This article appears in the June 26, 2015 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.

LAROUCHE 'FIRESIDE CHAT'

Creating a New Unity for All Mankind

[PDF version of this article]

This discussion took place between Lyndon LaRouche and hundreds of political activists from across the United States, on the LaRouche PAC activists' conference call June 18, 2015. John Ascher was the host.

John Ascher: Good evening, this is John Ascher from Leesburg, Virginia welcoming everyone to this evening's fifth Fireside Chat with Lyndon LaRouche.

LPAC/Chris Jadatz Lyndon LaRouche at his November 2, 2012 press conference at the National Press Club, where he called for the removal of President Obama from office.

Lyndon LaRouche: We've now reached a point where the whole world is in a tremendous crisis. The United States is also in the tremendous crisis. Great changes are occurring all around. Some of them are not conclusive at the present point, but if you watch the patterns, you see that everything is going on in that direction.

For example: Obama is really in a very difficult sitution. Certain kinds of developments, which are quite feasible to bring about, could ruin him. He's on the edge of being ruined. He's still the mad dog—not really a dog, perhaps a snake. Therefore that's factored in.

The point is, we're moving toward, the Democratic Party is moving against the Republicans who thought they had the total power over the whole thing at this time, and they don't have it. So, we have to approach things from that standpoint, not by playing like dogs and trying to steal other people's bones, but rather in the sense of thinking this thing through.

For example: One of the important things we should be doing, which we are not doing yet, even in fairly good circles in the Democratic Party—there are some good signs there on action, but it takes a little time to get that action moving—if we have the right actions, and begin to gnaw on the bones of Obama, or people like him—which is a dogged determination idea—then we probably can break out.

We're on the edge of the ability to pull a breakout. We're just short in terms of the Democratic Party, and people in our nation generally. We're very close to the point where we could, potentially, get Obama out of the picture. That is, weaken him to the point he does not have dictatorial claims anymore. That would make a big difference.

But there are other things that have to be done. We have to begin to deal with Wall Street. And Wall Street has to be tamed. And these are the things that have to happen, but they're not clearly pre-defined. But we understand them, and we know that these are the kinds of things, not necessarily all the things, but the kinds of things which will enable the people of the United States to get better control over the situation, and bring down Obama's funny games.

That would be the immediate intention. This would coincide with stopping Obama's tendency of bringing on global thermonuclear war. And right now, what you're talking about in the remainder of June, and July, is a period where Obama might still be able to provoke, together with the British, a general thermonuclear war. And a general thermonuclear war would be the extinction of the human species, or something very close to it.

So, that's where we are. These kinds of things have to be considered, and the problem we have with our people in the United States, is that most people in the United States have no willingness to understand what these factors are. They just wish something. They wish something is going to make it work. They hope that something will be done to make things better for them. They're getting pretty desperate about that already. They haven't had much experience with success, so far.

But there's something in the Democratic Party that has begun to move in a very serious way, and you're getting surprises—like a cat coming down on the back of some animal it's trying to eat—where the Democratic Party pounces on the Republican Party, and begins to eat it. So, it's a complicated process right now, but it's an understandable kind of process, which most of our citizens of course don't understand. But the knowable facts are already available for those who calmly look at reality: Maybe, maybe this is the kind of thing that will do the job, to get the United States out of the mess it's in now.

That's the kind of thing we have to think about.

Neither Animal Nor Machine

Q: Mr. LaRouche, D— from Oregon. My question is about artificial intelligence. Which assumptions, or axioms, that we currently believe to be true, would have to be overthrown in order to build machines that think creatively, that is, machines that employ the use of metaphor?

LaRouche: Well, actually, there are no machines designable which could actually do thinking. The human mind is completely different than any kind of these substances, these tricks, and absolutely different from any animal life. No animal life can simulate effectively human behavior.

creative commons/S.M.S.I., Inc. IBM’s “Deep Blue” computer was programmed in a doomed attempt to show its superiority over human intelligence in the chess game against Gary Kasparov in 2003, shown here.

For example, our pet dogs sometimes, if they are well-trained, will show things that look like human behavior, but it's not really human behavior. You identify the dog, a family dog, or hunting dog or something—what you get is the dog responding to human behavior, but the dog will give an interpretation of human behavior which may not be actually human, but for the dog's purposes, he's responding; the dog is responding, to the human standards.

Actually the problem that gets in the way of people understanding reality—and I do mean reality—is that mankind is not an animal. That is, animals cannot create new ideas of principle. Only human beings.

For example: Take two cases of modern history. Take Kepler, Johannes Kepler. Kepler discovered the existence and the principles of the Solar System. We have made recently a development which is known as the Galactic System, the principle of the Galactic System, which is more powerful, a more influential power, for mankind than was simply Kepler's own discovery. So, what happens: Mankind, not some artificial system, is innovating conceptions which mankind had not recognized before, and using those conceptions in order to increase the productivity of mankind. And it is this thing that no animal can do. Animals can be trained, or influenced, to cause things that look like human behavior, but it's not.

So, let's take the case of Twentieth Century. Now, what happened is, the United States, for example, was, from the time of the beginning under people like [Alexander Hamilton], was increasing the power of mankind in the Solar System, on Earth. And this is what the Nineteenth Century amounted to. At the beginning of the Twentieth Century, what happened is that the United States plunged into a long, more than a century-long degeneration of the intellectual powers of the individual. There may have been technological advances in some respects, but the quality of the mind of the human being in the United States, for example, has been degenerating since the beginning of the Twentieth Century.

What we have to look at is the power of mankind, to understand the way that man himself can make discoveries which allow the human being to do something which no other human being has ever been able to do before. So the idea of mankind as [defined by] the mechanical, technological kind of thing, was wrong. And all the actual evidence shows that the idea of this popular opinion is just plain bunk.

