EDITORIAL
A New Era Has Begun—If It Can Be Sustained
Nov. 12 (EIRNS)—Remember Ben Franklin’s historic response, after the 1787 Constitutional Convention, to a question from a Philadelphia lady who asked, “Well Doctor, what have we got, a Monarchy or a Republic?” His answer: “A Republic, Madam, if you can keep it.”
It can truly be said that a similar question could now be asked, following President Donald Trump’s historic trip to Asia: “What have we got, geopolitics, or the common aims of Mankind?”
The answer is also similar. Presidents Trump, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin have, over the past week, declared themselves jointly committed to a new era of cooperation—that it is “Time to get back to healing a world that is shattered and broken,” as President Trump put it today during his press conference with Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang in Hanoi. “It is very important to get along with Russia, with China, with Vietnam, with lots of countries,” Trump added, “because we have a lot of things we have to solve.”
Trump also took off the gloves against the corrupt leaders of the Obama intelligence community who have orchestrated the British intelligence operation to bring down the President of the United States, and to restore the British effort under Obama to provoke a war between the U.S. and Russia. Speaking to the press on his flight from Da Nang to Hanoi, Trump made clear that he respects the fact that President Putin asserts that Russia had nothing to do with “meddling” in the U.S. election, and said: “Look at all the things that they’ve done with the phony dossier…. I mean, give me a break, they’re political hacks. I mean, you have (Obama’s CIA Director John) Brennan, you have (Obama’s Director of National Intelligence James) Clapper, you have (Obama’s FBI Director James) Comey. Comey now is proven to be a liar, and he’s proven to be a leaker.”
This no-holds-barred attack on the coup plotters in the United States follows the extraordinary State Visit of Trump to China—actually, a “State Visit-Plus,” as Xi Jinping called it, the only such greeting to a foreign leader in China’s modern history. Both Xi and Trump, during their various speeches and comments, emphasized that the new relationship between the U.S. and China has created the conditions to solve not only the problems in U.S.-China relations, but nearly all the problems in the world. The “win-win” approach to such problems is now on the table, through cooperation between Russia, China and the U.S.—and hopefully this will bring European nations into the process as well, if the mental straitjacket of zero-sum, dog-eat-dog, one-against-all geopolitics can be overcome.
There is great urgency that the joint development projects agreed to between the U.S. and China get implemented immediately. The massive bubble in the Western financial system—despite Trump’s claims that the bubble represents progress—is ready to burst, as increasingly acknowledged by many of those who created the bubble, by refusing to restore Glass-Steagall after the 2008 crash. China, Japan, and other holders of huge quantities of U.S. government debt have expressed their interest in investing that debt in U.S. infrastructure projects and industrial recovery. Trump clearly encourages that process, as well as helping U.S. industries to participate in the explosive development taking place worldwide through the New Silk Road process.
The only way that can happen is for the Trump Administration to adopt LaRouche’s Four Laws, creating a Hamiltonian infrastructure bank, to direct national and international credit into real development—before the bubble bursts. In that way, the worthless portions of Wall Street’s gambling debts can be disposed of through orderly restructuring, rather than chaotic collapse.
And most important of all, we can, and must, reverse the cultural decay, the drugs, pornography, and violence that now dominate Western culture. Helga Zepp-LaRouche on Friday, addressing a forum in Denmark, captured this pressing truth:
“I think that the problem is not China rising. The problem is that Europe has moved away. We have a beautiful tradition. We have a Classical period, the Renaissance of Italy, we have the Andalusian Renaissance, the Ecole Polytechnique in France. We have a German Classical period which has produced some of the most outstanding thinkers, composers, poets, the rich tradition linking the Classical period of Germany with that of Denmark….
“So there are enough points where we can say, ‘Let’s just go back to our best traditions, and then we will find out that the Classical periods of Europe, and the Confucian tradition of China, and the Classical periods of other nations, are indeed creating the basis for a new Renaissance.’
