WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
Volume 33, No. 4, January 24, 2019
Expose the Long String of Covert Coups of
the FBI in Her Majesty’s Service
On this 60th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther
King, it is high time to expose the sordid role of the FBI and
other secret services in that crime, as well as in the assassina-
tions of John and Robert Kennedy and Malcolm X. That same
apparatus carried out the witch hunt against Lyndon LaRouche
and his associates, and is behind the current coup attempt
against Donald Trump.
***
Much of the major media in the United States went into full
celebratory mode when the New York Times published a page
one article on Jan. 11 reporting that leading officials of the FBI
engaged in discussions of whether Donald Trump is a “Russian
agent”, after he fired their director James Comey on May 9,
2017. The article was based in part on leaks of Congressional
testimony given in June 2018 by former FBI counsel Lisa Page.
According to the Times article, FBI officials were so con-
cerned by the firing of Comey that “they began investigating
whether he [Trump] had been working on behalf of Russia.”
Was he, they asked “knowingly working for Russia,” or has he
“unwittingly fallen under Moscow’s influence”? Buried in the
article was the admission that special counsel Robert Mueller
and the FBI have found no evidence of secret contacts with
Russian government officials. But the story was nonetheless
touted as proof that Trump should be impeached for collusion
with Russia.
But what the story actually provides was evidence that the
FBI has been actively engaged in a coup plot against President
Trump. Journalist Glenn Greenwald developed this in a pow-
erful way, making a point that has somehow escaped today’s
Democrats, who in their rabid rage against Trump have em-
braced the FBI, despite its history of such devious and unlaw-
ful deployments. His article, titled “The FBI’s Investigation of
Trump as a ‘National Security Threat’ Is Itself A Serious Danger
“was published in the Jan. 14 Intercept.
While there are many precedents of FBI witch hunts, includ-
ing J. Edgar Hoover’s efforts to induce Martin Luther King to
commit suicide, Greenwald focused on the case of Franklin
Roosevelt’s war-time Vice President, Henry Wallace, who was
surveilled, investigated and harassed for his alleged pro-Soviet
leanings. These investigations played a role in Wallace being
removed from the presidential ticket in 1944, to be replaced by
the dull-witted and easily manipulated Harry Truman.
Wallace, who served briefly as Commerce Secretary under
Truman, was fired for saying the post-war threat from Russia
“was exaggerated”, and that the U.S. should cooperate with
Russia, which had been Roosevelt’s policy. After his firing,
Greenwald writes, Wallace warned that the “British imperialis-
tic policy in the Near East,” that Truman was following, could
lead to war. We must look at the world “through our own
American eyes and not through the eyes of either the British
Foreign Office or a pro-British or anti-Russian press.” He add-
ed, “We must not let our Russian policy be guided or influenced
by those inside or outside the U.S. who want war with Russia,”
an obvious reference to the British.
Greenwald, who is no Trump supporter, has thus identified
the unholy alliance between today’s pro-war Democrats, cor-
rupt FBI and DOJ officials, fake news promoters such as the
NY Times, and the leading elements of British intelligence, all of
whom oppose Trump precisely because he wishes to cooperate
with Russia, rather than go to war against them.
Toward a Potential Opening
for “Mutually Assured Survival”
On Jan. 17, U.S. President Trump announced the release of a
new Missile Defense Review, the first since 2010. While the
report contains a great deal of dangerous geopolitical and
“cold war” assumptions, one part of it could potentially lead
to a strategic breakthrough, if correctly pursued. Trump em-
phasized that investments would be made in a “space-based
missile defense layer”, using new technologies and “not just in-
vesting more money into existing systems.” In this regard, the
plan would focus on the development of laser beam and par-
ticle beam defensive weapons which could, eventually, destroy
ICBMs in the boost stage and not just the re-entry stage.
A number of media noted that this aspect of the plan sounds
like a revival of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), announced
on March 23, 1983, by then President Ronald Reagan. What
is not mentioned is the role of Lyndon LaRouche in conceptual-
izing such a space-based missile defense program which, he
insisted, should be carried out jointly with the Soviet Union,
and be based on “new physical principles” and thus serve as a
“science driver” for all mankind. LaRouche’s objective was and
is to make nuclear weapons obsolete and end the era of Mutu-
ally Assured Destruction.
