LAROUCHE WEBCAST
`The Keys To Peace'
for Southwest Asia
by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.
The following is Lyndon LaRouche's address to a meeting in Washington, D.C. on April 30, broadcast over the World Wide Web. Only by putting forward LaRouche's doctrine for development and peace in the region, in his name, can the United States bring peace to Iraq and Southwestern Asia, he said. No other political figure in the United States—not the President, not John Kerry—has the stature, or the trust, of the political forces in the these nations, to restore peace.
The extensive live and on-line questions and discussion which followed LaRouche's 40-minute address, is published below. The address was released by LaRouche in 2004, his Presidential campaign committee. Video and audio are available:
| High-speed video/audio: | Stream | Download (170 MB) |
| Low-speed audio only: | Stream | Download (17 MB) |
This is going to be very hard stuff, and it has to go out. And it will go out naturally over the web network, because we're at a very serious point of crisis, and virtually no one who is in ostensibly leading positions as a candidate, or incumbent President, or so forth, in the United States, is qualified at all, even to think about what's in front of us, let alone deal with it.
Kerry, who's a guy I don't dislike, he's got certain qualifications, but he's frankly been a disaster on the issue of Southwest Asia, the Iraq crisis, and on the economy. President Bush? I don't know where he is. I don't think he knows where he is sometimes, even where he's sitting.
And we have a mess.
The problem today is, at this moment—as you probably notice, some of the data coming out of Europe—the financial crisis has reached a point of maturity which I'm not surprised by, but it's happening: The system is breaking down. It is crumbling. We do not have, yet, a collapse in the full sense of the term, but we have a process of crumbling around the world, today, and yesterday, and so forth, which is extremely ominous.
There are some people who have been talking about postponing the crisis until after the November elections: That will not happen. Of that, we can be sure. The crisis is here. It can not be postponed. This is May. You're not going to postpone this crisis, until November. It's coming on. It probably is coming on, before the Summer arrives. And no one in the United States, in a position of leadership—there are some people in the woodwork; there are some people who are staff people; some people in government, who would be prepared to act appropriately—but we don't have a President, or a leading candidate for President, in the form of Kerry, who is qualified emotionally or intellectually to do the things that are absolutely indispensable, without compromise, to deal with: first of all the monetary-financial crisis, the economic crisis, or the situation in Iraq.
I can guarantee you, neither of them—the White House nor Kerry—as long as they're advised by the people who are advising them now, will do anything that is even approximately intelligent about the issue in Iraq, the region generally, or the economic situation. It's just not going to happen.
The Treaty of Westphalia
I've made a proposal on this question of Southwest Asia, which will work. A number of people from various countries around the world, leading people, have proposed that I take certain things into account. Some of them will probably, in the question and answer session today, pose those questions to me; and I shall respond to them. But I can assure you, that there can be no compromises with what I have proposed. I have not proposed too much. I've proposed a minimal approach to getting this situation in Iraq and adjoining countries under control. People think that this is a matter of negotiating a contract. People are trying to put their two cents in, in the sense, as we say here: their condition, their condition, their condition. Forget it! Forget contracts! What we need for the area, there, is, we need a form of agreement which follows precisely the guidelines of the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, which brought a long period of religious warfare to an end. We're now dealing with an area which has been reduced to religious warfare and to related conflicts in the Middle East, as it's called. You are not going to deal with that kind of situation by making a contract agreement, like a bunch of dumb lawyers, Washington lawyers, coming in and trying to bargain points.
Don't try to do this the way that President Clinton goofed the negotiations at Camp David, on Israeli-Palestinian peace. Get that out of your mind! It is not going to work. As a matter of fact, there is going to be no solution for the crisis in Southwest Asia, unless we can adopt it as my doctrine, by name. Because nobody else has the credibility to do what has to be done—that is, no candidate, no other spokesman for the United States—has the credibility to make that proffer, and no one can be trusted to carry it through.
The same thing is true on the question of the economic crisis. No one in the United States, in a leading position, apart from my leading position, is prepared to even consider doing the absolute minimal things that have to be done to prevent this nation, and many of the nations of the world, from collapsing into a deeper depression—far deeper, far worse—than 1929-1933. It's coming on now.
Now, the problem is that I am blocked out from official discussion, with whole channels of people, who should be talking to me about precisely these questions. I have the expertise, I have the qualifications; they don't. If they're serious about saving the country and dealing with the problem, they would talk with me. Why don't they talk? Well, some of them do, in indirect ways. But they don't talk directly. We don't get into a dialogue. What does that mean?
There are people in the system, certain financier interests in particular—people typified by Lazard Frères, typified by Felix Rohatyn, and similar types—whose approach to the world financial crisis today, is to follow the guidelines that were carried out by the man who put Hitler into power in Germany: Hjalmar Schacht. What is being proposed, as you see in the imposition of conditionalities toward Argentina—the new ones, the so-called "vulture funds"—are exactly a forecast of what these people intend to do to the people of the United States, as well as other countries, as this crisis becomes worse. Everything will be cut, except the interest payments to the bankers, as was done by Schacht and company, over the period 1929-1933, in response to the onrush of what had been known to be, at that time, as an onrushing, general world depression.
People will die, if these bankers have their way. These bankers, and the interests they are associated with, control the Republican and Democratic Party election machines. They are presently controlling Senator Kerry. They control the people on whose lap President Bush sits, to take orders.
'My Message'
These people are determined to keep me out of the situation, because they know what my message is. My message is to follow the precedent of Franklin Roosevelt's dealing with the world depression, both in his election campaign in 1932, and in his Presidency, from March 1933 on. My commitment is to say, that the government is not efficient or morally competent, unless we're able to carry out the instruction of the Preamble of our Constitution: to defend the sovereignty of our nation, to defend the general welfare of all of our people, and to promote the security and welfare of our posterity.
Those are the three requirements of the President of the United States, above all. None of the candidates I'm dealing with in the United States, or their circles, are prepared to accept that. As a matter of fact, that means, that if I'm President, and the crash hits with full force, or has hit, I am going to do pretty much what Franklin Roosevelt did: I'm going to put the bankrupt system into bankruptcy reorganization; to keep everything functioning that must function, for our people, for our security, and for growth. And that means, the bankers are going to have to take a back seat. They're going to have to get in line, like everybody else. The people of the United States come first.
And the test of the quality of a President of the United States, for a situation like this, is to look at the people who are the poorest, who are the least privileged: And if you can't do something for them, you're not going to do something for the nation.
We have a very sick nation, politically, right now. Over the period since 1977, you will observe that there has been a decline in the physical standard of living, of people in the lower 80% of family-income brackets. Politics has, more and more, been turned over to a smaller section of the population: the upper 20%, which some call the suburban strata; the older people, who are now in their fifties and sixties, who are generally running most of the places in the country, who are controlling the Democratic Party machines, who think in terms of the interests of the Baby-Boomer generation, with their fantasy-life, with their comfort zones, and that sort of thing—not the future. And therefore, this generation will not, of its own accord, respond, on its own initiative, appropriately to this situation.
The United States, which has the oldest Constitution surviving on this planet today—and it's the oldest because it's the best, but if we fail that Constitution, in a time of crisis, now, we won't have a Constitution. We won't have a nation.
So, the test has come: Can we do it now?
And the decision must not lie with the upper 20% of family-income brackets. The decision must not lie with the bankers, who would like to impose the Schachtian methods used by the man who put Hitler into power, Hjalmar Schacht, against the United States and other nations, today. The people who would enforce the collection procedure against Argentina, mean mass murder. The people who are cutting the health care of senior citizens, because they think we have too many of them—and doing more and more, each time. They're reclassifying prescription drugs, as "over the counter" drugs, so the insurance companies won't have to support your prescriptions. This is the kind of thing that's going on. And nobody's doing anything in government effectively, to stop it.
So therefore, the question is: Will the people of the United States stop waiting to be bought to vote? Will they stop waiting, until they get approval to vote? Will the people of the United States, the 80% in the lower family-income brackets, mobilize themselves to say, "We are the majority in this country! We are the ones, whose requirements have to be met. We are going to turn out to vote, whether you pay us to go to the polls, or not! We are going to vote the way we think our interests determine, the interests of our country. We're going to go, we're going to throw you bums out, who will not pay any attention to our concerns." And the people need a candidate, like Roosevelt, who will say to the "forgotten man and woman" of our country: "Have courage, come out and vote. I'm your man!"
That's the only way we're going to deal with this depression. It's the only way we're going to deal with the situation in Southwest Asia, including Iraq.
Don't believe, that the United Nations will step in to save the situation in Iraq. It will not! Forget it! Don't say, "Go to the United Nations and give them the power." They can't do it, and won't do it! Kofi Annan may have the intention to do something, but he doesn't have the power to do anything. He does not have the resources to do what's required.
I do. Because I think I can have the resources of the people of Iraq, as well, to help us get out of this mess.
Don't think that somebody in Europe is going to stop this. Don't think that someone in Europe, is going to come to the rescue of the international financial-monetary system. They won't. There's no one there with the guts to do it, in a leading position of power. Their culture says, "Don't do it." European culture is based on the British system, of independent central banking systems: They will not overturn the principle of independent central banking systems. They're not capable of doing it constitutionally. The only way Europe could do that, is on the initiative of the United States, the United States government—as we bailed Europe out, at the end of World War II, with the Bretton Woods system, which was backed by the U.S. dollar, and backed by the design, provided by Roosevelt, in the 1944 Bretton Woods agreements.
That is the only way, that this world is going to be put in shape. No one else can do it, except the United States, because there's no authority outside the United States which is both competent and willing to do it. We have to do it. We have to mobilize our country. Don't try to find an alternative: It doesn't exist. Either we, as a nation, get back on our feet, and meet our responsibilities, or there isn't anything for this planet, except the threat of a dark age.
'Our Children Were Trained To Be Sophists'
Now, let me give you some indication of what the problem is, an historical indication: Some of you are not old enough to have had the experience that I've had. There are a couple of people in the room, who do. But, that's about it. The experience is, coming out of the Depression and the Second World War; coming back from military service to the United States, and finding that the people whom we had fought against, the people behind Hitler, were coming back into power, in the United Kingdom and the United States. It was a right-wing turn, in which most of the people in my generation capitulated. They capitulated out of cowardice—even people who had fought in war, suddenly showed cowardice and capitulated, to fear of the right wing, to fear of the FBI, to fear of what the Truman Administration represented.