“I think we are at an incredible moment of history, and we should just remind ourselves of the words of Friedrich Schiller, who said: ‘A great moment should not find a little people.’ ”
U.S. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC
Trump: It’s Time To Heal a Heavily Shattered and Broken World
Nov. 12 (EIRNS)—President Trump today stood up against Fox News’ (and John McCain’s) attempts to coerce him into reversing his effort to establish good relations between the U.S. and Russia. At his press conference with Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang in Hanoi, Fox reporter John Roberts (who earlier had been ranting on Fox News about Trump’s collaboration with “communists” and “dictators” in China, Russia and Vietnam), told Trump that Sen. John McCain and others wanted him to clarify his statement that President Putin rejected the charge of Russian “meddling” in the U.S. election.
Rather than bowing to the lying press, Trump responded that he had only said that Putin believed that Russia had done no such thing, but then powerfully declared:
“But—it’s very, very important that we get along with Russia, with China, with Vietnam, and with lots of other countries…, because we have a lot of things we have to solve. What Putin believes is what he believes. What I believe is that we have to solve the problems of North Korea, Syria, Ukraine, terrorism. Look, Russia has been very heavily sanctioned, it was sanctioned at the highest level. It’s now time to get back to healing a world that has been heavily shattered and broken. I feel that having Russia in a friendly posture, as opposed to fighting them, is an asset to the world and to our country, not a liability.”
Trump to Press after APEC, Praises Putin and Rips ‘Hacks’ Brennan, Clapper, Comey
Nov. 11 (EIRNS)—On the plane from Da Nang to Hanoi in Vietnam Saturday, where President Trump is being hosted in a state visit, the President opened up to the press corps, clearly energized by the historic events of the past days. He focusing at length on the importance of ending the insane Russiagate, establishing close relations with Russia and Putin, while also ripping into the “political hacks” Brennan, Clapper and Comey, the cohorts of legal assassin Robert Mueller in the ongoing coup attempt against Trump. Some quotes from the White House transcript:
On Xi Jinping: “We have an amazing feeling toward each other. And he’s for China; I’m for U.S.A.”
On Putin: He said that he and Putin had talked three times, all rather briefly, but productively. Asked about Russian “meddling” in the U.S. election, Trump was emphatic: “He said he didn’t meddle. I asked him again. You can only ask so many times. But I just asked him again, and he said he absolutely did not meddle in our election. He did not do what they’re saying he did.”
Asked if he believed Putin, Trump said: “That whole thing was set up by the Democrats. I mean, they ought to look at Podesta. They ought to look at all of the things that they’ve done with the phony dossier. Those are the big events. Putin said he did not do what they said he did. And, you know, there are those that say, if he did do it, he wouldn’t have gotten caught, all right? Which is a very interesting statement.
But we have a good feeling toward getting things done. If we had a relationship with Russia, that would be a good thing. In fact, it would be a great thing, not a bad thing. Because he could really help us in North Korea. We have a big problem with North Korea. And China is helping us. And because of the lack of a relationship that we have with Russia, because of this artificial thing that’s happening with this Democratic-inspired thing, we could really be helped a lot, tremendously, with Russia having to do with North Korea. And, you know, you’re talking about millions and millions of lives. This isn’t baby stuff. This is the real deal. And if Russia helped us, in addition to China, that problem would go away a lot faster.
“And I believe—I really believe that when he tells me that, he means it…. I think he’s very insulted by it, which is not a good thing for our country.
“But this is really an artificial barrier that’s put in front of us for solving problems with Russia…. I mean, give me a break. They’re political hacks. I mean, you have Brennan, you have Clapper, and you have Comey. Comey is proven now to be a liar and he’s proven to be a leaker.
“So you look at that, and you have President Putin very strongly, vehemently says he had nothing to do with that.”
A reporter said: “You seem to have a fairly warm relationship with a number of totalitarian or authoritarian leaders.” Trump didn’t fall for the bait, responding: “And others…. Everyone in that room [at APEC], I have a good relationship. They’re very different people, but every one. And I do have a very good relationship with Xi, obviously…. But, you know, we represent two very different countries. But we get along very well. And that’s a good thing that we along; that’s not a bad thing.
On Xi Jinping: “He’s the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao Zedong. Some people say more powerful than Mao. With that being said, I really believe he’s a good person, he’s a good man, he wants to do right, he’s representing his people. He’s strong, he’s very strong.