Helga Zepp-LaRouche was asked during a Jan. 19 webcast
for her evaluation of President Trump’s recent announcement,
EIR STRATEGIC ALERT 2 WEEKLY NEWSLETTER n°4 / 2019
in light of her husband’s proposal. “While it is very interest-
ing,” she said, “and many media actually referred to the SDI of
President Reagan, I would like to wait and see if it’s an offer
which includes Russia and China.” If the new plan is just one
more attempt by the “war party” in the United States to estab-
lish superiority in space, and to ensure that the U.S. could use
nuclear weapons without having to fear a counter-attack from
enemy missiles, then it will only increase the war danger and
instability in the world.
What became the SDI, Helga Zepp-LaRouche recalled, was
developed by Lyndon LaRouche in the beginning of the 1980s,
during the medium-range missile crisis in Europe, with its
launch-on-warning mechanism, which meant the danger of an
accidental nuclear war was extremely high. “So my husband
developed this proposal that the two superpowers, together,
would develop new weapons systems based on new physical
principles, install them together, and in that way, make the de-
fensive, for the first time, less costly than the offensive, and in
that process make nuclear weapons obsolete.”
Unfortunately, at the time, the hardliners on both sides, in
the United States and the Soviet Union, rejected the proposal,
which would have eventually led to the elimination of both the
Warsaw Pact and NATO.
As for Trump’s intention today, the key question is whether
he understands the need to cooperate on such a science driver
with Russia and China, in particular, and if so, if he can push it
through politically. “Let’s hope for the better,” Zepp-LaRouche
concluded, because President Trump is seeking a better rela-
tionship with Russia; he’s doing very good things now with
China; he wants to withdraw from Syria and Afghanistan. So,
I will give him the benefit of the doubt, and let’s see what it
turns out to be.”
US-China Trade Dispute:
Shades of Optimism Begin to Appear
The upcoming visit of Chinese Vice-Premier Liu He to Wash-
ington at the end of January is anxiously awaited around the
world. Liu is scheduled to discuss trade matters with US Trade
Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Ste-
ven Mnuchin. In placing draconian tariffs on Chinese goods,
President Trump was following the lead of Lighthizer, who has
had a persistently aggressive position on dealing with the trade
deficit with China. He may also be among those in the U.S. po-
litical establishment who would like not only to balance trade,
but also to throw a monkey-wrench into China’s development
by forcing the country to throw overboard its successful (Ham-
iltonian) industrial policy.
As long as President Trump has been fixated on eliminating
the trade deficit with China as the “solution” to U.S. economic
woes, he has leaned in the direction of Lighthizer. But given the
fact that the imposition of tariffs is now taking a greater toll
on the U.S. economy than the trade deficit ever did, he may be
re-thinking his options. In his telephone call with President Xi
Jinping at the beginning of the year, Trump expressed a certain
optimism that the issue could be resolved before the deadline
set for increasing the sanctions at the end of February.
According to an article in the Wall Street Journal of Jan. 17,
Mnuchin has a plan to lift some of the tariffs in order to push
the talks forward, although, as is usual, the White House has
denied it. While there has been general support among U.S.
businesses for more pressure on China to open its markets and
eliminate some of the outstanding barriers to foreign compa-
nies, nervousness is now growing over the ultimate effect of
the dispute, which is hitting U.S. companies as well. Not to
speak of American farmers, who are in danger of losing their
biggest market -- perhaps forever – in the absence of a settle-
ment. Wall Street immediately came to life at the very mention
of a possible trade agreement.
All bets are off until the negotiations are renewed at the end
of January, but there is a good chance for a compromise. The
Chinese may be willing to make some adjustments in their in-
dustrial policy, although few expect they will agree to dismantle
their successful program. And President Trump would be well
advised to move away from trade and in the direction of an in-
frastructure plan in order to bring the U.S. economy out of the
doldrums. If Trump turns to Lyndon LaRouche’s “Four Laws” to
make America a great industrial power again, both countries will
no doubt find that there is more that unites them than separates
them, not least of all, in the new adventures of space explora-
tion now opening up with the successful Chang’e-4 mission.
Lebanese President Aoun Proposes Arab
Reconstruction and Development Bank
Echoing the Schiller Institute’s continued proposals in recent
years, President Michel Aoun of Lebanon called, in his open-
ing speech of the Arab Economic Summit held in Beirut Jan.
20, for the creation of an Arab Bank for Reconstruction and
Development. The reconstruction of the Arab countries that
have been affected by war and terrorism in recent years should
become a priority, he said at the summit, which he had inten-
tionally titled “prosperity is the name of peace”.
