LAROUCHE TO BERLIN SEMINAR
`We're Moving To Take
the U.S. Government Back'
Lyndon LaRouche joined some 60 dignitaries from round the world, in a private EIR seminar in Berlin on Dec. 6, 2005. The seminar was titled "Strategic Options in the Post-Cheney Era: New Atlantic Alliance in the Tradition of Franklin Delano Roosevelt." We publish LaRouche's keynote speech below. The first panel was chaired by Jonathan Tennenbaum. An mp3 audio archive of the speech is available.
Tennenbaum: Those of us that have kept our eyes on the world, have been witness to what I think could only be described as a titanic struggle, political struggle, in the United States of America. A struggle which has gained in intensity, and density of events, particularly in this year, particularly since the Spring, and is reaching a kind of crescendo now, hopefully reaching a kind of a peak with what we hope very greatly will be the removal of Vice President Cheney from power in the United States.
Which, however, is not the end of the story. There're some rumors that Condoleezza Rice arrived in one of these strange planes here, with Cheney perhaps being delivered somewhere to be tortured. But that may be—
LaRouche: She's being tortured!
Tennenbaum: Yeah, right!
So, I think it's fair to say, that the struggle which is going on in the United States right now, in terms of its importance, in terms of its intensity and its implications, I think it really can only be compared with perhaps the Civil War in the United States. It's a conflict where everything is at stake: not only considering the United States, but the entire future of world affairs.
But, I want to make a little comment, before we proceed, on the reactions that I've observed here in Berlin, in my colleagues in different parts of the world—and Europe particularly—I have sensed a certain strange sense of distance, here in Berlin, in Germany, a certain distance between the way people in Europe are thinking about things, and the magnitude of the events in the United States. It's almost as if the two are a little bit decoupled from each other. And I think this is a big problem. Because, if we look, some people tend to say, "Ah, well, the United States is this superpower, and these things are happening in the United States. But then, we have our European problems to deal with," or, "We have our Russian problems to deal with," or, "we have our..." whatever.
And I think if we look at this sense of distance carefully, we will find, that it's really a distance to reality. It's a kind of a distance of many people in Europe to the actual history of Europe, a history, which connects Europe in the most intimate way with the United States, with the history of the United States, and with what's going on right now. Since, in a sense, the United States is the product of a great project which goes all the way back to Solon of Athens, to the Pythagoreans, and in a sense, this project, the success of this project of the American Republic, was the decisive event, which, for a very long time, and I believe today, also determines what is possible to be done, what can be done in other parts of the world.
So, I think what's dangerous about this sense of distance—which I think one of our main purposes here, is to overcome it—is not so much just that people don't know about what's going on in the United States; it's kind of what you might call an état d'esprit: It's a state of mind, where you find people in Europe continuing to follow certain agendas, that are no longer relevant. People trying to live out a certain way of doing things, as if they were living in a universe which doesn't exist any more.
Because, if we look at the situation in Europe—and that was underlined by, for example, the discussions on the European budget—we see that Europe is boxed in. It seems that the Europeans can only really agree on one thing, and that is, to continue with this suicide pact, or process of collective suicide, which the Maastricht agreement represents. But on everything else, they don't agree. Which is not a very good set of affairs. But, it's true also, for Germany in particular. It's true for Russia, as we can hear more about this. Basically, all over the world, we find nations and governments that are boxed in, that are not able to move, not able to respond in an effective way to the increasing problems, the increasing constraints.
So, from this standpoint, what's happening in the United States, the political revolution, which is in progress in the United States, is our big chance—and I say "our," meaning for the entire world. And I think we'll see, it is essentially the only chance. And it can make everything possible.
So, we have, right here in Berlin, right here at this table, the individual on this planet who knows the most about what is actually going on in the United States, and he knows it for reasons having to do with the fact that he is, to a large extent, the person who's making it happen. So, I say that not as an advertisement, just as scientific fact. So, I think we have a unique chance to get a window into what's going on in the United States, and what it means for the world.
Now, we have participants from basically all over the world here. It would take too long to introduce them all, and I would ask, in the discussion, I think most of the time here today and tomorrow morning, we will use for discussing, I ask people just to introduce themselves briefly when they make their remarks and their questions.
But I do want to first, of course, greet Lyndon LaRouche and his wife, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, here at the table. I would like to greet Amelia Robinson, who just came here—perhaps one of the elderly people here, but one of the youngest in mind. And perhaps, I will also want to greet Professor Menshikov, sitting here, from Russia, who, in a sense, here, I think will play the role of a certain kind of ambassador from Russia—a very capable and experienced one, but one who's very undiplomatic! Lastly, I would like to greet, and call your attention to the fact that we have here, from Germany and from France, representatives of the LaRouche Youth Movement, perhaps you'd just stand up and identify yourselves? A new political phenomenon, of extraordinary interest, has just received from Mr. LaRouche a training program, which perhaps we'll have a chance to discuss in the course of today.
So, without more ado, I give the word over to Lyndon LaRouche.
Panel 1: Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.
There are several things, points I'll present, as compactly as feasible. First of all, as to what's happened in the United States, and it happened during the course of the past week: There's an event in U.S. politics, which is comparable to the Tennis Court Oath in France.[1] This is Lafayette, and in a sense it's in the tradition of Lafayette, even though Lafayette did not have at that time the nerve to follow through, or the King to follow through with.
