Lyndon LaRouche delivered this address in Washington, D.C., on May 7; it was simultaneously broadcast over the Internet by the LaRouche Political Action Committee. LaRouche's opening remarks were followed by two hours of discussion, moderated by his national spokeswoman, Debra Freeman.
Debra Freeman: Good afternoon. My name is Debra Freeman, and on behalf of LaRouche PAC, I'd like to welcome all of you to today's historic event.
Undoubtedly, many of you commented prior to today's event, and coming into today's event, on the timing of it—the fact that it was scheduled to take place the day after the critical primaries in Indiana and North Carolina. What I would say to you today, and what I think Mr. LaRouche will make unmistakably clear, is that, in fact, what kept the nation riveted to their TV screens last night, was really not very much different than any other primetime drama that they were watching. That, in fact, they did not understand what was being played out. Because, indeed, what we are facing in our nation today, is not simply a "primary election campaign." We are not facing a race between two Democrats, and ultimately, between a Democrat and a Republican: What we are facing in our nation, is what we have faced in this nation, since the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, and that is, a war for the survival of republican forces, uniquely, American forces, against those of the British Empire. And today, that war has come to its final stage.
Where things go in the United States, and in the world at large, will not be decided at some political convention in August, nor will it be decided at some general election in November. The strategic questions which determine the future of this nation, and in fact, the future of the planet, will be determined today, will be determined based on how the leadership of this nation responds to the strategic questions before us, right now.
Both as a former Presidential candidate, as a statesman, as an economist, and as the chairman and founder of this political action committee, Lyndon LaRouche has put those questions before the U.S. population, repeatedly. And in fact, it has been the organizing of his movement, that has already largely shaped the issues in this ongoing national election in the United States. But the fact is, that not enough of the American people yet understand what is at stake. And not enough of the leaders, or would-be leaders of our nation, understand what is at stake.
I think that Mr. LaRouche's presentation today, will go a long way toward helping them to understand precisely that: So, Ladies and Gentlemen, please join me in welcoming Lyndon LaRouche.
The Election Is a Battle in a War
Lyndon LaRouche: Thank you all. Thank you, Debra.
The issue is not the election. The election is a battle in a war. It is not something unto itself. The result of this election, in itself, is a matter of indifference. It's a question of how the battle is won and lost which is important.
We have, obviously, two disasters running for President, though one has a good constituency—that is, Obama has a very large constituency, which is important; it is sensitive to the lower 80% of family-income brackets, as the top of the Obama campaign is not—it's on the other side. But Hillary's campaign is significant. But the issue is, that forces in Britain, with their stooges in the United States, have said that a Hillary Clinton election—even a nomination—would mean that Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton would be in the White House. And this, the British Empire, such as it is, and its lackeys in Washington and elsewhere, are determined shall not happen; and you're talking about methods such as assassination, if deemed necessary to prevent Hillary from becoming President.
It was not just the Republicans who turned out en masse to vote for Obama, in yesterday's Indiana, and also North Carolina primaries: That's what the margin was there. That's not at issue. That's part of the fraud. This was a gigantic fraud. I sat there at the television set, and watched this thing coming down in the last phases, and I saw something, that, from my nose, I could see the stink all over the place! This election was totally fraudulent; exactly how the fraud was orchestrated—we know one thing: There was a massive turnout of Republican and related vote for Obama, in Raleigh-Durham [North Carolina]; in contrast to other cities in North Carolina, where the expected result was going along—until the last minute, when a miracle occurred: Voters—who had not yet been born!—were flooding the polls, at the last minute. We've seen this sort of thing before.
But there's another issue here: There's also an issue of World War III. And World War III is between the British Empire, better known as the Anglo-Dutch Liberal banking financial system, on the one side, and the principal nations of Eurasia—Russia, China, India—and other nations, are the targets of intended warfare by the British Empire, which is already turning Continental Europe into a mere colony of the British Empire, through the program of the Lisbon Treaty. If the Lisbon Treaty were adopted—and it's being pushed for adoption now—there would not be a single nation on the continent of Europe, west of Belarus and Russia, which had any sovereignty whatsoever. The British Empire would control the entirety of that region of Europe, from Portugal to the borders of Belarus and Russia, as a puppet of the Anglo-Dutch Liberal financial interests.
It is those interests, represented in the United States, for a long time, especially since 1971-72, which have taken over control of the U.S. dollar, control of the United States: Now, they're moving in for the kill. And that's the issue.
