Lyndon LaRouche Webcast with
Youth in Argentina and Peru

The following is a transcript of Lyndon LaRouche's opening remarks, and of the first part of the question-and-answer period, of a webcast event on Nov. 11, 2004, which featured Lyndon LaRouche with participation from a number of university campuses in Argentina and Peru. Video and audio archives of the webcast are also available.

Anuart Jarma: Good afternoon, my name is Anuart Jarma. I am a member of the Liaison Executive Committee of the Rosario campus of the National Technological University, and a member of the Forum for Regional Dialogue of Rosario, which is an entity that was created at a very critical moment of the crisis which we Argentines have endured over the last years. This group has been formed by many different sectors of the community in this region—business layers, trade union layers, non-governmental organizations, civic organizations—as a forum for dialogue, for the purpose of exchanging ideas and coming to a consensus of views, and to face the task of recovering our country, which has suffered so greatly in this period.

For that reason, we are most honored to have Dr. LaRouche with us today. We are grateful to have him with us, and we appreciate the great deference he has shown us by being here. It is very generous on his part to communicate with Rosario, one of Argentina's most important cities, located in an area of great agro-industrial potential. Mr. LaRouche, welcome to our home.

I will now ask for a representative of the LaRouche Youth movement, Emiliano Andino, to take the microphone, and to be master of ceremonies for this video-conference.

We also have with us today members of the Secretariat of Culture of the National Technological University of Rosario, and also members of various representative entities, associations, trade unions, and business groups. So, now, I'd like to have Emiliano speak. Welcome.

Emiliano Andino: My name is Emiliano Andino. I am a member of the international LaRouche Youth Movement, and I would like to welcome all of you to this video-conference: "The Issue Is the Sovereign States of the Americas," given by former U.S. Presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche.

I am speaking to you from the Rosario branch of the UTN university of Argentina. Other universities are also connected to this webcast: the UTN of Buenos Aires, the UTN in Cordoba, the National University of Lomas de Zamora in Buenos Aires province, and also the University of Callao in Peru. Other universities were also scheduled to join us over the internet, for which we don't yet have confirmation of their participation. I also want to welcome those of you who are listening by internet.

We would like to thank Mr. Anuart Jarma and all the other members of the organizing group here in Rosario, for their support. Without them, we would not have been able to carry out this event. Therefore, I would like to present to you Mr. Lyndon LaRouche, the man who should be President of the United States.

Lyndon LaRouche: Thank you very much. As you know, the problems of Argentina are not regional, they're international. If there were any doubt of that, we have the case of the IMF involvement in the problems of Argentina, and other countries. Thus, what is happening on a world scale will reverberate into whatever we discuss in any part of the world, and notably this part of the world in the Southern Cone region of South America.

At present, the most recent event affecting world events, has been the death of Yasser Arafat, the longtime leader of the PLO. His death opens questions about the fate not only of the so-called Middle East, or Southwest Asia, but the world as a whole. And, as you know, Arafat was a fighter, a hard fighter for the Palestinians, against, in particular, the Israelis. Now we are in a situation where we are still trying to get peace between Israelis and Palestinians, a peace which is indispensable for the region of Southwest Asia, which includes Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iran, and the Arab states, including Egypt, of course. And what happens there will tend to determine what happens on a global scale.

It's the way history is in the long run, and very much the way history is today. So, to understand this problem we're about to face, we have to start with consideration of that, and what happens in Israel and in the Middle East, on the occasion of the death of Arafat, whether or not somebody will step forward, now, to bring about an effective peace negotiation between the leadership of Israel and Palestine, will determine very much what happens to every part of the world at large, including in this case Argentina, as it affects the kind of international constellation of forces which will affect the fate of Argentina.

Now, our problem is today, as in the late 1920s and early 1930s, an international cartel of financier oligarchical interests, who are not banks as much as they are controllers of banks, as a kind of Venetian oligarchy. This system, which was known in the 1920s and 1930s and early 40s, as the Synarchist International, gave us the spread of fascist states across most of continental Europe, and only the intervention of the United States prevented Britain from joining Hitler during the spring of 1940. The Roosevelt intervention in the situation, by backing Britain's resistance to Hitler and by rewarding the Soviet Union and other measures, made possible the rescue of civilization from a nightmare which would otherwise rule the world today.

