JANUARY 17 WEBCAST
Questions and Dialogue With LaRouche
This is a transcript of the dialogue which followed Lyndon LaRouche's opening remarks at his Jan. 17, 2008 webcast.
Freeman: before we get to the questions, I have a couple of announcements and greetings. When we conduct one of these webcasts, we have satellite meetings in various parts of the world, and I couldn't begin to announce all of them. But, when we have gatherings that are new to the network, I always do try to extend greetings to them. My understanding today, is that in addition to the normal gatherings that we've had on the continent of Ibero-America, today we have several gatherings in Bolivia, at the University of San Francisco de Asis; teachers and deans at the campuses of La Paz and Tupiza, which is the Tarija province, are gathering. Also, in La Paz in Cochabama. The Association of Municipalities in Cochabama is listening today, and we welcome them to today's broadcast. There is a gathering in Ecuador at the University of Manta. There is a very large gathering at the University of Sonora in Mexico, and as always, there is a gathering in Mexico City. So, I'd like to extend a welcome to all of those groups, and I will try to entertain your questions as I always do.
We also have a statement that was submitted by State Rep. Joe Almeda of Rhode Island. He is the primary sponsor of a resolution calling for immediate Congressional action on the Homeowners and Bank Protection Act in the Rhode Island House of Representatives. And he wanted to convey this statement to those who are listening:"I support the policy proposed by Lyndon LaRouche in the Homeowners and Bank Protection Act and we're working very hard right now, to push a resolution supporting this act through the Rhode Island House of Representatives. We are expecting a vote by next week. But I'd also like to urge all other state legislatures across the country to join us in passing similar resolutions. You do not need an economics degree to realize that LaRouche's proposal is necessary."
Lyn, I think that you answered many of these questions in the course of your presentation, but the various questioners want them answered anyway, again. And my experience with them, is that repeating doesn't hurt!
A 'Stimulation Package' or a Sex Clinic?
Before I get to those, one of the questions that came in while you were speaking, is from somebody who was previously associated with the Hamilton Group, and who now is over at the Congressional Budget Office. And he says:
"Mr. LaRouche, Hillary Clinton's economic stimulus package seems to me to be named incorrectly. I want to be clear that I happen to agree with what she's proposing. I think it's necessary. But I think that it's necessary only as a measure to address the immediate needs of the American population. I do not see it as stimulating the economy per see, but merely as an attempt to stabilize things.
"I'd like to know if you agree. My own view is that, given the nature of this crisis, there are two potential approaches. One is to take LBJ's approach, and I believe that Hillary's proposal actually falls into this category. The other approach is to take the kind of approach that John Kennedy took with his Moon mission. I don't know if one can lead to the other, and I'm wondering if you think one can lead to the other.
"The other question that I have for you is, do you think that we still have the capability to launch a JFK-style approach?"
LaRouche: Well, as I said, there is no real precedent for either the problem we face today, or for the remedies for that problem. There's no precedent in known history, for what's required now. I think, nonetheless, on the other hand, although that is true, that it is not beyond us, to discover the new approach to be taken to solve an unprecedented problem. This is not new to humanity, to do that, it just requires a mustering of the will and insight needed to do it.
The idea that we need a "stimulation package" is wrong! That's where the problem lies. Everybody is talking about stimulation, like this is a sex clinic, or something. This is not the problem!
The problem is the fact that stimulation is the worst thing you can do. That is, stimulation of the present system. Well, you had that, with the curve. It's being stimulated! The rate of inflation is so-oa-arr-ring! You want more of that?
Do you realize what the rate of inflation is now, underlying? Do you realize what it means relative to your income, personally? How do you match your income with the rate of stimulation? The rate of inflation? Look at the price of bread, look at the price of Al Gore! He took food out of your diet—as a carbon-control measure.
No, the point is, forget stimulation. This economy is not going to recover by stimulation. This economy will recover only by massive surgery to remove the present kind of stimulation, and introduce an altogether different one!
What we have to do, is forget monetary stimulation. We have to have a governmental control of the creation of credit. We must have a banking system, a regular banking system, which cooperates with government, in processing that credit into places where it's needed: new firms, infrastructure, so forth. So, the creation of credit is by government, not financial stimulation! You have too much sexual financial stimulation going on, as it stands now!
What we have to do, is bring this thing under control, and take down the present financial-monetary system! Without changing some of the labels. And how do you do that? You do that by an orderly bankruptcy. What do you do with an orderly bankruptcy? You put the entity into bankruptcy. And the first thing you do, you say, "We're going to send this to the butcher shop, or revive it."
Now, in most of these cases, you can't send it to the butcher shop. Let's take the case right here: Loudoun County, nearby. I warned about this. I warned about this back in 2000, that Loudoun County was being set up to become Ground Zero for the biggest financial collapse in U.S. history. And it is in process of becoming exactly that, as I warned. What happens with bankruptcy in Loudoun County? What happens with this crazy idea of bailing out worthless real estate investment enterprises, at the cost of banks! It is the banks which are used by the Federal government, and other means to bring credit into areas' institutions! It is the security of these banks, which is essential to us, in our system of government, our system of economy. We regulate! We do not destroy! We destroy that which is worthless—we destroy diseases. We don't destroy financial institutions.
We don't stimulate a sick economy. We don't stimulate the sale of cocaine. We don't stimulate the spread of AIDS. We don't stimulate these things. What we do, is we concentrate on creating and supporting things which are necessary to cause the physical recovery of the economy.
The problem with this thinking, is people are worshippers of money. The Mammonites, huh? Strict worshippers of money. And money is nothing. Money, except as government makes it more than that, is either a system of usury or piracy, or it's an instrument of government, controlled by government. Money must be controlled by government! Principle #1. Before answering the question: Do you accept the control of money by government, in terms of its utterance and its circulation? Do you accept that? Do you accept tax rates which are selective? Which have the effect of regulating what things get treated more favorably than other things, because the tax rates are better? No more golden parachutes; lead ones. They sink deeply.
So, stimulation is not the answer. What you have to do, is create a new monetary system, without shutting down the monetary process. How do you do that? You take the core of this financial problem, the core is: The homeowners are losing their homes. You can not have them thrown out of their homes. They are being thrown out, not because of any fault of their own, but the conditions imposed upon them, with the complicity of government, and with the complicity of powerful financial institutions which say, "We're more important than the people." People like Bloomberg. I mean, anybody who's got an $11 billion income can not have done it honestly.
So therefore, what you do, is you say, "Money is, under United States law, money is the property of the U.S. government, and its regulation lies with the House of Representatives as the representative agency, and lies with the Presidency, especially the Treasury Department." That's what money is, and money has no rights to exist except on that basis, or by treaty agreements of the United States with other governments. So, anything else, you get into bankruptcy, the welfare of this population is threatened, the welfare of the nation is threatened, the economy is threatened, what do you do? Money has got to go into the woodshed, and we're going to take cord wood, and we're going to train it, get its hips back in shape. So, that's the first thing you have to understand. So, it's not stimulation vs anti-stimulation; it's reorganization. And how do you do that? What you do is you go into the key parts of the economy, starting with homeowners, communities, and banks—real banks, not the fake ones. You stabilize them under bankruptcy protection, Federal bankruptcy protection. Don't try to resettle the accounts, don't try to resolve anything; just resolve they're going to be under Federal protection.
