In Memoriam

Butch Valdes,
Philippine Fighter for All Mankind

by Michael Billington

[Print version of this article]

Perhaps the best way to introduce these words honoring the life of Antonio “Butch” Valdes, who passed away in his home in Manila, Philippines, on Dec. 30, 2022, is to quote his words at the passing of Lyndon LaRouche on February 12, 2019:

Today, the Philippine LaRouche Society joins millions around the world in mourning the loss of a truly great man. Lyndon LaRouche is God’s gift to modern man, the most intelligent and morally courageous human being I have ever had the privilege of meeting in my entire life. As many great men in the past, the magnitude of his contribution to humanity, his true greatness, will be realized globally, only after his death.

Sharing his genius in teaching contemporary man how to think, how to discover truth, how to study history, how the future determines the present, that we human beings are immortal, having been created in His image and likeness, and how important it is to share all we know with our fellow men in a spirit of agapē, so that each of us can discover the very reason why God has created us in the first place.

Lyndon LaRouche may have left his physical existence, but he lives on through us, as we share his ideas as our own, with the same unselfish intention of improving the quality of life of every human being on this planet.

I thank God for Lyndon LaRouche. We pray that modern man has learned well enough from him, not to self-destruct.

Rest in peace, Lyn … in God’s eternal embrace.

Butch carried on LaRouche’s legacy in many areas—politics, science, philosophy, culture, and more. Reviewing his life’s work is a powerful lesson for all of us, that being a conveyor of truth—being “God’s strong right hand,” as LaRouche often said—requires that we all master the profound ideas which unite the many disciplines that mankind is continually challenged to further master.

Philippine Politics

Butch came from a substantial family in the Philippines. His father, who headed an accounting firm in Manila, served as the Philippine Ambassador to Japan and also to the Vatican. He first met the LaRouche movement while in Japan and encouraged Butch to contact us as well, which he did in the 1980s. Butch often told the story of his father sending him a copy of EIR with the cover story “The Philippines: Kissinger’s Next Iran.” It was among the first of many articles on the U.S. plot to bring down the government of Ferdinand Marcos Sr., an operation that served as a model for many “color revolutions” run subsequently by the U.S. and British intelligence.

In 2000 Butch set up the Philippine LaRouche Society. This author maintained a weekly correspondence by phone and email with Butch from that time on, and occasionally visited, meeting with Butch’s wide circle of associates in government and in the media, and with the early recruits to the youth movement within the Society, engaging them in singing Classical music.

Butch is known widely across the Philippines from his weekly radio broadcast on Radio Mindanao, broadcast nationally and internationally on the internet. In the past several years, he also presented three or more video programs on behalf of the political party he founded in 2003, Katipunan ng Demokratikong Pilipino (KDP), the Union of Democratic Filipinos, co-hosted with his first son, Itos. His broadcasts analyzed both domestic and international events, always locating them within the context of the global financial and strategic situation, insisting that understanding local events requires viewing them from “above”— from the perspective and context of the systemic failure faced by the global financial empire centered in London and Wall Street, whose oligarchical leaders have held most of the world economy in their grip.

In addition to the KDP, Butch created several national organizations to address the changing environment within his country, including “Save the Nation” and “Citizens National Guard.” During the Presidency of Joseph Estrada (1998–2001), he also served as Under Secretary of Education.

His mission-focus was always to free his country from the grip of power held by the international financial cartels, and to counter the power and influence of the oligarchical families domestically. He insisted especially that the nation’s utilities must be released from the effective control wielded by the banking and related families, in order to truly serve the people and develop the real economy.

He captured his view of the United States in a report published in EIR in October 2003, on the visit of President George H.W. Bush to Manila. The visit, he wrote,

went like clockwork, presumably due to the extensive security considerations by both administrations. The streets where his motorcade passed to the Malacanang Presidential Palace … were devoid of people…. The wariness on the part of security groups was evident throughout the visit, justifiably so, considering the level of hatred America seems to have brought upon itself these past years.

