EIR Online
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From Volume 4, Issue Number 3 of EIR Online, Published Jan. 18, 2005

LaRouche Keynotes Berlin Seminar:

THE NEXT 50 YEARS ARE OUR RESPONSIBILITY; LET'S START NOW

Here is the keynote of Lyndon LaRouche to the EIR seminar in Berlin, on Jan. 12, 2005. He was introduced by Michael Liebig.

MICHAEL LIEBIBG: It's a privilege to welcome you all here, for this strategic seminar here in Berlin, hosted by EIR. My name is Michael Liebig. I'm from the EIR office in Wiesbaden. And this seminar, here, today—and tomorrow—Mr. LaRouche decided that the depth of the issues which we are discussing here, necessitates a discussion which goes beyond a one-day event, so the seminar will extend into tomorrow afternoon.

So, the prehistory of this seminar, here, goes back right after Nov. 2, 2004, when Helga Zepp-LaRouche proposed, that in view of what happened then, at the earliest possible time we convene a seminar that discusses Euro-Atlantic and Eurasian relations in the context of the systemic economic, financial, and strategic crisis. And having the advantage of what you call in German kurze Dienstweg, so Mr. LaRouche, it was agreed, that he would be available in January, and that the topic of the discussion would be extended to address fundamental cultural-political issues, which normally, in discussions on Euro-Atlantic and Euro-Atlantic/Eurasian relations, tend to be pushed aside in favor of generalities and slogans. Mr. LaRouche has provided an extensive conceptual framework for that discussion in two articles, the second of which is printed here in the latest edition of EIR magazine; and I assume that most, if not all of the participants do have it, and have read it.

Now, what is addressed in the two texts, and what will be discussed today and tomorrow, is an in-depth analysis of the political battleground within the United States. And specifically, the leadership role, both in respect to the Democratic Party and in respect to U.S. institutions played by Mr. LaRouche, and his movement. And that an understanding, an adequate understanding of this situation, in the United States, which (and I speak out of personal experience), which does represent a significant problem in Europe—and not just in Europe—where, in spite of a lot of knowledge and insight into the U.S. situation, there simply is a tendency for a not-differentiated-enough understanding, in terms of the internal dynamics of U.S. politics.

So therefore, correlating the understanding of the situation within the United States, to the question of building a new foundation for Euro-Atlantic and Euro-Atlantic/Eurasian relations, on a solid, sustainable, non-sloganeering foundation, will be a central feature for the coming two days.

So, saying that, I would once again emphasize, that we would like to focus on the things that usually are not being discussed at such seminars—as I said, in favor of formulas and slogans—things which tend to be taboo issues, which tend to be characterized as "too heavy" for discussions of this sort. And, as we want to do this, we—and that's my hope—we do it in a Socratic fashion: in the sense that we will have a combination of contributions and free discussion. But, I would implore you all, that this occur in a Socratic fashion, so that we don't have simply the dropping of "idea-packages" or "concept-packages" one after the other: But that we have an actual discussion dynamic, which takes up the core concept evolving in the course of this seminar.

Now, we'll face certain time constraints, frictions, but I think that is the characteristic of any good seminar. And having said that, I would ask Mr. Saini from India to say a few words concerning the tsunami disaster, before we begin with the keynote address of Mr. LaRouche. Please.

MR. SAINI: A large number of people have died in the tragedy in Southeast Asia, particularly India, Indonesia, are the ones which were the worst hit, Sri Lanka, and we must stand for two minutes to pay our last respects to those who have died in the tragedy. We hope that their souls may rest in peace. Can we stand for two minutes?

LIEBIG: So, I want to ask Mr. LaRouche to start off with his keynote address, which is, as we say in German, the Diskussionsgrundlage for this seminar. Please.

LYNDON LAROUCHE: What I'm going to lay before you, contradicts the diplomatic and related assumptions of discussions around the world today: That, in the coming period, especially with the onrushing financial collapse, which is inevitable now, that what people believe today, will no longer be believed. The system is coming down. The present world monetary-financial system is finished, and will never rise again. It's coming on now. Exactly when the official collapse occurs, is uncertain, but it will be soon. And in terms of the system itself, there will be no remedy which will ever allow for its recovery as a system, again, in future history.

So, we're going into a period of either chaos, which could be a Dark Age, or we're going into a period in which the assumptions of relations among states, especially respecting economic and related kinds of relations, will be changed forever—either for the better, or very much for the worse.

Now, this became clear, this process, or this part of the process, became clear on the morning following Nov. 7, 2000, when a Democratic Presidential candidate, Al Gore, earned a loss of a Presidential election by his own foolishness, and brought in a very dangerous factor—not merely a President, George Bush, who is mentally ill, and incompetent, who is essentially a puppet of people such as George Shultz, and more immediately of his Vice President, Dick Cheney; but, a Vice President and a Shultz who are committed to a policy of the use of developing new nuclear weapons as part of a retinue for global, preventive nuclear warfare, in which the first nation on the target list—as of the moment that Mr. Cheney was sworn in as Vice President—was Iraq.

Nothing that happened subsequent to that, had any effect on the decision to invade Iraq. It was a predetermined decision, which had been the policy of Cheney since he had been the Secretary of Defense under George Bush I. And he didn't give it up; he worked for it. There's an international group called the "neo-conservatives," who are for it.

Now, these people, to make the point clear—and I exaggerate nothing in what I'm about to say: The force behind Cheney and behind Shultz, is what we knew formerly as the Nazi International. That is without exaggeration. That is not a comparison. That is a fact. The same group, such as Lazard Frères in Paris, the other groups which were involved in the Versailles agreement, which set up the Germany reparations agreements, at Versailles, were part of a plan of a process, which led through the British putting Mussolini into power in Italy, through the instrumentality of Volpi di Misurata, who is the actual author of Italian Fascism, run out of London.

And these people had a plan, by using war reparations against Germany, to crack Europe—that is, Germany would not be able to pay the war reparations, but the war reparations would be scheduled to go to primarily, directly, to France and England, which were bankrupt as a result of the First World War. And that this would create a situation, in which the monetary system would collapse—the Versailles monetary system—as it did; and then they would create a new monetary system, which they created in 1931, called the Bank for International Settlements, which still exists today. A key member of the Bank for International Settlements, was Hjalmar Schacht, who was one of the authors of Hitler's government, who was a British agent: an agent of the head of the Bank of England, specifically.

The plan was to create a new monetary system, based on an international financial cartel. This financier cartel, made up of private banking interests, private financier interests of the Venetian style, became essentially the government of Europe. They planned for a war. They planned to mobilize Europe, under Hitler—putting Hitler into power in Germany—as their tool, to conduct the war which initially was supposed to be aimed directly at Russia, first, at the Soviet Union. But then, because of discussions between the Soviet government and the German government, the Ribbentrop-Molotov agreements as they became, the British had to change their agenda. They first, initially intended that Germany would attack the Soviets, and be caught in depth in Soviet territory; then the French and British would attack the Germans from the rear (which is a favorite British stunt).

But, because of the change—and this, of course occurred in the context of the visit of Marshal Tukhachevsky to France, in particular; and the failure of the Tukhachevsky mission was the signal that this thing was on, even before the treaty, the Molotov pact was signed. So, at that point, the British and French knew they had to bring the Americans in—they didn't want to have the Americans in, because they were afraid that if the Americans were in on the war, the Americans would come out as a dominant force. They didn't want the Americans in the war, until the middle of the 1930s.

But then, after they dumped Edward VIII, who was too close to Hitler at that time, the people who had backed Hitler, from the Anglo-Americans in particular, shifted to an anti-Hitler position—gradually—not all of them. Lord Beaverbrook was still for Hitler in May of 1940. Lord Halifax was still for Hitler, in that period. Remember, Beaverbrook then became the propaganda minister for the British for World War II; Lord Halifax was sent to Washington as the British ambassador to the Roosevelt Administration.

Then, the crowd in New York which had backed Hitler—which included Harriman, the family of Harriman; which included, of course, the father of the present Senator Ted Kennedy, Joe Kennedy; who were, up until this period had been pro-Hitler, gradually changed. They were anti-Hitler. But, they were still part of the international financier cartel, which had created the Nazi overrun of Europe and the war.

And the end of the war, with the death of Roosevelt, the policies of the United States changed, absolutely, strategically, on the day of the death of Franklin Roosevelt, the following day. Roosevelt had been committed to a post-war decolonization of the world. Not merely decolonization, but a specifically American-led program for building up former colonies, into modern nation-states. This had been proposed, for example, at the meeting with Churchill, where Churchill was very upset, on this proposal, detailing what the plans were for Africa, especially Northern Africa, by the United States government at the end of the war. Similar programs for India and other countries.

And the idea was, that we would use the military power, the economic power, that we had developed in the United States for the war: We would convert these industries which had been mobilized for war production, we would convert them into industries to support capital formation in developing countries. The intention was to create a world order among sovereign nation-states, as a replacement for the kind of European-dominated system which had existed before.

This could be considered the Second Treaty of Westphalia prospect: To go beyond what was accomplished by ending religious war, as such, in Europe, with the Treaty of Westphalia—a system of nations, where the nations are each committed primarily to the common good of all nations, first, and themselves second. And by this kind of commitment, to create an order of sovereign nation-states on this planet, which would be the security system, as well as the promotion of economic growth, for the future of humanity thereafter.

On the day after Roosevelt's death, a very little man — Truman—a very stupid man, a nasty little fellow; just an instrument of Harriman and Company—these fellows did several things. A friend of mine, for example, had been involved in Italy, through the Vatican Office of Extraordinary Affairs, then under Montini who was later Paul VI, in negotiations on behalf of the Emperor of Japan with the United States and other powers, for a peace treaty. The peace treaty depended upon recognizing the position of the Emperor in the post-war period, as the head of state. The argument was, that if the Emperor remained the head of state, Japan would hold together, it would not split apart, and therefore there would be a workable solution.

The death of Roosevelt ended that. The Truman Administration suppressed the fact of that agreement, negotiated through the Vatican's Office of Extraordinary Affairs: in order to drop nuclear weapons—needlessly—on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The purpose was, to establish a world empire, based on the assumption of Anglo-American control of nuclear arsenals. It was a policy designed by that great pacifist, Bertrand Russell, an enemy of mankind. Who said, we must use nuclear weapons for nuclear preventive war, in order to establish world government, world empire.

Now, that policy, which Truman expressed, by his actions in that period, the Russell policy, has continued. What happened? The Korean War didn't go the way it was planned on the U.S. side. It was discovered that the Soviet Union had a deployable thermonuclear weapon, when the United States didn't have one yet. So therefore, they called off preventive nuclear war, for the time being. And there was a shift into "nuclear deterrence," developed, again, under the direction of Bertrand Russell. Which became known as Mutual and Assured Destruction, MAD—which is what I tried to bring an end to, sometime later (not without some success, and not with success—anyway).

