Yesterday's Real Journalist News - WEDNESDAY, MARCH 21, 2018

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WEDNESDAY, MARCH 21, 2018

• Trump to Putin—Let’s Get Together Soon
• President Trump Calls Putin To Discuss Strategic Cooperation, Possible Meeting
• Sanders Says White House Believes U.S.-Russia Dialogue Is a Good Thing
• How Much of Parkland Shooting Fault Belongs to Robert Mueller?
• Cambridge Analytica, SCL, the Heart of Britain’s Establishment: Steele’s Inside Accomplices?
• Corbyn Stands By His Words amid British Government Russophobic Insanity
• Putin Delivers Several Messages at Meeting with Presidential Election Opponents
• Skripal Poisoning: EU Won’t Say Russia Did It
• Litvinenko’s Father Says British/Soros Asset Killed His Son
• Goldman Sachs Warns of ‘Breakdowns in Markets’
• Op-Ed: Saudi Crown Prince Is Ending Salafist/Muslim Brotherhood Power in Kingdom

EDITORIAL
Trump to Putin—Let’s Get Together Soon
March 20 (EIRNS)—President Donald Trump has just pulled the rug out from under mad-lady Theresa May and the even madder Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson. While these has-been champions of the dying British Empire are blaming Russia for acts of war, based, typically, on no evidence, Trump today got on the phone with the newly re-elected President Vladimir Putin. Trump not only congratulated Putin for his electoral victory, but announced to the U.S. press that he and Putin “will probably get together in the not-too-distant future” to discuss measures to prevent an arms race, and to find peaceful solutions to the crises in Ukraine, Syria and North Korea. The Kremlin read-out of the call said that the two leaders “spoke in favor of developing practical cooperation in various areas, including efforts to ensure strategic stability and combat international terrorism, with particular emphasis on the importance of coordinated efforts to curb an arms race.” The Kremlin added: “The exchange on economic cooperation revealed an interest in bolstering it. Energy was discussed separately.”

The British will be chewing the rug this evening. Not only has Trump destroyed their ploy to blame Russia for a chemical warfare attack on British soil, but the “Russiagate” scam within the U.S., run directly by MI6 agent Christopher Steele and his assets within the U.S., has collapsed. Now, the operatives in that attempted coup against the U.S. government—including John Brennan, James Clapper, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and several recently fired FBI operatives—are facing possible criminal charges for the most blatant act of treason in modern U.S. history, all on behalf of the British Empire.

To make matters worse for the pathetic would-be “M” and her cohort “BoJo,” Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who would likely win an election against May if it were held at this time, has demanded that May present evidence (if any exists) of the nerve agent used in the Skripal attack to the Russians, insisting (like President Trump) that talking with the Russians was absolutely necessary. He also reminded the country in a BBC interview this morning of the catastrophic results of Tony Blair’s earlier faked intelligence about Iraq’s WMD.

And driving the nail in deeper, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders confirmed that the U.K. nerve agent attack was not mentioned at all in the in Trump-Putin phone call!

The new paradigm is coming into focus globally: not only did Trump congratulate Putin on winning six more years, he also said it was good that China has done away with term limits—because, he said, Xi Jinping is a great leader.

Xi Jinping today spoke to the closing session of the 13th National People’s Congress, expressing confidence that the Chinese rejuvenation will continue and expand, with China contributing even more to world governance and world development through the New Silk Road. “Let the sunshine of a community with a shared future for humanity illuminate the world,” he concluded.

Helga Zepp-LaRouche said today that Presidents Trump, Putin and Xi are asserting true leadership to the world, while the desperate acts of the British Empire are beginning to backfire. In the past, British imperial intrigue was backed up by weak U.S. leaders, who even took the lead in enforcing British policy, as in the Indochina War, the Iraq War, the Libya War, and in the radical free market policies which kept the former colonized nations in economic backwardness, while bringing ruin to the industrialized nations in Europe and North America.