Then you have to go from there to other measures which stimulate growth. Now, one of the first things you do, is you're going to start up things like the national automobile industry capability. We don't need more automobiles right now, we're producing enough, or we're getting the Japanese to produce them for us. But what we do need, is to revive the machine tool capability which was located within the automobile industry as a machine tool capability to build infrastructure—to build nuclear plants, to build new mass transportation systems. We don't need all these highways; we don't need people to have to travel from West Virginia into Washington at a cost of $7 a day or more in tolls, where it's two or three hours each way to live in West Virginia where it's cheaper to live, in order to work in the Washington, D.C. area. It's nuts! We used to have a system where you would have local production, and therefore when people were working or living, they didn't have to travel three hours commuting. The ideal of commuting or commuting organization was 15 minutes each way commuting. That was considered good; at the maximum half an hour. When you go beyond half an hour or 15 minutes for commuting time, either way, to and from work or other essential functions, as a normal daily function, you are insane, or the government's insane.
So, therefore, what we are going to do is reorganize the society to make sure that those things that are essential are encouraged, and those things that are not essential, well, they can sit there for a while. Then we will, in a sense, have new laws, which will be crafted, based on their impact on prices to incomes, in order to get things going so that you don't have a Bloomberg getting $11 billion from a swindle, aspiring to become a fascist dictatorship the United States. That is not our policy, or should not be our policy. We don't need all these golden parachutes. We have a population that needs care; we have a world that needs care, and resources are not going to be sucked out of the blood of the masses of the people in our economy in order to enrich the few, at the expense of the people. So, therefore, that's where this problem lies, and that's where this question of stimulation takes people way out of whack. Forget stimulation—go see your sex consultant.
Infrastructure Plus Stimulation?
Freeman: Well, you just provoked a whole mess with that. Well, people are altering their questions.
This is a question from someone who has responsibility for one of the Congressional committees that has to deal with this. And what she says is, "Lyn, there's a lot of discussion in Congress and the Administration regarding this so-called stimulus package. Maybe it shouldn't be called a stimulus package, maybe it should be called something else. The initiatives that we're talking about include things like rebate checks, extending unemployment benefits, aid to states, help with housing problems and the devastated construction industry, and various other short-term measures. While infrastructure spending is among the initiatives under consideration, there are concerns that legislation providing additional spending through infrastructural development, would simply take too long to enter the economy. So, from this standpoint, do you think that 'stimulus legislation' is appropriate, and should additional investment in infrastructure be included in any stimulus package, or should it be separate?"
LaRouche: Forget stimulus! There's too much stimulus. Eleven billion dollars in the possession of Mayor Bloomberg of New York is excessive stimulus. We don't need any more of that. We want to make sure that none of that ever happens again. He is the horrible example of the year. He must never appear again, especially as a candidate.
All right now, the point here is, forget the stimulus all together. What you're going to do is, you're going to cut and cover. You're going to cut crap; you're going to cut golden parachutes; and you're going to put what you cut to the account of things that should have been paid. In other words, you're not in the first instance going to increase the monetary aggregate. You're going to put money into some areas, and take it away from others. And that should be very stimulating, depending upon your point of view.
So therefore, we do want a growth program, but a growth program must be based primarily on science and technology and on capital improvements in basic economic infrastructure. That's what you do. Look at what Roosevelt did, and the way he did it. That's exactly the way it worked; that's the way it should work. You will provide abundant credit, but not money, credit. How will you provide it? The Federal government will issue an act—let's take one of the things that Hillary has proposed recently—that should be uttered as an act of the Federal government. That act of the Federal government should then be translated into a relationship with banks.
Now, for example, take banks that are legitimate banks—not these Countrywide or similar kinds of fake banks. What we want to do is stabilize them. In other words, you want the homeowner to have the home. This may mean that homeowner pays a reduced rate, relative to the present fees, for occupation of that house, but stays there. Now, you're reducing it, but at the same time, your intention is to protect the local bank. You don't want the local bank to go into bankruptcy, because if the local banks go into bankruptcy, then the homeowners have no chance whatsoever, the businesses have no chance whatsoever, they all go down. So therefore, your interest is to stimulate the security of those banks, and this is part of the exact same operation, it's inseparable from protecting the homeowner, because the homeowner is not just a homeowner, the homeowner is a member of the community, and that community requires support, because what about its tax revenue base? So therefore, you're going to have legislation which is addressed to dealing with these problems of the tax revenue base, the security of the banking system, the private banking system, the chartered banking system, and the homeowners, all at once. You don't want people evicted, you don't want things shutting down. So, you're going to shift your policy so that some things that need stimulation of that type will get it, and other things will lose the excess stimulation they've been enjoying all too much. That's the way you do it. And therefore, you have to have a sense of a national budget, a national operating budget, including a national investment budget. You have to make a list of the things you require.
For example, look at what's happening in Asia right now. It's a very crucial part of this thing. What you have now is, you have a train which has left Shanghai, and will end up in Hamburg. What this means is a revolutionary change in the economy of China and of Eurasia, comparable to what the United States achieved with the transcontinental railroad system during and following the Presidency of Lincoln. In other words, you are going away from a society which depends on long-range and sometimes tedious maritime trade, into internal traffic in goods—imports/exports—across land areas. In this case, it will reduce the time required from Shanghai to Hamburg, to a few days, a relatively few days, or a couple of weeks. Whereas, the longer route would take a month or two months. So, therefore, this is an improvement in the economy of Eurasia, which means that you are actually getting more for less. When you reduce the physical cost of something that is necessary, you're getting more for less. And our object is what? Doing this through technological improvements and improvements in infrastructure.
We have a world population that is very poor. Take Africa, for example: They're very poor people. You're not going to go in there and stimulate very poor people to suddenly get all the wonderful skills they need to have a modern industry, you're not going to do it! It's not possible. What you're going to do, for example, is to go to the African farmer. You're going to go to the African farmer, who is essentially a good farmer, but the bugs and diseases kill his crop, and other things happen to him. So what do you do? You go in and you do things, through infrastructure, which enable the improvement, in the conditions of life and productivity of that farmer, to occur. Now, you have created a foundation for that farmer and his children and so forth, to improve their cultural power to exist, and that's what you do. So, you are not always necessarily looking to spend more money, like a gift under a Christmas tree by Santa Claus or something. What you're trying to do is increase the efficiency of the human race, so that the same effort by people per capita and per square kilometer, produces a higher gain, physical gain. And you're trying to eliminate things which are more costly to society than they are worth, such as the existence of Mayor Bloomberg.
So, that's the point, and that's what has to be emphasized. Forget stimulus! What's this, a sex clinic?
Don't Look for a 'Plausible' Pitch
Freeman: Lyn, the more you say that, the more these questions keep coming in....
