TUESDAY, JANUARY 14, 2020

Volume 7, Number 9

EIR Daily Alert Service

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

• Putin, Trump, Xi-All Three Must Meet Now To Replace War With Economic Development
• Willy Wimmer Tells Merkel To Promote a Trump-Putin Meeting in the Spirit of Westphalia
• Wolfgang Ischinger Praises Putin’s Methods of Resolving Southwest Asia Crisis
• Libyan Faction Leaders in Moscow Meet Separately With Russian and Turkish Officials
• Defense Secretary Esper Admits Iran’s Government Is Legitimate, U.S. Is Willing To Talk to It
• FISA Court Shoots Itself in Self-Defense in Impeachment Fight
• Belt and Road Tops Agenda on China Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s New Year Africa Tour
• Small U.S.-China Steps Included in the Phase One Trade Deal
• Environmentalism, Not ‘Climate Change,’ Caused Explosion of Australia’s Bushfires
• Iranian-American Astronaut Says ‘We All Agree on Space Exploration, It Unites Us’
• Iraq Warns of Economic Collapse If U.S. Freezes Its New York Fed Account

EDITORIAL

Putin, Trump, Xi—All Three Must Meet Now To Replace War with Economic Development

Jan. 13 (EIRNS)—Join the Schiller Institute’s Day of Action, Wednesday, Jan. 15, to spread support for the Institute’s Jan. 7 “Call for Presidents Trump, Putin, and Xi To Convene an Emergency Summit to Address the Danger of War.” Activists on five continents will mobilize citizens, government officials, diplomats and institutions, in support of the call by Schiller Institute President Helga Zepp-LaRouche.

January 15, which is the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., is the day of rallies and activity at appropriate locations, and on social media, websites, and all means of outreach. The Schiller Institute asks all to commemorate the ideas and life’s work of Dr. King, by organizing for peace through economic development, as in the Call for the Emergency Summit.

The central international event will be at the United Nations in New York City, from 12 noon to 3 p.m., Wednesday, January 15. To participate in New York, or for more information, please contact: Lynne Speed, in New York, at (201)562-9890.

From the petition circulating worldwide since Jan. 6, “Sign the Call for Presidents Trump, Putin and Xi To Convene an Emergency Summit To Address the Danger of War”:

“If the world is to escape a spiral of retaliations and counter-retaliations in the wake of the killing of Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani and Iraqi Popular Mobilization Units Deputy Commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the Presidents of the United States, Russia and China must convene an emergency summit to address the current crisis in Southwest Asia and the solutions to that crisis.

“Seventy-five years ago, the United States, Russia and China were joined together in the global fight which defeated fascism, and today, these Presidents must act in concert to save the peace.

“On Jan. 3, Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche issued an emergency statement which concluded:

“ ‘It is clear, that among the three presidents, President Trump—who promised to end the endless wars and has already taken several steps in that direction—and Presidents Putin and Xi, there is the intention and the capability to outflank the maneuvers of the war-mongers and to establish a higher level of cooperation. That potential is the reason that the coup—Russiagate and now the Impeachment—are orchestrated against Trump. It is now the time for those three outstanding leaders to fulfill the potential that historical providence has bestowed upon them.’ ”

Don’t let the military-industrial complex remove or contain President Donald Trump. Join the Day of Action for scientific and economic progress.

STRATEGIC WAR DANGER

Willy Wimmer Tells Merkel To Promote a Trump-Putin Meeting in the Spirit of Westphalia

Jan. 11 (EIRNS)—Former German government official Willy Wimmer echoes as Helga Zepp-LaRouche—almost. He calls for a Trump-Putin meeting, not yet a Trump-Putin-Xi summit, but one good step “in the spirit of Westphalia.” Wimmer wrote in Sputnik Deutschland on Jan. 9 that Merkel’s Jan. 11 visit to Moscow to talk with Putin “makes sense only if she brings a date for a summit between President Putin and President Trump, or if this develops out of her visit.”

