LaRouche's video address, and the full question-and-answer period, is also available as a RealMedia stream (requires RealPlayer).

Securing the Future for
Our Grandchildren

by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.

Lyndon LaRouche addressed an EIR Seminar in Stockholm, Sweden, via video-teleconference, on Nov. 12, 2002.

As you probably know by now, the present world financial system is not in a depression, it's in a systemic collapse, from which there will be no recovery, that is, no recovery of the present financial and monetary system. We have people of limited mental capacity in the Presidency of the United States—some less than limited—and we have a great problem. But, in a sense I'm optimistic, because the world has no choice, except either to go to Hell, or to make the kind of radical change in the present monetary, financial, and economic policies which I have proposed. There is no choice. You'll find, even in the Bush Administration, more and more post-election emphasis upon economic stimulus. Now, I don't think that a Bushie knows what a economic stimulus is, but nonetheless, this is the thing. Therefore, what we've proposed in terms of infrastructure, as an infrastructure stimulus, to the U.S. and world economy is there.

Look at the Asia side of the thing, and you have to look from Europe, particularly toward Asia, particularly toward events which figure in the context of the Phnom Penh conference, involving China, the Southeast Asian nations, Korea, Japan, and India. What is in process now is an implementation of what we called the Eurasian Land-Bridge. It is being stimulated from Russia and China, with the support of India, as a strategic triangle effort, which combines the agreements among Southeast Asia, China, and so forth, in a perspective of a global system, essentially, a Eurasian system.

Now, this dovetails nicely with what we're proposing, and there is no other solution. We have to have a perspective for the next 25 years, and we must think in terms of a 25-year period—of a generation. It took a generation and a half to get us into this present economic mess, and it's going to take a generation to build our way out of it. This means we need 25-year credit, at 1-2% simple interest, as a general global policy. This credit must be channelled primarily through a system of banks, which is in bankruptcy reorganization. This means an end, essentially, to the so-called central banking systems of the world, which have been the pestilence of Europe all through modern times—away from this liberal, Anglo-Dutch model of imperial maritime power, run in the interests of financial-oligarchical circles.

We're going to have to go back to what the American System defined as a sovereign nation, in which everything, including the banking system, is under the control and direction of a government whose mission is to defend the interest of the general welfare. Under these conditions, in which governments take the banking system over, individually and collectively, set up a new international financial system, based on promoting global, large-scale, basic economic infrastructure and pushing through what we would call the science-driver programs of investment in improved technologies, at 1-2% basic interest, channelled through banks which are largely under financial reorganization, that is, in bankruptcy, in which the governments will be, essentially, national banks. You can have a national bank in two forms: as a constituted national bank; or simply, as Roosevelt did, to some degree, use the authority of the Federal government to make the Federal Presidency itself the equivalent of a national bank, which controls the Federal Reserve System, or controls anything that pretends to be a central banking system.

Something like that will emerge in Europe if Europe survives, or if Europe is to survive. The time is short; the end of the existing system is now. We're talking about weeks, at most, a couple of months, before the banking system centered in New York disintegrates. We're talking about a collapse of the housing bubble, internationally, especially in the United States and the United Kingdom, and similar effects in Europe. We're talking about a continental Europe, in particular, which is operating below breakeven, that is, the total amount of product in production of Europe is not sufficient to maintain the present population of Europe. Therefore, an expansion of employment to increase the tax-revenue base, is necessary to save these nations. This means large-scale infrastructure projects, largely, because we have an unskilled population. We have people today who don't even know what a factory is. They think it's a museum, at most, or a dustbin. So, we have people who are not skilled to produce. They've lost their skills over 35 years.

And remember the story in Sweden—how that happened in the 1970s, how what was once a powerful industrial economy was turned into a museum-piece of doubtful economic merit. We're going to have to reverse that trend of the past 35 years, largely with infrastructure development, in cooperation with Asia, and with a heavy emphasis on putting credit for high technology, agro-industrial growth, through bankrupt banks, into likely places of investment. With 25 years of that kind of program, we can come out of this alive, after a generation.

But the one thing I'm emphasizing with the youth movement is this: The characteristic moral defect of the Baby Boomer generation, that those who came into immaturity during the 1960s—into adolescence, and subsequent worse immaturity—this generation was weaned on the idea of an income society, a consumer society, a post-industrial society, as opposed to a productive society. They don't know what production is, and if you tell them about it, they hate you. They don't want to produce. They don't have an income; they have a credit-card debt! They are credit-card-debt holders. They don't care what they're getting as an income. All they care, is, do they have the margin of income to cover the debt service, to take a house they can not afford, but carry it on debt service, going more and more into debt.

Look at U.S. figures: The U.S. population, especially the Baby Boomer generation, those who came to immaturity during the 1960s—they are clinically insane! I have to deal with them. We have, in Europe, we have people, similarly, of the same generation, who are clinically insane. They do not believe in producing. They believe in credit-card debt! "If we can carry more credit-card debt, we can live better. We can survive, we can avoid bankruptcy, if only somebody will give us more credit, bigger debt, at 21-25% net interest, everything will be just fine.

Well, now that financial system is collapsing.

So, the other aspect of this, is that parents of that generation, by and large, do not really care about their children. They like to possess them, but they're considered nuisances to manage and to own. That unlike previous generations, in which people used to think, well, I'm going to become a grandparent, and my future and what I'm doing now, will be reflected, in part, in the success of my children as adults. And the success of all of us will depend upon what becomes of our grandchildren. That form of moral orientation of a producer society has been largely lost with the Baby Boomer generation. They're absolutely antagonistic to their own children, who are now in the, say, 18-25-year bracket. They're antagonistic. They say, "Get 'em out of the way. They cost too much. We don't want to bother with them." And I, on the contrary say, "Idiots! Those are our future." Not those children, as such, but what those children will produce with their children.

