LAROUCHE PAC WEBCAST
Overcoming the Imperial Drive
for a New Dark Age
Matthew Ogden hosted the weekly LaRouche PAC webcast on Oct. 10, 2014. The video can be viewed at http://archive.larouchepac.com/node/31887.
[PDF version of this transcript]
Matthew Ogden: I am joined in the studio today by Megan Beets from the LaRouche PAC Scientific Team, as well as Benjamin Deniston. I'm also joined by Dennis Small from Executive Intelligence Review. The four of us have had discussions with Lyndon LaRouche over the last 24 hours, so the answers that you hear tonight will be a direct reflection of LaRouche's outlook on the world situation today.
So, let me start with the institutional question, as is customary, which reads as follows:
"Mr. LaRouche, the Ebola outbreak in West Africa is unlike anything since the emergence of HIV-AIDS. This was said by top U.S. medical official Thomas Frieden. The outbreak has killed more than 3,860 people already, mainly in West Africa. More than 200 health workers are among the victims. What are your views on an effective response to this epidemic? Is the U.S. health-care system prepared to deal with the potential epidemic here in the United States? As you know, we already have had the first death in the United States."
And I'd like to ask Dennis Small to come to the podium to deliver the response.
Ebola: The Strategic Setting
Dennis Small: Thank you very much. The central point that LaRouche made, is that to properly locate the Ebola nightmare which is now sweeping not only Africa, but also implicitly Europe and very soon the United States, as well as the rest of the planet—to actually understand this, you have to realize that in the next two weeks, Europe and the entire Mediterranean region could be sunk into a catastrophic war, spreading outwards from the Southwest Asia cockpit—Syria-Iraq, where the ISIS terrorists run by the British Empire are running wild—which could spread into Europe, and also north- and eastward into Russia and beyond.
LaRouche said that this is the actual intention of the British Empire: to use tools of theirs such as ISIS in exactly this fashion. And it is also the intention of the British Empire's puppet Barack Obama, and they have unleashed the satanic ISIS hordes as a terrorist operation with exactly this intent in mind.
LaRouche was really very emphatic about this. He said we're on the edge of something which is ready to spread throughout the region. We're facing the immediate potential of a runaway horror-show. Obama is responsible for promoting this war in the Middle East, and unless he is removed from office, the prospects of stopping that war are slim indeed. We're facing the possibility of Kobani falling at any moment to the ISIS grouping. We're also looking at an air war up to this point launched by the United States and its allies—i.e., the British Empire and many Commonwealth nations and others—which by its very nature is incapable of actually addressing the problem; whereas the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States have presented a viable option—as has LaRouche, and other countries, such as Russia, who, in the words of former Ambassador Veniamin Popov, as paraphrased in an interview with RIA Novosti, said: Only joint efforts of the international community and major global powers can pave the way for the victory over the Islamic State ... and any other strategy is useless.
LaRouche is on record supporting Gen. Martin Dempsey of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and his proposal that Obama both take the issue to the United States Congress, which is what's required by the Constitution to actually proceed with warfare in the region, which the President has absolutely not done—yet another reason for his impeachment—and it is imperative that regional sovereign nations, including the government of Syria, be involved in making sure that this British-run terrorist operation is dismantled.
So, we need an alliance of forces, regionally and internationally, of the same sort which is actually required to put an end to the British Empire's financial disintegration and the horror-show which they have created economically as well.
LaRouche said we don't exactly know how the end-game will work on this, but we do know our responsibility in the United States. And he addressed the United States population, and the Congress in particular, asking: Are you capable of acting properly to do your part to prevent this coming war before it starts? If so, then oust Obama and his Republican guards, like Speaker Boehner.
LaRouche also said it's imperative to ask the question openly, and address the question to Europe in particular: Is Obama setting up a war in order to destroy Europe? Is that the actual intention behind this?
Now, if we take a step back from this strategic overview which LaRouche has provided, we should review briefly the situation in the following fashion:
First of all, let's make it very clear: Only the British could possibly produce something so satanic as what we are seeing today with ISIS, with beheadings. I mean, really: A killer beheading people on videos, speaking with a perfect British accent? Where was this guy trained?
Secondly, it is the British who have supported the Saudis, and the Saudis in turn financed ISIS and other groups like al-Qaeda, ever since Sept. 11, 2001 up to the present. They're the ones who are responsible for this. The Saudis, after all, include beheadings in their officially permitted form of meting out justice! And don't for a minute think that this type of British, bestial, satanic behavior is different from, or separate from, the British philosophy which defines man as fundamentally an animal: the Aristotelian view, the view of Hume, the view of Bentham, the view of Hobbes, which tell us that man is nothing but a glorified animal, and in effect acts like, and should be encouraged to act like a beast. And so they have unleashed political forces and military forces to accomplish this philosophical view of man, which they have been promoting for centuries.
