E.I.R.STRATEGIC ALERT WEEKLY NEWSLETTER Volume 32, No. 31, August 2, 2018

E.I.R.STRATEGIC ALERT WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
Volume 32, No.  31, August 2, 2018

The BRICS summit gives renewed momentum to the New Paradigm “I want the Chinese model. Because what China has achieved is incredible. The way in which they overcame poverty is unprecedented in history”. These are words of the Prime Minister-elect of Pakistan, Imran Kahn, who at the same time announced that he would improve relations with historic rival India. The positive implications of this development for peace in Asia and the world are not to be underestimated. In the same spirit, the BRICS summit in Johannesburg (July 25-28) consolidated the strategy of applying the “China model” of development to Africa in the context of the Belt and Road Initiative. Chinese President Xi Jinping said Bejing wants African nations to “leapfrog” in their industrial development, while Russian President Putin offered to help in the effort with his country’s leading nuclear technology (cf. below). In fact, three summits took place in Johannesburg: the core BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa); the BRICS Plus (with Indonesia, Turkey and Argentina) and the BRICS Africa Outreach summit, with African leaders. The inclusion of non-BRICS nations in the five country initiatives is not new, but this time it became clear that such an enlarged platform will be the key for further cooperation. “We are witnessing”, wrote Schiller Institute chairwoman Helga Zepp-LaRouche on July 28, “a new orientation of emerging and developing countries inspired by China, towards a world economic order based on completely different principles. “While the West is hopelessly trying to save the old paradigm of the neo-liberal economic system, more and more nations cooperate with the BRICS nations, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and other regional organizations in the framework of the New Silk Road Initiative on the basis of a win-win cooperation and thus demonstrate that the world can be made much more human”, Zepp-LaRouche wrote. The “hopeless” efforts by the West include the hostile reactions to the Trump-Putin summit, which have forced the two leaders to postpone the announced visit of the Russian President to the White House. However, the more the “deep state” and its discredited media become hysterical, the more support for President Trump’s dialogue with Moscow is growing among the American population. And that will resonate in the coming mid-term elections in November. “The West must choose”, Helga Zepp-LaRouche concluded: “either we accept the various offers from China and help de
velop Africa, South West Asia and Latin America with the BRICS and other nations, (…) or we can try to hold on to the hopelessly bankrupt financial system, which is oriented to a maximum of profits for the Establishment,  at the expense of large parts of the population.” This means a financial crash, worse than the one in 2008, and a future in which “our cultures will be exposed in the museums of Africa and Asia as examples of societies which lost the moral fitness to survive.” Xi: African nations must “leapfrog” to advanced economies While most international media have focused on the less important part of President Xi Jinping’s speech at the 10th BRICS Forum, i.e., the one on trade, the Chinese leader made it clear that China wants to help African and development countries to first achieve what makes trade possible, i.e. industrial production. And this is possible only with science and technology. Here follow a few excerpts: “In the face of new opportunities brought by new science and technology, every country has an equal right to development. Those who fail to keep abreast of the trend of the times will fall behind and become irrelevant. What we can and should do is to seize opportunities, increase input in innovation, focus on creating new areas of growth and replace old growth drivers with new ones. We should endeavor to advance structural reform, remove all institutional barriers to innovation and fully unlock innovation potential and energize the market. We should develop a global perspective, boost international exchanges and cooperation in innovation, and fully leverage each other’s comparative strengths and resource endowment, so as to enable more countries and people to benefit from scientific and technological advances. At the same time, we should ease the impact of application of information technology, automation and smart technology on traditional industries and create new job opportunities in the process of fostering new industries.(…) “We should pursue inclusive growth to deliver benefits to people of all countries. Uneven and insufficient development is a common challenge facing all countries. The North-South gap, namely, the gap between developed countries and emerging markets and developing countries, remains huge. And there are also development gaps of varying degrees within countries. “Home to more developing countries than any other continent, Africa has more development potential than any other
