Engelsk udskrift: I denne uge får vi en opdatering fra Kesha Rogers i Texas, som anfører en politik for en genoplivelse af det amerikanske NASA-rumprogram; Jason Ross fortsætter sagaen om Gottfried Leibniz; og Jeffrey Steinberg giver os Lyndon LaRouches analyse af betydningen for fredsprocessen i Syrien af de seneste udviklinger, med den russiske militære tilbagetrækning.
– DELIGHT IN CREATING SURPRISES! –
International Webcast March 18, 2016
MATTHEW OGDEN: Good Evening! It's March 18th, 2016. My name
is Matthew Ogden, and I would like to thank you for joining us
for our weekly Friday evening broadcast, here, on
larouchepac.com. I'm joined in the studio tonight by Jeffrey
Steinberg from {Executive Intelligence Review}; and Jason Ross,
from the LaRouche PAC science team; and we're joined via video by
Kesha Rogers, multiple-time candidate for Federal office from the
state of Texas, and leading member of the LaRouche PAC Policy
Committee.
All of us had a chance to meet with Mr. LaRouche, both in
person and via telephone connection (in the case of Kesha),
earlier this morning. Mr. LaRouche had some very definite and
specific ideas which he wished for us to convey. Mr. LaRouche was
{emphatic} when we met with him earlier today, that the global
agenda right now is being set by Russia and by China, and their
allies. He said that the initiative in creating the future and
shaping present global policy, lies with those two countries,
strategically — in the case of Russia, as is very clear with
what is occurring in Syria right now; and economically and
scientifically — in the case of China.
You can see very clearly that the outdated and archaic
methods of the trans-Atlantic system are proving to be impotent,
both in the case of resolving the current grave crises which are
facing mankind as a planetary species right now, but also
impotent in setting the agenda and fulfilling and laying out the
vision for the future of mankind. The mission which has been
undertaken by China, in terms of their objective to explore the
far side of the Moon — something which is going to be unfolding
over the coming two years — exemplifies the necessary identity
which mankind must have in order to affirm and to fulfill our
true nature as a creative species.
Mr. LaRouche stated that something that we should develop,
in dialogue with him and with each other, is to think about the
open questions, the unanswered questions about how is mankind, a
species, reflective of a much larger, and as yet not fully
understood, creative characteristic of the galactic system as a
whole. This is a relationship which Johannes Kepler drew out in
very unique detail in terms of his discoveries about our {Solar}
System, but we have many, many large and unanswered questions of
what is the role of the human species in our relationship to the
galactic system as a whole, and then the complex of galactic
systems as a much, much larger whole.
Mr. LaRouche said that this mission to explore the "dark
side" of the Moon, so-called, is a pathway in order to begin to
understand even the opening of the questions along these lines.
The dark side of the Moon, his hypothesis was, is where you can
find some of the shadows of this much larger system, have insight
into it, and also to begin to understand mankind's role as
reflective of these broader creative processes which are involved
in these great astronomical systems.
This is the spirit of the United States at our best. Our
republic was founded on these kinds of unique ideas, as we've
discussed here in previous weeks. The role of the great
philosopher and scientist Gottfried Leibniz is a major
contributor, a "founding father", or "founding grand-father" of
our republic. This is something which I know Jason Ross has
presented multiple times and is in the process of having a series
of developing classes on that subject; and I'm sure we'll be part
of his discussion later today.
But also, this is what you can see in a great statesman,
such as Abraham Lincoln — very, very much so. Franklin
Roosevelt; and John F. Kennedy. Tragically, that spirit in the
United States has deteriorated drastically. We see now that the
leadership does indeed lie with China and with Russia; and this
is something which Kesha Rogers, who is joining us here today,
wrote about in an editorial which is appearing in this week's
edition of the {Executive Intelligence Review} magazine. Kesha's
editorial is titled, "To Save the United States Economy, Revive
the Space Program."
Kesha and I had a brief conversation earlier this afternoon.
I know she has some broader ideas to develop on this subject, so,
without further ado, I would like to hand over the podium to
Kesha Rogers.