'Music Is Life Itself'

Q: This is Lynn Yen. I'm the Executive Director of the Foundation for the Revival of Classical Culture, and we are presenting this upcoming Carnegie Hall concert on Father's Day, this Sunday, at 4 pm, and the theme is "Classical Music Against Violence." As a matter of fact, the theme of the concert is: Not War, but Music; Not Violence, but Music; Not Death, But Music—Because Music Is Life Itself. And the reason we're doing this concert is because today there has to be a way for people to become alive again. Non-violent music: There has to be something that doesn't bang, or crash, or shout, and not flashing, strobing lights; but actually where it's the human mind that is just an instrument, an idea that is the canvas upon which your imagination can paint a picture of life as it is.

Anyway, this concert of ours—which will include Bach, Brahms, Schumann, and Chopin—will be performed at the proper tuning of middle C at 256 cycles per second, which is going to be at A=430. We've had a lot of wonderful responses from schools. We have over 2,000 confirmations from the public schools, and a lot of these teachers, when we were talking to them about the concert, responded really ardently to the idea that something has to be done about violence, especially when we told them that we picked Father's Day, because men and young men, and fathers, are the major purveyors of violence.

They're the most at risk to suffer from violent death and violence. But they're also the most qualified to reverse it, in that a more dignified and less violent America needs to take place, replace the violent and thoughtless and completely out-of-control, insane one that we have in America today. And it has to be our menfolk who lead the charge.

So, whenever we discussed the idea of this concert with the teachers, they were really completely on board. As a matter of fact, this concert is also part of what we're going to be doing in going into the Summer, which is going to become a music and science program involving, we hope, a lot of young people from the New York City area. Now, Megan Beets and Jason Ross actually helped us and taught some of the classes last year in the music/science program, and we have students who really thrived. For example, José Vega, one of the students who just spoke at the Schiller conference in November, and he articulately and beautifully developed the relationship between music and science and Kepler.

Now, the concert is being performed by Yaegy Park, Borislav Strulev, and Tian Jiang. Especially Yaegy Park, who is only 17, the violinist, I think has a really beautiful conception of music, and she talks about how she wants to perform the music, not for the money, not for being a professional musician, but because this is the thing that makes her want to be a human being.

I want to ask Mr. LaRouche the question, what is it that we really should be doing, going forward around this, and what were your general thoughts involved on what we're planning on doing going forward?

Violinist Yaegy Park performs at a Riverside Church concert in New York City, November 24, 2013. The concert was sponsored by the Foundation for the Revival of Classical Culture.

LaRouche: I think there are four examples—they're not adequate to span the entire subject matter, but I think these four cases will help to typify what the things are that we have to do in terms of the music, and the role of music.

First of all, Classical musical composition—just as a preliminary to this area of reply—there is a way of performing music which you may probably be familiar with, which was the Classical kind of music, which Megan Beets has laid out again, and that's very crucial.

On the other hand, people think that instruments produce music. Now they don't. The instruments are useful in helping mankind to capitalize on his potential. Now, you have areas, like you're talking about New York. New York City is, of course, one of the finest sources of organization of Classical musical composition. Unfortunately, over the course of the Twentieth Century, Classical music was forced to degenerate. Only a few great musicians were actually capable of generating, freshly generating—some of my friends who unfortunately are deceased were among the best people of that type, and people like that. So, we have the Classical music from Italy, from Germany; there's some actual special cases. This is one category. They understand the principle which underlies the function of Classical musical composition.

Everything that is not Classical musical composition, in principle, is a fake. And what's happened in the Twentieth Century—real music has been dying, and not only dying in terms of behavior; it's been dying in terms of the human understanding of what this means, and the ability of the mental powers of the individual, to grasp. Most people who are musicians today, the popular musicians, do not have the ability to actually do creative things. They make noises. And they make exotic noises often—like most popular music.

Now you've got another thing. These great sources of Classical musical composition have been shrunken down to a very small part of the total population. In addition to that, we have something abroad, in China. Now China is not the United States, of course, but you will find a great development of Classical music in China. It's massive. Anciently China was one of the greatest resources of Classical culture, of Chinese Classical culture, and they spread it around. So that's a source.

Then, on the other hand, we must develop new capabilities for understanding what this whole thing's about. And you will find that the deep understanding of what the Classical principles were, or have been—I could name all kinds of great people—and when you can understand how they designed music in the relevant centuries, you can understand the idea of general conception of what we call Classical music, including in the Chinese variety. A very important part. Chinese musical development today has a great influence on the planet. This is one of the greatest sources of music, and it's come up in recent years in China.

creative commons/Ryan Egan The Chinese Amber Quartet at the Asia-Pacific Chamber Music Competition in Melbourne, Australia, on July 14, 2013.

So the idea is, our own organization is very deeply involved in developing, specifically for New York City and the environs, a fresh launching of real Classical music performance.

Now, not all of our people are fully professional, but a number of our people are professionals, and competent professionals, and they are connected to people who were the great people 40 years ago, 50 years ago. I could say more, but this is what you have to understand.

The final point I would make is: What is music? Now, some people think that it's a popular form of music—they rub instruments. But it's not that. What's there is the kind of thing that you got from the great Classical composition in Europe. And this spilled into the United States as well. New York City, and to some degree Boston, were the centers of Classical musical development in my span of life. So if we understand that, then what we should do is to understand that we have to revive the schools and development of Classical musical composition, understanding the actual principles—not the noise-making principles, but the actual principles of composition and performance which made the greatest Classical music before.

Now we may add something to the repertoire, as happened in history as such, which will change the characteristics of popularized form of Classical musical composition and performance. But that doesn't make much difference, really, with the principle of the thing. Because the point is this: Classical music is something that can only exist through the activity of the proper development of the individual human mind. And therefore, Classical music, composition, and the introduction of that to schools, to children in schools, as in New York, or in Boston, or, for a while, in Detroit. There was a very active Classical musical school in Detroit, which pretty much got shut down, when Detroit was pretty much shut down.

