IMPEACH OBAMA!
The United States Must Be
a Paragon Among Nations
[PDF version of this transcript]
From the LaRouche PAC Friday Webcast for July 11, 2014. The video is at http://archive.larouchepac.com/node/31278. Host Matthew Ogden was joined by Megan Beets of the LaRouche PAC science team, Dennis Small of EIR, and Diane Sare from the LaRouche PAC Policy Committee.
Matthew Ogden: We had a meeting with both Lyndon and Helga LaRouche earlier this afternoon at which the questions which will be asked tonight were presented to them. So, the answers that you hear tonight will reflect their comments.
We're going to begin, as we normally do, with our institutional question, which reads as follows: "Russian President Vladimir Putin called for better relations with the United States in a congratulatory message to President Barack Obama last Friday, marking U.S. Independence Day. He stated that he hopes that the ties between the two countries, which have a rich history, will continue to successfully develop on an equal basis, despite the current differences and difficulties. Vladimir Putin also highlighted that Russia and the United States, as countries carrying exceptional responsibility for ensuring and safeguarding international stability and security 'should therefore cooperate, not only in the interests of their own nations and for the benefit of their own peoples, but in the interests of the whole world.'
So the question is, in your view, what type of cooperation between the United States and Russia can contribute to this international stability and cooperation in the interests of the entire world, as President Putin has called for?"
LaRouche: The First Step Is
Impeachment of Obama
Dennis Small: What Mr. LaRouche said in response to this question, when it was discussed with him today, is that the United States essentially should be the paragon for this type of relationship among nations. And as the paragon, we must assume responsibility to insure that such a community of principle among nations actually is created. He said, to do that, the first and most immediate thing that has to be done, is that the United States has to return to its rightful role in the concert of nations.
To do that, Barack Obama must be impeached, removed from office by Constitutional means. In fact, Mr. LaRouche said, Obama should be impeached for that purpose. And that would then set the standard for the honorable role that the United States must play today under the current conditions of crisis, bringing the nations of the world together around the common aims of mankind and our common mission towards the future of mankind on this planet and beyond, in the Solar System and the galaxy.
Now, with that change in the United States, by removing Obama from the Presidency—for reasons which we will discuss in the minutes ahead—we will be able to pull the world back from the brink of economic catastrophe and disintegration, and back from the brink of threatened thermonuclear warfare.
On the subject of wars, Mr. LaRouche said that the wars already unleashed by the British Empire, to try to bring the planet's population to heel, and to threaten Russia and China with thermonuclear extinction if they don't go along with the British Empire's gameplan, we now have—on top of Ukraine, on top of Syria, on top of Iraq and so forth—we now have horrors being unleashed by Israel in Gaza, on the instructions of the British Empire. Mr. LaRouche said, this is a hideous operation of Israel's, which is going on under British direction. It's murder; it's predominantly of innocent women and children, and we cannot allow this to happen. Their policy is simply to kill people, just as the British Empire's broader policy is to kill off 6 out of 7 billion of the people who are alive today on this planet.
Now once we return the United States to its Constitutional principles—with Obama out of the way and out of the White House, which is a necessary precondition of doing that—other nations will unquestionably join us in this effort for the benefit of the common aims of mankind. Not only Russia, as is fairly straightforward, as is evident in the way Putin has handled himself inclusively in this July 4th message to our President and our nation, but China as well—another one of the major Asia-Pacific powers that is moving forward today.
China is using all possible international fora to be able to discuss and call for the creation of a New World Order, based upon mutual respect among nations. The Chinese argue that nations have common interests, not interests that are absolutely, irreconcilably opposed one to the other, and that therefore what we must do as nations, is to defend the interests of others as well as our own. China is making concrete economic proposals to bring this about. They are putting meat on the bones, by giving examples of how this thing should actually work—for example, with their plans for the building of the New Silk Road, which is already operational and underway, and which is an open-ended proposal with invitations for every country, not only on the route, but far off the route, to participate in this.
And the Chinese interest and the Russian interest in the Bering Strait Tunnel project, which the LaRouche movement has been promoting for many decades now, actually gives us an interesting idea of a way in which the Silk Road could actually be extended directly from the Eurasian Land-Bridge, across the Bering Strait into North America, and from there into South America through the Darien Gap, along with the necessary high-speed maglev train lines and so on and so forth.
So, there are projects of that sort, which the Chinese are proposing. They're inviting all nations to be involved in this. They are creating an Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, which the United States has been invited to participate in. The United States government under Obama, the State Department, has expressed keen disinterest in this project, saying that it competes with the guidelines that have been provided and are being put forward by the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank—such as Green policies, which they say must be met; and transparency, which is another matter of great concern; and what they call "procurement," which is something I thought had been monopolized by Dominique Strauss-Kahn at the IMF, but I guess not.
In addition to that, the Chinese have announced they are launching, with the Nicaraguan government, the construction of an inter-oceanic canal, a kind of new Panama Canal, through the isthmus of Central America in Nicaragua, which is going to create 50,000 jobs immediately in construction, and up to 200,000 jobs in an area which is currently blighted by the policies going back to the Bush Administration, the policies of Wall Street, the policies of the drug trade, which the Obama Administration is promoting by fostering legalization across the United States.
The Chinese are going in instead with the idea of "let's develop," while the Russians are going into Central America, as we should be doing, helping those countries to fight the drug trade, instead of legalizing the damn thing. And you have the anti-drug czar of Russia, Viktor Ivanov, explaining repeatedly, that the only way to actually put an end to the drug trade is by applying the Glass-Steagall legislation internationally. That is to say, to separate commercial banking, productive banking on the one side, from speculative banking on the other, because it is the drug trade that is behind the speculative banking, and vice versa.
The Peace of Westphalia
So, these are the kinds of options being offered. Now this concept of society that the Chinese are presenting, and which Mr. LaRouche is talking about in terms of the paragon that the United States must be, is actually the concept of society and man set forth in the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, which was against the empire's idea of man as a beast, defending what the empire defines as his personal interest, usually his sectarian religious interests. How? By killing people from other sects.