On Putin: “We’ll have a meeting. I think we have the potential to have a very good relationship. I don’t know him like I know President Xi because I’ve spent a lot of time with President Xi, but I think we have the potential to have a very, very good relationship…. There’s an artificial barrier that’s put in the way by the Democrats. It’s a fake barrier. There was no collusion. Everybody knows there was no collusion…. And I think it’s a shame that something like that can destroy a very important potential relationship between two countries that are very important countries. Russia could really help us.”
Clapper and Brennan Say Trump Is a Peril to the Nation. Is this Incitement to Insurrection?
Nov. 12 (EIRNS)—Responding to President Trump’s denunciation of the “political hacks” who ran Obama’s intelligence community, former Director on National Intelligence James Clapper, most famous for his criminal lying to the U.S. Congress and the world that the U.S. intelligence community was not collecting data on all Americans (provoking Ed Snowden to release the proof that they were), went on CNN’s State of the Union today and called the President of the United States a “peril to this country.” Clapper and Obama’s CIA Director John Brennan, in presentations which would make Sen. Joe McCarthy blush, tried to stir up the American people to war with Russia, ranting that Russia is preparing a nuclear war on the U.S., that Putin is personally “committed to undermining our democracy,” and that Trump is a “national security” risk and guilty of covering up for the Russian threat to the United States.
Brennan and Clapper answered the leading questions from CNN’s Jake Tapper; here are some quotes:
BRENNAN: I think Mr. Trump knows that the intelligence agencies, specifically CIA, NSA and FBI, the ones that really have responsibility for counterintelligence and looking at what Russia does, it’s very clear that the Russians interfered in the election. And it’s still puzzling as to why Mr. Trump does not acknowledge that and embrace it, and also push back hard against Mr. Putin. The Russian threat to our democracy and our democratic foundations is real. And I think his continuing to not say very clearly and strongly that this is a national security problem, and to say to Mr. Putin, we know you did it, you would have to stop it, because there are going to be consequences if you don’t.
CLAPPER: The threat posed by Russia, as John just said, is manifest and obvious, and has been for a long time. Putin is committed to undermining our system, our democracy, and our whole process. And to try to paint it in any other—any other way is, I think, astounding and, in fact, poses a peril to this country…. The evidence that’s come out since the publication of our intelligence community assessment on the 6th of January, is—further reinforces the depth and magnitude and scope and the aggressiveness of the Russian interference, to include their very astute use of social media.
Apart from that, something we don’t think about too much, is the fact that the Russians are embarked on a very aggressive modernization of their strategic nuclear forces, to include a very capable and scary counterintelligence—counter space program. They only had one adversary in mind when they do this. And, oh, by the way, the Russians are in abject violation of the INF Treaty, the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty. So, the Russians do not harbor good intentions toward the United States, and there shouldn’t be any illusions or any ambiguity about that.
And our president—the president fosters that ambiguity.
BRENNAN: Well, first of all, [Trump] was referring to us as political hacks because he was trying to delegitimize the intelligence community assessment that was done…. It was written by the professional intelligence officers and law enforcement officers of this great country.
CLAPPER: The likelihood that the Russians are going to pursue like interests with us is slim and none. And I think it’s very naive and, again, in fact, perilous to this country to make an assumption that Russia is going to behave with the best interests of the world or certainly the United States in mind. They’re not.
BRENNAN: By not confronting the issue directly, and not acknowledging to Putin that we know that you’re responsible for this, I think he’s giving Putin a pass. And I think it demonstrates to Mr. Putin that Donald Trump can be played by foreign leaders who are going to appeal to his ego and to try to play upon his insecurities, which is very, very worrisome from a national security standpoint.
TAPPER: Do you agree that Donald Trump can be played by foreign leaders like Putin? And, if so, does that make you concerned about the security of the United States?
CLAPPER: I do. And, yes, I do think both the Chinese and Russians think they can play him.
BRENNAN: What Bob Mueller, who, again, is another quintessential public servant, is doing is trying to get to the bottom of this. And I think we’re going to find out how large this iceberg really is.
