PRESS RELEASE
Columbus Radio Interviews LaRouche on Economic Collapse and Presidential Election
July 7, 2008 (EIRNS)—This radio transcript was released today by the Lyndon LaRouche Political Action Committee (LPAC).
Lyndon LaRouche was interviewed July 6 on the second hour of host Khari Enaharo's "Straight Talk Live" three-hour Sunday morning broadcast in Columbus, Ohio. The program was also streamed live on the website of the radio station Magic 98.9, www.magic989.com.
ENAHARO: This is the second hour of "Straight Talk Live" with Khari Enaharo. Sunday morning tradition, heard exclusively on Magic 98.9. I'm Khari Enaharo, also known as "Brother K." This is your show, you are the expert, this show is designed with you in mind: When the people speak, we must listen! On "Straight Talk Live" we provide you with a broader spectrum of information to widen your ability to see the real world, in greater depth and with deeper understanding. We don't do CNN and Fox News here, we do "Straight Talk Live."
Join us in the second hour of "Straight Talk Live," as Mr. Lyndon LaRouche, world renowned statesman, economist, and former candidate for the Democratic Party nomination for the President of the United States. By the way, you can follow Mr. LaRouche's political opinions and writings by going to his website, at http://www.larouchepac.com.
Mr. LaRouche, welcome to Straight Talk Live, and thank you for joining us!
LAROUCHE: Good to be with you.
ENAHARO: In a recent online article entitled, "For The Moment, There Are Only Two Candidates"—now, this was posted on your June 6, on your website www.larouchepac.com, you wrote the following statement, and I want to quote here: " The two current Presidential pre-candidates are Senators John McCain, a Republican, and Barack Obama, a Democrat. Both candidates have shown the temperament of a hand-grenade with a loose pin. With McCain, the problem is well known; with Obama, the problem of a flakey temperament is no longer hidden." You say, "It is doubtful that either will actually be nominated. Some people in the back room of politics have a different idea, people operating from behind the scenes at a very high level in the circles of world power. McCain and Obama are political chess-pieces on the board; the fellows in the back room are chess players who know how a pawn becomes a queen."
Mr. LaRouche, this is quite a fascinating scenario and statement! Many would suggest that, "Wait a minute, this is little bit over the top," especially when Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain are the presumptive Democratic and Republican nominees. Now, you wrote this—it was posted on June 6th. This is July 6th: Do you stand by this statement, that was posted 30 days ago?
LAROUCHE: Absolutely. That's the way things are going right now.
ENAHARO: Okay. Give me some evidence to support that.
LAROUCHE: Well, first of all Obama is losing support rapidly, and that's not accidental. The people who backed him temporarily were only using him. And now that Hillary is technically aside from the race—she's still a candidate, of course—but, aside from the race, but now the advantage of using him is less. And he's made, of course, a lot of Democrats very angry, as well. And then, he's been changing his line. But all of this is orchestrated, I don't think he really knows what's happening to him.
McCain is known to be of a certain flakiness, that is, tending to go off wild.
We're now in a period in which ordinary politics doesn't work anyway. We're now in the biggest financial crisis since the 1930s, since the early 1930s: This one is worldwide, and it's more serious now than anything then. And there is no attention, by either of the two putatively leading candidates now, to any of these issues! That is, what they're saying has no relevance to the cure of the problem which is crushing us, now. And that's where the problem lies. And you can see it—I know from behind the scenes, as from London, certain forces that are operating in this case. I know about the consideration of the fight between Chairman of the Democratic National Committee and the biggest funder—who is based in the Caribbean, actually, a Brit based in the Caribbean. I also know that most of the funding of most leading candidates in this campaign so far, has come from London, not from the United States. I also know, that the campaign organizations of the candidates, now, come chiefly from London, not from inside the United States.
ENAHARO: Now, Mr. LaRouche, you said that Mr. Obama is losing support. And I'm struggling to understand. Can you give me a little more specific information about what do you mean, when you say he's losing support?
LAROUCHE: All right, Obama's basic support, the hard-core support for Obama, that's important, the leading support, comes from people who were leaders in the civil rights movement and things like that, who represent the lower 80% of the income brackets of the population. Less in the Hispanic side, most in the African-American side, but a lot of other people—just plain poor people, or people who are afraid of becoming poor. And that was what they counted on.
