LaRouche: We Have To
Change the Forecast!
Lyndon LaRouche made the following remarks to a private meeting in Washington, D.C., on June 23.
[PDF version of this transcript]
Well, there are two events, recent historical events, which are significant for any discussion of policy today. First, we've had the breakdown of the international economy, especially, the trans-Atlantic region, is now fully underway. So that these are not easy times. The financial crisis, the breakdown, is going to hit now, and during the early Summer.
What we're looking at is the threat of a general breakdown crisis of the trans-Atlantic economies. It will be centered in Europe. If the current President of the United States remains in office during this period, it will be a disaster here. And a disaster in the trans-Atlantic region, particularly, the north trans-Atlantic region, will have obviously devastating impact not only in the trans-Atlantic region, but a collapse of the trans-Atlantic region will mean a collapse also in the Pacific region.
So, this is now an immediate reality. And only corrective policies will prevent this reality from becoming realized.
What is required, without which we're not going to get out of this thing, is a general change in the world economy, by putting the world economy, starting with the trans-Atlantic region, into bankruptcy reorganization.
Now, what I've proposed on this, for some time, is, I propose that the United States must have a new policy, a policy which obviously will not occur under this President. But this President, as I shall explain, is not necessarily going to remain President for many more weeks. He's on the countdown to being a non-President. And the question is, what are we going to replace him with. That's crucial.
In Europe, the euro-system is disintegrating. It is doomed. It can not be salvaged in its present form. And the basic problem on these financial problems, is that we've gone through a change in policy in the United States, since 1968, and 1971, in which a corresponding policy was set forth in Britain, under Lord Jacob Rothschild, which became the Inter-Alpha Group. The Inter-Alpha Group of banking, which is British-controlled, nominally Rothschild, controls most of the finances of the trans-Atlantic region, directly or indirectly.
For example, the case of Brazil: Brazil is controlled by the Rothschild group. Brazil is controlled by a highly inflationary policy, on derivatives policy, which is going to rise rapidly, and a collapse of the Brazil relationship, through the Santander bank, which has a Brazilian division, will set off a general chain-reaction collapse in that region. These are the kinds of conditions that exist.
There is a solution, and the solution dates back to the concept of Franklin Roosevelt, President Franklin Roosevelt. By putting the world, or a good part of it, through financial reorganization, on an emergency basis, we can stop the general collapse of the world economy, which is now in process.
The Political Doom of President Obama
Now, to indicate one of the factors here which is relevant: On the 11th of April of last year, I delivered an international webcast in which I laid out the inherent doom of President Barack Obama, that is, the political doom of him. And I did it on the basis of defining his character, his personal character, as that of a modern imitation of the Emperor Nero. And I focussed that on his health-care policy, as a leading element in his policy.
Now, we've come to the point where, inside the United States, at present, there has been, for over a year, among the lower-income brackets, including middle-income brackets in the United States, there has been a galloping breakdown, centered upon a health-care policy of this President. But other things that correlate with that.
Now the thing has reached the point where the breakdown is imminent. It could happen within the remaining days of this month. It could happen during the early part of July. But we're presently on the verge of that.
Now, what I want to do is explain something which is fairly important, but it's probably not well known.
Usually, today, people, including leading political circles, assume that the destiny of nations is based on events. In other words, the idea that the occurrence of certain events, or non-occurrence of those events, determine the fate of nations. This is not true. We think back in history, that the great crises that strike nations, had been building up for a period of time, and they were building up, because there was a continuity of a certain trend in policy. And so when the crisis broke, when the great events broke, they broke as a symptom of these kinds of policies, over a longer period.
