E.I.R.STRATEGIC ALERT WEEKLY NEWSLETTER

E.I.R.STRATEGIC ALERT WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
Volume 30, No. 47  - November 24, 2016
A Truly Revolutionary Moment to Seize After all the teeth-gnashing that went on in Europe over Brexit, the election of Donald Trump as next President of the United States has made clear that the vote in the UK was not an isolated event, but the first shot in a global revolution. The present moment has been described by Lyndon LaRouche as one in which the “old Trans-Atlantic system has abruptly come to an end.” And just as rapidly as that old system is cratering, a New Paradigm, based on the “win-win” policies of Xi Jinping’s aggressive and successful organizing for the New Silk Road (NSR), with full support of Russia’s President Putin, is emerging. Though the old elites described the Trump victory as “shocking” and “unexpected”, clearer heads had seen it coming. The City of London-Wall Street establishment responded to the crash of 2008 by continuing the same economic/financial policies which had caused it, bailing out speculators, while imposing deadly austerity on the population. As the NSR has been embraced by nations representing more than half the world’s population, the old establishment has launched proxy wars, as in Syria, run a coup in Brazil while threatening President Zuma’s government in South Africa -- both BRICS nations -- and moved provocatively toward war with Russia and China. None of these policies have the support of the American population, which is war-weary, and fed up with fraudulent statistics proclaiming an economic recovery, when they know their family circumstances have worsened. Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were repudiated by voters, who saw in Trump one who, during his campaign, showed the same contempt for the Bush-Obama-Clinton establishment, which they felt. In his victory speech, and in his initial steps in diplomacy (cf. below), Trump has shown that he may be steered toward the New Paradigm. In addition, his call for a return to GlassSteagall banking regulation, and a robust infrastructure/job creation program, has the old establishment elites screaming hysterically. As promising as these signs are, the disgraced establishment neocons and neolibs are using every channel they have to contain or subvert the potential of a Trump presidency. With this in mind, LaRouchepac organizers greeting the lame duck (i.e., still seated) Congress last week with LaRouche’s economic program of Four Basic Laws, insisting that the priority is that Glass-Steagall be voted in at once, during the lame duck session (cf. SAS 46/16). The organizers found unprecedented inter
est, and significant positive response. Recognition that the old paradigm is over-ripe for burial appears to have reached even usually corrupt and cynical Members of Congress! Lyndon LaRouche Interviewed  by Republican Party Strategist Lyndon LaRouche was interviewed on Nov. 19 by Republican Party strategist Roger Stone on his Stone Cold Truth radio show. He began the interview with a long introduction of Mr. LaRouche, noting his presidential campaigns from 1976-2004, and his close relationship with President Ronald Reagan. Stone was the Northeast Coordinator for Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign, at the time when Reagan and LaRouche discussed during a debate among candidates in New Hampshire. Stone quoted Reagan from a personal conversation that, while he did agree with much of LaRouche’s policies, but not all, and considered him to be a friend. During the back and forth, LaRouche noted that the election of Donald Trump was a defeat for those, like President Obama, who were seeking to provoke a world war against Russia. In one exchange about the Bill Clinton presidency, LaRouche made clear that Clinton had been targeted by the British Queen and was under major attack when he capitulated to the repeal of Glass-Steagall, and that Hillary Clinton contributed to the demise of her husband’s presidency. Stone agreed with that assessment. He showed great respect for Mr. LaRouche throughout the interview, and delighted in the fact that some people on Wall Street will go berserk over the fact that he was interviewing LaRouche. LaRouche repeated that the Trump victory represented a global defeat for those provoking war against Russia, and that, while it is not yet known what the President elect  will accomplish in office, the halt of the war drive is a major contribution in itself. Stone made clear that one of the issues that he is certain that Trump will pursue is the reinstatement of GlassSteagall, a policy that Stone noted has been promoted by Lyndon LaRouche for a long time. Syria, Jihadis: Trump Begins to Set Course Donald Trump’s first national security appointment gives an early indication of the changes now underway in Washington. On Nov. 18, it was announced that the President-elect had offered the job of National Security Adviser to General Michael