Now, there was no discussion during the campaign by him, of any of the issues that pertain to this running-on of poverty, which is crucial, the breakdown of the U.S. economy. Now he's ahead, certified as the putative nominee for the Democratic Party, and he's still said nothing about the financial-economic crisis, the social crisis, which he ran on. That is, he ran on an appeal that he was going to make a change, and that presumes he was going to do something about the problems, especially something about the problem of the people who were supporting him. And the weakness of his campaign so far, has been a failure to do any of that. He's gotten on some, what might be considered high-falutin' issues, but they're really not relevant, either to present financial crisis, which is worldwide—the present price of fuel, the shortage of food, and other things, health-care, all the things that affect the ordinary people. And therefore, what's happened is, that the bloom is off the rose. The idea of running as a candidate who's going to promise to do something good, now we're coming to the time when people ask: "What're you going to do that's good?"
ENAHARO: But where's the evidence that he's losing support?
LAROUCHE: Oh, it's all out there. All the polls have got that. He's losing support by a magnitude of say, 5%, and it's accelerating.
ENAHARO: Now, you said something in your other writings, that he is a "throwaway." What do you mean by the term "throwaway"? Now, many black people would be insulted by that, but tell us what you mean by the term "throwaway."
LAROUCHE: That he was brought in and boosted by some people from the Chicago Board of Trade and from Harvard University—that was his sponsorship. He came in with very little support, as a Senator of course, but very little support, very little recognition. And the people who funded him, were largely offshore: George Soros, for example, a multi-billionaire, who operates in the Caribbean, who's a British subject, and who's typical of the people behind the funding of both the Democratic National Committee—as Howard "Scream"—and the Obama campaign. The Chicago Board of Trade, which is a financial institution of some notability, and this crowd in Harvard and so forth, managed to get support from the establishment, that is from the financial establishment. And thus, a candidate, who was considered an "also ran" for the Presidency, for the nomination, suddenly became the leading candidate based on this kind of support, through the mass press and so forth.
So he was getting in a sense, a free ride, in terms of this kind of support, and a massive funding: the amount of money that's gone into this, when he's talking about what he's got, a quarter of a billion dollars, to run a campaign for the Presidential election? This guy is not coming from poor people.
ENAHARO: He says he has more individual contributors than ever, he says that more people are giving him money!
LAROUCHE: You have to look at the money. Where's the money coming, where's the quarter of a billion dollars coming from. It's not from poor people.
ENAHARO: Well, let's follow the money: Where is it coming from?
LAROUCHE: Largely from the Caribbean, from the British Empire bases in the Caribbean, typified by George Soros. And George Soros operates out of the Cayman Islands, and he's a British subject, and he's a British agent. The money he has and gives is not really his own: He's an agent of a British financial interest. And he's deployed into the United States, to shape the policies of the United States. He coordinates with a guy who's the same guy that put this fascist Pinochet into power in Chile, some years ago, Felix Rohatyn. And they control part of the Congress, for example, Nancy Pelosi's controlled by these people. Howard Dean, the chairman of the National Committee, has been controlled by these people—now there's a break between Howard Dean and Soros. And it's Soros, the former owner of MoveOn, who has been the key factor in this operation.
ENAHARO: Now, let's go to McCain. You also said that McCain, nor Obama would be the nominee, in August. You also say there would be certain economic conditions by the time we get to August that would change a lot of things. Let's go through that: What do you mean, "certain economic condition"?
LAROUCHE: We are now in, not in a depression, but in what's called technically, a global breakdown crisis of the world economy. This is hitting Europe, it's hitting the United States. It's reflected in the price of food. It's a problem which is aggravated by this silly policy of so-called bio-fuels, which is starving people. That is, the conversion of food into fuel is starving people! Other conditions of that type.
So we're now in a global financial crisis, which is becoming worse by the month. As a matter of fact, by the day, the price of petroleum, for example, is affecting the entire population. The rate of bankruptcy of homeowners, the rate of bankruptcy of businesses, the rate of bankruptcy of entire communities like Washington, D.C., or New York City, essentially —all these communities. Or like Cleveland, Ohio, for example, which is in worse condition than it was back in 2004.
So the situation is worse: We're on the verge of a general breakdown crisis, something much more severe than the 1929 crash.
ENAHARO: Now, will this breakdown crisis look like? Give me some specific information to let me know when we've reached a breakdown crisis point?
LAROUCHE: We're already in it. All you have to do is look around you. Accept the reality, and just grasp the reality: Any citizen who just sits down and does that, knows it. Most people are complaining about it, most people are terrified by it. The price of food: Do you realize that over 40 to 50% of the world population is on the verge of starvation? And do you realize that when inflation occurs, as it is occurring—it's hyperinflation, actually—that you have politicians from leading countries, saying that the problem is caused by people in—poor people in China, India, and so forth—are eating too much! And they're down to one meal a day, if that! Most, about 40% of the world is in danger of a food shortage on their tables. And this is a killer: It's becoming worse. That's typical.
