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LAROUCHE INTERVIEW ON NEW YORK CITY RADIO

Lyndon LaRouche taped a half-hour interview with on Aug. 18 with Carlos Russell of WLIB radio station (1190 AM). Russell's magazine format program, "Thinking It Through," aired on Aug. 19 at midnight-2 a.m. Based in New York City, WLIB became the first city's black-owned station, when it was bought by Percy Sutton in 1972; it has a listenership of over 300,000 in the greater New York area, including adjacent New Jersey counties and Connecticut.

CARLOS RUSSELL: ...As most Americans are aware, we are living in tumultuous times: times of trepidation and of fear; times where the American republic and Democratic principles upon which it was established appear to be teetering, pushed by the contradictory winds of grandiose rhetoric, encapsulated in illusory pronunciamientos; and the reality of unjust war, visions of empire, the loss of civil liberties, an escalating deficit and other economic woes, plus a loss of prestige and respect.

This morning, I've invited an extraordinary analytical observer of the American republic, to share a few moments with us, and to offer you the benefits of his many years of analyzing and forecasting the behavior of the American economy and the nation: Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. is a well-known defender of justice and civil rights that emerged throughout the 1970s and 1980s to rank among the most controversial international political figures of our time. Mr. LaRouche is an internationally known economist, author, and statesman. He's the architect of an emerging new economic order on the planet, modeled on the Bretton Woods system developed by former President Franklin Roosevelt at the end of the World War II. In recent years, he has spoken in over 20 European, African, Asian, and Middle Eastern nations, on the need to reform the current free-trade system and return to the policies of Roosevelt. His domestic program for the United States is modeled on the Roosevelt New Deal, and entitled "A Super-TVA." The original Tennessee Valley Authority served the state of Alabama well during the middle of the 20th Century. He has authored over two dozen books. Steeped in the tradition of civil rights, Mr. LaRouche has also been involved in numerous battles in the United States, to address the needs of the "forgotten man and woman." Mr. LaRouche has run eight times for the Presidency of the United States.

We are certain that his insightful and provocative perspective will serve to help us all, to think through those issues that continue to affect and afflict us, as they taunt and haunt us. In a moment, my conversation with Mr. Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.

RUSSELL: Good morning, Mr. LaRouche.

LYNDON LAROUCHE: Good morning.

RUSSELL: Thank you so much for agreeing to share your views with us on "Thinking It Through." In my introduction, and as a part of a background, I mentioned that you have been a controversial figure. Could you kindly explain to our audience the essence of the controversy, and what it means?

LAROUCHE: Well, it probably is, that after Roosevelt died, rather immediately, Truman, who was a stooge in a sense for Winston Churchill, took a right-wing turn and committed the United States to a policy of what is called "preventive nuclear warfare." We went through a terrible period of right-wing terrorism, until Eisenhower became President, not to the credit of Truman, but the fact that it didn't go that way for him. So, he was induced to resign, and retire, and Eisenhower saved us from the worst, but he didn't solve all the problems.

At the end of Eisenhower's term, he warned the American people and others, that there was, in the United States, a phenomenon called a "military-industrial complex" and these people were trying to lead us into wars. Shortly after Eisenhower's termination of his second term, this broke out with the Bay of Pigs, it broke out with other things, and ever since that time, we've been, in one way or another, increasingly under the control of a right-wing, so-called, force which has actually affinities with the old Nazi apparatus.

People know it in the Americas, because, Nazis from Europe were brought in through Spain into the Americas, with the endorsement of people like Allen Dulles, who were responsible for the Pinochet government in Chile, and for the Operation Condor, for the death squads in Central America and so forth. So, we're still at that.

We're now at the point of a threat to civilization from the same kind of right-wing characters who are grouped around Bush, the President—President Bush—and also, more emphatically, Cheney.

That's where we are. And we're now trying to prevent the world from going into a nightmare. I don't know if we can succeed—but, I'm doing what I can in that direction, and I have the hope that we win.

RUSSELL: Okay—let me say this, sir. One of the things we try to do, is to make it a conversation, rather than a simple question and answer. I will ask a question and you can take it where you want to, and we will move. Because I think that way, we are able to give a greater span of your thoughts.

