Senate Needs Guts To
Defend Nation from Nazi Takeover
by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.
This is a transcript of the international webcast by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. on Jan. 11, 2006 in Washington, D.C., "Rebuild a Looted U.S. Economy." The dialogue with LaRouche appears after the main presentation. The animations on the decline of Baltimore, shown during the webcast, can be viewed at www.larouchepac.com, and audio/video archives of the webcast are also available at that site. The webcast was moderated by Debra Hanania Freeman. See also the question-and-answer dialogue following Mr. LaRouche's opening address.
Freeman: Good afternoon. My name is Debra Freeman. I serve as Lyndon LaRouche's national spokeswoman and his representative here in Washington, D.C. And on behalf of the LaRouche Political Action Committee, I'd like to welcome all of you to today's event.
As you know, in addition to those of you who are gathered here in our nation's capital, this seminar is also being broadcast live over the internet. For those of you who are listening via the Worldwide Web, we welcome you as well. I think you know the normal format of these events....
I think that today's event, without question, will have historic significance. It takes place at a time of incredible turbulence in this nation's capital. We are faced with a situation where we have an Administration, both a President and a Vice President, who seem to be desperately driving forward in what really is nothing less than the equivalent of an internal fascist coup, against Constitutional rule. As a result of Mr. LaRouche's efforts in particular, over a long period of time, the depth of understanding of what is at stake, is, I think, at a higher level than it has ever been. That understanding is enhanced by the recklessness of the Administration's behavior.
It also cannot go unmentioned that part of what undoubtedly drives this recklessness, is a global financial system, and a U.S. physical economy, that is disintegrating at a rapid rate. It's a problem which requires immediate emergency attention. It's a problem which Mr. LaRouche is prepared to solve. But it is also a problem that can only be adequately addressed once this drive toward an internal coup is stopped, and is stopped dead in its tracks.
Our seminar today also takes place, in the midst of a "Week of Action" by Mr. LaRouche's Youth Movement, by elected officials, and by trade union leaders, who are similarly coming into Washington in an effort to lend "critical advice" (if you will) to our elected representatives.
As I said, it's a period of enormous volatility. Things are happening very quickly. But it is also a period where I think we can make tremendous gains, and I don't think there has been any other time, when Lyndon LaRouche's voice has been heard more clearly in this nation's corridors of power. And that is, without question, a good thing.
There are certainly many more things that I can say, and there are probably more things that I will say when we get around to the Q&A. But, I know that all of you are very anxious to hear what Mr. LaRouche has for us today, as I know I am. So, really without any further delay, I'd like to ask you to join me in welcoming Lyndon LaRouche.
LaRouche: Thank you. Thank you, all.
As a great American patriot once said, "These are times that try men's souls." These are grim times. We have presently going on, in the Senate, a hearing of a man who lies: Sam Alito. The man's a liar. He's a member of the Federalist Society, which is a society assembled around the ideas and influence of a man, Carl Schmitt, who crafted the Adolf Hitler administration. Carl Schmitt, who lived in this country for some time, and influenced the formation of a Federalist Society, which now controls four of the nine Justices of the Supreme Court. And a fifth member of the Federalist Society, who, lying his head off up there on Capitol Hill, is about to be confirmed! And you would have five, out of nine Supreme Court Justices prepared to endorse a fascist government in the United States! And you have Senators who should have more guts, who are waffling, or being weak, in dealing with this fact. There is no honest debate about bringing Adolf Hitler and his tradition into the government of the United States!
Most of the American people are becoming extremely angry about this situation. But some people who at other times are leaders, in the moment of crisis, when men's souls are tried, grim events grip them, and for the sake of learning to get along with the enemy, they compromise. And then, they are compromised. And then, our system of government is compromised.
That is grim!
We also have a situation in Israel, which is extremely tricky and dangerous, and it involves Bush, but most specifically Cheney, Vice President Cheney. As you know, Ariel Sharon is very seriously ill, is crippled, and will probably never again participate in a government in Israel. Whether he will live or not, is also in question, given his condition. Or whether he's able to function at all, if he lives, is in question.
The threat is, that a Benjamin Netanyahu, who is one of the ugliest characters on the Israeli scene, of any significance, is in discussion with the circles of Vice President Cheney. And Vice President Cheney would like to have an attack on Syria, by Netanyahu. And if the Israeli forces in this strike attack into Syria, were to occupy some territory, they would haul some evidence from the desert where the Israelis are holding it, which they created for this purpose, to try to "prove" that Saddam Hussein had had weapons of mass destruction, but had moved them into Syria. But this "evidence" would be moved into Syria by the Israelis from the Israeli desert, where it's being housed in preparation for this operation.
That's what's going on.
We could have the entire region of Southwest Asia, blow up. And a lot more soldiers being killed suddenly, because of this complication—[more] U.S. soldiers—than there have been so far.
This is a grim situation, in which virtual treason by the Vice President of the United States, who is a known liar, threatens civilization, and our civilization here in particular.
We also have, as I shall address this here today, with one case, the problem of disease. We have a disease condition, as you shall learn today, in summary, in the City of Baltimore, but also elsewhere in the country, in which present policies of government are totally inadequate. These are grim conditions. The avian flu threat is typical of the reasons for fear, of these conditions.
