EDITORIAL

The World Must Unite To Stop the British False Flag Chemical Attack in Syria

Aug. 28 (EIRNS)—The Russian and the Syrian governments have exposed over the past three days the intention of the British-backed terrorists in Syria, together with their “White Helmet” terrorist support apparatus, to stage a fake chemical weapon attack, film the White Helmets “saving” the victims, blast the videos around the world on fake news outlets, and induce President Trump to allow the war party to unleash a missile and air assault on Syria. It worked twice before, although Trump restricted the attacks to minor, limited attacks, with few casualties. However, with ISIS largely defeated by the Syrian army, the British intend to provoke a wider war, both to prevent President Trump from carrying out his intention to withdraw U.S. forces from Syria, and to destroy the effort by both Presidents Trump and Putin to bring the U.S. and Russia into a friendly and cooperative relationship. In the eyes of the British Empire, the Helsinki Summit between Trump and Putin marked a deadly threat to the Empire itself.

Let there be no doubt: The British would vastly prefer a thermonuclear showdown, or even a thermonuclear war, between the United States and Russia, rather than see the imperial division of the world between East and West torn down. The power of the City of London and its Wall Street subsidiary depends absolutely on that division.

The first fake chemical attack in Syria took place while Trump was meeting with Xi Jinping in Florida in April 2017, aimed at undermining Trump’s personal cooperation with China’s leader. The second attack came in April of this year, based on a White Helmet video which was proven by multiple witnesses, and even the testimony of the supposed “victims” themselves, to have been completely staged by the White Helmets.

The difference now is that the Russians and the Syrians have the evidence ahead of the fake chemical weapons attack, and have made it public, calling on the world to stop it. Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Gen. Igor Konashenkov told the press on Aug. 25: “To carry out the alleged ‘chemical attack’ in the city of Jisr al-Shugur in the province of Idlib, militants from the Tahrir al-Sham [Jabhat al Nusra in Syria]…, had delivered eight tankers with chlorine to a village a few kilometers from Jisr al-Shugur. This provocation, with the active participation of the British special services will serve as another pretext for the U.S., U.K., and France to conduct a missile strike on the Syrian government and economic facilities.” He identified both the White Helmets and the Olive Group, a 5,000-strong British mercenary organization based in Abu Dhabi, as active participants in preparing the provocation.

When the British claimed that Assad was using chemical weapons in 2013, without evidence, President Obama ordered preparation for a full-scale military assault on Syria. Only the mass mobilization of the citizenry forced Obama to back down, after an outcry against yet another illegal and genocidal war against a Southwest Asian country which was no threat the West, and which in fact was staunchly anti-terrorist.

A similar mobilization today can and must prevent the current British plan for war. The fact that President Trump, unlike Obama, is opposed to regime change, wants to pull out of Syria as soon as ISIS is fully eliminated, and wants the U.S. and Russia to collaborate in this and other tasks, means that exposing this British provocation will also greatly contribute to stopping the British coup attempt against Trump through the Mueller Russiagate witch hunt.

In fact, President Trump was elected precisely because he is intent on breaking the “Special Relationship” with the British, a relationship which has turned the U.S. into a post-industrial junk heap, with a drugged up and demoralized population and a policy of permanent warfare. The LaRouche movement knows what is needed to make Trump a great President and to truly make America great again: He must be liberated from the coup attempt, freeing him to join with Russia and China and India in a New Bretton Woods agreement, to put the Western financial system through bankruptcy proceedings and restore the industrial economies of the West, in league with the New Silk Road development of the entire world. Without the United States taking that dramatic step, there is no possibility of the world avoiding disaster, and no possibility of the United States taking that step if Trump is brought down by the war party.

The New Paradigm is within our grasp, if we rise to the moment as a human race, to end geopolitics and Empire from the face of the Earth.

U.S. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC

Lavrov Points to Importance of Trump-Putin Relationship

Aug. 28 (EIRNS)—In an interview published today by Pravda of Slovakia, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov countered the sentiment coming from many Russian leaders that the U.S. is now lost to any cooperation, and that the world must unite against the U.S. Lavrov said that Moscow and Washington are working out specific moves to step up cooperation in various spheres based on the results of the July 16 Helsinki summit between Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. “In Helsinki the state leaders confirmed their mutual intention to search for common points and ways to overcome the existing differences. They agreed that Russian-American cooperation on a constructive and mutually beneficial basis is in demand in a great number of areas,” Lavrov pointed out. “It concerns, in particular, support for strategic stability, the war on international terror and other modern challenges, the settlement of regional crisis situations and the development of bilateral trade-economic ties.