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region in the world. We should strengthen cooperation with Africa, support its development and make BRICS-Africa cooperation a model for South-South cooperation. We should actively carry out cooperation with African countries in such areas as poverty reduction, food security, innovation, infrastructure development and industrialization in a way compatible with their national conditions. We should help African countries develop their economic structure, contribute to the implementation of Agenda 2063 of the African Union and thus enable Africa, an ancient continent, to gain strong vitality.” “China will continue to vigorously pursue the Belt and Road Initiative to create new opportunities of social and economic development for participating countries (…). The Belt and Road Initiative, guided by the principle of seeking shared benefits through extensive consultation and joint contribution, originated in China but belongs to the world. It is our sincere hope that other BRICS countries, African countries and other emerging markets and developing countries will forge strong partnerships with this initiative so that its benefits will reach more countries and their peoples.” Putin: “Russia Will Light Up Africa”, BuildNuclearPlants “From Scratch” In addressing the BRICS Africa Outreach Session at the BRICS Summit july 27 ,Russian President VladimirPutin noted that the African continent “is in huge need of energy investments, and Russia could become one of its key partners....I would especially like to note that Russia is planning to step up its assistance in development of national energy in African states.” According toPutin, as reported in RT , Russia is planning oil and gas projects with Angola, Mozambique and Gabon. He said: “In the field ofnuclearenergy, where Russia is the technological leader, we offer African partners to build an industry from scratch. These projects are crucial for Africa since about 600 million people on the continent live without electricity.” Putinadded that Russian business was also interested in “working with African partners in a wide range of areas, including agriculture, healthcare, the development of mass communications, geology and subsoil use.” BRICS-Plus Platform Has Expanded At the 2017 BRICS Summit, host country China initiated the “BRICS-Plus” format of inviting the leaders of five special guest nations, under the rubric of representing “Emerging Markets and Developing Nations.” But this year, the guest nation innovation was expanded even further, to systematically engage all those countries which head standing organizations, called “Regional Economic Communities,” of the Global South and United Nations. This included heads of state and government from 13 nations currently chairing these institutions. The BRICS “Outreach” statement said, “The rationale behind this BRICS Plus concept is to create a platform for greater interaction and partnerships amongst countries of the Global South to shape the agenda to effect changes in the global economy....” It portends historic policy shifts to come, in particular at the September meeting in China of the Forum on ChinaAfrica Cooperation (FOCAC). USA: Gap grows between population and Congress over Russia The harsh, nonstop attacks against President Trump and his persistent effort to forge a cooperative relationship with Russia’s President Putin belie a reality which those making the at
tacks refuse to face. According to recent polls, more Americans are with Trump than support the anti-Trumpers, whose overthe-top rhetoric against Russia is more extreme than that of the most dangerous moments of the Cold War. A torrent of verbal assaults against the two Presidents has dominated discussion in the U.S. Congress and coverage in the media following the July 12 summit in Helsinki. The first significant attack came from former CIA Director John Brennan, a key figure in initiating Russiagate, who accused Trump of behaving in Helsinki in a manner which was “nothing short of treasonous” (cf. SAS 30/18). Senators from both parties followed Brennan’s line, raging against Trump and Putin at a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on July 26. Typical was the charge by Tennessee Republican Corker, who stated that Senators have “serious doubts” about the foreign policy of the White House, who are “making it up as they go.” He accused Trump of appearing “submissive and deferential” to Putin, adding that he is “antagonizing our friends and placating those who clearly wish us ill.” Corker and others blasted the administration for its efforts to renew arms control negotiations, questioning why Russian officials have spoken of “agreements reached” on proposals for renewing START and INF talks, while the Congress has not yet been briefed on these agreements. When Corker belligerently insisted that Secretary of State Pompeo report details of the Trump-Putin talks, Pompeo pushed back, responding that “Presidents are entitled to have private meetings.” That Trump and Putin have spoken of cooperating to prevent a new arms race, and insure that nuclear weapons are never used, has been ignored by war hawks of both parties, who are out to sabotage a shift out of the geopolitical relations defined by the post-Cold War order, a shift which both Trump and Putin are attempting to execute. Polls taken since the summit demonstrate the disconnect between the provocative war-like intensity of anti-Trumpers, and the support from Americans for a peaceful