Now, inside the United States, you know the expression: Sometimes out of the mouths of babes...." Well, in this case, out of the mouth of the Vice President of the United States, Joe Biden, came a very interesting, truthful statement, that the problem we have today with ISIS, is that unfortunately, our closest allies—and he named Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and others—were responsible for financing and arming ISIS, and that is part of the difficulty we're facing today. That's true as far as he went, but he could have, and should have, and we will go further, because it's not simply Saudi Arabia and the United Emirates and Turkey; it's actually the British Empire. And it's actually the Obama Administration as well, which has been directly involved in creating the problem which Obama says he now wants to solve.
Now, Biden's remarks were so truthful, in fact, that the Obama Administration and the British of course forced him to immediately turn around and eat his own words, and apologize profusely before those whom he has rightly accused of backing ISIS from the outset. It's also worth noting that Gen. Barry McCaffrey [ret.], the former anti-drug czar under Clinton—and this is, I think, representative of a view which is widespread, if not predominant in intelligence and military circles—what McCaffrey said is: "Vice President Biden is starting to look like the wisest man in the room." He said the problem we have here is "the train left the station with all of the talk of supporting internally the so-called 'moderate' opposition in Syria."
And that's indeed the policy of the Obama Administration.
Now, this continuing British role—and Saudi role—behind the sponsorship of terrorism, and the Bush complicity, and the Obama complicity in this, in particular, with the covering-up of the 28 pages of the 2002 Congressional Joint Inquiry into 9/11, is going to be the subject of a politically very important meeting that will be held this coming weekend in New York City—in Harlem, in point of fact—which LaRouche's Schiller Institute has called, and which will include a number of very prominent speakers. And we'll hear a little bit more about that later on [see article in National]. But the LaRouche movement is right at the center of making sure that we deactivate politically the operation that has created this problem in the first place.
The final feature which I'd like to draw people's attention to about why LaRouche is saying that this situation around ISIS, or IS, or ISIL, or whatever you care to call it, is so potentially dangerous strategically, is that this is directly linked into the anti-Russian Chechen terrorist operation which has existed for years, if not decades. It is pretty well documented that approximately half of the actual leadership of ISIS in Iraq and Syria are, in fact, Chechens. And top leaders of that group have stated explicitly, for the record, that their strategic target is actually President Vladimir Putin of Russia.
So, the danger here is of a spreading war, as LaRouche indicated, which can spread rapidly, within days or weeks, across Europe, and into Russia as well. And thus the danger of global thermonuclear warfare, which is the British Empire's intention under the conditions of collapse of their imperial system.
Storm Over Asia
Ogden: The situation that we're seeing right now, with the immediate danger of the explosion of a general war in the weeks ahead, emanating from this region in the Middle East, was forecast in precise terms by Lyndon LaRouche in a television broadcast that he did in 1999, called "Storm Over Asia"—so 15 years ago. In that broadcast, LaRouche identified the Chechen war, which was occurring at that time against Russia, as a "mercenary war, directly sponsored and promoted by the British Empire and its allies," and as the direct outgrowth of a centuries-old British policy to weaken and destroy Russia, India, and also China.
In that broadcast, LaRouche stated: "This war, if continued, can lead to general nuclear war." And he elaborated that, saying:
"If these nations are pushed to the wall by a continuing escalation of a war which is modeled on the wars that the British ran against Russia, China, and so forth in the 19th Century and early 20th Century, this will lead to the point that Russia has to make the decision to accept the disintegration of Russia as a nation, or to resort to the means it has, to exact terrible penalties on those who are attacking it, going closer and closer to the source, the forces behind the mercenaries, which of course includes Turkey, which is a prime NATO asset being used as a cover for much of this mercenary operation in the North Caucasus and Central Asia."
So, I'd like to play you a short clip from the very beginning of that "Storm Over Asia" broadcast, so that you can hear LaRouche say this in his own words:
Lyndon LaRouche [on video]: What you're seeing is a war in the North Caucasus region of southern Russia. What you're also seeing, is a war which has broken out simultaneously in the border between Pakistan and India.
The forces behind these attacks on Russia and on India are the same. They are a mercenary force which was first set into motion by policies adopted at a Trilateral Commission meeting in Kyoto, Japan in 1975: policies originally of Brzezinski and his number-two man there, Samuel P. Huntington; the policies which were continued by then-Trilateral Commission member, that is, back in 1975: George Bush, before he became Vice President.
These are policies which were continued by George Bush as Vice President. Under Bush, this became known as the "Iran-Contra" drug-finance-link operations of mercenaries deployed with private funding all over the world, recruited from Islamic and other countries, and targeting Russia's flank.
This mercenary force, created then, still exists. The primary responsibility for creating the force, was the government of the United Kingdom—most notably, most emphatically, the government of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, a policy which has been accelerated and continued in full madness by the present Prime Minister, Tony Blair, of the United Kingdom.
This war, if continued, using mercenaries, can lead to nuclear general war. The major powers principally threatened today by this mercenary operation, are two of the world's largest nations: China and India; China on its western borders, India on its northern borders.
Of course, Iran is also threatened, but, more notably, Russia. If these nations are pushed to the wall by a continuing escalation of a war which is modeled on the wars which the British ran against Russia, China, and so forth during the 19th Century and early 20th Century, this will lead to the point that Russia has to make the decision to accept disintegration of Russia as a nation, or to resort to the means it has, to exact terrible penalties on those who are attacking it, going closer and closer to the source, the forces behind the mercenaries—which includes, of course, Turkey, which is a prime NATO asset being used as a cover for much of this mercenary operation in the North Caucasus and in Central Asia.