“I hereby put forth my initiative aimed at adopting the strate-
gy of reconstruction for development, calling to set up efficient
mechanisms that live up to these challenges and to the require-
ments of reconstruction, at the top of which the establishment
of an Arab Bank for Reconstruction and Development,” Aoun
said. According to a wire published in the Kuwaiti News Agency
(KUNA), he also stressed the necessity of setting up efficient
mechanisms that live up to the requirements of reconstruction
and development in the Arab world. “Against this background,
I call on all the Arab institutions and financing funds to meet in
Beirut during the coming three months to discuss and finalize
these mechanisms,” he added.
In November 2017, the Schiller Institute had again issued
a call for the creation of a regional bank for reconstruction
and development, in the Special Report Extending the New Silk
Road to West Asia and Africa. Chapter 4, on “Financing Region-
al and National Infrastructure” outlined the credit mechanism
through which such a bank could function in accordance with
Lyndon LaRouche’s and Alexander Hamilton’s concepts of pro-
ductive credit. The same call had been published in the Arabic
translation of the EIR Special Report The New Silk Road Be-
comes the World Land-Bridge which was launched from Egypt
at a special event hosted by the Egyptian Transport Minister in
February 2016.
Then French Presidential candidate and Schiller Institute as-
sociate Jacques Cheminade had met with President Aoun in
Beirut in April 2017 to discuss the prospects for peace and de-
velopment in Syria and the wider region (https://larouchepac.
com/20170410/cheminade-meets-lebanese- president-michel-
aoun-makes-powerful-intervention-peace-middle). In his press
conference after the meeting, Cheminade emphasized the im-
portance of economic development as the basis for any durable
peace in the region.
In July 2018, Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged at the
China-Arab States Cooperation Forum to provide $20 billion
for a reconstruction fund targeting specifically Syria, Lebanon,
Jordan and Yemen in the context of the Arab countries joining
EIR STRATEGIC ALERT n° 4 / 2019 WEEKLY NEWSLETTER 3
the Belt and Road Initiative. Later, China and Arab officials met
in Lebanon to discuss the mechanism of a joint reconstruction
fund, incorporating the Chinese funds with Arab funds.
However, knowing that the wealthiest Arab countries are
British-controlled, and that the IMF and World Bank histori-
cally exert pressure on the poorer Arab countries, the proposal
might be derailed from its real intention.
Brexit: Theresa May’s Historic Defeat
Highlights the Demise of the Empire
Prime Minister Theresa May will likely go down in British his-
tory as suffering the biggest Parliamentary defeat in modern
times, after losing the vote on her Brexit deal (432 against to
only 202 for) on Jan. 15, with over 100 of her own Conserva-
tive MPs voting against their own government. Just one day
later, Theresa May was able to win a no confidence vote sub-
mitted by the Labour Party only because even her most vocal
opponents in her own party fear an election would throw many
of them into the political wilderness, and bring Labour Party
leader Jeremy Corbyn into Number 10 Downing Street.
May was pilloried in the media for her crushing defeat and
even the Daily Telegraph headlined its commentary on the vote
“It takes a special kind of skill to get that many people to unite
against you”.
While Corbyn has been accused of not defining his alternative
Brexit policy and is under pressure to back a second referen-
dum, he has made clear that he respects the choice made in
the last referendum. Although he has called for negotiating a
customs union with the EU, Corbyn is well aware that under
current EU rules, Labour cannot delivery on its economic and
social policies. He wants the UK to be freed from the EU’s single
market rules, especially as concerns prohibition of state sup-
port to industry and other state intervention in the economy.
Corbyn’s Brexit would be a far cry from the Tories’ and would
not be welcomed by the City of London or Brussels.
While any self-respecting politician would have resigned after
such a crushing defeat, Mrs. May is bungling along and will
submit another deal to parliament this week, at a time when
there appears to be no agreement even within her own cabinet.
All this points to the utter incompetence of Britain’s political
class, but also of the European Union.
On Dec. 22, weeks before the Brexit vote, The Economist
featured a column signed by “Bagehot” titled “The Elite that
Failed: Britain’s Political Crisis Exposes the Inadequacy of its
Leaders”. In the past year, he wrote, “the British body politic
has endured an astonishing list of maladies. The cabinet has lost
a foreign secretary and two Brexit secretaries, not to mention
lots of lesser fry. Parliament has voted to hold the government
in contempt. The Conservative Party has held a vote of no con-
fidence in the prime minister and left her badly wounded. And
it is going to get worse. There is no parliamentary majority
for any Brexit deal, and no way out of the impasse that won’t
break promises -- and possibly heads.”
He added that “the country’s model of leadership is disin-
tegrating. Britain is governed by a self-involved clique that
rewards group membership above competence, and self-con-
fidence above expertise. This chumocracy has finally met its
Waterloo.”