We were somewhat saved from the evils of Trumanism, by the Eisenhower election. And two terms of Eisenhower gave a period of relative stability and security in the country—some relief from the right-wing ravaging that was going on. This turned many people, who themselves, of my generation, were cowards. They fled into suburbia. They went for tech jobs, in classified employment, that is, security classified employment. They sought jobs as engineers and technicians, and so forth. They were determined to become rich in suburbia—and forget the poor behind them. They raised their children, their pretty children, through things like funny schools you saw on television.
And the children were told, "Don't tell the truth." "Be careful what you say. Your father might lose his job." "Don't express opinions which contradict those of your teachers. You might get the family into trouble." So, what happened is, the generation which was born in the post-war period, and came to young adulthood in the middle of the 1960s, were trained to be sophists: not to believe in truth, but to believe in being overheard saying something that was advantageous to your career.
So, then, we were hit with the Missile Crisis. Everybody found God in a beer can, for about four or five days. They were convinced we were going to all be fried. Thermonuclear weapons, the missiles were going to come in on us, on the Soviet Union, on Europe, and so forth: We were all going to fried! There was this famous novel out of Australia by Nevil Shute, called On the Beach, where the last people were dying of radioactivity, the last people on the planet, where the radioactivity finally overtook them. That was the state of affairs.
You had messes in Europe, but you had, also, the assassination of Kennedy. All of these things were done by the right wing. A right wing, today, typified by Vice President Cheney. They did it to us! The people who were the so-called Baby Boomers, the children who had been taught to become sophists, during the 1950s, who didn't believe in truth, who believed in what was advantageous to be overheard believing. The people who were controlled by polls: The latest poll was supposed to tell you what to believe! They'd say, "I don't know what to believe today. I haven't seen the polls, yet." This was the kind of society.
And therefore, we trained a Baby-Boomer generation to flee, from which they didn't have the courage to remember. And the right wing took over. It really took over with the Vietnam War, the Indo-China War. They took over with Nixon. Nixon, in 1966, met with the Ku Klux Klan in Biloxi, Mississippi, and that was called the "Southern Strategy." Bit by bit, the Democrats of that Southern Strategy inclination left the Democratic Party, and went over to the Republican Party (or who knows where).
1971-1972: We destroyed the world economy. It was started by George Shultz, as an adviser, indirectly, but as an adviser nonetheless, to Nixon, who shut down the monetary system that had saved us in the post-war period. 1972, Shultz, at the Azores Conference, was the key negotiator who set up the floating-exchange-rate system, which has plunged the world as a whole into the present financial crisis. And so forth, and so on.
The Future Under Cheney
So, we've been in that kind of process. Now, you have—what does Cheney represent? Cheney represents what he says he represents. What he said he represented in 1989-1992, when he was Secretary of Defense, under George Bush I. He said he was for perpetual war. He said he was for preventive nuclear war, with mini-nukes: That is, low radioactive yield, but high-potential bombs, missiles. He tried to get it through. At that time, people said, "No." He was checked. He kept on with his program, the extreme right-wing program today.
The policy of the United States, under a Cheney Administration, which is what you have—you don't have a Bush Administration! You have a Cheney Administration! You have a dummy sitting on the knee of a Vice President Cheney, who's controlled by strings from his wife! Who is worse than Cheney is! Worse than he is: She's the clever one; he's the dumb brute, who's holding the strings on the President, the marionette.
So, what we have today, is a commitment, that if Cheney were reelected, as Vice President, we are looking at—not an Iraq War; not a mess in Afghanistan, which is getting worse by the day—we are looking at an attack on Syria, an attack on Iraq, nuclear weapons thrown at North Korea; eventually, a war against China. We're looking at that kind of world: A world which is depressed, by a great financial crisis, worse than that of the 1930s, that kind of condition.
These are the pre-conditions for a dark age. And my problem is, I'm looking at our people, our nation; I recognize the responsibility we have as a nation, for the sake of humanity as a whole. Once again, as under Roosevelt, the job has come to us. We must provide the decisive margin of leadership to save the world from Hell, the kind of Hell that Hitler represented back then. We have to do it, again. And, as far as I can see, looking around me, among my so-called rivals for the Presidency and others, I see no one with the competence or the guts to do the job.
I also see an American people, the lower 80% of the family-income brackets of this nation, unwilling to get out and fight for themselves. They no longer believe in voting! You get 15-20% turnout in elections, in districts. What does that tell you about the American people? They have no confidence that their vote means anything. They vote, if they're paid to turn out. They turn out for local issues, not for national issues. Not for issues on which the fate of the nation depends.
Therefore, my job—and your job—is to help me change that. Under Kerry, under Bush, at present—maybe we can change Kerry; I've certainly been trying to do it. If he's nominated, we've got to do something with him, and I've got to do it. But if we don't make those changes, if we don't get the average voter out, to fight for his and her own vital interests, for this nation, this nation is not going to make it, and the world is not going to make it! Oh, human beings will be around, but we're going to go through some special kind of Hell. Because the time came, when the responsibility was passed to us, and there were not enough people there to respond, to save the nation.
You know, people ask me, they say, "What chance do you have of being elected?" I say, "I have a better chance of being elected, than you have of surviving if I'm not!" And that's a fact. It's not an exaggeration. Those are realities.
But, the Baby-Boomer says, "No-o-o! No! It's not like that! We have our comfort zones! Our comfort zones say that what you say, will not exist! Our comfort zones say, there will be no financial crisis! There will be difficulties—of course. But we will manage them."
"Yes, we are not going to pull out of Iraq. We're not going to announce our military operations against the Iraqi people as over, as ceased. We're not going to do that! We're gonna come up with something. We're gonna rearrange the chairs! But, this is not a real crisis, that we have to take a sudden action on. We're not going to say things that George Bush would call unpatriotic." And he's not even a patriot! He doesn't know what patriotism is! Wouldn't understand the word.
So, that's the situation. We're faced with that kind of problem. And if we can not mobilize enough people in this nation—not because they got permission from the polls; not because they're bought to go out to the polls; not because the Washington Post tells them it's all right to vote for me, or something like that—if they can not stand up on their own hind legs, and fight for themselves, and do the thing that can work in fighting for themselves, in making sure that they don't choose people on what the pollsters say, but they choose people on what those people are going to do, to solve the problems that this nation has—
And it's not just all the little things that count. Yes, there are many little things that need to be fixed, and I've addressed many of them in the course of this campaign. But, the essential thing: Are you willing to save the human race from what threatens it now? What threatens it now, are not the local issues. What threatens us on the local issues: We don't have the means to deal with the local issues! We don't have the willingness to deal with them. What threatens us, we lack the will at the top, to take the kind of decision, which will lead the world out of this mess. If the United States were to follow my leadership, we would have the support that we need from Europe; the United Nations would play a role, which we would assist in giving it, in the matter of Iraq. We would find a way to deal with this world financial crisis—I know how to deal with it. But, these are the decisions that have to be made! And they have to be made here, in the United States, first of all, because no other part of the world is capable of making the decision on its own to do the job if we don't do it!
The world depends upon the United States, with all of the faults we've acquired. We have the oldest constitution on this planet, and that is not an accident. It's the oldest, because it's the best. It's the Constitution that worked, when every other part of the world failed. And, if we stick to that tested Constitution, and use the Executive branch of government, as the Executive branch was intended to be used, when this Constitution was framed; if we applied the leadership which the Europeans who helped make us possible, intended, when they intended to create in this country, on this continent, a new nation, which would be a beacon for freedom for the rest of the world, for similar kinds of republics—
That never happened. The French Revolution and other things prevented it. There were improvements in Europe, so forth. But, the kind of nation which we were constituted to become, which the greatest Europeans who supported us intended we should become, no other nation on this planet has acquired that kind of constitutional character. We, with all our faults, still have that.
The President of the United States, if he's competent, and understands that, is capable of leading the American people, to inspire other people, in other parts of the world, not to become part of an American empire, but to cooperate with us, in finding solutions to the problems that face us now. And there are solutions. The question is, does the willingness exist to apply those solutions? This must come from the United States. It must come from the leadership of the United States.
And I'm saying to the world, right now, via this broadcast, this webcast, and otherwise: "You better turn to me, buddy. Because this is your last shot. If I go, you don't have anything else that's capable of leading the United States, in a fighting position, now." And, if we don't have somebody in a leading position in the United States, in the Presidency, who's steering this country's leading role in the world, there's no hope for Europe, there's no hope for the United Nations, or from it; and there's no hope for the world at large.
This planet is on the verge of going into a new dark age. We don't have to go there. It's not inevitable. We have a choice. But, if we don't provide the leadership, from the United States, to get the rest of the world to move in the necessary direction, there is going to be a dark age for all humanity. And that, we could discuss.
Questions and Discussion
Moderator Debra Freeman: We will be taking questions. The first comes from Maria Malouf from NTV, a TV station based in Lebanon. She says: "Mr. LaRouche, you call for all American military forces to be withdrawn immediately in your doctrine. But, on Nov. 28, 2003, you called for the ceasing of the U.S. military occupation at the earliest possible occasion. What exactly are we dealing with here? One year? Two years? What is the timeframe we can expect for withdrawal?"
How 'The LaRouche Doctrine' Will Work
LaRouche: As I have said, this has to be called "The LaRouche Doctrine." Now, that means that the United States has to accept the doctrine, as I've defined it. Not try to build a contract, by negotiating away the doctrine with conditionalities. That means, they accept it.
Now, what happens if the U.S. government accepts it? Because, this is not an "if" question. This is a question of concrete action. And it's the kind of action—which is not a parliamentary decision: It's a decision by the Executive branch of the United States government. That's what I'm demanding: I'm demanding the pressure, on the United States government, from all kinds of sources, to induce that man who occupies the White House today, with all his, shall we say, "shortcomings"—and lack of anything else—to make a decision, under pressure, which will say that the "LaRouche Doctrine" for Southwest Asia, is, by executive order, U.S. policy. That's what I'm demanding.
That's the only thing that will guarantee the kind of solution toward which I've aimed.
Now, if that is the case, what happens then? If my Arab friends and others, relevant in this, concur that that is the doctrine they want to mobilize their own countries and people around, then we've got an action. That means that several things will immediately follow—not months or years down the line—but, immediately: An agreement with relevant forces in Iraq, for a disengagement of U.S. forces from conflict with any part of the Iraqi population. This means the immediate withdrawal of U.S. military forces, into designated bases. That's the withdrawal from Iraq; the withdrawal of U.S. forces from continued, active military engagement. And, if nobody comes in there to shoot at them, they're not going to shoot back. That's the first step.