This is our danger....
Ogden: So, this was a broadcast from 1999—again, 15 years ago. But the scenario that we see playing out right now, with the role of Turkey vis-à-vis the so-called Islamic State, openly backing the current ISIS offensive against the Kurdish city of Kobani, as Dennis mentioned, is precisely as Mr. LaRouche spelled it out in the broadcast that you just heard, as well as the role of the Gulf countries such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar in funding these mercenary operations.
And, just as LaRouche said in the broadcast that you just heard: This is the direct continuation of the Chechen war against Russia in the 1990s, including, in very large part, involving exactly the same individuals, who were veterans of those Chechen wars.
As Dennis mentioned, there was an article that was published in Bloomberg yesterday titled "Islamic State Grooms Chechen Fighters Against Putin," which reports that one of the top ISIS commanders is a Georgian who goes by the name "Omar the Chechen"—his nom de guerre is "Omar al-Shishani"—who openly boasts that the ultimate target of the Islamic State is Russia's President Vladimir Putin. And according to intelligence reports, there are over 1,000 Chechen nationals from Pankisi, the region between Chechnya and South Ossetia, that are currently fighting with the ISIS forces.
So, as you can see, LaRouche's forecast that he published in 1999 was spot-on, and if you look at the interview that Dennis mentioned from yesterday, from the Russian Ambassador Popov, where he states, in RIA Novosti's paraphrase, that only joint efforts of the international community and major economic powers can pave the road to victory against the Islamic State, and any other strategy is useless.
Only the collective effort of Syria and Iran, and of Russia, China, India, and the other BRICS countries, can defeat this evil. Everything else is a façade, he said. And, LaRouche said yesterday, the single biggest obstacle preventing the effective collaboration between the BRICS and the United States, is Obama. And therefore, the single most effective action that can be taken to defeat this threat, would be the impeachment of Obama coming from within the United States.
Now, Helga Zepp-LaRouche stressed yesterday, that when you look at the conjunction of ISIS and the threat of Ebola, with ISIS threatening all of Western civilization, and Ebola threatening the entire globe, the policy of geopolitical confrontation against Russia must be halted immediately, or else we face global genocide.
So, Dennis, in the context of what Helga said, what must be done right now through collaboration with Russia and the BRICS, to defeat these two existential threats, ISIS and Ebola?
The New 'Black Death'
Small: Well, the source of both of these threats to the existence of civilization is the same: It's the British Empire, and it is the intentional policy of the British Empire. I'm not claiming that necessarily Ebola as a virus was cooked up in some laboratory in a London basement—that's not necessarily how it works. The way it works, is that the policies of the International Monetary Fund, and of the Troika, and of the banks, intentionally create conditions in which diseases such as Ebola spread wildly.
And Europe, even more than the United States, is very well aware of this, and are rightly terrified about what's going on. They faced a situation like this, exactly, in the 14th Century with the Black Death, the bubonic plague, which spread across Europe—again, an intentional policy of economic collapse—combined with the insanity of the Flagellants and the other religious sects and fundamentalist groups, just like today, which were unleashed to induce a condition of irrationalism and hysteria and panic, opposition to science, within the population, to guarantee that these destructive policies would take root.
Now, one is reminded when one thinks about this, of what Nicolas of Cusa said in his De Pace Fidei, On the Peace of Faith, where he begins by talking about the horrors which had just occurred in the sack of Constantinople in Europe, which led Cusa to pose the issue of: How do we get out of this crisis? How do we create a concept of man, which can get rid of this bestialism and satanism which was spreading at the time? And we will indeed have to turn to Cusa, again, for the concepts which are necessary to turn the course of the planet around.
Now, I think if you simply look at a map, you can get an idea of why the Europeans are in fact so terrorized, and rightly so, of what's going on. You have in the explosive red marking on the right side, the Iraq-Syria situation, where the ISIS/British terrorist operation threatens to spread throughout the Mediterranean region, as LaRouche has warned, within a period of weeks, and also spreading northward into Russia, as we have documented. But then you have the Ebola crisis, which is centered on three western African nations at this point, Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone, which has already spread into Europe, in particular, through Spain.
Now, this is a pincers operation! It's a pincers operation in almost a classic military fashion, and the question is, how is Europe, and how is the United States, going to respond to this?
Just to characterize this, I would like to read a quote, which may be familiar to some of you:
"This sore affliction entered so deep into the minds of men and women, that in the horror thereof, brother was forsaken by brother, nephew by uncle, brother by sister, and oftentimes, husband by wife. Nay, what is more, and scarcely to be believed, fathers and mothers were found to abandon their own children—untended, unvisited—to their fate, as if they had been strangers."
That is a quote from Boccaccio's Decameron, describing the Black Death, but it could very well have been written about the situation which developed this week in Spain, and which has been going on for weeks and months in western Africa.