The issue is, the fools think—in the Democratic Party, the people at the top are generally, largely corrupt in this thing. They're lying their heads off. I watched some of them lie on television, watched some of the television commentators lying like hell about what was going on right under their noses. You can see the facts, and you see what they were saying: two different things.
But, you're looking at a war between an empire, run by London, not necessarily all the British people, but it's by the Anglo-Dutch Liberal financier cartel: the same cartel that put Mussolini into power in Italy; the same cartel that put Hitler into power in Germany! And we're now at the brink of something like a Hitler-power taking over the United States. If they grab the United States, then they will grab all of Europe under the Lisbon Treaty. If they control the United States and parts of Europe under the Lisbon Treaty, then you will have an actual fighting war emerging on this planet, against the continent of Africa and much of the continent of Asia, and other places. You will have dictatorship; you will have mass starvation. The elimination of whole sections of the population of parts of the world through starvation. And that's part of the British program! It's the food war!
We now have a situation, which I'll get into, on this, but that's the situation: We're not dealing with an election. We're dealing with whether there is in the United States, in the top layers of society, the moral fitness to survive! And so far, the vote is, in the leadership of the Democratic Party and the Republican Party: Neither is morally fit to survive! They're as unmorally fit to survive as the people who backed Mussolini and backed Hitler back in the 1920s and the 1930s. And if we allow this to happen, we will get the same kind of treatment, that the victims of Mussolini, Hitler, and so forth, suffered.
That's where we stand.
Truman vs. Roosevelt
We have to win this war against that evil empire! That's been the longstanding fight, for me, it's the longstanding fight ever since I had service in Asia, toward the end of the last world war, when I was in northern Burma, now called Myanmar, and in the Calcutta area in Bengal. And I saw the British Empire, close up, in those circumstances and elsewhere. I know the British Empire.
Truman was a victim of the British Empire. Just a case of this thing: Franklin Roosevelt's intention, at the close of World War II, before he died, his intention of that period, was to eliminate colonialism and all forms of imperialism from this planet. His intention was, that once the peace had been secured, that the power of the United States, developed through its agro-industrial and scientific power—which is the greatest power this planet had ever seen from any single source!—that this power was going to be used, by converting the war machine which the United States had assembled to deal with the war against Hitler; to assemble that machine, and transform it into a machine of production. And as Roosevelt had spelled out specifically, to take nations and continents like Africa, the colonial nations of the world, and free them! Not only by giving them political freedom, but by giving them economic assistance and technology, to solve their problems, where they could emerge from being colonies and prey, to being essentially self-determining. And Roosevelt's intention was to form a receptacle, called the United Nations, as an assembly of nations, including many which would be newly created, as freed from former colonies, to sovereign national status.
And the minute that that pig, Truman, walked in, to replace Roosevelt, within hours after Roosevelt's death, Truman went to the side of Churchill.
And Churchill's policy was to prevent Franklin Roosevelt from succeeding, his policy from succeeding, because the British were determined to maintain their empire! As they are determined in the case of Zimbabwe, and against Mbeki in South Africa, today! They're determined to destroy the United States, as they have been, since the inception of the United States, in the revolt against the Paris Peace of 1763, at which the British moved immediately, the British East India Company, moved to impose imperial power, over the people in North America, to take away the rights of the states, to take away the rights of the citizens, to deny us the right to have industry, to crush our agriculture, and to loot us! And we went to war—not seeking war, but seeking independence. We went to war against the British Empire.
We Have Lost the Sense of Immortality
Let me tell you a story, before I get into this main point, here—it's important, an important part of history. Most people in this country and other countries, today, are rather stupid, when it comes to reality. I mean that in a very specific sense. Because, no longer do they believe in successive generations, no longer do they believe in the immortality of the individual personality: that even after the individual is dead, their personality continues to live and have an effect on future generations. We used to have a society in which we thought grandfathers would give their lives to provide a better way of life for, not only their children, but especially their grandchildren. The relationship of the grandfather to the grandchildren, particularly in terms of our immigrant population, which came here, often working in poverty, working their way up; and the laborer who came from Italy, his grandson became a doctor, or became a scientist, or became something else of skill. This was called the "land of opportunity," because that was our policy.
But this was also a European policy, a policy that, we are not simply animals, we are not monkeys, who die, who go out of existence, and just our name is maybe remembered by an older monkey. But we are human, and we have the capability of creative powers that no animal has. We're able to use those creative powers, for the future of mankind. And thus, even after we die, what we contribute through those powers, lives on, and our influence radiates, our personality radiates in a useful way, to coming generations.