KESHA ROGERS: Thank you, Matt. I think I'd like to start,
first of all, by continuing to develop what has and must be the
focal point by which we come to understand the necessity for the
revival and the defense of, not just the American and U.S. space
program, which I have continued to be a leader in championing the
development and the necessity of our space program and what it
truly represents for the progress of all mankind. But just on the
editorial that I wrote, I think, to understand it, it's not just
from the standpoint of looking at the economic conditions of the
United States and some practical applications to economics that
the space program will provide; but we also have to look at it
from the standpoint of is, the space program as a true conception
of real economic value. This is what's actually missing from our
thinking and what has been attacked by the current Wall
Street/British imperial system, is that economic value is based,
from {that} standpoint, on monetary value and not on the creative
powers and progress of the human mind.
The real question at hand right now, is to bring about — as
we're seeing and will be developed further in these discussions
today — a new conception of what is the identity and what is the
purpose of mankind. I have continued to use the example and the
works of the great pioneer of space flight, space pioneer Krafft
Ehricke; and looking at his conception of mankind as a
space-faring creature, as the understanding of mankind's
"extra-terrestrial imperative," as that which must be identified
and understood.
If you look at the conditions of the space program and why
it's so important, you take the example, for instance, of what
China is doing now, as completely rejecting this monetarist
policy; that the space program is not how much money you're going
to put into pet projects and specific projects. It is creating
something that's never been created before, to actually create a
new conception and identity of mankind, from the standpoint of
the idea of acting on the future. That's what this idea and what
is being developed, for instance with China in their
investigation of the far side of the Moon.
People may look at this, "Well what is this going to
benefit us? How is this going to improve the economic conditions,
in terms of monetary value, or any of this?" But that is the
wrong way to look at it; because the problem right now is that
what you have seen is two different opposing conceptions of the
view of mankind. One coming from the trans-Atlantic system,
coming from a collapsing imperial system that has been based on
money and monetary value that is dying; and the other is
represented by what Russia and China are doing. And as Matt
emphasized and what I developed in my recent writing, was that
this was the mindset of the great leaders of our nation,
represented by the ideas of Alexander Hamilton, of Franklin
Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, [and] John F. Kennedy. It wasn't just
on the creating of new projects per se, but on a whole new
different conception of the identity of mankind.
And so, you take for instance, the example of what we
accomplished in the United States, of landing a man on the Moon
— the idea that Kennedy put forward, that by the end of decade
we would land a man on the Moon and return him safely to Earth.
What was the vision and intention behind that? Was it just the
idea that we would go and plant our flag on the Moon? This would
be some short-term gratification and so forth? Or, was it a
forward-thinking outlook, in terms of the direction of mankind in
recognizing what Krafft Ericke, the great pioneer of space
flight, recognized, that mankind was not just a creature of the
planet Earth. We were not just a part of, as he called it, a
"closed system," and so it was our responsibility to go out and
to do what no other animal had the capability of doing; of
actually conquering and developing, coming to understand what is
the purpose of mankind and what is the development of mankind in
the universe as a creature of our solar system and of the galaxy
as a whole.
One thing that I thought was very insightful, is that Krafft
Ericke wrote about the understanding of the Renaissance, the
Classical Renaissance, as an achievement of human progress. And
also the Classical Renaissance is something that contributed to
the development of what became our space program and what was the
intention that guided the direction of space travel and the space
program.
I'll just read a quick quote from what he expressed on this
idea. He says, "The development of the idea of space travel was
always the most logical and most noble consequence of the
Renaissance ideal, which again places man in an organic and
active relationship with his surrounding universe and which,
perceived in the synthesis of knowledge and capabilities, its
highest ideals."
So you look at this from the standpoint of Krafft Ericke
understanding that the Renaissance that was guided by the
scientific breakthroughs which I'm sure you'll hear a lot more
from my colleague Jason there, of Brunelleschi, or the
breakthroughs that came about from the works of Kepler. That the
idea of mankind, is to create something fundamentally new,
something that had never been created before, and increasing the
relationship of mankind to the Universe.
Now that's economic value! That is not what is being
discussed when you look at these debates going back and forth
from the standpoint of these Congress Members to the space
community, and what budgets are being cut and should not be cut.