The loss of jobs. We've lost the auto industry, since 2004-2005. We lost it! We don't have our own auto industry any more. We have some Japan auto industry, we have some other foreign-owned auto industry. We don't have our own money any more, it comes from the international financial community.
And everything is becoming worse: Our people may be in dream world, and wish to believe that it's not becoming worse, because they don't want to believe it is becoming worse, and they hope that somehow belief will make the things more comfortable. But it's becoming worse, it's becoming terribly worse. This is worse, already, than the 1929 crash.
ENAHARO: So you're saying by August, it will become even worse.
LAROUCHE: Yes.
ENAHARO: Let me go to the gas prices for a second. I've done shows on the gas prices; we've attempted to look at it. Most people believe gas prices are high because people in the Middle East, like Arabs who control it. But you have said gas and oil is not controlled by Arabs, it's controlled by the British! What do you mean?
LAROUCHE: Well, the British have a pact with Saudi Arabia. This pact involves one of the wealthiest intelligence operations in the world, called BAE. BAE was set up by a British agent who's a Saudi national, and was for a longtime an ambassador to the United States from Saudi Arabia. What happened was, back in the 1970s, we had an oil-price crisis. Now, there was no oil shortage at that time. We were told that there was an oil shortage, we were told that the Saudis set it up. Well, that was essentially bunk.
What there was, we had ships full of oil, sitting off the coast of the United States, waiting to unload; we had all the petroleum we needed for our needs. There never was an oil shortage, an objective oil shortage. There was a synthetic oil shortage arranged by certain people centered in London. Now, at that time, when the oil crisis occurred, the world was operating on the basis of generally fixed arrangements, on long-term contracts for oil prices. And they had a spot market operating out of Rotterdam and Amsterdam, which was dealing with a very small amount of the oil traded. Suddenly, through the oil crisis, the artificial oil crisis, orchestrated by London, you got suddenly this crisis, oil shortage: then you had a zooming of the spot market, which was jointly controlled actually, between the Saudi Kingdom and London! And since that time, the petroleum policy, the power policy of the world, has been controlled by forces associated with this spot market.
Today, the price of petroleum is not determined by costs, not real costs. It's determined by a speculative agency, the spot market, which is Anglo-American and also Saudi. The Saudis are also part of British intelligence, one of the most important branches of British intelligence called BAE, and the Saudis are a big stockholder in BAE; so you have British-Saudi alliance of this type, centered on the spot market, which is controlling the price of petroleum inside the United States.
ENAHARO: Mr. LaRouche, what do you mean by the term, British intelligence?
LAROUCHE: Well, the British are an empire, and they have intelligence services—they have all kinds of intelligence services, and that has more influence in the United States, than the CIA does!
ENAHARO: Mr. LaRouche, Lyndon LaRouche is joining us. He was a candidate for the U.S. Presidential nomination of the Democratic Party in 1980, '84, '88, '92, '96, and 2000. He is the author of several books, including There Are No Limits to Growth, So, You Wish To Learn All About Economics?, The Science of Christian Economy and more. He is also the founder of the Executive Intelligence Review.
Mr. LaRouche, in a book published by your organized, Executive Intelligence Review, entitled Dope, Inc., your organization says the British are controlling the world's drug trade. Now this is something completely different than we have heard all over the media; because we always hear, well, it originates in the African-American community, the mafia, the Colombians, in Mexico. We never heard that it was the British!
LAROUCHE: Well, why don't you look back, early, to the 18th century, when we were still struggling for independence. And we were struggling against the British interests which already was engaged in two kinds of trade which are very nasty, but they were major traders. Slavery, the trade in African slaves, which was British controlled, Anglo-Dutch controlled, but largely British controlled. The British gave up the slave trade for themselves, in the 1790s, but what they did is they transferred it to others, because it was not profitable for them. But they wanted the development of slavery inside the United States, as a weapon for splitting the United States, which is what became the Civil War. And they continued the control of this market.
In the 1790s, what they did, is the British East India Company, which was running the slave trade, and was running the opium trade, used the opium which was being developed in Turkey and in India, to open up a market in China for opium! This led to the Opium Wars, up to the 1850s, where the British invaded, conducted a war against China, in order to enforce the traffic of opium.
That, the entire drug traffic, international drug traffic today, which is one of the biggest traffics of anything, is controlled out of London, still! But you don't read it in the press; you say, well, who's financing our major press? Who owns the New York Times? Who owns the Washington Post? Who owns the large major media? Who took over control of the broadcast media? With money—it gets very interesting. So, naturally we don't hear the truth about this stuff.
Right now, we had an interesting thing in Colombia, where the Colombians got some of the captives of this terrorist mob down there, and got them out to freedom. That was run by these guys: I've been dealing with that, what we wrote in Dope, Inc. was simply documentation of the truth. I've got a hands-on knowledge of this stuff. I was in a hands-on fight against the drug traffickers. This is not a domestic problem: It became a domestic problem, because somebody dumped it on us, from the outside.
