LaRouche Calls for a Concert of Nation-States; a Peace of Religions

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LaRouche Calls for a Concert of Nation-States; a Peace of Religions

Lyndon LaRouche was interviewed by Fahri Hassan of Radio 786, in Cape Town, South Africa, on Dec. 28, 2004.

Host: Welcome to Radio 786. It's that favorite weekly news analysis program, that is always discerning, dissenting, never disappointing Prime Talk. The program that always tackles the crux of the matter, unravels the controversies, and tonight will most certainly set out to ruffle many feathers. We have the pleasure of having an individual that is a giant in his own right. He was imprisoned in America for having dared to take on the establishment clique, that included the likes of Henry Kissinger and George Bush, Sr. He's renowned as an outspoken critic of the present American regime, led by the neo-conservative cabal of George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld, and ranks as one of the most controversial political figures of our time. He's a renowned economist, and was a Presidential candidate in the recent primaries, under the Democratic banner.

He's also the founding editor of the highly acclaimed Executive Intelligence Review magazine. He's a prolific speaker and author of several books. He has fit us into his busy schedule, because I believe he's travelling all over the world, and he finds himself in Germany at the moment. And we thank him, and he joins us now from Wiesbaden, Germany, where he's on one of his busy speaking tours. It is indeed a great honor and pleasure to welcome onto my show, Mr. Lyndon LaRouche.

Good evening, and welcome, Mr. LaRouche.

LaRouche: Thank you very much. It's good to be with you.

Host: It's a pleasure. Mr. LaRouche, before we get to the whole George Bush juggernaut and his American empire-building escapade, may I just focus first on the American electoral system, because it is widely known that originally, in the 2000 election, that launched Bush Jr. into the White House, there were many widespread fraud and corruption charges, noting the case in Florida, the Jeb Bush scam, and other related problems.

Now apparently, it has come to light that there are some irregularities that have surfaced again, in the recent elections. Would you care to elaborate on that?

LaRouche: I was in the middle of this process, and I've been in the middle of the follow-up, not directly on the scene, but dealing with members of Congress, and others, who are really in the middle of it.

The 2000 election was a very muscular job, by the Republicans, and there probably was a significant amount of cheating and manipulation in that. However, the point was that actually Al Gore honestly lost the election by his own efforts. He made a number of mistakes, and his campaign made a number of mistakes, and they actually blew it. Didn't do their homework. Didn't do the job right. And they created a situation of ambiguity, in which it was possible to pull an arrangement, just to pre-empt the whole thing. It was illegal what they did. That is, the way in which George was inaugurated, with the intervention of this Justice Scalia, and so forth, was really a violation of our Constitution. It shouldn't have happened that way.

But now the thing more recently, that's just happened. I couldn't say that Kerry didn't win the election. I have many indications that the margins of vote attributed to a Bush victory, didn't happen.

Now, that by itself, isn't going to decide anything. Because of the way realities of politics go. But we do have a lot of people who are eligible for imprisonment, because there was a massive campaign of voter suppression. Voter suppression, under the U.S. law, under the Voting Rights Act, is a crime where each offense is worth five years in prison, and there are a lot of people who were caught doing just that. And there's the possibility of their being convicted for doing that, including possibly the Secretary of State of the state of Ohio could be in trouble.

There were things that were doing, that, in this case, look as though they're grounds for criminal action, as well as massive fraud.

Host: Mr. LaRouche, could you just elaborate on that voter suppression? What form did it take, the actual suppression of the votes?

LaRouche: Well, there actually was misdirection in all kinds of things. They would tell people, they would intimidate people not to vote. And an act of intimidation, not to vote—. There was a selection, particularly concentrated on persons of African descent, who were heavily targetted by the Republicans. And they actually were sent in with goon squads and so forth to intimidate them. They would actually shut down the polls, pull switches on them, so that there was a massive amount of vote suppression.

Host: There was apparently, I don't know how true it is, but from some reports that I read, some of these machines, these electronic voting machines, there were some irregularities concerning them.

LaRouche: That was the case of the Triad company, which supplied a number of the machines in the state of Ohio. There were eyewitness statements that an official of Triad, with the consent of electoral officials, was tampering with the vote, after the vote had been registered — that is, altering the vote. And that is, of course, under investigation.

The key U.S. official who is looking at this the most, is a head of a committee of the Congress, the U.S. Congress, Rep. John Conyers, and this is being pressed quite seriously, by the Democratic Party and people like that, in this matter.

Host: So, you are hopeful that the case will be taken further, to the Senate, and Congress?

LaRouche: Not necessarily. What we're doing is this. On the 9th of November, I did a webcast in which I set forth my views on what had to be done about the situation, as of Nov. 2. And there are several things I pointed to.

