Electronic Intelligence Weekly
Online Almanac
Volume 1, number 9
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May 6, 2002
THIS WEEK YOU NEED TO KNOW
Joe Lieberman's Dirty Little Secret
The "Breaking News" segment of this week's Electronic Intelligence Weekly is devoted to the seismic cultural shift now underway in Germany, in the aftermath of the April 26 school massacre in Erfurt, in which a 19-year old boy, Robert Steinhaeuser, killed 16 teachers and students, before taking his own life. The young killer was addicted to the same kind of violent point-and-shoot video games as the Columbine High School killers in the United States, who staged a similar premeditated mass-killing spree in April 1999. Dozens of similar incidents have occurred throughout the United States in recent years, fuelled by Hollywood's mass entertainment industry outpouring of movies, music, and videogames that literally program America's youth into "natural-born killers."
The difference between the German and American responses to the two incidents is striking. On May 3, over 100,000 Germans, mostly from the eastern region near the scene of the school carnage, gathered in Erfurt for a memorial service. President Rau and Chancellor Schroeder both addressed the crowd, and delivered frank assessments of the deep cultural crisis that the killing incident had revealed and spotlighted. Earlier in the week, the Interior Minister of Germany had issued a preliminary report on the incident, which warned that as many as 170,000 German youth were so deeply involved in the same culture of videogame violence and pornography, that any one of them could repeat the Erfurt incident.
Germany is going through a profound process of rethinking the direction in which the nation has drifted over the past decadesin culture, education, and economic policy. That process of national soul-searching will have a major impact on the national elections, scheduled for later this year.
Helga Zepp LaRouche, the founder and leader of the Schiller Institute, as well as a candidate in those German Federal elections, has issued a series of calls for a thorough international inquiry into the root causes of the "New Violence" (the full text of her latest statement appears in the EUROPE NEWS DIGEST in this issue of EIW, with a detailed news account of the Erfurt attack and its aftermath; her first statement ran in last week's EIW).
At an international webcast in Washington, D.C. on May 1, sponsored by his Presidential pre-campaign committee, Lyndon LaRouche directly linked Hollywood's "Nintendo brainwashing" industry to the strategic policy of leading American utopians, like Samuel Huntington, who promote "perpetual war" around the globe, modelled on the Roman Imperial Legions' far-flung operations, employing corps of stone-cold mercenary killers. As LaRouche asked the May 1 audience in Washington, "You think these Nintendo games are some accident, that crept up on us because of Hollywood? Yes, Hollywood is doing it, doing that kind of thing. No, this was done by the U.S. military. It was done intentionally. To do what? To create among our youth, stone killers who can be recruited to be sent in various parts of the world, and do there, exactly what the Israelis are doing."
Indeed, these utopianswho enjoy positions of prominence inside the Bush Administration, in the military, in the Washington think-tank community, in the leading tax-exempt foundations and law firms of the Boston-New York-Washington corridorare the chief patrons and sponsors of Ariel Sharon, whose present actions in the Mideast virtually guarantee that the goal of "perpetual war" in that vital part of the globe will be realized.
In stark contrast to popular opinion, the United States Congress and other policy-making centers are not "run by Israel." Israel is a controlled marcher-lord state, presently gripped by a Masada suicide impulse, which is run from the United States, Britain, and other centers of power in the Westbut principally from the United Statesthrough these utopians and their Mega Group-led corrupt Zionist Lobby allies. They also control large segments of the American Christian fundamentalists, whose own virulent anti-Semitism is promoted as "Christian Zionism," because they support the same Middle East "Clash of Civilizations" religious war as Sharon.
Initially, Americans reacted with the same degree of shock to the Littleton, Colorado carnage as the German people did following the Erfurt school killings. Why was there no mass outcry, no march on Washington, demanding the banning of the point-and-shoot video games, the Hollywood sex-and-violence movies, and music?
A simple, but incomplete, answer is that Americans have become so anesthetized to the culture of violence and sex that their reaction was muted.
But something else happened in Washington. Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn), who has been falsely and hypocritically touted as "the conscience of the Senate," stepped in to bail out the Hollywood smut-and-violence mass-brainwashing industry. Three weeks after Columbine, in May 1999, Lieberman was joined by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz) in pushing legislation through the Senate, giving Hollywood an exemption from anti-trust laws, so the videogame industry could develop its own "voluntary" rating system.