So it is us, the old fogies—it is our grandchildren who are the basis of our hope, our hope for the future. And our orientation must be to get these dumb Baby Boomers to face the harsh realities of their delusions, and to start to rebuild this economy, where the goal is to make sure that when our grandchildren, or that generation, comes into adulthood, they will find a world which is fit to live in.

Thank you.

Question: The type of change I think you're talking about is pretty radical, nothing short of a revolution.... And it seems to me that you're getting more response from the international system, i.e., the Italian Parliament. What else do you plan to do? Do you plan to use the international pressure on the U.S.?

LaRouche: Well, contrary to some rumors, even circulating among us in Germany and elsewhere, my influence inside the United States on the political process, is at an all-time high. This has been marked, or underscored, by the catastrophic defeat of the leadership of the Democratic Party, the fascist part of the Democratic Party, the Democratic Leadership Council, in the last election. Lieberman can not be reached; he does not talk to reporters. MacAuliffe, the chairman of the Democratic Party, is being hounded out of his position because of the failure. All those Democrats who went explicitly against the direction I proposed have been defeated, at least all the prominent ones. All the Democrats who lost, except one—that was a special case—but, of five, who lost their seats in the House of Representatives, all were on the wrong track; they were on the Lieberman track. And they were rejected massively by the voters. But these Democrats lost more heavily than other Democrats around the nation, because the population hated them, and would turn out to vote against them, where they wouldn't turn out to vote for other Democrats.

The reality is that, in the lower 80% of family-income brackets in the United States, and increasingly, in the lower half of the upper 20% of family-income brackets, reality has struck. Just take the lower half of the upper 20%—people have lost from hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars of their pensions and savings in recent months, in the United States. If you look at the total figures, that's the picture.

If you look at what's going on in the White House, contrary to some European views which are illusory, the result of the Nov. 5 election was not that Bush was given greater support—he was not. This was no victory for Bush. It was a defeat for the right-wing leadership of the Democratic Party, which has no policy. The Bush White House is going through a phase-shift. It wants to get rid of the Iraq war. It can't say it wants to get rid of the Iraq war, but it wishes to. Because the Iraq war is a bummer from start to end, and everybody knows it except idiots, like Laurent Murawiec—they all know it. There's a powerful faction, centered in organized crime, and allied to the Moonie cult, which is the extreme, right-wing, fascist cult inside the United States and worldwide. If you want to find a fascist, look for a Moonie. That's why Earthlings are fighting against invaders from the Moon. We're defending our planet from these invaders—the Moonies.

But look at the so-called Zionist Lobby, for example. What is considered the right-wing Zionist Lobby is funded largely by the drug money from the Moonies, and similar kinds of things. So therefore, when you assess the White House, you have to look at, first of all, at the notorious limitations, mental limitations, of the President. But you also have to look at the Presidency, not just the President. You see, in Europe, the problem is this: The Europeans think that the United States is, or should be, a parliamentary system of the type that Europe knows. The virtue of the United States, as a constitutional state, is it does not have a parliamentary system. The parliamentary system is designed on the basis of Venice. When Venice was losing its power as a state, to run Europe, during the latter part of the 17th Century, after the Treaty of Westphalia, Venice's power shifted to emphasize its diplomatic and financier influence, as typified by the Enlightenment, which is completely a creation of Venice, particularly, notably, in the early part of the 18th Century, by a fellow called Antonio Conti, who was operating out of Paris. He was, shall we say, the illegitimate father of Voltaire—however that was accomplished, I don't know, but it seems to be the case.

So, this group, based on William of Orange, as the tyrant of the Netherlands, and then, the tyrant of England, established a neo-Venetian, imperial-maritime form, of oligarchical, financier-oligarchical power. So therefore, governments were created, the so-called Anglo-Dutch liberal model, which Sweden was exposed to, as some of you may know. This Anglo-Dutch liberal model was based on a monarchical system, or a parliamentary system, which was devised as a reform of parliamentary systems under monarchies. This monarchical system and parliamentary system were associated with a parallel government which is called a central banking system: the central banking system, as a system of bankers independent of control by the government, or independent of efficient control by the government, represented a financier oligarchy. So, the financier oligarchy, through the powers granted to it by governments, in recognizing the so-called independence of central banking systems, actually control the world economy.

The problems of Europe, internal problems of Europe, and Europe as a whole, have been a result of the supercession of an even worse system, the Hapsburg system, by this Anglo-Dutch model of liberalism: the so-called imperial maritime power, controlled through a central banking system by a financier oligarchy. That's the problem.

In the United States, we have the same phenomenon, but it's not in our Constitution. We have a faction which is called the American Tory faction, so described during 18th Century, and ever since. It's the faction against which Franklin Roosevelt fought. It's the New York bankers and their large law firms; it's the Washington bankers and their large law firms—not the banks as such, but the financiers behind them. This is the treasonous American Tory faction which gave us the Confederacy and other such beautiful gifts. This is the faction which created the system of consumer society, of American neo-imperialism, which is attempting, at the point of its death, to emerge as supreme in the world today.

So therefore, in the United States today, you have a fundamental interest of the United States, and a deeply embedded history of the United States, including the record of Kennedy, as well as Roosevelt, earlier. That is coming to the fore. People say consumer society was a failure, rule by the upper 20% of parasites has been a failure, because the upper 20% are largely parasites. And we have to go back to representing the lower 80% as much as anything else. So, this is the mood in the population.

The problem is a lack of leadership. So therefore, we have a problem of sorting out leadership. On the one side, we have the Democratic Party. I will now move to take over the Democratic Party, by consent of the voters who voted down hard-core Lieberman supporters, more than anybody else in the last election. Lieberman and Gore lost the election. And so did Mondale. But that's the issue.

