Dialogue With LaRouche
This is a transcript of the dialogue which followed Lyndon LaRouche's speech at a conference titled, "Forum on the U.S.-China Relationship and the Peaceful Reunification of China," sponsored by the Institute of Sino Strategic Studies, which took place in Los Angeles on Nov. 24.
Q: I admire Lyndon LaRouche very much, and I have admired him for a long time. Now I have a question concerning, from the point of U.S.-China evolving economic relations, we know in the United States there are so many, many [inaudible], many parts are made in China, through their hard labor, and leading to damage to the environment and the character of wealth. The United States' corporations, at the upper level, are profiting so much from this process.
Is there any force in the world that can stop this process?
The United States and China Need Each Other
LaRouche: Yes, this is something I've concentrated on a great deal. In China, you have a mass of dollar obligations, which are held by China. These dollar obligations are important to the people of China, for investment in infrastructure. People talk about environmentalism: This is nonsense talk. Yes, if you do not develop infrastructure, you have an environmental problem. If you do not develop water systems, if you do not develop improved systems against contamination, to clean the air, to clean the water: If you do not do these things, you will have a problem! Therefore, the capital for transportation systems, for water systems, for power systems, and so forth, is essential to the people of China, without which the interior areas of China can not be developed, and the coastal areas can not be cleaned up of this smog. Hmm? Therefore, it's important that China have the use of its dollar holdings, to purchase assistance, in terms of capital goods, for these missions. If the dollar collapses in value, and the Chinese currency collapses as a result, then the Chinese people are cheated of their possibility of a good future.
Therefore, the solution is, to take the advantage [of the fact] that the United States government is going to become terrified in the coming weeks. Because the U.S. dollar and the U.S. economy are now in the process disintegrating! And that will become apparent to everybody in a short period of time. The great asset that the United States has, is China: Because China has become the leading trading partner for the United States, and the ability to maintain the economy of China, depends on getting the economy of the United States to fix its value, and to get back to increasing its exports into China.
A stabilized relationship on this basis, between China and the United States, would change the world! Every part of the world would have to cooperate. They would have no choice. Because the whole world is bankrupt, not just the United States; the entire world system is bankrupt. Money, today, is not worth anything! You think it's worth something, but it's not—you'll find out tomorrow, it's not worth anything. The collapse of the housing crisis, the collapse of the banks—every bank of the United States, major bank, is bankrupt—hopelessly so—not just Citibank. They're all bankrupt! The U.S. is bankrupt! The Federal Reserve System is bankrupt!
The U.S. dollar is fictitious, there's no backing for it. We've been printing dollar obligations all over the world, and there's nothing to substantiate it. This has been a criminal insanity.
So therefore, what do you do?
Well, very simply: The governments of China and the United States—assuming the United States government is going to be increasingly terrified, every person in the Senate who voted against China, is in trouble right now, politically, when they come to back to office, because the U.S. economy is collapsing: Therefore, the solution is, if the United States and China negotiate a treaty agreement, to fix the value of the yuan and the dollar, now, as a fixed-exchange-rate system, every leading economy in the world will have to join. If we go to a fixed-exchange-rate system, shut down all so-called central banking systems, because they're all bankrupt—the British are bankrupt, hopelessly bankrupt. The Bank of England is bankrupt, the whole system is bankrupt! The Queen's personal bank, Coutts, and the Bank of Scotland are bankrupt. Every country in western Europe is bankrupt, hopelessly so.
So they have no choice: The world is bankrupt in financial terms. The only thing we can do, is get agreements among governments, to return to a fixed-exchange-rate system of the type of that Roosevelt created during the end of the 1940s.
Then we say, we freeze everything. We have national banking systems in every country—you can not have the money running free, you have to have regulated systems: national banking systems. And you negotiate long-term treaty agreements, of a 25- to 50-year duration, as packages among countries. And that way, we can get out of it.
We are going to wipe out many claims to dollars. We're going to wipe them from the books, or they'll wipe themselves from the books. We will simply say, "We're going to pay the essentials, and the other debts are going to be frozen, until we investigate them." We're going to have an operating economy.