For example, you could go back, too, in United States history. The crucial event in the postwar period, or before, was the death of Franklin Roosevelt. With the death of Franklin Roosevelt, especially with the conclusion of the war, in August of that year, there was a fundamental change in U.S. policy, a very sharp change, from Franklin Roosevelt to Harry Truman. Harry Truman was a British asset, a British-Wall Street asset, who had gotten in as Vice President for certain reasons. But the death of Roosevelt put the fate of the world, away from the policies of Roosevelt. Roosevelt's policy had been an anti-imperialist policy. The minute the war ended, the United States would move to eliminate all colonialism throughout the world.
The turning point was demonstrated in Indo-China, where the United States forces in Indo-China had supported Ho Chi Minh, and Ho Chi Minh had been an ally of the United States, under President Roosevelt. The OSS was deployed in there to assist this operation. The minute Roosevelt died, the policy changed. British policy, in collaboration with Truman, went to Indo-China, and ordered the release of the Japanese prisoners of war, and re-arming of them to occupy Indo-China. That event was a marker of the entire history of the postwar period.
If you look at the Indo-China War pattern, and what it represents; you look at the fact that President Kennedy had opposed this war, and that Gen. Douglas MacArthur had been his chief advisor on opposing the war. MacArthur's policy and Kennedy's policy were "no land war in Asia." That was the policy. The only way they could change that policy, as long as Kennedy was alive, was to wait for Kennedy's death. And Kennedy's death came on time. And with the death of Kennedy, the policy changed. The policy of going into a long, extended land war in Asia, was launched. And since that time, on the side of the United States, the United States has been perpetually involved, in one form or the other, in silly, foolish, stupid land wars in Asia!
British Policy: Long Wars
This policy of land wars in Asia is not really new. If you look back in European history, go back to the 1890s. Bismarck had been discharged from the position of Chancellor in Germany. Bismarck in this period, after his discharge, indicated what the British policy was. Now, just to indicate the policy, to illustrate what the kind of problem is that we face today:
Bismarck said, that he'd been fired, by the British, by the influence of the British monarchy, through the Prince of Wales, and he'd been fired because he had operated to prevent Russia and Germany from being involved in a war, centered on the Balkans. And he made arrangements, secret negotiations, between himself as Chancellor of Germany, and the Tsar of Russia, that there would be no German support for the Austrian Emperor in conducting a war in the Balkans.
So, what they did, the British did, is, they got him out of the position of Chancellor. The policy of Germany changed, and now you had the new nephews of the British Prince of Wales—were now at war with each other! They were cousins. They were at war with each other, under the direction of their uncle, who was the Prince of Wales. And so we had that long war, the so-called World War II, which actually started with a war against China by Japan, in 1894 and 1895. And that war of Japan, against designated targets then, continued throughout the period until 1945. The attack on the United States by Japan, was planned in 1922, by the British and the Japanese Emperor.
That war continued until 1945. The war was planned in 1922, with the British, and the actual attack on the United States was launched in 1941, and that war again—a long war.
Now, look at the post-war period. With the death of Roosevelt, we had a long-war policy, in Europe. The long war policy was initiated by Winston Churchill, with the support of his flunky, President Harry Truman. We have been involved, up to the time of the fall of the Wall in Germany, we've been involved in a perpetual state of warfare, throughout the planet, which was launched by Winston Churchill, with the support of Harry Truman, then.
What happened then, the destruction of Germany, which was imposed by the French President, by the British Prime Minister, and by President George H.W. Bush of the United States, that policy of crushing Germany led to the looting of Russia, and adjoining countries who had been part of the Soviet Union. And that has continued to the present day.
So, the phenomenon we're looking at, is not events. We're looking at policies, strategic policies, and cultural policies, which extend over very large periods of time.
We are now, therefore, as a result of these developments—and actually the final step was the election of this President, who is a British puppet—to speak frankly, there's no way to describe him except that he's a British puppet. And we're in a continuation, for example: the case of the war in Afghanistan.
The war in Afghanistan has been going on since when? Since the British and the Saudi government launched the war in Afghanistan, as a booby-trap for the Soviet Union. That war, which became a drug war, the war which launched the Taliban, had been in progress from that time to the present day. So we have, in Central Asia, that kind of a problem.
