|
|
Friday International Webcast
17 July 2015
The British Queen, through the agency of Schaeuble and Merkel, forced a killed austerity program down the throats of the Greek people. The problem is, the United States is actually more bankrupt than Greece! What is Obama’s next move now that killer austerity is on the table? TRANSCRIPT MEGAN BEETS: Good evening, tonight is Friday, July 17, 2015. My name is Megan Beets, and I’d like to welcome all of you to our regular Friday evening broadcast here on larouchepac.com. I’m joined tonight in the studio by Jeffrey Steinberg of Executive Intelligence Review, and Jason Ross of the LaRouche PAC scientific research team, the Basement. Now, there have been a number of extremely dramatic developments over the course of the past week, which have landed upon our heads and which are moving the world forward at an unbelievably rapid pace; bringing civilization to a point of confrontation and showdown between the completely bankrupt and dead trans-Atlantic system — which is typified by the British Empire, the British Queen, and their intention for war and depopulation — versus those of us in the trans-Atlantic system and elsewhere who are not evil, and who have a very different vision for the progress of mankind. Which is represented both by the better tradition of the American republic, the offspring of the Renaissance, and the efforts associated with the Renaissance and Nicholas of Cusa to build a more human civilization; but also seen today in the efforts of the BRICS nations and their allies — particularly Russia, China, and India. So, to quickly highlight the strategic picture before I turn the podium over to Jeff to elaborate, I’d like to just highlight three of those very important developments. First, on Monday, we had the complete exposure of Hillary Clinton’s disqualification as a valid candidate for the Presidency of the United States. This was provoked by a very significant public intervention by LaRouche PAC’s Daniel Burke, in New York City, which exposed Clinton to be exactly what LaRouche has emphasized she is; nothing but a stooge for Obama, who’s in turn, a stooge and a tool for the British Empire. Now on Monday, at the end of what was supposed to be a very important speech on economic policy by Senator Clinton in New York City, Burke called out, demanding to know from Clinton, "Will you support Glass-Steagall? Will you restore Glass-Steagall?" Now, while Clinton refused to respond, later her economic advisor, who was contacted by the media, made it very clear that there would be no expectation of Glass-Steagall from a Hillary Clinton Presidency. Now, the firestorm of very straightforward media coverage which followed both in the U.S. and internationally, not only exposed Clinton as a tool of Obama; placing her in opposition to the majority of the Democratic base and most people in the country who are in support of Glass-Steagall, but it also highlighted very clearly the leadership being taken by the four Senators and others in the Congress, who right now are moving forward to champion Glass-Steagall. Now, that same day, Monday, we had the announcement from Brussels of the so-called "deal" which was struck between Greece and the EU. Which is, and is intended to be, nothing but a murder policy. Now in response to this that evening, Lyndon LaRouche had the following to say: "This is a genocide which is being steered from Britain; and it is the death knell of the European Union. The EU will disintegrate; and it is the British Empire which has done this. They operated through the German Finance Minister Schäuble, who represents the extreme right-wing influence on German Chancellor Merkel. But Germany cannot get by with this; therefore, Germany too, now will go into a crisis. And more than that, there’s a British-driven breakdown crisis of the European Union, also represents a serious and immediate danger of war with Russia, and one of fascism." Now, the last development that I’ll highlight from this week, is the conclusion of the current phase of the P5+1 process, and the announcement of the conclusion of a deal between the P5+1 and Iran. Which comes in the midst of the escalation of the war danger and provocation coming from Obama and the British which was just referenced by Mr. LaRouche in his remarks on Greece. Now, as Mr. LaRouche underscored earlier today, in a discussion that we had with him in preparation for tonight’s broadcast, there developments are not events. These are not facts to be taken one by one; they’re not to be taken as events as such. One is not the cause of the other. These developments can only be seen and must be seen as part, as a manifestation of a broad long-ranging process of human history, waves in human history. And the only way to respond to, and the only way to be able to shape so-called events, is to act on and to act for these broad waves of history. Now, we see this in the fight against evil which was waged by Nicholas of Cusa beginning in the 15th Century, continuing through the life of Gottfried Leibniz; and the