EDITORIAL
Leibniz Was Right: Korea Proves You Can Change the Worst into Best, If the Political Will Is There
May 8 (EIRNS)—While the mass media made sure that the Western world’s attention today was riveted on President Trump’s speech announcing that the U.S. was withdrawing from the Iran deal— based on yet another set of British-fabricated Big Lies—the day’s major developments actually changing world history were all happening on the Asian front.
Chinese President Xi Jinping held a surprise, two-day meeting May 7-8 with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in the Chinese port city of Dalian, where they discussed the way forward on the Korean Peninsula. Kim stated: “As long as relevant parties abolish their hostile policies and remove security threats against the D.P.R.K., there is no need for the D.P.R.K. to be a nuclear state and denuclearization can be realized…. I hope to build mutual trust with the U.S. through dialogue.”
South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s proposal to the North Koreans for a “New Economic Map of the Korean Peninsula,” is reported to involve the construction of “three belts”: a railroad from South Korea through North Korea and extending into Russia; a railroad running East-West along what is now the DMZ; and a second North-South railroad, this one extending into China—and from there linking up with the entire Belt and Road. Asian media are also promoting the historic Tumen River project as part of the Korean Peninsula policy package.
Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang arrived in Japan today, the first visit by a Chinese premier in eight years, for bilateral discussions and then to participate in the 7th China-Japan-R.O.K. leaders’ meeting on May 9. Li expressed his expectation that “the three countries will cement trust and seek cooperation, and contribute to regional development, prosperity and peace.”
Asia is where the future is being built, Helga Zepp-LaRouche stated today. It is the only part of the world that is growing economically, so much so that it is the locomotive that is pulling along the economies of Eastern and Central Europe, and of any other nation that is smart enough to join the Belt and Road Initiative. There is no real economic growth happening in Europe or the United States, nor can there be unless and until they too abandon the British Empire’s financial system, join the Belt and Road, and follow Lyndon LaRouche’s Four Laws policy.
“What is emerging is a new set of relations among nations,” Zepp-LaRouche stressed, “new relations based on the two-way road of win-win cooperation.” These new relations are already in effect, and they are the core of the New Paradigm that alone can ensure the long-term survival of the human species.
The projects now being discussed, and built—Tumen River, Korea’s “three belts,” Transaqua in Africa—are all projects and policies specified and promoted over decades by Lyndon LaRouche and his associates. And the world is now moving in that direction.
It is foolish and suicidal to pretend that this emerging New Paradigm doesn’t exist, Zepp-LaRouche stated. Those, like Germany’s Angela Merkel, who are lecturing the nations of Eastern and Central Europe that they shouldn’t go with the Belt and Road, because the EU has a better, more “transparent,” less “corrupt” “Europe-Asia Connectivity Plan,” are making themselves the laughingstock of the planet. Even self-respecting ostriches are beginning to pull their heads out of the sand, lest they be compared with Merkel, Macron and May.
The Korean Peninsula, Zepp-LaRouche emphasized, is a proof of principle that the worst of situations in the world can be transformed into the best, so long as the political will is there—and in Korea it has been shown to be there, coming from China, Russia and the United States.
With the New Paradigm coming into being, and with their speculative financial system collapsing, the British Empire is in a situation where they cannot win; but they may still succeed in having the whole world go down in flames with them. They are left with the option of provoking wars—as is their intent with the Iran policy enunciated today by Trump—and relying on the population’s credulity, for example in tolerating the British Empire’s attempted coup d’état against the Trump administration.
People of good will, Zepp-LaRouche emphasized, must “educate the population as to the strategic picture, the whole picture,” so that they recognize the existential danger that British geopolitics poses, and so that they act on the basis that this is the best, and possibly last, opportunity to save civilization.
THE NEW GLOBAL ECONOMIC ORDER
Kim Jong-un Visits Xi Jinping Again, in Dalian, China
May 8 (EIRNS)—North Korean leader Kim Jong-un travelled to China today to visit President Xi Jinping for a second time, following the summit in Beijing at the end of March. The two met in Dalian, the major port city on the tip of the Liaodong peninsula.