Nearby, in Northern Virginia, there's a county called Loudoun County. Loudoun County is ground zero for the greatest financial real-estate collapse in modern history. The entire international financial system, the mortgage part of the system, the mortgage-based securities—the mortgage-based part—has been ready to blow for some time. This is true in England. It's true in large parts of the United States. It's true in this particular county: The thing is ripe to blow, at any time. You have, out there, you have shacks which are priced at $400,000 cheapest, $600,000, the Hollywood-set-style shacks, put together not with nails but with tacks; put together with basically slave labor imported from Mexico and other places, to assemble these shacks. It has been a seller's market, and you have actual shacks going up for a million dollars a crack. All kinds of wild speculation in mortgages. And the greatest concentration in the United States of that, is Loudoun County, the place where I reside: It is ground zero for the greatest financial explosion in modern history, with many other parts of the United States, and Europe—Spain, England, and so forth—involved.
And what's going to happen to the people, if there's a mass foreclosure on the mortgages, in a densely populated Loudoun County, now? Where people have virtually no equity, and are threatened with being dumped in the streets, their incomes cut off, and thrown into destitution, when they had been told they were "getting into the good life"?
What is the government going to do? Under this government? Look at what happened with Katrina, in Louisiana and the lower Mississippi. What will this government do?
These are grim times.
Now, in grim times, people tend to become desperate, and frightened, and become incompetent, incapable of responding to the situation in a rational way. This has often happened in history. And there are certain people who have understood how to deal with this kind of problem.
One of them was a fellow called Boccaccio. He comes from Florence, the area of Florence. And the events that he refers to occurred during the period of the Black Death, a period of a great financial crisis, like the one threatening the world today, in which one-third of the population of Europe was wiped out. Half of the cities, these parishes, in Europe, were wiped out. And roving bands of mad people, went from place to place, looting, in great mobs—they were called the Flagellants; they would whip each other, and go out in mobs and loot—that's the way they would live.
So, this happened—the Black Death. And Helga and I sat, one evening, back in the 1980s, on a hillside, across the Arno from Florence, in the same place that Boccaccio and his companions had sat, when he wrote the Decameron. And think of the content of the Decameron: Here they are, people who are outside the plague area, sitting on a hillside, looking across the River Arno, down into the city of Florence, where bodies are being dropped in the street, from this epidemic.
This kind of thing is potentially going to happen here, in a depression. And the case we refer to here, in the case of what's happened in Baltimore, Maryland, is an example of how that can happen: These are grim times. And they require, what Boccaccio did—was to present this situation, with irony. Not with slapstick humor, but with irony. And the fact that people could see the irony of the situation, enabled him, with the aid of Decameron, to pick up the spirits of some of the people of that time. And they mustered the courage to go on to create what became known as the 15th-Century Renaissance, which was the beginning of modern European civilization.
So, sometimes when you face grim times, as now, you must reach deeply into your sense of humor, to lift people up to, in a sense, laugh at the ugliness of fate. And in laughing at such fate, to find the strength in yourself to see clearly what can be done, rather than whimpering, and whining, and screaming, about how awful the situation is.
You have another case, in Franc@acois Rabelais, in the earlier part of the 16th Century: One of the great thinkers of our time is known as a humorist. But he was much more than a humorist: He was a priest, he belonged to several religious orders; he was a physician, by practice; he was a very learned man, one of the most learned men of his time. He ran about, in fear of death, because he was targetted by powerful forces at that time. And he wrote the Gargantua and Pantagruel—which people treat as a piece of ribaldry! But not! It's actually a cartoon, on the character of the times in which he lived. And like Boccaccio with the Decameron, he portrayed accurately, the ridiculousness, the absurdity, the degeneracy of his times, but did it in such a way that he uplifted people, to think, and to use their minds. And he helped lay the basis for later positive developments in France.
You have a third case, the case of Miguel Cervantes, in Spain. Spain, at the time he wrote his famous Don Quixote, was a terrible place—an aristocracy, a King who was insane and totally immoral, Philip II; and the Spanish people had degenerated from the high level of culture they had represented in the middle of the previous century. They had degenerated under the influence of the Inquisition, and under the influence of war, into becoming Sancho Panzas, who could do nothing for themselves, except stuff their guts!—and be ridiculous. You had an insane ruler, and an insane, immorally insane, people! And Cervantes wrote of that, and he wrote of it with humor and insight, and laid the basis of inspiration throughout Europe, that terrible conditions like this, can be dealt with, because you have a sense of humor and a higher sense about it, which is required today.
There's a fourth one I would refer to, similarly: Jonathan Swift. Now, Jonathan Swift is very important for us in the United States today, because he was the political leader of a faction in England, which was trying to save England from the threat represented by William of Orange and his heritage. He was part of that circle associated with the influence of Gottfried Leibniz, and actually the direct, personal influence of Gottfried Leibniz, the greatest scientist of that time. And they were trying to save England, over a question of the monarchical succession. And they lost.
But in this period, he wrote things like Gulliver's Travels, which is a study of the sociology of that time, which was very decadent, and very decadent times. And his humor, and the influence of Swift, was an important part of mobilizing people to build what became the United States, during the course of the century.
We've come to such a time.
An Ironical Family History
Now, take a case—to get a sense of irony, take a look at my family history. My family came into what became the United States, in the second quarter of the 17th Century, between the time of the establishment of the Plymouth Colony in 1620 and the middle of that century. The family started—they were mostly English, and Quakers, and people such as people from the Netherlands; and they settled primarily—my family, that is, did—settled in two counties in Massachusetts: One, Bristol County which is in the south, which was a maritime area, a seagoing, seafaring area; and Essex County, which is in northern Massachusetts, which is, again, a seafaring area.