fight against evil that was taken up in the American republic in the aftermath of the death of Leibniz. So, that’s the context in which I’d like to place the discussion of tonight’s broadcast, and that’s also the context in which I will ask our institutional question for the evening. Which reads very simply as follows: "Mr. LaRouche, how do you assess the deal that has been reached between the P5+1 and Iran?" So, I’d like to invite Jeff to come to the podium to address that question, and also elaborate on the broader strategic picture. JEFFREY STEINBERG: Thanks, Megan. As Megan said, we had a discussion with both Mr. and Mrs. LaRouche earlier today. It was very extensive; it went for over two hours, so it would be impossible to replicate all of the depths of that discussion. But I do want to convey in response to the institutional question and these several other developments, the basic thrust of what we discussed. Now, just taking for one moment the developments around Greece, and Mr. LaRouche’s emphasis on the long arm of the British Empire; which in this case largely worked through German Finance Minister Schäuble. What actually happened is, over the past few days, the entire trans-Atlantic system reached a potential breakdown moment. Had Greece defaulted on the IMF loans that actually already came due on June 30 and were not paid, they have a one-month grace period. And of course, this coming Monday, July 20, is the date when the debt to the European Union and the European Central Bank — at least the next tranche of that debt — comes due. If there was a default by Greece on those debts, then the entire derivatives bubble of unknown, but also massive magnitude, would have blown out; and you would have had an instantaneous collapse of the entire trans-Atlantic and much of the global financial system. That’s the point that we’re at right now; it’s a nightmare moment. And all of the factors driving the world to a war confrontation, are centered around that situation. And quite bluntly, the Prime Minister of Greece — Tsipras — had a gun to his head. The bottom line is, that he was told that if he went forward and rejected the deal that was being put on the table — a suicide deal — that there would be a NATO coup and he would be deposed from power. It was literally a gun to his head. And there are people inside the trans-Atlantic intelligence establishment who were well aware of the fact that those were the parameters. The threat was a NATO military coup; an imposition of fascism in Greece, and the beginning of that process elsewhere. Now, if anybody has any doubts about the willingness of forces within NATO to carry out such a coup, just go back to 2013 and 2014 and the events that occurred in Ukraine. Where the Ukrainian government, the Yanukovych government — legitimately elected, undisputed — was thrown out of power by a neo-Nazi coup with enormous support from within NATO. Victoria Nuland was the poster girl for that operation, but it was much broader support than that; it was British. So, there was a military coup, using neo-Nazi forces, simply because Yanukovych concluded that signing the eastern partnership deal with the European Union would be completely against the national interests of Ukraine. So all that’s followed from that point, has been a hysterical reaction over the fact that some people in Ukraine decided to act in the interest of their country, and walk away from something that would have been basically the death of the Ukrainian economy and the Ukrainian people. So the idea that there was a military coup in the works, and that that was a critical factor in the decision by the Tsipras government to take a rotten deal is the way to understand that. And that will get us very quickly to the larger issue. You do have, of course, the developments around the intervention on Monday by Daniel Burke into the Hillary Clinton speech at the New School in New York City. Which has, predictably, caused enormous shockwaves across the entire trans-Atlantic region, because the number one issue that the British and Wall Street fear the most — the only thing that they really fear — is that a number of people in critical positions will recognize the bankruptcy of the whole trans-Atlantic system, and will go with Glass-Steagall. That is the solution; there is a solution that is readily available. There are now Glass-Steagall bills both in the Senate and in the House; in fact, this week a second Glass-Steagall bill, using the identical language of the Warren/Cantwell/McCain/King bill in the Senate, was introduced into the house by some of the very same people who sponsored the earlier bill with Marcy Kaptur, including Congressman Walter Jones. So, the solution is there; it’s on the table. It’s never a question of whether or not there are available solutions. There are always solutions, no matter how grave, so long as you have a certain kind of human creativity. Looking at the future and coming up with viable solutions. The question is, will there be enough people, who show the courage and the