That has been lost! We have now become, especially with the 68ers and that generation, which lost their morality almost at birth—actually, this was something that was done to them. Don't blame them entirely for it; it was done to them, by their parents, and the consent of their parents, and done by teachers and so forth.
They lost that sense of immortality, they lost the sense of culture. They lost the sense of a continuity of culture. They lost a sense of what the meaning is of national cultures, or cultures of people, the importance of preserving and promoting those cultures, because that's the way in which a people can deal with its problems. That's the way the creative powers of the mind can be summoned. We can't have a Tower of Babel, such as globalization! If you want to develop a people, you must develop them in their souls, you develop them in their culture, in their minds. The results you come to, may be the same as in a different culture. But the way in which you get there, is through the culture of their people. And you promote and defend that culture. And seek to promote independent nations which represent each of these cultures. And then bring the cultures together in cooperation for a common purpose, the common aims of mankind.
We lost that. It was taken away from us, as Roosevelt was taken from us by death, and we were given Truman instead. What did Truman do? Immediately! On behalf of the great British Emphah! Truman took the power of the United States, and used it to reinforce recolonization, and to accept the imposed forms of colonization which were worse than mere colonization.
There Are No Free Nations
That happened in Africa: There are no really free nations in Southern Africa, none. They have degrees of freedom, but the freedom is conditional. And the conditional freedom is run, now, from London. It's a colony! Who made it a colony! The United States made it a colony, precisely contrary to the intention of Franklin Roosevelt! Who specified the development of Africa, among the other objectives of the United States, for the post-war period.
Truman supported the British! Indo-China which had been freed, by its own efforts with the support of the United States under Roosevelt. The Japanese who had surrendered to the Vietnamese, suddenly, on orders of London with the support of Harry Truman, were freed. The Japanese soldiers were given their guns back and taken out of the camps—to reoccupy Indo-China, to turn it over to the British, immediately, who would then turn it over to those suckers, the French.
Look at that whole region. Indonesia: The Indonesian people had largely freed themselves from Japanese and Dutch occupation, and what did we do? The Anglo-Americans reinforced the colonization of Indonesia. Finally, the Indonesians got a conditional freedom, but their essential freedom was to be taken away from them.
A similar thing happened in India: India got a qualified freedom. But the British kept a stranglehold on it, as Nehru saw, from the time when the rupee was revalued—and India was put into a condition of slavery as a result.
That's the condition of Africa; that's the condition of Southwest Asia. Those are the conditions that were imposed wherever the United States was weak, in South and Central America.
And so, we went from a nation that we had been, to a Truman nation, a nation which was a lackey of the British Empire.
And we had, centered in New York City, in particular, but in other locations, financial institutions; like the grandfather of the present President of the United States, Prescott Bush: Prescott Bush personally signed the order, to release funds from a German bank to put Hitler into power! The grandfather of the present President of the United States: What a fine family tradition that is! I mean, you have a coke addict, a so-called recovering coke addict, who's now sitting as the President of the United States, under the management of a baboon called the Vice President, who is run, in turn, by George Shultz from the West Coast, the guy who put Pinochet into power in Chile—together, in collaboration with Felix Rohatyn, who runs the Speaker of the House of the Congress today. And Felix Rohatyn was an accomplice of George Shultz in putting the fascist dictatorship of Pinochet into power in the Southern Cone. It was under this arrangement that Nazis were brought in, veteran Nazis were brought into South America, and conducted this operation of Nazi-like murder throughout the Southern Cone of South America.
This is what the problem is.
And people say, "How can you talk about the British that way? They're our cousins!"
Well, you see, it's not really the British—that's another story, which I won't go into here. But essentially, what we call the "British Empire," or the Anglo-Dutch Liberal financier empire—is an Anglo-Dutch operation, based on Venice, which is a syndicate of financiers, individual financiers, who, in a group, form a kind of a locust horde. And this locust horde controls—.
Nixon: Elected by the Weathermen
One example: 1971, a stooge for London called Richard Nixon, who was elected by the Weathermen—actually. That is, the Weatherman revolt of that faction, the fascist faction of the 68ers, split the Democratic Party between the blue-collar and the dirty uncollared college students, huh? And therefore, the split of the Democratic Party in 1968—as occurred also in Europe, a similar operation—destroyed the Democratic Party, and thus, elected Richard Nixon. And what did you get from Nixon? Nixon was a fascist! His regime was fascist. We fought it off, but we didn't uproot it. And all through the 1970s, the same thing: From 1969 through 1981, the United States was destroyed as an economy in its essential characteristics. And the continued rot went on from there.