ENAHARO: Mr. LaRouche, what is the Anglo-Dutch oligarchy? I've heard you use that term, over and over again. What does it mean, who's involved, how is it constituted, and how does it operate?
LAROUCHE: Well, it's really an empire, but it has a special form. We're familiar with empires from Asia, and then we have the empires developed in Europe, the Roman Empire, its successor the Byzantine Empire, then you had the Crusader empire, which was run actually by the Venetian financial interests. You had the British Empire as such emerged in the process. We made a revolution against the British Empire, actually: It's when the British Empire was formed in 1763 that we began to revolt against the British, here in this country.
So, this is an old story. Admittedly, with our schools being what they are these days, and what our newspapers are, the obvious, evident, massive truth, the most easily accessed truth from the standpoint of fact, is simply ignored! And you know, we are lied to—I think you probably have seen that, when you look at the mass media, and look at what you know yourself on the street, we're lied to, massively.
ENAHARO: Mr. LaRouche, stay right there. Mr. LaRouche said, and I quote from his website, "the biggest collapse in modern history will probably hit in September and October." Well, we'll see what Mr. LaRouche has to say about this: This and more on Straight Talk Live with Khari Enaharo. Sunday morning tradition, heard exclusively on Magic 98.9... [station break]
I'm Khari Enaharo, also known Brother K. On Straight Talk Live, we provide you with a broader spectrum of information to widen your ability to see the real world in greater depth and with deeper understanding. We don't do CNN and Fox News here: We do "Straight Talk Live."
Join us in the second hour of Straight Talk Live, with Mr. Lyndon LaRouche, world renowned statesman, economist, and former candidate for the Democratic Party nomination for the President of the United States.
Mr. LaRouche, I want to circle back: You have stated that Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain will not be left standing for their respective nominations. You've also said that Mr. Al Gore somewhere lurks in the background. If not Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain, then who?
LAROUCHE: Well, you got all kinds of problems here. You've got in the background, coming up fast, you've got the Mayor of New York, Bloomberg; the man's a fascist. He's controlled, used, by the Rockefeller Foundation which has a policy essentially of shutting down the U.S. government, and having public infrastructure taken over by private finance. This is the same program which was used by Mussolini in taking power in Italy, back in the 1920s. You have Al Gore: Al Gore is a British agent, even though he was formally a Vice President of the United States, and I would prefer a possum to him, in the Presidency—
ENAHARO: [cracks up] Oh my goodness!
LAROUCHE: This guy is not to be trusted. His tail is a long one.
ENAHARO: But Mr. LaRouche, this is a Nobel Prize winner, what do you mean you don't trust him? He was our Vice President!
LAROUCHE: [laughs] I don't trust him. There's not a single nominee in economics by the Nobel Prize committee whom I would consider competent. So we have a bunch of incompetents and frauds—occasionally a decent guy gets in there with the Nobel Prize for something, but generally, these are people I wouldn't vote for!
ENAHARO: Well, let's go back to Michael Bloomberg. Harley Schlanger, your West Coast representative was on our show, and he mentioned the name Michael Bloomberg, who is, of course, currently the Mayor of New York. You said, "he's coming up fast"—as a Republican, as a Democrat? Which way is he going?
LAROUCHE: He's interchangeable. We're headed toward a nonpartisan dictatorship in the United States, unless we change things. That is, the scrambling of politics, so no longer do you have politics determined by people lining up on political issues and economic issues. You now have like a fascist system: Where it's agreed-upon that so-and-so is going to be the President, until we make a coup against him; that we're going to have a certain national policy, which is in the interests of the financiers of the United States, the same ones that are going bankrupt now, the banks and the financial institutions that are collapsing. They're going to take over and loot us!
It's already happening! We lost our auto industry. We're losing everything: We have no control over the price of petroleum, on which our life depends, our food is being taken away from us for bio-fuels, through a government subsidies. People are starving, not really in the United States; they're really starving in 40% of the world! And these are the policies that are running on. And Bloomberg represents an expression of a shift in politics, from partisan politics on issue-based partisan politics. And you look at the campaign. The campaign was driven, on all parties, was driven—particularly Hillary and Obama, you look at the composition of the hard-core support for both the Obama campaign and the Hillary Clinton campaign: what was the support? The lower 80% of family-income brackets. People clamoring for something to end this nightmare, which is crawling up their back! And what happened to it? That issue is gone!
