I want to begin by talking about something that is often in these updates, but many of you may not fully understand what the implications are of this idea of moving from an old paradigm (which is undergoing a systemic collapse) into a new paradigm. So let’s start with this whole question of: what is a paradigm?
A paradigm is a set of beliefs and ideas that are generally accepted by everyone. It’s how the majority thinks. Its how peoples’ opinions are shaped. The axioms that they accept. The views that are pretty much unchallenged. Now, in recent years, since the post-Cold War period, there were two aspects of this which have dominated, both of which come originally from the British Empire. The first is the idea of geopolitics, and in the post-Cold War era, after the fall of the Soviet Union, nevertheless, the view remained that Russia is bad and China is bad. And this was hammered into our heads over and over and over. Russia’s the adversary, China’s the adversary, and we have to defend ourselves from those two countries. And the way to do it is to maintain a unipolar world where the United States and its transatlantic allies are the only ones allowed freedom to act militarily in the world. This is what NATO’s involved in, this is why we’ve had endless wars, regime-change coups and so on.
The other axiom is neoliberal economics and the best way to look at this is the effects of so-called ‘globalization’. The idea of getting rid of sovereign nation-states, of establishing institutions above the nation which determine policy of nations regardless of how people in those nations vote or react. This includes free trade, it includes speculation, it includes austerity, and attack on government involvement in any economic activity and so on.
These two ideas, geopolitics and neoliberalism created an ongoing, deepening crisis. We saw it with the failure of the U.S. to impose its will, or impose the will of this Empire, in places such as Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan. These were not places where a military solution would work, just as in Vietnam, a military solution did not work. Instead of learning the lesson under Bush and Obama, we continued these regime change wars in the name of fighting terrorists. Under Obama, the United States aided terrorists, trained them, armed them, engaged in regime change wars in Libya, as well as Ukraine and Syria. None of this did anything to help US national security because it was against US national interest to continue with these wars.
At the same time we had a bubble economy which blew up in 2008 and instead of making the changes then to break with neoliberalism, we doubled down. We had a bailout and the bailout rewarded the speculators and the people who created the crisis and gave them new tools to build a new bubble. A total mistake, because people stuck to the old paradigm.
There was resistance to this. In fact, in 2016, this resistance came to a head. The opposition to the old thinking ended up with the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States and this was a sign that the American people were tired of the establishment, of the Bushes, the Clintons, the Obama-types and instead rejected them, rejected the attack on national sovereignty, rejected the idea of globalization.
The problem is, the establishment wouldn’t accept that and for three years they did everything they could to bring down the government of Donald Trump with Russia-gate. Every time you turned around you heard about how Russia was controlling Trump. Trump colluded with the Russians. All of which has proven to be not only false, but deliberate lies spread by people ranging from the head of MI6, the leaders of MI6 in Britain, through Christopher Steele, elements in the Australian intelligence community, and then people like Brennan, Clapper, and Comey in the United States, as well as all the mainstream media. Everyday it was Russia, Russia, Russia and that fit in the old paradigm, but many of you saw through that. Partly because of the work that we did at LaRouchePAC. Every step of the way, we exposed the fraud of Russia-gate. We defended Trump, not on everything that he did, but on his willingness to stand up against what most of you call the Deep State which is really the British imperial tentacles inside the United States. We defended the President against that and he ultimately triumphed.
Then they came up with the Ukraine-Gate, another fraud. Now what are they doing? They’re attacking Trump on the basis of his continued willingness to break out of the old geopolitical paradigm by aligning American interest with Russia and China. This is what Trump said he would do from the time he was a candidate in 2016, what he tried to do as President. He tried to do this with the Helsinki conference with President Putin, with his meetings with Xi Jinping, with his efforts at resolving the North Korea crisis, the Syria crisis, to get us out of the wars in the Middle East. And every step of the way, he was attacked by the networks of the British imperial interests in the Democratic Party of Pelosi and Schumer, and now Biden, the Republican Neo-cons, and on top of that, the whole of the mainstream media. What’s their new line today?
