Dialogue with LaRouche:
Questions and Answers
This is a transcript of the question-and-answer session of a webcast event held by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 11, 2006. The discussion was moderated by LaRouche's national spokeswoman Debra Hanania Freeman. See also Mr. LaRouche's opening remarks.
Debra Freeman: Well, for those who have not yet seen it, this is the Children of Satan IV, that is currently circulating in Washington, D.C. Actually, I was at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings yesterday, and I have to say: It was kind of delightful, to see these Senators and their staff walking in and out, with these things in their pockets. If you actually look at the TV coverage, it's really great, 'cause you see some guy and he's walking out like this, and somebody asks him for something, and he reaches into his pocket to get it—and, waves around Children of Satan IV! ....
In terms of the institutional questions that have been submitted, the questions fall into a series of categories, Lyn. We have a lot of questions on Mr. Rohatyn, that I'm going to ask you to answer. We also have a number of questions on the Alito hearings and some of the things that are going on around that. And then there are a large number of questions also, on some of the economic issues that you addressed.
I'd like to start, with some of the questions surrounding the confirmation of Mr. Alito. The first one comes from one of the Minority Counsel on the Senate Judiciary Committee. And he says:
"Mr. LaRouche, ultimately, if you have followed the process of the hearings over the course of the last two days, I'm sure you know very well that Minority Leader Reid submitted a memo to all of the Democrats who sit on the Committee, instructing us to focus on the question of Presidential authority and this principle that Alito has enunciated of the unitary executive. We have tried to do that in our questions, and if you have followed the process, Mr. Alito is simply not telling the truth."
He says, "What occurs to me, and certainly to some of my colleagues—and I'd be very interested in hearing your view on this—ultimately it does seem to come down to this question of the Federalist Society. Contrary to their name, everything that I've looked at would tend to indicate that there's nothing Federalist about them, and that in fact, they probably are an organization that, under different circumstances, could be considered seditious.
"My view—and I'm expressing it as my view, and not necessarily the view of the Senators whom I represent—but my view is that the question of membership in the Federalist Society, is, in and of itself, sufficient to disqualify someone for the Supreme bench. I'd really like to hear a little bit more about your view of this group, and how it is possible that they have managed to infiltrate our judiciary to the extent that they have."
LaRouche: Well, first of all, it's right. The Federalist Society can be put in the same category, for purposes of this Congressional proceeding on confirmation, as a membership in the Ku Klux Klan.
Someone says, a member of the Ku Klux Klan: "How do you vote on civil rights?"
It's no difference!
The key thing that has to be emphasized, is, the issue is Hitler. Now, Hitler didn't create himself, that's the interesting part about this. Hitler was created by an international cabal, which was a financial cabal, which was headed up at the time by the head of the Bank of England, Montagu Norman. But, Montagu Norman was working in tandem with the Napoleonic tradition in France, which is the fascist tendency in France. And the key typification of this, of course, the most famous one, is Lazard Frères of Paris! Which also has an office in the United States, and in London. The Lazard Frères is the key firm, involved, among the Synarchists of France, in the Hitler project! It was Lazard Frères, through the Banque Worms company, which, in the case of the Laval-occupied France, was a key part of the Nazi system. Lazard Frères was a key part of the concert of bankers who brought fascism, including Hitler, into power in Germany.
But fascism did not start in Germany. Fascism started in France. But it was created from Britain. It was created against the American Revolution. What they did, is: France was going to be the second country which would adopt a constitution, reflecting the American Revolution. And this was about 1782-1783. This was understood.
The British acted, under Lord Shelburne, and they had created an opposition to Franklin, in France, which later became what was known as the Martinist Freemasonic lodge. It was run from London. It included people like Cagliostro and Casanova, and more importantly, Count Joseph de Maistre. These people created the French Revolution, they organized the Jacobin Terror, they created Napoleon Bonaparte; Joseph de Maistre, personally, designed Napoleon Bonaparte, on the model of—the Grand Inquisitor of Spain, Torquemada. Napoleon, while apparently he was the enemy of Britain, nonetheless, did Britain's work! Because Napoleon's wars destroyed Continental Europe. And the hope of having a successful system of nation-states emerging on Europe, which had been the intention of Europeans, leading Europeans who supported the American Revolution, was lost, because of Napoleon's wars. And the Napoleonic tradition exists in France today!
Yes, there'd been opposition to that in France. But the tradition—Mitterrand is in that tradition (now deceased). Napoleon III was in that tradition. Synarchism is in that tradition. Many leftist organizations are in that tradition: "Synarchism" meant simply a unity of the socialists and the anarchists. It was created by a Frenchman called Saint-Yves [d'Alveydre] of the Martinist Society. The Synarchist International, which was organized as an international of bankers, in the context of the Versailles Treaty at the end of World War I, is what organized fascism! These bankers. Hmm? And the Synarchist International is typified by Lazard Frères! It's also typified by the head of the Bank of England; it's typified by Brown Brothers Harriman, for whom the grandfather of the present President of the United States worked: Averell Harriman. Averell Harriman was a partner of Brown Brothers Harriman; Brown Brothers was the firm of Montagu Norman, who was the head of the Bank of England. It was Montagu Norman who organized support from the United States and elsewhere, from bankers in New York and elsewhere: to put Hitler into power. And the only reason some of these guys turned against Hitler, was they learned that Stalin and the German generals had cut a deal, that the Nazi attack would come on the west side first, before going to the east against the Soviet Union. At that point, many people broke with Hitler, because he was going west, not east—only later.
So, therefore, you have bankers who were part of the Roosevelt Administration, who were Roosevelt's enemies, but who understood, we had to eliminate the Hitler threat. The minute Roosevelt was dead, they cheered, were happy to have a fool like Truman as President. And they saved the hard-core of the Nazi system!
Look, back in 1983, I had been part of a project—it was my proposal, I proposed because some of the things I had run into, that the United States should have an institution for intelligence, comparable to West Point and Annapolis. That we needed, because some of the people we were getting out of universities, into the intelligence services were not really qualified; they didn't have the background they should have had. My view was, we should have a Classical education for intelligence officers, which would be used also for training diplomats and specialists in diplomacy. Because of the incompetence I kept running into in seeing what was coming out of our intelligence services.
So, for this reason, a number of friends of mine who were in the intelligence service, including Bill Casey, managed to have some documents declassified from the period between the two World Wars, for my use, so I could study this problem; and this included U.S. military intelligence documents, and also documents of the OSS which were pertinent to my concern. [The point was] to look at the history of these two wars, to see where we had failed, or where we had had the intelligence and had not effectively used it.
So, I was given access to this, so I know this thing pretty well. Including the case of the real story about the Billy Mitchell case and things like that.
So, this was the feature: We had a problem. Roosevelt saved the United States from guys who were just as bad as the Hitler supporters. Which included—Hoover was not bad personally, but Hoover worked for them. And Mellon. Andrew Mellon was as bad; Coolidge was as bad. Coolidge was not a good guy! You had Wilson: Wilson was a generational supporter of the Ku Klux Klan! The revival of the Ku Klux Klan in the United States, was done from the White House, by Woodrow Wilson! These are not good guys! Teddy Roosevelt was no good, either! Teddy Roosevelt was trained by his uncle, who was the head of the Confederacy intelligence service! He's no damned good—and he did much to destroy the world and destroy this country.
But, these are the kinds of problems we had to face, and we face it today: We have to understand, that the force is not simply a bunch of Nazis or Ku Klux Klanners. The Ku Klux Klan was created—it was an organization of fools, created to please somebody who wanted to play a game. Hitler was [part of] a pack of fools—not as foolish as the present crowd. Because they weren't quite as stupid then. But a pack of fools who were unleashed on civilization, along with Mussolini, and along with the French fascists; and along with Franco. It was unleashed to destroy society, a mob! A gang! Mobilized to destroy society.
Cheney is nothing! Cheney is a piece of crap! He's not really human. I mean—his wife should keep him chained up outside at night. He wouldn't travel so much, better for his health. Along with the two dogs, there. The "Navel" Observatory, when they see the bellybutton on the dog.
These guys are nothing but gangsters, who are used as thugs, to attempt to destroy us. So, we focus too much—yes, Hitler was evil. Thoroughly evil. But he was not the author of evil: He did not make himself. He was a piece of junk! Like one of Pavlov's dogs, who snarled a lot, for an experimental purpose. And Hitler was a somewhat different purpose. But it was used for a purpose. You have to look at who uses them. Who organizes them? Who creates these movements?