historical insight to be able to actually act in a timely fashion? Now, when we look at the immediates of the agreement that was reached between the P5+1 countries and Iran, there’s many things that could be said. But quite frankly, many of them are quite irrelevant, because we don’t know what the consequences are going to be. And it’s impossible to precisely know them, but it’s very important to understand the historical context in which this has happened. Mr. LaRouche made the point very clearly right at the outset of our long discussion this morning, that you’ve got to understand the long-wave history of how the empire has operated. And effectively, the Roman Empire never really ended; it changed addresses, it changed names over the centuries. But you’ve had a system of empire, and in particular, that system of empire [was] located decisively in the British Empire during two key inflection points in modern history. The more recent of those two inflections points, which I think gives you a clear indication of why we can’t know precisely what the consequences of the P5+1 deal are going to be, is because of the unknown factors of what might stand in the way of the empire striking back. Now, in 1890, you had the British forcing the deposing of Chancellor Bismarck from power in Germany. And with that one event, the course for war, what came to be known as World War I and then World War II was absolutely set in motion. Bismarck was the key factor in avoiding a British-engineered war throughout Europe; and his removal really was the actual starting date of what came to be called World War I. Now, in the ensuing decade, following the ouster of Bismarck, the British embarked on a wave of assassinations. They assassinated President Sadi Carnot of France; in 1901, they assassinated the American President William McKinley. There were, all told, over 20 assassinations that took place in the several decade period between the dumping of Bismarck and the formal beginning of the fighting in World War I. That’s how the empire operates; provoke wars, provoke confrontation. And at critical moments, select those key historical figures who stand in the way of preserving the power of the empire, and subject them to assassination. Now, if you continue on past the immediate period of 1890 through the World War I, you see that on a number of critical occasions in history, the British resorted to the mode of assassination. In the 1960s, you had the emergence of a potential trans-Atlantic combination to defeat the power of the British Empire; represented by President John F Kennedy in the United States, by Chancellor Konrad Adenauer in Germany, and emphatically by President Charles de Gaulle of France. In the sweep of just simply less than a decade, Kennedy was assassinated by the British; the networks that carried out the Kennedy assassination were deeply involved in repeated assassination attempts against Charles de Gaulle of France, and of other destabilizations that ultimately led to de Gaulle being removed from power before he died. Those networks were hardcore, Nazi, criminal networks that operated primarily along the border areas between France and Spain. Some of the them were literally Nazi remnants from the Second World War; others were part of the French fascist apparatus that dominated France throughout much of its history, going all the way back to the time of the French Revolution and Napoleon. De Gaulle changed that; established the Fifth Republic, put France on a completely different trajectory. And therefore the British Empire had to get rid of them. And they used neo-Nazi networks, some of which were involved in the French Secret Army operation, some of which were remnants of the Franco fascist apparatus in Spain. And those were the networks, they were implicated in the Kennedy assassination. They were directly involved in the assassination attempts and the ultimate overthrow of Charles de Gaulle. And, of course, added in the 1960s, the assassination of Martin Luther King, of Robert Kennedy, of Enrico Mattei in Italy. You had a wave of international assassinations targeting a combination of leaders who represented an existential threat to the existence of the British Empire because they had an alternative policy; one that was based on Hamiltonian American System principles going into the future. You had events like the Apollo program in the United States, that was exemplary of that kind of alternative view of the nature of man and the nature of mankind organized into nation-states. You had the 1975 famous linking of the Apollo and Soyuz capsules, which was an historic moment and part of the effort that continued to try to end the Cold War and establish a whole different relationship between the United States and Russia. By that time, the network of leaders from the 1960s had been wiped out. You had the same thing happen again in the 1980s. Remember that President Ronald Reagan, who was a close collaborator of Lyndon LaRouche around the project to realize the Strategic Defense Initiative. He was