LAROUCHE ON WISCONSIN PUBLIC RADIO:
`The Danger Is There, and
Not Enough People Are Taking
That Danger Seriously Enough'
Jan. 18, 2006 (EIRNS)—Lyndon LaRouche was interviewed today on Wisconsin Public Radio, KUWS, the Duke Skorich Show, with co-host Patty McNulty. The broadcast was streamed on http://www.kuws.fm. Skorich previously interviewed Mr. LaRouche on Nov. 7, 2005 (see transcript).
Duke Skorich: We're also going to be joined, about 5:07-5:08 (somewhere in there), by Lyndon LaRouche. Been quite a while since he's been with us. And there are so many things, that are happening in our nation's capital, that he has an opinion about and somewhat of a — different perspective: So, Lyndon LaRouche will be joining us at about 7 or 8 minutes past the hour tonight.... [news break]
Part of the "ideas network" of Wisconsin Public Radio, where we talk about the issues that matter to you.... We have so many things to talk about on this Wednesday afternoon. In few moments we're going to be joined from Washington—he hasn't been with us for a while, but he's with us tonight—Lyndon LaRouche. So many things have occurred in the nation's capital, that we want to hear, and get his opinion on....
But, as I said, there are so many things happening in this great, wonderful world of ours, and unfortunately, some of the not-too-wonderful stuff is happening in the nation's capital. And joining us tonight, for his unique perspective, and we thank him for joining us, is Lyndon LaRouche.
Mr. LaRouche, how are you, sir?
Lyndon LaRouche: Oh, pretty good for an old geezer.
Skorich: Thank you. You know, I want to talk with you about just so many things. Let's start, though: We've had a couple of Supreme Court cases that have been handed down, just in the last couple of days, dealing with abortion and all of this—but I want to get your take on Samuel Alito. And, going back to Harriet Miers, it was our understanding of this, the way Patty and I talked about this, is that, they really did appoint Harriet Miers as somewhat of a sham, because they knew she would not be accepted by the far right-wing in this country, and eventually the Bush Administration would have to give us someone more to their ideological liking: And so, we end up with—Samuel Alito.
Talk to us a little bit, about what you know about him.
LaRouche: I'm not sure about the story about Harriet Miers. You know, the President is a funny fellow—he's not really all there, and he has his own agenda, which is, in a sense controlled by some people largely, but he still has his own reactions. I'm not so sure he's happy about the way Harriet Miers disappeared. You know, he's very much attached to the women who run his life, including Harriet Miers. And therefore, I think he would not too sympathetic to using her as a stooge.
But this is more Cheney's kind of business. And what they've stuck in there, of course, is obvious: We have a group in the United States, which was organized around the University of Chicago—some years ago, in the early '80s—which is called the Federalist Society, which is sort of an insult to the founders of the nation. But, the Federalist Society was organized around the ideas of a leading Nazi figure, Carl Schmitt, who was the man who crafted the law, the legal decision which both allowed Hitler to become a dictator, instead of just a Chancellor; and which later authorized, and endorsed the murders of people, such as the former Chancellor and some other people, by Hitler's forces—their actual murder.
Now, this idea, which they call here—they're calling it the "unitary executive" and other things—is simply the same policy that Carl Schmitt used to bring the Nazis into dictatorial powers, in 1933 actually, in February 1933, in Germany. And Hitler stayed a dictator until 1945, till he was dead. So, this kind of thing is being brought into the United States at this time.
Now, what you have, is, you have a problem in the Congress: The Democrats are putting up a show on this thing, but it's not—at the present time, it's not too clear cut. They're going to the mat and saying they're against Alito, they're asking questions. But, here's a guy, Alito, who's lying his head off about what his policies are—he's really playing kabuki theater, with the Congress—and the leaders know it. But they also know that a number of the members of the Congress are soft-shoeing it on this one, that they're going to go through the motions of protesting against Alito—but then, reluctantly confirm him, when it comes down the line.