The point is, there is this principle that Classical music has nothing to do with barroom music, or making funny sounds, or that sort of thing. But, what we need is to revive the best of what we know, already from experience, in terms of Classical music composition in the past, in European development of Classical music, from Bach on, particularly, and going on to what we did in the United States in the best period—especially in the Nineteenth Century—and something we managed to keep alive, for a little bit, in the Twentieth Century.

What we have to do is realize that that approach to Classical music composition, as so defined, is a part of the moral development, and the mental development, of the average human person: To put this kind of thing into the periphery of the school system, from the beginning of school education, is essential for the moral development of the powers of the human mind of the individual. And that should be our mission.

And what you're talking about is one of those kinds of things that has been going on. Some people are trying to restore, and recover, Classical music composition in a competent way. And New York City is one of the areas where this is most possible. We ourselves are putting a lot of pressure now into—we have certain capabilities, but we don't have enough Classically trained performers, but we're trying to work on that thing, to increase the number of Classicaly trained and qualified performers, and this is something which should be in schools. It should be in all kinds of experiences in life, and get the junk, the noise, out of the minds of our people.

Lifting the Moral Powers of the Citizen

Q: Hello, Lyn, this is T— from California. It's a honor to speak with you.

My question is like this: We have been somewhat discouraged, I think lately, in trying to call Congress, because they just haven't been responsive, but now we see that the Democrats in Congress have significantly broken with Obama. We see that—and what I think we ought to be doing is to be calling Democrats in Congress en masse to tell them that the Party needs to take a new direction; that Obama has misled the party, and looking forward, we need to put in Glass-Steagall, and back a candidate who is going to put in Glass-Steagall—which is Martin O'Malley. This is the moment when we can call Congress, and hopefully turn the Democratic Party around. What do you think?

LaRouche: This is something which is technically feasible. It has growing potential to be realized, though I don't think it's very impressive what the potential is right now, so far.

But take into account the real nature of actually Classical musical performance and composition, which is far different than what most people in the United States understand today. What is understood as music today, among most people in the United States today, is essentially a form of noise; it's not music. Bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum—all these kinds of funny noises.

So, this is extremely important. It's important because this develops the moral powers of the citizen, or the student. And that's what you want—the moral powers correspond to actually a specifically, expressly Classical approach to human behavior. I just referred earlier to the question of what China had done historically, in terms of the approach to music, which is actually ancient. To our best knowledge, China is the most powerful ancient culture on the case. And we have the modern culture, and we have some things from an earlier period in music.

But this is a moral force, which makes people more intelligent, or less un-intelligent today. It's important that this occurred. It's important that this development be understood, and be supported. Because when people understand what Classical music actually does, when performed properly, it produces an effect which otherwise is impossible to attain. And this effect has a moral force in society. And this moral force, which that kind of music represents, creates the moral impulses of the behavior of our citizens.

The Upsurge of Racism

Ascher: We've got a couple of questions from our internet audience which refer to something that Lynn Yen, our musician from New York, referred to also. In her speaking about Classical music, she was referring to how part of their event on Sunday was to do something counter to all of the violence in society. So, we had a couple of people who wrote in asking about this horrible incident that occurred last night in Charleston, South Carolina, in an African-American church, and asking whether or not there is an effort in this country to divide people against each other, and if this is a deliberate effort to try to stir things up in terms of racism in the United States.

We got two questions on the same topic from people who are listening live right now, via YouTube. Would you like to say something about that?

LaRouche: I'm perfectly satisfied to say something about that.

Look, what's happening: This thing is both what it appears to be, but it's also what it may not appear to be. What's happened with that incident just reported: What that was, you have some stooge, some young person, a stooge, who sits in an African-American church, and then lurches up from within the audience, and starts killing people, including the pastor of the church. And people say, what's happening?

creative commons/Confederate till Death KKK men and women at a cross burning on November 12, 2005.

It's not that guy. That guy is an instrument, which is cultivated and used, and brought into the church. In other words, he was not really the author of the phenomenon. He was the instrument used by the people who created the incident.

Now, in the order of things in the United States, you have the history of slavery, legal slavery in the United States, where people from Africa were put into ships, put down in chains for transport across the Atlantic Ocean, down into some parts of the United States. Most of this was done by the British, the British agencies. So, this is the history.

Now, therefore, because of the Southern states of the United States, from Virginia on down, Virginia on down, all the way down, has been historically, up to the present day, a concentration center for racism. Now, what's the function of racism? Now, for one part, people say, it's for slavery. That's too simple. Yes, slavery is a big factor, but that's not what the point is.

Remember, once the Revolution under Lincoln occurred, the so-called Negro slaves began to become not only freed, but also geniuses, because there were leaders among the former slaves, or the slave centers, who would actually develop a fierce desire to get out of what the evil was that they were being subjected to—as opposed to being slaves as such. And even those who had been slaves as such, began to rise. Because when people went from slavery to freedom—that is, true freedom, not some kind of Southern dirty trick—under those conditions, you would find the mental powers of the Negroes in the United States increased, and they increased at an accelerated rate.

All right. Now this is part of it.

Now, you look at the whole history. Look at this context that I just described, in terms of the history of the trans-Atlantic region, and beyond. What happened? What happened was —look what you're seeing right now in the area of Europe, and you have massive shipments of people from Africa, being shipped into Italy and other places, and then being thrown back from these other places, such as France, and condemned to death. And the rate of death rates by these transports across the Mediterranean has meant a rise of mass murder.

Now what you're getting is: you put the two things together. We're seeing that inside the United States, you're also getting a mass murder phenomenon of this type. And this guy, whoever he was, this young guy, who sat in the black church, and then rose to kill off the pastor and kill other members of the body—he was not cause of this thing. He was the instrument of this thing. He was the animal, who operated under "orders" from a higher sense.

So if you look at the whole process, inside the United States, you see there is a massive increase of this kind of horror show coming out. And it comes especially in the border areas, including Texas—and Texas is a borderline case.