“In Moscow, the German Chancellor should make clear that in the future and in its relationship with Moscow, Germany will be determined by the spirit of Münster and Osnabrück [Westphalia] in 1648 and the Congress of Vienna in 1815: A policy of good neighborliness, mutual benefit and effective conflict avoidance in accordance with the applicable rules of international law and its mutual development.”

Wimmer however does not hide his skepticism because Merkel “should ask herself whether, through her collaboration with the domestic political haters of President Trump, she has not largely helped create the situation in which President Trump finds himself today.

“For years, President Trump has been careful not to rely on the ‘deep state’ and not to let the intelligence services have a monopoly over his own actions. He has properly led a fight against the deep state, only now to become its top executor. It was and it is now a question of whether President Trump, in view of the global problems that could be the ‘end’ for the entire human species, is able to come to an understanding with other states, above all Russia, and to implement it with deeds.

“Every day, one is shocked at what is being done to prevent a meeting with Putin and Trump. You have a President who wants peace and must see how they take aim at him. The German Chancellor, of all places, is at the head of the European alliance against President Trump. Not that President Trump’s only response is his attempts to torpedo Nord Stream 2.”

Wolfgang Ischinger Praises Putin’s Methods of Resolving Southwest Asia Crisis

Jan. 13 (EIRNS)—Wolfgang Ischinger, the Chairman of the Munich Security Conference, praised Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “effective method” for resolving the crisis in the Mideast, TASS reported today.

Ischinger, whom Helga Zepp-LaRouche characterized as “an Atlanticist through and through,” nonetheless told Germany’s ZDF TV that, in order to have influence in Southwest Asia, one needs “political power of persuasion, clever diplomacy, and military support if necessary.” Ischinger emphasized, “This is the method that Putin is using to ensure his influence in Syria, Libya, and certainly in the situation around Iran.”

In the same remarks, Ischinger criticized U.S. President Donald Trump, who had posted a tweet on Jan. 12 in support of anti-government protesters in Iran. “Providing too much support could result in the conflict escalating,” Ischinger warned.

Although Ischinger did not provide a contrast, TASS did run a Trump tweet of Jan. 12 “National Security Adviser suggested today that sanctions & protests have Iran ‘choked off,’ will force them to negotiate. Actually, I couldn’t care less if they negotiate. Will be totally up to them but, no nuclear weapons and don’t kill your protesters.”

Libyan Faction Leaders in Moscow Meet Separately with Russian and Turkish Officials

Jan. 13 (EIRNS)—Lev Dengov, head of the Russian Libya contact group, announced that both Government of National Accord Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj and Libya National Army commander Gen. Khalifa Haftar are in Moscow today. Sarraj, whose Tripoli-based GNA is recognized by the UN, was accompanied by the head of the State Council Khalid al-Mishri, and Haftar was accompanied by the President of the Libyan House of Representatives Aguila Saleh Issa, which is based in Tobruk.

The two delegations will have separate meetings with Russian and Turkish officials. Representatives from Egypt and the Emirates will be present as observers. A meeting between the two Libyan delegations is not planned.

Meanwhile, it has been revealed that General Haftar met with U.S. officials on Jan. 8, during his visit to Rome. According to the State Department release, Haftar met with Victoria Coates, Deputy National Security Adviser for Middle Eastern and North African Affairs, and U.S. Ambassador to Libya Richard Norland, which is based in Tunisia, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Maghreb and Egyptian Affairs Henry Wooster.  The Americans separately met with the GNA’s Interior Minister Fathi Bashagha.

On Jan. 11, a few days after the Jan. 8 Istanbul meeting of Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin, where the Presidents called for a Libyan ceasefire, Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, for the first time acknowledged the role of Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar in any Libyan settlement. “It’s out of the question that we should ignore Haftar. He is also an actor in Libya,” Cavusoglu told the press.

Erdogan was quoted by Sputnik International after the Moscow talks today: “I think that the negotiations will wrap up tonight; they continue on a positive note as I was informed. I hope that an agreement [on a peaceful settlement in Libya] will be signed soon.”