Xinhua showed pictures of the two men walking through a park by the sea, reporting that Xi hosted a welcome banquet and held an in-depth discussion on the evolving situation in Korea and internationally.
“Comrade Chairman made a special trip to China to meet me again just after 40-odd days,” Xi said, “at a crucial time when the Korean Peninsula situation is undergoing profound and complex changes. This embodies the great importance that Comrade Chairman and the Workers’ Party of Korea Central Committee have attached to the relations between the two parties and the two countries, and to their strategic communication,” as reported in Xinhua.
“After the first meeting between me and Comrade Chairman, both China-D.P.R.K. relations and the Korean Peninsula situation have made positive progress. I feel happy about it,” Xi said.
Kim also praised the progress in bilateral relations since the meeting in March. “These are the positive outcomes of the historic meeting between me and Comrade General Secretary,” he said.
He also stressed that, “As long as the relevant parties eliminate their hostile policies and security threats toward North Korea, the North Korean side has no need to possess nuclear weapons, and denuclearization can be realized,” Xinhua reported.
President Trump spoke by phone with President Xi soon after the meeting between Kim and Xi. They discussed the unfolding diplomacy in Korea and the expected summit between Trump and Kim, for which there is still no certain date or venue. The readout from the White House says the two leaders “agreed on the importance of continued implementation of sanctions on North Korea until it permanently dismantles its nuclear and missile programs.”
Trump also announced today that the newly confirmed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is on his way to Pyongyang for his second meeting with Kim Jong-un, to finalize plans for the summit.
Leaders from China, South Korea, and Japan Gather in Tokyo for Historic Summit
May 8 (EIRNS)—In a major sign of the new paradigm of country-to- country relations being established in Asia, South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in and China’s Premier Li Keqiang will hold a summit with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe May 9 in Tokyo, a revival of three-way meetings that began ten years ago but had been suspended after 2015 over tensions among the three countries, sparked by Obama pressure on South Korea.
Premier Li, arriving in Tokyo today, expressed hope that “the three countries will cement trust and seek cooperation, and contribute to regional development, prosperity and peace,” Xinhua reported.
Li Keqiang will hold bilateral talks with Abe and meet with Japanese Emperor Akihito, as well as top lawmakers of the Diet and leaders of both the ruling and opposition parties. He will attend a reception commemorating the 40th anniversary of the signing of the China-Japan Treaty of Peace and Friendship and deliver a speech, Xinhua reported. He will then visit Hokkaido.
President Moon gave an interview to Yomiuri Shimbun today, saying that he would help Japan improve its ties with North Korea, calling that a key for denuclearizing the North and enhancing peace and stability in the countries’ shared region.
“Japan can play a very important role for peace and prosperity on the Korean Peninsula,” Moon said. “It is partly in that the normalization of North Korea-Japan relations may be a necessary part of a security guarantee for North Korea and that close cooperation between South Korea, the United States and Japan may be necessary for complete denuclearization.”
Moon said he discussed Japan’s concerns with Kim, including the issue of the abducted Japanese citizens, some of whom have not yet been accounted for. “I told Chairman Kim that Prime Minister Abe is willing to normalize the North Korea-Japan relationship based on the spirit of clearing the problems of the past, and he said he is willing to talk with Japan at any time,” Moon said.
“When we look back, pessimistic views had outnumbered optimistic views about a change in North Korea’s behavior, including the North Korean nuclear issue,” Moon said, but said that things have now changed. “Chairman Kim clearly understands what the international community wants. I plan to do all I can to help strengthen the trust between the North and the U.S. so their negotiations may go well, and I will closely cooperate with key nations of the international community, including Japan, in that process.”
On relations with Japan, Moon said that “I have consistently called for efforts to wisely overcome history issues between the two countries while pushing for future-oriented cooperation on the other hand.” The forced labor and sexual slavery during Japan’s colonization of Korea still angers many Koreans.