Then, I shall indicate exactly how this came about, what my approach is to it, and what the problem is, that Europe is going to face in trying to understand this. Why the United States, uniquely, must carry through on this equivalent, or parallel to a Tennis Court Oath—not what happened in July of 1789, but what should have happened in June. And what is involved in getting to this point, that Europe will have to understand exactly what we're doing and what the importance is for the world as a whole, of what's happening in the United States right now. Not merely as a factor in the world: Because, if the United States does not carry out the mission which is implicit in the agreements that were made, and publicized, during the past week inside the United States, then I'm afraid the world has no chance. Because, there's no part of the world that could take on the specific problem, which must be taken on to deal with the present world crisis. And what the problems are.
Now, what happened is this: Going back to last Summer, of 2004, up to that point over the course of the period since about the time of the Nixon Administration, the Democratic Party of the United States had been disintegrating. It had been disintegrating in the sense of departing from the Franklin Roosevelt tradition, which is the essence of European civilization, since—actually, since Egypt gave the ideas which were used by certain Greeks, such as the Pythagoreans and so forth, to establish the beginnings of European civilization, out of a bunch of mariners and so forth, running around loose in the Mediterranean at the time.
Two Different Conceptions of Mankind
So, the development of this, was the idea of the General Welfare. It was based on a very specific conception, which we would call today, "science." That is, we are not animals (though some people behave like animals, specifically some politicians), but we are human. And, being human, we have a creative power that no animal has. The human being is born as uniquely distinct from any beast. No animal could change its species-behavior, by discovering a universal physical principle. Only a human being can do that. Everyone has that potential. Some develop it, and some do not. And some go the other way. But, we have that potential.
Now, the significance of European civilization, exemplified by the Pythagoreans, by Thales and others of that type, and by Plato, is that this was developed into a concept, under conditions of a great war, called the Peloponnesian War, which was the product of a moral degeneration of Athens, under the influence of something which resembles the philosophy of Europe and the United States, today, called sophistry. No longer was truth a standard of behavior, but social opinion, and prevalent social opinion, were the standard of behavior. "Behave as your neighbors, or else." Whatever it means. And therefore, under the influence of public opinion, the greatest civilization of that time, Athens, destroyed itself, and much more besides, in the Peloponnesian War.
And this is what has happened to European civilization, also. It has happened repeatedly to European civilization. We had pestilences like the Roman Empire, which was evil. We had the Byzantine Empire, which was a continuation of that evil, with a little more sophistry than the Romans supplied. Then, you had another form of empire, from about 1000 A.D.: the empire of the Venetian financial oligarchy. Which, as Byzantium began to decay, Venice became an empire in the form of its alliance with the Norman chivalry. And the Norman chivalry dominated Europe from 1000 A.D., until the great crash, the great Dark Age, in the middle of the 14th Century.
And in the 15th Century, we had the emergence of civilization again, after a long pause—a long pause, since about 200 B.C.—in the form of a great Renaissance, centered on Florence, in that 15th Century. And everything that is modern civilization, everything that is European civilization, comes out of that.
But we didn't beat them yet. Decadence continued. We had, with 1492, with the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain by the Grand Inquisitor, the beginning of a period of religious war, from 1492 to 1648, which almost destroyed Europe. Except for the intervention in France of Mazarin, and his associate, Colbert, civilization would have gone.
But they didn't stop then: You had this fool, Louis XIV, involved with the Fronde, the old, traditional enemy of France from within. They started on new adventures with the Dutch wars, and the Dutch who had been persecuted, now had become evil. They had become Venetians, Venetian bankers. And they gradually took over England, and you had the Anglo-Dutch Liberal philosophy, which has destroyed Europe from within!
Again, there's been a constant struggle throughout this whole period, a struggle between two forces within European civilization, which is globally extended. One: to maintain the Classical Greek tradition, associated with Athens at its greatest, Solon of Athens. The great tradition of the Pythagoreans in science. And on the other hand, what is called the "oligarchical" or "imperial" principle. The principle of Babylon, the evil of Babylon, in the form of the Persian Empire, was the enemy of that time.
The Methods of Empire
Empire came back, in the form of a Babylonian empire, created by the Cult of Delphi, the Apollo cult, called the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire, as it decayed, was succeeded by the Byzantine Empire, another form of degeneracy, which tried to destroy Charlemagne's efforts to build civilization. And that was destroyed, with its great evil, of this Venetian-Roman alliance in the period of the Crusades—which was pure evil, and was the model for the unleashing of religious warfare as a way of destroying civilization between 1492 and 1648.
Just as today, we see people proposing religious warfare, war between Islam and Europe, which is nothing but a repetition of the same thing, the same methods of empire. We see we are faced with a threat, not just a threat from a nation, but a threat from an entity, which is the same old enemy, we have faced ever since the days of Babylon, the same evil. The power we face today, is not that of a nation. As long as we think a nation is the problem, we will never understand the problem, or solve it. The problem is a principle of evil, which dominates European civilization today, and pretty much world civilization, since 1971-72, with the change in the world monetary system from the Bretton Woods system.