And if this makes a striking resemblance in your mind to what's happening in Iraq and Syria today, well, it's because the same imperial policy—in the case of the British Empire—is actually operational. But the Treaty of Westphalia had the idea of sovereign nation-states in concert with other nations whose sovereignty is not only respected, but promoted and developed by each and all.
Now, this concept of the Treaty of Westphalia is, of course, synonymous with the idea famously presented by Nicholas of Cusa in the 15th Century, as Helga Zepp-LaRouche has repeatedly emphasized, and she stressed this point again today when we discussed this matter. For Cusa, the maximum development of each nation and its culture and its contribution is in the interest and to the benefit of all humanity. The idea is that the development of the microcosm is not only in coherence with, but is necessary for fostering, the maximum development of the macrocosm.
Now that is the concept on which the United States of America was founded; on which the Constitution was based, explicitly so. And it is now that Constitution and that history which are being violated up and down State Street by Barack Obama. And as LaRouche said, remove Barack Obama from the White House so that the United States can once again become the paragon among nations, for such a world order as we wish to create.
Impeachment Is Coming
Ogden: Let me follow up on that directly. One week ago, Mr. LaRouche issued a policy statement which went directly to this point. He said that the foremost national and international strategic priority must be to constitutionally remove Barack Obama from the Presidency of the United States. And following that, over the past week, there has been a mobilization of LaRouchePAC activists from all around the country based on these marching orders, which included delegations of almost 50 people who came into Washington D.C. from all over the East Coast to meet with their members of Congress. Included in these delegations were two members of the LaRouchePAC Policy Committee; Rachel Brown and Diane Sare. Diane is joining us here in the studio tonight to give an on-the-ground sense of what was accomplished this week in Washington. But what I'll say is that this nationwide mobilization has completely uncorked the discussion about impeachment on Capitol Hill. It's really catalyzed a total explosion, which can no longer be contained.
Let me give a little bit of a chronology. Starting this Tuesday, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin joined the chorus for impeachment, publishing an op-ed titled, "It's Time To Impeach Barack Obama." In it, she stated, "We should vehemently oppose any politician on the left or right who would hesitate in voting for articles of impeachment. The many impeachable offenses of Barack Obama can no longer be ignored. If, after all this, he is not impeachable, then no one is."
Now, I highlight this, not because of what Sarah Palin said, but because the following day, after Palin went on television to denounce Speaker of the House John Boehner for his planned lawsuit against Obama, denouncing this as impotent in the face of a lawless, imperial Presidency, and again calling on Congress to fulfill its constitutional duties to file articles of impeachment, during a press conference on Wednesday, Boehner was again confronted with Palin's demands for impeachment, to which he lamely responded, "I disagree."
This first question on impeachment was then immediately followed up with a question about other members of Congress from his own party who have openly come out and called for the impeachment of Obama. And all Boehner had to say to this was, again, "I disagree."
So, he thought he had gotten out of it, but then again the next day, on Thursday, Boehner was confronted with impeachment again, at another press conference, this time rejecting it not only twice, but thrice. In response to the first question, which again cited calls from Republican members of Congress for Obama's impeachment, Boehner once again, very originally, said, "I disagree."
And then, when asked whether his premise for suing the White House, that the President had "refused to faithfully execute the law," wasn't in fact an impeachable offense, Boehner said, "Well, others can make a determination as to whether or not it's impeachable." And then the last questioner challenged him and his lawsuit tactic by saying, "Wouldn't a Federal judge just say to you that impeachment is the remedy, not a court injunction?" And Boehner responded, "I believe that the path we're going down is the correct one," and promptly ended the press conference.
So as you can see, however much Boehner has attempted to keep impeachment off the table, his strategy has certainly backfired, and impeachment is now on the agenda more than it ever was before.
Obama: 'Let It Rip!'
And how is Obama responding to all of this? By saying, "Let it rip!" He was in Austin, Texas, giving a rip-roaring campaign speech, bragging about ruling the country through Executive decree with his 40-plus Executive Orders that he's issued since January, without the consent of Congress. And Obama referred to the calls for his impeachment. And putting on the cockiest voice that he could muster, he said, "Well, I don't have to run for office anymore, so let it rip!"
I think that's probably one thing that we can agree with Obama on. When it comes to impeachment, let it rip! So, it's very clear that the genie is out of the bottle on impeachment, and that the activity of LaRouchePAC has certainly succeeded in catalyzing an avalanche in the direction of impeachment, which I think is going to be very difficult to stop.
So, in that context, Diane, I wanted to ask you, from your perspective, to give a sense of the breakthroughs that LaRouchePAC achieved this week, but also, where do we have to go from here?
LaRouche PAC Organizing
Diane Sare: Well, I think, in that press conference, Obama also began talking about himself in the third person, which I guess he picked up from the Queen, whom he worships from afar.
At any rate, we are in a Berlin Wall type of moment, and what we are seeing across the nation, at our literature tables—which are now famous, and many of you watching this are familiar with Obama with the little Hitler moustache—we are now getting swarms of people signing up in areas where people used to freak out. Working-class areas, blue-collar Democrats, people coming up, getting harassed by their friends, and saying things like, "I'm tired of defending this guy because I'm a Democrat, or because I happen to be African-American. I'm sick of it; I'm not going to defend him any longer." And so this, I won't say culminated, because I think it is going to continue to build, but this week in Washington we had delegations of activists who came in from Pennsylvania, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Virginia, Maryland, some people from Texas.
About 50 people all over Capitol Hill, mobilizing around the impeachment and removal of Obama from office and the urgent necessity of instituting LaRouche's Four Laws to organize an economic recovery, and informing them about the fight that Argentina is waging against the Wall Street and British Empire's vulture funds, in which Argentina is being backed up by the majority of the world's population. And the response we got was very interesting. We were able to get a substantial number of impromptu meetings; that is, meetings where we didn't have a meeting set up with the office, but the activists were energized enough and aggressive enough to demand that someone meet with us. In the New York/New Jersey delegation we also had six people who had been in the military service, and some of whom were veterans of various wars, and this also had a substantial impact, given the situation in Iraq, which is one of the factors that I think is pushing people over the edge.
