pyongyang that it is necessary to strike the island of Guam, where several U.S. military bases are located, do not stop. Of course, this concerns us very much.” Lavrov continued, when it almost comes to a fight, “the first step away from danger should be taken by the stronger, smarter side…. Unfortunately, the rhetoric in Washington and Pyongyang is beginning to turn extreme. We are still expecting common sense to prevail.”
Lavrov asserted, “You know what our position is: we do not accept the nuclear status of North Korea. Together with China, we have put forward a number of proposals aimed at preventing a deep conflict that would lead to mass casualties.”
If the U.S. Is Going To War against North Korea, Nobody Told the U.S. Military
Aug. 11 (EIRNS)—“If you watch cable news or follow the President’s Twitter feed, you might be under the impression that the U.S. is heading to war with North Korea. But somebody, it seems, forgot to loop in the U.S. military,” reports the Navy Times in an article posted Aug. 11. The fact is, there is no mobilization of the U.S. military currently underway, despite the white hot rhetoric flying between Pyongyang and Washington. In Yokosuka, Japan, the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan is at pierside, along with the 7th Fleet command ship, the USS Blue Ridge. No Marines are being loaded aboard amphibious ships, no sailors are being recalled from shore leave, no BMD ships have been sortied to the waters around Korea, Japan or Guam, and no evacuation orders for family members of U.S. military stationed in South Korea or Japan have been issued, according to three sources who spoke to the Times. And while there’s been a lot of talk about B-1B bombers flying pre-emptive strikes against North Korea missile sites over the last few days, an Air Force spokesman told the Times that there have been no B-1 missions to Korea and Japan since Aug. 7.
What we’re seeing is the latest example of the war rhetoric far outpacing the facts on the ground, a U.S. official said on background Friday morning, Aug. 11. “This may come as a shock, but the rhetoric doesn’t match reality,” he said. “[I’m] worried about a ‘Guns of August’ scenario, where we stumble into a conflict.”
What the Times is attributing this week’s scare to, is the Washington Post report of Aug. 8 claiming that U.S. intelligence believes that North Korea can now fit nuclear warheads onto missiles. “We went from 0 to 100 miles per hour because somebody decided it was a good idea to tell the Washington Post about an … intelligence assessment and the President reacted to the story in the media,” said one former Obama administration official who spoke on background. In fact, nothing has really changed. “We’ve known for years that Kim Jong-un has sought to miniaturize nuclear warheads,” the source said. “What we are seeing is how echo-chamber of hyperbole can spin out of control to the point where the entire Korean Peninsula is on the edge of a nuclear crisis. That’s the power these leaks have now.”
The “Guns of August” risk is, in fact, very high, as the U.S. has not canceled military exercises with Korea and Japan that are scheduled for this month. Not only is the U.S.-South Korean joint exercise Ulchi Freedom Guardian still scheduled to begin on Aug. 21, but Exercise Northern Viper 17 kicked off in on Hokkaido, Japan’s northern most island, on Aug. 10, involving 500 U.S. Marines and 18 U.S. F-16’s from Misawa Air Base along with 3,000 Japanese troops. That exercise is scheduled to run through Aug. 28.
Former Defense Secretary Perry Stresses Need for Dialogue To Resolve North Korea Crisis
Aug. 11 (EIRNS)—Xinhua sought out former U.S. Defense Secretary William Perry who emphasized the need to hold a high-level dialogue as soon as possible between the United States and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (D.P.R.K.). It is truly vital for the two countries to “conduct a serious negotiation aimed at bringing peace to the peninsula and bringing a non-nuclear peninsula into being as soon as possible,” Perry said in an interview that was published on Aug. 9. “Sanctions in theory can be effective, but in practice usually are not,” he said. The 89-year-old Perry, who visited the D.P.R.K. in 1999 as President Bill Clinton’s special envoy, added that “the six-party talks has a great merit involving all of the countries that are most concerned about the issue. We need partnership to put together an effective, really effective diplomacy. He endorsed the double freeze proposal put forth by China and Russia, saying that it “would at least keep the nuclear dangers from getting worse.”
