Latest From LaRouche

TWO INTERVIEWS WITH LYNDON LAROUCHE:

'GUNS OF AUGUST' WARNING OUT EVERYWHERE

Lyndon LaRouche was the guest Aug. 12 on the radio program hosted by Andre Eggelletion. Andre has had EIR guests on a number of times, when he hosted a talk show in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, and now his program has just begun to be syndicated, streaming live weekdays from 11 am-1 pm (ET) on the Information Radio Network (www.inforadionet.com), and broadcast in six cities, led by WLRM 1380 AM in Memphis, Tennessee. LaRouche was interviewed last year just before the election, on Oct. 29, on Eggelletion's Fort Lauderdale program.

ANDRE EGGELLETION: Joining me now is a man who I have had a chance to talk to, since I believe it was October of last year, following an interview that I did have with Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, and he was able to come in and to clarify a lot of things that Dr. Brzezinski and I had to talk about, and just put the cap on our understanding of all of these things. And, I'm talking about none other than one of the greatest patriots ever to walk this soil, his name is Mr. Lyndon LaRouche. Mr. Lyndon LaRouche has been an activist, he's been a Presidential candidate, he has been politically involved in trying to make sure that this democracy and our prosperity in this country survives on into perpetuity, all of his life. And particularly since the early '70s, you know, he sought the Presidency a number of times; he was a candidate of the U.S. Labor Party, an independent political association committed to the tradition of Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Abraham Lincoln and so many other patriots who have fought the money machine.

And I'd just like to welcome Mr. Lyndon LaRouche to André Eggelletion Show. How are you doing Mr. LaRouche?

LYNDON LAROUCHE: Pretty good, for an old geezer.

EGGELLETION: [laughs] What a character! You know, you might be old in body, but I guarantee, you've got all the vim and vigor of an NFL rookie.

LAROUCHE: Well, I am a frisky person.

EGGELLETION: Well, it's good to have you. Now, I've been receiving a lot of materials from you, and I've read them, and I've been greatly edified from them. And one of the things that you talk about is the "Guns of August," down here now in 2005. Now, for the listeners who might not be aware of what that was all about, the "Guns of August," you've got to go all the way back to 1914, when Germany mobilized some seven armies. And their plan was to just sweep all across Europe, and by the end of the month, they descended on Paris, who was their long-time enemy. And those events in August of 1914 were the opening salvoes of what that generation called the "Great War," and we have come to know as "World War I."

And it now appears that we might be staring in the face of some more "Guns of August" type of activity again in America: Mr. LaRouche, you want tell our audience about it?

LAROUCHE: Well, it's not quite like previous times, because we have shot our ability to conduct a regular war. We've shot the remnants of our ability to conduct regular war, in Iraq. Now, what they're going for—and now, I had this from various circles, intelligence, military, and also checked it with people in the Senate and so forth—so, I was convinced that we had to go with the story, which we knew was true, but the other people, who had the story, were not in a position, according to their lights, to go with it publicly, so I did.

So, I put out this release, which is all over the world, and the world knows it: that Dick Cheney was headed to start a war, using the period of the Congressional recess, August, as a period to set it up. As to whether the war would start in August or September, I didn't know, but I knew we had to be ready to deal with an August threat, which is now developing around the world.

The danger is this: Cheney and his crowd, don't give a damn. They're out to have the war, and they're out for an air war. What they intend to use is missiles and airstrikes, on a great number of locations in Iran. They're trying to build up the pretext for that. And they're working with the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, to try to bring this about, in the same way that Blair and Cheney collaborated to get us into the Iraq War. So, there's a certain similarity. But, the point is, we don't have the troops to put into another war on the ground. Therefore, they're going for an air war, which means, aircraft and missiles, and they're going to target a lot of places.

Now, the problem is this: You can not fight a war of a traditional type, on this planet, now. Nuclear weapons, and similar kinds of capabilities, have taken out that kind of warfare. We see what's happening in Iraq and Afghanistan—we went in there, we fought a war, and it's worse than when we went in there—and it's becoming worse. What's happening, we're getting a reaction, which is called either "irregular warfare" or "asymmetric warfare." "Population warfare" is another term for it, where populations around the world are revolting and going to various kinds of resistance, terrorism, armed struggle, against the United States and Britain, but especially the United States.

