E.I.R.STRATEGIC ALERT WEEKLY NEWSLETTER Volume 32, No. 43, October 25, 2018

E.I.R.STRATEGIC ALERT WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
Volume 32, No. 43, October 25, 2018

Washington-London Establishment  Fears Shift in U.S. Election Prospects After months of hyping the prospects for a Democratic Party sweep into control of the U.S. House in the Nov. 6 mid-term elections, the anti-Trump fanatics in the “fake news” mainstream media seem to be recognizing that the change in thinking among Americans, which led to Donald Trump’s victory in Nov. 2016, was not a momentary phenomenon. The lead election story in the Washington Post on Oct. 21 reflects this recognition, in its opening sentence: “Democratic hopes for a wave election that could carry them to a significant House majority have been tempered in recent weeks amid a shifting political landscape....” While the rest of the article is full of the usual slanders against the President and his supporters, the underlying tone reflects how much those anti-Trump forces fear that the Americans have seen through the putsch attempt by the British elite, together with their allies among the Obama-Clinton Democrats, Bush Republicans, and lying media. Trump himself has been holding election rallies across the country, with large, enthusiastic crowds greeting him, cheering his charge that his opponents are conducting a witch hunt against him (and implicitly against them) for rejecting the antigrowth and war policies which drove the nation into a ditch during the Bush and Obama administrations. That the media continue to distort his comments, and to claim instead that his election was only due to “Russian meddling” serves to strengthen the anti-establishment mood of the voters, which does not always show up in the polls. On the other side, however, a number of Democratic Party leaders and other activist groups, including some considering themselves feminist, are waging an aggressive campaign against the President and have dangerously escalated calls for violence (cf. SAS 42/18). But they are not addressing the real concerns of the population.The LaRouche Political Action Committee is bringing reality into this highly divided situation, as candidate Kesha Rogers put it, by stressing that people will be voting on Nov. 6 for war or peace, whether they are aware of that fact or not. The outcome of the Nov. 6 elections will be decisive in determining whether the new House of Representatives has enough votes to effectively initiate an impeachment process against President Trump, on whatever grounds. But perhaps even more importantly, if the Democrats do win back a majority of 
the seats, they will automatically take over the chairmanships of the various committees, which means they could put an end to the investigations now ongoing into obstruction of justice and other illegal activities by the FBI, the Department of Justice, and ultimately British secret services. Indeed, beyond the midterm elections, to fully defeat the coup, it is essential that the British role in initiating the “Russiagate” affair be exposed (cf. below), as it will also expose the slavish devotion to British imperial geopolitics that characterized the approach of the Bush and Obama administrations, as well as Hillary Clinton. Trump won the election by ruthlessly rejecting those policies that risked triggering a new world war and a global economic crash – and voters responded.  That is the reason for the attempted putsch. Former United States Attorney Exposes British Hand in Russiagate It is highly significant that the former U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C., Joseph diGenova, has explicitly identified the role of the British secret services role in spying on the Trump campaign. In an interview with Washington radio station, WMAL , on Oct. 15, diGenova was asked about the documents that President Trump had ordered be declassified, related to the secret FISA Court warrants authorizing the FBI to spy on the Trump campaign (cf. SAS 39, 40/18). The British and Australian governments urgently requested Trump delay the declassification as, according to diGenova, they would reveal the hand of British intelligence, in collaboration with the Obama Administration. “British MI6 conducted illegal electronic surveillance on U.S. citizens at the request of the FBI and [CIA director] Brennan.... Illegal spying by the Brits. That’s why the Brits are going crazy,” he explained. That’s a remarkable issue, he continued. “We talk about domestic surveillance all the time. But when you stretch out to work with foreign governments -- read ‘collude’ -- to spy on an American citizen, that really opens up an entirely different can of worms. It opens up a huge criminal liability on the part of American intelligence officials, especially Brennan. Brennan actually visited London, before all this started, and visited MI6 and GCHQ before it started....” After speaking further about the complicity of Obama intelligence officials in illegal spying and involvement in the coup attempt, diGenova explained how they planted the Russiagate story through a typical FBI sting operation. The documents will 