This family remained there, married there, lived there, but it sent elements into Connecticut, into Dutchess County, New York, and out to the center of Ohio, in the course of time. And then, in the middle of the 19th Century, we had immigrants from Scotland. I had a great grandfather who came here to join the First Rhode Island Cavalry, for the occasion of the Civil War. And his brother was quite a famous Scottish sea captain, and that family moved in. At about the same time, the Irish branch of my family moved into Essex County.
And the family pretty much was intermarried, among the same group of people, over all these centuries, to the present time.
And this is not atypical of the history of the people of the United States. That is, families that came here early on, in the 17th Century and early 18th Century. Because, the roads were poorer then, there was no rail transportation, certainly no air transport, unless you had some joy juice in your head—hmm? And therefore, marriage customs were such, that you would meet a family, and you'd approve someone, a boy or a girl from a certain family, and your family would sort of approve of this relationship, and that would lead to a marriage and the establishment, with the help of the relatives, of a family. And so, families tended to intermarry, not for purposes of incest—except in some cases, hmm? But, because that was the way things were. Those were the conditions of life.
And marriage then was a serious business. Today, it's a very frivolous business; you marry one person today, another person tomorrow, and so forth. And it really is not that serious. And you may have babies, but you're not quite sure who had them.
But, in those times, they took it more seriously. Mortality being what [it was], and the question of social security being a matter of families, families clung together, cooperated together, knew each other, and if they would find somebody beyond the second cousin range, they'd marry someone in that connection. And that's the way it worked.
So, in this period, you had a group from France, who had arrived in Quebec, who had arrived from France in the same period, in the second quarter of the 17th Century. And eventually, they came migrating down to Bristol County in Massachusetts, and they began intermarrying with the Scottish and the English and whatnot—the Quakers and whatnot. And then, you had, of course, as I said, the Irish who came in from Ireland in the middle of the 19th Century, and settled in Essex County. And they also had connections through this. And that was the family.
Now, the family's kind of interesting: Some of them are famous—we had one of the great leaders of the anti-slavery movement, one of the Quaker leaders, people like that. But we also had some curious cases, which brings us to the point. We have, for example, in the family, you have Marilyn Monroe.
You also have—one of less gentle disposition—Lizzie Borden, the famous axe-murderer. You know:
Lizzie Borden, took an axe
And gave her mother 40 whacks!
And when she saw what she had done—
She gave her father forty-one!
We also have Winston Churchill, who married into the family, or his parents married into the family; Rudyard Kipling, married into one branch of my family.
And then—last. Let me tell you ... President George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, Jr. are members of my family!
I unburden my soul!
But, there's a special part of this family—that the family was innocent, until the descendants of Franklin Pierce began smelling around and sniffing around, for marriage's purpose. And the Sherman family, which is a branch of the family, from Connecticut, was "Pierced" many times! And they produced cousins, and they began marrying cousins with one another, and finally you get George H.W. Bush—who's a product of the Pierce family, and who marries a Pierce—hmm?
Well, his father, Prescott Bush, was evil. He was one of the people who helped finance Hitler's rise to power, from New York City. Not exactly a kindly recommendation. But he was bright. Then, you had George H.W. Bush, who was not bright—and who was evil, but who had some smart advisors, and he had at least enough intelligence to listen to them, once in a while—not all the time, but once in a while (if he could understand what they were saying!). But then you have this specimen now, George W. Bush, Jr., who is psychotic and evil—and doesn't have any intelligent advisors.
And this just shows you, that maybe there's something to those who say that inbreeding leads to degeneracy. But, whatever's going on, this family has got to stop, now!
But, that's the way, in times like this, in times that try men's souls, in grim times like these, you have to look at things like that, and see what is true—because, what I just said about the family history is all true! But in terms of looking at the ironies of the history. The fact that I have these two skunks in my family tree is something that enables us to look more clearly with perspective on what stands before us.
The Republican Idea of the United States
The other side of this, the good side, is, that what those people brought into the United States, or what became the United States—they were not just refugees from Europe! Some refugees came, in good time, when the reputation of the freedom in America, as the only place to go to, attracted them. But the original settlers were not fleeing from Europe; they were inspired by the idea of building a nation in North America. A European nation, open to Europeans from various parts of Europe, who would build a true republic. The paradigm of this, originally, was, of course, the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and to a certain extent, the Plymouth Colony before it. That was the purpose: to build a better society, an idea which, for example, you have in Sir Thomas More, who wrote of these kinds of things.
The idea of going abroad from Europe to build a better society, was a project launched in the second half of the 15th Century, launched by Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, who set up the program of international navigation, into the Pacific and the Atlantic, in order to engage people in other parts of the world, with the idea of building up a proper sovereign form of nation-state, by this civilization. So Sir Thomas More represented that; many people in Europe represented that. They saw the corruption in Europe, and people—not people of destitution—but people of courage, who believed in the equality of man, said, "Let's set up a society in North America—or societies in North America—where we can use the best ideas of Europe, free of the European burden of oligarchy, of a ruling aristocracy, of a ruling elite."