On the other side, the Presidency: Under our Constitution, the Presidency is the Executive Branch of government. Not the Congress—it's not a parliamentary system. The Congress has no constitutional executive powers. Only the Executive Branch does. We have a Supreme Court, which is a majority of animals, not human beings, typified by our shareholder-value fellow. But, in the Presidency of the United States, there's a large apparatus of civil servants and people out of government, but who were formally associated with government, who represent the Presidency. These are the forces without which the President can not act. The President is not capable of running the world as an Emperor, expressing his will from the throne. The United States is run by a Presidency, which is a very large establishment, set of institutions, of people in government service and out of government service. But people out of government service who have great influence on people in government service. It's in that layer, in the Presidency, on which I have focussed, as well as the people in general. The people's reaction is: "Yes, you're right. But we can't do anything about it. They won't let us do anything about it. What can we do? We're only little people. We can't do anything."

So therefore, the power of the people does not lie in popular will, not in populism. Populists are idiots, turned loose, escaped from institutions. The power of the people lies in their ability to find leadership in government, especially in the Executive Branch in the U.S. system, a leadership which will come forth, and say, "Yes, you are right. These are our problems, and here's what we propose to do about it." Under those conditions, as with Roosevelt, the people, the lower 80% and others, will rally to that kind of leadership from within the Executive Branch.

In terms of the general elections—which is why I've always run for President—it's the only post that can change the system. Running for Congress will not change the system; running for Congress, and trying to build your way up to become Prime Minister or some foolish thing like that, will not solve the problem. You have to move directly to control of the leading role of the Executive Branch of the Presidency. Anyone who does not run for President, is not serious about saving the United States, or supporting somebody who's running for President. Because the candidate for President is the person outside the Presidency who's in the wings, who offers the alternative. The primary constituency for action of the candidate lies within the Presidency and related institutions of the Executive Branch. If you have support from the people, and from these elements of the Presidency, you can change the system of the United States, fundamentally.

Now, that's where I concentrate. I concentrate on that with the Presidencies and similar institutions of other countries, as in South and Central America; in dealing directly with leading circles in Russia, in China, in India, and so forth; Korea, which represents something analogous to that. The view is, if we can provide the world a visible leadership, of the type which is moving in the direction we see now in the Phnom Penh meeting and similar meetings; if we can have a sense of that in Europe as well; and if we can use the crisis to get the United States to accept the kind of rebuilding program which I've outlined, for which we have support in Europe, as in Italy, and for which we have increasing support in the population, but also in those layers of the U.S. population which are associated with the institutions of the Presidency—.

Bush is in a situation where he has no chance—with his present policy, he has no chance. They know it. Bush and his father and others are haunted by the fact that he could be dumped in the same way his father was dumped in 1992, because of the economic crisis. And this is much worse. Bush's attention will be pushed more and more by people around him—not these crazy Murawiecs and similar people like that—will be pushed in the direction of economic-stimulus programs. War is not an economic-stimulus program, especially this kind of nonsense they're proposing now. An economic-stimulus program in the world today, is large-scale infrastructure, and high-technology investment. And the basic thrust will be high technology and infrastructure—both.

This means, as I've outlined in this paper, which we've published for EIR, on this question of the Super-TVA, that is, a massive program in transportation, integrated transportation; power generation and distribution, as an integrated operation, under state control, or public utility control; water management on a large scale; land reclamation and maintenance of land; promotion of agriculture, not only as farm production, but as a traditional way in which we have largely controlled the environment. If you want to control the large-scale environment of a country, you have to work with the farmers. Because the farmer has a natural byproduct—in modern farming—who takes care of the field, who takes care of the woodlot, who takes care of other things which are not necessarily producing food. Who provides a great deal of the local infrastructure, as well as the food, that the nation requires.

So, this kind of thing. Education, universal health-care systems of the type we used to have before 1973 in the United States. These kinds of things are the primary investments, usually of 25-year duration, that is, you put up credit for 25 years, 1-2% simple interest rate, generated by government, and run through a government-directed banking system, private banking system, to get infrastructure going, and to get private investment going. But it is the infrastructure building, transportation, power, water management, education, and so forth, combined with high technology, which will enable a nation, over a generation, to transform itself from a loser, as it is presently, to what we must make it—now.

So that is where I put the focus. And we're in the catbird's seat. We're the only ones, worldwide, who have a view of how the United States could be reformed and integrated with the aspirations that we find expressed now, coming from Asia. So that's where I put the focus.

Question: I would like to know, what is your opinion of the late Paul Wellstone. And did you feel as though he was in any ways, on the right track, of the Democratic Party.

LaRouche: Paul Wellstone was an interesting fellow. He is typical of the best people in the United States, who fall into the category of liberal. He's a man who is characterized as having a good heart. Not a stupid man, but a man with a good heart. Not a silly man, but a man with a good heart.

His loss, as I reported, as I stated at the time of his death, was a serious loss to the nation. It was a grave loss to the Democratic Party, because he showed more courage, in a more important position, than any other Democrat during that period. And I think that many people were, on the opposite side, the nuts, the madmen, were very happy to see him to go down.

Mondale, the Norwegian meatball who lost the election, was no replacement.

I will always honor people like Wellstone, not only because they've got good hearts, but they play a useful role, if not an adequate one, in providing leadership to a nation in trouble. Like Tony Benn, in England, in the Labour Party in England. Tony Benn is the perennial do-gooder, the perennial, traditional humanist, in the British Labour Party. I don't always have to agree with him; I respect him, and I consider him a very useful person, on the landscape of the United Kingdom, even though he may never lead the United Kingdom to great glory. But his existence is useful.

