EIR Daily Alert Service, THURSDAY, January 3, 2019
THURSDAY, JANUARY 3, 2019
Volume 6, Number 2
EIR Daily Alert Service
P.O. Box 17390, Washington, DC 20041-0390
Mexico’s López Obrador Announces ‘Every Young Person To Work’ Program, Inspired by FDR
Xi Jinping on Taiwan Straits Policy, Stresses 5,000-Year-Old Culture Unites Both Sides
In Syria Peace Effort, More Evidence Shows All Roads Do Lead to Moscow
Energy Department Takes Two Steps Forward, One Step Back on New Nuclear Reactors
China Well Ahead of United States in Rail Gun Development
Somali Foreign Ministry Declares UN Envoy Persona Non Grata
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EDITORIAL
Worse Lying Than ‘Russiagate’: Hiding the Progress of Humanity
Jan. 2 (EIRNS)—The new year begins with a paradox, Schiller Institute President Helga Zepp-LaRouche has noted in discussion with its organizations this week, and in her New Year’s message. Many nations in the world are moving toward a new paradigm of economic cooperation and peace, out of an era of geopolitical wars and confrontations orchestrated by British imperial circles. This new paradigm appears not only in the growth of China’s New Silk Road of great infrastructure cooperation; but also in President Donald Trump’s diplomacy over the Korean Peninsula; in the improving cooperation of Japan with Russia; of Japan and India with China; of the formerly warring nations of the Horn of Africa; yes, even in the potential ending of “permanent war” in Southwest Asia by mutually reinforcing actions of Presidents Trump and Putin, and Erdogan of Turkey.
Yet average “informed citizens” of the United States or the nations of Europe would never know it. The media of their countries overwhelmingly describe the end of 2018 as dystopian, chaotic, hopeless, unless they can succeed in driving Donald Trump from office and restoring “Atlanticist” leaders, climate tax believers, and full confrontation against Russia and China.
The surprise constructive relationship between Trump and Mexico’s new President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, for example, does not exist for these media nor their credulous readers. But it has raised the potential for real development of North and Central America. The growing potential of peace in South and Southwest Asia does not exist for them, only the supposed “grave dangers” to the world, of U.S. troops coming home from Syria and Afghanistan!
Because the Schiller Institute and the Lyndon and Helga LaRouche have worked for decades to prepare the World Land-Bridge development paradigm now enfolding scores of countries in the Belt and Road Initiative, they are now working as a dominant factor internationally. Since they have fought for the Peace of Westphalia approach of ending war by agreeing to “benefit the other,” Helga Zepp-LaRouche observed that they are now exercising extraordinary influence despite tiny apparent forces.
The real danger lies not in the alleged “threat to Europe of the Belt and Road Initiative” or any such raving against human progress, but in the imminent threat of another blowout of the London- and Wall Street-centered financial system, as in 2008 or worse.
Now the specific policies for bank separation and productive credit which the Schiller Institute has put into its reports, are on the agenda. These, and productive cooperation in space exploration, development of unlimited fusion energy and plasma technology, are the immediate prospects needed in 2019.
As Helga Zepp-LaRouche concluded her message: “We are at an absolute, historic branching point. We can shape a new era of civilization where we overcome geopolitics for good. And I would ask you, work with the Schiller Institute, so that we can convince the remaining nations which are still sticking to the old ways, and get especially the European nations to join the New Paradigm, and we can make a fantastic future if we work together.”
THE NEW GLOBAL ECONOMIC ORDER Mexico’s López Obrador Announces ‘Every Young Person To Work’ Program, Inspired by FDR
Jan. 2 (EIRNS)—In his New Year’s Day message, Mexican President Andres Manuel López Obrador announced that “all youth, all of them, are going to have work and schooling,” because the government is launching a new program to provide some 3,600 pesos a month (some US$184), which will allow them to work as apprentices.
“They are going to work in workshops; they are going to work in factories, in businesses. They are going to be working in the countryside, in the cities; with their parents, with their relatives, but working, being educated, qualifying themselves for work—all youth,” he said.
The goal of this Mexican President is to end in Mexico the acute problem throughout the West, where young people are being robbed of a future by neither being in school nor working.
