EIR Daily Alert Service, TUESDAY, APRIL 23, 2019
TUESDAY, APRIL 23, 2019 Volume 6, Number 79 EIR Daily Alert Service P.O. Box 17390, Washington, DC 20041-0390 |
- Week of Intense Diplomacy-Promise, Danger, Lunacy
- U.S. Announces No More Sanctions Waivers for Importing Iranian Oil
- State Legislators Are Warned of ‘Addiction-for-Profit’ Lobby Pushing Pot on Unborn Children
- Earth Day Is the Queen’s Birthday
- Trump Calls Ukraine President-Elect Zelenskiy To Offer Support & Congratulations
- More Sanctions Piled on Against Bolton’s Targeted “Troika of Tyranny’ in the Americas
- After Brexit, ‘Greta’ Britain?
- The Massive Bomb Attacks in Sri Lanka Remain Puzzling
- So, How Is Huawei Holding Up Under Attack?
- Costa Rican Envoy to China Endorses Belt and Road as Confucian New Paradigm for Development
- Jeremy Corbyn’s Brother Piers Corbyn Rips ‘Deranged’ Climate Fanatics
EDITORIAL
Week of Intense Diplomacy—Promise, Danger, Lunacy
April 22 (EIRNS)—This is a week of intense and world-historic diplomacy, some of it providing great promise for a shared future for humanity; some indicating the extreme strategic danger facing the world as a whole; and some expressing the state of outright satanic intentions emanating from the British Empire’s anti-science climate change hoax.
Starting with the satanic: Today is Earth Day, the pagan worship of Mother Earth, denying humanity’s existence as a creative species in the image of God. Greta Thunberg, the mentally abused child from Sweden who has been turned into a “Children’s Crusade” leader to stop the evil adults of the world who believe in human progress, arrived in London this weekend, after holding a pagan rally on Good Friday in Rome before 25,000 mostly children demanding de-industrialization and depopulation. She even met with the Pope, who thanked her for “speaking the truth.” Pope Francis, of course, in preparing his satanic encyclical Laudate Si’ endorsing the climate change hoax, worked closely with Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, who promotes reducing the human race to less than 1 billion. Poor Greta Thunberg is partially controlled by British climate “scientist” Kevin Anderson, who thinks half a billion is the proper number. In England, the true source of depopulation ideologies, Thunberg is expected to address the House of Commons. Will she be granted an audience with the Queen and her consort Philip, before he is granted his wish to be reincarnated as a deadly virus to help reduce the world’s population?
On the strategic danger side: The Moscow Conference on International Security will begin on April 23, with over 1,000 participants from 111 countries. Deputy Defense Minister Col. Alexander Fomin told RT today that “peace, independence, territorial integrity and sovereignty tend to be increasingly fragile today…. The U.S. does not sit idly and is employing other tactics including a broad range of techniques developed for hybrid wars and color revolutions…, training leaders and members of extremist groups, ramping up pressure including bribery, bullying, and sectoral sanctions.”
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov asked how the U.S. could complain of a few Russian soldiers in their “backyard” (Venezuela), while “in the meantime, nobody mentions the fact U.S. military and other NATO personnel—from Britain and Canada—have crowded Ukraine.”
At the same time, the Trump Administration’s use of third-party sanctions, attacking even supposed friends and allies who refuse to take orders to cut relations with Iran, Venezuela and others deemed to be enemies, is endangering economic and strategic stability in every corner of the world—and endangering the role of the dollar as a trustworthy currency for world trade.
But there is also dramatic momentum towards a New Paradigm, placing humanity at the center of a mission for the future based on a scientific and cultural Renaissance, centered on the spirit of the New Silk Road—a process set in motion by Lyndon and Helga LaRouche over these past 30 years. The Second Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation will take place on April 25-26 in Beijing, with over 130 nations represented, 37 heads of state or government, 360 ministers of state, and 5,000 participants. The transformation of China into a leading scientific and industrial nation, lifting 700 million people out of poverty, is an irrefutable fact, while the Belt and Road Initiative is dedicated to taking that process to the entire world, and is joyfully welcomed by nearly the entire world.