dialogue, rather than threats, regime change and war. In spite of the non-stop attacks on the Trump-Putin meeting, a poll by The Hill and Harris X pollsters found that 54% of Americans want a second summit. Further, 61% believe the U.S. will benefit from improving relations with Russia, with an overwhelming 67% believing that better relations with Russia are a fundamental interest for the U.S. While a Washington Post-ABC News poll reported a 50% disapproval toward the first summit -- not surprising, given the blatantly hostile coverage of that paper of Trump and Putin -- the same poll also showed that, while 40% think Trump “went too far” in his “support for Putin”, 35% said the support was “about right”, and 15% said Trump “didn’t go far enough;” that is, approval for the President’s actions prevailed by a 50% to 40% margin. A pre-summit poll listing the leading issues of concern for voters, found that less than 1% cited the charges of Russiagate as a priority! At the same time, Trump’s personal approval rating went up slightly, to 45% in a Wall Street Journal-NBC poll, in spite of the daily bashing of him by the media. In contrast, the latest polls show a 19% approval rating for the U.S. Congress. The offensive against Trump is designed to shift voters away from electing Republicans to Congress in the upcoming midterm elections. Democrats hope they can gain enough seats to make impeachment a real possibility, while Republican neocons hope a defeat in November will force Trump to return to the old paradigm of geopolitical confrontation with Russia. Despite all the pontificating of pundits and politicians, these polls show
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that most of the voters who backed Trump in 2016 because of his opposition to the establishment’s dangerous war mongering, have remained loyal to him, and his commitment to peace may overcome the vicious and phony Russiagate attacks.
Russiagate: There Is No Other “There”! Despite more than two years of official investigations, tens of millions of dollars spent, and thousand of articles and stories in the mainstream press repeating the same unproven allegations, it appears that, as disgraced FBI official and serial texter Peter Strzok wrote to his mistress, on Russiagate, “There is no there there”! Strzok’s promise to his former girlfriend and FBI attorney, Lisa Page, that they would either stop Trump from winning, or use the charges against him as an “insurance policy”, appears as unfulfilled as his pledge to his wife when they married, that he would “forsake all others” -- a reminder of which during Congressional testimony not only made Strzok visibly uncomfortable, but elicited howls of outrage from his anti-Trump defenders, who have been made even more hysterical by their failure to prove their case of Russian meddling and Trump collusion. Their situation has worsened, as evidence has emerged that the opponents of Russiagate, including Trump, were right in asserting that FISA warrants against Trump campaign officials were based on the discredited dossier of British intelligence’s Russia “expert” Christopher Steele. Though the documentation has been heavily redacted, enough has emerged to show that the FBI did not clearly notify the FISA Court that the basis for a warrant against Carter Page was a dossier paid for by Trump’s opponents in the Democratic Party and the Clinton campaign. Further, all the hype about special counsel Robert Mueller’s multiple indictments is unraveling, as some of the individuals charged as running a “Russian troll farm” to meddle in the election surprised his team by going to court to defend themselves. In trying to build a case, Mueller indicted Russians, assuming they would never appear in court, meaning he would never have to prove the charges. When members of the indicted Russian Concord Management and Consulting, LLC responded to the charges, demanding exculpatory documents, Mueller’s team was stunned, and has tried to stall. Likewise, Russian President Putin’s offer to allow Mueller’s team to sit in when Russian officials interrogate the alleged GRU officials indicted by Mueller for “hacking”, has been met by silence from Mueller. It seems that Mueller’s case has been shrunk to guilty pleas from individuals such as Michael Flynn, who lack the financial means to combat the power of the “witch hunt”, or minor figures such as George Papadapoulos. Paul Manafort, a bigger fish, has refused to plead guilty, and his trial on unrelated charges begins this week in Virginia. The major recent “gain” made by Mueller is from the gossip emanating from the ongoing investigation of Trump attorney Michael Cohen’s payoffs to a porn star, and implications that Cohen may be able to substantiate other charges, such as whether Trump was aware of a meeting of campaign officials with a Russian attorney in Trump Tower, to gather “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. However, not only was no dirt offered, but the meeting itself has the appearance of being an FBI “sting” -- just as the “evidence” created by FBI-CIA-MI6 stringers, that Trump campaign officials were seeking Russian aid in the campaign. Meanwhile, Congressional investigation into the corruption of Department of Justice and FBI officials continues, with the possibility of their indictments increasing.
