FRIDAY, MARCH 22, 2019

Volume 6, Number 57

EIR Daily Alert Service

P.O. Box 17390, Washington, DC 20041-0390

• Lyndon LaRouche’s Spirit Fights On
• Italian President Mattarella Speaks With China’s Media on China-Italy-Partnership
• Is Italy Mediating Between Trump and Xi?

• Eurasia-Mediterranean Think Tank Covers MoviSol Conference

EDITORIAL

Lyndon LaRouche’s Spirit Fights On

March 21 (EIRNS)—Chinese President Xi Jinping and his wife Peng Liyuan were to arrive in Rome Thursday night for his March 22-23 state visit to Italy, leading a delegation of 500, to include 200 Chinese businessmen. As Schiller Institute President Helga Zepp-LaRouche stated earlier today, the corresponding Italian team will probably be significantly larger than the Chinese one; the large numbers involved point to the importance of the issues that will be negotiated, including cooperation in third countries; the historic Chinese-Italian memorandum on the Belt and Road which was the subject of the jointly hosted MoviSol and Lombardy Region conference in Milan March 13; and, within that, the development of Sicily, which will be Xi Jinping’s second stop in Italy after Rome.

The London-steered adversary factions never quite anticipated anything like this, and they are still far from being able to contain it; its anticipated consequences are already reverberating around the world. In Germany, after a nasty press slander, the Transport Ministry moved to dissociate itself from the BVDSI, the Federal Association of the German Silk Road Initiative, which is an association of small and medium-sized enterprises (Mittelstand) which want to partner with China and the Silk Road.  But Austria’s Transport Minister responded to the report of the Italian-Chinese memorandum by declaring that Austria had been the first European country to sign one.

The cultural and civilizational consequences to which Zepp-LaRouche drew attention in Milan are even far deeper.

Now “attention must be paid” to the fact that such a far-reaching development, and beyond it, the still greater, world-encompassing Belt and Road Initiative launched by Xi Jinping’s China in 2013, owed their origin to the wisdom, the courage, and the plain old refusal to accept defeat, of one man, Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., who passed away this Feb. 12. In 1988, LaRouche put forward the Paris-Berlin-Vienna “European Productive Triangle,” as an avenue of combined high-technology development for Europe after the end of the Warsaw Pact, which he, almost alone, had foreseen five years earlier.

There was nothing obvious to common sense about the “Productive Triangle.”  It was a new, creative invention stemming from the depths of LaRouche’s original discoveries in economics, and he and his wife helped shape pedagogies to explain it to their associates and others. That “Productive Triangle” was the immediate origin of LaRouche’s “Eurasian Land-Bridge,” or “New Silk Road” design.

No sooner had LaRouche launched the “Productive Triangle” idea than he was sent to Federal prison for five years on false charges.  Lesser men would have accepted defeat, but LaRouche campaigned indefatigably from prison, while his wife led a campaign for this idea all around the world.

At that time, though, this was “the road not taken.”  Rather than the combined development of East and West for which the LaRouches fought so brilliantly, Margaret Thatcher, George H.W. Bush, and François Mitterrand destroyed the former Warsaw Pact with speculative excesses, while simultaneously bringing the “West” to catastrophe, too.

Did the LaRouches fight and lose? So it seemed at the time—until more recently.  Now, in retrospect, it becomes clear that the “loss” was only temporary.  They fought on regardless, and they won in the end.

Now it is up to us to fight on in the same spirit for the ideas, campaigns and great projects which LaRouche has left us. Another of these is to defeat the British coup-attempt against the U.S. Constitution and Presidency. In this regard, recent revelations make it clear that the British “Russiagate” operation against President Donald Trump, was an offshoot of the British-Obama fascist coup in Ukraine of 2014, which Lyndon LaRouche fought and denounced ceaselessly from the day of its occurrence. Facts which are now coming to light here will help us crush this coup.