It's here—really. And what you have, is a new kind of politics, the politics of, from the top down. Where big international financial interests, centered on London, control politics in the United States, and they're manipulating this like mad. There's no candidate who's "winning." There is a power, which is behind the scenes, which is playing chess, playing checkers with the candidates.
ENAHARO: And you say, this is the Anglo-Dutch oligarchy. Now, for those people who heard the word "fascist," can you break that down, so people can get a better understanding of what it is, when you use this term?
LAROUCHE: Well, the term actually comes from France, from the middle of the 19th century. Technically it was called synarchism. It came up again, in the beginning of the 20th century, for example, certain British interests were avowedly fascist, so fascist became a new word for "synarchism." The first fascist program was that of Italy. This was put in by the British—Mussolini was completely a British project. Churchill was one of his biggest supporters, up until the time that Italy invaded France during World War II. And he probably died at the head of Churchill, too, later on.
So this crowd, which is centered in Europe, is the financial oligarchy of Europe, which centers around the British monarchy and the British Empire as its institution of reference. It actually controls the British system. It's represented by bankers, all kinds of bankers, who function like a mob, and their politics of the mob, this financial institution, becomes the politics reflected in government and so forth, really.
So what you're dealing with, an international financier gang, which is trying to orchestrate the world, according to its impulses. And that's why the thing sometimes seems so irrational, because there're impulses that make no sense to the average citizen on the street; they have no understanding of these issues. But there's something they don't understand that they do know is controlling them.
ENAHARO: Mr. LaRouche, in your transcript reported on your website, www.larouchepac.com — by the way, you can go to that website [spells it] — from your webcast on July 25th, 2007, you stated the following, and I want to state exactly what you said: "The present financial system can not continue to exist under any circumstances, under any Presidency, under any leadership, or any leadership of nations. Only a fundamental and sudden change in the world monetary-financial system will prevent a general, immediate chain-reaction type of collapse. At what speed we don't know, but it will go on, and it will be unstoppable! And the longer it goes on before coming to an end, the worse things will get."
Now, Mr. LaRouche this is an obvious—this is a very dynamic, and some say controversial statement. Does this mean that I should take my money out of the bank? Does it mean that my pension may not be there? Does it mean that by the fall of the year, I may not be able to cash my paycheck?! Is this what you're telling me?
LAROUCHE: Well, the latter two are true. That the control lies in the hands of people who may collapse the banks—the banks are collapsing: Practically every leading bank in the United States is already bankrupt, technically. The whole financial system is already bankrupt.
What I said back then, on July 25th of last year, which simply indicated—I said, we've now made a change, we've now gone to "end-game," what they call in chess, end-game.
We're now in an end-game, and we don't it—like watching a chess player in a tournament, you don't know exactly what move is going to happen, that's going to cause the game to be settled. But we're getting closer and closer where the options are running out.
Now, the solution is, to go back to the concept of money which we last saw in Franklin Roosevelt: If the United States—even given the fact that the present President of the United States is crazy—but if we go back to Franklin Roosevelt's time, Roosevelt set up a fixed-exchange-rate system called the Bretton Woods system, and the United States was the only country really standing, at that time, financially. The whole world depended upon the U.S. and the U.S. dollar. We were the great powerhouse of production; we were the great powerhouse of economic and financial strength. Everybody depended upon us.
The system worked. But the system was subverted, first by Harry Truman, who went with the British against Roosevelt after Roosevelt died, and it decayed. We saw the assassination of Kennedy, things became worse; we saw the experience of the Vietnam War, things became worse; Nixon was elected, things became terrible. We saw the 1970s, we began to lose our farming industry, our power industry, manufacturing—we've been losing it all along. We have become consistently poorer, every year, over the years, since about the time of the Kennedy assassination, especially since 1968, we have become consistently poorer.
We've never had an improvement. Look at Cleveland, for example, which I know you're acquainted with. Remember Cleveland, 30 years ago? What's it like today? Look around at Ohio: Look at industry, look at agriculture, look at Detroit, look at Indiana, look at western Pennsylvania, look at western and northern New York State. Compare the conditions as they existed in 1966-68, with what they are today. Look at the standard of living, look at the question of Social Security, look at everything. And we're losing it all! And we have been losing it.
But we sit wishfully, the ordinary people, sit wishfully, saying, "What can we do about it? Let's hope it works it out. Let's hope it works out. Maybe some little thing will help us. Maybe something will rescue us." They have no sense—the lower 80% of family-income brackets in the United States, today, has no sense of the power of the people to determine the policy of the United States. And therefore, our people are weak. They accept things, and hope for things, they protest for things: But they don't take charge of our government, and that's what—.
ENAHARO: Mr. LaRouche, you've been pushing something called the "Homeowners and Bank Protection Act," some people call it HBPA: Why should we support this?