The problem is, if you have five people on the Supreme Court, out of nine, who are part of the Federalist Society, or supporters of the Federalist Society, you have a potential Nazi coup, coup d'etat, any time Cheney wants to pull it inside the United States. This is something which I'm fighting, and some others are fight—I think Harry Reid, the Democratic Leader in the Senate, there's no question, is fighting this. But around him, there's a certain amount of softness.
Many of these Democrats coming back to the Senate from their vacation, their year-end affairs, are not clear. They're also being muscled by the Republicans who threaten them, if they are fussy, that they'll lose the next reelection, or things like that. Some of the Democratic Party people are soft-shoeing it: They don't realize that this is one of those times, you don't play games; you don't "go along to get along." This is one of the times, when, really as a matter of principle, you stand up to the principle and say, "We're not going to have a Nazi organization, or a pro-Nazi organization, so declared, controlling the U.S. Supreme Court." And that's the issue.
Skorich: Well, there was slight mention of the Federalist Society during the Alito hearings—and I watched much of it and paid, I think, particular attention—and I heard it mentioned, just, in almost like passing! Certainly, these are very smart men and women, who were questioning Sam Alito.
LaRouche: The problem is, is that—you know, they went with Harriet Miers; the Democrats made an agreement with the Republicans and with the White House: They said, "Okay, we'll pad the approval of Roberts, but don't shove something on us we can't support, the next time." Now, Harriet Miers was not a source of objections from the Democrats. But then, they dumped Miers, and brought in Alito, who is objectionable. But then, you have some Democrats really are a little bit soft. And they don't understand, clearly—maybe, they don't wish to understand, in some cases—but they don't understand, clearly, what we're up against: We're up against the potentiality, which is coming out of the international financial crisis, that somebody's going to try to do what they did in the 1930s! Set up dictatorship. Because, they don't want democratic processes interfering with what dictators want to do with the economy, and with other things.
You have this pressure on Iran, the question on Syria, so forth—more wars, more wars! And the fear we have, in Washington, is that, were Alito confirmed, that Cheney and company would push ahead, we'd get those "more wars" which are now waiting for us, in Syria, in Iran, and so forth. It's an extremely dangerous situation, particularly as today, and yesterday, you have this crisis on the Japan stock market. Which could be—that is, "could be"; these things are not so simple, you can say "yes" or "no"—but it could be the trigger that could set off a world financial collapse.
Skorich: I have to admit, that I was somewhat surprised, when the Democratic panel members were talking to Judge Alito about the unitary executive, and about how Presidential powers are usurping other branches of government, that they really didn't press him further, on his belief about whether or not the object, or subject of unitary executive, is how he would rule on this!
LaRouche: Well, you have a Senator from New York, of course, Schumer, who was very serious on this thing, and is very serious. He understands the issue. Others understand the issues. But there are two things going on: Some of the Democrats are convinced that they don't have enough to block an Alito nomination. And therefore, since they don't have the bullets to bring down the prey, they say, "Let's not waste our bullets. Let him walk through. We're not going to fight this one, because it's a loser, and we'll just get a lot trouble for fighting a losing battle."
What we're in right now, is a period of days—this includes what's going on in the House of Representatives, today and tomorrow, with Pelosi, with her initiative coming up. We're going through a number of days, in which we'll see if we can get enough Democrats lined up, and maybe some Republicans, who understand that this is an issue of not having a Hitler in the United States. And Hitler would not be poor Bush—I'm not soft on him, because he's a distant cousin of mine!—but, nonetheless, the problem is, what's behind Cheney. It's not Cheney himself. Cheney's a thug, he's not very bright. But the people behind him, the bankers behind him, like George Shultz: George Shultz is the guy, who, with Henry Kissinger brought this Nazi, Pinochet, into power in Chile! The guy who was behind, implicitly—and Kissinger, clearly—the Operation Condor mass murders that were run in the early 1970s in the Southern Cone area. It's Shultz and Company, and these guys, who are the really tough guys, for whom Cheney is essentially a thug, like a mafia enforcer. That's where the danger lies.
Skorich: Our guest on the program is Lyndon LaRouche, joining us tonight from near the nation's capital. It's 5:16, you're listening to the Duke Skorich Show with Patty McNulty, here on KUWS.... [station id]
Patty McNulty has a question for you, sir.