We are now ruled by a Venetian style, called "Anglo-Dutch Liberalism," of international financier-oligarchy, which is sucking the blood of the world.
For example, you see the things called hedge funds; and hedge funds are nothing but predators. They're scoundrels, who in some societies would be hung—just for what they are. They take funds, and they go in under the rule of free enterprise, called "shareholder value," they take one corporation after another, in one country after another. They move in, and they buy, on an instant basis, buy into the stockholding of that company. Now becoming stockholders, at recent entry into that category, they now demand the company increase its profits. And not just to increase its profits, but increase its out-payments. It says, the company must cut this out, shut that down, shut this down, in order to convert essential productive capacity into cash. They then say, that the corporation must disburse these monies, as dividends to stockholders. And the result is, the corporation is ruined; it's left an empty, useless shell; and the hedge fund goes on and takes the money it has stolen in this way, and loots another company.
What we have in the present international monetary system, under the influence of financial derivatives, is exactly that kind of mentality. We have usury in the most extreme form. It's running the world. It's called the international monetary system. You have Europe being destroyed by the Maastricht agreements—literally destroyed, in this method! Europe will not survive, unless the Maastricht agreements are broken! It can't survive! The "euro" has become the "teuro."[2] It has half the value of the D-mark, at the time the D-mark was adopted. The Maastricht agreements were set up so that Germany was to be looted, to support the other countries of Europe—France and Britain, and so forth. Now, Germany can no longer afford to support the other countries of Europe. It no longer has the means to do so! Which means that all Europe is doomed! If the Maastricht agreements, which Thatcher pushed in, are maintained.
This is an extension of the same thing, this wild usury, which took over. And the target of this usury has been—in most of my lifetime and before—has been the United States, the fight in the United States—which was a European creation. It was a European creation which was designed in the 15th Century, actually, and set into motion by Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, who was the leader of the 15th-Century Renaissance. And Cusa, after the fall of Byzantium, proposed that Europe undertake voyages of exploration across the oceans, and find the people on the other side, and enter into development, or development programs, with these people on the other side. It was as a direct result of Cusa, who had then died, his plan for this exploration, that the first discovery of the Americas, occurred. Or, rediscovery. And it was based on documents produced by Cusa, and developed by his associates, which fell into the hands of Christopher Columbus in 1480; which resulted 12 years later, in the first rediscovery of the American continent, with which Europe had had an association in a long-previous time.
So, from that time on, when Europe was engaged in these crises internally, it was European civilization that looked across the ocean, and looked more and more to the English-speaking colonization in North America, as a place to build up a nation-state whose success would then be a lever for bringing the benefits of that reform back into Europe itself. And since that time, that's been the struggle.
The United States was created as a nation, out of the aftermath of the so-called "Seven Years War" in Europe. At which time, the British, in their effort to develop an empire, orchestrated the Seven Years War in Europe, in which all of the leading nations of continental Europe fought each other, and destroyed each other. And then, at a Paris peace treaty in February of 1763, the British East India Company became an empire.
And all the history of Europe has been that, all the wars! Napoleon was a stooge, for the British, controlled by a Freemasonic cult, headed by Joseph de Maistre, who designed the personality of Napoleon, based on the personality of the Grand Inquisitor of 1492. The Napoleonic disease has infected France. It's infected Europe. It became the model for fascism in the last century, on the same kind of thing. Always the same issue: to destroy the attempt of Europe, and the attempt of the forces of the United States engaged with Europe, to create a new situation among nations, sovereign nations, in which the goals of European civilization at its inception were finally realized.
We had the wars—not only the Napoleonic Wars, which destroyed Europe. The Napoleonic Wars to the greater glory of the British Empire, and the greater power of the British Empire! The British Empire manipulated the politics of Europe. The case of Germany, for example: Bismarck was a fine politician, sponsored by a friend of the member of the family of Heinrich Heine, James Rothschild. And as an experienced diplomat, [Bismarck] became the Chancellor of Prussia.
At this point, in this period, the United States won the Civil War and defeated the British by defeating the Confederacy, which was a British puppet. And getting Maximilian, a British puppet, kicked out of Mexico. At that point, then, the American System began to spread influence: In 1877-78, the American System—that is, the American System of political economy—was adopted, in '78, by Bismarck. After the fall of Napoleon III, influences in France began to pick up elements of it. Alexander III of Russia adopted the policy. Japan was transformed into a modern nation-state, under the direct influence of the American economist Henry C. Carey, the same one who was instrumental in causing Bismarck to adopt the great reforms on which the German industrial power was based since that time.
The Wars of the 20th Century
So the British moved again—not because they're British; because they're the empire. The empire moved again, to destroy Europe. And the result, when Bismarck was discharged by the nephew of the Prince of Wales, of England; and a fool, Nicholas II, was brought in in Russia; and the arrangement between Bismarck and his monarch, and Alexander III was broken—and the British were able to orchestrate what became World War I.
And the British again organized what became World War II. It didn't work out the way they planned it: Because some German generals and Stalin had a different idea. And so, the attack was to the west, not to the east, first.
But the United States saved the world, by its margin of intervention in this.