Glass-Steagall Enters the Fray
between Italy and the ECB
The confrontation between the Italian government and the
ECB over the issue of banking credit, which we announced last
week, reached a new level when Italian Deputy PM Luigi Di
Maio promoted a bank separation reform, on the lines of the
U.S. Glass-Steagall Act, in public statements on Jan. 18.
Di Maio was asked about the latest conflict with the EU in-
stitutions over banks’ non-performing loans (NPLs) during the
popular Porta a Porta TV show. This refers to guidelines issued
by ECB supervision to all Italian banks, requiring they put up
100% reserves for NPLS by 2016. That comes down to telling
Italy, he said, which has one-third of all NPLs, to “close your
banks”.
He went on to call for “a rule that separates speculative banks
from commercial banks, from those banks that make loans to
the real economy ... I mean, between banks that gamble on the
stock market and banks that use our deposits to lend to the
real economy. It is called ‘Glass-Steagall Act’ [in English] and we
must do it as soon as possible.”
Di Maio also called for a “Public Bank for Investments,” as
promised in the government coalition contract.
Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini has also accused
the ECB of wanting to destroy the Italian banking sector. He
described as “abusive” the ECB ultimatum requiring placing a
zero value on the backlog of non-performing loans (NPLs).
German Elite Pledges Allegiance
to the British Empire
In an article written on Jan. 19 for Neue Solidarität, Helga
Zepp-LaRouche blasts the appeal to the Britons by the Ger-
man establishment, calling on them to remain in the European
Union. Her article begins:
“If any proof were still needed that the German neo-liberal
leaders still think like the proconsuls of an occupied country,
then we have it in the form of the letter to the editor of so-
called ‘leading figures from German politics, industry and soci-
ety’ to the Times of London, in which ‘from the bottom of their
hearts’, they want the Britons to stay in the EU. And that, just
at the point where it is even being discussed in The Economist,
that the total impasse in which the British Establishment’s pol-
icy has maneuvered it, proves just one thing, and that is, that
the British model of leadership is ‘disintegrating’.”
Helga Zepp-LaRouche then quotes from the column signed
Bagehot in The Economist covered in our article on Brexit (cf.
above) on “The Elite that Failed”. She also cites an op-ed in the
“historically pro-British New York Times” headlined “The ma-
lign incompetence of the British Ruling Class”, which compares
the current fiasco of British policy to the use of brute imperial
power worldwide by woefully incapable elites at the time of
Lord Mountbatten ( https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/17/
opinion/sunday/brexit-ireland-empire.html). As for the former
mayor of London Ken Livingston, he comes to the conclusion
that ‘Brexit or not, things will get worse unless neo-liberalism
is brought to end’.”
While such “in-house publications of the declining British
Empire” recognize the symptoms of the failed imperial model,
“the obsequious attitude of so-called German leading figures is
shameful. In the above-mentioned letter to the Times, the sign-
ers say that the choice of a Brexit will of course be respected,
‘but Britons should equally know that we believe that no choice
is irreversible. Our door will always remain open, Europe is
home.’ They go on to say that they will miss the United King-
dom and its traditions. ‘Therefore, Britons should know: from
the bottom of our hearts, we want them to stay.’”
Helga Zepp-LaRouche goes on to note that “the subservience
of the German elite to the British Empire” is all the more scan-
dalous as it coincides with revelations on the way in which the
British Foreign Office and secret services, among others, are
EIR STRATEGIC ALERT 4 WEEKLY NEWSLETTER n° 4 / 2019
involved in massive information wars not only against Russia
and China, but also in other Western countries, via institutions
such as the Institute for Statecraft and Integrity Initiative.
Among the 31 signers are the leaders of major political
parties: Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (CDU), Andrea Nahles
(SPD), Annalena Baerbock and Robert Habeck (Greens); the
head of the German Industry Association Deiter Kempf, the
president of the Association of German Chambers of Commerce
and Industry Eric Schweitzer, the head of the DGB trade-union
Reiner Hoffmann, the chairman of Daimler Dieter Zetsche, the
CEO of Airbus Thomas Ender, etc.
(A facsimile of the letter is available at https://www.politico.
eu/article/germany-to-uk-we-will-miss-you/ )
Resistance to “Green” Insanity Growing
in Germany’s Lausitz Region
The region of Lausitz in the east of Germany has turned into a
battleground for the defense of industry against plans to turn it
into a pilot project for “de-carbonization.” The national govern-
ment and the two regional governments of Brandenburg and
Saxony all agree that lignite mining in this region must stop
somewhere between 2030 and 2050 at the latest. Obsessed
with the global warming issue, they claim that the future of
Lausitz lies in a “carbon-free”, green economy with “renew-
ables” such as solar, wind and biomass.