I also would say that this week 600,000 signatures were delivered to Sen. Elizabeth Warren's office and the U.S. Senate more broadly in support of her 21st Century Glass-Steagall Act. And I don't think it's a coincidence that the battle to bring down Wall Street, to defeat the British Empire which backs Obama, is coming to a critical point at the exact same time that the impeachment fight is coming to a crucial point. You had the sense in D.C., when I was there, that almost every time you turned a corner to go into another corridor, you would see a group of LaRouche activists walking down the hall towards you. And I don't think that was missed by the Congress.
Outside, we had a banner which said, "Argentina Calls Wall Street's Bluff. There Is a Limit to a Tyrant's Power. Impeach Obama!" We intersected dozens of Congressmen there. And the second day that we were out, almost all of them were saying, "I got this already!" So, we definitely saturated the place.
I also wanted ti report on one thing that occurred today, because I think it's significant, particularly from the standpoint of Mr. LaRouche's point, that for this to work, the United States has to return to its rightful place among a concert of nations. Alicia Cerretani and I were at a Brookings Institution discussion on the BRICS summit upcoming. And they had their Harvard-educated Anglophile "experts" on Russia, China, India, etc., to speak on this. They were trying to mask a certain kind of hysteria about how big this thing is that's coming together, with a lot of jokes—"Do the BRICS have any mortar? Is this for real? Blah, blah."
I was able to get in a question, and referenced that the United States at the moment, under Obama, has no credibility, politically, starting with a very major deal, which is that our CIA station chief has been expelled from Germany, because we are spying on Germany, not just Chanellor Merkel's cell phone, but their discussions on what to do about our spying—we're spying on that as well. The situation of John Kerry's recent trip to China, where he came in and bragged about the success of the U.S. economy, and then a reporter who showed a map of all of our military bases encircling China, and asked about the U.S. encirclement of China—Kerry accused the reporter of being a conspiracy theorist. And then, the situation with Argentina, where the Supreme Court has ruled they have to pay the debt, and because of the dynamic in the world, Argentina is in a situation where they can say "No!"—and our courts have absolutely no power to enforce their own ruling.
So, I went through these three situations, and then I said, "Do you think that the credibility and respectability of the United States might be restored, if the Congress would do what's been discussed in Washington this week, which is impeach Barack Obama?" At that moment, everybody in the room sort of gasped and choked, and I thought they were not going to answer the question.
But, because it is really like a ghost in the room of what's happening with the United States, it was taken up, first by the China expert, who said he would not agree with the premise of the impeachment of Obama, but certainly the United States has discredited itself, with the budget crisis, etc. And then, a woman whom we've had run-ins with on previous occasions, actually said, "I'm glad you raised this question." She was very upset about what's happened with Germany, and she said, "It is a question now: Can the U.S. prove its ability to lead?" And at the end of this, I spoke with people who said how glad they were that this had been raised.
Now, this is indicative of a completely different dynamic. And I think what Matt was raising earlier about Boehner—I'm glad you said, "uncorked," because I have this image of him of being a cork on the impeachment bottle, and we are shaking the bottle, and his lawsuit is going to end up exploding into a full-blown impeachment, if we do our job.
I would just say, for everyone who's watching: The Congress is in session now through the end of July, but they are also all going home for campaign and fundraising events, and you should find them. And you should tell them that they must move to impeach Obama, and institute LaRouche's Four Laws, and that you know that they've gotten our literature, because we've completely saturated Capitol Hill. And then you should call your Congressman, and demand that he or she meet with the LaRouche delegations in Washington. It is a revolutionary moment, and we can expect major changes.
Argentina, Glass-Steagall,
And LaRouche's Four Laws
Ogden: Dennis Small did an interview earlier this week on the LPAC website, in which he reported on the groundbreaking OAS (Organization of American States) meeting in Washington last Thursday.[1]
Now, as Diane mentioned, there is a huge fight inside the U.S. Congress around Glass-Steagall, which she has been responsible for catalyzing and leading. In fact, this week, a coalition of labor and civic groups from around the country, led by Public Citizen and Americans for Financial Reform, delivered 600,000 signatures on a petition to the United States Senate, calling for immediate action to restore Glass-Steagall.
So, the pressure is certainly on. But the question of why Congress continues to fail to act on Glass-Steagall, I think was addressed in a very direct way, ironically, by the Argentine Chief of Cabinet Ministers, Jorge Capitanich, in his press conference in Buenos Aires yesterday, in which he discussed Wall Street's financial control over members of the House and Senate. Speaking of the vulture funds, he said, "They extort judges, they extort through their respective congresses through mafioso campaigns, because we know that in the United States, a large part of the House of Representatives and Senate in the Congress of the United States get their financing from the vulture funds, and these then take advantage of countries, precisely to make their exorbitant and extraordinary profits. We can in no way accept extortion."
And the same point was made in full-page advertisements, the latest of which appeared in the Washington Post this week, which were bought by the Argentine government, in which they say that the vulture funds have dedicated themselves in recent years to "funding the campaigns of U.S. politicians." And this is certainly the case, as we highlighted in our previous webcast,
Paul Singer, who is the owner of NML Capital [one of the vulture funds that is suing Argentina], has been called "the GOP's go-to-guy on Wall Street," "Congressional Republicans' most powerful fundraiser," and some even call him—and he's proud of this title—"a fundraising terrorist," who often writes multimillion-dollar checks to Republican Super PACs and contributes his criminal blood money to various members of the U.S. Congress, leading Republicans like Paul Ryan, Eric Cantor, Mitch McConnell—and, surprise, surprise, John Boehner, as well as Chris Christie, and other prospective Republican Presidential candidates; but also to leading Democratic members of Congress. So, when your Congressman or Senator tells you, "I don't support Glass-Steagall," you can probably safely assume that they very well might be on the payroll of Paul Singer and his buddies.