NEW GLOBAL ECONOMIC ORDER

Italian President Mattarella Speaks with China’s Media on China-Italy Partnership

March 21 (EIRNS)—In an interview with Chinese journalists, Italian President Sergio Mattarella spoke at length about the ancient bonds between Italy and China and the future perspective for cooperation. This year marks the 15th anniversary of the comprehensive strategic partnership between the two countries, and this partnership is “built on solid foundations, inspired by natural convergences between two very ancient civilizations,” Mattarella was quoted by Xinhua.

He further underscored the “growing and fruitful interaction between our peoples, who are so similar in terms of industriousness and creativity.”

Both China and Italy recognize that “uniting the efforts of the entire international community is needed to successfully face the main challenges of our time, from the safeguarding of peace and stability, fighting climate change, to enacting the agenda for inclusive and sustainable development,” Mattarella declared.

Xi’s visit is an expression of the “solidity of the bond and the mutual respect” between Italy and China, he said.

“Italy sees China not only as an economic partner of prime importance, but also as a driver of global trade,” Mattarella said, continuing that Italy has experience, advanced technology and solutions in various sectors, such as energy, environmental protection, sustainable urbanization, machinery manufacture, food security, health services and geriatric care.

After giving some lip service to transparency and openness, Mattarella said that on the cultural front, the heritage of both Italy and China “arouses admiration everywhere in the world” and this heritage could be a great development driver. He referred to the mechanism of forging twin relationships between the two countries’ World Heritage Sites.

The two sides, he said, will soon announce the pairing up of Italy’s Vineyard Landscape of Langhe-Roero and Monferrato and China’s Honghe Hani Rice Terraces, as well as the establishment of sister-city relationship between Italy’s Verona and China’s Hangzhou.

As for people-to-people exchanges within the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative, the President said that Italy not only participates in building the new Silk Road, but hopes to turn it into a path for better mutual understanding.

More Chinese tourists are coming to visit Italy, the two countries are hosting more of each other’s students, and joint research programs are increasing between the two countries’ universities, stated Mattarella.

Speaking of how the Italy-China partnership contributes to a better and more stable world, the President said that Italy is committed to safeguarding peace and rules-based multilateralism, and is pleased to see the two sides have consensus on that.

The Italian press agency ANSA reported that Mattarella expressed the wish that with the visit of President Xi, “agreements, ideas, projects can come out, in which the Italian-Chinese partnership could develop further, including for a larger benefit of the collaboration between Europe and Asia, which needs an ever bigger volume of sustainable investments in infrastructure, to ensure a future of well-being and peace for all peoples of the two continents.”

Is Italy Mediating between Trump and Xi?

March 21 (EIRNS)- Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said yesterday that “I cannot exclude” that the Chinese President, after his visit to Italy, will cross the Atlantic. There could be “a summit between Trump and Xi” and, if the negotiation is successful, “it might end the trade war.” Corriere della Sera interprets this as Italy mediating between China and the U.S.

Corriere correspondent Paolo Salom reports that Xi’s long article published yesterday “has filled social media in China despite the fact that it was written in Dante’s language.” A Global Times editorial expresses satisfaction with Xi’s visit, writing that the visit will have “a deep impact” and “a major significance” on relations with China, Salom says. Italy’s joining the BRI will help expand “the circle of China’s friends.”

Eurasia-Mediterranean Think Tank Covers MoviSol Conference

March 21 (EIRNS)- The Centro Studi Eurasia Mediterraneo (CESEM, Center for Eurasia Mediterranean Studies) covered the conference “Italy in the New Silk Road,” co-sponsored by MoviSol, the LaRouche movement in Italy, and by the Lombardy Regional government on March 13 in Milan. The coverage, written by CESEM coordinator Stefano Vernole, highlights the address by the Italian government’s Task Force China head, with the title, “Michele Geraci: ‘The New Silk Road Serves National Interests.’ ”

Vernole writes that the meeting, in which Schiller Institute President Helga Zepp-LaRouche also participated, “helped dissipate much commonplace thinking on the ‘yellow menace’ spread by mainstream media with the consent of U.S. neo-con circles (curiously allied to U.S. Democrats on the issue), who fear that the Atlanticist geopolitical architecture is being threatened.” He summarizes Zepp-LaRouche’s speech, praising Italy’s Africa development policy and explaining that “Chinese influence will also be important to revive the best European cultural heritage (the Renaissance, German philosophy, the Ecole Polytechnique, etc.); Confucianism speaks about harmony among nations and aesthetical education of the population … meritocracy and common good.”

