This transcript appears in the November 24, 2000 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.

Questions and Answers at
LaRouche's Nov. 14 Seminar

LaRouche's seminar, held Nov. 14, 2000 in Washington, D.C., was attended by some 115 people, including diplomatic representatives, trade unionists, religious leaders, and the media. Questions were asked by many of those present, as well as by people calling in from cities around the world. The following is a the full transcript of the discussion. Also see LaRouche's main speech.

Adviser to the Ukrainian Parliament: Mr. LaRouche, in a recently broadcast television show called Tishden, "The Week," one of the best-known Ukrainian political observers said that the American democracy, which has been proven valid repeatedly in history, and which is an eternal example for the rest of the world, now finds itself in a dead-end street, because of the ongoing electoral crisis. Do you agree with this? Could you please comment?

LaRouche: Yes, I'll just refer to what I said briefly before, as the best way of getting at it.

Leading people in Europe, who frequently travel to high-level places in Washington or New York, know this very well, and it frightens them because they know it. They know, that the fascist mob, based on the Southern Strategy, this alliance I referred to of Dixiecrats and Carpetbaggers, has taken over the United States, and is extremely dangerous. They also know that the people who called this monster into being, just like Montagu Norman called Hitler into being in Germany, that those people are no longer in control of this mob which they created. It's like the famous story of the Rabbi of Prague, whose wife, when the Rabbi went on a trip, his wife tried to do magic tricks, and created a Golem. And this Golem was going to help her do the housework, and he destroyed the house. And the Rabbi came back and turned the whole thing off.

And what we have in Wall Street, is a bunch of dumb people, who, like the wife of the Rabbi of Prague, created a Golem. This Golem is called the Southern Strategy, the alliance of suburbanites and fascists and whatnot, and racists, and this crowd in out of control. And because Wall Street has not got a competent hand on the world economy, and because this mob has taken over, our system of government is corrupted, top to bottom, by the presence of this monster. And Europeans are terrified, of the idea that the United States, as a superpower, should be taken over by this Golem, this bunch of hooligans, typified by a guy who is, at very best, a Ku Klux Klan freak, fellow-traveller, Trent Lott, the Republican head of the Senate. Who is a part of this package of Ku Klux Klanners, who met with Nixon back in 1966, and so forth, in Mississippi, who followed the Southern Strategy. When you realize that you're talking about right-wingers, and you've got genuine fascists of this type, in the United States, in both the Republican and Democratic party, and that the Bush candidacy, and the Gore candidacy, are both based on the control of the party system by these types, then you realize what the problem of democracy is in the United States.

And thus, I would ask our friends abroad, to have some compassionate insight to the mess we have to clean up here. And that when they find that the United States does bad things, maybe they should take that into account, and not hold us all to account for it, because we're suffering from it, too. Maybe we should just get together, and combine forces, to get rid of that monster.

Debra Freeman: We also have a question, Lyn, from the staff of the United States Congressional Black Caucus. They actually have two questions. One is directly on the election, the other is on the question of the global financial system.

On the election, the question is: "There are allegations of serious violations of the Voting Rights Act committed prior to last Tuesday's election. Is there any way that this can be addressed now? It does not seem that the Electoral College procedure provides for this. Is it conceivable that the President form a high-level bipartisan commission, to investigate the very question of the legitimacy of what occurred prior to last Tuesday?"

LaRouche: It may be necessary to do, in the form of just that. Let me take this first, and then get the second question.

It may be necessary to do just that. Remember, that was done in the Tilden-Hayes case, back in the 1870s, in which the President supported the formation of a commission to investigate the questions of vote fraud and vote irregularities in that national Presidential election. Something of that sort is needed.

Now, we should not think of the Electoral College as a rubber stamp for the candidates; it is not. In half the states, it is supposedly semi-controlled by the candidates, in commitment, but in the other half of the states, it is not. So, if the Electoral College is aware, or made aware, of the fact that the hoax is not a question of cheating by somebody in some election--the cheating on both sides is enormous.

For example, in the case of my campaign in the state of Arkansas, for the Presidential nomination, 23% of the vote was openly stolen from me, openly! After counted and cast, by Al Gore. And similar things happened elsewhere. When you see that kind of operation in the primary process, and in the general election, you don't say you're going to take a case to court and prove the election went one way or the other. If you wanted to conduct an inquiry into this election, I don't think it would take less than years to get to the bottom of the level of the corruption run by the two contending corrupt people, and their machines. The corruption in this election was beyond belief. I don't think there's one or two, or five or ten, little cases of investigation of this county or that county, that's going to get to the bottom of the mess.

However, if the Electoral College is persuaded that it is the victim of a hoax, not on the basis of who chose the members of the Electoral College, but if it is convinced, in its conscience, that the American people and the Electoral College system are the victim of an electoral hoax, involving the partisans of both candidates, and the hoax is so dirty and so messy nobody can clean it up in fair time, by January 20th, then it is the duty of the Electoral College to make its own independent decision about who the next President should be! That would mean, in my view, that the Electoral College can select a candidate as President, who is neither Al Gore or George Bush. And if that is not the case in the Electoral College, it is true in the Congress. If the mess goes into the Congress without a clear Electoral College decision, then the mess goes into the Congress, and the Congress has much broader explicit ability to select a President.

So, we have not yet determined, by vote or anything else, who the next President will be. Counting the votes will not tell you who the next President is going to be! You have to take into account the corruption, the mass of the corruption.

What if you know the whole election is so corrupt, you can't do anything with it in time to select a President? Then you have to do something else. Because you must preserve the Constitution and representative government. If you don't do that--. Imagine if you elect either of these bums. What happens? Nobody in the world will have any respect for a United States who's elected as a President, somebody who qualifies, in the opinion of the leading European press, of being a petty comic-opera dictator of a banana republic! And that's the way that a Bush or Gore Administration will be viewed by the world as a whole.

Do you want the United States prisoner to that kind of a reputation for a sitting President? For four years, until you can impeach him? So, therefore, is it now the responsibility, as our Constitution provides, that we set reflective stages of the process, which is a process of review, by responsible agencies, of any error that was made in the proceeding step. Who must, with due process, and due haste, as well, proceed to find a solution. I say, insist, back up, organize. The decision must not be made in the courts by all these squabbles about this vote, or that vote. You'll never get to the bottom of it that quickly. Instead, insist that the Electoral College do a good job. And if it can't handle the job, pass it to the Congress, as the law prescribes. And work on the Congress, and the Electoral College, to insure that they take into account everything they should.

Now, obviously, all the evidence, like the fraud against me, the open vote-stealing by Al Gore--openly, shamelessly--and all these other things show, that the moral turpitude which pervades both candidacies--, you want to impeach a President on charges of moral turpitude? Why not get rid of him before you put him in there, if you've got the evidence? And that's the first question. I think that's the way to go.

Freeman: Their second question, Lyn: "Mr. LaRouche, you've repeatedly called on President Clinton to take steps to initiate the formation of a new, more just financial system. My question to you is in two parts: If President Clinton should fail to take such action, during the remainder of his term, can Congress initiate such a process? And on the other side, in the event that President Clinton does move in the direction, could a Republican Congress block him, or is it in his power to do it without them?"

LaRouche: What I'm doing today, and why this is an international press conference, in effect, is because, at this point, largely because of the onrushing financial crisis, and because the world is horrified by the spectacle of what happened in the election on Nov. 7, and before, that none of the above candidates have any credibility as President of the United States. To put them in charge of the United States, is to drag the United States down into the pit, simply by doing so. You have Presidents who command no respect in the nation. Remember, people voted for them--not for them; they voted against the other guy. They voted for the lesser evil, and they got evil. They can now reconsider that.

The reason I'm doing this, is, in this process, I've acquired a considerable amount of intellectual influence and credit, in high-level circles, as well as others, throughout the world. Many people will tend to agree with many of the things I say, but none of them so far, have put forward what I've outlined to you today: the indications of general solution, which is feasible, and practical, and based upon precedent, by which we ought to address this general problem of international crisis, and related things.

It is my hope that by my doing this--and I see nobody else who is presently situated to do what I'm doing right now--that my doing this will cause people to begin to move. I think that most of the serious politicians in the Congress and elsewhere in the United States, will not really privately disagree with much of what I've had to say. They know it's true. Everybody in top circles in the United States, knows what I've said about the Southern Strategy, is absolutely true, that is, in both parties. That the Presidents and Wall Street and everything else, are now political prisoners of the Southern Strategy, a fascist, Nazi-like movement. And they would like to get rid of it.

So, I'm doing what I can to inspire that action, and I'm taking the spear on this. You know, what I've said tonight, has put my life in the cross-hairs. But I'm 78 years old; I'm probably ten years younger in terms of biological condition and so forth, but it's kind of risky. But, since that's the kind of business I'm in, I take those kinds of risks; that goes with the job, as they say.

So, I think that what we have to do is realize, that you can not get a real satisfactory solution to this crisis, unless you engage the United States with Europe, and if you can do that, to engage the United States in cooperation with groups like the ASEAN-Plus-3, Russia, and people in Africa, people in Central and South America: In that case, we can do the job.

To do the job without enlisting the office of the President of the United States, is extremely difficult. As far as Bill Clinton is concerned, between now and January 20th, if you could get a movement among some Congressmen, which were capable of pushing such an initiative, I think Bill Clinton would join it. And you wouldn't have a problem.

Bill Clinton, you remember, in September of 1998, made a speech in New York City, in which he indicated his readiness to consider reforms of the international financial system. I think that personally, he's not averse to such things, if he thinks he's got the backing. He's a very political guy, as some of you may have observed. And with the signs of adequate backing, and if he didn't think they were going to shoot him on the following morning, I think he might do it.

And therefore, I would say, don't ignore the Congress. But don't count on the Congress as an institution to do the job. You can count on people in the Congress to set a fire under the President, a supporting fire, as they say, under the President--like supporting fire under a mule you want to get off his butt. That might work. And that's very good idea. And I think the possibilities are considerable, especially as this crisis gets worse. It's not going to get any better. People who are still clamoring, "Well, my man should get elected, I don't want Bush elected, I don't want Gore elected"; that kind of thing is going to die out. And people are going to get the idea, fighing for either candidate's cause, is not a worthy, profitable cause. We've got to take other courses of action. And I think putting pressure on institutions, in the Congress and elsewhere, to set a fire under the President, under President Clinton, to do what he can do in this direction--and if we could get echoes of this from people in Asia, South and Central America, but particularly Asia, Russia, and western Europe, I think we could pull it off.