Now, my question for you, Dennis, is that if you consider both the call by Guyana's Foreign Minister Robeson Benn for Glass-Steagall, in combination with the discussion now of a new, what you could call, an "international development bank," the sort that's forming around the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, which China is fast-tracking, and also the so-called BRICS bank, which is now on the agenda at the BRICS summit this week in Brazil, which both President Putin and President Xi Jinping will be attending, it's very clear that Mr. LaRouche's ideas are directly shaping the emergence of a tendency towards a new financial architecture on this planet.
So, the question is, how can we break the stranglehold of the vulture funds and Wall Street over Congress, here in the United States, and force the necessary breakthrough on Glass-Steagall and the entirety of Mr. LaRouche's four-part program, so that the United States can take its rightful place as the necessary paragon of leadership in this new system of relations among nations?
British Brainwashing
Small: Well, for starters, it would be useful if people understood a little bit more about the history of the United States and the principles on which this country was founded, instead of believing the poppycock which the British Empire has been teaching us since 1776 and before, as to what the principles are on which our economy and our political system are founded.
Whenever you hear people say that this country is based on free-market capitalism, defending property rights, and so on and so forth, you know that they are the victims of a British brainwashing operation. Because the fact of the matter is, that the idea of the United States on which it was founded, was "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Happiness meant, in the sense of what Leibniz describes as "felicity," which we've discussed in previous webcasts. It was not founded on the idea of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of property": That phrase, "life, liberty, and property" was very famous in the history of the United States, except it happened to be the basis of the constitution of the Confederate States of America! That is to say, the British-sponsored, slave-running, bestial operation to destroy the United States.
So when you hear people talking about "Oh, I know all about what the United States is based on; we're for free-market capitalism, we're for free trade, we respect property rights! Well, yeah, Argentina's having some problems, but they got to pay! They borrowed that money, they've got to pay! Why, I even heard, somewhere in my economics class, that Adam Smith is the economist on whom our country's economic system is based."
Well, I have some news for you! Adam Smith, whose Wealth of Nations is considered his magnum opus, was an agent of British intelligence, and that book, which promotes free market and the "invisible hand," and so on and so forth, which you've heard all about, was actually written and published in 1776. And it was written as a British diatribe against the American System, because the Argentines have got it right! Property, as it is defined under these circumstances, is not sacrosanct. Argentina is paying its debt! It is paying the debt which has been correctly restructured and renegotiated. They're simply opposed to paying the debt two, three, four, five times over again, killing off their population, which is, of course, exactly what's being demanded by the vulture funds.
The vulture funds have not only targeted Argentina. They specialize in picking on little guys, people who can't fight back, like African countries. And this was actually cited in the debate at the OAS that I attended, where the Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jaua recalled the fact that NML Capital and these other vulture funds had, a few years back, picked on Congo-Brazzaville. And they tried to collect $400 million and did collect that, after having bought up the defaulted debt, for pennies on the dollar, for $3 million or something like that. And the question he asked is a very valid question: How many children could be saved with those $400 million? How much medicine could we have bought? How many lives could have been saved?
And it is this principle, this principle of economics, that man and his creative powers are the primordial basis for economic prosperity and development, and that an economic system, and especially debts, have to be adjusted to that, and not vice versa. This is the principle on which the United States was founded. This is what the Constitution says. And what people run around on the streets, talking like they know what they're talking about, are actually just repeating a bunch of British propaganda! It's as simple as that! The Pope has made exactly the same point as the Argentines are making, as to the priority of human lives over and above these so-called property rights.
There have been numerous discussions of the question of property rights, so-called, throughout history. In a previous webcast, I mentioned the case of the discussion of property during the American Civil War, because, after all, slaves were considered property. And slaveholders had property titles—far more credible, far more justified, than what these vulture funds hold! In the case of Argentina, they bought defaulted debt, literally for pennies on the dollar, and they're trying to collect on that with a return, which, over a few years, amounts to 1,608%.
A Pound of Flesh
There's also a discussion of this in Classical literature: Go back and read your Shakespeare, read The Merchant of Venice. Portia had a thing or two to say to Shylock about this matter. What happens when you try to collect your pound of flesh; what are the consequences? We're responsible for the consequences of our actions, what the intention is.
Now, on these vulture funds, what you were just saying, Matt, is absolutely the case, and this is well documented, in terms of the money that they are spreading around the Congress of the United States, which, indeed, does have a lot to do with why they are cowardly on the question of impeachment, why they are cowardly on the question of Glass-Steagall, and why they repeat, over and over again, phrases like, "I disagree." Well, he didn't "disagree" when he got a check from NML Capital, did he? What about that, John Boehner? And what about the Democrats, who have taken the money, also, which is blood money!
Look at what's going on in Detroit, look at what's happening in Puerto Rico. These cities, these places, have been destroyed, by the exact, same vulture funds, by the exactly, same ruses. By the exact, same looting operation, of hooking them on speculative capital, destroying the physical economy, and then reeling 'em in! And where is Detroit, today? Fifty percent of the people of Detroit can't pay their water bills: What are you going to tell them? The same thing the Argentines or Congo-Brazzaville was told? "Well, I'm sorry that you don't have the money to do that, and you have to take that money out of what you're giving grandma to eat, but, you know, you got to pay your bills! My mother told me, you got to pay your bills! My mother told me our country is based on Adam Smith!"
Fifty percent of the people of Detroit can't pay their water bills! And the city of Detroit, under the control of these same vulture funds and speculators, is now planning to cut off the water!
And it's so bad, that the United Nations has gotten into the middle of the fray, saying, "Hey wait a minute! Water is a human right, you can't cut off people's water, unless they're intentionally not paying!" Now, when the United Nations comes to lecture the United States on basic principles of economics, you know we'd better get our act together! We're in serious trouble.