Therefore, the problem is that there's an international, largely British-directed, British-steered [operation], into the United States, in particular, as well as in the Mediterranean cases, which is across the Mediterranean Sea. And this is global.

UNHCR/A. D’Amato The lucky ones: 186 people rescued by the Italian Navy during their attempt to cross the Mediterranean to Europe.

This includes California where we have a governor who is organizing mass killing of citizens in that state, by trying to deprive them of water. And even though there are excuses for this thing, there are no excuses for it. There is no problem of water. Even the Pope is being sucked into this. He has a Nazi who's giving the instructions to the Pope on how to deal with this thing. But the Pope is intimidated. So he is capitulating to terror, in fact. And we should free him from that sort of thing. I had some close friends in the papacy who at one point, including the Pope, we were working with, and it was far different then than what's going on now.

The point is, we have to realize that there are forces, typified by the British Empire, which in legendary periods of time, and also earlier, which have done this kind of method of mass assassinations of human beings, reducing populations. That is going on now! That is going on under the governor of California, for example, who is doing exactly that.

So what was happening in that church, that we just referred, was a foolish little boy, who rose from the pew, and committed mass murder. Actually conducted it. Killed the pastor and so forth. This is now a horror show. But the horror show is being used to promote a replication of that kind of horror show, to spread it more broadly.

And therefore, we have an enemy within, within the United States as well as other places. And you don't sit back and say, we're impotent; there's nothing we can do about this; this happened, this happened, this happened. This guy did it, but this guy may have done the action—but he wasn't the cause of the action. When you look at the territory, you say, oh, this is typical Southerner behavior. It's not that, but that's the way it works. You have the race hate, the hatred factor, in the Southern states, especially as you don't have it in the northern states.

Texas, for example. Racism in the lower states. Racism, racism, racism. Florida, racism—the rate of murder is highest in Florida, and it's not on the beaches of Florida. It's among the bitches of Florida.

So, these are the kinds of things we have to take into account.

Obama Ready To Be Dumped

Q: Hi, this is A— in southwest Minnesota, and I'd like to ask a question about this business of free trade, that's plagued us now for 15 years with NAFTA in North America, and I viewed that as a looting of the American people, the American companies. And now we're talking about trans-Pacific free trade. And I can't quite get my arms around the idea of how the trans-Atlantic would probably be running this, and the United States would pass a law that could loot countries all over the world. And I just can't see how they can pull this off, especially with the BRICS countries. So, I just wanted to know if you could comment on this?

LaRouche: Yeah, sure. I think a lot of the problem currently today is from Obama, himself. It's Obama and his intimate allies, the Republican Party. Now, that doesn't mean the Republicans as such are categorically of this nature, but there's a certain group—well, I won't name the actual name of the section of the party, but there are people in the Republican Party, in the Congress, who have no business being even in the United States! They are trash; they are blue trash, white trash, pink trash, all kinds of things, but they're Republicans.

And you see the picture now. Here you have Obama. Obama is supposed to be a Democrat! He's not a Democrat, he's a Republican, right? So, what's going on?

Now, the real Democrats don't like any of this stuff. They're not in favor of Republicans. But they don't blame the Republicans as such. They blame the caste system, which controls, top down, the Congress of the United States.

And what the issue is now is that Obama is a racist: He's against human beings, essentially. Not against black, or white, or pink or anything: He's against human beings. And look, if you know the truth about it: I knew the truth about him, from the first time I encountered him when he was first put into power in the United States. And I had an attack on him, because I exposed the fact that he was promoting death rates.

That was what his policy was and I attacked that, and he really got very angry about that and tried to kill me and tried to poison me and all these kinds of things happened; that's what he did. I got out of that. I knew what would happen to me in the attempt to poison me in that way, didn't really work, because I sort of recovered rather quickly; I had a year of real problems as a result of what the poisoning was. But that was all over.

But I was out there, and I was the first threat against Obama once he was elected. And so he backed into a rage, because there were some very influential circles at that time, in the Administration, and they were attacking the health-care policies of Obama; and the health-care policies of Obama right then, were already genocidal: That is, for mass genocide trends. And he's always been of that nature, ever since he became President.

Now, what's happened now, is, he's now being dumped. He's being thrown out the window. But he's in the last phase of a desperate effort to cause global thermonuclear war. In other words, the danger from Obama now, is, as long as he remains President of the United States, or with Presidential powers, he is committed,—absolutely profoundly, energetically committed, to launching international thermonuclear war, between the period of now into probably, say, July, maybe as late as early August; where the people of the United States right now, are in danger of being exterminated, or virtually exterminated, by a thermonuclear war, which is organized chiefly by the British Empire, and you remember, Obama is a British Empire stooge. He always was; he was shipped in.

White House/Pete Souza Obama confers with his buddy House Speaker John Boehner after participating in a session with the House Republican Conference on March 13, 2013.

His mother was married to a terrorist in Asia, and his tradition has always been that; he's a terrorist intrinsically. He's a human hater, a hater of human beings. His father was part of that same stuff. So what do you expect?

So the problem now is that Obama is no longer a Democrat. As of the recent period, he is no longer a Democrat! He's a Republican? Well, how did a Republican President get to be in that transition?

So we have to get rid of Obama. And that is on the edge. There are notable Republicans, in particular, who are ready to dump Obama at the first opportunity, and that's the thing that has to occur. If we dump Obama, and the point is that Obama is essentially a Republican; he has no connection, really, to the Democratic Party any more. And this is the problem that's going on there: How can the Republican Party respond to the fact that Obama is a Republican, and there are very few Democrats among the Democratic Party?

So that's the situation. What we need to understand, is that we have to arouse our own citizens, who are not necessarily Republicans by any means, and certainly not Obama-ites, get them out of power, get them thrown out of power. And we in the United States, I know, with what the movement is inside the Democratic Party now, and some other locations, are ready to move and dump Obama, and to dump the kind of Republicans that breed with Obama. And that's our best shot.

