E.I.R.STRATEGIC ALERT WEEKLY NEWSLETTER

E.I.R.STRATEGIC ALERT WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
Volume 31, No. 25 - June 22, 2017
The U.S. Senate’s Anti-Russian  Witch Hunt May Backfire In an effort to sabotage President Trump’s declared intention to improve relations with Russia, the U.S. Senate has outdone itself by voting up a bill (97-2) on June 15 that establishes new sanctions as well as a mechanism to prevent the President from lifting them in the future. For many Europeans, this move went too far. Concretely, the bill provides for a review process under which Congress is given the power to reject any proposal from the White House on easing sanctions against Russians. And it would impose new sanctions on Russians found to be guilty of conducting cyberattacks on behalf of the Russian government as well as supplying arms to Syrian President Bashar Assad, while allowing for new sanctions to hit Russia’s mining, metals, shipping and railways sectors. In fact, no evidence of Russian-made cyberattacks has ever been provided, despite all the allegations, but the move serves to further demonize the Russians, while the provision on supplying weapons to Syria betrays the clear intent to undermine the US-Russian cooperation to defeat terrorism initiated by the White House. Russian President Putin has aptly described the whole antiRussian campaign in the United States as reminding him of anti-semitism. “They are always blaming Russians, like antisemites are always blaming the Jews,” Putin said in the course of his four-part interview with Oliver Stone which was broadcast last week by Sky television. Economically, the new sanctions, if passed by the House of Representatives, would badly hurt Europe, in particular the planned Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which is planned to double the already existing Nord Stream, transporting Russian gas to Germany and Austria under the Baltic Sea. The bill opposes the project because of its alleged “detrimental impacts on the European Union’s energy security, gas market development in Central and Eastern Europe, and energy reforms in Ukraine.” The German government has reacted with public statements of protest and even threatened counter-sanctions, as expressed by Economics Minister Brigitta Zypries. Angela Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert found it “strange” that sanctions intended to punish Russia for alleged interference in the U.S. elections could also trigger penalties against European companies. Previously, German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel and Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern had issued a joint state
ment, underscoring that the new sanctions would go against “European interests” on energy issues. That opens an interesting scenario. Since the EU is also against Nord Stream 2, a conflict would emerge with, on the one side, the trans-Atlantic globalist and neocon elite, including the Wall Street and Obama factions in the US and the EU bureaucracy, and on the other side, Russia, the White House and the interests of the European nations. The next step should be drop the geopolitical games and build an alliance through cooperation. How Vladimir Putin Views  Perspectives of US-Russia Relations On June 15, Vladimir Putin conducted the yearly “Direct line” webcast, answering online questions from Russian and international participants. One such question came from an American citizen from Arizona, who asked the Russian President if he has advice on how to get Americans to understand that Russia is not the enemy, despite the rampant “racist Russiaphobia”. Putin thanked him for his stance, and noted that the Russiaphobia, in his view, “is primarily a result of the escalating political infighting. I do not think I have the right to give you any advice... We know that we have very many friends in the United States,” just as many Russians hope the “our relations will get back on track.” Later on, in response to a similar question from the editor of a Moscow-based newspaper, who asked whether relations can improve if Presidents Putin and Trump do meet at the July G20 summit, he went through the areas in which both countries should be working together, starting with the control over non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. “Cursing and trading barbs and insults with the U.S. administration would be the worst road to take...”  Fighting poverty is another area, which is “one of the sources of radicalism and terrorism.” Putin went on to note that both sides had we worked “to resolve the Iranian nuclear issue, and we did reach an agreement, we did find a solution.” As for Syria and the Middle East in general, “it is clear to all that no progress will be made without joint constructive work.  We hope greatly too, for the United States’ constructive role in settling the crisis in southeast Ukraine.”  He added that the main problem is from within the United States: “I have said before and say again now, that this is clearly a sign of an increasingly intense domestic political struggle, and there is nothing that we can do here. 