First of all, this vote suppression act, the violations of the Voting Rights Act: That we have in concrete evidence on. Number two, instances of that is a violation, which constitutes grounds for a five-year sentence.

We have a case in New Hampshire of the former Governor Sununu, who's involved in his campaign in something like that, from 2002. So this is quite serious.

There are other things that were doing, which are violations of Federal law.

My view is, where we have the evidence of a concrete violation of law, in connection with the election, that we should pursue that.

Now there's another aspect to this thing which is political. But, you know, people behave, as you know from your business, on the basis of politics, as much as on technicalities, or law, or fact. And what has happened is, that President of the United States is pushing to steal the Social Security funds of the people of the United States, for the benefit of his friends on Wall Street, or the financial community.

Host: So, what you're saying is that they are aiming to privatize this Social Security funds, and that sort of thing.

LaRouche: Exactly. And this is a direct copy, by the statement of the President himself, of what was done by Pinochet in Chile, in the 1980s. So, he's out actually to steal some trillion of dollars, from Americans who rely upon the Social Security for their support. And by putting this money, privatizing it, means putting in Wall Street, for Wall Street to steal!

Host: That brings me to, now that you mention it, obviously, big business, and big corporations. Clearly, big business and the major lobby groups on behalf of big business, I mean, they have a lot of influence on Capitol Hill, don't they?

LaRouche: Well, they have influence all over the place, because it's not just big business. These are actually real, first-class thieves, of the Enron variety. These are people who are in the financial area.

For example, let's take the case of, a big one, which may bust any time now in the United States: Fannie Mae. Now, Fannie Mae was created by Franklin Roosevelt, as one of these institutions which would facilitate the ability of people to get mortgages, for home purchase. And it's actually one of the biggest banks in the world, in that sense, that kind of bank. Now, this was taken over by Alan Greenspan, the derivatives man, who's now still the head of the Federal Reserve system. And what happened, about three years ago, this was about to go belly-up. As a matter of fact, the entire mortgage-based securities business is about to go belly-up. It's the same thing in the United Kingdom. In the United Kingdom they've got a relatively more severe problem, though it doesn't have the magnitude of that in the United States.

We have the potential very immediately, of a general collapse, mortgage-based securities speculation tied to derivatives, internationally. This alone could blow out the U.S. system.

So, what Bush is doing, essentially, is, these fellows are desperate. They're about to see the entire international monetary-financial system go into a belly-up. They're desperate to save their hides. The only large source of money they can get, that's available, by any trick, to try to cover up their problem, in this eventuality, is to steal the Social Security funds.

Host: And, I mean, is this perhaps the reason why we're seeing this dramatic fall in the dollar?

LaRouche: No, the dollar is going down legitimately. As a matter of fact, the dollar's highly overpriced. In fact, two dollars to a euro is on the horizon. You're now looking at about 1.35, 1.36 right now, $1.36, approximately for a euro. That is already bad times, and that's a highly supported dollar. I'm looking at something that looks more like $2 to a euro, as on the horizon.

This is coupled with the irrepressible rise in the price of petroleum, not because of a shortage of petroleum, but because of the speculation in petroleum—people speculate, and they grab control of shares. And you have the same thing in raw materials generally, which, of course, South Africa is a target of that, right? For speculation in mineral resources. This is international.

So, it's a wild situation. The whole financial-monetary system is collapsing. It's much worse than the 1920s-1930s. It's about to come. It could be dealt with by Franklin Roosevelt's methods, but the people who are in charge, are not Franklin Roosevelt, and they tend to go in a different direction. So we're likely to have an incalculable collapse of the system, centered on the United States as sort of an epicenter of this thing. It can happen any time. It's in process now.

You'll get leading circles in the United Kingdom, financial and so forth, and around Europe, are talking quite openly about it, and people I know, who are in banking in the United States, also are quite aware that this is going to happen.

Host: Sorry, before we continue in this vein on economic factors, I just have one question that just jumped in my mind. It's an obvious question that jumps up. So, is this perhaps one of the reasons why we have this war on terror, this mythological, you know, war on terror, and the war in Iraq, to cloud over the ills of the American economic empire?

LaRouche: I think, not quite. I think it's close, but it's not quite. This, for example, back in the 1990s, when Cheney was then Secretary of Defense under George Bush 41, he already had the intention to go with a campaign of war, based on mini-nuclear weapons. It's actually preventive war. At that point, under the influence of people like [Brent] Scowcroft, George Bush I said no, and Cheney went out grumbling about the fact that his plan was spoiled.