It then goes through “the most anticipated” speech, that of Undersecretary of the Economic Development Ministry Geraci, covering all his main points on BRI cooperation, exports, infrastructure, screening à l’Italienne (against predatory investments but in favor of greenfield investments), and the “Made in China 2025” policy.

The daily newsletter Osservatore Politico Internazionale, which is sent gratis to political, business, and institutional networks, yesterday ran as its leading news item the EIR Strategic Alert report “Italian Media Discover LaRouche’s Role in the Silk Road.”

China Urges More Countries To Pay Attention to Africa’s Development Needs

March 21 (EIRNS)—Involved in a large number of infrastructure development projects and with more than 10,000 Chinese firms engaged in Africa, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang, responded to the groundless accusations made against China’s policy towards Africa, such as the claim that the Mombasa-Nairobi Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) Project in Kenya will sink the country in debt.

Geng cited Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta as saying “in recent years, Kenya-China relations have become closer and closer, and cooperation between the two countries has become tighter in such fields as industry and infrastructure construction.” The SGR is one of the most ambitious infrastructure projects in Africa and has brought great changes to the lives of the Kenyan people, Kenyatta said, Xinhua reported.

The Foreign Ministry spokesman said that China intends to intensify cooperation in various fields with African countries under the Belt and Road Initiative, steadily implementing the consensus reached by Chinese and African leaders, and promoting constant development of the China-Africa comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership. “We hope,” he said, that “more countries will truly pay attention to Africa, attach importance to Africa, and invest in Africa, and work together with China to help Africa’s peace, stability, development and prosperity.”

U.S. POLITICAL & ECONOMIC

John Solomon Breaks Old Story: All Roads on Russiagate Lead Back to British Coup in Ukraine

March 21 (EIRNS)—Investigative reporter John Solomon has written a bombshell article in The Hill, reopening the Ukraine file concerning the 2016 U.S. Presidential election.

Solomon reports that the Ukraine Prosecutor General has now opened a case about the intentional leaking of records of Paul Manafort’s Ukraine payments in 2016, in order to damage the Trump campaign and assist the election of Hillary Clinton. “Ukraine Prosecutor General Yuri Lutsenko’s probe was prompted by release … of a tape recording purporting to quote a top law enforcement official as saying his agency leaked the Manafort records to help Clinton’s campaign,” Solomon writes.  The parliamentarian who released the tape also secured a court ruling to the effect that the leak of the so-called Manafort black ledger constituted, an “illegal intrusion into the American election campaign.”  The court in Kiev charged that Artem Sytnyk, who led Ukraine’s anti-corruption efforts, and Serhiy Leshchenko, a funding product of George Soros and Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk, were responsible for the leak of payments to Manafort.

Paul Manafort resigned as Chairman of the Trump Campaign on August 19, 2016 following widespread claims that he was joined at the hip with Vladimir Putin in a media barrage featured in Christopher Steele’s dodgy dossier, and led by Steele’s early most favored journalist, Michael Isikoff. Isikoff in turn was promoting a direct feed from Alexandra Chalupa, Hillary Clinton’s favorite follower of Ukrainian Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera, then employed by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) as its main opposition researcher concerning Donald Trump. Politico had documented in 2017 that Chalupa had a direct line to Ukrainian state intelligence.

Lutsenko also states, according to Solomon, that he was given a “no prosecute” list by the U.S. Ambassador concerning what he apparently believes is the corrupt diversion of funds paid by the State Department and destined for the Prosecutor General’s office. The clear implication of these claims is that the money was paid to various Ukrainians providing intelligence to the Ukrainian/State Department black propaganda operation against the Trump Campaign. In addition, Solomon reports that the current U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, an Obama holdover, has told U.S. Embassy employees and Ukrainian officials that they need not pay attention to Trump since he is going to be impeached. On March 20, former U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C. Joseph diGenova demanded Yovanovitch’s immediate recall by President Trump, in an interview with Sean Hannity of Fox News.