So, if you look at the problems we have, the key to understanding these problems is looking at the policy of long warfare, which was British imperial policy, since the victory of the British in 1763, at the Paris Treaty, as a result of the long war, the Seven Years War, so-called, in Europe; where the nations of continental Europe destroyed each other, or weakened each other almost to the point of destruction, and the British Empire was declared by the British East India Company.
Events Do Not Determine History
So, it is not events, as such, that determine the long waves of history. It is actually policies of a type which are historic, and have a historic reach. And the most characteristic of these kinds of destructive policies, is the policy of long wars. Long wars which weaken the adversaries, to the advantage of imperial design. The British Empire was always based, from its emergence as an empire, in February 1763, has always been based on getting the intended victims to engage in wars against one another, and thus to weaken one another to the point, that they became the subjects of imperial control.
The nature of the British Empire is not a political division, in terms of political borders. The British Empire is an empire, and Rosa Luxemburg was right, and everyone else who talked about imperialism back in the last century was wrong. Imperialism is not based on territorial control, political territorial control. It's based on financial control. Just the same way that the British won—Napoleon essentially was a British agent, but didn't know it, because he fought long wars in Europe, throughout Europe, with French forces, which destroyed and weakened all the nations of Europe, from 1782 on, the same pattern, the British pattern, and that's how the British Empire was consolidated, in the 19th Century.
It was the United States, under Lincoln, who, by declaring war against a British agency, the Confederacy, turned the tide. It was not the war that turned the tide, as such. The war was necessary. What turned the tide was the Transcontinental Railway system, and similar kinds of development. It has always been the development of nations, and the development among nations, which has led to peace and growth. And the most convenient way of imperialists, since the Roman Empire, and even earlier, in European history, has been to get long wars—like the Peloponnesian War, for example, in ancient Greece—get the intended victims to engage in long wars against one another, and thus, weaken themselves, and make themselves the prey of financial powers, in the ancient times, maritime empire. Maritime power. And the echoes of that are still today.
Now, this is seen very clearly in the history of the United States recently. That is, in my time, it's recent, since the end of World War II, that we have been destroyed, systematically, by the policies which were introduced. We've been destroyed as if by a certain kind of slow suicide, which took over, actually, with the assassination of Kennedy, and our venture into the war in Indo-China. We've been taken over by long wars.
Therefore, we can not judge history, or we can not forecast the important events in future history, from the standpoint of events. We have to forecast events, from the standpoint of strategic, long-term policy, or the long-term implications of an adopted policy.
Now, the crucial thing in the post-war period, came after 1944. Roosevelt, in 1944, had prescribed two things: a fixed-exchange-rate system for the post-war world. This was the famous Roosevelt system, economic system. The second thing, was that Roosevelt committed the United States to destroy colonialism throughout the world. As Roosevelt said publicly, repeatedly: "Winston, when this war is ended, there are not going to be any more empires. Those people whom you're holding in bondage, as colonial victims, are going to be freed. We're going to use the vast power of our military power, as an industrial power, to help these people get their own freedom. We're going to have a United Nations of freed and present nations, which will cooperate under treaty relationships, and stable relationships."
Unfortunately, the minute that Franklin Roosevelt died, that policy for the postwar period died. That's the long wave in policy.
The Mass-Strike Movement
Now we've come to a time, where this present system, which is typified as an Anglo-American system—because we have a lot of British agents controlling our Wall Street and similar institutions—where this system either goes, or civilization goes. There is no nation in Europe which is not bankrupt. The United States is bankrupt. Most of the hemispheric nations are really bankrupt. They may be able to hide it by paper, but under pressure, that paper becomes quickly worthless.
We're now approaching a point in the Summer of this year, in which the collapse of that system, is inevitable. However, we could free ourselves from this catastrophe, if we could change the policies.