“Specific moves are being developed now which could be used to step up effective cooperation in various areas,” he told the daily, reported TASS.

On the other hand, he said, “It is quite natural that each of the Presidents is protecting the interests of his country, which [Russian President] Vladimir Putin said at a press conference on the results of the negotiations with [U.S. President] Donald Trump in Helsinki on July 16. However, we definitely have common interests in both the bilateral and international agendas.”

On the issue of the latest U.S. sanctions he said Moscow will provide tit-for-tat responses and stated that the relations between both countries “are still under significant influence by U.S. domestic policy conjuncture.” He also observed that “some forces in the Washington establishment add fuel to anti-Russian hysteria and try to block any positive progress in bilateral affairs.

“It’s no accident that right after the meeting in Helsinki, Trump came under fire of his opponents, and Congress started to prepare new initiatives against our country,” Lavrov continued. “In this context, the administration itself is not being consistent. Despite the promises of Americans that they are ready for dialogue, we still face unfriendly measures, which aggravate the difficult situation in our relations even further.

“For example, on Aug. 8, they announced new anti-Russian measures on the account of our alleged involvement in the ‘Skripal case.’ ”

Muellergate Suspect Ohr Was First Before Congress This Week

Aug. 28 (EIRNS)—Today, Bruce Ohr, as former Associate Deputy Attorney General, then fourth ranking official in the Justice Department, appeared behind closed doors to answer questions from the House Judiciary and Oversight and Government Reform Committees’ joint investigation into Robert Mueller’s witch hunt. He is the first of three top suspects who will be questioned this week.

The central subject addressed by Ohr was his role in handling British MI6 agent and FBI confidential informant Christopher Steele (or Steele’s handling of him). Steele is the primary author of the dirty dossier on Trump used to get authorization for FISA court surveillance of one-time Trump campaign official Carter Page, and the basis for the entire Russiagate scam.  Ohr has been a long-term collaborator of Steele, while Ohr’s wife Nellie was employed by Fusion GPS, a private contractor working on Trump research for Hillary Clinton’s campaign that paid Christopher Steele to create the dossier. Although Ohr was not officially assigned to the Mueller witch-hunt, he served as one of Steele’s go-betweens with the FBI and continued to do that even after the FBI fired Steele for leaking information to the media.

Congressmen present for the questioning report that Ohr has presented material that answers some questions about how Steele’s dossier was used and raises many others.

Representatives Mark Meadows (R-NC) Chair of the House Freedom Caucus, Jim Jordan (R-OH) of the House Freedom Caucus, Trey Gowdy (R-SC), John Ratcliffe (R-TX), Darrell Issa (R-CA), Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and Andy Biggs (R-AZ) attended.

Gaetz, Meadows and Issa reported that the FBI knew more, and withheld more about the Steele dossier than had previously been reported.  Gaetz said, “What we’ve learned today is that the FBI was absolutely in possession of material facts that they withheld from the FISA courts.”  Specifically, not only had the FBI made no attempt to verify the truth of the dossier, but they also had serious reasons to doubt the truth of much of it.  It appears from the copies of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court application that have been released, that the FBI hid these doubts from the court in filing their request.  Meadows said, “If the information we heard about today was not given to those four FISA judges, there’s real problems.”

Several Congressmen observed discrepancies between what Ohr told them about the operations of Fusion GPS and what its co-founder Glenn Simpson and FBI attorney Lisa Page told them. “Either Bruce Ohr’s lying or Glenn Simpson’s lying,” Gaetz reported, and stating that someone will be held for perjury.

Issa reported that Ohr had provided a long list of FBI officials who “handled” Steele and had information about the dossier, but Ohr had insisted that the names not be released.

Yesterday, Roll Call reported that Ohr will be followed by the other Muellergate suspects in House hearings: James Baker, removed as FBI General Counsel last May, will appear on Aug. 30, and Trisha Anderson, a legal advisor to the DOJ Office of Legal Counsel, will appear on Aug. 31.

Baker worked closely with James Comey, whom Trump fired as FBI Director, and had been investigated by the DOJ for possible leaks to the news media.

Anderson worked closely with DOJ lawyer Lisa Page of the Page/Strzok affair and was involved in preparing the case for the FISA court application to permit surveillance of the Trump campaign.