Moon’s ‘New Economic Map of the Korean Peninsula’: Integrating with the Belt and Road
May 8 (EIRNS)—An article appearing in the May 7 South China Morning Post details what it states is the content of the economic proposals contained in a thumb drive which South Korean President Moon Jae-in gave to North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un when they met on April 27. The SCMP article is headlined “Seoul Offers Kim Jong-un Grand Bargain To Link North and South Korean Economies with China,” and it reports that South Korea’s proposal to Kim for a “New Economic Map of the Korean Peninsula” was based on a July 6, 2017 speech that Moon gave in Berlin, in which he proposed “three economic belts between the two countries.” The article also notes that this proposal is fully consistent with China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
The SCMP article elaborated that Moon’s Berlin “initiative included three economic belts—one connecting the west coast of the peninsula to China, making the region a center of logistics; one connecting the east coast to Russia for energy cooperation; and one on the current border to promote tourism.” An article in Sputnik, which reports extensively on the SCMP coverage, reported that Moon’s proposal calls for “connecting and upgrading rail and road systems [which] will ensure that the entire Korean Peninsula becomes more seamlessly linked with China and Russia.”
The SCMP article quotes Park Byeong Seud, a member of Moon’s ruling Democratic Party of Korea, explaining: “The new economic map includes railway links between the two Koreas and China’s northeast stretching all the way to Europe.” The article says further that “one part of the plan would involve the construction of a rail link starting in Mokpo on the southwest tip of the peninsula, passing through Seoul and Pyongyang and the North’s Special Administrative Region of Sinuiju, before reaching Beijing. Beijing is likely to welcome Seoul’s proposal as it accords with the core Chinese national interest of enhancing sustainable economic development and boosting the country’s northeastern rust belt.”
Another Chinese expert, Cheng Xiaohe, a deputy director at the center for international strategic studies at Renmin University, said that Beijing could “incorporate the plan into its Belt and Road Initiative.” Similarly, Lu Chao, a research fellow at Liaoning Academy of Social Sciences, agreed that “The plan would have a huge impact on China’s northeastern region, as it would transform the region as a center of logistics in East Asia, which could function as a driving force for the rapid economic growth of the region.”
STRATEGIC WAR DANGER
Trump Announces U.S. Withdrawal from Iran Nuclear Deal
May 8 (EIRNS)—U.S. President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. will be withdrawing from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), in a much-awaited statement issued at the White House today. This announced policy, however, is based on British lies, including the one Trump started with, that Iran is the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism, naming Hezbollah, other Shi’ite groups and even al Qaeda. Trump also cited the latest British scam run through Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who, during a staged show-and-tell last week, displayed documents that he claimed conclusively showed that Iran’s promises to refrain from development nuclear weapons were a lie.
On the basis of this and other fraudulent evidence, Trump announced that the U.S. is withdrawing from the JCPOA and that he would be signing an executive order reimposing all of the U.S. sanctions that were waived as a result of the deal, to include secondary sanctions on third countries deemed to be not only helping Iran’s nuclear program, but also its ballistic missile program and its alleged support of terrorism.
How this policy will play out strategically remains to be seen. Prior to Trump’s speech, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani had announced that he was open to remaining within the JCPOA even if the U.S. withdrew, so long as a satisfactory agreement could be worked out with China, Russia and key European signatories.
VIPS to President Trump: Don’t Be ‘Played’ By Bogus Evidence on Iran
May 8 (EIRNS)—Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) issued a memorandum yesterday warning President Trump not to make policy based on Benjamin Netanyahu’s half-ton of documents on Iran’s nuclear program, which are just a pile of rehashed lies going back to the George W. Bush administration.