In the United States presently, we have a mass-strike movement, as Rosa Luxemburg described it, identified the mass strike. A mass-strike movement surfaced in August of last year, with demonstrations, mass demonstrations, against members of the Congress in their own districts. This mass-strike movement, which was then confined to ordinary citizens, has now reached a level recently, according to the poll on the question of Glass-Steagall, of about 78% of the adult voting population, is for Glass-Steagall, and is against the policy of the current President.
That's a mass-strike movement, as described by a number of people.
More recently, we have seen the mass-strike movement move up, from the level of ordinary citizens protesting against the policies of the Obama Administration, to a much more extensive one. You see it expressed in the question of the Afghanistan War issue, in which an unlikely personality for this purpose, a certain general, is now on the hot seat, because he correctly, in a sense—I'm surprised and pleased at the fact that he did it—but he himself has denounced the President's policy of a continuing war in Afghanistan.
Because, what is the Afghanistan War now? It's been going on since Brzezinski launched it. Brzezinski launched the long war in Afghanistan. It's gone on from that time. It has been essentially a drug war. Afghanistan is the principal source of opium transactions throughout the world. And one province in Afghanistan, is the principal source of the opium, and its products, which are running through Eurasia. This is the new British Opium War.
The President of the United States, Barack Obama, is an agent in support of this opium war. He has forbidden the military forces of the United States, involved in Afghanistan, to occupy and destroy the drug fields and the processing plants. That could be done very quickly, in a very simple military operation. You could eliminate that one province, of British-controlled, British-protected operations, which is the source of the opium problem hitting much of Asia, and hitting Europe today.
The Russian government has repeatedly stated that. They are correct. You have to deal with these drug wars this way, because you can not survive the toleration of a drug war. Because it destroys the morals and confidence of the people. We've been at this for a long time.
And the British are still pushing drugs. The Queen of England does push drugs! She's pushing them, officially, in Afghanistan. Russia is saying, "Free us from this thing. We want a treaty agreement to get these things out of the there." We could get rid of this. We could do it overnight. In 24 hours, with a military operation, we could eliminate the entire opium traffic, or the root of it, in Asia.
Why not? Why are we fighting a war to defend the opium interests, which are the British interests? Again: policy.
So, we're in that kind of situation. We're at a breaking point in history.
The Personality of the President
Now, the other side of the breaking point is the personality of the President of the United States. On April 11 of last year, I presented an international webcast, in which the principal subject I addressed, was the health-care policies of the President, that is, the current President, and indicated that his health-care policies were identical with those of Adolf Hitler, the same policies that Adolf Hitler introduced into Europe in 1939, with his initial, what became known as the Holocaust. It was the beginning there.
And the policy of President Obama is identical with that of Adolf Hitler in 1939-1940, which later became known as the Holocaust.
Now, I looked at other aspects of his behavior, and presented them, publicly, in this webcast, last year. He has carried out that policy. All his policy-making has been consistent with that characteristic, up to the present time.
Now, the final blow in this thing, so far, has been a British operation in the Caribbean, where a criminal operation has been run with an oil fraud, run by British Petroleum. With the consent and support of this President.
This oil is now about to come out of the Caribbean area—it's a massive flow, 100-200,000 barrels a day—it's coming out of the Caribbean, and it will go in two directions. One direction, as it comes around Florida, it will go into the Atlantic region. You will get into the current which links to the Gulf Stream. When it hits the Gulf Stream, it will move toward Europe, along the Gulf Stream, at 100 miles a day, and will hit Europe. This thing will destroy fisheries, because oil, in this seawater, along those tracks, will destroy living processes in that area, through de-oxygenation.
The President of the United States refuses to deal with this. This is the end of him. He's actually a supporter of the British monarchy, on these and other policies. He is increasingly hated by the American people. He will not remain President for long. He has now reached the end.