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show, according to him, that Stefan Halper, a joint asset of the CIA and MI6, used a CIA agent to entrap two low-level Trump campaign advisers, George Papadopoulos and Carter Page, and then funnel back to the FBI lies about Russian involvement, in order to get the FISA warrant. DiGenova points out that it was totally illegal to have the British MI6 and GCHQ do illegal “overseas surveillance of these people”, and then use material they knew had been fabricated. He characterized the entire operation as “so much worse than Watergate.” DiGenova also warned that if the Republicans lose the House, “all the investigations are over”, because the Republican Senators will not have the courage to pursue them, although they have a majority. Kesha Rogers’ Candidacy Endorsed  by Major Veteran Organization The campaign of Kesha Rogers, an independent candidate for Congress in Texas 9th District and long-time leader of LaRouche PAC, was strongly supported on Oct. 19 by the National Vietnam and Gulf War Veterans Coalition, a 250,000 strong national organization. In a letter to Rogers, chairman John J. Molloy informed her that they had studied her website, polled the Board of the Coalition, and “unanimously approved the endorsement of your candidacy.” The letter expresses appreciation of Rogers’ willingness to “support those who have answered America’s call to duty,” and notes that “Your leadership and patriotism are especially needed in the House of Representatives at this particular time in our history when our beloved country is at risk.” It clarifies that “national security is the Coalition’s primary objective. As veterans, we served to protect our nation and, although we are concerned about veterans issues, we continue to be focused, like you, on ‘What can we do for our country?’” They list a number of national issues they support -- some of which Kesha Rogers could not support -- but these are not considered conditions for the endorsement. Rating Agencies and Reuters Attempt  to Blackmail Rome with Troika With the decision by the rating agency Moody’s on Oct. 19 to downgrade Italian sovereign debt to one notch above junk, the Empire faction unveiled its strategy against Italy: force the government to abandon its anti-austerity policy and submit to the Troika, or else face the “Greek treatment”. Moody’s downgrading was expected, albeit not so soon. It came just one day after EU Commissioners Valdis Dombrovskis and Pierre Moscovici had drafted a second letter to the Italian government (hand-delivered by Moscovici in person), which rejected the Italian budget proposal as “a particularly serious non-compliance with the [Stability] Pact’s obligations” and a deviation “without precedent in the history of the Stability Pact”. The letter provoked a sell-off of Italian bonds and a plunge in the Milan stock market. In the short term, Moody’s downgrading (and a possible one by Standard & Poor’s later this month) does not threaten to trigger a liquidity crisis in Italy, but the hawkish faction in the EU is artificially creating one. On Oct. 11, Reuters interviewed “five senior sources familiar with the ECB’s thinking” who not only claimed that a debt crisis for Italy is sooner or later inevitable, but that even if Rome does change its course, it “should not count on central bank” help unless it submits to the Troika (EU Commission, ECB, IMF). Worse: to force Italy to do so, the 
ECB “could require that an economic program is in place in Italy before it gives its all-clear to large amounts of ECB cash being disbursed, much like it did in Greece.” New details of what the ECB did with Greece have been revealed by then Greek Finance Minister, Yanis Varoufakis, in his new book Adults in the Room - My Battle with Europe’s Deep Establishment . First, in Feb. 2015, the ECB stopped accepting collateral from Greek banks, forcing them to access the more expensive Emergency Liquidity Assistance (ELA). Then, the ECB froze the amount of ELA available to Greek banks in the summer of 2015, as Reuters recalls, after the government had rejected a bailout, leaving Athens with little choice but to close the banks. The “senior sources” interviewed by Reuters claim that Italy will soon lose its investment-grade rating, and the ECB will stop accepting Italian bonds as collateral, precipitating a banking crisis. At that point, ELA will only be available if Italy underwrites a “rescue” program with the Troika. Thus, the Reuters report illustrates what we reported last week, as one faction of the European elite “playing with fire”. Insisting that an Italian banking crisis is inevitable, although it is not, is an attempt to influence the markets in that direction. In other words to push what is called a “self-fulfilling prophecy”. But Italy is not Greece. The current Italian government would not accept the humiliation of submitting to the Troika, and an Italian banking crisis could potentially blow out the entire Eurozone.