What would happen, if Cheney did that, is he would uncork the incalculable. We would be headed toward a global asymmetric warfare, where down the line, would come some thermonuclear weapons in the picture: which would mean the death of civilization. So, what Cheney is doing—and I don't think he cares—what he's doing, as the acting President, while the nominal President is sitting down there having bike rides down in Crawford, Texas—that we're in a very dangerous situation, and there are very few places in the world that have the guts to deal with two problems: One: The rising danger of war, which Cheney typifies. Number two: The fact we're in a big financial crash, and that has to be prevented.

So, those are the two problems which are largely on my plate, right now.

EGGELLETION: Umm-hmm. And I'm glad you're focussing on these problems, because, shortly after President Bush was elected and he did submit his Nuclear Posture Review to Congress, I had a chance to read the declassified sections of that Nuclear Posture Review, and I was shocked, to find that battle plans in the 21st Century do call for the use of a new class of nuclear weapons, a low-yield form of a nuclear weapon, which is capable of not the type of devastation that the old Cold War-class of nuclear weapons were capable of, but for a targetted, strategic purpose.

Now, you fear that this President, and this Vice President, could perhaps call upon the use of these types of nuclear weapons, in addition to the old Cold War class weapons against Iran?

LAROUCHE: Well, what it would do—they would not start with the thermonuclear weapons. What happens is, when you pull the trigger on a loaded gun, and you have a target you're aimed at with that gun, you may set things into motion you don't even control. That's the situation.

What they're aiming to do, is a selective air attack, with missiles and planes, to attack a large number of targets in Iran. And this is all part of trying to intimidate the world into submission. That's the essential name of the game—the way they tried earlier with the Iraq War. It's not going to work.

But the danger is, that, once you start setting fire to the world, I mean, you declare war on Islam—that's 1 billion people! They may react. They are likely to react. You declare war against other people; you declare threats against China—that's a lot of people, that's 1.3 or more billion people. You begin to make threats against India, that's 1 billion people. You crash the economies of Europe, Russia, Central Europe, and so forth—that's more people. You're crashing the economy of Mexico and Central America, with this CAFTA thing, and South America. We're blowing up the world.

So, instead of a U.S. policy of taking leadership, to bring stability to the world, which is what we should be doing, we are doing the worst possible thing, of trying to blow up the world. And this is what this crowd behind Cheney is doing.

The President, I don't think, knows what's going on. He's a mental case. And we have an acting President, a Vice President as an acting President, while we have a sitting President! Cheney's running the government! Not Bush! This is the kind of situation, we're in.

EGGELLETION: Well, you know, one thing that particularly concerns me, especially in a global environment of terrorism, that is, the dismantling, the inadvertent dismantling of the trans-Atlantic alliance, due largely to this Presidential unilateral option of invading Iraq, alone and by ourselves, and I think that we need to put that trans-Atlantic alliance back together, in order to be able to diplomatically work ourselves out of this situation. And I think that any sane statesman could arrive at that conclusion. But, do you believe that these guys have any regard whatsoever, towards multilateral sanctions, and multilateral incentives, towards any of these governments, to back off of some of their confrontational posture with the West?

LAROUCHE: Right now, no. My view is, there are some useful factors overseas. But, I've been counting—as you may have observed—I've been counting on the Senate, as the relevant institution under our Constitution to put a check on the rampages of an out-of-control Executive branch. And hoping also to get support from within the House of Representatives, and other institutions.

So far, we've prevented a coup against a government. That is, Cheney was trying to run a coup, called the "nuclear option" coup, to take over power to neutralize the Senate. The Senate stopped him: A coalition of Republicans and Democrats in the Senate stopped Cheney on the 23rd of May. Cheney is coming back, and keeps trying to do it again. So far, the Senate has played its part in resisting this, and you have people in the House of Representatives, too.

You have, now, the key man of Tom DeLay, Abramoff, is in deep trouble. And that's of course, his Florida big-time news, among other things. And that could lead to the end of DeLay over the coming months, because DeLay has a trial coming up in Texas, which could lead to his conviction, and he might just decide to resign and get out of there, to try to avoid that conviction.

So, you have a reaction, from the institutions in government, and outside government against this coup around Cheney and crowd. So, there is resistance.

Now, the big problem is this: We're on the edge of the biggest financial collapse the world has ever imagined. The center of the collapse in the United States, the big center that will hit people the hardest, is the danger of a real-estate collapse, a real-estate mortgage-bubble collapse, the Greenspan collapse. We could have the effect of a sudden collapse of the world financial system, centered in things like mortgage securities, other things of that sort.

The problem here, in respect to Europe, is, the U.S. dollar has a lot of dollars outstanding as obligations against the United States—China, Japan, other countries, Europe. Now, if the dollar were to collapse by 30%, and the way the oil price is going, that could happen, very soon.