The rot started, the decline in the U.S. economy actually started, the frustration of the U.S. economy, with Truman. Truman was the bastard to hate, if you want to know what's wrong with the 68ers. You don't like Baby Boomers? Blame Harry Truman! He gave birth to all of them, by some mysterious force.
But then, again, you have the same thing: The 68ers, the children of Truman, the white-collar class, the children of Truman, gave us Nixon. And you got three Rockefeller brothers: Nelson, John D., and David. And the three of them, with the aid of the Trilateral Commission, destroyed the U.S. economy on the inside, during the period of their control during the 1970s. And the Trilateral Commission of David Rockefeller led the thing, and poor Jimmy Carter didn't know what the devil was happening to him. He was just listening to "Mister Rockefeller"—the guy who put the $3 million into the coffer to run the Carter campaign, to launch it. And Jimmy has been a good ex-President, but he was a terrible President. And it's not good to have a President who's a wind-up toy for a Rockefeller.
So, we were destroyed!
Globalization: The New Tower of Babel
Once the Soviet Union collapsed, what happened? Another change, called globalization occurred. There was no longer a Soviet power to contend with. So therefore, what did we do? We stripped Germany of its economy! How was it done? By Margaret Thatcher and François Mitterrand. And Mitterrand, the French President of that time, was a stooge of the British. I know it personally. I had meetings in London on that subject, where they said, "No, Mitterrand is our man. We own him." Mitterrand the President of France, was a stooge of the British monarchy! And Mitterrand and Margaret Thatcher destroyed Germany, and it's still being destroyed today, as are other countries, as a result of that.
That is, German technology, developed in Germany, is now used in various countries, like the Transrapid in China! But it doesn't exist in Germany. Nuclear power: virtually does not exist in Germany. Where it did exist, it's being torn down. Technology is being destroyed. All for the sake of the British Empire.
Even worse! In the economy, you will find that what has happened with globalization—and it affects people in this country very much: What they've done, is they've taken industries, manufacturing industries in particular, agriculture in particular, and countries which were good agricultural producers, or good manufacturing producers, have been stripped of those industries, the industries have been taken to populations where the lower 80% of the population is illiterate.
So you have colonies of manufacturing in countries in Asia, Africa, and so forth, South America, where the people, the 80% of the population does not participate in the economy! You have areas which used to be food-producing areas which no longer produce food! Because, what you're having is a world dictatorship, under the name of globalization—better called a new Tower of Babel—in which the cultures are being destroyed, as the United States is being destroyed, as Germany is being destroyed, as Italy is being destroyed, as France is being destroyed—and the attempt to make war on China, India, and Russia.
And that's the intent of the British Empire: Nothing less than the destruction and breakup of China, the breakup of Russia, the breakup of India. That is the policy of the British Empire now. That's the policy they're condemned to. The policy is to take every nation of continental Europe, west of Belarus and west of Russia, and under the Lisbon Treaty, which is now being voted up by many institutions of government in continental Europe, strip every nation of Europe, from the Atlantic Ocean to the border at Belarus and Russia, and they will have no sovereignty. That is, there will be no government which has the authority to contradict the Lisbon Treaty organization. NATO is intended to be absorbed, by the Lisbon Treaty. And the forces of Europe, which are not NATO forces, will be combined with NATO forces for warfare against points East: Russia, former parts of the Soviet Union other than Russia, China, Korea, India, as well as Southwest Asia, where they're doing an excellent job of mutilating the whole countryside.
This is what we're dealing with. The intention here is to eradicate the United States, among other objectives. Because, as long as we exist, we're a problem.
It Was Not a 'Subprime Crisis': The System Is Finished
Let me just go one more point on this, before getting to economic questions I want to deal with today.
Anyway, what happened relevant to now, to this present situation, is, approximately nine months ago, slightly more, on the 25th of July of last year, 2007, I made a statement here, in this forum, in which I said, that a new, general breakdown crisis of the financial system was now in progress. Three days later, we had the beginning of what some fools called the "subprime crisis." It was not the subprime crisis.
Some of you have seen a building, torn down by explosives, and you blow it out from underneath, and the building collapses into the area where you exploded. That's what the "subprime crisis" really was. The subprime crisis was the weak underbelly of a large financial system, which was collapsing! But the collapse was not the collapse of the subprime system! The collapse was the collapse of the entire international financial-monetary system, which is now entered, into, very visibly, a hyperinflationary phase: We are now, globally, in a hyperinflationary phase.