LaRouche: Okay.
Patty McNulty: Good afternoon, Mr. LaRouche. You just briefly mentioned a potential chain-reaction, which would cause a world financial collapse—
LaRouche: Yeah.
McNulty: And that's something we don't hear a lot about. People are really focussed on what Ray Nagin said yesterday, and other things that don't impact our world. Could you just talk a little bit about some of the economic concerns, that are facing the world?
LaRouche: Well, first of all, we have a potential collapse of the real-estate bubble in the United States, the mortgage-based securities bubble. Also in Britain, also in Spain, and other parts of the world. This is very much involved with the hedge funds, and we're looking at the Japan crisis: To what degree the hedge funds are involved in this Japan flap, where they went down about 6% on the market over the past day.
There's always a question of this, because we're dealing with a hyperinflationary economy, where every time we go into a potential collapse, someone starts pouring a lot of aggregate into the money system, and therefore you have an inflationary postponement of a crash which is ultimately inevitable.
Now, the only thing that'd stop this crash, is if the Federal government, the United States Federal government, in particular, would simply say, "Well, our system is in bankruptcy." Because the hedge funds really are based upon the major banks. The major banks are up to their ears in the hedge funds—in Europe, as well as in the United States; they're the ones who are doing it. And they could all go suddenly flop! Because they all tend to go in the same direction on a bet, and when people all bet the same way, they can all go down the same way! There's not much of a hedge in there. So—all the banks.
But the only thing that could stop it, is, if I were President, or if I had a guy in there who was President, and who's listening to what I have to say, I would say: You put the Federal Reserve System into bankruptcy, to keep the doors of the banks open. We can't have a chain-reaction collapse of the banking system, but we can put it into bankruptcy reorganization, and work its way out. Start a recovery program: Now, that's what you're seeing, in for example the Congress, now, around Nancy Pelosi. There is an agreement to go with an initiative, from the Democratic Party campaign for this year, an initiative which would be an economic recovery initiative, which would try to build back some of the industries we've lost and things like that. I'm all for it.
But, with that kind of a package, and putting the system in bankruptcy, and going back to Franklin Roosevelt kinds of thinking, we could get through with this thing, and lead the world, getting out of this mess. The danger is, that we don't do it. The problem is, that you have major financial interests, which are behind the extreme right-wing—as behind Shultz, who's behind Cheney and so forth—and these guys would rather see the world go to Hell, than save it!
So, some of us know what has to be done. And I think the people around Bob Rubin, and other economists whom he talks to, would agree: We could save this system. We could prevent a crash, which would be a devastating crash. We want to do it. We don't control the government. We probably have enough influence in the Senate to do something like that, as we saw with the Katrina affair; we probably could get, with the purge of the Senate by this Abramoff-DeLay problem, we could probably get enough in both Houses to do something about it, if there's a perceived emergency.
The problem is, with this President, particularly with Cheney there, we're not going to get it. So therefore, there's where the problem lies: We're on the edge of a crash, could occur any time we want it. We're on the edge of the biggest financial mortgage bubble collapse in world history. It can happen any time. We hope that it doesn't come too soon; we hope that we have changed the political system in time, so that if the crash does come, we can take an FDR solution to the problem.
Skorich: You mentioned FDR, and just last week, it was reported that for the first time since the Great Depression, more people spent money, than saved money: For the first time since the Great Depression, savings was outstripped by spending. And, this past week, we also raised the debt ceiling over $8 trillion! Do we have any choice, in raising this debt ceiling? Because, we can't certainly default.
LaRouche: The problem is this, there are two kinds of debt, and this is one of the things I'm trying to make clear to our friends in the Senate and House: Is that, we've been operating recently on the assumption that the Federal debt, is the current debt of the nation. Now, actually, you have two kinds of debt. You have one debt, which is current obligations, things that we should repay this year. Now, that's current debt, current Federal debt. But, then, you have long-term debt, of the type we developed during the 1930s, in the recovery: Where you have a debt, say 30-year loans, 50-year loans. Now, that is not current debt. And therefore, you shouldn't count the two things together. You shouldn't count the current obligations, current expenditures, current operating expenditures of government, and count them together with capital expenditures, which are long-term investments.