LAROUCHE: Take a typical community, you've got two things. First of all, you've got the homeowners are being evicted, or on the verge of being mass evicted, and that is building up speed. The whole buildup of the mortgage structure in the United States, essentially since the period of 1987 in particular, has been one big fake. And the last phase of this was the flexible-rate mortgages, which were given to poor people who otherwise couldn't afford mortgages. And they got them in with a low introductory offer, and then as time passed, as the year or two years passed, those loans were converted into much more expensive things, for the people who were so-called mortgage owners. That's been destroyed, we have been destroyed.
This is the kind of process that's taken over. We have never had an improvement in the actual, physical standard of living, of the typical American citizen since about 1967. We've had some diversions, but if you look at the hard core of the physical standard of living, having a home to live in, the standard of living, quality of education, quality of health-care, everything that's important to people in the lower 80% of family-income brackets, things have been becoming worse.
ENAHARO: Now, how would this Homeowners and Bank Protection Act turn this situation around?
LAROUCHE: All right, first of all, if you want to save the nation, you've got to make sure you don't have mass evictions of people from communities. You don't turn people from homeowners, or home occupiers, into destitute wanderers through the slums and gutters of the nation.
Now, to maintain that, first of all, you have to say the system is bankrupt. The entire financial banking system is bankrupt. Now, we can't have the bankruptcy proceed, because that means people will be evicted, industries will close, all kinds of social security will disappear, you will have a vast army of homelessness, worse conditions than you had in the 1929 Depression period. What're you going to do about it?
Well, first, I say: Government has the power, the United States government has power over money. That's one of the specific parts of our Constitution. If the United States government says that the real estate industry is bankrupt, the mortgage industry is bankrupt, and we're not going to have people evicted from their homes, we want them to stay there, we're going to put the thing into bankruptcy, and they will still be living in their homes under bankruptcy protection. It'll be sorted out later on.
Now, at the same time, you can not maintain a community, even if you protect people in their homes, in which there are no jobs. Now, the jobs generally involve things that involve local, regular banking systems—forget the high-flying banking type things—just the ordinary banking: deposits, loans, so forth. Local communities depend entirely on a stable supply of credit, and means of circulation in those communities. Without that the businesses close, the community goes down—the nation goes down. So therefore, the first thing you have to do, in a situation like that, is what I proposed back in July of last year: The first thing you have to do, is have Federal bankruptcy protection over the regular banks, that is, the Federal and state chartered banks, where people deposit money, get their loans, and so fort; do their transactions. And you must have stable communities, in which people live in their homes, and have a normal family life.
Therefore, the government must step in, to protect, the United States internally, by ensuring that the communities stay in business. Then we will work our way out of the problem, what you want to do in any bankruptcy proceeding.
ENAHARO: But, Mr. LaRouche, you say we're broke! If we're broke, where's the money going to come from? You say the government is broke: How can we do this if we have no money?!
LAROUCHE: Because we have a Constitution. Under our Constitution, the power to create and circulate money lies with the Federal government. The Federal government has the power, but the power operates with the consent of the people, chiefly through the House of Representatives. When the House of Representatives utters a bill which authorizes the Federal government to issue credit which can be monetized, for purposes of national interest—including national security—that becomes money.
Now, we went away from that, in 1968 to 1973: We went to a floating-exchange-rate system, an anti-Roosevelt system, during the 1970s, under the succession of Nixon, Ford, and Carter—especially the Trilateral Commission which turned Carter into somebody people didn't like any more. We destroyed the U.S. economy and its system. What we have to do, is say, go back to the time of 1962-63, when the assassination was going on and President Kennedy was killed; since that time, we've been going, generally, with the aid of the Vietnam War, in the wrong direction. What we have to do, is say, "Halt! We are the U.S. government. We are a sovereign people." We are going to say "Halt. You bankers, you screwed it up, you made a mess of it. We are going to fix it."
And that's where we are: Do we have the guts to get our government to use its legal, Constitutional authority to take the kinds of measures which say, "Stop! We're not going to have mass evictions. Stop! We're not going to close down essential businesses. Stop! We're not going to shut down banks, simply because they're in trouble. We're going to keep the essential institutions of daily life functioning. And then we'll do some other things, such as large projects, infrastructure projects, and things which get the economy again."
ENAHARO: Now, Mr. LaRouche, no President to date has really addressed many of the economic issues, particularly plaguing the African-American community. From your perspective, what must be done?