assassinated; he barely survived the assassin’s bullets. But the diminished health that Reagan suffered for the remainder of his Presidency effectively opened the door for the Bush apparatus to move in. First during the Vice Presidency of George H.W. Bush; later during his Presidency, and after the Clinton period, with George W Bush. And in effect, Barack Obama has been an extension of the Bush system. So, you had the attempted assassination against Ronald Reagan, a month later, you had the attempted assassination again, also not fully successful, but damaging none the less of the Pope. And then in the period of the late 1980s, beginning in 1989 at the point that the Berlin Wall came down, and at the point that Germany had a unique opportunity, not just to have a reunification, but to become the key nation in Europe integrating Eastern Europe and integrating Russia back into the community of nations, in the post-Cold War period. And, again, what did the British do? They resorted to a series of targetted political assassinations. The leading banker, Alfred Herrhausen, who was a critical advisor and close personal friend of German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, was assassinated. Soon afterwards, [detlev] Rohwedder, who was in charge of the re-integration of eastern Germany with West Germany, was also assassinated. As the result of these two critical assassinations, effectively, Germany was taken over by the British. We see that manifested most clearly today, in the behavior of [German Finance Minister Wolfgang] Schäuble, and in the fact that the largest private financial institution in Germany, Deutsche Bank, became, in the post-Herrhausen, post-Rohwedder, post-Kohl period, an appendage of one of the major City of London British Royal banking groups, Morgan Grenfell. So, Germany has lost its sovereignty. And, while it still remains a potential economic power in Europe, the behavior of Schäuble, the re-emergence of a Nazi apparatus in Germany, is reminiscent of the British networks around [then Governor of the Bank of England] Montagu Norman, and around American Prescott Bush, that facilitated putting Hitler in power in the first place. Without this historical recollection, without this historical knowledge, how can you judge current events? How can you anticipate, and in some cases preempt and prevent, the kinds of reactions that we can expect from the British in this particular dangerous, nightmarish, historical moment, if we’re blind to history, if we think in "practical" terms, if we don’t understand the nature of empire through its long historic sweep? As Megan mentioned, briefly, you have to also look back at an even larger slice of European history, because it bears directly on the situation in the United States. You had Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa [1401-64], who was one of the giants of the 15th century, who was really the architect of the European Renaissance. And, when Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa died, the Empire—it wasn’t at that point, the British Empire, it was the Venetian Empire, and remnants of the Roman Empire, and other centers of imperial power in Europe—went absolutely berserk. To beat back the accomplishments of the Renaissance, including the initial emergence of the system of modern nation-states, and modern political economy, the Empire launched a series of religious wars, that threw Europe into a state of absolute chaos for more than one-and-a half centuries, through the entirety of the Thirty Years’ War period. If you want to understand, and get a real insight into the Hell that was Europe, that was part of the Empire’s reaction against Cusa and the Renaissance, then read William Shakespeare. Read his history of the Plantagenets, read his tragedies, and you’ll get an idea of what kind of Hell Europe was put through. But, at the beginning of the 17th century, towards the very end of Shakespeare’s career, you had the emergence of [johannes] Kepler, and a new scientific revolution, a new Renaissance, was launched in Europe. Even despite the fact that Europe was still going through the hell of the Thirty Years’ War. Soon after Kepler’s death, you had another critical figure, Gottfried Leibniz born. And, so long as Leibniz was alive and active, the principles of the scientific revolution of Cusa and Kepler, the principles of the revolution, the Renaissance, and the idea of sovereign nation-states, was prevalent. Quite frankly, the Empire forces were terrified of Leibniz, because he could out-think them on every flank. Leibniz played a critical role in the American Revolution, because he was in the middle of the fight to control the Hanoverian dynasty that moved into the English Throne, during the very beginning of the 18th century. Leibniz was a key figure, a key educator, of several people, including Princess Anne, who were earmarked to bring England into a very, very different direction. During that period, a number of critical figures were deployed into North America. Key Governors of the North American