Corbyn Launches ‘Build it in Britain’ Reindustrialization Campaign In a seech to business leaders in Birmingham, Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn launched his party’s “Build in Britain” reindustrialization campaign. It included a major attack on the City of London. Corbyn accused the Conservative Party of continuing to do as they always have done – “kowtowing and skewing policy to the narrowest interests in the City of London while ignoring the needs of the vast majority in their bungled Brexit negotiations...” He slammed the economic policy of the last forty years as a “kind of magical thinking” where “We’ve been told that it’s good, even advanced, for our country to manufacture less and less and to rely instead on cheap labor abroad to produce imports while we focus on the City of London and the financial sector.” The banking crash exposed the weakness of this policy. Denying he was pursuing protectionist or nationalist policy, Jeremy Corbyn explained, according to the Guardian : “It’s not economic nationalism, it’s good sense to invest in the skills that we’ve already got here and to improve those skills for the future... Nobody’s ever said I have something in common with Donald Trump before. It’s news to both of us, I suspect.” Asserting that a Labour government would use “more of its own money to buy here in Britain”, he pointed out that the  “state spends over £200bn per year in the private sector. That spending power alone gives us levers to stimulate industry, to encourage business to act in people’s interests by encouraging genuine enterprise, fairness, cutting-edge investment, highquality service and doing right by communities. But to ensure prosperity here, we must be supporting our industries, making sure that where possible the government is backing our industries and not merely overseeing their decline.” Pointing to the fact that the government outsources the production of British Naval vessels to foreign countries, UK passports to a Franco-Dutch company and rolling stock to foreign companies, the Labour leader said: “We have plenty of capacity to build train carriages in the UK and yet repeatedly over recent years these contracts have been farmed out abroad, costing our economy crucial investment, jobs for workers and tax revenues…. Are we promoting economic nationalism? No, what we’re promoting is an investment in manufacturing in this country.” In the full speech, Corbyn laid out a three-prong strategy that would include new government procurement rules so that government supports jobs and industry; investing in infrastructure to support companies in Britain to keep goods flowing efficiently and costs low; increasing investment in education, skills and lifelong learning through creating a National Education Service; and programs to support small and medium sized enterprises through founding a national investment bank and a network of regional development banks. Corbyn pointed out that between 1970 and 2007, the output of the financial sector grew from 5% to 15% of total economic output, while manufacturing decreased from 32% to 12%. To rebalance the economy, he will work to get the “dirty money out of the City of London” and “shift taxation to disincentivise financial speculation, for example with our financial transaction tax.” The Labour leader called for the UK to have a customs union with the EU. “It’s not often that the Labour party and the Institute of Directors, the CBI and the TUC agree – we need to negotiate a new customs union,” he said.