EIR STRATEGIC ALERT WEEKLY NEWSLETTER2 N°25 / 2017
“We cannot influence this process, but we are ready for constructive dialogue.” Americans also got a rare chance to hear Vladimir Putin in his own words during the four-part documentary by film director Oliver Stone, broadcast by Showtime (in Europe by Sky ). Putin covered a wide range of subjects during the interviews, including how relations had come to reach such a low point, as well as his view of perspective points of collaboration, and the ability to see the present from what the future challenges will be. At one point, he called for a “new paradigm of international relations.” Coup Plotters Incite to Unprecedented  Political Violence in U.S. After months of demonizing President Trump as a liar, a greedy self-serving incompetent, and an agent of Vladimir Putin, the situation in the U.S. has become increasingly volatile and dangerous, as seen in the shots fired at Republican Congressmen and their aides during a baseball practice last week in Alexandria, Virginia. Among those hit was U.S. Representative Scalise, the third-ranking member in the Republican leadership in the House, who remains in critical condition. Though the media has been portraying the shooter as a “lone nut” -- which is the typical cover story for assassinations in the U.S., as in the murders of the two Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King, Jr.  -- an environment has been created by the opponents of Trump in the Deep State and the media, which provides a cover for the deployment of professional assassins. The shooting occurred in a week in which the image of a prominent comedienne holding a severed, bloody head of Trump, went viral on social media. And in New York City’s annual “Shakespeare in the Park” festival, a production of Ju lius Caesar portrays Caesar explicitly as Trump, who is killed in an exceptionally brutal scene. Despite protests against the play, which led to several sponsors withdrawing support, the New York Times not only defended the performance as art, but continues in its “news” coverage to portray Trump as a dangerous autocrat, deserving of impeachment, or worse. The unfolding of both violent images and actual violence has been accompanied by an increasingly frenzied drive to remove Trump, now centered around the “investigation” of Special Counsel Robert Mueller III. Trump opponents had demanded the appointment of a Special Counsel, when the original line of attack – i.e., his election due to foreign intervention by Putin and his treasonous collusion with the Russians -- was collapsing due to lack of evidence. Mueller, the former head of the FBI, has added two new charges: that the President has been involved in “obstruction of justice,” by firing FBI Director James Comey to impede the investigation; and that he has engaged in wide-ranging “financial crimes”, including receiving laundered money from suspicious Russian sources. At the same time, the incessant media drumbeat against Trump has made it difficult for him to proceed with his commitments as President, both to realize the benefits of open collaboration with Russia and China, and to advance his agenda for reviving the U.S. manufacturing base.  This week, the Senate voted 97-2 to impose new sanctions against Russia, while Wall Street-controlled Republicans are maneuvering against Trump’s support for Glass-Steagall and infrastructure spending. In the face of this increasingly dangerous escalation, Lyndon LaRouche has called on the American people to rally to stop the coup, and to fight for passage of LaRouche’s Four Basic laws,
which would provide the legislative basis for neutralizing Wall Street and its Deep State allies, while generating the credit to finance a scientific and manufacturing renaissance. Glass-Steagall: Mnuchin Drops the Mask At a hearing on the Federal budget in the Senate on June 13, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin finally came out openly opposing the bill to restore the Glass- Steagall Act sponsored by Senator Elizabeth Warren as well as the similar proposal in the Republican Party platform. Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs investment banker before heading for Washington, said there should be no forced separation between commercial and investment banking, claiming it would “hurt the economy”. He thus confirmed the fear expressed the day before by Democratic Representative Marcy Kaptur, a co-sponsor of the House bill on Glass-Steagall. On Cheddar TV , she recalled that bank separation is supported by the population and is contained in the platforms of both the Democratic and Republican parties, but that the Treasury Secretary seems to be “stepping back from the promise that was made”. It’s no secret, she said wryly, that Mnuchin comes from Goldman Sachs, as do seven of Trump’s close advisors. Given Trump’s personal endorsement of restoration of the GlassSteagall Act, she said “I hope the President uses his authority” to get it passed. A former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy under President Ronald Reagan, economist Paul Craig Roberts, has also weighed in heavily for re-enactment of GlassSteagall. In testimony written for Congress on June 13, he charged that the repeal of Glass-Steagall “turned a