But the key thing here, is the interdependency of China on the United States, and the United States on China, is such, that the Chinese economy would suffer, internally, from a lack of development if these dollars, if these claims were devalued. The United States would collapse without China as a market. Therefore, these two nations need each other. They are prisoners locked as in a marriage that can not be broken. And they have to legalize the marriage.
We Are in Crisis Politics
Q: I have a very crucial question to ask. My question is how do you promote, most emphatically, how do you promote and convince the government or any other parties to adopt your idea, your philosophy, and your perspective on that strategy? Or the people of the United States?
LaRouche: Well, the people in the United States are suffering. They're suffering—the people of the United States have a 10% popularity for the present Democratic Party leadership. The people of the United States have contempt for the Congress, where they did not have contempt last November, a year ago. The people of the United States do not like what the Congress is failing to do right now, with the housing crisis. And the housing crisis is not only a housing crisis—that's a lie. It's a banking crisis: The institutions of government and every bank are in crisis. The people of the United States have interests, such as housing, such as jobs, such as health care, things which they're now losing! The people of the United States are ready to revolt—maybe not tomorrow, but two days from now, or three days from now.
Therefore, you go to the Congress. Now, I have many friends in the Congress—they're cowardly friends, but they're friends. And in the institutions of government, in the professionals in government, you have a better quality than you do, actually, in the elected officials, in many of them. They understand these kinds of problems.
Let me speak very frankly: You have a predator who controls the Speaker of the House, [Nancy Pelosi] is controlled by a fascist banker, Felix Rohatyn, who also controls Sen. [Dianne] Feinstein from out here, which is what much of the politics in California suffers from. And good Democrats are afraid to act politically, because of the control exerted by these forces, which are actually fascist forces, like Felix Rohatyn, the man who helped put Pinochet in power in Chile! He was part of the administration. And George Shultz, who is no better, was also part of it.
So the question is, as I said here today: You have a powerful financier interest, which is a predatory financier interest, which is fascist, in point of fact. Just as fascist as Hitler. They don't yet have the dictatorship Hitler had, but they have the same direction of thinking.
The power lies with the people. The problem is, that the lower 80% of family-income brackets of the people of the United States have been for over two, three decades, they've been shut off from real access to their government, as their government. Now, they're losing their housing, they're losing their employment, they're losing everything; they're losing their health care, they're losing their pensions. They want an answer! We can provide answers, and I find that our going directly to the people on the state level, and the county level, the county politicians, the elected ones, the state officials—you get a response there, you don't get in the Congress now. The Senate and the House are totally controlled by the predatory enemies. So therefore, it's a matter of power: The system is collapsing, the leading power in the world that controls the world is losing power. Those in powerful positions in elected office, are losing power, especially at the Federal level.
So therefore, if we mobilize the people at the base, that is, on the state level or the county level, find officials who are honest and who are responsive, we can get a change. We're on the verge of the greatest change in modern history, either for the worst or for the better. And what we do in organizing the base of the population is going to determine that.
If we get cooperation, in spirit, between the United States and China, among the people of the United States and China, the people of the United States and Russia, the people of the United States and India, and so forth, then we will find that we have power, in a time of crisis.
But this is crisis politics. And that's the only answer to your question: We're in crisis politics. Are we prepared in an understanding way, as to what we must do, practically, in these circumstances. We can win. If we don't win, we're not going to have much of a planet.
The Solution: Nuclear Energy
Q: What do you think, Mr. LaRouche, about this Iraq and Afghanistan war, where the U.S. spends billions and billions in dollars, [while] only those people like Cheney benefitted from such a war? What do you think? That's number 1.
Number 2: about the environmental situation. The U.S. is the largest CO2 producer in the world. And it's actually on an increase, the CO2 production. What do you think in that respect?
LaRouche: Well, let's take the second one first, because the first one has more substance to it.
The idea, the environmental rage associated with Al Gore, the former Vice President of the United States, spread among the people of the United States today, is a fraud. It's based on the shrinkage of the number of leading people with scientific qualifications in the population.