So, these kinds of people, I respect. But I also have a special role of leadership of my own, which I know is my responsibility, which I cannot pass to anyone else. I know what I can do. I know others cannot do it. And therefore, what I have to do, I must do. And the Wellstones to me, are therefore, a loss. It's like a loss of a colonel of a regiment in war. Somebody who is needed, who is useful, is missing. And they will not be easily replaced.

Question: I would like to hear the views of LaRouche about what he feels the influence of the black, the African-American political elite is on both sides, the Democratic Party, and the Republican Party. And on the side of the Republican Party, what kind of influence does the political elite, in the establishment of the Bush Administration, have on the foreign policy direction of the United States? I'm talking about the two people here, Condoleezza Rice, and Colin Powell, and I'd like you to comment if they share on any of your views, that you have presented.

LaRouche: Well, that we have probably the most important section of the so-called black leadership in the state legislatures, to some degree in the Congress, the Federal Congress, and elsewhere, in the United States. The best people in that leadership are my friends, and my associates. This is something that has developed in this form—it has deep roots—but it's developed in the this form, especially over the past dozen years, especially the past decade.

The problem today, is that the Moonies, and related influences, have moved in to try to buy up African-American leaders. Now, African-Americans generally are poor, relatively speaking. And therefore they are more easily bought, than others, because the poor are generally, in society, bought. They're often bought through churches.

Remember, to get the picture, you have to look at the Moonie Cult. The Moonie cult is a right-wing, fascist cult, created in Korea and Japan, by the extreme right-wing faction of the U.S. military utopian establishment during the period and after the Korean War. It is a sex cult. The Reverend Moon, so-called, was arrested and imprisoned in Korea, for running a sex cult against children. He teaches a sex cult.

His money comes largely from international drug operations, and he is a major factor inside the United States, through this illegal funding.

For example, the Moon cult was the funder of CAUSA. It was the creator of the World Anti-Communist League, and similar kinds of things. All these right-wing, fascist, racist kinds of nonsense. It runs all over the world.

In a recent period, with the aid of their vast amounts of drug money—and they run drug operations in South America, and elsewhere—they have taken over large sections of constituencies. They own the so-called right-wing fundamentalism churches. They are the major financial bulwark of the right-wing Sharon-types in Israel. That's where the money comes from, for the worse. And they moved in recently, to take over many of the African-American organizations in the United States.

So, we have a heel and toe fight, to get rid of the Moonies, as an international arm of things typified by Oliver North, and people like that, of the right wing war faction. The draft dodgers who want World War III. And the Moonies are the hard core of it. Buckley. The worst right-wing Catholics. The worst, wildest-eyed of the so-called Protestant cults, sects. These are all associated intimately with the Moonies. Not back behind the door, but directly, openly.

Now, therefore, the problem in the African-American community in the United States, is the issue of Dr. King, Martin Luther King. Now, Martin Luther King was a true Christian, which most of these preachers in these black churches are not.

Remember, you probably know in Sweden very well, his most famous speech, the so-called Mountain Top speech. Where he announced that, even though he knew he faced death, that mortal jeopardy was not everything. That what he did with his life, for the future of the nation, and humanity,—not just African-American people, but the nation and humanity—was the cause on which he had to stake his life.

Now this is a Christian attitude, which people think of in terms of the image of Jesus Christ, in the Gethsemane, and the Crucifixion. It is that the immortal soul is willing to sacrifice that impediment called mortality, for the sake of living immortality in future mankind, for the benefit of all mankind. And it's in the parables of the New Testament, in the parable of the talent, for example. Your mortality, which is not you, but it's an essential appendage of you, it's your property, it's a talent. And what's important about your life, is the way you spend that talent.

When Jeanne d'Arc spent her talent early. Not by choice, but she put it at risk. And as the result of her sacrifice, a chain reaction occurred, which led to the liberation of France, from a pestilence of the Plantagenet, and its successors, the Anjou, in Europe. The end of the worst kind of feudalism. And the beginning of the modern nation state, with Louis XI.

She was also a key factor in bringing about the reform, the great reform, of Christianity in the 15th Century Renaissance. Without her, without her sacrifice, these questions would not be posed. Without her courage, France would never have thrown the British out of France, or the Plantagenets. Without her courage, and the consequences of Louis XI's reign, England would not have been freed, at least temporarily, from evil, by the overthrow of Richard III, and accession of Henry VII, which is the beginning of modern culture in England—was Henry VII.

So, Martin Luther King belongs to that tradition, of agape. That tradition of those who spend their talent for humanity. Such people have been relatively unique in history, because they were willing to spend their lives, as Hamlet could not. Hamlet was a swashbuckler, a mass-murderer, bragging about killing Poles, killing a minister behind a cloak, without even knowing quite who was there. Quick with a sword, quick to kill. But faced with a question, a political question, he flinched, and said, I cannot risk my immortality, or the reputation of my immortality, on the unknown outcomes of an attempt to do the right thing.

So, most politicians are like Hamlet, or worse. They fail in the test, because they lose the nerve, to pledge their life, their talent, for the meaning of their entire life, for the meaning of their existence. Martin Luther King was one such person who did.

All those who turned away from King—and there was not a single person associated with the leading circles of Martin Luther King, who was able to continue what Martin represented, after Martin was killed. They all ran to various foundations to get money, and to get positions. They did not stick with it. You had a large organization among African-Americans, which went the other way, with black nationalists, with similar kinds of things. Where the power of Martin Luther King, and the success of the struggle for human rights, was, that Martin Luther King was not running to be a black leader. Martin Luther King was implicitly running to be a candidate, to become the President of the United States, because, at that particular time, he was the one figure best qualified for the job. Because he was capable of fighting; not just for civil rights for African-Americans, but for all humanity. He unified the American people—Jewish backgrounds, all other kinds of backgrounds—were united around Martin Luther King, because he brought them all together for a common purpose.

