LAROUCHE WEBCAST
Save the American Republic
From the British Empire!
Lyndon LaRouche addressed a three-hour international webcast on Oct. 10. His opening remarks were followed by two hours of discussion. Here is an edited transcript. Video of the webcast.Debra Freeman: Good afternoon. My name is Debra Freeman, and on behalf of LaRouche PAC, I'd like to welcome all of you to today's event.
Certainly, Mr. LaRouche's address here in Washington today, could not come at a more opportune moment. Our nation finds itself clearly in the throes of what I think can only be assumed is the final stage of a breakdown crisis that has been a long time in coming. We find ourselves in a situation where virtually no American can escape the immediate effects of this breakdown crisis. Probably the first people being hit are those unfortunate individuals who got sucked into various kinds of exotic mortgages, or subprime mortgages, but clearly that is really just the very, very tip of the iceberg.
It doesn't come as a surprise, certainly, to anyone in this room: Mr. LaRouche has warned about this, and really, with time to spare, proposed an initiative that would establish a firewall that would protect not only the American people, but which would also provide a measure of protection for the chartered state and Federal banks, to ensure not only that people were allowed to remain in their homes, but that at the same time, our banking system continued to function.
Now, some of our friends said, "Well! We agree with keeping homeowners in their homes, but why the heck should we do anything to save the banks? You know, they're the ones that are responsible for this, they made plenty of money. Why is LaRouche concerned about them?" And while the anger might be understandable, I would challenge anybody to try to figure out how to run a nation—in fact, how to run a superpower—without a banking system. It doesn't really function. And I think that Lyn's expertise in this area is really vital.
And while the developments of the last weeks and months have not been surprising to those of us associated with Mr. LaRouche, what has been surprising, and continues to be surprising to me, is the absolute impotence of the response here in Washington, where no longer do you have the excuse that there is not a Democratic majority. There is a Democratic majority; yet, our national leadership stands paralyzed.
Fortunately, what Mr. LaRouche has been able to do, with the help of the LaRouche Youth Movement and others, has been to mobilize city, state, and county leaders—political leaders, civic leaders, labor leaders, etc.—to begin the kind of drive necessary to get action taken here in Washington. As we convene today's meeting, more than 100 political leaders from across the United States, including leaders of some of the largest national constituency organizations, have endorsed Mr. LaRouche's Homeowners and Bank Protection Act. At the same time, that legislation, in memorial form, is being considered in eight state legislatures, which is somewhat unprecedented, when one considers that at this particular time, about 70% of the state legislatures are not even in session. Were they in session, I can guarantee you that the number considering this piece of legislation would be far more.
But the fact of the matter, is that even for this simple action to be taken, what we need is a leadership in Washington, which is prepared to do what it has not been prepared to do up to now: And that is to face the simple reality. And I can think of no individual, who is a better messenger and spokesman for that reality, than my boss. So without any further introduction, ladies and gentlemen, I bring you Lyndon LaRouche.
9/11 Was an Inside Job
Lyndon LaRouche: Thank you. Well, let's start from the top.
In early January of 2001, before the inauguration of George W. Bush as President, I warned that the general nature of the catastrophe would be, that the U.S. economy would be a failure—the policies of Bush would be a total failure: We were headed into a downslide, which in fact has happened, all throughout this period. And the thing we had to fear, from inside the U.S. government, was that someone would set off a form of terrorist incident within the year, which would shock the nation into submission.
In the Summer of that year, 2001, the recession was fully on. The collapse was on; the political systems were shaken by the collapse. And then, on the famous Sept. 11, someone, with cooperation from inside the highest levels of power in the United States, unleashed an incident which is called the 9/11 incident. That job was done with the complicity of the British Empire. It was done with complicity of elements in Saudi Arabia, as all the evidence would plainly tell you. That was a terrorist act, against the United States, done with complicity of people at a very high level inside the United States, with a coverup organized by people inside, a high level inside the United States.