somewhat egalitarian democracy with a large middle class into the One Percent vs. the 99 Percent.” Americans are aware of the decline in their economic situation, and that was reflected in the election of Donald Trump as President. He debunked the much touted creation of jobs under President Obama. “Americans know that the nonsense from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics about a 4.3% unemploment rate and an abundance of new jobs is fake news. The BLS gets the low rate of unemployment by not counting the millions of discouraged workers who cannot find employment. If you haven’t looked for a job in the last 4 weeks, you are not considered unemployed. The birth/death model, a purely theoretical construct, accounts for a large percentage of the non-existent new jobs. The jobs are there by assumption. The jobs are not really there.” In Roberts’ view, it makes perfect sense to separate commercial from investment banking, and to refuse to use taxpayers’ savings to come to the rescue of the risky instruments created by investment bankers. Today, “we have the extraordinary situation that the repeal of Glass-Steagall forced the 99 Percent to bail out the One Percent.” This is not “politically viable unless Congress and the President are going to resign and turn over the governance of America to Wall Street and the Big Banks. A growing cresendo of voices are saying that this has already happened.” Intervention to Stop the War  in Yemen at the Geneva HRC A seminar on the war in Yemen was held on the sidelines of the 35th Session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on June 16 hosted by the NGO “Yemen Solidarity in Sweden”. The three speakers from Sweden – chairman Roland Hedaya, co-chairman Walid Almufti and Ulf Sandmark -- were joined
EIR STRATEGIC ALERT WEEKLY NEWSLETTER 3N °25 / 2017
by two representatives of the Yemen association in Germany, Ebrahim Hedyan and Ayesh. The seminar, held at the Office of the High Commissioner for HR (OHCHR), stresssed the need to put an immediate end to the illegitimate war against Yemen, which has no basis whatsoever in the UNSC Resolution 2216, in order to address the wrenching humanitarian crisis, including stopping the explosive spread of cholera and of famine on an unprecedented scale. Ulf Sandmark, who is also a prominent member of the Schiller Institute, denounced in his speech those powers that are intent on imposing an illegitimate president on the nation and that use terrorists for this purpose as a method of global strategic irregular warfare. Sandmark called for a special working group to be set up under the OHCHR to investigate such methods, which constitute human rights violations. Radical Environmentalism Behind London Grenfell Tower Fire Catastrophe The catastrophic fire that engulfed the 24 story Grenfell Tower apartment block in London on June 14 has caused many to question whether “dubious” insulation was put on the tower just to meet the “global warming”, climate change agenda by claiming to make buildings more “environmentally sustainable”.  That is the real issue here. How else can one explain how it was permitted to clad a formerly fireproof apartment block with highly combustible material, creating a fire trap that may have killed up to half of the tower’s 200 residents in a matter of minutes? According to British media, over 4,000 such towers have been turned into potential infernos in addition to tens of thousands of low-rise buildings. The political backlash in Britain has further discredited the conservative government of Prime Minister Theresa May, which was already reeling from the loss of their parliamentary majority in the recent elections. The Grenfell Tower was a social housing project located in the poor section of the immensely rich London district of Kensington, a stone’s throw away from Her Majesty’s Kensington Palace. The  catastrophe has served to expose the huge divide between rich and poor which has become ever wider under conservative governments, feeding into the growing rage against the neo-liberal policies of globalization, privatization etc.  May’s approval ratings last week dropped to -34! Outside of Great Britain, similar cladding has been used throughout Europe, especially in France and Germany. In the latter case, where Chancellor Merkel’s  “energy transition” has reached the heights of insanity, hundreds of thousands of buildings have been turned into fire traps. On top of that, the government has promoted through generous subsidies not only the cladding, but also the installment of solar panels on the roofs of buildings, in particular of homes. That, despite warnings from the fire departments that since solar panels cannot be simply turned off, firefighters are prevnted from doing their job for fear of being electrocuted. After a long campaign by the fire-fighting authorities and building societies, the German government did end up banning such cladding on high-rise buildings, but it does not cover lowrise structures nor demand the removal of the cladding from buildings where it has been installed. Thus, similar catastrophes are just waiting to happen in many European countries which will further expose the reckless imposition of Green “sustainable energy” policies, as leading to mass murder.