For example, we have to fix up the Mississippi River system. You have a whole area of the United States, running from the Great Lakes, down through the rivers, down the Mississippi, down into New Orleans area: Now, that's a key part of the organization of the U.S. economy. The thing is jammed up, now, because of the recent Katrina flood, and because of the neglect which has gone on down there, for a long period of time. This is going to cost some tens of billions of dollars of investment to get something functioning down there. But, that's a 30- to 40-, 50-year investment. So, that is not current account debt, current operating budget debt. But, we can create a debt, an obligation of the credit of the U.S. government; it's a commitment to pay, down the line, for 25, 30 years or so, and we can finance that.
We have a lot of that kind of thing in the United States, today. For example: Take the states of western New York, western Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana—these are disaster states today, caused by a systemic collapse of the steel and automobile industry. It's coming on fast. We can not tolerate that! We've got to rebuild Michigan, we've got to get the western part of New York State, the western part of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana, back in shape! We have other states, which have similar problems, maybe not as acute.
We have to put some capital into building the dams, building the water systems, building railway systems, and other things we desperately need, to get the economy moving. It's a long-term debt. We should incur a long-term debt, if it's for something which is going to live as something useful, for the term of that debt. And not get confused between short-term indebtedness and long-term.
The problem with this debt, that we have now, the current account deficit, is that it's short-term debt, of long-term dimensions—and that is insane.
Skorich: I want to go back to Presidential powers, for a moment, in the time we have allowed. And the President has made it known—well, the New York Times made it known—that the President has signed 500 so-called "signing statements," which basically says, he has chosen not to follow the laws of the United States Congress that they passed, even though he signs them! Talk to us about this, whether you think that this is an abuse of power; and, we'll get into some other questions, then.
LaRouche: This is much more dangerous than abuse of power. You have two kinds of things: Now, the President was asked by the Congress, in the case of the Katrina disaster, to put a certain amount money to rebuild the area, southern Mississippi, Louisiana, so forth. He didn't do it! Now, that would be a case, where the President could use the authority of the Federal government and the Executive, to move ahead with a capital debt, that is, a long-term debt—off-budget, that is, off the current account deficit—and do that. He didn't do it.
On questions which involved the wartime ambitions, the war-making ambitions, and similar kinds of things, of Cheney and Company, the President goes along with it! Now, what the President is doing, is, he's using this formula, of the Carl Schmitt formula—the formula which was used to make Hitler a dictator!—to make Bush a dictator! Or to make Cheney a dictator, using Bush as his stooge.
This is what the problem is.
And there's no need for the President of the United States to have dictatorial powers. We've had great crises in the United States. We've had Presidents who have gone to great use of powers, but very delimited, to the specific emergency that occurred, not saying, "We're going to put the whole country under a dictatorship." Roosevelt never put the United States under a dictatorship, even during wartime conditions! And it was a much bigger show than we have today.
So, this is the problem: We have a President who is following the Carl Schmitt precedent, which is the Nazi precedent, by Federal judges—some on the Supreme Court—like Bork, who think like Nazis on this question! And my issue with the Congress, is to say to them: "Look! The issue is Hitler. We can not have Hitler, and his policies of government, brought into the United States!" And that's what the issue is.
Skorich: Do you have any doubt in your mind, that this eavesdropping that the President has ordered—or not ordered, depending on who you believe, because, the National Security Agency said they started eavesdropping even before they talked to the President, or he talked to them—do you have any doubt, that this is illegal, and perhaps impeachable?
LaRouche: Yeah, it's implicitly impeachable, the way it's being done. Because, we had a law enacted some years ago, on the National Security Agency law, which was set up, using judges—under the Supreme Court, but district judges, for the FISA Court: So that no action of this type, of spying action, could be taken, without approval of the judges; and implicitly, appeal to the Supreme Court. All right, now, that was operating. That's one thing. It may have been messy, it may have been nasty, but it was under control.