He contrasted this to the visit paid in 1960 by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who

rode in a white Cadillac convertible, seated on top of the back seat, waving to the thousands of admiring and grateful Filipinos lined along the streets to Malacanang. In contrast, today’s world leader rides in a limousine—one of three identical vehicles, to confuse possible attackers—a bomb- and bullet-proof Cadillac from which he did not venture to wave to the police, who were his only onlookers.

The Philosopher Statesman

Butch was invited by the World Philosophical Forum to address an international conference held in Manila in September 2019. He titled his address “Peace Through the Advantage of the Other.” His address is reminiscent of speeches given by Lyndon LaRouche, who always addressed the financial and strategic crisis facing the world, but in the process gave lessons in history and philosophy.

Butch situated the address in the “current political and economic crisis now confronting the world,” noting the “regime-change wars” in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and other countries, as well as the tension in the South China Sea, a militarism which was “threatening global conflict which could very well annihilate present civilization. Thirty thousand or more nuclear warheads in the possession of the superpowers, at 20 megatons each, are ready to be unleashed in a war of total destruction, with the capacity of killing the world’s population 20 times over.”

The U.S., he noted, had shifted 60% of its naval power to Southeast Asia.

He then located the crisis in the longer span of history, pointing to the Peace of Westphalia of 1648, when “all the warring parties finally came together,” after 30 years of religious war in Europe, the “first time that a European community of sovereign states was established…, only possible because all of its members recognized each other as having equal legal standing, and guaranteed each other their independence.”

This was only possible because the participants agreed that

the identity of this new alliance—of this community of states—could never be only for self-preservation. It would be morally justified only if it realized ideas and principles which had a higher unifying purpose than just the survival of the states themselves. Such principles exist in the treaties of 1648. Some were expressed for the first time in history. These negotiations lasted for four years, 1644-48, and in the end, Protestants, Catholics, monarchies, and republican forms of government were treated as having equal status in negotiations and in the treaty. Cardinal Jules Mazarin, as the leader of France, the ascendant nation among others, is credited with initiating the move towards peace. The guarantees of independence, recognition of sovereignty, the cessation of hostilities, and forgiveness of damages done to lives and properties, were the result of the principle laid down by the leaders of these nations.

The agreement called for the principle of promoting the advantage of the other. All proposals coming from every country involved must be to the advantage of the other. This is a very precious idea. It is essential to have peace. It is the idea of Nicolaus of Cusa, which he had in the 15th Century, that peace in the microcosm is only possible when you have the development of all microcosms. You can only have peace among different nations if each nation develops itself fully, and regards as its self-interest the development of the others fully, and vice-versa.

Butch also quoted German scientist and philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz from his Ethics, Law, and Civilization of 1693, in which he comments on the Peace of Westphalia: “Charity is universal benevolence, and benevolence is the habit of loving. Moreover, to love is to take delight in the happiness of another, or, what amounts to the same thing, it is to regard another’s happiness as one’s own.”

Butch emphasized that the agreements of the Peace of Westphalia included transforming the European river system from merely marking the borders between countries into becoming “economic corridors.”

He proposed a five-point program to stop the threat of war in Asia, including a non-aggression treaty between China and the ten nations of Southeast Asia (ASEAN); freedom of navigation for all commercial and military vessels using the Strait of Malacca; construction of the Kra Canal in Thailand, to ease the congestion in the Strait of Malacca; demilitarization of the South China Sea and banning of nuclear weapons from the region; and lastly, that “China and the ASEAN nations propose assistance to the United States in rebuilding its infrastructure, especially a network of fast rail systems, and negotiate fair trade for mutual benefit.”

His conclusion is timeless, and should be heeded by all as if he were speaking it today:

“Then, as now, mankind is at a crossroads. One path leads to war, despair and destruction. The other leads to hope, prosperity and development for coming generations. With the powers given to us by our Creator, there are no limits to growth. As history has taught us, if we are motivated by the common good, and act benevolently to the advantage of the other, we will learn to use our rivers and our oceans, and even outer space, not as territorial boundaries, but rather as corridors of commerce, and economic and scientific activity to enhance the quality of life of all human beings on this planet. It is my fervent hope that we citizens of the world, patriots of our countries, use this defining, historic moment to make the spark that ignites the spirit of a new world renaissance.”

