E.I.R.STRATEGIC WEEKLY NEWSLETTER

E.I.R.STRATEGIC WEEKLY NEWSLETTER

ALERT Volume 33, No. 18, May 2, 2019

A Resounding Success for the Second Belt and Road Forum in Beijing The Second Belt and Road Forum for International Coopera- tion that took place in Beijing on April 25-27 consolidated what has become the largest initiative for infrastructure and connectivity in modern history. Some 150 countries, includ- ing 37 heads of state or government, and 90 international organizations attended the event, in addition to thousands of entrepreneurs. New economic deals of one kind or another amounting to some $64 billion were signed, and many new plans laid for the future, amid a refreshing atmosphere of optimism.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, in his keynote address to the opening session, vowed to create “an even brighter future” for cooperation in the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative. The aim, he said, is to jointly meet the challenges and risks confronting mankind and deliver “win-win outcomes and com- mon development”.

The Chinese President also presented a list of major policy steps that China has undertaken as part of its “Opening Up” strategy, which read like some of the major components of the economic and trade deal now being negotiated with President Trump, and which is reportedly nearly finalized. Among those steps: greater market access for foreign investment, more im- ports of goods and services, intellectual property protection, and “a binding mechanism” for honoring international agree- ments. The latter has been a central sticking point in negotia- tions with the US.

The Roundtable discussion on April 27 with the 37 heads plus state and government, issued a final communiqué that also appends a list of projects and development corridors that are being built under the Belt and Road Initiative. One of them is the “New Eurasian Land-Bridge”, to which Helga Zepp-La- Rouche responded that it made her “very happy”, since the Schiller Institute has campaigned for precisely that project “for almost 30 years, since the collapse of the Soviet Union.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin was a special guest at the Forum, seated next to President Xi during the Roundtable. He fully endorsed the Chinese long-term projects, which “abso- lutely” meet Russian interests, as well as greater cooperation between the Eurasian Economic Union and the Belt and Road Initiative.

Xi Jinping used the occasion once again to call on other coun- tries to join the BRI, with no ideological or geopolitical strings

attached. A number of European countries have responded fa- vorably, although others, as well as the EU overall, have not yet admitted the failure of the old paradigm (cf. below).

Switzerland Signs MoU with Belt and Road Initiative, Other Europeans Strengthen Cooperation German Economics Minister Peter Altmaier boasted at the Belt and Road Forum that “the four big European countries” (Ger- many, France, Spain, United Kingdom) would not sign memo- randa of understanding with China. But what he did not say is that a fifth big country -- Italy – has signed such an MoU, as have no less than 22 countries in Europe. The latest one to join is Switzerland, a major industrial player in Europe, al- though not in the EU, which signed a memorandum during the Forum.

Asked about criticism coming from Brussels, the spokesman for Swiss President Ueli Maurer noted that “We are a sovereign country, and we take our own independent decisions.” Maurer himself, in an interview with Xinhua, called the Belt and Road Initiative a rare long-term strategic plan, which has created a new dimension for the development of the world economy. The landmark projects for sustainable development to be launched in the near future, he said, will lay the basis for better global development in the future.

Another prominent Swiss supporter of cooperation with China is Rudolf Minsch, chief economist of Economiesuisse, the country’s largest federation of businesses, with 100,000 member companies employing 2 million workers altogether. On the eve of Maurer’s departure for Beijing, he pointed out that is important for the Swiss economy to engage in unbiased cooperation with China, because the BRI enables countries to develop their infrastructure which is the basis for economic growth and development of prosperity. Switzerland, with its high-tech products, depends on developing markets in prosper- ous countries, he added.

Positive reactions also came from other EU heads of state or government attending the Forum, as well as from the Ser- bian President. Italian PM Giuseppe Conte, who just recently bucked Brussels by signing an MoU with Xi Jinping in Rome (cf. SAS 13, 14/19), held a bilateral with Xi in Beijing, after which the latter called for efforts to “make China-Italy cooperation a model of China-Europe cooperation under the BRI.” Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, for his part, paid a five day visit to

China, including participation in the Forum, at the head of a 26 member business delegation.

As for Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, he stressed that his country does not want to be “the border between West and East but rather the bridge... a global hub for transport, energy and trade.” The Chinese-owned port of Piraeus, Tsipras said, “is developing into a global gateway to Europe for products coming from Chinese and Asian ports via the Suez Canal.”