But the reality is, as I stated before, we have to have, in the
defense of the space program, a new conception of the direction
of mankind. That means we're removing all limitations to
progress, all limitations that are put on mankind's ability to
continue to understand how to make new discoveries in the
principles scientifically of what's out there. Why should we
actually investigate the Solar System? What is our mission in
doing so? And it's not about a money-making short-term
gratification. And so, I think this emphasis that Krafft Ehricke
put on the renaissance as an ideal of looking at why we have, as
a human species, an extraterrestrial imperative, is really a
continued expression of what you're seeing coming from China; not
just in their space program, but in the development of the
win-win strategy of cooperation for all mankind, for every nation
to come to join together. And to further the progress of
addressing the necessary challenges to the economic condition of
the planet by actually recognizing that the solutions do not lie
right here on planet Earth.
So, I think that's the conceptions I wanted to get across;
and what I hope to have further discussion on as we continue this
fight to identify what is the real mission of the space program,
and how we come to rid the world immediately of this current dead
system that's keeping us from advancing in the way that we should
be.
OGDEN: Thank you very much, Kesha; and I can recommend that
people read what you've written in the current edition of
{Executive Intelligence Review}. I also know that you're planning
on making a video statement — which will be posted on the
LaRouche PAC website and available for people — developing some
of these ideas a little bit more in detail.
So, if people have been watching this website, you know that
Jason Ross has also been working very closely with Kesha to
develop some of these ideas with their implications from the
standpoint of a scientist, whom I hope you are becoming more
familiar with by now — Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. As we
discussed last week on this webcast, I think if you begin to
consider this question which Kesha just laid on the table for us,
about how do you create a future for mankind. How do you initiate
the creation of something which is completely new, as we move
into the future? Now, this can never be done through the
replication of the past; there's no precedent for a discovery. A
discovery is something which is always new, and is created {de
novo} and is introduced, which changes the course of human
history. Obviously, there is a lineage that goes back to
Gottfried Leibniz, and many Leibnizians who have lived since him:
Karl Gauss; Bernhard Riemann; Albert Einstein; and I would even
include Mr. Lyndon LaRouche in that lineage.
So, without further ado, I'm going to ask Jason to elaborate
a little bit more; picking up on what Kesha just left off on.
JASON ROSS: Thanks, Matt. Well, I think if you consider how
to conceptualize the value of the kinds of programs that Kesha
was discussing that we're promoting today, you reach a
contradiction if you try to approach them from a monetarist
standpoint. That is, the kind of economics that's generally
taught today, the kind of economics practiced as a religion —
well, I was going to say as a religion on Wall Street; the
primary religion on Wall Street is stealing — but, in general,
the basis of thinking is that economy is about money; we can
measure things in terms of money. How much is somebody willing to
pay for something? That's how valuable it is. That isn't. Money
doesn't measure different qualities; money doesn't measure the
future potential that something is able to create. And if you
base money on how much somebody's willing to pay for something,
you don't distinguish between things that are good and useful
versus bad and vices. People are willing to pay for heroin;
people are willing to pay for other opioids if they're addicted
to it. Does that mean that those drugs, as used by those people,
are valuable, or worth something because they're willing to pay
for them? Quite the contrary. So, we need a different way of
thinking about how we can measure economic value if we're going
to be human economists, instead of Wall Street magicians or
Satanists.
So, the reason we have economy is that we aren't animals;
animals don't have economies. Animals don't change what they do
from generation to generation; they don't improve, they don't
develop. We do. We create a new kind of time for ourselves. In a
very real way, humanity is a totally new and totally distinct
force of nature from anything else. Over geological time,
geologists describe to us how the Earth has changed, or how a
planet has formed; this is over hundreds of millions of years.
Over evolutionary time, perhaps tens of millions of years, we're
able to see transformations in the kinds of life that exists on
the planet. Over biological time, we have short-term periods of
the life of an organism, of its respiration, very much tied to
the daily cycle of the Earth, for example. And with humans, we
have a different kind of time. We create time. The flow of
history isn't always the same speed.
During the Dark Ages, when not much happened, you might say
that human time slowed down. And with the Renaissance, and with
the ability to discover more about nature by having a more
powerful way of thinking about it, and a more powerful conception
of us as human beings interacting with it; you could say that
time sped up. We create a certain time in that we create new eras
of humanity; not in the way that geology or evolution does, but
willfully by developing new principles that if we were animals,
you would say this is a whole new type of life all together. Life
moving from the oceans onto land; that's a totally different
quality of life. Life having developed photosynthesis and using
the Sun as a power source; that's a totally different kind of
life. But we're still human beings after the discovery of the
combustion engine, for example; the use of heat-powered
machinery. We create in ourselves the change that's comparable
only to large-scale evolutionary changes when we look at life in
general. So, we're distinct.