López Obrador explained that this idea came from FDR: “I have had this idea since I read how President Franklin Delano Roosevelt pulled the United States out of the 1930s’ crisis. What did he do, in a tremendous economic crisis? He decided to put the whole U.S. people to work. And he decided to put young people to work, and he paid them a dollar a day, for every young person. But his idea was full employment. That is, a job for everyone. That idea stuck in my head, because Roosevelt lifted the United States out of the crisis, and for me, he was therefore, if not the best President, one of the best that the United States has had—Franklin Delano Roosevelt, by that action, by that decision. Now we are going to do something similar: All young people to work.”
His message in this statement, on New Year’s Eve, was one of optimism for the year 2019. He promised that he would not fail the Mexican people, he repeated.
“Some changes have been made, and more are coming.”
Xi Jinping on Taiwan Straits Policy, Stresses 5,000-Year-Old Culture Unites Both Sides
Jan. 2 (EIRNS)—Chinese President Xi Jinping’s first major speech in the New Year dealt with the all-important issue of Taiwan and China’s reunification, one of China’s “core issues.” While it took place on the 40th anniversary of the “Open Letter to Taiwan,” in which the P.R.C. committed to ending its military operations against the island, it was also a clear response to moves within the Trump Administration to upgrade the diplomatic status of Taiwan, as had been indicated in the “The Asia Reassurance Initiative Act of 2018,” signed into law by President Donald Trump on Dec. 31st and which called for strengthening official contact and military links between the U.S. and Taiwan. President Xi was addressing a forum in which many speakers from both the mainland and Taiwan spoke on the issue of Taiwan and the rejuvenation of China.
In his speech, Xi reiterated China’s standing policy toward Taiwan: The desire for eventual reunification on the basis of “one country, two systems”; the commitment to resolving this through peaceful negotiation; but also reserving the right to use force in the face of efforts to create an independent Taiwan. Xi also stated that the separation of Taiwan from the mainland during the Opium War was due to China’s military weakness at that time to defend its territory from foreign aggression, a condition which no longer applies with the growth of China’s military strength.
The message was also directed at those in the West and in Taiwan who are trying to separate Taiwan from China. Most specifically, it was directed to those compatriots in Taiwan who realize that the only successful outcome for the island would be reunification with China under the “one party, two systems” formula, urging them to make greater efforts to move the process forward. The speech also comes at an auspicious time after the crushing losses of the independence party, the DPP, during the November local elections, and when the desire for closer ties with the mainland is probably at a high point in Taiwan.
Most importantly, Xi underlined the common 5,000 years of Chinese culture that unites both sides of the Taiwan Straits, a culture which has gained a greater recognition and stature in the international arena with the rise of China as a global power and with the growing influence of the Belt and Road Initiative as a framework for global development.
STRATEGIC WAR DANGERIn Syria Peace Effort, More Evidence Shows All Roads Do Lead to Moscow
Jan. 2 (EIRNS)—The evidence continues to grow that there is no solution to the conflict in Syria without the involvement of Russia, especially in the aftermath of President Donald Trump’s Dec. 19 announcement that U.S. troops would be leaving. Reports continue to proliferate, indicating that Russia is exerting great efforts to set the conditions for some sort of settlement that will give all interested parties—other than designated terrorist groups—incentives to avoid a major conflict. New agency Al Monitor’s Moscow correspondent Maxim Suchkov reported on Jan. 1 that, in Turkey, the view is that the Trump decision further reinforces Russia’s role as a deal-maker in Syria and that all roads involving the situation in Idlib and the east of the Euphrates now lead to the Kremlin. Trump’s “handing over” of Syrian operations to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is largely seen in Moscow as “a reflection of this intent,” Suchkov writes.
Suchkov says that the Russian approach is not to drive a wedge between Ankara and Washington, but rather to offer the Turks a set of incentives so powerful that they “cling” to Moscow instead of Washington, while, at the same time, Erdogan plays both America and Russia to get the best deals for Turkey’s own interests. In the current state of affairs in Turkey, “Russia shows empathy for Turkey’s fundamental security concern about the YPG and other Kurdish forces. Turkey, in turn, has to side with the Russian agenda on preserving Syrian territorial integrity and on Assad as being ruler of the country at least for now.”