Putin Praises Trump, Says We’re ‘Ready To Turn the Page’
Nov. 11 (EIRNS)—Vladimir Putin held a press conference today in Da Nang, Vietnam following the APEC Summit. He said that, although the Trump and Putin teams were unable to work out the problems of protocol to set a formal meeting between them, the two were nonetheless able to meet briefly several times, and achieved a few things, including releasing a statement on Syria (reported elsewhere).
On Russia-gate, Putin said the Steele dossier and the attacks on Russia were an “internal domestic struggle” in the U.S. He said the accusations against Wilbur Ross and Paul Manafort for Russia connections were absurd, since Ross was a businessman with business deals all over the world, and Manafort had deals with Ukraine, not Russia. “They can look for sensations,” he said, “but there are no sensations there.”
He said relations with China and Xi Jinping were excellent, in energy, space, deep space, joint airplane design, helicopters and more, and that they are working to integrate the Eurasian Economic Union and the New Silk Road.
Interestingly, he said on North Korea: “We have seen very promising signs, from Japan, the U.S., South Korea, which makes us understand there’s no alternative to a peaceful path.”
He praised Trump as “very professional, friendly,” saying they had a good dialogue, but without enough time to get to details. “Our teams should arrange a meeting. He is a very competent person, it is comfortable to communicate with him.”
He pointed out that U.S. business wants to engage in Russia: “By banning ExxonMobil from working in our Arctic, [the U.S.] only deprived it from an interesting, promising project, that could have boosted the U.S. economy and created more jobs in the U.S., bringing in revenues and taxes,” he said, as translated by Sputnik. Adding that the oil giant is just one case among others, Putin warned: “Your place will be taken over by rivals. It is inevitable in the modern world.”
He noted that the largest number of business representatives at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in June were from the United States!
He concluded: “Although relations are still in a state of crisis, Moscow is ready to turn the page and move on, look into the future and solve problems important both to the people of the U.S. and Russia.”
COLLAPSING WESTERN FINANCIAL SYSTEM
Important Ingredient in U.S.-China Trade Deal Includes Plan To Build Six New Nuclear Plants in China
Nov. 12 (EIRNS)—Thirty-seven trade deals, worth $253 billion, were either signed or committed to in Memorandums of Understanding, between U.S. companies and Chinese companies and state entities, on Nov. 9, during President Trump’s trip to China. One deal, that the media have scarcely mentioned, but U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross’s list of concluded deals reports on, has fascinating potential.
The three deals worth a total of $164 billion that received most coverage are: the $83 billion project between the state of West Virginia and China’s Shenhua Corporation for development of shale gas; the $43 billion project between the state of Alaska and several Chinese entities to develop Alaskan liquefied natural gas; and $38 billion agreement between Boeing and China Aviation Supplies Holding for 300 Boeing aircraft.
However, included in Ross’s list of 37 deals, scarcely noted, is that Westinghouse Electric affirmed it has signed contracts with China’s State Nuclear Power Technology Company and its subsidiaries to build six new AP1000 nuclear plants in China: two at Haiyang; two at Sanmen; and two new plants at an apparently additional site Lufeng, not mentioned before.
The Aug. 18, 2017 South China Morning Post wrote that the Westinghouse-designed, 1100 MW AP1000 nuclear plant, in Sanmen County, Zhejiang province is “the world’s most advanced.” In September 2017, the power plant started loading over 100 fuel assemblies into the honeycomb core of the reactor. The reactor has an overhead water tank that can flush the core’s reactor, and keep it cool even if every water pump ceases to function in a blackout. The AP1000 “is a simple, genius solution to the risk of nuclear meltdown,” said Xi’an Jiaotong University’s nuclear science Prof. Shan Jianqiang, an expert on reactor safety and operation.
The Sanmen plant construction began with much fanfare in 2009 after a $6 billion investment between the United States and China, with a plan to fire up the first of two reactors at this site in 2013.
But the site sat idle for years, awaiting Westinghouse’s need to redesign the reactor’s main pump—which features so-called “dual-use” technology found in submarines—in order to obtain U.S. export approval.
In 2006, Japan’s Toshiba Corp. bought Westinghouse Electric. On March 29, 2017, Westinghouse Electric filed for bankruptcy, stemming from huge losses in its domestic U.S. nuclear projects. Toshiba is seeking to sell Westinghouse Electric. Westinghouse Electric has stated that it will meet all its contracts.