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Flynn, the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency who was fired by President Obama in 2014 for his refusal to go along with the Administration’s policy of de facto support for major Islamic terrorist groups, including the Islamic State and the Al Qaeda front, al-Nusra. Flynn was well-known for forecasting the rise of the jihadist caliphate in the border region of Iraq and Syria, and for debunking the White House’s fraudulent explanation of the Benghazi 9/11 attack in which US Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other American officials were killed by Ansar al-Sharia (affiliate of Al Qaeda)  in a pre-meditated terrorist attack, that Obama and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tried to pass off as a spontaneous protest over a little-known film slandering the Prophet Mohammed. In an Al Jazeera interview after he was fired which became famous, Gen. Flynn made clear that the Benghazi attack was not a policy failure but a consequence of conscious policies that were adopted by President Obama, who was more fixated on regime change in Libya and Syria than on combating the jihadist threat. Flynn, who personally met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow earlier this year, is part of Trump’s inner circle that is prepared to forge proper relations with Russia. The Trump transition team also announced the appointment of Cong. Mike Pompeo as the new Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Just prior to these announcements, General James Clapper, President Obama’s Director of National Intelligence handed in his resignation, effective in two months. This means that both Clapper and CIA Director John Brennan, two architects of President Obama’s courtship with the Saudis and Sunni jihadists, are out and the way is paved for a new policy direction, with a distinct Flynn imprint. These developments make it difficult for Obama to carry out any dangerous flight forward actions at this point, but there are no guarantees. Already, though, there appears to be a shift in the US Administration’s actions in Syria, where, for the first time, the U.S.-backed forces seem to be going after the Nusra Front, as well as ISIS. In more than a year of bilateral negotiations, John Kerry and Sergei Lavrov have been working out plans for joint Russian-American counter-terror operations against both groups. Brennan and Defense Secretary Ashton Carter had, until recently, been able to block any action on the plans, as U.S.-Russian relations reached the lowest point in the entire post-Cold War period. British Geopolitics Eroded  by Two Phone Conversations Throughout his campaign, Donald Trump repeatedly attacked the political and financial establishment which controls both parties, and said he would not be constrained by their strategic policy orientation. Few knew how Trump would act, if elected, and it remains unclear what he will do in the White House. However, two phone conversations he had last week, with Russian President Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping, indicate that he may, indeed, be overturning the London-directed geopolitical doctrine, which has dominated U.S. policy under the last two presidents. On Nov. 14, he spoke with Putin. Trump’s office reported that the President-elect is looking to establish “a strong and enduring relationship with Russia,” which includes a broad range of strategic, economic and trade issues. Putin’s press service said that the Russian President “noted his noted readiness to build partner dialogue with the new administration on the principles of equality, mutual respect and non-interference into each other’s domestic affairs.... Putin
and Trump shared the opinion on the necessity to pool efforts against a major common enemy -- international terrorism and extremism.” The same quality of a transformation in relations seems to be in the works, following the conversation between Xi and Trump. Xi said the two nations “can and should cooperate....I attach great importance to China-U.S. relations and am ready to work with the U.S. side to carry forward bilateral ties and to better benefit the two peoples and the rest of the world.” Trump praised Xi for China’s “eye-catching development prospects,” then added, “The United States and China can achieve mutual benefits and win-win results,” using a term frequently used by Xi to describe China’s intent. “I would love to work with you to enhance the cooperation between the U.S. and China.” There are still many unanswered questions about the direction of Trump’s foreign policy. However, his first steps have destroyed Obama’s “legacy” and shaken the geopolitical establishment, and hint that there is more to come. Six Lame Ducks in Berlin  Stuck in the Old Paradigm Helga Zepp-LaRouche derided the self-proclaimed leaders of the trans-Atlantic world in an article dated Nov. 19, the day after lame-duck President Obama, whose “legacy” had just gone down in flames in the U.S. Presidential election, met with the heads of state and government of Germany, France, the UK, Italy and Spain, in Berlin.  “The hysteria, which was already in full swing in die-hard Atlanticist circles and mass-media before the U.S. election, and which reached unprecedented dimensions after the victory of Donald Trump, affords clinical insight into the state of mind and the conception of democracy of such people. Evidently, they would have preferred a President Hillary Clinton and a Third World War due to her intended policy for Syria, to the possibility to improve Russian-American relations, which is indispensable for maintaining world peace and finding positive solutions for Syria and Ukraine. “It is truly remarkable: after the repudiated President Obama was able to find three days to stay at the Hotel Adlon in Berlin, and to dine and discuss with his friend Angela Merkel, and then to hold a mini-summit of the self-proclaimed ‘Six’ -- both of them decided, together with the other four leaders whose political fate is very much up in the air --François Hollande (with a 7% approval rate), Matteo Renzi (who will likey lose the Dec. 4 referendum in Italy) Mariano Rajoy (the stopgap head of a minority government) and the hapless Theresa May -- to prolong the sanctions against Russia for one year. That they proceeded to appoint themselves the quasi Directorate of the EU and then to decree a policy which half of the EU member countries oppose, is unlikely to promote the cohesion of the European Union. “The selected ‘Six’ have obviously not yet understood that their variant of neo-liberal policy directed against Russia and China was rejected both in the Brexit referendum of June and in the recent presidential election in the United States. They have not understood that a situation has developed in the transAtlantic world which is evoked in the American Declaration of Independence: whenever ‘a form of government becomes destructive of the ends’ of its mandate, which is to guarantee the inalienable rights to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness, then it is the right of the people and indeed ‘their duty’ to alter or to abolish such a government. The ‘long train of abuses and usurpations’ mentioned in the Declaration of Independence cor
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responds exactly to the experience which those whom Hillary Clinton condescendingly called the ‘basket of deplorables’ have endured under Obama’s policy, and which they did not want Clinton to continue. “The self-proclaimed ‘Six’, and even more so those crazed representatives in the media who deliver threats to  Trump disguised as humor, are so imprisoned in their own ideology that they are unable to grasp the natural-law dimensions of the sea-change underway.” Zepp-LaRouche goes on to outline that sea-change, as evidenced most recently in the just-begun APEC summit in Peru, and the visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping in South America, following on the defeat of Barack Obama’s attempt to push through his anti-China Trans-Pacific Partnership (cf. below). Xi Jinping Visit Bolsters South American Development, Independence Wall Street boasted too soon that with its coup against Brazil’s Dilma Rousseff in August, all South America would fall inexorably back under its yoke. That was made clear in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s Nov. 17-18 state visit to Ecuador, the first in a week-long trip which also included state visits to Peru and Chile after the APEC summit in Lima. Ecuador is one of the smaller nations of South America, battling to develop despite having been stripped of any national currency since 2000, when it was forced to “dollarize” by the IMF and U.S. State Department. Both President Xi Jinping and his Ecuadorian counterpart Rafael Correa held up Sino-Ecuadorian relations as a model for the relationships which China seeks with all of Ibero-America and the Caribbean. During Xi’s visit, Correa repeatedly thanked China for having provided the financing and technology transfer the country needs to accomplish its dream of moving from being a “producer of raw materials to become a knowledge-based society.” The two presidents held a stirring ceremony for the start-up of two key projects which China made possible. From Quito, connected by interactive video, they oversaw groundbreaking on a new hospital in the city of Chone, to replace the one destroyed in the April 2016 earthquake. China’s CAMAC Engineering pledges to build the 120-bed hospital in 18 months, with state-of-the-art seismic design. Then, they jointly pushed buttons starting up the last turbines of the giant Coca Codo Sinclair hydroelectric dam, built with Chinese engineering and financing by a workforce of 1,500 Chinese and 6,000 Ecuadorians, which gives Ecuador the power to build new industries, and export to its neighbors, as well. Many more major projects are envisaged in infrastructure, oil and gas, agriculture, ship building, metallurgy, etc. The emphasis on scientific development is notable. On the eve of the visit, Ecuador’s El Telegrafo published an opinion piece by President Xi, in which he underscored that high technology is a key focus of Sino-Ecuadorian cooperation. Citing China’s launching of Ecuador’s Caballo Alado satellite in 2013, he noted: “The experience of our immense development tells us that science and technology constitute the first productive force... Ecuadorian efforts are directed toward revitalizing the country through science and technology.” In welcoming Xi, Correa expressed Ecuador’s gratefulness for China’s help in “transforming” Ecuador, not just in such great projects as the hydroelectric project, but in financing “what I consider the most important public work in our history, not in its amount, but in its transcendence: the Yachay City of Knowledge, which includes a world-class university dedicated to promoting innovation and development of the hard sciences.”
