LYNDON AND HELGA LAROUCHE IN ROME
The World Food Crisis
Can Be a Lever To End Globalization
by Claudio Celani
Lyndon LaRouche and Helga Zepp-LaRouche paid a visit to Italy, June 18-19, in the aftermath of the Irish "No" vote on the European Union's dictatorial Lisbon Treaty, and on the eve of Italy's planned parliamentary vote on the same issue. Behind a facade of formal consensus, the political class is in disarray, as the ratification vote is now useless. (The Treaty must be approved by all member-nations.) Nevertheless, the pro-EU lobby, led by President Giorgio Napolitano and powerful media, corporate, and financial interests, attempts to strongarm the Parliament to ratify it in July. There will be a discussion in the relevant Parliamentary committee, and at least one party, the Northern League, has called for a debate.
In this context, the LaRouches provided leadership in their meetings with political, intellectual, and religious leaders, by connecting the resistance to the Lisbon Treaty to the worldwide fight to defend the "lower 80%" of the population against the effects of the collapsing globalized economic system. Italy now has a unique opportunity to take the lead, with a clear rejection of the supranational Treaty, that would reduce continental Europe to "a British colony run from the outside," LaRouche stressed.
Over the last two decades, the LaRouches have visited Italy many times, and helped to shape the current political debate. In 2001, a significant number of parliamentarians raised the issue of a new international monetary system in the legislature. In 2005, the Chamber of Deputies approved a motion for "a new and more just international financial system," with the objective of "preventing financial crashes and supporting the real economy."
Then, in June 2007, EIR held a conference at the Hotel Nazionale in Rome, in front of the Chamber of Deputies, in which Giulio Tremonti, now finance minister, strongly supported LaRouche's proposal for Eurasian infrastructure development, concluding his speech by stating that the LaRouche movement's ideas "must be spread." Earlier this year, Tremonti released his book, Fear and Hope, in which he calls explicitly for a New Bretton Woods.
Double Food Production; Kill the WTO
On June 18, 2008 the LaRouche held a press conference, together with former Sen. Lidia Menapace, on the subject of the global food crisis. Zepp-LaRouche regretted the failure of the recent FAO (UN Food and Agriculture Organization) meeting to provide solutions to the crisis, but welcomed the fact that many countries refused to capitulate to the free-market faction. The next step, she said, is to put on the agenda of the upcoming UN General Assembly the fight to immediately double world food production, dissolve the WTO (World Trade Organization), and establish a worldwide New Deal. Africa, the continent hit hardest by the food crisis, is being helped only by Russia, China, and India, while Europe and the United States do nothing but complain about the "expansion of those countries' influence."
However, the Irish defeat of the Treaty has delivered a clear message: The lower 80% of the population, who are hardest hit by inflation, want governments to act to protect them. If the political parties fail to do this, they will disintegrate, Lyndon LaRouche said. Our task is to "get people to organize themselves politically," and fight to change the system. As for the United States, the next 60 days, leading into the late-Summer party nominating conventions, will be crucial, LaRouche said, because everything remains open, and many things can, and will, happen between now and then.
Senator Menapace said that she celebrated the defeat of the Lisbon Treaty, which she considers anti-democratic. Despite what government and state leaders say, the Treaty is now dead and the ratification process cannot go on. She then polemicized against those who try to re-introduce Thomas Malthus' ideas to justify the food crisis, as if it were a consequence of natural causes and not man-made. She therefore supported Zepp-LaRouche's call to shut down the WTO and launch an effort to double world food production.
The entire press conference was taped and posted by Radio Radicale on its website.
Later during the day, the LaRouches emphasized the same issues in an interview with Egyptian television, supporting President Hosni Mubarak's call to end production of biofuels.
The LaRouches held an informal meeting on June 19 with several members of the Parliament in a Senate room, to discuss the global systemic crisis, as well as the strategic perspectives around the U.S. elections and the Lisbon Treaty debate. Only a bankruptcy reorganization of the system can work, the American economist said, so as to replace the British-style monetary system with a real credit system. LaRouche's political movement is working to ensure that, by September, a person of the qualities of Hillary Clinton is the Democratic Presidential candidate. In that case, LaRouche said, we have a chance to influence the U.S. Presidency, which, together with Russia, China, India, and other countries, could proceed to make the needed international changes. Among the participants, a decision was taken to launch future initiatives in favor of a new Bretton Woods system.
Aldo Moro: A 30-Year Memorial
Lyndon LaRouche was the guest of honor at a conference dedicated to the memory of Aldo Moro June 19 (see below). The event was organized as a discussion of Giovanni Galloni's book on the former Prime Minister, entitled 30 Years with Moro. Galloni was a collaborator of Moro from the founding of the left-wing current in the Christian Democratic Party (DC), until Moro's assassination in 1978, when Moro was chairman, and Galloni was deputy secretary general of the DC. LaRouche was introduced by Galloni's son, economist Nino Galloni, who recounted how he first became acquainted with LaRouche's ideas through his book The Science of Christian Economy, many years ago.
Among the other speakers, were former Moro collaborators or allies Paola Gaiotti, Giulio Alfano, and Giuseppe Chiarante, who expressed the view that Moro's assassination 30 years ago is still an open case, since the real string-pullers have not been identified. The name of Henry Kissinger came up several times, in relation to his famous meeting with Moro in 1976 in Washington. The then-U.S. Secretary of State warned the Italian leader that if he intended to go ahead with his policy of involving the Italian Communist Party in a government alliance while splitting from Moscow (known as the "Historic Compromise"), he would end up badly. Two years later, on the very day that a government based on his policy was to be inaugurated in the Parliament, March 16, 1978, Moro was kidnapped. Two months later, on May 9, he was killed by the Red Brigades terrorist organization.
The audience, which included many figures who, three decades ago, represented Italy's political establishment, eagerly awaited LaRouche's intervention, as it had been announced that he would speak on the subject of Henry Kissinger. They were not disappointed, although LaRouche began by noting that Kissinger's role has been greatly exaggerated: Sir Henry is, in fact, just a lackey for the British empire. Other figures, such as George Shultz, are more important, LaRouche said, explaining Shultz's record as an agent of the Anglo-Dutch Liberal oligarchy.
To locate the strategic context in which Moro was killed, LaRouche went back to the developments unfolding in the 1960s: a wave of assassinations in the U.S. and Europe (the Kennedys, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King; the many attempts on the life of Charles de Gaulle; the ousting of Konrad Adenauer and Harold Macmillan); the 1968 upsurge that brought Nixon into power; the dismantling of the Bretton Woods system and the U.S. economy since 1971, etc. Moro was killed because he represented an opposition to that process, LaRouche stated.
Giovanni Galloni concluded the event, declaring that he fully agreed with LaRouche's analysis, which he partly reflects in the concluding chapter of his book. Galloni forcefully stated once again that a higher entity was pulling the strings of the Red Brigades terrorists who, as he knows from his sources, and as has written in his book, were infiltrated by American and Israeli intelligence.
On June 19, LaRouche gave a beautiful lecture on scientific creativity to students and teachers of the Physics Department of Rome University "La Sapienza." The lecture polarized the audience, especially because LaRouche polemicized against textbook methods of learning vs. real learning. "You want to have the dog and not just its footprints," LaRouche said, showing, in Kepler's work, a unique reproduction of the true process of scientific discovery as against simple mathematical formulas or theories. Educating the youth in real creativity, as the LaRouche Youth Movement is doing, is the key to having independent thinking in political leadership for the future of society, LaRouche explained.
