EDITORIAL

Defend a Peace President Against War Party’s Attempted Coup

Sept. 9 (EIRNS)—Anyone not suffering from the now well-known “Trump derangement syndrome” can see that President Donald Trump has begun to remove a 60-year-long threat of nuclear war over the Korean Peninsula, something that alone and in itself would be the major accomplishment of any Presidential term. It is equally obvious that a neo-conservative war party, instigated by London and British intelligence, is trying to force the President into at least a war confrontation with Russia in Syria—an essential component of a coup to force him out of office.

This war party will not accept President Trump’s rejection of the geopolitics of America the sole (British-directed) hyperpower and hegemon, and of regime-change wars at will. So, they refuse to accept the American people’s electing him President.

Just as legal assassin Robert Mueller was instrumental, when FBI Director, in triggering Vice President Dick Cheney’s disastrous Iraq War in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Mueller’s attempted legal assassination of President Trump is being used to launch war over Syria. It could go nuclear, with many Russian, British, and U.S. naval assets converging and exercising simultaneously in the Eastern Mediterranean off Syria.

In this crisis nothing is more important than having the United States led by a President committed to peaceful great-power relations with Russia and China, and friendly exchanges with their leaders, trade dispute notwithstanding. The “anonymous op-ed writer” in the Administration—if real—is indeed a national security threat. He/she/it is threatening that a war party is trying to seize the White House from within, from a peace President who is also still open to the anti-Wall Street, infrastructure and investment policies he campaigned on.

With a crucial election just weeks away, the American people have to mobilize to defend the President against this coup. EIR and LaRouchePAC are providing the weapons of exposure of the war party, and the weapons of economic policy to defeat Wall Street and the City of London.

The American Banker publication has just warned Wall Street that “populism” threatens a sudden political comeback of the Glass-Steagall Act, and reminding that both candidate and President Trump have publicly considered it. The so-called “emerging market currency crisis” is threatening an international collapse of corporate debt and financial blowout.

Glass-Steagall bank separation and massive credit for high-technology infrastructure are therefore essentially connected to the need for American peaceful cooperation with the great powers China and Russia. This is the merging of EIR founder Lyndon LaRouche’s “Four Laws” for economic progress, with the Belt and Road Initiative of China which is becoming a worldwide renewal of vital basic economic infrastructure.

All this is at stake in this election season.

THE NEW GLOBAL ECONOMIC ORDER

North Korea’s National Day Parade Signals Hopes for Korean and World Peace

Sept. 9 (EIRNS)—President Donald Trump tweeted Sunday afternoon that “North Korea has just staged their parade, celebrating 70th anniversary of founding, without the customary display of nuclear missiles. Theme was peace and economic development. Experts believe that North Korea cut out the nuclear missiles to show President Trump its commitment to denuclearize. @FoxNews This is a big and very positive statement from North Korea,” President Trump wrote, and went on: “Thank you To Chairman Kim. We will both prove everyone wrong! There is nothing like good dialogue from two people that like each other! Much better than before I took office.”

Toronto’s Globe and Mail captured the hopeful shift in this year’s parade from those of past years:

“Instead of inter-continental ballistic missiles, a parade float depicted notable dates in the ongoing detente with South Korea, under a giant red text proclaiming ‘Fatherland reunification through the strength of our nation.’

“And instead of nuclear boasting, a group of children marched with sunflower signs in front of another float emblazoned with ‘Nothing to Envy,’ a common education slogan. Beneath it was a drawing of a rocket with four portholes leaping upward on tongues of flame, decorated with a single word: ‘Future.’ It was a spaceship, an image of scientific aspiration rather than belligerent advancement.”

D.P.R.K. leader Kim Jong-un attended the event, but the major address was given by the head of North Korea’s parliament, Kim Yong-nam, whose speech according to Western and Asian media alike focused on economic development. Xinhua reported that Kim Yong-nam said that “under the leadership of Kim Jong Un, the D.P.R.K. has made great achievements in economic construction. He urged citizens to carry out the strategic line of economic construction put forward at the Third Plenary Meeting of the Seventh Central Committee of the Worker’s Party of Korea and to contribute to world peace and the unification of the Korean Peninsula.”

Beijing Announces Big Plans with Xi Jinping’s Participation in Eastern Economic Forum

Sept. 8 (EIRNS)—“This year is the year of regional cooperation between China and Russia,” Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister Zhang Hanhui told reporters yesterday during his briefing on President Xi Jinping’s participation in the Sept. 11-13 Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, reported TASS. The EEF “will be a very large-scale meeting from the point of view of regional cooperation…. We will hold a dialogue of regional heads, exchange useful experience of cooperation in the Far East and will therefore make full use of the two important platforms of cooperation: between northwestern China and Russia’s Far East, and under the Volga-Yangtze mechanism.” This is the first time Xi will be attending the EEF, Xinhua cited Zhang as remarking.