So, at that time, around the 25th of last July, I introduced one, then, of several measures which I had crafted for defense of the United States, in particular, against this crisis, which had broken out: That is, this new world depression. It's more than a depression. It's something like what happened to Europe, during the middle of the 14th Century, when the bank of Lucca, the House of Bardi, when bankrupt and all of Europe plunged into a new dark age.
We are now in a period, where the world as a whole, is in the process of collapsing into a new dark age, similar to, but worse than, potentially—unless we stop it—that which happened to Europe in the middle of the 14th Century. That's the situation we're in.
Now, the measures I proposed, were, first of all, the HBPA [Homeowners and Bank Protection Act]: That is, Federal legislation, which we're now getting supporting legislation for in states; which means that the households' mortgages will not be foreclosed. But rather, the households which are effectively put into receivership, that is, protection, bankruptcy protection, and people allowed to stay in their homes, paying a reasonable fee in the form of something equivalent to rent, for that, instead of this mortgage process, until we can straighten the mess out.
We don't want to destroy the communities, we don't want to destroy the people, we don't want to have people—let's keep people in their places. That way, we've got a structure to begin with.
Now, if you're going to something else, which is the second part of the thing: You have to provide bankruptcy security to the banks, that is, the chartered banks, the Federal banks and the state banks. Because if the Federal and state banks in communities begin to disintegrate, you don't have an organized community any more! So therefore, forget the Federal Reserve; send Bernanke back, with his helicopter beanie or whatever it is, and send him back to where he belongs; and put the Federal Reserve system itself, which is bankrupt in fact, by virtue of its members being bankrupt—put it into receivership, under the U.S. Teasury Department! Where it still functions: The offices are there, the people are there, but it's now taking orders directly from the Treasury Department, not controlling the Treasury Department. And in that way, we can save the system from a chaotic collapse.
This condition is generally spreading throughout the world, if you look at the rate of hyperinflation.
A Worldwide Food Crisis
Now, there's one part of this hyperinflation, which is of special significance: Food.
When you look at what happened yesterday, in terms of the fraudulent operation by Republicans and others in this primary election yesterday, you say: "What's the power that can defeat these predators, these imperialists, these parasites, these murderers?" Who is behind the use of the Democratic Party top down, and other institutions, and the press generally, in trying to destroy the possibility of a Clinton Presidency in the United States? That's your issue: Why? That is, to eliminate the possibility of the United States being a factor. Because, what would happen? And where does this come into the food problem? Now, when people are denied this or that benefit, people of the lower 80% and many others will say, "Well, we gotta learn to put up with this. Can't we compromise? Isn't there some compromise that we can accept? Can't we get together and make a compromise?" And you get a bunch of compromised people, who just really aren't capable of doing anything useful.
But food is different: If you don't have food tonight, to put on the table in the morning, that's kind of personal. And it becomes universal.
For a number of months now, there has been a worldwide food crisis, caused by many things: By the financial policies, various kind of management deals—by the WTO, which ought to be eliminated. By the promotion of bio-fools, or biofuels if you prefer—which is destroying food supplies! This biofuel program is a gigantic swindle for which there is no possible justification: None! The justification comes out of the World Wildlife Fund of Prince Philip, which says, we must not have vampire bats offended by water projects! Exactly!
You can get, in Mexico, if you make a donation to the World Wildlife Fund of Prince Philip, you get a stuffed vampire bat, with a handbook telling you of the wonderful properties of this vampire bat is: how it has this grooved tongue, which will cut through skin; its saliva will keep the blood from clotting, so the vampire bat can suck on you all day long! And we're supposed to regret the threat to the habits of this little bat!
But the point is, here you have, for example in northern Mexico, particularly in the vicinity of the state of Sonora, which is just below the border on the western side of Mexico: There where you have a large water system. If this water system is controlled, Mexico already has the engineering designs for a system which will enable Mexico to increase its total food production. Also, since we're throwing Mexicans out of the United States, rapidly—as rapidly as possible in some cases, especially from areas like Los Angeles, where this does have a political effect on the community, there's no place for them to go! They could throw them across the border into that part of Mexico which used to be an agricultural region—but! the water's not there. When they left to become virtual slave labor in the United States, or cheap labor before they got into construction jobs as virtually slave labor, they used to be farmers, in areas like Sonora. Their wives are not farmers; Mexican wives in that area are not developed as farmers. The husbands were the farmers, the husbands and the sons.