This one is from the Hispanic Caucus on Capitol Hill. And I'm asking it because we have a number of Congressional offices, but also a number of state legislators, who are asking exactly this question:
"Mr. LaRouche, what would you think about dividing your legislation into two pieces? I think we've got the votes for a moratorium on foreclosures. What if we were to put that first, and then bring up separately the bank protection? And if we were to do it that way, how much time would we have after a moratorium on foreclosures to deal with the banks?"
LaRouche: I would say about ten seconds. By the time the effect of that hits the banks, you would begin to get an effect you don't want. See, the problem here is very simple, it's understandable: People like people, and they don't like banks. People like people more than they like loan sharks. They don't like predators who eat them. This is understandable. But don't worry about these predators; we are going to re-educate them and train them. They will now become good people; we are going to train them. The government is going to train them to become good people instead of bad people.
The point is, that the welfare of the citizens requires that the bank be stable. The welfare of the community requires that private banks, under Federal and state regulation, be stable, to provide an essential function in the communities to keep the communities functioning. Without the credit system which banks represent in the community, you can not have a circulating medium of credit needed to stabilize an economy. There is no question that what is proposed for the homeowners is, for the moment, more popular. But that's only because the homeowners don't yet know the truth of the matter. And the object is, rather than trying to pander to their ignorant views on some aspects of this thing, why not educate them and inform them of what the whole truth is? It is not against the law to educate people! It is not against the law to tell people what they need to know to survive, and they need to know what the role of banks is in their survival, or they will not survive. So, the fact that they have a prejudice against banks at this moment, does not mean that that's going to work.
See, the problem is, we're living in a sophist society. The culture is sophist. I find that I am appalled sometimes, even though I know this better than most people do. There virtually is no regard for truth in this nation. Virtually no part of this population wants to talk about the truth. I can get very nasty about that, because I can tell you some cases that people wouldn't like to have me talk about. But the point is, that people think that a plausible appeal, a plausible pitch which gets what you want, is what you should say. "Don't tell the truth if you don't think it has sex appeal." That's the standard of sophistry today, and therefore, most people relying on what they consider common sense or sex appeal, seek things that will destroy them. It's like the guy who went out to a prostitute and came back with a deadly disease. He sought it, he thought it was what he wanted, and he died with it. So, don't think that what people think is popular is true, or that what is popular is what you should base yourself on.
The most important thing in politics, which very few politicians today know, is if you're going to tell the truth, you're going to make a lot more enemies than friends. But if you don't have the guts to do it, society may not survive. My job is to tell the truth, even if my own associates don't like it, because the truth is necessary. And the fact that we're in a society filled up with sophistry, where people say things on the basis of how they think it would affect the attitudes of other people. If they've got the wrong attitude, you're going to help change it.
After the HBPA: Reactivate Industry
Freeman: ...This is a question from somebody involved in a national campaign, and it's got many parts to it. I'll read you the whole thing, and then you can figure out how you want to address it.
"Mr. LaRouche, you've built what you call a firewall to protect what I assume you mean are the charter banks, into your HBPA legislation, and I have several questions regarding this. I don't understand exactly why you call it a firewall. How would it function? It won't really stop the collapse, as far as I can see. Second—and this is what I'm having the most problem with—the banks' exposure to the hedge funds and vice versa, is such that I don't understand how you could separate one from the other, and I think this is what many people are having problems with. I also look at it in terms of the implications of Bank of America's acquisition of Countrywide, which is being promoted as something that was good for Bank of America, although I don't really understand how it could be. Since your legislation does seem to address the issue of protection for the banks, why does Wall Street have such a violent reaction against it?
"Also, finally, you've repeatedly said that the HBPA is only the first step. From the standpoint of domestic policy—I understand what you're saying about the four-power agreement—but from the standpoint of domestic policy, how would you immediately follow up on the HBPA, because obviously there's more than just the mortgage crisis that has to be addressed."
LaRouche: Well, let me take the last part of that first. The first thing that I would do, is to do what I proposed in the year 2005 and into 2006. I would say that we would create a Federal fund to reactivate what would otherwise be the permanently lost machine tool capability embodied in the U.S.-owned auto industry. I would use this, for example, for building large-scale rail systems, and nuclear power systems, and other things which are desperately needed by the population. So we shift the flow of payments away from what is a hopeless cause—bailing out these crazy banks, like mortgage banks. We're just going to cancel them. They're bankrupt, they're honestly bankrupt, they're obviously financially bankrupt, and they have no useful function. Why should you save any of them? Why don't you declare them in bankruptcy? Is it because you don't have the guts to do so? Is it Wall Street? Wall Street is polluted. If Wall Street says something is something, don't do it! They lie! They always lie. At this stage, there is no honesty there. Forget Wall Street! If you want to live with Wall Street, you're going to die. Maybe not what you chose, but what you chose in fact.
Okay, so the key thing is, there are things which are urgent, which if done, will revive the economy by reviving the creative productive powers of the population, either directly, in terms of the application to production, in terms of the infrastructure which catalyzes an improvement in productivity. In this period, most people aren't worth employing, and in most cases it's not their fault. They're not worth employing because they were never trained to be useful. They were trained to do make-work, to seem to have a job, to seem to have a function, but no significant function to the benefit of the economy. It's just to keep them on maintenance, like a kindergarten. Not developing people. So therefore, our biggest factor in recovery, there are cases where we require re-industrialization, that is, employing people like skilled machine tool people, who were in of the automobile industry, as part of the machine tool sector. Employing them in projects which we need desperately as a nation, and employing as many other people as auxiliaries of their work as possible.
So, we will not put a penny into bailing out the mortgage banks, not a single penny. We will defend the charter banks, period. Nothing else. Everything else was a swindle. Why should we bail out a swindle? Just because it was not called illegal, it's still a swindle. So therefore, we will defend the banks, because we are limited in what we can defend, and we must defend the charter banks, otherwise the entire system on which the economy's functioning depends, will fall. And we have limited resources; we do not have infinite resources. And therefore, we will reserve the subsidies for the Federal government to extend long-term credit, issued through the usual procedure, including by the Federal government with the consent of the Congress, for major projects of the type that people like Felix Rohatyn and company killed, when I proposed them in 2005 and 2006. If my policies had been continued in 2005 and 2006, we would not be in the mess we are in today. Now it's later, but maybe it's not too late, and maybe we can still survive. So, let's do it, and let's stop talking about these other things. They're not worth talking about.
Hedge funds—well, we may need an expansion of the prison programs. I'm serious! Bloomberg—$11 billion—look at it! How the hell did he get $11 billion? What kind of hokum did he pull? Who'd he rob? He ought to be ashamed of himself to have that much money, considering what's happening to every street in New York. You're afraid to take one—it may the one that collapses into a pit tomorrow. So, that's the situation.
The point here is, the charter bank is an essential institution for organizing and maintenance of the protection and recovery of the American economy, and the protection of its people. Don't start from the end run of some jerk, who says that's not going to work, so-and-so doesn't like it. Of course they don't like it! You're taking their right to steal away from them. Their right to commit suicide; you're denying that. "How cruel you are to do that." No, no need to apologize. The guy comes up to the bank, and says, "I've got a claim on your accounts here. I got this thing, you owe me this." "We got a firewall here, buddy. You get nothing. You go to the back of the line and wait. Put in your application, and when we get around to it, we'll talk to you." That's called a firewall.
What Can the States Do?
Freeman: This question is from a Maryland state legislator.
"Mr. LaRouche, I serve on the committee which is dealing with the immediate implications of the mortgage crisis, and while I do plan on signing on as a co-sponsor to the HBPA, I wonder if there isn't something we can do on the state level to mitigate the crisis, while we are pressuring Congress to act." We have so many questions like that.
LaRouche: Well, very simply, yes. See, the state level is already functioning, and the state level is the superior power of the legislative facilities of the state, to kick the Federal government in the ass. And giving it an elevating experience, that method. That is a very important function, because the consent of the people as a whole and our institutions as a whole depends upon this process. The state has to do certain things, its responsibilities, but our Constitution divides what they have to do and what they don't. What they have to do above all, as states, and as state government agencies, is to represent the people to the Federal government, and to kick the Federal government in the rear end, when necessary. And that is what they're doing. Look, don't kid yourself, and don't be afraid. I'm telling you, that what we're doing in organizing this legislation now, and particularly when it comes in as LPAC legislation—comes in as something else, it wouldn't work, because LPAC means me. And I'm an expert, so you're not getting some gossip from the street, who's coming in and making a wild suggestion, which may be well motivated and so forth. But I'm an expert. I'm more expert than anybody in the government right now on this question. And what I'm putting out as an LPAC proposal, is an expert proposal, and I've seen nobody able to duplicate the equivalent of that, so far. So, when people at the state level support me in this, that is a message to the Federal government. And I can tell you, the Federal government wants nothing presented to it with my name anywhere near it. Why don't they want my name appearing there? Because they're afraid of me. What good does that do? If they're not afraid of me, they're not going to do any good. That's the way it works.
Oil Prices: Congress Isn't Listening!
Freeman: ... I'd like to call to the microphone Ted Weill, the chairman of the Mississippi Reform Party.
Weill: I've just been bothered tremendously in the last three or four years, because I see a slight increase in gasoline prices all the time. In 1946, I paid 11 cents a gallon. Now I'm paying three dollars and a quarter a gallon. The strange thing is, that the oil under the continental United States belongs to everyone in this room. It doesn't belong to politicians, or to Bloomberg or anyone else. We should be able to do with that oil whatever we want.
Now, I know all you people know that in places like Venezuela, they're charging 9 cents a gallon for the Venezuelan people. Iraq, where we've already lost 5,000 boys, I think their price is 12 or 13 cents. My question is simply this: if the Venezuelan government can set up oil-cracking plants to make gasoline for their people, we should be able to do the same thing, and I'd just like to hear your comments on this, if you're in agreement with that, or if you're not in agreement with that. I've tried to contact congressmen. I can't get past the staff, and for some strange reason, you know. I just think this is an example of what the people can't stand in American anymore. When they have to pay, well, like I said, I used to pay 11 cents a gallon after World War II, and you can't go from 11 cents a gallon to three dollars and a quarter—now I understand, the last report I got, is that the price per barrel may jump to $150 a barrel, and now it's $100, and within a year it may go up to $200 a barrel. That could kill the average American, and I don't think they should be dying.
I think we should do something about it, and the LaRouche group—I've been following them a long time, and I think we ought to have a program. You probably already have one, and we could do something about this, because I know you have young people, and that's why I like to support your organization. These young people go out all over the country, and it's going to fall back on their shoulders anyhow what happens to this country. Not me, not you, LaRouche. You're too old. and so am I. But I think the American people should be able to do something about this, and do something about it now. And I don't know how to get to 'em. I can do it on a local basis. I put a full-page ad in the Tylertown Times in Mississipppi, and got good response from the people in the county. I think we ought to really go out and get serious.
I've asked the Congress, where are our anti-trust laws? I got three answers back. One from Pelosi, asking for a $30 donation for the Democratic Party, and two of them were form letters, saying the exact same words. One was from a representative from the East Coast, one was a representative from the West Coast: "We have a longstanding understanding in the House of Representatives. Whenever we get a letter from another district outside of our district, we give it to the representative in that district." Pickering, my representative, received 411 letters, because that's how many I sent to Washington, and those are the three responses I got.
Now we, as the American people, should be able to do something about this and do it now. And, I know it's gotta be a monopoly. It couldn't be anything else, because those oil companies aren't really paying anything for the oil they get out of the ground, but they've been paying a lot of our representatives and our congressmen, and a lot of other people. That's the reason I can't get in touch with 'em. Thank you.
LaRouche: It's not a physiocratic problem. The point is that, ask, " what is the price paid to Saudi Arabia for its oil per barrel," and you'll find out the truth of the matter is very simple. The truth is the price of petroleum is controlled by the British empire, not by the producers of oil, petroleum, or petroleum products, in the Gulf or anywhere else. They have a monopoly, which is controlled by the Anglo-Dutch Liberal system, which is the empire. My view is, there's only one solution to this problem: Skunk the Empire! Sink the Empire, and if somebody says they're pro-British, ask them what lunatic bin they came from, because anyone who's pro-British has to be a lunatic.
Is the HBPA Constitutional?
Freeman: Lyn, we have a dozen questions that address this particular issue. This one is from John Jeffries, the machinist in Louisville, Kentucky, but we also have it from a couple of congressional offices, and we also have it from a Presidential campaign. The way that Jeffries poses it is as follows.
"Lyn, I recently helped get the Homeowners and Bank Protection Act to my city councilmen and my legislators, and I've recruited many top officials in the labor movement here in Kentucky to endorse the legislation. I've recently met with my congressman, John Yarmouth of Louisville, this week, and I asked him to introduce the legislation into Congress. He read the material and was extremely provoked. He said he thought it was a good piece of legislation, but he was concerned that the bill was unconstitutional. I assured him that it was not, but I said that I would relate that concern to you, and I'd like you to comment on it, since it keeps coming up."
One of the ways that this was posed by one of the other congressional offices, and by a Presidential campaign, is they say that the question of constitutionality is a complicated one, because "there seems to be little question that the President has the power, either by the declaration of a national emergency or by Executive action, to move in this direction or to send legislation up to Capitol Hill; but the argument that keeps coming up is that such a Presidential declaration or Executive order is in fact necessary, and many of us, frankly, are reluctant to encourage such a declaration, given our current circumstances."
LaRouche: Well, first of all, there is no constitutional issue here at all. It's fake. What happened was some members of Congress referred the subject to the Congressional Research Office, and suddenly in the middle of all this, somebody plunked this thing, saying this is unconstitutional, on top of it. And so, therefore, whatever jerk wrote that into that particular reply to the congressman, is the source of this thing. It's totally incompetent.
The principle involved, the constitutional principle, is in the Preamble of the Constitution. And the Constitution prescribes the protection of the general welfare. By extension, each of the states—to the extent that the Federal government has not preempted the area!—the state has the responsibility and power to act in lieu of the Federal government, if the Federal government has not yet taken that area over. What would happen is, if a state government pushes something through, then if the Federal government then comes in with superseding legislation, then that power of the state has been taken from the state government to the Federal government.
So, the whole argument is idiocy. It means you've got some worms, or, uneducated people, shall we say, inside the congressional advisory office. So, it's crap! It's nonsense. You can not sit back and say, after reading the Preamble of the U.S. Federal Constitution, you can not sit back and say, that in the face of a threatened disaster to the American people, that the executives of a state, or the legislative bodies of a state, can not take action in the case where the Federal government has not preempted that area of action. The guy should go back and go to school, before giving it such an opinion.
Motivation and Creativity
Freeman: This question comes from Ruby Nelson, who is a Warrensville Heights city councilwoman.
"Mr. LaRouche, I'm a city councilwoman in Ohio, who recently raised your Homeowners and Bank Protection Act at our council. There's tremendous interest in this initiative among my colleagues. I understand that in the second portion of the bill, that you're not calling for a bailout of the banks. I understand what you are calling for, and I agree with it. If the banks go belly up, then pensioners, state employees, and depositors will lose everything. If the HBPA passes Congress, and I certainly hope that it does, what can we look forward to? How will it work? Also, importantly, we depend on local revenue from real estate taxes and other taxes based on real estate in one form or another, to help on school and related funding. If we lower mortgage payments, this will impact those jurisdictions, and we're going to have to deal with it.
"But second, on a broader and more profound level, I think your initiative is just terrific, and I really admire your drive. I have to ask, what is your spiritual motivation to do this? It's like you're David fighting Goliath. You're working against all odds. What motivates you to wage this very challenging fight, and how can we spread it?"
LaRouche: My motives are habits I acquired a long time ago. You know, I came out of life with knowing that Euclid was a fake, from the age of 14, and knowing a number of other things were fake, because I never accepted what I knew to be fake. This got me into a lot of trouble, but it gave me a great benefit. I'm smarter than the people who gave in, because I didn't believe what you shouldn't believe, simply because somebody in authority said you should believe it. And also, you know, there's a sense of immortality here, which is intrinsic to the human being who's aware of this, and that is, we die, but since we're human beings, we don't completely die. The creative powers that are given to us, as human beings, continue to be efficient in their products, in their influence on society after we're gone. And thus, there are no good "lost causes" in history. Any cause which is good, which involves creativity, will find expression in the process, by reverberation or otherwise.
I've seen that. I probably know more history than most people do. I live with about 3,000 years of European history, so I know this very well, and I could give you examples, but that's a long story by itself, and I've already been dealing with a long story here, to begin with. So that's essentially it.
How the HBPA Will Work
The understanding on the other part of the question is, we must save the homeowner and the bank, both. We must save the charter bank. We can not save any other bank but the charter bank. We can't do it! It's too complicated. But what do we do? As I said, that's the beginning, but what do we do? We've got a bank down there, we've cleaned the thing up by putting it into bankruptcy protection, bankruptcy protection. Now, we know that this is not going to be enough to get a recovery going, so what do we do? We get Federal credit, from the Federal government, and we take necessary projects, which are long-term projects, like 25-year, 50-year projects, we take these projects and we use these projects which are an increase of productive output, and that increase of value of productive output becomes the margin of stability in the community, in which you have a certain balance between banking and households, and other things in the community. It's important to create productive activity. Passing money around is not the solution! Money does not contain the solution. The credit for doing things that are necessary, which are productive, is the solution.
So therefore you need programs. For example, it's crazy in this area here, to go from West Virginia, to Washington and back, in daily commuting. This is nonsense. It's idiocy! And the people who took down the railroad that connected Washington to that Northern Virginia area, the people who failed to develop farming and industry—they took an area and made a big residential area out of it, with no income source except the income of householders who reside there, and the services they provide in the community. There's no production going on! You have an area from into West Virginia to Washington, where there's virtually no production! They are failures! The revenues of the cities, the communities in this area, is entirely family income of people who live outside the area from which they commute. We used to have farms out there. We shut them down. Farms grow food. Farms near cities growing food are very helpful to municipal areas. Why did we shut down the farms? We could have improved the farms. That area is only good for one thing—dairy farming and similar kinds of things. The only damned thing it's good for, and that's what it was being used for before some damned fools got in there and tried to do something else with it, as real estate speculation.
The whole thing is a swindle! It's been a swindle since the early 1980s. And I'm sure we can fix it. We can fix it by bringing into that area, knowing there are a number of people who are no longer going to have jobs there, our job is to figure out what is a useful kind of employment—probably infrastructure or something else—which will stimulate growth of employment in that area, to absorb that area's requirements for employment. And that's where the Federal government, with cooperation with the state government, steps in.
But the idea of passing money around, this monetarist conception, is crazy. We've got to concentrate on building up the productive powers of labor per capita. If you increase the productive powers of labor, physically, per capita, per square kilometer, you can solve all the problems in that way.
If you think that by sloshing money around, or credit around, just as passouts, you're going to solve a problem, it is crazy. It's a product of the degeneration of the culture of our people over the recent period, particularly since 1971, 1964-71. We've degenerated. And we can not hold ourselves hostage to habits which represent degeneracy. We have to say to people, you have to give up those habits which are moral degeneracy. Give them up! We can't afford them anymore. And then you have to come in and give the alternative, more productive things, and that's the way to get ahead. You've got to give the population a sense, as they did under Roosevelt during the Depression. You have to give the people of the United States a sense that they are moving ahead, that they are part of the process of moving ahead, that they and their children are part of the future of the nation, in building a future for this nation. If you get that started, we can not lose. If you don't get it started, I don't think we're going to win.
What About Credit at Zero Interest?
Freeman: I'm going to take a couple of international questions, and interject them into this discussion of the situation here in the U.S. This is a question from José Villar, who is an economist for more than 29 years, who is writing to you from Spain.
"Mr. LaRouche, I'd like to say that I'm absolutely in agreement with your analysis and I understand that not only in the United States, but in all the other countries of Europe, we absolutely must adopt national emergency solutions. Given that the dollar currently has no support with relation to gold or GNP, and that they have eliminated the M3 index which identifies the quantity of money in circulation, I wonder if it's possible for a nation to issue money through a national bank without interest? I believe that this would prove a true revolution for humanity; money would only be moved within the productive economy and thus the speculative economy itself would be eliminated at its source. Is it feasible to do this, to issue money without interest? Wouldn't this after all be the best solution to force us to turn the economy back toward production and away from the speculative impetus that has brought us to this state of systemic and nearly apocalyptic collapse?"
LaRouche: Well, in general, the policy should be a recovery policy. If you recognize the level of productivity in economies today, to have a prime interest rate in excess of 1 to 2% as a general national credit standard for banking, is excessive. Anything in excess of that—We can't carry it. You have to realize, as I've put the curve here, over the recent years, especially the past ten years, that the productivity of Europe and the United States has been collapsing per capita, per square kilometer, at an accelerating rate, while money has been uttered at increasing net interest rates, in effect, for things which have no value whatsoever, except resale, resale on speculation of one thing or another. The case of Bloomberg. When Bloomberg walks away with $11 billion from this thievery, you have to say there's something wrong with that society. Not just with Bloomberg, but something wrong with a society that lets a thing like that develop. It's like a cancerous tissue developing. You have to say, there's something wrong here. You have to remove that cancerous tissue. That's the problem here.
So therefore, I think a low interest rate and control of the banks leads to control of credit at low prices, which do not affect and do not diminish that, and it has to be a fixed-exchange-rate system, because if you have a floating-exchange-rate system, as now, you have people finding that they were paying one rate of effective interest on something, and because of a currency depreciation or appreciation, they are now paying a different rate of interest borrowing costs than they did earlier. And you have whole sections of the world economy which are put out of business for this reason. So therefore, the regulation, Federal regulation, with international treaty cooperation, on agreements which regulate this, are necessary. If we have that kind of regulation, and that kind of international banking system, then a low interest rate, basic rate, on a nation-wide level, can be sustained, and will have exactly the kind of effect that you propose for an interest-free lending policy, because the net effect will be that the benefits will far outweigh the costs of that approach.
Barack Obama's Role
Freeman: This is a question on the Presidential campaigns, from a Presidential campaign, but it's not on policy, it's more on strategy.
"Lyn, this is a more mundane question than some that you've been asked, but it's on the minds of a lot of us, and you keep bringing up Bloomberg, so I thought I'd ask it. Barry Obama keeps presenting himself as the candidate of change, and it's also the case that many people assume that simply because he says he's black, that that also makes him progressive, and they just never learn. He hasn't said very much specific about what his actual policies would be, were he to be elected, and this is probably a conscious policy on his part. Yet, despite the fact that he hasn't said what he would do, and despite the image that he tries to convey, it is the case that he enjoys the support of Wall Street and the most conservative Democratic senators and governors that we know. My question to you is the following: Does he know what he's doing? Is he a witting player in all of this, or do you think that he's just a throwaway?"
LaRouche: I think there's some of both elements in that. He is intrinsically a throwaway: The intention of the people he might think are backing him, is to throw him away. The key political figure to look at, to understand this, is Schwarzenegger, whose father was a true Nazi—he was engaged in the Nazi police force in enforcing, killing people in Eastern Europe, and that's his tradition. And he's also nothing but a tool of Shultz, who's another fascist, the man who brought Pinochet into South America with the help of Felix Rohatyn, and who brought in some Nazis by way of Spain, veteran actual Nazis, to apply Nazi methods to the Southern Cone in the first half of the 1970s, under the Nixon administration. So, this is the kind of reality you're dealing with. Shultz is a factor.
The Chicago Board of Trade is all I could find on Obama, as a major controlling factor. He has a history, part of which he wrote himself, in books which are published and also by one biography written by others, who did a study. And there's nothing there that gives me any confidence. Now, he may be intelligent, but he has not revealed that to me. And in my view, Bloomberg and Schwarzenegger, who are owned by Nazi types—Bloomberg fits the profile of the Mussolini who was put into power by the Bank of England, with the support of relevant people in New York City, whereas Adolf Hitler was put into power by the Bank of England, with support from Harriman, for example, in New York City, and other Manhattan bankers.
In dealing with the ownership of someone who is receiving favorable treatment from financial interests which I know are at issue, it means that either he's intended to be a stooge for them in government, or that he's simply, like other candidates, one of those they're trying to run—they're trying to run the campaign in such a way that no visible candidate receives a significant, dominant support for the nomination. In that case, then, the Democratic Party officials, as opposed to elected or designated delegates, take over. And then you get a backroom decision, which could be something like Bloomberg.
We are very seriously in danger of a fascist government being installed in the United States at this time. The governor of California is a fascist dictator, in fact, by virtue of practice. And he is supported by, principally, by George Shultz, his controller, who also has a Nazi pedigree. The policies of Bloomberg are those of Mussolini. Corporativism! He said it; his people said it, his supporters said it. Corporativism, which is a form of fascism, a name for fascism as introduced under Mussolini, which was copied by Hitler! So, Mr. Obama, before he would get one iota of blessing from me, for his candidacy, would have to satisfy me that these unfortunate indications concerning his background and influences upon him can be explained away.
The Source of Growth Is the Human Mind
Freeman: ...The next question comes from the Freshman Congressional Caucus: "Mr. LaRouche, you speak often about an FDR approach. Our view is that FDR's policy was to build our way out of the last Depression. The question to you is, can we still build our way out of this crisis, or is it just too late for that. The current situation seems so critical, that waiting for the benefits of a massive public works program to kick in, just does not seem to be sufficient to address the problem. What are your thoughts on this?"
LaRouche: Well, that's too simple a description of what I'm proposing, and what I'm pushing for. I'm not waiting for something to kick in, I'm saying we should move in, and we should do some slash and burn, of things that are too costly for us to do, and we should not continue to do. And after we slash and burn things that shouldn't be done—you know, like mass prostitution, which may denude the Congress at a certain point—that we have other things which have been postponed which are urgent.
Now, there is a secret to this; a secret well known to me. It's called human creativity, which if you can avoid computer games, you may become able to understand. Because computer games destroy your distinctly human capabilities. To put it as I said earlier, to understand it, you have to realize that if a procedure is digital, and you are trained by that, you are not a competent scientist, and your brains may be in danger. Whereas, if you think in ways which would be described as analog, you probably are on the right track.
Now, the source of growth in society is not money. The source of growth in society is the human mind. No animal, no chimpanzee, no gorilla can make an invention which would increase the potential population density of its species. Human beings do that all the time. Gorillas, and chimpanzees, and Schwarzeneggers have no creative potential. And it is through the creative potential by which the productive powers of mankind are increased, that society increases its power per capita and per square kilometer, to live, and increases the standard of living, that is, the actual effective standard of living, increases the life expectancy of populations. That's the point. It's not manipulating money; it is stimulating the development and expression of the creative productive powers of the human mind. Now, the more creative you can be—and I can give you many examples: You have the Renaissance. The increase of the productive powers of labor of the mind, during the middle of the 15th Century was one of the greatest surges in increases of productivity in the entire history of mankind. The American Revolution had several cases. The power of the United States, which was developed by crushing the slave system, is one of the greatest increases in productivity per capita and per square kilometer in the history of mankind. The increase in productivity, productive powers of labor, and wealth, per capita and per square kilometer, under conditions of depression, under Franklin Roosevelt, is one of the greatest miracles of economic productivity in all mankind.
So, the issue of success, is not an issue of accounting. Accounting is important in the sense that you don't spend money for things that are worthless and you do spend them on things you should be spending them on. That's where it ends. And you engage largely in long-term investment, and you tend toward increasingly capital-intensive investment. You tend to invest as much in basic economic infrastructure in that way, as you invest in production, otherwise. If you follow those rules, as we did under Lincoln, with the effect of the transcontinental railway system and similar kinds of things—if we do that, if we do again what Roosevelt did out of the Depression in the 1930s, we can not predict any definite rate of improvement overall in net effect, but we can say, that this is the road you have to travel. And you will travel it, by choice, because if you don't, all Hell awaits you. And simply because Hell is burning at your tail, you will go ahead and progress.
Investment, Not SIVs?
Freeman: This is a reflection of many questions that we've gotten from both inside and outside the United States. This particular question comes from Mr. Temba, who is asking you the question from Tanzania.
"Mr. LaRouche, the financial system failure may be caused by financial management system regulation or whatever, but since you are an expert on this topic, we are going to pose this question to you, since we've been unable to figure it out. Could you please explain if you would, how Structural Investment Vehicles were formed, and what their effects are to the global economy? Also, who owns these things, and what are we to do with them? Thank you." Nobody seems to know this, by the way.
LaRouche: First of all, it's a fake. It's a swindle, it's looting, and if you look at the results of the practice where this occurs, is promoted, you see that it's all looting.
As I said just before, take the case of Africa. Africa has the largest area of agricultural production of any continent. It has a population, to the extent it's not being killed by AIDS, which is talented for this purpose. But they have a very low level of technological skill otherwise. Now, what do you do? Well, what you do is what I've been proposing since I issued a proposal actually aimed at Nigeria back in the early 1980s, on the plan of action which had been developed in that period—the Lagos Plan of Action. And it was obvious to me, that because of the low technological productivity factor in the African population in general, that if we looked at the problems that the African farmer faced—and they were largely African farmers—then you would see what had to be done. For example, look at what they produce as farmers, from inception of planting the crop and so forth. And you find out that bugs are eating them up; the bugs and diseases are eating them up. The problem is the African farmer had no local institutions, generally, which were capable of dealing with this challenge of bugs and infestations.
You would have local stations, in a place like Africa, a quasi-jungle area, tropical areas, and you would have local shelters which would help the farmers deal with problems of infestations and other kinds of things, like an agricultural advisory capability which is functional, as opposed to just commentary or advice. Then you would insure that you had methods of transportation—and remember Africa has the largest farming area of any continent—and you would try to insure that food was not destroyed in the process of being delivered to places for the people who were going to consume it. This required mass transportation systems, this required power systems, it required facilities of the type I had indicated. In that case, you would increase the net productivity of the African farmer, per capita and per square kilometer, without necessarily having to re-educate him as a farmer. You would simply give him the means to make his work more effective. And that would raise his standard of living, and once the standard of living starts to be raised, then you can go on a process of technological and other kinds of progress. That's the solution. It's still the solution today. We do not have any large-scale rail systems throughout Africa. We do not have the kinds of power facilities I have indicated. We do not have the institutions to give the kind of assistance against disease, tropical diseases and so forth, which are required. Why? Because they don't want it done.
And you go back to 1975, when Kissinger wrote a report on U.S. policy under the 1970s, and that is that the African population is already too large; it must be reduced. Let's not increase its productivity or size, because if we do so, the African population will consume too much of the raw materials which we have designated for our future use. So, there's a deliberate policy for Africa, of genocide. And once you understand that, and once you understand what the alternative was, and is still, and you understand what the opposition is, and where it comes from, as from London, from the London School of Race Relations, for example, which ran the Mau Mau operation in Kenya before, and is back at it in Kenya again today, the same kind of operation. And what happened to Mozambique and all these other places: Now you understand the problem. There is an element out there, an enemy of mankind, which happens to, among its other targets, choose Africa. And that's an example of this.
Freeman: We have time for a couple of more questions. I just want to remind people before I get to those questions, that as we gather here today, there are state legislatures all over the country, joined by city and county councils, who are currently considering legislation supporting the HBPA, and urging their Congressional representatives to take action on it. I know that in the state of Pennsylvania alone, I believe that as of this morning, 30 municipalities had passed HBPA endorsements. I would urge people to make sure that in their localities, the same is done. This is obviously not the total solution to the problem, but it is a critical first step, and one which our Congress has to obviously be helped along, before they take.
The Kosovo Crisis: A Dangerous Game
The next question comes from someone in the audience, if he is here, Mr. John Bosnitch. Okay, if you would step to the microphone. Mr. Bosnitch is a consultant and a former executive director of the Serbian Unity Congress.
Q: First of all, Mr. LaRouche, I'm very happy to see you're still in action, despite the decades of efforts to silence you. Having been demonized for, unfortunately or fortunately, having Serbian descent, I understand exactly what it means to try and fight for the truth, and I'm very happy that you started out by talking about this as an era of sophistry, and that you took it one step further, because the Sophists did mix a little bit of truth with the lies, and you went straight out and said that there is no truth whatsoever, no regard for the truth in this country whatsoever.
And now when you talked about the deliberate policy of genocide for Africa, that's the same thing that's being pursued now in Kosovo. There's not a single Jew living in Kosovo today. The Croatian population that was living there has been eliminated. The Turks are asking Turkey to protect them from the Albanian extremists. The hill people called Romani, are staying in their villages for fear of being executed if they leave them. And of course, the final target will be the complete elimination of the Serbs from their ancestral homeland. And we've experienced the same kind of closed doors that one of the question askers was discussing earlier. No matter what we say, no matter what issue we raise, it's, "No, Kosovo has to be independent." So, I want to ask you about this illegal effort to separate Kosovo from Serbia. It's not only an attack on statehood, but an attack on the entire Westphalian order, which you discussed earlier today. And I'd like to ask you for advice. Were you in the situation of Serbia and Russia today, what additional steps could be taken to stop this effort to destroy the entire world order through the issue of independent Kosovo?
LaRouche: Good. Well, first of all, you had Madeleine Halfbright, otherwise known as Madeleine Albright, or something, and while she was Secretary of State, she gave an address in, I believe it was New York City, in honor of the H.G. Wells Association, of which she is a member, and in which her father, who was the teacher of our present Condoleezza Rice, is also. The other key figure to look at in this connection is Richard Holbrooke, who was a key figure in the mess which occurred in the Balkans in the earlier phase of warfare there.
Then you have to look back. You have to look back to the policy of the Hapsburg Empire and the heritage it passed on to Great Britain, and the history of this whole process, which was a cockpit. And you have to locate this in reality, which means you have to shift your focus somewhat from the point you were making, to a different point of focus, because the British set rarely fight their own wars. They get other people to fight each other, as you saw with the Seven Years' War, and that sort of thing, or with the world wars, so-called World War I and World War II, as you saw with the effect of the conflict with the Soviet Union, which was already orchestrated in the same way. The same conflict you see orchestrated by the Sykes-Picot Treaty in Southwest Asia, which is still run by the British. The British run that place; they run whole sections of religious bodies and so forth in that region. And now again, since they're trying to start a war with Russia, they go back to the legacy of 1912, and they start a Balkan war, again and again and again. And the Balkan war was used to trigger a war—it was done by a fellow who was dead by that time, the King of England, who organized this thing to have a war between his two nephews, Kaiser Wilhelm II, and Nicholas II. These are his nephews. To get them in war with the aid of the stupid Kaiser of Austria, who was stupid enough to play this game.