Now, certain facts are not known, and I shall not say what I know now. But I shall say, that I do know, beyond doubt, that 9/11 was an inside job. It was an inside job on behalf of what the Bush-Cheney Administration represents. And since that time, everybody who knows anything about the government, knows about our system, knows that more or less to be true. You see the behavior of members of the Congress and political institutions who are running scared! Because they know that kind of thing is on.
Now what I said in January of 2001, prior to the inauguration of this President, the first time: I said that we had to look at the precedent, under these kinds of economic conditions which I indicated, in which Hermann Göring orchestrated the burning of the Reichstag, for the purpose of making Hitler not merely the Chancellor of Germany, but the dictator. And Hitler remained a dictator from the night after that burning of the Reichstag, until the day he died! Nobody got rid of him. I would say, that what has happened is, with the case of Cheney, in particular—Cheney is the figurehead of this operation, Vice President Cheney, the man everybody's afraid of because of 9/11!—that everyone is running in terror, just as in Germany, they ran in terror from the burning of the Reichstag, and the Germans never got free of that, until the day Hitler was dead.
Now, the operation was run against the United States by whom? It was run against it by the British Empire. They're the ones that ran it. And right now, you see in politics now, the shadow of exactly that kind of problem, because that's what you're looking at when you look at the U.S. Presidential campaign, right now. The Presidential campaign, the political campaign on the Federal level, is a bad joke! Hillary Clinton says a few things which are important. She does not have a clue as to what the problem is. She doesn't have a clue as to what the solution is—but she is the closest to telling the truth, and all the rest of them are far from the truth. Dennis Kucinich says a few things that are true, but he has no grasp of this issue.
I do have a grasp of the issue—and I know more than I'm saying: With complicity of certain people in Saudi Arabia, with the British Empire, which shares power with Saudi Arabia, through the BAE, a job was done on the United States on 9/11. And we've been living under the heat of that, ever since. That I stand by. Other facts will come out at a suitable time.
But the point is, under those conditions—you saw what happened in 2005: At the end of 2004, Kerry failed in nerve, as a Presidential candidate. He could have won, but he lost his nerve. It's something that Kerry tends to do—he's a man of anger, who sometimes, when restraining his anger, imposes a certain kind of impotence on himself, as we saw in his behavior under attack during the period of the Summer Democratic Party convention, when this same thing happened. So, under that condition, we had this monstrous thing face us: the reelection of the present President, with his Vice President as the actual acting President.
So, I intervened—a carry-over from what I had done in assisting the Democratic Presidential campaign—to mobilize the United States, the Democratic Party and others, for the defense of Social Security. This occurred in November of that year, late November, and was fully in play in January. The Democratic Party responded to what I set into motion, and organized to defend the Social Security system, against the plans of the Bush-Cheney Administration. That program succeeded, during the course of 2005.
The 'Revolution in Military Affairs'
However, approximately April-May of that same year, we had a well-known fascist, a Democratic Party fascist, from Middlebury College, Felix Rohatyn, who is a partner with George Shultz in what is called the "Revolution in Military Affairs." The Revolution in Military Affairs is what you're looking at when you think about Blackwater, and the Blackwater scandal in the papers right now. The policy has been, and this was the policy of Cheney when he was Secretary of Defense, was to eliminate the regular military forces of the United States, except for the Air Force, which had a special function, and perhaps some Naval forces, but to eliminate the regular military forces of the United States, in order to implement what was called "the Revolution in Military Affairs."
This is a policy which has been around for a long time. Under Hitler, it was called the SS policy: Get rid of the regular military forces and bring in the SS. The International Waffen SS has never come fully into operation—that was a matter of timing—but the intention remained there. So, we had the intention to establish, in the post-war period, actually from about the time that President Roosevelt died—an intention to change the course of military affairs and to set up a kind of Caesarian world dictatorship, an Anglo-American world dictatorship, with special military capabilities, in which private armies, or privatized armies, would be used to police the world. We had this, for example, in the Pinochet regime in South America, in Chile, the terror in South America in the 1970s—the same kind of thing, the same operation: Revolution in Military Affairs.
Now, this has been the special project of George Shultz, who is the official author of the Bush-Cheney Administration, and who was behind Felix Rohatyn in this Revolution in Military Affairs.