Now, the President is going to be meeting at about this time, with the President of Russia. There's an agreement that has been reached, initiated through Germany and Russia, between the Chancellor of Germany, Gerhard Schröder, and Putin, Vladimir Putin, the President of Russia. This agreement provides for a 20-year cooperation of oil-for-technology exchanges between Russia and western Europe. This agreement has been extended under the auspices of the President of the European Commission, Prodi, to include other European nations. This can follow very quickly the type of agreement that was made by some signators in the 1920s, called the Rapallo Pact, in which certain Europeans had entered into an agreement with the minister of Russia, Chicherin, to this kind of cooperation: technology for Russian exports.

This is a very sound project from the standpoint of Russia's interests at this time, and from the standpoint of western Europe in particular. It is important to the United States that such agreement is being reached, because the United States' trade relations with Europe are crucial for the United States itself. A healthy Europe is essential to the United States.

Under those conditions, Japan, Korea, China, the ASEAN-Plus-3 group, in general, would be in a position to cooperate. So we might, by this route, and by pressure and thinking in those directions, we might bring into being, quite feasibly, the circumstances by which we can pull this off. And I think we should watch very closely what the discussion between the two Presidents, Putin and Clinton, is, in this immediate time frame. A good discussion between them, on this kind of issue--economic cooperation--could be a very important added factor, in light of the existing discussions among Russia, China, Japan, Korea, and so forth in that area, and India, and so forth.

So, I think the possibilities are great. The idea of a 25-year global long-term credit agreement, among a group of nations, of swaps for technology, and raw materials and so forth, around the world, this kind of agreement is a very viable agreement; it's the one thing that can work to get the world out of the present financial crisis.

African diplomat: Good afternoon. Dr. LaRouche, thank you very much, indeed, for the lecture. It's quite obvious that the American election has somewhat altered the scenario, not only immediately, but in the near future. I'm very much interested to know, how you see the world political and economic system, and the role that the United States can play, in the next two years, following these elections, with particular reference to Africa, in terms of debt and AIDS, and democratization, and also with particular reference to the Middle East. Thank you.

LaRouche: I think--as you're experienced, you know something about these things--that sometimes you take a principle, and you try to find the practical road of least resistance to get the thing in operation. Now, in this case, in the case of Africa in particular, from my own experience in doing studies, and plans, and proposals for development of Africa, and looking back to it, I see that what President Franklin Roosevelt threatened Churchill with, on African development, in his meeting with Churchill at Casablanca, is a place at which to start. Why? First of all, this is the policy of a President of the United States, who is one of its authentic heroes, President Franklin Roosevelt. Secondly, the time has come when the anti-Roosevelt slanders--Roosevelt-haters are about to get a big slap in the face from reality, and therefore, a U.S. population, particularly the lower 80%, who are suffering as much as they are, will encourage a return to the policies of Franklin Roosevelt, saying, "He got us out of the Depression. These guys put us back in one. We're going back to his policies." And therefore, in that light, the American people, in that condition, will tend to have confidence in the kind of policies for which we can cite a precedent from the policies of the United States, the Roosevelt Presidency.

And therefore, what I would do, is, I would simply say, what the United States should think of, in cooperation with its partners, in various parts of the world--Africa's major problem, as we discussed this, the major problem is the lack of basic economic infrastructure. That is, we need, for example, as I said many years ago: From Dakar to Djibouti and Port Sudan, we need a corridor, an East-West corridor of modern transportation, water management; that such a route would be crucial along the Sahel region area, for bringing back that whole section of Africa, into the conditions for very signficant rates of the development of agriculture and other things. We need similar things from North-South, and so forth. I think that these questions of power, of large-scale power systems, large-scale transportation systems, large-scale water-management systems, and so forth, that these things--

And remember also, that we had another problem, which relates to this right now; it's an added problem, the problem of epidemic disease: As a result of the conditions, which the past years' U.S. and other policy, IMF policy, has imposed on Africa, we have turned Africa into the breeding place, for the spread of new types, as well as old types, of pandemics and epidemics. The entire planet, as the recent CIA and National Security Council reports indicate, the United States itself is now threatened by a major strategic threat from the spread of pandemic and epidemic disease. The greatest concentration of this disease, is, naturally, in the poorest area, especially in the tropical disease belt of Africa, in the wake of wars and devastation of other kinds, and poverty. And therefore, we have to realize, that not only are we going in to help Africa, by helping with support with grants and other ways, to support Africa, so that Africa is able to undertake these large-scale infrastructure projects, which it desperately needs, as a precondition for any successful economic development. As Roosevelt indicated in the Casablanca address. But we must also recognize, that the frontier, the world frontier for fighting against the spread of a deadly--strategically deadly--spread of epidemic and pandemic disease, is in Africa.

If we understand our own best self-interest, right here in the United States and Europe, we are going to get on those fighting lines, mobilize the forces to fight the disease where it comes from. That's I think, the way to approach it.

Freeman: Lyn, the next question is from Esam Elborei Albayan newspaper, in the United Arab Emirates.

Q: Hello, Mr. LaRouche. The current crisis, obviously, will be reflected on the credibility of the next President, whoever he is. There's an idea circulating that Bill Clinton probably will continue his intermediation in the Middle East, even under a new administration. A new President will be susceptible to blackmail from pressure groups in the United States, because he will start with a situation, that is, that reflects a lack of credibility. How do you think the situation in the Middle East will evolve under such a vacuum of the influence of the United States?

LaRouche: Well, let's say that President Clinton made a great mistake in handling the Camp David discussions with Ehud Barak and Chairman Arafat: that he did the one thing, he make the one mistake, which spoiled everything else. There had been progress in the discussions, along the lines of the Oslo Accord. There was a sentiment among many of us, that the murder of Rabin should not be rewarded, by giving in to the policies for which Rabin's murderers had fought. We could not let Rabin's murderers dictate the policy of the world, and the United States in particular.

Now, it's true that Prime Minister Barak had gotten himself into a difficult situation, in which he himself was under death threat from the same people that had killed Rabin, many of whom are based in the United States, and are found among those associated with the influence of Edgar Bronfman, the man who backed [East German dictator Erich] Honecker in the last years of Honecker's career--a failed effort.

But, the point is, despite the fact that Barak may have excuses, in the fact that he was acting as he did under death threat from the forces associated with Sharon, but also from the forces associated with the hard core of the Dixiecrats in the United States. The basic problem with the so-called Temple Mount phenomenon, the attempt to take back the holy places in Jerusalem, and give them over to these fanatics: This does not come from Jews! There may be Jewish factions--nominally Jewish factions--who tend to be rallied into this, but the threat comes from certain American fundamentalist Protestants, who are organized around this idea of an Armageddon. They want to have the Battle of Armageddon now, so they don't have to pay their rent next month, or something. These kinds of fanatics, these dangerous fanatics, who are typical of the racist element in the United States, the Southern Strategy types, the Dixiecrat types. We know them: the Falwells, the Robertsons, these loose-goose fanatics all over the place, are dangerous.

Thus, the problem here, is, the United States can not act as an "honest broker" in the Middle East. The United States, and the President of the United States, must never become an honest broker. The President must be President of the United States, and represent the fundamental interests of the United States in any negotiation in which he deals.

Now it happens that the fundamental interest of the United States, in the Middle East, is peace. And the fundamental interest of the United States in peace in the Middle East, is development. Because, look, for example, in the Palestine area now: You have less water available in the aquifers than there are people existing. How the devil can you divide the land? It's the water that's the problem. There's not enough water! People are moving in from Brooklyn, and elsewhere, into new settlements. The Palestinians wish to return to their homeland. Where's the water? Where's the water? The Middle East has lots of land. But look at it. Fly in a plane over it, as you know it well. Desert, desert, desert! Where's the water?

We have the ability to make the water. We have the technologies to produce masses of water, to turn the desert into--to make it bloom. If we create that kind of optimism, then we can have peace, or a basis for peace.

The interest of the United States, is to say: We've had--from the time of the Grand Mufti, who was a British agent, with Nazi clothes--we've had a state of warfare which did not previously exist among Jews and Arabs in the Middle East. It didn't exist. This state of warfare, has gone on, for how many years? It's gone on since World War II, as an active state of warfare. It has never really stopped. We've had interruptions, but it's gotten worse now than it ever was before, because of these fanatics, who are loose, the fanatics who killed Rabin, and who have threatened to kill Barak, if he didn't do what Sharon wanted.

What we need is peace. We need peace, as we needed peace in Europe during the period of the Thirty Years War.

The interests of the United States, is to force peace, in a situation dominated by what is recognizably religious warfare. In the case of religious warfare, the one mistake you never make, is, you never make the possession of holy places, a matter of political negotiation. The holy places must be left intact. Untouched. Untouched by political power. The only thing the politicians must do, is, they must work to insure access to the holy places. They must never touch them. They must never claim to own them, or manage them. As long as you insist that the holy places must be part of the negotiation in a Middle East agreement, you are fomenting war.

And that's exactly what happened.

When President Clinton made the mistake of trying to act as an honest broker, instead of President of the United States, and took an otherwise workable agreement, as an interim agreement, negotiated that, then added to that, the insanity, of bringing a political negotiation over the holy places into the discussion, the whole thing blew up. And we now have a full-blown, potential religious war developing in the Middle East.

The solution to that, is not, how do you force a peace on the Middle East? The solution in this, is for the United States to act as a sovereign nation. And what Clinton is--he represents a sovereign nation; what's out there in the wings trying to get in, does not necessarily represent that. But, what Clinton should do, if he wants to bring peace, as a first step--you can't guarantee you're going to get peace by any action, but you have to take the position, which the United States itself should take, which is the first step toward bringing peace. And that is, President Clinton should say, he made a big mistake, by opening his big, fat mouth about the holy places, and for blaming Arafat for breaking up the negotiations, because Arafat did what he had to do. Arafat could not live ten minutes, if he had agreed to that condition, demanded by Barak, and supported by Clinton. Religious war would have been inevitable, as the immediate outcome of it. Worse than what we have now. By Arafat rejecting that demand, he may have postponed the full-scale outbreak of religious war.