LAROUCHE: Yeah, right. Okay, good.

RUSSELL: You have been credited with being the architect of an emerging new economic order. May I ask, what is that new economic order, and how, if it does, differ from the old economic order, and the "new economic order" of those who are supportive of President Bush?

LAROUCHE: Well, since the beginning of modern European civilization, there's been a struggle between two tendencies: One which came out of the 15th-Century Renaissance, which was for society based on respect for the interest of the average individual—that is, the general welfare, the common good of humanity. On the opposite side, we've had the repressive measures, which have tried to preserve the old order, sort of a feudal order. And that struggle has gone on. We've had wars and so forth.

And we reached the point, with nuclear weapons and other things, that we can no longer tolerate the kinds of repressive actions, which we've been subjected in past years. We've now come to the point, that either nations, which are sovereign nations, cooperate in common interest for the common good of humanity, or civilization will go into a Dark Age.

Now, that's where I stand.

RUSSELL: But then, how does your new order function, pragmatically, differently, from the old order? What are some of the principles that are encapsulated in your approach to addressing the issues that impact on mankind?

LAROUCHE: Well, what Franklin Roosevelt intended to do at the end of the war, had he not died, and what I intend to do, are not dissimilar. They're very closely related. Roosevelt was for the elimination of colonialism, and for programs of development among nations, using the power the United States had accumulated during the 1930s, and during the war, to create that kind of a new world order, where there's no more colonialism, in which nations were being promoted by the influence of the United States. That's where I stand today.

The opponents of Roosevelt have moved the world in a different direction. We're now coming to the end of the ability to tolerate that trend. My particular approach is simply to go back to that kind of approach that Franklin Roosevelt represented—not that that limits what I think, but I think that is the platform on which I can mobilize the American people and others, for a common-interest effort for a just, new world economic order.

RUSSELL: Yes, I agree. But, what would it include specifically, so one says to someone who's listening to you, "These are the basic plans"?

LAROUCHE: Well, let's take the case of what I did in 1982. In 1982, we had the British, with some support from people in the United States, ran the Malvinas War against Argentina. In the same year, they moved to crush Mexico, with a crushing operation against an outgoing President, López Portillo, the President of Mexico. I stood with that group. And I stand with it today.

In the Americas, we have a ruin of the Americas relative to what they were in the immediate post-war period, since the beginning of 1971-72. The Americas are being destroyed today. Concretely, the United States has to ally itself with the interests of the sovereign states of the Americas. We have to rebuild. We have to rebuild around the kind of ideas that López Portillo, as President of Mexico, presented in October of 1982, to the United Nations: And I'm working for that, now. And that, essentially, is typical of what I think we have to do internationally.

RUSSELL: Mr. LaRouche, one of the things that is helpful to our listening audience, is that, while you are very knowledgeable and use language and historical references, oftentimes, some of our listening audience may not be aware or cognizant of what they are. So, I would like perhaps to ask that, if I were to say, for example, "what were some of the elements of López Portillo's address to the UN," that you—if you could—make that clear so the audience are on the same page with you. Am I clear?

LAROUCHE: Oh, sure. Absolutely.

Well, in April and May of 1982, I was mobilizing to prevent the United States from supporting Britain in an attack on Argentina.

RUSSELL: Yeah, the Malvinas.

LAROUCHE: Yeah, the Malvinas War issue. So, in that period, I went down to Mexico and in that period, I met with the President of Mexico, López Portillo—who was known to me, and who knew me. And the President of Mexico said to me, in our meeting, which was about an hour in length, at Los Pinos, he said, "What are they going to do to my country?" And I said, "They intend, by September, to destroy your country." And so, from that meeting, I acted, with a number of people from the Americas, to draft a program which I took responsibility for, which was called Operation Juárez—

RUSSELL: "Operation Juárez"?

LAROUCHE: Yes. To establish a pact, proposed with the United States, hoping to influence the Reagan Administration to support that: for a new perspective for the Americas, which was consistent with what Franklin Roosevelt had stood for with the Treaty of Rio and so forth, before then.