There is a Spanish nurse, or nurse's aide, who is infected with Ebola. What is happening at this point, is that there are not enough—there are very few doctors and nurses who are prepared to provide her treatment at this point, because they are terrified that the government has taken down the capabilities of actually safely treating people who have these diseases. They don't know how to do it, they don't have the conditions to do it, and the Spanish government, under the direction of the Troika, has destroyed the health-care system that could deal with this kind of crisis.
This woman has been taken to the Carlos III Hospital in Madrid, that is the one major center for trauma and infectious diseases in Spain, and it is being dismantled and privatized, because of the policies of the British Empire.
Not only that: You have conditions in Liberia and in western Africa, there have been photographs which have circulated around the world over the Internet, showing, for example, a young child, a ten-year-old by the name of Saah Exco, who is simply left to die in the streets—no mother, no father, no uncle, no brother, no one to take care of this child.
And these are the kinds of conditions, which are a moral disaster for humanity, and an economic disaster, because of the direct policy of this system.
The question that is posed, because of the Spanish question, in particular, is whether Spain will be—as the LaRouche movement had posed in a programmatic study over a year ago—the bridge of the World Land-Bridge into Africa, to bring industrial development, to bring infrastructure and the particular project of a tunnel under the Gibraltar Strait, to connect the Eurasian Land-Bridge and the high-speed rail lines into Africa, to then create the infrastructural development throughout the region, along with health and sanitation and so on, to bring that continent back to life from its current trajectory towards death.
And the question is whether Spain is going to be the bridge for that positive development from Eurasia into Africa, or if instead, Spain is going to be the bridge across which the death march of Ebola and other so far unnamed diseases, march into the center of Europe. And that is a very real question today.
In fact, even the President of the World Bank, Jim [Yong] Kim, in a speech just a few days ago, at the meeting of the IMF and World Bank now ongoing in Washington, stated the following: "We, the world community, in the Ebola crisis, we have failed miserably. Now that there are cases in Spain and the United States, the chance of the virus going to other European countries is fairly high. We were tested by Ebola, and we failed. We failed miserably in our response. So I say to finance ministers, look at what's happening in Spain right now. It is going to get much worse."
Now, the irony, of course, is that the policies of the institution over which he presides, the World Bank, and the IMF, are the ones guaranteeing these deaths. These are the people, these accountants, these finance ministers, these bankers, are the ones that kill with sharp pencils. (People don't use pencils a lot these days, but you get the image.) The accountants who write people off—"We don't have the money, we can't spend that. People are just gonna have to die." Like Obamacare. Same policy.
Now, this is not just Europe. This is the United States that is immediately in the marching path of the diseases created by the British Empire's disintegration. And I would like to quote what was stated just a couple of days ago, by the head of the U.S. Southern Command, Gen. John Kelly (who, incidentally, headed up the response for the United States to the Haiti earthquake a few years ago), and in a speech on Oct. 8, at the National Defense University here in Washington. He said, referring to the reports that there would be approximately 1.4 million people infected by Ebola by the end of 2014, with 62% of them dying: "This is horrific. And there is no way we can keep Ebola contained in West Africa. So, much like West Africa, it will rage for a period of time in Central America and in the Caribbean. There will be mass migration into the United States. They will run away from Ebola, or if they suspect they are infected, they will try to get to the United States for treatment. All of this was made worse by the drug trade, and by the crime syndicates that traffic in human beings." Both of which, incidentally, were controlled by the British Empire through their Dope, Inc. apparatus.
An Intentional Policy
Now what LaRouche added to this picture, and it's absolutely critical to understanding it, in discussions we've had with him over the last few days, is that this is an intentional policy. This is exactly like what happened in the 14th-Century Black Death. It is an intentional policy of takedown of the economic potential of regions, which is what opens the door wide to the disintegration and the degeneration of the biosphere, so that inferior species actually take over from superior ones. So you get a virus like Ebola wiping out mankind—or the Black Death, in this process of devolution, happened in the same way in the 14th Century.
Now, just to give a very quick idea of this: Much, much more can be said, but to give some idea of what's going on in western Africa, we're looking at the nations of Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea in particular. We have just a comparative reading of the level of poverty in this area, as compared to Spain, Germany, and the United States—where it's bad enough. And I don't vouch for those figures—I think they're much worse in the United States, Germany, and Spain than they indicate. But it does give you an idea. In Liberia, 80% of the population lives in poverty; in Sierra Leone, 70%; Guinea, 47%.
Now, in terms of some of the basic health infrastructure, compare what you see in hospital beds per 10,000 population; and then doctors per 100,000 population. On the left side of the graph, you see again, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea, which are hardly discernible, because the level of actual health infrastructure, of hospital beds per 10,000 people, is minuscule as compared to Spain, Germany, or the United States. On the doctors per 100,000, you can't even see Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea on this graphic, because they're virtually nonexistent, compared even to the inadequate provisions that exist in Spain, Germany, and the United States.
I ask you: If the policies of the Troika and of the IMF continue to be implemented in Spain, with the takedown of health infrastructure there; if on that last graphic you drop Spain's and Germany's defenses down to the level of western Africa, what do you think is going to happen? If you drop the United States down, as is occurring under Obamacare, what do you think is going to happen? This is all predictable, it's lawful, and it's intentional.