We, of the United States, must take the position that the precedent by which we overcame religious war, which was tearing us apart for a century and a half in Europe, including the Thirty Years War, that we must use the lesson of the way we stopped religious war in Europe, and say that is in the interest of the Arabs and the Israelis, as it was of the Europeans in 1648. We must recognize, that from the standpoint of modern international law, that the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648, is the standard of international law, which is in the vital interests of the United States. And the United States President, despite Henry Kissinger's objections, must say that the Treaty of Westphalia is the terms. We want peace. We want each to walk away from the negotiations, equally as sure of the sovereignty of their people, and the right to prosperity. No recriminations. No retributions. No compensation. We just do the right thing, to give each people a way to live to the future, so that their children will not be living still, with the hatreds of the past. And that was the rule of the Treaty of Westphalia.

The United States should use its good offices, and can obtain the support of Europeans and others, in that thing, to offer to the parties in the Middle East, an offer they can not refuse, an offer based on our commitment to the same principles of the Treaty of Westphalia, which brought to an end, the horror of nearly a century and a half of religious warfare in modern Europe.

That's the only approach that I think can be taken as a policy. Of course, there's much more to discuss. We can discuss many things, but I think that's the core of the answer.

Q: My question, Mr. LaRouche, is, if indeed the Electoral College has been appointed by people we don't know, and we consider it a hoax, why would you advocate holding on to the Electoral College?

LaRouche: Because the Constitution provides for it. If you try to reinvent the Constitution impromptu, on the basis of a specific issue at a specific time, you're going to unleash a pack of cats and dogs, which you can't get back out of the picture.

Now, I know that some people are desperately saying, "We don't want George Bush for President; therefore, we've got to support this idea of 'the majority must rule.' " We don't know who the majority is! The corruption of this election campaign was so filthy, nobody knows who won anything. The popular vote doesn't count, the electoral vote doesn't count, etc. So what you have to do, is, try to get the Electoral College--which is created for this purpose, under the Constitution--get it induced to make an honest decision, based on the conscience of the members, or the majority of the members.

If the Electoral College can not make that decision, then the Congress has to make it.

Now, if you try to get out of that track, and go to some crooked court, and try to get a crooked judge to give you a crooked decision in your favor, what are you going to get? You're going to say, "Where is the law? Where is the Constitution?" When you go, and try to get Justice Scalia to recognize the Constitution, you already have an almost-impossible chore on your hands. This guy is against human beings, he's for shareholder value. His decisions don't make any sense, but he makes them, and they cause a lot of trouble. Rehnquist doesn't understand what Scalia's decisions are, so what are you going to do talking to him for? He's too dumb.

So, the point is, we do not want to start gambling, opening a gambling hall, with the U.S. Constitution. What we must do is make the Constitution work. Make it work. Because, if you go the other route, then you turn around tomorrow, and when you try to get a constitutional defense, and uphold constitutional law, you haven't got a chance in the world. And once you begin to get that kind of fight, and once someone says the whole thing was illegal to begin with --. What if, for example, you get Gore nominated, designated by the Electoral College, and Gore goes up to be sworn in; and Chief Justice Rehnquist is standing there, and refuses to swear him in, because the whole election was a fraud? And can prove that the selection of Gore was done by a method which violates the Constitution? What are you going to do?

So the problem in this case, is, don't go for what you think the cheap-shot debaters' tricks are. And that's the tendency of the American people. When they say, "vote for the lesser evil," and they get the evil, every time, either way the vote goes, as they got in this election: They got evil. And Gore is a racist, even if he pretends not to be, but I know better. Why did he vote for repudiating the Voting Rights Act of 1965? But he did it. He got the court to go along with it--a Bush court, Sentelle--to go along with doing that, on his initiative. The man's a racist.

So what's the difference between him and George Bush? Gore's intelligent enough to know that he is a racist. Bush is too dumb to know it. What's the difference?

So, I say: What we have to do is, we've got to stop being beggars at the back door of the White House, like slaves. We've got to go in the front door, and say, "We are in charge of the joint; we are the citizens." And you're going to find that, as the financial crisis hits, we're going to find a lot more who'll go with us. The problem, is that this country needs leadership; people who say, "I'm tired of the lesser evil."

Remember the whole thing about [Socialist Party Presidential candidate Eugene] Debs? Now, I've got a lot of things to say against Debs. But Debs, when he ran for President in the 1890s, said, "It is better to vote for what you want, and lose, than to vote for what you don't want, and win." And we, the American people, have got to get off our butts, and stop being the lower 80%; stop being the fieldhands, begging for favors from the back door of the slavemaster!

We've got to assert our rights. Look who voted for Gore: African-Americans, labor people, and so forth--not one of them likes anything that Gore represents. They just thought Bush was the greater evil. And if these same people had not made the mistake, of selling themselves to--. Of course, the Justice Department blackmail helped a good deal, otherwise they wouldn't have gone for Gore in the first place. But, if we'd gotten together, and defended our interests, instead of trying to find the lesser evil, the power that we represent--just those two constituencies, labor and African-Americans, represent a core of political power among the lower 80% of the population, which has the power to mobilize the nation, and determine its policies. And we've got to give up this idea of field hands, slaves, going begging at the back door of the slavemaster's plantation, and trying to find out which door opens to the lesser evil. Instead, we've got to find someone who represents us. And then we'll win.

And when the people get the idea that we're out to win, and we get the majority together to do it, at least a reasonable sample of that majority, we're going to start winning. Every crisis is the golden opportunity to seize, to make that fundamental change, when people no longer believe in corrupt institutions, and they're ready to consider looking for something else instead.

This is our great opportunity!

And those people who are on the state level, whether as elected political officials, or as influentials on the state level, who represent the grassroots leaders of the nation: These are the people to whom I would appeal and I have confidence in. We can do it, if you guys will stop playing lesser-evil games, and start fighting for what we want, instead of the lesser evil. Then we won't get evil! We'll get something else, instead. We may lose, but at least, we'll set a precedent, a precedent of courage and honor, through which someone who will come after us, will redeem the nation.

Egyptian journalist: Will the coming collapse of the dollar be beneficial to other currencies like the euro, or will it lead to the collapse of all currencies? What will the effect of the dollar crash be, on the economies of the Third World? And what's your advice to Third World countries, as they face this crisis?

LaRouche: First of all, the collapse of the dollar will be a catastrophe for everyone. It should have been prevented, but it's coming, and it's now here. My estimate is, that no one can know how far the collapse will go, because there is a certain element of pure fantasy in this whole business, anyway. But, to talk about a 40% collapse of the U.S. dollar over a fairly short period of time, some time in the very near future--could be next week, could be this week, that sort of thing could start, at any moment; you're already getting signs of it right now. The turbulences on the financial markets right now portend the preconditions for a very rapid, sudden collapse of the dollar.

When it goes down, it will go down big; it will flop; it will crash. And a 40% relative devaluation of the dollar is a very likely prospect to think about. No one can predict how far it will go, but you've got to think in those terms, to make a policy for dealing with it.

The collapse of the dollar will immediately--. See, people think that everything is trade relations, and trade has very little to do with anything these days. Everything is financial speculation.

What will happen with the collapse of the dollar will be a number of things. First of all, not only is every leading bank in Europe, in particular, and Japan, the United States, bankrupt. But the central banking systems, including the Federal Reserve System of the United States, the central reserve systems of Europe, Japan, and other nations, are bankrupt.

You face a situation, in which the only way to prevent chaos, is for the U.S. government--in the case of the Federal Reserve System--to take the Federal Reserve System, which is a government-chartered private organization of merchant bankers, and take it into receivership, in bankruptcy receivership. In other words, the United States government has to direct--and the President, the Executive Branch, and the Congress together have to collaborate in taking over the Federal Reserve System; putting it through bankruptcy reorganization, for the purpose of defending the U.S. economy, its functioning, lines of credit to communities and other things like that; and to protect the U.S. dollar itself. Which means that things like the derivatives--which they say is $100 trillion, but which is maybe closer, in total globally, with the off-the-counter stuff, to $400 trillion in soft paper around the world: Most of that should be wiped off the books immediately!

You see, as a famous man said of the 1929 crash: What collapsed was only paper. The essence of this crisis is, that what is collapsing is paper! You could burn the paper. You could write it off. You can declare it worthless. But that is not the economy. The economy is people. The economy is infrastructure. The economy is production. The economy is essential services. The economy is the functions of government. Our concern, is to save the economy, which is not money--we have to have a stable currency--but to save the institutions which are real economy: people, families, schools, farms, factories, modes of transportation, health services, essential services. We must keep those functioning. That's the real economy.

What happens if a corporation continues to produce what it produced yesterday, but its stock value has collapsed to 10% of what it was the day before yesterday? Is that a catastrophe? It's a financial catastrophe for those who are stockholders; but it's not a catastrophe for the economy. The economy is the real things on which life depends, and the maintenance of life depends. The economy is not money. The economy is not paper. It is not shareholder values. It is the things which are needed to sustain life and sustain the economy, and the civil order, and the development of the population.

Therefore, under the rule of the general welfare, which very few people today understand as a principle of natural and international law, the function of the government in the bankruptcy of the Federal Reserve System--which is now, presently bankrupt, I can assure you; it's more bankrupt than you can imagine--under those conditions (and Alan Greenspan, essentially, might be called the Cowardly Lion of Wall Street), under those conditions, you freeze everything that is not essential. You keep families functioning; you keep the local stores functioning; you keep the local police chief, the local fire chief, and all these people, functioning. You keep people employed, as much as possible. And you set out to create expanded employment in useful things.

And that's what we're going to have to do.

So, the question then comes: The collapse of financial values is meaningless, in this period. A vast collapse. Look, we have over $400 trillion of debt out there, against about $42 trillion of total GDP of the world, as a whole! You can't collect! What you can't collect, you've got to write off. And you write off the things that are least important, and that means derivatives; that means short-term financial speculation; that means a lot of so-called shareholder value, get written off, because we must save the people, the economy and the nation.

If we agree on that, and if the nations in Europe, the United States, the ASEAN-Plus-3 nations and so forth, agree on that, then we shall survive, and we shall prosper! Because by getting rid of the cancer, the rest of us can grow. The question here is not a financial or economic question as such; it's a political question. It's a moral question. If the government decides that we're going to save the people, rather than the shareholders, we'll save the people. If they decide to save the shareholders rather than the people, which is what Gore and Bush are both sworn to do--to save the shareholders, not the people--then the people are going to suffer. The economy will collapse. Chaos will exist.