The minute Roosevelt died, the system he'd set up began to be destroyed by Truman, who was an agent of what Winston Churchill represented. We went through a totally unnecessary period of threat of nuclear war, from 1945 up until recently—and still today—because of what Truman did, in capitulating, together with his friends, to Winston Churchill, on using the nuclear weapons that Truman didn't know about beforehand, but Churchill did! First, they intended to drop the nuclear weapons on Berlin. But, Germany surrendered before the weapons were ready. So, they had to drop them someplace, so they dropped them on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They did that by postponing the peace agreement, which had been negotiated through the Vatican, long enough to drop the weapons on Japan. And after that, they gave the Emperor of Japan exactly the same terms he had negotiated for peace through the Vatican's Office of Extraordinary Affairs. In order to get this world into Hell!
Stalin never intended to overrun Europe! Stalin was counting on the agreement he struck at Yalta, with Franklin Roosevelt. And they were out to destroy that! Because Roosevelt understood history, and understood how the world works. And at that point, the challenge was what? The challenge was, eliminate colonialism. The challenge was, to free nations and help them develop, as free and independent nations around the planet: to once and for all, eliminate this factor of imperialism from this planet, which we've been suffering ever since ancient Babylon.
It was destroyed! We went through a Hell-like war, and it could have been a nuclear war, at several points, because of this.
Then, what did they do? They brainwashed a whole section of young people in my country, a generation that was born between 1945 and 1950. There was an organization of evil, called the Congress for Cultural Freedom. We should call it, the Congress for Cultural Destruction. And they targetted especially, the upper 20% income-bracket, of people who were born between 1945 and 1950. They destroyed a whole generation, especially those who were going to fit into the white-collar class, in suburbia.
So, after events like the Missile Crisis of 1962, the killing of Kennedy, the British ouster of Adenauer, prematurely, in Germany; assassination attacks on Charles de Gaulle, repeatedly. And then, the assassination of Kennedy. Then unleashing another foolish war, the war in Indo-China—a piece of folly beyond belief! A calculated folly, even before it started: to break the United States, and corrupt it.
And the young people, in 1968 revolted—and they were revolting, to all civilized people. As a result of that, the base of the Roosevelt tradition, in the Democratic and Republican Party, was broken. And a right-wing turn occurred, because these people had behaved disgustingly—the wild-eyes 68ers. And therefore, Nixon was elected President.
As a result of that, there was an attempted fascist coup in the United States, which was stopped. Just as Sept. 11th was intended to be a fascist coup in the United States, and became a lot of trouble. And just as the United States has virtually destroyed itself, in going into this war in Iraq. You say, "What's the purpose of this?" Idiots say, "The purpose is to win wars." The purpose was not to win a war in Iraq; the purpose was, to destroy the United States—and they came close to doing it.
A Turning Point in the United States
Now, those are circumstances, in which this equivalent of the Tennis Court Oath came into being.
I've been fighting against this, ever since I returned from military service in 1946, where I'd been in India, and before that in what was then called Burma, now called Myanmar. I came back, and I saw what had happened, as opposed to what I thought was going to happen under Roosevelt: We were headed toward Hell. When I got back to the United States, I found people who I thought had been courageous in fighting war: They were cowards when faced with their wives, under the right-wing terror, which was unleashed under Truman—not McCarthy, Truman! Truman was the terrorist! Truman was evil!
I've been fighting this, all my life, since that time. And now, I think we may be close to victory. We may be able to get my country back. And it's the people in my country, who have a sense of wanting to get our country back, from the evil we've been subjected to and the corruption we've endured in this period, that made possible what's happened over the past week.
Here's what happened.
In the Democratic Convention in Boston, in July of last year, there was a kind of reconciliation between me and people in the Democratic Party. Now, that doesn't mean everybody in the Democratic Party had been opposed to me before then, but the majority of the Democratic Party, which was controlled by Wall Street money, was opposed to me. People like well-known Wall Street financial figures, hate my guts and always have. Most of the troubles I've had, come from that crowd. And some of the British crowd.
But, at this point, the crisis was apparent, the mess of the economy was apparent, the danger of a second Bush Administration was apparent. So, at that point, there was a reconciliation, in a sense, between me and a core of leadership in the Democratic Party. This was realized at the end of August, in which they realized I had to be brought in, to help them run the campaign. So, I was involved in the Kerry campaign, at that point. Now, it was too late. Kerry didn't have enough killer instinct—he could have won it, but it would have required a killer instinct to win. You have to play rough to win some political contests. You have to tell the truth—don't moderate! Tell the truth! You're trying to win people, you've got to tell people the truth! Don't try to think what you can maneuver with—tell them the truth! They'll take it.
So, we came close to it.
Then, Nov. 2: Well, by aid of a fraud and various other things in Ohio, Bush was nominally re-elected. And while there was actual vote suppression—actually fraud, vote fraud, as well as vote suppression and other things—it was a tough thing to go in there, and say you're going to win, and overturn a fraudulent election in court. You can't do it, under some such circumstances. That is not the way you fight. Legalistic efforts by individuals often lose. You have to move real forces. You have to mobilize forces of society, and move them, if you want to—you have to virtually plan a revolution: That's how you win an election, honestly. All honest elections that are won, are won with revolutions. Or by stupidity, one of the two.