Now, how do we understand this? Both how do we understand
that world around us that we act on and interact with; and how do
we understand our thoughts about it and our ability to progress
and use the practice of science itself? What sort of terrain is
it? What sort of world is it? The physical world and the mental
world.
Well, here's where I'd like to take up some concepts that
Mr. LaRouche has been bringing up recently about Bernhard Riemann
and about Gottfried Leibniz, and a bit about Einstein, too, who
got the verification of his hypothesis of gravity waves announced
very near his birthday this year — which was on Monday. So,
let's think about it. Is the terrain that we're operating on, one
which is steady and indifferent to our actions? Or, is it one
where what we do and what we discover and how we interact with
it, changes that world around us in a way that the world is not
fixed; either in ourselves or in our understanding of it? And,
that is the case; we transform the world in changing our mental
understanding of it. The math that we use in understanding how do
we conceptualize that world; that changes our interaction with
it, and we're a force of nature. We change the operation of the
forces of nature by improving our understanding of the world
around us and of ourselves and our ability to discover such
things. How can we possibly think about that quality of change?
As a couple of other examples, think about the difference
between what you might say is a fixed object — let's say iron
oxide. Iron oxide is basically rust; it's a mineral that's rust.
It's reddish brown, it's not terribly useful; but with the
development of metallurgy, instead of being a deposit of some
compound, it's now a resource. It's an ore from which we can
create iron and steel. The substance itself, did it change
chemically? It did in terms of the potential of what we could do
with it. And remember, we're a force of nature; we changed what
it was. It has to be thought of that way.
Or, what's the value of a technology? How does it change
over time? In the 1400s, windmills were a great invention; they
were somewhat new on the scene. They allowed pumping water, they
allowed grinding grain. That's excellent; that's a breakthrough.
Are windmills valuable today for making electricity? I don't
think so. Consider helium; helium is an interesting element. It
was first discovered in the Sun, not on Earth. It was discovered
in the Sun by the kind of light that came from the Sun when that
light was broken up into a rainbow with a prism, and certain
bands of the absence or presence of color were the clue that
there was a new element out there named helium, after Helios, the
Sun. That element, what's it used for? You might think of it's
being used to fill up balloons for children; you might think of
it being used as a gas for cooling for physical purposes or for
experiments. It's also, as Helium-3, an ideal fuel for fusion.
So, this substance transforms its meaning based on our developing
understanding. How can we think about this?
Well, let's take the example of Bernhard Riemann. In 1854,
Bernhard Riemann delivered a presentation and a paper on the
subject of the hypotheses that underlie geometry. That might
sound like a dry title; it might sound like it has nothing to do
with physical economy or anything that we'd want to be doing
right now. But this paper is very important in the view of Lyndon
LaRouche for his own development and as a way of understanding
economics. So, let's say why. Very briefly, Riemann points out
that our conception of space itself and of the way things operate
in space is taken for granted. The ideas that we use to
understand it, they don't really come from experiments per se, or
from physical theories; they come from our thoughts about space.
For example, the idea that space has no particular
characteristics of its own; that was the view of Isaac Newton.
Newton said space is uniform, it's out there; things occur within
space. Space is there first, it's just space; it has no
characteristics in particular. Newton said the same thing about
time; that time flows on uniformly. That's what time is; it's
really not much of a definition, or an understanding.
Geometric ideas that people had, for example, are the idea
that if you add up the angles in a triangle, you get 180 degrees.
Now, if you're drawing triangles on flat paper, yes that's true;
if you draw them on a curved surface like a sphere, it's not
true. Triangles on a sphere have more than 180 degrees in them.
If you then ask, "What if I draw a triangle in space?"; that's a
tough question. When we connect points in space, is the space
between them flat, is it curved? How could we discover that, and
what would be the basis of it having a curvature if it wasn't
flat?