A Champion of Nuclear Power

Butch made himself the leading Filipino spokesman for restoring the country’s nuclear program, which had been shuttered by the 1986 coup against President Ferdinand Marcos Sr. He never failed to note that stopping the nation’s nuclear program was a primary intention of the coup-plotters, Secretary of State George Shultz and Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. (Wolfowitz had argued in his doctoral thesis that peaceful nuclear power should be denied to all so-called third-world countries, claiming that “wogs” could not be trusted to not build nuclear weapons.)

When the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chose to hold a major conference in Manila, in September 2016, titled “Prospects for Nuclear Power in the Asia-Pacific Region,” Butch was invited to make a presentation. He was introduced by Dr. Kenneth Peddicord, Director of the Nuclear Power Institute (NPI) of Texas and a professor of nuclear engineering at Texas A&M University. Dr. Peddicord began his introduction: “I’m pleased to welcome to the podium a gentleman I sat next to yesterday, and really enjoyed the conversations with him.”

Butch praised the IAEA for its work to counter anti-nuclear hysteria. He pointed to former President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace program, and quoted Eisenhower’s address to the UN General Assembly on Dec. 8, 1953, on the danger of nuclear war and the purpose of the Atoms for Peace program: “To the making of these fateful decisions, the United States pledges before you—and therefore before the world—its determination to help solve the fearful atomic dilemma—to devote its entire heart and mind to find the way by which the miraculous inventiveness of man shall not be dedicated to his death, but consecrated to his life.”

Butch proudly reported to the assembled nuclear scientists and professionals that the Philippines “became the first recipient of this particular Atoms for Peace program. Soon after, we were granted the resources and the technical help to put up a reactor, a two-megawatt reactor, and to start the Philippine Atomic Energy Commission.” He added that the Philippines at that time had been committed to becoming a modern agro-industrial nation, with cooperation from the U.S. and others.

But that was not to be. Butch continued:

But sometime in 1971, the economic order changed. During the period between 1946 and 1971, the whole world was being run by a certain economic order that came out of the Bretton Woods agreement; that Bretton Woods agreement basically meant that there will be fixed exchange rates, which means there would be no fluctuation on currency exchanges; no fluctuations, it was fixed. And the IMF [International Monetary Fund] was the one that was supposed to be moderating this. And aside from that, of course, usury was considered to be a crime—it was a crime during this particular period. People who were charging excessive interest rates were charged because of the anti-usury law.

But the IMF became the enforcer of the new form of usury:

The IMF took the lead for the financial institutions to start imposing certain rules. I still remember the time when they told us—at that time Ferdinand Marcos Sr. was the President—they told us that we needed to devalue our currency vis-a-vis the U.S. dollar, that they considered our currency to be overvalued—the peso at that time was more or less about 4 pesos to $1—and that we needed to divide it immediately to 8 pesos to $1, under the threat that we would not be granted the resources by the banking sector to be able to import our oil, if we did not devalue.

So we devalued, not exactly to 8, but pretty close to 8. And subsequent devaluations then happened. Just imagine, if we needed only 4 pesos to pay $1 debt, in a very short period of time, if you bring it all the way up to 1986, we would need 28 pesos to pay $1, and that was going to be borne by the population. But that is the system, and we still went, nevertheless.

Because of this pressure that was exerted on us, Mr. Marcos decided in 1974, to go into an energy development program—a program which was going to be based on three baseload activities. One was geothermal, another was hydroelectric, and a third was nuclear.

The aim was to become energy self-sufficient by 1990.

This did not happen, because in 1986 the Marcos government was overthrown in a “color revolution” directly sponsored by and directed by the U.S. State Department and intelligence community. The puppet government installed took down all of the Marcos development programs, including [forcing] the mothballing of the otherwise ready-to-operate nuclear power plant.

Not only was the Philippine nuclear program scrapped, but, Butch added:

The rest of Southeast Asia also did not go nuclear…. They called it “Globalization.” The globalization program was to convert economies which were otherwise setting up to be producer economies, into service economies, making use of our cheap labor…. We stopped producing scientists. What we produced were nurses, caregivers, culinary arts people, and other areas of service.