EGGELLETION: And that would decimate these government-secured enterprises, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Mr. LaRouche, we're going to have to take a quick break. When we come back, I definitely want you to continue with that topic and give us a better understanding.

You're listening to the André Eggelletion Show on the Information Radio Network. My special guest is Mr. Lyndon LaRouche. Stick around, 'cause he's just getting warmed up!...

All right, welcome back to the André Eggelletion Show. My special guest is Mr. Lyndon LaRouche. He has run for President numerous times, and he is now running larouchepac.com, that is a website. His organization is doing a lot to try to make sure that our country remains sane. Mr. LaRouche, welcome back to the show.

LAROUCHE: Thank you.

EGGELLETION: I'm glad to have you.

You know, if the confirmation of what was written in The American Conservative about Cheney's schemes for this pre-emptive nuclear strike on Iran and setting forth the policies that will take us to that point—I mean, if these Congressional, and military, and intelligence sources who have confirmed this information are correct, and we do ultimately go down the road, and end up using these nuclear weapons, this would not only signal a major doctrinal shift in our strategic policy around the world, but I think, if a nuke were to go off—anywhere in the world, no matter what size the nuke is—it would have catastrophic consequences, on just the thing that you were talking about, prior to the break: that is, the compromises to our mortgage industry. You care to elaborate?

LAROUCHE: Yeah, well, the problem here, is that if the U.S. dollar falls, by say 30%—which is a fair estimate, or even less, but say 30%—that would mean a disaster in terms of dollar holdings by foreigners, China, Japan, Europe, and so forth. Now, this would cause a chain-reaction collapse of the entire monetary-financial system, and it could happen virtually overnight. It's something much worse than we experienced during the 1930s, or 1929 to 1933.

However, if the United States government takes effective action, to defend the dollar, by extending long-term credit, dollar-denominated credit, which means that the dollars are fungible over a period of 25 to 50 years to come, we would get agreement from countries overseas which hold dollars, because this would save them, from eating that loss.

The use of that method, which is a Franklin Roosevelt-type method, would force the expansion of our economy. Now, we have vast needs in infrastructure alone, let alone industries. We have water shortages. We used to get safe water out of the tap, at least east of the Mississippi—you can't do that any more, generally. We used to have electrical power, which was reliable. We had fuel supplies that were reliable. We had schools that were reliable. We had medical facilities, including institutional facilities which are being wiped out now. So therefore, if we restore our transportation, power, and other systems, we have to make an investment, which is about a 25- to 50-year investment, varying on the kind of thing you do: a power station, minimum 30 years; new rail transportation system, another big chunk; water systems, power distribution, another chunk. Housing, medical care, another chunk. So, the investment in production, to meet infrastructure requirements, inside and outside the United States, by a group of cooperating countries, would mean we would go into a Roosevelt-style recovery, like that which made us the greatest nation in the world, economically, in the post-war period. We could do that, again.

But we have to have a government that resolves to do that. Under those conditions, where the United States does its job, as a leader among nations, and in cooperation with other nations, and stops that mess and saves the world from that kind of chaos, the United States would have pretty good relations with most part of the world.

EGGELLETION: I agree with you 100%. And I think that would be a prudent course to embark upon, but it seems like their prescription calls for more and more outsourcing, it calls for riding the multiple-asset bubble environment of our economy on a tiger of liquidity. And, as President Kennedy said, those who foolishly chose the back of the tiger, eventually ended up inside.

We're chatting with Mr. Lyndon LaRouche. And we are going to have to take a quick break. And when we come back, we'll be on a little bit longer segment than this one was. And we'll be ready to take some of your phone calls....

Welcome back to the André Eggelletion Show. You know, we all are kind of like that Midnight Rider, and if you're lucky, you might have one more silver dollar left. I mean, they've confiscated all of our precious metals, our silver, our copper, our nickel from our coins. And with us, today, to help us to understand what they're planning on doing, to so-called try to "make up" for this shortfall, with the privatization of Social Security and so many other initiatives that this President failed on, is Mr. Lyndon LaRouche. Mr. LaRouche, welcome back to the show.

LAROUCHE: Thank you. Good to be here.

EGGELLETION: Very good. Who do you feel is behind some of these policies, particularly the one that President Bush came up with, the privatization of Social Security, as the central pillar of the reorganization of Social Security—another Roosevelt great program that was set up.