So, we had a second program that year, in 2005, which was to defend the automobile industry, preventing it from going into the dissolution it's undergone since then, now, by saying, "Let's take the automobile industry, which is overbloated by the way it was mismanaged, and let's take valuable sections of the automobile industry, which are a machine-tool capability with an attached labor force; and use this capability as a government takeover of this capability, to deal with things like fixing up power stations, fixing up rail systems, fixing up water management systems and so forth." Which would have been actually a Roosevelt-style recovery program, which means going to public infrastructure first! And by employing forces which exist for public infrastructure, you create a market which builds up your private sector, which is what in a sense we did with Harry Hopkins under Franklin Roosevelt. That kind of method would have worked.
However: In comes Felix Rohatyn, with Shultz behind him, and these monkeys say, "No, no, no!" So, what happened is that the Democratic Party, while they picked up and defended the Social Security system, did not defend the rights of the American citizens, because we had to defend the automobile industry, not necessarily to produce automobiles, but as an industrial capability, to keep the capability of running an economy here. When the decision was made by February of 2006, to let the automobile industry go down the chute—and that was the decision that was made: It was made at the highest levels of the Democratic Party and the Republican Party: "Let the auto industry and what that represented go down the chute." And they did. And we have since gone down the chute.
The last shards of the automobile industry, of the American-owned, American-run automobile industry, are being destroyed. Throughout this nation, there's desperation. The state of Michigan is a no-man's land. The state of Ohio is virtually a no-man's land. Throughout the United States, there is desolation, because of these policies.
And the war continues! And the intention to extend the war into Iran and beyond continues. And the same thing behind their 9/11—Cheney, the friends of Cheney in London, in the BAE, and the Saudi accomplices in the BAE—the same crowd that gave you 9/11, are behind it all. And many people in the United States know that, many people in high places. But they're afraid to say so. I'm saying so. A lot of us have been talking about this in private, at a high level: I'm saying so, now.
If you don't give up the blackmail, the fear of 9/11, the fear that something terrible will happen to us if we displease Cheney, and Cheney's backers in London; if we don't give that up, we don't have a nation.
The Political Parties Are a Joke
We're now at a point, in terms of the economy, where the U.S. dollar is collapsing. The collapse is worse than it appears to be, because in these cases they fake assets, as you see massive faking of assets, like the Northern Rock in England; Goldman Sucks, or Goldman Sachs, or whatever you want to call it, is doing these kinds of things. This is fake. There is no recovery! There is no growth! It's fakery! Entirely fakery. And people wish to believe.
Then you have a situation, like the recent developments in the Democratic Party. Forget the Republican candidates, they're all a joke; they're not serious. And they don't intend to be serious. It's a joke.
But look at the Democratic Party side, it's a real joke: Do you realize that the entire Congress has the level of popularity today, that Dick Cheney has? The leadership of the Democratic Party is held in the highest contempt, by the Democratic voters of the United States! And this despair, this lack of a sense of leadership at the top of the Democratic Party, is one of the problems, which aggravates our problems. Hillary Clinton has expressed some being upset about that. She doesn't understand what the answer is, what the solution is; she has no program that fits reality. None of the candidates has a program that fits reality—they're not about to. And the leaders of the Democratic Party, for example, Harry Reid in the Senate, and Nancy Pelosi in the House, will not allow the Democratic members to do anything worthwhile doing.
Take, for example, at the beginning of the nomination campaign for the 2000 election: Before the Iowa caucuses, I published a summary of my estimate of the various Democratic contenders, leading Democratic contenders for the nomination. And in that, I made a special note of the fact, I said: Many people think that Howard Dean is a contender. And I said, he is not a contender. He's going to blow his stack, and that is going to take him out of the race—it did! He remains "Howard Scream" to the present day. That's all he's good for!