So, that's the big question.

So, if as nations, as in the case of Egypt, if we can get a regional agreement within the Arab world, for example, on development, if that agreement touches into Africa, if we can bring that agreement into congruence with agreements with the ASEAN-Plus-3 with India, with Europe, with Russia, Japan, the United States as such, then we shall all do very well. Simply because we decided to cooperate, on the basis of protecting the people and the economies, and the integrity of the nations and development, rather than protecting the shareholders.

But, whatever happens, whether they try to defend the shareholders or not, the shareholders are doomed. There's nothing you can do for the shareholders. They'll just have to eat their losses, and live like the rest of us, and normal people.

Patricio Ricketts, Peruvian journalist: All right, Mr. LaRouche. Months ago, the Peruvian elections were seriously disturbed, as you recall, and finally objected by the Organization of American States, as well as the American Embassy, supported by Canada and the European Community, the so-called "U.S. Protectorate," to quote Raymond Aron. To be sure, the show of Washington finance, non-governmental organizations, did their job. One of them, Transparencia, got a million dollars to model the election, with the excuse of observing it. The Carter Center and the Democrats made a similar effort. Finally, the American government and its orchestra came to the conclusion: The Peruvian elections were below the minimal world standards.

Now that we can observe with amusement the American elections, we Peruvians ask ourselves, if the United States will be able to reach at least our poor mark, below those famous standards, provided someone is able to find them anywhere in the world.

In this country, 80% of the citizens entitled to vote, that means absolutely everybody above 18, did vote. What was the American electoral participation, and therefore, is now the Presidential democratic representation? In this country, votes were immediately counted by the citizens elected at random to manage the electoral sites. Their results were registered in acts in front of party representatives; and then went into an Internet page, all the 90,000 documents, so that every citizen could check the official counting of the electoral documents. The State Department, the CIA, the Organization of American States in Washington, and anyone, in any possible place on Earth, could verify the results, and check the votes, act by act, for each of the 1,227 candidates for the Presidency and Congress.

So far, no one has been able--no one, no one--has been able to demonstrate that the official counting was incorrect. And nevertheless, the U.S. government objected to the results, decided they were substandard.

Now we ask, when are we going to see credible results of the American election? And what about the famous standards? How is it, that the country which reached the Moon, cannot count votes? Have we reached the cybernetic era in order to rely on manual counting of votes?

Let me quote, Mr. LaRouche, a sentence of Pachacutec, the wisest of the Incas. "If a fellow," he said, "cannot count the knots of the quipus (their accounting system), and pretends to reach the stars, he deserves a laugh." I would like to hear your comments, Mr. LaRouche. Thank you.

LaRouche: First of all, you have to start with two facts, two sets of facts.

One is, that in 1989-1990, the alliance of George Bush, then President, with Margaret Thatcher of the United Kingdom, then Prime Minister, created what they imagined to be a world empire, an English-speaking world empire, Anglo-American world empire. As I said earlier in my remarks, today, this reduced the status of France, Germany, Italy and so forth, to satrapies. So that what you have now, is a parody of not only East Germany--and you might consider Bush and Gore as the Honecker and Mielke of the United States, two characters in East Germany who were being supported heavily by Edgar Bronfman when the East German government fell apart.

What we're dealing with is an empire, the United States, the Anglo-American empire, as defined by George Bush and Margaret Thatcher and others, at the end phase of its existence. You're at the point at which the empire is collapsing in on itself, because the oppression by the central force upon the periphery, is causing the periphery either to crumble, and thus disintegrate as assets of the empire, or to turn upon the empire itself.

Now, in the case of Peru, these two things are to be considered: First of all, the idea that this was democratic or anything else--there was no democracy whatsover in anything the United States did in that process. None. The whole claim there was democracy is a fraud.

But then you look a little bit closer: What is the "democracy"? Carter is an exponent, and an agent, of the Southern Strategy, the Dixiecrat-Carpetbagger alliance. The Carter Presidency was the inauguration of the takeover of the Democratic Party by the basically racist, Carpetbagger-Dixiecrat alliance. Carter doesn't know what democracy is. Why do they call it a Carter Committee for democracy? Because he's still studying, trying to find out what it's about, and has not yet discovered. He thought it was an early-on version of George W. Bush.

Transparencia is a personal asset of the Royal Consort of the United Kingdom, Prince Philip. Prince Philip is the head of Transparency International. Now you realize that anyone that is a monarch, an absolute monarch in a sense, one hereditary monarch, is not exactly a paragon of democratic institutions. There may be some decent monarchs in history, but that institution is not necessarily one qualified to judge from experience, to explain what democracy is.

So, you look earlier at the case of Italy, 1992 on. Transparency International was represented by the yacht Britannia, of the Queen of England, which was parked off the coast of Italy, which gave marching orders to a bunch of Italian politicians who were agents of the British monarchy, who then collapsed the existing system of democratic government of Italy, in an operation called "Clean Hands." They washed their hands in the blood of their victims. And they slaughtered and destroyed the political system of Italy, which has not been able to regain control over its own sovereign affairs since.

Is that democracy? So, if you say, these guys call themselves democracy, but they're pirates.

You take a step back further. What is Project Democracy? Project Democracy was founded, as a project, in 1975-76, by crazy Zbigniew Brzezinski, the man who was the controller of the Carter Presidency. He was typical of the forces which took the Democratic Party over, for the Southern Strategy! Huntington, the agent of Brzezinski, wrote a paper on the "Crisis in Democracy." This paper on the crisis in democracy, which was intended to create a system under which the two Southern Strategy organizations, that is the Republican Party and the Democratic Party, would together control the political party system of the United States, through what was called Project Democracy, the National Endowment for Democracy, which runs both parties from the top.

So, what you have is essentially a fascist organization, so defined as fascist by its Mussolini-like commitment to shareholder and slaveholder traditions, imposed upon the system of government of the United States, in the party system. Agents of that party system, typified by that desperado Carter himself, go down to Peru, and say, "You do not please us in Project Democracy. You're not democrats, the way Project Democracy defines it. Well, you don't have any black slaves down there! You don't have any slaveholder tradition, to speak of, that you honor. You don't have a shareholder decision -- you don't have a bunch of fascists running the country! Therefore, you're not democratic!"

When you eliminate this word-play, and say: What is the content of Project Democracy, what is the democratic system of the United States, what is this cesspool of corruption called the recent election, Presidential election? Put this all together, and what we're dealing with, which I'm sure you understand, is a question not of fact, or law, but of power. Power as a substitute for law. We watched in Ibero-America. We've watched George Bush in Panama. We watched the United States State Department backing the drug-pushing dictatorship inside Colombia. We saw what happened to the destruction of all sovereignty of Ecuador. We see what's being done, now, in adjoining countries. We see the destruction of one nation and economy after another, throughout all of Ibero-America.

This is democracy?

The question is, it's a misunderstanding about the definition of words.

Now, the question is, is how do you defeat this? Well, you don't defeat it by appealing to courts of law, because the judge is a crook. You don't complain about the lack of democracy by going to a fascist judge. You have to change the judge. You have to change the correlation of forces.

A nation like Peru understands, as a relatively small and vulnerable nation, that it depends upon some system of law among states, which is based on rational grounds, on the grounds of the general welfare, the grounds of the common good. Therefore, a country like Peru needs a rational system of international relations, based on clear and honest rules of law, for behavior among nations.

The United States has become a lawless dictatorship, in the tradition of the Roman Empire at its end-phase. So, you've got to eliminate the empire. We're now at the point that the empire is about to collapse, and the smart victims of the empire, at that point, always get together and say, "Let's restore the kind of system which was promised by Franklin Roosevelt, and his 'Good Neighbor' policy, which was promised by John Kennedy, before he was killed, and his policy for the Americas, and start right there." All we need is an honest President of the United States, who is not under the control, and not terrified by the bullets aimed at the nape of his neck, by the fascists, the way Bill Clinton is. If Bill Clinton did not have the gun-sights of the people behind this fascist gang, aimed at the back of his neck, he would behave as a different President than he's behaved as so far.

So, take the gun out of the hands of those people who've got the gun-sights aimed on the nape of his neck, and his child's neck, and he might behave differently.

So, the point is, those of us who have power, or don't have power, must have among ourselves, an understanding of these problems. We must have an understanding of our need to cooperate around the ideas of the kind of world, based on what John Quincy Adams called a community of principle, among perfectly sovereign nation-states. A group of nations which has agreed to defend the sovereignty of each by all. No tampering with the sovereignty of a nation. And to agree to a principle of the general welfare, otherwise called the common good, by which we each seek to govern our own internal affairs, and by which we seek to promote the common good among us.

That's all that we need, and we have to make that revolution now.

Because obviously, as you see in the case of Peru, as you saw in the case of Ecuador, as we see in the case of Colombia, which we see in the case of Panama, and so forth, we see that there is no hope, for any of the nations, of Central and South America, in even the relatively short term. There's no trick, there's no way in which any hope can be brought, unless the power can be brought to bear, to bring back a cause for hope.

And we who understand that, like you in your position, I in mine, we must do what we can together, to bring that coalition of power together, to bring this world back into some semblance of order, to establish, finally, a community of principle among self-respecting and mutually-respecting, sovereign nation-states.

That's the only solution to this mess.

Dr. Abdul Alim Muhammad, Minister of Health of the Nation of Islam: Greetings to you, Mr. LaRouche. I think I have two questions. In thinking about this constitutional crisis, as a result of the fraudulent elections, and due to my training as a physician; I always try to think: How could this very bad situation be even worse? And it occurs to me--and I want to get your opinion on this--that if something were to happen to President Clinton, it wouldn't be the first time that a person became President due to the assassination of the sitting President. And that would be one possible resolution of this crisis, about who becomes President, because it would put one of the current candidates in office immediately. And I just wanted to get a sense from you: Do you have any feeling about the danger that this crisis might represent, for the sitting President, Clinton?