So, what happens is, now, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, instead of a new arrangement of the type we sought with the SDI—and, President Reagan was, with all his faults and other questions, was seriously dedicated to that prospect. He was dedicated to that, because he was, among other things, among all his faults, he was committed to the legacy of the Franklin Roosevelt Presidency. And therefore, this was his sentiment, and he expressed it sincerely and honestly. I designed the policy, in detail. He adopted it, exactly as I had designed it.

It was turned down by Andropov—and Hell broke loose, as a result. And for me, too, personally. Because, what I had nearly done, had gotten the apparatus so upset, they wanted me out of the way, in any way possible. They just didn't want to take credit for it.

So, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, which was clear in 1989—it took them all by surprise; they didn't foresee it. They say they foresaw it. They didn't foresee it. They didn't understand the situation. They were blinded by their own schemes.

But, at that time, they immediately responded, with a revival of the Nazi International. And this thing, was not something that was brought out of the grave: The Nazi International never died. For example—the case of Pinochet is an example of this, the Pinochet government. And I'll indicate the importance of this particular event, for what we're discussing today: Allen Dulles had been a key partner, of the international backing for the Nazis, he and his brother John Foster Dulles; and in principle, the younger brother Avery Dulles, the Cardinal—now in Rome—who's relevant to the corruption of the Church.

So, what they had done, on the death of Roosevelt, they had proceeded to bring in large sections of the Nazi system, into the Anglo-American system. And it eventually became an integral part of NATO. The argument was used, that these guys were the best anti-Communists, the best anti-Communist fighters, therefore, you bring them in for that purpose—and you will look the other way, when you come to looking at their credentials. Many of them went down into South America, through a "rat-line" organized by Dulles, through Schacht's son-in-law.

Then, you come to 1971: George Shultz was a key member of the Nixon Administration, one of the controllers of Nixon at that time—with Henry Kissinger as an also-ran, and people like Paul Volcker. These people, in 1971, in August, pulled off the first step to collapse the Roosevelt-designed Bretton Woods system, the original IMF. The following year, with Shultz at Azores, fighting Pompidou, imposed upon the world a change in the world monetary system, the IMF, from the fixed-exchange-rate system to a floating-exchange-rate system.

Now, that change, and the U.S. government's participation in that change, changed the world. We were on the road to Hell, already at that point. And George Shultz was key.

One of the first products of this change, occurred in Chile: You had two groups who were part of the Synarchist International, actually: Fidel Castro, who is actually a very right-wing character, if you know his background; who changed to a left-wing character when the opportunities required it. So, he was used, with the Allende regime, to create a stunt, including this Kalashnikov display—personal Kalashnikov for Allende; and this stunt was used to create the impression, in the wild-eyed parts of the world, that there was a "Communist menace" about to take over all of South America. And they were going to deal with this first of all in Chile!

So, what they did, is they took Allende, they got him killed by Pinochet and Company; made Pinochet a dictator; and to follow it off, they took the Nazi International—that is, people who were first or second generations part of the SS!—and they organized what was called Operation Condor, a mass slaughter throughout the Southern Cone area of South America.

This was the part of a strategy of tension, which we saw with the unleashing of terrorism in Italy! And the terrorism in Italy was done by the Nazis! It was done by the sequels of SS Gen. Karl Wolff—who ran Gladio for NATO; and who committed the assassinations, the terrorist wave, in Italy, Germany and elsewhere, during the early 1970s.

These guys are the same guys, who, with Shultz involved, who are behind the present Bush Administration. Shultz, in the middle of the 1980s, actually crafted the structure of what became the Bush Administration. Cheney was his number-one man. Shultz represents international finance. He represents the same interests, which we knew as that group of private bankers, that financier cartel, which gave us the Nazi system and so forth, during the 1920s and 1930s. They're back.

The President of the United States is a mental case. This is not a characterization. This is a clinical diagnosis: The man is mentally ill. He's non-functionally mentally ill. But he's a puppet. And it is dangerous to have a mentally ill person, in the position of a head of state of a powerful nation, even if he's only a puppet, even if he's chiefly controlled by people like Shultz and Cheney.

So, we are in a period of incalculable possibilities, in which the checks and balances of politics no longer can be relied upon. But that does not mean we don't have resources: as in warfare, you have your strategic resources, you have your strategic options. And that's what we have, is strategic options.

Now, where are we right now? I raised these questions with a group of Democrats and others, during the period immediately following Nov. 7, 2000. And that began a process, which more or less directly, leads to what we're discussing here, today, the circumstances we're discussing here today. Early on, parts of the U.S. establishment agreed with me, especially people around former President Clinton. Who has been listening to me, shall we say, a little more and more, as time passes on. We fought a number of issues, with the idea of trying to rebuild the Democratic Party. But, we had strong opposition to this within the Democratic Party, which has its own Nazi-connected types in there, as well as other things; as well as Republicans.

We also had a network of Republican figures, who are the same variety of Republicans: particularly people who come from the military background, intelligence services, the diplomatic services, or who are out of service, but who still are functioning in that mode, as professors of this, or this or that, in this part of our system—this part of our Presidential system.

So, the ideas, the influence of our discussions spread. When it came to the 2004 election campaign, the determination was to keep me out of this, if at all possible. Well, they didn't keep me out. They tried. It didn't work. At the Boston Convention of the Democratic Party, we reached an agreement, agreement to collaborate. After Sept. 1 of this past year, when Clinton spoke to Kerry, and told Kerry that his present campaign was nonsense, that he had to change his ways, and that I had to be brought in, as an advisor on how to run the campaign.

We managed to salvage a good deal of the campaign. We probably actually won the Presidency, in terms of what we did. However, the other side cheated, and since that was the party in power, it was difficult to overturn it. But, recently, in the past week, we did raise the question: that we, in a sense, declared George Bush a "lame duck," as what we call it in U.S. politics—he's already on the way out, before he's even inaugurated.

Now, we got people to take a stand on that. What we have now, you have probably about 1,500 people who form a network, largely in the Democratic Party, but also Republican pedigrees, who are part of the network that I work with; who I'm in touch with every day, directly or indirectly. That is, the policy discussion among us, passes around the network very rapidly, particularly in these days of internet electronic communications. And therefore, the policies are discussed.

We do not yet have a consolidated control of the Democratic Party. But we have many Republicans, and many Democrats, who are oriented to finding a solution. And since we represent the United States, we think in terms of the American history, our precedents, our capabilities, what we can do, what we must do in the world.

What that means, of course, that we have to take actions that no other part of the world can do.

The problem is this: The present international monetary-financial system is coming down. It can not be saved. It's only a question of when—and when is soon. The system is finished. Now anybody who understands the system knows that—including my enemies, at the highest level. Their game is, how are they going to play the situation?

Now, many people say, "Well, if the financial system collapses—It can't collapse! If it collapses, what happens to our money?" This is where this illusion, the brainwashing, about belief in political economy, comes in: Money is not anything! Money is a creation of somebody. And somebody else accepts it; that makes it currency. But there's no intrinsic value to money. Money has value under various terms: Do you have a financial group, such as the Bank for International Settlements, or the bankers associated with that, who run central banking systems—so-called "independent" central banking systems, which are more powerful than governments?

There's not a government in Europe, which is more powerful than its central banking system! The government is a flunky of the central banking system! And they even have a control mechanism, called the Maastricht Agreement of the European Union, which ensures that no country has any sovereignty, no government has sovereignty. Because, as long as you're under the control of an independent central banking system, which is independent of government control, but is controlled by a group of international financier-oligarchs, who's running the world?

Now, of course, government has the intrinsic power to take that power away from central banking systems. But, when you look at the political systems of the world, who has the guts, among the politicians, to take that, and not be shot in the morning? Where do you have a concert of political forces, which are willing to rise in the defense of the sovereignty of their nation or of a group of nations, against the tyranny of international central banking systems?

(We have two of our guests arrived—Dr. Kiracofe and Jeff Steinberg, who arrived by plane, obviously safely. They seem to be uncrippled. And Dr. Kiracofe is familiar with some of background I've just referred to, in his part of the discussion with me.)

Anyway. So, the problem is, the United States is the only nation which was created with a Constitution which is adequate to this situation. And, as in the case of the immediate post-World War II period, where the United States was the only nation, with any integrity as an authority in monetary affairs, so in 1944, at Bretton Woods, President Roosevelt used the American System of political economy—the anti-British system of political economy—and shoved it down the throats of the British, including Keynes and others, to set up what became known as the Bretton Woods system, or the fixed-exchange-rate system: based on the power of the United States to back a gold-reserve-based fixed-exchange system.

Now, that's the character of the United States. One has to understand, that the United States was created as the first revolution against the establishment of the British Empire; a British Empire, which was established on Feb. 10, 1763, at the Treaty of Paris. This British Empire, which was then an empire of the British East India Company, not the foolish British monarch, then used the power it gained by the submission of these countries at the end of the Seven Years' War—which the British had organized! The British organized the powers of Europe, to fight one another, to weaken the nations of Europe, so that the Anglo-Dutch Liberal system of imperialism could prevail!

The one place in which this fight was staged, against this new empire, the British Empire, was in the United States. It started, actually, in that period, in the period of the Seven Years' War; at a time that people in Germany, like Kästner and so forth, from here, were involved in connections to Benjamin Franklin; where leading Europeans were working with North Americans, especially around Benjamin Franklin, to build an alliance, with the idea, that the establishment of an independent republic among the English-speaking colonies of North America, could be a precedent for bringing that effect back into Europe, as a precedent.

The French Revolution, which was supposed to occur, in the form that Lafayette and Bailly proposed, would have been the second step, to establish the liberation of Europe, from this kind of system. But the British intervened, because the British ran the French Revolution! From July 14, 1789 on. There were British agents who orchestrated it, including Necker. It was run on his behalf.

And you had a British intelligence operation, called the Martinist freemasonic association which ran Napoleon! Joseph de Maistre created Napoleon! Invented him! Designed him! Based on the model of Torquemada, the Grand Inquisitor of Spain. Ruined Europe, through Napoleon! And established the power, first of all, primarily, of the Anglo-Dutch Liberal system. And the Habsburgs were soon finished off, and made merely puppets of this Anglo-Dutch Liberal system, thereafter, through financial control.

So, because of that, the United States, which was beleaguered, small, weak; because Spain was collapsed, which had been an ally of the United States; because Spain and France were divided from the United States in the peace Treaties of Paris, 1782-83, by the cleverness of the British under Lord Shelburne—who was probably one of the most evil men of that century—and the creation of the pretty much of the British system, today: because of that, apart from the Bolshevik Revolution and similar events, there has been no alternative, to the British Anglo-Dutch Liberal system of imperialism on the Continent of Europe, so far.

There have been thrusts. De Gaulle made a thrust in that direction, with the Fifth Republic, with the heavy franc, which was an act of guts. But, after John Kennedy was killed, de Gaulle was more or less isolated, in point of fact, with no U.S. ally of worth. And therefore, what happened, happened.