And yet the neoconservative dinosaurs surrounding President Donald Trump have thus far undermined his intention to build friendly relations with both China and Russia. The anti-China hysteria has reached a new height, despite Trump’s optimistic view of China and of the potential “epic deal” with China which is now close to completion. The FBI has initiated the stripping of visas from China’s leading scholars—as many as 200 or more—the very scholars who see themselves as friends of the United States, who are crucial to building the cultural and intellectual ties necessary to forge that friendship. The same FBI is now driving leading Chinese scientists out of the United States, including cancer researchers at the prestigious MD Anderson Medical Center in Houston, Texas, thus undermining progress in the health of all humanity, and aggravating U.S.-China relations.
There is little time to waste in completely ending the coup attempt against the Trump presidency. The Mueller report was forced to admit that there was no collusion, but retained the lie concerning Russian meddling in the election and potential obstruction of justice by the President, prompting the degenerate Democrats to pursue impeachment investigations over a crime that did not exist. Trump was elected by a nation sick of economic and cultural decay, of perpetual warfare, and fully supporting his intention to end the Cold War divisions of the world—a program inherent in the work of Lyndon LaRouche over the past half-century. Bringing the U.S. and Europe into the spirit of the New Silk Road can, and must, advance that process.
U.S. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC
U.S. Announces No More Sanctions Waivers for Importing Iranian Oil
April 22 (EIRNS)—Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced, today, that no more waivers from U.S. sanctions on Iranian oil imports will be granted. On May 2, waivers that had been granted to Greece, Italy, Taiwan, China, India, Turkey, Japan, and South Korea, will expire. Three of those—Greece, Italy and Taiwan—have reportedly already cut their oil imports from Iran to zero, but the others, if they don’t accede to U.S. demands, will be sanctioned. Thus, Pompeo is threatening allies, friends and foes alike, that they must do as we say in their (supposedly) sovereign relations with other countries, or face punishment. He is clearly pushing the limits of toleration to his neoconservative fantasies of America as the “only superpower.”
“We will continue to enforce sanctions and monitor compliance,” Pompeo said. “Any nation or entity interacting with Iran should do its diligence and err on the side of caution. The risks are simply not going to be worth the benefits.”
Pompeo said he had negotiated with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to pump enough additional oil to maintain market stability. In addition, he said, the U.S. is now a significant producer as well.
“I can confirm that each of those suppliers are working directly with Iran’s former customers to make the transition away from Iranian crude less disruptive,” he said.
Pompeo promised that once Iranian oil exports are down to zero, they will stay at zero until Iran responds to U.S. demands.
“We have made our demands very clear to the Ayatollah and his cronies. End your pursuit of nuclear weapons. Stop testing and proliferating ballistic missiles. Stop sponsoring and committing terrorism. Halt the arbitrary detention of U.S. citizens,” he said. “Our pressure is aimed at fulfilling these demands and others, and it will continue to accelerate until Iran is willing to address them at the negotiating table.”
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang, during a press briefing before Pompeo’s announcement, told reporters: “China opposes the unilateral sanctions and so-called ‘long-arm jurisdictions’ imposed by the U.S. Our cooperation with Iran is open, transparent, lawful, and legitimate, thus it should be respected,” he said. “Our government is committed to upholding the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese companies and will play a positive and constructive role in upholding the stability of global energy market.”
State Legislators Are Warned of ‘Addiction-for-Profit’ Lobby Pushing Pot on Unborn Children
April 22 (EIRNS)—Former U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy (RI) sent an open letter to legislators in states where legalizing marijuana is actively being considered—New Hampshire, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Vermont, Connecticut, Illinois, and New York—warning that marijuana legalization is being driven by “addiction-for-profit companies…. We must put public health and safety—and our kids—ahead of the interests of Big Marijuana.”