Now, once again, we have come, as in the 1920s, to a great international monetary-financial crisis, and also an economic crisis. This process, especially since 1971-72, has been crushing the world. The floating exchange-rate system. It has crushed Argentina, which was once one of the wealthiest countries in the world in terms of standard of living, and we need not detail here what the condition is today. This deterioration of the condition of life in Argentina, as in other countries in South and Central America, as in Mexico since 1982, is a result of the role of this international Synarchist financier interest which has been controlling international monetary financial policy thoroughly since that time, and we have been resisting.

Now, we've come to the point that that system is finished. Whatever happens, nothing can save the IMF system in its present form. There is no measure, no magic, no method by which the IMF as presently represented, will continue to exist, because the international monetary-financial system is hopelessly bankrupt. It is not bankrupt in the sense that it could be reorganized in its present form. The only thing that could happen with the IMF, would be that governments, a concert of governments, put the IMF and related banking systems, central banking systems, into receivership, for reorganization of these banking institutions.

Now, what would have to be done at that point, is of course what Franklin Roosevelt did in the United States in March of 1933 and thereafter. Remember, our Constitution in the United States, as little as it is observed now by the present government of the United States, nonetheless makes the United States unique among republics, in that our Constitution provides for the non-existence of any central banking system, even though we have had some snuck in here and there, like the Federal Reserve System. Under our Constitution, only the federal government has the power to create currency. The Federal government is responsible to manage currency and credit on behalf of the nation. And the government is compelled by its Constitution, by the preamble of the Constitution, to use its power, including the power over the currency, to defend the absolute sovereignty of the nation as a republic, to defend the general welfare of all of the people, and to defend both the sovereignty and the general welfare at present, for future generations, for posterity. Roosevelt did that.

Presently, that's what we have to do. All nations around the world, the entire system is about to go under. We are on the verge of a greater depression than western European civilization has known since the 14th century dark age. This is much worse than the depression of the 1930s, and it's coming on fast and cannot be prevented now. The only way the effects of the crash can be prevented is by the intervention of a concert of sovereign governments, to put the international monetary financial system into reorganization.

You see what is happening now. The case of Argentina. The demands of the bankers, including the IMF, is to impose upon the people and nation of Argentina, conditions which amount to genocide, to turn all of Argentina into a vast concentration camp, and to squeeze Argentina's people and resources for what the country no longer has. It no longer has the means for payment of these debts, and therefore, to proceed with these would be a Hitler-like or worse, genocide against the nation and people of Argentina. The same thing threatens South America and Central America as a whole. It also threatens other parts of the world.

So therefore, we have come, at the time of Arafat's death, to a point of crisis, a turning point. We've now had a recent election in the United States. The election is not concluded. George Bush is not yet the re-elected president of the United States. The process has to go through the Electoral College, and several things could happen during the course of the proceedings through the Electoral College, including the effects of the present examination of the way the election was conducted, and what the results are. Also, if the Electoral College cannot resolve the differences, then the matter goes by our Constitution into the Congress, which has to take over, when the Electoral College has failed, in choosing a President and Vice-President of the United States.

But, under the putative new President of the United States and the presently incumbent President, there's no indication of any policy which will prevent the conclusion of the worst financial collapse in world history. That's where we're headed.

Therefore, the question is to find leadership in this difficult time, to lead nations in putting this financial system through reorganization, to restore something similar, on a world scale, to what was established at Bretton Woods by Franklin Roosevelt, in 1944: to establish a new world monetary system of fixed exchange rates, a new system of credit, and a mobilization of credit to rebuild the economies of the world. We can do that. That will work. Physically it's feasible.

The question is, which way are we going? If we go the way of the present Bush Administration policies, the present policies of the European countries—Western and Central European countries—the policies of the IMF, then humanity is going to plunge into a dark age. The question is, whence comes the leadership, and the will to bring nations together, to force the necessary change in international as well as national institutions, required for people to survive? Our objective can be no more nor no less immediately, than ensuring nations the rights they had prior to the onset of this crisis, prior to 1971-72 in terms of rights. The rights to rebuild their economies by that standard, that yardstick of performance. We must ally to that end, among ourselves. We must agree to that. We must find governmental and other influential forces which can induce governments to make the kinds of decisions we require for them.