But Trump has refused to fall prey to the “special relationship,” insisting instead that the imperial division of the world into East and West is to be no more. In defeating the coup plotters, he is also positioned to carry out his pledge to return the U.S. to the American System of physical economy, leaving the failed “free market” British model behind in favor of Hamiltonian directed credit to rebuild the American industrial infrastructure. The situation is still extremely dangerous, but never have we been so close to ending the very existence of Empire once and for all.

U.S. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC
President Trump Calls Putin To Discuss Strategic Cooperation, Possible Meeting
March 20 (EIRNS)—Speaking with reporters during his Oval Office meeting with Saudi Prince Mohammad bin Salman today, President Donald Trump briskly announced that he had called Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier in the day to congratulate him on his electoral victory, and propose that that the two of them meet “in the not-so-distant future” to discuss how to jointly prevent an arms race, amongst other crucial issues.

As the President elaborated: “The call had to do, also, with the fact that we will probably get together in the not-too-distant future so that we can discuss arms, we can discuss the arms race. As you know, he made a statement that being in an arms race is not a great thing. That was right after the election—one of the first statements he made.

“And we are spending $700 billion this year on our military, and a lot of it is that we are going to remain stronger than any other nation in the world by far.

“We had a very good call, and I suspect that we’ll probably be meeting in the not-too-distant future to discuss the arms race, which is getting out of control, but we will never allow anybody to have anything even close to what we have. And also to discuss Ukraine and Syria and North Korea and various other things,” he concluded.

The U.S. media, both the CNN “anti-Trump” and the Fox News “pro-Trump” variety, showed their British pedigree by going berserk against Trump for talking with Putin.

The Kremlin readout cohered with the spirit of President Trump’s report on the two leaders’ discussion, including mention of interest in increasing economic cooperation.

“Donald Trump congratulated Vladimir Putin on his victory in the presidential election. The leaders spoke in favor of developing practical cooperation in various areas, including efforts to ensure strategic stability and combat international terrorism, with particular emphasis on the importance of coordinated efforts to curb an arms race,” the Kremlin reported.

“The exchange on economic cooperation revealed an interest in bolstering it. Energy was discussed separately.

“The problem of Syria was discussed, as was the internal crisis in Ukraine. There was recognition on both sides of the need to make rapid strides toward achieving settlements.

“Satisfaction was expressed with the limited reduction of tensions around the Korean Peninsula. The expediency of continuing consistent efforts to resolve the situation by peaceful, diplomatic means was underscored.

“It was agreed to develop further bilateral contacts in light of the changes in leadership at the U.S. Department of State. The possibility of organizing a top-level meeting received special attention.

“On the whole, the conversation was constructive and businesslike, with a focus on overcoming the accumulated problems in Russian-American relations,” it concluded.

Sanders Says White House Believes U.S.-Russia Dialogue Is a Good Thing
March 20 (EIRNS)— Following President Trump’s announcement of his call to Russian President Vladimir Putin, the establishment press whores were downright apoplectic when White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders’ press briefing came around. Did the President confront Putin on Russian aggression? Could he possibly believe the Russian elections were fair, since the U.K. and Senator McCain don’t? Are you telling us he didn’t confront Putin on election meddling? On the poisoning in the U.K.?

No less than six times Sanders replied that the President believes dialogue with Russia is in U.S. interest.

“We want to continue to have a dialogue with Russia, and continue to talk about some of the shared interests we have, whether its North Korea, Iran, and, particularly as the President noted today, slowing the tensions when it comes to an arms race, something that is clearly important to both leaders,” Sanders stated over and over. We will “continue to be tough” on Russia, but “the President finds there to be an importance in having that dialogue with Russia so that we can talk about some of the big problems that face the world…. It is important for a lot of the safety and security people across the globe.”

Demanding that she answer whether the White House believes the election in Russia was free and fair, Sanders slammed the implicit “regime change” axiom: “We’re focused on our elections. We don’t get to dictate how other countries operate. What we do know is that Putin has been elected in their country, and that’s not something that we can dictate to them how they operate. We can only focus on the freeness and the fairness of our elections, something we 100 percent fully support….”