In this case, they proceeded without any clearance from the judges and gone out wildly.
Now, the other side of the thing, is a certain comic aspect to this thing: What they're doing, they're using new kinds of electronic capabilities for monitoring all kinds of things. And you get what's called in these circles, the Pizza Hut Phenomenon: That if some guy, who's actually a terrorist, off somewhere in the Middle East, calls up every Pizza Hut in the United States and Europe, and orders pizza, every one of those Pizza Huts is going to go under surveillance by the NSA. And the FBI's going to go out and investigate every case!
Now, this is a matter of stupidity and absurdity! Now, it's not wrong, that maybe only 1% of all the calls that they're monitoring might have some relevance to security: There's nothing wrong with the fact that they have to go through a lot of garbage. What's wrong, is the fact that they've gone out of surveillance of the NSA. And the NSA has been operating under the pressure of the Federal Executive to break the law. The authorizations come through the President—the President may not have known all of it, but he accepted the orders of Cheney, and he's not supposed to take orders from Cheney; Cheney's supposed to take orders from him! So, there is an impeachable crime, involved here.
Skorich: Of course, the obvious question is whether or not hearings will ever arrive at the same conclusions. I think an awful lot, the majority of Americans believe, that this is impeachable: Whether or not those hearings conclude that, I guess we'll all wait and see what happens.
Let me talk a little bit about lobby reform, with you. You have watched all of this happen, and whether we talk about the K Street Project, or whether Jack Abramoff did meet with the President—I know that the Democrats have put forth some plan for lobby reform; and the Republicans have put forth a plan. And somebody said today, putting the Republicans in charge of reform, is like putting John Gotti in charge of investigating mob ties! So, talk to us about how dirty Washington politics has become, because, a poll of Americans believe that entire Congress is corrupt.
LaRouche: Well, there is a lot of corruption, and it's standard with people like Cheney running around, and people he works with. Also DeLay. Look, Gingrich was the beginning of this kind of thing, in this way. Remember, Gingrich came in, he won this election for "Contract on America," and he gave, in a speech in January of that year, and he described himself as intending to run the French Revolution inside the United States. So, you've had, since that time—. Oh, remember, also, that behind this, was the Federalist Society! The entire operation against President Clinton, during his term in office, was run by the Federalist Society. And the Federalist Society and Gingrich are really integral.
So, this is what you have, is, the tendency—. Well, let me put it this way: You had an organization which came out of the French Revolution. It was the organization that made the French Revolution, that organized Napoleon, was Napoleon's policy, was Napoleon III's policy, and became known as the Synarchist International, which gave us Hitler, and some other people like that, during the last century. This Synarchist tendency, which is based on certain international financial interests, is what is behind this. And this element is trying to destroy our system of government, to undermine it, to corrupt it—imagine, for example, that a majority in the Senate and the House, are both trying to exclude the Democrats in both bodies—elected officials—from participating in the processes of government. What's that? You're already in corruption.
What DeLay, what Abramoff did, all these things, it's massive! The whole system is corrupt! The whole Cheney-Bush crowd is corrupt.
And I don't think that all Democrats are honest.
Skorich: This is going to come down to an election in November, this off-year election, where the fate of this country, some people believe, really rests. And I know that an awful lot of Democrats are starting to come to the forefront. Al Gore made a big speech the other day; Hillary Clinton is the perceived front-runner; John Kerry is indicating he's going to go for President again; Russ Feingold is indicating that he wants to run. But I think an awful lot of Americans keep waiting for somebody to stand up and challenge this current Administration, and say some of the things you're saying, and they're not out there! What's going to happen?
LaRouche: I'm not ignored. I have a number of friendly relations with people in the Senate, and elsewhere. The problem is, I have a lot of enemies, and therefore, they don't want to attract the lightning from my enemies! While we do what we can.
And we're doing what we can. I'm rather pleased with many of things that have been done by people in the Democratic Party, and some Republicans, who've acted like they should act, in these matters.