Up to 80,000 jobs in mining and related branches are to be
sacrificed, and an entire industrial sector that is crucial today
for the supply of electricity and home heating is to be eliminat-
ed. Since no one really expects the “renewables” to be reliable
enough, electricity will have to be imported from neighboring
Poland and the Czech Republic -- generated from “dirty” coal
power and for the Czech share, from nuclear power as well.
A broad coalition against these dangerous pipe dreams has
been forming among local industrial institutions, chambers of
industry and commerce, municipal administrations (some 50 of
which are organized in the “Lausitz Roundtable”), and among
citizens -- particularly those who are still employed in the min-
ing sector. In that context, an event was held on Jan. 16 at
Schwarzheide, a center for chemical production, by some 80
local institutions and industry representatives.
A leading official of the local branch of the Swiss logistics
company Bertschi, who had just come back from China, gave a
very future-oriented outline of how the region’s rail transport
grid needs to be upgraded to tap into the full potential of the
New Silk Road. Bertschi has massively expanded in recent years
into Russia and China, with an emphasis on developing rail
freight between Chongqing and Europe, mainly dry and liquid
chemicals transported in special containers. The region of Laus-
itz, just at the German border with Poland, is directly linked to
the northern and southern Silk Roads by rail, and that is where
its future lies, according to this Bertschi representative.
Unfortunately, environmental nonsense has also infected in-
dustry, judging from the utterings of a leading representative
of the BASF chemical production site in Schwarzheide, who
stated last week that his company hopes to “not produce a
single gram of CO2” by 2030. How chemical production would
still be possible in such conditions remains a mystery...
Industrial Development of Africa
Is the Answer to Migration and Terrorism
In the past week, some African and European leaders have re-
iterated the idea that it is only by developing and industrializing
Africa, with a focus on the Sahel region, that the root causes of
migration and terrorism can be extirpated.
This concept was at the center of a two-day visit (Jan. 15-
16) by Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte to Niger and
Chad, two member countries of the Lake Chad Basin Commit-
tee, and of separate statements made by Nigerian President
Buhari and by a representative of German industry.
At the joint press conference in Ndjamena with Chad Presi-
dent Idriss Déby, Conte referred to the Transaqua project for
the revitalization of Lake Chad as an example of development
programs. European countries, Conte said, “cannot remain in-
sensitive to the drying up of Lake Chad. If it goes on, there will
be increased misery and thus increased emigration and terror-
ist threat. If we don’t have a vision on those issues, we will
be overwhelmed. I reminded President Déby that the possibly
oldest project to tackle the drying out of Lake Chad was made
by Italian experts. There is a project of dams and canals to pro-
vide irrigation. This means laying the basis for the development
of those territories and therefore better controlling migration
flows.”
(The feasibility study for Transaqua, which Italy is financing
with a grant, should start as soon as the joint LCBC/Italy Com-
mittee meets early this year.)
Both in Niger and Chad, Conte complained that the EU is not
doing enough for the development of Africa and called for the
EU Trust Fund for Africa to be enlarged.
At the joint press conference in Niamey, Niger President Ma-
hamadou Issofou thanked Italy for the support of the Sahel-5
Multinational Force to fight terrorism, but repeatedly stressed
that “the solution is developing Africa, industrializing Africa.”
The importance of refilling Lake Chad was reiterated dur-
ing the same week by Nigerian President Buhari, who warned
that “the about 40 million population in the region will pose
adverse migration and security challenges to the world” if the
lake dries up completely. He called for a greater commitment
from the international community on redirecting water to the
Lake Chad. “Now, whenever I go for any global meeting or
visit a country, I will always draw the world’s attention to the
adverse effect of climate change on the lake, and the resulting
negative effects.”
It is noteworthy that a representative of German industry
has also strongly criticized the European failure to bring real
economic development to Africa. In an interview with the De-
cember issue of the Austrian journal CorporAID, Judith Helf-
mann-Hundack of the German Afrika-Verein says she is much
puzzled by “the innovations hype. Just because people write
about apps does not make them create real value. The shoe that
is going to be sold via an app is not produced. And, then there
are hundreds of apps with advice about health, pregnancy, and
nutrition. I think what we simply need is a solid industrializa-
tion, skilled laborers who build good homes and roads, trained
electricians that can lay reliable power lines. What is desirable is
better production in agriculture, higher harvests.”
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