Perhaps the understatement of the day coming after the briefing was the tweet by an enraged U.K. journalist present: “White House spokeswoman confirms U.K. nerve agent attack was not mentioned in Trump-Putin phone call. Deeply frustrating for Downing Street.”

How Much of Parkland Shooting Fault Belongs to Robert Mueller?
March 20 (EIRNS)—Following 9/11, the public was inundated with encouragements: “if you see something, say something,” together with color-coded daily terror alerts. This, of course, largely disguised the fact that the perpetrators of 9/11 were already known and the lines of investigation clear, but were being covered up based upon the Bush Administration’s longstanding ties to the Saudis and the British. The servant of this coverup, according to former Sen. Bob Graham, was FBI Director Robert Mueller. Graham says, and proves, that Mueller “aggressively deceived” Congress’ Joint 9/11 inquiry into the role of the Saudi government and its agents in the murders of almost 3,000 Americans on that day.

Mueller did something else in the wake of 9/11. He devoted the entire FBI to intelligence matters, with criminal law enforcement assigned a second seat. He privatized the FBI’s tip line, setting up a call center in West Virginia staffed by civilians who handle calls according to scripts and protocols.

This bypassed the FBI agents in field offices, who no longer received and screened tips.

The tips regarding Victor Cruz, the Parkland shooter, were very explicit. On Jan. 5, a tipster, close to the Cruz family, warned a civilian analyst at the FBI’s West Virginia call center that Cruz was a dangerous gun owner who posted disturbing statements and images of rifles on social media with the potential to shoot up a school. According to a transcript of the tip, obtained by the Miami Herald, the tipster said that she was worried about Cruz getting into a school and just shooting the place up. She said, “He is 18 but has the mental capacity of a 12 to 14 year old and started off saying he wanted to kill himself. And then just recently, now he was switched to he wants to kill people. I know he is going to explode…. It’s alarming to see these pictures and to know what he’s capable of doing and what could happen.”

The tip center never forwarded the tip to the Miami FBI Field Office or followed it up. Similar red flags were posted repeatedly with local law enforcement, who also did not respond. Earlier, Cruz posted on YouTube a comment stating, “I’m going to be a professional school shooter with the handle name ‘nikolas cruz.’ ” A local FBI field office in Mississippi was called by a bail bondsman who saw the comment, but gave up after their own searches failed to locate Cruz. Google was never contacted, although after the incident it was clear that the name and address for the “nikolas cruz” handle was readily available from them.

The FBI’s former No. 3 in job importance, Chris Swecker, described the FBI’s call center prompts as “maddening,” particularly if you are urgently attempting to convey a genuine threat, in an interview with the Miami Herald. EIR’s staff tried out the system yesterday and concurs with Swecker’s analysis. More telling, Swecker said, Mueller’s call center consolidation puts untrained analysts in the firing line of making judgments without any law enforcement investigative experience. “They don’t have the context and the background to recognize the urgency between each phone call.”

Cambridge Analytica, SCL, the Heart of Britain’s Establishment: Steele’s Inside Accomplices?
March 20 (EIRNS)—A bombshell piece published March 20th by investigative journalist Liam O’Hare, entitled “SCL, a Very British Coup” in Bella Caledonia raises profound new issues regarding British meddling in the 2016 U.S. elections. Those following the news may be aware of stories over the past 48 hours claiming that Cambridge Analytica, a data mining firm employed by the Trump campaign, stole data from Facebook compromising the privacy of many Americans. Across the pond, Britain’s news Channel 4 caught Cambridge executive Andrew Nix bragging about using dirty tricks, including bribery and sex honey pots, to entrap politicians and subvert elections. Nix was suspended as a result of the Channel 4 sting videos by the company.

Who is supposed to be at fault here? Donald Trump for hiring this gang of miscreants after Steve Bannon, the Mercers, and others, dragged Cambridge Analytica into Trump’s campaign from Ted Cruz’s campaign, where Bannon, the Mercers, and Cambridge had previously operated? Or Facebook, already correctly called a primary intelligence and personality profiling mechanism, by Edward Snowden?