In September 2000, the Federal Trade Commission issued a report, confirming what was already well-known: Hollywood systematically violates its self-policing codes by devising marketing strategies, specifically targetting underage youth for sales of violent and pornographic movies, music, and videogames.
Less than a week after the FTC report was released, Joe Lieberman, by then the Democratic Party Vice Presidential candidate, along with his running mate, Al Gore, journeyed to Hollywood for a $10,000-a-plate fundraising dinner, which generated $4.2 million for the Gore-Lieberman campaign. As Reuters reported the next day, "Lieberman sought to reassure those present that a Gore Administration would not seek to censor films, Hollywood's biggest fear."
Lieberman was quoted as telling the audience, "Al and I have tremendous regard for this industry. It's true from time to time we will be critics, but I promise you this: We will never, never put the government in the position of telling you through laws what to make. We will nudge you, but we will never become censors." As the Reuters correspondent observed, "For their donations of $10,000 or more, diners got more than chicken."
Just last week, at the end of April 2002, the New York Times reported that, once Lieberman became addicted to Hollywood money, he never gave up the habitto the point that his former running-mate, now 2004 rival, Al Gore, is furious that Lieberman has grabbed up big bucks from all the Hollywood smut moguls who were first introduced to Lieberman by Gore.
Joe Lieberman's "morality" was demonstrated in September 1998, when he became the first prominent Democrat to call for President Bill Clinton to resign from office, over the Monica Lewinsky scandal. This effort, launched from within the Democratic Party through the so-called Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), was nothing less than a full-scale assault upon the institution of the U.S. Presidency, and the U.S. Constitution. In this effort, Lieberman joined forces with then-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahuwho, along with Ariel Sharon, was the intellectual author of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, aimed at killing the Oslo peace accords. The effort to install Al Gore in the Oval Office was led by a powerful group of American-based billionaire Israeli Lobbyists, known as the "Mega Group," led by Edgar Bronfman and Michael Steinhardt. Joe Lieberman is "The Man From Mega."
The Lieberman "morality" was on display this past week, once again, with his sponsorship of a Senate resolution fully endorsing Ariel Sharon's ongoing campaign of genocide inside the West Bank. As the Forward weekly newspaper, owned by Mega Group member Steinhardt, proudly reported on its May 3 front page, Sen. Lieberman has taken the lead in confronting the Bush Administration for even daring to pressure Sharon to give up his murder spree against the Palestinian Authority. In his zeal to blackmail a notoriously weak President George Bush into abandoning his public statements of support for a Palestinian sovereign state, Lieberman has once again demonstrated "his morality." Lieberman is the poster boy for the Huntington "Clash of Civilizations." One can fairly assume, given that Lieberman is a very smart and cunning man, that he was equally aware of the consequences of his sabotaging of any effort to shut down the violent video ame industry, following Columbine. Perhaps he even understood the link between the two actions, as LaRouche exposed them in his May 1 webcast: Videogame-programmed stone cold killers today are tomorrow's front-line mercenaries in the "perpetual wars" being sparked, around the globe, by the ongoing Israeli actions in the Middle East.
The following is an edited transcript of Lyndon LaRouche's opening remarks to a Washington, D.C. seminar and international webcast on May 1, 2002.
My subject today is focussed on the question of the horror show, in the danger to civilization, which is expressed in the Middle East crisis. And also, to indicate the possibilities of solution for that crisis. However, the Middle East crisis is not a crisis of the Middle East; nor was it created in the Middle East; nor is it the creation of protagonists in the Middle East. This is a world crisis, which, for various strategic reasons, has exploded in the Middle East, threatens to spread out throughout that region, and threatens, under present circumstances, to bring an end, for generations to come, to civilization, worldwide, as we have known it.
Some of the things I will say today, which are not generally said publicly, coincide with the views of many of the people from around the worldnot only critics in the Arab sector, but others, in Europe and elsewhere. But nonetheless, no one else says it, no one else in a position, with the voice to make it heard, says it publicly. As you know, if you've looked at your Congressman recently, in the United States, and have watched him going away, and you look at their back, in your mind's eye, you see a sign on their back: "Space for rent." This is the general situation with the parties, in politics, in the United States today.
So therefore, in the mud and slime of existing U.S. politics, in the confusion and chaos and insanity which comes out of the teleprompter which the President reads, and similar kinds of things, where is there a solution? Where is there a clear voice defining policy? Nowhere, in general. And no one from inside the United States.