So the agricultural product of this area has declined. There is a vast water system, which, if organized, would permit us to open up large areas for agriculture, so that people in Mexico already, or being forced across the border back into Mexico, who happen to be farmers by tradition, would have the opportunity—with some cooperation from the Mexican government—to begin opening this area for food production.
When the world food organizations have indicated to us, that the shortage of food production, relative to human need, is we are producing half the amount of food required for human need. And therefore, every place we can get food production going, in a reasonable way—which usually requires irrigation projects, and things like that, engineering projects—we have to. The estimate of the experts is: We need to double food production, in order to meet the requirements of the human race.
You have people, like the Chancellor of Germany, who is complaining that Indians are causing a crisis in food supplies because they're eating two meals a day! And the report is, that in many parts of Asia, the food consumption, was, where you were getting meals, it used to be three times a day, and now it goes down to two, and now it goes to one.
The situation in Africa is beyond belief, in terms of food supplies. Zimbabwe for example: What's the crime? You have an African population in Zimbabwe, which was one of the biggest fighters against the British Empire; it was called southern Rhodesia at one time, hmm? And this area, is an area of people with a strong culture, strengthened by the fact that they were fighters against the British imperialists. They're not allowed to develop their own territory. Because London, by various mechanisms prevents them from doing so. And London uses the farms it allows to prosper, in former Rhodesia—to feed the populations of Britain! So you have non-African farmers running farms, producing food in Zimbabwe, for the edification and fattening of Brits. But the rest of the population is inhibited in any attempt to develop!
You look through all of Africa, and you look at the policies of NSSM-200, back in 1975: The policy is that Africans should die out! Not entirely—keep a few for this or that. But the policy is, the raw materials of Africa belong to the Anglo-Americans. If the Africans develop, and increase their population, they will use up some of those precious raw materials, which belong to us! (By what miracle we don't know!) Therefore, you must suppress them.
And what do you do? You go down, as they did, as Kitson did in Kenya: You start a war, which was organized by Kitson, and his crowd personally, by MI5. Then they organized the countermeasures against the Mau-Mau out of South Africa, a colonial operation. And a similar operation was just run in the recent election in Kenya, just recently. What's going on in Zimbabwe is the same thing. And this is the thing we're up against.
The American System vs. British 'Free Trade'
Let me go, on the question of economics. Now, I'm an economist, and I can tell you I'm a good one, but there are very few competent economists on this planet. The reason for that is, despite the fact we used to have an American System of political economy, which we understood fairly well, as opposed to the British system, as opposed to the so-called free-trade system, or the monetarist system. Yet, under our system, as some of you should know, our Constitutional system states that money can be uttered, that is, issued, created, only by the U.S. Federal government. No other agency has the right to create or control money, our money, except the Federal system. Now the law stipulates, that the authority of the Executive Branch, to utter money, or to utter credit which could be converted into money, is a power of the Presidency, which lies with the consent of the House of Representatives. And therefore, it's a greenback policy.
European systems, the imperial systems of Europe, do not have such a form. In the European system, the money is created by central bankers who are assemblies of private bank interests, and some government mixed in. So, the central banking system, protects the bankers against the intervention of the government! Which means the people are not allowed to control their own money. Whereas, under the U.S. system, our Federal system, the Federal government has control of our money, and protects it, and protects us. So the purpose of the British system was to eliminate that.
Now, you have people who come up with what's called a "free-trade system." And the problem is, as I said, we have very few competent economists. Now, theoretically, they're all incompetent, but some of them are not stupid. And therefore, they're essentially incompetent in defining what an economy is, and how it works, but they're not stupid, and therefore, they have a practical view of how to deal with this crazy thing called "money."
For example, back in my old days as a management consultant, we would have, in happier times then, you would have a conflict in most corporations—that is, producer corporations, industrial corporations, for example—where you would have the department which is the department of production, of design, of product-making, and so forth, and these people would think in one way. But then you would have, usually, especially as Wall Street became more powerful, the company would be controlled again by Wall Street—by the stockholders! By these wonderful people called stockholders. They probably don't even know where the company is—and they just bought into it yesterday, and they're going to sell the stock tomorrow.
So these stockholders have a Wall Street interest which comes in, as you'd see some type of finance officer or so forth of the firm, and therefore the firm is operating, on the one hand, with departments which are the production and product design, and so forth, departments, which know what economics is, particularly under the old protectionist system we used to have, years ago. Whereas, the banking client says, "No. You run the corporations for the sake of the stockholders." And it's not just the stockholders of this corporation; what you operate from is a central banking function, like the Federal Reserve system, in which a concert of financial interest determines policy for all types of firms in the U.S. economy, and takes over control of more and more of these firms.