This was characteristic of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. It became, to a certain degree, part of the Pennsylvania colony. At a later point, it became a part of the development of Virginia, in the 18th Century in particular, after people came from England, after the defeat of the English cause—and came here, to New York State, to Virginia, and elsewhere, to build up a republic. These were the ideas of the Winthrops who built Massachusetts. These were the ideas of the Mathers, including Cotton Mather, who produced Benjamin Franklin. These were the ideas of the leaders who created independent states in North America, admittedly under the King, but independent of the British Parliament. And attracted people from various parts of Europe.
The same intention existed in Quebec, another side of my family, which was shipped over by Colbert into Quebec, in the second quarter of the 17th Century, to build a society, in North America. That the characteristic—well, my Scottish ancestor—he was a bit of a drunk and a saber swinger, and a professional dragoon! But he came from Scotland, to fight against slavery, and joined the First Rhode Island Cavalry to fight against slavery! And made it his home here, in the fight against slavery. His brother was a sea captain, who came here, a Scottish sea captain, White Star Line, hmm? Took the first ship built in Bristol, in southern Massachusetts—in New London, Connecticut, rather. And took the first ship, steam ship built in that quarter, and took it down to Argentina. People who participated in building the nation—and that's our legacy.
The Irish came over in flight, but they became part of it—with the Condons and O'Gradys. Part of the same thing, in the same part.
The nation was built on a tradition, not of flight, not of poor people who were inferior to Europeans, but people who represented the best of the European citizenry: those who believed in a republic. Or something we call today, "a republic." We shared that. And that is our strength.
We, then, took in people, from Europe, who were the poor, who were in flight, who were destitute. We took them in, especially after the Civil War. Yes, and they became part of our tradition. But we are not just Europeans! We are a distillation largely of Europe, of those Europeans who believed that we must build, in this North America, we must build a republic which would be a symbol, a bastion, a leader, for establishing the same kind of freedom in other parts of the world. And that's what is within us, which is our source of strength: a source of strength, which lies in families such as my own! With all their shortcomings and their variations, and so forth. The idea that we are a nation.
The last time I really saw a surge of this, was during World War II, where there was awakened in the United States, despite the fact it was provoked by the Pearl Harbor attack, there was awakened the sense that we had to save the world! We did save the world! We saved the world from Hitler—up to the point that this nominee for Justice of the Supreme Court, a man who advocates Nazi ideas—in a Supreme Court that already has people who have Nazi ideas!—threatens to destroy everything this nation has stood for, even before it was a republic, back at the time that my first ancestors came to these shores, in the second quarter of the 17th Century.
There's a continuity in our culture—which many of us sometimes lose sight of, or don't know well enough—of what is justice, what kind of a world we want, what kind of a system we want. And therefore, when we see these kinds of things, and come into bad times, into grim times as now, when the system is about to crash, the financial system of the world is about to go under, and there's no government yet in sight prepared to deal with it; when the threat of Nazism, or something which is a product of the same thing, threatens to take over, even the United States, in these grim times. We must draw in this country upon ourselves, and draw upon the deepest roots, across many families, and say, "Okay, we do have a couple of Bushes, but we also have a lot of strong trees."
The Issue of Fascism
Now, let's just take, first briefly, this issue of fascism. The reason I'll deal with it briefly here, is because we've published some material in EIR, and a pamphlet which is on the streets, this Children of Satan IV, which does document a lot of this material. There's no question, the Federalist Society is a pro-Nazi society. Justice Scalia is already a member of that. Other members of the Supreme Court are members of that. Bork, who was rejected by the influence of Ted Kennedy, was a part of that. And this Alito, is a lying part of it. He is a supporter. He joined the Federalist Society, which is a society of the Hitler tradition, with consciousness of what he was joining! And he says, he does one thing one day, has one client one day, and another client the other day—bunk! He joined the Federalist Society! Which is equivalent to Nazi society. It's like having a Nazi Party card. And the issue is not his opinion on law—that's the issue!
The issue here, the way it formed—. The Nazi Party didn't form itself, it didn't create itself. Somebody created it, as a tool, as an instrument of power, as many things have done. Like the Ku Klux Klan, which was created, as an instrument of power—it wasn't spontaneous at all!
It was created by what? It was created by people who opposed what we consider our form of government. Europe, at that time, was dominated by a financier cabal—like today, Felix Rohatyn, an American immigrant, who was one of the people who put Pinochet into power in Chile. Pinochet is a Nazi. These guys, with Pinochet, and with the support of Henry Kissinger, ran Operation Condor, which was a death squad operation across the southern part of South America! The same people ran the death squad operation, under the nose of George H.W. Bush, when he was Vice President, in Central America! These are the people who have taken over the right wing in Mexico; and are trying to do various kinds of things like that there.
So, this is the enemy! The enemy is a financier group, which does not believe in a republic, which believes that private banking syndicates, which create and control money, should enslave the entire human population to the will of this banking group. They believe, as Felix Rohatyn has said—and has threatened me, personally, on this account! He said, "The world must now be run by syndicates of bankers, which are more powerful, and must remain more powerful than governments." Governments, if they were allowed to exist on this planet in the period of globalization, will be errand-boys for financial syndicates which are more powerful than governments. And they intend to keep them that way.
They intend to destroy us—for this purpose!
They need an arm, to enforce dictatorship, of their system, the system of Felix Rohatyn, the Big MAC system. And remember, that Felix Rohatyn was the key man on the financial side in putting Pinochet, and what he represented, into power in Chile! And he wants to do the same thing today. And some people think he's a Democrat.