And it's not just this crisis. This petroleum crisis, this British Petroleum crisis, which will not only hit the North Atlantic side, it will hit the South Atlantic side. Because when it goes on the other side of the stream, it will take the currents down toward the tip of South America. If it hits the tip of South America, it will come around the tip of South America, and will continue to flow in the Pacific region, and you will have a global crisis, as long as this particular condition is allowed to continue.
This idea of these deep-well oil sources—these petroleum sources are a nightmare. There is only one way that we know of, that we could control the situation, in the way it is defined now: And that is, with a peaceful nuclear explosion.
Now, the Russians, in past times, have conducted experiments with that, in terms of gas wells and so forth, in Russia. The technology is well known, but it's not something you can take off the shelf and apply. You have to prepare an explosive charge, which is planted deep in the system, planted actually in the submarine territory, the sub-sea area. A peaceful nuclear explosion, of proper design, can compress the entire plate of that area, and stop the leaks.
Presently, we don't know of any other method that will work. But that can not be done without preparation: You have to design the particular PNE, the particular explosive you're going to use, and the instrumentation by which you're going to place it. The Russians did work with this; there are three cases out of four, where they tried this with gas wells in Siberia, and it succeeded, in three of four cases. We don't know why it did not succeed in the fourth case, but we know that this PNE method does work for this.
Now, in other conditions, there is no need, at present, for anyone to risk deep-well petroleum exploitation. What is needed worldwide, for technical reasons as well as others, is, we need an increase in nuclear and thermonuclear sources of power. Because, in order to meet the needs of humanity, you must have a source of power, which is called "high energy-flux density," and which you achieve only with nuclear and thermonuclear forces.
On the other side of nuclear/thermonuclear technology, all the important technologies require very high energy-flux-density, which is general available only with nuclear and thermonuclear power. Therefore, the technologies that are needed, for the successful economic development of the nations of the world, and especially those of Asia: I'll give you two cases, China and India. China is exemplary. China is working in this direction, which a correct direction. We need nuclear/thermonuclear power: Otherwise, we can not get the energy-flux density necessary to develop raw materials in a way required for these nations.
You have in these Asian nations, a population in which, generally, 60-80% are very poor, and live in very poor circumstances. And, while large-scale infrastructure projects in China, and similar things planned in India are useful, you can not really succeed without high energy-flux-density power sources. These sources are, principally, nuclear or thermonuclear. We do have some access to thermonuclear power, now, especially for chemical and related applications.
So, to take the 80% or so, of the poor people of Asia, and to uplift them, from these terrible conditions, which we must do, if we're going to develop those nations, the nations which have 80% or so poor, very poor, can not be helped as nations, unless we're prepared to assist these nations in developing power sources, which will enable them to overcome the effects of extreme poverty, which prevails in much of Asia.
So therefore, that should be our policy.
We Can Solve Our Problems
What we have to do, is, realize—again—we have been living in the entire period, especially since the death of Franklin Roosevelt, we've been living in a long wave of policies which are influenced by considerations, which are contrary to the welfare of humanity, contrary to what Roosevelt had intended. This has produced a failure to meet responsibilities for humanity, during this entire period. We have to change our policy, for humanity. If we change the policy for humanity, instead of repression, selective repression of independence, we can survive, we can solve these problems.
These are things which are my specialty in economics: We could, very easily, under agreement with governments, we could cancel most of this debt, which is fraudulent debt. We could go back to a fixed-exchange-rate system among nations. We could generate long-term projects, of two generations or so, which have to be included, in order to change the situation of these populations in these nations. We could do that.