Now, the second step, as I've indicated, is to say, "We decide that we want the United Nations to be a responsible agency for supervising this area, while we're trying to get Iraq reconstructed." This means that the Ba'ath Party officials, except for some people who may be objectionable to all concerned, will come back into full functioning—they should have never stopped functioning; the civilian authorities in Iraq, which were functioning, unless they have some objectionable thing about them, personally, which all parties agree on, they come back to their jobs.
That means, we now have some hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who are now working to carry out the reconstruction of their own country. Our job, in the United States, is to cooperate to ensure that that reconstruction is successful. We recognize, of course, the right of Iraq to build a military force, to rebuild it, as a capable defense capability, for the nation of Iraq. In other words, we're going to give them back their country, the way it should have been done, at the end of the so-called hostilities. Their country.
This will only work, if other things are done at the same time. Remember, this is Executive decision of the United States government: It is not a parliamentary decision. It means the Congress is going to have to second it! And I defy any Congressman or any significant one of them, to defy this thing at this point! This thing in Iraq, is very unpopular. And any Congressman with guts, is going to say, "Yes! You're getting us out there? Good!"
Servicemen, general officers, others—retired and service—are going to say, "Good! Get us out of there!" You say, "What're you going to do with the military?" I say, "I'm going to rebuild it! In the United States, as a defense force, and a reconstruction force; as an engineering force." We'll rebuild the military! We don't want a disgrace, called a military. Senior officers don't want a disgrace. They'll do a good job. Don't worry.
That means that we have to have a kind of agreement, among the nations of the region, which ensures that a peace, once achieved, will be stable. And peace can be had right away, if forces in Iraq agree; and this means, of course, Sistani and company have to be brought into the picture. You've got to unite the Iraqi people about the rebuilding of their own country. And they have to reunite themselves. We can't do it from the outside. We've had enough of Bremer, and his ideas.
That means we have to have an agreement with the region, as I've laid out. You must finally say, that Southwest Asia—not the "Middle East": That's a British colonial term. Southwest Asia is dominated by Arabs (although it's not entirely Arab); this area has to have its own policy. It's a weak point in the entire reconstruction and rebuilding of Eurasia as a whole. We can't have this kind of cockpit there, any more. The people don't want it. The people are terrified—fears of loss of security and so forth, in the region.
But, they have to make an agreement. So therefore, we say, "What kind of agreement?" We have one experience which worked. It worked in 1648. And remember, from about 1511 to 1648, Europe was bled, almost bled to death, by religious warfare, orchestrated by those who were trying to maintain, and go back, to the old feudal system! This was led by the Spanish and Austrian Habsburgs, but also by the Venetian bankers. And Europe was torn, in orchestrated religious wars, organized largely by Venice, the Venetian bankers, and led by Spanish troops! It was one of the greatest crimes against humanity! You want to talk about anti-Semitism? Talk about Tomás Torquemada, the Grand Inquisitor: An anti-Semite who wanted to kill every Jew! Hitler was simply a copy of that.
'Do You Finally Want Peace?'
So, this kind of thing was going on, until 1648. When Cardinal Mazarin, from France, who had been the Pope's peace negotiator earlier, led in reaching an agreement among the powers, called the Treaty of Westphalia. Which agreement was based on giving the "advantage to the other" by agreement: That is, no decision shall be made, which is contrary to providing a benefit to the other nation, or the other people. And therefore, to establish a community of commonality of interest, based, not on saying, "What do I want from them?" but rather, "I will give them what they need. And, I expect them to do the same for me."
We have to have that kind of peace in Southwest Asia. We have a long period of religious warfare, and similar kinds of warfare, throughout the region. A warfare which is going back to the time of the Ottoman Empire, and earlier. The British have been in there since the beginning of the 19th Century, running wars, managing the area by getting people to shoot each other, within the area. This kind of thing.
You have the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which has been going on for a long time. You can't get peace by negotiating by contract, contract terms, under those conditions. You have to bring to bear a principle, which will bring about peace. You have to use the very shock of the horror which people have gone through, the insecurity, the nightmare, to say, "Do you finally want peace?"
And that kind of shock creates a revolutionary situation, in which people say, "You're right. We were wrong. We were shooting each other—and what did it get us? Now, we're going to have peace."
And the United States has to be the sponsor of that idea. And foster agreement among nations. Use the United Nations, and every other asset in the book, to bring nations in this region together, and to foster the idea of a general development program, including economic development, for the region.
The obvious thing, if you've ever flown over the Middle East, you see: yellow sand, yellow sand, yellow sand. Flying, say, from Khartoum in Sudan, up to Jordan, as I did on one occasion. Just think, of mile after mile after mile, of sand, sand, sand! From one fertilized spot, irrigated spot, to another. The Middle East can be an area of richness for the future, but we have to conquer the sand. We have to bring in water. We have to develop power. We have to develop agriculture. We have to turn wasteland into land for habitation.
We should be the sponsors of that—so the minute that the President of the United States, the Executive branch, says, "This is the policy," it all begins right there, that day, that minute; the wheels go into effect immediately. And the United States troops will stay there only to the extent that the free consent of the Iraqi people wants them there, to assist in the security and reconstruction.
Freeman: Lyn, we have a question that's been submitted by a sitting member of Congress. He's a Democrat. He doesn't wish to be identified by name. He says: "Mr. LaRouche, over one year ago, you indicated in the strongest possible terms, that the ability of the United States to function in any reasonable sense, in accordance with its Constitution, was contingent upon the removal of Dick Cheney, one way or another, from any position of power. While there's been significant motion in the Congress in this regard, and while I know you have dedicated your own movement to this, I think that there are problems. I'm aware of growing discontent among uniformed military, and also among the professional intelligence establishment. This week, Cheney, of course, was targetted by my fellow Democrats on the Hill. But, with the exception of what I consider to be a brilliant intervention by the senior Senator from New Jersey, those efforts have been largely ineffective.
"It seems to me, that Cheney's power remains very much intact. Some say that he's stronger than ever. But I'm also aware that perception is sometimes not accurate. I'd like your assessment of the situation. Do you still believe that the removal of Cheney is an absolute necessity? And do you think that we've come any further in this fight? Also, what do you recommend for the immediate period ahead?"
Bring Me In, and Cheney Is Out
LaRouche: Well, that's a fair assessment of the way things look, with respect to Cheney; and with respect to our situation. Now, the problem is very simple. Those in the Democratic Party in particular—let me say some things, because we're getting something from the Congress, and I want to give an answer which will be useful to them, for their part in this.
The problem has been, that the forces which are determined to keep me out of the primary debates, and so forth, have created the situation under which Cheney is still there. If Cheney is not removed, now, it is their fault. Because, if the Democratic Party had not excluded me from the debates, had not been running operations against me, we would have Cheney out now! Cheney considers me the greatest threat to his power.
We have Cheney, and his wife—who is actually his boss—have close associations with 10 Downing Street, through a woman known as Baroness Symonds—and she certainly is barren of morality! Now, this crowd of scoundrels at 10 Downing Street, who are the Blair administration—and Blair is probably not the innocent fellow-traveller of Cheney. He probably is virtually his boss! You have to understand things.
Now, we've gone at this, and this crowd is really coming after me. They're trying to run an international, fake scandal, through the British press, which they're going to bring into the United States; it's scheduled to come into the United States, as a dirty operation against me, from a period of about two weeks before the Democratic convention, and to continue after the convention, simply as an attempt to keep me out. Because Cheney knows that if I'm not excluded—as the Democratic National Committee is causing my exclusion, and others—that Cheney would be out.
Because, if I'm out there, with the Democratic Party working with me, Cheney will be out quick.
Now, let's look at another part of the thing. Let's look at the party situation, which every senior member of the Congress, who's been around for a while, should think about. I probably have a growing constituency among Republicans, as well as Democrats. I'm not talking about just out in the field; I'm talking about leading Republicans, Republicans who represent some degree of power, in the Republican Party.
What happened some time ago, is, you had a process under which the right wing in the United States began to take over control of the Republican Party, out of the Nixon process, which Cheney and so forth represent—a continuation of that. And this was the "war party." This was the Truman party! And many of the people who were warriors for Truman went over to the Republican Party, and became neo-conservative right-wingers; like Richard Perle, "Perle diver."
The Democratic Party decided to become racist, too. This is called the Southern Strategy. This is called the Democratic Leadership Council. So that we have racists and right-wingers in both parties—in the Republican Party, and in the Democratic Party. Now, why don't we resort the parties? Why don't we have a right-wing party, and a non-right-wing party? The way you do this, is not by having party conventions, and re-assorting the members. The way you do this, traditionally, in our history—we've gone through various party systems, as you know. Contrary to rumor, the Democratic Party was born with Jackson, not with Jefferson. The Jefferson-Madison party died, out of disgrace! And, it didn't come back until a New York banker, Martin Van Buren—who was rumored to be the illegitimate son of the traitor Aaron Burr—put this guy, a racist, Andrew Jackson, on hire into the White House. So, we had, in the meantime, the formation of the Whig Party, and the Whig Party was dissolved into the Republican Party. And, for example, me, by my family heritage: I'm a Whig! And a lot of Whigs went over to the Democratic Party!
So, the political tradition in the United States is such, you have elections, and the elections will sometimes cause a re-scrambling of the party affiliations, as happened with Roosevelt, for example: Roosevelt's election and his Presidency did involve a re-scrambling of the political structures of the United States.
What I'm saying, in response to this particular question, from that source: We are going to fight this election out on a partisan basis. That's fine. But, once we get the election over, and even before—apart from the election process—we have to cooperate, as political figures, in the country, on the basis of national interest, not partisan interest. The function of partisan interest is to try to represent certain issues, certain people, certain things, but also to join with others in representing the national interest. Which is the interest of the nation, not just partisan issues.
What I'm saying, is, we've come to a time, where, in the next election, if I were the Presidential candidate, as of now, with the present Republican administration's policies, we would pull over a very significant portion of the present Republican movement, to support my Presidency. We have a kind of situation—and that, I think, everyone who's in the Congress, knows what I'm talking about, any senior person in the Congress—We're talking about a time for a realignment of U.S. politics, in accord with the interests of the American people, and our role in the world.