The Chinese know all this. By reaffirming this deal in Beijing Nov. 9, and adding the site of two new plants in Lufeng, China would be making a financial and policy commitment to the Westinghouse Electric AP1000, which could mean contracts in other countries. This could mean the survival of the Pennsylvania-based company, and the further development of world nuclear power.
Also, General Electric signed an agreement with the Silk Road Fund, one of China’s state funds for the Belt and Road Initiative, to “jointly invest in electric power grids, new energy and oil and gas, in countries and regions along the Belt and Road,” China’s State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) said in a statement. “The cooperation between the Silk Road Fund and GE will not only boost cooperation between high-end manufacturing industries from China and the U.S., but also promote economic and trade development in the regions where investment will occur,” SAFE said.
STRATEGIC WAR DANGER
Putin and Trump Joint Statement Calls for All Nations To Support Syria
Nov. 11 (EIRNS)—Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump signed a Joint Statement calling on all countries to build up humanitarian assistance to Syria. The document was prepared by the experts of the two countries and agreed on by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who met earlier in Da Nang today.
The statement reiterated that the conflict in Syria has “no military solution.”
The statement also says: “The Presidents agreed to maintain open military channels of communication between military professionals to help ensure the safety of both U.S. and Russian forces and de-confliction of partnered forces engaged in the fight against ISIS. They confirmed these efforts will be continued until the final defeat of ISIS is achieved.”
The Presidents praised “the successful U.S.-Russia enhanced de-confliction efforts between U.S. and Russian military professionals that have dramatically accelerated ISIS’s losses on the battlefield in recent months….
They agreed the final political settlement should be in the framework of the Geneva process in compliance with the UNSC Resolution 2254, and noted the recent statement of Syria’s President Bashar Assad committing to adhere to the Geneva process, the constitutional reform and the elections in compliance with the UN Security Council Resolution 2254.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Sputnik that the statement was specifically prepared for the meeting in Da Nang.
The text of the statement is posted to the websites of Russian President and the U.S. State Department.
U.S. Orders Media Network RT To Register as Foreign Agent; Putin Responds
Nov. 11 (EIRNS)—Russian media network RT was ordered on Nov. 9 by the U.S. Justice Department to register as a “foreign agent,” or face the arrest of its officials. “The American Justice Department has left us with no choice,” said Margarita Simonyan, RT’s editor-in-chief, in a statement on Thursday. “Our lawyers say that if we don’t register as a foreign agent, the director of our company in America could be arrested, and the accounts of the company could be seized.”
President Putin ridiculed and denounced this harassment in his press conference today following the APEC Summit in Vietnam, saying it would be funny were it not so sad. He said the U.S. always prided itself as the champion of free speech, yet, “The attack on our media is an attack on freedom of speech without any doubt. We are disappointed.” He added that the Russian parliament is currently discussing the response. “But we will definitely respond and it will be reciprocal,” Putin said.
He said that a news station “can be challenged, but not by shutting down the media or creating conditions to make it impossible to carry out its professional activities, [but] by presenting your own perspective, presenting your information to the audience. The U.S. has chosen another approach, however, opting for virtual closure…. I want to draw your attention to the fact that there wasn’t and could not be any confirmation of our media’s meddling in the election campaign,” Putin said. He also said that Twitter banning RT ads was equally absurd, since “the Russian ads amounted merely to some tenths or hundredths of a percent” compared to the millions of ads by other media, yet “in Russia’s case, it was interpreted as meddling.”
Al-Yamamah Operatives Bandar and Turki Arrested in Saudi Arabia
Nov. 11 (EIRNS)—According to Middle East Eye and The Times of London, Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan, who orchestrated the infamous Al-Yamamah arms for oil deal between the Saudis and the U.K.’s BAE (and funded the 9/11 terrorists), and his top negotiator in the Al-Yamamah deal, Prince Turki bin Nasser, have been arrested in the massive purge taking place in Saudi Arabia by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The Times does not report the fact, documented in detail by EIR over several years, that the Al-Yamamah deal was organized to create a multi-billion dollar slush fund used by British intelligence to finance the creation and training of Islamic extremists to fight the Russians in Afghanistan (i.e., to create al-Qaeda), as well as other covert operations around the world. This fact was admitted in the approved biography of Bandar, The Prince: The Secret Story of the World’s Most Intriguing Royal, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, by British author William Simpson, in 2008.