So, the United States today has a tradition, a Constitutional tradition, which many Americans know. Those of us who understand the United States, understand it: We are capable of reviving the Franklin Roosevelt precedent, that I referred to. And in the time when the entire international financial system is collapsing, if you have the right government in the United States, the right government in the United States will, preemptively, act, to do what Roosevelt did. When all monetary systems are collapsing, the United States will say, "We repudiate the present IMF. It's bankrupt. And we go back to a fixed-exchange-rate system as policy." Under those conditions, we can crack it! And those nations which wish to be free from the slavery of the Anglo-Dutch Liberal system, can then declare their freedom, which has been long awaited.

Now, the world has not been exactly unchanged, during the past 40 years, the 40 years of decadence. In the past 40 years, Europe, and the Americas, have been destroyed: have been destroyed by a process called "environmentalism"; a process called "globalization"; a hatred against technological progress, real technological progress. The substitution of playing or masturbating with computers, as a substitute for technological progress. You're playing with numbers, not actually creating anything—just moving things around, according to the numbers. Bertrand Russell's system.

Therefore, what we've done, is we said: "All right. First of all, we use the IMF"—from 1971-72 on—"we use the IMF to impoverish nations which have been nations." Look at South America! Look at Mexico! Go through the period 1971 to 1982: Look at the transformation in the conditions of South and Central America. We bankrupted them! How? Through London! How? By using the international monetary system of the bankers: Through London, we organized runs against national currencies. We then said to them, "Well" (to the government in question), "you want this run to stop? You better call in the IMF and get some advice—or the World Bank, or both." So, the IMF and World Bank, which were then the "Thief of Baghdad" of the world as a whole, now move in, and advise the country to reduce the value of their currency, arbitrarily—a currency which had been collapsed by a financial warfare attack from the London market, from the concert for the system. They dropped their currency.

Ah! "But," the IMF says, "that's not going to work. You're going to have to create, on paper, a new debt, to make up for what your creditors will lose by your devaluation of your currency." Now, all of the countries of South America and Central America, combined, have more than paid every penny they ever borrowed! They don't owe anything, except the effects of this superimposed, artificial debt, dictated debt.

You have a similar situation—this happened, of course, in India, earlier, with the rupee devaluation. Which was intended to break India, and to break the will of Nehru. This is what Mrs. Gandhi dealt with, all the time—till they killed her, too! And her son, too! To prevent a powerful nation from standing up against this.

So, what is the situation of the world? Now, we have created desperate nations, which no longer have the ability to develop their own economy. We now offer them, to give us their cheap labor. At slave-labor rates. To allow us to loot their natural resources, and their people.

An example of this, Henry Kissinger, National Security Study Memorandum 200, written in his capacity as the National Security Advisor. Policy for Africa: Africa is overpopulated. Africa has natural resources, particularly the Southern Shield—mineral resources. We intend to take those resources. They're ours! We can not allow the Africans to eat them! We can not allow so many Africans to live: They will eat resources, that we want for our future. We can not allow them to develop, because then they will use more natural resources, per capita. We can't allow that: We must conduct population reduction against Africa! Sub-Saharan Africa.

And look at Sub-Saharan Africa, since the beginning of the 1970s. It was already started then, clearly. This was the Anglo-American IMF policy, the World Bank policy, all the way through. The IMF and World Bank have become the Adolf Hitler of the planet. They've done more killing—. And the way it works: They would go into a country—the bankers would go in first, formerly; now, it doesn't work that way, they send the killers in, first. The bankers go in first; the bankers induce the country to take loans, under these IMF conditions. The country is then induced to bankrupt itself. Then, the IMF moves in, through its agents, and orders the country to submit to certain arrangements—under the pressure of this debt crisis. As in Indonesia, for example. And then, if the government resists these conditions, then members of the Nazi International, or their second or third generation, move in to kill, assassinate heads of government, heads of state, and other key figures who are impediments to the good interests of the IMF and the World Bank.

As a result of this, what did we do? We took Europe—great Europe! Great, independent, wise Europe! Great, independent, wise United States—we said, "Ah! We have cheap labor! We don't have to keep paying our wage rates to our people! We can get conditions for free that we have to pay for in the United States. We can close down our factories, and move the production of our materials, to countries where they have cheap labor. And now, we will get these things that we want to consume, from the cheap labor of South America and Asia."

Now, therefore, we have an increase in technological levels of activity, in countries which are beneficiaries of this becoming cheap labor for the United States. But, they're also competing in cutting each other's throat, by undercutting each other with cheapness of labor. And therefore, you have a growth of employment, in Asia for example, in these categories, which may look attractive to people in Asia now—but, it is also a threat. It's a threat to do to Asia, exactly what they did to South America and Africa.

India, of course—India and China are the chief targets. And that will express itself, at certain times, in certain ways, as a part of this process.

If Europe were to collapse—and it can collapse, now—Europe is in a state of collapse. Germany has a very successful export program. But the export program is not enough to make up for the loss of employment inside Germany itself. Germany is bankrupt. The European Union is bankrupt. It may, because of political institutions, it may be able to pretend it's not bankrupt. It may have alternatives, political alternatives. But it's bankrupt!

We have a world system, which is in the order of magnitude of less than $50 trillion a year, gross product. That is the net of gross product. And we have a financial derivatives complex, in hundreds of quadrillions!—of implicit debt.

The system is bankrupt. There's no way you could reorganize the system, in an ordinary way. The only thing you can do, is declare bankruptcy and repudiation of obligations to the system. Then the state intervenes, under the principle of the general welfare, the European principle of the common good, the general welfare—and says, "The state must now act, to defend the general welfare, the common good: That means, to maintain employment, to maintain institutions which are essential to the population, and essential to the future of the nation. They come first. Everything else comes second—or maybe never."

We're at the point, the decision is on the table: Are we going to create a new monetary system, which presumes that a concert of nation-states, sovereign nation-states, will put the existing IMF system—the so-called Anglo-Dutch Liberal system—into bankruptcy receivership. In other words, governments would take over these banking institutions, and the financial institutions; take them into receivership, as it takes any bankrupt into receivership; and manage these bankrupt entities, in such a way as to promote the general welfare, first; and then, if there's something left over, maybe some of the claimants may get something back, if they behave themselves. But, nothing on financial derivatives, because we can't afford it. That's number one.

But the world has changed: The world of 40 years ago, no longer exists. We're in a new world.

Right at the present time, as many of you know, the only business, international business of any importance, is speculation in assets in so-called raw materials. The United States is engaged in speculation for seizing control, financial control—that is, future ownership—of raw materials assets.

Europe, in two parts—Continental Central and Western Europe, are engaged in the same game. Trying to reach outward, to get control of assets, mineral assets especially, from various parts of the world, for Europe's future. The British Commonwealth, which is a special predator in this thing, has its own game, as part of the European system. Russia is in territory, with associated countries from the former Soviet Union, is a great raw materials power, in terms of the intrinsic resources lying within that territory.

China is not a great raw materials power, but China is a great bidder, today, in the world, for future raw materials. China has entered into contracts with, say, Brazil. It's entered into contracts with Canada, on tar-sands development. It's just recently added agreements with Argentina. And Argentina's Patagonia has one of the great reserves of mineral resources on the planet. One of the greatest potentials for development, actually, on the planet. Brazil has vast resources, under the Amazon, which the British and others are trying to keep them from developing. And naturally, countries move in these areas.

Now, the question is this: We've come to the point, with the expansion of population—and let's take the case of India and China, who are represented here, at least by citizens who can respond to the interests and sensitivities of these countries: All right. We've got an expanding population. We have over a billion people now in India. And we have probably—moving toward 1.5 billion people in China, or something like that. Most of these populations are extremely poor. Of over a billion Indians, about 700 million are extremely poor, desperately poor. In China we have—society may be more orderly in terms of the poor, but it has a vast amount of poor. They're not developed for modern society; they're coming in on the tail-end. The same situation exists throughout Southeast Asia and South Asia.

What are we going to do? Given this crisis, this raw materials business, and this population growth? Can we provide, to the human race, a guarantee of sufficient availability of mineral and related kinds of raw materials, for the indefinite future on this planet? Yes, we can. If we do what we have to do, to do it.

However, this is extremely important, especially since we must lift the poor populations, the poor part of the populations of Asia, out of the extreme poverty, which is merely typified by the situation in India, and the poor in China. If you're going to have a society which can develop itself, protect itself, you have to increase the productive powers of labor intrinsic to the people, by developing the people: developing their education, developing their opportunities, creating new communities where they live a normal life. We've got to bring the poor of Asia out of poverty! And we have to do it in a generation. We can not sustain this planet, with this kind of poverty: It must be changed.

What does that mean? Number one: We have to use the power of governments, to protect the mineral resources of the planet from being seized by private entrepreneurs, or interests or combinations of private entrepreneurs, who hold them and will use them in speculation against populations, and use that to tyrannize governments to reduce their populations.

Therefore, we must have an agreement among nations, to say that the question of the planet's common interest, in the management of our mineral resources, of the planet as a whole for the future of humanity, is a principle of the general welfare, and it is not a matter of private interest. Private interest can operate, but private interest must operate under regulation. And the regulation must guarantee the access of every part of the world to the needed raw materials, or developed raw materials, they require for their populations and those populations' development for times to come.

Now, when people are talking about a Dialogue of Cultures, we've come to the point, that we must, in particular, we must bring Europe and Asia together: This is inevitable. A division of labor exists, for example, like the German trade with China. The Russian trade with China, and especially with India. A division of labor exists between Europe and the countries of Asia, especially the developing countries of Asia.

Therefore, Eurasia is a reality: It is an emergent economic reality. We have before us, the prospect of a Eurasian culture emerging. Now, of course, Russians have some experience with Eurasian culture, because Russian culture is a Eurasian culture; it's become that. But, we have to develop a Eurasian culture.

Now, some people approach this thing, from the standpoint of, "let's get the religions together." I say, "Stop it!" If you try to run the religions together, you're going to get a religious war. Forget it! Don't try to get people to give up their religions. Don't try to get them to compromise their religions.

Take a different approach. The different approach is the common interest of mankind. And what we should be aiming for, culturally, is the idea of the nature of man: That the human individual has certain inherent rights, which distinguish the human being from the animal. And rather than arguing about how that should be interpreted religiously, why not deal with the problem as governments can? Practically. Let us affirm the responsibility of government, individually and collectively, for the dignity of the human individual, as expressed by the right of that individual, that family, to have for their children and grandchildren, the prospect of an improved condition of life, a worthwhile future, and the recognition of their personal identity, as a person who, in their lifetime, has been given the opportunity to contribute to the future of humanity as a whole—to the honor of the past, and to the benefit of the future.

So therefore, my view is, that the way we can get at a Eurasian culture, is take this crisis, right now—the system is coming down—the American System, or return to a Bretton Woods-style of fixed-exchange-rate system, is feasible. But this time, as an integral part of that, we have to recognize, we're up against the point, which, without development of the management of natural resources, we're not going to be able to meet the needs and aspirations of the peoples of the world, as a whole.