Perry also noted that it is important for the concerned parties to understand the D.P.R.K.’s priority concern. As long as the D.P.R.K. feels threatened by the United States, it will feel obliged to move to nuclear weapons, Perry explained. “The goal is giving each side the reasonable assurance that their security is not threatened,” he said. “There’s no reason for the United States to even have troops” in South Korea if the D.P.R.K. would be no longer seen as a threat by South Korea, he added.
U.S. POLITICAL & ECONOMIC
VIPS Avalanche Is Building Against London’s Russiagate Fraud
Aug. 12 (EIRNS)—The memorandum prepared by the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) continues to rocket around the world, despite the mainstream media’s and the Democratic National Committee’s best efforts to contain it. Over the past four days, thousands of blogs, political news commentary and aggregation sites, and tweets have reported on the VIPS findings, referring to the original VIPS memo posted to ConsortiumNews, LaRouche PAC, the articles in The Nation by Russian affairs expert Stephen Cohen and historian Patrick Lawrence, the report by investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, and/or the Aug. 10 article in Bloomberg News by Leonid Bershidsky.
Below is a representative sampling of coverage:
On Aug. 10, Breitbart published an article headlined “Left-Wing Magazine The Nation Report Puts ‘Russian Hack’ DNC Narrative in Freefall.’ ” Breitbart has a very large readership: it was getting upwards of 45 million unique monthly visits at the beginning of this year, although there are reports that its traffic has dropped significantly since then. Of course, has close links to the Trump White House.
Theirs is a lengthy report on the article appearing earlier this week in The Nation, authored by historian and journalist Lawrence Patrick. Breitbart’s account which begins: “A bombshell report published Wednesday by avowedly liberal news magazine The Nation may have put the last nail in the coffin of the ‘Russian hack’ narrative that has dominated the mainstream media’s coverage for the last year.” Breitbart also elicited the following defensive response from the DNC’s deputy communications director, Adrienne Watson: “U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded the Russian government hacked the DNC in an attempt to interfere in the election. Any suggestion otherwise is false and is just another conspiracy theory like those pushed by Trump and his administration.”
“Bombshell Report on the DNC Hack by Forensic Experts Claims It Was an Inside Job, Not the Russians,” by Benny Johnson posted in the Independent Journalism Review of Aug. 10 who notes that despite the countless investigations and nonstop political scapegoating, there is still very little, if any, hard evidence of a hack of the DNC servers. Now, “the infamous hack of the Democratic National Committee has been blown wide open by a new bombshell report by Patrick Lawrence of The Nation.”
Cheryl Chumley online opinion editor for the Washington Timeswrites in an article posted Aug. 11: “You know it’s time to pack it up and move on from a Democratic-driven political hit when even the left-of-left liberal-leaning magazine, The Nation, starts to say, hey, guys, there are no facts here.”
A Reddit.com page dedicated to Fox News personality Tucker Carlson on Aug. 11 had at least 26 posts on VIPS and other material undermining the Russiagate hoax.
Western Journalism covers The Nation article.
World Tribune covers it with the headline: “Left-Wing Magazine Shoots Down Premise on Which Mueller Investigation Is Based.” It quotes Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning saying that if the whole premise of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation is false, then there’s no rationale for it continuing.
The New York Post on Aug. 11 posted commentary by its editorial board, under the headline “U.S. Spies Don’t Buy Russia Story,” reporting on Leonid Bershidsky’s article on the VIPS memo published by Bloomberg Aug. 10.
Edward Snowden’s collaborator, Glenn Greenwald tweeted the Bloomberg article with the message “skepticism like this is worth raising & hearing” after an online exchange with LaRouche activist Martin Glaser.
Robert Mueller’ Former Senior Adviser at the FBI Threatened Trump with Death
Aug. 11 (EIRNS)—CNN “counterterrorism analyst” Phil Mudd, who had a long career at the CIA, and ended up as then-FBI Director Robert Mueller’s Senior Intelligence Advisor through 2010, openly stated in a CNN interview on Aug. 10 that the intelligence community was going to “kill” President Trump.