So, what you're looking at today with Holbrooke and with the legacy of the society, which was Madeleine's legacy, she avowed this—the H.G. Wells Society. To understand that, the simplest way to understand that is to look at two things: The Open Conspiracy of Wells, and also his The Shape of Things To Come, including the movie called Things To Come. You see a kind of utopian image of a certain hellish variety, and Holbrooke is a part of that. The minute I hear the name Holbrooke connected with anything to do with the Balkans, I say the obvious: This is orchestrated.
Now, the other thing you have here, is you have two kinds of passions, largely religious passions. I mean after all, the Serb and Croat populations come from the same origins, north of what is now Czechoslovakia. They came down and on both sides of the river you have a division. The division was declared by the Roman Empire, who split the two sections. So one side is called Croat and the other side is called Serb. They come from the same exact historic background, very similar backgrounds, except that one is technically Orthodox and one is technically Western. And since that time, as with the Byzantine Empire before them, the way empires are managed is by orchestrating conflicts, and the genius of avoiding empire and avoiding these conflicts is to find ways to orchestrate the situation to prevent these conflicts from starting. Because once ignited, they are difficult to stop.
Now, my first thing is keep Holbrooke the hell out of there, and anybody like him. Because they're out to start the war! Not to fight it, but to start it. And the fight because of the history of the recent Balkans wars, will be hellish, if it happens. Therefore, it must not happen. And therefore, there must be a determination by, I hope, our friends and some friends in the U.S. government to understand this.
We must not have a new Balkan War. We must have a solution. The solutions are going to be difficult to get, but we must organize it. We must organize forces and get agreement on it. We are not going to kill each other anymore! The killing has gone on and on and on. End it! Because we will not win this by war. We have to win this not by war, and convincing people they have to be human to each other. That's the great challenge. But the problem we have, I have, is these skunks who are out there, chiefly British skunks, because the British run this. It used to be an Anglo-French extension of the Sykes-Picot [Treaty], but now it's completely British. They run the thing, and they are out to have a war with Russia, or to get the United States to fight a war with Russia.
And also, they have a similar design on China. We have a mess in Southwest Asia, which it is possible we could bring under control, because if the Israelis would agree, we could have a peace in some of that area, and that peace could be spread because the Israelis no longer have any real interest in fighting that war because they no longer are a real asset to the United States. Therefore, a Syria-Israel agreement would not be a Syria-Israel agreement: It would be the opening of the door to a general reorganization of agreements among the nations of the region, which have had more than enough hellish war of Southwest Asia so far, largely orchestrated from Britain and the United States.
So, this is the kind of situation, and therefore, number one, the important thing is to present the truth of this situation. And the truth of the situation is, what the hell interest do these people have in killing each other? None! Have they killed a lot of each other already? Yes! How did it happen? Fine. Are we going to continue it, or not? Or are we going to lay down conditions, which are human conditions, for the region. What we need is a regional agreement, like a Treaty of Westphalia kind of agreement, in terms of the entire region, and it should be sponsored by powers. I would hope that Russia would play a significant role in that, given the opportunity to do so.
Western Europe doesn't function right now. Doesn't function at all. There's no government in Western Europe. It's a Maastricht government. It's a Tower of Babel. There's no lender of last resort in the continent of Europe, in terms of western and central Europe. There's not a single lender of last resort. There's no state that has sovereignty in western or central Europe, continental Europe. None!
So therefore, we need that, and therefore Russia has a very crucial role, and I would hope that the United States, despite—. Remember, one thing about the United States. As bum as our President is, as bum as some of the others are, in our institutions in the United States, there is included a roster of people to which I am attached. People who are veterans of wars, or other kinds of things, who are generally patriots of the United States. Who are concerned about the country, its responsibilities and so forth, and who think about the future of the planet, as the best of us did. We care, and we have some influence. So there are people of influence and power in the United States, in institutions of all kinds, inside and outside the institutions of government, who are capable of understanding what has to be done, and will do it, if given the opportunity. They have been the major block against the poor lunatic President getting us into a war with Iran, so far. It's not guaranteed, but so far it's worked. So therefore, there are forces in the United States which have the sense to care about this kind of situation, in the Balkans as elsewhere, and to use our good offices, and to talk to Russia, and to talk to other countries in the region, to say, we have to have a solution that does not lead to more killing. It's our best shot.
And then, on that point, we have to lead to the question of rebuilding the area. Look, here you have all these nice rivers, these mountains and so forth. It has tremendous potential for development, agriculture and other development. Why can't the development of the region be the unifying factor of cooperation, and let a couple of generations pass of peaceful construction to sort the mess out?
Freeman: Lyn, before I pose the last question of today's event, I should tell you—we usually don't get this—that we're getting numerous thank you's, especially from some of the national institutions and Presidential campaigns, for your answers. They say that you did a great job in clarifying this for them.
The Best of All Possible Worlds'
The last question comes from Mark Samet, who's a member of the LaRouche Youth Movement, and his question is a simple one. "Lyn, what makes ours the best of all possible worlds?"
LaRouche: Well, what we're talking about when we mean "world," you know what I mean by world, or you should. It's the universe. The universe is finite, isn't it? I've tried to make that clear. It is an unbounded finite universe in which we live, and the principles on which we operate are universal. We're not able to travel the way we might like to, to other exploding super-galaxies or things like that, if you like those kinds of spectacles. But we are part of this universe, we are part of the principle that runs it. And we have an effect on our immediate part of the universe, and on the whole.
For example, I often refer to this one case. You know, we discovered back at the end of the 1980s, that most of the cosmic ray radiation coming into that area of northern Germany, also in England and also in Denmark, through these phased-array devices, cosmic ray detection devices—we discovered that most of the cosmic ray radiation hitting the United States was coming periodically in a way which indicated it was coming from the Crab Nebula, which was a great supernova explosion back in the time when it was first observed from China. So this thing is a very complex organism out there. And it also controls our weather, much more than Al Gore could, because what happens is, the Sun is the real factor in global warming or not global warming. Nothing else. The Sun is the key factor, eh? What the Sun does, it plops up or it plops down. We're now in a period of greatly increased solar radiation activity recently, which is why there has been global warming. Having to do with the Sun, no other reason. And they pass suddenly, as Solar flares do.
So, in any case, we live in that kind of a universe, and therefore we should think of ourselves as universal beings, even though we are restricted to walking around on one particular planet, or even one part of it. We should think of ourselves not just as one human being in one area. We should think of ourselves as eternal people, as immortal people, because while the animal aspect of our being is subject to death, and that is not yet remedied or known to be remediable, nonetheless, what we are mentally in our creative powers, no animal has. And what we create to change the ordering of the universe, even in a finite way, is eternal. And thus, if we understand that, we have the confidence to expend our lives without tangible reward, simply by doing what we know needs to be done. And that is what makes us human, when we realize that. That what we get from life is not what's important. Physical satisfaction, for example, is not what's important. What's important is the fact that we have lived a good life, which will be, in some way, of benefit to those who come after us. And you have to have that kind of unselfish motive, in order to gain for yourself the most precious thing you can have: satisfaction with being yourself.