They should know; VIPS is led by respected former leaders of the U.S. intelligence community, many of whom quit their posts in principled opposition to the anti-Constitutional, war-mongering policies of the Bush and Obama administrations. They outline their argument in opening their memorandum to the President, which can be read in full on the “VIPS Memos” page on ConsortiumNews:
“The evidence presented by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on April 30 alleging a covert Iranian nuclear weapons program shows blatant signs of fabrication. That evidence is linked to documents presented by the Bush Administration more than a decade earlier as proof of a covert Iran nuclear weapons program. Those documents were clearly fabricated as well….
“The Bush administration account of how the documents on Iran got into the hands of the CIA is not true. We can prove that the actual documents originally came not from Iran but from Israel. And the documents were never authenticated by the CIA or the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
“Two former Directors-General of the IAEA, Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, have publicly expressed suspicion that the documents were fabricated. And forensic examination of the documents yielded multiple signs that they are fraudulent.
“We urge you to insist on an independent inquiry into the actual origins of these documents.”
Sixteen VIPS members and associates signed the memorandum for its Steering Group, among them such well-known figures as former UN Weapons Inspector for Iraq Scott Ritter, former CIA analyst and Presidential briefer Ray McGovern, and former Criminal Law Division Chief, Office of the Judge Advocate General, now Virginia State Senator Richard Black.
Proposed House Defense Authorization Bill Takes Aim at Russia and China
May 8 (EIRNS)—House Armed Services Committee chairman Mac Thornberry released his proposals for the FY2019 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), and while Thornberry trumpeted the provisions in the bill that address military readiness, his proposal continues the military confrontation against both Russia and China (and also Iran) with a raft of new, nasty measures, the basis of which is Secretary of Defense James Mattis’s National Defense Strategy, the document that targets both countries as “revisionist powers” trying to undermine the global structures that the West has built since the end of world War II.
Thornberry’s proposed bill is still a long way from becoming law, but given the behavior of the U.S. Congress over the past few years and known British and neo-con intentions, most of the anti-Russia and anti-China provisions that Thornberry has proposed could make it into the final bill in some form.
The 10 anti-Russia provisions described in the summary of the bill released by the committee appear to be designed to worsen the Western confrontation against Russia, including:
Withholding of funds for implementation of the Open Skies Treaty until Russia complies and takes other steps, including agreeing to extradite Russian nationals who have been indicted for their actions against the U.S. during the 2016 election;
Prohibiting military-to-military cooperation with Russia;
Prohibiting the U.S. government from recognizing the unification (absorption, the bill says) of Crimea with Russia;
Authorization of $250 million in lethal aid to Ukraine;
Providing $6.3 billion for the European military buildup.
China, Thornberry’s summary claims, is “governed by the dictates of the Chinese Communist Party, is working to undermine the world order which has existed since the end of World War II.” To counter this Chinese effort, therefore, Thornberry proposes to direct a whole-of-government strategy to confront China. It also expands and directs maritime security cooperation through the Indo-Pacific Maritime Security Initiative to increase maritime security and maritime domain awareness in the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean. It also aims to improve security cooperation “to counter China’s rising influence in Africa, Southeast Asia and other regions.” It also supports providing greater military support to Taiwan, among other measures.
Defense Secretary Mattis has also sent a letter to the leadership of the Armed Services Committees in both House and Senate urging them to include provisions in the NDAA to strengthen limits and controls on Chinese investment in the U.S., particularly high-tech. “[W]e must be clear-eyed that our adversaries have studied the weaknesses of our current laws and regulations and are exploiting them today,” he wrote, reported Reuters, which claims to have seen the letter. “Of particular concern is the national security risk that may arise from coercive industrial policies that force the transfer of technology and associated support through joint ventures.”
U.S. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC
Eric Schneiderman: ‘Will This Man Take Down Donald Trump?’ Nope!
May 8 (EIRNS)—In February 2017, Politico dubbed New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman “the leader of the Trump resistance.” It reported in detail on Feb. 3 how immediately after the 2016 election Schneiderman had transformed his office into a “Get Trump” war room, instructing his staff to amass every possible bit of dirt against Trump, so as to move against him as soon as any opportunity presented itself. Politico headlined that article, “Will This Man Take Down Donald Trump?”