Will Jeremy Corbyn Become  the Next Prime Minister of the UK? After the Brexit referendum and the election of Donald Trump in the United States, the third political earthquake in the past year was the June 9 general election in the UK, in which the Tories lost their parliamentary majority. But that was not the earthquake, the extraordinary showing of the Labour Party under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn was. While the pundits had claimed Labour would lose 100 seats, the party actually gained 47, and garnered 40% of the vote, its highest rate since 1945. That smashed PM Theresa May’s hopes for a landslide victory so she could carry out “hard negotiations” on Brexit with the European Union. And it catapulted Corbyn to becoming the major contender for Number 10 Downing Street in the next general election that could be held before the end of this year. It was also a personal victory for the Labour leader, who had been vilified in the establishment media as well as by the Blairite New Labour MPs in his own party. Since everyone loves a winner, the party, Blairites included, is now standing united behind Corbyn. It is also an earthquake because it has unleashed a new political dynamic seen in the unprecedented mobilization of young people, who gave the party the decisive margin for victory. British commentators now speak of the meltdown of the entire neo-liberal ideological foundations of the Conservative Party, as the vote showed a solid rejection of austerity, privatization and globalization. Labour under Corbyn, is not the same as the post-industrial Social Democratic parties of the continent. The Corbyn faction cooperates closely with the trade unions, while Corbyn himself has organized an extra-party youth movement called Momentum, which continues to mobilize beyond the election. The Labour Party Manifesto 2017 calls for £250 bn in investments in infrastructure with heavy emphasis on transportation, especially high-speed railways and industrial transformation. While it promotes “renewable” and “carbon free” energy, it clearly calls for renewing and expanding the nuclear power sector as a major source of clean energy, as well as continuing to exploit Britain’s hydrocarbon assets. A “National Investment Bank” is recommended to finance industrial and other enterprises. Although Corbyn has supported Glass-Steagall bank separation in the past, the program only proposes a “firm ringfence” between investment and retail banking. In foreign policy, Corbyn supports cooperation with both Russia and China and has openly opposed NATO expansion. He has also declared that it would be important and correct for President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin to establish a cooperative relationship. All in all, a break with previous governments. Helga Zepp-LaRouche: Setting the Record Straight on Helmut Kohl’s Legacy The Chairwoman of the Schiller Institute Helga Zepp-LaRouche wrote the following statement for the Strategic Alert Service on June 18, two days after the passing of Helmut Kohl, the former German Chancellor from 1982 to 1998. The various assessments of Helmut Kohl as the “father of German unity” and “the visionary of united Europe” sound more like the PR description of the politically correct reading that Kohl’s contemporaries are supposed to have of that historical period that coincided with his term in office. What is totally suppressed are the geopolitical operations that targetted
EIR STRATEGIC ALERT WEEKLY NEWSLETTER4 N°25 / 2017
Kohl, in particular during the time of German reunification, and that still play out to this day to in other forms. It is to Kohl’s credit that, with the release of his “Ten Point Plan for a Confederation of the two Germanies” on Nov. 28, 1989, Kohl made a first baby step toward establishing German sovereignty, a step which he had not planned with the Allies or with his coalition partner Hans-Dietrich Genscher. A truthful picture must include the fact that the assassination two days later of Alfred Herrhausen, the then-chairman of the Deutsche Bank and a close adviser to Kohl, allegedly by the third generation of the RAF, was meant to immediately contain this impulse to obtain sovereignty. What is also omitted in the many comments is Margaret Thatcher’s hate-filled “4th Reich campaign” against Kohl, as well as François Mitterand’s threats of war in the event Kohl were not ready to abandon the deutsche mark as the price to pay for reunification, and to accept the constraints of the Maastricht corset and the euro, as reported by Jacques Attali in his biography of Mitterand. Kohl later described the European Community Summit in early December 1989 in Strasbourg, during which he was confronted with such hostility, as one of the darkest hours of his life. According to his own statements, it was not until his visit to Dresden on Dec. 19, 1989, where the population was shouting with joy “Helmut!, Helmut!” to him, that he realized that the moment for German reunification had come. Of course, Helmut Kohl was also a living witness to the promise made by the Americans to Mikhail Gorbatchov, as was reported by the then-US ambassador to Moscow Jack