What you have in the Federalist Society, is a case, directly, of Carl Schmitt. Carl Schmitt was the man who created Adolf Hitler! Not every phase of it, but Carl Schmitt was the guy who shaped the law! He had been a part of the legal staff of German military, during the 1920s. He shaped German law with this kind of provision. And then, it was he who used the case of Goering setting fire to the legislature, the Reichstag: Just as somebody set fire to New York City!—on Sept. 11th of 2001, in order to attempt to build a dictatorship in the United States, the way a dictatorship was created in Germany, by setting fire to the Reichstag! And this is what I warned against on Jan. 3, 2001, before Bush was inaugurated: That this would happen! It did happen!
I knew exactly what I was talking about. I did study those papers; I studied them carefully. I know how things work.
It may not have been Cheney that set fire to New York City on 9/11, but somebody behind him did it! And remember, who ran Iran-Contra. It wasn't just Bush. You had people behind him. You had an Islamic organization, created by Brzezinski and company for the Afghanistan War, with the Soviet Union. This organization was owned by whom? It was jointly owned by the British and the United States. You want to conduct a "dirty" in Islamic interests, ostensibly, in the United States? Who do you get to do it? People you can use. And you have to have somebody turning off the lights in certain areas, to let it happen.
We have that in the United States! We had something in the United States! It ought to be ripped out of it! We have Nazis in the United States, in high-level positions in institutions of our government. What do you think the torture crowd is?
All these things, they're all the same thing! These things should be ripped out! Angleton and what he represents should be ripped out of the United States' heritage. Allen Dulles should be ripped out of the American heritage. These guys were not ours. Angleton was not ours. The so-called left-wing terrorism in Italy, was run in part by Angleton! Run by these guys.
No. We have to face facts—this Alito thing: The man lies. Sufficient reason to say, "No!" And no Senator with perception and guts will endorse him!
Unless they're a coward.
Constitutional Line of Succession
Freeman: Well, I think he wanted you to say that on the record. And now that you have, we can move on.
Lyn, the next question, similarly, is from a Democratic Senate office. The Senator is a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He says:
"Mr. LaRouche, as you know, we've seen a stunning pattern of leaks over the course of the last several weeks, that provide us with a clear window into how, in fact, this administration intended to overturn and disrupt the normal functioning of the Constitution and the three branches of government. The march from Executive Order 12333, to where we stand now, reminds one—at least reminds me—in a particularly chilling way, of the warnings that you issued in January of 2001, long before any of us thought that something like 9/11 was possible. I'm in possession now of declassified memos and other documents from the National Security Administration, that are, even from someone in my position rather startling, in terms of how, in fact, citizens of the United States have been treated. I'm also deeply disturbed, by a memo that the head of the NSA sent to members of that agency, instructing them that they were not to comply with requests from this body"—he means the United States Congress—"investigating what we consider to be abuses. Without any further investigation—and there will be further investigation by this Committee, and by others, as well—but, without any further investigation, it would seem that there are sufficient grounds to begin to draw up, joint Articles of Impeachment. And I'd like you to know that we are working in that direction.
"However, this also raises a very pertinent question that I'd really like you to comment more on, and that is, the line of succession, as it's defined by the U.S. Constitution. We're in a period of critical upheaval, and I believe that that upheaval is going to intensify, particularly as the Abramoff situation continues. We are in a situation where, in very short order, the entire leadership of both the House and the Senate—at least on the Republican side of the aisle—could change very significantly.
"I guess what I'm really getting at, and I know you've addressed this before, but it's just not clear to me, how we would actually proceed: The line of succession is already defined. And I don't understand exactly how we could intervene to change it. As it stands now, the question of what comes after the President and the Vice President, is the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and that, obviously, is not acceptable. Could you please talk about this, because we have to address it in the very short term?"
LaRouche: I concur.
Well, this does require some very serious consultation. And I should be, have been, talking more directly with a number of the key individuals involved—and I have been speaking with them indirectly, as people know. And they're very much in touch with me. So, the messages and exchanges of views do pass back and forth.
But, in this case, there's—just as our Youth Movement could explain to people—you get 15 to 25 people together, to try to define the solution to a problem, it's a far different matter than passing messages back and forth. It's that vital interaction which is crucial, as in a good classroom—that vital interaction. And the passions that go with that, and the exchange of passions, and the freedom to express things passionately, to get it off your chest, clearly. And that's what works, and that's what's missing.
I have to be involved more directly with some of the key people, because I know exactly what is in the mind of this kind of question. I think it is valid—it's absolutely valid. It is the problem. I think it's inherently soluble.
But the problem is this: The problem is, is—legalism, which ignores law.
Our law, as written, has an intention. Now, some people like to interpret all from the standpoint of positive law. But, there're many kinds and degrees of positive law. And there's also natural law. A question of this type has to start from natural law. And it has to be presented by a body of men and women, who agree on a concept, a natural law-based concept, which applies to this case; who, then, will, as was the case in the effort to get the Constitution adopted, as by Hamilton and others, you have to present the concept to the relevant people. This is a missionary discussion method, which our youth are well aware of—this is what we do all the time, in the youth organizing. We're going through a process of development, a development of ideas. Not of words, not of definitions of words, but what does an idea mean? What do we mean by an idea?
And it's difficult in these times, because the scientific education does not allow for ideas. You can take statistics. You have a statistical theory, of an explanation of something—that is not an idea. The discovery of the principle of gravitation by Kepler, is an example of an idea. The discovery of the principle of doubling the cube by construction, is an idea. These are the ideas, which were called dynamis in the Classical Greek, and these are called powers in the modern English, or Kraft by Leibniz, in German.
These kinds of ideas, because—you're dealing with universal principles. What is true? What is true, is what is universal! But, the problem with something that's universal, is, it exists as the object of the universe! It does not exist as a particular object in the universe. It's an object of the universe: What is a universal principle?
Now, we have a very simple universal principle, which starts all modern civilized society: That principle is called in Greek agape as in the mouth of Socrates in Plato's Republic; as in I Corinthians 13, again, agape. It's called the General Welfare, the principle of the General Welfare, on which all modern civilized society is based. The principle of the General Welfare: That man and government exists, for what purpose? What's the intention of the existence of man, and government? It's to provide for the welfare, of future generations of mankind—according to what? According to the requirement of the development of the character and quality of mankind. And the improvement of the universe by virtue of the existence of that mankind!
The principle of the General Welfare, as expressed in summation in the Preamble of the Federal Constitution, is the fundamental law. Proceed from that, not from the so-called positive law, but from that. Don't try to get a positive law—don't try to get a legalistical word-chopping approach to this. You've got to get the concept: Do we believe that there should be a Hitler of the United States? What do I mean by saying that? I mean, that, if you have five judges on the Supreme Court, who are members of the Federalist Society, and joined it in good faith in believing what the Federalist Society stands for, you can have a fascist dictatorship in the United States, decreed and approved of, by the Supreme Court!
Therefore, Alito must be rejected. That simple.
Why? Because we're concerned with what? The General Welfare! We're concerned with the conditions that, already, we tolerated much too much! We tolerated the destruction of our society! We've been destroying the United States since 1994. We were corrupting it, when Roosevelt died, under Truman. I lived there—I saw this! I saw the betrayal of what we fought for in World War II, when I came back here, from service.
So therefore, the question is, our mission is, the United States is essential, as an institution for the world as a whole. We're essential because we represent what is best expressed by our Constitution, the intention of the Constitution: The promotion of the General Welfare. And by the struggle, like the Civil War, we went through to defend the principle of the General Welfare—to establish it, less imperfectly. This is what we must not give up! This is the intention!
Therefore, the Bill of Impeachment, the right of impeachment, goes to this! The preservation of this republic! Knowing that if these clowns get control of the republic, we don't have a republic! Therefore, a Bill of Impeachment is a defense of the republic against an intolerable menace! The highest grounds for impeachment. Not because somebody committed an offense, stole money or something like that. That's bad enough. That's worthy of impeachment. But, there's a higher standard for impeachment, also: It's when someone in high office, or some group of people in high office, threatens the existence of the republic, threatens its purpose of existence. Threatens its purpose of existence, in respect to all humanity!
I can tell you, without the United States playing the kind of role it must play, this planet is going into a Dark Age, because there's no other place on this planet except in the United States, that we could pull off the initiation of saving this planet from Hell! Yes, other countries will do what they have to do, and it will be useful: But if we don't start it, they won't do it! This nation is needed for all humanity. And we must not allow this nation to be corrupted and destroyed, because somebody wants to do some pettifogging juggling with terms! Legalistic terms.