He stuck to the policy all the way through. When he became Vice President, at about the time he walked into office in January of 2001, he was again at the postings, pushing this thing. Now he is actually the controller, pretty much, of the Bush Administration, from the inside. Bush is a man of limited intelligence, and I'd say, worse than limited. And Cheney was sort of running him.

So, this was the policy.

But, there's another aspect to it, which I emphasized in January of 2001. That when you get a situation, as in the late 1920s, 1930s in Europe, when you get a situation in which the financial system is disintegrating, you are likely to get some fellows deciding they can solve the problem by setting up a dictatorship, as happened in Europe. And they tried it in the United States, and it didn't work.

We're in a period in which the very fact that we're in that kind of crisis, means that people who are thinking in terms of coup d'etats, dictatorships, and things like that, and wars in various places, these kinds of sentiments begin to get more support. And what we're seeing in Iraq, and what is threatened elsewhere, is more of this stuff. It's a period of great instability. And it's going to be quite a struggle to get things calmed down. But we're headed for a period of dictatorship. There is a correlation between financial crisis, and this kind of business, but it's not that simple; it's not a simple direct correlation.

Host: We would explore that. But you mentioned something very interesting. You mentioned the issue of coups d'etats and dictatorships. What we see in America at the moment certainly smacks of it. And I mean, it brings me to the insights of 9-11, and the war on terror. I mean, there's much evidence, for instance, whether you want to call it conspiracies, or conspiracy, that's surfacing now, that 9-11 may have been a coup d'etat, and a pretext. Evidence presented on many websites, and many texts, and books, and research that has been done. I'm just recalling one or two, powerhour.com, and many others who suggest that this little terrorist Osama bin Laden in a cave in Afghanistan, could not possibly have carried out this caper. That it's an inside job. This is what—

LaRouche: Osama bin Laden is a Bush asset. So, it didn't happen that way.

What you've got, if you look at the total picture: We had from the late 1960s, especially during the early 1970s, we had the unleashing of terrorism in Europe. Now, there is no such thing as international terrorism, as I think you can understand from your experience. There is, however, terrorism, as distinct from some entity called international terrorism. There are people who practice terrorism. Sometimes it's not called terrorism, sometimes it's called freedom fighters. Sometimes it's something quite different.

But, what we have on this planet, we have a group that we took over, from the United States, after Roosevelt died, which was a hard part of the Nazi system. We took it over, and we digested it into our system. It became part of NATO. It's all over the world. And we have these fellows that are now third generation of that sort of people. They did, as they did, for example, in the 1970s, in the case of the Pinochet coup, the Operation Condor in Argentina, Chile, and Bolivia — this was done by ex-Nazis. People like della Chiaie. And this was this type.

Host: Klaus Barbie and company.

LaRouche: Yeah. You had, for example, the killing of Aldo Moro. Aldo Moro was killed by a Nazi stay-behind, which was inside Gladio, which was part of NATO, inside NATO intelligence. And they killed a former head of state, or head of government, because he was proposing things they didn't like.

Now, I've seen coups, I've seen killings of heads of state, and people of that importance, because of this kind of stuff. I've been the target of this kind of stuff myself. This goes on all the time.

So, what we're dealing with, is not international terrorism. We're dealing with people who represent a terrorist-type capability, coup capability, killing people, or running stunts in order run coups against governments. And what I'm looking at in terms of 9-11, which I saw coming. I didn't see the 9-11 operation as such; I was looking at other things. But I knew that the United States was a target of an international terrorist-type operation, whose purpose was to try to push through what became the Patriot Act. It was an attempt to establish a dictatorship in the United States, by terrifying the people, and using a horrible incident to get the excuses, as Goering did in 1933, to get Hitler into power. The same kind of thing.

And it's going on, it's been going on all the time. I've seen people killed, heads of government killed. Mrs. Gandhi killed in India, for example, because she displeased certain people. And they killed her. They organized somebody to do it. Her son was killed, because they didn't like his policies for India, they wanted to get rid of the Gandhi family.

Host: You refer to "they," "them": Are you focussing and referring to this cabal, this Rumsfeld, Henry Kissinger crew?

LaRouche: No, no. They're a lower level. What this is, is: Remember, the Nazi system was created in the wake of the Versailles Treaty, under the conditions of reparations agreement, and a group of bankers, private bankers, largely based in Europe, but extending to New York City—it's called the Synarchist International Their first coup was a British asset actually, Mussolini, who was organized through the famous Venetian bank, by his particular banker, Volpe di Misurata, and then you had a series of these fascist coups throughout Europe, going through the Hitler thing, and so forth.