Mudd said that Trump’s defense of President Putin has compelled some Federal employees to want to kill Trump: “Let me give you one bottom line as a former government official. Government is going to kill this guy,” Mudd said. “He defends Vladimir Putin. There are State Department and CIA officers coming home, and at Langley and Foggy Bottom, CIA and State, they’re saying, ‘This is how you defend us?’ ”
Not satisfied to threaten the President with assassination just once, Mudd continued, referring to the predawn, July 26 FBI raid on the house of Paul Manafort, who was briefly Turmp’s campaign manager and one of the people accused of colluding with Russia in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s witch-hunt. “What did the Department of Justice say on Paul Manafort?” Mudd asked rhetorically. “ ‘You can say what you want, a judge told us we had cause to search his home early in the morning because we don’t trust the guy who was your campaign manager.’ The government is going to kill this guy because he doesn’t support them,” Mudd concluded.
Don’t Get Distracted from Destroying Russiagate; Desperate Traitors Stage Riot in Charlottesville
Aug. 13 (EIRNS)—The Aug. 12 violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, which is grabbing international headlines, was a staged confrontation designed explicitly to tar President Trump as a racist and a Nazi in the wake of the possible collapse of the Russiagate hoax. The three deaths which resulted should be blamed squarely on the British Empire, the authors of the ongoing coup against Trump and the U.S. Constitution.
According to the press, the violence was precipitated when a group of white nationalists fought it out with the Antifa counter-demonstrators over the planned removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. One person died and five were critically injured when a car was driven into the crowd of counter-demonstrators. Two state policemen died when their helicopter crashed.
The President denounced this egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence on all sides and called upon the nation to unite. By contrast, Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, a staunch ally of Hillary Clinton, condemned the white supremacists and Nazis, but condoned the violence of the counter-demonstrators as a reasonable response. There are numerous comments, even in The Washington Post this morning, citing inexplicable policing tactics which failed to separate the two sides, despite ample time for planning to deal with the widely-publicized event.
The white nationalists featured former President George H.W. Bush’s favorite Ku Klux Klan/Nazi David Duke, and Richard B. Spencer, his successor in government-instigated riot planning. Duke is a rabid environmentalist and population control freak who emerged from Henry Kissinger’s State Department and its genocide in Laos as the modern face of the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan has always been an FBI-controlled operation and two of Duke’s closest Klan associates, Bill Wilkinson and Donald Black, were admitted government agents.
Richard B. Spencer has a similar curriculum vitae, with a Master of Arts degree in humanities from the University of Chicago, graduate study at Duke University, affiliation with various right-wing racist institutes and projects which have served the intelligence community. Spencer’s mother is an heiress who has funded his career, with a fortune that came from owning cotton farms in Louisiana. Spencer has engaged in repeated stunts attempting to link President Trump to the Nazis, including holding his own widely publicized inauguration event in which his supporters saluted President Trump with Nazi salutes.
Trump Says a ‘Military Option’ vs. Venezuela Is Not Ruled Out; Better Recall LaRouche’s Words
Aug. 12 (EIRNS)—Speaking to reporters Aug. 11 at his Bedminster, New Jersey golf club, President Donald Trump stated: “We have many options for Venezuela and, by the way, I’m not going to rule out a military option. A military operation and military option is certainly something that we could pursue.”
Trump was responding to the fact that the Venezuelan situation has rapidly devolved since the decision by the Maduro government to impose an unconstitutionally-convened Constituent Assembly on the country earlier this month, leading to strident objections from both domestic opponents and many foreign governments. Within Ibero-America, the Mercosur (Common Market of the South) on Aug. 5 voted to suspend Venezuela from membership in that body; but today, the Mercosur nations responded to Trump’s threat with a statement that they “reject the use of force to reestablish democratic order,” and “repudiate violence and any option that involves the use of force.”
What this statement reflects is the fact that, while many nations in Ibero-America may be opposed to Maduro’s unconstitutional measures and his deployment of Jacobin violence, they all balk at the idea of a direct U.S. military intervention, as this would threaten all of their sovereignties and unleash chaos and violence across the region.
Fifteen years ago, during a similar crisis in Venezuela, EIRFounding Editor Lyndon LaRouche intervened forcefully against the prospect of using U.S. force to topple the government of Hugo Chavez—Maduro’s predecessor and political godfather. LaRouche’s words then, provide a way out for the Trump administration today.