Q: This is V— from New York City. I'm very interested in knowing your opinion of the special interest groups.

LaRouche: Well, that's a broad term, and I think it tends to get confusing. But there are ways of looking at something we might call the so-called interest groups of that type, but I don't think it's truly categorical. I think probably, your experience might suggest that it's categorical. And there are people who adopt a policy of belief that is not their own, but it's like the guy that goes out and gets a special kind of suit that he runs around in, and he calls himself something like that. But it's all foolishness on that side.

So I mean, we're in a situation where, if we can get our citizens to move a little faster in insight—and there are movements such as part of our economic system which do understand what has to happen. And these people are willing to move and are capable of moving. But we have to get some of the weight off their backs. There are many Americans now who realize, that the condition of life of the typical citizen of the United States, has been in a long wave of degeneration, of the standard of living of the American citizen, which began in the beginning of the Twentieth Century and has become ever worse, ever since up to the present time.

So the time has come for the American citizen to revolt against this kind of suppression, against the economic policies which were introduced during the Twentieth Century; because we've been in a consistent decline and deterioration, of the conditions of life of the average citizen of the United States, and it's been getting worse all along the way. And many of you have lived for any period of say, 20 years, 30 years, 40 years, 50 years, you can trace that very readily: Conditions of life for the typical American have become progressively worse, as Wall Street has enriched itself by gambling.

Wall Street's Bankrupt, Not Greece

Q: Hello, this is J— from New York City. And I've received information about Greece having declared that their debt owed to the International Monetary Fund is "illegal, illegitimate, and odious." And obviously, they didn't use Glass-Steagall, but it seems to run along the lines of what you have been talking about in regards to how the banking system is run. What's your take on that?

LaRouche: The first thing that must be done, is we have to shut down Wall Street. Because what's happening? Wall Street is not producing anything. That is, in net effect, they're producing nothing; as a matter of fact, they're detracting. Wall Street is destroying the economy of the United States. And what we should do and must do, and what the Presidency must do once Obama's kicked out, is get Wall Street shut down.

Because look at what Wall Street does. They don't do anything for the U.S. economy. Nothing! Much less than nothing! So the thing is, we should be shutting down Wall Street.

View full size EIRNS/Suzanne Klebe LaRouche PAC’s January 20, 2015 rally at Federal Hall, New York City, right across from the New York Stock Exchange

Now, Glass-Steagall as a law, Franklin Roosevelt's law, would eliminate that problem. So what we want to do, is don't buy these guys out—bankrupt them! Shut them down. The minute we shut them down, you will find out what has happened, is that the people of the United States are being looted, by means of use of Wall Street money, Wall Street investment. So, shut down Wall Street, get it out of business: bankrupt it, shut it down, and change the character of the economy. To what? To technological progress in labor and skills.

We've been going in the other direction. Just think, if you look back at your own history, what has been the trend in terms of the relative productivity of labor, per capita, in the United States, during your lifetime so far? You have been going through an increasing rate of destruction of your standard of living and your circumstances, and moral circumstances of life in the United States. What's the key point? The key instrument is Wall Street! Now Wall Street should be cancelled. And Glass-Steagall would do that.

So you want to get Glass-Steagall into operation right now, as an anti-Republican operation. And then, you will get an opening, under which we will have the financial mobilization required to increase the productive powers of labor in the United States. And the increase of the productive powers of labor in the United States, is the increase of the standard of living, of the people of the United States: Better education, better life, better health care, all these kinds of things. And these are things which are already available to man in terms of technology in the United States.

But we have to get Wall Street shut down. Glass-Steagall, if properly enforced, will do that. It will also bankrupt most rich Republicans. That won't hurt anybody! That will be useful. The Republicans who get bankrupted, they'll have to change their careers and they'll be more moral, as opposed to the less moral trend that they have been showing recently.

Q: This is W— from Virginia. Mr. LaRouche, I have another question concerning the Greek crisis. We know that this dynamic of the crash of the trans-Atlantic system is what's driving all this push for war. But recently the Tsipras government made a comment that the IMF is a criminal organization, and I think that signals that they're fed up with these talks. And they have a meeting with the Russians, but at that point, the Greeks could potentially join the BRICS. I'm just wondering, what effect that will have on the Merkel government and the threat of war, if it hasn't already happened by then.

LaRouche: [laughs] Yeah, you hit the key note with that supplementary remark!

Well, what's happening is this. Now, Greece has been a slave economy, for some time. It was induced by corrupt elements inside the Greek population, but that was only an incidental feature. What you're dealing with is a threat of a mass murder of the Greek population.

Now, this comes under a British category, the British Empire, and Wall Street, of course is a product of the British Empire. And Wall Street is the means of destruction of the means of life and so forth, and education, of people in general. And you have to understand what the British Empire is. Actually, the United States has been living under the influence of the British Empire, imperial control, over a very long period of time. At one point, of course, in our history, we fought and defeated the British forces. But lately, we've done a very poor job of dealing with that kind of problem.

So that's where the problem arises in that sort of thing. So if we don't deal with this problem, we're going to get mass death. Right now, the solution for the Greek condition, in terms of very narrow and specific circumstances, the Greeks themselves, the leading Greeks are saying "to hell with their persecutors." And the chief hell-raiser is the British Monarchy, Her Majesty. And the racist, mass killer, in the trans-Atlantic region, is the British Royal Family.

This is not anything unique for people who know what the story is: The British Royal Family, that is the presently living members of the British Royal Family, have a policy of degeneration, and mass murder of the populations of the planet: That's their policy. It has been their policy, it's their declared policy, it's their publicly declared policy. And that's what the problem is.

Now, at the same time, the use of speculation, wasteful speculation, becomes the mechanism by which the economy of Europe is being ruined: Portugal, ruined; Spain, ruined; France, very deeply injured; Italy, great injury, and so forth and so on. And so what you have is Germany, which still has some strength. I'm not saying that Germany is the great ideal of modern European culture, but it happens to be that in Europe, this side of Russia, the only nation which really has a significant growth pattern in it—and that's not too good right now.