The first round of Ukraine’s Presidential elections occurs on March 31, and what relationship breaking this story at this time has to that election is unclear.  Current President Petro Poroshenko is trailing the comedian Volodymyr Zelensk badly in the polls.

Solomon’s bombshell also includes the statement: “We now have strong evidence that retired British spy Christopher Steele began his quest in what ultimately became the infamous Russia collusion dossier with a series of conversations with top Justice Department official Bruce Ohr between December of 2015 and February 2016 about securing evidence against Manafort.” This would explain why Steele was being paid as an FBI informant as of February 2016.

As was demonstrated at Manafort’s trial, the corruption charges against him were solely based on his activities in Ukraine in support of turning that country toward Europe and away from Russia. The Russia! Russia! Russia! narrative about him was a complete British/Obama/Clinton Campaign fabrication. Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk contributed millions to both the British intelligence outpost known as the Atlantic Council and the Clinton Foundation and is an extremely important player in the British operations against Trump. EIR’s work on the coup against Trump has demonstrated again and again that the filthy British operation run against the President is staffed by a group which might be called, “Veterans of the Ukraine coup.” Not only was Christopher Steele being paid as an informant of the FBI concerning Ukraine, he was also funneling his dirty memos to the State Department’s Victoria Nuland, the former Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs who was the U.S. case officer for the coup. StopFake, the anti-Russia censorship and InfoWar network associated with the Chalupa sisters, is a full partner of the British military’s Integrity Initiative information warfare operation. That operation grew out of a British strategic determination for regime change in Russia following the Ukraine coup.

StopFake has repeatedly targeted the Schiller Institute and Lyndon LaRouche. The Chalupa sisters were deeply implicated in each step of the British operation against Trump, publicly campaigning, for example, for Electoral College members not to vote for Trump. Kurt Volker, the present U.S. envoy on Ukraine, and David Kramer, the John McCain Institute employee tagged by Christopher Steele and Sir Andrew Wood to secure the publication of the entire dirty Steele dossier following the election, have been demonstrated by recent revelations, to be fully enmeshed in both the coup in Ukraine and the operation against Trump. Writer George Eliason has detailed significant elements of this operation, including the extremely intriguing claim that in accepting the DNC and CrowdStrike analysis of the alleged DNC hack, Special Counsel Robert Mueller actually indicted Ukrainian intelligence, rather than Russia’s GRU since the Fancy Bear persona is a creation of Ukrainian intelligence.

Pulling this thread will go very far indeed in demonstrating the complete British intelligence genesis of the coup against President Trump.

Russian, Chinese and EU Special Envoys To Meet in Washington for Afghanistan Peace Talks

March 21 (EIRNS)—“Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad will host his counterparts Presidential Special Representative Ambassador Zamir Kabulov of Russia, Special Envoy Ambassador Deng Xijun of China, and Special Envoy Ambassador Roland Kobia of the European Union at the Department of State for talks on March 21 and 22. Discussion topics include: international support for the Afghan peace process, the role each party can play in bringing an end to the war, and progress to date in peace talks,” the U.S. State Department press service said yesterday. Neither India nor Pakistan was included in the talks.

On March 19, Russian envoy Kabulov, complaining that Washington was not keeping Moscow abreast of its talks with the Taliban, said that the March 21-22 consultations with Khalilzad are planned in Washington. It is evident that responding to Kabulov’s complaint, the broader format was set up to brief others about the talks. The Russian diplomat last met with Khalilzad on Feb. 22 in Ankara, reported TASS.

COLLAPSING WESTERN FINANCIAL SYSTEM

German Government Backs Down on Silk Road Issue

March 21 (EIRNS)—Harassed heavily by Germany’s dailyBildzeitung, the nation’s major tabloid, and certainly also by other like-minded Sinophobes of influence in Germany, the Ministry of Transport made it known last night that it no longer supports (whatever that support had been) the pro-China Mittelstand group, the Federal Association for the German Silk Road Initiative (BVDSI). The ministry said it does not share the views of the BVDSI.