If we had competent leadership, if I were in the picture—I'm in the picture, but I'm not in the picture as far as the party is concerned—if I were in the picture as far as the party's concerned, number one, I can guarantee, we'd win the election! And Cheney would scamper, quickly, because the Republicans would throw him out, knowing that if I'm in the election, he hasn't got a chance, and they better dump him.
And that's the way to go at it.
The problem lies—for the Democrats—they refuse to face that issue. This is not an election like a typical election! This is not going to be a monkey show! Like the Gore candidacy. That's what it was. It was not a serious candidacy. It was a dog and pony show—and I guess the Senator from Connecticut was the dog.
This is the time, when politics becomes real: Politics has to be based on the policy interests of the nation; a judgment of what is good for the nation; what the nation's obligations are to itself, and its role in the world. We are going to have to go through a realignment, to get this right-wing thing, out of us! And go back to being Americans again!
And the way to do it, is simply understand that. And just as Roosevelt understood that, when he had to deal with Republicans in his Congress, and so forth. It's when a national interest is overriding, which is really what a Presidency should be about, the Executive branch of government: Under those conditions, responsible, elected officials, and others, will work together on the basis of those issues, despite other partisan divisions. They will, also, as the conscience of the nation, will act together, to get rid of a bad Presidency, without consideration about partisan interests. Get the bad President out! There are Republicans—they don't consider George very serious. George is just dumb! But, a George controlled by a Cheney-Shultz Administration (and Shultz is the architect of this administration), is bad news. We must get that out! We must get rid of what Cheney represents, what Shultz represents: We've got to get it out of power over our country!
And that is a bipartisan concern, for all good, honest people. And I would hope that somehow—and I hope I'm helping that today—the people recognize, that Democrats and Republicans must not be partisan to the degree that it's insane. The parties are parties. Party loyalties are party loyalties: But national loyalty comes above both.
The Sovereignty of Iraq
Freeman: From an Arab diplomat based in Berlin, Germany: "Mr. LaRouche, can you please explain, how do you envision the transition government? Will it be sovereign? If so, how can it be, according to international law, if it is not duly elected by the Iraqi people? Mr. Wolfowitz insists that it will not be completely sovereign. What exactly does he mean?"
LaRouche: When a country is occupied by a military force, under our law, the country is still, in a sense, a sovereign country, in the sense that we must be prepared to leave it as a sovereign country. We do nothing which interferes with the sovereignty.
You've occupied the country. As I've said, repeatedly, the first thing you do—as anybody, in World War II, who was any good, knew: You go into an area. You've taken over the area. What does the commander of the military unit do, when they go into that area? He sends somebody out to find the mayor and the other officials who have been office, to make sure the local community functions! You don't do anything to change local government—except by law.
Now, what has been done in Iraq is a travesty. The day—as it has been noted by many people, now—the day that Bremer came in there, and dissolved the Iraqi Army, and fired the officials, and kicked out all the Ba'athists, was the day this country went to Hell! The first thing, is to go back and reverse that.
Now, Iraq had a constitution. A perfectly fine constitution. Okay, that Constitution is recognized; no other constitution. Unless a change is made, by the sovereign power of the Iraqi people themselves, voluntarily. Not by somebody telling them what constitution they're going to adopt. Therefore, you have a provisional government, which is arranged simply by trying to put things back into place. And you let the Iraqis themselves negotiate what the interim government will be. Now, this means, obviously, Sistani and company, and other people like that, will have to negotiate with people, such as the Ba'ath and so forth, to form some agreement, on an interim, provisional government. The function of the provisional government, is to prepare the way for a constitutional election of government. And what we're there for—to the extent we are there, and others are there—is to try to make this process proceed as rapidly as possible.
The other aspect of the process—we have a long-term problem. Iraq has been looted, since the period of the first U.S.-Iraq war. Under UN conditionalities, it's been looted. Children were being killed, they were starved! All kinds of horrors were imposed upon that country. For example, one official who has been informing the Iraqi oil minister, who was speaking at my conference, that I attended at Abu Dhabi—the Zayed Centre—pointed out that, since 1977, there has been no significant improvement in the technology of oil production in Iraq—and Iraq is one of the great oil-producing areas of the world.
So a lot has to be fixed. The first thing is to get a sovereign government. The first thing, [is] to get the best approximation of a sovereign government you can get right off the deck: And that is, to bring the people bring together, who, under the constitution, under the existing definition of government, constitute a provisional government for the purpose of organizing an early election to form a regular government under the constitution. Then, any changes in the constitution should be made, by them, in that process—that is, in the election of a new government, which would be responsible to call a constitutional convention, to make adjustments as needed.
So, that's the way it should be. But, we're in this process, where we have to have a period of reconstruction. But the authority under which the reconstruction is done, has to be established immediately. And, that is, to get the United States out of the position of being that authority. We now become, under the cover of United Nations, we become a helping hand, of a group of nations, in trying to put this country back together, and get some peace in the region as a whole.
But, we are out of it. We may be in there. But, we'll be in there under a completely different agreement, completely different terms.
Now, the key thing here, also, is, don't forget my personal role in this: I am the only notable political figure of the United States, who has not disgraced himself in the matter of this war. This is recognized by the Iraqi people. It's recognized within the Arab world, at large. I'm the only person, in the United States, who can be a catalyst for pulling this off.
You couldn't say, "Well, let somebody do what you could do." No! They couldn't do it! They don't have the respect. I have earned the respect! In the opinion of many in the Arab world, I have earned that respect. Therefore, I am putting the respect I have earned on the line, for the benefit of the people, and for the benefit of the people of the United States. No one else in the United States has that respect, who's in a position of leadership. And, that's what will make it work. You can not remove that factor. That's the only factor here that counts. You can't go in, and say, "I've got a design." "Who are you?" What did you do, when this war started? Did you vote against it in the Congress? Did you move for the impeachment of Cheney? I did. Did you do that? Or, did you say, "Well... Well, maybe..."?
No. No one in official positions in the United States has the position I have: I'm the only one that's earned the kind of respect that is required, as an American representative, to bring about a peace of the type required in the Middle East.
Strategic Defense: Military and Political Campaigns
Freeman: From a state representative: "Mr. LaRouche, a growing number of constituent leaders across the United States agree with a formulation expressed by [Pennsylvania State] Rep. Harold James, when he endorsed you a couple of weeks ago. What he said then—and what I agree with—is that our constituents will have no representation or voice at the Democratic Convention, unless there's a LaRouche delegation present. That's why increasing numbers of us have endorsed you. I should also tell you that, unlike Brother James, I'm not African-American, I'm White. But, it doesn't change my view.
"While there are still enough primaries coming up, to ensure the presence of a LaRouche delegation, I have to tell you that I don't think it looks good. I'm not saying that I'm about to throw in the towel; I'm not. But, I am asking you for direction: What is the most effective way for state representatives, like myself, for trade unionists, and for other constituent leaders, to operate in the current framework?"
LaRouche: Well, first of all, I'm a realist, but I'm also an optimist. But, I believe in a policy of what is called "strategic defense." Typical of this—one of the most famous, was the case von Wolzogen, who was an in-law of Friedrich Schiller, who had studied Schiller's work on the Netherlands war, the religious war—the Spanish and the Netherlands—and the Thirty Years' War. And from his studies, he had devised a plan for the defense of Russia, against the invasion of Napoleon's Grande Armée. And this plan was a plan of classical strategic defense. In which the emphasis was laid—and it was adopted by people, including Scharnhorst and others, who were in the picture, and, more notably, others who were directly in the picture; and was adopted by Alexander I, the Czar of Russia—not to try to engage the Napoleonic forces with a decisive battle at the borders of Russia. But to draw Napoleon in—whether Napoleon decided to shoot for Petersburg or Moscow—draw him in gradually, in either direction he chose. And have the destination—either Petersburg or Moscow—waiting for him.
And when Napoleon, by this delaying tactic, when he got to Moscow, the city was mined and ready to blow up around Napoleon—in the Wintertime. It blew up. And then, the conserved military forces, and the irregular forces—volunteers of the Russian people—fell upon Napoleon's Grande Armée. And when Napoleon was in Poland, waiting for the Grande Armée to retreat to Poland, Marshal Ney walked in. And Napoleon said to Marshal Ney, "Where are your troops, the rearguard?" And Marshal Ney said to him, "Emperor, I am your troops." There was nothing left.
Now, the same thing applies in politics: When you have a situation like this, you have a war you must win on principle. What you have to do, is take the defeat you're going to have to take, as you take it, and prepare your position, so when the time comes, you'll be able to act, decisively. That's what I'm doing. That's why I continue this campaign. I'm in an action, which is applying to the field of politics, the same action as a classic strategic defense in military warfare.
We have to win. We have to save this nation, against the enemy which are those forces of finance and the right wing, which are driving this nation toward destruction, and toward the destruction of other nations. We must win this battle for our Constitution. I have to do it. There's no one else visible. So I must win. Because, if I don't, there's not going to be much left worth fighting for.
So, the enemy's making a mistake. The greatest financial crisis in modern history is now coming down at an accelerating pace. A lot of foolish people, ordinary citizens, who should have voted for me, didn't. Because they weren't serious about politics. They weren't serious about the nation. They're now about to find out, how serious the problem is. When the American people decide that this is a serious election, they'll vote for me.
The Economic Collapse Factor
Q: Mr. LaRouche, a small group of us who worked with Bob Rubin and Bill Clinton on the new financial architecture, are sitting here listening to you. Last week, Bob was asked what he thought the impact of a new LTCM would have on the elections. He said he wasn't worried about a new LTCM, he was worried about many new LTCMs. It's time to go where nobody wants to go, it seems, in this discussion. Where do we stand in terms of the state of the global financial and economic system, and how does this impact your LaRouche Doctrine?
LaRouche: We are talking about a global system, which is in the order of tens of trillions of dollars of estimated net product per year. We are talking about financial derivatives, whose annual turnover is in the order of quadrillions. These are short-term obligations. We are now entering a period of accelerating inflation, of a type characteristic of hyperinflation—now, right now. It's been accelerating for over a year. Look at food prices in grocery stores, look at a lot of other things.
We're at the point the bubbles are cracking and popping. The decision by China, most recently announced, is a drastic response. This is going to have chain-reaction effects around the world. The system is now collapsing. The problem is, Bob's group has to face this fact: not when are you going to fight; but, are you going to have a fighting position available to you, at the time you do fight? And that's the problem. That's his problem. That's what his statement represents. He did not say, "If you're not a nut, vote for LaRouche"—which is what he should have said. No, "In this condition, there's only one man in this country who, as a candidate, knows how to deal with this problem"—and he knows that. But he's not saying it. Because he has other responsibilities.