But there are certain people—not Merkel; Merkel is not a very good thing to have in Germany, for Germans. Shmerkel or Merkel, whatever you want to call her. So that's where the problem is, that's how the Greek problem comes into play.

creative commons/Crown copyright German Chancellor Angela Merkel with her partner British Prime Minister David Cameron, at 10 Downing Street.

So Greece was looted, and raped. It was raped because pressures from Britain, in chief, had induced certain parts of the Greek population to assassinate their own fellow Greeks, but by economic means.

So the means has been the British system, chiefly, but also most of the nations of Europe west of Russia, have committed a crime of mass murder against Greeks, by starving them to death, and similar kinds of things.

Now, the Greek population and the new present government, says: No, we're not going to do that; we're not going to tolerate that, we're not going to accept it. We're going to resist it. And then, the nations of Western Europe, in chief, especially Britain, and anything related to them, all these things— you can get the list of these criminals, easily. So what you have is the demand that the Greeks submit to British mass murder of Greeks!

Now some people don't like that, and the main support for the Greeks, comes from Russia. Because the power of Russia, even though it's not intending to start a war against Western Europe or something, is in a sense, a fact. And you have the same thing in a lot of the whole area of Europe, and Eurasia: Russia through much of Eurasia, China, India, many parts of South America now are also on the march to progress and success.

So the issue right now, is if we were reasonable, we would immediately wipe out the debt attributed to the Greeks. Because there is no honest reason why that money should be collected. The problem is, you have people in Germany who understand that that's wrong, but they don't have the guts, so far, to do anything about it. And Merkel is not exactly helping anything good. She would be better out of German politics than in it. And we could have other people in Germany, who may not be the greatest people in the world, but these are patriotic Germans, and therefore they would prefer to defend the interests of Germany and adjoining nations, because Germany's characteristic is, still now, its industrial characteristic. So the industrial characteristic of Germany is unique, in terms of that part of the world. So if you unleash the potential of the German economy for this kind of production, then you are going to help all nations of Europe, by doing so.

You will then eliminate the danger of a worldwide thermonuclear war. Because if Russia and Germany, and other nations like China and so forth, come into play, the war is not going to happen. And all you have to do is throw Obama out, down the trash can, and then, everything goes much better. It may not be perfect, but it'll be much, much better, and for the coming generations of mankind.

View full size kremlin.ru Siemens CEO Joe Kaeser (center, back to camera) meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin (third from left) and colleague in March 2014.

And that's what the situation is: We're on the edge, where the Greek issue is a very important signal of what the problem is that all mankind on the planet faces. The Greeks are doing very well; the Greek government, is doing very well, and has friends, and it's moving in directions which are very difficult conditions for it to deal with. But they have a movement, a spirit and a determination, and many nations, like Russia, other nations in Eurasia, are very much involved in realizing what the Greeks are.

You remember, the Greeks have played [a major role] for a very, very long time, in Europe and beyond. And the Greeks have been the master of civilization for most periods of life. The Greek legacy, despite the deterioration of the quality of life in Greece—how did Europe get a modern civilization? It came through the Greeks.

Now, the Greeks at that time were not exactly in the best condition, but some people, like Nicholas of Cusa went into the Greek area, where the culture of the Classical Greek was still being maintained. And Nicholas of Cusa created modern Christianity, and since that time we've had improvements in European civilization, and in the United States. So: That's the story.

And the problem of everything that those Europeans who are attacking the Greeks are talking about—they're a criminal proclivity! That's what the problem is!

The Murder Policy

Q: Hi, Mr. LaRouche. This is E— in the Bronx, New York City. I would like to ask you, what do you think about all this gang violence, that's going on throughout the country. Many innocent people are getting shot by handguns, and a lot of people have died. I believe that Congress should pass a law, doing away with guns for the American public—they have no need of them—and it should be signed into law by the President. In other words, guns shouldn't be made anymore, they shouldn't be manufactured any longer. And all those storeowners, that acquired their weapons legally, to ward off crimes, they would simply be required to turn them in to the government, and the government would do away with them. It should be a crime to have a gun. I believe they should be done away with completely. So, I would like to know what is your take about that?

LaRouche: I don't think that is the problem. I think the misuse of guns is a very significant problem—the misuse. And, there, of course, are orders between one thing and the other, where the use of guns and access to guns, has to be under some degree of control, of social control, which is a matter of the security of the body of the citizenry.

But there are also weapons which are equally dangerous to guns. So the limitation on guns will not remove the problem. Because there are other means—just, for example, poison. Poison is much more efficient than guns for mass killing of people in the United States, and elsewhere. The gun is symbolic, in its use; it's symbolic of what the problem is. But the gun, per se, is not the problem. The problem is, how the gun is used. But how the gun is used is a very small part of the problem of murder, mass murder.

U.S. Navy/Steve Johnson Policies that kill: The homeless of Salinas, California line up for food from a U.S. Navy program in 2009

Health care! Lack of health care, is murderous. Lack of support to fight against infectious diseases, is murderous. The lack of health care, the destruction of the quality of health care in the United States, is crucial. Because the ability of the citizen to get health care, is shrinking all the time, at an accelerating rate right now. And Obama has been one of the promoters of that mass killing of citizens in the United States, who are helpless, and deprived of access to things they need, in order to stay alive. The improvement generally of medical care, of health care; you know, dangerous problems that mankind has. The improvement of health care, in terms of scientific means.

And often, our government, itself, through secret organizations, secret bureaus, run under the federal government, and similar institutions, is also a big killer. And, you don't have to use a gun to kill people by that method. Use poison, use deprivation, use spread of disease. And the spread of disease, willfully, is one of the best ways of killing people in the United States, en masse. And that is going on!