colonies, who were instrumental figures in shaping the American Revolution a generation later. The moment that Leibniz died, in 1716, it was the British Empire, that really launched its war against mankind from that point forward. And you had, basically, a war, centered around the American Revolution. The British suffered a defeat in that, quite obviously—a major strategic defeat—and how did they respond? They responded with assassination. The Arron Burr assassination of Alexander Hamilton was one of the critical events. And, moving forward from there, you had, obviously, a great Presidency with George Washington. You had John Adams, who was part of the tradition, but was weak, had flaws, was limited. And then, from Jefferson on, until the Presidency of John Quincy Adams, you had a British disaster, one after the another. The United States was effectively recaptured by the British Empire, and it was only the brief four years of the John Quincy Adams Presidency, that pushed back against that factor. And then, you have to look to [abraham] Lincoln as the next great figure in American history, who waged war, consciously, against the British Empire, who, through his greenback policy and his commitment to absolute victory in the Civil War, saved the Union, and went back to Hamiltonian tradition, that he understood very well. What happened to Lincoln? Assassinated by the British. It was one of the most clear-cut instances of a British assassination of an American President that we’ve had. There were military tribunals that identified the British protective apparatus around the Confederate intelligence services, that were instrumental in the Lincoln assassination. Fortunately, one of the great Generals of the Civil War, Ulysses S. Grant, was elected President, and did serve two full terms. And, of course, his base of operation was New York City. He was very conscious of, again, the Hamiltonian actual roots of the American Revolution. And, then we get to the end of the 19th century, where William McKinley was the last of the American System Presidents. And, what happened to McKinley? Assassinated by the British in 1901, paving the way for Teddy Roosevelt. When Franklin Roosevelt was elected President, in 1932, even before he was sworn into office, there was an attempt to assassinate him! When that failed, the J.P. Morgan/London interests plotted an outright military coup d’état, to overthrow Franklin Roosevelt, because of the danger that he presented to the system of empire. So, you’ve got a very clear picture, if you’re are willing to be courageous enough to step back and learn the lessons of history, appreciate the sweep of history, so that you’re capable of devising the kinds of strategic flanks that are indispensable for mankind’s survival, going into the future. Now, we’ve got to actually have a clear vision of exactly where things stand at the moment, but only from the standpoint of having an appreciation of this sweep of history. The vast majority of our fellow citizens, to put it in very blunt language, are stupid. They don’t know this history. They’re incapable of judging events like the three dramatic events that occurred just in the last seven days: the intervention with Hillary [clinton] that shed clear light on where this Presidential campaign is headed; the true significance of what happened in Greece. In point of fact, nothing was accomplished. There is no new debt deal. All there is, is a hyperinflationary bail-out of the existing bubble. There is no way in Hell, that the deal that was struck the other day, can actually last for very long, or succeed in any way, shape, or form. All that happened is that a moment of truth, that when the whole trans-Atlantic system was ready to blow out, completely, that moment passed and it didn’t happen. But it’s still pending, it’s still right there on the surface. Nothing has been done to fundamentally alter the fact, that the British Empire is on its last legs. Now, quite literally the British financial system, the London/Wall Street system is absolutely on its last legs, and the persons who represent the British Empire, Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, are thankfully on their last legs as well. Now, it’s very important to look at even the events that have transpired in Germany: Do not in the least, underestimate the importance of the fact that Queen Elizabeth, Prince Philip, and David Cameron were in Germany just in the last several months: They met with Schäuble, they met with Merkel, and from that point forward, the resolve on the part of the Germans to follow British orders, and to move forward with this murderous policy, of killing Greece to save the bubble, has been moving forward. So Glass-Steagall is the absolutely indispensable, immediate step to be taken. Glass-Steagall, under the present conditions, bankrupts the British Empire! It brings down London, it brings down Wall Street, it changes the entire political correlation globally; it lines up the United States, because it finished Obama as well. Obama is simply there to