Now, this is what is lacking in many among my friends, in the so-called African-American political establishment. They all know me. They are all cowards, in the sense I just described, like Hamlet. Under certain conditions they'll fight and show courage. But, faced with the problem that Hamlet confronted, the doom of Denmark, they will flinch, and say, "Yes, maybe you're right, but we've got to get that money. We've got to get that deal." And they abandon the cause, and shatter it.

The main line of improving the conditions of the African-American, is to get rid of the Moonies, because what is destroying today, more than any one thing, is Moonie drug money buying up ministers, and others, who are leaders of so-called African-American organizations. And many of them are my own friends, who are bought up by these guys. I am their leader, but I feel like what happened to Martin Luther King after he died. Many of his best supporters went out to get that money, and abandoned the cause, to which he had dedicated his life, his mission.

So, the other characteristic of the African American, is they are Americans, they're not Africans. I mean, if you're of African descent, that doesn't mean you think like an African. Most African-Americans, including leading ones, haven't got the slightest idea of what Africa is. Some of them have learned where it is on the map, but they don't have any understanding of what I know, from our dealings with the problems inside Africa. They don't think like Africans. They don't understand Africans. They don't have a sense of what's going on there.

Sub-Saharan Africa is being destroyed by a vast genocide, orchestrated largely from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Israel. It's genocide. It's not better rights, it's genocide, intentional genocide. A policy developed by the followers of Thomas Huxley and company. "There are too many Africans. They're eating up the natural resources. We've got to cut down the number of African farmers, they're going to use up the land. We want the land for our future. They're going to start to invest in mineral resources. They're going to use up those mineral resources, and when we come to steal them, they won't be there! So we have to reduce the population of Sub-Saharan Africa, by a large amount."

That's the policy of the Club of Rome. That's the policy of the environmentalist movement, as such, from the top.

So, the other problem I have with the African-American, is, except for a few people, a very few people, who is considered the African-American leadership, has no conception whatsoever, of what it's like to be in Sub-Saharan Africa, and to actually live under the conditions you see in the Congo, the Great Lakes, West Africa, and so forth today. They don't understand it. They don't recognize it. They live in a fantasy world.

So, my point is, that, if we can inspire these guys with optimism, my friends, we can take over. And I have some very concrete positive measures, toward taking over, including a few of my higher ranking African-American friends, who are conspiring with me, we're up to something, and you'll see it in the near future.

Queston: I'm from Africa, the Congo. According with the river project, that links Africa with the rest of the world, I would like to know, how Mr. LaRouche, as the next President, would cause the financial establishment in U.S., to change the direction from the oil or mining strategy, to the river project.

LaRouche: It can be done.

First of all, one of the big problems among African governments, is that, most of them are fake. They're governments which are put into power, by the power of Anglo-American-Israeli forces.

Example: Right now, Musseveni, who is a really evil character, but was a British character... he was a key figure in the genocide which occurred in the entire Great Lakes figure of Africa. Now, the Americans have come up with another one, from the State Department. They're trying to run a coup against Museveni, to come up with another bloody fool, of the same type, for American purposes, as distinct from British.

So, you're having another wave of genocide—in terms of civil war and so forth—which is being propagated at this time, by the Anglo-American interests, and Israeli right wing, combined. The entire Great Lakes operation, what happened in Congo, what has happening to the South, the campaigns in Zimbabwe, all of these things are part of a vast genocidal program, where you see that governments which had some degree of stability in sub-Saharan Africa, are being toppled and replaced by mercenary armies, one after another.

The main forces in these armies, are children of about 14 years of age. Children of 14 of age are the soldiers of Musseveni, in Uganda. A similar situation exists in many parts of Africa. These children, in these conditions, are being destroyed mentally and morally by this kind of life. You don't send a child out, a pre-adolescent child, or early adolescent child, to become a killer! You destroy the morality and character of that child. Probably irreparably. As we're doing with our video games in the United States, and elsewhere. A child who's subjected to these kinds of killer video games, is being destroyed. Their personality is being destroyed. Any parent who allows it to happen, or allows it to happen in the community, is contributing to the destruction of that personality. There's no excuse for it.

But the actual killing in warfare, the realization of the objective of video games, is what's happening in Africa.

Look at the map of Africa, take every state in sub-Saharan Africa. How many are still standing? How many are not occupied by mercenary armies, fighting mercenary armies run on funds out of the United States, Britain, Israel. Every one of these. These gangsters, these mercenaries, they're not some independent force. They are a special warfare force, run from the United States, from Britain, and Israel—every case. And sometimes the United States and Britain are funding two mercenary armies, against each other, as well as against the population. Look at what's happening to the population.

So, that's number one. This has to stop. And the Presidency of the United States is capable of stopping it, if the President has the knowledge and courage to do it. That part stops right now. And anybody who's guilty, is going to feel the crushing force of the United States, if I'm President, if they try to continue to do that. They will be crushed. We know how to crush them, without starting another war. We just destroy their power, and give the country back to the people.

But, this will not work without a second phase.

The object of crushing this kind of horrible show, in Africa, is to clear the way, for a large-scale infrastructure development, which under present economic conditions must largely come as a quarter-century development of infrastructure. What is needed, without which you cannot solve any of the problems of Africa, is a system of high-speed rails, especially in development corridors, associated with large-scale water management, associated with generation and distribution of electrical power; associated with the building of health care systems, which are integrated with the infrastructure program, because you've got to deliver the health care system. You need a transportation system, to sustain the health care system. Disease, epidemic disease, general health problems. Fighting AIDS, for example. Pharmaceuticals, cheap pharmaceuticals, available for Africans to enable to fight some of these diseases, for which we do have some of the means.