O’Hare’s piece indicates that pointing the finger at Trump or at Facebook are very, very serious diversions here. He profiles the investors, Board, and activities of the parent company, SCL (Strategic Communications Laboratories). O’Hare says the Board is “an array of Lords, Tory donors, ex-British army officers and defense contractors,” offering military-grade psy-ops as a private company. This is a scandal that cuts to the heart of the British Establishment. According to The Observer, Cambridge Analytica and SCL are not separate entities. For all practical purposes they are one and the same.

The organization boasts that it has conducted behavioral change programs in over 60 countries with clients including the British Ministry of Defense, the U.S. State Department, and NATO. SCL has a contract with the U.S. State Department to counter terrorist propaganda and disinformation. The company participated in “countering Russia propaganda operations” in support of Ukraine for NATO. This puts them right in the center of the Christopher Steele, Victoria Nuland, Project Democracy anti-Russia, pro-Kiev operations in the State Department.

Mark Turnbull, who heads up the SCL Elections subsidiary, spent 18 years at the disgraced British intelligence-connected public relations firm Bell Pottinger. He headed up the Pentagon-funded PR campaign for Bell Pottinger in occupied Iraq which included production of fake Al Qaeda videos, according to O’Hare. The firm is headed by Nigel Oakes, who, according to the website, PowerBase, has links to the British royals and was once rumored to be associated with MI5.

Oakes says he uses the same techniques as Aristotle and Hitler. The president of SCL is Sir Geoffrey Pattie, the Defense Secretary in Margaret Thatcher’s government. “The British military and royal establishment links to SCL are further highlighted by another Director, Rear Adm. John Tolhurst, a former Assistant Director of Naval Warfare in the Ministry of Defense and aide de camp to the Queen,” according to O’Hare’s profile.

O’Hare ends his stunning profile with the following words: “We finally have the most concrete evidence yet of shadowy actors using dirty tricks in order to rig elections. But these characters aren’t operating from Moscow intelligence bunkers. Instead they are British, Eton educated, headquartered in the City of London and have close ties to Her Majesty’s government.”

STRATEGIC WAR DANGER
Corbyn Stands By His Words amid British Government Russophobic Insanity
March 20 (EIRNS) – In an interview on BBC’s Radio 4’s World at One, British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn once again demonstrated that he is one of the few British and European political leaders with any principles and even rationality in the face of the British government’s insane drive against Russia. In the interview on March 20 Corbyn stuck with his position that he will wait for the evidence.

“What I’m saying is the weapons were made from Russia, clearly,” he told Radio 4’s World at One. “I think Russia has to be held responsible for it, but there has to be an absolutely definitive answer to the question, where did the nerve agent come from?” Corbyn continued: “All fingers point towards Russia’s involvement in this, and obviously the manufacture of the material was undertaken by the Russian state originally.” But he made clear “Don’t shoot from the hip…”

Corbyn repeated his call for Russia to be sent samples of the nerve agent. “I asked the Russians be given a sample so that they can say categorically one way or the other.”

Asked how he would deal with what many people see as the threat from Russia, Corbyn said he would deal with the issues at hand, such as this current spy case and cyber-security, but was clear that he would have “a very robust dialogue with Russia. There has to be that dialogue otherwise we don’t get anywhere.”

BBC asked whether he thinks he could do business with Putin, he again said yes, “You have to do business with people whether you like them or not, whether you agree with them or not. You have to do business based on your principles. So yes, would I do business with Putin? Sure. And I’d challenge him on human rights in Russia, challenge him on these issues, and challenge him on that whole basis of that relationship.”

He expanded, telling the BBC: “You have to deal with people who are in the position they are—after all he is head of state…. He’s just been elected as head of state for another six years and Russia is a huge country that has suffered more than anyone else in the Second World War and we have to recognize there has to be a relationship with Russia. Yes, robust; assertive, yes; demanding, yes; but there has to be a relationship.”

