LAROUCHE: THE PRESIDENT WAS SHOCKED
An Opportunity To Bring This Planet
Out of the Crisis
Here are Lyndon LaRouche's opening remarks to a luncheon meeting of notables in Washington, D.C., April 15, 2009.
This past Saturday, I delivered an international webcast, which some of you may know something about, and some may not, which had three segments which I addressed. First, were some opening remarks which have sent shock waves through the present administration in Washington, the Presidential Administration. The President himself was shocked, according to his representative, by what I said. But it was necessary for me to say it.
We're in a period, in which the role of the United States is absolutely crucial, in the possibility of a recovery from what is not a depression, but is a global economic breakdown crisis. There has been nothing like this in European history since the Middle Ages, since the so-called Dark Age of the 14th Century. This is not a depression. This is a total breakdown crisis.
Now, such crises can be corrected, which is what I'm concerned about, and they're corrected by a reorganization of the economic system, by actions among nation-states, to reorganize their relationships in order to organize a recovery, and in order to staunch the flood of breakdown in process.
Unfortunately, the President's economic policies, as influenced by various people who are presently in control of his policies, are an absolute disaster. It's a disaster not only for the United States; it's a disaster for the planet. Because there can be, because of the role of the dollar—it's not a reserve currency in the old sense that it was before 1968-73, but the dollar-denominated debt in the world is the largest factor. And therefore, the ability to recover from this world depression, and to reorganize and restart international trade, depends upon a reorganization of the role of the dollar, which means ending the world monetary system in its present form, and going to an international credit system, under which a fixed-exchange-rate system among nation-states, will be the basis for turning the dollar—which is now almost a waste product—turning it back into something which is of value for the world as a whole.
And the President presently has no grasp of it.
Otherwise, the good side is, that with a few exceptions, whom I would like to throw out the window, most of the cabinet and related people that have been brought in with this Administration, are competent and capable people. Whether I agree with a lot of everything or not, is irrelevant. They are competent, and left to their own, and with the right guidance, they would be a good instrument in international relations, and otherwise, for getting the world organized to get out of what is otherwise, a general breakdown crisis.
That's where we stand.
Saying What No One Else Will Say
Now, what I did on Saturday—I said things that nobody else dare say. But they had to be said.
Now, you know, usually in diplomacy, diplomacy is called polite lies. Polite evasion of the subject. Maybe you whisper the truth to one another, in discreet circumstances, but you don't tell the truth publicly. Or very rarely. And often when you do that, it's in very angry tones. Unless people are very angry, they don't tell the truth.
But, we're in that kind of situation, in which the truth had to be said about the problem which is inside the present Obama Administration. So I said it, and I said it plainly. I said it personally. I didn't pull any punches. I was accurate, I was very careful to be accurate. Nothing I said was wrong, but what I said, for some people, was very offensive. But somebody had to say it. And I'm the kind of person who does, from time to time, do exactly that in international affairs. I do say what everybody else is afraid to say, because I know somebody has to say it.
And sometimes it works. Sometimes it succeeds in bringing about a better understanding. And I would hope, in this case—the President can not complain that I said anything about him that's untruthful! Everything I said about the President is absolutely truthful. And I can swear by it, and God himself will approve of what I said. There's no doubt about that. But it had to be said, and he's very angry about it right now.
But we could not go on the way we were going, when he made that trip to London, and sold out, in my view, sold out the United States, and sold out the world, by the agreement reached in London, and therefore we have to get back the United States' true interest, after eight years of Bush, and now, this recent catastrophe of some of the people around the President, who are presently controlling his economic policy, which, frankly, is a disaster.
Now, since it is a disaster, and I know it's a disaster, and I know it's going to come on as a worse disaster, I don't think this present economic policy of the United States will survive very long. I think the breakdown crisis is coming on fast, and this present policy will be scrapped. And we will be forced to go back to a new policy. And for that purpose, we have, in the Administration, in the cabinet and people around the cabinet, we have a combination of people who are qualified, in my view, morally and intellectually qualified, to make the adjustment, make the change we need.
