This discussion appears in the May 16, 2008 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.

May 7 Webcast Dialogue with LaRouche

This is a transcript of the two hours of dialogue which followed Lyndon LaRouche's opening remarks at his May 7, 2008 webcast.

[PDF version of this presentation]

Freeman: ... I would encourage people who are here, people who are listening over the Internet, to please make sure that they have in their possession Mr. LaRouche's two latest works. One is a pamphlet which was released by LPAC, which is Mr. LaRouche's Interim Report on the Elections; this was composed just prior to the Pennsylvania primary. And what you will find on the website, both of LPAC and also of Executive Intelligence Review, is Mr. LaRouche's latest piece, called, "H.G. Wells' 'Mein Kampf': Sir Cedric Cesspool's Empire," something I think people will find very useful, especially in light of Mr. LaRouche's remarks here today.

Now, I will try to intersperse questions from the audience with the some of the institutional questions.

I'd also like to just take a moment, to ask you to join me in extending our most heartfelt sympathy to a great friend of Mr. LaRouche and of the LaRouche movement, and certainly a great friend to the citizens of Washington, D.C. Dr. Abdul Alim Muhammad, whom all of you know, lost his wife this past weekend. She also was a great friend. She was by his side in the Abundant Life Clinic and in the fight to save D.C. General Hospital. She will be sorely missed, and I know that all of you will join me in extending sympathy and condolences to Dr. Muhammad.

Lyn, we have a communication that was sent in by Tom Jackson from the Alabama House of Representatives. Representative Jackson is the chairman of the Alabama House Committee on Agriculture and Forestry, and is the vice chair of the House Democratic Caucus. He also is the former chair of the Agricultural Committee of the National Black Caucus of State Legislators. He was part of a Schiller Institute delegation that visited Sudan in the 1990s, and he is also the principal sponsor of the HBPA [Homeowners and Bank Protection Act] in the state of Alabama, which just recently passed the Alabama House.

He says: "Dear Lyn, I agree wholeheartedly with your initiative to once and for all stop all of the free trade policies, and to return to the principle of parity pricing for our farmers. Like you, I'm very concerned with the ongoing destruction of our food supply and the increasing hunger and starvation among our people. Hunger haunts the planet, both here and abroad. I've witnessed this crime, not only in the states that I have been privileged to visit, but also on the great continent of Africa, where I saw the impact that it can have on other populations, but also the possibility of doing something to change the outcome.

"Our legislature in Alabama is in session this Spring for only several more days, so I have taken the liberty of drafting a short resolution addressing this crisis, which hopefully I will be able to introduce into the Alabama House. I've enclosed the resolution for use at your meeting in Washington.

"Good luck on your effort to halt the spread of hunger and want before it overruns our planet. I also would call on legislators from around the nation to join me in introducing similar resolutions."

Representative Jackson's resolution is a long one. Rather than take the time to read it here, what I would simply indicate for you, is that the resolution is an expression of precisely what Helga Zepp-LaRouche has called for, in terms of addressing this question of the global food supply. We will put a copy of Representative Jackson's resolution up on the LaRouche PAC site. And we would encourage other leaders across the United States to act similarly.

Baby Boomers and the DNC

Lyn, the first question comes from someone who is working in one of the Presidential campaigns. And what she says is:

"Mr. LaRouche, forgive me for this—I feel like I'm bringing down the level of discussion. But the fact is, that some of us have no choice but to deal with the day-to-day reality of electoral politics.

"The one statistic that is reported over and over again by everyone, and which is not disputed anywhere, is that 90% of the Democrats—and I do emphasize, Democrats—who voted for Barack Obama in each of the past primaries, have said that they would indeed vote for Hillary Clinton in a McCain versus Hillary race. However, the opposite is simply not true: The majority of those who vote for Hillary now, may indeed vote for McCain, in a McCain versus Obama race. This is not my estimate, this is what these polls are showing.

"My question, therefore, is, what is up with the Democratic Party—the DNC, the House Democratic Caucus, the Senate Democratic Caucus? Even from the most limited, pragmatic, pedestrian view, the simple fact is, that Hillary can beat John McCain, and Barack Obama can not. What are they doing? Do they know what they're doing, or are they being played for fools?"

LaRouche: In some sense, they're being played for fools, but the problem with them, is not misinformation, it's a systemic moral problem.

You have to realize that what happened after 1968, particularly with what happened in the 1970s, for example, as a consequences of Nixon, is that the Baby-Boomer generation, is not simply a generation; it's not an age-group of people born between 1945 and 1958. But rather, there's a certain element in it, a composition to it: You have a blue-collar and similar type of layer; you have proud engineers and so forth. But then you have, specifically in this age-group, the so-called white-collar group—and sometimes it was a very dirty collar white-collar. Which is the typical, the roving fascists of 1968, both in the United States and various countries in Europe and South America and elsewhere.

So what happens is, these fellows—what do they stand for? They represent anti-technology. This was the hard core of the 1970s: Kill nuclear power. Support destruction of agriculture, on so-called environmentalist grounds. One thing after the other: The systemic destruction of the United States was based on the impact of the rise of the 68ers throughout the political institutions during the 1970s.

Now, what happened is, then, you have another section of the white-collar Baby-Boomer generation, who were not pigs, unlike Obama's friends from Chicago. But what happened is, they found themselves—who actually had some competence, some knowledge, some dedication to sanity (they probably change their underwear, as Al Gore, I understand does not)—but they found themselves in an inferior position of political influence. So what happened is, the scumbags (to use a nice term) rose to the top positions—you'll find all kinds of people, you look at their pedigree, these guys are really filthy! They're not unwashed: They rub in dirt to make sure they are unwashed! They're potheaded, huh? All these wonderful qualities.

And here you have, the other Baby Boomer, who went to a university perhaps, or has some pride, thought of maintaining a normal family life, finds that his or her conditions of life are not really improving that much—and sometimes getting worse. Whereas the scumbags (to use a euphemism) are prospering, they're at the top positions.

So what you have, not only with the elected officials who are of this category, or government officials who have this background, but you have a whole coterie of people around them, like political groups, action groups, this kind of thing, which are the political machine. And the political machine is dominated by people you wouldn't want your daughter to marry. But you have to respect them, because they have the money and the power.

As a result of this, the Democratic Party—. But you have the same thing in the Republican Party; it takes sometimes a different form. So you have this generation of Boomers, who either were part of the scum and who are in power, often in top-ranking power, not the very top often, but top-ranking; and then you have the other Boomers of the same white-collar background, who had some competence, but they're discouraged; they gave up, over the course of the 1980s, they gave up trying to fight against the Boomers in power.

It's like in warfare generally, the soldiers have to retire from combat or related duties at the age of 35 approximately, because they're no longer in combat condition. And the same thing is true of Boomers. They reach the age of 35, their sex life is drying out—from overuse, and similar kinds of things—and they are no longer fighters. And their values change, and I've observed this thing in my own organization, the change that occurs: Those who once fought, are now looking for comfort zones, not foxholes. So therefore, they adapt to being, "Well, we can't fight them. We have to learn to somehow make our traditions felt in some way. But we have to accept the terms that they demand we accept!"

And therefore, what you've got then, is a revolutionary potential: Because, these Boomers have no regard for the actual well-being of people in the lower 80% of family-income brackets. Therefore: If you want to organize a political movement in the United States, as Hillary has demonstrated with her own campaign, fairly well, with what she's done since the New Hampshire campaign; if you want to organize a political base, don't look to your Boomers.

I mean, she's the same age as Helga, 60. Hillary and Helga are the same age, and they have a similar kind of situation. (I think Helga's better at it, but that's all right. Matter of fact, I know she's better at it!) But Hillary has done a fine job, in her own way.

But they find themselves conditioned to dependency upon the Boomer generation, which is now ensconced in many of the political positions which determine politics. Their instinct is Boomer! It's not their brains, because their brains are in not too good condition, these days. They aged out, after the age of 36 when the sex began to dry up.