 Italy Signs on to Funding Transaqua Project in Africa, Discusses Joint Investments with China Just before Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte met with Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang on the sidelines of the Asia Europe Meeting (ASEM) in Brussels, Finance Minister Giovanni Tria received the Deputy Chairman of China Investment Corporation (CIC) Tu Guangshao, to discuss a joint fund for industrial investments in both countries. The meeting is a follow-up of initial discussions that Tria had had with the CIC, the largest sovereign fund in the world, during his trip to China in late September. A memorandum of understanding will be signed in 2019, aimed not only at “pooling capital, but also know-how and analyses to promote cooperation between the two countries and start common initiatives with direct and indirect spinoffs on the mutual dialogue,” Tria said. Another MoU on strategic cooperation for investments in the Belt and Road Initiative, with a special focus on Africa, which is planned to be signed before the end of the year. In a related development, a protocol for the initial funding of the feasibility study for the Transaqua project in Africa was signed on Oct. 16 in Rome by the Italian government and the Lake Chad Basin Commission, based in N’djamena, Chad. The document signed by Francesco La Camera, director general of the Italian Environment Ministry, and Mamman Nuhu, Executive Secretary of the Lake Chad Basin Commission, provides for an Italian government grant of €1.5 million to finance the feasibility study for the project developed by the Italian firm Bonifica more than 35 years ago, involving the replenishment of  Lake Chad and the attendant creation of a system of water, transport, electricity and agro-industrial infrastructure in central Africa. The Schiller Institute has been in the forefront of promoting Transaqua internationally for decades now. The formal signing follows the decision announced at the Feb. 26-28 International Lake Chad Conference in Abuja, Nige
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ria, and will now require further bureaucratic steps before the grant can be delivered and the feasibility study can start. “It is a historic step,” Bonifica CEO Romina Boldrini told EIR. “Italy is giving money forTransaqua. Everybody expects Bonifica to start the feasibility study now.” Marcello Vichi, the head of the Bonifica team that drafted the original Transaqua study in the 1970s, said he is “very satisfied” with the agreement. “Finally, after so many years, Africans and Europeans understood the importance of the project. Now we have to make up for the lost time.” While the decision to promote Transaqua was taken under the previous government, the new Italian government is expected to support it even more wholeheartedly. Current undersecretary Michele Geraci, who is leading the negotiations with China, had published an endorsement of Transaqua when he was still a professor of Economics in Bejing, calling it a model of tripartite cooperation between Italy, China and Africa. Austria’s Future Lies with the New Silk Road Multiple calls have come from Austria over the past months for full participation in China’s Belt and Road Initiative. A sampling: * The Vienna Chamber  of Industry (WKW) notes, in a press statement released on Oct. 15 by its president Walter Ruck, that the New Silk Road “is part of our economic future. Because the new trade routes between China and Europe will make sure that the exchange of goods between two powerful economic regions becomes faster and more efficient”, while bringing the respective countries closer together through infrastructure projects, power supply and cross-border services. “That means additional economic growth, as also our own logistics and transport firms know.” Ruck urged politicians to “pursue this project with commitment”, adding that it will bring “thousands of new jobs and a higher economic growth. From my talks in China, I know that the Chinese would very much welcome a strong commitment by Austria.” * On the occasion of the celebration of 35 years of sister city partnership between Linz (Austria) and Chengdu (China), it was announced on Oct. 12 that a special new “Trade Route of Creativity” will be created, extending the current Chengdu-Vienna rail connection to Linz. Along the 180 km stretch between the two Austrian cities, “innovation hubs” will be created with IT start-ups to encourage creative exchanges. * Former Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel emphasized the world-economic importance of the Belt and Road Initiative, in a commentary in the Oct. 6 Neue Zürcher Zeitung , Europe needs to contribute to this initiative, which will determine the future of the world economy, he wrote, with the Eurasian sphere playing a central role. Schüssel, who was Chancellor from 2000 to 2007, cited OECD statistics according to which China will contribute 25% of global GDP by 2050, the United States and Europe between 15% and 18% each, adding that the greater potential for the future lies in Asia. * In late August, the association of logistics firms of Austria (Zentralverband Spedition und Logistik – ZV ) released an appeal to the Austrian government to use its six-month chair of the European Union to advance cooperation between the EU and China on the Belt & Road Initiative (cf. SAS 36/19). A recent poll among logistics and transport firms, as Walter Ruck pointed out in the above-mentioned statement, found that 85% of them considered the New Silk Road to be an important issue, and 91% of them expect positive effects on Austria.