My generation, as you know, is the generation—I was born in 1922. Some years ago, we had a science [foundation] called the Fusion Energy Foundation. It was one of the leading scientific institutions in the United States, and was influential internationally. Then, we find, as that generation, my generation, has died out, the younger generation, the generation that is now in power in Congress, between the ages of about 50 and 65 years of age, are scientifically incompetent and inert. And they appeal to a similar stratum in their own age group in the population, which is similarly anti-scientific, inert. These are the 68ers, and they have a 68er ideology, which is against science, and which is against progress, it's against agriculture, it's against industry, it's against blue-collar workers. And this is part of our acute problem.
Now, there is no scientific competence behind what Al Gore says: It's a fraud. His famous television address contains an absolute scientific fraud. This is nothing but Malthusianism! It's the same kind of thing: of reduction of population through starvation and similar things. This is a complete fraud: This is the enemy of civilization. And I think Bill Clinton has recognized by now, that Al Gore was no friend of his, as President. He was a nuisance; he's a right-wing fascist, and he should be exposed as that. He eats too much, among other things.
But, on the actuality of this: Most of the heat in the Solar System comes from only one source, the Sun. The idea that carbon has something to do with heating is nonsense! If you cut down the carbon, you're going to increase the heat! By converting to methods which use biological materials instead of other kinds of materials for power. Because if you take a beam of sunlight, and you inject it into agriculture, or the forests, by the magic of chlorophyll, you transform solar radiation into viable, living biomass. This transformation by chlorophyll, lowers the temperature of the planet, through this growth.
Whereas, if you allow this sunlight to just float around there, or use these methods that he [Gore] talks about, the environmentalists talk about, you will actually raise the temperature, by having less development.
So what we need, is a high-technology [solution].
Now, back to the question of the war. The war policy is related. The war policies come largely from Britain, because the United States under the present President is simply controlled by largely international British financier interests. And the problem is, as has often been the case in our past history, that the United States has been controlled from the top, by alien interests from outside the country, usually associated with the dirty side of finance—as is the case, in this case.
The policy we're dealing with, is that for a long time, there's been a policy called the "Revolution in Military Affairs." This was denounced by President Eisenhower, in his outgoing speech, as President, and it came from a certain section of what he called the "military-industrial complex." The idea was to get rid of regular armies, regular military forces of the United States, and introduce privately funded warfare, and private wars, of the type like the British East India Company used to run, in the world of the 19th Century, and [the British empire] still runs today.
The policy behind these wars, in Southeast Asia, and more recently in Southwest Asia, all comes from London. Dick Cheney, for example: His career was made by the British interests which are behind Tony Blair, the former prime minister. We got into a war in the 1960s, in Vietnam—it was a fraud. It was voted by a fraud, under the terror conditions arising out of the assassination of President Kennedy. The war in Indo-China was that.
The subsequent wars we've gone into, are all the same thing. This war was started by fraud, it was initiated by the British. I was involved personally in fighting against this; I was personally victimized on this thing. This came from London, and Cheney and his wife are instruments of London. And also there are other people in the United States, like Rohatyn and like George Shultz, and so forth, who are essentially more British than they are American.
And you know what the President is—he's a piece of waste material, politically. He has no control over his own government. He's an idiot, he's a mental case, and he was put in there because he was a mental case, that would enable other people to control him.
So you're right, this is evil. We have to stop it. It has to be stopped. We can stop it. And the way to stop it is very simple: If we build, in the context of what I already said, cooperation among the United States, Russia, China, and India, we have a combination of power, which would be the most powerful combination of power on this planet. If those powers agree, on a common interest, it will be realized. The problem is, these nations are divided against each other, on one issue or another. If we can unite these nations, and others, around a combination of power which can change world policy, we can solve that problem.
In the case of the environment, the solution is: Go to high technology. More nuclear power, more high tech, more promotion of greening of the desert. All of these things, which will control the climate quite nicely. And scientists know how to do it. Unfortunately, we have people in government who are of an age group that don't know what science is any more.