Consider the implications of the following horrors, among others, that Kennedy cited, as resulting from legalization:
• Marijuana being sold now contains up to 40% of its mind-altering chemical, THC.
• Pregnant mothers are being encouraged to use marijuana for morning sickness by “legal” pot shops. A 2018 Washington University study showed marijuana use during pregnancy increased 75% in the U.S. between 2002 and 2016. A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA Psychiatry) in March 2019 found that psychosis developed in children whose mothers used marijuana during pregnancy at a slightly higher rate than in children whose mothers had not.
• Rates of marijuana use by 12- to 17-year-olds are going up in “legal” states, as compared to falling rates in non-legal states (no surprise).
• Pot distributors in legal states are selling such marijuana “edibles” as gummy bears, ice cream, sodas, cookies, etc. in cute little packages which appeal to children.
It is not just beer and tobacco companies that are getting in on the lucrative legal marijuana market, Kennedy reports. The former CEO of opioid-pushing Purdue Pharma, John H. Stewart, now heads a top marijuana-selling company in Canada.
Meanwhile, the commercial pot buzzards expect that this year Congress will pass a law ending federal action against marijuana, letting the states decide what they please. Thirteen Democrats and an equal number of Republicans introduced the STATES—Strengthening the Tenth Amendment Through Entrusting States—Act in the House at the beginning of April, and would-be Presidential impeacher, Elizabeth Warren, and Colorado’s Cory Gardner have introduced its companion bill in the Senate.
Earth Day Is the Queen’s Birthday
April 22 (EIRNS)—How fitting that April 22, the day Queen Elizabeth II was born 93 years ago, is the day chosen by the oligarchy for their Malthusian worship of Mother Earth. How about we burn some oligarchical trash to celebrate?
Among the garbage bag of articles written to “celebrate” the event, one in the widely circulated USAToday stands out. Among the “science-based facts” they choose to emphasize, is a “new study” which claims to show that “we” can now be 99.99999% certain that human beings are at the root of global warming.
“That means we’ve reached the ‘gold standard’ for certainty,” say the clowns, “a statistical measure typically used in particle physics.”
Now, the publishers at Gannett either have a perverse sense of humor, or they are practicing a new form of economic censorship, for the study they cite, from the February 2019 issue of Nature magazine, is not likely to be read—considering the publication’s $213 annual subscription cost—by more than 0.00001% of the population! Conversely, all “skeptics” can now proudly claim that they are part of the 0.00001% of the population.
Otherwise, the “Road to the Green New Deal” is now rolling on, with a series of Nuremberg-style rallies taking place for the next month across the country. After launching in Boston on April 18, in a rally addressed by Rep. Ed Markey, then Detroit (addressed by Rep. Rashida Talib), the Earth Day rally is set for Des Moines, Iowa tonight. Sponsored by the Sunrise Movement, the website (where one can find the complete tour schedule) states: “We’ll lay out the plan to make the 2020 election a referendum on the Green New Deal, so we can make [it] law in 2021.”
Also, Bill McKibben is scheduled to lead a “litany” of “global warming alarmists” in how to reboot media coverage in the “reality of a 1.5° world,” Tuesday, April 30, at Columbia University. Otherwise an obvious master class in how to create “fake news,” this propaganda seminar is sponsored by the Columbia School of Journalism, The Nation, Britain’s daily Guardian, and WNYC radio.
Trump Calls Ukraine President-Elect Zelenskiy To Offer Support and Congratulations
April 22 (EIRNS)—President Donald Trump spoke to newly elected Ukrainian President-elect Volodymyr Zelenskiy Sunday night, congratulating him on his victory in a “peaceful and democratic election process,” according to White House officials. He offered U.S. support for Ukraine’s “territorial sovereignty” and said he would work with him to “strengthen democracy, increase prosperity, and root out corruption.”