Czech President Milos Zeman called the BRI a “fantastic in- frastructure project,.. I encourage Czech companies to partici- pate in the construction of the new Silk Road, especially railway construction, we have good tradition in this area.” For Hungar- ian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, the Belt and Road Initiative is not a threat, but rather a great opportunity.

Serbian President Aleksander Vucic stressed that “unlike others” China, as a great power, “does not exert pressure on Serbia,” and that his country would “continue the excellent co- operation that exists between our two countries.”

Russiagate Was an Attempted Coup In a 45 minute interview with Sean Hannity on Fox TV April 25, President Donald Trump declared the Russiagate investiga- tion was an attempted “overthrow of the government,” and said he will fight to expose it, and bring down the criminals responsible for it.

“This was a coup,” Trump said, in his sharpest statement yet, following the release of special counsel Mueller’s report in late March. “I think it’s possibly the biggest scandal in political history of our country... it’s far bigger than Watergate, because it means so much. This wasn’t stealing information from an of- fice in the Watergate apartments. This was an attempted coup. It’s inconceivable. Like a third world country.”

After naming the names of some of those involved, such as former FBI Director Comey, former CIA Director Brennan, and Obama’s Director of National Intelligence Clapper, Trump said an investigation must see “how high up it [responsibil- ity for the coup] goes,” implying that, in addition to Hillary Clinton, the role of Obama must be scrutinized. He added that all the FISA documents, and more, that relate to the charges against him are “going to be declassified....It’ll all be declassified.”

Despite Hannity’s effort to get him to attack Russia, claiming that the Russians were working with the Clinton team against him, Trump singled out Russia and China for praise in regard to the North Korea diplomacy. President Putin, he said, “made the statement that it’s great to be able to help us with Kim Jong Un and North Korea. We all want to get rid of the nuclear weap- ons, Russia wants to, China wants to. President Xi has been a great help. We’re working on a great trade deal.”

The exchange with Hannity occurred only hours after Trump tweeted about an interview with former CIA analyst Larry Johnson on One America News Network (OANN), in which Johnson identified the role of British intelligence in coordinat- ing with Obama’s intelligence team in “spying” on the Trump campaign. Trump tweeted, “Former CIA analyst Larry Johnson accuses United Kingdom Intelligence of helping Obama Admin- istration Spy on the 2016 Trump Presidential campaign. @ OANN. WOW! It’s now just a question of time before the truth comes out, and when it does, it will be a beauty!”

The truth IS coming out, more and more, in part because, in addition to the courageous fight Trump is waging, intelligence professionals, such as Johnson and former NSA Technical Di- rector Bill Binney are speaking out about the unconstitutional nature of the coup attempt, together with the LaRouche move-

ment (cf. below). Yet, incredibly enough, the so-called main- stream media has a nearly complete blackout of the US Presi- dent’s charges of an attempt to overthrow the government, or only cover them to ridiculize them.

Former Intelligence Analysts Highlight GCHQ Role in Coup Attempt The April 25 Fireside Chat program of the LaRouche Political Action Committee featured former NSA Technical Director Bill Binney, former CIA analyst Larry Johnson, who had also been part of the State Department’s Counter-Terror Unit, and Barba- ra Boyd of LaRouche PAC (https://larouchepac.com/20190425/ now-time-end-sorcerer-s-spell-and-take-country-back). They engaged in a thoroughly riveting discussion on Robert Muel- ler’s entirely nonsensical report trying to justify how he spent $35 million investigating Russiagate when it was known from the beginning that there was never any conspiracy between the Trump Campaign and Russia. Instead, there was a concerted effort from British and American intelligence agencies to smear Donald Trump as a Russian agent, a full-scale escalation of that effort involving multiple FBI, CIA, and GCHQ components once Trump became the Republican nominee, and the explosion of a coup attempt against the incoming Administration when he won the Presidency.

Bill Binney said he found no evidence whatsoever in the Mu- eller report demonstrating that Russians had hacked the DNC or John Podesta’s computer, although that fraud is promoted in page after page of the report. Binney has previously done fo- rensics on the Wikileaks documents, that proves that they were the product of a download via a thumb drive or storage device rather than a hack by the Russians. He has also demonstrated, as have others, that Guccifer 2.0 is not a Russian GRU persona, but a fake persona.