They’ve changed from Russia, Russia, Russia to China, China, China. This world that was defined by geopolitics and neoliberalism has collapsed. The policies don’t work. Just take an example. What happened yesterday on the oil fields? The collapse of the oil price to $10/barrel, which then ended up at around $20/barrel, but the futures market was below $0. What does that mean? That nobody wanted oil for delivery, there’s too much oil already. The problem here is not something that happened because of the Coronavirus. It’s the debt crisis that already existed that allowed the shale oil fields in the United States to become moderately profitable. But as the price fell below $60/barrel, the accumulation of debt became unsustainable and this is now being stated openly by people who are involved in oil shale exploration and development.
Similarly, where did the pandemic threat come from? It came from the tearing down of the public health sector. You can say what you want about China, but China had nothing to do with the decision to move to Big Pharma, to the insurance companies, and the for-profit hospitals to deliver health services to the American people. As I’ve said before, if you were rich and had a gold-plated insurance policy, your health care system was fine. If you were a working American, if you were middle-class, you were one illness away from bankruptcy.
Our system broke down and the idea is that China didn’t tell us? Well, China first discovered December 23, 2019 something strange going on. By Dec. 30, they recognized an increase in cases of pneumonia, and by January 4th they notified the United States and World Health Organization that they had discovered a new virus and 3 days later, on January 7th, they had isolated the coronavirus strain and sent it to the United States to verify. So, that’s a period from December 23 to January 7. Was China responsible for Western governments not responding? Was China responsible for the 40 year tear-down of public health in the West?
No, that was something we did to ourselves because of the old paradigm.
Now, you might ask yourself. Why didn’t people listen? Well, why didn’t people listen to LaRouche in 1971 and again in 1974 when he warned that the teardown of the post WW2 international monetary system, the Breton Woods system, and the establishment of a neoliberal speculative system would lead to bubble economies, financial collapse, debt, and eventually to biological holocaust. Why didn’t they listen? Because of the paradigm.
Someone who did listen was Ronald Reagan who brought Lyndon Larouche in to negotiate with the Russians in the 1980’s on the Strategic Defense Initiative which was a break from the previous strategic paradigm of Mutually Assured Destruction. But what was the result of that? The same crowd, including some of the same individuals who have led the coup against Trump, built Get Larouche task force which resulted in throwing Lyndon LaRouche, an innocent man, into prison and backed Reagan away from the strategic defense initiative (SDI).
Now I want to read to you a statement from a Reagan administration official, Paul Craig Roberts, which shows that some people are getting this idea that we need a new paradigm. Roberts was an assistant Treasury Secretary under Ronald Reagan and here’s what he said in a column two days ago. “The destruction of the US economy has been underway since global corporations moved middle class jobs offshore. It’s been underway since the financial sector diverted a larger share of consumer income to the service of debt. Its been underway since corporations invested their profits in buying back their own shares instead of expanding their production capabilities. It’s been underway since quantitative easing let the Federal Reserve inflate stock and bond prices beyond realistic values. It’s been going on since the rules against concentration were set aside and the Glass-Steagall act was repealed. It has been going on since endless wars crowded out infrastructure investment and social safety net expansion.”
Paul Craig Roberts gets it, that’s the Four Laws of Lyndon LaRouche that he’s essentially talking about. It shows that there are people who are figuring out the need for a new paradigm. Now, I’m appealing to our viewers to think these things through before you react automatically, thinking within the box of the old paradigm. You’re trapped to the extant that you see China as our biggest threat, and not the debt bubbles that are crushing the US economy. It’s when you see Russia as a greater threat than the US Federal Reserve that you’re trapped in an old box. And right now, they’re trying to push President Trump to give up his goal of achieving cooperative relations with Russia and China. That’s what the new anti-China line is all about.
Now, we’ll find out sooner or later, some of the questions that are unanswered, but until then, we have to concentrate our efforts on getting into a new paradigm, and out from under the systemic collapse which is characteristic of the old paradigm in Western Europe, the US, and the rest of the world. And one of the best ways to inform yourself on this would be to go to the LaRouchePAC.com page and click on to register for the conference coming up April 25-26 where we will be discussing how we get to this new paradigm and how the ideas of Lyndon LaRouche have shaped the potential for us to escape the disaster that will otherwise befall us, which would seem like an inevitable tragedy, but actually would be the result of people being unable to break their way of thinking out of this old paradigm. That’s what I have to say today and I’ll see you again tomorrow.
-daily report from Harley Schlanger of LaRoucehPAC for April 21, 2020