Do not believe that, even if Bush is confirmed, that the present policies of the Bush Administration will go forward. This is not the end of things. This is not the end of time, the fact that Bush might be elected again. Because Bush faces problems. The United States is bankrupt. The housing system, the mortgage system of the United States, like that of the United Kingdom, is bankrupt, is ready to blow. The United States has a current account deficit. It's bankrupt.

The price of petroleum is now around $50 a barrel, internationally, headed toward $100 a barrel. Soon, that increased price of petroleum will hit every part of the consumer sector of the economies of the world. We have a vast speculation in raw materials, a speculation which is concentrated in the United States, in Western and Central Europe, in a different way in Russia, and China is not a holder of raw materials, but it is the biggest bidder for raw materials on the world today, as you see in neighboring Brazil, where China has shown a great interest in Brazil, and also more recently, China has now shown a similar interest in Argentina. So, the world is dominated by great raw materials cartels, buyers and sellers, in a crashing system.

But there is, generally, in Europe and elsewhere, there is no concern for rebuilding the economy in the sense of the productive powers of labor and the general welfare of populations.

So, and this government of Bush is going to face that. The European governments are going to face that. Their banking systems, the banking system of the United States, the banking system of Western Europe, is hopelessly bankrupt. It cannot be saved in its present form. It cannot be reorganized in its present form, in its own terms. Only government intervention, to put the banking system through drastic reorganization, in bankruptcy, in order to protect the population, to maintain the continuity of essential physical economic functions, can save the system.

We have to bring about a condition under which governments will make that, and the US government, among others, is going to face the challenge of this crisis. You're going to see upheavals in the US government, whoever is the government. It cannot be avoided. This is a very dangerous period, a period in which wars and revolution can spread. Generally, asymmetric warfare planetwide.

There is a solution. The solution is essentially a concept. It's the concept on which the United States was founded at a time that the situation was seemingly hopeless. In 1763, the Anglo-Dutch liberal system, at a treaty in Paris, in February, had established the British Empire as a fact. That is, the empire of the British East India Company. The situation for Europe was then almost hopeless. This empire was about to gobble up everything, including the remains of the Hapsburg Empire. But some in Europe supported the cause of the United States, in particular, and they also supported people in various parts of South America, as in Colombia and other states of the Americas, in the hope of building republics in this hemisphere, with the hope that such republics would make a reform in international affairs, which would lead in return to the establishment of true republics in Europe as well as in the Americas.

The United States was the first and only successful effort, but the French Revolution, which was organized by the British East India Company, prevented France from making the change which Lafayette, Bailly, and others, wanted to make, to make a constitutional monarchy modelled on the same principles as the recent US Constitution. That did not happen. Hell broke out, and Europe has not had a true republic as a government ever since. We had approximations under Charles de Gaulle at a certain period, high point of the Fifth Republic, a serious effort of building France as a true republic. We've had desires in that direction in other countries. But today, the United States remains the only nation with that kind of constitution, even though we abuse it.

The time has come, when we of this planet, realize we cannot continue to have wars, of the types of wars we have now. We cannot resolve the problems of humanity by going to aggressive war. We cannot resolve these problems by going in with military force, to try to change governments or social systems by force. We must now return to the principles of the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, to establish a system throughout the world of perfectly sovereign nation-states, committed to the principle of promoting the general welfare, the sovereignty of nations, the welfare of their peoples, peace among nations, and cooperation for posterity.

Because we cannot fight wars anymore, the way we used to. Nuclear weapons and the terrible effects of asymmetric war today, are such that a general warfare would mean the extinction of civilization on this planet. Therefore, we must find a peaceful solution.

It does not mean we give up defense. But defensive warfare is far different from the kind of aggressive war which Vice-President Cheney, for example, has been pushing in recent periods. We must end aggressive war on this planet forever. We must bring about conditions where peace is expected, where peace is the exit strategy for all conflict, and where just solutions are proposed. And thus, while we don't know definitely what will happen in the future, we don't know what will come out of this period because we don't have the governments in place who are presently committed to the right ends.