Nonetheless, The Times does report some of the truth: “Among the string of allegedly corrupt deals being investigated is the Al-Yamamah series of contracts for Saudi Arabia to buy weapons, from warships to fighter jets, over a 20-year period, the same source confirmed,” The Times reports. “Prince Bandar was also named as a recipient of huge BAE Systems backhanders in a British investigation later blocked by Tony Blair, the then prime minister.” Blair shut down the investigation by the British Serious Fraud unit, claiming national security, to prevent the exposure of the truth that the British were using their puppet regime in Saudi Arabia to create terrorist operations around the world, to maintain their Empire, as we have seen ever since across the Mideast and Africa.
Bandar’s associate Turki bin-Nasser was head of the Air Force, and also headed the Saudi branch of Prince Philip’s World Wildlife Fund.
Also arrested was Bakr bin Laden, the head of the country’s biggest construction company, and the brother of Osama.
One of the first arrests—the extremely rich Alwaleed bin Talal—was reported to have funded Barack Obama’s education. Alwaleed’s partner, Khalid al-Mansour, was reported in 2014 to have solicited support for Obama’s admission to Harvard Law from Manhattan political figure Percy Sutton, and established a fund for black students in the U.S.
Crown Prince Mohammed is clearly taking on several of the highest-level British assets in Saudi Arabia in consolidating his power. The fact that he is also responsible for the genocidal war on Yemen, for efforts to provoke a new war in Lebanon, and that his anti-Iran escalation is fully supported by the British, means it is too soon to draw any conclusions about the direction of the purge.
THE NEW GLOBAL ECONOMIC ORDER
A Brazilian Editor Gets It Right on Trump-Xi Summit
Nov. 10 (EIRNS)—“Historic Trip, Ridiculous Media,” Marcos de Oliveira, managing editor of Brazilian daily Monitor Mercantil, headlined his comment on President Trump’s visit to China yesterday. He got immediately to the point:
“The visit by the President of the United States Donald Trump to China was a monumental failure. A failure for the defenders of permanent warfare; a failure for those who are opposed to a rapprochement between the two countries; a failure for those who want to see the Americans out of the Belt and Road Initiative. Also enlisted on the losing side were the Western media, which insisted on transforming Trump’s trip into a one-note samba, the confrontation with North Korea…. The examples demonstrate that Trump’s visit had a strategic component essential for the whole world. It is a challenge to those who insist on maintaining more of the same. Of course the Western media insisted on minimizing the importance of the trip. That is just their nature.”
Six days earlier, in his Nov. 3 column in Monitor, Oliveira identified Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s “Russia-gate” as “an artifice to make a ‘coup’ against the President,” drawing the parallel for his Brazilian readers between Mueller’s methods in the U.S. to the methods being used by the “Lava Jato” (Car Wash) anti-corruption prosecutors wrecking Brazil.
The indictments against two of Trump’s campaign advisors by U.S. prosecutors “sent the message: It is better to cooperate,” he wrote, right on the eve of President Trump’s trip to China. That visit “upset Wall Street and the U.S. Establishment, who want the U.S. far away from the Chinese, especially the Belt and Road Initiative, which is a threat by the productive world to the financialized economy…. In addition to keeping him away from the Chinese and Russians, there is the market’s interest in keeping Trump from reinstating the Glass-Steagall Law,” Oliveira said.
The press backs up Mueller’s investigation, he noted, even though they know he won’t find anything directly against the President. “Any similarity to ‘Lava Jato’ is no coincidence,” Oliveira concluded.
This is an important message for Brazilians who know “Lava Jato” was used to overthrow President Dilma Rousseff and destroy the national economy.
UNESCO Backs Campaign To Save Lake Chad
Nov. 11 (EIRNS)—Nigeria’s Water Minister Suleiman Adamu announced that UNESCO is backing an international campaign to save Lake Chad from drying up. UNESCO is sponsoring an international conference in February in the Nigerian capital of Abuja, where the solution advocated by Nigeria and by the Lake Chad Basin Committee will be presented.