Bob's a fine fellow, he's one of the best, I would use him in a heartbeat, in the Presidency, because of his competence. But he is not a political fighter of that type. I am. I've got the job.
So, what has to be done: There has to be a recognition of the necessity to make certain decisions. You have to have a large number of people who are agreed upon that. That is what we don't have. We have me. You have a handful of people in the country, some of them who are influential, who agree with me, and would follow me immediately if I were given support. I could pull a government today, together, today, right now. Make me President right now; I'll have a government. I can pull them together, I know where to get them. I can staff all key positions of the Executive Branch, at the top level, enough to run the government. So, that's there. But I don't have a preparation of an accepted plan by political forces, of what the action is that we're going to take.
In other words, I'm prepared to do one thing: I'm prepared, the instant the crisis occurs, as President, to take the kind of action that Roosevelt took on entering the White House: to put the Federal Reserve system, and the banking system, into receivership for reorganization in bankruptcy, and to make sure that the country functions, does not shut down. That we don't have bankruptcy proceedings and foreclosures that shut the country down. And to launch an immediate program, in the order of, probably, for the first four years, $6 trillion of government credit to be supplied for large-scale infrastructure projects of the type we need, which would mean about 10 million additional jobs above the present net level.
That's the policy. I'm prepared to do that. I'm prepared to deal with other problems of a similar nature on a global scale. I'm prepared to act now, and I know what I'm doing. But in order to act, I've got to have the political support needed for the plan of action, or for the policy of the plan of action. Because when you go into the White House, as President, to start to run the country, from the Executive Branch, you've got to know what you're doing, and you've got to have people with you, who know what you're going to do. They have to think out what they're going to do, in order to carry out the policy we have. Somebody has to do this, and somebody has to do that. You have to have the people in place to take charge of making sure it happens. And that's what we don't have.
We do not have a strategic fallback position. We take the defeats, we take the blows, we retreat. We retreat because we're not ready. But when will we be ready, if ever? As we're going now, we will never be ready. And the crisis will come first.
Look, people don't understand our Constitution. Our Constitution is the finest instrument of its type ever seen on this planet. In a crisis, our Constitution is designed to be used as Roosevelt used it. In a crisis, to save the nation and get the rebuilding process going fast. We can do that. No other country on this planet has the constitutional ability to do that. They may do it by improvisation. Some will tend toward dictatorships to do it. We don't have to have a dictatorship. Our constitutional system enables us to do it without disturbing the Constitution in the least. You don't need to open up large camps in Guantanamo Bay or some foolish thing like that. That's the problem. They have to come out with me. They have to have the guts to do it. Because if we lay before the American people that a bunch of people have a consensus on this issue, that we are prepared to act in recommending preparation for action, then we can win. That's what we need.
Q: My name is Kathleen Winn, and I'm the co-chair of the Committee for Vote Integrity and Protection in Cleveland, Ohio. We're fighting to keep these paperless machines out of Ohio by the November election. My question is this: I agree with you on your assessment about the crisis we're now in. But how can we elect you—or anybody, really—if there is a possibility that through paperless, electronic voting machines emplaced throughout the United States, that our votes will be manipulated, that the election will be manipulated, and that our votes will never be counted accurately. Without a true and accurate count of the votes, we, the people of the United States, have absolutely no hope or power for our voices to be heard. What is your solution to this very real problem, before the November election?
LaRouche: The conduct of an election in the United States is a matter primarily of state law. It lies generally under the supervision of the Secretary of State of that particular state. Therefore, only if the Federal government has some overriding intervention, then the state is responsible. What we are pushing for, apart from what we're doing on the Federal level—and there is activity on the Federal level on precisely this issue, recognizing the danger. A certain faction of Republicans are determined to get the ability to have an election fraud in the order of magnitude as high as 20% of the vote, by electronic voting machines, these procedures. We know it. We're out to stop them. We've been proceeding on a state-by-state level, at the same time we are discussing this with relevant people in the Congress. And there is action in this direction. There's not enough.
The states are actually moving much more rapidly than the Federal government, in terms of this kind of action so far. And we're working with that. My only thing to say, is to encourage, let's do it—that should be policy. Let's use the authority of the state to conduct elections, and force through state election procedures, which will ensure that the paper ballot, with some verification procedure built into it, is provided in every state. It's our best shot.
Changing U.S. Economic Policy
Q: Mr. LaRouche, my interest, sticking to the economics, is the enormous sums of money that we're spending, particularly on the war. How will this impact—and I hope you would speak to this—how will this impact on our communities, our neighborhoods in the coming years? Because, as you know, most of our states cannot support themselves by generating the money within the states. We rely most heavily on our tax dollars coming back to our states. Do you look in the future, to a general rise of taxes by the government, so that we can generate this money, that's surely going to be needed down the line?
LaRouche: It's key. The problem is, we're operating below breakeven. That is, the amount of employment and income being generated in 48, at least, of the states, is insufficient to support the state in its obligations presently. So therefore, there's only one solution: the kind of thing that Roosevelt understood, and we should understand better because of that experience. What we have to do, is, we have to put the entire country under financial reorganization, using the precedent of Roosevelt. What I would do is a little more ambitious, but we have to do it. Then I would go—by freezing, reorganizing the Federal Reserve System, and putting it under Federal control, you will federalize it through bankruptcy receivership. Because I happen to know the leading banks of the country are bankrupt; that means the Federal Reserve System is bankrupt. Therefore, the Federal Reserve System will be put into bankruptcy.
The United States will be committed immediately to a policy of return to a fixed-exchange-rate system in the world. And we will fight for that, and we will maintain that kind of system on our own account.
Under those conditions, as I said, my plan is $6 trillion of Federal, newly created credit, to be concentrated largely in large-scale infrastructure projects which we need. This includes transportation, especially rail, or equivalent. It means light rail also for areas, because the highway thing is a mess. It means power generation and distribution; water management, large-scale; rebuilding of our education and public health systems, because there's a lot of structural damage which has been done, by destruction of hospitals and so forth.
Government is generally efficient in funding public works which are in this category. It is not efficient when it tries to run normal private businesses. So the way you run it is, you have a banking law, of the type that Roosevelt used, the way he used, in part, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, as an instrument for this kind of thing. Put the credit out. You move immediately with a selection of projects.
Now, you do it the same way we used to use the National Highway Act. You sometimes schedule the way you go with your construction based on the needs of a state, or a part of a state, as we did some of those things. So, therefore, the trick is this. We have to build up the level of net increase in employment and income, state by state, as well as the nation as a whole, such that the state now has a sufficient revenue base to balance its budget, from internal income. We then have to, at the same time, make special credit available through banks, which are now coordinated by the Federal government. Where the local banker, under certain rules of the type we used to have back under Roosevelt, the banker will get somebody there who's running a business, or wants to run a business. And if the banker and other people in the community on this committee, advisory committee, say this person should be given the support, the credit, for that business, do that too.
So the point is, that we can build up a net increase of 10 million jobs in the United States, with a lot of it initially concentrated in basic economic infrastructure on the Federal or state level. We can make it.
Take the case of power generation and distribution. We used to have a system of state-regulated public utilities. They used to issue bonds. These bonds were considered almost as gold, almost as good as Federal bonds in the old days. We destroyed that thing, under deregulation. Put it back. Let the states again, go back into the business of public utilities, state public utilities, in which Federal money will come in, and other money will come in, to get the projects going, and then you will bail out by drawing private savings into that system, and run it in such a way that it's a secure investment for people who want secure investments. That kind of procedure. So it's a state and Federal, largely, effort. And that's the only way it's going to work; there's nothing else that will work. We must increase the annual income of each state to the point that the income, both from wages and other income, in the state, are sufficient to maintain a tax revenue base in the state, essentially, to allow the state to operate on a balanced budget. Because the states can't operate on a deficit—that's one of the problems. It shouldn't be that way, but that's one of the problems.
And that's the only way we can tackle this problem, is to get that kind of program going. Anything we try to do within the existing rules, without that reform, can't work. There just isn't the ability. We are bankrupt. This nation is bankrupt. And when a couple of these major banks go under, everybody's going to know it. And what we're seeing now, in Japan; what we're seeing in Korea; what we're seeing in cutbacks in China; which China is simply responding to rationally, as a result of the situation it faces. And Europe, and here. We're bankrupt. And very soon, you're going to have chain-reaction collapses of banks.
For example: Take this [metropolitan Washington, D.C.] area here. Take the housing boom. And it's going to go boom! It's about to go. The entire banking system is tied into this housing bubble. It's going to collapse. So we are at doomsday, in terms of banking. So therefore, the only thing that's going to work is a Federal intervention, of the type I've indicated. A Roosevelt-type intervention, which goes at the idea, "We're going to stop the so-called wild stuff we did in the recent years. We're going to go back to basics. Basic economic infrastructure. We're talking about $6 trillion of capital investment, supplied by government credit over the coming four years. We're talking about the need to create a net 10 million jobs. We're talking about a need to think about this in terms of how do we manage this, so that each state is put back into balance, and is able to raise sufficient revenue to meet that. It means also Federal programs, which will absorb some of these things."
For example: Let's take the Veterans Hospital system. One of the key things we have to do as part of health care, we have to kill the HMO bill, kill it right now. Go back to the Hill-Burton philosophy, as we used to have it, which is a combination of private, public, various things; and then you paid, you took care of everyone. Somebody fell in the street, whether they had money or not, you cared for them, just as if they did. We used to have a Veterans Hospital system. We used to have a public health service which was adequate. We're going to have to rebuild that, particularly when we see what's coming back from Iraq now, and what's happened before. Even a soldier is no longer guaranteed, a veteran who's wounded in warfare, is no longer guaranteed the care that used to be considered a right under our system. We have to rebuild that. So, these kinds of things will have to go forward.
But essentially it comes down to simple arithmetic. If your income—your annual income of your people, and your other sources of income in the state—is sufficient to carry the state as a semi-self-sufficient operation, and you do that for all 50 states, you're in pretty good condition.