What we need is not an event. We need a change in policy, a change in long-term policy, a policy for development of man's power in our planet, per capita and per square kilometer. We need to have an intelligent approach, to applying that policy to the situation in each nation. We need therefore, a global fixed-exchange-rate system among nations, of the type that Roosevelt had intended. We need long-term credit, especially in support of technologies which are needed for the world at large. We need long-term investment, at low borrowing costs, 1-1.5% per annum, in order to fund the kinds of projects which can reach to the poorest parts of the world's population, and uplift them, so that in one or two generations, you will have transformed and overcome the great, and worsening poverty, in much of the world today.
So, the issue today is policy, it is not events. It is not news-breaking developments. It's getting the concept of what must be done, particularly at this stage, at this point: Because we are at the end, of this entire phase of history. Since the death of Roosevelt, to the present time, is a phase of history. It's a phase of history which has been governed by malice, centered in the British influence in the United States and elsewhere, centered in "Wall Street," as we call it, affectionately.
We change that policy, back to a Roosevelt-oriented policy, a Roosevelt-precedent policy: Set up a fixed-exchange-rate system among nations; create a system of international credit, at low-cost credit, for projects, especially infrastructure and development projects, which are necessary throughout the planet; and providing a system of credit to meet the needs of all the nations of the planet: We can within two generations, succeed, come to the point, that we can say, "The evils of the past period, have been put behind us."
We can make progress immediately—we can make significant progress immediately, just by a change in policy. But we can also have a longer-term, by, in two generations, we can change the general orientation of life on this planet. And that's where we are today.
We Have To Rebuild the World System
But we have to understand, there is no way you can work within the present system. As long as you're trying to find a solution by compromises within the terms of the present system, we are doomed. The doom will explode, first, most probably, in the trans-Atlantic region, in the north trans-Atlantic region: That's the most vulnerable area—the United States and Europe—that's the vulnerable area. But if you collapse the northern trans-Atlantic region, then you will collapse the southern trans-Atlantic region. If you collapse the northern and southern trans-Atlantic regions, you will collapse the Pacific region.
And civilization is plunged into a dark age.
That's the importance of making a distinction between trying to shape events, or interpret events, and applying policy. That's where we are now. We are actually, I can say it with confidence, and I've never been wrong in a forecast of this type; since 1956, I never made a mistake on forecasting of this type. And that's where we are now.
So therefore, we have to change the forecast! Not by changing what we interpret as the forecast, but by changing the intent of the forecast: We need to do what Roosevelt had intended for the post-war period. We have to rebuild the world system, on the basis of a system of sovereign nation-states, which enter into a fixed-exchange-rate credit cooperation, a credit system, with which to organize the financing of the large-scale infrastructure projects, of major infrastructure, which will supply the stimulus for the development of industry and agriculture. That's our chance!
If we don't do it, and if we don't do it in these months immediately before us, it won't happen. A catastrophe will happen. And we're on the brink of that catastrophe, right now! It could happen this month, it could happen this weekend. It could happen next month. You can not pick a date, necessarily—sometimes you can pick a date, because there's a crucial event that will give you a date—but you can not forecast, or predict by a statistical forecasting of dates.
We're in a period where the situation is such, this system, in its present form, is coming down. The crisis is in the trans-Atlantic region, first the northern trans-Atlantic, then the southern trans-Atlantic. When it hits the trans-Atlantic region, just like the oil crisis we're having now, it will then hit the trans-Pacific region, as opposed to the trans-Atlantic. And then, the whole world is plunged into a dark age.
That's where we stand! That's reality! Guesswork, opinions, don't mean anything! This is reality! And what the enemy will do, as they're doing in Afghanistan, is they will continue the process of promoting long wars, ulcerating wars, pitting nations against nations, rather than cooperation; seeking differences, rather than common interest; seeking short-term popularity, rather than long-term success.
We're at that wonderful time, right now, in history, where if you want real events which shape the history of mankind, and the view of the history of mankind from the past, and into the future, you are fortunate enough to live in the circumstance, where this decision will be made!
The question is, who is going to have the power, and conviction, to make that decision?
That's where we stand, today. I'll be dealing with that this weekend.