But—George Shultz, the same thing. These kinds of people, who are behind Dick Cheney. Cheney's nothing! Cheney's a bum! A complete bum. He was a sulking thing on a high school campus. There's a girl there, later his wife. She's the "Campus Queen"! And he's a Lump. Their ways part, for a while. He goes to university—and he's dumped (which is one of the better things that sometimes happens). He goes out and tries to get a job as a lineman, and they won't let him get up a pole; they don't trust him up a pole. So, then, she comes along, and she decides she wants a stud—I guess she ran out of dogs, hmm? So, she takes him out, she marries the scum, sends him to college, gets him his job; gets him in with the British royal circles, which is the Liberal Imperialist crowd in London, makes the connections for him. And then he's picked up by these guys, and he's used! He's used in various stages of his life. He avoided the draft—scrupulously. He managed to get his wife pregnant, which is how he was able to avoid the draft. (I don't know how that happened. There's some speculation about what goes on in that bedroom. You know, this issue of torture, hmm? I think she chains him up at night, outside the house up there at the Naval Observatory.)
But, anyway, he's nothing! He's nothing! He's only a thug. He's like a mafia enforcer. But he works for people like Shultz and George Shultz's friends. And they use him.
The difficulty in getting him to resign, with his illnesses, with the things against him, is, they won't let him resign! They would let George W. Bush, Jr. go first, because Cheney's more important to them than the President. So, getting rid of this guy is tough! That's why the hearings are so tough on the question of the Alito case, right now, this week. Because the Republicans are scared. I said, "Times that try men's souls." And I see strong men—men and women I've regarded as strong men, in the Senate—flinching! When the issue is: Are you willing to defend this nation from a takeover by Nazism?
The issue is not opinion. The issue is Hitler!
And we can't have him here.
Baltimore: Paradigm for Spread of Disease
Now, what I want to present now—We have a summary of a study we've done on a certain aspect of the city of Baltimore, which is not far from here. This was done on the basis of a number of factors, including some knowledge of the nature of the disease patterns in Baltimore; a disease pattern which is illustrative of what's happened to many parts of the United States. It typifies a problem which is not being efficiently addressed in the United States, today.
This is grim. The idea that a Nazi takeover of the United States, or followers of the Nazis taking over the United States now, is the fight in the Senate, right now! is grim.
This is also grim. So, let's present it. This is partly a video, and I'll comment on it afterward:
[The title of the animation is "From Industrial Powerhouse to Death Zones: A Case Study of Post-Industrial Decay. Illustrations include: U.S. Steel Production, 1860-2005; Baltimore: The Shrinking Job Base; Harford County, Baltimore County Depopulation; Baltimore Population Shrinks (over time); Baltimore, Excess Death Rates, 2000; Person-years Lost to Disease 2001-2004; Percent of Households Earning less than $25,000/Year; Baltimore, 1970-2000: Industrial Employment vs Poverty.]
This may be somewhat difficult to follow, but I'll comment on it later.
This [photo of boarded-up, decrepit row houses] used to be housing areas for people who had an income, who had respectable jobs, who were raising families. This is a key part of it, the disease and death rate, in a certain part of Baltimore.
Now, what this represents, is this:
Overall, the picture is clear. There will be more detailed studies published soon on this. This is extremely important for people in the Congress and elsewhere, who have to deal with this problem. You may recall, back in the 1970s, we did a study, a projection of the increased death rates expected in the Sahel region of Africa, as a result of some policy changes which had occurred in 1971-72 internationally. All those things happened, including the locust infestation, which we forecast. This was the first study of the type that we did as an organization.
Then, when the first report of HIV studies were clarified, at the beginning of the 1980s, we did a further study. And one particular study was important to us, because it was a key to some things in Africa—the HIV death rate in Africa, and the spread of the disease. We looked at two areas. One area, of course, was an area typical of that of San Francisco, where there was a high HIV rate. And also, we looked at a somewhat different area, south of Miami, in the Everglades region, of HIV death rates and infection rates, there.
Now, what the significance of that is, in this country, we were operating, up until the change in the law, we were operating under the Hill-Burton health-care policy. Then, under Nixon, at the beginning of the 1970s, we changed that, to what became the HMO system. Now, under the Hill-Burton system, we looked at health care, as something which was focussed county by county of the United States, in terms of hospitals and similar institutions. Because, obviously, physicians are organized around hospitals and clinics and similar institutions. And therefore, by ensuring that we could deliver health care, hospital health care, or hospital-related health care—outpatient-type care—through hospitals and clinics, we assumed that if we provided the beds and facilities of the types required, county by county of the United States, with an improvement factor year after year, that we could apply the lessons of health care which we used in the U.S. military during World War II, where we had 16 to 17 million people under service, who had to be—needed health care! So, the U.S. military ran a health care system, for 16 to 17 million people and their dependents, wives, and so forth. We ran that, and we ran it very well.
But, we said, "Why can't we do the same thing, for the general population? It doesn't cost any more, because the prevention of loss, of doing this, more than pays for expanding the system to accommodate things." So, we ran a system up until the early Nixon years, in which year by year—and New York is a prime case of success—in other parts of the country gradually more or less, [had] improvements every year. Because, you would have money coming in from physicians, from health-care funds, and things of that sort—or government agencies. And they would make an annual budget, based on the anticipation of what they were going to do to care for the population, assuming that some people could pay for all or part of their care; some people could pay for none; some had various insurance programs, some had less; and it worked! New York City was a prime example of the success of Hill-Burton.