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Ethiopia Targeted for Destabilization On July 26, on the day Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed left for his first official trip to Washington, Simegnew Bekele, the chief engineer of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, one of the country’s most important Chinese-backed infrastructure projects, was assassinated. His body was found in his Toyota 4X4 in Meskel Square, one of the busiest intersections in Addis Ababa, with a gunshot wound in his head, and a gun was later found nearby. Bekele had become a legendary figure in Ethiopia for his championing and managing not only the Renaissance Dam project, but two others that have significantly increased the country’s power generation capacity. Addressing a gathering of the Ethiopian North American Muslim Foundation (BADR), in Virginia, Prime Minister Aiby  stated: “The circumstances of his death – in daylight at the heart of our capital – are a provocation to shake our resolve.” He vowed that justice will be served. The $4-billion (3.2-bn. euro) dam will be Africa’s largest when completed, producing 6,000 megawatts. It is financed in part by China while the Italian engineering firm Salini-Impregilo is the contractor.  In May, Sudan, Egypt and Ethiopia agreed to set up a scientific committee to study the dam’s impact. Government sources have told EIR that most of the concerns expressed by Egypt and Sudan, including the speed at which the dam’s reservoir would be filled, were being resolved. Construction started in 2011, and two of its 16 turbines are scheduled to start producing power in 2018. Bekele’s murder marks an escalation in the destabilization of of Ethiopia, a country already dubbed the “China of Africa” because of its ambitious economic development policy based on the construction of power, transportation and industrial infrastructure on the Chinese model. The new Chinese-built railway between Addis Ababa and Djibouti now connects the country directly to the Belt of Road Initiative. While the destabilization began in 2015, the coming to power of  Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed earlier this year with an ambitious reform program, served to quell the popular grievances that were being manipulated by the destabilization. On June 23, an attempt on his life occurred while he was addressing hundreds of thousands of supporters at a rally in Addis Ababa. Throughout the country, incidents of violence have been orchestrated to sow ethnic and communal tension. On July 11 in a city in the Amhara Region, a mob attacked a car reportedly belonging to Berekat Simon, one of the leading architects of the country’s economic policy and a leading member of the ruling party’s leadership. He addressed the Berlin conference of the Schiller Institute in 2016 on “win win cooperation with Africa”. All this occurs in a historic moment for Ethiopia, which has just reestablished relations with Eritrea, twenty years after the bloody independence war. With the visit of Eritrean President Isaias Afewerki to Ethiopia on July 14, full  diplomatic relations between the two countries have been established and ambitious plans for economic integration have been discussed, including reconstruction of the highway between Ethiopia and Eritrea’s two Red Sea ports. Eritrea has begun a process of overcoming its self- imposed isolation as a result of the Ethiopian initiative. On July 8, PM Ahmed paid an official visit to Somalia, where discussions were held on economic integration, including development of ports.
Developing North Korea Transforming Asia and the World The diplomatic breakthrough on the Korean Peninsula – driven by the historic summit between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean Chairman Kim Jong-un on April 27, followed by President Donald Trump’s even more historic summit with Kim Jong-un in Singapore on June 12 -- sets the stage for a development process in North Korea which will facilitate a transformation of the entirety of East Asia, and indeed of the entire world. The festering crisis on the Peninsula since the end of the Second World War has served the advocates of Empire as a crucial point of division between East and West, with the “war party’” within the Anglo-American alliance demanding that all nations line up on one side or the other, maintaining the imperial “divide and conquer” which has served the British Empire historically. But President Trump has rejected that imperial division of the world, insisting that the United States should be friends with both Russia and China. It is that intention, as seen in Trump’s personal friendship with Xi Jinping and his July 16 summit with Vladimir Putin, together with the courage of President Moon of South Korea, which made the Korea breakthrough possible. Within the framework of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, President Trump’s opening to Russia, China and North Korea has effectively united all of Asia – including Russia, Japan, India, and all of Southeast Asia – behind the vision of peace through development. It exemplifies the potential in Lyndon LaRouche’s call over a decade ago for a “Four Power” agreement among Russia, China, India and the United States, as the necessary combination to overcome and destroy the power of the British Empire and bring about a new paradigm for Mankind. The development of the vast resources of the Russian Far East, in which China, South Korea and Japan can and must play a crucial role, has been stymied by the fact that North Korea, which is central to such collaboration, remained ostracized. The political divisions across the region, exacerbated by the “with us or against us” dictates of the Cold War, even after the collapse of the Soviet Union, were aggravated further by Presidents Bush and Obama in particular. Now that can and is changing. Provided the denuclearization process proceeds successfully, and North Korea’s security is assured, Pyongyang is primed to undergo a rapid and powerful economic expansion, which will not only lift the struggling people of North Korea out of their poverty and stagnation, but will benefit peace and development worldwide. For a discussion of the nature of North Korea’s economy, and the proposed scope of development of the region, see http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2018/2018_2029/2018-29/pdf/15-20_4529.pd f
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