LAROUCHE: Well, Social Security was one of the last places you could steal enough money to make Wall Street temporarily happy. And George was out to steal it. I don't think George understood that, because I don't think George understands much of anything. But, the people who were steering him, and using him like a puppet, knew exactly what they were doing. That included people like George Shultz, the man who crafted the existence of the entire Bush Administration, that is, this Bush Administration. It was put together as a team, under the direction of George Shultz, and marched in on the basis of an election.

So, the bankers behind George Shultz, who is tied to Halliburton and Bechtel and so forth—the people who are "cleaning up" in Iraq, shall we say?—they were behind the thing. And they have their little puppet, George, and he does what they tell him most of the time. And when he's not there, and sometimes he's not all there, then Dick Cheney does the dirty work. And Dick Cheney, the acting President—that's the way this thing is working.

Fortunately, we're getting some resistance, and have since the new inauguration, resistance from the Senate and others: there is a fight-back in the country. It's much slower than most of us would hope. It's more difficult than most of us would imagine. But, it's in progress. And therefore, my job is to push that, boost that. We can defeat these methods. And I hope that we do.

EGGELLETION: I hope that we do, as well. I believe that we can do it. The American people just need some perspective. And you can get that perspective, just give us a call, 1800-773-8255, and you'll get a chance to talk to, and ask a question of Mr. Lyndon LaRouche. Just pick up the phone....

Mr. LaRouche, do you believe that some of the events that we have seen recently, the bombings in London, the bombings in Madrid, and particularly, 9/11, whether or not, these are contrived incidents; or whether or not, what they're telling us in the news is correct, you believe that these events are being used as a Reichstag Fire kind of pretext for expanding the government's authority over the citizens, to—?

LAROUCHE: Absolutely. Remember, Cheney is very close to Tony Blair, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. The connection of Cheney to Blair, goes through Cheney's wife, the woman who picked him off the dump, married him, and used him as a stud, and eventually made him Vice President. So, that's the connection. And Cheney's connection to London, is largely through his wife's connection into the Liberal Imperialist crowd around the Fabian Society of Tony Blair. And they cooked up a lot of this, on their level.

This is an orchestrated operation. It is run by an international financial organization. Now, the way it runs is a little more complicated than most people would like to think. You know, if you have an idiot, a dangerous idiot in your neighborhood, and you want to cause a problem for the neighborhood, if you can tick this guy off, he will do all the damage you want done. He may not know who you are; you have no obvious direct connection to him, in the ordinary course of business; but he's doing the job.

Now, that's what we're getting in various parts of the world. We're getting terrorist incidents, which are almost programmed—and to a large degree, are programmed. But the way it works is, the people who are doing this, do not like to get caught. So therefore, they use subterfuges, to try to make the operation they're controlling untraceable. And with the help of a President, who blocked the functioning of the 9/11 Commission, they do manage to cover up things which are relevant to finding out who did what to whom.

And that is what is going on right now.

You see it openly advertised, by Dick Cheney—you know, this is not a guess, a good guess that needs confirmation. This is confirmed! This guy, out of his own mouth, has confirmed that he is determined, now, to have a war, using nuclear weapons, against Iran. This is not something that needs to be confirmed: He has said it. The deployment is being made. The plans, for STRATCOM and so forth, have gone out, under orders. This is "go."

Now, we can stop it. But, as of now, this is not something we can speculate upon. This is already "go." It's something we have to stop in midstream.

But right now, we have terrorism all over the planet, and the people who control Cheney are doing it, in the same way that the financial agencies which wanted to put Hitler into power, not only stuck him into power, but then had Goering set fire to the Reichstag in order to make Hitler a dictator. And that went all the way from 1933 to 1945, when Hitler was dead.

So, that's the kind of danger we're in. And, it's—knowing what it is, knowing what has to be done, don't wait till you catch the exact connection between the guy who's doing the provocation, and what the government's going to do. If you know the connection exists, act on knowing that's the case to prevent the thing from happening.

EGGELLETION: You know, and you mentioned Fabian socialism and the Fabian Society with Tony Blair. You know the Fabians' creed was, they would advance their agenda through gradualism, but it seems that this Bush Administration is being very, very rapid about the things that they're doing, that are compromising the people of the world. And, what in your opinion—I mean, how is the world receiving this major doctrinal shift, that Cheney is signalling, towards his intention to use nuclear weapons?