Zepp-LaRouche Presents the New Paradigm in Peru, in Prelude to APEC Summit The 21-nation APEC Summit, that was held in Lima, Peru, on Nov. 19-20, has been described as the occasion to bury the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) so fervently pushed by President Obama, which had already been handed a death sentence in the United States with the election of Donald Trump. In its stead, the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP), which China first proposed at the 2014 APEC Summit in Beijing, is quickly gaining ground. Both Chinese and Russian officials have made it quite clear that the FTAAP is not meant to exclude the United States, or any other country. Obama’s TPP, on the other hand, emphatically excluded China. President Xi insisted in Lima on the need for inclusiveness and equality, saying “arrangements that are closed and exclusive are not the correct option.” Just two days before world leaders convened in the Peruvian capital of Lima for the APEC Summit, Helga Zepp-LaRouche gave the keynote address to the XXIII Congress of the Economists Association of Peru, held in the Amazon city of Pucallpa, in the department of Ucayali. Her presentation, titled “The New Silk Road Concept, Facing the Collapse of the World Financial System,” was delivered via a 50-minute pre-taped video, followed by 20 minutes of live Q&A with the 200 or so people present in Pucallpa. Her opening video was also broadcast online by the national Economists Association, to Economics departments on campuses across the country. The theme of the three-day Congress was “The Peru-Brazil Bioceanic Train: Impact on the Economy of the Amazon Region and the Country.” China has expressed interest in building and financing this rail project, which would connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans from Peru to Brazil, via Bolivia. Linking that project to the World Land-bridge was the subject of a presentation on the second day of the congress by EIR’s representative in Lima, Luis Vasquez Medina. Zepp-LaRouche’s presentation provoked so great an interest among participants that the Economists Association made a DVD available to all on the next day. In preparation for the congress, it had printed 2,000 copies of a 60-page pamphlet for participants and others, consisting of extracts of EIR’s The New Silk Road Becomes the World Landbridge , Lyndon LaRouche’s 2014 policy statement on “The Four Laws,”etc. EIR Brings New Silk Road Paradigm to Zurich A public debate on the New Silk Road was held on Nov. 18 in Zurich by the Swiss “Impulswelle” group, which featured as speakers Schiller Institute and EIR representatives Caroline Hartmann and Claudio Celani. The three-hour long event, which included a lively discussion, brought out a shared consensus on the principles of the “New Paradigm” and the wish to replace the bankrupt Western financial system by one of development and cooperation. Caroline Hartmann illustrated the pioneering role of the Schiller Institute in launching the idea of the “New Silk Road” long before it became official Chinese government policy. It started in the 1970s with Lyndon LaRouche’s fight for a new world economic order, in the form of his International Development Bank proposal, then the “European Productive Triangle” in 1989, followed by the “Eurasian Landbridge” and the “New Silk Road” launched by Helga Zepp-LaRouche in the 1990s. Mrs. Hartmann showed how those initiatives were an elaboration and expansion of LaRouche’s original idea of a system of international cooperation on development projects based on
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scientific and technological progress. She described LaRouche’s dedication to improving human productivity as based on his early discovery of Leibiniz and as being in the tradition of Alexander Hamilton and Friedrich List, and highlighted some of the international conferences and meetings the LaRouches have held with Russian, Chinese and other Asian leaders to promote such a grand design. Claudio Celani then went into some features of the current New Silk Road or “One Road One Belt” policy, not just as a modern system of transport connecting Europe to Asia, but as a gigantic program of infrastructure investments to increase global productivity. The decisive aspect of the OBOR project is the scientific driver represented by the Chinese fusion energy and space research projects. The Chinese “win-win” perspective is based both on Confucian philosophy and on the tradition of the western Westphalian principles. The Confucian notion of the “mandate of heaven” which a ruler loses if he does not promote the common good, is consistent with the principle of the “advantage of the other” which the Peace of Westphalia established as the fundament of international relations, Celani explained. Therefore, it is not surprising that today, just as in the 18th century, East-West cooperation based on Westphalian/Confucian principles is opposed by oligarchical interests through the use of geopolitics.  