Now, this was a political operation, run by a financier interest, which was conspiring to take over the world, for their particular financier interests. The same type of people, the continuity of the same type of people.

For example, Prescott Bush. Prescott Bush, the grandfather of the present President of the United States, was the guy who wrote the letter which authorized the release of funds controlled by Harriman and company, the funds to finance Hitler's being refinanced to become dictator. So, these are the kinds of people involved.

So, it's not the little guys, it's not the little conspiracy, it's not the Henry Kissingers, and so forth. These guys are flunkies.

Host: Yes, I want to come to that. Because this reminds me, Zbigniew Brzezinski, he writes a very interesting text called The Grand Chessboard, in which they laid out and set out, the way I understand it, the conquest of the world, dividing it into various regions. And one of the areas that, interestingly, he focussed on that was not under the control of what you called this secret, or this cabal, was Central Asia, and that is where the issues are happening now. Could you elaborate on that a bit?

LaRouche: Well, you know, Brzezinski's part of this operation, which was set up, part of this key. He comes from a Polish minor aristocracy, that is, the state aristocracy — his father was. He's a little bit crazy. He was backed by Harriman, he was picked up by Harriman at one point, and he's had a certain influence in the Democratic Party. He's associated with this fellow Huntington, who is—they're the same thing, they're the Bobbsey twins. Madeleine Albright was the same thing. She's part of the same crew. Holbrooke is part of the same thing. Condoleezza Rice is the same thing.

So, you have a whole group of people inside U.S. institutions, who all belong to a certain bloc, with certain antecedents, and they're this.

Now, I did a documentary tape in 1999, as part of the year 2000 election campaign. Which was called "Storm over Asia," in which I documented exactly this stuff. That Brzezinski, of course, who was the author of the Afghanistan war against the Soviets, which never stopped. We saw a whole part of the Red Army became drug pushers, because they were involved, about 80,000, 100,000 Soviet troops in there, and they became drug pushers, lots of them. They became part of the drug operations, expanded drug operations throughout Europe, gangs. In other words, they went from Red Army veterans, into becoming gangsters.

Now, what he did, he took the Central Asia area, and the North Caucasus, and began to use it after the fall of the Soviet Union, began to use that as a base of operations, of terrorist operations. Like what happened, the recent terrorist operation in this area. The operations against Ukraine, and so forth. And yes, he's doing that. This is the kind of thing that goes into the Balkan wars, and things like that.

Host: Speaking about Ukraine, is there much evidence to suggest that the money has been flowing into Ukraine to agitate people to have a rerun in the election there?

LaRouche: More than that. It's an attempt to split the Ukraine. That's the intent. To split the Ukraine, and to start—. They're out to get Russia. They're out to destroy Russia. That's Brzezinski's particular game. And he's got the International Republican Institute, George Soros's crowd is in on it, a whole lot of other people are financing this thing. But it's essentially the hard core, the center, is Brzezinski.

Host: You know, there's so much things that have come up now. If we can shift to the Middle East, and look at that region, and what is transpiring there now, because clearly, you mentioned earlier Dick Cheney, and his role as having been at the head of it. And one thing that became clear and obvious, even, I think, it was in "Fahrenheit 9/11," where Michael Moore exposed the fact that Halliburton, the Dick Cheney company, had major interests, even before the war, and it so panned out. Now that Iraq is nicely packaged, Halliburton moved in, and actually took most of the contracts.

LaRouche: Well, they haven't got much, have they? They got a U.S. paid contract, but they haven't gotten much in the way of assets from Iraq. That whole thing is a mess. It's going to go through a new phase of deterioration. The United States is really in trouble in Iraq right now. There's no way the United States can come out of that thing successfully.

Host: Now, what are you seeing back home, in the States, amongst the people, the general populace, on the war in Iraq?

LaRouche: Well, the issue is—it's not just Iraq. Iraq was obviously an obvious target. But the whole thing—you have to look at Southwest Asia. You look at an area which includes Azerbaijan, Armenia, Turkey, Iran, as well as the Arab countries, including Egypt. Now, this area is notable in raw materials, because the price of getting oil out of the Gulf area, is the cheapest in the world. And it's done next to water, which means the transport is easy. It also—the supply of this, according to the estimates, we had one of these meetings at the Zayed Center, when they had these in Abu Dhabi, in Dubai, and we discussed this, and the experts estimated that the supply of petroleum, from this area, is about 80 years at least.

So, you have the world's longest-lasting and cheapest supply of abundant petroleum in this area.