LAROUCHE: Just exactly what I said. First of all, we've got to get rid of this division among our people. For example, you had two constituencies which are most notable in the recent campaigning, primary campaigns: African-American and Hispanic-American. These two communities were largely divided against each other—big mistake. Because these two communities, which have a different history, but they're part of the history of the name, is, when they're together, you can bring the lower 80% of the family-income brackets of the nation together. You can then have real politics, which is people politics, not populist politics—where the lower 80% of the family-income brackets, which represent the majority of the citizenry of this nation, or those about to become citizens, are able to express their voice, through their advocates, in shaping the policies of government. We don't have that today.
We have the base, in the lower 80% of family-income brackets. If you unite these constituencies around a common purpose, which is the right purpose, you could change everything for the better: We can make a revolution, which is what I'd like to do.
ENAHARO:[gives phone number] Mr. LaRouche I want to shift the conversation just for a bit before we start to take calls—well, we've got a lot of people wanting to talk to you—are we headed for a war in Iran? Will President Bush and Dick Cheney pull the trigger, or are they just bluffing?
LAROUCHE: Well, I wouldn't give President Bush too much credit for intellectual foresight. He's not too smart, I know his history; I know something about him. Cheney is a thug, he's a bum! When we stuck these two characters in the White House, that was—bad for the nation!
But in this, in control of the situation, we could control the situation. We could. And the problem now, is neither party, from the top down, this is a party organization, is doing anything which makes any sense from the standpoint of the interest of the American people. Neither of them.
ENAHARO: So are we headed for war in Iran?
LAROUCHE: Well, the intention, on the part of one faction in London to make a mess of that region of the world at this time. If you start an attack on Iran, or if you push the Israelis, one faction of the Israelis, to make an air attack on various points in Iran, you will get a general war exploding throughout the entire region, which will not stop, and nobody will be able to stop it. You think we got trouble in that region, now? You'll get impossible trouble! You will get an oil crisis beyond belief. And that danger is there.
Actually, at this point, to be fair, there are people in government, even under the Bush Administration, in the Defense Department, top officials, in the intelligence services, and others, who are determined to prevent that war from being orchestrated. But there are people in London, who have influence in the Bush Administration, at top, in the Presidency, who are determined to have that war happen. They have been trying to get it, whereas honest patriots in our country, in top positions, have been working again, and again, from the military and elsewhere, been working again and again, to try to prevent this war from breaking out.
ENAHARO: If Barack Obama does make it to the Presidency, or if McCain makes to the Presidency, would either one of them pull the trigger and start a war with Iran; or would they would say, "No, this is insanity"?
LAROUCHE: No. What probably either of them would react differently—Obama would react differently from McCain, but the net effect would be about the same. That is, as of now. Remember, the Vice President hasn't been chosen: Remember the phenomenon of Cheney as a Vice President.
ENAHARO: Yes!
LAROUCHE: The character of the Vice Presidency has changed. The Vice President was sitting there, waiting to be called, before, like the famous Maytag repairman. That's no longer true: You now have an orchestrated Presidency which is not controlled in the way people it should be controlled Constitutionally. So you can have influences, especially London influences, which can operate, which can get the United States, inch by inch, into a war, in which they lead the President, or intended President, will not want to start, but he won't know how to stop it.
ENAHARO: Stay right there, Mr. LaRouche. You're on the air, with Mr. Lyndon LaRouche. Yes, caller, you're on the air, go ahead.
Caller: I was just listening at the radio, and they was talking about Brother Bush don't want to go with Iran. I feel strongly that if Bush and them go to war with Iran—
ENAHARO: Wait a minute, turn down your radio, caller, because we're picking up your radio, and not what you're saying... Go ahead and ask your question.
Caller: If Bush and them go to war with Iran, I could be wrong, but I feel like this time we'll have problem with Russia.
ENAHARO: Oh! That's an interesting question. Mr. LaRouche! The caller says, that if [static] goes to war with Iran, they would probably have problems with Russia.
LAROUCHE: Well, not that simple—yes, Russia in part. You now have a coalition of countries in Asia, which includes Russia in this case—China, India, and other countries. They are a bloc, which are a bloc defending themselves against the British Empire. Most Americans don't know that, but that's the British Empire, they're protesting against. These countries are involved in what's called "asymmetric warfare tactics," for dealing with a threat coming from London. And they are conscious that it is London! They know there's a problem in the United States, but they're aware that the problem is coming out of London, and the United States is being controlled from London on these matters. And has been under the entire Bush Administration.
ENAHARO: Why would London want to take down this government? You know, you would think that, they've been partners all this time. You've got Tony Blair who's sided with Bush—why would they want to destroy this government?
LAROUCHE: Because, ever since 1763, they've been out to destroy us! The problem is, people don't know the history! They think the British are our allies: Roosevelt knew better than that! Go back to World War II. I'm a veteran of World War II, I was serving at the end of my service, in Burma and India. I was there into the immediate post-war period, 1946, the spring of '46. And I can tell you: We had an alliance with Britain. We also had a war against Britain! The United States, under Roosevelt, and Britain under Churchill, were at war with each other, at the same time they were allied against Hitler. And what happened, when Roosevelt died, and Truman was a man of London, we got going in the wrong direction.