Zelenskiy won a crushing victory, with 73.2% of the vote. He won 87% of the vote in the East (excluding the Donbas, which did not participate in the election), 70% in the central region, and 57% in the West.
Following the call from lame-duck President Petro Poroshenko conceding the election, Zelenskiy told the press, according to the Kyiv Post:
• On the war in Donbas: “We will act within the Normandy Format [Ukraine, Russia, Germany, France] and will continue the Minsk process. We will be reloading it. I believe we’ll have staff turnovers—we will do everything possible for the sake of ending open hostilities. Bringing our boys back home alive is paramount for us. Apart from that, our number-one task is to get all of our prisoners of war back.”
• As a Russian speaker, he told the press: “I must protect the Ukrainian language as guarantor (of the constitution), and I will do it.”
• On Poroshenko: “Poroshenko has offered me his assistance. If I ever need it, I’ll call him. Do you want me to appoint him to a post? I will definitely ask society, and if it wants Petro Poroshenko on some post, it can happen. But let’s at least try to do something with new people.”
Zelenskiy is an unknown, and forecasting his actions is impossible at this point. But the crushing of the Poroshenko regime is reason for hope. The Trump role could be crucial.
STRATEGIC WAR DANGER
More Sanctions Piled on against Bolton’s Targetted ‘Troika of Tyranny’ in the Americas
April 22 (EIRNS)—Last Wednesday, April 17, the U.S. State and Treasury Departments announced new sanctions on Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba for “violating democracy” and supporting each other. That same day, National Security Advisor John Bolton was down in Miami promoting the sanctions in a rant delivered to an approving crowd packed with worn-out Cuban exiles. (Even the Association of Bay of Pigs Veterans was present.)
Treasury announced sanctions today against Laureano Ortega, the son of President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Morillo de Ortega, and Banco Corporativo SA (BanCorp). The younger Ortega is sanctioned for his role in overseeing investment proposals and projects; his role in creating and coordinating Nicaragua’s proposed Grand Inter-Oceanic Canal Project with the Chinese private company HKND is specifically named. BanCorp was sanctioned as “the personal slush fund for the Ortega family and the instrument for corrupt deals with Nicolas Maduro and his former regime in Venezuela.”
All assets of Laureano Ortega and BanCorp in the U.S. are now frozen—with third-party sanctions added, that “U.S. persons are generally prohibited from transactions” as well, read the State Department release.
In the case of Cuba, Title III of the 1997 Helms-Burton Act was activated, opening the floodgates for lawsuits against people or companies using lands confiscated by the Castro government (60 years ago!). By so doing, the law’s Title IV third-party sanctions go into effect: the heads and employees of companies doing business with confiscated properties in Cuba may not be allowed into the United States and could also face penalties, a “senior State Department official” told reporters in a March 4 background briefing.
This targets European companies (the bulk of foreign companies operating in Cuba) as well as U.S. companies operating in Cuba under Treasury license. The State Department official was emphatic that no exceptions are allowed. The official estimated that there could be tens of billions of dollars’ worth of claims filed. The European Union is reported to be considering suing the U.S. at the World Trade Organization over this.
In the latest action against Venezuela, economic sanctions are imposed on no less than the Central Bank, with which no one is now allowed to do business, without also being sanctioned. The State Department official did allow that Venezuelans will be allowed to use their debt and credit cards without sanctions. How kind.
After Brexit, ‘Greta’ Britain?
April 22 (EIRNS)—Sweden’s 16-year-old climate-change activist Greta Thunberg arrived in London this weekend, coming from Rome by train, to address hundreds of climate-change protesters in the British capital on Sunday, April 21. She told a cheering crowd at Marble Arch: “We are the ones making a difference—we, the people in Extinction Rebellion and the children’s School Strike for the Climate—we are the ones making a difference…. And we will never stop fighting, we will never stop fighting for this planet, for ourselves, our futures and for the futures of our children and grandchildren.”