But we have a great crisis, in which governments which have failed are going to be put to the test, in which the will of the people can intervene effectively. And if it intervenes amongst a number of countries effectively, we will have changes in the behavior of governments. We will have the opportunity to come out of this crisis alive. That's the condition we face. The development of a system of fraternity among sovereign nation-states, the promotion of the existence of sovereign nation-states, and the promotion of economic progress and technological progress throughout the planet, these are the objectives around which we must mobilize.

If I were President, or had been elected President, I could promise you great things. I've not been elected President, obviously, and am not about to be elected President within the near future. That's obvious. But my objectives are still valid. I have been a part of the Democratic Party's campaign for seeking the presidency. We will continue on the course we're working out, and we will hopefully make a contribution to this process.

So, I cannot promise you anything, except my dedication and the dedication of people like me, to the kinds of ideas I represent. But I can say, we do have a chance. There's always a chance for humanity. And there's nothing worth doing, except fighting to build that chance for humanity. Any other choice of action would be foolishness. Thank you.

Emiliano Andino: We now continue with the second part of this conference, which are the questions we'd like to ask Mr. Lyndon LaRouche. Would anyone present here in Rosario like to ask a question?

Q: The first question that one must ask, is: Just a couple of days ago, the elections in the United States were held. The million dollar question is, what awaits us as a result of the results of the election in the United States?

LaRouche: What awaits us is dangerous uncertainty, a period of very dangerous uncertainty. Remember, the inauguration occurs on the 20th of January. We now have the better part of three months in which to await the actual inauguration of the new president. In the meantime, there's great uncertainty within this presidency, and there is a tumultuous process, political process, now ongoing inside the United States, in particular. Also in Europe. But, the first few days following the completion of the election on November 2, was a period in which people suddenly let down. There was confusion. There was confusion in the state of minds of people. Now, in the past several days, that confusion is waning away, and I've been able to play a significant part inside the United States, among these institutions, in helping to bring an end to the confusion.

We are now in the process of mobilizing within the Democratic Party, an effective way of dealing with the prospect of the election of Bush, his inauguration in January. We also have a large number of Republicans, and the Republicans who do not like what the Bush Administration has represented, but supported the Republican presidential candidacy nonetheless. They are now very upset. There's going to be tumult in the US political process. There's the danger that the Bush Administration may launch new wars, like the escalation presently at Fallujah, to try to compensate for the internal political crisis inside the United States, and also in Europe. The crises that face the Bush Administration, especially the economic crisis—remember, the economic crisis is coming on fast, right now. The United States is on the edge of a general collapse. How long this general collapse can be postponed is not certain, because this involves subjective factors as well as objective ones, but the preconditions for a general chain-reaction collapse of the international financial monetary system, exist right now. And that is the predominant fact.

We have all the particular crises, which are going to have a political effect. We have the growing sense of dangers of new kinds of epidemics, disease epidemics, which may be worse than those we've had in recent times. And a sense of no preparation for dealing with them. We have a sense of all of these kinds of problems. And also possible new wars.

For example, we have the case that I mentioned earlier, of Arafat's death. There is a man in Israeli prison, who if Sharon wanted to, and if the United States would press Sharon to do it, could be pulled out of prison as a negotiating partner with Sharon, for bringing about, or negotiating, some kind of peace between the Palestinians and Israelis. If they did agree to any acceptable terms, that would in a sense bring the crisis in the entire Southwest Asia, into some kind of order. We are obviously going to work for that. Even while Bush is president, we're going to work for that, because the reality of circumstances is going to push many inside the Bush Administration, as well as the Democratic Party, to seek to bring about that reconciliation, long-awaited now.

And so the death of Arafat, as I said at the beginning of my remarks today, the death of Arafat is a turning point in history. It's a point at which decisions are forced upon the world, postponed decisions, about the question of the prospect of peace in Southwest Asia as a whole. You can't talk about Iraq without talking about Israel/Palestine. You can't talk about Turkey, without talking about Israeli/Palestinian relations, or about Iran, or about Egypt, or about Darfur in Sudan. You can't talk about any of these areas, without talking about the death of Arafat, and what that poses. It's a chain-reaction situation. So there's the element of uncertainty.