I have a different temperament, and therefore, probably at this time, I can say things and do things that others will hesitate to do. I know a lot, of course, from experience, and particularly from my kind of experience!
So, I'm able to do a lot. And I think that we're going to find out that by spring, which is the time when the Democratic Party is going to have to, in a sense, pick who its front-runners are going to be, among the choices, we're going to have to see who's serious, as opposed to who is not serious. The first step is going to be this thing, that is being run today and tomorrow, in the House of Representatives, which is an attempt to find a Democratic policy for election for this year. That's going to be largely economic, that's useful. We're going to have to have similar things coming from the Senate side.
And, at some point down the line, I think probably a month or two, we're going to see some actual serious thinking about who is going to be the next President. I'm going to be asked a lot about that, from my friends and from some others—as to who I think. And I'm already trying to shape opinion. I haven't drawn any conclusions, yet, because I'm not satisfied with anyone, but I do have to see who might become qualified for the job.
Skorich: I know that when asked one time, about his legacy, the President said, "Well, that's history, and that's in the future." And so many of the things he says, I think a lot of people don't quite understand—but, I want to ask you: How will history remember—and let's just talk about these past five years—how will history remember this country, these times, this administration?
LaRouche: It probably will—they'll compare it to Caligula, Nero, and a few other people! [Skorich laughs] I mean, you're getting shades of that!
You're also getting shades of the worst aspects of Athens during the Peloponnesian War. So, that, if you look back in history, you've a lot of professors who are saying, "Oh, we're doing it, too. Maybe we're going down in the soup, too."
Being a patriot of the type I am, I'm very concerned to preventing that, but also, at the same time, I won't deny, the danger is there, and I think not enough people are taking that danger seriously enough.
Skorich: And so many days, we keep hearing, "Be very afraid." And this administration, I think has just—every day there's another warning, every time the scandals grow, every time the calls for impeachment grow, there's another warning, "Be very afraid." Today, it was over in Washington State, they got some guy with four guns in his back seat. Can we, as Americans, regain something, that we don't have to live every day of our lives in fear that the boogeyman is out there.
Or—is the boogeyman out there, and its name is, now, "Iran"?
LaRouche: No, the boogeyman is largely us. Because, we have tremendous power as a nation, if we use it properly—not power necessarily in kicking somebody around, but, if we do the right thing, people will look to us. We've lost a lot of that under the two Presidencies we've had in the past time, with the Bush now, and before.
But, the problem is, in our country. The disorder does not come from foreign sources—there may be some of it comes from foreign sources, but mainly, look at the social situation in our cities: We're doing a study of Baltimore, for example, Baltimore, Maryland, which used to be one of the leading cities in the United States. It's now a dump. They have a little gentrification on the edges, but it's a dump: Diseases, and things like that are rampant.
And you see people who have become de-classed: People who were working for a living, they lose their job. The family breaks up. One or more members of the family who's broken up, becomes a bum. Now, they were formerly normal people. But they get out into this situation, they're thrown out of their houses, they're living on the street, there's drugs, they're in areas where people mug each other to get a living—hmm? And they become actually degenerate.
We find, as a friend of mine reports, who works in this area, we find, that if these people are cleaned up and brought back to normal, they will return to their normal standard of living.
The problem is, we have two classes of people who are in this category of being in that downside of life: We have those were fairly high-grade, moral citizens, when they had a normal life; and their life has been broken up and ruined. If we bring them back, to some kind of normal life, as I saw during the Depression, in the recovery from the Depression back in the 1930s, they'll go back to being normal people, and there's no problem, to speak of. Then, we have people who never had a chance, who never had a sense of a normal life. And it's more difficult to get them back.
So, we have a social problem, as a result of our negligence, or like our health care policies and things like that: This negligence that we're exerting, our policies on jobs, on employment, on security, on retirement—these policies are producing crises in our country. These crises, in and of themselves—combined of the people who never had it, never made it, and those who did make it and have been dumped into rubbish bin—so these are two social problems. We don't need any foreign influences to give us these terrorist problems: They can come up spontaneously from what we've done to our own people.