So anyway, that didn't work. Then, on Nov. 2, the Democratic Party was totally demoralized, from Kerry on down on Nov. 3. So, we had a webcast conference, which I called, which we had on Nov. 9. And I scolded the Democratic Party, and told them, I said, "Now, if you're intelligent, we could turn George Bush into a lame duck before he's inaugurated."
And we did!
George Bush has been a lame-duck President of the United States since the day he was inaugurated for a second term. What you're dealing with, is not Bush. You're dealing with other forces that control the situation.
So, I laid out, I said: Look, Bush is going to come out and try to steal the Social Security of the nation, to loot it, let Wall Street loot the Social Security system. We're going to fight on that. And they agreed. So, we went in to turn George Bush into a lame duck, before he swore in his second term in office.
And he was a lame duck! You had two Senators, including Barbara Boxer, who moved in there, to certify that.
So, we started out as defeated. By May 23 of this year, not only did we have a strong majority of Democrats, an overwhelming majority of Democrats in the Senate, allied with the policy we were pursuing. But we also, as of May 23, had won over enough Republican Senators, that that bipartisan combination was the dominant force in the U.S. Senate, and has remained so—increasingly so—from that time to the present time. You will notice that more recently, over various issues, you had a vote of 98 to 2 in the Senate, against the torture which is going on, by the United States, among prisoners at Guantanamo, etc., today. It was an open fight, in which the Vice President of the United States and his cohorts had said, admitted, they are conducting torture! And they have defended the use of torture as a legitimate means. Condoleezza Rice defended it here, in Germany, yesterday! She lied! She said, "The United States has never admitted to torture." Yes they did: Dick Cheney, who is the acting President of the United States, claimed, fought for—.
You have the bill for the financing of the U.S. defense forces, is jammed up in the House of Representatives, because Senator McCain wrote a resolution from the Senate side, which is in the House bill on voting up the financing of the national defense establishment: And that McCain Amendment says no money can be used for torture. And the reason that bill is not voted up, is because the Bush Administration—or the Cheney Administration—wants that bill to go through without the McCain Amendment. Now, on the issue of that, including the Iraq issue in general, 403 members of the House of Representatives, Republicans and Democrats, repudiated, entirely, the Iraq War policy. Now, those are the conditions [under] which this happened.
Defend the U.S. Machine-Tool Sector
In the meantime, I've been conducting a struggle within the Democratic Party and elsewhere, to get people in the United States to recognize that General Motors, intentionally, was going to try to collapse itself into bankruptcy, and turn itself into a financial corporation, like U.S. Steel had done some years back. That is, go out of the manufacturing business, and become a financial corporation, pretty much the way General Electric has become that, and the way U.S. Steel became that.
So, we proposed measures: Essentially, we said, we're producing too many automobiles anyway; but the essential issue here, is the integrity of the nation as a productive nation. And in the United States, productivity is concentrated in one sector, essentially; the same thing is in part of the Mittelstand,[3] here in Germany, and that is, not just in the high-tech sector, but in the machine-tool part of the labor force. The modern machine-tool capability, in the labor force, is the crucial part of any modern economy. If you have not got an effective machine-tool capability, on large-scale and capability, you do not have a modern economy! You're a second-rate, or third-rate economy.
Now, the machine-tool capability of the United States, which was once built up vastly, under Harry Hopkins and others, under Roosevelt, this machine-tool capability has become concentrated in a remnant in the aircraft industry—that is, you have it similarly in Europe. Aircraft and automobiles are generally the concentration of high-skilled productive employment. Without the machine-tool sector, an economy is not going to go anyplace independently. It can not develop the new technologies, and produce all those technologies. They can invent, make discoveries, scientific discoveries in laboratories, all kinds of things; if they do not have a machine-tool sector that is effective, tied to industry, they're not going to progress! They're not going to grow.
Now, in the United States, as I said, this is located chiefly, in a remnant inside the aircraft industry, which is rather small; but the great concentration is in the auto industry. The auto industry is the relic of what Roosevelt did with Hopkins, in building up the great productive power that astonished the world, during World War II. If we lose that, we are no longer a national economy. If Europe loses the Mittelstand in Germany, and corresponding things in France, Europe has nothing! It's dead, economically!
Therefore, to fight, to defend, and maintain this element—the machine-tool capability of production, for high-skilled production—is the essential basis, for maintaining any existing national economy, or for developing one, which I'm trying to develop.
In other words, being able to produce something based on blueprints and skills, that are given to you from other countries, is not independence—it's not power. Every nation must have its own, independent machine-tool capability, by means of which it's able to turn ideas into designs, and into actual production capability. Every nation must have that. That's why we have to defend that.
Well, the bankers were against it, and the bankers don't like me at all. (Well, some bankers do. We have a few sane bankers in the United States, actually.)
But, they wouldn't act. We had a fellow, a Congressman from California, [George] Miller, who got on this thing from the standpoint of pensions. Now the pension system of the United States is in danger—not the Social Security system, but the private pensions. And the large corporations have stolen the pensions of their employees. People went and relied, in their union contracts and so forth, relied on pensions, the private pensions. The private pensions are being wiped out. So, Miller went in on this thing, to try to mobilize, and we began to work with him on mobilizing for dealing with this pension problem. But I kept insisting, the only way you're going to solve the pension problem, is by creating viable entities—and that means we've got to save the auto industry. But not as an auto-manufacturing industry.