One of the problems here, which I will make a bit clearer today, is very few people, even in the United States, know what the United States is, and what its problems are. Many people would like to defend the United States, but they don't know what they're defending, and sometimes, they pick the wrong side, when they choose a cause. My job is to make that clear to you.
We are now, globallythe context for this, which I will address first, and then I will come to the Middle East matter itself, laterthe context for this crisis today, is that the world as a whole, especially European civilization, extended globally, is experiencing presently, the worst and most dangerous crisis in the history of Europe, since the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia. No crisis, including the wars of the last century, was as severe and dangerous to civilization as what you're seeing reflected in the Middle East crisis, today. This is the one crisis which could destroy modern history, for generations to come.
And, as you see, we have no President of the United States. We have an elected Presidentnot elected, probably, but inaugurated, anyway, despite all the misunderstandings, and whatnot. I think, actually, Al Gore inaugurated him, because Al Gore could have won the election in Arkansas, but he chose to ignore Arkansas, perhaps because it had something to do with Bill Clintonand went to Florida instead, and threw the election away in Florida, where he had it won in Arkansas, if he'd not wasted his money on Florida. So, he actually gave the election to President Bush. And he is now a creature of the past, and let's hope he remains that way.
But, the problem isit goes deeper: That since 1964, with one exception, no President of the United States, has, on a matter of grave strategic importance, expressed the actual interests of the United States, except for one incident by President Reagan, on the SDI, in the early 1980s. Since 1964, since President Johnson pushed through the Civil Rights legislation, no President of the United States, with the one exception of Reagan's support of the SDI, has spoken in a manner which is consistent with the actual, fundamental interests of the United States. For example, you had the Suez Crisis: President Eisenhower acted in the interests of the United States, and he understood them.
Now, what I've described as the problem here: At the end of the war, after Roosevelt had died, the United States turned away, in large degree, from the commitments which Roosevelt had, from the path he trod, and from the postwar world we would have had, had he lived. Roosevelt, for example, was for the abolition of colonialism, immediately, at the end of the war. The United States emerged from the end of the war, as the only world power, as the only power, built out of the wreckage that was left by Coolidge and Mellon, from the Depression. There was no other power on this planet. And Roosevelt intended to use that power, as he told Churchill, to bring about a new system in the world, one not based on the 18th-Century policies of Adam Smith and the British, one not based on colonialism; but to use the power of the United States to effect the immediate liberation of all colonies. And to use the policies of the American System, the anti-Adam Smith policies, to rebuild, and build the economies of the world, with U.S. backing. That was taken down: Under Truman, colonialism was restored at the point of a bayonet, with the backing of the United States, and on the instruction of the British government.
However, we did have a system that worked somewhat. The postwar monetary system, which had many features of Roosevelt's policy continued in it, was a very successful policy, for about 20 years, until about the middle of the 1960s. The United States prospered, in a continued recovery, despite all the mistakes of Arthur Burns' influence on President Eisenhower, and so forth, the United States prospered economically. The conditions of life for most citizens improved. Opportunities increased.
The same was done in Europe, with U.S. cooperation, with the ideas of Jean Monet of France, who was an admirer and collaborator of Franklin Roosevelt. The same thing happened in Japan, and to some degree, in South and Central America. But the period then, even despite Truman, and under Eisenhower, and despite his mistakes, was a period of progress for most of the world. Then, it suddenly changed. The change came after Eisenhower's death. And it became worse, and worse, and worse.
Here's what happened: Look back at the history of the United States. The United States was a creation of Europe. That, after the period of religious wars, from about 1511 to 1648 in Europe, the hope of building a modern sovereign form of nation-state in Europe had gone into the rubbish pile, into the ditch. So, on the basis of the Treaty of Westphalia, in 1648, there was an effort to begin to build up sovereign nation-states in Europe. However, the rubble left over from the religious wars, and from the feudalist interests, and things of that sort, prevented this from being successful in Europe.
So, during the course of the 17th Century, and especially the 18th Century, more and more of the intellectual leadership of Europe, from many countriesFrance, from England, from Russia, included, from Germanyfocussed on the United States, or what became the United States, as the hope of building, in North America, the kind of republic which European civilization had aspired to build on the basis of the wreckage of the Roman Empire and feudalism. These people concentrated on us, educated our people, imported their people to assist us in building this republic. And we built, what is still, to this day, in terms of its constitutional design, the only true sovereign nation-state republic on this planet, which was described by Lafayette as a "temple of liberty and beacon of hope for all mankind." Which it was. And which it does remain, at least in the wishes, if not the reality, for many people today.