LAROUCHE: This goes way back. People have been ignoring what's happening. Look, in the post-war period, at the beginning of the post-war period, we had some nasty things with Truman: He was going for preventive nuclear war, on the basis of instructions from Churchill, who had just been booted out of office in London. It was Truman, under Churchill's initiative, who postponed the peace treaty with Japan, in order to drop two nuclear weapons—the only ones we had—on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; and we were then committed to a preventive nuclear warfare attack on the Soviet Union, as soon as we could build up a nuclear arsenal, which we didn't have at the time.

But, even despite that, despite the anti-Roosevelt character of the Truman Administration, we were still doing well as an economy in terms of relative progress, of the economic conditions of our people, into the middle of the 1960s. About the time of the war in Vietnam, we began to go downhill. Under Nixon and under Carter, but actually it was Brzezinski, the whole thing began to go down, and we have been going downhill ever since.

As you know, the lower 80% of the family-income brackets of the United States, since 1977, have been losing massively. Our population is being pauperized—the lower 80%, in varying degrees, but pauperized: loss of medical care, loss of other kinds of services; deterioration of education; sanitation; power problems, everything. So that, we are being looted.

So, what's happened to us now, did not start suddenly with George Bush becoming President. This has been going on as a trend, which we resisted in the post-war period. But the decline of the economy has been going on for about 40 years.

EGGELLETION: All right, let us go ahead and take a call, Mr. LaRouche. I've had a guy from Los Angeles wants to talk with you. He's been holding for quite some time. We'll go to L.A. and welcome Embaje [ph] to the André Eggelletion Show. Embaje, thanks for calling; you've got Lyndon LaRouche, man.

Caller: Okay, good morning Dré and good morning to you, Mr. LaRouche. You were talking just a little while ago about the housing market. And being in Los Angeles, which I know is highly overinflated, as far as prices go, just for a layman, what would be some key indicators to look for, to show that the market is starting to take a turnaround. Me, myself, I know possibly anything detrimental that happens, I think I have enough equity in my property, to absorb that, and still be okay. But, I know, for the new home-buyers that don't have any equity, they're going to end up—you know, being on the short end of the stick.

LAROUCHE: What about a case of a guy, whether he has equity or not, who is stuck with a half-million-dollar mortgage on a house? What kind of an income does he have to have?

Now, look at the total population, and look at the breakdown of income groups: What about the lower 80%? Now, how many people in the lower 80% of family-income brackets are into heavy mortgages, sometimes on these no-interest mortgages which are more dangerous than any other—

Caller: Oh yeah! Yeah, yeah.

LAROUCHE: And then, look at the case of the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac situation. We have a real-estate bubble. California's one of the hotspots for this. You know, they're putting a swimming pool on top of the house, in order to do something—that kind of nonsense.

Caller: What should we look for, though?

LAROUCHE: We're looking for a situation in which, the Federal government is going to have to go through a bankruptcy reorganization of the mortgage market, on the principle that we can not put people out of their homes! Therefore, we're going to have reorganize the whole thing.

Caller: Now, didn't they have one of these bubbles that burst in the early '80s, or mid-'80s?

LAROUCHE: No, this is nothing—that was tame stuff, compared to this! This is the world system.

See, because the mortgage bubble, is not just the primary mortgage on a property. This is a speculative bubble, which is then—the mortgages then become part of a mortgage-based securities market, which goes into a general financial derivatives market, hedge funds, and so forth. These mortgages, of course, are part of the assets of banks. So, a collapse of the mortgage bubble, or the mortgage-based bubble, would mean a collapse of the entire banking system, internationally. I don't mean "collapse"—but ouch! All gone!

In this case, the Federal government must act, through the Congress, with the law, which freezes the thing, and puts it into bankruptcy reorganization: That is, the Federal government takes a bankruptcy act, puts the banks under bankruptcy protection to make sure they don't close their doors and shut down their operations. We have to do the same thing with these mortgages: We have to freeze the thing, and put them into reorganization. On the presumption, we have to have the people staying in their homes. We have to maintain the structure of the homes, of the communities.

Then, we have to grow out of this mess. We're going to have to go to a Roosevelt-style program on a grand scale. It can be done. I've worked on this. It can be done. We just have to have the guts to do it!

Caller: Okay Mr. LaRouche. Thank you for the information.

EGGELLETION: Appreciate your call, Embaje [ph]. Mr. LaRouche, we're going to take a quick break, and when we come back, we're going to have five minutes left in the final segment, and you can finish giving us this education, this wonderful education that we're getting from you, sir.

LAROUCHE: Thank you.

EGGELLETION: All right, you guys are listening to the André Eggelletion Show. I want you to stay with us. If you got time, give a call to your friends and family, tell them to tune in, right here, on the Information Radio Network: We got Lyndon LaRouche—it's a rarity! So, you guys stick around....