On Dec. 21, 2002, EIR issued a press release headlined “LaRouche: We Do Not Wish ‘an Allende Solution’ for the Chavez Problem in Venezuela,” which stated in part:
“U.S. Presidential pre-candidate Lyndon LaRouche has expressed his concern over the dangerous and rapidly degenerating political situation in Venezuela, and in particular over the added complications arising from the highly unstable and erratic behavior of President Hugo Chavez…. LaRouche stated emphatically: ‘We don’t want an “Allende solution” to the Chavez problem.’ LaRouche also rejected the idea, currently promoted by the Inter-American Dialogue and other bankers’ think-tanks, of using the Organization of American States (OAS) to orchestrate a supra-national intervention into Venezuelan affairs, in violation of that country’s national sovereignty….
“LaRouche reiterated that his policy for the Americas is in the tradition of John Quincy Adams, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, where a community of principle among perfectly sovereign nation-states is the framework in which mutually beneficial economic development tasks are jointly undertaken.”
COLLAPSING WESTERN FINANCIAL SYSTEM
Behind the Opioid and Heroin Epidemic: Britain’s Dope, Inc.
Aug. 12 (EIRNS)—The deadly epidemic of opioid and heroin consumption and overdoses in the United States has garnered much attention of late. Some of the reactions have been well-intentioned but misguided (just stop prescribing so many pills); others have missed the forest for the trees (the problem is that heroin is now cheaper than opioids); others have been ill-intentioned and criminally insane (doctors and hospitals are at fault, and need to be educated about the risks of opioids).
The reality, however, is that the devastating U.S. opioid and heroin epidemic is part of skyrocketing production and consumption of alldrugs, globally, as part of the deliberate Opium Wars marketing strategy of Britain’s Dope, Inc., the $1 trillion per year business which is controlled at the top by the bankrupt, London-centered banks—as Lyndon LaRouche and EIR have documented for over 30 years.
More than a quarter-billion human beings used some illegal drug in the last year, based on statistics for 2015 just published by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), in its World Drug Report 2017. Of these, an estimated 183 million consumed marijuana; 37 million used methamphetamine and other stimulants; 35 million opioids; 22 million Ecstasy; 18 million opiates (opium and heroin); and 17 million cocaine. Of all reported world drug-related deaths, one quarter were in the United States.
Heroin on the U.S. market comes mainly from Mexico (80%), Colombia (15%), and only a very small amount from Afghanistan. Afghanistan is still by far and away the world’s largest producer of opium (which is then refined into heroin), producing an estimated 6,300 metric tons in 2016. Myanmar is next, with 900 tons; and Mexico is a rapidly-advancing third, with an estimated 810 tons in 2016, nearly 13% of the world total. Mexico’s opium production has grown from “only” 250 tons in 2011 to 810 tons in 2016: a more than tripling in the last five years, all on Obama’s watch.
Cocaine production has also been growing rapidly again, after a brief pause in the early 2000s: total production of potential pure cocaine jumped from 720 metric tons in 2011, to 1,100 tons in 2015—a 55% increase. Most of that is due to world leader Colombia, under the pro-legalization Presidency of British puppet Juan Manuel Santos, where production rose by 125% during that same time period.
As for the epidemic of marijuana consumption in the United States—Dope, Inc.’s gateway drug of choice for its full array of products—it tracks causally to the huge, successful push for legalization under Obama: from 2007 to 2015, “daily or near daily use” of marijuana jumped by 75%, while those believing that there is “no risk of harm” from smoking marijuana skyrocketed by over 150%, according to data reported in the UNODC annual report.
With that big picture in mind, return to the opioid crisis in the United States, and the soaring deaths from drug overdoses and other “deaths of despair.” According to a report from the government’s Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), an agency within the Department of Health and Human Services, out of the roughly 7 million people currently out of work, opioid users constitute somewhere between one-third and one-half. In a related study published by the Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank in early 2017, of those surveyed among people who are not participating in the labor market for “other” reasons (i.e., not because they are in school, ill, etc.) half said they had taken an opioid-based drug the previous day.
Why? Goldman Sachs has a simple answer, which lies by turning causality on its head. “Why aren’t more people actively looking for work again with the job market so strong?” a study published July 5, 2017 by David Mericle, Goldman’s senior U.S. economist, asks. “Part of the answer may be opioid addiction.”