Adamu said that the commission had proposed inter-basin water transfer from Congo Basin to the evaporating lake as a measure of saving it from total extinction. “This is a huge infrastructure project that will change the dynamics of the region and it is a long- term project with a lot of consensus to build on, as well as diplomatic issues having to do with different countries,” Adamu said according to PM News Nigeria media outlet.
Adamu said: “We have a 60,000 hectares irrigation scheme under the South-Chad Irrigation scheme, which was designed to depend on intake of water from the Lake Chad to irrigate the 60,000 hectares for the production of wheat. That irrigation scheme is not working now because the water is not available. We need the water to revive that investment. All the efforts the administration had been making to boost food production and reduce food imports stands to benefit if the Lake Chad is revived,” he said.
The lake, on which the lives of 30 million people depend, is bordered by Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad, and Niger; it has shrunk by 90%. “Clearly, the major factor of the Boko Haram insurgency is that there are lots of young people that are living in that area without any opportunity whatsoever because of the shrinking lake. Herdsmen had been forced to move southward and eastward and you can see that crises are getting increased between farmers and herdsmen,” he said.
Ibero-American, Caribbean Countries Join China at International Trade Exposition in Guangdong
Nov. 11 (EIRNS)—The three-day China-Latin America and Caribbean International Exposition (CLAC-Expo), which concluded today in Zhuhai, Guangdong province, has generated great optimism and excitement about the possibilities of incorporating the Western Hemisphere nations into China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
A key feature of the event, which included representatives of 523 companies from 24 Ibero-American and Caribbean countries and 33 countries associated with the Belt and Road, was the formal inauguration of the huge Hengqin China-Latin America Economic and Trade Cooperation Park, which will serve as a platform from which to launch many economic, industrial, investment, and trade cooperation agreements among the three regions. PRNewswire reports that the 244,000 square-meter park, backed by a $375 million investment, was created by the port city of Zhuhai “for the implementation of collaborative projects between Chinese and Latin American entities.” At the expo itself, contracts were signed for 73 projects, spanning a variety of industries, and more are to come.
As Cronica Digital observed today, the establishment of the industrial park, at which many Chinese, Ibero-American and Caribbean companies will set up permanent offices, “thus links Latin America and the Caribbean to the Belt and Road project” put forward in 2013 by Chinese President Xi Jinping, “to connect many continents in a giant network of economic, trade and cultural cooperation.”
OTHER
WikiLeaks Exposes CIA Hacking Tool for Impersonating Companies
Nov. 10 (EIRNS)—WikiLeaks published the source code for the CIA hacking tool “Hive” yesterday. The CIA-operated malware “Hive” could mask itself under fake certificates that impersonate public companies; namely, the Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab.
This dovetails with former NSA Technical Director William Binney’s revelations of the CIA’s ability to mask its penetration of computer networks.
The CIA multi-platform hacking suite “Hive” was able to impersonate existing entities, and thus conceal suspicious traffic from the user being spied on, the program’s source code indicates, according to WikiLeaks. As a result, the extraction of information would be mis-attributed to a company which had been impersonated. WikiLeaks states that at least three examples in the code show that Hive is able to impersonate the Russian cybersecurity company Kaspersky Lab.
WikiLeaks tweeted yesterday, “New WikiLeaks publication reveals CIA wrote code to impersonate Kaspersky Labs anti-virus company. If the target organization looks at the network traffic coming out of its network, it is likely to mis-attribute the CIA exfiltration of data to uninvolved entities, who have been impersonated.”
Kaspersky Lab, which provides virus protection for many modern high-tech companies worldwide, has repeatedly been accused by U.S. officials of being involved in the alleged Russian state-run hacking of the U.S. Presidential election.
In September, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) ordered all government agencies to stop using Kaspersky Lab products and remove them from computers, citing “information security risks presented by the use of Kaspersky products on federal information systems.” Kaspersky Lab has repeatedly denied cooperating with any government entity, including Russia. It has stated that its products cannot be used for spying, and that its product does not function for any use beyond the advertised one. Kaspersky Lab took the further step of opening its source code to independent review in October.