defend London and Wall Street. If Glass-Steagall is passed, and London and Wall Street are bankrupted, Obama’s finished. And that sets the stage for the United States, to accept the invitation by Chinese President Xi Jinping, to directly join in the BRICS policy, the "One Belt, One Road" policy, and to make it a truly global alternative. So, as Mr. LaRouche emphasized at the end of our long discussion, there must be a positive perspective towards the future. Not just some pollyanna-ish idea, but a very specific, critical, flanking operation, that is both feasible and timely and necessary. And happily, we have a counter-trend that has begun in the last several weeks, with much work going into it, where a grouping of the members of the United States Senate are beginning to see the bigger picture, and have recognized that Glass-Steagall is indispensable, at this moment. So that’s where we are, and this is why it would be really impossible and it would be actually counterproductive to speculate, on the outcome or lack of outcome of the P5+1 deal. Certainly, it’s positive that it happened; but with the threat of thermonuclear war, with the threat of the entire dissolution of the trans-Atlantic system as a whole, the British Empire system as a whole, it’s really impossible to say how that situation is going to play out, because it’s not yet situated in this larger showdown moment that we’re living through right now. BEETS: Thank you very much, Jeff. Just to pick up on where you left things, I think the question before all of us, all of our viewers out there, is exactly that issue of human progress. Under this picture that you just detailed, what must mankind do to move forward? And while it’s necessary to identify and know the evil which has brought us to the current situation, it’s not sufficient. True leadership is the ability to insert into humanity a new principle upon which mankind as a species progresses, moves forward. So, with that, very simply said, I’d like to ask Jason to come to the podium to address this issue: What do we do to move mankind forward into the future? JASON ROSS: Well, it’s true you can’t talk only about the negative things, but I can’t resist talking about one more of them, which is possibly the most intense example of stupidity which is expressed in for example the Encyclical of the Pope, Laudato Si’, which takes up the British push for reducing the world’s population, by committing mass suicide by calling carbon dioxide a "pollutant." It’s an induced stupidity. It’s something that’s been created and pushed by Prince Philip, for example, in a very major way, and which is planned to have a major international impact in the conference coming up in Paris later this year, to try to get the world’s nations together to sign onto suicide, to agree to goals of carbon dioxide reduction, etc. I want to contrast the good side of things with a couple of quotes that I thought were particularly revealing from an aide to Prince Philip: Martin Palmer, who’s been playing a key role in organizing the Paris conference towards the end of the year, as well as the smaller conference that just took place this month in Paris. So, Martin Palmer, this aide of Prince Philip believed that it was necessary to wipe out the idea that human beings are special, that human beings are the center of creation. He took particular offense at the notion that man is the measure of all things, and said that one of the problems in creating ecology as a real mass movement, was the resistance that it would find in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Here’s a couple of quotes from him [as read] — actually, I’ll just read one in particular that I want to come back to. He said, "The pervasiveness of the attitude I am indicating is seen in those elements of the Renaissance that attempted to bring about the elevation of man. The view in these elements is that man is the paradigm of the universe. This is most clearly seen in the drawings of Leonardo Da Vinci. That is what he is trying to depict." So to him, the idea of the elevation of man, man as the paradigm of the universe, that this came across in what Da Vinci had done, and that was the real enemy there. So this was the beginnings of an attempt to really create and push ecology as a religion, starting to be promoted in a very by him, in the 1980s. So, let’s contrast that with the view that he’s attacking, and go beyond that as well, in looking at what the nature of the human species is, and how progress, as a concept certainly doesn’t exist without human beings, and that the notion of purpose for the universe, for ourselves, again, is something that can’t exist outside of human minds. The universe itself doesn’t have a purpose, independent of us. It would be impossible to try to express one. It couldn’t exist; it’s actually a notion that has no meaning. So let’s look at these people who are under attack. Let’s look at this fight. As we’ve covered, you know, and we’ll get into some amount of detail, there’s been a major fight about the role of