Johnson revealed that Britain’s GCHQ began a calculated sur- veillance operation covering everyone in the Trump Campaign in late 2015, which is how they targeted George Papadopoulos, the young Trump campaign volunteer working in London, for a series of entrapment operations which created the pretext for the FBI’s counterintelligence operation, codenamed Cross-Fire Hurricane.

Boyd focused on the reported fact that John Brennan initially demanded that the completely phony report by former MI6 agent Christopher Steele be included, verbatim, in the Obama Administration’s January 2017 intelligence “assessment” that Russia meddled in the election in support of Donald Trump. Had that phony piece of intelligence been directly endorsed, the putsch would have become completely operational just before the President’s inauguration. “How close were we to tanks on the White House lawn, so to speak?”, Boyd asked

Italian Government Plans to Refund Victims of the Bank Bail-Ins According to guidelines just issued by the Italian government, depositors and owners of subordinate bonds who were “bailed- in” will be refunded up to €200,000. The measure, which is to be financed with €1.5 billion over three years, applies to customers of two Veneto banks, Banca Popolare di Vicenza and Veneto Banca, liquidated in 2017, and four banks in central Italy -- Banca Etruria, Carife, Banca Marche and Carichieti -- liquidated in 2015.

The measure challenges current EU law, but has been legiti- mized by a March 21 ruling of the European Court of Justice, which found that the European Commission decision forcing the resolution and bail-in of those banks, was illegal and pro-

EIR STRATEGIC ALERT WEEKLY NEWSLETTER 2 N° 18 / 2019

ceeded to invalidate it (cf. SAS 15/19). That ruling should set a precedent for the entire European Union.

Ukraine Election: Stepping Away from Disaster In the April 21 run-off of the Presidential election in Ukraine, actor Volodymyr Zelensky vaporized incumbent President Petro Poroshenko, receiving nearly three-fourths (73.22%) of the vote, with a 62% turnout. The gap would have been even greater, but for the exclusion of 8 to 10 million voters. Sev- eral million people from the easternmost provinces, Lugansk and Donetsk, could not vote, either because they reside in ar- eas that declared independence after the Feb. 2014 coup in Kiev, or because they are war-zone refugees living elsewhere in Ukraine. At least 2.5 million Ukrainians have relocated to Rus- sia since the Donbass civil war broke out, but the Kiev regime offered not a single voting precinct at its consulates there. For the 1.2 million or more Ukrainian labor migrants in Poland, only a handful of voting locations were opened. The Commu- nist Party was not permitted to field a candidate, and Progres- sive Socialist Party of Ukraine leader Dr. Natalia Vitrenko, a two-time Presidential candidate who received 11% of the vote in 1999, was barred from the election by illegal Justice Minis- try stonewalling of the PSPU’s official registration.

Even so, the election outcome was a resounding rejection of the economic “reforms” of Poroshenko’s five-year term, through which he sought to comply with International Monetary Fund conditionalities through ever stricter austerity. Household in- come peaked in 2013, and average wages have fallen 22% since then. Ukraine is now the poorest country in Europe!

The outcome was also a rejection of Poroshenko’s pursuit of the Donbass civil war, in which 13,000 people have died. Zelensky has pledged to relaunch attempts to implement the 2015 Minsk II accords among Russia, Ukraine and the Don- bass insurgent leaders, co-sponsored by France and Germany. He says that he wants to reach out to the Donbass population with humanitarian help; besides frequent shelling of residential areas by the Ukrainian Army, people there remain cut off from nationally disbursed services like old-age pensions.

Some commentators in the West who are wedded to us- ing Ukraine as a tool for confronting Russia militarily, joined Poroshenko in smearing Zelensky as “pro-Russian” or in the pocket of businessman and ex-Governor of Dnepropetrovsk Ihor Kolomoysky. Others depict him as a lightweight, because he is a comedian. In reality, Zelensky has a law degree and comes from a family of Jewish intellectuals. His TV production company Kvartal 95 emerged from champion performances in famous comedy competitions called KVN (Club of Merry and Inventive People), of which sharp-witted repartee is the hall- mark.

Natalia Vitrenko, in a pre-election video statement, warned that Ukraine would not survive a Poroshenko victory. She called on people to vote for Zelensky, and then hold him to the principle that is the name of his party: “Servant of the People.” After the election, Vitrenko publicly offered her help, as an economist, to the new President, outlining a range of ready-to-go policies to break with the IMF’s demands, stop the drain of Ukraine’s resources into the offshore bank accounts of the owners of privatized industries, and generate credit within Ukraine through banking reform that includes Glass-Steagall- type separation of bank lending from financial speculation.