Applying the Hamiltonian Principle
So this whole idea of property rights being primordial over everything else, this is a complete nominalist, Aristotelian view of law! This is the idea that what's written on a piece of paper, just like Shylock had—"I have a piece of paper here, and that's what it says. I don't care if it kills you."
Now, what Argentina's doing: There's another way to approach this thing; what Argentina's doing, they did renegotiate their debt. They wrote it down partially, by mutual agreement, and restructured it, and on the basis of the economic policies they chose to adopt for growth, to then be able to pay the debt. They're now meeting and have met, absolutely on time, completely, all of the payments, on the 93% of their bonded debt which was restructured. The vulture funds represent 7%, or less; in the case of the ones that are suing, 1%. And they want to blow the whole thing up, because of that.
See, it's not a question of what you do with your debt, whether you write it down—all of those are monetary manipulations which are secondary. The question is, what are the terms of the actual physical economy which are applied, as a condition for that debt renegotiation. If you do it with the IMF, if you do it with the Troika, if you do with the British Empire, their condition is, "Kill yourself."
The way Argentina did it was not unlike what Alexander Hamilton did: In the case of the United States, he reorganized our debt, too. He recognized the legitimate debt that we had. But the way he did that, is he issued new government credit for the purpose of increasing the productive powers of labor. And we grew to pay the debt!
The former President of Argentina Néstor Kirchner, said "Corpses can't pay their debts! We're going to pay by growing." And that's what Argentina has done. Just this last week, a United Nations economic body, the Economic Commission on Latin America (ECLAC), put out a report saying that Argentina's growth rate over the last eight years, after their bankruptcy in 2001, was the highest rate of any country in the entire region in 50 years. So they grew!
There's a principle of economics here which is very, very important, and that is the same principle on which this country was actually founded, which is the Hamiltonian idea, the idea also expressed in the Monroe Doctrine—that we don't want looting operations like the British Empire in the Americas. The famous Monroe Doctrine, written by John Quincy Adams, when he was Secretary of State under Monroe.
And it was actually those ideas, in some cases, I think, really quite unbeknownst to the participants themselves, which guided the discussion at the OAS meeting, not only the comments of Acting Foreign Minister of Guyana Benn; similarly with the Venezuelans, who mentioned the Drago Doctrine, which was Argentina's restatement, effectively, of the idea that you cannot collect the debt by force, you cannot destroy a nation to do that, which he wrote in 1902; a doctrine which [Argentine Foreign Minister Luis María] Drago himself described as the financial corollary of the Monroe Doctrine of the United States. And Drago was a close follower of "the great Alexander Hamilton."
So this idea of the United States being a paragon to lead the world in the direction of the destruction of the British Empire, is not a new idea, it's just a very necessary one. And it was that idea, unbeknownst to many of the people there, which was actually what was moving the political process forward at the OAS meeting.
Let me just conclude in response to this—much more could be said—but now what comes up, is, taking this issue of Argentina much more broadly than simply in the nations of Ibero-America, what was expressed there generally was solidarity. That's good. But it's not enough. We are not going to destroy the British Empire by people expressing solidarity with Argentina's just cause: It's going to require kicking over the chessboard altogether. It's going to require bankrupting and replacing this financial system with a new one, as per the specifications in LaRouche's Four Laws, and that is the kind of topic which is actually on the agenda at the BRICS summit on July 15, in Fortaleza, Brazil, and as Matt mentioned, with the presence of the Chinese and Russian heads of state, each of whom will be visiting Argentina, before, in the case of Putin, and after, in the case of Xi Jinping, the BRICS meeting.
So, I don't know that miracles will happen at that meeting, but there will be, in fact, an extremely important discussion of ideas to deal with the crisis, which have been uniquely presented, in fact, by Lyndon LaRouche.
Euro Banking Crisis:
Financial System on the Brink
Megan Beets: I would like to ask a question, turning to the issue of this bankrupt financial system. Underscoring the fact that we are at the moment of total blowout of the trans-Atlantic system, in the recent week, we've seen some very significant developments, significant shocks in the banking system of Europe.
As a certain kind of prelude, we saw in the last days of June, a run on the banks of Bulgaria; we saw an announcement on July 3 by Austria's Erste Bank, that they expected losses of €1.5 billion this year. Both of which events set off a series of shocks throughout the Eurozone banking system, but also hysterical denials, that there are any systemic implications to these developments, including a reaction from the assistant editor of London's Daily Telegraph, Jeremy Warner, who nervously insisted that Erste Bank's announcement was "not quite the Kreditanstalt," the Austrian banking collapse that marked the beginning of the Great Depression, but he said it was still very worrisome in terms of the future of the entire European banking system.
Now, that's the prelude.
In just the past couple of days, the picture has become much, much more dramatic, with the announcement of the insolvency of Portugal's flagship bank, the Banco Espirito Santo, as well as its holding company Espirito Santo International, to which not only the Portuguese banks, but the major banks of Spain, the banks of France, including Crédit Agricole, have serious exposure.
Now, despite the denials of the bank, of the Portuguese government, and of the European Central Bank, that this has any systemic risk, the announcement of Banco Espirito Santo has already set off major tremors throughout the European banking system, including yesterday, the collapse of the bank's stocks by almost 20%, which induced the shutdown of trading; you have government bond yields, not just of Portugal's bonds, but of Greek bonds, and across the continent, having skyrocketing interest rates, also the wide discussion of the imminent threat to the entire system. So the genie is out of the bottle.
Also last week, on July 3, we saw the announcement of ECB head Mario Draghi, that the ECB would be unleashing an unprecedented amount of monetary expansion, liquidity pumping, which was expected to surpass the liquidity pumping of the U.S. Fed at the height of the bailout. So, I think it's clear that we really are at the end of blowout of the entire system, as Mr. and Mrs. LaRouche have been warning.