So therefore, the free-trade system is a system which is based on what? It's based on the system of the ancient mercantile banker system, like the old Venetian systems, in which concerts of private financial investors control the economy. And these powers, in turn, control the governments.
What we're faced with today, is exactly that: We're faced with a situation, in which the United States government is controlled entirely by international financial interests, which are now centered in London.
This occurred in the following way: When Nixon came into power, his administration, under the advice of George Shultz, caused the Bretton Woods system to be destroyed. That is, the United States went off the fixed-exchange-rate standard, the international fixed-exchange-rate system.
In the following period, after these, a second operation was run. It was run from Europe. It was run by bankers associated with the Middle East petroleum production, including Saudi Arabia as part of this combination. These guys created, in the 1970s, a famous, artificial shortage of petroleum, a freeze on the delivery of petroleum. So you had tankers, full of petroleum, floating off the coasts, moored off the coasts of the United States and other places, but especially the United States, and we had an "oil shortage." We had a wild increase in prices of petroleum. Out of this, what happened is, the United States had lost the power to control its own currency, the dollar, under the Federal Reserve system, and, now, the power to control the price of the dollar was being determined by what was called the oil cartel, the Amsterdam-based spot market oil cartel.
So, we no longer controlled our own currency, more and more, from that point on, under Nixon, and under the programs of the Rockefeller brothers, during that period. We destroyed every bit of the essential structure of our economy, as it came out of the Great Depression, under Roosevelt's leadership.
Lincoln's Defeat of the British Slave System
You go back further, and look at the fight. The fight was, first of all, the United States against Britain. It was a fight for our freedom, and a fight against the efforts of the British to destroy us, in various ways. For example, the British who controlled international slavery during the 19th Century, through their Spanish suckers. The Spanish monarchy was a tool of the British monarchy in running the slave system. The spread of slavery in the United States was run by the British, through the Spanish, who were their puppets.
All right. Part of the operation was not merely the slave system. Part of the operation was to destroy the United States, by dividing it between non-slave states and slave states, which Lincoln defeated.
Lincoln's defeat of this operation, resulted in a development of the United States, as a sovereign continental power from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the Canadian border to the Mexican border. We were developed largely by immigration; we were developed by the development of agriculture. The whole development was based on developing an international—or national in this case—a national railway grid, or continental railway system.
As a result of this, and the power we represented coming out of Lincoln's war against the British, called the Confederacy, the United States, became a threat to the British Empire, through the fact that Russia, from 1876 on; Germany, from approximately 1879 on; and other states, began to develop continental railway systems, and developed other modes of technology proved in the United States for developing inland territory.
This became known as the issue of geopolitics. Maritime power, control of the continent from the seas, or the inland power of nations, in which we developed the management of their own internal territory—geopolitics.
And as a result of that, there was, beginning 1890, with the firing of Bismarck, from the position of Chancellor in Germany, there was a process launched by the British, which became known as World War I, which actually started, with the British organizing Japan for an attack, a war on China, which continued in effect, from 1895 to 1945. And similar wars in that region.
So what Roosevelt represented, then, as President, was the effort to restore the balance that we'd lost in previous struggles, to restore the United States to what it had been. And we succeeded. The British put Hitler into power; the British put Mussolini into power. The British organized World War I and World War II—both of them. But the British got into a mess in the process, and they decided to come over to the side of Roosevelt, conditionally—or some of them did. And therefore, we fought a war against Hitler and so forth, but it was actually a war with the British. But it was partly in alliance with the British, who cooperated with us, for the purpose of defeating Hitler.
But the minute that Roosevelt was dead—even before Roosevelt was dead, in the latter part of 1944—what happened is, again, the Wall Street crowd under Truman took over, and we went back in the direction of becoming British. We retained that power, the power that Roosevelt gave us, up until 1963, until the immediate aftermath of the assassination of President Kennedy. We were fooled into going into a war in Indo-China. This war in Indo-China drew us down, and thus, with the explosion of the 68ers, in Europe and in the United States and elsewhere, in 1968, you had the break between the blue-collar classes of people, in the United States for example, and these Baby Boomers, who were rioting in the streets, who were actually, mostly, pro-fascist.
And that split the Democratic Party, shattered the good side of the Republican Party, and gave us the situation we have today.