And then, under Nixon, they tore it down.
Now, in the old case, under Hill-Burton, you didn't go after the individual diseases by category. Yes, physicians treat diseases. But, you would look at—you would treat the population, not the disease. That's the difference. Your job in medicine is to treat the population, not the disease. Under HMO, you treat the disease, not the population. The disease walks in, and says, "I'm a disease. Treat me!"
But, the character of the thing, as physicians will tell you, that sometimes you find that people get an illness, and by going to a different area, that illness—they recover from it. If they stay in the same area, it's difficult to shake the illness. Because you don't have diseases, you have people. And you have groups of people, and they interact; and this interaction actually defines the way diseases function. And therefore, in care, you have to treat the population.
Now, what did we find in the case of HIV? In the San Francisco area, and in the Everglades area adjoining Miami, in Florida, you found a complex of various kinds of diseases and infestations interacting. And the population—as a doctor, Mark Whiteside, with whom we worked on this thing, documented from his work in this area—all the people in that area had the same diseases! The same infestations. So that, you would have an area where people would have the exposure to these diseases, and these infestations, and these conditions of life—like financially related conditions of life—and they would all have the same sickness. And they would all tend to transmit their sicknesses among one another. So, you would have a "blob."
In San Francisco, you had a "blob," where the HIV infection was interacting with other conditions, and facts, and diseases in the area. You had, in this area, this Everglades area, you had a blob. This is most clear in tropical disease areas, where the blob, normally, is most conspicuous.
You have boundary conditions. And it's not just the map, of say, the city of Baltimore—it's not a map, it's not certain streets, where on "this street," and "that street." It's the blob! Wherever this combination of disease and conditions of life exist, among a people, that defines the border of a blob. The blob moves, the borders move, it changes.
So that, in public health, and in other things related to that, in society, we have to deal with blobs. We have to treat blobs, not individual problems. And this study is based on that: That the city of Baltimore, which has turned into a post-industrial paradise, called Hell, has, in the middle of it, a blob, where people share, in and out of prison, share the same set of diseases! The same set of conditions. The same reduced life expectancy.
Now, obviously, from the standpoint of public policy, we have to treat the blob, not just the individual sickness. Under the Hill-Burton law, with that provision, we were tending by a natural way, to treat the blobs. The physicians, the institutions, were reacting to the needs of the patient; and they would find patients with similar characteristics, in terms of disease and problems of this type. And they would recognize that people in that area had to be treated in a certain way, because they're part of what might be called "a blob."
When we went to HMO, we eliminated that! We went to a different approach—more and more. And we're now deliberately, as a matter of policy, killing people, through the HMO policy.
Now, this applies to many things, not just to illnesses as such. It applies to conditions of life; it applies to productivity.
For example, suppose you used to work as a factory worker, with some skill. Now, you're working as a waitress, or as a short-order cook in a restaurant. The fact that you have been downgraded, from a job at which you had a family income, into a job below family income, is not the extent of your problem. Your problem is defined if you live in a community, where this is characteristic of the community! Because, if the community is poor, everybody in the community will tend to be poor; everybody will suffer. We're not treating this problem.
We're losing mass transit, we're losing all kinds of things. And you look at a city like Baltimore: One of the primary, wealthiest cities in the United States! A great industrial center, with a great steel industry, with automobile manufacturing, with all kinds of things! One of the places you would prefer to live. Associated with great medical institutions, or one with great reputations. And look what's happened to it. It's been destroyed.
All over the country! Look at the state of Michigan! Detroit is virtually a ghost town—look at it! It's being destroyed. Look at western New York State; look at western Pennsylvania; look at the state of Ohio; look at Indiana! This whole complex used to be our steel center, our steel industries, our heavy industry. That gave us the equipment we needed for World War II. Look at the areas of California, that had a similar function, in terms of war production in World War II—look at the Kaiser Shipyards, this stuff is all gone. We have a blob!
Now, what we're doing, in terms of this, as to the perspective: We're conducting studies, which I started, which are based on examining these characteristics of populations, through every county of the United States. We're taking every county of the United States, and comparing them physically with the physical changes, year by year, over the past 40 years and longer, to see what the changes are, and to see the patterns of changes, which are going on in society. Because, in my view, the government, including the Federal government, must start to look at things in this way. And we have, with the use of modern computer technology—the computers aren't going to give us the answers, but the computers will give us the ability to show, what the data show us. In other words, the pattern of data will show us what is happening. And it's what is happening, that concerns us: How do we represent what is happening? How do we show the characteristics of a certain process, under certain conditions? And we're doing that.
But, we're going to have to change as a nation. We're going to have to change the way we approach things, into looking at things in this way. To look at the changes, county by county, election district by election district, neighborhood by neighborhood, over a period of two generations or so. And try to understand lawfully, what the interactions are, within society, which determine this. We're going to have to take Baltimore, and we're going to have to save it. But Baltimore is only an aspect of a national problem of similar situations: We have to save the United States!
Emergency Measures Required
Now: Go from that, to two other subjects I want to address in the remarks I'm presenting today. We can stop the crash. We can stop it cold. With our system of government, our Constitutional system, we can do that. But it's something that most people in government, today, wouldn't dare do.