And also, the introduction, with the help of educational programs, of large-scale development programs, in the private sector.

For example. Africa has, Sub-Saharan Africa, has one of the largest agricultural areas in this world, already being farmed. But the land is very poor. It's poorly maintained. The bugs eat everything. The diseases eat everything. The farmer is not given the means, the technological means, to make his effort on that land, effective. With the aid of modern technology, by building small communities, or building them up, in which delivery of this kind of assistance, is available to the local farmers, you can transform Africa, from a poor country in food, to one of the great food-exporting regions of the world. Simply by increasing the productive power of the land and the farmers. Without any other change. Just enabling these farmers to become productive. To find means to protect their crop, both from insects and diseases, while it's growing, and from spoilage, which is the biggest source of loss, after it's harvested.

There is no real significant protection for food, even if it's successfully harvested. The bugs and diseases destroy it. The net yield of African agriculture is poor. And we have a vast markets, already, for agricultural products of Africa, in Asia. A growing market in Asia. So that in the immediate period, of the next 25 years, African has to make a transition—sub-Saharan Africa, in particular—from what it is now, to a system of sovereign nation states, assisted by international cooperation in basic economic infrastructural development, in disease control, health care systems—provided for them to use and develop themselves; it means, teaching universities, for example, for nurses and doctors; that's typical, huh? And also, to realize that Africa has a very short-term, a relatively short-term perspective, in improving food production. Which will transform the condition of the African society.

Secondly, we have to have a longer-term view, because Africa is, next to Central and North Asia, is the largest single concentration of mineral resources on this planet. Maybe South America's a rival, but that's the state. So, therefore, Africa is sitting, Southern Africa, the Shield especially, is sitting on one of the great sources of valuable mineral resources.

Now, Africa should not simply mine and export those resources; Africa should develop and refine those resources, and make products with them, and Africa should therefore go through an industrial development, based on increasing the productive powers of labor, through high technology development of industry.

So, the program, infrastructure—freedom first. Political security first. Infrastructure. Agriculture. Industry. That is the future of Africa, which we can provide. If we are solving the world problems as a whole, in Eurasia and the Americas, then we will have the means to assist Africa to do that. And that's what we should do. That's what I'm determined to do.

Question: I just wondered, how elastic and strong this enormous bubble on this sick economy has been. It's very difficult to understand, that it has not already crashed yet. Which mechanisms are keeping it, effectively, together? And, is it a risk that we can get a Japanese situation for long future, or can we be sure, that the banking system will crash?

LaRouche: Yes, it's going to crash. You have to understand the system as a whole. The system is not a collection of sovereign nation-states. There are no truly sovereign nation-states, to speak of, left in Europe, or the Americas. Except the United States, which is not sovereign in its own mind, as you can tell by seeing one of the speeches which is dictated to President Bush by his teleprompter. The teleprompter is the President, not Mr. Bush. And whoever stands before that, and recites that, is under the control of the dictator, "Big Brother."

Out of World War I, the United States emerged immediately as the only world power. And attached to it was a leech on its back, called the United Kingdom. The bloodsucker on its back, which was often controlling its mind. But it had no power. It had only token power given to it by the United States.

So, the intent was, from before the end of World War II, the intent of this circle, in the United States and Britain, was to establish a permanent world empire, of English-speaking power, oligarchical power. The empire would be a neo-Roman empire, based on the Venetian model, of imperial maritime power, ruled over by financier oligarchy. The modification was, that, with the development of air power, and nuclear weapons, Bertrand Russell and company (and that's the problem in Sweden: People don't know that Bertrand Russell was the most evil single individual of the 20th Century; he made Adolf Hitler look like small-time thug, compared to what he did)—their conception, which is Russell's conception, the conception of Russell and Wells, was to set up world government of this form, using nuclear weapons, as weapons so horrible that nations would give up their sovereignty, and submit to world government. By world government, they meant British government, of their type, of their utopian type.

This group became known as the Utopians, and what they came up with, was the idea that you could use, in the post-war period, English-speaking power, using nuclear weapons for land, sea, and air forces, which would represent a capability so horrible, that the world would submit to world government.

But, to do that, they had to have an adversary. You could not have a threat of war, without choosing an adversary. So they reached out and they found one. They called it the Soviet Union.

So the Soviet Union was turned into an adversary. Stalin had no intention of the type that was attributed to him, by Churchill, or Truman—none. But, if you threw a bomb in his face, he had a reaction. And if you studied Stalin's history, you'd know how he would react to having a bomb thrown at him. He would not react pleasantly.

So, the Soviet Union became the alternate power, which was used in the Great Game of the post-war period, in order to orchestrate the world into giving up its freedom, for the sake of security, from the threat of combined land-based, sea-based, and air-based nuclear power. That was the Great Game we lived through.

Under these conditions, with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989-91, these creeps, these degenerates, conceived the idea that the end of history had been reached, as this famous, or infamous, Francis Fukayama said, the "end of history." And now we were in a post-historical period, of imperial nuclear power, exerted by the English-speaking powers. In this process, you had a development inside the United States itself: A crazy faction, tied to organized crime (you don't say "Zionist," you say "organized crime"—then people know what you're talking about), which said, "We don't need Britain any more. We're going to establish an American empire." And these are the nuts who are controlling Cheney, Rumsfeld, and so forth, today. These lunatics, dangerous lunatics, who were determined to set up, destroy all nation-states, to set up a Wells-Russell type of world empire, as a permanent institution on the planet.