Germany Asserts Its Sovereignty
Now, I want to add something else to the picture here, on the breakdown of the trans-Atlantic system, which is what we saw come out of Germany yesterday: the announcement that the German government, at the request of the German Parliament, has asked that the CIA station chief at the U.S. Embassy leave the country, in the wake of the identification of not just one, but two spies, passing information to the U.S. intelligence services. Der Spiegel Online described that request of the German government as follows: "On a diplomatic level, it is no less than an earthquake and represents a measure that until Thursday would have only been implemented against pariah states like North Korea or Iran. It also underscores just how deep tensions have grown between Berlin and Washington over the spying affair."
This move obviously is unprecedented, and it demonstrates that there is a very rapid breakdown of the trans-Atlantic system, so the question I'd like to ask you is: What is driving and determining the breakdown? And what does this have to do with the coming financial blowout?
Small: Well, if you don't want to be called a "pariah state," we should get rid of our pariah President, and things would change very significantly!
These German developments are extremely significant, and we did have an opportunity to discuss them today with Helga Zepp-LaRouche, who said, speaking as a German political leader, that the perspective that they have is that the United States has absolutely nothing to offer Europe, today, other than spying, coercion, blackmail, and wars. Oh, and an economic collapse, too! So, this spy case, this particular development with the expulsion of the head of the CIA desk in Germany, could well be the straw that breaks the camel's back, in terms of developments in that country. She said that Germany, despite Chancellor Angela Merkel, is actually interested in economic cooperation with China and Russia and the rest of the world, but under the British Empire's control and under Obama, that is impossible. In other words, that is not available in the trans-Atlantic sector.
Now, to that evaluation of Mrs. LaRouche, I can add that there is good reason to believe—we could at least call it a probability—that the handiwork of what's going on in Germany, not only this current case of spying, but also the previous disclosed activities of the NSA and spying on Chancellor Merkel's own cell phone, really does appear to be the handiwork of CIA Director John Brennan. Brennan is very close to the Saudi government, in ways that I do not wish to describe on this webcast program, in case children are listening, and that means he's very close to the British, because that's who the Saudis are. Brennan has played a role in the cover-up, at least, if not more than that, of every one of the 9/11 atrocities carried out against this country in 2001, as well as the 2012 attack in Benghazi—and he's played a principal role in these activities.
So what's happened in the case of Germany, is that a crisis has broken out onto the surface now, that was brewing underneath. And this could well go in various directions, especially because of the economic catastrophe now going on, that you were just describing. I'd like to recall for our listeners that Mr. LaRouche, in the immediate aftermath of the EuroParliament elections a couple of months ago, had said that his forecast was that we would be witnessing a triad of nations in Europe, breaking, or showing signs of breaking, or leaning towards breaking, from the British Empire's trans-Atlantic alliance, and he pointed to Germany, in particular, because of its historic tradition; as well as France, which showed it very clearly in the elections; and he also spoke about Italy, although the signs there at the time were somewhat weaker.
There Is No Middle Ground
In addition to the German developments, this week in Europe, there are another two cases which I'd like to point to, which I think are exemplary of the same process under way: First, you should know that on July 1st, Helga Zepp-LaRouche issued a statement, an "Urgent Appeal to the Governments of Europe: Do You Support Argentina, or the Criminal Speculators?" And in that statement, she says, "The crucial question here is: Is international law, as it evolved from the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, and as expressed in the UN Charter, still valid, or not? Can and must a sovereign government defend the general welfare of its citizens, or do criminal speculators have the right to use all means, as Shakespeare depicted so vividly in The Merchant of Venice, to demand the debtor's "pound of flesh," even if that means that the person dies?" And she concluded: "The only thing that the trans-Atlantic camp has to offer is the sacrifice of the common good, of the happiness and the life of its people, in favor of a Frankenstein monster, 'the stability of the market,' to which anything and everything should be sacrificed, but which is itself hopelessly bankrupt. This system does exactly what Pope Francis says: It kills. You could also call it satanic.
"In the struggle between Argentina and the hedge funds, there is no middle ground. Which side are the European governments on? We want an answer! We want official statements! Now!"
Now, with the vast majority of the world's countries and governments supporting Argentina in this life-and-death battle against the vulture funds—the G77, which is 133 nations; China, Russia, now, all of the nations of South America, all of the OAS, except for the United States and Canada, which voted against it—totally supporting, Europe has up until now been somewhat quiet, kind of caught in the crossfire, as Europe generally feels under these circumstances. So in that regard, I think it's of some note that the Democratic Party of Italy, which is not some small party; this is the ruling party of Italy—and it's generally not a very good government! But the Democratic Party of Italy went on record as the first major such institution in Europe, in support of Argentina under these circumstances. So it kind of broke the barrier.
We'll see what comes next, but I'm very confident that Zepp-LaRouche's call is going to find a significant response on the European side.
The Banking Crisis
Now, let's just take a quick look at some of the economic backdrop of this which you were mentioning, Megan, which has to do with this banking crisis: The misnamed, "Espirito Santo" (for those who don't speak Portuguese, that means the Holy Spirit, of which there is undoubtedly none in that bank!) is really quite bankrupt. But it's not just Espirito Santo, it's the entire European banking system, as Mr. LaRouche has been saying over and over again. It's Bulgaria, it's Austria, it's Portugal.
The principal creditors of Portuguese bank debt are Spanish banks, which are probably more bankrupt than the banks they're trying to collect from! The whole thing is falling apart, and what LaRouche said earlier this week is that the "big one" is upon us. This thing is melting down now, and we must prepare in time: We have to have the bankruptcy reorganization in place, now through Glass-Steagall, and the other three laws which LaRouche has proposed: establishing a National Bank, and issuing credit in the national credit system, as Hamilton did, and then driving the economy forward with high-technology, scientific breakthroughs, as in the case of thermonuclear fusion power—these are the things that have to be done immediately.