Skorich: But, it's been 1998 since we had minimum wage. We are the Western power without health care. If we can't move forward on minimum wage, why can't we at least move forward on some sort of a minimum health care coverage for all Americans?
LaRouche: We could, except some people are trying to make money out of this thing. There's no good reason for the loss health care. It was part of a policy, introduced under the Nixon Administration, this destruction of the Hill-Burton system. We should go back to it! We could go back to it! I think you —
On the Presidential side, I think that Hillary Clinton, for example, who has health care, among the particular slings her pocket, that, she might go in that direction. I think other key Senators would go in that direction; I think a lot of other people, if it were explained to them, would go in that direction. We could get it back.
What we have to do, is realize, we have to give people hope: We have to give them a sense, immediately, that we are not going to throw people off their pensions; we're not going to destroy their health care; we're not going to dump them on the streets, to become demoralized. We're not going to do that. We don't have to.
We can mobilize employment, we can mobilize production, we can use national credit to do what Roosevelt did: We can get people out of the gutter, get them back to what they were, clean them up, give them hope again—and we'll find that we can handle things.
Skorich: One final question for you, and it deals with China. Because, as I'm going over my notes, and I'm looking back, we talked a little bit about debt and deficit; and, China controls so much of our economy, and is ever-expanding its presence in the world. Are we ever going to be able to contain China?
LaRouche: We don't have to. The problem—see, China and India, take two large countries, hmm? China with over 1.3 billion people; India's over a billion people. In India, you have 70% of the population is living in desperate poverty, and it's getting worse, in general. In China, you have about the same sense—a large part of the population has not made it!
Now, what we've done, is, in both cases, we and the Europeans have used the large labor pools of countries in Asia, for example, China and India, as cheap labor markets to get products for us at cheap labor. That means that, with the prices we're paying, do not cover the cost of living of the people of China as a whole, or India as a whole. Now, the Chinese export market is largely European and U.S. United States manufacturers go to China, and say, "Give us some of your cheap labor. We'll even let you buy into certain industries and brands, and produce it." But what happens, is, the Chinese don't control that. The Chinese are supplying essentially cheap labor, to produce products for the American market; they produce an intermediate product, which they don't control: If the United States economy goes down, they go down. Same thing with India.
So that, the fear of China becoming a great power—it will become a great power, in the normal course of events; but it becoming a great power as a menace to us economically, or India becoming a menace to us economically—it just is not true! These are poor countries, in which about 70% of the population is extremely poor! They're poor, because what they make on exports, is not enough to cover the cost of living of the population that is, one way, directly or indirectly, is producing those exports.
Skorich: But, if we get into a fight for resources, natural resources, with China—doesn't that eventually have to end in some sort of a military showdown with them?
LaRouche: No. That only ends up with a challenge to the stupidity of many people in Europe and the United States.
Look: This goes into this question of Biosphere and Noosphere. We have been living, in natural resources, largely upon the residues of what were living processes which deposited certain minerals within the Biosphere. That is, we go down a certain level, we pull up iron, or whatever, we're pulling up something that was left behind by bacteria! Which, instead of having a distribution of iron all over the Earth, and so forth, in that way, we now have it concentrated in certain locations: Why? Because of living processes.
We've come to a time that we have realize, that the rate at which we're using these residues of the Biosphere, for raw materials, we can no longer sit back and simply pull them out of the Earth. We're using it at such a rate, that sooner or later, we'll overtake the rate at which the Biosphere is producing new amounts of these minerals. However, we, now, have to realize that we have to organize the Biosphere, so that we are reproducing the concentrations of some of these raw materials which we require. The greatest concentration of raw materials of this type in the world, lies in no land—it lies in the ocean. So, if we decide that we're going to take responsibility for managing natural resources, including replenishing them, in many cases, then we don't have a problem. The danger would come, only if we decide not to take on starting to replenish some of the resources we're using.
Skorich: I told—I don't want to refer to them as your "handlers"—but I told some of the people who are instrumental in getting you on the program, I'd try to go 45 minutes with you. I do have—and we've had people on hold for an awfully long time! Can I put one person on, at least, and maybe get a question from him for you?