The selection of the Arab and Muslim populations for targetting, was done by Bernard Lewis, a British Intelligence agent of high rank, who transferred to the United States, and, from Princeton, became key advisor to two acting Presidents, Kissinger and Brzezinski, who set up this system. And the idea was to use the Islamic population of the world—1.2 to 1.4 billion people—the way the Romans used the Germans and others, in maintaining the Roman Empire, called a "limes" policy. You would establish a border area, on the edge of the existing Empire, and you would go out in this area, and send your troops out, in perpetual warfare, to kill these targetted populations, in the limes policy, as you chose.

So, a permanent genocide against the Islamic population of the world, is the policy on which the idea of this American Empire is based. That's what we're up against.

Now, thus, when it comes to financial matters, you can not interpret economy today, as the idiots in the universities' economic departments teach, or governments. What they're teaching is absolute nonsense. Economic power is primarily physical power. It's the power to produce. It's the power to control. Physical power. Financial power is charade. It's a device, it's a hypnotic device, a magician's trick to fool you into believing that somehow, there are laws of finance, monetary principles, which govern this economy. Crap. Power governs. Physical, raw political, physical power is what runs the planet.

When you have a mad dog, like an American utopian mad dog, with the biggest arsenal in the world, threatening to kill everybody, and you want to know how the U.S. economy is kept from collapsing: Everyone's afraid of not doing what the mad dog tells them.

But nonetheless, the physical power of the mad dog is disintegrating, and the mad dog can not overcome the laws of the universe, the physical laws of the universe. And the physical laws of the universe, are catching up. The mad dog's power is finished. The American Empire was the greatest mistake in history. It came too late in the game, like the famous American poem, Edward Arlington Robinson, "Miniver Cheevy": "Born too late." The Romans established their empire at the height of Roman power. The Americans are establishing the empire at the end of American power, of this system. It won't work.

So, we are now at the point, where the internal features of the U.S. system itself, the entire central banking system of the world, dominated by the United States, is disintegrating. Once that system's disintegration can not be prevented, it is over. The end of that phase of history is now. The question is, whether we will survive it or not. The system will not survive; it's finished. The question is, are we going to be able to act in time to survive? The way we'll survive is by changing the system, by using the power of government to change the system.

The opportunity to do so, is already seen in Asia, where Russia, Japan, Korea, China, Southeast Asia, including Malaysia, and India, are moving in concert. There's a spread of a move throughout the Islamic world, to cooperate with this, to find links to this, so that they too could survive, because a lot of them are part of the Islamic world. So we have a movement around the world, which is to survive. We have people around the world who wish to survive.The problems we have in Europe, we have cowards, who don't show the courage that is shown by Chinese, the Russians, some of the Japanese, and the Southeast Asians and so forth.

Therefore, since everybody's afraid of the United States, and since I'm the only qualified leader of the United States, my job is to give Europe courage, to join the fight.

Question: I had a question submitted by a journalist here, from Palestine.... Today, the news was that the Iraq Parliament rejected the UN Security Council resolution, and they sent it back to the President of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, to take a final decision.... This question is, what will be the outcome of the U.S. policy on Iraq? And what is Israel's role in this policy?

LaRouche: This is tricky. It's a very tricky situation.

Now, I'm not surprised by the Iraq Parliament's vote. I don't think we can say that's conclusive. That is indicative; it's not conclusive. The Revolutionary Command is the real power in Iraq. The Parliament is a secondary force.

Obviously, prior to the U.S. Nov. 5 election, a deal was struck, and the deal was struck involving France, Russia, and others. The deal was, okay, you can put nasty language into the resolution, as long as you do not put the automatic feature, of automatic military action, into it. So that was moved down the agenda, under negotiation between Colin Powell, the French, and others.

The danger then became, that if Iraq accepted this package, as proposed, and implemented it, the war would be stopped. However, if somebody were to provoke a "regime change" effort inside Iraq at this time, then the possibility of Iraq accepting these conditions, would be impossible. Therefore the great danger now, is that somebody tries to play a "regime change" game in Iraq. That the immediate danger.

The intent on the part of, shall we say, the responsible people in the U.S. diplomatic institutions, and military—the predominant view of the professional U.S. military is, "no war." None. There are probably just a few freaks in the military, who would actually want such a war. Everybody else says it's insane, don't start it. Whatever. Don't start it. The prevailing view of competent people in Europe, who have some courage, is similar: "We don't want it. Don't do it. It's not necessary. There's no reason to do it. You don't know what you're starting."

Even in Israel, even around Sharon—I don't know about this other kook, Netanyahu, because they play games with each other. Maybe they're sexually involved in some way. But two fat slobs, who should be going on a diet, not making war.

So, in any case, there's a danger. But even in Israel—you have this growth of the peace movement, because of what you might call a Yitzhak Rabin reflex. Remember, Rabin was a military man, of a certain faction. A hard-liner. And he came to the conclusion, on a purely rational military basis, that this is impossible. We must make peace with the Palestinians now, or we will be destroyed by our own actions. That was his policy.

What is happening now, in the shift in the kill ratio of Palestinians to Israelis, in the present operations by the Sharon government, has shown that the doom of Israel, is embedded in any continuation of this present policy. And those in Israel who still have a brain, up there above the neck, say, "If the war in Iraq starts, then what will happen in the Middle East is that we too will disappear."

So, that's the environment, in which anyone who's rational, who's not like Murawiec, who just got published in Hamburg press, knows that this is insane, and should not happen.

So, now they've tried to play a great diplomatic game, to extricate themselves from an immediate operation against Iraq. It's a very dangerous game, not based on principle, but based on maneuver. Diplomatic maneuver. Colin Powell is part of the diplomatic maneuver. He's not an African-American; he's an American general. Don't think of him as African-American; he's an American general, who served in Vietnam, and like most people of flag-officer rank in the U.S. today, retired or serving, who were in Vietnam, they all said, "This war in Vietnam was crazy, we must never do it again."