Danger of Fascism: Not a `U.S.' Problem
Moderator Debra Freeman: From the LaRouche Youth Movement in Argentina. It says: "Lyn, you mentioned that you enjoy the respect of the Arab community. Now, to be able to apply the LaRouche Doctrine for Southwest Asia, is it necessary for the United States to declare publicly, that it has behaved in a fascist way for the last 30 years, in order for it to be trusted in its future action in the region?"
LaRouche: It hasn't always acted in a fascist way in the past period, but it has [done] something like that. I think I said that fairly clearly, and therefore, when people vote for me, and support me, generally they are implying agreement with that statement. So it has been said. The support for that statement may be somewhat less than should have been the case, but I said it, I have documented it, I have shown, I've said who the fascists are today, including those in Argentina, and other parts of the world, the so-called Synarchist International, which is operating out of Spain and elsewhere, other parts of the world.
So, fascism in the United States is not a U.S. problem. It is something we imported from Europe, essentially from the British East India Company, originally, which ran Europe under the Synarchist International, during the period 1922-1945 increasingly, which almost took over Britain. Britain almost conducted an agreement with Adolf Hitler, to destroy the United States, in 1940. It was stopped, but it was almost there.
So, in the past period, the fascist, Nazi movement was brought into South and Central America, partly through the courtesy of Allen Dulles, and William F. Buckley, in Mexico, in particular; but also through Franco's Spain and various channels. And from some of the Nazis in Europe, who were shopped into Uruguay and Argentina through certain dirty Vatican channels—a channel which is called the "rat line."
So the danger of fascism is not a peculiarity, a secretion of the United States. It is an international threat today, controlled by international bankers, and they're in all parts of the world. And generally you can tell who they are, because they all, by no remarkable coincidence, happen to be my personal enemies.
The War Alliance with Tony Blair
Q: Mr. LaRouche, I'm a member of the British Labour Party, and I'd like you to talk a little bit about the links of Tony Blair to the Synarchist International. Also, how would you rate Gordon Brown and other Labour ministers in regard to their inclination to defend the general welfare, as prime minister? Do you think that Tony Blair should be ousted, as I am most ardently hoping he will be?
LaRouche: Well, I don't want to interfere with the internal affairs of the United Kingdom unduly. But, I certainly would smile if he would go, and I would probably invite some people to a party. With our resources, it would be a modest party, but the quality of enthusiasm would not be dampened by the shortage of money. We don't have to get drunk to enjoy things.
People have to understand something about the British system. As I've said, the British system is an imperial system. It was developed as such in 1763, with the Treaty of Paris of 1763, which was the British victory over France and other countries, which secured to Britain the imperial status in India, and over North America, or parts of North America, Canada and so forth. So, that was an empire of a company, not a monarchy! The company was the British East India Company. The British East India Company was a product of the Dutch India Company, which was brought into that form in England in 1688-89 by William Orange, the unappealing Orange, the one who killed all the Irishmen.
So, this group, by various manipulations, achieved imperial power with the intention of being a permanent empire, in the tradition of the Roman Empire in one sense, but based on the central principle of financial-oligarchical control of a type which was the Venetian model. So the Anglo-Dutch Liberal model is a Venetian model. In fact, in the 18th Century, the British System, the banking system so-called, was called the Venetian party. The British East India company was known in that century as the Anglo-Dutch Venetian party.
Now, the policy of that was—and the French Revolution was the first reflection of that: The British organized the French Revolution to prevent the spread of the influence of the American Revolution into Europe. And the British policy was always—then, and thereafter, as it had been in the Seven Years War—was to create such bloodshed and confusion on the continent of Europe, and by the suppression of the influence of the United States, which was later created, to ensure that there would be no competent challenge to the British Empire's eternal rule of the planet.
After 1865, when the United States had beaten the British puppet, the Confederacy—a treasonous puppet, intended to destroy the United States, on behalf of the British Empire—the British could no longer play those games. And in that period, the followers, successors, of Lord Palmerston, who had been the key figure in organizing the Civil War in the United States, emerged with what became known as the Fabian Society.
Now, the Fabian Society had such representatives as H.G. Wells, a real pig in every way; Bertrand Russell, a real fascist pig in every way. It was Bertrand Russell and H.G. Wells who defined the policy of perpetual war—perpetual war conducted through the aid of nuclear weapons, as a weapon so horrible that people would give in to world government, otherwise empire, rather than suffer the slings and arrows of nuclear attack.
This is Cheney's policy!
Now, between Blair, on the one side, and Cheney, there are no principled differences! They may speak differently. Blair tends to speak in an excited manner! Cheney snarls and growls. But otherwise, essentially, Lynne Cheney is very close to 10 Downing Street. Dick Cheney, otherwise known as Dirty Dick, is also very close to 10 Downing Street, and they have financial deals of a very nasty nature, together.
So, what you have here [picture of snarling Cheney shown]—oh yes, that's it; he got that way from chewing too many rugs. What you have, therefore, is you have a fascist alliance between Blair's 10 Downing Street, including the Baroness Symonds, and her husband and this crowd, who are the co-authors of the war in Iraq. There is no difference between Blair and a fascist. As a matter of fact, as anyone can tell you who has looked at British history, English history, back during the 1930s, the British Union of Fascists came out of the Fabian Society.
So, this kind of Fabianism, this Fabian approach, which Blair represents, is nasty. And whether Blair is more nasty than Lynne Cheney, the owner of Dick Cheney, is a question. But obviously, Blair's departure I would look at as, "Well, another Hitler has gone," because that's, in effect, what he is. The same kind of thing. It's a different style. The British method is different than some of the continental methods, but the question of the objective is what? The objective is to set up a world empire, and at this time a world empire of a bankrupt world, would only be a fascist world empire. It won't function, actually, but the society that dies, because somebody tries to make it function, won't know the difference.
Dialogue With the LaRouche Youth Movement
Q: From a team of LaRouche Youth Movement organizers in Alabama. "Lyn, we've been studying your doctrine and we have a few questions. Why Turkey, Syria, Iran, and Egypt, particularly? Why not Saudi Arabia, and/or Jordan? Thank you."
LaRouche: This has to do with the character of the self-confidence of these states. Syria is a relatively strong state in terms of its state structure. Turkey is a very important state in the region. And particularly the Ataturk tradition is very significant, because when Ataturk, the revolutionary founder of modern Turkey, who defended Turkey against the French and British influences at that time, invasion—one of his first acts was to acknowledge the independence of Syria, saying that Turkey's borders would be limited to the borders of Turkey, and would not have any aspirations for control over Arab countries; which had been, of course, the problem the Arabs had with the Ottoman Empire and others.
So, Turkey is crucial. Syria is crucial, as an Arab state. Iran, as a neighboring state of the Arab world, is extremely crucial. Egypt is crucial, because it's the leading Arab state, in terms of its influence as an Arab state.
Now, if these states are together, as the sponsors of an agreement, this does not mean the exclusion of any other state in the Arab sector, but quite the contrary. For example, if you go to Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia would be actively concerned about its security. Saudi Arabia is fearful that the present war, and the ongoing shenanigans in Iraq, represent the unleashing of devils who would destroy Saudi Arabia, or carve it up for the benefit of people like Cheney, and things like that, who are out to grab oil for their particular causes.
So, therefore, it would mean a meeting, essentially a convocation of Arab states with Iran, and with Turkey, and also, because you have a little instability that some Americans are playing games with, in Transcaucasia. It's very important that you have Armenia and Azerbaijan locked into this arrangement as a security arrangement, because that is a flank. Transcaucasia is a flank from which many troubles can come for the whole region.
Therefore, you want a group of people involved, a group of nations, who can bring other nations within the region together, to form some kind of a community of cooperation and security. They're all concerned with their security; I'm concerned with their security; other people are concerned with their security.
The big problem, of course, is the Israeli problem: that unless we get an Israeli-Palestinian just peace now!, not sometime down the line, but the kind of peace that Rabin himself wanted with the Oslo Accords, you're not going to have any peace in the Middle East. No one can bring it. Therefore, the United State must force Israel to accept the Oslo Accords. Otherwise, no peace. No possibility of peace. And that's the kind of decisions that have to be made.
So, therefore, no. If you get that kind of peace, that kind of arrangement, which I proposed as the doctrine, I'm sure that Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and other countries, will be very happy. And particularly, they will be happy because they know I did it. That's the most important thing for them. They're very personal. They like to know who is doing what to them!
Languages and Sovereign Nations
Q: My name is Aaron Yule. I have a quick question on sovereignty. How do you actually know what sovereignty is? When does a country become sovereign?
LaRouche: That's a fairly important question! The first principle, the Preamble of our Constitution. The idea of sovereignty involves a mission, first of all. That is, to establish a sovereign state, means that you have to have the mission of creating a state which is sovereign. And therefore, the condition of sovereignty is not a circumstance; it is an intention. That is, a group of people intend to have a sovereign state.
Now, what goes into that, then, is the effect of realizing that intention, or attempting to do so. And this is something I've spent a good deal of time writing about and dealing with, otherwise. See, people will say, "Why not have world government? Why not eliminate the nation-state? Why not have globalization everywhere?" Or "globularization," probably a better term, hmm? Because the communication of ideas, which uses language in part, can not be accomplished by carrying a dictionary around with you. That what is involved in a culture is not a dictionary of words; or inventing a synthetic language is the worst idea of all: Esperanto was a crazy idea.
What is involved with a language is history. That in all important communications, you use words in a way you could never find in a dictionary. It's called irony! You take words which usually have one association, as its common association, but you put them together in a certain way, and you create an idea which is nowhere in the dictionary. Now, these ideas are shaped by two things: by history, the transmission of historical experience, from one generation to the next; and also by innovation, discoveries of new principles.
For example, one of the problems we have in the United States today: We have almost no culture, because we have no music and no poetry. What is called "music" today, popular music, is not music. What is called "poetry" is not poetry, because it does not have the qualities of Classical poetry which enable you to define meaningful new concepts—just like the discovery of a scientific principle—by juxtaposing words in a new way, so that other people know, recognize the idea you're trying to express.
In the history of languages, what used to be called Classical poetry: as an example—one I refer to often, because I had some experience with some scholars on this—was Tilak's observation that the Vedic poetry, which was transmitted into Sanskrit and beyond, from Central Asia, contained precise astronomical information, in the poems, which enabled the scholars to ascertain exactly at what time these poems had been written, by the astronomical content of the poems. And these were transmitted largely by oral transmission, not by written form. Orally. They were transmitted in the form of musicality, which is specific to the Vedic-Sanskrit tradition, such that, even—as this Professor Dandekar indicated to me in Poona—even to the present day, you have chanters who chant hymns, Hindu hymns, which come from the Vedic, and are in the Sanskrit; but the singers of these chants, which are part of the religious service, don't know the language! They never learned the language. But, nonetheless, these poems were transmitted by oral tradition, or largely oral tradition, over thousands of years. And the information in them, pertaining to astronomical data, remains valid to the present day.