Matlock, among others, that NATO would never expand up to Russia’s borders. For Kohl, the Cold War ended with the breakup of the Soviet Union and it is highly doubtful that he would have agreed with the demonization of Vladimir Putin of the past years. The fact that Mrs. Merkel now considers herself as the proconsul of Barack Obama’s policy of confrontation would probably also not be to his liking. More Technological Advances from China Just last week China’s firm commitment to technological progress was reflected in three new developments, which are of international relevance. Space Telescope : On June 15, China launched its Hard Xray Modulation Telescope, dubbed “Insight,”  which will study pulsars and black holes, and search for gamma-ray bursts that correspond to gravitational waves. The telescope, designed to operate for at least four years. will be able to detect a broader range of frequencies than previous X-ray satellites, with a trio of detectors for the high, medium, and low-energy X-ray range. It also has a detection area described as the largest in the world in its energy band. This telescope should further the understanding of astronomical objects that have been observed, but are little understood. “We are still not clear about the interior of pulsars,” said Zhang Shuangnan, the lead scientist for the mission. “Current physical laws cannot describe the substances in the state of a pulsar well, since no lab on Earth can create a density as high as a pulsar. So we have to conduct more observations.” Understanding what makes pulsars “tick,” will aid in the use of their precisely regular emissions in spacecraft navigation. Maglev Commuter Line: On June 14, it was announced that the first domestically designed and manufactured maglev line in China is now in its comprehensive testing phase, with a trial run expected before the end of this year. The 10.2 km
elevated line will serve eight stations in Beijing, cutting travel time between any two of the locations along the line by twothirds, as compared to current bus routes. Designated the S1 line, it will connect with the Line 1 Beijing subway and a western extension of Line 6, which is under construction. The maximum speed of S1 will be 100km/h. Using maglev systems for intracity and regional passenger mass transfers, is of relevance for all other densely-populated urban areas globally, as energy consumption and maintenance costs are considerably lower than those of any other commuter train system. Small Nuclear Reactor: Within a few weeks from now, China expects to launch a pilot plant of its small module reactor (SMR), dubbed “Nimble Dragon” or Linglong. It is being designed for deployment in isolated regions, on board ships, and potentially even on aircraft. In fact, China is also planning to deploy small floating nuclear reactors near islands in the South China sea, which could share some design work with the land-based SMR. The pilot plant will be placed on the island of Hainan. This is also where China’s new space launch facility, Wenchang, is located. The small reactors, under 300 MW, will be about the size of a bus, and fit on a truck. So far, Pakistan, Iran, Britain, Indonesia, Mongolia, Brazil, Egypt, and Canada have been in contact with the China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC), as potential customers. Africa Needs Modern Railroads  to Boost Pan-African Trade China is investing in African railroads to enhance the weak panAfrican trade, wrote Joyce Chimbi in the June 18 Global Times . She quotes the figures from the African Export-Import Bank that intra-African trade was only about 19% of the continent’s $930 billion traded last year. The rest was shipped out of the continent despite availability of markets across Africa.” Therefore, the improvement of transport connectivity is crucial, and China has been very active on it. Passenger traffic on the new China-built Nairobi-Mombasa railway in Kenya was just opened a few weeks ago (cf. SAS 23/17). In February, the Chinese opened the first electric transnational railway in Africa, running from the Red Sea port city of Djibouti to Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, while the Nigerians have also benefitted from modern lines built by China. For Joyce Chimbi, there is a great need for African countries “to prioritize infrastructure development, since this will provide the continent with the foundation it needs to support all sectors of the economy.” On June 14, Global Construction Review reported the formation of a consortium made up of Mota-Engil of Portugal and the China National Complete Engineering Corp., to build a 500 km railway in Mozambique. The new line will connect the Moatize coal mining area near the Malawi border with the port of Macuse.
E.I.R. STRATEGIC ALERT        www.eir.de  Published by: E.I.R.GmbH,  Bahnstr. 9a, 65205 Wiesbaden Tel.: 0611/73650, Fax: 0611/7365101, Email:  info@eir.com Verantwortl. f. d. Inhalt: Dean Andromidas, Claudio Celani Subscription: EUR 3000/ ISSN  0936-7527 © E.I.R. GmbH  Alle Rechte vorbehalten, auch die des Nachdrucks von Auszügen, derphotomechanischen Wiedergabe und der Übersetzung, Printed in Germany