And therefore, we must take the fact, that we're at a boundary condition: The planet is being strained by a lack of development. We have population growing, but a lack of development. Our friends in Russia, from institutions such as the Academy, the Geological Museum, Vernadsky Museum, represent a repository of people, who have experience with the Asian aspect, and other aspects, of the problem of managing raw materials, mineral raw materials, for the future of this planet. Russia is a key part of the Russia-India-China partnership for Asia. Russia is a partner, with Western Europe, in these enterprises.

Therefore, is there not, a common interest which has several features? Do we not require, that Western Europe—say, typified by Germany where we're standing here, today—must go back to becoming a high-technology exporter? Of goods, high-technology goods? Because Asia needs that technology. Why should Europe try to compete to get back markets from Asia? It's crazy. Why does not Europe, as the United States, take the responsibility of developing its people, and its capabilities, for the kinds of technological frontier development in technology, which is needed for the peoples of the world as a whole?

Why not think of a constructive, mutually beneficial division of labor, rather than competition? Why not recognize, that in contributing to the common good, to the general welfare first, as the Treaty of Westphalia prescribed, that we find a greater advantage for ourselves than in trying to compete, in competing advantages against one another in a world market?

This means, of course, a change in the way that we look at the individual in society, today. It means the death of what has been called "environmentalism." It was that weapon, of the so-called "environmentalism," as defined by the Club of Rome and others, which has done the greatest amount to help destroy, or to help induce Europe and the United States to destroy themselves. And has also contributed to oppression, which Europe and the United States have imposed, upon so-called developing countries: This has been a piece of unscientific, anti-scientific idiocy. We should stop it! We have to stop it, if we want to survive.

We have to now think in terms of what is good for the planet, from the standpoint of the working scientist, who says, we must develop the means to cope with any problem which presents itself to us, or to humanity in general. If we are willing to dump this mysticism, this crazy, Satanic cult of ecology, and get back to becoming what Europe was at its best, a repository of technological and scientific progress, then, we can educate our populations accordingly—and we can do things: We can create new industries.

What we need now is, of course, a series of—in this new period—of treaty agreements among nations, long-term treaty agreements of 25- to 50-year duration, for capital formation. And the way we can muster the capital, is by creating long-term loans, with the aid of governments, to fund, to provide credit to entrepreneurs and others, who will produce what is needed, as capital goods. This must be at low rates; it must be a fixed-exchange-rate system—you can't do it otherwise. If you have a floating-exchange-rate system, you can not engage in long-term treaty agreements. You must have state treaty agreements, state-to-state; or multi-state treaty agreements; 25 to 50 years' term, as blanket agreements which cover a lot of smaller agreements, and smaller projects.

These treaty agreements then become like a banking facility: They issue loans, which they think meet the purpose of their institution, in assisting the progress of this enterprise, that enterprise, and so forth, which they think is going to fulfill the purposes of their agreement.

In trying to get nations together, rather than trying to argue about bits and pieces of cultural this, and cultural that—flotsam and jetsam—why not take the most fundamental thing? The human race is in danger. We have a common interest. We have a common interest, above all in development; in development and management of such things as the mineral resources of the planet. We're now bumping up against the point, there are no wild areas to be raped: We now have to develop whatever we need, to provide our mineral resources.

Therefore, let us take that task, as a task of common interest, and let us create agreements, under a new monetary agreement, dedicated that and include that. And then, let us look at each of our countries, and say, "What can each contribute to the general good, in this way? In way of production?" Put the Europeans back to work, in producing what they could produce, if they're saved in time. Put them back to work! Especially in the high-technology areas, where they can produce a product which would be useful for emerging countries, emerging economies.

And define that as a common aim of mankind—the common aims of mankind. And let us, rather than trying to impose a cultural model upon Eurasia, and the rest of the world, why not take the one issue, which best defines our unified, common interest, and use that to bring us together, in cooperative ventures? And take two generations, 25-50 years. We can't mortgage the future indefinitely, but the next 50 years is our responsibility. If we start it now, I think that's solution.

And that's what I will be working for, from the United States. I will be fighting for this. It's going to be a big educational fight—but I think we can win it. We can win it, not because people want to be won over, but because they've suddenly become convinced they have no alternative, but to be won over.

On the day they perceive, in general, that the system is coming down, that the institutions which they took for granted are no longer there, they're going to scream. If we provide the answer, they'll probably grab then, where they would refuse it, before. If we don't provide the answer, then the Devil will!

Latest From LaRouche

Q: Lyn, we have a couple of questions that have been submitted via email from a variety of institutions. I would like to start with those.

We can start first with a question on the events of tomorrow, because we do have a number of questions that have been submitted in this regard. One very specifically comes from the House side of the U.S. Congress where, once again, the challenge to the certification of the Electoral College vote is being mounted.

The question is, Mr. LaRouche, at this point while we are still involved in intense negotiations, it is the case that there is still no member of the Senate who is firmly committed to sign the resolution that is necessary to actually initiate a full debate on the question of whether or not this vote should be certified. The question that I wish to pose to you today is one which has come up in the course of these negotiations, and that is, when does tenacity become fixation?

The events in Washington State proved that the enormity of the illegitimacy and the suppression of the vote actually was beyond what anyone had previously thought. And, when the Washington State Democratic Party maintained a tenacious fight, it did, in fact, change the outcome of the election. There are some members of the Senate who, while they are sympathetic to the question of voter suppression, still maintain that it was not sufficient to change the outcome of the election. We contend that nobody knows that at this point, and no one will know that unless there is a full inquiry conducted.

Either way, the fact that there was any suppression at all, whether or not it was sufficient to change the outcome of the election, still represented a breach of law, both in terms of the letter of the law and the intent of the law. It is our view that it is still important to make the challenge, but the question has been raised, when does tenacity become fixation? What would you recommend in terms of how we conduct ourselves during the certification debate tomorrow?

LaRouche: First of all, you can not accept what happened in the election, in the election process. For example, let's take the case of voter suppression. The estimate based on counting of votes, that people chose to count, is not a determination of the election. That is, simply recounting the vote is not going to determine what will make right, what was done wrong. People, who were deprived of the opportunity to vote, who wished to vote, who were eligible to vote, who leave no record of having voted, but had an intention and were denied the right to vote—particularly when they were in areas where the Republican Party was acting on the assumption that this was an area of likely Democratic voters—. Now, how can you take the procedure that we've had so far and say, the question of voter suppression was adequately addressed in this process. It was not.

We're now back in the same trap, in a different form, that we were in, back in 2000. Probably Al Gore honestly lost the election. But, there were a lot of irregularities. Now, at that time, James Baker III, who may have reasons to regret it now, stepped in on behalf of the Bush candidacy and pled for finality. And they rushed up to the Supreme Court. They got a corrupt Justice, Scalia, — and when I say corrupt, I say it advisedly — and he intervened to cause the certification, or the process of selection of the President, to go by a way which violated the Constitution, on the basis of pretext of finality, or I think it was more likely shareholder value.

So, in this case, are you going to let the pressure to don't dig your heels in — are you going to allow that to intimidate you into giving up the key issue? The question here is not just this election! It's the next one. If we don't crush what we know was done to create a fraudulent election — in other words, this election was fraudulent by virtue of the mass of voter suppression alone, and we know of that — it was a fraudulent election in character. Are we going to make no remedies, make no assurances, set no precedent to ensure that no S.O.B. dares to do that to a U.S. election ever again? Are we gutless wonders, that we find some reason to squeak out like frightened little mice to back off from a fight, in order to look good with people who might criticize us? Or are we going to defend this Constitution? We don't have a constitutional government the way it is functioning now. The people of the United States, especially in a time of crisis, need constitutional government. You need, above all, the protection of the general welfare, the protection of the rights of every citizen, including, especially the right to vote. If you lose the right to vote, we don't have a republic any more.

And somebody took a lot of people's right to vote away from them, illicitly. And, it was mostly the Republicans, who were engaged in this voter suppression campaign, which was massive. Somebody has to come up and say, what is the figure for the amount of voter suppression that occurred in this campaign, and, who's going to go to jail for doing it? That's vote fraud. And, if we don't get that, we haven't got anything. If we walk away from this now, we end up with no republic. I believe in tenacity in defending the Constitution. We need tenacity to defend the Constitution.

Q: The next question is from a scientist, actually a biochemist, who's affiliated, previously with the World Health Organization, and who now works in Florida as part of the tropical disease section of the Centers for Disease Control. He says, Mr. LaRouche, I'd like to go back, for a moment, to a thesis that you uniquely developed in the 1980s, when I first met your organization. At that time, you outlined that the policies of the advanced sector had essentially created a giant petri dish or breeding ground for exotic diseases in the developing sector. While I don't wish to address the origin of the HIV virus right now, whatever its origins were, the result, once that virus began to reproduce, clearly knew no borders. For anyone who thought that it would be contained in the developing sector, well, what actually happened is now history.

Looking at the current situation in the Indian Ocean region, I believe that we may be looking at the same danger. The estimates that I've seen are that at least 200,000 people are dead, and if we applied classic public health measures (and I personally believe that these measures are inadequate), we can expect that the immediate deaths as a result of injuries suffered in the tsunami will be at least double the actual deaths that we have already counted. Given the fact that the number of injuries is already estimated to be over 500,000, I think my presumption that this is going to be far worse than the classic sampling would indicate — I do believe that if we do not act quickly, to address the situation in this part of the world, that we may be courting a biological holocaust that will affect that entire region and that will not be limited to the four nations immediately affected by the tsunami itself. I'd appreciate it if you would comment on this in terms of its implications both in the short term and in the long term.

LaRouche: Well, obviously it is a policy which has been in place for some time. The policy is based on the idiocy of assuming that the Universe contains a number of fixed options, including biotypes; which is obviously insane. When we consider the fact that the very existence of the Solar System is a byproduct of evolution of what was initially a solitary, fast-spinning Sun; that all the higher levels of the Periodic Table above things such as helium and above cyanogen, and so forth, didn't exist in the Solar System until the Sun generated them in a very complex process of self-development. The characteristic of everything we know about the Universe, whether in the inorganic (so-called, as defined by the division established by Vernadsky) or in the abiotic area, is development. We are looking at a Universe of galaxies which is obviously a Universe, not only of our Solar System, but of development. Of a Universe, even in the abiotic area, that is generating things that didn't exist in it before.

The same thing is true with the biological sphere. The development of species, the development of varieties, the development of types of diseases. These were created, They did not exist before. They developed from a natural process which is built into the nature of living processes generally.

We then have man, who is a different category. It's the only creative being walking around. Man has undergone great development. The characteristic of the Universe is development. Now, development goes in various directions. It goes in desirable and undesirable directions. So, science must always look beyond what is presently known, to discover what is about to become, or what may have become behind your back.

And, as far as the general thesis you state, it's true. We did this study back in the early 1970s on the effects of the changes in international monetary policy on Northern Africa. We came up with some forecasts for spreads of disease, of epidemic diseases, and so forth; and they were right. They happened that way. The death rate increased.