Where the Solutions Lie
There are solutions, and there are answers to this. And they have to do with the policies which are being implemented at this point by the other half of humanity—that is to say, the half of humanity that is not dominated by the bankrupt financial system of the British Empire—the BRICS and allied countries which we will be further discussing, where developments in technology, and especially in high-energy-flux-density technologies, are moving forward. I would like to recall for people a graph that we showed here previously, which is to compare nuclear energy as a percentage of total electricity produced in a number of countries. Again, Spain and Germany at the top, where the percentage of nuclear energy has been dropping, has been plummeting from 1990 until the present. Whereas, the three lower graphs are BRICS countries—Russia, India, and Brazil—where, although they started off much lower, they are moving in the direction that is the only way you can actually address these kinds of problems, which is ongoing scientific and technological advance.
What is projected for the future in these countries is even more revealing, because the way things are now going under current policy, Germany by the year 2020 is going to have zero nuclear energy in their mix. Spain is rapidly heading in the same direction; whereas Russia, Brazil, and India are moving upwards.
And this is only fission; the real story is fusion power and the even further advances in technology which are required. But I think it points in the direction of the kinds of policies that are required to actually stop what the British Empire is otherwise unleashing against the planet.
Ogden: Currently, in Washington, D.C., is the meeting of the IMF and the World Bank, with a meeting of the BRICS happening on the sidelines. And representatives of the LaRouche movement are as we speak, in Washington, D.C., in the vicinity of these meetings, and in these meetings themselves, circulating this leaflet—"A Life and Death Choice Between Two Systems." And I think that distinction was made very vividly by what Dennis just went through.
Now, let me just ask Megan Beets to come to the podium to pose the next question.
Leadership: The Concept of Immortality
Beets: Dennis, to pick up on the theme that you ended with—the rise of the BRICS nations and the allied nations: In the recent period, we've seen some incredible leadership initiatives and development initiatives coming from the nations of South America in particular, particularly from the leadership of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner from Argentina.
However, now we also have great reason to pay attention to another nation with which Mr. LaRouche has had a very unique history, and that is Mexico. It was announced last week that Mexican President Enrique Peña-Nieto will travel to China on Nov. 13, to work out the details of joint Chinese-Mexican infrastructure development projects to occur in Mexico, totaling roughly $3 billion. Now, among these various transportation, agriculture, port, and energy projects are: 1) a high-speed rail line which is planned to run from Mexico City to Querétaro in the center of Mexico. And very significantly, the long-planned trans-isthmus railway, which is said to function as a dry canal, which will connect the city of Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz on the Gulf of Mexico, with Salina Cruz, Oaxaca on the Pacific Ocean. And this trans-isthmus railway will not just be a rail line, but will function as a development corridor, with centers of industrial production, new cities, and so on.
Now, the reason that I want to highlight this particular project is not only because of its scale, but also because this project was promoted in the late '70s and early '80s by then-President of Mexico, and a very good friend of both Lyndon and Helga LaRouche, José López Portillo, who fought to free his nation from colonialism—from the policies being imposed upon Mexico by the British Empire under the auspices of the IMF and the World Bank, and with the great help of Henry Kissinger. López Portillo was subsequently driven from office, and instead of his vision for the development of Mexico, the British policy came to bear. And that resulted in the condition in which we see Mexico today, with the rule of drug cartels over the government, kidnappings, massive unemployment, a completely collapsed industrial base, and so on.
Now, I think that it's quite striking in the context of this emerging world system, that today we are seeing the return of such leaders as López Portillo, just as we are seeing the return of the great leader Indira Gandhi, walking again in India, with the actions of Prime Minister Modi. And I think this recalls what LaRouche said in his webcast last week, on the subject of immortality:
"The thing is, that even when life is taken away from you, you are still doing the kinds of things which create a state of the future of humanity; which humanity has never known before. This is the principle of immortality, as taught by all people who understood the idea of human immortality. The objective is to reach human immortality—that is, to create things which are necessary to mankind, necessary to the purpose of the existence of mankind, and which have become the fruit that drives the creation of a higher state of mankind than ever existed before."
So Dennis, I'd like to ask you to comment on the significance of this development in Mexico, within the context of the newly emerging world system, and upon the role of López Portillo.
Small: I think the heart of the issue is what you identified in terms of the concept of immortality. And this actually takes us back to Nicholas of Cusa's treatment of the same problem in De Pace Fidei, which I was referring to earlier. Faced with a situation very similar to today, where the planet was being wiped out by the ideas associated with the creation of the New Dark Age, of the Black Death of the time, and the rampant irrationalism—both in the form of hedonism and associated Flagellant movements that had swept across Europe. And faced with the atrocities which were presenting an image of Man which was not Man at all, but of Satan—sort of like the British Empire today—Cusa's way of addressing of this issue in De Pace Fidei was to take it to the highest level: What is the concept of Man that is required? What is Man that makes it possible for him to not act in that fashion, and what form of organization of society is required to foster that, and to destroy the bestial outlook? And the origins of the sovereign nation-state, the origins of science itself—in particular, sciences such as astronomy and a concept that later evolves in Kepler, of the Solar System—is at the heart of this thing, because the issue here is what is the intention behind actions—not the mechanical actions per se of Man, but the intention governing those actions. Which, incidentally, is the same dominant concept of the Solar System which we were bequeathed by Kepler. His discovery of the Solar System is actually the intention of the Solar System, and yes, there is an intention. As strange as that might sound to materialists today, that is the case.