In Rome, the pathetic, abused child was praised personally by Pope Francis, who has long espoused the genocidal insanity of the green agenda. Thunberg addressed 25,000 screaming children at the Piazza del Popolo on April 19, Good Friday—a pagan celebration on a major Christian holy day—and spoke to the Italian Senate.
Thunberg is scheduled to meet with British politicians this week, including the Labour Party’s Jeremy Corbyn, and may speak at the House of Commons. This London trip is kind of a Thunberg journey home: Climate radical Kevin Anderson, of Manchester University and the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, has been one of Thunberg’s leading advisors on climate issues, communicating with her quite often. Anderson even thinks the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is wrong, and that the real rise of global temperatures should be expected to be at least twice as high: “If you have got a population of 9 billion by 2050 and you hit 4°C, 5°C or 6°C, you might have half a billion people surviving,” he told The Scotsman ahead of the 2009 Copenhagen climate conference, which is frequently requoted by fellow alarmists.
The worldview of Extinction Rebellion is similarly Malthusian. More than 800 climate-change protesters have been arrested for causing disruption, in a pattern of public actions in central London since April 15. Police said the number of arrests in connection with the protests rose to 831 on April 21 and 40 people had been charged with offences such as obstructing a highway and obstructing the police. Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick said on April 20 that the protests had caused miserable disruption and that there were now 1,500 police officers on the streets.
The Massive Bomb Attacks in Sri Lanka Remain Puzzling
April 22 (EIRNS)—Following the coordinated attack by seven suicide bombers on churches and luxury hotels in Sri Lanka yesterday that killed at least 290 people and wounded more than 500, the Sri Lankan government said today the Islamist group National Thowheed Jamath (NTJ) was behind the attacks. NTJ is believed to have split from Sri Lanka Thowheed Jamath (SLTJ), another hard-line group. SLTJ’s leader, Abdul Razik, was arrested in 2016. Hilmy Ahamed, vice president of the Muslim Council of Sri Lanka, said he warned military intelligence officials about the group and its leaders about three years ago. In addition, according to AFP, Sri Lankan police had reportedly issued a warning to top officials 10 days before the deadly blasts that wreaked havoc in the churches and hotels in multiple cities across the country.
Beyond that, why these deadly attacks took place, as well as the involvement of the Muslims, is puzzling. Less than 10% of Sri Lankans are Muslim and less than 8% are Christian. Muslims, who are poorer and located in a territory about 150 miles northeast of Colombo have no known support base inside the capital city. Muslims, who had provided hide-outs for the Tamil Tigers but never joined hands with the Tigers during the decades of civil war, had never been in conflict with the Christians, although some Buddhist fanatics had attacked and pillaged Muslim properties a few years ago. Under the circumstances, it is likely that the officials ignored the exigency and gravity of the warnings, since it is likely that they found no reason why any Sri Lankan Muslim would target the Sri Lankan Christians indiscriminately on Easter Sunday.
While failure of the Sri Lankan intelligence is self-evident, there were reports a couple of years ago of Saudi money coming to the Sri Lankan Muslims to counter the growing bilateral relations between Iran and Sri Lankan authorities. It was said then that the Saudis were encouraging the Sri Lankan Muslims to embrace the Saudis’ Wahhabism. In recent days, however, no further report of growing Saudi support appeared in the public domain.
ECONOMY
So, How Is Huawei Holding Up under Attack?
April 22 (EIRNS)—Huawei Technologies Co. said today that it posted $26.8 billion in revenue in the first quarter of 2019, representing a year-on-year growth of 39%! It would appear that the massive U.S. effort to stop countries from using Huawei equipment—the best in the world—is not doing so well.
The company’s first quarter net profit margin stood at about 8%, slightly higher than the same period last year.