The Kurds are also looking to Russia; in their case, to mediate talks between them and Damascus that would include “comprehensive defense” of their territory from the Turks. Rudaw, the Iraqi Kurdish news site based in Erbil in northern Iraq, reported that, in Dec. 14 meetings at the Russian Foreign Ministry, a Syrian Kurdish delegation presented a roadmap for dialogue focusing on protecting northern Syria “according to a comprehensive defense system of Syria from external threats,” constitutionally including their region in a unified Syria, and fair distribution of economic wealth in the country. This was stated by Bedran Ciya Kurd, a senior official in Syria’s Kurdish administration, to local ANHA news on Dec. 31.
The delegation asked Russia to mediate such a dialogue. Russia’s Foreign Ministry reportedly said they would take that role “very seriously” and were ready to “work together to protect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Syria.”
Al Monitor’s Week in Review section argues that keeping the peace in Syria will ultimately require deeper U.S.-Russian coordination to prevent another round of costly bloodshed, beyond what the Russians have already done in holding off a Syrian army assault on Idlib or an Israeli-Syria-Iran escalation. While the Russians are taking into account the interests of Turkey, the Kurds, and even Israel, America remains the missing piece in the Russian strategy. Al Monitor observes that former U.S. Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford, in a Dec. 27 column in the Washington Post argued that the United States should offer “Russia cooperation in smoothing the way for a deal between the [Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces] SDF and Damascus that would allow Syrian troops to return to eastern Syria in a manner that meets Turkish security concerns and gives no new space to the Islamic State.”
U.S. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC
Energy Department Takes Two Steps Forward, One Step Back on New Nuclear Reactors
Jan. 2 (EIRNS)—World Nuclear News reported that the U.S. Department of Energy signed a memorandum of understanding on Dec. 21 on the use of 2 of the 12 modules of a demonstration small modular reactor project planned for Idaho National Laboratory (INL). The third partner, Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (UAMPS), plans to replace aging coal-fired plants with a plant having 12 reactor modules of the firm NuScale, each with about 70 MWe. The site is the INL, the expected date of operation 2027. The memorandum calls for two modules of the demonstration plant to provide electric power for the INL, itself, and for experimentation with energy sources.
UAMPS is a State of Utah department that provides wholesale electric energy, transmission, and other energy services to community-owned power systems throughout the Intermountain West.
The Energy Department is not funding the construction or operation of the modular reactors; but it has expedited the design certification for NuScale’s small modular reactor by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. It is now scheduled to complete the second phase of review, the safety evaluation, by August 2020, followed by approval of NuScale’s application for production of the SMRs.
The Energy Department is also funding, with a $40 million grant, development of an “advanced nuclear power reactor” by Bill Gates’ company TerraPower, which calls it a “travelling wave reactor.” Gates put out a New Year’s blog statement bewailing climate change, but proposing “advanced nuclear power” as the solution superior to wind or solar power, and urging “U.S. leaders to get in the game” on it. TerraPower’s reactor is called a fourth-generation liquid sodium-cooled fast (breeder) reactor. Its cooling by molten salt would allow operation at significantly higher temperatures with less maintenance than water-cooled reactors, ideal for providing heat to industrial and/or chemical processes.
However, Terra Power just abandoned a 2015 joint project with China National Nuclear Corp. to build a prototype 600 MWe reactor unit in Xiapu, Fujian province, during 2018-2025 2025. It was abandoned due to restrictions on U.S.-China technology transfer by the U.S. DOE.
SCIENCE AND INFRASTRUCTURE
Deng Xiaoping Simulated a ‘Moon Landing’ at NASA’s Johnson Space Center 40 Years Ago
Jan. 2 (EIRNS)—As the world waited for China’s Chang’e-4 spacecraft to attempt the unprecedented soft landing on the Moon’s far side, Houston-based LaRouchePAC leader Kesha Rogers pointed to an irony, which also upholds the enduring value of international cooperation in space science to overcome differences. Almost exactly 40 years ago, in late January 1979, Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, who had begun China’s “opening up” policy, visited Houston. As news broadcasts of the time reported, Deng was not presented with the keys to the city, and more than 500 people protested outside his hotel; “but at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, Deng was denied nothing.” Among other demonstrations, he was able to use a simulator to pilot a lander down to the surface of the Moon, starting at 100,000 feet—about the altitude of the orbit low point from which the Chang’e-4 probe will descend. He was clearly fascinated by the science and technologies of NASA, of which China at that time had no semblance. Forty years later, China’s space program leads, and has accomplished what no other nation has done. (On Jan. 4, as of 02:26 UTC, 10:26 a.m. in Beijing, Chang’e-4 was reported to have touched down on the lunar far side.)