He was a key part in wrecking the Democratic campaign in 2006, a key part of it. He was the one who had moved the money around to prevent a serious campaign being done from the Democratic Party on behalf of the candidates, and he spent the money in his own, little special projects! So the Democratic Party had no money to run its campaigns, as it should have had, to launch from the top its campaigns for the year 2006, and you saw the result. Howard Scream: They made him the head of the Democratic National Committee! Howard Scream! And he has certain qualities worse than just his bad temper. There was a cartoon series that used to appear in the newspapers back during the 1930s, called "The Terrible-Tempered Mr. Bang," and I think that was Howard Scream, or Howard Scream's grandfather, or something like that. But that's our situation.
Now, where are we?
Right now, we're on the short end of the end of civilization as we've known it: this present world monetary-financial system is hopelessly bankrupt; it's at its terminal end.
Now for reasons I shall explain to you now, here, you can never precisely predict a date on which something is going to happen, in economic processes: Because, economic processes are a reflection of voluntary powers of persons and institutions. And so, they don't operate on the basis of a Cartesian projectile system, where you launch a bullet, or launch a cannon ball, and it goes out at a certain speed and comes to an inevitable end at a predictable point. In real life, in real economies, economic systems don't function with that kind of predictability. Economic processes are not statistical in nature, they are actually dynamic, in the same sense as the term dynamis was used by the ancient Greeks, the Pythagoreans, in defining scientific method, and the way that modern scientific method which is based on Leibniz's definition of dynamics, operates. We operate in a universe which has laws. These laws include laws which are discovered by mankind and used by mankind, and become an integral part of the way society works.
In this process, there's free will operating. There are choices. Free will is operating at all levels, on an individual level, in powerful institutions, and so forth. But the rules which society has adopted, rules which function like universal physical principles, these rules remain—at least temporarily until they're superseded—they represent the thing that controls what is going to happen in society. Within this set of rules, individuals have choices, they can make decisions. Institutions have choices, they can make decisions. You can shift the way the consequences unfold. You can change the timing of events, by human will. But you can not change the characteristic direction, which the rules of the system have built into it.
So, now we have reached a point, where we are, at this point, in terms of dynamics, in terms of the system, this world monetary-financial system is finished. It's as good as dead, right now—or as worse than dead, right now. There is no possibility, that, of its own volition, it will rebound. There is no possibility that it can have a remarkably extended life. Though you can have an extended life, under a dictatorship. But as the kind of political systems we have now, it can not continue. You can have an exception to that—dictatorship, extended wars, other things that will delay the point of decision, or resolution. But this system is finished. There's nothing you can do within the terms of this system, to prevent it from collapsing. Somebody can alter the date on which the collapse officially occurs. But the inevitability of the collapse is built into the system, and it's on the short term.
But you can change the system.
We Are a Unique Form of Government
Now, the United States has had quite a bit of experience with systems. The system which the United States represents was new in its time. We were a unique republic. Nothing like it actually existed in Europe. It did not exist in the 18th Century, it did not exist in the 19th Century, and did not really exist in the 20th Century. We are a unique form of government.
The European systems, and systems of the world in general, are oligarchical systems: That is, you have an upper ruling class, or influential class, which dominates society, typified by parliamentary systems. A parliamentary system is a system of tyranny. You have a parliament, elected officials, who presumably make certain decisions. But the minute they try to make a decision that offends the leading powers, the parliament goes into a crisis, and you have a new parliamentary government, the end of the threat. That's the way it works.
Our Constitutional system, inherently, is superior to any other system on this planet, when we use it, when our Constitution is followed. Because, our Constitution is based on certain principles which flow implicitly, from the intention of the Preamble of the Federal Constitution. And also, that our system of government, constitutionally, is not a monetary system—it's a credit system.
Read the Constitution! How is money created, under law, under our Constitution? A bill is presented in the House of Representatives. That bill authorizes the Department of Treasury, and therefore, the President, to utter credit of the United States, in the form of currency or some other form of credit—public credit. This credit is then released, and applied, according to law, at the discretion of government. This credit forms the basis for our currency, the utterance of our currency; it forms the basis for public credit, such as investments in public infrastructure: building a railway system, building power systems, dams, and so forth; funding certain kinds, or launching certain kinds of private projects, as well as for warfare. Public credit is our system. We regulate our currency, as we did best under Franklin Roosevelt, to have a fixed-exchange-rate system, among nations. That works the best.