Then the second question, is related to the constitutional process for trying to resolve this kind of a dilemma. It's my belief that the electoral process is completely fraudulent, in that the election was deliberately shipwrecked, if you will; and those that drove the ship into the rocks, probably already contemplated the notion that the Electoral College would be called into play, to perhaps, make an independent choice for President, such as in the Hayes-Tilden situation. And I was wondering, whether or not, is there some way that we could tell the legitimacy of the Electoral College, as it is presently constituted? And, related to that, is there a particular way that you would advise, for us to try to influence the functioning of the Electoral College, so that someone other than Al Gore, someone other than George Bush, could be selected as President? Thank you.

LaRouche: I've been worried about that problem with Clinton, for many years--since 1994, in particular; one of the first things I was concerned about with him. I've done, because of my peculiar advantages and experience, I've done a number of studies of this problem of high-level assassinations, and have enjoyed the collaboration of some top-level, relevant people in the military, and others, of various countries, in the United States and abroad. So, I do know something about how these things are done. I've been the target of such assassinations several times, including by the FBI, 1973 in particular. I escaped that, so I know (we have the paperwork on that one, by the way) how that's done. It's done with deniability, but it's always done with the official agencies, and you have to worry about several in the United States. You worry about the FBI. You worry about the Wall Street crowd in general, which is called the "BAC," the British-American-Canadian crowd of financial interests and law firms, tied with the financial community in New York City.

The Kennedy assassination brought that to the fore. We don't know who assassinated Kennedy--I don't. I don't know who those three guys were! It wasn't Lee Harvey Oswald, that I know; it was some other guys. And John J. McCloy covered it up, and bulldozed the Warren Commission into creating the fake Oswald story. But I do know the attempt to organize the assassination of President Kennedy was organized from Canada, by the Louis Mortimer Bloomfield who was head of the relevant organization, who had been the chief advisor on the correlation between British intelligence and the FBI, since 1938.

That's how things happen. I know, also, that if you want an assassination done in the United States, there is a special offshoot of the military, which is a "special warfare" offshoot, as it's called, which is used for that purpose. Now, the special warfare unit has people from many countries, who are professional killers, who can be brought in and flown, and then shot afterward, after they've done the job, and kill almost anybody--poisoning, and everything else, is done!

So, that danger I know about; I know about it in the case of de Gaulle, because I've talked with people who had defended de Gaulle, personally, against assassination. I know what his problems were. I know about the Mattei killing in Italy. I'm familiar with the assassination of Aldo Moro in Italy, a killing that was done, partially, on the orders of Henry Kissinger personally, in the 1970s. I know it was done through a section of NATO, that did that assassination. I know how that was done; I know some of the facts about it.

And since I understand this kind of business, from that standpoint, from my investigations and my association with people who were insiders on such investigations, I have been seriously worried about the life of the President, since 1994. And I know that the danger to him was focussed, in foreign interests behind George Bush, personally--the former President--who, together with people like Richard Mellon Scaife, and some corrupt people in the Justice Department and courts, and so forth, orchestrated most of the operations against President Clinton. I know those operations are still, in a sense, live today. Yeah, I'm worried! I'm worried every day, for President Clinton's life. Every day, I worry about his life, for just the reasons you indicate, and, probably, some more reasons as well, of what the implications might be, of that, eh? Lonely.

The problem we have is a cultural problem. The American people have been conditioned to accept the status of human cattle, which has been imposed on most of the people in the lower 80% of family-income brackets. Now, the problem is not the external impression imposed upon them--that's not the most serious problem. The problem is the internal impression they impose upon themselves, so that they think like human cattle. When someone says to me, "I've got to vote for the lesser evil," you say, "Buddy, you're voting for evil, right?" And in the case of these two clowns, it's a very clear case: They're both as evil as both sides think.

So, why do the American people vote for the enemy, instead of themselves? Why do they vote for Satan, rather than God? and expect Satan to do some good for them! and then, are surprised when he doesn't, after they voted for the clown.

So the problem is, that the Americans say, "Look, we've gotta be practical. Don't take on the big boys. We've got to think about our family interests, our community interests, my personal interests. We've got to make a deal, to get this little deal for us." Trade unionists do the same thing. They'll trade off their souls, to get one little promise of a favor, in a deal with some politician. And then, he turns around and double-crosses them, and they say "We were robbed." They weren't robbed, they asked for it; they robbed themselves, by making that deal, instead of saying: "I am a citizen; I am a sovereign person; I have a mind; I have a right to know what's going on; I have a right to make an informed decision about what's good for this nation."

Will you stop thinking about yourself, and think, instead, as a President should think, what is good for the nation, what is good for our posterity, what is the good of our nation for the human race? What are we, as a nation, doing, that makes us good for the human race? That's our long-term strategic security. What are we doing for our people? Don't sit there and say, "What am I getting? How am I cheating to get a deal?" Think of what you're doing for your nation, and then your nation might do something good for you. Think of the man, elect the man, who's good for the nation; and maybe he's the man you can trust, to do something good for you when you need it. Don't try to make a backroom deal with somebody, and then hope, that because you got a secret little deal on the inside with the slavemaster, that he's going to be good to you, the slave. Stop thinking like a slave, and think about what you're supposed to be. You're supposed to be a citizen! A citizen who's born; you're going to die; we all are born, we're are all going to die. Are you gambling on the pleasure you get in between? Is that the meaning of your life? the pleasures and satisfactions you get from moment to moment, as you travel from birth to death? Or do you want your life to mean something, when you've moved on? Do you want to think that your life means something to your grandchildren, to your community, to the nation, to humanity? that you've paid your dues to humanity, passing through this life? Do you think of yourself, as God looking at you personally, and say, "What have I done for God today?"

If you think like that, you think like a citizen. You say, "I've got a mind; I can think; I can find out what's going on; I can talk to people; we can discuss these things; and I can come to a decision, about what I think is good for this nation, and is fair to people in it."

If you make that kind of decision, and only that kind of decision, you are a moral citizen. If you think of, "what favors I can get, or what troubles I can get personally lifted off my back, and I'm willing to sell my soul for that, (in the form of a vote)," then what do you expect you're going to get? You act like a slave, you're going to be treated as a slave.

And see, a true slave--and I saw exactly this in Virginia, looking at a place that had been a place where slaves were kept; and there was a place in the basement, where women slaves would lock themselves up every night: To be a slave, is to be person who, in one way or another, locks themselves up every night, or every day when they go out to work. They are self-enslaved, and the master sits back and laughs at them: "Ha ha! My slaves are very good slaves; they put their own shackles on."

And that's what people do, the way they vote.

Our job, if we're serious about politics, is to confront our fellow-citizen with this fact. And hopefully, using everything we know, including Classical forms of art, where this kind of thing is taught to people, to teach them to stop being self-imposed slaves. And then they'll stop doing this nonsense. And I'm persuaded, that until we can get people to stand up on their hind legs like human beings, instead of four, and stop thinking like slaves, stop reacting to politics like slaves, and vote for their soul's position in the whole of eternity--what am I going to be, between birth and death, and what is that going to mean in the totality of it all? And you can think like that, and act like that, you can't help but tend, with all the errors you'll make, to converge on making the right kind of decision.

You'll learn from experience.

Correspondent for the Korean daily Chosun Ilbo: What do you think about President Clinton's possible visit to North Korea; and, how do you evaluate the Korean peninsula's recent situation, after the summit between the North and South, last June? Thank you.

LaRouche: Well, personally, the North-South agreement, of course, I'm happy about; particularly, because I'm happy with the President of South Korea, who made a very, in a sense, courageous decision, and a correct one. The man is a noble man, and he should be honored for what he's accomplished so far, in that respect. The ending of that horrible division, and the willingness of people in both parts, to take the lead in doing it, is great. And we see, immediately, the benefits.

Now, forget the terrible things that are being done to Korea right at the moment, by the international financial authorities, including the United States. What was done to Korea was a crime. Everybody in Korea knows it. It was a crime that was done by its great partner, the United States--the conditions that were imposed in the 1999 period onward: a swindle. And everybody in Japan, who's any good, knows it too; those in China know it; other parts of Southeast Asia, ASEAN Plus Three, know this.

Now, there's a good side. And I think we have to concentrate on the good side, and making it work, and trying to defend as many things, that are being destroyed now, as possible, like the industries, and so forth. The good side is, that--as has already been adopted--if we start, as has already been proposed and agreed, by simply reopening those railroads, those railroad connections, and extending them as agreed, into areas such as Beijing; into areas such as the Trans-Siberian Railroad: If we take the area of Korea as a whole, China, and Russia, and you look across the sea to Japan, you have an area of China, in there, which is one of the rich potential development areas of all China; in the ideal place, with infrastructure and with transportation through the area, this area could suddenly become very rich.

This shows that the development, if you go from Japan to Pusan, through Korea, into China, into this area, into Russia, you have, as people who are involved in this recognize, we have the possibility of going from Japan directly to Rotterdam and to Brest in France, by transportation grid systems with power systems attached. We have the ability to open up all of Central Asia for a great development, in areas which are sparsely populated, with rich resources, but which are unusable because of the lack of development in that region. We have one of the greatest opportunities for improvement of the conditions of this planet as a whole, through that kind of development in that area. That is an area which includes some of the greatest concentrations of population on this planet, as with the case of China, India, the case of Southeast Asia.

This is where we have the greatest impact, on the greatest part of the human race, in the quickest way, and in the fastest way, of all. When we open up the hinterlands of Central Asia, including the remoter areas of China, the underdeveloped areas of China, for this kind of development, which the reunification of Korea strategically facilitates, we say: This is one of the great things about the 21st Century, if we could just get there in decent condition!

So, I'm extremely happy about the positive side.

I'm extremely worried about the effects of the continuation of the destructive process, as we've seen in the Daewoo case, for example, just now. That should not happen! The sovereign industries of Korea, which were developed by Korea in the great reconstruction of South Korea, industries which are invaluable for the treatment of North Korean development; which are invaluable for opening up those new areas of development in China, Russia, and so forth: This must not be destroyed, this must be protected.

And I hope that very soon--you know, President Clinton, in my opinion, is not a bad guy. But when you understand what he's up against, and understand the nature of what I referred to today, from this Southern Strategy crowd, this fascist crowd which controls the politics in much of the United States, you understand what danger and pressure he lives under. I would probably be more courageous, and I would probably be considered more foolish, but I would be more courageous on these matters. But I can not but have compassion for the situation in which he finds himself, which I probably am more sensitive to, than many other people, even people who are closer to him. And therefore, I have compassion for his mistakes, because I understand they're not simply his mistakes. They're institutionalized features of our present system of government, and party system. And my job, is to figure out, how can we change that?