Now, that directly has to do not only with Mexico, but with the entire BRICS development, because it is demonstrably the case that the British are palpably terrified by the BRICS developments, and the way this has exploded onto the world scene, really over the course of this year. And more than fear of specific developments, like the space technology developments coming from China and Russia, like work in the nuclear field—both fission and fusion—coming from these countries, beyond even Argentina's complete repudiation of the vulture funds and the ideas of speculation, what the British are actually terrified about, is that LaRouche's method works.
And by LaRouche's method, I don't mean that in a proprietary sense of, you know, he has it copyrighted or something like that. It's Cusa's method; it's Leibniz's method; it's Kepler's method. It's the idea that Man, as a distinct species, is governed by his intention, meaning his ability to create. And if individuals, leaders, and nations are governed by an intention of creating a future worthy of our species, they're going to act in such a fashion that it will be very difficult for the British Empire to defeat them. Because everything that the British Empire throws against them—threats, assassination attempts, economic warfare, financial warfare, and so on and so forth—actually backfires; it boomerangs. It's a principle of—I don't know, the "intellectual boomerang" you could call it—if the motivating intention is what Cusa laid out, and which is most identified today with LaRouche's method, and which is today also embodied in what the Chinese government is doing with their Confucian-related principles that President Xi Jinping has presented.
So, again, as with the Solar System per se, it is intentions and not mechanics which is actually the governing power of the universe, both politically and physically. And in that sense, it is Man's immortality—that is to say, that which allows Man to act outside clock time per se, both in the past and the present and the future, as exemplified by López Portillo, or as exemplified by Prime Minister Modi, as you indicated, which is a power which the British have a lot of trouble dealing with.
Looming Financial Explosion
Now, that said, let me point to one or two specifics in the current situation. First of all, the crisis is here; the global financial crisis is upon us. It's crashing down upon our heads. Even Die Welt in Germany had an article this week where they expressed great shock and horror at the fact that world debt has grown since the 2008 crisis, that the policies implemented have only increased the debt—which is, of course, the case—to somewhere in the range of $200 trillion, they say, and that's ten times larger than global gross domestic product, they point out.
That's true, but what Die Welt does not mention, is that global derivatives and financial aggregates are actually ten times larger than global debt alone. What we're actually looking at is a financial bubble, which is in the range—as we have stated—of $2 quadrillion. There is absolutely no way that this can possibly be paid off. The population of the planet is being wiped out by policies attempting to maintain that political control and that bubble, as we see in the case of Ebola and health care—and as we see in the policies now of the head of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, who has implemented a policy of quantitative easing, which is so bad that it's modelled directly on the Federal Reserve of the United States.
Now, into this situation, I think it's important to note the particular role that Argentina and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner have played. And I do this to get back to your issue of Mexico; I haven't forgotten the question that you asked. But the role that Cristina Fernández is playing today is not unlike that which López Portillo was playing 30-odd years ago. They are moving forward: The more threats they get, the more they distance themselves and break from the trans-Atlantic system. They are in the process of nationalizing the banking system; they may not call it that, but that's what's going on. They are imposing currency controls and capital controls, exchange controls. They are also threatening to, and actually in the process of nationalizing foreign trade, because those who now control it, the large grain cartels internationally, have withheld exports of Argentine grains, and therefore deprived the country of $10 billion that they should have at this point, as part of financial warfare. But all of that is backfiring.
There was yesterday a rather notable international press conference held between Fernández and Putin, by videoconference hook-up, in which they announced that the Russian RT TV in Spanish was providing a digital signal for the first time for all of Argentina, so that they could have access to information not only about Russia, but about the entire world. And both political leaders commented on the importance of this kind of cooperation among nations: to know each other and to work with each other outside the boundaries of what the trans-Atlantic system is. And that clearly does panic the British Empire.
Similarly, the new Chinese ambassador in Argentina again announced that China will not back the vulture funds against Argentina, but will back Argentina in all of its efforts.
I also want to emphasize, because I think we're going to be hearing much more about this in the weeks upcoming, the fact that the United Nations Human Rights Commission, after having adopted an Argentine proposal to form a committee to investigate vulture fund activity, not only against Argentina, but against the Democratic Republic of Congo—they were involved in Liberia as well—and also against Greece and other countries.
The head of that is Jean Ziegler, a feisty, 80-year-old Swiss investigator, who is the bane of the banks, because he has revealed a lot of what they have actually done. And what he said is, we're going to look into this Argentine case, and we're going to show that the vulture funds are supporting what he called a "cannibalistic system." He said, "This is a cannibalistic order. It's an absurd and deadly order. Why do I call it cannibalistic? Because the victims it creates are completely avoidable. One example is sufficient—chronic hunger. The malnutrition which causes vast loss of life in the world would be easily preventable. All it would take is international will to end it. Hunger is a form of organized crime," he said. "The future depends on us; that we act and solve problems. The world order is truly intolerable, but we can change it."