Now, if we take a look at Figure 1, what you'll see is that the hyperinflationary expansion of financial instruments, which Megan was describing before, has really taken off over this recent period, and particularly, the role of the ECB, the European Central Bank, is filling in, and then some, for the so-called "tapering" going on at the Fed. But the combined level of the two is $8-$9 trillion created since the blowout of 2008.
Now, the argument, of course, is that money is necessary, because it's going to go to banks which in turn are going to lend it, and that's going to lead to development, and businesses are going to prosper, and people are going to consume, and you're going to have a chicken in every pot, and everything is going be wonderful!
Is there bank lending going on (Figure 2)? No. There's no bank lending going on: As quantitative easing has increased across the trans-Atlantic sector, to more than $9 trillion—this includes, Europe, the U.K., and the U.S.—over this period, actual bank lending has gone south, negative, over this entire period. And that's because all of the money is going to bail out the bankrupt financial system, which it's not going to be able to do with this bail-out approach; the bail-in approach which the British Empire is proposing, of basically looting everyone till they're dry, to bail out a handful of banks which they choose to salvage, is also not functioning. And you have a situation, where this thing is actually at the blowout point.
Now, let me emphasize a point here: The problem is not the issuance of credit. Nine trillion dollars issued by the trans-Atlantic sector—the problem isn't that they issued a lot of credit. The problem is that they issued a lot of credit which went to speculation! China, during the same period, since 2007, has issued approximately $6 trillion in credit—that's two-thirds as much as the entire trans-Atlantic sector—but its credit went as specified in the American System of political economy—there are better Hamiltonians in China, than there are in Washington! Because what they are doing, is they are building canals, they're building railroads, they're building the Silk Road, they're participating with Africa, they're participating with Central America, all of Asia, they're offering it to Europe—and they're even offering it to the United States.
So this gives you an idea of what the Hamiltonian concept actually is, and the kinds of measures that need to be taken. The United States has got to get onboard with this! And the way to do that, is get Obama out, and get our country back to the policies on which it was founded.
Why Is Scalia an Aristotelian Idiot?
Beets: Okay, this'll be the final question of the evening. In response to the June 16 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, to uphold the ruling of Federal Court Judge Thomas Griesa, that Argentina must pay the vulture funds, even over its dead body, of this decision, which was written by the notorious Justice Antonin Scalia, Lyndon LaRouche noted two things: One, he said immediately, the bail-out and bail-in policy is in full play now, and the attack on Argentina has set this into motion. Now the other thing he said is that Justice Scalia should be denounced for supporting genocide.
An article published on June 27, in EIR, on the ruling, entitled, "Will Argentina Be the First To Bolt from the Bankrupt System?" opens as follows:
"In a decision written by Aristotelian idiot Justice Antonin Scalia, the United States Supreme Court on June 16 sided with the bloodiest of vulture funds, NML Capital and Aurelius Capital Management, in their effort to use American courts to gain discovery of all Argentine financial movements worldwide, in order to seize that country's assets in payment for defaulted bonds."
Now, from what you laid out earlier, Dennis, about the full implications of the Argentina situation, it is quite clear that Justice Scalia is an idiot. He's a dangerous idiot: He's a genocidal idiot. But my question to you is: Why is he an Aristotelian idiot?
Small: Well, I don't know why he's an Aristotelian—that's something we'd have to ask him or his psychiatrist. But I can tell you why we wrote that in the magazine: because the issue of Aristotelianism is actually central to this whole question that we've been discussing tonight, and to the ruling, and to the future of humanity.
If you have a spare minute or two, you can read Scalia's ruling in this case. It's pure, nominalist literalism; it kind of holds up, like Shylock, the piece of paper, and says, "You said you were going to pay. Doesn't matter that they bought a piece of paper, that says it's worth $1 billion for $1 million, you got to pay. So what if the profit rate is a thousand percent? That's irrelevant: It says here on the paper, you got to pay."
What it does, is it banishes any concept of the justice system, of justice! It banishes any concept of intention. There's no such thing as truth; the only thing that's presented are arguments that would pass a computer's spell-checker. And that's probably what it did, although there may be typographical errors in there, as well; I haven't checked that out. But this is exactly what Aristotle does.
What Aristotle does, is he banishes from his system the existence of mind, and tries to project this onto the actual political results. He says that the only thing which actually exists is sense-perception.
And this has its consequences. Let's take a look at a quote from Aristotle, which is taken from his work De Anima, which is—that's sort of a misnomer, just like "Espirito Santo" is a misnomer for the bank, De Anima means On the Soul, which Aristotle denies exists! So, here he is writing on the soul. Well, you'll see why.
Aristotle says,
"Perceptions are always true; it is intellect that introduces errors."
"Things are first separate"—in other words, you look at the pieces, first—"and then conjoined.... In all cases falsity occurs in a conjunction.... It is intellect that effects the unity."
So, take off your thinking cap, don't try to come up with an idea that explains the sense-perceptions around you, limit what you say you know to that which you perceive. And his concept of man reflects exactly this.
In the same document, De Anima, Aristotle says we should never ask why. Why is the wrong question to ask, because you don't know why. All you know is that something happens or doesn't happen, supposedly.
Now, this has certain consequences, if you look at this, in terms of the economy, because what happens to an economy if you banish mind, if you say, simply, the only thing you know is that which you perceive: Well, you have a situation like we have today, where you have no technology, you have no science, you have no advance, you have nothing that's an actual solution to the crisis which we're facing! You simply adhere everything to the nominal monetary value on a piece of paper—regardless of the actual consequences that that will have for the future of the human species.
This is a Green paradise! This is exactly what the Greenies want to do. Everything is banished that could actually save the situation: because without an advance in thermonuclear fusion, without applying technology massively on a global scale, we're going to end up with what the British Empire wants, which is genocide of 6 out of 7 billion people on this planet. And that is why Mr. LaRouche referred to Scalia and his decision as genocidalist.