On the importance of nuclear power, Butch made a more profound point:

We know that man is the only creature that has been able to use fire for its benefit. And using fire for its benefit, it was on that, that the development of man, the whole history of mankind, was based. We are Promethean—we refer, of course, very often pedagogically to Prometheus. Prometheus was the one who brought the beneficial use of fire to mortals, despite what Zeus was saying. And for this he was punished. Our national hero, José Rizal, even sculpted a figure of Prometheus being tied to a rock, to be eaten by vultures, because he had defied Zeus, because he had taught mortals the beneficial use of fire.

Diplomacy with Russia and China

Butch also assumed the role of diplomat for his nation, in place of the officially appointed diplomats who failed to deal appropriately with extremely important countries—especially China and Russia. He was interviewed regularly by leading Chinese newspapers and news agencies, and promoted China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) regularly on his broadcasts. He repeatedly refuted the anti-China lobby (most of whom were assets of the Washington-London cartels).

On November 17, 2019, Butch interviewed the Russian Ambassador to the Philippines, Igor Anatolyevich Khovaev, for more than two hours, in an extremely rich dialogue covering multiple major subjects. Ambassador Khovaev, who appeared in the studio with Butch and his staff, engaged in a lively dialogue on terrorism, drugs, regime change, energy, nuclear power, world peace, space exploration, Ukraine, Syria, and Russian-Philippine trade and cooperation.

Concerning drugs, Butch expressed his support for the stern anti-drug policy of then-President Rodrigo Duterte, noting that George Soros was funding the pro-drug forces in the Philippines. Ambassador Khovaev noted that Soros called Russian President Putin his enemy. Russia, Khovaev said, had an anti-drug policy equal in strength to that of Duterte.

Butch addressed the “imploding financial system,” and they discussed the ongoing Russian-Chinese plans to “de-dollarize” by trading in their own national currencies. They noted that nations around the world were “de-dollarizing” because the U.S. used dependence on the dollar to impose sanctions and other such penalties on countries around the globe.

On nuclear power, Butch praised Rosatom, the Russian nuclear agency, for inspecting the dormant Bata’an nuclear power plant. Khovaev noted that Russia, in addition to its vast reserves of oil and gas, had the most modern nuclear industry. “Only stupid people would call Russia a ‘gas station’,” he said (a jab at President Obama, who had made such a foolish statement). Both Butch and the Ambassador emphasized that the energy industries must be run by the state sector. Butch decried the privatization of the energy sector in the Philippines, which had driven up the cost of electricity, imposing a huge burden on the population.

On the global crisis, Khovaev denounced the “color revolutions,” noting that “those who enjoyed domination don’t want to give it up.”

They discussed the international cooperation between the U.S. and Russia in the exploration of space, although Khovaev denounced the U.S. for excluding Russia and others from its Moon-Mars mission. President Reagan, he noted, had said in Moscow in 1987 that if the U.S. and the USSR had a common enemy, all the smaller quarrels between them would disappear. “Those running the U.S. 30 years ago were much smarter than now,” he said, adding that the programs of Russia and China, such as the BRI, were open to all nations, whereas the U.S. formed groups to keep the world divided.

Ambassador Khovaev said that President Putin’s huge level of support in Russia was due to his defense of the nation’s security and sovereignty, and that “that is why Putin and Duterte get along so well.”

The two ended their dialogue with joint commitments to maintain cooperation to better relations between the two nations.

Associates Remember Butch Valdes

We present here just a few of the many messages received by Butch’s family upon his passing, shared by Michael Billington.