With the auto industry, we can produce railroads, railroad systems. Germany has the lead in maglev. But the United States, with a machine-tool sector, we can do the same thing, in cooperation with Germany, right now. If you take the German company, and they get into an agreement with the right forces in the United States, you can have maglev in the United States, rapidly. It's the best way to do it. Because we have the capability, the machine-tool capability, to work with the design on maglev, and do the same thing. It's what China did! The same way. China did exactly the right thing. They took one project, a popular segment from Shanghai to the airport, which is feasible in terms of the developed capabilities of China, with German cooperation. So, China now has the beginning of a maglev capability, as an integral potential in China, by taking a project, applying a technology to it, and then building around that technology to expand this application.
We can build a transportation system. We can build power systems. We can build nuclear plants, like pancakes! We, and other countries in Europe, can collaborate in building nuclear power, like pancakes! And there is no substitute for it! There is absolutely no substitute for nuclear power, in any sane country in the world. You may use other kinds of power, but nuclear power is the only thing you've got that's worth having. And a nation that does not have the right to have nuclear power, does not have sovereignty. It's that simple.
The 'Tennis Court Oath'
So, these were the issues. We discussed over the Spring and into the Summer—and into the Autumn. And then, one day, it happened—last week: The leadership of the Democratic Party in the Senate and the House of Representatives, had spent much of the month of November, in crafting a policy agreement, which is consistent with what I've been clamoring for for some time. This week, this past Friday, this was implemented: That was the Tennis Court Oath.
Now, it's not well-known around the world. The first website presentation of the full text of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's address at Harvard University, which is one of the two signal addresses, of the equivalent of the Tennis Court Oath, will be transcribed and available on websites today, for the first time [see Documentation]. We're doing a careful transcription of it. Then, you have Representative Miller, who, because of his work on the pension question over the months, had gotten deeply involved in this question of rebuilding the economy. In the meantime, during the same period, a number of leading industrialists in the United States, including the head of the Ford Motor Co., the chairman, William Ford, have joined forces.
So, we now have a coalition, which is essentially bipartisan, but led by the Democratic Party, with the Democratic Party national leadership, in the form of the leader of the Democratic Party in the Senate and the leader of the Democratic Party in the House of Representatives—the anti-war party—is now moving; and Republicans are moving in a cooperative relationship—sane Republicans, largely on the issue of the Iraq War and the related implications of that, on the issue of torture.
We're moving, to take the government back. I've insisted we have to get rid of Cheney. If we get rid of Cheney, we'll work out how to handle this idiot in the White House, who's pretty isolated.
This is a dying regime. This is not a powerful regime; this is a dying regime. The President is breaking up. He's not capable intellectually of understanding what he's doing. Cheney is a criminal; he's a murderer. But, he's not a super—he's not even an Adolf Hitler. He's stupid! He's a thug. He's a mafia enforcer. And his qualities are those of a killer, like an organized-crime killer. And you have a President, who's weak, mental illness, who is handled by women, three women—his mother, Barbara; Condoleezza Rice, who's a weakling, intellectual weakling; and Karen Hughes, who used to mother him in Texas. So, these three women hold the hands of this poor idiot, who tends to break down, constantly.
So therefore, we have the situation, in which we can, by forcing the issues, which are now being put on the table, and making these clear, we can change the policies in the United States. We're in the process of doing so. But to do what we have to do, we have to take power, in Executive power. You can not run a revolution through a legislature. A legislature must be run under a Presidential system, because Executive power is like command in warfare. You don't run a war with a committee—unless you want to lose it.
So therefore, you have to have the Executive power, which has to make the day-by-day decisions. We have that in the United States, as some of you know. We do have people, some of whom are out of military service, or out of intelligence service, or out of diplomatic service, who are very good citizens, who are experienced, mature people. They function. They exist. Many of them are my friends. We have the capability to pull together an Executive branch which would remind those who know history, of the kind of thing we had under Roosevelt. We can do it very quickly.
So, that's the task.
Globalization: A Form of Slavery
Now, the problem is this: Europe, like the United States, is the victim of a current wave of sophistry, which has taken over in the post-war period. The so-called "Cold War," helped sophistry, because you didn't tell the truth any more. You said what you wanted to be overheard saying, you didn't tell the truth. You thought of the consequences of being heard saying it. So therefore, you didn't speak the truth, you didn't share the truth with one another. Just like ancient Athens. Europe, like the United States, has become a nation of sophists. It's called "spin"—things like that.
I call it lies.
Therefore, in this circumstance, politics has become, not the politics of what should be done, but the politics of what you think you can sell. Now, the ideas that can be sold, are generally the ideas which got us into this mess, in the first place. Or variants on that.
For example: Globalization. You can not have civilization and globalization. Without the sovereign nation-state, you can not have civilization. This is the history of Europe, since Greece. Without national sovereignty, based on a principle of the General Welfare, that is the General Welfare of all of the people, as the first requirement of government—without that, you can not have an effective economy. You can't have effective government.