This guy Alito must be rejected! Because if we don't reject him, then we aren't fit, to look in a mirror: We can't face ourselves any more. We have betrayed the nation! Not that Scalia is not as bad—he is bad. He's already there. But! to have five Justices out of nine on the Supreme Court, fascists—that is more than we can tolerate. That's the time you fight! That's the time you draw the line.
And you really don't need to know the words as words. You have to understand a principle, the same way you understand a universal physical principle: The world needs this republic. It needs it, to function as it should. Without it, the whole world's going to Hell. These guys have no right to exist. Their ideas are totally opposed to ours. The President's ideas are totally opposed to ours. The President has committed crimes—high crimes and misdemeanors. The Vice President is better at vice, than the President is: He's committed more.
Get rid of them, both!
Now, you've got to look out in the streets, as you know it. While some of these Senators are hesitant, because of the usual kinds of things, to do what should be done, and they should have told the guy, "Git!" They should have just have said, "Git!" "Don't waste our time. You git!"
Look at the people! Look at what I see in the people: The people hate this Administration! They hate the Bush-Cheney Administration! To the extent they understand it, they hate what Alito represents. The will of the people has implicitly spoken! They want to be rid of this! They hate this war, they don't want another war! They don't want any more of this stuff!
Are the politicians, the leaders, capable of standing up to the demands of the people? They say they're representatives of the people: Well, let them represent the people! In a matter of the people's concern.
What we have to discuss, is to craft a formulation, or a series of statements, which encompass the issues that I just mentioned. It can't be one person saying the words, and the other people supporting it. There has to be an understanding of what we're fighting for. This is like going to a declaration of war: It's like going to a declaration on which the fate of humanity depends. We can not make a mistake. If we are uncertain in our own minds of the cause we've undertaken, then we will flinch, and fail. We must be clear in our own heads.
So, some of us who are leaders, and I, must meet: For the sake of this nation. And the usual objections to having such a meeting, if they've got any guts, are by the boards.
Felix Rohatyn, The Synarchy's Boy
Freeman: We have a series of questions, that kind of dance around this issue of Felix Rohatyn. The first is from a long-time friend and a consultant to the Democratic Party. He says, "Lyn, ultimately, if you ask me, the question of what happens to this country is not going to come down to the question of the Constitution vis-à-vis Presidential power. I believe, ultimately, that the Congress will do the right thing in this area. I think that it's all going to come down to the question of the economic policy agenda. My assessment, based on discussions with people in a position to know, is that Wall Street and the banks won't resist the dumping of this administration, if for no other reason than that they have been so incompetent in implementing Wall Street's policy. But, that doesn't mean that Wall Street and the bankers won't resist a challenge, ultimately, to their control. And, that's where the question of the future economic policy agenda comes in.
"Felix Rohatyn has worked to establish himself as the counterpole to you, among Democrats. I think we got a good handle on how to deal with this, when his less astute buddy, Mr. Rudman, gave an interview a couple of weeks ago, where he outlined what the Rohatyn-Rudman plan really was. The two things that jumped out of it, from where I sit, is that, they talk about floating 50-year bonds for infrastructure construction. What they don't mention, is that those bonds are supposed to be paid back by the states and municipalities. The other thing that really did jump out at me as a stark contrast to what you're saying, and to, in fact, what Nancy Pelosi [House Minority Leader] stated in her introduction to the Innovation Agenda, is that Rudman says we don't need new infrastructure. All we need to do is fix the infrastructure we already have. Around Washington, what that really translates into is, 'stealing money.'
"My view is, that these are not shades of disagreement. That these are two views that are diametrically opposed to each other. Your view has largely been adopted in our party's Innovation Agenda. It seems that in Rudman's plan, or in Rohatyn's plan, there really is no science-driver, there is no new construction, there is no recovery, there's just an increase of the banks' control. I don't think it's a subtle point. But some people seem to. Could you comment some more on this? And comment on how to draw these guys further out into the open?"
LaRouche: What you have, is, you have almost a species that's not really human, in the case of Rohatyn. You know, by human, I mean a human purpose.
We have a human race. We know something about the human race. We know something about the conditions of life in the world. I deal with this, all the time. And, there is no efficient concern for humanity—I mean, people talk about "charity," "we'll give some money to this,"—it's like excusing their bad conscience. "We're going to help out here. We're going to help out there." How about changing—as I've talked about this Baltimore problem—how about changing the condition of life? You want to get some money to Baltimore poor? Or do you want to change the conditions of life which were intolerable for them? There is a difference. And the one is just—it's faking.
And, it's true. Rohatyn, you have to understand his mind. I understand his mind very well. Because I have studied these characters in history. And some of the things he has said, indirectly to me, and about me, make it very clear what he is thinking. Rohatyn is a protégé, now come up to second, third rank, whatever, in the system of international Synarchy. He is a product of the network of Lazard Frères. Lazard Frères and Hitler are the same thing. He happens to be Jewish. He may not like Hitler personally, but, he is that. His crowd is that. These are the people that gave us Hitler. These are the bankers. This is the mentality that gave us Hitler! For a purpose! They were not Hitler supporters. They were Hitler users!
Take the case of Rohatyn, in particular: His character is shown in the case of his relationship to ITT and Hartford Insurance, on the question of Pinochet. This guy, presumably Jewish—presumably a Jewish refugee out of Galicia and Austria—comes to the United States and becomes a Nazi! What kind of a Jewish guy is this?
Now, in this case, he, knowingly, as a part of Geneen's ITT operation and the Hartford Insurance acquisition, is involved directly, in putting a Nazi, Pinochet, into power in Chile! And continuing that support, that relationship, with mass killings, including Hitler-style genocide by Nazis; who are second- and third-generation Nazis, who were exported by friends of Dulles, into the Americas, into Mexico, down into South America; where they turn up as second- and third-generation Nazi killers, like Licio Gelli in Italy, who was part of the Nazi apparatus. They turn up down there, and they, as Nazis, reproduce Nazis under other names, in Chile, and in Argentina, Bolivia, and elsewhere! They run genocide. They run death-squad operations! Hitler-style, death-squad operations—all with the blessing, of whom? Before the fact, and after the fact: Henry Kissinger, and our poor fellow here, Felix Rohatyn.
What kind of a mind does this? A Venetian banker. It's where it comes from.
Look! You had a system of government, it goes way back to Babylon, but the system of government is known to us, before modern times: It was known as the ultramontane system, which was run by the Venetian bankers, together with the Norman chivalry. They ran the Crusades, and similar kinds of mass genocide—and that's what they were—the Crusades were nothing, but genocide. The genocide was done by the Normans, but it was ordered and directed by the Venetians, who collected the money on it.
This is the mentality. What you have in the Anglo-Dutch Liberal establishment bankers—what you have is a direct continuation of the Venetian families. As a matter of fact, the Venetian families in Venice, are still running it! So we have this Venetian phenomenon, of a predatory financial interest, which preys upon mankind, as a beast preys upon his victims. To them human beings are nothing. Human beings are matters of convenience. Human beings are a matter of profit! A matter of usurious profit. That's all they are interested in.
You have to understand them. They're not human. They have broken from human morality. They have no loyalty to the human species. No regard for the General Welfare, quite the contrary: They hate the General Welfare!
These are the people, for example, take the case of the Lockean Constitution of the Confederacy: the Preamble to the Confederacy. The Preamble of the Confederacy effectively supports Locke. The support of the slave system is based on Locke. The pro-slavery attitude is an example of the same kind of mentality. You don't regard people as human: "You use them or kill them. Uh-huh—it's business! What're you talking about? It's business!"
And that's what you have to understand. He'll do anything for a buck. And he will hate anybody who interferes with his grabbing that buck that he thinks he can steal. It's that kind of thing. Think of him as a gangster. Our gangsters, our worst mobsters in the United States, are nothing but a cheap imitation of what Rohatyn represents.
Why Did Rohatyn Destroy New York
Freeman: Okay, Lyn, that answer actually did cover a series of other questions that did come in on Rohatyn. But, there is one additional one that I'd like to have you answer. It comes, actually, from an office that represents New York.
And it says, "Mr. LaRouche, I have to admit that I was somewhat startled to learn that Mr. Rohatyn, through his position on the board of ITT, played a role in the Chilean coup. It seems all the more ironic, given the fact that it was, in fact, that same Chilean model, that this administration held up in their attempt to steal the Social Security fund earlier this year. I think you've done an adequate job in various locations of identifying what you think motivates Mr. Rohatyn, and who he represents.
"What I'd like you to talk about, a little bit, is what Rohatyn did in his role as the intellectual author of the policy known as 'Big MAC.' It's brought up all the time in meetings on Capitol Hill, but I'm not sure anybody here really knows what it was, and what it did. Could you please discuss this?"