We agreed on that. The crisis came at the point I expected, in August. President López Portillo acted as he and I and others agreed. We moved. We were crushed, by Henry Kissinger and others at that time.

I laid out a program in the meantime, which was called Operation Juárez, which is a program for reorganizing the relations in the states of the Americas—which is still my program today, which is what we need today. López Portillo, already defeated in effect, went to the United Nations, and gave an address which is historic and is worth hearing today—it's still available in terms of their video recordings of that address—in which he laid forth his program: He was defeated. But the program which he set forth, in that address to the United Nations, and what I set forth in this paper, Operation Juárez—

RUSSELL: But what was the essence of the program, sir? You were saying you laid out the program, but what was the program?

LAROUCHE: Well, first of all, I recognized the fact that the debts which had been accumulated by the countries of Ibero-America since 1971-72, were totally unjust. They did not represent the actual obligations of the states of the Americas.

What I proposed is, we reorganize the debt, and create a monetary union in the states of the Americas, which would be a pro-growth program for long-term investments in basic economic infrastructure, and promotion of trade and cooperation. This is what we did in the case of Mexico. President López Portillo moved in August and September, for measures of, nationalize the national banking system, and to mobilize credit for the development of the country. That's what we proposed. It's still viable today. We could—

RUSSELL: And those views are the essence of your new economic order. Is that what you're saying?

LAROUCHE: Exactly. In terms of the Americas. That's my program for the Americas.

RUSSELL: Okay, now, let me ask you this, then—a slight segue: What is your view of the current crisis, in the Middle East for example, and the so-called "War on Terror"? And America's apparent quest for an American empire?

LAROUCHE: Well, the empire is actually an Anglo-American empire, it's not an American empire, it's not U.S.: Tony Blair is much more important in this, in the sense of the ideas of the empire, than, say President Bush, or Dick Cheney, who, in a sense, is Bush's controller.

These guys are Nazis—that's the only term to describe them. That's the only thing that they fit.

RUSSELL: How do you use that? You say "Nazis"? Again, for the audience.

LAROUCHE: I mean, first of all, the Nazi system was brought into power by a group of bankers, starting in the 1920s. It was called the Synarchist International. They're infamous in Mexico, because the Synarchists of Mexico are infamous in terms of the history of Mexico.

All right: This group put Mussolini into power, Hitler into power, Franco into power, organized World War II. This crowd never was removed from power. Roosevelt died; Truman was sympathetic to them; Churchill was sympathetic to them. So, in the post-war period, we had a re-colonization process, which has now come to the point that the same people who put Hitler into power back then, in the 1930s, are trying to build an empire, an Anglo-American empire today. And I'm trying to prevent that from happening! And it gets rather nasty at this point.

RUSSELL: But now: How does the Middle East crisis and the alleged "war on terror" fit within that schemata?

LAROUCHE: Well, the Middle East crisis is organized as a way of actually establishing a world empire. For example, we saw what happened in Iraq. Cheney, who had been committed to the war in Iraq. from the time he was Secretary of Defense under George Bush I, "41"; came into power with George Bush II. And from the day they entered office in January of 2001, he was committed to this entire program: of a war against Iraq; war against Iran; a general international Nazi-like system. And that's what's going on today.

So, we have a threat of wars, whose intent is to establish an Anglo-American world empire—not a U.S. world empire—an Anglo-American world empire, in which Prime Minister Tony Blair is fully complicit.

RUSSELL: Now, you place Tony Blair as an integral part of those who are striving for the Anglo-American empire. Yet, here, we see with the neo-conservatives—Karl Rove, Rumsfeld, etc.—have been the ones who have been pushing much more so, for a New American Century, than Tony Blair.

LAROUCHE: Oh no, Tony Blair is much more for it, than any of these—the British crowd is much more significant in this, than the U.S. crowd. The United States is, as an individual nation-state, is more powerful in the world than the British United Kingdom. But the ideas, in terms of ideas, the Blair Administration is at a higher rank and a controlling rank, relative to the Bush Administration.

RUSSELL: You describe the Middle East and the war on terror, as an integral part of the quest for the Anglo-American empire.

LAROUCHE: Yes, right.