Let's take the case of India. Now, some people say that India, like China, is a big success story. Some superstitious fools, say that China and India are a threat to Europe and so forth, because they're going to take over the world market. Bunk! And anyone in Europe with any brains, knows it's bunk, if they're thinking. Globalization will not work for anybody's benefit! Globalization is a form of slavery of entire parts of the world.
Look at the population of India, for example: Seventy percent of the population of India lives in desperate and worsening poverty—physical poverty. Now, why can't India, if it's such a success, provide enough money, enough income, to improve the conditions of life of these poor people? And we've seen things like this, in my visits to India. Helga went to East Delhi, which is a hell-hole of disease! Which is a repository of people who left the farms, to go into these places to die of horrible diseases! And very few people understand what this kind of disease problem is. Disease is not an individual disease: In impoverished areas, all diseases exist in everybody! A new disease comes in, everyone gets it! You have areas of the country, of extreme poor—in any country—that are like that! You have hell-holes of disease. A new disease comes in, they're going to get it! All of them! In very short order.
And that's the condition we're getting.
Now, why is that? Why is a country that's supposed to be such a success, such a threat to Europe's possibility of production—why should they have these conditions? Because they don't get enough money for the price of what they export! And people look at wages, as simply what one person gets in income. Wages are not what one person gets as income from producing. What's at issue here, is the income, the physical income of the entire population. The productivity, the mental life, the skills, of an entire nation, are in all of its population! Not one part! Not some part which has a job, and the other part that doesn't. A nation is an integrated unit, and all of the people of the nation, are the productivity of the nation.
If you take 70% of any nation, and you condemn it to poverty—like has been done with Italy! Italy is a broken nation, because of the Mezzogiorno! As long as you have a Mezzogiorno, with a state of permanent poverty, in the southern part of Italy—you don't have an Italy that functions, politically, or otherwise! And that's the condition of the poor countries of the world. That's what we're fighting against.
So therefore, what happens now, if we insist that India get prices for its products, and China get prices for its products, which correspond to what the cost of those products would be in the United States, or in Europe? That's what you'd have to do. The productivity of India and China is not what we're capable of in the United States, or Europe. They want to get there: But this means you've got to have the kind of cooperation in which the entire population, over the course of a generation or two, is being uplifted. So that you have some degree of parity in productive power, throughout the world. You have to have, therefore, a protectionist system!
Don't go around, trying to manipulate currencies—"this one should go up, this one should go down"—no! That's insanity. You have to go to an international agreement among nations, on a protectionist system like the Bretton Woods system. And you have to calculate this, on the basis of providing the improvement in the standard of living, which is good for all of the population, in all of the nations. Otherwise it's not going to work.
And that's where we are. We can do that now! We can't realize overnight, the improvement we require, in the conditions of life of the people of this continent, this planet. But we can realize it in two generations! We can adopt a policy now, which carries us in this direction.
The NASA Model
The core of the policy which was announced last Friday, at Harvard, is based on the concept of NASA. There were two models we've been discussing in the United States. One, was the Roosevelt 1930s mobilization, which led to our capabilities, in 1940-41. But the problem was, in pushing that, which is valid for today—to understand how an economy should be saved; how the world economy should be built up, go back to the United States under Roosevelt, during the period from Harry Hopkins coming into office, until we got into the war. That's the model. But the problem was, this was done, in many people's minds, it was done under wartime conditions. It was not actually done under wartime conditions; it was done under pre-war conditions. It was done, because the day that Roosevelt walked into his office, to occupy his office for the first time—Hitler had been made a dictator! Not just a Chancellor, but a dictator! Two weeks before. And once Hitler was made a dictator, anybody that knew anything, knew that World War II was inevitable! The question was, how was it going to occur, in what form? When? Where? But it was inevitable. Everybody who had any brains, knew the world was going to a general, global war, the day that Hitler was made a dictator, after the Reichstag's burning—with the special order.
Now, because this Roosevelt recovery was done under wartime conditions, or these kinds of wartime conditions—pre-war, wartime conditions—the point was, if we're raising the question of this kind of mobilization, won't people inside the United States and outside the United States, think this means we're going for war, or for empire? And you know the mood in Europe, and other parts of the world, that's the tendency; as well as in the United States.
So therefore, we said, "Wait—" and we'd been talking about it, but they decided to do it; they said, "Let's take NASA." What Kennedy did with his decision to put a man on the Moon within a decade: That was one of the greatest projects in modern history. It is one of the reasons he was killed, because he was going in a direction opposite to what his opponents wanted to go to—and this was a global issue. They killed him! And people inside the leadership of the United States were involved in that killing of him, and covering it up!