LaRouche: We had a problem, which started in a sense with World War II, with part of the regulations that were done to prevent inflation, under the conditions of World War II. One of these was rent control. And that was the defense of the population of the city. Now, the destruction of New York City started with places like Levittown, because instead of repairing New York City, as a functional city of industry and so forth, they began this process of post-war suburban development. Which, again, when the Eisenhower National Defense Highway System was put in, people then went to a much further degree of this suburbanization.
But New York City was essentially destroyed: Because it should have been repaired, it should have been maintained. The industries should have been maintained, they should have been transformed, of course, in a post-war mode. They weren't.
So, the time came when they saw the chance to make a lot of money, by overturning the financial controls, stability controls, of New York City. And they drove the city into bankruptcy. I saw it from the inside, I saw exactly what was going on. I saw how it worked. And, then they put the city up to the point of bankruptcy, then they brought in Rohatyn—who had gone through this other operation—and they brought in Rohatyn, as the arbiter of a group of bankers, who figured out how to really slaughter the pig. And they did.
It was a complete swindle. At that time, we were arguing this—I was involved in arguing with a number of people, there was a lot of agreement on what had to be done. But, at that point, when Rohatyn installed the Big MAC, I knew New York City, as we had known it, was doomed.
New York City, with all its faults, used to be a city, in which you could walk around and live a complete life, pretty much within the city. That was gone. That was destroyed. With all its faults, it could have been rebuilt, it could have been maintained.
You see what's happened now: Look at our life now. The standard of life for us Americans was: You ate dinner at home at night! You couldn't get there now. And you have to work three jobs, or two jobs, or whatever it is. You can't make a decent living, most people. The family life has been destroyed—and some people think that's good, because they figure that if the divorce rate would be increased, the people would meet each other more often. Or something, because their purpose in life is pretty much gone.
Look at it! Look at what I see, in young people, 18 to 25 years of age, slightly older: Look at what I see, from my vantage point. Who's your mother? Who's your father? Is that actually your sister, your brother? What family do you come from? Which family were you thrown into, when the divorce happened, the separation happened? What kind of a community do you have? What kind of a social life do you have?
I find, with young people, that the only remedy, that is general, is, when they get on a project of the type that they do with me, they have an orientation toward a joint task-orientation, a mission, a scientific—.
The most important thing that these young guys do, is the choral work. Music is the key to social organization: Because it's this kind of social interaction in music, which defines an organization, defines it as healthy. If, at the same time, there's scientific progress and scientific development in their minds, they have it! If they are thrown back, without music, without science, into the streets: What do they have? They have a sense of existential insecurity, which is given to them by the society which is going no place.
They have parents who are now in the, say 55 to 65 age-group, which is running society generally, the Baby Boomer generation today. The parents don't think about the future. Because, they are going to retire soon! They're thinking about the comforts of retirement! They're thinking about not having to think about things that bother them! They hope that when the things that come around, that they fear—they'll be dead. Or, that somehow, they won't know it that it happened, when it does.
Now, your younger people—now, say, in the 18 to 25 range—what is their relationship to the parental generation which is, you know, 55 to 65, or perhaps a little bit younger? They have nothing in common! They don't hate each other necessarily (sometimes they do, I suppose). But they don't hate each other, they just don't have anything in common!
Young people, 18 to 25, are looking forward to 50 years into the future! And what kind of society is going to be there, 50 years in the future? The Baby Boomer generation, because of what it was subjected to, does not think in the future! They don't believe in the future! They believe in the "Now Generation"! Or the Now De-generation.
Therefore, there is the conflict.
So, the problem here is essentially of that nature: That we have not understood the importance of engineering society, including its physical structure, its organization, so forth, with the idea that we are going from one generation to another, with a span of three-plus generations, generally, as it represents the living. And, how do we organize that mass of people, so they are happy, in a meaningful sense of happiness? They have a sense of purpose in life, and if they are approaching the time of retirement and death, that they say, "I am leaving something good behind me"? And they look at the younger generation, and what they think of what the younger generation is going to do.
In the old days, for example, if you asked a child, who is five or six years old, or so forth, "What are you going to be when you grow up?" The child would often have an idea—it may not be the actual idea, but they have an idea! They had an idea of a future, an adult future, a purpose in life.
What's now? What's the relationship now? And that's a city, well organized—and New York, with all its faults, did have that: a sense of multi-generational society, in which you all had a sense that you were participating in a common destiny, and each person could look forward to something coming out of their life, out of their childhood, into adulthood, and something good that they were going to leave behind them after they are gone. And, a city is a way of doing that, a sense of community.
And that's what's been taken away: And that's what they did to New York City.
It's still there. New York City is still—morally, despite the high rents and so forth—morally is still a stronger part, morally of this country. Look at, for example, one thing: the reaction to 9/11. The population in New York City has, generally reacted better to 9/11, than most other parts of the country. Go up there, find out. It's true: Why? Because there is something left over from previous generations of a sense when life meant something, and a city was a place in which to live, rather than a place to park your butt.
Using Computing in Science-Driver Economics
Freeman: This always happens: I'm getting more questions here, than I can deal with. A couple of things, for people who are submitting questions via the internet, I do intend to get to your questions—so you don't have to keep sending me nasty notes! Telling me you've asked the question three times. I will get to them; we'll group them together in some cases. We are giving a certain precedence to institutional questions obviously, because of the grave nature of the current crisis.
To members of the LaRouche Youth Movement, who are submitting questions both here and via the internet, many of those questions are of a more theoretical nature; I will also try to get to them during the body of today's broadcast, if we can. If we can not, you will have another opportunity to put those kinds of questions to Mr. LaRouche over the weekend. So, please be patient if we don't get to them today.
Lyn, this is a question from somebody, who is directly involved in the planning of next week's conference, here in Washington on the Democratic Innovation Agenda. He says, "Mr. LaRouche, at a recent policy meeting that we held, that was directed to plan next week's conference on the Innovation Agenda, an issue emerged that I think we need you to comment on. As we proceed on this project, the question of infrastructure building, and its relationship to preserving the automobile sector, and, in fact, the machine-tool sector as it relates to it, is becoming increasingly clear. That's especially clear in the question of infrastructure as it applies to transportation, energy production, water management, etc. Beyond that, there are other vital areas, which I guess can be roughly considered infrastructure construction, like school and hospital construction that also seem relatively clear, or at least, increasingly clear.
What's not clear, and what I'd really like you to comment on, is the question of the high-tech computer, aspect of all of this. You obviously have an uncommon handle on the utilization of computer technology, and its role in overall economic planning. But, there also does seem to be a difference, at least in your view, of how we deal with these two sectors. I agree that they are different. I see that. But, is there some reason why the overall expansion of our computer and software-design capability should not be pursued as part of the overall Innovation Agenda? Why are these not part of vital infrastructure?"
LaRouche: Well, the problem here is, essentially, that science went mad, in terms of what was typified by followers of Bertrand Russell, and his kind, during the course of the 20th Century. What's in the Christmas Special Edition of EIR, on this Max Born and Einstein debate, is highly relevant to this. We had some fakers who were kicked out of the University of Goettingen, for good reason—because of fakery. One was Prof. Norbert Wiener, the putative author of Information Theory, and the other was John von Neumann, who not only committed a fraud, but committed incompetence there, and he was fired for that reason. And, he's the inventor of so-called Artificial Intelligence and whatnot, and also some computer theory.
Now, what the conflict between Einstein and Born is key to this. And there are some things I would qualify on Einstein, as I have written about this—but Einstein essentially is on the right side. He's a good guy. Born was a nice person, but he is no longer a good guy, as Einstein.
And what's happened is, you have a generation of people, who—. Remember—go back to a few things. Take the "programmed learning." Take the New Math, and programmed learning, and similar kinds of things which are offshoots of this same problem. Think of projects which came out of the so-called Cybernetics Project of the Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation. All of these kinds of things were corruption, which were introduced, during the 1930s especially, but even earlier, during the Solvay Conferences of the 1920s. There was a general corruption of science, based in denying one thing, which is what I've focused upon with the youth" And, that is: ideas.
Now, the universe is run by universal physical principles, of which Kepler's discovery of universal gravitation is typical. Now, in the physical universe what is a universal physical principle? It's something which efficiently exists in the universe as a whole. Now, how can you see an object that fills up the universe as a whole? Where are its boundary conditions? You can't.