So, I look at Korea that way. I'm concerned about Korea. I'm concerned for the success of its great undertaking. I'm concerned for the success of the ASEAN Plus Three process, that it not be sabotaged by the IMF pressures, or other. I would like to see an end to this looting of Korea by these financial arrangements, and financial rules of the IMF and others.

But I'm very happy about the positive implications of what we can do.

And what Korea can do. Korea is extremely important. It's a country which has a mixture of cultures, a Buddhist background and a very strong Christian element. And because of that reason, Korea is a one of the perfect countries--like the Philippines, and others--to function as an interface between European culture in general, and the whole of Asian culture in general.

And that's one of the great challenges of this whole period. It's, how do we take cultures like Asia cultures, in particular, which are different, and a different origin and different history than those of European civilization; and how do we effectively have understanding and cooperation among people who have different cultural backgrounds of this type in the long span of history; bring them together, to a common purpose and common understanding?

Korea is one of those nations, whose peculiarity is that it is particularly well suited, to help act as an interface between European civilization and Asian civilization in general. It's a part of Asia; it's also a part of European civilization. The development of industry in South Korea, and so forth, is a part of that. It's an essential part of that, and it's demonstrated that principle. And therefore, Korea is, in that sense, one of the special jewels of the prospects of cooperation, between European civilization as a whole, and Asian civilization at this time. And therefore, I would defend it, especially from that standpoint, as well as its rights as a nation.

American trade union leader: Thank you, Ms. Freeman. Thank you, Mr. LaRouche. My questions are directed in the area of the financial reserve system, and the "Plunge Protection system" that our government, I suppose, has in place today.

I found it interesting, you spoke about the Daewoo crisis in South Korea, and you felt that Daewoo should not be allowed to crumble, so to speak. And I'd like for you to, perhaps, explain the difference between your stand on that, and what it might be if, say, a bank, a major bank here in the United States would fail. And my question about the "plunge protection"--hopefully, these questions will all interrelate--I'm wondering if they're going to further lengths than they've gone in the past, and I wonder how far they can actually go? And as far as the Federal Reserve, you claim that it should be taken into receivership. I wonder if you would feel that it should not be restored, once things would come back around, to what it is today; if it should actually become something different than it is today? Thank you.

LaRouche: Let me focus on two things that you've asked about, because the "plunge protection" system just fits into that.

First of all, just visualize what this means: a collapse of several hundred trillion dollars, of real estate and other paper in the United States, in a very short period of time. Now, you remember that one of the key things is the leveraging of mortgages; mortgage recycling through Fannie Mae, Ginny Mae, and so forth, which will then pump the banks into this kind of bubble-building in real estate. And if you look at the inflation in real estate, especially in the so-called growth areas of suburban investment in the United States, you see a real hyperinflation in real estate prices. You see people, for example, in Silicon Valley, who can not afford to find a house to live in, even though they're getting incomes in the $60-70,000 a year or higher brackets. They can't afford to buy a house!

You see the homeless in this country as a result of the real estate crisis. This has helped create this situation.

Now what happens when all this paper collapses? And what is the real value of houses that are priced now, many of them nothing but glorified tarpaper shacks, with Hollywood exteriors pasted on the exterior. There're reallyt arpaper shacks! A little bit different materials--a little chipboard, some plastic appliqué on the outside, and maybe a couple of gold-plated faucets in the toilet. But they're junk! Even a termite won't eat them! They're so bad.

These things are going at $400,000 to $1 million mortgage, or more, or higher in the Silicon Valley area. They're junk! You put a grand piano in one of them, and the whole row of houses will go down. $400,000 and a million dollars a crack, whatever it is.

So, what happens on the day that half of the people employed in the upper 20% of family-income brackets, such as the Nasdaq area, are suddenly unemployed, and have no skills that are employable, available. They're out in the street, they're ejected from their homes because they couldn't meet the payments on these high-rent houses, which may run to 40% of their paycheck, or even 50% may be spent on paying rent, or the equivalent. And they're ejected from their houses, they're on the street, they have no skills which are employable at that time. And you hit the most heavily debt-ridden section of the employed population: this section, about half of them wiped out. What happens to the real estate values, then?

Now, then, what happens to the security that the banks and the mortgage companies, and so forth, hold on this real estate? What happens? What happens when shareholder values collapse in a chain reaction, because all of this mess is tied in together--the credit system, and so forth, is tied together? So, as a result of that, you're faced with the fact that you have a hopelessly bankrupt Federal Reserve System, because the Federal Reserve System is essentially a government-chartered corporation, set up successively by Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, as a way of running the U.S. economy independently of the government, but with a government charter, and with some influence by government, in appointing a few people as part of the board.

When this system, when the banks of this system, the major banks--the big banks, which are now super-merged and highly vulnerable because they are super-merged--go under, one after the other, then you have to recognize that the system, as a whole, is bankrupt. That means, that you have to have--Uncle Sam has to come in, in the form of the Executive Branch, with the consent of the Congress, and aid of the Congress, and put the whole shebang into bankruptcy reorganization, just like any bankruptcy on any streetcorner. The difference is, what we have to do, is, that we have to keep the banks functioning even if they're bankrupt. We may think that the stockholders' value in the bank may be worthless, it may be zero; the bank may have no net financial assets whatsoever; but the bank is still an administrative agency, by which we can maintain the flow of savings, deposits, and so forth, and business in local communities and others.

So, therefore, the Federal government will want to keep many of these banks, or most of them, functioning, for their service function, even if they're not viable as banks.

Now, in that case, what are we going to do? Where are you going to get the mechanisms of credit to keep the economy functioning?

Well, what you do, if you've frozen this debt and declared it non-interest paying, and so forth, while you sort it out in bankruptcy; where's the source of credit? The source of credit is, to go back to the Constitution, and recognize that the only authority to print currency, and emit currency of the United States, is the Federal government, in its credit-creating authority, as Alexander Hamilton defined it. Therefore, we're forced to go to what is called national banking: the Federal government creates credit; it then utilizes both government facilities, and private service channels such as banks, to administer the flow of this credit, which is used for purchases, for employment, salaries, and so forth, of producing people, to keep the economy going, and to make it grow.

This means very large-scale government commitment to what it can do: large-scale infrastructure. We have a lot of infrastructure projects, which are government, or state, or otherwise existing. We have a vast shortage of power production. All these kinds of problems. So the Federal government will have to do what Roosevelt did, in a sense: is, go to the infrastructure, increase the percentile of the total labor force employed in building essential infrastructure, including rebuilding hospitals, health care facilities, schools, things of that sort; as well as things that involve water, power, etc., this kind of thing.

So, we'll plough a great deal of credit into that. That credit, in turn, will give employment to contractors who contract to work in these projects. So we'll have to supply the credit, so those contractors can get the materials, and get the labor needed to do their part of the job, as well as the main job on infrastructure. That would stimulate the economy. It will stimulate employment and activity in local communities. That way, the Federal government, in cooperation with the state governments, can manage the process to ensure that communities remain stable. You say, "This community's going to collapse unless it gets something. What have we got on the decks that it's going to get, to keep it in business." We can't have communities collapsing. We can't have pockets of mass unemployment in various parts of the country. We've got to administer this process, so we say, "Only useful work will be assigned, but we must apply this, and provide this where it's needed to maintain the economy locally, as well as to get us out of this mess."

So, in that case, you have a significant period of time ahead, in which the credit of the United States--the credit of the U.S. as a sovereign state--is the only source of net credit, by which the economy is kept functioning, and is able to grow; as it was in the case of the 1930s, and so forth, under Roosevelt. So we're going to have to do that.

This means that the Federal Reserve System, essentially, in reorganization, will cease to be the chartered Federal Reserve System; and instead, will be come a national bank. That is, the Federal government will simply create it as a national bank, in the way that, essentially, Alexander Hamilton defined the way in which a national bank functions; in modern terms, but the principle is essentially the same.

At the same time, the International Monetary Fund is also bankrupt. The G-7 nations' central banking systems are all, collectively, bankrupt, because all of the leading financial institutions associated with those systems, are bankrupt. Therefore, since they are bankrupt, they can not create credit. They can't even pay their debts. Therefore, those governments will have the choice of either taking those systems over, or accepting national catastrophe, a social and human catastrophe.

Therefore, the G-7 nations no longer represent a group of central banks, who dictate the policy of the world. Instead, the governments which have taken over those central banks, now are responsible for the credit policies of the G-7 nations, and their policies change accordingly.

So, those are the circumstances under which we can operate.

Now, the Plunge Protection Committee was essentially a hyperinflationary speculative mechanism, for short-term coverups of the degree of bankruptcy of these banks. The Plunge Protection system is hyperinflationary in character, and it is that system itself, which by delaying the collapse of the system, has made it worse. We are now on a boundary condition, where the attempt to continue the Plunge Protection system will be a self-causing blowout. It's finished.

In the case of Daewoo, the same thing applies. We have to understand, ourselves, that the productivity of the people of another nation is part of our standard of living. That is, if people in Korea can produce a product which helps the world economy to grow, through the labor of Koreans, that is good for all of us. So, we don't want to take their jobs away from them, for the sake of protecting U.S. jobs. We want to increase, and stabilize their employment, as a way of creating the basis for increasing our own.

What we want is--look, the United States has to be dedicated, over the next 25 years, to going back to being a high-technology exporting nation; not cheap goods, very high machine-tool type of technology. Benchmarking ends; we go back to the old system of engineering and science. We make the products the world requires in terms of high technology. We ask Europe to do the same thing; some parts of Russia have some scientific capabilities which will do the same thing.

So, therefore, nations which have a higher level of technology, on the average, must dedicate themselves to long-term assistance to nations which, on the average, do not have that level of technology. And that means a 25-year program of transfer of technology, to nations which, especially, can not afford it, through credit mechanisms.

That means that our industries must be re-geared to supply what the world as a whole needs. It used to be good business, you know: You supply what the customer needs; that was considered good business. What the world needs from the United States, from Western Europe, from Japan and so forth, is the technology which China, India, Africa, Central Asia, so forth, need, to build up their own economies. And if they build up their economies, that means that by increasing the productivity per capita of the world, you raise the standard of living of everyone.