Welcome back for the final segment to the André Eggelletion Show, my special guest is Mr. Lyndon LaRouche. And Mr. LaRouche, it is an honor and a pleasure to have you with me here on the André Eggelletion Show today.

LAROUCHE: Good to be with you.

EGGELLETION: It's good to be with you, too.

So, tell me something: How do you see all of this playing out? I mean, we know that President Bush is a borderline lame duck, today. He's not going to be able to get this privatization of Social Security thing through. There have been so many other initiatives that have come out of the White House that are just not going to fly. How do you see all of this thing playing out, in terms of fomenting this doctrinal shift, towards the use of nuclear weapons? You see this thing coming to fruition?

LAROUCHE: Yeah. It's—we can stop it. I'm depending to a large degree on the Congress, especially the Senate. The Senate is the fulcrum here, to try to deal with the thing on a temporary basis.

We're going to have to get rid of this Presidency. I think it's impeachable. I think that Cheney can go; you start with Lewis Libby, his chief of staff and what he's been involved in. I think there's a vulnerability there that he could be induced to take a "walk." The President himself is a mental case.

EGGELLETION: I heard that there's a sealed indictment against Libby. Is that true?

LAROUCHE: Yes, there is. I don't know what the content is, but I've got the general nature of it. And also, what's going to happen, like the case of Abramoff case, which is going to be Tom DeLay's nightmare. These and other directions. There is an action in the process, to get sanity back in the system. And there are some legal aspects being pushed, where people have been doing things that are more than slightly irregular, where politicians can go down, and as a matter of convenience, they can be induced to avoid the worst that could happen to them, by "taking a walk." On that basis, if the President of the United States and Vice President, take a walk—Cheney first, and then the President—we can get out of this mess. And we're likely to, because the way we would select a President to replace this Presidency, would mean that we would have someone who was dedicated, to the job that has to be done.

Therefore, I'm looking at a temporary solution, in that sense of blocking the worst that could happen. For that, I'm counting largely on the support we might mobilize around the Senate. But, in the longer term, and it's not too long, we have to move to replace this Presidency, by getting rid of Cheney first, and then Bush. Cheney, obviously, is culpable; he's done things that are wrong; he's impeachable, and he can be induced to quit, while the getting is good.

Bush is a mental case—he can't handle it. He's on the verge of a crackup. These three-month vacations in Crawford—I mean, this reminds us of the Woodrow Wilson case. He's worse than a Woodrow Wilson case, in some cases.

So therefore, we have to look to a replacement to the Presidency, during this term of the Presidency.

EGGELLETION: I couldn't agree more. And your number, Mr. LaRouche, for my listeners, if you guys are interested in giving him a call, is: 800-929-7566. You can call the LaRouche organization, at 800-929-7566, or you can visit them online at larouchepac.com.

Thirty seconds: Any final thoughts, Mr. LaRouche?

LAROUCHE: Well, it's a worrisome time, but I'm an optimist, albeit a cautious optimist. I don't make big promises, but I do indicate possible solutions. That's my function.

EGGELLETION: All right. And I would definitely suggest that everybody check out your website, larouchepac.com.

Mr. LaRouche, it's been an honor, it's been a pleasure. Thank you, and I look forward to doing it again.

LAROUCHE: Thank you.

LAROUCHE INTERVIEW BY SAN CARLOS UNIVERSITY RADIO — GUATEMALA CITY, GUATEMALA

Lyndon LaRouche was interviewed for 30 minutes on Aug 8, 2005, by University Radio, of the San Carlos National University, in Guatemala City, Guatemala. The interview was conducted by host Julio Mora, and two members of the country's Society of Economists, Carlos Estrada and Carlos Wer, the latter also a long-standing Schiller Institute member.

Q: Mr. LaRouche, it's a pleasure to have you with us. You're on the air right now. Thank you for joining us.

LAROUCHE: Good to be with you.

Q: This is Radio University, from the University of San Carlos in Guatemala, which has a large listening audience among students, professors, and the public in general. You are on the air, so we would like to hear what you have to say.

LAROUCHE: Well, we have a very interesting situation, in the sense that the world is now on the verge of plunging into a New Dark Age. For some people, that's horrifying, but for historians and people of my profession, it's like being a physician: It's the disease that you have to deal with. So therefore, my job is to try to save the patient, and I'm a specialist in very grave sicknesses.