understanding our relationship to nature: What is the human mind? How does it fit into things? What are human beings? What’s our role? You had 2,000 years ago, or a little over that, you had the two differing views of Plato and Socrates, versus Aristotle, where Aristotle said knowledge comes from the senses; the mind is something that gets written upon by experience of the outer world, and that through the senses — touch, in particular, he said, was the best of them — we come to learn things about the world around us. Obviously, we need our senses. In contrast to that, the view of Plato or Socrates, was that there was something about how nature worked, or better said, there was something about our ability to understand and act in a more powerful way upon nature, that had a connection with the way the mind operates. One of the ways Plato expressed this was with the idea of recollection, that knowledge was always the form of a discovery in a way that felt as though one already knew something and only had to uncover it in the mind. That is, those ideas that are found to be true and have power over nature, and in the arts as well, already exist in the mind and have to be developed or brought forward. That the mind has a connection to nature. So this came up — the Renaissance itself created by Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa as Jeff had mentioned, who had developed more work on the nature of the mind, on the nature of discovery, astronomy, medicine, chemistry; he worked in a very serious way in politics and avoiding religious war, unifying the churches. And Cusa’s view of the human species was what enabled Kepler to make his discoveries, to throw aside the idea that we could know the world "out there," only as being out there and different from us, but that instead, principles that are of a human nature, such as the principles of music are something that we’re going to find out there in the planets; that a notion of cause, of a physical cause that we’re able to understand can shape how the planets operate. So, I think that it comes in a very concrete way in Leibniz, who — I think this is said about a number of people, but I think Leibniz is one of the most prominent ones — as "the last man who knew everything." Leibniz really did it all: He worked in politics, economics, he made great breakthroughs in science, he developed the calculus and so on. Leibniz’s view was that it was impossible, again, that it was impossible to try to understand nature without using reason as a basis, that the way the mind works is inherently connected with how the universe works. And LaRouche takes this to another level, where he disagrees with the prevalent notion, that knowledge is asymptotic; that we head more and more towards the truth. We never know it, but we’re always getting closer and closer and closer. And LaRouche for decades has said, "no, that’s not the way to understand it." It introduces an error, by separating the human beings who are creating those discoveries, from those discoveries that are supposedly about the world "out there," when in fact, those thoughts that we have that have this power over nature, they never actually represent what’s taking place in nature, by virtue of the fact that they’re never done; they’re never fully right; they’re always provisional, they’re always susceptible of being overthrown or improved upon, or overthrown in the future. What it means is that human reason itself is a force of nature, is a power in nature, and that is studied in different ways by both the Russian/Ukrainian scientist Vladimir Vernadsky, and the economic work of Lyndon LaRouche. So, take Vernadsky first, and we’ll end with LaRouche. Vernadsky studied human beings in a way similar to how he studied life. In looking at life, Vernadsky didn’t study individual organisms; he did, but that wasn’t his focus. For him, that was the domain more directly of a biologist. What he looked at, was, what is the impact of life as a whole on the surroundings, what does the biosphere itself do as a whole? What does life do? What kind of changes do we see in life as a whole, beyond individual organisms and their functions? What do we see over evolutionary time, with the fact that life moves toward increasing use of energy? And that it’s those species which participate in that change that survive, and those that don’t, which go extinct. And this individual species doesn’t participate in that, the evolution as a whole does. Vernadsky said, look at human beings as a physical phenomenon: What is characteristic of the human species? What is it that makes us human? There’s a lot of answers that people have to that. I’m sure everybody watching this has their own idea in mind of, what it is that makes us human, or makes us different from other animals. I think everyone recognizes that we are different from the animals, even if they’re rather not recognize that. What Vernadsky said, is look, human beings are the only living species that changes its relationship to nature, that introduces a new kind of time, the time