STRATEGIC WAR DANGER

Mattis Defensive about U.S. Support to Saudi-Led Coalition Crimes against Yemen

Aug. 28 (EIRNS)—Secretary of Defense James Mattis, during a joint press conference with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford today, very defensively backed the continuation of U.S. military support of the Saudi-led coalition that is bombing Yemen, while clearly defensive about the overtly genocidal bombing of civilians by the Saudis and allies. During his opening statement, he said that the U.S. supports Saudi Arabia’s “right to self-defense” and that the administration recognizes that the end of the conflict requires a political solution through the efforts of UN Special Envoy Martin Griffiths.  “We are also working closely with the coalition that is fighting to support the UN recognized government in order to determine what went wrong with errant bombing attacks and prevent their recurrence,” he said.

Perhaps one reason for Mattis’s defensiveness was the release, just a few hours earlier, of the UN Human Rights Council’s Group of Independent Eminent International and Regional Experts who were appointed to examine allegations of war crimes in the conduct of the war in Yemen. While the report takes a sort of “pox on both your houses” approach—blaming the Houthis for war crimes as well—it states at the outset that “Coalition air strikes have caused most of the documented civilian casualties.” These air strikes “have hit residential areas, markets, funerals, weddings, detention facilities, civilian boats and even medical facilities.” The report raises serious concerns about the targetting process used by the coalition, including, among other things, by observing that the use of precision-guided munitions indicates that the object hit was, indeed, the intended target. “If there are errors in the targetting process that effectively remove the protections provided by international humanitarian law, these would amount to violations,” the report states. “These may, depending on the circumstances, amount to war crimes by individuals at all levels in the member states of the coalition and the government, including civilian officials.”

NATO Imagines Russian Chemical Warfare Attack

Aug. 28 (EIRNS)—Is NATO now so corrupted as to believe that Russia will launch chemical weapons attacks against it should there be a war? The answer to that question would seem to be “yes.” On Aug. 26, The British Sunday Express tabloid ran a story on how NATO is going to run a secret computer exercise in October, called Arena Star, at the Warrenton Training Center, a 500-acre facility in Virginia only about 50 miles outside of Washington, D.C., to examine how the alliance would respond to a chemical attack not from a terrorist group, which used to be the fear, but from Russia. “The reason why we have chosen a chemical weapon attack for our October scenario is because of the growing belief, based on information we have gathered, that nuclear weapons would not now be a first strike by Russia,” an unnamed senior military source told the Express. “The problem will be how the West should respond to such a [chemical] attack.”

The Express trots out Col. Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a retired British officer, who commanded chemical defense battalions in both the British Army and in NATO. NATO’s decision to run the exercise, he lied, was “recognition that the 100-year taboo on states using chemical weapons, broken in Syria and followed on in Salisbury, is now truly and finally broken,” referring to the poisoning of the Skripals in March. He further claimed that, “There have been chemical attacks in Syria, of course, but Russia’s use of Novichok in Salisbury is being seen as proof positive that it is willing to use this nerve agent in a state-on-state attack….

“In conventional terms. Russian’s military is no match for NATO—we saw that recently with the crash of its most advanced jet in Syria,” de Bretton-Gordon claimed. “But it outmatches us in terms of chemical weapons. I have no doubt that it would use everything it has, including Novichok, should a conflict break out.”  The fact that Russia’s destruction of the old Soviet chemical weapons program was certified by the Organization for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) is irrelevant to this lunatic.

ECONOMY

Global Times: Trump Is Trying To ‘Reshape the Global Manufacturing Chain’

Aug. 28 (EIRNS)—A business article by correspondent Hu Weijia in today’s Global Times is titled, “Complex Reshaping of Industry Chains Means Sino-U.S. Trade Dispute Likely To Drag On.” It reflects debate among China’s policymakers about U.S. President Donald Trump’s intentions.

The article begins by referring to the “revamp of the North American Free Trade Agreement,” stating that President Trump likes such bilateral trade agreements (as with Mexico) because it gives the U.S., with its market size, more leverage than in multilateral negotiations. There is an intention, on President Trump’s part, they argue, through such bilateral trade deals, to “foster a high-standard global free trade network to reshape the global manufacturing chain.” The new U.S.-Mexico trade agreement is therefore one step in this overhaul.

According to Hu, Trump is intent on using U.S. leverage with China to foster these high-standards, believing that “the U.S. has to start a trade dispute to reshape the manufacturing chain” between the U.S. and China.”

Therefore, Hu reasons, “the trade dispute is likely to become a protracted one, because the adjustment of the manufacturing chain is a long process.” Recognizing this, China must, “try to take advantage of its economy to protect its manufacturing sector.”

Others in China point out that the Trump policy also aims to punish U.S. firms that moved to China to manufacture goods cheaply, then export the product back to the U.S., noting that this is over 40% of China’s exports to the U.S. This will also bring some of those firms back to the U.S.

THE NEW GLOBAL ECONOMIC ORDER

Indian Scholar: Belt and Road Came from ‘American Prophets’ Lyndon and Helga LaRouche

Aug. 28 (EIRNS)—Mahmud Ali, an Indian scholar currently at the Institute of China Studies at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur, posted an article on LinkedIn titled “America’s Foundational Contributions to China’s Belt & Road Initiative (BRI)” on Aug. 27. He ridicules the “disdain” from Western officials and media towards the Belt and Road Initiative, and stating that the slanders are “repeated ad nauseam,” especially in the U.S. But, he continues, the concept “originated in America, with U.S. visionaries envisaging, promoting and advancing the cause of a united Euro-Asian economic space, as early as the late 1980s, before politicians and their assorted advisors had begun considering the possibility of the collapse of the Soviet Union, or the end of the Cold War. It was that American intellectual spark, nurtured by a few farsighted men and women, which illuminated the new world of possibilities. Without it, and direct intervention by governments and multilateral agencies based in America and its allies, there would probably be no BRI today.”

Then, under the subhead “American Prophets Imagine a New Silk Road,” he writes that despite the geopolitical thinking of most people in the West, based on the concepts of Halford Mackinder, “Western thinkers operating outside state-funded national security establishments envisioned a non-competitive, indeed collaborative, vision of the future. One of them, the U.S. politician and co-founder, with his wife Helga LaRouche, of the Washington-based Schiller Institute, Lyndon LaRouche, promoted such a vision, with some success in influencing segments of trans-Atlantic opinion. In October 1988, LaRouche briefed the media in West Berlin on ‘U.S. Policy Toward the Reunification of Germany,’ prophesying the collapse of Comecon economies, and urging food-support to Poland so that a majority of Germans on both sides desired reunification. In December, he assigned a group of Schiller Institute specialists to examine prospects for establishing a Paris-Berlin-Vienna productive triangle. In January 1990, Schiller Institute published LaRouche’s book on a proposed 320,000 sq.km. European economic area comprising a population of 92 million concentrated in 10 large industrial areas, from which he envisaged infrastructural corridors, linked with high-speed railways, radiating in all directions, providing a basis for upgrading living standards across Eurasia.”

Ali goes on to describe Schiller Institute conferences and EIRarticles between 1991 and 1996 (noting that LaRouche was then in prison), when Helga Zepp-LaRouche presented her speech at the May 7-9, 1996 “Symposium on Economic Development along the New Euro-Asia Continental Bridge” in Beijing on May 8, 1996, titled “Building the Silk Road Land-Bridge: The Basis for Mutual Security Interests of Asia and Europe.”

Then, he writes: “In January 1997, Lyndon LaRouche addressed a Washington conference, urging the Clinton Administration to sponsor a New Bretton Woods system, reorganizing the world economy to prevent disruptive boom-bust cycles, and recognize the global merit of the Eurasian Land-Bridge program. Reinforcing and explaining her husband’s persistent thematic refrain, Helga LaRouche published a commentary titled, ‘Eurasian Land-Bridge: A New Era for Mankind,’ which was widely circulated across the Atlantic by the Schiller Foundation [sic].” He adds that Helga LaRouche addressed a second conference in Beijing in November 1997. “By then,” he continues, “railway connectivity between coastal China, Central Asia and Russia was a reality; Europe beckoned.”

He next reports on a conference in India organized by Schiller representative Ramtanu Maitra, with leading figures from Russia, China and India, where they “established a Triangular Association with the goal of promoting Indo-Russian-Chinese cooperation in forging a shared vision of Eurasia’s post-Cold War future of peace, progress and prosperity. The effort failed for a combination of distractions and difficulties: fallout from the Asian Economic Crisis, the September 2001 al-Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington and America’s subsequent Global War on Terrorism, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and then, the Great Recession. Nonetheless, seeds had been sown in the febrile post-Cold War intellectual hotbeds. Ideas analyzed at Schiller’s many conferences and events began gelling into policy-frameworks in early 21st century.”

Ali then reviews other Western interventions into Central Asia, including a number of “bilateral investment treaties” the U.S. signed with countries in Central Asia and the South Caucasus, aimed at capturing the energy resources and breaking them away from Russia and China, and the so-called “New Silk Road Initiative” sponsored by Hillary Clinton (based on keeping Central Asia out of Russia and China influence), and the Lower Mekong Initiative, also by the U.S. State Department.

However, Ali makes a point that the U.S. initiatives were both “much more modest” than the LaRouche plans, or of Xi Jinping’s plan announced in September 2013, and that the U.S. “more candidly advertised their geopolitical drivers.” On the other hand, he concludes, “Beijing emphasized its economic, indeed geoeconomic focus.”

China and Kenya To Sign Contract for Phase 2 of Standard Gauge Railroad in Beijing

Aug. 28 (EIRNS)—Kenya and Chinese companies will sign contracts to begin the second phase of the new Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) on the sidelines of the Forum of China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) Summit on Sept. 3-4 in Beijing. The new line with extend the railway from Nairobi to Kisumu on Lake Victoria. China Communications Construction Company is the main contractor for the SGR.

Speaking in Mombasa Aug. 23 at the Architectural Association of Kenya annual convention, Kenya’s Transport and Infrastructure Cabinet Secretary James Macharia said: “We shall be traveling to China on the first week of September for the FOCAC summit and we shall sign the Sh380 billion ($3.8 billion) contract for the second phase of the SGR from Naivasha to Kisumu.”

The development of a new port at Kisumu on Lake Victoria will facilitate water transport to Uganda and Tanzania. Currently only small ships, less than 1,000 tons and mostly old ships are active on the Lake.

SCIENCE AND INFRASTRUCTURE

Political Fight for India’s Manned Space Program Will Be Won by Prime Minister Modi

Aug. 28 (EIRNS)—Yesterday, the Chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization K. Sivan, in a session with reporters in New Delhi, detailed how ISRO will carry out Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s plan for India to launch an Indian astronaut by 2022. It will be a five- to seven-day mission, during which the crew will carry out microgravity experiments. Sivan said that 13,000 jobs would be created in industry to carry out the mission, and ISRO will add 900. Space capsule recovery experiments have been carried out, and a prototype spacesuit designed. ISRO is planning either a sea or land landing, he reported. “Soon, you will see advertisements for selecting potential astronauts,” said Sivan.

The previous day, the City of London’s Financial Times gave voice to the opposition, which has stalled the manned project, and even the Indian satellite program, throughout ISRO’s history. Most of the opposition, naturally, comes from the financial mafia, and the professional India pessimists. “I think if you did a grand cost-benefit analysis, this wouldn’t rank very high among the priorities,” says Vivek Dehejia of the IDFC Institute. “When we’re a rich country we’ll have plenty of time to put a man on the Moon,” says Dehejia—a student of Robert Mundell’s—purposely distorting what is even being proposed.

The Indian space program is often contrasted with China’s. Dehejia advises, “if you want to beat China, beat them on the economy” with clearly no comprehension of how China is enabling “sustained growth,” or why it is spending substantial sums on a space program, while so successfully fighting poverty.

The scientific community is mobilized to secure funding and support for the program. On Aug. 26, highly respected biologist, and principal scientific advisor to the government, K. Vijay Raghavan acknowledged that the program and timeline are a challenge, but says ISRO has been moving on the mission. Dr. Raghavan explained that opposition was raised as far back as India’s development of rockets in the 1970s. He dismissed questions about the money spent on “expensive” space missions, saying “We anticipate the short-term and long-term benefits.” (In fact, it is estimated that the $1.5 billion manned mission will cost $1.15 per Indian over four years).

He sees the program as a technology driver for the economy, pointing out that today India has to import electronic parts and other equipment, but that “We can use this manned mission to promote domestic industry and science.”

He concludes that the mission will also inspire the young generation, and all Indians will be proud of it.

Rodman Narashima, former director of India’s National Aerospace Laboratories, reports that in his conversations throughout his career with working-class Indians about the space program, “It is their dream to send their kids to university so they can do things like space technology…. I’ve hardly found anybody who thinks it shouldn’t be done.”

This mission can succeed because of Prime Minister Modi’s Kennedy-like setting of a challenging national mission, and a deadline to meet it. It is a statement on economic policy, seen through the example of the space program, which puts advanced technology and breakthroughs in science rather than “appropriate technology” as the driver of tomorrow’s Indian economy.

And it sets an example to the many other developing nations determined to overcome poverty.