The front end of the thing is that, at the present, we're on the verge of war with Iran, which will not stop there. And just like the rise of fascism in Europe in the 1920s and 30s, the danger of war now from Cheney and company is an expression of an international financial crisis.

In the short-term, the way to define the present crisis immediately is the following: The great depression which occurred in October 1987 is comparable to what happened in 1928 to 1933. But, this time, under Alan Greenspan, they came up with a way of postponing the effects of the depression. What they went to, is what we call "gambler's side-bets": This is financial derivatives. Now, what they did, is they went out to create debt against the account of financial derivatives, and by using the printing press, they converted the profits on these debts into profits on the financial side of the account. There were various financial bubbles in the 1990s which went on to 1999, more or less.

The most important part about this was the looting of the former Soviet Union. They turned the Soviet Union into a corpse, and ate the proceeds and lived on it. In 2000-2001, this changed. What happened is, the amount of debt which had to be generated in order to provide financial growth, was such that the debt was greater than the growth. In other words, when the bankrupt debtor goes into debt to pay his current bills, and the debt is greater than the bills he's paying: He is doomed. He's financially doomed.

The entire world system, including the United States, went to that state in 2000-2001. So, we have now a system—we don't know exactly what date the system will collapse, but the situation is like what happened to Germany in 1923. Germany was bankrupt in June-July of 1923, but they printed money. They flooded with inflationary money, and by October-November, it was impossible.

Take one example of the case of the United States, and also the United Kingdom: The most conspicuous, obvious bubble is the real estate/mortgage bubble. The total world economy is less than about $70 trillion a year, but the debt is hundreds of trillions, and going higher all the time. And the way it is driven is that, in the ratio of debt to income, the debt is always higher. It has now reached the point that the system is about to disintegrate. In other words, in the short term, we have transformed the depression of 1987 into a general monetary and financial disintegration.

Well now, such situations are not impossible to solve, but you have to give up money. You have to put the system into bankruptcy reorganization. Now, if the bankers conduct the bankruptcy, the people are cooked and eaten. This is the intention toward Argentina, for example. The alternative is to have the governments put the financial systems into bankruptcy.

Now, if you go back to the philosophy of the Roosevelt-designed Bretton Woods, and say, we're going to put the international financial systems into receivership under government control, and if we launch a general growth program—in physical growth, not just financial—then the problem can be solved. But it requires a world system which merely requires the majority of the world to agree. Obviously, the governments today would not agree, unless they were terrified into doing it. Therefore, the more terrified people are, in that sense, that's good, because they have to be convinced to do what is necessary which, unless they are frightened into doing it, they would never consider it.

The problem is that only the United States is capable of forcing this kind of reorganization. Europe is sick. Europe can do nothing. Asia as a whole can do things, but they can't do anything on their own. But since the United States has denominated the world monetary system in U.S. dollars, and since the collapse of the dollar would bankrupt most of the world, the agreement of the United States to defend its dollar in the ways I've proposed, is now in position where the only chance the world has, is to accept my proposal. Which, like the physician going into surgery, I can save the patient, but the patient depends upon me.

Now this situation should actually amuse those people in Central and South America, who will say that LaRouche is taking revenge for Mexico's President Lopez Portillo. And, I would be happy to do that. He has died now, but I would like, in a sense, to avenge his honor, by saving the world from a New Dark Age, by doing what Lopez Portillo and I agreed to try to do in 1982. And that is the general situation, in short, as I see it.

Q: Is it possible that the military conflicts, such as those that are emerging now, those of general warfare, would such scenarios actually serve as a way of solving the economic crisis, as some propose?

LAROUCHE: No. The people who think this are, if you look at them closely: You have a draft dodger, Dick Cheney, who is actually already the acting President of the United States, while the nominal President is on vacation, mentally and otherwise. Now, Cheney's a draft dodger. His wife became pregnant just in time to save him from having to go into military service in Vietnam. We call these people in the United States "chicken-hawks." That is, the draft dodgers who want everybody else to go to war.

All right. Now, what Cheney is proposing—and you have to understand his incompetence and insanity: He's only a thug, a Mafia boss for the financial establishment. You see, he's gone into wars, for example, in Iraq and in Afghanistan. He can not win these wars in these areas. These areas are disintegrating. No victory is possible. Ever! Now, what he's threatening to do now, is to go to a nuclear war, a nuclear attack, on Iran. And he is committed to that, together with Tony Blair, the Prime Minister of Great Britain. The push to go to a preventive nuclear attack, and other attacks, on Iran, is now on the table. He's going for that kind of war, because we no longer have the ability to fight a ground-forces war. The world has no ability to fight general warfare, as we understood it in the past.