Bildzeitung produced a smear job against the BVDSI in an online dossier two days ago, trying to make the association look like an alleged agent of Chinese geopolitics, and again yesterday in a prominently placed article. One may assume that U.S. Ambassador Richard Grenell, who has already openly threatened Germany with sanctions over the NordStream 2 gas pipeline project with Russia, and over Germany’s dealings with China’s leading information and communications company Huawei, intervened against the BVDSI as well. The dubious charm of Western “democracy” has shown its ugly face once again.

STRATEGIC WAR DANGER

Iran Seeks Regional Alliance To Protect from U.S. Use of Terrorists

March 21 (EIRNS)—As the United States begins the March 21-22 discussion in Washington on the Afghan peace process with China, Russia and the EU, Iran has called for a regional conference with representatives from Russia, China and India, to form an alliance against what it charges is the U.S.’s transfer of terrorists from Syria and Iraq to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

On March 20, the Chairman of the Iranian Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh, charged that, “after the defeat of ISIS, the U.S. has negotiated and supported a host of terrorist groups.” According to Fars News Agency, he went on to warn that Washington intends to bother Iran, India, Russia, and China through its cooperation with terrorist groups. He also stated that he has sent a letter to the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres about the issue, calling on that body to investigate the U.S. role in transferring terrorists to the eastern side of Iran and also to adopt required preventive measures.

SCIENCE & INFRASTRUCTURE

Trump Administration To Finalize Aid To Finish the Vogtle Nuclear Power Project

March 21 (EIRNS)—The Trump Administration is expected to finalize $3.7 billion in loan guarantees to Southern Co. and its partners building the Vogtle nuclear reactor project in Georgia. The guarantees, expected to be announced on March 22 when U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry visits Plant Vogtle with Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and Southern Chief Executive Officer Tom Fanning, represents a critical lifeline for the project, which has been dogged by construction delays and cost overruns, doubling in cost to $28 billion, Bloomberg reported.

The Vogtle project has made good progress over the past year, with a reported 7,000 workers now at the site. Construction of two new AP1000 reactors, Units 3 and 4 at Vogtle, is more than five years behind schedule. The project was first approved by state regulators in 2009, and at the time the cost for the two new reactors was pegged at about $14 billion, with an original startup date of 2016, Powermagazine reported.

The Vogtle expansion would be the first new U.S. nuclear power plant project to be completed in 40 years. A similar project in South Carolina was abandoned in 2017 after its costs ballooned to more than $20 billion.

U.S. NuScale Power’s Small Modular Reactors Attract Romanians

March 21 (EIRNS)—Romanian energy company Societatea​ Nationala Nuclearelectrica SA has signed an agreement with the U.S. small modular reactor (SMR) developer NuScale Power, to explore the use of SMRs in Romania. The U.S. Department of Energy has welcomed this development, World Nuclear News (WNN) reported. NuScale has also signed memoranda of understanding to explore the deployment of its SMR technology in Canada and Jordan.

The signed memorandum of understanding covers the exchange of business and technical information on NuScale’s nuclear technology, with the goal of evaluating the development, licensing and construction of a NuScale SMR for a “potential similar long-term solution” in Romania. “The Department of Energy (DOE) applauds this important agreement to evaluate how small modular reactor technology could be utilized in Romania,” Energy Secretary Perry said. DOE has been working to support many innovative approaches to power generation, including this groundbreaking technology. “We are enthusiastic about the possibilities for the future and being on the cutting edge of nuclear generation technology,” said Cosmin Ghita, CEO of Nuclearelectrica, WNN reported.

NuScale is offering twelve 50 MW reactors combined, a scaled-down version of large, light water reactors that can be put together module-by-module to develop a generating capacity of 600 MW. The NuScale SMR is an advanced light-water reactor. Each module is a self-contained unit that operates independently within a multi-module configuration. Up to 12 modules are monitored and operated from a single control room. The entire reactor sits within a containment vessel 65 feet tall and 9 feet in diameter.

Reach us at eirdailyalert@larouchepub.com or call 1-571-293-0935