U.S. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC

Defense Secretary Esper Admits Iran’s Government Is Legitimate, U.S. Is Willing To Talk to It

Jan. 13 (EIRNS)—Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, in an interview with Margaret Brennan on CBS News’ Sunday program “Face the Nation,” admitted that the current government of Iran is legitimate. “You can see the Iranian people are standing up and asserting their rights, their aspirations for a better government, a different regime,” he said, with respect to the anti-government demonstrations that have erupted since the Tehran admitted on Jan. 11 that it had mistakenly shot down Ukrainian International Airlines Flight 752, which had taken off from Tehran on Jan. 8, killing all onboard. Then Esper said: “Well, it is still the legitimate government, if you will, of Iran. And what we’ve said, I’ve said publicly, the President certainly has said, is we will meet with them. We’re willing to sit down and discuss without precondition, a new way forward—a series of steps by which Iran becomes a more normal country.”

Otherwise Esper did not confirm the existence of any evidence that an attack on Americans had been “imminent” on Jan. 3, which was the excuse for the Jan. 3 assassination of Gen. Qasem Soleimani, but said he “shared the President’s view” that U.S. embassies were going to be attacked. Asked by Brennan if there had been a specific or tangible threat, Esper said: “I didn’t see one with regard to four embassies.” Esper then went on: “What I’m saying is I share the President’s view that, probably, my expectation was that they were going to go after our embassies.

“We had information that there was going to be an attack within a matter of days that would be broad in scale, in other words more than one country, and that it would be bigger than previous attacks, likely going to take us into open hostilities with Iran. We had every expectation to believe this would happen. That threat has been disrupted.”

In a separate interview on CNN, Esper said, “What the President said with regard to the four embassies is what I believe as well.” He stated that “There was intelligence that there was an intent to target the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.”

Esper’s view takes its credibility from the history of major bombings of U.S. military/diplomatic facilities by both Iranian and Sunni groups dating back to the early 1980s.

FISA Court Shoots Itself in Self-Defense in Impeachment Fight

Jan. 13 (EIRNS)—The tattered credibility of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) which issued warrants on false premises for the FBI’s Operation Crossfire Hurricane surveillance against the Trump campaign, became even more shredded over this past weekend. On Jan. 10 amidst the Iran crisis the FISC announced it was appointing as adviser on reforming its warrant processes, an avowed never-Trump lawyer who frequent contributes to the impeachment strategy outfit Lawfare, who has demanded Trump’s removal from office.

The lawyer, Obama’s former Assistant Attorney General for National Security David Kris, moreover attacked then House Intelligence Chair Rep. Devin Nunes in March 2018 for his Jan. 18, 2018 report revealing the FBI’s malfeasance in Crossfire Hurricane. Nunes’ report was vindicated in every detail by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s Dec. 9, 2019 report, but the FISA Court acts as if they missed that. Lawyer Kris, now to “assist the Court” in considering reforms of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) process, had denounced Nunes’ report as follows: “The Nunes memo was dishonest. And if it is allowed to stand, we risk significant collateral damage to essential elements of our democracy.” He further threatened that “Nunes might be prosecuted for obstruction of justice.”

On Oct. 3, 2019 Kris ended a five-part tweet on the Zelensky phone call, “Trump has to go.”

Nunes’ responded to Kris’s appointment yesterday in a message to investigative reporter Sara Carter: “It’s a ridiculous choice. The FBI lied to the FISC, and to help make sure that doesn’t happen again, the FISC chose an FBI apologist who denied and defended those lies. The FISC is setting its own credibility on fire.”

President Donald Trump on Twitter Jan. 12, emphatically agreed: “You can’t make this up!  David Kris, a highly controversial former DOJ official, was just appointed by the FISA Court to oversee reforms to the FBI’s surveillance procedures. Zero credibility. THE SWAMP!”

Now it will be seen whether the Attorney General or the Congress will take any action regarding the FISA Court’s future. It could hardly have asked for worse if it had appointed Peter Strzok to advise it on its flagrant “Russiagate” mistakes.

THE NEW GLOBAL ECONOMIC ORDER

Belt and Road Tops Agenda on China Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s New Year Africa Tour

Jan. 13 (EIRNS)—As part of a New Year’s tradition, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has just completed a five-nation tour of the African continent. The focus of each visit—starting last Jan. 8, Wang has made stops in Egypt, Djibouti, Burundi and Eritrea, and is today in Zimbabwe—has been the Belt and Road Initiative. This year also marks the 20th anniversary of the Forum on China Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) initiative, also celebrated by African countries.