The quality of health care available to the people of the United States, has collapsed during the recent time, especially since the Obama Administration, and even before that. So the deliberate mass murder of citizens, by misuse of what is called health care, is the greatest single threat to human life inside the United States, today.

The gun is not the issue. The misuse of it is a significant problem. But the real problem is the use of instruments, by our government itself, as under Obama. Obama is killing people—he doesn't use a gun, he uses himself. And he is the weapon that does the mass killing.

So, it's true, we don't want uncontrolled gun use, but the assumption that gun use is the problem, is a mistake. It's relatively minor. Unless you go into general warfare, the gun is not really a significant thing in history. But what is significant, is the various means by which governments and other agencies do mass killing. And they don't nicely go out there and just shoot you on the street. That's not the way it happens. That does happen, but that's not the way it happens.

And you have to regulate the question of health care: Do people get health care? You want to kill people? Withdraw health care. You want to increase the death rate? Deal with health care. Eliminate the protection. Fail to give people the help they need, to deal with dangerous illnesses, these kinds of things. And the spread of disease, in that form. The spread of disease is probably one of the most efficient methods of mass killing—and in the United States, and by the United States.

No. What you are talking about is a legitimate concern, but don't make it simplistic. Guns are not the sum total of willful mass killing, or just ordinary killing. Other means are much more efficient.

Q: Yes. Mr. LaRouche. It's a pleasure, again, to get to ask a question of you, and thanks for these fireside chats, they're awesome, really great; thank you. The question I have—you briefly discussed it a little bit ago, about Pope Francis, and his position—I guess he's taken the environmentalist position, that there is man-made climate change? Could you expand a little bit more, on what you were talking about earlier?

LaRouche: I don't understand wholly, exactly what the Pope's position is. I understand there are a group of forces, which pushed the Pope to—I don't know how far his agreement goes—but I know he's being pushed into doing that.

Now, you have a guy called Schellnhuber, and Schellnhuber is a British agent, in profession. He's also a mass killer. His design is mass killing.

Depopulation advocate John Schellnhuber, CBE, at the Nobel Laureate Global Symposium in Stockholm in May 2011.

creative commons/Janwikifoto

And the policy here—the fraudulent policy—I don't know how the Papacy, in somehow or some way, or some degree, actually bought into this idea, but the very idea that's in the public press; I don't know what the Pope thinks, I don't know what the circles of the Pope actually think. I know that the Pope is under tremendous pressure because of economic policy questions, where Italy and other parts of the world are under great pressure, because of conditions like the British conditions impose.

But, I will not say what the Pope's intention is, what his motive is. I know what the pressure is that's on him, from Schellnhuber, who's a British agent, and a mass killer. And I don't think the Pope is a mass killer. But I know Schellnhuber is, and that's the problem.

Get Rid of the Queen!

Q: I'm from West Palm Beach, Florida. I have a question about the economic cycle, I'm not sure if you're familiar with "Shemitah"? Trying to find anything about, the Jewish calendar of economic cycles, that pertain to seven-year cycles? The Jewish calendar, are you familiar with the Shemitah?

LaRouche: There's a lot of mythical stuff to that stuff. It doesn't work that way. What did happen, was well-known—it was Adolf Hitler who demonstrated that one. It was Adolf Hitler's policy. You have a Hitlerian policy. And Jewry today, of course, is international. That is, there's no such a thing as a "universal"—there's a Jewish religious belief, and that's a religious belief. But the great horror was, of course, that now, everything today comes as a reflection of the mass murder of Jews by Hitler! And by the British! That's a big factor.

And also what happened is the part played in terms of the Jewish settlement, the increased settlement in terms of that part of the population there, in present Israeli life; again, the same kind of thing. And you have Jewish policies which come from manipulation of certain sorts, and then on the other hand, if I look at certain Jewish communities, they are developing and making a very significant contribution to the improvement of water supplies in arid areas! You have some people in Australia doing the same thing. You have people in Mexico who have proved themselves to be experts in this business!

So, the promotion of human life, and the Jewish society, are very closely related. You can't make a Jewish distinction. Sure, you have people who are mass murderers; you have people who are enraged, Jews who are enraged—who were enraged by the Hitler massacres. And they became angry.

I dealt with very important Jewish leaders in the immediate post-war period. I was a close friend of these groups of the Jewish leaders, military leaders and so forth, in that period. And that was the one period, the so-called "socialist period." Then you got the new thing that came in, the hardball nuts, and they screwed everything up for Israel, and they imposed upon Israel, a mode of life which is contrary to what the Israelis of the founding of Israel, the modern founding of Israel, were going to do!

Remember, you had all these Jews who had been murdered, mass murdered; mass murdered on a degree which is unbelievable, actually, to any human being in a normal case. Now these guys, who are people I worked with and associated with, in the immediate post-war period, and they were my friends, I know what they were like, the so-called Socialist Jewish organization. These guys were warriors, but they weren't killers. They were defending—they're saying, "Look, all these Jews were killed by Hitler, and by his friends, including Saudi friends." And, they were trying to live.

What happened was things went bad when the so-called Socialist group in Israel was pushed aside for this right-wing wild-man crowd. And they are a problem; they are a pestilence. And if you know the history of Jewry, in Palestine, you have some great heroes in that process, even under conditions which were not good. You have great humanists among Jews in that area.

This idea of racial or similar kinds of things, is absolutely nonsense. Yes, the Saudis are stinkers, the Saudis are mass killers. If you want to worry about something, the Saudis are the mass killers! But they're not really so bad, because the Saudis are nothing but agents for the British Empire, of Her Majesty the Queen. Now, if you want to get rid of the problem, get rid of the Queen!

Focus on the Historical Characteristic

Q: Hello! This is T— from New Hampshire. I'm truck-driving in New Jersey right now, and my pitbull is in my lap, in a traffic jam right now. Mr. LaRouche, it's an honor to speak with you. I just wanted to comment on the gun thing. Why is it, that in society, when we have—well, first of all, if you look at the gun statistics, of the late, they are down in the last 10-20 years. Number one.