And therefore, they may not be the greatest strategists in the world, as I think Tommy Franks had a case of that, but they know what war is. Particularly the ground generals, of the Army forces or Marines. They know what war is, and they know that this war is a bummer. It's the war that should never be started, that can not be won; it can only lead to Hell. They're against it.

Other leading institutions, and the majority of people in the United States, are against the war. The President is not so much for the war; he's got his own mental problems. He's for his own interests, whatever they might be told to him to be. He's being told by the institutions, that it's not in his interests to have this war. He's told that he has to face the economic issue, which will bring him down, "just like we did to your daddy." George Bush I went down on the economic issue, essentially. I mean, that's the way it's played. And they're now telling the kiddo, Georgie Dummo Bush, "Well, you could go down like your Daddy did, if you don't pay attention to this economic issue. It's coming down, Mr. Bush. Boy, it's comin' down! I'm telling you, it's comin' down!"

So, Boy George is a little bit upset.

As I warned people, I said, do not look at the election as a continuation of the process leading up to the election. The election was the time that the President of the United States, got rid of the policies which he'd carried into the election. The election was over. Election policies no longer counted. Not election 2002, election 2004 issues counted. And a war is not in the President's interests for the year 2004.

So, what they tried to do is pull a wingding. On the one hand, they said, "Well, we're for this war. This is Saddam Hussein. He's got to be destroyed. But, we'll make a deal. We'll put it in the United Nations, along with the French. We'll make a deal—the French and the Russians. Okay, we'll make a deal. But it can't look like we backed down! So, the agreement we get with the United Nations, will be a United Nations agreement, but it's got to be awfully nasty. It's got to have terrible provocative conditions in it, that Saddam will tend to shoot back at. So, maybe we can have a war. It looks like we're going to war."

But the intent on the part of the United States is not to go to war. That's the current intent. The election is over. The intent to go to war is over. But, there's a risk.

What then happens when you make that kind of a rotten deal, with that kind of political impetus in the system? You pressure Iraq, and Saddam Hussein doesn't go along. Then you're back into what you thought you negotiated your way out of with a rotten deal.

Therefore, my chief concern, and the concern of responsible people in leadership of the Democratic Party and Republican Party in the United States—I'm not speaking as an outside critic, I'm speaking as an insider—is, the danger is, that if Saddam reacts the way he's being programmed by the war hawks, and decides not to accept the deal, that will be used to unleash the dogs of war.

Therefore, those who are going for regime change, who are pushing regime change measures in the Middle East, are the most dangerous element loose in the situation today. That's what the danger is.

But the problem is here, instead of getting out of the war by stating as a matter of principle, we shouldn't go to war, by saying that the propaganda coming out of the war hawks in the United States is a bunch of lies, and getting out honestly, they made a typically dishonest—which is what typical diplomacy is; it's thievery and lying, under other colors—by going to a thieving, lying deal, they set the stage of opportunity for the war to go on, and happen anyway.

We have to understand that a deal was cut, not to have a war. But the way the deal was cut was rotten and unprincipled. The unprincipled and rotten character of the deal, which was done for political reasons, means that we've left a hair trigger in the situation, under which the war could happen anyway. Even though nobody wanted it. I mean, that's the way wars sometimes happen. Nations go up to the edge of war, and the egos of heads of state, such as kings and emperors, get in the way of reason. And some little incident is then used, to get some idiot, like the German Kaiser, to get buddy-buddy feelings about his buddy, the stupid Austrian Kaiser, to make a resolution, which was then used by the madmen inside Russia, to get the Tsar to launch a general mobilization, and then, the war was on.

So, it was the British playing a game, and the French, playing a game in the Balkans, with the assassination of a prince, and other operations, that was used to promote a fascist tendency inside the Russian military, and society, for a war over the Balkans. The stupid German Kaiser, who was a nephew of Edward VII, supported the stupid Austrian Kaiser—who was more stupid than all of them, and senile as well—to go to war. When the German Kaiser, stupid German Kaiser, supported the stupid Austrian Kaiser, the weak-kneed, cowardly Tsar, allowed for the general mobilization.

What set World War I into motion, was the Russians. The Russians caused World War I, from a battle standpoint. The general mobilization ordered by the Tsar is what started World War I. All the conditions were set into place beforehand, by the then-dead King Edward VII of England, for this war. But negotiations were continuing up to that point, to try to avoid what people knew would be a horrible war, called World War I. But because of a last minute stupidity, by petty, stupid jerks who should never have been in power, a stupid German Kaiser, a more stupid Austrian Kaiser, a more stupid Russian Tsar, an evil French leader, and a corrupt, stupid British government, which was evil as well. Because of this confluence of events, and because of the Woodrow Wilson Presidency in the United States, which was committed to support the British and French in this war, because of this, we had the unnecessary war occurred.

What my saying this to you, here and now, as I would say it on other occasions, and have said as much on other occasions, in such a situation, you would say, "Don't you wish that someone, back in 1914, in the late spring and summer of 1914, had said exactly about that situation, what I just said to you now about the Iraq situation?" If someone had said, "We've got a pack of fools on our hands, people who are not fit to govern, called a King of England, a French government, a German Kaiser, an Austrian Kaiser, and a Tsar, and none of them are really fit to govern! They want to take us into a war, which nobody will want, which is unnecessary, and is going to occur, only because these guys are a pack of idiots, where one of the fools is a greater fool than the other."

I think the only thing today, is to say that, and to say it loud and clear. We are governed by a pack of fools, who are not fit to work, to carry the garbage out. We'd better get ourselves some better leadership, or at least intimidate the ones we have, into ceasing behaving like fools.

We have some good stuff, some good initiatives, from various parts of Europe, and elsewhere, for peace, or war avoidance. But it's not good enough. They're not tough enough. these guys have to learn to be as tough as I am, and then we won't have a war.