China’s trade with African countries has multiplied by 20 times in those 20 years, and is now larger than that of any other nation.

Landing first in Egypt, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi was anxious to have the Belt and Road intersect with his already ambitious improvements on the Suez Canal. In Djibouti, the newly completed Addis Ababa international rail link stood at the center of discussions. In Burundi, China has just finished building a presidential palace as a gift last year. In Eritrea, where Wang celebrated China’s historic 26 years of ties to the nation, and its recent peace with Ethiopia. In Zimbabwe, the Chinese are building a new parliament building.

Aside from Egypt, each of the nations favored by Foreign Minister Wang’s visit are small countries, desperately in need of a “big brother” in the fight against the parasitical imperial finance. In Zimbabwe, Wang stated—in his public press conference Jan. 12—China’s continued support for Zimbabwe’s “just call” for the removal of U.S. sanctions crippling the country, saying that they infringed on Zimbabwe’s legitimate development rights and interests. China has previously vetoed demands in the UN from the United States and U.K. for additional sanctions on senior government and military officials.

Small U.S.-China Steps Included in the Phase One Trade Deal

Jan. 13 (EIRNS)—The Chinese trade delegation headed by Vice-Premier Liu He arrived in the United States today for the scheduled Jan. 15 signing of the phase one U.S.-China trade agreement. Its detailed content is still not published or known. However, the Wall Street Journal reported that as part of the agreement, the Treasury Department will release an update to its Foreign Exchange Report and remove the designation of China as a currency manipulator. That designation was made, very dubiously, by the Treasury on Aug. 5, 2019.

In addition, a Jan. 13 Global Times article was written on the United States and China having agreed to a semi-annual dialogue mechanism in connection with the trade agreement. It is essentially a dispute resolution mechanism for the agreement. Chen Fengying of the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations says “It is hard to predict that the new mechanism will take dialogue between the two countries back to normal, given the U.S. protectionism under President Donald Trump, but it shows that, instead of fighting [a trade war], the U.S. now emphasizes solving problems through dialogue, which is much better than no dialogue at all.”

Another Global Times article itself notes that all reports of gigantic Chinese imports of food products, etc. are claims by U.S. officials, and that although China is increasing imports generally, it is doing so for its own growth. The headline is “China-U.S. Trade Deal To Boost Growth: Experts.” It is relevant in this regard that China’s imports from many Belt and Road countries are increasing strongly; Kenya’s, for one example, are up nearly 60%. And the United States itself is experiencing rising exports to China, across a number of sectors, before any agreement is signed.

SCIENCE AND INFRASTRUCTURE

Environmentalism, Not ‘Climate Change,’ Caused Explosion of Australia’s Bushfires

Jan. 13 (EIRNS)—The Australian Citizens Movement released two analyses of the current bushfire crisis in Australia’s southeast, which will be published in EIR. They show, as in America’s West, that massive “fuel loads” on brushland, the result of environmental bans on use and controlled burns, multiply fire danger over years leading to disaster. The analysis says in part:

The Volunteer Fire Fighters Association (VFFA) of New South Wales prominently displays on its website an article, “Green Ideology, Not Climate Change, Makes Bushfires Worse,” by Miranda Devine. Numerous articles on the VFFA website point to fire experts warning that fuel loads pose the real danger and that “it’s ridiculous to blame climate change.” Devine’s article reported a federal parliamentary inquiry into bushfires in 2003 which showed that a four-fold increase in ground fuel leads to a thirteen-fold increase in the heat generated by a fire.

The mainstream media mostly ignore these firefighters and has instead focused on the Emergency Leaders for Climate Action, which is a front for the Anglo-American financial oligarchy’s World Wildlife Fund and its secretive 1001 Club of extremely rich donors.