Now, going to war will have two effects. First of all, it will set forth what we're already seeing in the region of Asia. There'll be a general spread of what we call irregular warfare or asymmetric warfare. What the Chinese once called "peoples' war." It will lead toward, actually, the use of thermonuclear weapons, not merely nuclear ones. So, you're looking at a Dark Age, but you're looking at weak, and cowardly, and stupid people in government, who will actually sit back and let this happen. And I'm speaking of all of the governments of Europe. They make me sick. They're pitiful. They're cowards. Unrealistic.

Therefore, I count on the United States to take the leadership to stop this nonsense.

Q: One way to pose this question, is the way it has been presented to us frequently on this radio station, which is: Is there a similitude between the situation of the depressions of the 1930s which led to World War II, and the situation today, where we'll have waves of unemployment, leading to militarism in the United States today: $500 billion per year spent on arms. Is history being repeated here? Are we facing this kind of drive toward war?

LAROUCHE: Not exactly. You're facing is the impulse toward war, which is of that character, but it's like a mentally disabled degenerate is conceiving of it. You're looking at the potentiality of a global New Dark Age, not just a depression.

This has a long history in modern European history. The first war was the Seven Years War in the early 18th Century, which established the British East India Company as an empire. You had the Napoleonic Wars, which were actually organized by the British monarchy, again to destroy Continental Europe. Then you had various wars, but especially World Wars I and II: They destroyed Europe. Britain's organizing, with Churchill, organizing, potentially, World War III, was an attempt to destroy Continental Eurasia.

What you have is a financial interest, which is the Anglo-Dutch Liberal tendency, which has been organizing this kind of affair over these hundreds of years. We have now come to the end of the possibility of this kind of thing. We either stop this, prevent this, or the whole planet goes into a Dark Age, in which the world population will go below 1 billion people.

Q: Could you clarify an issue for the Guatemalan public, and that is, the idea that the war in Iraq is in fact not a result of terrorism, as people are told, but rather over the question of oil. This goes back to the early 1990s, with the first President Bush, and today, with the new President Bush, it's the same thing. Could you clarify this whole issue for the Guatemalan people?

LAROUCHE: First of all, terrorism is not the cause of the war at all. The terrorism that actually occurred came from sources outside the Arab world. It had nothing to do with petroleum, as such. But if you look at the world's financial situation, you see that all raw materials, plus housing: The speculation is astronomical. The issue is, we're at the end of a world monetary financial system. The interests behind that system are desperate and they will do anything. They can not win, but the human race can lose.

We have to get rid of this idea that greed is the main driver of history. The greed is for power; not for wealth, but for power.

Q: One final question, since I know your time is limited—and let me say that, at the end of this interview we'll be receiving lots of phone calls, I'm sure, from people who are listening, with regard to what you've said. But my final question has to do with the United States' violations of human rights, which have become known internationally. Not just in Iraq, or Afghanistan, but what has happened at Guantanamo as well. And worse things than what we now know will undoubtedly come to light. These are the acts of a criminal government which has violated the Geneva Convention, among other things. How does the United States' population view this question, and what can be done about that?

LAROUCHE: The lower 80% of the U.S. population, has been driven out of politics over the past 30-odd years. The generation which is in power in the United States, the so-called Baby-Boomer generation, is, from the standpoint of my generation, rather disgusting. There are some good people in it, but they represent their generation, and that is of a very poor quality of generation. You have a similar situation in Europe. The generation in power is morally incompetent, and its moral incompetence comes out also in the form of intellectual incompetence.

What is controlling the situation is a financier group, typified in the Western Hemisphere by George Shultz, who is the guy who created the Bush Administration. These guys are the direct descendants of the people behind the Nazis. What you are seeing in Guantanamo and similar places, is a spectacle which is horrifying to our traditional military, and to some Republican Senators, among others. It's a contemporary revival of Nazism. There's no difference between the people who are doing what they're doing in Guantanamo: just like the Nazis did at the concentration camps. If we in the United States do not bring this under control, there will not be a United States much longer.

Q: This is a final question from Carlos Wer. He says that the Guatemalan population is not well-informed at all about the meaning of NAFTA and the free-trade agreements, in particular CAFTA, which has just been approved by the United States Congress. What is the meaning of CAFTA for the population of Central America, including Guatemala?

LAROUCHE: An increase in slavery, in a few words.

Q: I want to thank you very much for this interview, on behalf of the entire university community.