We are unique, in that sense. Every part of Europe, for example, is still—well, forget Eastern Europe, forget Russia for the moment—but every part of Central and Western Europe is actually an oligarchical system, in which there is a higher power than government. That higher power is central banking. Central banking is private central banking. And private credit, in the form of a monetary system, controls the governments.
We're living in, essentially, a British Empire: That is, the world is run by a money system, called a "free-market system." Or the equivalent. The money system is controlled by banks and similar financial institutions. Governments, under free trade, are not supposed to interfere with the functioning of that system. You're under a dictatorship of international finance. The only alternative to this, which is what is hated by the oligarchs, is Franklin Roosevelt's system: Franklin Roosevelt instituted a revival of the American System, based on public credit, rather than monetary power, arbitrary monetary power.
Now, the present system—to make as short of this as possible in terms of this aspect of the presentation—the present system, as long as we try to operate according to the rules of an international monetary system, the United States is now hopelessly doomed. And Howard Scream can scream all he wants—it's still doomed. He would just make it worse. There is no hope for the continued survival of the United States, under the present monetary system.
However, under our Constitution, with a President, and with the backing of a Congress which supports him in this, the United States can turn on a dime: Precisely such is the key to my proposed legislation, which is now before the Congress. That is: You can not reform this system. You can not improve it, it can not work, there's no way of escaping catastrophe globally, under this system—none!
What you can do, you can do under our Constitution: The Federal government can act, to create a firewall, in which we protect—for example—mortgages, and banks, that is, legitimate banks, chartered banks. We move to protect them, absolutely, under the same thing as a bankruptcy procedure. In other words, you're putting the system into bankruptcy, under the authority of the Federal government. That means that no household will have an eviction. We'll sort it out later. No bank will be shut down; no regular bank, no chartered bank, will be shut down—they're protected, under bankruptcy protection.
We now proceed to decide what is going to be paid in the future. We're not going to pay gambling debts. And most of this monetary effluent, that you're seeing floating out there, is gambling debts, what is called "monetary assets." All of it is speculation, speculation, speculation, speculation—gambling debts. We don't pay gambling debts. "What about my bank, my debt? I got this note, I got this note, who's going to pay my note?" "We're not paying your note, buddy. It's a gambling debt. Can't collect—it's an IOU, not worth anything." As George Bush said—wrongly—about Social Security claims. That's not an IOU, that's an obligation of the Federal government. That's not an IOU. Gambling debts are IOUs, Goldman Sachs is a bunch of IOUs, and I don't think they're going to pay them, either.
So, the point is, what you can do under the authority of government, you can create a new system. In our case, in our republic, the system you would create, would be a return to the principles of the Constitution, as typified, for example, by the precedent of what Franklin Roosevelt did, with Harry Hopkins and others, to save the United States from the worst Depression we'd had up to that time, that is, in the 20th Century. We do the same thing again.
A Firewall of Law
So what is required here, leadership, means very simply, things that the average guy out there can understand. The average person on the state level, the state legislatures and similar institutions, are sane. The people in the Congress are insane from the top down. That doesn't mean they're all insane, it means they're intimidated by Harry Reid, they're intimidated by Pelosi, and so forth and so on. Therefore, they will sabotage anything, which is not pleasing to the bankers, to the financiers. And that is to the international financiers, in the City of London.
The center of the world economy today, is the City of London. It's not the British monarchy, as such. The British monarchy is an institution of the system, but the British monarchy is not the controller of the system. The controller of the system is a Venetian-style system of private financier interests, sort of like a slime mold, which assembles and asserts its collective power, and uses the instruments of government, under its compulsion, to cause societies to submit to its will. That's an empire. That was the empire, the medieval empire, of the Crusaders and the Venetians, the usurers. That's been the British Empire since February of 1763, when we broke from the British on that issue.