of discovery. No longer are geological ages necessary for changes to take; no longer is evolutionary time, measured in the millions of years, required for the energetic processes of the planet to transform. Now, it takes place on the scale of generations. Now it takes place by individuals. Before humanity, individuals don’t really exist; there’s not any particular significance to an individual jaguar, or a hippopotamus, or anything. Not outside a human relationship to them. But human beings, individuals, actually matter. Because individuals and societies, make discoveries. So let’s look at how LaRouche measures that. He had stressed in the discussion that we had today, about the concept of energy-flux density as a guiding principle for understanding progress. Now, I’ll just say something briefly about this. I know that many of our viewers might be familiar, but: if we look at the time kinds of power that human beings are able to exercise on the world around us, that’s changed in dramatic leaps. In the broadest of outlines, we’ve moved from simple wood, wood fires for cooking food or boiling water, that kind of thing; to the new kind of fire that was creating several thousand years ago, by making charcoal. You know you think about this Encyclical from the Pope, where he talks about how the "Earth provides for us" — which isn’t true; there are things that we find around us in nature, but the things that we depend on as the human society, increasingly are things that we create ourselves, and that’s a measure of our progress, an increasing — not independence from our surroundings, but an increasing power over them in creating our own resources. You might consider the analogy of the move of life from the waters onto land, where you have to bring your environment with you, so to speak. So what have we done? We’ve gone from basic wood fire to the creation of charcoal, 5,000 years ago or so; charcoal was necessary to create metals, to create copper, to create bronze, to create, the Iron Age; this was created by resources that we formed ourselves. You then move on to coal — coal, which saved the forests of Europe from destruction. At the time that coal was introduced as a new fuel source, there seriously were major deforestation problems in Europe, from wood being cut down for fuel. Coal saved the forests. Natural gas, petroleum, nuclear power: What we see along the lines of these changes is a dramatic, incredible, stupefyingly huge leap! The difference in power that a society using nuclear power has, compared to one with wood fires, isn’t of number; isn’t of quantity, it’s of quality, it’s of kind. It’s a different type of power. The processes that we’re able to participate in and create, we’ve transformed. We can control electromagnetism, we have motors, — I don’t need to give a list. I think some of these things are pretty direct. That progress, however, has been stopped, and is directly opposed by this British system. So the breakthroughs of fusion, which haven’t happened, both because of a lack of funding, as well as problems in science in the outlook being applied to the study of fusion; to the dramatic impacts that the shift from around 1900, starting in the 1890s, since the ouster of Bismarck, the corruption and taking down of culture and of science, especially with the work of logic to replace real science, this put us in a position where the things that we need to do are necessary, while being incredibly impractical. And the solution to that, as I think people who are familiar with LaRouche know, he doesn’t take kindly to practicality. That’s not one of his characteristics. You have to change what’s practical and we’re seeing how this is taking place, how the moves of Mr. LaRouche and his associates have been playing a key role in providing an alternative with the developments around the BRICS, with the new paradigm represented in the global Silk Road, among other concepts; you saw it, for example, with what happened this week, with Daniel Burke putting Hillary Clinton on the spot around Glass-Steagall. That ended up becoming, I think, the first question at the White House press briefing today, where Obama’s press spokesman was asked, "where does Obama stand on Glass-Steagall?" The answer was, "no," in case anyone was wondering. But you change what’s practical and that’s when you were really being as fully human as you can be. That’s how LaRouche acts. So rather than making modest suggestions, we have to have bold demands, an idea of where we’re going, and a basis, an understanding, a rooting in history, in science, in culture, to ensure that we have a depth of understanding of where we want to go, of what progress is, to be able to make it happen, to be able to organize it. So, we have to dare to be wise, rather than practical. BEETS: Thank you very much, Jason. So with that, I’m going to bring a close to tonight’s broadcast. I’d like to thank both Jeff and Jason for joining me in the studio tonight, and I’d like to thank all of you for watching. Stay tuned to larouchepac.com. Good night. |