Now, in physical science, all discoveries, like the principle of gravitation, can not be seen as objects of the senses. What you can do, is that you can generate, as you do with machine-tool design—if you understand the concept of a principle, you find a way to express that, as a design. Now you demonstrate the effectiveness of the idea, by a machine-tool design—as we did with a number of these things in that edition, in which some of the young people did that. Like the case of—instead of trying to draw a catenoid, based on doing a parallel to a hanging chain, actually construct and generate a catenary. The catenary principle is not something you can see. It's a transcendental function. And, you can not see transcendental functions. They have the form of being zero, or everything. But they are a something.
So, once you have the idea and you demonstrate by construction that you can generate that effect—which is what a machine-tool designer does, if they are really good at it. Particularly in research, test-of-principle work: You actually say, "Does this principle work?" "Okay. How can you generate an effect, that shows that this principle works?" Now, you've proven it. That's called a proof of principle, a unique experiment.
The capability of doing and thinking in terms of unique experiments, which is science, is this issue. And, this is what is threatened by Information Theory, what is threatened by John von Neumann's crazy ideas, as in economics.
So therefore, to the extent that you see computer technology, as leading, as some of these computer firms say, to the idea: [dumbo voice] "Oh-h! We're going to learn to synthesize life!"—from non-living matter! We're going to synthesize life from non-living matter. You will never do it! You will never do it: It's a principle of the universe. You can not create a principle of the universe—you can discover it, but you can not create it.
"Well, we're going to do better than that! We're going to create a machine that can think!" Maybe we could substitute for George Bush, perhaps?
No. You will never do that. Because only life can generate life—a fundamental physical principle. Only cognition can generate cognition. The most important thing, in all human life, is the generation of cognition by cognition. Sometimes, this is called education. That is, you have an idea which is an idea of a universal principle, like gravity. I say, "There's gravity." And you say, "How did we discover gravity? What's gravity?" How do you get the child, or some other person, to understand what gravity is, as a principle? Cognition generates cognition.
Now, on top of that, it is only through the development and application of these kinds of ideas, which are ideas of principle, that humanity is able to increase the power of humanity to exist, as measurable in physical terms. Therefore, society depends upon supporting the ability of human beings, to generate and transmit ideas, which enable mankind to increase man's power in the universe, power to exist.
These ideas, of Information Theory, and of synthetic, Artificial Intelligence, these kinds of ideas, as reflected in statistical mathematical methods, or reflected by accountants in trying to explain an economy from an accounting standpoint—these things are deadening. Basic economic infrastructure is a part of the machine, by which we support a people in being able to develop, to discover and apply ideas: ideas of principle.
So, now, as I said, in the case of computer technology: With today's higher-speed computers and miniaturization, we can take, by sheer, brute force, we can take the data from every county of the United States, down to everything that we have data on. We can do correlation studies, of the type of this generation that we've done into some of our work. We can do studies which cause the data to leak out, and take a form which shows us how this thing is working. We can—for example, one of the most sophisticated cases, which I didn't mention before, in the case of this Baltimore study: How do you define the fact, that there's a very definite object—a definite object, a kind of a blob, which has boundary conditions within the city of Baltimore, so that on one side of the surface, the condition doesn't exist; on the other side, it does? How do you define that as an object? This is a problem in Riemannian physics, which is called the Dirichlet Principle problem, of defining objects in that way. This is very important to do...
How do you define objects of this type? And, this is what computers are good for: We can, actually, by this high-density generation of these kinds of patterns, these models, we can actually show what the data are telling us. And, by looking at this with insight, just the same way that Kepler looked at his massive data on observation of the orbit of the Earth and Mars with respect to the Sun, and was able to discover, and demonstrate a principle of universal gravity.
So, that's what we can do with computers. And, to improve computers for that purpose—fine. Just their pure number-crunching power, is used in this way. And the mathematics you use to organize it is essentially these Riemannian hypergeometries, that is what you use generally in these cases.
Anything in that direction is a part of infrastructure, as schools are a part of infrastructure. The educational process, all the things that are essential to promoting the development and application of the development of the mind of an individual: Because it is those minds' increase in power, on which progress of society depends. And, anything that is good for society in that way, is worth maintaining as infrastructure.
Fair Trade, Not Free Trade
Freeman: The next question, Lyn, is from a senior Democratic Capitol Hill staffer, on the House side.
He says, "Mr. LaRouche, you've proposed that the Federal government launch a major infrastructure development project, involving high-speed rail, water management, energy, and other vital programs. Would you require, as many people up here are suggesting, that these projects be exclusively contracted out to American companies, including the materials needed for the project, such as steel, etc.? If you would include that as a requirement, how would you avoid instigating reactions from foreign countries, that could lead to a trade war and other actions, that would ultimately undermine an American industrial recovery, since so much of the U.S. economy today relies on export earnings?"
LaRouche: I think it is not just a matter of hand-to-mouth kinds of agreements. What we need is this: We are going to have to create, first of all, a long-term agreement on a return to the original Bretton Woods system, or something very much like it. Now, remember, with that system the U.S. dollar was king. It was the only currency in the world that was worth anything. And so, Roosevelt used that to define the Bretton Woods system, which was a fixed-exchange-rate system of the post-war period.
Now, if you are going to have long-term investment, you must have a way of insuring that the cost of carrying of the investment, the financial cost, doesn't fluctuate wildly over time. Now, most of the important investments are those, which involve infrastructure and large capital ventures for production, in lives of 15 to 50 years, or longer. So, therefore, the issue is to insure that when we create credit, which we capitalize, in order to fund a large construction project, in infrastructure, or in production, that the cost of carrying that loan is not going to fluctuate wildly over the period of the life of that loan.
The way that we are going to have to do this, we are going to have to go back to the system that Roosevelt prescribed, but with some modifications. The principle remains the same, the form will be somewhat different. Then the U.S. dollar was the only currency worth using for anything but toilet paper. Therefore, the world system was based on the solidity of the dollar.
Today the situation is different. We are not going to create an international currency, because that doesn't work either. But, what we're going to do, is, we're going to create a fixed-exchange-rate system. And, it doesn't have to be the "right price." There is no such thing as the right price. There's a manageable price, or a price that's not manageable, but there is no right price in life. Money is only money. It is not real. It's a medium of exchange, and a medium of credit. It is not real. It's how you manage and use money, as a medium of exchange and credit, that counts. Money has no intrinsic value whatsoever. It's only paper, or less. These days of electronics, it's less. You can have billions of dollars represented by a simple glitch on the computer.
So therefore, what we are going to have to do is have a fixed-exchange-rate system, of a reasonable fixing of exchange rates, which can be adjustable under certain conditions. It's going to have to be global. And we are talking about largely a framework of loan-structure, not just the individual loans, but the combinations of loans—where you have Germany loaning to China, and vice versa; the United States is loaning to so and so, and vice versa. So therefore, you have a mesh, a back-and-forward mesh, of long term-credit agreements, in terms of different currencies.
So, the world will then run, on the basis of long-term credit agreements, in the form of treaty agreements, or nested treaty agreements among nations. And the function of an international monetary system, that is a reformed one, back to the Bretton Woods model, is to organize the system so that these things are balanced, reasonably balanced into the future, and maintained. Because, we must have cheap credit, at 1-2%, in terms of simple interest—no compound interest—1-2% over the long term.
This has to be the basis of an international monetary system. These are loans that are going to be made for up to 25 to 50 years. And they will be nested loans, where you will package a whole group of loans, you'll bundle them together, and you create a monetary trade-credit agreement. And that's the way we are going to handle it.
Now, once you have that kind of structure, then you can handle these kinds of questions you raise, within that context. We are going to do something. We're going to proceed on what our interest is: We're going to go back to a protectionist economy. We have to go back to a fair-trade economy, not a free-trade economy. We are going to go back to parity prices. Because, we can not expect somebody to produce, at a price below the cost of the capital required to produce it. So therefore, you have to set prices at levels which compensate for the cost of production, including the capital investment needed to make the production. You have to build into the prices, the payments that have to be made to support infrastructure, as through tax collection, and similar kinds of mechanisms. So, you have to build in a reasonably good fair-trade structure, of the type that we did have, actually, in a sense, in the 1950s.
Now, you've got a system that works.
Now, then, everything comes on contract; it comes on agreements. You negotiate agreements. This is where you have good diplomats, who negotiate agreements on the minutiae of these kinds of things. We have got to have—in the United States, we've got to have a steel-producing industry and related industries, back in the United States again. That's our policy. So, we are going to do that. Now, we're not going to prevent other people from selling to us. We are going to say, "Yes, you can. This much, we're going to have to take ourselves. You can come in, and get in on the rest of it," under these complex of trade agreements. It works!