What Riemann does, is he discusses through all the possible
ways that this could come about. He discusses in general,
curvature — both of surfaces and of space; how a space could be
curved. He works out in general how you could do that; but he
can't answer the question. He says, to answer the question,
"What's the nature of the space, and which processes unfold?";
you have to leave the department of mathematics and you have to
go to the physics department. You can't answer questions like
that just be pure reasoning; you got to have a hypothesis —
"What physically makes space?" And in this way, he's coming back
to the view of Gottfried Leibniz, who, just to say very briefly,
Leibniz and Newton totally disagreed on a number of subjects.
People may have heard of the dispute over their invention of the
calculus; did Leibniz steal it from Newton, or vice versa? But
there's a lot more there.
One of the major disputes they had was about space. Newton's
view was that space and time were absolute; and Leibniz's view
that space was a way of understanding co-occurrences. The
relationship of things that are here at the same time — that's
space; and for Leibniz, time was the evolution of things, how
things change. But time didn't have its own existence. Now,
that's precisely what Einstein took up in his theories of
relativity; he did what Riemann said had to be done. He didn't
finish the job; but he did what Riemann said had to be done.
Einstein overthrew, in a very specific way, the outlook of
Newton; Einstein showed that space was not flat, that it was bent
in special relativity, that it was curved in general relativity.
And very importantly, the basis of its shape, the basis of how
things interact over distances — that sense of space — was
based not on what a mathematician might imagine, but on what a
physicist hypothesizes. Einstein hypothesized an equivalence
between different observers that the laws of nature shouldn't
depend on whether you're moving; something that Leibniz also said
very explicitly. Einstein considered that light moved at the same
speed to any observer; something he had been pondering since he
was a pretty young man. And he hypothesized that gravitation
would transform the shape of space; that straight lines wouldn't
be straight to the extent that gravity is affecting them. This is
what was seen with the experiments about the position of stars
around the eclipse of the Sun, performed earlier during
Einstein's life; and it's seen in the recent verification of
gravity waves.
So, most people acknowledge that Einstein, OK, this is
physically important; this is a scientist, he discovered things.
What does it have to do with this other point, though, about
understanding humanity, and our role in economy, and our creation
in economy? Well, what Riemann did was, he made it possible to
say that human discovery is a force of nature; it reshapes
nature, it transforms our understanding about the objects around
us. And the basis of that world outside of us, can't be
considered independently of our increasing knowledge about it.
What we know about the world around us changes it, in that it
changes our ability to interact with it.
So, if we're looking for a real idea of what economics is,
throw away any sense of monetarism that says money made in a
whorehouse is just as valuable as money made in a steel plant;
and instead say, "How do we foster scientific discovery? How do
we foster its social implementation through technologies that
physically improve our power over nature and our ability to
provide improving standards of living and promote the general
welfare of human beings?" If this is our basis of economics,
fostering that kind of outlook, then I think we can say that
Gottfried Leibniz was the first physical economist in that sense.
I'll just reference to the show on Leibniz from earlier this
week, and one of the documents I cited there; Leibniz's paper on
the creation of a society for science and economy in Germany. And
I think if you read that paper, you'll be astonished at how
Leibniz pulls together both promotion of discovery, how that
works, what kind of thoughts are needed, how people should work
together, and how to implement those thoughts to improve people's
lives to the betterment of mankind. And that really has to be the
basis of our economics.
One simple rough measure, proposed by LaRouche to measure
this, is the potential population density. How many people can be
supported in a given area? That's a measure that is fixed for
animals. For a certain kind of environment, the number of deer
that can live there; deer don't change that. Human beings do. And
as a rough measure of economic progress, we could take that
value. What's the potential population that we're able to
support? The ability to use these thoughts is one that is not
being expressed in the trans-Atlantic at present. In our
discussion today, Mr. LaRouche talked about the positive impact
that Riemann had had on Italian science. Riemann had
tuberculosis, and spent a good deal of time later in life — he
didn't live that long — but later in his short life in Italy;
where thoughts from Riemann influenced the development of
hydrodynamics, stretching all the way into the time of airplanes
and the consideration of getting out into space.
Today, this overall outlook is best represented by Russia,
and especially at present, by China. So, this doesn't have to be
a purely Chinese development; this is clearly something that we
can take up as a mission for ourselves to contribute to here in
the United States and in the nations around the globe. And we've
got very special and precious people in the past that we can look
to for insights in how to make the next breakthroughs in
developing our understanding of what it is to be human, the basis
of human culture, and how best to advance human economy.