The first part of the interview was on former Labour Party Prime Minister Tony Blair bringing Britain into the war against Iraq based on a lie, a war which Corbyn passionately opposed. The entire interview starts roughly at minute 18, here:

Putin Delivers Several Messages at Meeting with Presidential Election Opponents
March 20 (EIRNS)—Russian President Vladimir Putin met yesterday with the seven other presidential candidates in Sunday’s election, to discuss how to take the positive elements of the campaign so as “to join efforts in the future for constructive work for the benefit of the country.”

As he has repeatedly since the election, Putin reiterated that the main emphasis of the executive branch is now on resolving domestic problems, starting with ensuring adequate economic growth rates, closing the income gap between rich and poor, ensuring no Russian works for “contemptible pay,” reducing poverty, and “making innovation part of the character of our economy.”

It was in this discussion, that Putin made his statement that Russia in no way wants an arms race which President Trump quickly responded to, in his congratulatory call today. Putin told the meeting, that while national defense will, of course, be bolstered, “let me tell you outright that no one is going to start some arms race. On the contrary, we are going to pursue constructive relations with all countries of the world. We will aim for constructive dialogue, without question, and encourage this among our partners.

“Of course, not everything depends on us. There must be interest on both sides, like in love, or there will be no love,” he elaborated. “However, we, on our side, will do everything possible to resolve all disputes with our partners through political and diplomatic means. In addition to this, of course, our position has always been and will always be that we will fight to uphold our national interests. Our operating assumption is that we will do all this work with our partners on a mutually acceptable basis, showing respect for each other and for our national interests.”

Putin made clear, also, that the success of the previous years’ investment in developing the “cutting-edge weapon systems” which he revealed in his March 1st speech, systems required to force the West “to now listen to us,” as he said in the speech, has now freed up resources that can be focused on national economic advancement. The government can reduce military spending both this year and next, and still ensure completion of those weapon systems, he reported. He added, in typical Putin style, the intriguing statement that Russia can “continue with current designs, which I have not yet spoken about” while cutting military spending.

Skripal Poisoning: EU Won’t Say Russia Did It
March 20 (EIRNS)—Despite the claims hyping the “unity” of NATO and the EU around the alleged poisoning of British double agent Sergei Skripal, the British government doesn’t quite seem to be getting all that it wants, particularly in the area of new sanctions. “The first signs of tension in EU ranks emerged yesterday as foreign ministers meeting in Brussels failed to sign off on a statement laying blame for the nerve agent attack firmly at Moscow’s door,” reports the Daily Mail. The EU statement condemned the poisoning and expressed “unqualified support and solidarity” for the U.K., but failed to specifically blame Russia for the incident. Unnamed British sources are blaming Greece and to a lesser extent Hungary and Italy. Even EU foreign affairs representative Federica Mogherini expressed doubts.

When asked why the statement was weaker than similar statements of support of the U.K. position issued by the U.S., France and Germany, she said: “Maybe because different countries have different relationships to U.K. intelligence.”

Litvinenko’s Father Says British/Soros Asset Killed His Son
March 20 (EIRNS)—Valter Litvinenko, the father of Alexander Litvinenko, the Russian KGB officer who defected and was poisoned in the U.K. in 2006, went on the leading Russian TV station First Channel this week and embraced Andrey Lugovoy, the person the British accused of poisoning his son, saying he was certain that Lugovoy was not the assassin.

During the primetime program “Pust Govoryat” (“Let People Talk”) on First channel, the major Russian federal television channel, Valter Litvinenko said that he was certain that his son was poisoned by biochemist Alexander Goldfarb, who was part of the inner circle of Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky, also in exile in London at the time (who was also found dead in 2013). As reported in Sputnik, Litvinenko said that his son made his way from Turkey to Great Britain, where he was granted political asylum. Goldfarb then represented his son’s interests during the final weeks of his life, and upon his death, he read out his deathbed letter to the media. Valter Litvinenko said that Chechen separatist leader Akhmed Zakayev, who was in London at that time, called Goldfarb a CIA agent.

Who is Goldfarb? He is a Russian-American biochemist who worked directly with George Soros and oligarch Berezovsky, both British assets and enemies of Putin.