As his polices are not fully spelled out, there will be a battle for the new President’s ear. And it will be difficult for Zelensky to do anything quickly, since the Supreme Rada (Parliament)

is dominated by radical nationalists elected in 2014. Already, Speaker Andriy Parubiy, the Euromaidan commandant impli- cated in the sniper shootings of Feb. 20, 2014, engineered passage on April 25 of a long-debated tough law mandating the use of Ukrainian alone -- not Russian, Hungarian, Romanian or other languages spoken in Ukraine -- in many more settings than hitherto. The Parliament has approval/veto power over key ministerial appointments. And it cannot be dissolved by the new President until his inauguration, the date of which is set by the same Rada, and can in no case be dissolved in the six months preceding the Nov. 27 Parliamentary elections.

Sri Lanka Terror Attacks Target Belt and Road Initiative On Easter Sunday, 10 suicide bombers attacked three luxury hotels and Christian churches on Sri Lanka, killing more than 250 people and wounding 500 others, in the worst terror at- tack in South Asia since the horrific bombings in Mumbai, India in 2008. The coordinated assault on April 21, some security experts suggested, would have taken years to organize, and yet it is attributed to a little known Islamic extremist Sri Lankan based group known as the National Thowheeth Jama’ath (NTJ) under the direction of the Islamic State terror group.

The intensity of the attacks left everyone asking why and how it was possible. However, when one asks “cui bono”, the answer can only be the British Empire’s enemies of the Belt and Road Initiative. Their propaganda offensive has often tar- geted Sri Lanka as a victim of Beijing’s alleged “debt trap”. Now that this spate of attacks has all but killed the country’s tourist industry, its third largest source of foreign exchange, it may indeed have serious problems in paying the debt.

Sri Lanka is one of China’s main partners in the Belt and Road Initiative, as a major hub for all of South Asia on the New Mari- time Silk Road. The country has three major deep water ports, in Colombo, Trincomalee Harbor and the Chinese built Hambana- tota port which was leased to the China Merchants Port Hold- ings Company. Located at the foot of the subcontinent, they are ideally located as transhipment ports for container ships making multiple ports of call beginning in East Asia and heading towards Europe and North America via the Suez Canal.

They already serve as major transhipments ports for all of South Asia, as most of the ports there are in geographically inconvenient locations and lack the deep waters necessary to accomodate the large and fast containerships.

Since 80% of the transshipment traffic is bound for India, it is here that the interests of China, India and Sri Lanka come together in a “win win” cooperation. India is expected to in- vest $200 million to develop the Trincomalee port in the ethnic Tamil north of the country, which is very close to the Palk Strait which separates India from Sri Lanka. India has already rebuilt the railway from Jaffna, in the far north to Colombo in the south, and is looking into investments in the airports.

Destabilizing Sri Lanka through terrorism and communal violence is aimed at sabotaging such developments. In a re- port on the recent bombings, China’s Global Times compared the situation to Xinjiang province, where British-led forces are campaigning against China’s offensive to eliminate the terrorist separatists among the Uyghur Muslim minority, who are sup- ported by those backing the Islamic State.

Today, the British Empire hand behind the terrorist attacks wears the Muslim glove, tomorrow it might find a Sinhalese one, or chose a provocation in India or elsewhere on the Belt and Road. Security services need to deal with such gloves, but they must never forget the hand inside them.

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Lake Chad: UN Will Help Raise Money to Implement Transaqua Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari has brought UN Sec- retary-General Antonio Guterres on board the effort to raise the $50 billion needed to finance the Transaqua project to refill Lake Chad. That figure was proposed at the International Con- ference on Lake Chad that took place in February 2018 and approved the integrated water-transfer and multi-infrastruc- ture plan known as Transaqua as the only feasible solution to replenish the lake (cf. SAS 8, 10/18).

The project involves transferring up to 100 billion cubic me- ters of water per year from the Congo basin to the Lake Chad basin through a system of dams, water reservoirs and canals that intercept all the right-side tributaries of the Congo river. The plan is also referred to as the “inter-basin water-transfer”. The government of Italy is co-financing the feasibility study of the project.

President Buhari revealed through his media aide on April 24 that UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres had accepted to co-chair a special fundraising session to put together the $50 billion needed. According to Nigerian media, Buhari had submitted the co-chairmanship proposal to him, pointing out that such a special forum was necessary in view of the amount of capital required for the project, which is not available to the Lake Chad Basin countries.