Huawei said in a statement that it continues to focus on communications infrastructure and smart devices, and will develop the efficiency and quality of its operations, which contributed to its solid first-quarter performance, reported Xinhua.
“This year will see large-scale 5G deployment around the world, meaning Huawei’s carrier business group, which primarily supplies telecom equipment and services to telecom carriers around the world, has seen unprecedented opportunities for growth, the company said. By the end of March 2019, Huawei had signed 40 commercial contracts for 5G with leading global carriers, and had shipped more than 70,000 5G base stations to markets around the world,” the company reported.
Xinhua writes that the company’s performance “showcases Huawei’s resilience despite the security concerns it faces in some markets. Huawei has repeatedly said the security allegations it faces are groundless and not supported by any factual evidence.”
THE NEW GLOBAL ECONOMIC ORDER
Costa Rican Envoy to China Endorses Belt and Road as Confucian New Paradigm for Development
April 22 (EIRNS)—Costa Rica’s Ambassador to China Patricia Rodriguez Holkemeyer enthusiastically endorsed the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), describing it as a New Paradigm for global development which embodies the thought of Confucius.
In an interview with China’s television network CGTN on April 21, Ambassador Rodriguez described the BRI as a project which is creating “a new paradigm for development … [which] may be as important perhaps as Bretton Woods was after World War II.” China is calling “upon the whole world to design together what the New Paradigm is going to be,” she said.
Rodriguez accurately identified Confucius’s teachings as the basis for China’s concept of the Belt and Road. As she explained, Confucius taught that a person’s welfare depends on their family’s welfare, and the family’s welfare depends on the community’s welfare, and the community’s welfare depends on the province’s welfare, and so on, in concentric circles. “Thus China wants to develop in order to provide happiness to its own people, and cannot make it alone; it has to be done jointly with the whole world,” she explained.
But when the Ambassador asserted that “this new paradigm could not have been conceived by a Western mind, but only by, I would dare to say, by a Confucian mind,” she really missed the boat.
Not only did the “Western minds” of Lyndon and Helga Zepp-LaRouche develop and fight for the concept of the New Silk Road/Eurasian Land-Bridge as early as the early-1990s, but also the very Confucian values expressed in the Belt and Road are universal, and can be found at the highest moments of every great culture. The case of Benjamin Franklin is only one such example. As the works of Plato, Nicholas of Cusa, Gottfried Leibniz, Friedrich Schiller attest—to name only a few—the best of the paradigms developed by the West are a far cry from today’s dominant British empiricism, egoism and materialism. And that is very good news!
SCIENCE AND INFRASTRUCTURE
Jeremy Corbyn’s Brother Piers Corbyn Rips ‘Deranged’ Climate Fanatics
April 22 (EIRNS)—Dr. Piers Corbyn, an astrophysicist and founder of Weather Action Long Range Forecasters, who has long countered the climate change hoax (and who gave an interview to EIR in the June 1, 2007 issue) is the brother of Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn. The insanity of the Extinction Rebellion over the past week, disrupting London traffic, has provoked him to speak out. According to London’sDaily Express, Corbyn demonstrated against the protesters, describing: “Corbyn, 72, held a banner in the capital which stated ‘CO2 levels are effect, not cause,’ and ‘Global Warming is a hoax to hike up energy prices,’ along with the hashtag ‘#Coverup #Climategatefraud.’ ” Asked what he thought of the Extinction Rebellion action, he responded: “I think it was deranged.”
He further told the daily, “Global warming is over and it never was anything to do with CO2—CO2 is still rising but the world is now cooling and will continue to do so.”
Jeremy Corbyn, who is reliably reported to EIR to be in agreement with his brother, has tried to balance that truth with the climate fanatics within the Labour Party. He was reported today to be one of the people scheduled to meet with the abused teen campaigner for climate change, Greta Thunberg.
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