So therefore, Daewoo is essential--is one of the essential pegs--in Korea's role in building up the economy of Central Asia. It's an essential part. All the people of Central Asia need that product. Don't take it away from them. Keep the skilled labor, and the skills of Korea, working, for the benefit of all Asia. That will improve the total productive powers of labor in Asia, which will make the cost of living less, per capita, in the world as a whole; which will benefit us tremendously. If we do that, that will increase the market for export of U.S. high-tech goods, to all parts of the world--which should be our business. Meeting our customers' needs is always good business.

And if we think in terms of this kind of problem, that way, then we see that, we in the United States, which has thought of itself as the great power, have a vital interest in defending the best interest, the economic interests of a country which is Korea. That's the way to look at it.

Two members of the Mexican Congress, José Antonio Calderón and Patricia Lorenzo Juárez, of the Alianza Social party: Mr. LaRouche, everyone is aware, these days, of the unprecedented occurrences, like the U.S. elections where no one seems to have been elected. To this, one might add other unprecedented occurrences, such as the complicity of parliamentary forces, that have traditionally been antagonistic to each other, joining together to legislate in favor of the destructive, neo-liberal, and globalist economic model. Here in Mexico, we see how lawmakers from the PRI and the PAN are readying themselves to pass laws that will de-nationalize us, and that, despite the fact that some of them just heard Pope John Paul II denounce globalism and the savagery of the market, on the occasion of the Jubilee 2000. What do you think can be done, by us, legislators from the emerging political parties, who, although we are in the minority, favor laws that would radically change the neo-liberal economic model.

LaRouche: I am very much for doing that. What I've said today, implicitly addresses that question.

Look, neo-liberal policies are dead. Or, if they're not dead, the people who believe in them, will soon be dead, hmm?

What is neo-liberal policy? Neo-liberal policy is nothing but a return to the conditions of economy and social policy, which are associated in European history, with the 14th-Century New Dark Age.

The key to the improvement in the productive powers of labor, and standard of living, which occurred in extended European civilization, from the 15th Century to the present, is absolutely unprecedented in all of human existence. This improvement is largely centered in two policies which created the modern, sovereign nation-state, instead of all previously existing forms of society. By creating the sovereign nation-state, of which the first example was France under Louis XI, and then Henry VII in England, we established governments which are based on the principle of what is called the general welfare, commonwealth, or common good. The first time in history, that governments were constituted--of entire nations--were constituted on the assumption of law, that no government has a legitimate right to exist, except as it is efficiently supporting the promotion of the general welfare of all the people, and their posterity. And that relations among states must be based on the agreement of sovereign states to cooperate in promotion of the general welfare among them all.

That was the principle of law. Under that principle of law, which was based on, also, the utilization and acceleration of scientific and technological progress, the improvement in the per-capita output, life expectancy, conditions of life of populations, improved as they had never improved in all human existence, pre-historical, and otherwise, before.

This was the unique contribution of European civilization, from the 15th-Century Renaissance, to all of humanity. We created, finally, a conception of sovereign government, under which the government could mobilize resources of credit and otherwise, to foster that kind of development, for the benefit of the improvement of the conditions of life of all, and their posterity.

That means, that you must have a protectionist policy; government must take political action to promote those kinds of endeavors, and public improvements, which contribute to this improvement in the general condition of life. This means that governments must protect and sponsor scientific and technological progress in forms which are beneficial to the population as a whole, and to the needs of the nation. This means that government must mobilize credit, over a longer period of time, to enable these things to be done. This means that government must act to protect prices, so that entrepreneurs can continue to function, and produce these fine products, which benefit all mankind; which mean you require a system based on perfectly sovereign nation states; no to globalization--that's feudalism; no globalization--that's a return to the Roman Empire. A protectionist system of the type that Alexander Hamilton described, and others have described--the American System--which protects prices; which has regulation of imports and exports; which regulates financial affairs--its internal financial affairs; which controls the external flow of credit, and so forth, for that purpose. The kind of things we did from 1945 to 1965, to revive Europe and the U.S. economy from the conditions of depression and war. Those measures are essential to the survival of a nation. If we do not do that, then we are in a condition where the population of this planet--the potential population of this planet--will drop from over 5 billion, over 6 billion, at present, to less than 1 billion in a very short period of time.

So, when you propose neo-liberalism, which is the end of those policies of the modern nation-state, what you are proposing is the greatest genocide in all human existence.

Now, some people commit genocide--they believe in the legend of the lemmings, which are supposed to go out every season and jump off cliffs, and die en masse. Neo-liberals are a new kind of lemming.

Now, at this point, I return to this one basic resource. First of all, as many people in Mexico would agree with me, there should be much more close attention to the writings of one of the greatest humanists in modern history--Miguel Cervantes: his Don Quixote. I see in the promotion of neo-liberal policies in Mexico, I assure you that Miguel Cervantes, in Don Quixote, particularly in the second part, revealed all the secrets of neo-liberalism, and revealed the confused inner state of mind of people who are sucked into it. I also will say, in fairness to all my Mexican friends, that they did what they did because they had guns put to their heads, especially from the United States. And you look at the gun shoved to the head of President Fujimori of Peru, and the gun put to the head of those governments of Colombia which opposed the drug pushers, by our U.S. State Department, and "Mad Madeleine" Albright--when you see those things, you say, "Well, Mexico didn't do that exactly voluntarily. A gun shoved to their head, helped."

So therefore, if we get the gun away from the head of the Mexican--the Mexican government and the politician--and if the system that is now seen as collapsing, the so-called neo-liberal system, and we in the United States and some other countries say, "An end to this," I think that our friends in Mexico will very quickly improve their perception of the problems of neo-liberalism, and might return to the kinds of thinking which were typified by my dear friend some years ago--in 1982--those kinds of policies, before the 1982 change. So, I'm hopeful. But we have to be fair, and honest, about this kind of thing. It's a gun to the head of the Mexican which is caused some people to say, "I'd rather be a neo-liberal, than dead."

Moderator Debra Hanania Freeman, LaRouche's campaign spokeswoman: Okay, we're now going to come back to questions from our live audience. I'd like to call on Mr. Seth Ofori-Ohene, who is the acting director general, and the former deputy general of the Pan-African Student Association, which is the coordinating body for all national student associations in Africa.

Seth Ofori-Ohene: Thank you, very much. Mr. LaRouche, my first question is: America--after witnessing this election--can America continue to be the world policeman for democracy?

Second, you have called for a new Bretton Woods institution--that is, the IMF/World Bank. We all know the IMF/World Bank is operating a system that is unfair to developing countries, especially Africa, where they force a government to implement structural adjustment programs, which cause the [lowering of the] budgetary allocation on education, health, and other issues, which puts pressure on the masses. Now, with this prediction of economic crisis, or economic collapse in the United States, are you telling us that there will be an automatic breakup of the IMF/World Bank, which will create also an automatic, or new, IMF, or a new Bretton Woods institution, that will favor all nations, in a very free and fair manner?

Let me add another question. I would like to know where Africa lies under this era of globalization?

But let me correct the record--I am former Deputy Secretary General of the All-Africa Student Union.

Thank you very much.

LaRouche: Well, first of all, the creation of a New Bretton Woods, would be a sovereign act of a group of governments, and, in practice, it would mean, of course--presumably--that the governments of the present G-7 group, or at least many among them, together with the representatives of the ASEAN Plus Three nation group, together with Russia, probably, and some other countries, and, hopefully, with those nations which still survive in Central and South America would typify the group of nations, which would replace the G-7. That is, the IMF would be taken over by nations which have scrapped the system. That is, the olf IMF is dead. The post-1971 IMF and its policies and practices are dead. Because the IMF is dead. A new authority takes over the premises. It's like making a revolution, and the revolutionaries come in, and they take over the premises, and they set up a new system. And the system would happen to be the system which President Franklin Roosevelt, in general, intended should be created--had he not died prematurely in 1945. That is, had Roosevelt lived to the end of the war, and perhaps beyond, what would have happened, is that you would have had an end to colonialism, which is still rampant in the Dutch-, Portuguese-, English-, and French-speaking areas. Those colonies have never gone away; they're there; you have governments which are called African governments, or Asian governments, and so on--but they're really not, because the financial controls are there, and I know in great ugly detail, because of my association with friends in Africa, I know exactly what's going on there, in these terms of reference. There is not a free government. Those that were somewhat free, have lost their freedom; they have a gun at their head; it's the gun of a British mercenary, or the gun of a U.S. mercenary, a former military man, operating as a mercenary, who's killing Africans, the way the President of Burundi was killed some years ago, by American military, who were working off the reservation, as a private capability, using people trained in Leavenworth, to shoot down that plane and kill a President, and change the politics of the entire Great Lakes region.

So these governments are not free any more. They aspire to be free; they're committed to be free, but they're not allowed to be free. Colonialism reigns. The system that Roosevelt intended to eliminate at the end of the war, exists; it rules; it's rapacious; it's murderous. It's as bad as Hitler in Africa. The conditions are as bad as those of Hitler, imposed upon Sub-Saharan Africa, in particular. And I know this. I have many friends who are dying; killed, who are from that part of the world--strictly, as a result of this operation. So, I'm not soft on that question.

But in this case, what we have to do, is what Roosevelt intended.

Number one, we create a new international credit system, which will operate to the benefit of all of those nations, exactly as the Europeans and the United States desired to have the IMF operate to their benefit, in the period between 1945 and 1965. And that the authority for making the rules of the system, will lie with all of the governments. Now, in point of fact, my recommendation has been: that in regions such as Central and South America--which I call Ibero-America, because it was Portugal and Spain where most of the people came from (as language-cultures), that took over, even though the Indians still live there; they're the citizens of today, in Peru and Mexico, and so forth--that's a group [of nations] which are very closely associated; and there's been a desire for a certain economic unity among sovereign nation-states in that region of the world. There's an expressed natural desire, expressed among people in ASEAN Plus Three, for a cooperating agency, associated with concepts like the Asian Monetary Fund, proposed by Sakakibara of Japan some years ago--that such an agency be created. There are agreements: agreements among Russia, China, and India; similar kinds of agreements which exist; so that, you would have, yes, all nations represented, but you would also effect that by having groups which are relatively powerful, because numerous. They would participate as, actually, the mediating agencies, to create the policies. So, under those conditions, you have a completely new system; and that's what we must have.