Chairman Roger Underwood of Bushfire Front Inc. of Western Australia, on March 10, 2019, wrote to then-Environment Minister Melissa Price following her comments that the recent Victoria bushfires were “the result of climate change.” Such misinformed comments from the minister could not go unchallenged. Underwood has 40 years’ experience in bushfire management in Australia and overseas. He was General Manager of the Department of Conservation and Land Management (CALM) in Western Australia. He wrote: “I implore you to withdraw your comments blaming the recent bushfires on climate change. They are unhelpful to Australian firefighters and disrespectful to Australian bushfire scientists and managers … the very people who are putting their lives on the line to protect the Australian environment and communities.”

Raging bushfires sweeping through Australia were entirely predictable and the experts who forecast the crisis are in utter dismay that their warnings were ignored. Fuel loads are now about 10 times greater than existed under Aboriginal management at the time of British colonization. In April 1770, Captain James Cook described Australia as a “continent of smoke,” because Aboriginal tribes performed regular controlled burns, but now environmental laws prevent necessary controlled burns and land clearing, setting the stage for mega-infernos on hot windy days. In recent decades green ideology has seen forests locked up, fire trails grown over, and fuel loads explode as controlled burns are prevented under spurious green rationales.

Fire expert David Packham has explained that a 10-fold increase in fuel load means the fire will be 100 times more intense. It’s just basic physics and has nothing to do with whatever climate change may be occurring.

“It’s all preventable, this is the tragedy of it all,” VFFA Vice President Brian Williams told Jane Marwick on 2GB radio last week. “This fire has been building for the last 20 years. We’ve been burning, in N.S.W., less than 1% of our bushfire-prone land for the last 20 years. So that means every year, the fuel loads just continue to build. And they continue to build until we get a disaster like this.”

Iranian-American Astronaut Says ‘We All Agree on Space Exploration, It Unites Us’

Jan. 13 (EIRNS)—The first Iranian-American astronaut is in the new astronaut class, 13 women and men in a class picked from 18,000 applicants, for the first Moon landing since 1972. Jasmin Moghbeli is a 36-year-old Marine Corps major, a test pilot with combat experience, who graduated from MIT in aeronautical engineering, and received a Master’s in aerospace engineering from the Naval Postgraduate School in California. Moghbeli’s parents emigrated from Iran to Germany, where she was born, and then moved Baldwin, New York, where she grew up.

She told AFP on Jan. 10 after the new Artemis class graduated, “One of the reasons I love working in human space exploration is, it’s something we generally all agree on and unite on.” She cited the U.S.-Russian cooperation on the International Space Station as an example: “I think it is an area where we see diplomacy where we don’t see it in other areas.  I think it has an impact.”

COLLAPSING WESTERN FINANCIAL SYSTEM

Iraq Warns of Economic Collapse If U.S. Freezes Its New York Fed Account

Jan. 13 (EIRNS)—Iraqi officials are warning of an economic “collapse” if Washington imposes threatened sanctions, including blocking access to a U.S.-based account where Baghdad keeps oil revenues that feed 90% of the national budget, AFP reported this morning. The account, set up at the New York Federal Reserve Bank in 2003 after the U.S. invasion, is also at the center of the China-Iraq memorandum of understanding organized last summer by Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi for the rebuilding of Iraq’s infrastructure. Last week, after the Iraqi parliament voted up a resolution calling for the withdrawal of all foreign troops from Iraq, President Donald Trump threatened that “we will charge them sanctions like they’ve never seen before.”

The U.S. then delivered an extraordinary verbal message directly to Abdul-Mahdi’s office, two Iraqi officials told AFP. The Prime Minister’s office “got a call threatening that if U.S. troops are kicked out, ‘we’—the U.S.—will block your account at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York,” one official said.

Iraq officials explained to AFP that the balance in the account is currently about $35 billion and that oil revenues are still paid into it. Every month or so, Iraq flies in $1-$2 billion in cash from that account for official and commercial transactions. “We’re an oil-producing country. Those accounts are in dollars. Cutting off access means totally turning off the tap,” the first Iraqi official said. The second official said it would mean the government could not carry out daily functions or pay salaries and the Iraqi currency would plummet in value. “It would mean collapse for Iraq,” the official said.
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