In August 2017, Schneiderman was brought into Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller’s operation directly, according to several media “leaks” published at the end of the month. Reportedly, one of Schneiderman’s prosecutors joined the Mueller team, and the pro-Obama New York Daily News wrote wildly that because Schneiderman “has jurisdiction over Trump’s home state,” where he lived, and managed his company and his campaign, “that puts him, in a way, above Trump’s presidential powers.” Now, in an ironical twist, it was depraved Esquire magazine which wrote at the time that the Schneiderman-Mueller hook-up would be “a game changer” in the war against President Trump.
The game has indeed changed, but not in a way Schneiderman foresaw. Schneiderman’s career as a judicial hitman came to an abrupt, ignominious end on Monday night, after the New Yorker reported, in lurid detail, four women’s accusations that he had assaulted them during sexual encounters, and threatened to kill them if they reported it. “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Schneid,” headlined the New York Post. Schneiderman (who had initiated the suit against Hollywood’s Harvey Weinstein for just such bestiality) issued a statement insisting he did not practice assault and battery against women, but rather “in the privacy of intimate relationships, I have engaged in role-playing and other consensual sexual activity.”
As part of his war against Trump, Schneiderman had organized a network of Democratic state Attorneys General to function as a “fourth branch of government,” in the words of New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas. Its first act was an amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief drawn up by Schneiderman and signed by 16 Democratic state attorneys general against an immigration decision by Trump. Schneiderman didn’t care about immigrants any more than he cared about women; the suit was “the first test of the Democratic legal apparatus under the new administration,” he told the New York Times.
Not to be forgotten, Schneiderman carried out repeated judicial campaigns to shut down nuclear energy and any company or institution which engaged in the thought-crime of challenging the Malthusian lie of man-made climate change. In his last tweet as Attorney General, Schneiderman bragged, “I’m leading 8 AGs against [Environmental Protection Agency administrator] Scott Pruitt’s absurd plan to have the EPA limit the science [sic] it uses to make decisions about our public health and our environment.” Not any more.
Gina Haspel: Is President Trump Promoting Someone Out To Destroy Him To Head CIA?
May 8 (EIRNS)—President Trump may be letting a leading figure in the coup against him take over to replace Mike Pompeo at the CIA. That is, if David Ignatius is telling the truth about Haspel’s background in his May 7, 2018 Washington Post article. Ignatius, a dutiful scribe for the intelligence community, used the article to sell the Haspel nomination to the rabid McCarthyite Democratic Party with this argument: So what, if she was involved in torture? The greater good is that she hates Russia and will fight off any attempt by Trump to curb the agency’s provocations against Putin, or any attempt to get to the truth about the CIA’s role in the coup against the President.
Ignatius backs up this argument with the following claims: 15 years of Haspel’s career were in Russia-related operations with one CIA colleague bragging: “She has a PhD in the FSB, SVR, and GRU.”
From 2014 to 2017, she was the CIA’s London station chief and has a strong relationship with MI6. Ignatius bellows that “Britain remains America’s indispensable partner operating against hard targets such as Russia and China.” According to Ignatius, Haspel played a key role in snookering President Trump concerning the Skripal poisoning hoax, coordinating all the time with Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6.
The same MI6, operating through Christopher Steele, which conducted a criminal information warfare campaign against Donald Trump employing both the FBI and the CIA in the process, a campaign which is ongoing. The aim was to destroy Donald Trump, starting with destroying his determination not to go to war with Russia but to build mutually beneficial relationships instead.
Haspel’s role in London in 2014-2017 places her in the center of Barack Obama’s dangerous British-incited military encirclement of both Russia and China. The President should be interrogating this woman. He should ask for everything she knows about Christopher Steele, John Brennan, and joint U.S./British operations for regime change in Russia from 2014-2017. He should also seek all files and information from the CIA itself concerning Russiagate, particularly anything involving MI6. One other relevant question for the White House: What was Haspel’s role in attempting to discredit Bill Binney, the former National Security Agency (NSA) technical director who appeared at the CIA to brief then-Director Mike Pompeo at President Trump’s request? Binney has proof that the alleged Russian hack of the Democratic National Committee is not what Obama’s intelligence chiefs said it was. While we are at it: What exactly was Haspel’s role in the phony intelligence community assessment that the Russians intervened in the U.S. election to help elect Trump?