OGDEN: Thank you very much, Jason. Now, as Jason just
mentioned, and as I said in the beginning, really right now you
do see the initiative — the economic and the scientific
initiative — being taken by China to lead mankind into the
future; especially with the space program. You also see the
initiative being taken by Russia; and this is very clearly
illustrated this week with the actions that have been taken by
Russia in Syria. The strategic initiative lies in Putin's actions
there. As Mr. LaRouche emphasized, Putin is setting the agenda;
he is constantly on the flank. You can see this going back to the
chemical weapons, where Putin took the initiative to say fine, we
will help Assad dismantle these chemical weapons. It can be seen
with the decision to intervene, a few months back, by Putin into
the situation in Syria; and then with the pull-out that happened
earlier this week. What's clear is that every step along the way,
Putin's actions have caught Washington and Obama by surprise;
constantly breaking profile. And this is what's called "taking
the flank" in a military sense. There's clear precedence, as Mr.
LaRouche always uses the example, of Douglas MacArthur's actions
in Inchon. You always, always act on the surprise.
Now, this was illustrated I think just anecdotally very well
in an article that was published March 15th — Tuesday of this
week — in the {New York Times}, with a very apropos headline
which read "Putin's Syria Tactics Keep Him at the Fore, and Leave
Everyone Else Guessing". I just want to read the first paragraph
of that article, actually, because I think it just describes very
vividly what we mean by this:
"President Vladimir Putin's order to withdraw the bulk of
Russian forces from Syria seemingly caught Washington, Damascus,
and everyone in between off guard; just the way the Russian
leader likes it. By all accounts, Mr. Putin delights in creating
surprises."
So, this is the subject of our institutional question for
this week; which Mr. LaRouche had some very specific words to say
in response to, which I'm going to let Jeff elaborate on for us.
But let me just read the text of this question to start off.
"Mr. LaRouche, as you know, earlier this week, at the start
of the Geneva Peace Talks, Russian President Vladimir Putin
announced that he ordered the withdrawal of some of the Russian
military forces in Syria. The withdrawal of Russian fighter
planes began the next day and has continued. A residual force
will remain at the naval base at Tartus and at the air base in
Latakia. How do you view Putin's decision? How might it impact
the Russian, American, and United Nations efforts to bring the
Syrian war to an end, now underway in Geneva?"
STEINBERG: Of course, we've taking up the bulk of this
week's report with a discussion about man's extraterrestrial
imperative; the need for man to get off of the planet Earth,
because man was never an Earthbound creature. So, we're at a
point right now where Mr. LaRouche was delighted in our
discussion earlier today at the prospect of over the next two
years, China going through the preparations for the launching of
an orbiter that will be hopefully landing on the back side of the
Moon. And will for the first time, give mankind a window into the
Solar System and the Galaxy beyond. And this is something of
enormous importance and enormous excitement, because it puts this
nature of man as an extraterrestrial creature capable through
creative discovery, of not remaining Earthbound, but of exploring
the near Solar System and beyond. And it reminds me that
virtually every astronaut and cosmonaut who has travelled in
space, has remarked at one point or other, that having the
vantage point of looking down on Earth, you become at one point
overwhelmed with the fact that so much of what goes on, on the
planet of Earth, is trivial relative to the challenges that are
very obvious when you look at man from the standpoint of man's
ability to explore the Universe and make these kinds of
discoveries. And it was that approach that actually informed our
discussion about the Syria situation per se. Because as Matt
said, Russian President Putin has demonstrated once again that he
has a certain understanding that at the core of grand strategy is
always the idea of continuously moving; continuously flanking;
continuously confusing your adversaries by constantly being on
this kind of offensive.
So, we do have the developments of the past days, where at
the very moment that the Geneva second round of peace talks were
beginning, President Putin announced a draw-down of the Russian
military forces inside Syria. And in fact, the very next morning
— Tuesday morning of this week — the first Russian bombers and
other air force equipment and personnel began leaving. Now, the
Russians are there still; make no mistake about it. Russia has
established a fundamental change in the situation on the ground,
which is both a military shift and a shift at the diplomatic
table taking place right now in Geneva. Russia has a permanent
naval base fully established and more secured than at any time
previously at the port of Tartus; and it has now a major air
force facility in the Latakia province. And more recently this
week, yesterday President Putin issued a statement where he said,
if the circumstances change, if the peace process does not go
forward, then Russian forces can be reinforced in Syria, not in a
matter of days, but in a matter of hours. And quite clearly, the
infrastructure is in place for that to happen.