The Case of López Portillo
Now, keep those thoughts and ideas in your mind as we review briefly the issue of Mexico. Because Mexico has been thoroughly taken over by the British Empire's Dope, Inc. apparatus, in particular since 2009. That doesn't mean that everyone good in Mexico is wiped out. Many of the good people have been wiped out, but two things remain. One is that there are still nationalist forces, pro-development forces in Mexico, that, if the international correlation of forces is such—i.e., with Obama out of the Presidency would help a lot—will move their nation forward in consonance with other countries. And the second thing, which is very closely related to the first, is that ideas, "universal ideas from the past," are still acting, as we see in the question of López Portillo.
The specific case that you cited, Megan, of this industrial railroad crossing the Isthmus of Tehuantepec from Coatzacoalcos to Salina Cruz, was a proposal of López Portillo's, and it was discussed with LaRouche and his representatives in Mexico at the time. And it was not just to build a railroad across the isthmus, but rather to have industrial ports on both sides, and two more on each coast as well—to set up nuclear plants in these areas, as part of a plan for 20 nuclear plants across the country. And that was the actual intention here; it was a totally forward-looking idea. And that is what is now being discussed again. The intention of Mexico, the desire of Mexico, never disappeared; but now they have somebody they can to talk to about it seriously, which is China.
So, you can get an idea of the way the global changes actually activate forces which the British thought were long dead, but they are wrong. Now, it is these ideas which define the kind of new system which the world requires, which LaRouche has been discussing, where it's not simply sovereign nation-states, but it's a community of principle of sovereign nation-states, guided towards an intention of realizing what Man's actual potential is, his true nature as a creative being. And we have to define the principles of that new system, which I think could be adequately summarized as the intention to do good. And Lyndon LaRouche's role in this thing has been a dominant force for decades, four decades or more. And in the case of Mexico, we see that most clearly.
I think probably the best way to give viewers of this webcast a sense of that, is to play you a video clip which centers upon two speeches given by López Portillo—first as President before the United Nations, and then a second one, with a brief introduction which I provided a number of years ago, when we first made this public in English for people to see.
Video. Dennis Small: López Portillo's was the last administration where there was actual economic growth in Mexico. His government was committed to technological advance, to using Mexico's oil to trade for technology with the United States and other nations. It was committed to industrialization; it was committed to nuclear energy; it was committed city building; and it was committed to stopping speculation, and replacing the global system of speculation and free trade with one committed to production.
For all of these reasons, José López Portillo got into an enormous political fight with the International Monetary Fund, and he fought like a true statesman. President López Portillo was one of the very few sitting heads of state—Prime Minister Indira Gandhi of India was another—but López Portillo was one of the very few who met with Lyndon LaRouche, which he did in 1982, to discuss these policy alternatives. Mr. LaRouche subsequently wrote a book on the policy alternatives which he had discussed in Mexico, which was called Operation Juárez. López Portillo's views coincided on many points with those of LaRouche, and he stated them without fear, and like a statesman on many occasions. Perhaps one of the most historic was his October 1982 address to the United Nations General Assembly, where he issued a clarion call for a new world economic order:
President López Portillo [English voiceover:
... But the most constant concern and activity of Mexico in the international arena is the transition to a new economic order. We developing countries do not want to be subjugated. We cannot paralyze our economies, or plunge our peoples into greater misery in order to pay a debt on which servicing tripled without our participation or responsibility, and with terms which are imposed on us. We countries of the South are about to run out of playing chips, and were we not able to stay in the game, it would end in defeat for everyone.
I want to be emphatic: We countries of the South have not sinned against the world economy. Our efforts to grow in order to conquer hunger, disease, ignorance and dependency have not caused the international crisis. After major corrective efforts in economic affairs, my government decided to attack the evil at its root, and to extirpate it once and for all. There was obviously an inconsistency between internal development policies and an erratic and restrictive international financial structure. A reasonable growth policy was irreconcilable with freedom to speculate in foreign exchange. That is why we established exchange controls. Given our 3,000-kilometer border with the United States, exchange controls can only function through a banking system that follows the policies of its country and government, and not its own speculative interests or the fluctuations of international financial chaos. That is why we nationalized the banks.
We have been a living example of what occurs when that enormous, volatile, and speculative mass of capital goes all over the world in search of high interest rates, tax havens, and supposed political and exchange stability. It decapitalizes entire countries, and leaves destruction in its wake. The world should be able to control this. It is inconceivable that we cannot find a formula that, without limiting necessary movements in flows, would permit regulation of a phenomenon that damages everyone. It is imperative that the new international economic order establish a link between refinancing the development of countries that suffer capital flight, and the capital that has fled. At least, they should get the crumbs from their own bread.
The reduction of available credit for developing countries has serious implications, not only for the countries themselves, but also for production and employment in the industrial countries. Let us not continue in this vicious circle. It could be the beginning of a new medieval Dark Age, without the possibility of a Renaissance.