So, you don't have to treat every issue as something you have to bargain. You have to have an overall agreement, on tariff and trade, and fair trade, as opposed to free trade. You have a structured system. You have long-term agreements among nations, on credit, back and forth, over 15- to 25-year periods,—that's two generations. And, you manage, within that system, everything you do. And, what you depend upon is, you have good economic planning, good economic foresight. Each new condition comes along, you find a way to fit it in. You have good bureaucrats; you have good corporate executives; you have good diplomats—and they manage the thing. It's management: It's real management. You manage the thing, so that everyone has a fair shake. And, if they know they're in a system which gives them a fair shake, they will complain—but they won't really complain, because it is better than the other way. Particularly, with memory of what has happened to us, recently: They will not want to go back to that!
Choral Music To Uplift Deprived Youth
Freeman: We have a couple of more questions on these economic issues, and then we have a series of question on the current situation vis-à-vis Iran. This question was submitted by Ted Smith, who is interviewed in the EIR that concentrates on Baltimore project. He is a school teacher and the director of a community center in the center of the City of Baltimore.
He says, "Lyn, I am a Baltimore city school teacher. I direct a community center, and as I think you know, I was interviewed in the latest issue of EIR, on the conditions in the community. Most of the residents in the community that I serve, are largely undereducated, and they rarely have either the leisure, or the inclination, to read newspapers. It's not a minor problem. Many of the principles that they need to master, in order to survive, exist to them as simply abstract concepts that they don't have time for. My question is: By what principle can I begin to organize, in such an incredibly devastated community, to begin to build their own political and economic understanding, as well as to link them to political efforts overall?"
LaRouche: Well, I am rather optimistic about the possibility of doing something—but, it's going to go slow. When you have people who are demoralized, who don't have confidence in their own minds—remember, what you've got in areas, like the blob, like the Baltimore blob: You've got people who have almost given up on life. They've given up on the idea that they are capable of doing much of anything. They think of themselves as almost like animals. The idea of intellectual activity is alien to them. They go for fads—they like this, they like that. You see it in their dance behavior, their other kinds of behavior: There's no critical structure-building in this thing—there's no idea-structure, no meaning to it in the sense of music.
What I think really works the best, is if you can get young people into actually singing, at an earlier age. Because the fact that they engage in organized choral singing under competent direction, even though the thing is crude and so forth at the beginning, this is the best way to get people out of the mess. You find people change when they sing. They work together. They understand this.
It's not easy. It's a lot of work, but it's well worth doing! So, therefore I think you have to use the full repertoire of art, in the directed way, to try and to get the cognitive powers of the young person bestirred. And music has been proven over a long time, as the most effective way of doing this. And choral music, because it involves cooperation or a sense of group, a sense of relationship, a sense of achievement, a sense of failure in achievement, and overcoming a failure to come back to a relative achievement. And that's the best way to do it.
But it's a hard job, and it always has involved, in trying to bring people up in society—when you've get people who are deprived in society, to get them to come up to a higher standard, than being a deprived person. It takes a good deal of patience. And it takes people who have a lot of love for the children they're helping. Then it works.
But there're no easy solutions. It's having small classes, not too large: 15, 25 at the most; small groups, working with them; gaining the trust of the young people; engaging them in things, that they find that they are actually learning to do something, they couldn't do before; mutual reinforcement, in terms of sense of mutual respect among them, for the fact that somebody is improving. A concern, expressed by the children for the fact that someone hasn't understood it, and they want that person to succeed in understanding this—that kind of thing.
So, it takes patience. And teaching is a very loving profession, when it's practiced properly with children. They have to think you love them. If they think you love them, in that way, you may get across to them. And, if you get across to some of them, they'll help you get across to others.
The threat of war against Iran
Freeman: Lyn, this is a question, that comes from a friend here in Washington, who's been involved in the function of the Executive for quite some time, certainly during the eight years of the Clinton Administration. And it's on the current situation in the Middle East. We have a number of questions on Iran. We will get to them, in order.
He says: "Lyn, I find myself surprised to be saying this, but I find Ariel Sharon's recent removal from office to be a regrettable event. All indications that I have, are that the United States does, in fact, intend to make some kind of military move against the nation of Iran.
"This is a very troubling situation. And I have to say, that it is largely being provoked by what are seemingly insane and suicidal statements by Iran's current head of state, regarding the state of Israel. One can argue that the United States could not sustain such a military effort, but that also assumes a degree of rationality in the Executive Branch that I believe is currently absent.
"Our own government's actions aside, I'd like your view, on what it is that is driving the Iranians? And also your view on whether or not there is some configuration in the Middle East, some particular Middle East government or group of governments, that can somehow bring them into line, before we're faced with a disaster?"
LaRouche: I understand exactly the problem. For example, there's another aspect to this thing—and on the Sharon question, I, too, have the same reaction on Sharon. That Sharon is not nice—to say the least. But, he is not quite as insane as some other people are. And certainly Sharon would not want, at this stage, to be a puppet of Cheney in an attack on Iran, nor would he want an attack on Syria—either one. Because, from Sharon's standpoint, Israel is presently a doomed state. The conditions of life, the future, just isn't there. And therefore, the conflict in this area, and immediately, the conflict between the Palestinians and the Israelis—which is highly differentiated, it's not a simple case—is the first problem. You have hatred motivating forces, and hatred against hatred. It's very difficult.
Now, Sharon at least understood that. And while he would do hateful things, he understood it. He was not recklessly irrational, in the extreme.
Bibi Netanyahu is a different question. And Bibi Netanyahu is very close to Jack Abramoff, in multiple ways, and to Cheney. Cheney and Abramoff are joined at the hip, and Netanyahu is joined to them. Maybe not at the hip, maybe at some other part of the anatomy, I don't know what.
Now: The calculated estimate of some people, with whom I tend to agree, is the following—before going to the Iran question: First of all, you have to look at the British angle on this. The operation in the region is not a U.S. operation alone; it's an Anglo-American operation. Now, the British are a relatively smaller power, they have a lot smaller population. About the same-sized people, but a smaller population. But the British are actually the top dog, in orchestrating this international crisis. This is primarily British, not American.
Cheney, for example—Mrs. Cheney—is very close to the British Liberal Imperialist establishment. It was she, who introduced her husband, Dick Cheney, into the British Liberal Imperialist establishment. The United States is now, under the present government, is largely discredited, partly because of the Iraq War. Therefore, you have Jack Straw,—who's not out of the Wizard of Oz, he actually is in Britain—who is operating—the British Foreign Office is operating, and they're playing games there!
In this situation (along with the famous cosmetics family), in this situation, you have negotiations where Cheney wants, and Cheney's crowd, wants a Middle East war. They want another one. They do not particularly like the idea of risking an Iran war, even though they're pressing in that direction. But they do think that a limited attack by Israel on Syria, is a feasible operation, to get a new 9/11 effect. And since there is equipment, which is in the control of the Israelis, which can pass for Arab equipment, being held in the desert of Israel, if a limited strike force from Israel were to go into Syria, and dragging this equipment along, they then could hold this equipment up, which they just dragged in, and say, "We just discovered it here in Syria. It was Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction."
Now, that operation is the one I'm most concerned about, because that is actually a potential operation; it's very dangerous.
I'm also very concerned about some other things: I'm concerned about the President of France, who's acting like an ass, on this issue. And he's playing with the British in these matters, and you have an aspect of this which is a British-French operation against Germany, which is a complicated factor, too, in the situation. So, you have people in Europe behaving like fools.
Then you have a President of Iran, who belongs to a faction in Iran, who would be inclined, as he's shown at Mecca and other places, by making—by trying to provoke the Israelis into making an attack on Iran! No Israeli in his right mind wants to make an attack on Iran, at this point. But Bibi Netanyahu is not necessarily in his right mind; and there are some other people who are a little less so. But, what he's doing, is provoking an attack: Because, in a sense he has to estimate that the attack would have to be limited, and he would be prepared to accept the damage, in order to unite Iran as a fighting force in the region.
You have, also, people who are trying to play the Muslim Brotherhood card, that Henry Kissinger used to play with, in the region, against Syria! The so-called "regime change" in Syria, which is being orchestrated through the President of France, through the former official of Syria, Khaddam.
You have a stinking mess, with incalculable implications. It is not a simple case. It's no one thing. Yes, there's a danger of some outbreak with Iran. And it's correct to say that since the present administration of the United States is clinically insane, and since a government of Bibi Netanyahu would be clinically insane, all kinds of things are possible because checks and balances don't work among people who don't know what time it is! Or what planet they're operating on!
So, the problem here is the other way. My view of the problem, is this: you look at a problem and you try to deal with negatives. That is a mistake! That's bad policy. You must operate from the positive side. Can you bring about a peaceful resolution of the problems in Southwest Asia, sometimes called the Middle East? Can you do that? Can you come up with something, that will do that? That's your best way of dealing with the situation.