During the long and lively discussion, questions were raised on the Schiller Institute, on the strategic situation after the U.S. presidential elections, and on issues of banking and credit. A particularly hot issue in Switzerland is the banking separation reform, which the Impulswelle organization has promoted for many years. It was stressed that the window of opportunity represented by the defeat of Barack Obama’s and Hillary Clinton’s war policy must be used to push through the GlassSteagall reform in the there and globally, for which Switzerland could play a catalyzing role. For Wolfgang Schäuble, the Greeks  Are Not Yet Poor Enough At the Frankfurt Banking Congress on Nov. 18, German Finance Minister Schäuble was questioned about the likelihood of a debt relief for Greece, as was promised when Athens signed the third bailout agreement. That was enough for him to work himself up into a rage. First, he charged that Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras was demanding debt relief because he refuses to implement “reforms”. (In reality,  the Greek economy has already collapsed by one third.) He then blurted out “Greeks have to learn that their living standard is too high,” before calling for further cuts in pensions, wages etc., to make the country more “competitive”. A few weeks ago, the Hellenic Statistical Authority, which uses EU standards, reported that 40% of the Greek population is living in poverty conditions (cf. SAS 24/16). Figures for 2015 on child poverty in the EU released on Nov. 16 by the European Statistics Agency (EUROSTAT) confirm the harsh reality after five years of EU “medicine”: 37.8% of children aged up to 17 in Greece were at risk of poverty and social exclusion, compared to 28.7% in 2010. That is the sharpest increase in the entire EU. But in terms of percentage, the situation is even worse in Romania, with 46.8% and in Bulgaria, with 43.7%. Then comes Greece, followed by Hungary at 36.1%, just ahead of austerity-hit Spain at 34.4%  and Italy at 33.5 %. These are damning figures for an EU in which the overall average of child poverty barely dropped half of 1% from 2010
to 2015 (27.5% 26.9%), a percentage which represents approximately 25.26 million children. The INE-GSEE, the Labour Institute of the government employees union GSEE, issued a report indicating that real unemployment is at 30.8% with over 800,000 long-term unemployed for the past 15 trimesters. The official figure of the Greek statistics agency ELSTAT was only 23.4% for the month of August 2016, because it excludes those who are forcibly underemployed, including anyone who only work one hour a week! In fact, many workers are on part-time contracts, and have in many cases three months’ arrears on their wages Nonetheless, Greece creditors are demanding more austerity and implementation of  so-called “reforms”. On top of the list is a 3.5% budget surplus to pay back the debt, and labor reforms to make it easier for employers to fire workers. These reforms are grossly out of touch with reality, to say the least. Pro-EU Presidential Candidates Lose  in Bulgaria and Moldova In the same week as Americans voted to stop World War III, voters in Bulgaria and Moldova voted down pro-European Union presidential candidates in favor of candidates who have called for cooperation with Russia and for preventing their countries from becoming the “no mans land” of an East-West conflict. Running as an independent with the backing of the Bulgarian Socialist Party, former Air Force Commander Ruman Radev won a nearly 60% majority in the presidential run-off on Nov. 13. Unlike outgoing President Rosen Plevneliev, Radev has been advocating dropping the EU sanctions against Russia and establishing closer ties with Moscow to help Bulgaria’s struggling economy. Also on Nov. 13, Igor Dodon of the Party of Socialists of the Republic of Moldova won over 55% of the votes in the presidential run-off, after campaigning for improving relations with Russia and seeking membership in the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union. On Nov. 18, he announced he would insist on the resignation of Defense Minister Anatol Salaru, who has called for Moldova to join NATO, and has sanctioned military drills with NATO countries on the country’s territory. That is in violation of the Constitution, Dodon charges, which proclaims Moldava a neutral country. While the powers of the President are fairly limited in Moldava, he does have the prerogative of  dismissing a member of government. According to TASS , the current Defense Minister has also called on NATO to help transform the peacekeeping operation in Transnistria involving Russian, Moldovan and Transnistrian forces into an international mission of civil monitors. Yet more alarming is the fact that he recently made an agreement with his Ukrainian counterpart, Stepan Poltorak, to draft a joint plan of withdrawal of Russian troops and weapons from Transnistria via a route over Ukrainian territory.