We cannot fail! There is good reason to be alarmist. Not only the heritage of our civilization is at stake, but also the very survival of our children, our future generations, and of the human species. Let us make what is reasonable, possible. Let us recall the tragic conditions in which we created this organization and the hopes that were placed in it. The place is here, and the time is now.
Small: It was the same López Portillo, 16 years later, and now the elder statesman, who responded to the LaRouche message in the following way:
López Portillo [English voiceover]: I congratulate Doña Helga [Zepp-LaRouche] for these words. It impressed me especially, because first, they trapped me in the Apocalypse; but then she showed me the staircase by which we can get to a promised land. Many thanks, Doña Helga.
Doña Helga—and here I wish to congratulate her husband, Lyndon LaRouche, and it is now necessary for the world to listen to the wise words of Lyndon LaRouche. Now, it is through the voice of his wife, as we have had the privilege of hearing. How important that they enlighten us as to what is happening in the world, as to what will happen, and as to what can be corrected. How important that someone dedicates their time, their generosity, and their enthusiasm to that endeavor.
For my part, I fulfilled a period of responsibility. And I can report, in a somewhat dramatic way, what happens to national economies in an international financial order such as that which has ordered our affairs since Bretton Woods.
Space: The Challenge of the Future
Beets: This will be the final question, which I would like to direct to Ben. Earlier this week, at the all-Russian science festival being held in Chelyabinsk, Russia, one of Russia's most experienced cosmonauts, Alexander Volkov, told the audience, "There is water on the Moon, and there is helium-3, which is better than any other energy source existing on Earth. One day we will run out of oil and coal, and mankind will need energy. Then we will start supplying it from the neighboring planet."
Volkov also stressed that mankind is not yet ready to send people to Mars, that that is still several decades away. But that in the meantime, we can and must start developing the Moon.
So here, Volkov, as a Russian, is adding his voice to that of the Chinese, who are currently in the midst of carrying out a quite ambitious, multi-staged program geared toward developing the resources on the Moon—most especially helium-3—for mankind's use on Earth, and out into the Solar System.
So, Ben, I'd like to ask you what we could and should expect from such a potential collaboration led by these great nations on the development of Moon and beyond.
Deniston: Well, a lot can be said on that issue, but in the context of what we just went through in this whole dialogue, of this discussion here today, this just serves as a critical reference point for where mankind can go right now. And if you look at what we've painted in terms of the horrors of this imperial system, versus this serious intention and action to break from that system, we should look at this perspective from that standpoint. This is where mankind can go, if we—as LaRouche said—get Obama out, get the United States on board, and get serious about working toward the future of mankind.
I think this is exciting, because what China has done on this issue is incredibly important, focusing on the Moon, focusing on helium-3. This is the prospective best available fusion fuel to be developed from the Moon. Russia's adding their voice to this is incredibly important. And what India has done recently is incredibly important, with their Mars mission.
I think the bottom line is the challenge to all mankind today, that mankind's existence depends upon going into space—that that is the future of mankind.
Now, people ask: Why? There are all kinds of reasons why. You could say we're going to run out of oil; we're going to run out of this; we want to see if the Moon's really made out of green cheese or not, whatever you want to say. But I think the only real issue is that mankind is a creative species; and if mankind ever stops being a creative species, and stops developing, and stops moving towards new levels, we cease being mankind. We're effectively denying what it is that makes mankind mankind.
So, space is the future, and the Moon is the first step. And the perspective for an international effort for the development of the Moon, for the development of helium-3 and fusion resources on the Moon, is probably one of the most important challenges for mankind today. And this will enable the defense of Earth from threatening asteroids and comets. This will enable the development of an advanced fusion economy on the Earth and in space. And this will enable mankind to develop the whole inner Solar System.
But I just want to underscore what Mr. LaRouche has stressed in his remarks on this issue over the past months, which is that the fundamental issue is: We don't know how to do all of this yet. We have certain ideas about how to do certain aspects of this, but we don't have all this figured out. We don't yet have a complete plan for how to achieve these goals. So, what does that mean? That means that nations collaborating and taking on these common unknown questions, is the key to the future of humanity, because these are questions for all of mankind. These are not questions just for Russia; these are not questions just for the United States; these are not questions just for China. These are questions and challenges that all mankind faces, that will affect all mankind. And these are questions about the nature of mankind and mankind's position within the universe.
And LaRouche has stressed that our most important reference-point for tackling these questions is the work of Kepler. And he's pointed many times to the work that his "Basement" scientific team has done. He's pointed to the work that Megan has done, understanding and presenting Kepler's discoveries, because that is the real issue on the table now. It's an issue of developing a deeper understanding and appreciation for the role of the human mind in the universe, and in the Solar System immediately, specifically as Kepler defined it.
So I think, in LaRouche's view, that element, that aspect of Kepler's definition of the role of the human mind in the universe, is what has to become the guiding post, the guiding conception for tackling these challenges on the Moon, and moving mankind into this new system.
So, that's a brief answer, and we'll have plenty more on this subject over the coming weeks.