Now, at the same time, this is an area that has two other significances. First of all, it's the pivot of the Islamic world, Southwest Asia, with all the complexities of that. Egypt is key. The Southwest Asia as such is key. Turkey is key. Iran is key. If you want to start a general war, the way that Brzezinski and Huntington do, using Islam as a target for world war, of a special kind, that's a good place to do it. It happens to also involved petroleum.

Also, by taking at the petroleum target, and destroying the area, you create a crisis for the entire world. If you want to take over the world for some bloc, there's no better way to try it, than to take this area, and sink it. Just sink it.

Now, you look at what's happening in Iraq. There's no possible way that the United States can win a successful war, or call it successful, in Iraq. It can't happen. What they're doing is they're destroying the country. My argument to people is, "Yes, you're right, they are destroying the country. But that's not their mistake. That's their intention. That's what they intended to do. And they intend to do that to other countries as well."

What you're in is, now you're in a "great game," the great game behind the picture; it's not what Brzezinski calls "the chessboard." It's a real great game.

If you look at the world, all of the money in the world, that is, the money that's going to grab things, is concentrating largely on raw materials, mineral raw materials, chiefly. Look at the price of minerals. Look at the way that derivatives money is swarming in to buy up contracts, to take control of these minerals: nickel, copper, everything, as well as petroleum. Look at the fight about the Russian oil.

What you have is—the United States is a raw materials power. Central and Western Europe, including the United Kingdom, are a raw materials power; they should know that in South Africa. A raw materials power. Russia is a raw materials power. China is not a raw materials power, but it's the biggest bidder for raw materials of anybody in the world right now.

Host: Mr. LaRouche, if I get you right, and I mean, the sense that I get from what you're explaining, is that, there is basically resource wars that we are having now. I mean, are you, finding ourselves in Africa, South Africa, and having seen for the last 50-odd years what is happening in Africa, I mean, this is precisely the way things have panned out here in Africa. Angola, DRC, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Somalia — I mean, these are all just because of resources that they want to plunder.

LaRouche: Yes, exactly. Remember, you had Henry Kissinger in 1975, wrote this memorandum, National Security Study Memorandum 200, which was later declassified and released, so people could look at it. This thing specified the policy of Kissinger's crowd, under Nixon, and also spilling over when Nixon was replaced by Ford, was, the United States should have a policy — and in Central Africa the policy was specific: Africa has raw materials. These raw materials belong to the future of the United States, not to the Africans. In the meantime, the Africans are much too populous. They're consuming too much of these raw materials which we want conserved for our future.

Also, the Africans want technological progress. Their populations are growing. They want technological progress to feed their populations. They're going to use up those raw materials, or they're going to try to protect them, and hold on to them. And keep them away from us. What are we going to do? We're going to destroy all sub-Saharan Africa. By how? By what method? The methods we've seen. And that's how it's worked.

Host: AIDS?

LaRouche: The latest thing about Thatcher's boy, getting involved in the mess.

Host: Oh, of course.

LaRouche: Typical of the whole operation. The operation of the use of mercenaries and so forth, to facilitate all kinds of little wars. What happened in the Great Lakes area. For example, the way the Rwanda thing was run by these guys. The way that George Bush Sr. moved in, in Zaire, in northern Congo, to grab the gold reserves up there.

This is the pattern, is to destroy the place. One war after the other. Genocidal wars, of Africans killing Africans. Nations disappearing.

Host: Mr. LaRouche. Another question that stems from that: Clearly they need, for that to happen, they need conduits. You mentioned one already, mercenaries in the form of Mark Thatcher, allegedly speaking. Of course, having grown up here, in this part of the world, one has seen the rapacious rise of big corporations, and from—I'm just looking at the big corps that are involved in the mineral resource extraction. You know, companies like Anglo-American, companies like Rio Tinto, and LonRho, and all these companies. Are they the conduits of these cabals?

LaRouche: They're the instruments. They're not the owners, they're the instruments of the financier interests which do use them. But they also discard them. Like LonRho, who went through a couple of operations after coming out of the so-called Northern Rhodesia operation.

No, what you're looking at now is even worse: You're looking of a pattern of young boys, many of whom have not reached puberty yet, who are being trained as killers, in Africa. They're using African children, to kill Africans, and to kill each other. And look at the map, one part of Africa after the other. Look at the map, and look at where these things are going on.

Host: Rwanda, for instance.

LaRouche: You're looking at, somebody's created a machine for self-inflicted genocide. And what's happening is the heavy military forces are moving in to create compounds, where they surround and protect the mineral assets they want to control, and hope that everything else goes to hell. So, you have this kind of no-man's land developing. Areas they don't want to bother with, they turn them into a no-man's land, like what's going in the eastern part of Congo.