But Mr. LaRouche wanted to make a larger and much more
fundamental point about what is going on here. What he emphasized
is that you can't lose sight of the fact that the war is still
going on. We don't know how things are going to play out; what we
do know, is that there has been a change of conditions. In fact,
there was a major change of conditions beginning on September
30th of last year, when the major Russian military presence
began. And when the situation systematically shifted from that
point on, and yet at the same time, certain leading political
figures around the world — the spokesman for the Jordanian
government; Steffan de Mistura, the UN representative for Syria
— they all said, "We're not surprised by President Putin's
announcement this past Monday." In the case of the Jordanians,
the chief of staff of the Jordanian military, the chief of staff
of the Syrian military, were both in Moscow last October; and
they met with Russian Defense Minister Shoigu, they met with
President Putin. And they were told quite clearly that the
Russian mission was not a permanent mission; but was a limited
mission in both size and in time duration. And that when the
circumstances reached the point where it was feasible to reach a
diplomatic solution to the Syria crisis, that the Russian forces
would begin to be withdrawn.
As Matt pointed out with the {New York Times} coverage,
people in the West were scratching their heads, because they
refused to take note of the fact that Putin is a strategic
thinker. And very often, what he says — in most cases, in fact
— is exactly what he intends to do; but he's not going to do it
in a predictable fashion. He's going to do it in a way that will
catch you by surprise. And the biggest surprise is that most
political thinkers in the West, most officials in government in
the West, are ignorant and prejudiced. So, their own prejudices
prevent them from understanding how Putin thinks about these
things. Their own prejudices prevent them from understanding
because they're incapable of thinking in this kind of a strategic
fashion. Now the problem is, that we're still in a state of
warfare; and that state of warfare will continue until certain
things occur that go way beyond the borders of Syria.
Until the British Empire ceases to exist, there will be a
condition of warfare on this planet. We see it, not necessarily
in the form of warfare that most people think about — soldiers
shooting, artillery pieces firing, bombers dropping bombs. Look
what's happening right now in Brazil. The British Empire is
waging a war against the new emerging Asia-Pacific-centered
global system. They're trying to destabilize Brazil, which is a
founding member of the BRICS. There's a similar effort underway
to destabilize the Zuman government in South Africa; because
South Africa is the latest country to join in the BRICS
initiative.
So, there are all kinds of problems going on; you can't look
for a simply linear expectation or projection of what's going to
happen by the situation now ongoing on the ground in Syria or in
Geneva. Another example: President Obama is taking a series of
measures that will lead unavoidably — unless they're reversed —
to a major confrontation between the United States and China. We
had a report earlier this week from David Ignatius in the
{Washington Post}, who is very often a kind of reliable leak
sheet for what's going on inside the administration. And the
Obama administration is preparing for confrontation with China
over the South China Sea; they're waiting for a ruling from the
World Court in the Hague on a complaint filed by the Philippines.
So the United States is preparing contingencies for poking China
in the eye, for carrying out new provocations against China. The
sanctions that President Obama announced this week, ostensibly
against North Korea, are in fact sanctions against China; they go
way beyond what was agreed upon by China and the United States at
the United Nations.
So, if you take all of these factors into account, and if
you think of them as a process, not simply as a series of
discrete events, then you get a very clear idea of what Mr.
LaRouche means when he says that the planet, in general terms, is
in a state of war. Now, ultimately what this state of warfare
comes down to, is the fact that you have a new emerging
Asia-Pacific-centered future. It's defined by the economic
initiatives of China, by the One Belt-One Road policy, and most
emphatically by China's systematic plan for collaborating with
other nations on the kind of space exploration that once was a
hallmark of American policy; but has not been abandoned.
President Obama has spent the last seven years systematically
taking down and dismantling America's space capability; and Kesha
is leading the fight to reverse that process.