Now, the NASA model: We pulled together every facet of society, for a concept of man's exploration of space. Now, man's exploration of space, is not just a project. Man's exploration of space, is asserting man's identity as a universal being. Man is a creature in the universe. We are in the universe. We are part of creation. We are a creative part of creation. It's in that, that we find our identity. We need nation-states, as sovereign nations, in order to function. Because we need to have national cultures, as the basis for functioning. But we also have a higher identity, a higher identity which we share in common among nations. That higher identity is: the nature of man as a creative being in the universe. And therefore, we lift up our eyes to the heavens, and to say, "What are we going to do out there?" Who's in this neighborhood of the Solar System, who's going to take care of the Solar System? Who's available to take care of the Solar System—which has some threats coming up in periods ahead? We have the responsibility! Not we, necessarily living today. But our grandchildren, our descendants, will have that responsibility. And when we think of taking that responsibility, we rise above the pettiness which leads us into stupidity. We, for the first time, begin to realize, that we are man in creation. A creative being, in creation. And what you need at this time, in the United States, and around the planet, you need a sense of man in creation. You've got to lift people up, from the pettiness. You see gambling, mass gambling; you see all these sicknesses, these diseases, these moral diseases of mankind. How can we lift mankind up, so, instead of being corrupt, mankind begins to see himself as what he is? And thinks about what his descendants are going to be. What mankind of his descendants are going to be.
And you need that kind of inspiration, because the things we're going to do, the goals we have, some can be realized in a short term; some in a longer period of time—two generations. Two generations is a good term to think ahead, 50 years. And that's not such a long time; if you think about those of us who've had some experience of the past 50 years, 50 years is a very short time. A lot of things can happen very quickly, in terms of 50-year terms. So, that's what's happened.
Defeat the Financial Succubus
Now, the Democratic Party is going to move that way. And the enemy is going to move, too. And the enemy is not any nation. It's not Britain, it's not any nation: It's bankers. It's the international financier-oligarchy, which is typified in our memory by the Venetian slime-mold. And that's the enemy. What does the enemy want to do? The enemy has said it to my face, has made threats to me, directly, personal threats—to me, on this issue.
What's the issue? "We, now, have giant financial entities, which are bigger and more powerful than governments. No longer are we going to submit"—speaking for the bankers—"no longer are we going to submit, to the government by government! We are the government! In many cases, governments will cease to exist. In other cases, we will keep governments—as our lackeys!"
And our job is, to overthrow the power of that financial octopus, that financial succubus.
How can we do it? Well, they are bankrupt. Every major banking system in the world, in Europe in particular, and the Americas, is hopelessly bankrupt. There is not a truly solvent bank in the United States, or in Europe: They're all bankrupt, if the right accountant came in to check the premises. In some cases, you don't even need to check the premises. Every bank—JP Morgan, of the Morgan interests, is bankrupt. Every other major bank in the United States involved in hedge funds, is bankrupt. Every leading bank in Europe, is more or less bankrupt. The financial system is bankrupt! We're talking about hundreds of trillions of dollars, of fraudulent money, out there, in the form of financial derivatives obligations. The world could never pay that debt! The financial system is bankrupt!
And if we resist this, and put them into bankruptcy, we have a chance. One chance. The question is, will the United States, the government of the United States, which has a Constitutional system, which set up the Bretton Woods system—can we again, be willing to go to the mat, and impose something like the Bretton Woods system, again, on the planet? And use such a system to generate the credit which is required, by states, for the large-scale projects which this space orientation, and development of humanity requires.
We're at that point. So, this is like the Tennis Court Oath. The Tennis Court resolution was the intention to carry what the United States had accomplished in establishing its republic, into Europe. The point was, that if France would—even with the conditions that had been placed upon it, under British influence in 1782-1789—if France were to free itself from Jacques Necker, and Philippe Égalité, and so forth: Under those conditions, that France would actually be the signal, the leader for spreading the same thing as the American Revolution, in the form of a constitutional monarchy in that case, in France, and in Europe. It didn't happen; it went the other way. The British prevented it.
But, that's what we have to do today. We have to go back to that intention. We have the opportunity, because the crisis is so great. The enemy does not have any of the solutions he's had available, in terms of financial power in past periods. Therefore, what we have before us, is a threat of a general breakdown crisis of the world system, and the possibility of a great victory—or a long Dark Age.
And the United States is the place, we've got to stand up, so the rest of the nations can group themselves for a common effort to make this work. And we depend especially on those forces in Europe, which have a certain understanding, a limited understanding perhaps, but an understanding of what the United States is. And understand who we really are: We're not George Bush, we're not Dick Cheney. We're not Wall Street. We are a long tradition, going all the way back to Solon of Athens. We're that tradition, as expressed in the United States, and the same thing that Europe has been struggling for, in all its best efforts.
So, here it is: The Tennis Court Oath-type situation, but more important than the Tennis Court Oath. The fate of humanity hangs on what we're going to do. Can we do it? I don't know. But there's nothing else worth trying.
Thank you.
[1] The Tennis Court Oath of June 20, 1789, organized by the Marquis de Lafayette and Jean-Sylvain Bailly, pledged the members of the French National Assembly to stay in session until they gave France a Constitution. It was in response to this action, that British and other oligarchical agents went wild, in order to provoke a confrontation between the King and the Assembly, and to launch the bloody revolution, which led, as it was designed, to re-establishment of oligarchical rule in France. See Pierre Beaudry, "Jean-Sylvain Bailly: The French Revolution's Benjamin Franklin," EIR, Jan. 26, 2001.
[2] German teuer = expensive.
[3] The Mittelstand is the small and medium-sized industry that has historically formed the core of Germany's machine-tool and R&D capability.