Host: Mr. LaRouche, just before we continue. Unfortunately time has caught up on us, we have to break for ads, but just a thought, if you can stay on with us for another couple of minutes. After the break, I would just like to focus on the very interesting that Jeff Steinberg did on John Perkins' book the Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, because clearly they — it brings in the triad of the IMF, the World Bank, and WTO, and their role in furthering this globalization of genocide.

LaRouche: That's right.

[station break]

Host: Now, before the break, I asked you to comment, because there's clearly, in economic terms, a process of globalization has taken place. Big corporations, transnational corporations, are expanding into the world, and setting up shop all over the world. And apparently, the way I understand it, the IMF, World Bank, and WTO is the kind of regulator, or vehicle that is being used to further their interests. Now, what I would like to know is, are they in cahoots with big business? ...

I read a book of John Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, and also one of your journalists, Jeff Steinberg, has commented, and reviewed the book.

The question is, could you outline for me how this fits in with the globally demonic plan?

LaRouche: What you're looking at, a period which starts in 1971-72, in which a group inside the Nixon Administration, led by George Shultz, orchestrated, first of all, the decision that was made on the 15th of August, 1971, which sort of collapsed the dollar, and then, the following year, the fight between the Nixon Administration, and the Pompidou government of France, over the issue, at the Azores conference, of the IMF.

Now, since that time, the IMF and World Bank, and some other institutions, have actually functioned as organizations of financial and political rape around the world. Typical of that, was the case of Chile, Pinochet. The Pinochet coup was a fascist coup, using, literally, people left over from the Nazi regime, put into that part of the world. And then "Operation Condor," which was rather notorious, occurred to eliminate, by murder, mass murder, possible resistance to these regimes of Chile, Bolivia, Argentina, and so forth.

So, from that point on, the kind of thing that Perkins describes in his book, until about 1989, when they put the head of government of Panama in jail, after the little war down there, the policy was pretty much what Perkins describes. They would move in on a country, get them to go into debt, use the over-indebtedness of the country to take the country over, and loot it. And if someone, such as a local politician, resisted this rape, they'd kill him. They wouldn't kill him directly, as Perkins describes it quite accurately. They wouldn't come in and kill him—the same people who were doing the operation. They would have somebody else, like an ex-Nazi, or some other team, professional-killer team, come in and do the assassination, or perhaps some government agency.

Now, what's happened is, in those days, as Perkins describes it—and this goes on from about '71-72, until 1989-90—in those days they would start with the bankers up front. The bankers would go in, and try to get the country to buy this loan package, to go into debt, to support this foreign contractor to come in and do something and rape the country. Then they get the country way over in debt, way over its head, and they make certain demands, to take the country over, for its debt. And if the head of state, or somebody else, gets in the way of the project, and he doesn't come around to "reason," as they would put it, suddenly somebody comes in and kills him. As Perkins calls them, the "jackals."

That happened. And that was the characteristic of that period of about 20 years.

After that, we went through a change, which is now in effect. Now, they kill first, and send the bankers in second. You see this in the pattern in Iraq. They move in with a war, to kill. They've already half-killed the country with the first war, and the conditions put on it. Now, they move in to kill. And what do they come in to? They come in with the bankers to pick the bones of the victims of the war.

Now, what's going on now, is not bankers trying to grab this, or grab that. We're actually in a process of globalization, which is the elimination of the nation-state.

Look for example, at what's happened in Europe—the case of the Common Market. Under the Maastricht Treaty, the problem is, the predicament of France, and particularly, of Germany, which could otherwise have handled this problem, managed it, is that under the European Bank, the European Central Bank, these countries no longer have the sovereignty to deal with their own crises. So that, globalization means, essentially, the elimination of the sovereign nation-state as an institution, and going to some kind of imperial glob, run by a cartel, rather than a system of nation-states.

Host: So, Mr. LaRouche, the way I hear you say, what happened to democracy? I mean, is this—?

LaRouche: See, the problem is, if you convince people that their vote doesn't mean anything, which is what's happened in the United States. The lower 80% of family-income brackets have essentially been phased out. The point is, we used to have the lower 80% of income brackets, would be the dominant part of income, of national income, personal income. Now, the upper 20% of family-income brackets, has more income than the lower 80%—by far! So, what you've had, is a change in which the poorer people, which are the great majority of society, do not believe that they actually have power to shape the policies of their government. They believe they have the power to beg, and to bully their government, into making concessions to them. But the idea of going in and telling the government, "this should be your policy": No, they don't do that any more.

So, therefore, we've gone through a phase of "democracy doesn't mean anything," because the people themselves have been, in a sense, pushed out of playing a leading role, as they used to play, say, in the United States. They would influence the parties, they would influence the government. They would campaign, and vote, on the basis of what they thought the Federal government ought to do.