And, the death rate is increasing in Africa today, because of the same kind of conditions: foreseeable consequences of policy. The question of HIV, foreseeable. All right, we did not have this type of disease in the Human Kingdom, but we had it in the Animal Kingdom. Suddenly, one day we found this kind of infection in the Human Kingdom, where we should have expected it. And carelessness would cause it, would help to cause it. Or favorable conditions would help to cause it. When we got hit with HIV we should have had a program of the type we never developed. But, it cost too much money. So, they said, don't develop it. This was under Reagan. Don't develop it. It came up one day, when the Surgeon General of the United States had to make a decision. He made a decision: don't do it. I was talking about $40 to $60 billion in terms of funding in dealing with HIV and its implications, or the care of patients, for the understanding of this problem.

We did nothing about Africa. With the conditions in Africa, it was determined, as you know from your experience of this tropical disease factor, it is a very important factor. And, you have dirt and filth and tropical disease conditions, you're going to have trouble. You're going to have new diseases, new kinds of diseases. And the kinds of diseases we develop in Africa or develop in Southwest Asia are going to be the diseases that hit us next. And therefore, what we are trying to do with our HMO policy, with our health policy, with cutting down the number of doctors, with cutting out the whole medical practice, with restricting what physicians can do, because we don't authorize them to do the things they should be doing, for just this kind of reason. We're insane.

We have to go back to work. Produce a lot more wealth per capita, with the aid of high technology, and spend a lot more money in supporting research institutions, scientific institutions, and just plain health care. If we don't have that, we are not going to survive, because, by not having that, by those who want to save money, save money for them to waste on their entertainment, instead of putting people to work in high-tech jobs and educating people for high-tech jobs, we are making ourselves vulnerable to the unexpected.

And we see this today. Look at what happened with the tsunami. The tsunami is something that was waiting to happen for a long time. These have happened periodically in the known history of mankind on this planet. It happened. We had a policy. It was the Asia-Pacific policy, which I fought against, back in the 1980s. I said, we have to have development in these areas. What did they say? They said, no. We're going to have a policy of investment in tourism, and hotels. What did that mean? Instead of developing Southeast Asia, instead of developing Indonesia, what we did is we created these places, these hideaways, for sex entertainment. We had these at the beaches where they could go swimming and find sex with the sharks, or whatever they wanted. We had people who were very poor people who worked and came to live there, in order to get jobs working around these hotels and entertainment centers, or providing sex for people who wanted it in various flavors and so forth. So we had cheap living, poor living, slum conditions, on the beaches in these areas where the inland areas where not developed. And people were down there to have sexual or other kinds of entertainment, in resort centers. And this was policy!

International policy was, we do not allow these areas of the world to undergo development. This has been U.S. policy and other policies since the 1970s, especially since the 1980s. This is why we did not develop a second, sea-level canal in the Panama region, which could have been had. This is why we didn't develop Mexico, when Mexico was ready for large-scale development projects, inside its borders; and it would have worked. So, what we have done, we have gone with the wrong policy. We have created the conditions of poverty, extreme conditions of poverty and lack of sanitation. We've destroyed the medical facilities and biological weapons to defend us against these kinds of things. And, now we have created, by negligence, in this area of the world we are talking about—and you probably would agree, we are talking about millions of people will die as a result of the effects of this, under present conditions, because we do not have, presently in place, the delivery system to get into those areas in the way needed to arrest the implications of this disaster. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

And we have to take this into our conscience. And we have to, as the United States, be proud of ourselves and do something in the direction and get other nations to join us. We've got to change our policies, so we think about the fact that this Universe is a developing Universe. It is developing good things; it's also developing bad things. And we are responsible for making sure the bad things are detected and taken care of.

Q: We have a pile of questions on Social Security. These questions are coming from state legislators, a couple from Capitol Hill. There's a question from the principal lobbyist of the American Association of Retired People. The AARP representative poses it in a very particular way. He says, Mr. LaRouche, my own view of the thing is that ultimately, the issue which is driving the attack on Social Security is not the impending shortage or emergency in the Social Security Fund. In fact there's a much larger shortage looming in medical funds and no one is addressing that.

My question is this: You contended in your remarks that it's the desire of the Administration to steal approximately $2 trillion for short-term use on Wall Street. That may be true, but I have a slightly different view. And, I would argue that what is actually at the heart of this is not simple thievery, but also a desire to dismantle the Social Security system. The fact is that the neo-cons have always hated any and all programs associated with the legacy of Franklin Roosevelt. It's a problem that's not simply limited to the neo-cons. It's a problem in both parties, in fact. We all recall the Democratic Leadership Council insisting that it was time for Democrats to turn away from the policies of FDR and to find a third way. More recently, journalist Alexander Cockburn has made it clear that we can not count on Senator Edward Kennedy to hoist the FDR banner for reasons of his family history, despite his own liberal leanings. I'd be interested in your view on this. Is this simply a question of stealing, or are these people actually trying to dismantle the system as we know it?

LaRouche: There's no contradiction between the two motivations. There's just a different—it's a convergence of two different views or two different tendencies. The first thing is that, what has happened here in terms of the George W. Bush initiative, is comparable, as Bush himself has said, to what Pinochet did in canceling Social Security on a similar program in the 1980s in Chile. And that's where the immediacy comes in. Because, you have to realize, that right now, contrary to what some people think on the other motives, this international monetary financial system is doomed. We're talking about days, or weeks, or months at most. This system is doomed. It is not going to live. The banking system of the United States is bankrupt.

Do you know what that means? Where are your savings? Where are your assets? Your stocks, your bonds, everything? What do you have for assets? How about your mortgage? People of the United States are intensely vulnerable now, and they try to pretend that they're not. They try to pretend that somehow it's going to work out. That somehow the bad things will be limited to this or that. We're talking about a general collapse of the world economic financial system, and a collapse of the economic system unless the government intervenes to deal with that problem the way that Franklin Roosevelt did. What Franklin Roosevelt did was deal with a much less severe problem, but of the same type, not as extreme. The present one is more extreme.

On any given morning this system can go! It can go if the California real estate bubble goes under Schwarzenegger, as it's threatening to go right now. If that goes, the whole Fannie Mae business goes down. The whole real estate bubble comes down. Do you know how much is tied up in the United States and the implications of the real estate bubble? What's going to happen to all those people who thought they had a mortgage or a $600,000 home, and they find that it has a market value of less than $100,000?

This is the kind of thing we face. And, therefore, that's the difference, that in the case of Chile, you had one country which is a country within a system. The system was buffered by the international system. The disease was confined, at that point, to that country. Pinochet had a problem. He was about to go belly-up. And, he had good reason not to go belly-up because he had committed so many crimes that he knew he would be tried and executed, for the crimes he had committed against humanity. And, because he was so deeply in bed with the Nazis who had come into his country to help him. So, what he did is that he stole the Social Security funds to tide him over to get him through his lifespan in Chile. And to hold on to the Presidency as long as he could, because otherwise, he was dead.

Now, you've got a similar situation right now in the United States. George W. Bush, whether he knows it or not, the people around him know it, that this thing is coming down. Don't believe the press. Don't believe the stuff about the prosperity around the corner. Don't believe it. The system is dead, it's coming down, now. And, the problem is, we don't have a Franklin Roosevelt in the White House. And, therefore the solution to this problem is to create a mess in the Congress, so that we create a situation in which we can force, under pressure of the American people, we can force measures to be taken, even by this Presidency, which by its total instinct, it didn't want to do, Roosevelt-style measures.

Now, that takes us into the second area. You have people who were for Hitler as long as he didn't try to eat up the British Empire, including many in the United States. People like Harriman, who funded Hitler. It was the Harriman family, and Prescott Bush, the grandfather of the present President, who wrote the paper to a German bank which refunded the bankrupt Nazi Party to have the Nazi Party in place so that Hitler could be made a dictator. And, this was done by Harriman, with the consent of other big bankers from the New York bank crowd. It was done under the direction of the British.

So, they didn't like Hitler for one reason. When Hitler decided to go westward first, instead of eastward, in his war plans, to go against France and England, rather than the Soviet Union first, then the British got upset. That wasn't their war plan. So, they fired Edward VIII, who was a Nazi lover, because they knew they were going to go to war with Hitler, not because they were opposed to Nazism, but because they were opposed to Nazism going westward rather than eastward.

And, the people of the United States also changed their views. They were still Nazi in their sympathies. They were still part of the cartel that put the Nazis into power, du Pont, Morgan, Harriman, and so forth, they were all part of this cartel which came out of the Nazi system still owning their assets in the Nazi system. Some of the Nazis were killed but the bankers who owned them were still the bankers that had owned them, in the financial cartel tied around the Bank for International Settlements. They are still a powerful force inside the United States. And the one thing they hate more than anything else is the memory of Franklin Roosevelt. And all you have to do is ask, who somebody's grandpappy was and how they stood on these issues, on the issue of Roosevelt vs. the Nazis in the United States in the 1930s. I mean Nazis like Morgan, du Pont, Harriman, and so forth. These people hate Franklin Roosevelt. And hate everything he stands for.

And so, you've asked two questions, you're going to get yes to both. You have people, on the one hand, who are desperate now, to try to buy time to hold on to control of their system until they get their dictatorship in place. Then, you have other people who, in any case, have been working, ever since the day Roosevelt died, like Harriman, who destroyed the life's work of Franklin Roosevelt, which includes Social Security and a lot of other things. Fannie Mae, for example also, which had been destroyed, was a Roosevelt creation.

So, both are going. It's a confluence of these two tendencies which creates the force which is expressed by this rape on Social Security now. Two motives are there, not just one. One motive, is the present Administration is not ready to be a dictatorship yet. Cheney, gum-chewing Hermann Goering, Cheney, is not yet a dictator. Therefore they have to try to control the system. To control the system means try to control it in the short term: Steal a lot of money from Social Security to try to make the system stand up for a little bit longer. The long-term objective is dictatorship.

On the other side, you have those Roosevelt haters, who have been moving in the direction of destroying Roosevelt's life's work, ever since the day that Roosevelt died. When Truman came in — remember, Roosevelt was for decolonization. That was an active program of Roosevelt's, it wasn't just a dream. It wasn't just words, it was an action program. The day that Roosevelt died, Truman went the other way for recolonization of areas that had been liberated during the wartime period. Since the day that Roosevelt died and since some of the people who took over, brought the Nazis under protection, in the U.S. and elsewhere, and used them, these guys have been out to destroy the legacy of Franklin Roosevelt and to destroy the United States. So, you have the two things: the emergency and the long-range. And these two things are converging. That's where the danger is.

The point is that this is like a situation in warfare. You have to fight a certain battle. You have to fight a battle against forces which are allied for different reasons, but they're in alliance. But you must win that battle! If we lose the battle for Social Security, or defense of it against the Bush attack, we are not going to have a nation. We are going to have hell! With no chance of getting out of anything.

People who will not fight to defend Social Security won't fight for anything. They are prepared to give up all the way, all the way to the gas chamber. They may not know it now, but they are.