Maybe something can come out of the combination in Israel, that's coming out of Sharon's unfortunate situation. I don't know. There are dangers, they're real dangers. But the danger comes from here! The danger comes from here, not only because Chirac is behaving like an ass—and I happened to warn the Gaullists against promoting Chirac, back in the 1970s. Some French Gaullist generals were friends of mine, and I said, "Don't put this little boy in charge of the Gaullist party. It'll be a disaster in the future." And I was right, and they were wrong. He's now there. He's a little boy! And he's not up to playing big world politics. That's the problem.
Therefore, our problem—the fact that we don't have a government which can respond to this situation in a positive way, with positive solutions to real problems, to take these things off the agenda by putting other things on the agenda that are positive. It's not who can beat whom! It's not who can kill whom! That's not the way history is settled. It's by, how can you make peace! Not peace by crawling or cringing, but peace by constructive action that actually solves problems, that takes people who are pretty foul balls, and gets them to go along with it, because they have to say, "Hey, I must admit that's a good deal."
That's what we need in this situation. It's the lack of that. As long as we allow what's going on right now in the Senate, and not telling this fool Alito, "Git!"—we have lost an option for dealing with the situation in the so-called Middle East! If people thought the United States had a government, even a united Senate, that could say "Git!" to Alito, at least a majority to say "Git!" to Alito, then the world would respect us! Because there would be something in the United States that they could trust. My fear is, that the Senate will capitulate to Alito! Capitulate to his nomination. In that case, we will have lost trust! People say, "Ehhh, the United States. Big guy, huh!?" They take a Federalist Society clown and turn the country over to a bunch of Nazis. "Big country, huh!"
Nuclear Weapons and Sovereignty
Freeman: We have another question on this topic from someone in the audience, of a slightly different nature. I'm presuming that he's in the room. Lyn often talks about the question of leadership. In introducing the questioner, I'd like to say that I myself, in terms of my own organizing—and I know that Lyn shares this view: This is an individual who has played a critical leadership role, both nationally and internationally, and we are fortunate to have him living here in Washington, D.C.
Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming Dr. Abdul Alim Mohammad.
Q: Thank you. Greetings. How are you?
I just wanted to ask a little question. I read recently in, I don't remember which edition of the EIR, but you said that the possession of nuclear power was the right of sovereign nations, and you put it forth as, in a sense, a principle of sovereignty. So, could you comment a little bit more on what you meant by that? And then, by extension, how does that apply to the current situation vis-à-vis Iran and the threatened attacks there?
LaRouche: Well, Russia is absolutely correct in the way it's approaching this situation. You have an unstable government at present in Iran, which has—as we see with the attacks from Mecca on Israel, which are absolutely insane. I mean, for the President or head of a country to make such an attack, is absolutely insane. I mean, actually, millions of Jews were killed by the Nazis in Europe. It's a fact. The idea of going to a place of refuge, is a fact. The whole thing was a mess. You had leaders in Israel, after they won the '67 War, saying what kind of a mess have we made in the world, didn't we make a big mistake? Because the original thing was peace with the Arab world: which still has to be the objective.
Now, this question of nuclear capability. Again, the problem comes back, the essential problem we're facing is the insanity of the United States and Britain. That's exactly it. We are threatening war. We are creating an incentive for nations to desire to have intimidating weapons, and nuclear weaponry has a certain blackmail advantage, particularly small nuclear weapons, or relatively small ones. Now, Iran requires nuclear energy for development of its economy. It requires those technologies. It has a right to those technologies. We have a rule that says that the right to have access to nuclear weapons, however, must be limited to a certain number of countries who are already in the club. And some countries which are in the club must get out of it, and other countries must not be allowed to get into it. They can have nuclear power, but they can't have nuclear weapons.
The problem arises only because we're insane enough to create a situation, in which the desire for nuclear weapons comes up. The use of nuclear weapons by any country, on its own, as a voluntary action, would be an act of insanity; an act of criminality at this point. There's no need for it, there's no function. Warfare as defined, heretofore—particularly aggressive warfare, or reprisal warfare—is actually out of date, morally out of date. We have to be able to defend countries, countries can defend themselves against attack.
But, the problem is that Iran is under the threat of attack. Otherwise, what the Russians offered, and I think what the Europeans would tend to agree to, would be a perfectly rational solution.
We'll get back to this question about their access to knowledge of nuclear weapons technology; things like that can be done. But the point is, there's no rush! Unless there's a rush to war. Where's the rush to war come from? The rush to war comes from the British and the United States. So, we're creating the anomaly, and I think we just ought to stick to it.
The thing is very simple. Continue the negotiations. Say, in principle, they have a right to know the technology, they have a right. But we have come to the end of the use of nuclear weapons! The world has got to come to the end of the use of nuclear weapons. They have no effective military purpose, on the planet at this time. The planet has changed. We're actually at a turning point. And therefore, there should be no problem, because a negotiation should be continuing, and their right to knowledge of this sort of stuff, it's their right.
The problem, then, is that we've created a situation in the region: We've created a situation, in which we've had a war against Islam, organized by Bernard Lewis of British intelligence, or the British Arab Bureau, and Henry Kissinger and other people, and have made this an issue of Islam.
And then, we've, what we did in Iraq, we've made a mess of the whole area. We have now taken a nation, Iraq, in which—it was not a perfect nation, by any means, I know! But it was a united nation, it had a sense of a unity, with some oppression of some minorities in it, that sort of thing, and some who were not minorities—but we've made a mess of the whole region. And the British are making a mess of the whole region.
I see no solution, except that the United States gets rid of George Bush and Cheney! And shows that we're a nation, and that we are going to make sure, that we have come to a set of rules of behavior, which are truly equitable. And then, the Iranian people themselves don't want a nuclear war, and they can take care of their own government. And once that's done, we can eliminate this whole question of who has a right to know what nuclear weapons technology is.
Dialogue of Cultures in Alaska
Freeman: A number of the elected officials who are here, have submitted various questions for Lyn. You guys will have, obviously, the oppportunity to ask those questions, as the second half of today's agenda proceeds. So, I'm just going to ask you to be patient with that.
I do want to entertain a couple of questions that have been submitted from members of the LaRouche Youth Movement, some of whom are here, and some of whom are not. There's a question that's been submitted by the Anchorage, Alaska, LaRouche Youth Movement—which I thought I'd ask, since they're so far away, that they never really get to ask their questions in person. This is a question on indigenous people and physical economic development. And, Ian asks,
"Lyn, in attempting a dialogue of civilizations between American patriots and Alaskan natives, I run into some really serious problems. First, there is little distinguishing between what we know as the American System and the system of usury, and this has to do with the history of the genocide against Indian tribes in the United States. That's an easy enough hurdle to overcome, when we discuss some of the people involved. But the bigger problem, which I have less of an idea of how to address, is a problem of culture, with an explicit opposition to physical economic development of the degree that we're proposing.
"These people were used, and partially enslaved, by Russian imperialists, and unfortunately, they fared little better under the United States with Gold Rushes and other things, including the Land Settlement Act of 1971, which applied shareholder values of the corporate type to their own tribal councils. When a subsistence lifestyle has become their identity, and they've already lost much of their identity and culture to these conditions, how should one approach these people with ideas like science-driven infrastructure projects, such as the maglev, the NAWAPA river extension program, all of which fundamentally challenge the deepest of their subsistence-identity axioms, that have already been so rudely stripped from them?
"Also, this subsistence mentality is used by the environmentalist movement up here in a very destructive way, and this is a second major factor in justifying in keeping these people in an impoverished way of living. I have trouble listening to these clueless Bobos, who brag about ANWR [Alaska National Wildlife Reserve], on their way into shopping at REI and other stores, for some new synthetic underpants. I find it nauseating. Please comment."
LaRouche: Well, you know, this is something the British started. The House of Morgan. A number of our people have done some work on this, which should be looked at. What was done with the so-called indigenous population of the American Indians. Look, take Andrew Jackson, President Andrew Jackson: What a fine fellow he was! One of the myths of the Democratic Party, is that he was fine. The Democratic Party was created by a Wall Street bunch of gangsters. And it underwent a positive evolution under President Roosevelt. That's the story! But before then, it was the worst thieves and traitors the United States had. It's just that the Republican Party began to go bad, as bad as the Democratic Party—we sort of switched roles. It's something.