RUSSELL: How can one extricate themselves from that apparent direction into destruction?

LAROUCHE: Well, I'm moving for operations in the United States and elsewhere, which take the power out of the hands of these characters. If we don't do that, we're going to have Hell on this planet. The world is now faced with the greatest financial crisis in history. If we don't do certain things that are needed to be done, we're going to be in a Dark Age.

RUSSELL: Such as? What needs to be done?

LAROUCHE: Well, what we need to do, is simply put the world into bankruptcy reorganization; convert so-called central banks, independent central banks into national banking systems as the United States was founded to be; reorganize the International Monetary Fund and put it back under a Bretton Woods type of system, which Roosevelt initially installed; do it as a cooperation among nations, rather than a U.S.-backed or -controlled operation; set forth a series of long-term 25-year, 50-year programs of infrastructure-building and development, internationally, as international cooperation; create masses of credit, as Roosevelt did, but masses of credit for this rebuilding program; and try, in a period of two generations, that is, 50 years, to pull this planet out of the bankrupt system into a system that begins to work again.

RUSSELL: Now you said, follow the Bretton Woods approach that Roosevelt used. Now, that was 61 years ago or more, and I'm not certain that many of our listeners are clear as to what that approach was. Could you kindly describe what that was?

LAROUCHE: Yes. The point is, what Roosevelt set up, on the basis of U.S. power, through the Bretton Woods agreement of 1944-45-46, was to set up a fixed-exchange-rate system, under which the essential relative value of currencies was fixed, in order to promote a system of long-term, low-interest-rate loans for rebuilding the world economy; including the liberation of nations which had been colonial or semi-colonial nations into truly independent status, and to assist them in building up their infrastructure and their industry over a period of a generation or two, to become fully equal partners in a world system which was free of colonialism and semi-colonialism.

That was Roosevelt's policy. That was stopped by Churchill. It was stopped by Truman. It was stopped by the right-wing which has tended to dominate the international monetary system today. For the first 20 years after Roosevelt, we continued to operate on the basis of Roosevelt's Bretton Woods system, which is that system. With the middle of the 1960s, we began to move in a new direction, and under actually Nixon, and Kissinger, and company, in the 1970s, we moved to a floating-exchange-rate system, which put the power over the international system, back in the hands of the international private bankers. And they have been looting the world ever since.

We've also destroyed our economies, in various countries, so that the United States for example, is no longer a producer nation. We are a consumer nation. We are hopelessly in debt. The European countries are approaching a similar condition. We are living on sucking the blood of cheap labor in countries, as in South and Central America, and other countries.

We are now at the point that the whole system is bankrupt and coming down. And what we have to do, essentially, is go back to the Roosevelt idea, of a fixed-exchange-rate system—that is, the currency values are fixed over the long term—using low-interest loans on long term, for long-term investment in basic economic infrastructure, and promoting growth in all nations of the world, over a period of 25 to 50 years to come.

RUSSELL: Okay, you said, that one needs to help in the development of the developing countries. Now, what would be some of the elements, aside from the low-interest rate that you talk about, as part of the developing countries—what would be some of the other elements? And how does CAFTA, this so-called new CAFTA, fit within that concept?

LAROUCHE: Well, CAFTA is a program for looting and sucking the blood of the people of Central America. And, it doesn't do any good for the United States, either. So, I would say, I would kill CAFTA. And give back to the nations of that region, the right for protectionist programs to insist on the opportunity for developing their economy, rather than selling their cheap labor as slave labor on the international market. Because, what CAFTA is, is: "Give me your people, as cheap labor, and I will sell their bodies and their labor on the world market." That must be stopped.

What we have to do, is, look at firstly, all the infrastructure of the Americas: Now, take the Mexican border, the northern Mexican border. There is no rail line from the Mexican border to Mexico City! What kind of a country is that? Mexico has had, for years, plans for the development of the coastal water distribution system, which would develop the PLHINO [Northwest Hydraulic Plan—ed.] in similar areas in Mexico. What happened to it? It's not there. The Mexican population, industry, and sovereignty has been destroyed, since López Portillo left office in 1982.