Rita Gadi, one of Butch’s closest collaborators was, in the words of Ver Archivido, one of the first members of the Philippine LaRouche Movement, a “Poet: Philosopher, Public Broadcaster, Political logician, and passionate follower of Sir Butch Valdes.” Rita was the sole Broadcaster for the Office of the President under President Ferdinand E. Marcos, from his first presidential campaign in 1965 ... all the way till 1986 [the year Marcos was overthrown in a U.S. orchestrated coup—ed.], and also a writer and researcher. She remained to help the Marcoses during their period of exile, as legal assistant to the RICO trial [of Imelda Marcos—ed.] in New York City. She has interviewed: Mao, Zhou En-Lai, Deng Xiao Ping, Saddam Hussein, Muammar Qaddafi, four U.S.A. presidents, heads of state of some 24 countries, et cetera, including Yasser Arafat.

At the Memorial, Rita said:

“Sir Butch and I go a long way, 2,700 years ago in the Agora of Greece where you have the debate Socrates, Plato and Aristotle—we were seated there, at the edge of the stairs. Look at the photograph [School of Athens] that Butch has as his icon, we were there, we were there together....”

She also read her eulogy to Butch at the first of several gatherings in his honor, which can be watched here.

Jullie Daza, a leading journalist with the Manila Bulletin, wrote in her Jan. 5 column:

Thursday, Dec. 29, 2022, the passing of football legend Pelé, 82, who put Brazil on the map of the world by revolutionizing the sport.

Saturday, Dec. 31, 2022, the passing of retired Pope Benedict XVI, 95, nine years after he walked away from the Vatican as leader of two billion Catholics all over the world.

Between the two dates, sometime between the wee hours of Dec. 29 and 30, my friend of 40 years died in his sleep. Butch Valdes, 76, pundit, beekeeper, grower of fruit trees, big brother of our seven-strong circle of nondenominational allies, you certainly chose a dramatic date for your exit.

Question is, who will be at the head of the queue waiting to catch St. Peter’s attention at heaven’s gate? …

While exploring the stars, Butch, who’s taking care of your 44,000 honeybees?

(See her full article here.)

Ver Archivido, a very close collaborator of Butch and his family, wrote the following:

I’ve been with Mr. Antonio ‘Butch’ Valdes for almost two decades….

In 2003, Butch started his own daily radio show called ‘Ang Ating Katipunan’ to inform the public about the world financial collapse, to explain far and wide the economic ideas needed to uplift the quality of life of every single human being on this planet.

He was so tired of hearing the so-called economists, economic managers who manage the economy by just raising or lowering interest rates, then loot people by increasing taxes, privatize government assets, impose population control. These policies kill people. Economics, for Butch Valdes, is human lives. These aren’t merely statistics on a balance sheet, these are precious human souls. Economic policies must always be for the betterment of mankind.

Butch, a CPA and MBA, former head of an accounting firm, Former Undersecretary for Finance of the Department of Education, would always say, he wished he had known about LaRouche ideas 20 years earlier, when he was still in his 20s, so that he could have had done more, much, much more for the country.

I remember our intellectual works with him weekly. He would participate with us in reading out loud in dialogue form and/or discussing Plato’s works including The Republic, William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Gottfried Leibniz’s Monadology, Moses Mendelssohn’s Phaedon, and Johannes Kepler’s Mysterium Cosmographicum, Harmony of the World, and New Astronomy.

He really liked On Learned Ignorance by Nicholas of Cusa, and also his other works. He even asked me to make a few more hard copies and he’ll give it to his high school friends, and force them to join him in a dialogue. We’ve read the Report on Manufactures authored by the first Treasury Secretary of the U.S., Alexander Hamilton. Also discussed our very own Dr. Salvador Araneta and his economic ideas influenced by the U.S. President FDR and Alexander Hamilton as well. Like a youth himself, Butch would still join some of our pedagogical studies of constructive geometry, the anti-Euclidean geometry. We would construct Platonic Solids, Archimedean Solids, and Egyptian Solids, solving the ‘paradox of squaring the circle,’ and doubling the square, and the cube.

Antonio “Butch” Valdes was a friend, a father, a comrade-at-arms in the battle of ideas.