Now, they put pressure on the Federal and state government, not to change the policy of the government, but to get a favor. So, therefore, we have lost the sense of what we used to call democracy, because, first of all, we make it dysfunctional by this kind of method, and then, when the people are weak, because they've given up control over their government, then government moves in and tries to put in dictatorial measures.

Host: So, what I understand you're saying, is, I'm thinking you're making me very nervous. I'm thinking about South Africa, and we've just voted, and 70% of the people voted for a particular party. And well, not so long ago, we took a loan from the IMF, about $1 billion, or $2 billion, I think, which obviously increased our debt to quite an alarming extent. And so, am I to believe that President Mbeki is singing the tune of George Bush, and the cabal?

LaRouche: Well, I think a lot of people are. But you know how it works, if you look at it objectively. Because the problem in this thing is, which I have deal with in myself: You see a situation like this, and your passions are aroused, because the injustice of it all impresses you. But then you have to sit back and make sure you're thinking clearly. Because you have to think about how to beat it, not how to complain about it. And I'm in the business of trying to do something about it, not complain about it.

Yes, I know this goes on. My view is, that we have to develop the positive side. We have to develop what's called by Schiller, the "Sublime." We have to present people not how bad it is; we have to tell them that; you've got to tell people the truth. But rather than emphasizing "let's act against the 'baddies,' " what we have to concentrate on is what should be good. And fight for that. And from the strength of fighting for the good, we can beat the bad. Whereas, if you go out to destroy the bad, you may become the bad yourself, because you get into something like the Thirty Years War.

So, therefore, I think our job is to give people a vision of what we could do, and can do, and try to mobilize people to work for something positive, rather than screaming, and be losing blood over just the negative. I'm not against fighting to resist and defend rights. But I think that, in itself, is not a winning war policy. A winning strategy has an exit strategy, and an exit strategy has to be something that is worth fighting for, to try to get people to understand it, and when they will fight for something which is good, we can take care of—the other thing will go by the way.

Host: There are so many things I want to cover, you've touched on so many things. If we can just change tracks for a moment, and come back to the Middle East. And yes, of course, one event that has clearly reshaped perhaps the political landscape in that region, is obviously the demise of Yasser Arafat. And clearly the legacy that he has left behind; clearly the land of Palestine has many complexities, one realizes. But now, some believe that Yasser Arafat was a sell-out, some believe that he was a revolutionary, others believe he was a confused statesman. Looking at what is happening in Israel, because, clearly, it would appear from the American policy, that Israel is clearly, as you called it just now, I assume, a pivot in that region, and one that needs, whose security is vital in that region. So, unfortunately the Palestinians are the lackeys, or the monkeys, or whatever you want to call it, in this game.

Your vision of how the state of Israel is playing a role in that region?

LaRouche: Well, Israel is a loser. Israel is a pawn in this situation. Because anyone who looks at this from a military, or related standpoint, strategic standpoint, realizes that Israel is about to be destroyed by its own hand. You can not engage in this kind of situation, neighbor to neighbor, in asymmetric warfare modes, as is going on now—and you know, people have left Israel, who once were there, and other people have been imported, who, shall we say, are not quite sane always—and so, therefore, you have this terrible situation.

Now, the situation is complicated, because people, including some people from the United States, are playing this situation in a way to keep the thing going this way. They don't want a resolution. Whereas even with Sharon—I could talk about Sharon for months, about how bad he is, but he's not the worst. Netanyahu is: If you think Sharon is bad, you ought to look at Netanyahu.

But we do have some positive things on the ground, friends of ours, in the region. Arafat was what he pretended to be. He was a freedom fighter. He's exactly what he pretended to be. He may have made mistakes, but he made honest mistakes in the sense of what his situation was. And the situation was corrupt. I mean, the money thing was corrupt, a lot of things were corrupt. It was a war type of situation, and he's very much missed.

What's happened now is, we have a new Palestinian government presumably coming into existence. I think [Marwan] Barghouti is a much more interesting person, if somebody wanted to make a deal, because he's a fighter, and a fighter is the one who can be the best bargainer. I think if Sharon were forced with a government, which included Peres, for example, were forced to negotiate with Barghouti, and if the United States and some other people would insist that this discussion occur, I think it is possible, to put through something which is a step toward what the Oslo accords was intended to do. It can be done. It's not impossible. It would require tremendous pressure.