Now, also look at the question of the consequences of this view, in the area of law. Because, what this means, is that there's no such thing as an actual concept of justice, of the good to be sought, that man has a moral purpose. Man is not guided by anything moral or purposeful or intentional about bettering the human condition, the common good, the general welfare, and so on. Not at all! Man is guided, Aristotle tells us, by hedonism, by the law of the jungle, by pleasure and pain. By the idea that "might makes right," by the idea that Cheney and Obama have presented, quite clearly, of the Unitary Executive: "I decided it, it's right. You don't like it? Let it rip! Bring it on!" These are the signing statements of Obama: He's violating the Constitution, like I said, "up and down State Street"! And that comes from exactly this concept of law. This is what you would see, and do see in Scalia's Court.
Now, look at what Aristotle has to say about this, on this question of justice and morality. This is from The Nicomachean Ethics:
"The whole subject of moral virtue and of statecraft is bound up with the question of pleasures and pains; for if a man employs these well, he will be good, if badly, bad.... We have now sufficiently shown that moral virtue consists in observance of a mean ... of holding a middle position between two vices.... As it is hard to hit the exact mean, we ought to choose the lesser of the two evils."
So, if you ever wondered where that obnoxious and offensive phrase comes from, "choosing the lesser of two evils"—sort of like voting for one of two candidates in an election, who both are getting a paycheck from Paul Singer of NML Capital—you can thank Aristotle. That's where it came from.
And, what is Aristotle's concept of man? Again, the Nicomachean Ethics:
"To argue that man is superior to the other animals is beside the point; for there are other things more divine in the universe even than man."
Well, clearly, if you define man as being nothing but a basically complicated computer, that receives computer messages and sense-certainty, but there's no actual thinking, no reason, no creativity, therefore, no morality—if that were man, then it would in fact be the case that man is not the superior thing in the universe. But Aristotle is wrong, obviously.
This is what mathematics actually is, because if this is what the reality is, and this is what truth is, as described by Aristotle, merely sense-perception, then you can perfectly describe the categories of sense-perception and everything that you perceive under a mathematical formula, because there's nothing outside that mathematical representation as such. There's nothing additional added to it, there's no intellectual activity. No intuition, as Nicholas of Cusa later refers to it.
So anything outside of mathematics is considered to be "metaphysics"—i.e., it's not real, it's made up. So anyone who thinks in a mathematical fashion, strictly mathematical or Aristotelian fashion, is, in fact, thinking in a way where the concept of man is going to conclude in genocide. That's a simple fact of the matter; whether mathematicians like it or not, that's the truth of the matter.
Now, it turns out that when you try to describe the world in strictly mathematical or Aristotelian terms, you run into uncountable paradoxes, because lo and behold, a mathematical system can't actually explain itself.
For example, this is a famous one: I would like you to tell me if the following sentence that I'm about to utter is true or false. Ready? Here's the sentence:
"This sentence is false."
Well, from the standpoint of mathematics, it's an utter paradox. From the standpoint of reality, it simply means that a mathematical system cannot comment on itself from outside the system. It's incapable of reflecting a process of actual change. And this little paradox, of which there are a million that could be cited, points to what the actual, underlying issue is here.
Cusa on the Human Mind
Now, compare this issue to that presented by Nicholas of Cusa, who says that mind is a substantial form of power, and therefore it is called the soul.
Cusa commented on Aristotle, as well. In one of his writings, called The Not Other, he asks himself, what did Aristotle discover? He says, well, to confess, honestly, I do not know.
Cusa, the great Renaissance genius, who was the founder of modern science, and who, incidentally, has everything to do with the founding of the United States, also said the following: "Aristotle says that to understand is an accident.... [But] something is present to mental intuition [to reason], which was not present to sense.... Mind is a living measure which achieves its own capacity by measuring other things.... Mind is not of the nature of changeable things which it grasps by sense perception, but of unchangeable things which it discovers in itself."
This is from Cusa's The Layman: On Mind.
And he concludes:
"Mind is a living substance.... Its function in this body is to give it life and because of this it is called soul. Mind is a substantial form of power."
Now, what is your concept of economics, and of man, and of the universe, and of the Creator, if your view is that mind is a substantial form of power? Well, you will then provide a solution to this crisis, based on that substantial form of power, which is the actual scientific and technological advances which are necessary to wipe out the British Empire, and the disaster that's going on today.
This is very much the same idea that was presented, on the Russian side, by Vladimir Vernadsky. He addresses exactly the same issue, where he says, thought is not a form of energy; how, then, can it change material processes?
So, with that, I return to the opening question, which is, U.S.-Russian relations and what LaRouche said about that. Which is, that a Russia guided by Vernadsky's thinking and his philosophy, with a United States returning to being a paragon of the kind of thinking reflected in Nicholas of Cusa, is exactly the sort of relationship among sovereign nations which is required to get this world out of the mess that it's in.
Aristotle is going to have to go, and the equivalents of Aristotle that some of the Russians cherish; we must return to Cusa and Vernadsky, and these ideas. And I would like to conclude my remarks with a quote, from one of the greatest statesmen of the United States:
"Our knowledge of physical nature, such as it is, consists entirely of inferential corrections of the testimony of the senses.... When we sit down to astronomical calculation, we discover the truth, the triumph of inference over the senses.... Intellect not residing in matter, but molding and controlling it. What is that intellect, and where is it? Everywhere in its effects; nowhere perceptible to the sense.... That it modifies and governs the physical world is apparent both to my senses and my reason."
Now, that is a statement that was written in 1817, two days before John Quincy Adams returned to the United States to become Secretary of State, after a meeting he had with Jeremy Bentham, who is an Aristotelian if ever there was one. This is John Quincy Adams! This is the man who wrote the Monroe Doctrine.
This is the basis for the United States returning to being a paragon, as Mr. LaRouche was saying from the outset, for creating an entirely different world based on what man actually is.
Ogden: Well, I want to thank Dennis very much; I want to thank Diane Sare also, for joining us tonight, and Megan Beets. Thank you all very much for watching. This is a conclusion to our webcast tonight. Good night.
[1] See also last week's EIR, July 11, 2014.