If you try to find a reform of the old system from inside, it won't work: because you can not teach a goose to become a pig. It just can't be done, I don't care how many colleges you send it to, it will not become a pig. The IMF will not become human, simply by trying to re-educate it. You have to eliminate, essentially, what it is now. Just take it out, pack it up, box it, crate it up, and ship it out someplace; and bring in a completely new crew, which is established by the mutual consent and agreement of these participating nations, operating, to a large degree, through cooperating blocs, typified by the ASEAN Plus Three. You have the European Union bloc; the ASEAN Plus Three bloc; you have other, imminent potential, or actual blocs; and these nations must meet, and they must agree, under emergency conditions, for a provisional set of rules, putting the old system in bankruptcy, and changing the rules of the system to promote growth, and promote a system--. A general agreement is required, for a 25-year span, of creation of credit, for large-scale projects; which mean, largely, the export of high-technology from technology-rich countries to technology-poor countries, for the long-term, 25-year development of these countries. And the credit should be made available in concept, and then we should figure out how to get the job done in particular, on a country-by-country basis.

But that's the way the system should operate. And that's what I envisage: to take what Roosevelt intended we should do, for all nations, having ended colonialism at the end of the war; to bring all nations which had been oppressed by colonial and related conditions, to bring them to a state of freedom, and to offer them the means by which to achieve economic equality.

I think of nothing more; that sums it all up, Seth.

Q: Mr. LaRouche, my name is Wladislaw George Krasnow, and I am President of Russia-America Goodwill Associates. It's an organization of patriotic American citizens, who believe that the improvement of relations with Russia ought to be one of the highest priorities of U.S. foreign policy. And I was about to ask questions, but they were pre-empted; they were answered already, to my satisfaction, some questions on the global issues. So, before I ask another set of questions, I would like to thank you, as a former dissident, and a former defector from the former Soviet Union; I would like to thank you for the wisdom and the courage of taking a dissident view of American politics, and indeed, a dissident view of global politics.

Sir, I know that you had the courage to stick to your convictions, and you paid a very high price for that, by having gone to prison for your convictions. So, I appreciate that deeply.

So now, to my questions: As I said, I wanted to ask questions of global implications about the Bretton Woods, and about the Middle East, but they were pre-empted; so therefore, I come back to my question. First, a somewhat personal question: why didn't you run? Why didn't you go the Nader way, so to speak, and run for the Presidency of the United States, as an independent candidate? In that case, you were probably better positioned to have a chance in the Electoral College. And if, let's say, if you were President of the United States--and now I come back to the interests of my organization, how to improve relations with Russia; and I think you would agree with me that we need to improve them, and you already mentioned the agreement between the German Chancellor and Russian President Putin, the long-term agreement about extraction of energy resources from Siberia. So what other steps would you take, if you were President of the United States?

And in conjunction with that, you would like, perhaps, to address the issue of NATO expansion, and the plans for further expansion of NATO; and also the situation in the Balkans; and the Bretton Woods in relation to Russia. What are the steps, could we, the United States, take to improve our relations with Russia? Thank you, I would appreciate it.

LaRouche: Well, I didn't run, because there was a real operation to ensure that I would not run effectively. It was legally, almost impossible to run anything useful. I was in a situation, in which I had to worry about what happens after Clinton ceases to be President. And therefore, I concentrated on--I knew this thing would be a mess; I knew from the Spring, from March-April, that this would be a mess; that there would be no clear, honorable victor in the Presidential race--none; that with the money business, the political business, the frame-ups, and so forth, that no serious candidate would be allowed to run. And you saw that, the way Bradley was pushed out, the way other things happened. No serious candidate would be allowed to run, seriously and effectively, against the Gore-Bush preselection. Gore and Bush were not elected by primaries; they were appointed to be the victors of primaries. There was no election involved; the whole thing was a hoax from the beginning.

So, I did what I did, because I thought it was the best thing to do. And my concern was hopefully, knowing the crisis would come in this period, that my concer was, hopefully, to influence a number of people internationally, and also hopefully, the incumbent President Clinton, to change some of his estimates on what his capabilities might be, and to respond to a crisis in the right way. That's been my specific, immediate concern.

And I decided I had to make a choice: either to run a useless campaign, as a third-party candidate (and I think Nader was not a useless candidate; I think he was a hopeless candidate, but I think he contributed a very useful role in the specific role he played, to open things up a bit; and he probably is the guy who tilted the Florida vote sufficiently, to create a problem for Al Gore, which is not, in itself, unuseful)--so I made the decision I made, because I have a capability. I could use it one way, which I thought would be ineffective, at that time, under those conditions. And I had a possibility of being effective. So I decided to be effective.

On the question of relations with Russia: There are hidden factors of which you may know, because of your experience and background. The great problem in Russia today, apart from all the ones that are more obvious, is that the Russian scientific community, which is one of the world's great ones, has been largely dissipated. And if we wait another four or five years, the possibility of renewing a Russian scientific capability, will become more or less impossible. We're in the last time that the existing, leading scientists and educators of Russia could, through the normal educational process and promotional process, generate a layer of scientists who are comparable to the layer of scientists which existed in the Russian-speaking community, say, in 1989-1992.

Now, Russia has certain capabilities, scientific capabilities, which are part of the division of scientific labor in the world as a whole. We see some reflection of this in the space cooperation, which--most people don't understand how important that space cooperation is; I think, even some people in NASA don't really know what they're doing; they may know what they're doing technically, but they don't know what their purpose is, at least from some of the programs I see; they don't know, yet, what they're doing; and the policy-makers don't know.

But in this area--also, for example: In the area of biophysics--the Russian scientific community has an invaluable contribution to make in the area of biophysics. This is, particularly, in the legacy of people like Vernadsky and Gurwitsch, and people like that. And that thing is still alive in Russia; weakened, but alive. Some extremely important work.

For example, we are now coming to the end of the possibility of relying upon the great antibiotic revolution which we enjoyed, especially, since the 1930s, with the introduction of penecillin and the other kinds of things which we use, the sulfanylamide and all the other things we've got that are sulfa drugs. We've now come to the point, that the global epidemiological potential is such, that we can no longer depend upon the kind of antibiotic programs we've relied upon, largely, to the present day. We must look at biophysics again, and make a frontier breakthrough in the approach to dealing with this kind of problem. Molecular biophysics will not work; molecular biogenetics, that will not work. It's useful in some ways, but it's much overrated, in terms of dealing with this area. Life is much more complex than a mechanical system, and the tendency of molecular physics to deal with this thing in that way, is just not competent for this purpose.

In Russia, as well as in some other places in the world that I know, some very valuable developments are still in progress, in determining, actually, what is the difference between a living and a non-living tissue. There are qualitative differences which are not yet fully understood, though we know many of the critical things which will enable us to define that. We have to solve that; we have to crack that. There are new technologies which are still frontier technologies. We must develop these rapidly, to be able to deal, among other things, with the new strategic threat of new types of pandemic and epidemic disease, globally.

And the Russian scientific community is one of those.

Also, though, one of the great frontiers for the development of mankind, is in the Arctic tundra region of Russia, in Siberia. This region is one of the great untapped potentials of the world, in terms of all kinds of development. There are people in Russia, who still have some of the left-over knowledge and capabilities, for how to approach that area; as well as other problems of a similar nature. By opening up transportation routes across that area and others, and controlling that area, we will change the economy of the world for the better; because we can move goods better, we can do other things better; we open up new areas of natural resources, we are presently not able to have access to. And so forth and so on.

These are only some of the areas. So therefore, I think that what we have to do, is, as the United States, Japan, Western Europe, as we enter new cooperation to rebuild the world technologically, it's essential that Russia be--from its scientific standpoint--an integral part of the resources, which contributes to the technology needed (scientific technology and derivative technologies) for the planet as a whole.

There are many problems: African problems, other problems all over the world, in which the Russian component--potential component, still surviving--needs to be regrown, rebuilt quickly, for the kind of essential contribution it can make to the world.

NATO is a useless object. It's used up its purpose a long time ago. In 1989-1992, there was no continued purpose for the existence of NATO. It's now a sham. It's a sham for the countries it's extending into, it's a joke, it's a military joke! What do we have it for? We don't need it. What we need,--based on what I've outlined, this 25-year conception partnership--what we need, is a strategic conception of a mission for mankind. The mission is, to bring a condition of justice throughout the planet, through sovereign nation-states, and through the technological development of the conditions of life in each of those nation-states. That's a mission.

What we must defend, is not, "Beat some enemy." We must be prepared to defend, by every means, including military means, that mission. We must complete that mission. We have a mission in Africa. We have a mission in Asia. We must develop that mission for humanity as a whole. Whatever threatens that mission, we must cooperate to deal with, and prevent it from taking over. And therefore, we don't need NATO any more. We need what John Quincy Adams described as a community of sovereign nation-states: that we agree to cooperate, for a positive mission, for the betterment of mankind in a specific way. And if somebody tries to wreck that, by introducing globalization or some other terrible thing, we are going to combine forces to frustrate that attempt. And if they try to force that attempt on us by arms, we'll deal with it.

Our objective is not war as such; the objective of strategy is a mission, a mission for humanity. And the time we shoot, is when we have no other means to deal with the defense of that mission. But the mission is not a malignant one. It's not trying to pick out an adversary, to kill them. The mission is to defend the mission itself.

And the mission should be--finally--the human race has to grow up and become human. Sovereign nation-states must cooperate to create the conditions of life on this planet, which we consider decent for all human beings. That mission involves transfer of technology in the development of that potential. And anything that interferes with that, must be opposed, because we act to defend one thing: decent relations with the human race.

[The moderator, Debra Hanania-Freeman, national spokeswoman for Lyndon LaRouche, announces that she will forward the remaining, numerous questions to Mr. LaRouche, for his possible further responses to them. Invites those listening on the Internet to forward further questions to LaRouche by e-mail.]

LaRouche: One thing relevant to the transmission of the proceedings, so far: And that is, that I crafted this seven-point statement with much thought aforethought. I did it, essentially, two weeks ago, with foreknowledge of what this election crisis was going to be, and what the implications were. And I put a lot into it, which may become obvious to people only after reflection.

So, if the bomb explodes in the middle of your head tonight, and you realize what I really said, call up Debbie, and maybe she'll get to me, and I'll get you the answer.