All right, so therefore, you start, from the United States to Mexico, you say, "We have to cooperate with Mexico for the development of the infrastructure of Mexico, so that it becomes what it can be very quickly, or in terms of a generation, can become a major nation in the hemisphere." Mexico, for Ibero-America, is the symbol throughout the Americas, of what the American U.S. policy is toward the Americas as a whole. You have tremendous potential in Argentina; you have potential in Brazil—these are two major countries. You have potential in other countries.

A coalition of countries of the Americas, organized around not only their industrial and agricultural development, but their infrastructure development, can become a powerful force on this planet, in the coming 50 years.

RUSSELL: If I hear you correctly, then, in a sense, you're speaking about an integration of the infrastructure of many of the Latin American countries?

LAROUCHE: Absolutely. That's the primary responsibility.

RUSSELL: Now, if that is accurate, then how do you place in context, the emerging movement in Latin America, where Venezuela, for example, Brazil, and I think it's Uruguay, are moving to come together to address the issues that impact on the poor and the marginalized in that region, but finding opposition of their approach by the United States?

LAROUCHE: Well, just take the case of Mercosur, because Mercosur is being attacked now from the United States, in terms of the attack upon Lula, the President of Brazil.

Mercosur is not a solution for the problems, but it is an example of the cooperation which is a step toward the solution. For example, Kirchner's Argentina is part of Mercosur. Peru is not, though it wanted to become that earlier. You have cooperation among Colombia, Venezuela, and Brazil, which is very useful. If these countries begin to cooperate with one another, with powerhouse countries—and Brazil is a powerhouse country, potentially; Argentina has, still, the potential of being a powerhouse country—you can develop in the hemisphere, you could develop very rapidly, a program of development, using even largely resources which exist in these countries, which would be developed.

But, what they need: They need independence from interference from the outside with these kinds of measures of cooperation. So, what the Prime Minister of Spain did, in going to negotiate with Venezuela, with Colombia, with Brazil, as it intersected the Mercosur policy, is an excellent step forward. It is not a solution for the problem, but it is a step toward the solution for the problem.

RUSSELL: As a final question, sir: For many of us, here in the United States, racism is systemic to the body politic. Would you agree with that concept? And if you do, what would you suggest, as a mechanism or an instrument, for the ultimate eradication of racism from the fabric of the American (quote/unquote) "republic"?

LAROUCHE: Well, racism has two sources. Both of them come from, I regret to say, Spain. Because at the time of 1492, at the time that the Americas were rediscovered by Christopher Columbus, there was a contrary effort, which was the Inquisition. And the Inquisitional influence was negative. Two things were happening: Spain and Portugal adopted a policy which said that the people of Africa were not human. They're only animals who were fit to be slaves. And in the same way, in the indigenous populations of the Americas, Spain and others looked at the indigenous populations, such as the large indigenous population of Peru and Mexico, as peons, and said they are not truly human, they are only semi-human.

And the policies of racism in the United States, and in the Americas, are typified as a continuation of these policies: of saying that people of African origin and Hispanic origin—as peons, in the latter case—are inferior. And that is the kind of racism, which we experience in the United States, and throughout the hemisphere.

If we understand the historic roots of this thing, and its essential immorality, any development program which concentrates on the idea of uplifting the condition of life of the typical family and their family members, is a solution for this. We simply have to have a moral commitment to the idea that the legacy of what was done to the Africans who were brought into the Americas, and what was done to the indigenous population of the Americas, as in the case of the Mexico population and so forth who were treated as peons, that this must come to an end, and justice and equality must be established.

And that's a practical economic policy. If we do the practical economic policy, of promoting the development of the families, this problem will go away.

RUSSELL: What is your prognosis for the future?

LAROUCHE: My prognosis is, to fight to win. Period. If we don't win, the condition of humanity is horrible. Therefore, we have to fight to win, without reservation.

RUSSELL: Thank you so much, Mr. LaRouche, for sharing this brief moment with us. Perhaps in the future, we can find a way to go deeper into some of the specifics of your new economic order. I think my audience's appetite has been whetted with what you have just suggested this morning. Thank you very much.

LAROUCHE: Well, thank you.

RUSSELL: Peace.