Take the case of Loudoun County, which I referred to earlier. Loudoun County, ground zero for the biggest real-estate bubble explosion in modern history. What's going to happen when that bubble explodes? What's going to happen to the people who are holding the mortgages? What's going to happen to them? What's going to happen to the economy, which is affected by the condition of these people, and these foreclosures? Are we going to evict them? The banks are going to go bankrupt—are we going to watch the banks go shut? Are we going to see the deposits wiped out? We're going to see the communities wiped out?
Or, are we—as government—going to do something? To protect the people. To promote and defend the general welfare of the population as a whole!
Well, that's something very simple. The Federal government has to have the guts—and we're facing that situation now—that is coming up! That's why fascism is such a danger now, because, you're coming up to the point, that you have to go beyond what Franklin Roosevelt did. The only way you're going to save this country, from effects of which the housing bubble bursting is only one—something far worse than the last Depression, but we can deal with it, if the will is there. We have the law. We have the tradition. Roosevelt gave us the precedent, as to how we do this.
We simply have to say: The banks aren't closing. What do we do? We put the Federal Reserve System into government receivership. Because, the problem is, in the banking system, the banks are not clean, they're not honest. It is the major banks internationally, which are running the financial derivatives bubble—and we could never pay off the financial derivatives bubble. It can never be done! This situation, the financial situation of the banking system in this country, and other countries, is unimaginable! There're only a few of us, a relative few of us alive today, who know how bad the situation is! It's not "troublesome"; it's ready to go! The whole system is ready to go. Not a depression: a disintegration.
And there's only one thing you can do: The President of the United States, with the support of the Congress, has to put the Federal Reserve System itself, as an entity, into receivership, by the Federal government, which takes it over, for the duration, and manages it as a national banking system! That is, you don't privatize the individual banks, but, in a sense, you nationalize the Federal Reserve System. So, the Federal Reserve System, under the control of government, under the provision of our Constitution, concerning money—convert the Federal Reserve System into a National Bank, as the institution to conduct the receivership of the banking system.
That system now keeps the banks from closing their doors. Makes certain that essential things that banks do, will continue; that businesses in local communities will continue; that foreclosures will not mean evictions; that social stability will be maintained. The General Welfare will be maintained. And some people, like the admirers of Kirk Kerkorian, don't like that. Because, that's the only thing that can be done. That's what I intend to do, what I intend should be done. The minute the crack comes, the Federal government must act, and put the Federal Reserve System into national receivership. And put the banking systems, the private bank systems, under management, as private banking systems—management for financial reorganization, to get back on their feet again—under the Federal government.
Without that measure, in Loudoun County, and other parts of the nation, you have desperation and destitution. You have a country that disintegrates.
And the problem is—and this is where the "grim" comes in—the problem is, ask how many people in Washington, in the Senate, let alone the White House, are willing to support that action?
If they don't support that action: No country.
Are they willing to defend the country? That's the only thing that'll work. It will work. Because, what we have to do at the same time, is, we have to make the economy work. Now, the economy hasn't worked for 40 years! We've been sucking it dead.
For example, most of our economy, about half of our economy, is basic economic infrastructure: This is water systems; this is large-scale capital; this is railway systems; power systems. Now, these things have a life-expectancy, physical life-expectancy, of 25 to 50 years, after which, if you haven't replenished them, they've worn out and you no longer have them.
What we've come to, after this period of time, we're about to lose our basic economic infrastructure: We've lost our railroads; we're about to lose an airline system; we're losing our power system; we're losing our water system. Where can you get safe drinking water out of a faucet, in places you could get safe drinking water out of a faucet 40 years ago? Hmm? We've lost it! Look at the medical care, look at the lost hospitals; look at the lost medical care, as the Baltimore case illustrates.
So, all of these things have to be repaired, and rebuilt. We have productive capabilities, not enough. But what I've proposed, in this case, is, we have one bill, which is a marker bill, one law; one recovery law. You go back and look at what Harry Hopkins did, and what Ickes did, and so forth under Roosevelt. Those are things we refer to, in understanding how to go at this kind of problem.
But, you go back to—one law: Let's take our transportation, national transportation capability. Not the individual automobile as such, not the highway as such. But, railroads, or their equivalent—the development of magnetic levitation systems—bring our airline system back into play. And also, develop our power systems. Maintain our river system, build our power systems. We're going to have to have a lot of nuclear power.
For example, the automobile industry has to be converted. Probably about one-third, or one-quarter of the present automobile manufacturing can be sustained, as an industry. The rest of the industry, which is largely machine-tool driven, will be used for other things, like building railroad systems, repairing our river transportation systems, building power systems—lots of power systems; we're in a power crisis. These kinds of things.
This kind of mobilization would be sufficient, by using the automobile industry, the aerospace industry as a core, in its machine-tool and related capability, to bring the level of production employment in the United States above breakeven, if we include power. We're going to have to use nuclear power. I would prefer, a lot of production of 125- to 200-megawatt fission reactors, high-temperature gas-cooled reactors, because these are needed not only for power. They're small, you can produce them quickly—or, more quickly—you can distribute them around the country, ship them around the country, after you've produced them, the pressure vessels and so forth, assembly. You can now build a power system!