The reality is exactly the opposite: soaring unemployment and despair in large parts of the United States, which is the result of bankrupt Wall Street’s deliberate destruction of the physical economy, is driving larger and larger parts of the population into the waiting arms of Dope, Inc., and death.
The Empire Culls the Herd by Making Birth in Rural America Increasingly Dangerous
Aug. 13 (EIRNS)—Since the turn of the century, it has become ever more dangerous for women to give birth in rural America. While the death rates from pregnancy complications are rising in every section of the country, by 2015, according to a front-page piece in this weekend’s Wall Street Journal that cites Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) figures, the rate at which women in rural areas died of those complications had risen to 64% higher than in urban areas.
The reasons are not hard to see. Foremost is that hospitals, and specialty units within them, and other health facilities have been slashed. Most rural hospitals have no high-risk pregnancy specialists; many also lack cardiac and other special services.
The number of hospitals in rural America that offer any labor and delivery services at all has been cut by 15% over the 10 years from 2004 to 2014, compared to 5% in urban and suburban areas.
The Journal article includes a map of what it calls “maternity deserts,” showing the number of obstetrician/gynecologists per 10,000 women aged 15 and above across the country. Huge swaths of rural America have zero or less than one. Only a small minority have more than five.
Emergency Declared for New Orleans, as Decrepit Infrastructure Fails To Control Flooding
Aug. 11 (EIRNS)—As hurricane season begins, and citizens of New Orleans are still reeling from torrential rains that flooded part of the city Aug. 5, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards declared a state of emergency for the city yesterday after a substation fire knocked out one of four turbines used to power its century-old drainage pumps which serve the East Bank of the city, the Washington Post reported today.
In addition to the substation fire, three other turbine stations are out of service for repairs, leaving New Orleans with only one functioning turbine to power its pumps. Entergy New Orleans, the city’s main consumer electric supplier, is scrambling to provide generators and alternative power supplies, but Mayor Mitch Landrieu warned that these will not be able to power all the pumps during heavy rains. “We are right now running on our last backup power source,” he said.
Schools have been closed for the past two days, and residents are being told to park their cars on high ground and be prepared to move to safety quickly in the event of serious flooding. This has enraged residents who don’t own cars or have no ability to get out of their neighborhoods quickly. As one woman told CNN, “we don’t have cars in New Orleans, we’re poor.”
People are also angry that they can’t get a straight story as to why the drainage system failed on Aug. 5, when an unprecedented 8-10 inches of rain fell in the space of four hours. It turns out that 16 of the 121 pumps that are spread across every neighborhood to suck water out of storm drains and canals, and push it out of the city, were not operating; and six of those non-functioning pumps were major ones, located in the neighborhoods that got the most rain.
In 2015, ten years after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans received $2 billion in grants from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), for infrastructure repair, part of which was earmarked for repair of New Orleans drainage pumps, according to CNN. Landrieu said last week that repairs are ongoing, but added that at least $9 billion is required to properly upgrade the system.
SCIENCE & INFRASTRUCTURE
China Advances Its Effort To Deploy Nuclear Power at Sea
Aug. 11 (EIRNS)—China is “bolstering” its maritime capabilities with a “new joint venture” which combines ship and nuclear production resources, which could “catalyze” the development of floating nuclear power plants, the South China Morning Post reports. The manufacturing capacity that would be created for the very small floating plants is seen as a first step in the development of nuclear-powered ships. China National Nuclear Power announced yesterday the new company is in cooperation with Zhejiang Zheneng Electric Power, the Shanghai Guosheng Group, Jiangnan Shipyard, and Shanghai Electric. China has had a small nuclear power plant that could be placed on a ship or barge under development. They could be going from this to a reactor for propulsion. The Russians went in the other direction, adapting their ship-based nuclear unit to a civilian platform.
In the article, the project is described as supporting both maritime power and the Belt and Road. The company statement did not say where the technology would be deployed, but the South China Morning Post undoubtedly correctly notes areas such as the South China Sea. The Chinese have announced before that they would be putting small floating reactors near their islands, and it appeared in a white paper last year. Up to 20 such plants have been mentioned. China has also been marketing them for export, to island countries, such as Indonesia.