The answers to these questions are central to ending the criminal coup against President Trump.
COLLAPSING WESTERN FINANCIAL SYSTEM
Argentina Goes to IMF as Financial Crisis Deepens; Other Emerging Markets Sink
May 8 (EIRNS)—After last week’s drastic measures raising interest rates to 40% failed to halt a run on the peso and continued capital flight, today a desperate Argentine President Mauricio Macri announced his government, which, he admitted, relies entirely on foreign financing, will go to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to seek a “preemptive” $30 billion standby loan, to cover immediate financing needs.
Finance Minister Nicolas Dujovne is already on a flight to Washington, D.C. to meet with the Fund, telling a press conference before he left that this will be a “flexible” IMF loan, with few conditionalities, insisting the Fund today “is very different from the one we knew 20 years ago.”
Opposition legislators, economists and political leaders say otherwise, warning that this is a rerun of the policies imposed by London toady José Martínez de Hoz, finance minister of the 1976-83 military dictatorship, or Domingo Cavallo, the finance minister in office just before the 2001 default, who vastly increased the country’s foreign debt with loans from Wall Street banks on usurious terms. There’s no question that the IMF will demand harsh austerity, as both Wall Street and London say this is now the only way to deal with the Argentine crisis.
At the end of December, Wall Street investors and hedge fund managers told Argentina’s economics team to stop issuing debt for foreign consumption; there would be no more money flowing into the country, they warned. In April, JP Morgan set off the run on the peso when it began to dump its holdings of Lebacs, a short-term, peso-denominated bond which has served largely to attract hot money and build up a speculative bubble, to buy dollars instead. Many other investors followed suit, dumping Lebacs, stocks and other public paper.
An Argentine economist told this news service that it’s not out of the question that Macri may be forced out before next year’s election, as the crisis is unsustainable. That’s what happened in the crises of 1989 and 2001, he recalled.
But Argentina could be the tip of the iceberg for a much larger emerging markets crisis, in the context of a looming global debt blowout. Rising interest rates in the U.S., especially on ten-year Treasury bonds, are provoking a significant capital outflow from emerging markets, whose own currencies and stock markets are shaky at best. Last week, the Mexican and Brazilian currencies declined significantly, as did Turkey’s and Indonesia’s, while Turkey’s debt was downgraded to below junk status. And Venezuela is being driven into default to hasten the regime change sought by London and Wall Street’s “Project Democracy” allies.
OTHER
Putin Issues ‘May Decree’ Laying Out Policy Objectives to 2024
May 8 (EIRNS)—Vladimir Putin assumed the Presidency of Russia yesterday and, following his inaugural speech, signed an Executive Order on National Goals and Strategic Objectives of the Russian Federation, which sets out his government’s policy through 2024. The decree is a strong statement of intent of the direction Putin will instruct his new cabinet to adopt, which echoes both the tone and specific points which he made in his nationally televised March 1 Address to the Federal Assembly. This May Decree begins:
“In order to achieve breakthroughs in science and technology and socioeconomic development in the Russian Federation, increase the country’s population, improve the living standards and conditions of our citizens, and create an environment and opportunities for all to fulfill their potential, the President has instructed the government to achieve the following national development goals by 2024:
“a) ensure sustainable natural population growth; b) increase life expectancy to 78 years (80 years by 2030); c) ensure sustainable growth of real wages, as well as the growth of pensions above inflation level; d) cut poverty in half; e) improve housing conditions for at least 5 million households annually; f) accelerate technological development and increase the number of organizations engaged in technological innovation to 50% of the total….”
The full text is posted on the President’s Kremlin website.