Because, what we have to do is, we have to take the dollar-denominated debt of the world—it's now not funded. It's lost its ability of negotiation. We have to turn that indebtedness, denominated in dollars, into an asset for long-term growth of trade and investment.
For example: What we need above all—we are now in a nuclear age. Some people are talking about a post-nuclear society, post-nuclear economy—that's nonsense. We could only sustain about 5 billion people on this planet without nuclear power. That is, nuclear power is not a matter of the number of calories you have; it's the amount of the energy flux density—that is, the number of calories per square centimeter of cross-section of flow. And you've got to the point now, that you can not deal with the problems of the planet, the physical economic problems of the planet can not be dealt with, without proliferation of nuclear power, nuclear fission power, and things beyond that, things comparable to that.
So, the idea of going to windmills, the idea of going to this kind of thing, solar energy, all this sort of stuff, the "free energy," will not work. It's a disaster. And it would cause the greatest genocide the planet has ever seen if we were to go with such a policy. Only a high energy-flux-density policy can save the planet.
And you look at Africa, you look at the poor of China, you look at the poor of India, and this sort of thing throughout the world, you can not possibly sustain this world population in growth now, under present conditions, without a real boost in power, in power technology, in modern technology.
And also, this means largely increasing what we call the energy flux density, but also capital intensity. And we have to get more and more capital-intensive investment. Otherwise, we can not solve the problems of this planet, in terms of maintaining a population which is now 6.7 billion people. We can not sustain that without this change. And the population is going to grow, unless we have genocide. And therefore, we need this program of development.
Africa: Potential Breadbasket
One of the big emblems of this is Africa. Africa is essentially entirely, in fact, a British colony. It's an Anglo-American colony, but really it's a British colony. And there's no hope for Africa under these conditions. What we've seen recently in the confrontation with Zimbabwe, from London, and from London also, against Sudan, are examples of a growing threat against all of Africa, coming from the British Isles, or from that interest. And the United States has been long a collaborator with the British in supporting that policy, especially since the 1970s.
So therefore, we know we have to have a change in policy, which means, among other things, in view of the food requirements of the world: Africa is the largest area of potential increment in food supply, good food supply, for the world. The area is one populated largely by people who are farmers. They're not very skilled farmers, in the main, but that's not the problem. With the introduction of improved technologies, we can make these farmers more productive, because there will be less waste of their product.
They have diseases they have to fight against, all kinds of diseases, including crop diseases. They have no transportation systems. There's a study that was done recently in Europe, a photographic study of all of Africa. It was done at helicopter level, where they spotted every part of Africa, and shot it from helicopters, in regions. And if you look at that helicopter study, which I think a number of people have access to, if you see that, if you see how undeveloped Africa is, and then you take all these things into account, and you consider the raw materials that Africa has, which are undeveloped, for their African benefit; you consider the agricultural quality of the population; consider the problem of why they lose food supply—you see that Africa is one of the great areas for development on the planet as a whole.
And to do that job, there has to be a concerted effort, an agreement, among other continents of the planet, to assist Africa in acquiring the infrastructural development, which will enable the Africans to develop their country, even without a sudden surge in their technological capabilities, as individual persons.
And that's the kind of mission we have to go with. We have to go for much more nuclear power.
Take India. And you look at the problem there. India does not have a very large, high rate of export-dependency, as China does at this time. So India seems more stable. But you look inside India, you see the water supplies, the freshwater supplies, of India are being drained down, historically. You see that the conditions of life are deteriorating. They have 1.1 billion people, compared to China's 1.4 billion people, or so. And most of these populations are extremely poor. And the conditions of life are poor, and the natural conditions are degenerating. So, without investment and development, the large populations of many nations, are largely in danger.