Zhang also said that Xi Jinping will attend numerous bilateral and multilateral events during his visit to Russia. “The most important of those events will be the meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the third this year. The heads of the two states will also take part in several cultural, trade and other state-level events. Chinese President Xi Jinping will make a speech at the plenary session of the forum.”

“At present, relevant agencies of the two states are about to complete discussions on cooperation documents, including cooperation in the Far East, educational exchanges and other matters,” he said. The Chinese diplomat said leaders of nine Chinese regions and their 13 Russian counterparts will take part in the forum. The theme for this year’s Fourth Eastern Economic Forum is “The Russian Far East: Expanding the Range of Possibilities.”

Trump and Xi Jinping May Meet To Discuss Trade at UN General Assembly or at G20

Sept. 8 (EIRNS)—White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow told Bloomberg on Sept. 7 that President Donald Trump may have a bilateral meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of this month’s United Nations General Assembly in New York, or at the November G20 meeting in Argentina. “It’s never too late to make good trade policy. But I will say this, the world trading system is broken,” Kudlow said. He further said that Trump is “dead serious” in his determination to push China to reform its trade policies, Bloomberg reported.

Kudlow’s comments came in the context of President Trump’s remarks on Air Force One yesterday saying that his administration could act on the next $200 billion in trade tariffs against China “very soon, depending on what happens,” and that “I hate to do this, but behind that there is another $267 billion ready to go on short notice if I want.” Kudlow commented that the U.S. wants to build a “coalition of the willing” to pressure China, including the EU, Japan and others. “The Chinese, you know, may find themselves more isolated if they don’t come into the global process.” White House Deputy Press Secretary Lindsay Walters said that no final decision has been made yet about the next round of tariffs.

Bloomberg reported about a possible Xi-Trump meeting, that “Kudlow’s comments indicated the U.S. is looking for a deal with China to end the trade war between the world’s two biggest economies.”

New Silk Road Spirit Awakens Big Thinking in Central America

Sept. 9 (EIRNS)—Costa Rica’s La Republica daily launched a polemic this week against those who argue that nations should not take on debt for development, in a Sept. 7 article emphasizing that Costa Rica’s signing onto the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is key to ending economic paralysis in their nation. Debt has been a forbidden word in Costa Rica, La Republica wrote, but “it is necessary to understand that without investment, growth is impossible, and if adequate resources are not available, they must be asked for. The intelligent decision is to invest in areas which generate development and have a positive return.”

The daily cited Costa Rica’s Ambassador to China Patricia Rodriguez Holkemeyer on this point: “We should shed our fear of indebting ourselves for building basic infrastructure which we need for development. If we lag behind, other countries will do it, and we will lose competitiveness. If we do it intelligently, seeing where the bottlenecks lie, then we will be on a positive path towards future development.”

Signing the BRI agreement is a “great opportunity which China is giving Costa Rica, introducing fresh ideas” on development, the Ambassador told the paper, “an option which the West is not offering.”

El Salvador, which just established relations with China a few weeks ago, is sending a delegation of cabinet ministers there in the next few days to open economic cooperation talks. One of those participating, Commerce Minister Luz Estrella Rodriguez, told Xinhua that El Salvador paid close attention to Costa Rica’s signing onto the BRI, and in her view, the members of the Central American Integration System (SICA) which now have relations with China “could form a common bloc to take better advantage of their logistical potential.”

An article in Panama’s La Prensa daily on Sept. 6 raises one of the most exciting plans for the BRI in Central America, which EIR knows is key in those discussions: the long-desired railway running throughout Central America. Author Roberto Montanez’s subject was the railway to Chiriqui province which China is planning to build in Panama as part of the New Silk Road. Rail still today revolutionizes economies and brings social and economic progress, he wrote. Looking towards the future, President Xi Jinping seeks to build up a greater land and maritime connection between China and Latin America, and Chinese company executives tell us that China is firmly committed to doing business in this continent, he wrote. Then, the key:

“The strategic interest of China is to build a rail network to Central America to handle cargo, and turn Panama into an agro-industrial center, strengthening its logistical hub, through which the products and raw materials of a sub-region which has 50 million inhabitants would be imported, not negligible as an economy of scale.”

U.S. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC

Trump Tells Montana Rally that Putin Summit Was His ‘Best Meeting Ever’

Sept. 7 (EIRNS)—In a rally with his supporters in Billings, Montana President Donald Trump described the Helsinki meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying, “One of my best meetings ever was with Vladimir Putin. …  We had a great meeting, we talked about Ukraine, we talked about Syria, we talked about the protection of Israel. We talked about so many great things.”

Commenting on criticism that he was being too soft with the Russian leader, Trump countered: “They wanted me to have a boxing match on a stage.”