In conclusion, I’d like to end with the Christmas message from Butch, posted at the KDP page:

“Over the years, it has gotten more and more difficult to look forward to the merriment and festive atmosphere that Christmas traditionally brings. We no longer can feel that the goodwill thrown our way is sincere or merely perfunctory. No, I have not lost faith in our people, and yes, I have lost faith in our leaders. No, I am not bitter about the present conditions of life, dire conditions made more and more manifest over the years, but yes, I am passionately angry at our government leaders who maliciously imposed programs designed to promote poverty and depopulate our country. No, I am not angry at President Marcos Jr., but yes, am still waiting for him to wake up and realize the gravity of the situation our nation and people face in the near future.”

Itos Valdes, Butch’s first son and close collaborator on the radio and video presentations with Butch, and now the head of the family, gave a passionate eulogy at the ceremony, ending with:

“He was everything to me. He always insisted that I had to be responsible for brothers and sisters, I was responsible for the family. I never understood, but I guess he was preparing me for this time. I will miss you so much, but I will see you soon—Not too soon. Father always had us sing, he taught us classical music, and we would always have to sing at events. It’s not how we sounded, which was not bad, but that we worked together to achieve a goal, to create beauty.”

Itos then ended the ceremony by bringing all the children and grandchildren (ten in all) to the front to sing. The first piece, Mozart’s glorious Ave Verum Corpus, was sung together with a video made several years earlier, so that Anton, who had passed away, would be with them. They closed with the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s Messiah. The grieving audience was deeply moved.

Harley Schlanger, spokesman for the late Lyndon LaRouche and the Schiller Institute, wrote this tribute:

My relationship with Butch stretched over many years, as I was interviewed by him on numerous occasions. He was always very much on top of breaking developments, on politics, economics and strategic affairs, and often provided profound insights on these issues. Unlike many of those who have interviewed me, it was clear that his primary desire was to draw out from me a discussion which would both provoke and inspire his audience. It was this concern for the many listeners and followers he had that demonstrated his true quality as an organizer, who acts not to win plaudits for himself, but to enlighten and activate those who listened to him. I always had a good feeling about what we had done every time our dialogue ended.

And it was his agapē, his love for his fellow human beings, that I remember best. To me, it was evident that this concern for those he touched was real, making his loss one for all those he engaged with during his lifetime. I know he cared deeply about his family, and that his legacy—now in your hands—will be realized, as you continue his work on behalf of your countrymen, and humanity as a whole.

Dennis and Gretchen Small also sent their thoughts. Dennis, in addition to being a leading member of the national executive committee of the LaRouche movement in the U.S. and a member of the Board of EIR, leads (with his wife Gretchen) the LaRouche movement in Ibero-America. Dennis wrote:

Dear Itos and the entire Valdes family,

Butch was one of those rare, sparkling individuals whose passing makes you think: how fortunate and honored Gretchen and I were to have known him and worked with him. Our lives are richer for it.

I met Butch some two decades ago, through our mutual friends, Gail and Mike Billington. In late 1995, a few years after I had gotten out of prison (I was jailed as part of the political railroading of Lyndon LaRouche and his associates), and still a number of years before Mike would finally be released, Butch invited Gail and me to the Philippines to talk about the LaRouche case. And he also asked me to speak at a conference of the Katapat movement he had helped organize about how the Philippines would “go down Mexico way” if it kept following IMF policies. In trying to recall the date of that visit, I found our report on that trip in the January 19, 1996 issue of EIR magazine, which you may want to look at.

Butch was the perfect host during that visit. For starters, he wouldn’t let us sleep long enough to get over the jet lag, because we had to get out and start talking to people right away! He ran us ragged with meetings, press interviews, long car rides through Manila’s unbelievable traffic jams (I grew up in Mexico City, which has pretty impressive traffic jams of its own, but they don’t even come close to Manila), and of course excellent meals out at restaurants of his choosing. I especially remember the “chicharron” (just like in Mexico!)—accompanied with Butch’s extensive historical and political briefings about the Philippines and Asia in general.

He indeed brought the Philippines to the world; and he of course brought the world to the Philippines, through his decades-long association with Lyndon and Helga LaRouche and our movement. Butch was a wonderful, loving, soft-spoken but deeply courageous man; you should be proud of that, even in this moment of grief and loss.

With all our love, Dennis and Gretchen Small