But the point is, the British have always been out to destroy us, ever since then. They still are today! People who think the British are the allies of the United States, don't understand history! And don't understand much of recent international experience.
These countries know—India, China, Russia—know that the British Empire is the enemy!
ENAHARO: Now, that's what we see happening in Zimbabwe right now, under Robert Mugabe.
LAROUCHE: Well, Mugabe's an honest man, he's a patriot. But look at Africa in general: Since 1975, the United States has joined Britain, in a policy of genocide against Africa! It's that simple.
ENAHARO: That's heavy. Wait a minute—Mr. LaRouche, you got to give me some evidence, because a lot of people hearing this would saw, "Aw, c'mon!" Back it up, tell me what you mean "a policy of genocide." And how are they carrying this out? What's the evidence to base this on.
LAROUCHE: Well, the evidence is massive, that anyone who says it isn't going on, lacks knowledge. There is no evidence to support the argument that it isn't going on! That is the condition of life.
Look at the conditions of life in Africa! And look at the policies of the United States, look at the policies of Britain, since 1974-75, toward Africa! The policy has been one of genocide! I've been on the front lines of this, with the Africa issue, with South Africa. With Rhodesia, the two Rhodesias; with Kenya; with Sudan; with Nigeria, with the other countries of Sub-Saharan Africa, and other countries in Africa.
This thing has been a fight, it's been a genocidal fight. Look at the disease question, the AIDS question—all the things that affect the lives of people in Africa. You have a policy of genocide against all of black Africa! And it's been ongoing.
And the typical American, thinks as an African-American thinks he knows about Africa, because he's an African-American. He doesn't know much about Africa. Most African-Americans know nothing about Africa. That's a big problem.
ENAHARO: And if they knew more about Africa, what conclusion would they come to?
LAROUCHE: Kill those Brits! [laughs]
ENAHARO: Oh-ho-ho! My goodness! Oooo! Oh, my goodness. Stay right there, Mr. LaRouche. Magic 98.9, you're on the air.
Caller: I was calling regarding a question, that you posed about the United States going to war—
ENAHARO: With Iran.
Caller: Yeah. Well, the Scripture prophesies that about loosed the four angels found in the great River Euphrates, and the four angels that it's mentioning is the four countries that's in power, the UN, EU, United States, and Russia. Russia's playing both sides right now. They selling what they can sell to make money, but they're part of the Quartet as well.
As far as going to war with Iran, what the Scripture says is that there won't a President after Bush. Bush is the last President which we call this the Last Days.
ENAHARO: Hmm. Let me give Mr. LaRouche a chance to respond. Mr. LaRouche.
LAROUCHE: I don't look at thing in those scriptural senses, because we don't have any timetable from God, on when things are planned for. We do have a timetable on the consequences of the way we're behaving now. And there is no reason for anyone to go to war in that region, now—that is, no good reason. We look back in European history, to the period between 1618 and 1648, where you had religious war, tearing up Central Europe, with a great depopulation as a result of religious warfare and its effects.
And thus, in 1648, we had the Peace of Westphalia, which changed things and stopped that nonsense. What we have in the Middle East, as also what's called the Balkans, we have a cockpit of ethnic divisions among peoples, in which these ethnic differences are used to create conflict within the region, even though the people in the region have a common interest, a common human interest in the future of the region. And so, various things, like religious differences, that, this, so forth, were played upon to get these people to kill each other!
Now, we're at the point right now, where the danger from the British side, the danger is: Peace is about to break out. Israel already has an essential agreement with Syria on peace. That will be supported by Turkey, if Turkey is not destabilized. We've just avoided, with the help of France, an new outbreak of religious warfare coming into Lebanon. We have the majority of Israelis are very sane at this time, on this issue: they want a peace agreement; a peace agreement is available. The British don't want it; the Saudis don't want it—and the Saudis have a powerful influence because of their alliance with the British.
ENAHARO: Mr. LaRouche, we're up against the clock. And this has been a pleasure talking with you. In closing, I got about 20 seconds. Give me, if you can quickly, what it is, we need to do to combat this situation.
LAROUCHE: We have to get the lower 80% of our population, or at least the core of it, up on its hind legs and starting to take charge, instead of waiting for something to happen to them, make something happen that has to happen. And my HBPA is an example of that.
ENAHARO: All right. Thank you so much. You can read more about Mr. Lyndon LaRouche. Go to his website, at www.larouchepac.com [spells it out]. You can read it.