The President was on the campaign trail in Montana, when he spoke, addressing a live, nationally televised rally yesterday.

Recognition that ‘Regime Change’ Coup in U.S. Aims for War

Sept. 9 (EIRNS)—Amid a number of columns identifying the attacks on President Donald Trump as nothing short of “Regime Change—American Style,” in the words of Patrick Buchanan, dissident Republican David Stockman, President Reagan’s former Office of Management and Budget Director, analyzed the “coup underway” against the President as a drive for war.

Stockman connected the New York Times “Anonymous” operation—“the kind of bald-faced election-tampering that our putative Russian meddlers could only drool about”—to the buildup of “Sen. John S. McWar as a ‘lodestar’ of honor,” by the “cabal … attempting to nullify the 2016 election … the entire Washington-based GOP establishment.” Stockman warns that this cabal is trying to take Trump down, because “if the unseen hand of the historical fates had infused any purpose in the election of Donald Trump, it was to destroy once and for all the corrupted malignancy of John McCain’s GOP.” The “Anonymous” column “was commissioned by neo-con central, in large part over the fact that, however awkward and halting, the Donald’s efforts to normalize relations with North Korea and Russia are exactly what the doctor ordered, and the most hopeful initiatives toward world peace in the decades since the Cold War ended.”

In his own way, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) co-founder Ray McGovern pointed to the same purpose in his Sept. 8 entry on his website, “Will Mueller Opt for Non-Existent Intelligence?” dedicated to taking down Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s reputation as honest. When he was Director of the FBI, Mueller played “an important part” in preparing the way for the war of aggression against Iraq, by ignoring calls coming even from within the FBI to produce evidence of the alleged al-Qaeda/Saddam Hussein connections used to justify that war, McGovern pointed out.

COLLAPSING WESTERN FINANCIAL SYSTEM

‘Is Glass-Steagall Poised for a Political Comeback?’

Sept. 8 (EIRNS)—That is the headline of its Sept. 7 Bankshot column in the trade site American Banker. The article says that “the time for loftier political battles over the very structure of the banking system may be just around the corner. And that will almost certainly include the fight to bring back the Glass-Steagall Act.” The article asserts that Glass-Steagall is not going to “pass Congress anytime soon barring, perhaps, a sudden economic crisis,” but it is being discussed because “populism remains strong on both sides of the aisle.” They also note that “although he’s made no real mention of the 1930s law since coming into office, Trump did signal his interest in Glass-Steagall during his campaign. The provision also made its way into both party platforms in 2016.”

The article takes particular note of the fact that the National Association of Federally-Insured Credit Unions just released a white paper calling for a return to Glass-Steagall, since they have not done this before and rarely venture into policy issues not directly related to credit unions.

A second article in American Banker, this one dated Sept. 6, reported on the NCUA white paper and noted that the NCUA “is going on the offensive against big banks and calling for a modern-day Glass-Steagall Act.” The article quotes Geoff Bacino, a former NCUA board member that “where all our troubles began” was with the repeal of Glass-Steagall.

Credit Union Mobilization for Glass-Steagall, Now, After 15 Months’ Debate

Sept. 9 (EIRNS)—The September 2018 policy paper, “Glass-Steagall Act Revisited,” by the National Association of Federally-Insured Credit Unions follows by more than a year, the start of debate over Glass-Steagall reinstatement in the Association’s umbrella group, the National Credit Union Association (NCUA); it reflects new urgency in the face of financial crisis.

In June 2017, EIR reported, “A strong endorsement of reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act, from a new institutional source, appeared in the June 21 issue of Credit Union Times, which says it goes to about 11,000 credit unions. The article by Kathy Geary and Bernard McLaughlin, both presidents of credit unions, called a May 18 [2017] Senate Banking Committee hearing ‘the official start of the debate on a 21st-century version of the Glass-Steagall Act,’ and came down on Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s side of that day’s confrontation with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin….

“Their conclusion is a call to mobilization. ‘As the Glass-Steagall debate unfolds in the coming months, the call to action to credit unions is clear. We ask that credit unions, credit union leagues and our two national trade associations join together with one voice on this important debate of a 21st century version of Glass-Steagall. To ignore it could leave our industry, our members and our entire country open to a repeat of the crisis of 2008.’ ”

The Credit Union Times carried no further discussion of reinstating Glass-Steagall in the following months; the credit union associations did not mobilize.

But now, with 2,500 credit unions having disappeared by closure or buyout since the 2008 crash, the Association is mobilizing, against the threat of a new financial crash and, even before that, the ongoing threat of lack of access to credit of credit unions themselves. Though very mildly and professionally worded, the white paper, “Modernizing Financial Services: The Glass-Steagall Act Revisited,” states: “NAFCU believes that the lack of appropriate separation between commercial and investment banking activities presents risks that are worth legislative consideration. A significant aspect of this risk involves reliance by nonbank financial firms on deposit accepting banks to secure liquidity in times of financial stress or crisis. NAFCU believes that such dependency undermines financial stability…. Consequently, NAFCU recommends that Congress consider the creation of a modern GSA to address bipartisan concerns related to the increasingly interconnected and interdependent shadow banking system.”