LaRouche: Why, sure!
Skorich: All right, thank you. Michael, you're on the air with Lyndon LaRouche. Go ahead. Michael?
Q: Oh! I'm sorry, I didn't hear you say, "Michael."
Mr. LaRouche, it's refreshing to hear your voice, and it's excellent on behalf of Patty and Duke to make this information available to all of us. I think you're right on, and as I've talked to the program before, the grave concern that I have, is that these people who are part of the administration and this group of what I term as "vigilantes," really view the world as good and evil. And they realize the minority position that we, as a nation, really have on the planet, as the rest of the world is awakening.
And just to correct a couple of numbers, is, that, according to Lester Thurow, in his book The Future of Capitalism, we began to spend more money than we earned in July of 1999, and it's been that way ever since! We're just finally being told publicly, that that's what has happened.
The other thing that's very interesting, and I think that we need to look to India and China, and in particular to China—China today, has $818 billion American dollars in their banks in their foreign reserves. Not to mention, they own 40% of our debt bonds. And they have been very, very wise in understanding where our vulnerabilities are. And I would like to have you talk about, or share your views on how are we, in the United States, and in the industrialized world, going to learn to become a minority nation?
LaRouche: Well, first of all, we have to reverse our direction, and go back to becoming an agro-industrial manufacturing nation, again. We should no longer be living on what other people produce for us, at low wages, while we leave our own people unemployed. That's what the problem is: We're not producing enough. We're not educating enough people, we're throwing too many of our people on the dump.
We still have a potential, which I know very well—under the proper leadership, we would become the number-one in the world again. Not by might! But, by influence: Because we have the best system in the world—if we use it!
So, I'm not worried about these things, unless we become negligent, in which case, anything can happen. So, I'm not frightened by these things. I'm frightened by the lack of leadership in our own country.
Q: But, aren't you suggesting that the administration, in where we're headed, and the American populace, who fail to get out and vote, are in fact being negligent, in meeting your concern?
LaRouche: Absolutely! Now, the problem is this, however: What's happened to politics, as you observed, and I'm sure of, that we've gone away from a constituency-based politics, to a mass-media advertising-based politics. We no longer have the man in the street organized to influence his politician. We have him, looking at a poll to see who he should vote for.
Now, my experience with our Youth Movement in particular, is that when we organize the voters—and we do that, and other people aren't doing that! They're not out there organizing the voters. When you organize the voters, you, in a sense, can control the politician.
Q: But, haven't you put your finger on it? Is that, we have no organizational abilities in the general public, that we have no desire to do that; we don't like the outcome when we do that; and that this small group of vigilantes is gaining more and more momentum—
LaRouche: Absolutely—
Q: In keeping the voting populace at a very small level!
LaRouche: Absolutely. And my approach, is to say, "take the young people, who are 18-25—
Q: Who takes them!
LaRouche: I do!
Q: Who takes them?
LaRouche: They do a good job—
Q: I mean, they'll do a good job. But, we have no leadership: We have nobody in the Republican Party or the Democratic Party, that are willing to make the investment in our future and our young.
LaRouche: I think we do have a number of people who are. I find that since I do that—
Q: Well, where are they?
LaRouche: I find that since I do that, that there are people out there. They not up to speed on it. I think we get them up to speed. If they recognize what we're up against, and recognize, you can't play this "go along to get along" game indefinitely—and they do respect youth! And it is when you get youth in motion, around serious political enterprise, that you find the politicians change. That's our hope in this country.
Q: We don't have the heart for that any more!
LaRouche: We do.
Skorich: Michael—Michael, thank you so much, for calling. I do appreciate.
Q: Well, thank you!
Skorich: Mr. LaRouche, it's always so enjoyable to have you here, and joining us, as you have in the past couple of months. And I think people respect your opinions, and they enjoy hearing you. And I hope we can do it again, in another couple of months.
LaRouche: We can!
Skorich: Okay, excellent. Thank you. We'll talk to your folks, they'll talk to ours, and we'll get it done. Thank you, so much.
LaRouche: Thank you.