Over the last 15 years, if you look at the Bush/Cheney
administration followed by the Obama administration, the United
States has been under British occupation. Both Bush/Cheney and
Obama were each, in their own way, governments that were at the
beck and call of the British Empire, of the policies of the
British financial oligarchy operating through Wall Street. And as
the result, the United States, really the entire trans-Atlantic
region, is dead. Germany was once a great prospering economy; the
result of the "economic miracle" that Franklin Roosevelt
envisioned for the post-World War II period; no replay of
Versailles, but a completely different approach. Germany has now
been destroyed by the policies largely coming from the British
Empire. All of continental Europe is hopelessly and irreversibly
bankrupt; and Mario Draghi's announcement of an expansion of
quantitative easing and a zero interest rate policy is a
reflection that certain people are desperate over the fact that
Europe is doomed, that the United States under present
circumstances. We've talked in recent months on this broadcast
about the death rate increase in the United States; the true rate
of unemployment; the epidemic of heroin addiction and heroin
overdose deaths; the declining life expectancy in the United
States. These are all measures of the fact that the
trans-Atlantic region is dead; and will only begin to reverse
that death if there is a revolutionary, fundamental change in
policy. That alternative policy is being carried out in the
Eurasian and Asia-Pacific region; led by China, led by Russia,
reflected in the way that Russian President Putin has navigated
the strategic situation.
So, the great threat is coming from the fact that a dying
British Empire — which is irreversibly doomed — is lashing out
and is trying to preserve something that can no longer be
preserved. There was a time when the British Empire could impose
petty tyrannies on countries around the world and achieve a
certain limited degree of stability. That's over with. All of the
efforts within the framework of the mindset of the British
Empire, the mindset of the Obama administration, the mindset of
virtually all European leaders — the French probably the worst
of the bunch on the continent — is doomed; it doesn't work. Yet,
there is an opportunity; and opportunity for all of mankind in
what's going on in the Asia-Pacific region, led by China, by
Russia. India is clearly stepping in to play a significant role
in this new emerging combination, cooperation among nations for
purposes that go beyond national interests, but address the
interests of all of mankind. Egypt is fully established as
orienting towards that new Asia-Pacific combination.
So, this is the larger picture; this is the framework for
judging the initiative taken by President Putin this week. And it
must be judged from the standpoint of the global consequences;
and not just simply the consequences for the immediate
negotiations around Syria. Although his actions this week have
certainly greatly improved the possibility of bringing that
five-year tragedy to an end.
OGDEN: Thank you very much, Jeff. I would just add, the
initiative being taken by these countries also very much has to
do with the decades-long work Mr. Lyndon LaRouche and Mrs. Helga
LaRouche have undertaken. The One Belt-One Road policy that China
has adopted, is the Eurasian Land-Bridge policy which the
LaRouche movement uniquely championed in the beginning of the
1990s. Now, you have an evolution of that to the World
Land-Bridge; and this is what is documented so thoroughly in the
350-page Special Report that was issued by {Executive
Intelligence Review} called "The New Silk Road Becomes the World
Land-Bridge". One very exciting announcement, because you
mentioned Egypt, just this week there was a very high-level event
which was sponsored by the Transportation Ministry in Cairo;
featuring a LaRouche collaborator, Hussein Askary, to announce
the formal publication of the Arabic language of this full,
350-page World Land-Bridge Special Report from {Executive
Intelligence Review}.
So, you can see that at the very highest levels of
government around the world, this is what is shaping the
discussion; the initiatives that the LaRouche movement have taken
for decades. And one final note along those same lines, as we
announced last Friday, Mrs. Helga LaRouche just got back from a
very important trip to India; at which she was one of the
featured speakers in a very prominent, very high-level dialogue
— the Raisina Dialogue. And if people have not seen it yet, a
wonderful half-hour interview that Jason Ross conducted with Mrs.
LaRouche was posted on the LaRouche PAC website earlier this
week. So, if you haven't watched that yet, I would really
encourage you to watch it; and to just think about everything
that has been said here today. Think about these initiatives that
are being taken by some of the world's leading countries to
create the future; and think about the role that the LaRouche
movement has played over years and decades in shaping the
possibility of these initiative being taken today.
So, thank you all very much for joining us here today. I'd
like to thank Kesha Rogers for joining us over video; and I would
like to thank Jeff and Jason here in the studio. Please stay
tuned to larouchepac.com. Good night.