Number two is, why is it that when we have a mishap, such as of late, we want to get rid of the thing? And it's not just with guns, it's with pitbulls; we'll use that as an example, because we have mishaps all over the country with pitbulls, and now it's at the point where media, the government, everybody is saying, "Oh, they're a bad breed, you have to get rid of them, they're no good.' " It's not the breed, it's the people who aren't in control of such! And I'll take my comment off the air.

LaRouche: Let me give you a whole biographical slant on what you're talking about. During the 1970s, I ran for President of the United States, and that Presidential campaign made quite a stir at that point.

In the following period shortly after that, I was approached by some people who were historically leaders of the Presidency, in intelligence sector, during the period of World War II. These people. as senior people who were part of Franklin Roosevelt's close followers, came to me in 1977; and they came to me and asked me, would I work to do certain things for the United States, in terms of a new administration in the United States, which was the Reagan Administration. And, as most people know, Reagan was soon shot, with an intent to kill him, actually. And he was very much weakened in his ability to maintain much of his functions from that point on. And what happened is that Bush came in, as in an infestation, which entered into the Presidency.

Now, this was a very bad thing. The original Bush of the Bush family's dynasty, or genocide if you want to call it that, was allowed to bring in a member of the Bush family to the Presidency; that is a child of the Prescott Bush Nazi-type, who was operating from Britain.

So, what happened is that the President, under those conditions, the President of the United States, Ronald Reagan, at that time, was shot by a representative of the family of Bush! And so, he was crippled for a while, and the whole system that we were operating on was then frustrated, because the Bush factor entered into the Reagan administration through the assistance of the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan, at that time.

As a result of that process, I had been running as a specialist on science programs, international science programs, then. And I was working with one of the leading scientists of the world at that time. And we, in part, were sharing assignments which we had organized, together with Ronald Reagan, to negotiate an agreement with the remains of the Soviet Union, to avoid war between the United States and the Soviet Union at that time. And that was good, it was good.

But what happened is the Bush interests moved in through the aid of the British, and what they did is that they put in a new head of the Soviet Union, as an emergency thing, from Britain. And the British influence on that leader, just stuck in there, changed the entire policy, from the Reagan administration policy, which I had been an active part of, together with a leading scientist of the world, who was shall we say, my co-worker. And that's how things happened.

George Bush Library/College Station, Texas President George H.W. Bush, son of Nazi financier Prescott Bush, and Barbara Bush host a state dinner for Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip on May, 14, 1991.

So, when you want to understand these kinds of things, you have to understand the movement of the Bush family, which is actually a Nazi-like family: The Prescott Bush family, he was literally a Nazi, at that time. And the Bush family has the stink of the Nazi characteristic ever since that time to the present day, including the current Bushes. And I don't believe in burning the Bushes, because I don't want the stink up there. But that's the situation.

So, if we look at world history, as you might look from a practical standpoint from your profession, your activity, that's what the problem is. We had two good Presidents after that. And they were both people I worked with, and that's the history. The problem is, we have not had decent Presidents, except for two cases of installation, since the time that Reagan was shot.

That may be interesting for you; I think perhaps your practical circumstances in life might make that interesting for you.

The Common Purpose of Mankind

Ascher: Lyn, besides what you've been discussing a lot with your associates and organizers about the music project in New York, the other major statement that you have put out in the last days is entitled, "Dump London's Phony Debts with Glass-Steagall; The Euro Is Bankrupt, Not the Drachma." And in that statement you said: "The critical action is Glass-Steagall in the United States, and force it in European countries"; and of course, that's in reference to the Greek crisis, which you referred to already earlier in our discussion. I wanted to reference that for everyone on the call, that they can get further information on the website.

So, Lyn, we've covered tremendous amount of ground here this evening. Do you want to say anything here in conclusion?

LaRouche: I just want to add a closing note which might be useful on the overall perspective we've covered this evening. So far, we've covered a number of subjects, and I want to emphasize that all of these subjects are related, including the questions made by the people who were the questioners: that all of this material is relevant. It's part of life. There may be some missing elements in the record we presented this evening, but the same principle exists under even different conditions. We as a nation must pull ourselves together to face the questions which we should be considering in life, even the questions we hadn't even known about beforehand, which is frequently the case.

And we should get mankind to unify himself, not about the individual as the individual, but to bring the people of the United States in particular, together. Even though they have different backgrounds, different kinds of considerations, they are the same people and should be the same people. They shouldn't be different groups of people: They should be people of the United States, and the families of the United States, and the culture of the United States, and the people of the United States. That's what it has to be.

The idea of the "rugged individual" is a stinking idea. The role of the individual, who can express a participation in the love for all mankind, which is expressed by promoting people to become educated, to understand what the principles of mankind should be, under the conditions of the contemporary era. That is the issue.

And all of the things we discussed tonight in particular, are into that one thing: Don't try to assume that everybody is different. They're all different in some way, but their needs are similar; their future, the possibility of their future is the same. The condition of the world as a whole, not only in the United States, is the same.

NASA The common aims of mankind: The joint U.S.-USSR Apollo-Soyuz Test Project docking mission on July 17-18, 1975.

What we have to do is build up nations of the planet, like our United States, like the states of South America, like Australia, like the Middle East, like China, like India, like Russia, and so forth, and Europe: All these things are things which have to come together, because in the final analysis, we live not only on Earth, but mankind lives in the Galaxy also, and we're now beginning to understand what the Galaxy means: that mankind lives under the domain of the Galaxy, as it lived, also, under Kepler's understanding of the way the Solar System was created and functioned.

So it's all one thing, with many differences in shading and characteristic, but the object is to bring mankind as a species, into a growing, developing process, for the future of mankind and for the future of what mankind can accomplish in the Galaxy, and other locations of relevance.

And so we should have this kind of unification, of concern, not particularization, but the search to come together from different standpoints, from different skills, but all coming to a common purpose at the same time.