The shrinking of Lake Chad, which is down to only 10% of its previous size, has led to famine and jeopardized the eco- nomic life of the 30 million inhabitants in the area. It has also had a major impact on international security both by encourag- ing illegal migration toward Europe, and by strengthening ter- rorist groups, including the Islamic State in West Africa (ISWA) and Boko Haram, which have recruited militias and built their strongholds in the region.

President Buhari has also asked Qatar to join the financial effort during a meeting in Abuja on April 23 with Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-thani. “We need help with the recharge of Lake Chad, as it is not a project that the concerned countries can handle alone,” he said, adding: “Recharging the lake will bring back fishing, farming, animal husbandry, and the youths won’t be attracted by insurgency or illegal migration. We want Qatar to be involved because of the humanitarian nature of the endeavour.” This was the first visit of an emir of Qatar to Ni- geria. The two heads of state also discussed investments in oil, power, aviation, agriculture, railways and other sectors.

Schiller Institute Role Acknowledged by Chinese Media In the run-up to the second Belt and Road Forum, the input of the international Schiller Institute in promoting cooperation wth the BRI, was noted in various Chinese media. A sampling: * Beijing Review: on April 17, the prestigious Beijing Review published an article by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, titled, “Roads to the West -- Geopolitical Spectacles Make it Impossible to See the Solutions.” She writes that “For the last several years or so, Western media and mainstream politicians have chosen to largely ignore the Belt and Road Initiative, which Chinese President Xi Jinping proposed in 2013. The initiative, consist- ing of the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-Century Mari- time Silk Road, efficiently addresses the infrastructure needs of developing countries, which the West simply pretended not to exist.

“But, at a certain point it dawned on the Western establish- ment that China was not only building an enormous amount of

railway lines, ports, bridges, power plants and industrial parks in Asia, Africa and even in parts of Europe, but that the pros- pect of poverty alleviation offered by China instilled an unprec- edented spirit of optimism.”

Zepp-LaRouche concludes that Europe, which is now so deeply divided, needs to unify around win-win cooperation with China and the joint development of third-party markets, but also “by bringing the rich heritage of European classical culture to the concert of nations. If European nations reconnect to their own cultural traditions, they don’t have to worry about China, instead we will have a dialogue of the best humanity has produced.” * Chinese language CCTV. On April 26, China’s main news channel, CCTV-13, aired snippets of an interview done with Helga Zepp-LaRouche in February and shown at the time, but which the producers chose to re-transmit just prior to the live broadcast of Xi Jinping’s opening remarks to the Belt and Road Forum (cf. SAS 12/19). CCTV-13 also aired a short snippet with Jason Ross of the Schiller Institute ridiculizing talk of a Chinese “debt trap” in Africa. http://tv.cntv.cn/video/C10598 /3cc0a617f77946f9b86c5a759b6d5617, http://tv.cntv.cn/ video/C10598/526d5198db104dfcb10242a85daacc5b. * Le Figaro and Le Monde. A full-page paid supplement on the Belt and Road Initiative was published on April 26 in two major French dailies, Le Figaro and Le Monde. It is comprised of three articles by People’s Daily journalists (which are shortened in the Le Monde version), including one on the Schiller Institute’s book-length dossier headlined “All You Need To Know about the ‘World Land-Bridge.’” The first two give updates on the ongoing great Silk Road projects. The third, notes: “Last year, on Nov. 6, the Schiller Institute, an international think tank, published the French version of its dossier The New Silk Road, a World Land-Bridge To Put an End to Geopolitics. The pre- sentation, which took place in the Paris 5th arrondissement municipality, recommends countries take part in the Belt and Road Initiative. Contrary to the analysts on the other side of the Atlantic, often prisoners of the ‘geopolitical’ software in which the winner always wins to the detriment of the loser, we try to show here that a new win-win paradigm is not only possible but indispensable. Whereas the New Silk Roads must be known because of the major opportunity they represent for international trade, above all they must be known, explains this dossier, as a multilateral alternative to financial globalization, a true leverage to restart growth and a chance for peace. Helga Zepp-LaRouche, president and founder of the Institute, affirms that since its launching in 2013, the BRI has shaped the world. The Chinese initiative will have a growing influence over more and more countries and improve the future.”

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 Germany

EIR STRATEGIC ALERT WEEKLY NEWSLETTER 4 N° 18 / 2019