Q: Lyn, the next question is on the topic of Dick Cheney, and it comes from someone who is a senior Senate staffer on the Democratic side. He says, Mr. LaRouche, you're probably best known over the course of the last few months for the expose you did of the circles around Dick Cheney and Cheney's influence in this Administration. And, people frequently see your organizers with billboards that say things to the effect of, "Fire Dick Cheney," or "Impeach Dick Cheney." As we come into this new session of the Congress, what you call bureaucratic rot and inaction in the face of the tsunami, we have since learned was largely exacerbated by Dick Cheney's repeated hammering of Condoleezza Rice, who, regardless of what my opinion of her politics is, is essentially, an otherwise articulate woman, who has been turned into an incoherent fool, and who failed to brief the President adequately. This has been all documented by Sidney Blumenthal and others in the press.

Also, in today's Washington Post, we learned that it was not Alberto Gonzales who was the intellectual author of the now-infamous torture memos that led to the atrocities at abu Ghraib, but in fact, the author of those memos was none other than Dick Cheney's lawyer, Addington. I don't think that I have to remind you that tomorrow's joint session of the Congress, where the question of voter suppression will be debated, is one which will be chaired and presided over by the same Dick Cheney. So, I guess my question is, are we still talking about getting rid of Dick Cheney? And, do you think we could do it by tomorrow?

LaRouche: The first thing in fighting war is guts. What we have is a shortage of guts in a whole generation, which is the generation which is generally in the Congress today. They were the generation of the 1960s, the 68ers. And younger. And, when it comes to war, or anything resembling it, they can always find a way to avoid it. They suddenly get struck by a conscience, which they never knew what it was before. Suddenly they get a blow of conscience. The basic thing is they don't want to be involved in the war. Or they don't want to work. Or they think that they are likely to get a lot of sex if they go in this area where people are resisting the war. Or they can have sex with trees, or whatever. Whatever they did. So this was a generation which does not have the temperament of a World War II generation. A World War II generation would not, under present conditions, have put up with what this generation has put up with in the Congress and elsewhere. They'd have fought.

But, remember that this is the generation which was victimized, largely, by the Congress for Cultural Freedom. It's actually, I call it, the Sexual Congress for Cultural Fascism, which is a better term. And, the basic characteristic of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, which was led by a lot of Marxists, among others, who were doing work for the fascists such as Allen Dulles, was that you can't have authoritarian personalities. And an authoritarian personality is a person who makes up their mind based on ideas of principle, from fact. You've got to have people who don't have that kind of commitment.

And, the basic argument was, after all, there is no such thing as truth. Nobody knows truth. Nobody could have a monopoly on truth. There is no truth. Therefore, how can you defend something, since you can't define anything as truth? Shouldn't you compromise everything, including yourself, especially your own morals? So, you had a generation, and a political system, as a corruption of the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, both, in which the composition is, the effect of the Congress for Cultural Freedom on the morals and behavior and intellectual life of people in these positions.

Now, under such conditions in past history, only a great shock will turn a bunch of cowards like this into fighters. They will all find a smart way to deal with the problem and try to keep a show, a face of courage, when they actually are hiding cowardice in the seat of their pants. Now the fact that has come, donated to us, that we now face, is a situation where the people of the United States are about to lose their Social Security, absolutely. Absolutely. There's no return. The private social security program, the private Social Security fund, they don't exist. The pensions don't exist. You're going to find pension systems that you thought were private pension systems are going belly-up, now. You have a threat to the airline system, that the whole private pension system of the airline system may go belly-up. Right now.

Now, when people are faced with a shock, like the dropping of the bomb, suddenly they react, and they break free of conditioning. We now have, with the attack on Social Security, the opportunity to break free of the bondage, of — not Dick Cheney. Dick Cheney's just a thug. He works for these guys. The bondage of the people behind George Shultz. The bondage of the people of the Mont Pelerin Society, who are about as Nazi as Nazis can become, the whole pack of them. The Milton Friedmans, one of the worst of them.

So, therefore, we have to say that we are going to fight. And, by having the courage to fight, we are going to give the guy next to us the courage to fight. And, by both of us having the courage to fight, then that guy next to both of us may get the courage to fight. This is the time and the chance to fight. You are fighting to save everything, including the Constitution, including our nation. This is the time to fight. Pack all your issues in one, and fight. And don't give up. You can break Cheney. Break him! Take this case of Gonzales. Demand Addington. They withheld information. They lied! They held back documentations on Abu Ghraib, they lied. It wasn't Gonzales. It was Cheney. Cheney's a fascist. Get rid of him. Get him out of there! He's impeachable. You can impeach him twice, once for his incumbent term and one for the one he thinks he's getting next. A double dose.

Impeach him as a candidate and impeach him as an incumbent. But, if you fight, you can win.

But I know the American people, especially the lower 80% of family-income brackets. They've lost their courage, over the years, since 1977, when the standard of living of the lower 80% was lower, and lower, and lower, and lower. And today, the lower 80% of the family-income brackets have a lower total income than the upper 20%. They don't fight anymore, in politics, for big issues. They pick a little issue, a single issue, or maybe two single issues. Or, they fight about a neighborhood issue. They fight about little things, and try to nag the politicians to give them something. But, they don't fight anymore on principle. They don't defend principle.

They say, well I need money. People have given up civil rights fights, saying, well I need money. I'll give up the principled fight for civil rights, if I can get some money. This is typical of the lower 80% of our family-income brackets today. They won't fight. They're cowards. The stuffing has been taken out of them.

But, we are now at the point, when the lower 80% is about to lose everything, it all. You fight now, or you ain't human no more. This is the opportunity to fight, the best one you've ever had. Let's fight and take it back. Beat these guys on the question of Social Security. Beat the Boykin initiative on the issue of the Addington role, of Cheney. Go for the gut. Get them out. And show people you have the courage to fight. And then, maybe, they'll have the courage to join you in supporting the fight. That's our only chance.

Q: We have what are virtually identical questions. One was submitted by a member of the LYM in Denmark, and the other is by a fellow at the Economic Policy Institute here in Washington. The question is regarding the nature of the financial collapse. I will take a certain amount of liberty in summarizing the questions, because the two are so similar. The fellow from the Economic Policy Institute says: "Mr. LaRouche, a few years ago, I probably would have argued with you about the question of the overall bankruptcy of the system. However, today, I can't really make that argument, especially as the dollar continues to collapse against virtually every currency in the world. Let's presume that we are facing a collapse of that type. I've done a great deal of study of Alexander Hamilton. And although Alexander Hamilton does make certain reference to the relationship of the nation's currency to gold, what he discusses, most notably in his Report on the National Bank, was the necessity for public confidence in the credit system, in order for the government to be able to increase the amount of credit in circulation.

"My question is, how, in fact, do we restore credibility in a credit system in the immediate aftermath of a dollar collapse?

LaRouche: Franklin Roosevelt, in 1933, in March, took a number of measures which asserted the authority of the Constitution—particularly the General Welfare principle. And remember, Roosevelt was not just stumbling around with this and coming up with a quick idea to deal with the Depression. In his Harvard graduation proceedings—or that period of time in his life—he wrote on this subject, at Harvard University, as a student there, in the process of graduating. He also was a descendant of Isaac Roosevelt, a New York banker of the Bank of New York, who was an ally of Alexander Hamilton. So, on his side of the family, the Roosevelt family tradition, Franklin Roosevelt was proceeding from a well-informed knowledge of the history of the American System as a system, not just like the British system but with different gimmicks. Our system is not the British system.

As I've written in this most recent paper, which is just being published now, on these kinds of questions, we've got to get away from the fetishism about money, and money systems, and credit systems. Our system, of Hamilton, was a revolution—a world revolution. At that time—in 1763, when the British had used the Seven Years' War to establish a British empire, through the mutual defeat of the nations of Continental Europe who had been played against each other by the British—since that time, the Anglo-Dutch liberal monetary system, which is really a Venetian model, has dominated the world.

The American System, which had its inception before then, in what happened, in particular, in Massachusetts, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony prior to 1688-89, under the Winthrops and then under the others of that group, had established a credit system in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, which was internal to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and which resulted in a great expansion of growth of the economy of the Commonwealth. Now, the Commonwealth was then suppressed, to a large degree, and the Perkins Syndicate crowd came in afterward. That is, the British loyalists, who came in, and corrupted New England, pretty much. But this was the precedent which Franklin carried from Mather and Co.; and carried down into his work in Pennsylvania, and in contact with people in Europe, such as the famous mathematician Kaestner; on a principled conception of a new type of republic based on this tradition, which started here in the United States, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, prior to 1688-89. That's the root of the thing.

Now, the point was: We do not accept money as having an independent role or existence in the universe. Our view is, as Americans, that money is something which is created only by the government—by no one else. Anybody else who creates money, in the United States, is guilty of uttering, and could go to jail for fake currency. Which makes one wonder about the Federal Reserve System, sometimes.

But, in any case, therefore the credit of the United States must not be corrupted. The credit of the United States must be defended. The credit is the credit we give to one another. We make contracts. We make agreements. We agree to postpone receipt of payment in return for this and that, and so forth. And it is this, by drawing off a part of the total product of society, and drawing it off in the form of capital—capital to improve a farm; capital to build an industry; capital which is something which lasts in its effect over coming generations—the formation of useful capital. In other words, instead of just producing, and consuming everything we produce, we withhold from our expenditure for consumption, some part which we use as capital. To improve farms, for public works, all these kinds of things.

These things increase the productive powers of labor, and enable us to charge some kind of interest on the creation of capital, as compensation.

So, we're now in a situation where the international Venetian-style monetary system, the IMF-World Bank system—is now hopelessly bankrupt. Therefore, we put it into bankruptcy reorganization. We put it under the conditions of the American System of Political Economy, in which the U.S. government, with the consent of Congress—that is, the Federal Executive with the consent of Congress—is sovereign in matters of money and credit.

And therefore, we absorb the bankrupt system into our hands. And we reorganize it on our terms, to the purpose of creating an American-style system of money and credit, of the type that Hamilton is talking about; rather than trying to work within the framework of the present international monetary system.

As I lay this out, in this paper, on this subject, you have to realize that here we are, living, in a sense, physically, in a modern economy; a modern industrial economy, based on—presumably—equal rights for everyone, for opportunity, on the basis of increasing the productive powers of labor, on improving public works, and so forth, for the common benefit. But we are living in a monetary system which belongs to feudalism! It's a relic of feudalism. It's a relic of the Venetian system, where the Venetian financier-oligarchy and the Norman chivalry were dominating Europe in a government-free system.

So, there is no contradiction in this. What I'm talking about, clearly, is having the guts to establish the American System—again—as what was the intent of the Constitution; and to say to Europeans: "Come in and join us, and do the same, and we'll cooperate with you."

That is the only way out of this crisis. We're going to take most of the monetary aggregate—the monetary claims which exist in the world today—they're going to disappear, one way or the other. Now, either we engage in a mercy killing, or we have a general slaughter. We propose a mercy killing.

We take these assets. We take them in. We look at them. We decide which ones are justifiable, which are not. Those that were justifiable, those claims will ultimately be paid. And nobody is going to suffer unjustly because of the collapse of the system.