All we have to do, is reestablish the principle of sovereign government: That sovereign government is the highest authority on this planet, and especially in our own country. We say, we put the system into bankruptcy reorganization. Our objective is to make sure that we can keep the economy, society going, without missing a step. No one is evicted from their homes. No bank, which is a chartered bank, is closed down. We take other measures of a similar nature, to ensure that what we're doing today that is good, will continue! And we will build on that to introduce new things, which will get us back on the road to expansion.
And the first thing we'll have to do, once I get this bill through the Congress, the next thing, is go back to do what we should have done, in 2005 and 2006: Take the capacity represented by the automobile industry of the United States—that is, U.S. corporations—take that capacity, which represents primarily a machine-tool capacity, in locations which still exist (the plant may be closed down, but the location exists; the people still live there, or most of them do). It has a machine-tool capability. It has also an associated labor force which worked with the automobile industry, and similar industries, to engage in the production to realize the fruits of what the machine-tool sector does in terms of rebuilding.
We can use the remains of the machine-tool sector associated with the auto industry, by getting it back into functioning under government financing. We can use that to start a recovery program. We start it in the public sector. We build nuclear power plants, rapidly, many of them. We rebuild our water systems, rapidly. We create a national rail system, immediately, rapidly.
We use these kinds of projects, which are government-related projects, we use these to stimulate employment and production in the private sector of industry, in agriculture and industry. The same way! The same way as the Homeowners and Bank Protection Act, the same method: We create a firewall of law, a firewall of Constitutional law, which protects what is essential for the functioning of the nation and the security of its people, to separate what we do day by day, which is protected from claims of another nature. Those claims of another nature can stand outside the offices and wait their turn to be considered: We are going to protect the people and nation of the United States. We're going to encourage other nations to join us in doing the same thing.
We're going to shut down British Empire! Which, as I described it, is the source of 9/11: We'll shut it down.
We Can Break the Power of the British Empire
We'll bring together a cooperation among nations. Take the case of Israel. The thing is a little more complicated than it might seem on the surface. But, any sane Israeli, and there are some there, wants peace. They realize that Israel has no future in a continuation of the present system. Every sane Israeli knows that there must be a permanent peace between Palestinians and Jews. It must be established. The President of Israel at present, has said so. Well, I know him quite well, and I believe him. And these have been ideas he's had for a long time. He is, for me, and for many Palestinians, an acceptable partner for discussion of this question. And the idea of having a two-state solution for the Middle East, Palestinians and Israelis, each with its capital in Jerusalem—so you have in Jerusalem two capitals, one the Palestinian state, one the Israeli state.
You do this, first of all, by going to Syria, which is ready to make a peace agreement with Israel. Everything is done that needs to be done, to discuss. You can go in there and you can make the agreement. You can't dictate it, but you can make the agreement—it'll work. If you're determined to make it work, it'll work. And that closes the last insecure border for Israel.
That means then, that you proceed with what? Well, with nuclear power! What's the big problem in that area? Water! There's not enough water; how can you get water? With nuclear power! Nuclear desalination.
So, now you can transform an area which is destitute because of the water crisis and related things, and if you have peace among these people, as parties to the peace, and base the peace on commitment to this project, you can stabilize that region! If people of good will are there.
The problem is, the Israelis did this operation against Syria, and therefore, they're not too enthusiastic about going ahead right now, and making the negotiation. Though Peres has indicated he's committed to doing it, and everything he's said so far, indicates that's true.
So, what we have before us is the prospect, if we can get this thing in view, we can proceed quickly, throughout the world, to work through part of the world, we can begin to put things into place, to rebuild the world as President Roosevelt had intended, had he not died. The intention, coming out of the war, the idea of the creation of the United Nations, the idea of the elimination of colonialism, systematically and immediately—these kinds of things were the intention of Roosevelt. The Truman Administration turned it around, and went with the British.
But today, the same kind of thinking applies: If we decide that we're going to defend the U.S. economy, in particular, against what is now an immediate and virtually inevitable collapse, disintegration of our economy, of our republic—if we decide to do that, and use the methods I indicated, that can change the world. It will break the power of the British Empire: the empire which gave us 9/11.