Both the ZV and Ruck personally are pushing for an extension of the broad gauge railroad from the eastern border of Slovakia to Vienna, to further develop trade with Eastern Europe and Russia. According to Russian Industry Minister Denis Manturov, construction on the 60 km stretch between Bratislava and Vienna (which will be “highly beneficial in economic terms”) could begin by the end of the year. AIIB Increases Loans for Development Projects The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) has been building up its loans to fundamental infrastructure investment throughout Asia and beyond, during the past 20 weeks. On Sept. 28, the AIIB approved new loans totaling nearly $1 billion to finance projects in Egypt, India, and Turkey. This is the bank’s first loan to the Egyptian government, and consists of a $300 million investment to improve rural sanitation services in the country, co-financed by the World Bank. It aims to provide construction of pumping stations, water waste treatment plants and improved sewage systems for some 892,000 people in 178,000 rural households in five governorates. For India, the board of directors approved a $455 million loan to improve all-weather rural roads in Andhra Pradesh in the southeast of the country. Turkey, for its part, will benefit from a loan of up to $200 million to the Industrial Development Bank of Turkey (TSKB) to finance energy projects. Turkey had received its first loan earlier this year, amounting to $600 mn for underground gas storage facilities. The AIIB is also considering $541 million in loans for three proposed infrastructure and power projects in Bangladesh, according to BSS news agency. Since its formation in December 2015, the AIIB has made about $5.8 billion in loans. Contrary to the World Bank, the AIIB does not attach conditionalities to the loans, which are restricted to actual development projects. “IPCC Report Is Anti-Scientific Nonsense” The recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, with its alarmist warning that the rise in global temperature must be kept below 1.5 ° C by the end of the century, and that carbon emissions must be rapidly reduced by 1 million tons per year, has provoked a welcome backlash. The fact that U.S. President Trump was asked about it in a couple of prominent interviews added to the publicity. The LaRouche PAC devoted its weekly meeting on Oct. 20 to refuting the notion that mankind is some kind of “pollutant” of the planet Earth, rather than an indispensable means for the development of the universe. (See https://www.youtube.com/ watch?time_continue=17&v=zJ9bYClCzLU.) Megan Beets of LaRouche PAC went through the ugly oligarichal history of the environmental lobby, and its ultimate goal of population reduction and control. She was followed by meteorologist Tom Wysmuller, who worked with NASA for many years. He discredited the IPCC argument in a nutshell by showing a chart that was published in the panel’s first report, but was then quickly removed because it didn’t fit their purposes. It shows that 97% of all CO2 in the atmosphere is generated from natural sources: outgassing from the ocean, transpiration of plants, etc. “And only 3% of the CO2 emissions is due to humans -- and half of that gets reabsorbed.... How do you think that controlling anything we do with CO2, is going to affect the total climate? It can’t happen.” Wysmuller also went through the role of the Sun’s activity and cosmic rays on the climate here on Earth.
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From Great Britain, astrophysicist Piers Corbyn dismissed the IPCC report in a debate on LBC radio Oct. 9. He called it “a pack of lies, it is anti-scientific nonsense, based on fraud... There is no scientific paper in existence that shows that increases of carbon dioxide worldwide drive world temperature rises. There’s nothing of the sort anywhere in existence.” Piers Corbyn, the brother of Labour Party head Jeremy Corbyn, owns the company WeatherAction which specializes in the physics of weather. The specialty of his contender in the debate, Stuart Haszeldine, is “carbon capture and storage,” an insane scheme to suck carbon dioxide out of the air, and bury it underground! Coming back to Donald Trump, in an interview on CBS Sixty Minutes on Oct. 14, journalist Lesley Stahl asked him if he still believes climate change is a hoax. His reply: “I don’t think it’s a hoax, I think there’s probably a difference. But I don’t know that it’s man made.” When Stahl insisted he should watch “these huge chunks of ice just falling into the ocean” in Greenland, Trump retorted: “And you don’t know whether or not that would have happened with or without man. You don’t know.” The issue was again taken up in Trump’s interview on Oct. 16 with Associated Press , where he stressed the controversy among scientists, stating he was not “willing to sacrifice the economic well being of the country for something that nobody really knows.” Record CO2 Emissions  Due to Environmentalists? The failure of Germany to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions since its bold pledges at the Paris Climate Conference -- or, for that matter, since 2009 -- illustrates the fraud of the “manmade climate change” argument, repeated just recently in the latest report of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (cf. SAS 42-18). The example of Germany is instructive, because it has shifted to so-called renewable energy sources more aggressively, per capita, than any other major country. As of 2017, according to many sources, it had invested roughly $225 billion in wind, solar, biofuel and geothermal power sources. In addition, the electricity bills for households are now running some $50 billion/year higher than a decade ago. But by “exiting” from nuclear power generation and closing down its existing nuclear fleet, this huge investment has accomplished nothing in terms of CO2 emissions. In 2018, they will equal the 2009 level, and experts forecast they will exceed that level in the following years. Consider the paradox: Had Germany invested the same amount over the past decade in new, third-generation nuclear power plants, while maintaining its existing fleet, it could soon have more than 50 Gigawatts of nuclear-electricity capacity installed, and could have replaced its entire coal-fired and oilfired capacity. How great could have been the reduction in Germany’s CO2, CO, and NoX emissions, had that been done? The same reasoning holds for the rest of the world, of course. Thus, if there are now 40 billion tons of CO2 emissions a year worldwide, one can blame it on the environmental lobby and financial interests that have demonized nuclear power. The only sane way to “decarbonize” the production of electric power and heat, was and is with nuclear energy. But a breakthrough is needed, toward mass production of fourth-generation, inherently safe small modular reactors (SMRs). And going from design to prototype to production quickly, requires the cooperation of the major nuclear-producing nations in a crash program.
Yemen Needs Schiller Institute’s Operation Felix “The crisis in Yemen is so huge and of such magnitude... We are literally looking at hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of people who may not survive.” Such is the heart-wrenching assessment of Lisa Grande, the UN humanitarian coordinator for Yemen, as quoted in the Oct. 16 Guardian . The UN estimates that 14 million people are already at risk of famine. “Things are deteriorating very, very quickly. The implications of this are enormous, and, truthfully, frightening. The reality is that time may be running out,” Grande said. And yet, such warnings are ignored by our leaders, who continue to support the war against Yemen, led by Saudi Arabia with the logistical help of the US, the UK and France, while hypocritically denouncing “human rights violations” by the Sana’a government. In that context, the Schiller Institute and the Yemenite organization INSAN for Human Rights and Peace held a joint seminar in Berlin on Oct. 13, during which the horrors of the humanitarian disaster now occurring were counter-posed to the perspective of reconstruction and development of the country.  Helga Zepp-LaRouche sent a hard-hitting greeting to the conference, calling the aggression against Yemen a “crime against humanity”, in which Western governments and media are complicit. After the Nazi Holocaust, she said, many people said they did not know about it, and that may or may not be true. But today, no one can claim that about the genocide in Yemen, even if it is not so widely reported in the mainstream media. After the probable murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Zepp-LaRouche pointed out, some U.S. senators called for sanctions against Saudi Arabia for human rights violation under the Magnitsky Act. “But for every child dying of hunger in Yemen the same Magnitsky Act should apply!”, she said. Nevertheless, there is reason for optimism, because China’s Belt and Road policy has changed the strategic situation already, she concluded. After this introduction, three speakers from INSAN, all of them Yemeni professionals living in Germany, described the consequences of the catastrophic humanitarian situation in Yemen (Abdullatif Elwashali); the psychology of war trauma among children in Yemen and how difficult it is to treat (psychiatrist Dr. Hussein Al-Warith); and the concrete effects of the blockade of the ports (Mohammad Abo Taleb). Hussein Askary of the Schiller Institute presented Operation Felix , the reconstruction plan for Yemen in the context of the New Silk Road, which he has worked out. After a brief historical overview of the country, he showed the plans for the main development corridor projects for Yemen. Askary’s appeal to have a clear vision for the future, so you can fight for it, clearly struck a response with all those attending. One of the points made in the discussion was the need to make this perspective better known in Yemen as an antidote to the daily horrors. A number of the young people attending, in particular, were visibly excited about the perspective that Askary presented. 
E.I.R. STRATEGIC ALERT        www.eir.de  Published by: E.I.R.GmbH,  Bahnstr. 4, 65205 Wiesbaden Tel.: 0611/73650, Fax: 0611/9740935, 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 German