We can fix that, with nuclear power, and other such means, in modern technology. But we have to make that turn, because we realize we're going toward 7.5 billion on this planet, at a very rapid rate, without genocide, and therefore, we have to work on a continental basis, and continental cooperation, with heavy emphasis on long-term capital improvement, physical capital improvements—in power, water, development, and these sorts of things.
We're also going—contrary to rumor—into a global cooling period. The planet as a whole is now going naturally into a period where, because of sunspot activity, and because of the long-term Ice Age activity—the planet's been in an Ice Age for about 2 million years. We have fluctuations in the Ice Age. Sometimes the ice builds up, sometimes it shrinks. These Ice Ages tend to go about 100,000 years each, something like that in a period. And you get a melting period in between, more or less. We're going into a global cooling period, both because the sunspot activity is down, which is about an 11-year cycle, so we have an 11-year cycle of cooling in progress because of sunspot activity. And we have, in the whole Solar System, we have another development, which is about a 100,000 year cycle.
So, we're headed for global cooling. Which means that areas which are now producing food, will tend to produce less food. And those areas which could produce more food, are now much more important for the future—provided we develop them.
So, we're in that kind of a period, in which we need imagination and good sense combined.
The United States Is Crucial
The United States is crucial, because of our constitutional structure. We don't have an oligarchical tradition in the United States, which you have in Europe, for example. That's what holds Europe back—too much oligarchy, and oligarchical tradition.
In the United States, we have a constitutional system which is the best in the world in terms of its utility. Unfortunately, we have a large mass of people in the United States who are rather powerful and influential, who do not represent that very well. Who are predatory characters. But if we react to this crisis by recognizing what the problem is that we face, and recognize that the present international monetary financial system can not survive—there is no way that you can reform the present international monetary system, and have people survive. You have to make a fundamental revolution, which can be made, simply by treaty agreements, and change the world system, from a monetary system, to a credit system.
If we change to a credit system, that is, using the agreements among sovereign nation-states—credit agreements, long-term credit agreements among sovereign nation-states—we can create a new kind of international economy, to replace the present British-dominated monetary system, which has been dominating for a long time.
That means, long-term credit, commitments for large-scale infrastructure development. Transportation, power, sanitation, and increasing of the conditions for productivity, to meet the standards required now.
So, on the one hand, we have a great opportunity, and the greatest crisis in modern European history exists. That's before us. We have the greatest follies of mankind, which have been contributed—especially in the course of the 20th Century. The 20th Century, with a few exceptions, has been a century of disasters, for the world as a whole. We're now coming out—we're now in the 21st Century. We have the opportunity, the force, scientifically and otherwise, if we agree, to recover, and to get to a growth pattern which meets the challenge for humanity throughout the planet.
But it's going to be tough, because the world is now dominated by a financier interest, radiated from London, organized from London, also represented by our Wall Street operation. This financier interest is determined not to allow its way of life, its way of rule, to be disturbed. They will fight as much as they can. They're now weakened by the fact that their system is collapsing. But what we have to do, is simply have agreements among sovereign nation-states, in a manner which is consistent with what happened in 1648 in Europe, with the Peace of Westphalia. A system of nations, each of which is sovereign, and which agree to support the interests of the other, as the 1648 Peace of Westphalia proposed.
Under those conditions, we have the knowledge, we have the opportunity, to bring this planet out of this crisis. And that's what I'm committed to. And I would hope that I can get Obama, President Obama, to change his ways, and understand that. But I had to scold him. I had to take the student into the classroom, back of the classroom, out into the woodshed, and talk to him, as an adult talks to a child who's behaving badly.
He can do the job. He's intelligent. There are a lot of things he doesn't know that he should know. But we do have, in the United States government, around the institution of the Presidency, we have people who are competent, who do understand, and if they're given the freedom to do what they must do, they will advise the President competently, and we can do what I've indicated we must do. And they're moving in that direction. They're thinking in that direction—they're good people. They're not perfect, but they're good people.