That's the way we do it. That's the American System. And we just have to have a clear understanding of this, and get out of our heads, the idea that we have to play within a notion of money, which is taught in every university and so forth, generally, in the world today, which is absolutely nonsense. It's feudalism! It's not modern society. It's not capitalism. It's feudalism! We want to get back to the American System.

And if we think in those terms, there really is no serious contradiction. There's a great challenge. And I ran for President because I have the guts to do it, and the knowledge to do it. That's why I ran for President.

So, there are people, such as me, who have the guts and knowledge to do this. And I'm prepared to do it. And I'm prepared to help anyone who is President of the United States to do it, if he doesn't know how to do it already.

Q: The question that I'll end with, is a question that's been submitted by a large number of the young people who are gathered here today, and are also listening from around the country.

But first, I want to pull together a composite question—we're getting questions from all over the world, on a recent paper that Lyn has authored, that has been posted on the website: "For a New Treaty of Westphalia."... We can't possibly take all of them.

Imani Jones, who has had Lyn as a guest on her show a number of times, and who's from Cleveland Talk Radio, says: "Mr. LaRouche, with regard to some of your current writings, I wanted to call to people's attention, an interesting passage in the Scriptures—which I know I take great risk in bringing up, because your people don't like to quote Scriptures. But in James 5—and I would urge people to look at it. She said, there exists there a warning to rich oppressors. And I, actually, will read it because it is a good passage.

"Now, listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming upon you. Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. Your gold and silver are corroded; their corrosion will testify against you, and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. But look, the wages you failed to pay the workman, who mowed your fields, are crying out against you; the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. You have lived on Earth in luxury, and self-indulgence; you have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered innocent men, who were not opposing you."

My question, Mr. LaRouche, is, how long can this nation's so-called solvency rest upon the backs of the poor, coupled with these outlandish interests rates, and attacks on Social Security? Further, in some of your recent writings, you've talked about a new Treaty of Westphalia, concerning the current situation. How can we succeed in agreements with these countries, when we are in a state of such deep crisis? How can we have a concrete union among nations, which from their past, to the present, have done nothing but seek profit, and power?

LaRouche: That's what I'm working on; exactly what I'm working on, with my discussions internationally with various circles. This involves exactly what I've written about. The solution to the problem is described in a number of things I've written; the problem is, today, we are conditioned to beliefs about human nature, which are not human nature. The ability to deal with this, lies with those of us who are not afraid of the word immortality. The problem is, see, most people are concerned with, say, 'What do I get in my mortal life, that I can experience and enjoy in my mortal life, which, as a bribe, would induce me to accept this deal?' That's the way it goes: 'What's my gratification? What's the payoff? What do I get out of this?'

Now, among normal, healthy, moral people—who did, believe it or not, used to exist—parents would sacrifice for themselves and their grandchildren, taking their satisfaction from the fruit of their labor, as expressed in the accomplishment of their children and grandchildren. They had a sense of immortality, or an intimation of immortality, in this sense: That the purpose in life was what they used their life for; not what they got out of it. It was not a gambling deal; it was not a tradeoff.

The problem we have today, is, most people who are leaders of government, who are in leading positions, most of the time, are of that morally inferior type like Hamlet. Remember the Third Act of Hamlet, the soliloquy, where he can not fight, because he's afraid of immortality—the uncertainties of immortality. And only people who—as I am—who are not afraid of the uncertainties of immortality, are capable of going all the way with a fight. And only people who have that quality in themselves, can inspire other people to confidence to do the kind of thing that must be done today.

We have a world of frightened people, and they're going to become much more frightened fast. Therefore, we need leaders; we need people who will step forward, with a sense of immortality: who devote their life to the outcome of what their life means for the future of humanity; not for what they get out of it. Only people who are of that type, are capable of responding, in this kind of situation. I can do it; I want others to be able to do it. I would hope that the youth movement will produce the kind of people who can do that. That's one of the goals of my work with the education work on the youth movement—to concentrate on that problem.

So, you have two things: you have the fact that there are solutions; there are remedies; they would work. What will it [take] to get people to agree to these remedies? What had made them agree to the Treaty of Westphalia in the first place: they had seen the impossible pit of horror in the Thirty Years War. And, because of their horror of that experience, they're willing to do what Cardinal Mazarin, the chief inspirer of the Treaty of Westphalia, proposed they do. Read the Treaty of Westphalia—the original one. Study the original document; the original resolution. Take into mind the circumstances under which that was done. And remember, that what you heard done by the youth, the chorus, the Jesu, Meine Freude, was an expression of the explosion of joy in the people of Germany, at relief from the Thirty Years War; something which continued into Bach's lifetime, which was, of course, more than 60 years later, when he did his versions. And what you heard, as Jesu, Meine Freude, was an expression of mankind grasping the fact, that it had achieved something: it escaped from a terrible evil, 'the old dragon'—the abyss.

And that's what you need today, and you find that, when people work in the Jesu, Meine Freude, as a motet, and actually get on the inside of it, they find there's something that is very awesomely mysterious about it. There is something in it that can not simply be explained by formalities. It is something that Bach understood, as to how to communicate these higher orders of ideas.

And, that's really the answer. We have to have leaders who understand that we must do it. And we'll do it, because we must do it, the way the Treaty of Westphalia was brought about as an agreement. And, we need enough leaders who will agree to that, to get the others to go along. And they'll go along, not because they really have insight, or they have belief, or competence, [but] because nothing else is going to work. And that's the way you're going to bring about a new Treaty of Westphalia now on this planet. When people realize, in coping with things like we've seen with this incident of the tsunami, that they are faced with forces beyond their ability to control—and that's only one example of it—the forces of the collapse of an international financial-monetary system, beyond their individual control—things that can destroy whole civilizations, beyond their control—and, for that reason, men and women unite to common purpose, to develop the power to deal with these things, which are frightening beyond belief. That's the answer.

Q: The last question, which has come in many different forms from the young people gathered here, is, "Lyn, our task and our mission this week was clearly defined and clearly focussed, around today's activity and around tomorrow's debate. We still have a couple of more days of the Week of Action to get out the remaining allotment of the 50,000 pamphlets we were given, but after this week we will no longer have the forces in D.C. that we have had thus far. What's the next crucial point in our mission? Is it the Inauguration? Is it the ICLC Conference? Please help us to define the mission, and tell us exactly what you want us to accomplish here in Washington."

LaRouche: Washington, D.C. is not just a population center, it's the nation's capital. Therefore, you want to change the policy of the nation, its government? You've got to pay direct attention to the nation's capital. Therefore, the intensity of concentration on the nation's capital must be primary.

Now, we have certain areas I've laid out in the United States, which we now have, are able to concentrate significant forces to do enough. Some with youth movements, and some with other parts of an organization, the adulterated part of the organization, shall we say?

So we have a Boston base, which has to be developed. It must go on. New York City is a major center, and I have a lot of supporters up there, who have to be organized, and they will fight. Remember, New York did not give up. Many other parts of the country were more fearful after 9-11 than the New Yorkers were. The New Yorkers have shown more guts about 9-11 than the people outside New York. And I know why. I understand New Yorkers. They have a terrible situation up there. Terrible economic situation. It's hard to live, but they have a certain manner. So, that's important.

We have to get Jersey out of the mud. You used to have Jersey mud, you took it for intestinal diseases. Now we've got to get the Jerseyans out of the mud, and get them functioning.

Philadelphia is doing what it's doing. Washington, D.C. is crucial. What we have in Texas is crucial. The Midwest is crucial. We've established a position there, we've not going to give it up. The Michigan-Ohio area. We'll organize there.

Texas, we have that, and it's also a border connection, important. California, we have a powerful situation. From Washington State into Oregon, California. It's a very ripe situation. All right, we'll concentrate there.

Now, what have we got? We now have, what we're doing is engaging other organizations, other networks, as you've seen in the fight around Social Security. The way we will spread is not by trying to spread ourselves all over the landscape. We have allies! Allies in a common cause. The common cause typified by Social Security and other things. Therefore, we are going to associate ourselves within the orbit of the Democratic Party, where we're already established as part of the Kerry campaign assembly, but also with Republicans who are sane people. There are many sane Republicans! They don't all think like George W. Bush, or Dick Cheney!

So, we are going to have a kind of networking arrangement, around common cause, around the nation, with groups which are fighting for these causes, and our work will be, marker-buoys in all situations, where we are sitting the pace, and our operation in Washington, D.C. is key for maintaining the pace-setting center, by which we try to tie all these organizations, most of which are oriented to Washington anyway, as lobbyists, or whatnot, or have lobbyists, to try to create a national movement, in which we are a catalytic element, an independent but catalytic element, in bringing together many kinds of forces that are coming together with us now, so we don't have to be every place simultaneously. They're are not enough of us.

But there are people who will work with us, with whom we will discuss, with whom we will come to agreement on policies and tactics. We will spread these networks, overlapping networks, throughout the nation, and that's the way we're going to change the nation, if we're going to change it at all. And that's the way to go.

Take the areas that we have. Understand how each part of the area functions, what function it performs. We're functioning as a keystone of a network of organizations which are coming together around our initiative. The position of initiative we've gained because of the last two months of the recent Presidential campaign, and because at November 9th on, we pulled the Democratic Party off the floor, and got it into some kind of semi-living motion again. And so, that's where we are.

Take the objective situation. We're going to build our networks, and they're going to be national. We're not going to be proprietary, because we're going to work with them, but we're going to build our own organization at the same time. And what we do, in limited areas in the United States, is going to be crucial for what many people do in all areas of the United States.

EXCLUSIVE EIR INTERVIEW WITH SCOTT HORTON

BUSH ADMINISTRATION, GONZALES REVIVE NAZI LEGAL ARGUMENTS

Nuremberg Tribunal Rejected Rumsfeld's 'Rotten Apples' Defense

Scott Horton is chair of the Committee on International Law of the Bar Association of the City of New York and lecturer in international humanitarian law at Columbia University. During 2002 and early 2003, when civilian lawyers in the Pentagon, working with White House lawyers such as Alberto Gonzales and David Addington, and Justice Department lawyers in the Office of Legal Counsel, were developing policy positions declaring that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to the Afghanistan conflict, and were loosening restrictions on methods of interrogation so as to violate U.S. military law, Horton was contacted by top lawyers in the military services who opposed these new policies, but whose voices were not being heeded.

EIR: Scott, the most famous of the Gonzales memos, is the Jan. 25, 2002, which talks about the war on terrorism being a new kind of a war, and that this renders provisions of the Geneva Conventions obsolete, and so forth and so on. Is this argument—that this is "a new kind of a war"—actually a new argument? Or, is this a rather old argument?

Horton: It's an absurd argument, actually. Only a person with very little background in history could make such an argument. The major launching point for modern international humanitarian law, is the 1907 Hague Convention. And, at the time that Convention was being negotiated and was being drafted, the United States and Europe were in the midst of a wave of terrorism, which people at the time said was "completely unprecedented"! Which people said, had "never occurred before in human history!"—and, of course, that was principally the Anarchist movement.

