LYM PRESS RELEASE
The Future Is Now:
Oil For Nuclear Technology
The following statement was issued on April 12, 2006 by the LaRouche Youth Movement (LYM) in Mexico, as a call for a conference to be held in Mexico City on June 7, co-sponsored by the LYM and Executive Intelligence Review.
One of the stupidest statements ever made on the subject of economics, is the infamous cynical remark by the British oligarchy's pet economist, John Maynard Keynes: "In the long run, we are all dead." Meaning that economic decisions must all be based on immediate monetary criteria for the here and now, with no regard for the future.
Keynes, of course, is right ... if you think man is just an animal. But man is not an animal. Man has cognition; he creates; he can build the future. And we—the LaRouche Youth Movement—are that future, and we are building it.
To state the central point clearly: Mexico, like the rest of Ibero-America and the world, must go nuclear, now! And we have to do it the way former Mexican President José López Portillo proposed it back in the late 1970s and early 1980s: establish an oil-for-technology exchange to rapidly propel Mexico into the nuclear age.
U.S. statesman and Democratic party leader Lyndon LaRouche worked closely with López Portillo on precisely such a policy back in the 1980s. Today, LaRouche heads the growing movement in the United States to stop the Cheney-Bush Administration's imperial economic policies, and return to the outlook of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, including cooperation with Mexico's sovereign high-technology development. In March of this year, LaRouche elaborated on these ideas during a visit to Monterrey, Mexico:
"We need a policy for the reconstruction of Mexico. Now, this coincides with the world situation. Everyone in the world, who understands the world's problems, has now come to a general agreement on a rapid return to investment in nuclear power. This is not only because of the price of petroleum. Petroleum has a limited future as merely a fuel; it has an important future as a chemical feedstock. We will tend to go, instead, toward fuels which are produced by nuclear fission. As a general agreement, we're going back to nuclear power, and more or less rapidly: This is China, this is Russia, this is France, this is Brazil, and so forth. As a general understanding, we are going back to a nuclear-based economy.
"Now, of course, in Mexico the greatest problem we have is water. That is not a Mexico problem, that is a worldwide problem; but it's especially a problem for Mexico, because of the dry areas of the North, especially between the two Sierra Madres.
"Now, there's only one way that we can get an adequate flow of water for human consumption and similar things, agriculture, and that is with nuclear power [to desalinate sea water]. There are sources of water in Mexico in the South which you can bring across the mountains into the area between the Sierra Madres, or along the West Coast, the Pacific Coast, up to the PLHINO [Northwest Hydraulic Plan]. That's possible. But that's not enough.
"You look at the ratio of use of water in the agricultural areas close to the U.S. border: You have a critical situation there, in terms of water use. In Mexico City, you have a catastrophe in water. In most of the rest of the country, you have important problems.
"Now, two things are in the future on nuclear power, right now. As you know, back in the early 1980s, Mexico had a policy for building 20 nuclear plants.
"The second thing is, we will go into a new kind of industry of producing hydrogen-based fuels. This is already under way as a policy within certain countries and within their industries. For example, Japan is going toward hydrogen-based hybrid cars. Now to produce hydrogen-based fuels, by fission power, requires about 800 MW power to get the intensity of power needed; whereas, you can use a 120 to 200 MW plant for all kinds of things, [desalinating] water, and so on.
"Also, we need, of course, transportation, and Mexico should actually have a rail line from the Mexican border to Mexico City—it's an insult not to have it! If you're going to unify the country, you have to do it! And it would help to move things around. This will be popular. Argentina will go in that direction. Brazil has already adopted the intention. Other countries will.
"So, what we're going to need, first of all, is we're going to make the Mexican population in the north of Mexico stable: This requires water. It requires new cities. It requires making these areas, areas of development, not areas of cheap labor. Whereas, you have a crisis already, in the number of people from Mexico going into the United States as virtual slave labor, which is a security risk in this area; therefore, we have to think about building up northern Mexico, but with things which involve power and water to transform the environment. It can be done, it's not a great intellectual challenge, just a lot of work.
"So, we need a clear perspective, a shared conception of objectives among the nations of the hemisphere.
"If you are to invest in Mexico, you have to invest in the future of young people, because all your important investments in Mexico, capital investments, have a life of 25 years investment, or 50 years investment; a nuclear plant, 30 years investment, 35 years investment; water systems, 50 years investment. Who is going to do this? You're talking about a society which is going to be under the management of young people who today are 18 to 25 years of age. But the very youth you need for this, young adults, are largely demoralized, because they don't see a future. So you should call these young adults the future, the generation of the future. Not only a generation to inhabit the future, but a generation which will create the future!"
LaRouche is right. In order to plan what we must do today, we require a clear concept of what the next 50 years must be.
Mexico's oil industry must be rebuilt from the destruction imposed by the International Monetary Fund and the bankers since 1982. The oil industry, under López Portillo, was used to provide the resources to fund education, health care, and the building of essential infrastructure. Now it is used to pay the foreign debt that has been illegitimately imposed on the country. And the bankers' plans are to remove Pemex's revenues from the government's control—in order to steal them for the bankers—and to privatize the state oil company Pemex altogether.
It will take about five to seven years to rebuild Mexico's oil industry back up to the level of 1982. That must be done, at the same time that we move toward a nuclear-power-based economy. Oil and nuclear are complementary—if we view them from the standpoint of the next 50 years.
So, contrary to John Maynard Keynes and the financial oligarchy he represented, in the long run we are not all dead—at least not those of us who live today for our immortal contribution to humanity.
So act like a man, not an animal. Join the LaRouche Youth Movement to change the future today. Come to our international seminar on "Oil for Nuclear Technology," to be held in Mexico City on June 7, 2006.