The problem here, is that a fetish was made, by the British in particular and their agents in the United States. Initially, this thing started, where the British and some of the French tried to hamper, and war against, the English colonies in North America, and they incited tribes, like the Iroquois and others, in order to conduct warfare, where the settlers had originally sought nothing but peaceful relations with them. The King Philip's War in Massachusetts is an example of this, where the British orchestrated a war against English settlers, who had nothing but good feeling and good intentions toward the people.
As a matter of fact, some of the Indians were not really Indians, they were Portuguese. Because the Portuguese had settled New England before the English colonists got there. As a matter of fact, the Mayflower stopped at Provincetown to ask the Portuguese on directions to their destination on the coast of North America. That's how they ended up at Plymouth Rock. And when they met the Indians, what they met was a tribe of people who had intermarried with the local Indian tribes, because you had Portuguese sailors staying over there, catching codfish, making salt on the sand, making barrels, and taking the salted codfish, which they had sun-dried and stuck in the barrels with salt, and about every two years, they would take a shipment of these casks of salt cod, and take it back to Europe. So, they had been there, and being gentlemen over there, they made acquaintance of some of the ladies, to revive the requisite entertainment they desired during these long two-year periods that they were on the coast of North America. So, the Indian tribe was actually a Portuguese tribe; and the reason they were able to talk with them, is because they spoke Portuguese.
But, in the process, the British policy—and especially after 1763—it was the British government and the British Foreign Office and its agents, who orchestrated most of the slaughters. Now, in the case of Andrew Jackson's slaughter of the Cherokees: Now, the Cherokees had developed as a literate nation with a written language. They were the first indigenous population of North America of that period, which had a written language. They had rapidly developed a written language, of their own—hmm?—based on their language, on studying English. They had their own government, everything. So, Andy Jackson came down there and destroyed them! Some were chased off into the area next to Oklahoma; others were chased down into the Everglades. And Andy Jackson committed a kind of genocide against the Cherokee nation. So you had that. But you had, also, these wars with the Sioux and so forth, which was orchestrated across the border from Canada by the British.
Now, what happened was, the idea was to use the cult of backwardness, of the Indian tribes—and they became more backward under these conditions, not less backward; for example, the Sioux had originally been in the area of Minnesota, around Pipestown, for example, which was one of their centers. It was called Pipestown, because they used the clay there to make their smoking pipes. And they were driven—by the British, they were driven westward, and were cultivated and transformed into a horse-riding culture, hunting down buffalo, bison. They had not done that before! Oh, they may have killed a bison or two up in the woods of northern Minnesota or something, but it was a transformation.
So the British organized these wars. And then they had their friends in New York City, the bankers who were London-controlled, and they were in it on the other side! So, you had the famous case of Custer's Last Stand, which is the logic of this conflict, engendered from both sides. An old British trick is, "Get them to fight each other, and we'll beat 'em both."
What was left, therefore, was a policy in Washington, under the New York financial interests, which then imposed upon the treaty lands, conditions of life and a doctrine of culture which is "Don't Change! Our Way of Life!"
Now, before that time, most people in most parts of the world, meeting a new culture and finding something interesting and profitable in it, would adopt it. For example, how did the Indians get the metal tomahawk? The British gave it to them. The British East India Company gave it to them, or the British India Company gave it to them. They gave them muskets, and they got them to deplete their land by hunting with muskets, instead of bows and arrows. And they began moving westward. They gave them traps, to trap for the Hudson Bay Company; this kind of thing.
So, what you had, you have a policy of brainwashing and degradation, an imposed self-degradation of these people, who should have been integrated with dignity into the United States. Some of them did. In Canada, for example, some of them were used as construction workers. In New York City—the skyscrapers in New York City were built by the Iroquois. Because the Iroquois tribe became skilled in terms of high-rise construction, high steel construction, and built a lot of the structures in New York City. That sort of thing.
In Canada, they were trained, they were educated in the Canadian schools, in more recent times. I saw them, one time I saw this thing at Moosonee, which is at the mouth of the Moose River, going into Hudson Bay area. I went down there on a kayak trip, shot a nice little rapid for myself when I was younger and friskier. And they all went to college.
But I saw them here in Moosonee, which is a dusty track. It's the end, where the Hudson Bay Company would service the Hudson Bay Indians and so forth, with their supplies, and where the goose hunters would go out there once a year. They would hunt the geese, and the black flies would hunt them. These people were just walking around in circles, around these dusty streets, going nowhere, where some of them were off working on construction jobs. But, you saw a dismal situation, of people who are university-educated, or college-educated, with no sense of future, no sense of going anyplace, where some of the men had construction jobs and worked in various parts of Canada.
But systematically, governments did everything possible to bring this state about. In this case, in Alaska: Well, you're going to have to go at this the right way. You're going to have to say, that there are certain things that they will accept, and you use what they will accept, to get them to upgrade themselves. And you try to minimize the conflict. Because what was done with the so-called Eskimo, was what was done to the Indians, the same policy. The so-called indigenous tribes. And, if you want to find out where the dirt comes from, you go up to New York City, and go to the American Museum of Natural History on Central Park West: And you'll see the whole dirty story laid out there. And that's where Margaret Meade used to hang out. And she had a big staff, and at the top of the staff she had witch's horns, because she considered herself a witch. And I don't know that—I never heard a "b" pronounced like a "w."
When the Nation's Existence Is at Stake...
Jeffrey Steinberg: Debbie had to step out of the room for a minute, so I have the pleasure, but slightly unfortunate pleasure, of reading the last question, of this afternoon's webcast. This is from Seneca Jones, from Boston, Massachusetts. The question is:
"I went to the Lincoln Memorial and read a letter written by Lincoln. I read that he said, 'I want to save the Union and this is my focus. If saving the Union means freeing the slaves, I'll do it. If saving the Union means leaving them in bondage. I'll do it. If it means freeing half and leaving the other half in bondage, I'll do it.' What do you think he meant by this, and what will it take to save the Union today?"
LaRouche: That's Lincoln! And that's the observation of a man who had a keen mind. Because, we survive on the basis of institutions, not on the basis of contracts, on agreements. Slavery was reintroduced to the United States as a policy in the 1820s, because the United States was isolated, and the British were able to do it. The only institution on this planet, which could eliminate slavery, the practice of slavery—which was still going on in Brazil; the Spanish were doing it under British direction: The British were conducting slavery in the United States, and don't let anybody tell you they weren't! They ran the Spanish monarchy, and the famous Amistad case is an example of that. The Spanish were running the slave trade. The British didn't want to do it, because it wasn't profitable to them—so let the dumb Spanish do it.
And the only way to get rid of this thing, was to have a nation, which would get rid of it. That was Lincoln's policy. If we lost the Union, slavery would triumph internationally. If you kept the Union, it would not.
The immediate issue, is to save the Union: Because without the institutions of power that would provide freedom, there is no freedom. The idea that freedom is an individual thing, is a failure to understand the problem. Mankind, society, has two natures. On the one side, you have society as a whole, as a unit. On the other side, you have the individual. The power of the mind, the power of creativity of the human being, is unique to the individual person, not to the society. Freedom does not really exist inside the society; it exists inside the individual. But: The exercise of freedom requires the protection of society. And that's the issue: the protection of society.
If we had lost this republic, slavery would never have ended. That was the issue.
How do you get rid of it? How to hold a nation together, to create a result, that did get rid of it? And he did! He got rid of it. He always intended to get rid of it. But he had to take a pathway, that would lead to that victory. He had the same objective as Frederick Douglass, but the question for him, was to win: to win that war, and he had to win that war. And he did. And slavery ended. Because he understood that the institution of the United States—. Look, he said this in 1863, in the Gettysburg Address. Clearly. That if this nation were to disappear, were to be broken, there would be no hope for its replacement.
The hope of all mankind, was the existence of the United States. And fortunately, or unfortunately, that is still true to the present day: Without the United States functioning as it must function—but first, it must exist—there is no hope for civilized humanity on this planet today.
The problem lies largely in the other side, of thinking that the whole thing is a matter of individual impulse, of individual freedom. The problem is a matter of winning a war, winning a war for principle, and this republic is the only thing that stood between a world of slavery, then, and freedom. That was the situation.
That is the cruelty of real life. And therefore, when you have to fight a war, put your life at risk for war, that's what you have to remember.
What I'm thinking today, as I worry about what's happening in the Senate, today and tomorrow: Will they capitulate and let this Alito pass? If they do, the existence of this nation is in jeopardy. Everything hangs on it. Often, in the course of events, you come to a battlefield, where you must win the war on that battlefield. That battlefield will not decide history as such, but the outcome of that battle will determine whether you can decide history, or not.
Freeman: Okay, so let's go on, to win this battle! Please, join me, once again, in thanking Lyn, and then, let's go do our work. Okay?
LaRouche: Thank you!