According to Valter Litvinenko, his son had been poisoned several times even while he was in hospital, reports Sputnik. Anyone could enter the hospital, he said, and that at first, his son had been diagnosed with food poisoning, then thallium exposure, and subsequently there emerged reports on the use of polonium 210. Valter Litvinenko also stated that he had been denied access to the files on his son’s death, or to the autopsy report.

The journalist on the interview, Dmitry Borisov, explained: “It’s now clear why all the documents on the Litvinenko case are highly classified in London for the next 100 years. It was, by the way, carried out by Theresa May [Interior Minister at the time of the classification]. And nobody asked her why on Earth she had to classify something that had been on everyone’s lips,” the journalist said. He also said that if Valter Litvinenko had confessed what he knew earlier, the attempted murder of Skripal may have been avoided.

COLLAPSING WESTERN FINANCIAL SYSTEM
Goldman Sachs Warns of ‘Breakdowns in Markets’
March 20 (EIRNS)—Bloomberg reported today that Goldman Sachs’ co-chief markets economist Charles Himmelberg had issued a warning to their Wall Street clients that the early February stock market drops are “a symptom of growing financial fragility, or big swings in prices caused by breakdowns in markets themselves as opposed to changes in fundamentals.”

Himmelberg said further that there is reason to worry about “liquidity drying up during periods when markets are distressed,” Bloomberg reported. As Himmelberg put it: “Future liquidity disruptions may amplify price declines when the current cycle turns.”

For its part, Bloomberg commented that Monday’s U.S. tech stocks sell-off signaled “the market is under stress, as near-term contracts became more expensive than longer-dated counterparts” on futures market.

THE NEW GLOBAL ECONOMIC ORDER
Op-Ed: Saudi Crown Prince Is Ending Salafist/Muslim Brotherhood Power in Kingdom
March 20 (EIRNS)—Adel Al-Toraifi, the former Culture and Information Minister in Saudi Arabia, from 2015-17, posted an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today on the campaign by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) to clean out the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafist power in the country, as well as attacking the corruption. The Crown Prince also was interviewed on CBS News’ “60 Minutes,” saying some of the same things.

Al-Toraifi said that in 1979, the year of the Iran coup by radical Shi’a Islamists, and the effort to take over the Grand Mosque in Mecca by radical Sunni Islamists, as well as the Russian intervention in Afghanistan, the “Saudi rulers, fearing Iran’s revolutionary example, decided to give more space to the Salafi clerical establishment in hope of countering the radicals…. Their legal rulings and attempts to police morals made the Kingdom increasingly intolerant, setting back the gradual opening up that had occurred in the 1960s and ’70s. In Saudi schools, education was largely in the hands of foreign nationals, many with Muslim Brotherhood backgrounds.”

Al-Toraifi writes that “the combination of the Brotherhood’s political outlook and the rigid Salafi doctrine injected a virus into the Saudi education system. That virus allowed Osama bin Laden to recruit 15 Saudis to take part in that terrible deed on Sept. 11, 2001. We Saudis failed those young men, and that failure had global implications. The Salafi clerics and Muslim Brotherhood imports also worked in concert as they were given unsupervised access to private donations to fund mosques and madrasas from Karachi to Cairo, where they generally favored the most conservative preachers.”

He said that “the Muslim world is still reeling from the effects.”

He claimed that MBS is out to clean out radical Islam wherever it is: “Political Islam, whether Sunni or Shi’ite, Muslim Brotherhood or jihadi Salafist, has damaged Muslim nations.” Unstated is that this appears to be a justification for the virulent stand against Iran as “radical Shi’ite.” He writes that MBS believes “it is the role of Muslim countries to face these evil ideologies and groups and to stand with our world allies in the West and East to confront them once and for all.”

He also praises the fact that MBS has ended many Salafist social strictures: women may now drive, attend sporting events, and are not required to wear scarves, while the powers of the religious police have been restrained.

Al-Toraifi concludes that “for the first time in four decades the ghosts haunting Saudi Arabia are in retreat. Mistakes are inevitable, and there is no universal guidebook on how to reform a country … but the genie is out of the bottle and it can’t go back in.”