Now, only Classical poetry can do that. And in English Classical poetry, the great examples of it show the same principle. The use of the bel canto method, which is the Italian bel canto, Florentine bel canto, reveals in the application to music, to Classical music, in song-form, exactly how this works. So therefore, the way that a language functions, and a culture functions, and language is of course essential to culture; it's not in the dictionary meaning of words. But it's rather in the process of transmission of old and new ideas, for which no dictionary word exists, which is nonetheless clear to the hearer, or is accessible clearly to the hearer. And this coincides with the experience of the people, family experiences, over successive generations. All these things that go together.
So once a people has the intention of forming a nation-state—one of the best examples of this is our nation-state. We are a melting-pot nation. We are the most typically melting-pot nation on this planet, contrary to some racists and bigots. We have no race; there is no race, there's only the human race. Except for some bigots who have some stupid other idea. We're all the same. We have formed a nation around an intention. We have used the English language, which is not the way it's used in England—it's partly the way it's used in Ireland—we've used the English language as a medium for a melting-pot culture of our nation. We have traces of other languages in the use of the English language. We have our own unique uses of the English language. But we have formed an American culture, which is different from any other culture in any other part of the world, around the intention to have a sovereign republic. And therefore, the protection and maintenance of that intention is the concept of sovereignty, along with the constitutional principle around which we built the nation.
The Monroe Doctrine and the LaRouche Doctrine
Q: From the LaRouche Youth Movement in Argentina, a group in the state of Neuquén, in the Patagonia, at the National University of Comahué. "The Neuquen province is very rich in energy resources, hydroelectric plants, oil, gas, uranium, water for nuclear plants, as well as for drinking. We had for decades a lot of state companies that supported life and the progress of the nation. Then the companies were sold to private hands [questioner lists them]. This province and the neighboring provinces are pushing for something called regionalization to get more power and freedom to deal with foreign companies. Some people are taking about total independence from the nation, like a new country.
"Do we have a future of the development of our living conditions, with the energy and natural resources in foreign, private hands?"
LaRouche: Yes, this is something that I know something about. There has been for some time, coming out of the fascist tradition in Spain—the Franco fascist tradition, and before that the Carlist tradition in Spain—people who have never given up restoring some kind of monarchy. The argument is that the nations which were formerly the colonies of Brazil and Spain, that is, the colonies of the Iberian Peninsula, have never lost their status of being properties of Spain. Therefore, a movement was built around the fascist nucleus and around certain European bankers, to take over—by various methods, including fascist movements—the territory of the former Spanish and Portuguese colonies from the Rio Grande in the United States, all the way down to Antarctica. That was the intention.
The key economic manifestation of this policy today, in those countries, is the takeover of the energy and related resources of the continent, more and more by Spanish financial front interests. And what is happening is exactly that. Now, the people behind this in Spain and elsewhere, happen to be Synarchists; i.e., fascists. These Synarchists have, in effect, declared war against the United States and civilization, pretty much as if Hitler had come back with a Spanish moustache.
Therefore, since what is going on financially is international predatory interests which are acting contrary to moral natural law, and since these institutions are essentially bankrupt, we have to act with the initiative of the United States, to restore Argentina, in particular, to the condition of being a sovereign nation.
That means that we will examine the books of these countries of South and Central America, we'll go back in particular to 1971-72 when the floating-exchange-rate system was put into effect. We're going to look at the books, look at what the IMF and World Bank did under the floating-exchange-rate system, which I happen to know to be a swindle. Therefore, were going to say that every debt which was not paid in, but which was imposed or derived from impositions made artificially by the IMF and World Bank—those will be cancelled. Now, that will effectively bankrupt a lot of the people who've taken over these properties of Central and South America. And if I'm President of the United States, these countries are going to be very happy—at least the good people in them—because we are going to encourage their sovereignty. This has been our policy ever since the Monroe Doctrine in 1823.
What do we do? Do what we do. Become part of our system, become part of our re-creation of a Bretton Woods-type system. Under this, create credit, take over your own natural resources, create your own companies which are yours, not those of lying, thieving predators who don't deserve anything, who stole it. Rebuild it.
Now, the area of Patagonia, and I know, because we did some studies on this some years ago, is potentially one of the richest areas of this planet for habitation, for development. Tremendous untapped potential. You could have a lot of people there, rather happy people, in a short period of time, in agriculture, industry, mining. It has great resources. So why should we let it go to waste? Be assured, if I become President of the United States, this is going to be fixed.
Q: From the Detroit LaRouche Youth Movement. "How does one know another's intention? Because this seems to be something that is relevant to relations between countries and people getting to know and trust another's judgment and ideas, and one's own."
LaRouche: Well, some things are easier than others, and the trick in diplomacy and law, in nation-building, is to start from what you can agree upon, and hope that that is sufficient to get you through the immediate challenge ahead; and then to go on; and on the basis of success in dealing with that point of agreement, to look for ways of broadening your areas of agreement.
It's the same thing as life in general, like science, everything. We don't know everything. At no time do we know everything. We are constantly discovering new principles of the universe. We didn't know everything. What we should do is always proceed from what we do know, particularly if what we can settle is a matter of principle, proceed from that, be satisfied that we don't know the answer to everything, and don't fight about what we don't know the answer to, but rather discover what the answer is.
There's plenty of agreement among nations. There's enough room for agreement which is clear, that we should have no trouble in getting along together, and cooperating. For example, if you want to raise some kind of religious question: Well, we have this religious difference—are we going to fight about it? No. Why? We won't allow that. Can't do that. We're not going to fight. You want to believe that? It's your business. We're not going to fight about it. We'll have our own.
But there are some things we do know. There are some things that government can know and does know, and government should limit itself to those things which it can know, which it can agree upon. And you have to be content with that. You have to discuss the rest, you have to explore the rest, as you do with science.
But operate on what we should know, what we should be able to agree upon already, and find in our cooperation on that, a basis for continuing cooperation, and hope it expands.
You know how you do that? Again, children and youth. The great integrators of nations are children. Children from all parts of the world, brought together, will tend to play together. It used to be the case with immigrant families in the United States. We used to have a lot of immigrants. We were very happy about that, very proud of that at one time. How would the immigrant families come together, from different parts of Europe? They came together because the children played together!
The other thing is, how does a society develop? It develops on an adult level, largely through the initiative of the 18-25 generation. The children and adolescents play together. The 18-25 are the leading edge, the university-age group. What we have to do is recognize, we have to develop the economies of the world, so that we can provide what I consider a competent education on the university level for every person, because people of the 18-25 age level need the opportunity to develop those powers. And to the extent that we do that, and continue to utilize the fact that young people—children and other young people—will bring people of different backgrounds together as a people.
Go one step further: Why do we neglect those in the ages 18-25? Why don't we have a decent form of higher education, guaranteed for all persons, so we do a better job of integrating nations; and cooperation on the basis of the most advanced level of scientific and related culture, instead of limiting it to a few people and giving half-baked education as college education, in order to keep people quiet?
Democratic Party and the `Smallness' Problem
Q: Brian McAndrews from the Philadelphia Youth Movement: I have a question about the DNC [Democratic National Committee]. I just participated in the Pennsylvania primary, where we had some not-so-insignificant members of the Democratic Party there, who endorsed you for President, and who had organized and mobilized a significant portion of the Democratic Party of Philadelphia to vote for you. And we found out the day of the election, and afterwards, that there was a significant amount of sandbagging and counterorganizing, obviously coming from high levels of the Democratic Party, to keep you from getting delegates.
Now, back to the DNC specifically. It was created in 1848 to manage party affairs between elections and so forth, and I also know that they opposed Roosevelt and his candidacy, and were counterorganizing against him. So what productive role has this ever played in the Democratic Party? It's not the Democratic Party. The members of the Democratic Party are the party, so why does it continue to exist and operate seemingly as a completely nasty thing within the party, and why do people go along with it?
LaRouche: First of all, you have to destroy the myth of the Jefferson-Jackson tradition; the idea of the Jefferson-Jackson Democratic Party doesn't exist, it never did. You had the Democratic Republican Party of Thomas Jefferson and Madison, which managed two Presidencies of two terms each, and then fell in disgrace. And a new party began to emerge, which became the Whig Party, as its replacement.
Now then, in the 1820s, you had a New York banker, a treasonous thug, Martin Van Buren—later a President—who put in a hired thug, Andrew Jackson, as President. Now, the purpose of doing this on the part of Van Buren was to destroy the Bank of the United States, which Jackson did. What he put in was a system of land banks, which was a vast John Law-type swindle. This went down in 1837, and bankrupted and ruined the economy of the United States. This guy was a British agent, Van Buren.
What they were doing is that they were operating at that time to divide the United States into two groups, using the slavery and free-trade issues as crucial. And from that time up until Roosevelt's time, the Democratic Party was a party of filth, which managed to pick up a certain amount of votes, particularly from so-called immigrant groups, but it was nonetheless operated with the same intention. It was always controlled by British bankers, or British-controlled bankers, from New York City. Then you had a problem, because the Republican Party, which had been created actually in opposition to this aspect of the Democratic Party, under New York bankers became just as dirty as the Democrats.
And this went on until Franklin Roosevelt, and Franklin Roosevelt was out to destroy this machine; He knew what it was. Franklin Roosevelt was a follower of—guess whom? Of Isaac Roosevelt, who was an ally of Alexander Hamilton, for national banking. So Roosevelt changed the Democratic Party, at a time when both the Democratic Party and Republican Party had become pretty much of a stinking mess.
What built the Democratic Party today, the positive aspect, was Franklin Roosevelt. Franklin Roosevelt saved the United States and the world. He saved the United States from a Depression, and his role saved the world from world conquest by the forces behind Hitler, without which we would be living under—or not living under—something like Hitler today. That's the issue.