My view, of course, was that we have to stabilize the region politically, which is why I came up with this Southwest Asia policy: If you get Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iran, and the Arab countries to agree on a certain policy for the region, then you can approach the Israel-Palestine situation in a forthright way, and say, "Okay, now, we can't have peace in this region unless you guys stop killing each other." And under those conditions, if the United States and Europe were really serious, and put the pressure on Israel that has to be put on there, to keep the crazies under control, I think we could bring about a peace at this time.

Host: But, Mr. LaRouche, if I hear you, we are not obviously focussing on the role-players that play major roles in fomenting this war in that region. It's of course the Jewish lobby, AIPAC, JINSA, and, of course, not forgetting the Christian fundamentalist lobby, as well.

LaRouche: I think their power is exaggerated. They are used as levers in the situation.

For example, look at the world today, just to get a picture of what the reality is, the way I see it. You have the United States. If the United States is somehow straightened out, and that can happen—because Bush is in a very dangerous position with this Social Security campaign. He can lose his position, on his attempt to rape Social Security. That is a big mistake on his part, a political-strategic mistake, for him to take that policy. He can lose Republican support, as well as Democratic. So, he's not in good shape on that one.

Now, you have the other side of the powers. Europe presently, western and central Europe, have no concerted power, as states, in the old sense. Europe today, western and central Europe, is no longer what it was in the beginning of 2003. They're much weaker. But Europe is important, especially on the pivot of Germany, especially on the pivot of a Chancellor Schroeder, who is more of a ministerial chancellor, because he really doesn't have a party base. And it's just the circumstances, that he is the Chancellor of Germany.

Now, he's doing some positive things: He's dealing with Russia; he's dealing with China; and implicitly, therefore, he's dealing with the whole Asia complex. In order to carry out that policy of Europe, involving Russia, China, India, and so forth. he's got to have the rest of the European countries, or many of them, involved with him, with Germany. So, therefore you have a situation where you have a U.S.-Europe-Russia pivot, and you can not solve the problems of China and India, without a Europe-Russia pivot.

So, therefore, you have a concert of interests, centered on Eurasia, which demand security to be able to go ahead with 25-50-year, long-term agreements on development, of the type that China, in particular, is pushing for now.

On that basis, that concert of power, if it wants a stable world, if it wants to deal with the great financial crisis coming down now, has to take something like the Middle East situation, and say, "We are going to have peace there now! We are determined to have peace." Under those conditions, we can have it.

The problem so far has been, it always has been available, but some people wanted to play games in that region. And other people who should have taken a tough stand, didn't. The problem is not a Jewish problem. The problem is not an Arab problem. The problem is, someone is orchestrating a conflict which has been going on, actually since the 1920s, but especially, since the 1930s. They've been orchestrating it. We need to have a peace of religions around the world today. We've got to stop this religious war.

We must have a peace of religions. And we cannot have a peace of religions, while we have this mess coming out of the United States, and elsewhere, playing Arab against Israeli. There will not be peace. It's been war too long. We're on the verge of the spread of religious war around this planet. And we've got this in the United States with these lunatic fundamentalists. You know, they're anti-Semitic, that's the funny part about it. They want to kill the Jews. They want the Battle of Armageddon so that they can come in there, take over the territory, and kill all the Jews that don't convert.

Host: Unfortunately, Mr. LaRouche, there are so many issues I wanted to cover with you, and I must say, thank you for your time. Unfortunately, we've run out of time.

This is a last point, last message for us, here, the locals down south in South Africa. You know, how can we play, you mentioned earlier about working for truth, working for justice. What's your message, how can we play a role, in working for truth and justice?

LaRouche: What we have to do is, we in various parts of the world, have to rely upon the idea of the nation-state, as sovereign nation-states, and we people, who are patriots of our respective sovereign nation-states, have to understand our interest in the world, the way the world goes. We have to combine our forces, by talking to each other, and by collaborating with each other, to become a concert of national power that is able to bring this world into order—not just a giant lobby. But, as really, a kind of alliance of people in various countries who are concerned with doing good with their own lives, for the future of their nations. We have to work together.

Because, divided, we are weak. We can be chopped off. As in the case of South Africa: It can be chopped off. And you see the process north of South Africa, the vulnerability. So, therefore, the strength of South Africa lies in its alliances of various kinds, of its people's alliances, people-to-people alliances, with other parts of the world.

We have to have discussion, dialogue, to come to a sense of common purpose, common interest, common understanding. Then, we can apply our concerted force, to do things collectively that we could never do individually.

Host: Thank you there, Mr. LaRouche, and I hope that the powers of truth and justice are listening tonight, and heeding your call, and we hope that you will be successful in your endeavors to establish that. And I thank you for having taken time from your busy schedule to chat with us. It's indeed been an honor, and I hope we can do so again in the future.

LaRouche: Well, thank you very much.