Now, why would you want such a power system? Well, there are many reasons. Let's take one case: Ford and others are talking about changing the kind of automobile we manufacture in the United States, going to a hydrogen-fuel-based hybrid type of unit, a new kind of automobile. Now, if you're going to use hydrogen-based fuels, where are you going to get the fuel? Where are you going to get it locally? You're going to go away from, to a large degree, imported petroleum, as a way of transportation. You're now going to produce hydrogen-based fuels. How do you produce hydrogen-based fuels? Well, the best way, is to take a high-temperature gas-cooled reactor, and generate hydrogen fuels from water, and other things. Now, you use these hydrogen-based fuels, you use them in vehicles, and use them in combination with hybrid types of vehicles. So, that takes care of your automobile industry.
But, you have other applications, many other applications of the same type. You convert the energy side of production in the economy, convert it from what we're doing now, burning oil—use the oil, largely more and more as a petrochemical resource, rather than a combustible resource; use it for plastics and other things we need; produce at the point where you extract the petroleum, not ship it all around the world at high cost for a lower grade product. But many other things—new trains.
So, we build up a new industry, with more energy. We have to have dense supplies. Every area has to have its development of hydrogen-based fuels, locally, for production. We produce new types of vehicles. We use the same technology for many other purposes.
A New Approach to Education
This gets us started! Getting us started with what we can do now, on the basis of existing technological capability will give us the ability to expand the quality of the labor force. And if you look at what we did, in the Christmas edition of EIR, on this question of the "Principle of 'Power,' " what we have to do, also, at the same time, is take the younger generation, especially the generation of 18 to 25, and a new approach to education of the type which is illustrated by the participation of some young people in producing the examples used in that particular article.
We're going to have to have a new approach to scientific education, which prepares us, quickly, so the young generation coming up can quickly acquire the skills, the scientific and related skills needed to have a rapidly expanding increase in productive power in the society. That's our solution.
This means you've got to go against the anti-nuclear lobby. Now, there's nothing wrong with using nuclear power. Using a match is dangerous. But, when you have power, power is dangerous. It has power, it can destroy you if you don't control it. Who is the master? The fire or you? So therefore, you have to control it. Well, we can do that! We've done that before. We can exact safe standards. But, it's a bogeyman.
But, we have to get away from this so-called services economy, in which you don't have the tax-revenue base needed to support the population; you don't have the kind of employment needed to enable a family to support itself; you don't have skills, you don't know what the world is like, you can't think clearly; your education stinks—and so forth.
And so that's what we have to do. We have to recognize, it's going to take guts. Guts, number one, to make sure that we find enough Senators to make sure that Sam Alito is not confirmed. No Hitler in the United States.
Secondly, we have to realize, from comparing the effects of social conditions and disease conditions, under the pre-1970 standards, and post-1972 standards—as we see in the blob in Baltimore—we see what's wrong. We've got to change the way we think about society, and think about this thing that blobs illustrate. We have the computer technology—it exists. People can understand this material, as we have exhibited how you use that. You can find patterns, you can discover how to manage things, and how to plan things. We need that.
We need to stop the crash immediately, by having the guts, to put a bankrupt system through bankruptcy reorganization, as the case of the problem, or the challenge—or the H-bomb-like effect about to hit Loudoun County, and a lot of other parts of the real-estate business of the United States, and elsewhere—shows.
A Mission of Immortality
We have to have a driver program. We have to have a mission for our economy, a mission for our people. We have to transform the world, we have to lead in transforming the world, not run the world ourselves, but lead in transforming it. Show it can be done! And we can do it. We can do, because, of what I referred to in this question of family: We have in our culture, not necessarily every person, but we have it as a part of the American culture, this idea that the founders of this nation, back in the 17th Century, for example, and on, understood the kind of nation we wanted to build. We can deal with this.
We need a program, a mobilization of our economic resources, to ensure not only a high standard of living for all of our people, but we need a sense of immortality: You know, we all die, sooner or later. And some people try to say, "What am I getting out of life?" And they assume that the purpose of their life, somehow ends with the end of the life itself. Whereas real people don't think like that.
Real people, who understand what it is to be human, think about what their life means to people who come after them, to the world that comes after them. You know, like an old man in the old times, would take his grandson out and say, "I built that, for you! Make discoveries, for you! Build a better education, for you! So that I can die in peace, knowing that what's coming after me, for the next two generations, is secure!"
That's what it is to be human. We don't produce things because we're greedy, because we want more things. We produce things because we're human, and we have our own way of approaching the question of immortality. As it says in the Gospel: "When do you present your talent, that was given to you? When do you present it to the generations to come? When do you return the talent, that was entrusted to you by being a human being? And return it for society, for the benefit of society?" Do something good, because it is good, to do! Do something good for society.
We've lost that.
And that's why marriages are so unstable these days. That's why marital relations, or the facsimile thereof, are so unstable these days. Because, people aren't together in marriage because they're thinking about building a future. They're together for ple-e-a-sure!
"Why'd you divorce your husband?"
"He bored me"
"Every Wednesday."
So that, when we plan our work, we plan the work of our nation, we create an opportunity, for us, each as individuals, to participate in immortality: the immortality of giving something to humanity that comes after us, something we can only do, if we work together to do that! Therefore we enter into useful enterprises for mankind in the present, but we concentrate still more on the enterprises of benefit to generations yet to come. And when you think back about family, as I think about family, as I described it summarily here. A lot of people went into bringing me here to you, today. Over hundreds of years, and even longer! Just in the United States. Without all this family business, I wouldn't exist! I was their future:
And who will be mine?
Okay, thank you.