Flight Capital Drives Political Crisis in Indonesia

Sept. 9 (EIRNS)—Indonesia, the fourth-largest nation in the world, is one of the many developing nations being battered by the “reverse carry trade” which is driving the collapse of currencies around the world. Speculators who borrowed the easy money in the West, with near zero interest rates and massive money printing through QE over the past decade, are now cashing out to cover rising rates and a bond crisis in the West. The rupiah has fallen to nearly 15,000 to the dollar, not seen since the hedge fund assault on the Asian currencies in 1998, which drove the rupiah from under 3,000 to 15,000 virtually overnight, before settling at about 8,000. This essentially tripled Indonesia’s foreign debt in national currency terms.

The current crisis has seen a 9% fall in the rupiah over this year.

The foreign debt in Indonesia is now relatively low, at 29% of GDP. But with national elections coming in April next year, the opposition to President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) is blaming the currency crisis not on the international crisis, but on his increased foreign borrowing to build up the nation’s infrastructure since his 2014 election. Total debt rose about 40% under Jokowi, with about 40% of the debt held by foreigners.

With China being involved in nearly every major infrastructure project in the country as part of the Belt and Road Initiative, the international speculators who have caused the crisis are trying to put the blame on China, not only in Indonesia but internationally.

STRATEGIC WAR DANGER

Countdown to Chemical Weapons Provocation

Sept. 8 (EIRNS)—Russia warned this morning that the jihadis in Idlib province are about ready to carry out a chemical weapons provocation. Russian Ministry of Defense spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov told reporters that leaders of the terrorist groups Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (Jabhat al Nusra), the Turkestan Islamic Movement, and representatives of the White Helmets met in Idlib on Sept. 7 to coordinate their participation in the upcoming false flag operation. He said the terrorist leaders agreed on the scenarios and expect to have everything in place by Sept. 8.

The official Damascus news agency SANA, in a report published yesterday, adds other elements to the scenario that don’t appear to have been previously reported. It says that jihadis will not only be using chlorine, but also the deadly nerve agent sarin. SANA’s sources say that the provocation will be carried out in three towns in western Idlib, including a town in the Jisr al-Shughour countryside. The sources affirmed that sarin gas and chlorine gas shipments have been transported to these three areas, and that dozens of young children who had been abducted recently from a camp near Salqin now were transported from Jisr al-Shughour to an unknown location. Unlike in Douma, however, which provocation was carried out hastily, this time they intend for there to be a real massacre, SANA’s sources say.

U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford, traveling in India with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, told reporters en route with him that he is involved in “routine dialogue with the President to make sure he knows where we are with regard to planning in the event that chemical weapons are used…. He expects us to have military options and we have provided updates to him on the development of those military options,” he later said of President Trump.

OTHER

German Machine-Builders Attack Berlin’s Anti-China Trade Policy

Sept. 8 (EIRNS)—In unprecedentedly plain language, President Carl Martin Welcker of Germany’s Mechanical Engineering Industry Association (VDMA) denounced government plans to prevent Chinese purchases of German industrial firms by lowering the threshold for permits of presently 25% of corporate shares to 10% or even less. “We don’t need this restriction,” Welcker said. “The response to China cannot be that we eliminate our basic values,” which includes the principle that if Germany insists on open markets elsewhere, it must not be protectionist at home—this would be detrimental for a sector like machine-building which employs 400,000 people abroad in addition to the 1 million employees within Germany itself. Protectionism and trade war are poison to German industry, Welcker warned. He particularly criticized the government’s double standards, visible in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s inviting Qatar investors at a conference in Berlin yesterday, while at the same time disinviting Chinese investors.

Welcker then lashed out in general against the policymaking elites in Germany, saying that “in my view, the confidence in the forces of the market has been abandoned deeply into the political parties. The social market economy, the market, is seen as something bad today, which causes environmental pollution.” Instead of lifting market rules against China, Germany should enter a reasonable dialogue with it to resolve problems. After all, it is a good thing that China would be investing in German firms and thereby securing jobs, and he pointed to the example of the Kuka firm which the Chinese Midea Group took over. Welcker stated that the same principle should also be practiced in respect to the United States, “We should not reject everything, just because it comes from Trump.” Partnership with the Americans requires a dialogue, Welcker said, apparently in reference to plans of German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas to create an anti-Trump front of Europe and willing allies elsewhere.

Welcker is a machine-builder himself, working as CEO of the Alfred H. Schütte GmbH in Cologne.