What we do know is, we're going into a crisis. That nothing is fixed, nothing is certain, except the circumstances of crisis. That we will have opportunities to influence the process. We're not just screaming in the wilderness. We in the United States who are determined to do something, are determined to do something. We are the most powerful nation in this world politically, if not as much in other respects as we think we are. But if we make important decisions, among a significant part of our political establishment, those decisions will affect the world. If those decisions are good ones, they will affect the world beneficially. And all I can promise you is that, those of us in the United States who are part of that effort, if we succeed, we will bring about a beneficial change in the present trends in world affairs.

Emiliano Andino: For those of you who are following this presentation over the internet, and all of the other universities that are participating, I want to remind you that you can send in your questions by e-mail to: argentina@wlym.com. Lyndon LaRouche will answer all of your questions. Just include your name, and your e-mail address, and if we don't have time today, he will be glad to answer those questions subsequently. I'd also like to remind you to please ask your questions slowly and clearly, so that the simultaneous translators can translate for Mr. LaRouche—please show a little compassion for the translators.

So, I'd like to take another question from Rosario, if there is someone else who would like to answer a question here.

Q: My question is, if the United States, with Israel, were to attack Iran, would the military response of Iran be similar to that of Iraq, in your view, or would we be facing a different situation from Iran? Thank you.

LaRouche: The attack on Iran would be an act of insanity, but since there is insanity within the US establishment, especially around Vice-President Cheney and company, it is not impossible it will happen. Of course, it would be impossible for Israel to attack a site in Iran with missiles, for example, missiles supplied by the United States, without the consent and support of the United States. An attack on Iran is not like an attack on Iraq, or at least Iraq today. This will have chain-reaction effects, and you cannot look at these areas one at a time.

We now have an area, as I said, Southwest Asia. The center of Southwest Asia is Turkey, number one, and Turkey can become involved in Iraq and Syria, because of the Kurdish minority factor in the northern part of Iraq. You have in Transcaucasia, on the borders of this area, you have Armenia and Tajikistan, which are very important in respect to Iran. Iran borders the area. Then you have the Arab states, including Egypt, which are the immediate environment. This is one unit, this is one package. Sudan is also part of the package. It extends deeper into Africa, and other parts of the world. So that, if you start a war attack on Iran, you do not attack another nation. You escalate the already existing conflict within Southwest Asia as a whole. In other words, you'll turn the entirety of Southwest Asia, including its critical role in world petroleum supplies, into an area of crisis like that of Iraq today, an area of asymmetric warfare.

So, anybody who would condone a US, or US/Israeli attack on Iran, with missiles, as has been proposed, has to be in effect clinically insane. But it can happen, because we have people in the US government and elsewhere, who are clinically insane.

I don't think that, for example, that Sharon is clinically insane. I think he's a gangster, more than an ideologue, but he lives in a country which is highly ideologized. The point is, it is not irrational, because I'm doing it too, for the United States government to go to Sharon, and other governments to go to Sharon, and say, if you will negotiate with the Palestinians, to get an end to this strife in that part of the Middle East, we will support you in that. For example, you take a man out of prison, a Palestinian, you negotiate with him, and get an agreement which is a two-state agreement in principle in the Middle East, and we will support that fully, with our resources, in order to ensure peace, prosperity and well-being for the people.

So, we will do that. But the alternative is that there are people who don't want that. There are people who want chaos and insanity, and they exist among the so-called neoconservative faction inside the US government, they exist in Israel, madmen; they exist in other parts of the world. There also is tinder on the other side. There are people in the Arab and Islamic world, who have some very dangerous ideas about some larger empire or something, or some larger system. These can become dangerous. In other to prevent these from becoming major factors in the region, and more broadly, we have to bring stable peace among nation-states and peoples today, wherever possible. That stability, that peaceful stability, is our security in every part of the world. And what happens, as I said earlier, in the so-called Middle East, what happens there now, will determine in one degree or another, but significantly, every other part of the world, including South America.