The problem is that we have not had political movements which have had the strength and continuity needed to build a healthy party system inside the United States, one that lives up to the level of the standard of our Constitution. We don't have it. The way it's done is that they play upon the small-mindedness of our people. They always go to populations and say: "I'm concerned about my community! I've got to think about my family interests. Don't involve me in national politics." If you don't control national politics, you don't control anything! If you don't control the politics of the nation as a whole, you don't control anything! And you're not going to solve anything on a local level. But they play on the small-mindedness, just as this famous passage of Cassius from Julius Caesar, where Cassius says to Brutus: The problem is that we're underlings. And the way the American people are corrupted, is that they're told, "Be an underling! Think of your local community, think of your local family interests, think of your special interests, think of your competitors. You want government to help you against this guy you're competing with."
And you play upon that pettiness, that stupidity, that stinking stupidity of our people, and you turn them into acting like pigs, or dogs who eat each other. Therefore, you divide them around these kinds of petty issues, of my local this, my local that. If you have a country that takes care of everybody, what have you got to fight about around local issues? Nothing! So therefore, by getting the population dragged down—for example, today: so-called wedge issues, single issues. Single-issuism is a typification of moral corruption in the extreme. Someone says, "I'm a moral person, and therefore I'm for these single issues." You should say, "You're an immoral person because you're for single issues!" That is the ultimate immorality. You don't care about the rest of the world. You're willing to let the world go to hell, as long as your single issue is supported. You don't have any universal issues. Man is supposed to be universal, a universal creature, not divided by race, but a universal creature. We're the only immortal creature in the universe. We're the only thing which transmits something which is immortal from ourselves to coming generations, which acquires something which is immortal from previous generations, which is part of us. We are part of humanity. We have an intention to be a nation.
These are the things which should concern us. Other things will tend to take care of themselves, if we take care of the things which are universal. And the problem is they make us small; and single issues and wedge issues and things like that are used to divide us. Section was always the problem in the United States. Section in the 19th Century. We were played, played by money issues. You can get a little more money, steal, cheat! Get a little more money for yourself! And that's the problem. And I think these kinds of changes that are needed, come only when populations come so close to extinction that they look up to the sky and say, "What did we do wrong? Let's stop doing whatever it is." And maybe the people of the United States will be frightened enough by what they have brought upon themselves, by the way they've played politics, by the way they've allowed themselves to be manipulated by wedge issues, that they'll say, were going to cut it out. That's the only chance we have.
A Basis of Hope for Africa
Q: From the New Jersey Youth Movement. "Mr. LaRouche, my first question is directed toward the idea of nation-state sovereignty. You go into the history of modern state civilization around the period of the Renaissance. How can other cultures come to understand the universal principle that governs the idea of sovereignty, especially with the governments of Africa, where the idea of neo-colonialism was substituted for the so-called republics?
LaRouche: There's a principle which is probably most exquisitely stated by Percy Shelley in a famous essay of his, "In Defence of Poetry," which I've often referred to. Its played a very important part in my life. It steered me in certain directions at a certain point. And in the course—in drawing a conclusion after going through many aspects, he said that there are certain periods in which there is a heightened sense or power of insight into universal principles; of passion, not incomprehension, of matters of mankind; and he characterized this kind of period as a period of florescence of poetry. That there are periods of what you call renaissances, or things like that, in which a people coming through a bad experience, and having a vision of an alternative to that bad experience, becomes enthusiastic, as the youth movement today has shown that kind of potential of being a part of the Renaissance. Saying the Baby-Boomer generation has failed, society is going to hell, the whole thing is disintegrating, unless we change things. We youth, we're discussing this. Maybe together we can do something to change this.
That is the typical situation in history of a Renaissance. This kind of period results in impassioned developments around ideas, ideas of science, ideas of society. It tends to be a period of proliferation of Classical forms of poetry, things like that. New kinds of expression. And in that period, a people which seems to be hopeless, incapable of solving anything, suddenly becomes effective, in the way that we have in so-called periods of renaissance in history.
The way these problems have to be dealt with—put Africa as a special case—is they have to be dealt with that way. That anyone in my position, who knows what I know, says what we need is a renaissance. And my approach is, how do we build one? And you say, we always start with a youth movement, if there's one available. You build it, you encourage it. That's how a renaissance is started.
Look at the age interval of when people came into the movement that became the formation of the American Republic. How old were they? How old was Lafayette when he became a general of the Army of the United States? How old was Hamilton, when he became a leading figure of the U.S. military in the defense of the United States? These were the age of the 18-25s, with a couple of old goats like Franklin—like me—and some younger people, younger older men, like George Washington. But it was the youth of this age that did it. This was a renaissance in the United States, which shook Europe and shook the world.
You had a similar movement. How old was Lessing when he and Moses Mendelssohn made a revolution in Germany in terms of Classical knowledge and science? The same kind of thing. That's how you do it.
Now, in the case of Africa: In Africa, there is no general solution, because Africa is now being murdered by genocide. The genocide comes largely from the British, the United States, and from Israel. Those are the three parties that are the greatest sources of evil in Africa. What is going on in sub-Saharan Africa is genocide, pure genocide, nothing else. Deliberate genocide, spelled out precisely by Henry Kissinger in 1974, in a memorandum, National Security Study Memorandum 200: "The Africans are sitting on top of natural resources. We want those resources for our future. We can't let the Africans use them up. We must prevent them from increasing their population, because they'll use up natural resources. Above all, we must prevent them from developing technology, because then, per capita, they'll use up too much natural resources, which we want for our future." This policy was put into place also by Zbigniew Brzezinski: Global 2000, Global Futures. This policy was the policy of creating the environmentalist movement, the Greenie movement, the anti-nuclear movement. They were all created for the same purpose. But in the case of Africa, this meant: "Die!" How do you get people to die? You get them to kill each other. And what is going on in Africa today is genocide, and nobody can do anything about it, unless the United States does something about it.
And Clinton didn't have the guts to take on the forces he knew were responsible. And nobody else would really do anything about it, except for a few missionaries, and a few people like that.
So, you didn't have the conditions under which you could create optimism in Africa. Africa is besieged by the pessimism, which was brought upon it by these kinds of conditions, a sense of hopelessness, a sense of going backward, ever-backward.
So we have to create a renaissance among ourselves, sufficient to take over Africa policy and end this genocide. Identify the sources of it, identify the mechanizers, uproot the international institutions which are guilty; and then, and only then, will people in sub-Saharan Africa believe that there is any hope for the future of their people.
So yes, we have one solution for ourselves, for Europe. There are certain things we can do. We have a basis for optimism. But look at the condition of Africa, especially since the 1970s, the middle of the 1970s. Africa has been subjected, by the United States, by Britain, and by Israeli intervention, to genocide. Who created Museveni? Who created the genocide in the Great Lakes area? It was the Israelis, the British, and the United States. Yes, there were French involvements too; but those were the principals. And therefore, unless we are willing to remove that, we have no reason to complain about the condition we lament in Africa.
And also, I don't like this "African-American" thing. I don't like the language. I don't like the very term. You can say Americans of African descent, that's a good term, it's a fair term. But most people called Afro-Americans, have no sense of what Africa is! How can they be Afro-Americans? They're not! They're Americans! Why play into the racists who want a nice category like Afro-American that can be targetted for genocide and other kinds of things? We're all Americans. Maybe of African descent, but they don't know anything, really, about Africa. They ask me to find out what's going on in Africa! I know more than they do. Maybe I'm an African-American!
Sophistry and Spin-Doctors
Q: From the Youth Movement in Mainz, Germany: "Here in Europe, people have great difficult in distinguishing truth from mass opinion. How can you recognize truth? Which qualities else should a world leader have?"
LaRouche: Well, truth is truth. The problem is, that people don't know what truth is, and they haven't decided to tell the truth yet. They've decided to express opinion. And what we have in the United States today—you know what we are? We are sophists!
You know what a sophist is? Athens, in the time that Pericles came to power, was the most advanced political institution in the world. And what did it do? It destroyed itself. At the end of certain wars, it went over, under Pericles, into a form of corruption which is called sophistry. "There is no truth; there is only opinion." And under this sophistry, they declared an attack on the island of Melos, one of Athens' enemies, and committed a kind of genocide against people who refused to submit to Athens' terms. This led to what was called the Peloponnesian War, from which Athens never fully recovered.
Now, the disease that killed Athens was sophistry. The typical example of sophistry was the trial, and judicial murder of Socrates, by the so-called Democratic Party of Athens. It was the Democratic Party again! In response to the situation, Plato did a number of things, but he composed a series of dialogues, the Socratic dialogues, which are actually a form of drama; and they can only be understood if you think of them as Classical drama. You think you read them in school and so forth—no! You have to experience—a Socratic dialogue is formed as a Classical drama. You have to experience them all, not pick pieces out of it. The whole thing is a package, because the package is a treatment of a subject of statecraft, and the subject of truth.
So, in terms of European civilization, we have probably the only efficient standard of truthfulness which exists in the world, and that is the Platonic, Socratic standard of truthfulness.
Now, what we've done in the United States in order to destroy this—because remember, we were a reflection, our Constitution was a reflection of the Platonic tradition. We used to refer to Solon of Athens, who laid down the principles upon which the United States Constitution was, in a sense, modelled. We looked to that period, of the greatness of Ancient Greece, the greatness of Athens in this period, its best traditions—not Peisistratus, the super-democrat. The super-democrats were always trouble. Those who were men of principle, rather than men of opinion, were important. We looked back to that.
So we should just go back to that, and recognize that, when someone says, "You've got to go by popular opinion. You have to do what the polls tell you." Instead of saying, "You, personally, are responsible to tell the truth. It's your personal responsibility." That's a truthful society. Including the truth about yourself. And don't borrow someone else's opinion. Policy in the United States was opinion. This came in the post-war period. "There is no truth, there is only opinion." That is sophistry; what we call today "spin." You don't call them liars, you call them spin-doctors. They advise candidacies, and people say, "Well, I can't speak until I talk to my spin-doctor."
That's Kerry's problem. Kerry doesn't tell the truth. You've got a bunch of spin-doctors, and he looks like a guy who's sitting inside the tumbler of a washing machine. He's spun and spun and spun, and he comes out rather bruised and incoherent. We need truth. We have a standard of truth. We have a standard of scientific truth; we have a standard of poetic truth, of truthfulness in poetry, in Classical drama. We have all of these things. One of my missions in life, among my many missions in life, is to fight always to try to get people a sense of this principle of truthfulness. What do we know and what don't we know? And let's fight about what we do know, and fight for what we should know. Don't worry about all these things, these opinions. We have too much opinion, and not enough knowledge.