Former NASA Administrator and current Defense Undersecretary for Research and Engineering Michael Griffin had stated that China could put human beings on the Moon within six to eight years, if it wished to—which is the next step toward exploration of the Solar System.
And Chinese President Xi Jinping, in his message yesterday congratulating President Donald Trump on 40 years of China-U.S. relations, declared: “History has proven cooperation is best for both sides. I attach great importance to the development of China-U.S. relations and am willing to work with President Trump to summarize the experience of the development of China-U.S. relations and implement the consensus we have reached, in a joint effort to advance China-U.S. relations featuring coordination, cooperation and stability, so as to better benefit the two peoples as well as the people of the rest of the world.”
China Well Ahead of United States in Rail Gun Development
Jan. 2 (EIRNS)—A U.S. intelligence estimate of June 2018 found that China is well ahead of the United States in developing electromagnetic rail gun technology and expects to begin fielding such weapons on PLA Navy ships as soon as 2025. Development of China’s rail guns began in 2011 but, according to a Dec. 30 report in Task & Purpose, a People’s Liberation Army (PLA)-run news outlet claimed in February 2018 that the Chinese Navy had achieved a “breakthrough” during sea trials for the new rail gun.
And indeed, the referenced U.S. intelligence report apparently not only confirms the PLAN claim but suggests that trials began even earlier than the PLA said.
Photographs of the Haiyang Shan, a Type 072 III landing ship, with the prototype rail gun mounted to the bow, have recently been circulating on the Internet, and they demonstrate how far the Chinese are ahead of the U.S. Navy in developing this technology. The U.S. has tested a prototype rail gun at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren, Virginia, but has yet to mount one on a ship for further testing, though T&P reports that an extra $20 million is provided in the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act to accelerate the development of a shipboard demonstrator.
COLLAPSING WESTERN FINANCIAL SYSTEM
Banca Carige, Italy’s Tenth-Largest Bank, Put in Receivership
Jan. 2 (EIRNS)—Having organized two bailouts of Italy’s third-largest and Europe’s oldest bank, Monte dei Paschi di Siena, the European Central Bank had to put Italy’s tenth-largest bank “under administration” and Italy’s regulator Consob stopped all trading in the bank’s stocks and bonds. Banca Carige, a Genoa-headquartered bank with €25 billion in assets and 482 branches, has seen its capital wiped out by loan losses and been unable to raise any new equity. Its stock had dropped essentially to zero when the Italian government stopped trading this morning; its directors all resigned when the plan to raise new capital failed.
The ECB will try to organize a sale of Banca Carige, for a nominal price, to a larger bank, requiring the Italian government or Bank of Italy to subsidize the takeover, as in the March 2007 case of Bear Stearns on Wall Street.
OTHER
Somali Foreign Ministry Declares UN Envoy Persona Non Grata
| Jan. 2 (EIRNS)—UN Special Representative Nicholas Haysom has been declared persona non grata by the Somali government, following his accusation that the government may have acted in “violation of international humanitarian law.” The Foreign Ministry accused him of meddling in the country’s sovereign affairs and “blatantly violating protocols.” Haysom has been occupying the post of the UN Special Envoy for Somalia since September 2018.The incident that prompted the accusation was the government’s arrest of Mukhtar Robow, former leader of the terrorist Al Shabaab organization, who had very strong ties to Saudi Arabian supporters of terrorism. Robow had defected to the government in 2017 and then recently announced he was running for the presidency of the South West State in Somalia. The government maintained that he had no right to run for that position, and ordered his arrest after he refused to withdraw his candidacy. It accused him of arming his followers in the South West State, leading after his arrest to three days of violent demonstrations in the state capital of Baioa over Dec. 13-15 which left 15 dead.Somalia has been part of a regional reconciliation effort, initiated by Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali, to end the 20 years of war and hostility affecting Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, and Djibouti in the Horn of Africa. The reconciliation aims to stabilize the region, and thus allow for regional economic cooperation, in which all four countries are involved in the Belt and Road Initiative. Reach us at eirdailyalert@larouchepub.com or call 1-571-293-0935 |