So therefore, the problem of the Clintons, as of many other politicians, is they are depending too much on the Boomers, who are the layer they go to for political support in political institutions, and similar kinds of institutions. They're also key for fundraising. So therefore, you have a money problem involved here.

So the only solution for this—which is typical of history: You want to fight a war, don't concentrate on the old-age homes! You want to fight a war, get people under 35 years of age. You get some good generals of course, good strategists and so forth—but you need the people who have the energy to understand the mission. Who will accept the training. Who have the sense of the vim and vigor, are between 18 and 35—those are your fighting troops. These people, obviously, since you're looking for numbers, you're going to the most numerous part of 18 to 35. And these people are generally middle class, or lower income groups, or poor.

And therefore, if you're looking for success, choose the right constituency. If you want a victory, choose the right army. Yes, you need a few generals, but they have to have the right army. And the army has to be well informed, it has to understand its mission, it has to have some tactical sense of what it's doing. And it has to be dedicated, with a mission-orientation.

Now you have, all over the world, people who are fighting a life-and-death struggle for food, food which is being taken away from them, denied to them. Organize the lower 80% of the population for a war for food. Because, the alternative is mass death through starvation and disease. And if Prince Philip has his way, in his opposition to any development of the water systems in the PLHINO system[1]—with his bats! His vampire bats!—you don't have a chance. Humanity doesn't have a chance.

See, you don't go to war, unless there's no other alternative. And you don't go to war for the purpose of continuing a war. You go to war for the sense of trying to win the opposition into acceding to terms that you negotiate with them. Which means, we have the wrong philosophy these days. We have a philosophy of trying to find out "what nation is our enemy? Is it China? Oh! 1.4 billion people, perhaps more, you know? That's a lot of people—maybe we should cut down the number, huh? India, 1.1 billion people—Oh! that's much too much. It was much better when there were only 300 million of them." And so forth and so on.

Africa—"well, we're not going to fight them, we'll just reduce the population." That's what the policy is now! That is it!

And therefore, someone's saying they're going to fight for "black," they better not get too involved with Obama's leadership. Maybe some of the Obama leaders, his faction's leaders, are very useful people, very important people; the base is important, the lower 80% of family-income brackets, they don't have any interest in this crap! In being sucked into something.

Advice to African-Americans: Make It Happen!

I'll just go to one other thing on this African-American question. You have two leading tendencies in the United States, among people of African descent. One sense is a great man—my type of fighter—famous from the Washington, D.C. area in point of fact. And he was replaced in influence during the course of the 20th Century, under the influence of Jim Crow and other things, by an idea of, "Don't go out there and fight, and originate, but wait for good things to descend upon you."

Now, in terms of the African-American constituent, of the Obama campaign—you've got to look carefully at this—you have the fighter, who fought to get free of slavery, who probably killed to be free of slavery. And who also was a great thinker, a scientist, a musician, whose sons were musicians and scientists; who was a leader, like many others who fought the fight against slavery in the United States. They didn't wait for something to descend upon them from above! They didn't wait for a little good thing to drip down on them. Their stock was "go out and fight for it!" Not just fight for it, but make it! Build it!

And what happened, is the condition of the population of the United States with the destruction of industry—because the strength, largely of the African-American population, in former times, was largely in industry. The real strength of the African-American in the United States was based on industry, and also technology and science, even though it was a small number, relatively speaking. The association with high degrees of skill, the association with rising from a low level of skill, to a higher level of skill in one's lifetime, and a higher position in life, and a better life for one's children: Make it happen! Don't wait for it to descend upon you! Make it happen!

And the problem is, look at Obama: Obama says nothing! The problem does not lie with the people around him. The people around him, as we know, many of the leaders of the Obama campaign, they're good people. They think like that; they're fighters. They're in it for various reasons.

But, the thing is—get the image! "We're going to make it happen. We're going to make it happen!" "How? What's your program, Obama?" There is none! "What're you going to do to cure the problem? You have nothing to offer!"

But why would somebody vote for Obama, who promised everything, but promises not to deliver it? By unction, like Elmer Gantry. You know, this travelling salesman, in the novel—and there was this movie with Burt Lancaster, which was a kind of funny movie; it was very good, it was a very good job.

And you get this religious preacher, a faker, like the fundamentalists, like the Jerry Falwell types, huh? And they come along and say, "Jesus will save you! We're going to raise this money tonight, we're going to do this... Jesus is going to save you, if you do this. It's going to descend upon you!"

Whereas in the Christian view—that is not a Christian view—but the Christian view is, "Well, find in oneself the strength to do what has to be done. Spend your life for something useful. Make something necessary happen. Discover what your mission is—and do it! Build something, make something!"

And you've got these people out there voting for Obama, who in many cases are waiting for it to descend upon them. He promises the revolution, he promises the Great Change. Where's it coming from? If there's going to be Great Change, you're going to do something, aren't you? What're you going to do!?

What're you going to do, Obama?

You haven't done anything so far. You take in a lot of money, but what have you done? You haven't done anything! What're the problems of life, for people out there? What have you done about these problems? What have you done about the housing crisis? What have you done about the education problem? What have you done about the health-care problem? You've done nothing!

You've talked about everything, like Elmer Gantry, the great swindler. Like the minister who creates more people behind the curtain, than he saves in front. That's what it is, it's Elmer Gantry.

And the problem here is, is not the fact that he does that. That's bad. The problem is: The people put up with it! Here they are, they think they want revolutions, they want salvation, they want the good to descend upon them. They're waiting for the great Faith-Based Initiative money! Coming down upon them. "And if the Faith-Based Initiative will bri-i-ng that Gr-re-at Flow of Money, down upon them, then they will get all the sex and other blessings they desire!" Elmer Gantry-style. And that's fakery!

But the problem is, why do the American people put up with it? And I can tell you why from my experience, even from 2004: Faith-Based Initiative. People came to us, who had been leaders that we had worked with for years, in the Civil Rights Movement. They say, "Yeah, you're good, you're right. But! You don't have the money! And we need the money!" And so, they drifted off, from being fighters—to make it happen!—to being quite the contrary. "Gimme the money. Gimme the money." "Let it descend upon us! Let that gr-re-at shower of money from the sky, descend upon us!" And that's the Obama campaign: Elmer Gantry. See the movie, it's all there for you.

And by the destruction of industry, by the destruction of the kinds of things, that transform a poor people, poorly educated, poorly treated, into people who make things happen, in a factory, in a machine shop, in whatever—make it happen!! Don't pray for it: Make it happen! Pray for the strength of your arm to do it, and nothing else. Pray for the strength of your brain to see it, and to accomplish it. Feel the joy and dignity of being something! We used to say, you know, in the Civil Rights struggle: "Be somebody! Be somebody! Be somebody, who makes things happen!"

Not this slouch. "It's gonna descend upon us... huh—huh-huh."

Anyway. That's the problem. And we have to, in reaching out to these people who are in the Obama organizations, we have to tell them this:

"Cut it out! Stop the fakery! Get real! Make it happen! People are starving for lack of food: Make it happen! People are starving for lack of decent jobs: Make it happen! People are starving for lack of infrastructure: Make it happen! People are starving and dying for lack of health-care: Make it happen! Be a doctor—make it happen! Create the situation in which you can become a physician, or your friend can become one. Make it happen!

"Don't tell me about what's going to descend upon us because by some unction, you're going to suck this thing down from the sky upon you! Make it happen!"

Freeman: The next question was submitted by a gentleman who holds statewide office in New York. He says: "Mr. LaRouche, the New York press is full of stories that Karl Rove has insinuated that the Republicans are in possession of an October Surprise, to be used if Barack Obama becomes the Democratic nominee. But that would indicate that it would be their intention to make John McCain President, and that doesn't seem to make sense to me. Personally, I do think John McCain is crazy, but I really don't believe that he is a fascist. What is your view of this?"

LaRouche: I think that, what I've seen, and clinical things that I've actually seen, John McCain has a troubled mind. He is not—. You know, you look at him as I have defined this situation with him. McCain's only positive factor is not in himself, as I said, anything positive in McCain comes from his family. It comes through the Navy tradition that he represents through his father and so forth. Now, you have a certain section of the Navy tradition—you have two of them; one's British, that's the Pearl Harbor problem. The other side was with MacArthur in the same relevant period. And that tradition understood one thing. See, the important thing to say, for we who are in this room, or in this United States, the important thing to say is we are Americans.

Cusa and the Concept of America

Now, let me just divert from the answer to the question to get this thing in here, because I think it's important.

We came out of a Dark Age in Europe, a result of the kind of economic policies which are represented by the people in London, by the people who support these policies in Wall Street and elsewhere today. We came out of that, out of a Dark Age. One of the great leaders was a fellow who became a cardinal of the Catholic Church, Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa. Cusa had two great accomplishments in life, or to sum it up: one was his Concordancia Catholica, which was essentially a statement of the intention of Dante Alighieri in De Monarchia. That is, the formation of the nation-state, as opposed to imperial systems. Now this, in the case of Cusa, was based in a different way, based on Christian doctrine, and it was a solution for the Dark Age situation. It was a key part, with the Councils, leading into the formation of the modern nation-state in Europe. Cusa.

Cusa was also a great scientist, who discovered, or re-discovered, the principles of physical science, and all competent modern European science, flows directly through Cusa, from precedents which he himself studied, in terms of the ancient Greeks, the Pythagoreans, and Plato, and so forth. So European civilization is a product of this mobilization around Cusa, but people also like Brunelleschi, who discovered the principle of the catenary, before anyone else seemed to have done. It's called a funnicula in Italian. "Funniculi Funnicula."

So anyway, this is our civilization. Now, our civilization was corrupted, the same way it's corrupted now. Because of an oligarchical, a financier oligarchical power. Now, under these conditions, Cusa, after some defeats in wars against these powers, prescribed a policy: Let us in Europe, he said, in effect, to summarize it: Let us go to other parts of the world across the oceans. Let us meet the people in other parts of the world from around the oceans. Now, let us work with them and let us give them the best of us, so that together with them, we shall build something that will surround the sickness inside Europe, and solve the problem.

So, Cusa died, but a young Genoese sea captain in the Portuguese service found the documents of Cusa's will and testament on this point, and this resulted, particularly, in the exploration by Christopher Columbus, to discover America. This was not Christopher Columbus's discovery. This was the discovery made by Cusa. Now, since that point, the problem was that Europe had European civilization, which in its culture was very good, especially as revived by the Renaissance; the problem was that the oligarchy of Europe was still successfully controlling it, and therefore, the purpose was to move the best of European civilization across the ocean, to settlements in other continents, and thus to create a European civilization heritage which would not be enslaved by European oligarchical traditions.

So therefore, one of the movements which my ancestors in this country came out of, was that. My ancestors of relevance came into this country back in the first half of the 17th Century, the first real settlements in New England and so forth, of that period. And so, what we brought into what became the United States, was the best of European culture, without the damned oligarchs! But they chased us over, they came after us, made a mess of things. So, the United States is specifically a product of that Cusa connection, that Cusa nexus. We are an expression primarily of European civilization, in root at the best, in our devotion, our dedication, our conception of man. We are superior morally to Europeans generally, on this issue. We don't believe in oligarchies. We don't believe in kissing the butt of some prince this, or count that. We think they're all no-counts. But anyway...

Therefore, what we have represented, is the planting of the best distillation of European culture, largely through the immigrants from Europe who came here not to flee Europe as such, but to find an opportunity to build a better world. This is our national character. This is we at our best. And that's the issue today. That's the way we have to think about things. We have a mission. Our mission is to take the best of European culture, and what it's been able to draw into our society, and to use that as a weapon on behalf of the improvement of all mankind. The liberation of mankind from oligarchism, for example. That's our mission. That's what we should be doing. That's our immortality as a nation. But we, therefore, are an enemy and a target of the European oligarchy, which hates our guts, and always has! And therefore, they try to corrupt us and destroy us. They're now moving to try to destroy us.

And I say, gentlemen, if my wit and arm have any strength in it, we're going to destroy you! Because the world has had too much of you oligarchs, including the British oligarchs! And I'm going to encourage people like both the Clintons and their real supporters—the sincere ones as opposed to the Johnny-come-latelys—and also the people from the Obama camp, who care about this country and care about the human race, and are willing to join me on the issue of "let's do it!" rather than wait for it to descend upon us. Let's take it! It's ours! Let's take it. Let's feed our people.

And that's what the issue has to be. We have to have a war, which is a war to defend the American tradition, as expressed by Roosevelt in his Presidency, and by other great figures of our society, some in high places, some not, but have all contributed to this intention, which some of us—like me—have in our bones. This is what we believe! We believe in that kind of mission! We believe in taking the best of European civilization, and combining it with the best we find from other parts of the world, and combining it into a force, for a society free of oligarchism, free of a situation in which some people own other people, or subject them to conditions which are virtually owning them. To say that the hungry must be fed, and we have to go to this as to war! Not to kill, but to win the war. And if we don't do it now, it will come many generations down the line, before you'll have the opportunity to see civilization again.

Oil Price Problem? Destroy the Oligarchical Enemy!

Freeman: The next question comes from a former Secretary of Labor, and she says: "Mr. LaRouche, one of the most pressing issues we face right now is the price of fuel. On the food issue, clearly one way to address this problem is to increase food production. However, the massive increases in the price of fuel are not a result of oil shortages per se. Hillary Clinton's proposal at least recognizes the problem, but we're all aware of the fact that it hardly solves it. My question to you is what action would you recommend? Is the proper path one of going after OPEC and the big oil companies? Is there some legislative initiative that should be pursued? But clearly this issue does have to be addressed."

LaRouche: She's right! It has to be addressed, but what is it that we have to do to address this problem? First of all, we have to recognize that the problems we have—because, remember, the idea of food for peace and so forth, was a characteristic of the Franklin Roosevelt Administration. It was not original to them, but was characteristic of it. So, why do we have it today? We had developed a food-producing policy for the world, which worked. Why did we abandon it? Because the oligarchs took over. Now, what happened is therefore, the habit of not raising food—and I'll be specific on this, because it's important that I do be specific—of not raising food, is one imposed from London, and other places, but London. The British! Not the British people, because most of them—it's specifically, this dirty crowd, the Anglo-Dutch Liberal financier interests. The parasites. The legacy of Venice! The bloodsuckers! The usurers of the planet, and of the Solar System, if they could get it.

So therefore, this is the enemy. If you are not prepared to destroy that enemy, any measure you propose won't work. Roosevelt showed, the Roosevelt administration showed we could do it. The technology exists. It's a matter of technology and will. Do it! We say, "We've got to work within the parameters of what these guys—the consent of these people." No, they don't have any rights! They're behaving as inhuman people; they don't have any rights for their principle. They are criminals! We don't propose to execute them. They're not edible, after all. But that's the situation.

So therefore, we have to take the power. You have to say, don't say how to solve this problem or that problem. You have to go at the gut of the thing. If you say, "Let's go back to Franklin Roosevelt," that is a very good way of identifying it. If Roosevelt did it, it was good. If somebody doesn't like Roosevelt, he's no good. That should be your base in politics, and go at it that way. Then you don't have a problem.

The basic thing is simple. We can, with programs, we can double food production on this planet. That is not really an impossible task. But you have to have the institutions, and the political will or the political control, to do it. Therefore, you have to take political power. You have to be—again, like the Obama question—don't wait for it to descend upon you. Don't say, "What shall we put in our prayers, to be dropped on us tonight?" No. You say, "What are we going to do, to change the system, so that it happens?" Same thing. And it's not a technical problem. This has been worked on before, all the records are there, how we do it is known. No problem. The problem is the system. But the problem is not how to change the system; the problem is how to eliminate it. We had a system before that worked. Go back to it.

Hillary Clinton Needs a Qualified Team

Freeman: The next question is from somebody who has a big personal stake, I suppose, in asking it. He says: "Mr. LaRouche, if you were running Hillary Clinton's Presidential campaign, knowing her and her capabilities—i.e., not if you were a candidate yourself, but if you were advising Hillary—what would you tell her? How can she intensify her appeal to the lower 80%? Do you think that any of this ultimately is sufficient to overcome the hierarchy that's determined to keep her out of the Presidency, and if not, then what do you think she has to add to her appeal?"

LaRouche: Well, if you want to deal with that problem, you have to be prepared to declare war, and you have to—you know, it's like the Gideon's Army problem. I think, that if Hillary is not acquainted with Gideon's Army, I'm sure Bill has a long lecture he can give her on that subject, the typical lecture on Gideon's Army. You have to go out, you find a bunch of people around you, who you know you can't trust. You have a campaign organization of people around you, you know you can't trust. They're prepared to skedaddle and go to the opposite camp at the first chance, the first opportunity. That's your problem.

So therefore, what you have to do is two things, one of which Hillary is already doing. Hillary has gone, repeatedly, to the lower 80%. Therefore, on this issue, she has credibility with most of the best of the Obama people, supporters, as well as the citizens generally. That's number one. Now, you have to think like Franklin Roosevelt. You have to build the team that is going to do the job. What I see in her situation, from a distance, because I'm not on the inside of it, and therefore I will limit what I think I can say about it, because I'm not an insider to it, is that she's doing too much of too little, with too little. She's relying upon people—she doesn't have to throw them away, but in general, obviously, she doesn't have the team she needs. She may have a few people, a few collaborators, who do a good job, she may have others who are doing as they're told, while they continue to be attached, but she doesn't have—as I wrote on the election problem—she needs a team.

You need a government, not a personality. Yes, you need a personality, but you need a government, and you've got to go in on a fight like this, like a government, with a full panoply of government, of a U.S.-styled Presidential government, and that should be your campaign team. You go in like a machine, and you fight the way I fight. You know, some people think that I'm in trouble, that I'm not as competent. Well it's not a lack—I have too much competence, and therefore, the enemy wanted to get me out of the way, quick, and they tried a couple of times. But what you need is what I represent, the same kind of thing. You've got to have a team of people who say, "Let's make it happen." But it has to be a team which is like a machine, which is able to go in and gobble up anything that gets in the way—a juggernaut! And the problem, I think, is that she's traded—not because of her choice, but because of circumstances—she's traded from a juggernaut which she actually needs, to what she's trying to, herself and a few other people, work with a bunch of people who may be semi-willing collaborators, and also sabotaging things they don't like.

Legislation for the Food Crisis

Freeman: This is from the Senate, the Democratic side anyway, of the Senate Agricultural Committee. "Mr. LaRouche, will you be drafting something similar to the HPBA, on the food question? Regardless of whether you plan on submitting actual legislation, what specifically would you recommend in the way of legislative action, to immediately address the crisis?"

LaRouche: Again, I think you've got to hit it on a flank, first. Don't think about a piece of legislative action first. What we have now, is we have an upcoming Rome conference of the FAO. The original intention of the Rome conference was not good. The FAO was a good idea; it was done by an American of Jewish parentage and so forth, who became a very significant influence in the United States and who went to Rome and got Victor Emmanuel III to adopt this thing, and so that's how it was founded in Rome.[2]

But there's this conference, now, and the original intention was to promote a usual nonsense-type of trend toward destruction of everything. But because of the importance of the issue—remember, you've got governments, powerful institutions in government, throughout Europe and other parts of the world, who want this reform, who are fighting for food reform. And the problem here in the United States, is someone thinks that if the newspapers here don't put out food as the issue, they think it's not an issue. Well, for hungry people, it's an issue! They don't need to read the New York Times to discover whether or not it's an issue! If they didn't get their dinner last night, if their family hasn't been fed, that gets the message across quite nicely—particularly when they see the prices of food going up again, which is a swindle.

So therefore, the key thing is to take an international fulcrum, and the way you make good legislation is you get out there, and it becomes a power in its own right, by mobilizing around it. Now, food attracts a lot of attention. The lack of food attracts even more attention. So therefore, the lack of food is working for you. So what you have to do is say, "We must cancel these programs. We must cancel the WTO. We must cancel the food-for-fuel program."

Let nobody deny that food-for-fuel is a complete fraud, and it's genocidal in its implications. The food-for-fuel program is one of the major factors causing starvation today, which means death. It's a murderer. And the food-for-fuel program should be killed, right now! I don't care whether the President of Brazil likes that or not. It's going to be killed, as far as I'm concerned, now.

We're going to double the food production, because if we don't double food production, we're not going to have a stable supply of food. Because you have to realize, not only do we have a food shortage—we have a food shortage in terms of absolute numbers. We have a food shortage, in the sense that people who used to have three meals a day, went down from two and are headed towards one, or none. Therefore, what you have to do, is destroy the existing institutions that are part of this policy, that did this, such as the WTO, such as the food-for-fuel policy. That policy must be destroyed. Now, your program flows from that, because the minute you say that, we have on the record, for example, the Nehru Green Revolution policy for India. We have all these records. We have the thing centered out of the Philippines. Vast programs exist for immediate food requirements. We are short of some of the skilled people we need for this, but we can get the job going.

So you need, simply, the obvious enabling legislation which states its purpose simply. A three-page report—no longer than three pages—which states what the policy is and indicates what the objectives are to be reached. When you put that out as policy, you destroy and nullify any policy that contradicts that, then you go back in the manuals, and you dig out all the things that are there which are worthwhile, get a committee working, piece the thing together for an action program now, and it works! That's the way to do it.

You see, the hesitation is in trying to get into something that you put through the normal legislative process. I wouldn't give you two cents for the whole damned Congress right now! Do you want the people who are kissing the butt of Nancy Pelosi to draft your legislation for you? Or to pass it? Anything she passes I don't want to get near! Like Al Gore, you know.

So the point is, don't try to find recipes that you hope you can sell on, because in this case, you're fighting a war, and the war is, are you going to have biofuels? If you are, you're not serious. Cancel biofuels! Immediately! Biofuels are a swindle. The possibility of marketing them as competing with other fuels is entirely a government-paid swindle, a people-paid swindle. It's a swindle! So cancel the swindle! Tell them, "No more subsidy, buddy! No more international subsidy, no WTO caps and so forth. Cut it out!" And watch the food-for-fuel program die. And watch the farmers scamper back to producing food for food.

'Why Don't You Endorse Hillary Clinton?'

Freeman: The next question is, "Mr. LaRouche, I have been following you and your organization for quite some time, and I must say that I agree with much of what you say. During the course of the Pennsylvania primary, both my wife and I and several of our friends took leaves of absence from work, to go up to Pennsylvania to volunteer for Hillary Clinton. If Obama is a fall-guy set up by the British Empire, and obviously, the election is one of the most important parts of fixing the U.S. economy, then my question to you—and I don't ask you this sarcastically, but with all sincerity—is why are you not backing Hillary Clinton 100%? I understand that she is not perfect, but is without doubt, the only one that has a chance of doing right by humanity. Also, taking into consideration her using so many of your policies as talking points, as well as repeatedly invoking the name of Franklin Delano Roosevelt on the campaign trail, I really do believe that she will embrace your economic change with open arms, if she wins the nomination, and the Presidency. Shouldn't we have everyone, including most especially you, endorse her, and help push her for the nomination, since this election is so very important?"

LaRouche: Just think again about that. Think about that formulation. Think what's wrong with it. First of all, as I've said repeatedly, as the head of a PAC, it is contrary to law for me to endorse her, and it is certainly that interpretation that would be put on it if I did it, so I didn't do it. But in the meantime, anybody who knows what I'm doing, knows exactly what the message is. The message is not my saying I support Hillary. My message is saying what I propose to happen, and she happens to be doing it. What's wrong with that?

I also say critically what's wrong with Obama, and the Obama campaign. What's wrong with that? I talk about McCain, and don't call him "Coke" McCain, because that would confuse him with George Bush! So, it's not necessary. As a matter of fact, the enemy would all have fits about this, trying to hammer her all the harder, with all the people that hate me, would immediately desert her and do terrible things to her. So, what good does it do? This is not the case of that kind of politics. Yes, each of us must do what is our mission. Our mission is determined by what we do anyway, what our capabilities are, and what the effect of our—in our own name—doing something. So, those all go together.

My purpose is to save the United States, and what I'm doing, obviously, does implicitly help her, because she uses it. It's to her advantage. She deals with the lower 80%, where the competition does not. I promote the lower 80%. It's all very clear. And I try to make clear, things which she needs to know, and other people need to know, and by just putting them out as things that people need to know, she gets them automatically. So, she's not deprived of anything from me. If I were to publicly endorse her, do you realize what would happen to her support? They would target her as never before. That is not useful.

A Riemannian, Not Cartesian, Approach

Freeman: I will say that we have more questions like that from Clinton delegates, than any other topic, except, "don't you think Dick Cheney is really responsible for killing the D.C. Madam?" (That would actually be grounds for anyone hanging themselves!)

The next question: "Mr. LaRouche, I have two questions for you, pertaining to the economy." I should mention that this question is submitted from Rep. Priscilla Taylor, from the Florida House of Representatives. She is the representative who introduced the HBPA into the Florida legislature. She continues: "Since I've been following the debate on the gasoline crisis, and the proposed lifting of the gas tax, Hillary wants the tax holiday; Obama opposes it. What do you think? What can we do now, immediately, that will have some benefit for the population? Second, I know your HBPA has passed many cities and states. Right now, Congress has refused to act on that measure. However, I just heard that they had their own bill." Essentially, what she's saying is that Bush has said that he will veto the relief bill that the Democrats have put forward. She says, "Therefore, does this gives us a new opportunity for the HBPA, or are there other more pressing questions?"

LaRouche: As I say, I'm looking at this strategically. I'm not looking at this mechanically. We Americans are so conditioned by the news media and whatnot, that we come up with mechanical approaches. "If you do this and you do that"—is the little wheel run by faith, and the big wheel run by the Grace of God, or the other way around, right? It just doesn't function that way. We're in a power game. It's not influencing this guy, influencing that guy—these are all the mechanics; we know about them, but they really are not what determines the way political processes work.

What you have to think about, is how you set into motion processes which control the way things happen.

Now, my problem with this, is that I try to educate a lot of people in Riemannian dynamics, as the way to explain how to deal with some of these questions. But people don't know Riemannian dynamics, and thus, I can offer them a scientific solution for an approach, but they don't understand it, because they still are thinking in Cartesian terms, which most people think in. That's why most economists are incompetent, when it comes to forecasting; some of them are just incompetent per se, whether forecasting or not.

But the point is, what I'm trying to do—first of all, I'm trying to formulate statements of policy, which the person who doesn't understand Riemannian concepts, would be able to understand and use. And that's what I'm trying to do on that point, because I have a hopelessly illiterate population, especially in high levels of authority on the questions of economics. There is no professional competence in economics in the United States today. There are people who work as economists who have specific kinds of competence, because they're smart or they do the work. But in terms of principles of economics, there is no body of people in the United States who today are practicing economists who know what the hell they're doing! And if you tell them what to do, they wouldn't know what it is. They're just not competent.

So, therefore, the compromise is, to set forth—which I'm involved with, and which some people around me are involved with—is specifying things which as packages will work. They're practical, and therefore, they act as temporary substitutes for the incompetence of people, in thinking about principles of economics.

That's the way it has to work; that's why I'm so overloaded. Because this thing—you can trust me—people in economics today, are just incompetent. They don't know what it is. They all think they know something about it, but they don't know anything about it. What I do is try to educate people in a package which will work, and explain why and how it will work. But otherwise, without my direct instruction, they haven't got a clue as to what to do! That's the problem, and that's why I do what I do; because it's important that this be done, so therefore I try to do it. And I'm also engaged in trying to get some young people to—I will not be here forever. Contrary to rumors, I will not live forever—to come along and pick up the slack and develop a broader base of education to produce people who are competent in the principles of physical economy. But those who try to interpret or define economy in terms of monetary systems, haven't got a clue. They're beaten from the start. There is no way that you can define a rational system of economy on the basis of monetary economy; it cannot be done, by the nature of the thing.

Let me qualify it in this way: Economy is physical, it is not monetary. Now, we have monetary systems, which are used to manage exchange, wage rates, things of that sort. They are monetary systems, but they are not economic systems. They are monetary systems which function within certain false or true assumptions about what an economy is. And an economy is physical. Now, most people don't pay attention to the most important thing about an economy: no monkey ever had one! No chimpanzee ever had an economy, because economy is a reflection of the effect of the creative powers of the human mind. Now, most people don't know what "creative" is. They probably studied Descartes, they don't know what creative is; they believe in Euclid, they don't know what creative is. They studied this science or other; they don't know anything. So, therefore, the problem is, is that the economy is determined by physical things. Physical processes, which include things like what we call infrastructure, we call it agriculture, we call it industry, we call it transportation systems—that's a very specific kind of infrastructure—and so forth. And in economy, the secret is how to get these things to mesh together to one end. First of all, to promote the increase of the productive powers of labor, which is largely a promotion of a mental capability. The same thing we associate with creativity, which no animal has. Human beings have creativity. Most people don't know what creativity is; they call anything creativity. The child makes a smudge on the wall, they call it creative. But a physical economy is a concatenation of the relationship of physical things and practices, which are used as media of allowing discoveries by mankind to be employed by these facilities to increase the productive powers of labor per capita and per square kilometer. It's physical.

Now what you do on the monetary side is, you create a money system, as under the American System, and then you manage the way in which you price things, by protectionist methods. And without protectionism, there's no sanity. In order to make this machinery of production of increasing the productive powers of labor work. In other words, you have to build a machine. The machine is a physical machine, the physical machine is driven genius. It is driven by the human genius of discovering principles which can be translated into benefits. Those benefits then depend upon creating an apparatus like the creation of the transcontinental railway system. What does it do? Well, it transforms, it reduces the cost of production, and enables one to use the whole territory of a nation usefully, where you couldn't without railroads. The best approximation before that was water systems, inland water systems. Inland water systems were the precedent for railroads. Inland water systems do not have a high speed (if they do have a high speed, you don't want to ride on them!). So, railway systems run at a higher speed, and therefore we were able more efficiently and quicker to move things that we could not move with the same amount of human effort before.

For example, going from coal to coke is an improvement. Going from coke to petroleum is an improvement. Going from petroleum to nuclear is a big improvement. It's a great leap, which means everything else is doing the same thing so to speak, but now with a driver of nuclear power in there, suddenly you've multiplied the power of the human being per capita and per square kilometer. That's economics! Real economics.

Now, the other factor of a real economy, is that you have to provide freedom for it. What is freedom for? Is it in order to please people, to give them this or that? No. The point is, freedom in science means creativity, in the same sense as discovery of a universal physical principle. That's freedom! The ability to break through from a limit of behavior and discovery and insight, to find a new power which the human mind can control and apply practically, which increases man's power to exist in this universe, or overcomes a deficit in that respect. So therefore, that's what our drive is. Genius, the mind, creative powers of mind is the source of economy. It's what makes the difference between a baboon and a human being. You can tell that. If somebody disagrees with me, they're probably a baboon, right?

So therefore, that's economy. The monetary side then is, you get these relationships, and based on these relationships, the physical relationships, you now set up a set of numbers, a protectionist system, which works. Which means that the money-flow in the system, corresponds to the objectives of the system as a whole. In the old days in the United States, that was approximated by the factory management section of a production, as opposed to Wall Street. Wall Street was always a pain. But the factory management was to design a system of producing products integrated with the market, which would actually increase the productive powers of labor; that is, you would get a benefit to the user of a product, because the product enabled the users of the product to have some benefit which is measurable in physical benefit to society.

But that concept, this understanding of this, is lacking, and thus, when you discuss many of these questions that touch on economics, as well as dealing with it directly, you're dealing with the problem of the intrinsic incompetence of the conceited fellow who thinks, because he read a book about economics, or got a lecture on it, he knows what it is. He has no understanding whatsoever.

Economics is related to what? The human mind, and the human mind has a power that no animal has. It is the human mind which is the source of creativity, the creativity which increases the productive powers of labor. And it is the design of the physical systems which we operate—including streets, highways, water systems, and so forth—the design of these systems and their proportion, their interaction, is based on the utilization of the powers of mind to increase the power per-capita productivity of man. And you design a monetary system then, or a price system, which fits that, so the flows of money correspond to the physical benefit for mankind.

And that's what I teach, and I hope that other people will be enlisted into becoming masters of that. And that's what the problem is when I bring this subject up. They think of the wrong thing.

What Does Africa Really Need from Us?

Freeman: We still have a very large number of institutional questions from the United States, including from Congress, from various state legislators, and from trade unionists, but I do want to try to work in some of the international questions that we're getting. We just have a huge number of questions coming in via the Internet, and also from here, on Africa. Just to kind of put several of them together: "What is your solution to the problem that you refer to in Africa, where the growth of the African population is seen as a threat to the international financiers' control of raw materials? Do you believe that there is a difference between the Anglo-Dutch financier oligarchy and the government of Great Britain? Because many people in Africa really don't see any difference between the two. Considering the food and financial problems that Africa faces, if right now you were standing anywhere on the African continent, what would you say to the African people?"

LaRouche: I probably would stand in Zimbabwe, because that's the best place from which to insult the British! And they would believe it.

The point is, people have to think clearly about this. Right now, what's the problem? Africa has a land area which is intrinsically agricultural, in its primary potential, which is one of the major sources of food on the planet. Where's the food? Well, some things eat the food. Diseases affect the food. In the process of transportation or lack of process of transportation, lack of efficient food-handling devices, food actually grown is lost; sometimes before it comes to maturity, sometimes afterward. You have also diseases in Africa which are not treated, not only diseases of plants and animals, but diseases of people. Therefore, you have a loss there. For example, the AIDS, so-called, effect in certain parts of Africa wiped out especially the better-educated part of the population of African nations. That's another problem. And so therefore, I've taken the view toward Africa of saying, let's talk about infrastructure.

Now, the first one you talk about is water, water management. That is very important. Then you talk about transportation, because without transportation systems, you can not manage the delivery of things which are necessary to increase the productivity of agriculture. In other words, don't try to start by saying we're going to increase the productivity of the farmer per se. First of all, let's take the African farmer as he exists, with his existing culture. Let's say, what can we do in terms of infrastructure which will cause an increase in the productivity of that farmer without changing him otherwise? Well, you know, kill some of the diseases that kill the food. Preserve the food that is grown and is destroyed because of various reasons. Create the infrastructure. I would say, create an internal transportation network for Africa, which links it together in such a way that these problems can be addressed [Figure 1].

For example, you are going to some part of Africa. You've got a disease in this area. You've got a farmer who's growing, a couple of farmers who are growing in a community, but they have no local facility to assist them. And the local facility, if it existed, couldn't assist them because there is no transportation system to support it. In other words, you want to save food. For example, you could use nuclear irradiation and other things. You want to preserve food that's grown, say crop food. All right, what would you do? You would probably put it in a big sack, and you'd probably irradiate it. Now, you wouldn't use that product for seed, it wouldn't be in good shape, because you use radioactive isotopes, which was developed as a technique. So, now your concern is to save the food, and you package it, and you move it to places where it is going to be consumed or otherwise utilized. And that is in general the approach.

Where there isn't water, you need water management. For example, some fairly elementary—not simple, but elementary—work on the Nile system, would actually increase the productivity of Sudan. Now, Sudan is, in territory, the largest nation of Africa. And therefore, and its territory is such—you have various climates—but the territory in the large North area, is such that a very small amount of increment of water available in any given repeated years, suddenly turns what is relatively a desert, into a fairly productive grain-producing area. And some other things as well.

So, sometimes, I would say, coming in from the outside, from a European culture, and going into Africa, what do we know that they can use, which would be most beneficial for them? Don't go in there and try to change them; work with them, and try to find ways of things that they can understand and use, which will enable them to decrease the losses from their effort, and decrease the losses of food once they've grown it. Because I think that's the first step.

And then look, with that approach, and say "What are we going to do three generations ahead? What's our perspective?" We've got the African farmer now, and other Africans, but let's take the African farmer as a type. What are we going to do to make sure that his grandchildren are going to have the kind of life that we would aim for? And I would say, as European civilization, rather than going in and trying to give them too much advice, the better way would be to go in and give them the infrastructure and technology they need to improve the power of productivity of what they're able to do with their own existing skills now.

1933 and Today

Freeman: The next question is from John Jeffries from the machinists' union in Louisville, Kentucky. He says: "Lyn, we're making every effort to get the HBPA passed here in Louisville, and we will continue to do so. And I have some questions for you. One: What actually are the similarities of the times in 1933, to today? My question pertains particularly to the housing market, and to banking in general. Debt obligations of mortgage-backed securities, I don't think were an issue in 1933, or were they? My real question is, what are the differences in the two situations, and is our current situation worse than the situation in 1933? If so, how?"

LaRouche: Well, the situation today is worse in the sense of morality. The population today is less moral. Now there, you had—think of the composition—you had what? In the United States from the 1920s, about 40% rural, agricultural. You had a rapid growth under Roosevelt—well, rapid, you're talking about five, six years, that sort of thing—increase in productivity. What's needed, essentially, is that.

We have to recognize that money as we define it today, in today's prices, is essentially worthless. We're in hyperinflation now. The rate of increase of inflation, per week, of prices, is already hyperinflationary. We're headed for a 1923 Germany-type of situation. The rate of inflation is going to increase. The rate—you take the case of food; the rate of shortage of food is going to increase; it's built into the present structure. So therefore, in that time, Roosevelt had an easier time than we have today. Because then he had the task of reviving production, which took about a decade on his part. Today, we have the problem of stopping a declivity in production; that's the difference. Therefore, the challenge is greater. I think it's soluble, in the sense that we can mobilize and motivate people, as we could not before. We can do it because the situation is so damn bad that people are willing to make that extra effort to find the solution to the problem. It's not casual; they will actually fight hard to save civilization. And that's our best shot.

The Promise of the Youth Movement

The other thing is, as we know with the youth movement in particular, and my experience with it, we have a potential out there, in terms of people, especially take the age group of 25 to 35—that's the organic leadership layer in our society today. The potential intelligentsia from this age group, that's the leadership; it's where it come from. And it's special, because this is the generation which reached into adulthood about the time of the 2000 election, when you had a significant movement on campuses, as I saw in the election campaign year that year. A significant movement among university youth. I mean significant, I don't mean majority; I mean something—better than nothing; something.

I found it inspiring, and I set out and said, we've got to get serious about this, because there are these young people out there that are entering adulthood, or are already adults, they have an orientation. They're getting crap for education. They have courses where they have the sense of losing their mind every time they attend a class—in some new way. Well, it's true; it's what I was finding. And therefore, we have to do something to organize them as a political force for science, for ideas, as well as for politics and such. But they have to be organized around a mission orientation: What are you going to do with your life? You become 18, 20, and so forth. What are you going to do with your life? Not what are you going to do; what are you going to do with your life? Is the fact of your existence an embarrassment to you? What are you going to do with your life?

So, you have to have a mission orientation, which is, in a sense, a surrogate for a commitment to fight war. You're fighting war not to kill, but you're fighting a kind of war to mobilize people to achieve goals, to achieve missions, or to define missions that ought to be obtained. And that's the way we have to approach this kind of thing, to get this across. And I think we can mobilize people. Look, I know it, and we know, people could tell you from what we do in the Basement, for example, that we know that you can accelerate the development of the creative powers of people, by these kinds of programs. We have been experimenting, in a sense, with doing just that; it works. It's not perfect; it's obvious, it works. And we can increase the productive powers of people, we can increase their ingenuity, and that's what we have to do.

So, I think in answer to the question, which has complicated aspects, the situation today is worse than it was then, principally because of the social composition of the labor force, which is less suited to production. Secondly, because we have some talented young people who are affected adversely by their experience of life, because of their generation's situation. That life out there, that society out there, is a bog; it's a mess, it's a swamp. And even young people who are bright, talented, motivated, do not have access to the kind of environment in which the creativity in them is easily developed. Too many things are working against them. My intent was to try to create the idea of, how do you protect these young people who show talent? How do you get them to develop by protecting them? Protecting them from Boomers, for example, from the influence of Boomers. There's nothing worse than a bunch of academic Boomer professors of the type in a university to destroy a mass of human minds. Well, I guess I won't go into that, but I could, at great length.

So therefore, by creating the environment for mission task-oriented goals, I think we can accelerate a cadre of young people who can become the intellectual leaders of the next generation. I'm talking about people who are entering the 25 to 35 age group; I think we can do it. And if we can get them moving, we can then take the younger people, between 18 and 25, and begin to influence them in a positive way. I was very optimistic about the 18 to 25 age group back in 2000. But the degeneration of the culture of the United States since the year 2000, now eight years later, is such that the possibility of taking people in the 18 to 25 group and getting them to progress, is much greater. It's more difficult than it was then.

Food Production Has Been Destroyed

Freeman: Lyn, the next question is from Dr. Luise Light, who is the former USDA Director of Dietary Guidance. Dr. Light says: "Mr. LaRouche, according to the United Nations Global Policy Forum, the world produces enough food to feed every person alive today. So why are we seeing the greatest worldwide hunger and starvation epidemic ever recorded, with one out of every six people in the world at immediate risk for severe malnutrition and death by starvation? This is not only immoral, but it is breeding war and revolution in every known country where this massive hunger exists.

"We know two things: when people have the capacity to grow most of their own food and live in stable communities, they are not malnourished, they don't starve to death, and barring any unexpected catastrophe like war or weather-related disaster, they're okay. The second thing we know is that this global hunger catastrophe is manmade. It was created by the WTO and others who have globalized monoculture and restricted farming by rules that favor the needs of the affluent, and ignore those of the poor. My question to you is: Who has decided who will live and who will die, by dictating such stupid, arrogant, and murderous world trade policies?"

LaRouche: Well, one thing I disagree with. I think the food supply today is really in jeopardy. And Helga, my wife, has been working with a number of people in Europe on this question; leaders in relevant areas with backgrounds in government and so forth, relevant kinds of professions. And we have here a center in Leesburg, where we're doing some work which is also quite relevant to the same thing, which is on the history of this food problem. We do have obviously the potential for adequate food supply; that's the basis for optimism. But the point is, we've destroyed that potential; we've destroyed its organization. For example, we had a wheat problem in some parts of the United States; that it was not there. The product was not there, and will not be there. It will not be there. So, the food is not there. And what we're getting all over the world, is there's been a cover-up, including the information, a systemic cover-up of the fact of the growing net food shortage in production in the world today. It's a lie. But otherwise, what the question posed is correct. And assuming that these conditions did not exist, which are contrary to some of the reports out—the reports are fraudulent. But otherwise, the question is correct.

We need a program, and what the purpose is of the focus, among Europeans in particular, which we're working to try to get the American side of people involved in now on this, is to focus on the period into the June meeting of the FAO, and to build a head of steam around that meeting, to force a change in what had been the original intention of this FAO session, based on the fact that people who are concerned with food and so forth, are now realizing that they've got to get rid of the WTO, got to get rid of biofuels, and these kinds of things, and got to get rid of the idea of taking certain areas of the world, and restricting which areas can produce what food, and deny the right to produce food in those other areas.

For example, the clearest case is the case of Sonora [Mexico]. You have Prince Philip, the dung heap of the royal family, who with this World Wildlife Fund, is a genocidal organization. We have in the Sonora area, in the PLHINO area, we have the ability now, based on engineering which has been done by Mexican engineers for a long period of time, we know the water potential [Figure 2]. We can actually produce an expansion of food production in that area, one of the more opportune places, but it's prevented by the British government, by the British monarchy, through Prince Philip's World Wildlife Fund, and other means. So, our problem is, that we are destroying the natural potential for growing food, at the same time that we are prohibiting people from growing it, destroying the means by which it could be grown. Therefore, we have to act and get those criminals out of the system. We have to send Prince Philip back to Satan, where he belongs.

Raise the Productivity of the Economy

Freeman: We've gotten a lot of questions concerning the production of food for domestic markets versus international markets, and this in a sense reflects it. This question was submitted by Sen. Joey Pendleton, who is the Minority Whip of the Kentucky State Senate, and who also is the co-sponsor of S.R. 90, which is the Kentucky Homeowners and Bank Protection Act, that he and Sen. Perry Clark passed through the Kentucky Senate on the final day of the session—in a Republican-controlled Senate, they add. So he says, "Lyn, in addition to my service in the legislature, I'm an active farmer and I also serve on the faculty of the Murray State University Agricultural Program. As I'm sure you know, farmers today face a horrific crisis. We're seeing rising prices for fuel, fertilizer, and virtually everything we need to farm. We're responsible for feeding our nation, and frankly, we do have to feed part of the world. I agree that using corn for ethanol is not viable. We have to move back to using corn for the food supply. The question that I have, is how can we feed the world, with the rising cost of production, and yet at the same time, keep food cheap for the domestic market? What is your idea on how to keep farmers in American farming, to keep them in business and to provide our own nation with a supply of cheap good food for the table?"

LaRouche: We've got a couple of problems here. First of all, when you reduce the productivity of an economy, you do not lower the overhead costs of maintaining that economy. When you have fewer people working, as a percentile of the total population, you are increasing the cost of existence. If you restrict production, you are increasing the cost of production, for this reason. On top of that, the prices of products are not based on cost—that is, not physical costs. If you take the physical costs that go into it, including everything, and starting from a certain average price of labor, and measuring the equivalent of price of labor with cost, if you do that, you discover that most of the price increases today, really are not real; they're speculative, they're monopolistic.

For example, what the British do—the idea is really very old. Create a shortage and raise the price by creating a shortage. Now, by creating a shortage, you have two ways of increasing the price. First of all, you have a speculative, a monopolistic increase in price. You have a monopoly, you can bid the price up. You can steal the money. Not because the cost has risen, but because the price has risen. And the cost that's risen is the parasite, the cost of the parasite who does the stealing. That's the way it works. So therefore, the other way, is reducing, by monopolistic methods, the baseline of net production of the entire economy. That is, you have a given population. How much product in that population generally, useful product, can that population generate? Well, obviously, that's a factor of technology and of policy of employment. If you are not advancing technology, if you're reducing the amount of production, and so forth, the costs of maintaining society then become reflected, including the parasitical costs, become reflected inversely in the price of the product that you're producing.

So therefore, the general point is to have a rational maximization of production, in which you always have an overproduction. But also, you maintain production to distribute it in many areas of the world.

For example, petroleum. The petroleum business is absolutely insane. Petroleum as a product was invented by Mendeleyev, who created the Baku oil field in Russia. It was his design. But the petroleum was then used by the British Navy, in preparation for World War I, and they discovered that they could make British cruisers which were oil-burning, rather than coal-burning. And the game was such, that this gave them greater range and increased the seapower of the British Navy. So the British took a part of the Middle East, which is now called Kuwait, which is actually British Petroleum, and they took this area and tried to use that as a lever. Then, by encouraging the development of the use of petroleum, by pushing automobiles rather than rail systems. Now, when you use trucks, for example, highway trucks, as a replacement for rails, you increase the cost greatly, vastly. But you eliminate the rail system, and you have to use the trucks. Now therefore, the social costs of maintaining the transport of goods, zooms out of the inefficiencies you've generated! This is the kind of problem we face.

If you think—forget the money thing! Don't assume that the price is right. The price is often a thief's price. But don't assume that. Therefore, if you look at it in physical terms, then the things become obvious. If you start to measure economy by taking an average price of labor, which you measure in commodity content, as a family household: You start with a family. Somebody's working; they're in a family. You take a normal family. Make a table: education, and so forth. Put it in there. Get your average costs of maintaining a human being in that society, to be productive, or a family to be productive. Think about how you optimize the cost of production, and effectively lower the cost of production. Then it all becomes very simple.

So don't move product all over the road. Diversify your production rationally, use every part of the world that is suitable for a certain kind of production, locally, don't use petroleum, as much—use it as a feedstock. Petroleum is an excellent feedstock for chemicals and many other things. Do it that way! Don't haul it all around the world at a great markup, and then say that's the cost of production. It's not. So use nuclear power, higher energy flux-density. Use that. You've changed the production. Everybody's more productive. The cost declines, because cost is relative to the cost of maintaining a human being. So therefore, if you make people more productive, the cost of maintaining a human being, in terms of production, is cheaper. And don't let the parasites get in and steal, and then the prices will not go up. It's very simple. Good government, good understanding of how economies work, this is the issue. And the problem is, we do not have a problem. We have the problem only to the degree that you have mismanagement. (It's not a feminist movement, it's something else.)

Freeman: I'm going to take all the questions that we have, which are many, from state legislators, and from city councilmen, and others, all of which ask Lyn specifically what to do about the price of oil, specifically what to do about the price of gas, specifically what to do about the price of food, specifically what to do about the price of housing, and specifically what to do about the fact that we have a rotten economy—and give them all to Lyn to take home. Because I think he's answered most of them, and I think that people can find the answers to these questions in terms of specifics on the website. But I also think that there is a higher principle that needs to be addressed.

Is Politics Too Hopelessly Corrupt?

The last question that I'm going to put to you is kind of a composite question that's come from a number of members of the LaRouche Youth Movement here in the United States, but it also reflects questions that have come from them around the world, and I think that it's a question that's worth asking.

"Lyn, I understand why Hillary Clinton might be the least bad candidate for the Presidency in the United States, but it is also just hard to get excited about her. Even though she falls way short of what's needed in this crisis, she apparently is still way too much for the financial oligarchy. Maybe because they worry about your influence on her. My worry is that, even if she manages to win the Presidency, as far as I can tell, the only way she'd be able to do that, would be to make so many rotten deals and compromises with really bad people, that she wouldn't be a very good President anyway. I don't know, maybe I'm wrong. I don't have that much experience in politics, but my question to you is that, maybe there is some other way for us to affect the general future of civilization, other than politics. Maybe the whole political theater is just too dirty and too corrupt for us to make an impact. I want to maintain a sense of optimism about the future, but looking at the political framework, I'm having trouble doing it."

LaRouche: Well, it's a field that's troublesome, because it's a field of conflict, not because it's intrinsically difficult. Hillary doesn't really have a problem of the type described. Not really. She may have psychologically, at the present time, a sense of difficulty of that type, but it doesn't exist.

You see, when you are a President of the United States, under our Constitution, you are not in a contract society. The President is not in a contract society with the population. The President is like a commander in warfare, which is one of his powers; and therefore, he's supposed to respond to what is required by the situation, taking the present and future into account. That's his job.

So therefore, the President can say, "Well, ladies and gentlemen, you know, I was running for a campaign last year, I had a number of ideas, and some of them, I think we ought to junk, because on reflection, either they were wrong—our judgment was wrong at the time, and now, with new information, we find we were wrong and we've got to change that. Besides, there were some other things that came up that we didn't discuss last year, and we find we're going to have to do that. So we do that."

Now, that would be the way a Franklin Roosevelt would approach a situation like this. It's to say, "You know, last year I was a damned fool! I wasn't the only damned fool, though, I'll tell you that! I was the least damned fool, and you're lucky, because you got the least damned fool, me! And therefore, I've come to my senses. I've been struck, I've come to my senses. And therefore, I'm telling you, we're going to cancel this. Stop worrying. I'm not nuts. I'm not going to stick with this. If I were a nut, I would stick with what I said last year, but not being a nut, I'm not going to stick with what I said last year. You voted for me because you trust me. You trust me as an executive of this nation, who can make mistakes and did make mistakes. But he has the ability to recognize the mistake and to correct it!"

That's the best you can get. You get a couple of genius strokes which were really revolutionary and they're perfect, but for the greater part, you have to address in the heat of battle, in the heat of conflict, in the heat of crisis, you've got to respond to any situation, either by saying it's not important, we're going to live with the suffering, or we're going to do something about it. And you're going to come up with, most of the things you decide are actually approximations, not perfection.

Take the case of China. China has gone through a number of changes, since the days of Mao Zedong. Deng Xiaoping was a success, but there were problems. So each successive generation attacked a different set of problems. And so forth and so on. In the normal course of life of a government, if it's well run, this is the nature of things. You have to deal with certain things—you may have a long view of what your objectives are. And I think Deng Xiaoping had a long view, or reflected a long view. But, at the same time, you have to make decisions in the short term, or the medium term, because they have to be made. You don't have as much knowledge as you need to make a good decision, but you've got to do something. You do it. You do it, knowing you may be making a mistake. You tell people so: "Maybe I'm mistaken, but this is the best I can do, and we have to do something. You've got a better suggestion?" That's good government.

But, at the same time, there's another level. There are certain things which are matters of principle. What is government? What should government be? What's the meaning of our Constitution? For example, the question of war. Today, in the oligarchical system, like the British system, like Cheney, are looking for a war. Now, a good government may conduct a war, but it's not looking for wars, as a matter of policy. It's looking to prevent wars. It's doing everything possible to avoid those damned wars. The Treaty of Westphalia taught the lesson to anybody who's got any brains. You don't go out to kill the other. You go out to solve the problem, and try to find a way of circumventing the conflict. You deal with people who are in governments which stink, but you don't kill them, or go to war with them because they stink. You try to find a way to deal with the problem, because you know the cost of war. The first cost of war is it breeds hate, and hate curses society. Hate against others is hateful. So therefore, you avoid war. The first thing you're concerned about when you fight wars, if you're any damned good, is, are you going to provide for the care of the person you were shooting yesterday, who is now your captive? Are you going to treat them fairly and honestly, as the Treaty of Westphalia prescribes? That's the point.

So, Hillary has no problem, if she's President. She can say she was a damned fool, and people will probably love her for it.

Freeman: In closing what I would say, is that if people in the audience, people in the movement, people who are listening over the Internet, find that they can't get excited about Hillary, or Barack Obama, or about John McCain, or at least excited about them in any positive way, then certainly, you can get excited about Lyn. And you can get excited about what Lyn has had to say today, and about LaRouche PAC. And you can show that excitement in two ways: One is by giving money, so that we can continue to do what we're doing, and do it on a much larger scale. The other is that, if you can't give money, you can go out and find someone who can, you can volunteer your time. That's what we need you to do right now: We need you to be an organizer and a fighter in this war. These are obviously difficult times, but I think also, there's a clear path, that we can take to victory.

I hope you'll join me in thanking Lyn for this remarkable presentation, and then I hope you'll get to work.

[1] Mexico's proposed Northern Gulf Hydraulic Plan; see below.

[2] David Lubin. See "FAO June Food Summit: Showdown over Gorey/WTO Plans To `Let Them Starve,'" by Marcia Merry Baker, in this issue.