The Anarchists were systematically targetting leaders of the intellectual community, and the political community; the American President had been assassinated, an extremely traumatic event in this country; numerous political figures all across Europe had been assassinated—the Empress of Austria, the Prime Minister of Russia. And then of course, leading into World War I itself, we have the Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

Horton: So, these documents were drafted against the backdrop of a wave of terror, in fact, which bears parallels to what's going on today.

Then, when we get to 1949, there was a realization at the end of the war, which I would say started with the Americans, that the old Geneva Convention and the Hague Convention didn't go far enough; that horrible things had happened that hadn't been adequately covered by the law: crimes that had been committed by the Nazis. There was a need to move away from the old model, which was based on very technical rules of the law of war, and required declarations of war, and things of that sort; and that operated on a model of "just war"—to move away from that, to something that was much more encompassing, and was designed to protect, in particular, also, civilian populations, not just combatants.

And so, when you get the 1949 restatement of the Conventions, that is the major transformation that occurred. So, it was really a sweeping expansion of the old Convention.

EIR: Now, the general way the administration talks about this, is that the Geneva Convention is the question of prisoners of war, and that if someone, say, al-Qaeda or Taliban, is not entitled to be classified as a prisoner of war, therefore they have no protections whatsoever.

Horton: Well that sounds like someone has derived their understanding of law from watching Hollywood movies. That's not the way the Geneva Conventions operate.

Horton: They operate on the basis of application to conflicts. So that a conflict is either covered by, or is not covered by, the Conventions. And, of course, in 1949, things were redrawn with the notion that all kinds of conflicts would be covered, in some respect, by the Convention: Whether it's a civil war, or an international conflict, there would be some level of coverage by these Conventions.

EIR: So, if someone's not classified as a prisoner of war, what are they entitled to?

Horton: Well, there's a comprehensive plan of categorization and treatment under these Conventions. And, a major focus, of course, is the rights of prisoners of war. But, we have combatants who are not, who are not entitled to that treatment under the Convention, and the specific category label for them is "spies and saboteurs."

By the way, the administration is always saying, "These Conventions don't cover 'unlawful combatants.'" And, can you think of a combatant that is more unlawful than the spy or saboteur? Of course, they're covered! They don't have the extensive protections that POWs have, privileges against coerced interrogation, for instance. But the unlawful combatants still have a basic right to humane treatment. There are also specific categories for civilian noncombatants. There's a special categorization and treatment of humanitarian aid workers, like the Red Cross—who have very particular rights and responsibilities, in connections with conflicts. The intention of the people who drafted the '49 Conventions (as distinguished from the 1864 Convention, the 1906 amendments and the 1907 Hague Convention, which were not all-encompassing), was to cover every actor and every non-actor, and any fair reading of the text reveals that.

Nazi-Era Precedents

EIR: Now, are there any other precedents from the World War II period, or going into it, to what's happening now?

Horton: Well, I'd say in the course, really, of the last two years, a very great number of scholars are finding sweeping precedents across-the-board, between things that happened and the years leading up to World War II and during World War II, to what's happening now.

Horton: And that would be, for instance, Fritz Stern, former Provost at Columbia University, probably the nation's leading historian of the Nazi state, who gave a major speech recently, in accepting the Leo Baeck Award, in which he paralleled the interaction between the Bush Administration and the Religious Right, to the political campaign that the Nazi Party launched in 1933, and its exploitation of religious values. Stern gave a sustained and convincing comparison which raised so much comment that it was reported in the New York Times.

It's not an exact parallel, obviously; it's not a complete parallel. But, nonetheless, it's clear, that there are very strong similarities.

And then other scholars, in the legal area, which is of course is my major field, people have been noticing for quite some time, that legal policy advocates in the Bush Administration produce arguments—particularly about international law—that are startlingly similar to the arguments that Nazis international law scholars articulated. For instance, Sanford Levinson at Texas, Detlev Vagts at Harvard and Robert Bilder at Wisconsin—three very important scholars who are actively writing and speaking on this subject now. But to the comparison: they're similar in content; they're similar in style of presentation; they include a strident voice of ridicule; a strong sense of a paramount national interest that overrides any international obligation; an insistence on preservation of unilateral prerogatives for the executive.

There is a tendency to have an asymmetrical pattern of interpretation that is to say, the United States has rights under these Conventions, which it may enforce against others—but it has no corresponding obligations. Or, the United States has all these rights, but other nations don't have corresponding rights. Completely asymmetrical. And also, the asymmetry is consistently based on a notion of countries being friends or enemies: and the friends have rights, but the enemies don't. And, if we look at the Nazi international law scholar Carl Schmitt, that was the core of his writing, and his theories. That's exactly the path he took in addressing almost every significant issue.

All Power to the Leader

EIR: We've written—that is, Mr. LaRouche and others in our publications—about Carl Schmitt, in particular; and his notion that everything is justified by the state, or the interest of the state. And those arguments seem to be popping up very much, again.

Horton: It's not just the interest of the state—of course, if you look at Carl Schmitt, it's the "interests of the nation," I think is the way the Nazis would put it. And that they would have more of an ethnic understanding to it. So, that's an area where there's a bit of a difference, obviously, between our times and their times.

But, there would be a strong focus on the powers and prerogatives of the leader—specifically. And a very disdainful attitude towards the liberal core values of modern democracy. They would say that the "spirit of the nation" is reflected in the "leader." And therefore, it's essential to vest all power and all prerogative in that leader, and therefore, you work very, very hard to overcome any limitations that could be imposed on your leader's prerogatives and rights, under international law.

EIR: Now, that sounds strikingly similar to some of the arguments made in the Justice Department torture memos, about the so-called "inherent powers of the commander-in-chief in wartime" that can't be subject to any limitations.

Horton: That's right. One of the things that was typical of writers in the Nazi period—like Carl Schmitt, for instance—is that even on points where the law was really quite well settled, and there was an international consensus, that no argument was too ridiculous, to avoid being presented by the Nazis.

It seems that their volume and the stridency would make up for the absence of logic in their arguments. That also, as a style, as a certain redolence to America, today; I certainly know of talk show hosts on cable TV who use this model.

EIR: There has been—and we wrote about this, some of my colleagues—a revival of Carl Schmitt, in the U.S., in the past decade or more. Is there any seepage of that, explicitly into this sort of conservative theory about the "unitary executive" and the "strength of powers"?

Horton: No, we don't see explicit citation of it anywhere. But, I think most people who read some of these things, and I think—you know, you can go to recent meetings of the Federalist Society, and listen to some of the speakers talk about these things.

It's just a fact that their approach to belittling international law, international legal scholarship, and so forth, is remarkably to similar to the writings of Carl Schmitt. Both in style and substance. No one ever doubted that Carl Schmitt was a brilliant writer and thinker; but it was a very dark brilliance, to put it mildly.

One thing that is different is racism. Carl Schmitt would stand up and say, "Jews!" "They're all Jews!" And he would have long lists of the professors who themselves would become targets. That is not an element of the current debate. But, aside from that, we are seeing a wholesale revival of ideas which appear largely banished from legal scholarship since the end of World War II.

This idea of the "paramount power of the Presidency" is a critical element. Scholars purport to cite The Federalist Papers and Alexander Hamilton, and other—I would say—conservative, strong-central-government writers, from the American tradition—purporting to cite these people for views which are totally contrary to the views of Alexander Hamilton and his contemporaries.

Horton: Absolutely contrary. On the question of international law—or, as they would have said, "the law of nations"—there's no question whatsoever, that Alexander Hamilton, for instance, felt that was a binding and very important part of the law. And something that just never would have been questioned.

Horton: They are suggesting, frequently, that the "law of nations" exists to usurp the Constitution, or the Constitutional authority of the government. Frequently, they ask derisively, "What is this 'international law'?"

And if you look at the Constitution, and you look at the writings of the Founding Fathers, they had little doubt about it: There was a law of nations, an integral part of the law. There wasn't a really extensive body of law of nations, but there were rules. And those rules were binding, and had to be observed!

And one of the major areas, certainly, at the time of the Constitution—1789—was "the laws of war." Another was the law governing "piracy." Pirates were in a sense the terrorists of their day. But of particular importance to the drafters of the Constitution was the current question: How do you treat—as the Constitution calls them—"captures," in time of war?

Horton: Absolutely not! I mean—it was so important, that it was, in fact, one of the expressly articulated prerogatives of the Congress, not of the President! Congress was given the right to set the rules implementing the law of war, including treatment of detainees. And for a military person at the end of the 18th Century, this was important, for many reasons. I would say the concerns weren't entirely humanitarian: The concerns were also a matter of deciding who got the benefit of a ship or wagon-train that was seized!

'Terrorist Conspiracy'

EIR: Now, moving ahead to the 20th Century, the types of arguments that are made—which have been made in the context of the current, so-called "war on terrorism," there are echoes of that, also, in the Nazi period, or going into World War II.

Horton: No doubt about that! I think if you look at the Nazi climb to power, starting from 1933, that climb to power was driven by fear-mongering on what might be an historically unprecedented scale.

Fear-mongering was used as the tool to change the law, to undermine civil liberties. So, where the constitution was changed, the code of criminal procedure was changed in this period, and extraordinary powers were vested in the Executive, including police powers; the powers of an independent judiciary were destroyed. And, this was all done based on a "terrorist menace." And exactly what the menace was, shifted from time to time during the Nazi period. It was a matter of opportunism, or convenience.

But clearly, 1933, at the beginning, if you look at the campaign speeches in the elections to the Reichstag, probably the number-one target is the "international Bolshevik conspiracy." So, it's multi-ethnic, rooted in ideology, it's all around us, you never know if your next-door neighbor isn't a member of this conspiracy—but it is also tied to a local political party. And they're definitely labeled as a terrorist conspiracy.

The seminal event for the Nazification of Germany, the so-called Gleichschaltung, was, then, the burning of the Reichstag building—1933. And, again, that event occurred a matter of months after the new government was formed. It was seized upon immediately by the Nazi leadership, as a pretext for strengthening their control of the state and rooting out the liberal democratic protections of the Weimar Constitution and of German law.

EIR: On the specific military questions that have come up—on treatment of captives, prisoners of war, enemy combatants, and so forth—what kind of parallels are there in that respect?

Horton: Let's just start at the threshold question: Do the Geneva Conventions apply to the conflict? From the outset Nazi leaders talked dismissively of the Geneva Conventions and looked for ways to avoid them.

They looked for technical exceptions. And the arguments that were advanced, are essentially identical to the arguments that are made in Judge Gonzales's memorandum of Jan. 25, 2002: First, the adversary didn't sign the Convention, and therefore the adversary is not entitled to its protections. And in this case, you have the Soviet Union, which, of course, was not a state party to the Geneva Convention.

And then, secondly, all the demonization of the Russians as "Bolshevik terrorists" was trotted out: That these people, they are terrorists, and therefore, in the language of the Geneva Convention, "they don't abide by the rules of

LaRouche Keynotes Berlin Seminar: