ALERT Volume 34, No. 20, May 14, 2020

E.I.R.STRATEGIC WEEKLY NEWSLETTER 

ALERT Volume 34, No. 20, May 14, 2020 

Victory in Europe Day Celebrated by Schiller Institute with Call to End Geopolitics and War On May 9, the Schiller Institute held an online conference on the 75th Anniversary of the Victory in Europe, bringing to- gether representatives of the United States, Russia, Germany, France, and others. The purpose was to reflect on the past, but also on the urgency of international cooperation among nations today against common enemies, including hunger, dis- ease, economic breakdown and geopolitical conflicts, which if left unchecked, threaten to lead a new world war, aggravated by the collapse of the trans-Atlantic financial system. 

Indeed, it is essential to acknowledge and understand the mistakes that led to tragedies such as the Second World War, lest they be repeated. In that context, the demonization of Russia and China needs to be completely exposed and re- jected. For that, the role of the United States is key, and the outcome of the fight now raging in Washington over foreign policy is crucial, as the following example illustrates. 

The commemorations this year of the first meeting on the Elbe between Soviet and American soldiers on April 25, 1945, as well as of the end of the war, celebrated in Russia on May 9, were planned to be major events in Russia, which would have contributed greatly to reducing the tensions between the so-called “West” and Russia. Unfortunately, the lockdown due to the Coronavirus prevented them from taking place. 

Nonetheless, on April 25, Presidents Trump and Putin spoke by telephone and issued a joint communique which concluded: “The ‘Spirit of the Elbe’ is an example of how our countries can put aside differences, build trust, and cooperate in pursuit of a greater cause.” Just two weeks later, on May 7, the two Presidents again held a telephone call, and discussed, according to the Kremlin readout, “the urgent problems of our time, including maintaining strategic stability, the anti-ter- rorist struggle, settlement of regional conflicts, and gaining control of the epidemic.” President Trump stated afterwards that the Russiagate affair was “an absolutely dishonest hoax” which made bilateral relations difficult, adding that he hoped new developments would prove that conclusively (cf. below on General Flynn). 

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had a very different narrative on that occasion. He rounded up the foreign minis- ters of Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia to put out a joint 

statement, which marked the end of World War II not as the defeat of fascism but rather as the beginning of 50 years of communist oppression by Russia in all of Eastern Europe! In other words, more confrontation 

Similarly, the accusations against China for deliberately spreading the Coronavirus, if not worse, are tirelessly repeat- ed by Mike Pompeo and the neocons and geopolitical fanatics in both major parties, while President Trump is under tre- mendous pressure to toe the same line, ostensibly to bolster his chances in the upcoming elections (cf. the following slug). 

The Issue of Cooperation with China: Who’s Peddling Fake News? Ever since “Phase I” of a trade deal with China was signed by President Trump on Jan. 15, 2020, the neocons and their co- thinkers have done their best to prevent positive bilateral rela- tions. More recently, they have used the Coronavirus as the casus belli. At the heart of the escalation are City of London/ British intelligence operatives, including the Henry Jackson Society (cf. SAS 19/20). 

Now, the issue of “who is soft on China” threatens to be- come a leading theme of the 2020 presidential campaign in the United States. The Biden team has begun running ads, showing Trump praising China, to claim that he is allowing Beijing to get away with killing Americans. It is true that Trump had repeatedly commended China, for example tweet- ing back on Jan. 24 that the U.S. “greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency,” and again on Feb. 23, saying that President Xi is “working very, very hard,” and “doing a very good job.” 

Yet as the pressure on Trump has escalated, from within his administration and from his supposed supporters from Fox News, he indicated there is an investigation underway of whether Beijing did run a cover up of what its scientists knew about the spreading pandemic, to determine if what they al- legedly did was deliberate, or a mistake. Key to the anti-China hysteria paraded on Fox are former Trump official and China- hater Steve Bannon; trade negotiator Peter Navarro, who pushes the slogan “China lied, People Died”; and Secretary of State Pompeo, who claims there is “enormous evidence” that the Chinese are “hiding and obfuscating” the truth. China “continues to pose a threat to the world,” he blustered, but said he cannot present the evidence he claims to possess. 

On the other hand, Dr. Anthony Fauci, a leading adviser of President Trump on COVID-19, again disputed the claim that the Coronavirus was produced in a Wuhan Institute of Virology laboratory, in an interview published May 5 with National Geo- graphic. The WHO’s Emergency Program director, Dr. Mike Ryan, and other colleagues of his have stated that the WHO has seen no evidence of a man-made origin of the virus. 

A blatant piece of “fake news”, that circulated internation- ally, has now also been debunked. Australia’s Daily Telegraph reported on May 2, that the intelligence services of theFive Eyes (US, UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand ) had compiled “a 15-page dossier” accusing China of a deadly cover-up. That report was denied by British and Australian intelligence in an article published in the Guardian on May 5. 

That was confirmed by Werner Sczesny, chairman of the German Intelligence Service BND, who told leaders of the For- eign Policy Committee of the Bundestag that the Five Eyes agencies his service contacted knew nothing about such a joint paper. He added that the report may have been a misunder- standing, but “it could also be a targeted fake news.” 

German Constitutional Court Throws Monkey Wrench into the EU Machine Six weeks ago, our newsletter wrote that the EU might not survive the most serious crisis in its history. It has just been delivered a potentially deadly blow by the German Consti- tutional Court in a historic ruling handed down on May 5. The German court invalidated a previous ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) that rejected com- plaints raised against the European Central Bank for violating its mandate, on grounds that the CJEU was acting ultra vires, i.e., beyond its jurisdiction. 

(A press release in English on the ruling is available at https:// www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/SharedDocs/Pressemittei- lungen/EN/2020/bvg20-032.htm.) 

The German Court also criticized the ECB policy on its mer- its, stating that the bank’s monetary policy has had more neg- ative effects than positive results, thus violating the principle of “proportionality”. It thus issued a three-month ultimatum to the ECB to argue its case, otherwise Germany will pull out of ECB programs. 

The ruling came in response to the complaint filed by former CSU vice-president Peter Gauweiler and a group of economists, including former AFD members Bernd Lücke and Hans-Olaf Henkel. 

The ruling of the Constitutional Court of Karlsruhe strikes two holy cows of the European Union system: the supremacy of so-called European Law over the national law of member states, and the independence of the central bank. The official press release on ruling reads: “even under the Lisbon Treaty, the Member States remain the ‘Masters of the Treaties’ and the EU has not evolved into a federal state (....). The Europe- an Union (...) is based on the multi-level cooperation of sov- ereign states, constitutions, administrations and courts”. In that way, the German Court is justified in rejecting the earlier decision of the CJEU for failing “to give consideration to the importance and scope of the principle of proportionality”. 

In addition, the Karlsruhe Court found that the Public Sector Purchase Programme (PSPP) of the European Cen- tral Bank is actually a bank bailout operation: It “affects the commercial banking sector by transferring large quantities 

of high-risk government bonds to the balance sheets of the Eurosystem, which significantly improves the economic situ- ation of the relevant banks and increases their credit rating. The economic policy effects of the PSPP furthermore include its economic and social impact on virtually all citizens, who are at least indirectly affected, inter alia as shareholders, ten- ants, real estate owners, savers or insurance policy holders. For instance, there are considerable losses for private savings [emphasis added]. Moreover, as the PSPP lowers general in- terest rates, it allows economically unviable companies to stay on the market.” 

In conclusion, the ECB must present a complete and con- vincing justification of its program within three months, otherwise “the Bundesbank may thus no longer participate in the implementation and execution of the ECB decisions at issue... On the same condition, the Bundesbank must ensure that the bonds already purchased and held in its portfolio are sold based on a – possibly long term – strategy coordinated with the Eurosystem”. 

Eurocrats Opt for Confrontation to Save Their System The Karlsruhe ruling is regarded by pro-Eurostate circles as a declaration of war. Franz Mayer, an attorney who has legally represented the German Bundestag in all cases against EU in- stitutions in front of the Constitutional Court, said in an inter- view on May 6 that “even if the ruling is officially against the ECB, which is the object of complaint, it really goes against the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). When the legal binding force [of the CJEU] is directly challenged, the whole European project is immediately threatened”. He added that it would be “opportune” for the EU Commission to initi- ate a legal procedure for violation of the treaties. 

Mayers’ proposal was picked up by the head of the Ger- man Green Party faction in the European Parliament, Sven Giegold, and endorsed by EU Commission chairman Ursula von der Leyen, who confirmed that the Commission is analyz- ing the ruling and “on the basis of our assessment we will explore further steps, including a procedure for violation of the treaties.” 

On a similar wavelength, former Germany Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU), now chairman of the Bundestag, raised his concern about the future of the euro. “It may well be that the existence of the euro will now be called into question by other EU member states as well, because every national constitutional court could establish its own ruling,” Schäuble told the Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland news chain. He as- sessed that it would not be easy to counter the Court’s ruling, because “independent institutions [like the ECB] which are not democratically legitimized and controlled, need to remain within their mandate and not over-interpret it.” 

In France, Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire regretted that the ruling “does not help stability”, and restated that “Europe- an Treaties guarantee the independence of the ECB.” Banque de France Governor François Villeroy de Galhau stated that “criticizing ECB independence and its concern for price stabil- ity, the two pillars of the central bank, seems to me not only unnecessary but also dangerous.” 

As for a panicked leading architect of the euro system, Jacques Attali tweeted: “The German constitutional court de- cision this morning is of vital importance for the future of 

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the euro, the European economy and jobs in Europe. I hope European leaders will react quickly and in a unified way, start- ing today!” 

Others See the Karlsruhe Decision as a Breakthrough * Udo di Fabio, former member of the Constitutional Court of Germany, noted in an interview dated May 5 with Capital magazine noted that this is the first time that the country’s highest judicial authority determines that “an act of Union law does not apply in Germany. The Federal Constitutional Court accuses the CJEU of exceeding its mandate with its decision on the ECB’s bond purchase program at the end of 2018.” 

Whereas immediate serious consequences for the ECB are not to be expected, they may come into play in the future, Di Fabio said, hinting for instance that the ruling may compel the German government to go against the ECB’s bond purchas- ing policy and insist on its termination. The German ruling also provides a model for the other EU member countries, in that sense the “unity” of Europe which has so far been practiced may suffer, he said, calling for a “clearly defined exit program” to allow countries to end their participation in the ECB purchasing approach. For the time being, the German Bundesbank is prevented from doing so. 

* In Italy, while Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte criticized the ruling, opposition leader Matteo Salvini called for re-founding the EU on new principles and for regaining national monetary sovereignty. In an interview with Sky TG24 on May 6, he stressed the need to” re-think the entire European system, including the right to issue currency, because jobs, welfare and healthcare come before European criteria and economic constraints... 

“We should also reflect on whether money is in the service of man or whether man is at the service of money,” he went on. In an emergency such as we have today, if “it is necessary to print money so people can eat, we should print money.” 

* Italy’s former Economy Minister Giulio Tremonti blasted the ECB policy in an interview with Il Sole 24 Ore, noting that the German Court ruling meant the end of the ECB’s quanti- tative easing. The Karlsruhe Court “ruling reflects the letter as well as the spirit of both the German Constitution and the German people....The essential point is that we had economic Picassos at the ECB and the Fed, who replaced solids with liq- uids, capital with debt, put rates below zero, pursued inflation as (an unreachable) friend and replaced reality with magic. And all this apparatus, which started as necessary exception and became a continued practice, goes against the German idea of good government. 

“Whereas we [Italians], have put the Union above Consti- tution, Germany has put its Constitution above the Union... For Italy, this means that the illusion of unlimited access to ECB funds is dead. Notwithstanding the technical nature of the ruling, it is evident that nothing will be the way it was before, and nothing will be as it was announced and hoped for.” Tremonti suggested that Italy set its own course and use national savings for national credit. 

FBI corruption Exposed, as Conviction of General Flynn Is Dropped Immediately following the announcement that the U.S. De- partment of Justice had dropped the conviction of General Mi- chael Flynn, President Trump stated, “There’s more to come 

from what I understand,” adding, provocatively, “especially as it relates to President Obama.” 

As more and more evidence comes out demonstrating the blatant corruption of top FBI and Justice Department (DOJ) officials involved in the prosecution of Flynn, speculation has centered on who might be exposed next for participating in the frame up of the general, who briefly served as Trump’s National Security Adviser. Beyond former FBI Director James Comey, it is certain that Obama’s CIA Director John Brennan and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, are on the list. Others mentioned include former National Security Adviser Susan Rice, former Vice President Joe Biden, and Barack Obama himself, as FBI texts and memos mention that the then-President wished to be updated on the inves- tigation launched after Donald Trump won the Republican nomination. 

Michael Flynn, a former Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, had been fired by Obama in Aug. 2014, after he had criticized the Obama Administration’s response to the expan- sion of ISIS (cf. SAS 19/20). In a comment on the reasons for his dismissal made on July 9, 2016, Flynn said he believed that “the intelligence system was way too politicized.” 

The recent disclosure of documents related to his case, and to Russiagate in general, confirm that he was right. The of- ficial reason given by the DOJ for dropping the Flynn case is that his interrogation by the FBI, which resulted in the charge that he had made false statements, was “unjustified by... the counterintelligence investigation.” Indeed, the FBI had dropped the case on Jan. 4, 2017 for lack of evidence. But Peter Strzok, who headed the investigation into Russian “meddling” in the 2016 election, insisted that the Flynn case be reinstated, then participated in the interrogation of Flynn on Jan. 24, and he and his mistress Lisa Page rewrote the re- port of the interrogation, which accused Flynn of lying, after the original report “disappeared”. 

In another angle, the evidence that the Russiagate narrative was fabricated as a coup plot to topple Donald Trump is con- firmed by the release of the transcripts of 53 interviews con- ducted by the House Judiciary Committee. Among the most damning was that of Shawn Henry, CEO of CrowdStrike, the only firm that had access to the computers of the Democratic National Committee that had reportedly been hacked by “the Russians”. But Henry admitted during his interview back in Dec. 2017, that CrowdStrike had no evidence that emails of the DNC were hacked or extracted by Russia. Moreover, both Brennan and Clapper acknowledged the lack of evidence in their interviews. 

No wonder Judiciary Chair Rep. Adam Schiff, a leader in the drive to impeach President Trump, had blocked release of those same transcripts since Sept. 2018! That “there’s more to come” is no doubt causing panic among the coup plotters. 

Africa Needs Debt Relief to Avoid Humanitarian Crisis David Beasley, executive director of the United Nation’s World Food Program (WFP), addressed the deadly potential facing mankind if the food supply chain breaks down, as is already beginning to happen in many parts of the world, due to the pandemic. He estimated that up to 300,000 people could starve to death every day. 

Speaking at the Atlantic Council on May 8, Beasley noted that it was the 75th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day, 

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adding that 2020 might be remembered as the deadliest year for humanity since World War II. “That was a tough time,” he said, “but the supply chains didn’t break down, except in war zones. Right now, you’ve got supply chains breaking down all over the world.” 

Even before the Coronavirus hit, Beasley had been warning leaders as of last December, of the staggering dimensions of the humanitarian crisis building, “especially in Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Sudan, the DRC, Ethiopia, and Somalia.” That was when the desert locusts began to hit, threatening the planting and harvesting, and now a second wave is about to happen, which is expected to be twenty times worse. 

Faced with the disaster, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has taken the lead in mobilizing the international com- munity to recognize their own interest in aiding Africa (cf. SAS 15-16/20). In an op-ed in the New York Times on April 30, he welcomed the temporary moratorium on debt repay- ments until the end of the year offered by the Group of 20 nations, but to avert a “humanitarian disaster”, he said, there must be “debt cancellation.” 

He notes that “in 2019, 64 countries, nearly half of them in Sub-Saharan Africa, spent more on servicing external debt than on health.” In the case of Ethiopia, the country spends twice as much on paying off external debt than on healthcare. The spread of COVID-19 has severely aggravated the existing problem. 

Contrary to what many believe, Prime Minister Abiy pointed out that “official bilateral creditors are no longer the principal source of external debt for many developing countries. Pri- vate-sector creditors, including investment banks and sover- eign funds” hold the purse-strings to this debt. The Ethiopian leader challenges these banks and funds to “play their part in the effort to rescue African economies from permanent paralysis...” To drive his point home, “it would be morally indefensible if resources freed up from a moratorium in bilat- eral debt collections were to be used to pay private creditors instead of saving lives.” 

What should be added to that is that it is morally indefen- sible that the highly productive farming sector in the United States and Europe, is being deliberately shut down at this point in time for cost-benefit reasons, because it’s cheaper to import food products from poor countries than to ensure decent prices for the producers here. 

Background: Yes, Virginia, the “British Empire” Does Exist During the Q&A of the April 25-26 Schiller Institute online conference, a controversial and oft-raised question was asked about what the Institute actually means by the “British Em- pire”. Even many people who have studied and greatly appre- ciate the work of Lyndon LaRouche and the Schiller Institute have trouble understanding it as an active geopolitical and financial force in the world today, that controls in particular the United States. 

Helga Zepp-LaRouche began her reply by stressing the need to look at the ideology, as she had done in her presentation the previous day. If you just look at the “facts”, she said, it might be unclear, because the British elite is very smart in taking all sides. In a certain sense, it’s the ‘divide and conquer,’ it’s the idea to subvert organizations.” She took the example of Integrity Initiative, the thing tank funded by the Foreign 

Office which plants “cluster agents” in international media to spread a given line – as can be seen in the anti-Russia and anti-China propaganda, which is taken up almost to the word in news reports around the world. For example, a prominent British columnist, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, “once gloated that the European Union is doing exactly what is in the British interest. So that is how they work!” 

As concerns the United States, Helga Zepp-LaRouche went on, H.G. Wells describes it very clearly in his book, The Open Conspiracy, of 1928: “when the British realized that they could not militarily reconquer the American colony, they said, now we have to subvert the American establishment to get them to adopt the British Empire as a model to run the world based on the Anglo-American special relationship. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, they decided to establish the uni- polar world, based on the model of the British Empire. 

“So you can say that the Americans have more power, they have more muscle, they have more military -- that’s all true. But I think if you want to understand how it works, you have to go back in the history of the United States, the British never gave up on the idea that they would reconquer the American colonies; they first tried to re-win the colonies in the War of 1812. That didn’t work. Then they tried the Civil War, they sided with the Confederacy against Lincoln, that did not work. Then the assassinations [of various Presidents] occurred. And basically, ever since they managed to get the United States into World War I, it’s like a textbook. If you really try to fig- ure it out, you can. And the subversion of the establishment is the big problem. 

“And what is lacking is the patriots. The patriots who would reassert the ideals of the American Revolution, to fight for America as a republic.... The United States would have such an easy time to be friends with every country in the world if they would go back to the ideas of the American Revolution. People are not anti-American. They are against this thing which has emerged after the assassination of Ken- nedy, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the regime- change wars, the color revolutions, the interventionist wars -- this is really far gone! 

“And I think it’s a calamity, because if the United States is not part of the solution, it for sure will be part of the prob- lem. I don’t think that the U.S. would dissolve as peacefully as the Soviet Union did in ‘91. If it does collapse, I think we would have World War III. So therefore, I think it is in the interest of the whole human race to find a solution where the United States plays an important role, maybe even primus inter pares -- I don’t care – as long as there is the principle of the acceptance of sovereignty, of having alliances... And I can tell you, the peoples of the world would be overjoyed if the United States would find its way back to its tradition.” 

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°20 / 2020