The Food Crisis: Hungry People Will Revolt
Therefore, the question before us, is: What do we do about this? We have to recognize—and this comes to the part of my other two proposals of that time of last year, which were subsequently published: Not only a two-tier credit system, that is, 1-2% for government approved kinds of credit, and floating rates of interest for other things; and secondly, that the United States under its current President or next President, in point of fact, should go to Russia, China, and India, and propose that these countries combine as a core group of countries, to bring other nations together in a New Bretton Woods conference, to reestablished a fixed-exchange-rate system, which would be guaranteed by the sovereign agreement of these nations. Thus, to go back to the Roosevelt system. To put the international financial-monetary system, which is hopelessly bankrupt, into bankruptcy reorganization, and thus, start to rebuild.
This is what the issue is, and this is the danger, from the standpoint of London. They're now moving for, as I said, wars centered on the consolidation of power by this financial interest, in the United States, in western and central Europe, and elsewhere, and this power to conduct effective warfare, including killing warfare, by military means, against Russia, China, India, and other countries. This is what the game is.
And if this game is not stopped, I can tell you: There'll be no planet.
But then, come back to the food question. If you want to get the American people—and people of other nations—up on their hind legs, acting like free people, rather than battered slaves, tell them their food for tomorrow morning is not there. That activates popular resistance more than anything else.
We are now in such a situation: For many parts of the world, the lack of food, is an immediate reality. There is a growing explosion throughout much of the world over this food shortage issue. My wife Helga [Zepp-LaRouche] is involved in Europe, and it's spreading here, as an effort, around the meeting of the FAO, that is the international food organization in Rome, in June, and to mobilize people of the world, around this question of food, its production, distribution, and supply.
This comes into direct collision with the World Trade Organization, which is virtually a fascist organization. It comes into conflict with the British policies of Prince Philip, for example, who, with his bats, is opposed to developing water systems in Sonora region.
And therefore, you are now, at the same time that you have people who have orchestrated this last phase of this election in the United States, in Indiana and North Carolina, have orchestrated a coup d'état against the U.S. Constitutional system. That's what it is, in fact: This is treason! What happened yesterday is treason! Because its intention was treasonous. Not because the act itself was anything more than a crime, but the intention was treasonous. Therefore, it's treason. And the enemy of the United States, is thus, those who are taking the food away from the people of the United States, and some other countries.
This thing is building up. It's recognized internationally. Most countries are already facing this crisis. The rate of food shortage is increasing, because the stocking from various food stores, annual stores, has already been delivered, and there's not enough. So, as the fact of the empty warehouses, and equivalent forms of supplies, as these things go down, without food, the food crisis is going to accelerate. And you're going to have, not only other parts of the world, but also American citizens, who are now faced with the threat of death by food shortages.
The time has come, that those who're trying to gloat over the fakery they pulled yesterday, has come to an end. Because a hungry people will be a revolting people. And those who set forth this conflict, will have to reap the harvest.
We Can Win This Fight Against Evil
Therefore, we must not be pessimistic about what's happening in this last phase of the election. It's a fraud. The fraud with the present powers will make it stick, because that's what they do—they're fakers. They whole thing is a fraud: They don't want Obama. They just want to use him to destroy Hillary Clinton, that's all. Once they destroy Hillary Clinton, they'll get rid of Obama. That's their intention. And their intention is to bring in a fascist regime, in the United States, a Presidency which will be, in effect, a fascist regime, which will cooperate with the British and bring the United States into alliance with the United Kingdom, or the Anglo-Dutch Liberals—not all Brits are for this, by the way, and they're some influential ones; and with western and central Europe taken over by this same imperial power. An imperial power whose intention is, to go to war against Russia, China, India, and other countries, using nuclear weapons! That's the intention.
So therefore, the issue here is not the election result. The issue is not the President. Obama is not competent to be a President; he has none of the makings of competence. Many of his constituents are valuable people, who are tied to the interests of the lower 80%, and they should be encouraged and defended, and their rights defended.
Obama's a failure. He's sort of an Elmer Gantry of politics. That's the best way to characterize him.
And thus, we're now at a point, where a revolutionary movement, or the makings of it, is building up around the food issue. And therefore, those who triumphed yesterday, are not going to continue to triumph for long: The result is, either we win, and restore the kind of government we require, in various nations, and among nations. Or this world is going to go into Hell, because the crisis won't quit. The people will die of hunger, they will die in increasing numbers; they will kill for food. The structure of society will be destroyed in the fight over food, which is not there.
And therefore, either we win this fight against this evil, or there won't by anything to fight for.
Thank you.