We are still a powerwe don't deserve it, but we are. That is, we have the capacity, as a nation, because of our historic authoritynot because of our present government, or our recent habitsbut because of our historic authority, to intervene in world affairs, not as a dictator, but as a moral influence and a power, to cause things to happen for good, which otherwise could not happen.
The case in the Middle East is typical of that: If the President of the United States would find the gumption and the wisdom to intervene in the Middle East, this horror show would stop immediately. Not because the United States has the physical power to suppress what Sharon is doing, but because if the United States took that position, then the nations of Europe who want that result, would rally to, and cooperate with the United States, other parts of the world would rally to and cooperate with the United States, and the entire world, or most of it, would, as if one crushing blow, stop this murder in the Middle East now, and bring about peace.
Our problem is: How do we bring that about, with this President, this inaugurated President? And that's what I want to lay before you today. The problem existsI'll turn to the problem, the worst manifestation of it. Solutions exist, at least on paper, as ideas; I've worked since 1975 to try to bring about Middle East peace, and looking back on that period, over 25 years, I made no mistakes: What I said then is valid today. What others did to the same or similar effect is valid still today. What has been lacking is the will and the authority to put that into place and into work. My concern is, therefore, how do we implement the solution realistically, not how do we simply propose, once again, a solution that I and others have been proposing, rightly and justly, for over 25 years.
This is the problem: At the end of the war, the same forces which hated Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, seized control in the United Statesnot totallythose of us who had returned from the war wouldn't have put up with it. We had remembered the war; we had been uplifted by Roosevelt and what he represented; many of us had rediscovered the legacy of the American Revolution in our history. We wouldn't have put up with it. But, we became fat, and lazy, and corrupt. Men returningremember, 16 million of us, were in military service during the war, at the high point. We returned after approximately five years in U.S. involvement in this war to start families, or to build families. Married couples would decide to have children at about that time. We began to move into suburbia, as in these Levittown shacks out there, in the potato fields outside of New York City, to build up suburban life, and other kinds of life. Women, who had had their husbands in the war, said, "No, you've got to do everything to catch up for five years of lost time. We've got to make the babies now. We've got to have the schools for them now. We've got to have a house now. We've got to have this now."
And, they had a kind of "now generation," which became the Baby Boomer generation. They went to universities, not to get knowledge, but to get a job, a better job. And so, they became corruptible. And so they were corrupted. I saw it all. I hated it then. I hate it more today, when I see what the outcome was.
What happened in the United States was, a certain faction, whose legacy is the Confederate States of America, typified by the Nashville Agrarians, led by a virtual member of the Confederacy, William Yandell Elliott, united with certain financial circles in Boston, in New York, and Washington, and elsewhere, to conceive of an anti-Roosevelt world, an anti-Franklin Roosevelt world. Their conception was this: If the power of the United States could be joined and controlled by the power of the United Kingdom, of Great Britain, then, we could create an English-speaking world empire, modelled somewhat on the Roman Empire, but with British-financier characteristics, as opposed to Roman characteristics. Then we could rule the world, we could put military force to work, to control nations in the way that Ancient Rome had controlled nations with its legions, and its policies, and religious wars, and ethnic wars. This policy became known, in the course of the 1950s, as the "utopian" policy. It was a policy of leading banking firms and law firms, accounting firms in New York City, and in Washington, D.C., and in Boston.
These people were conjoined with a faction inside the U.S. military, centered around the buildup of the Defense Department, around what became the RAND Corporation, became the various foundations which dominate United States policy-making today. So these foundations and financier interests and law firms and so forth, together with a certain faction in the military, set out to transform the United States and the world, on a model in the distant past, on the tradition of the Roman Empirean English-speaking world, largely, and also modelled, in military policy, on both the Roman legions, and also, the Waffen-SS, the Nazi Waffen-SS.
So, the change in direction occurred then. What happenedthe changes in military policy? You had the firing of MacArthur, who was the best commander the United States had in World War II. He conquered more territory, with fewer losses, both to U.S. forces, and to their Japanese opposition, over a shorter period of time, relatively speaking, than anyone else in modern history. Probably, the most successful military commander in modern history. He became the overseer, so to speak, of Japan. And he did not have to use nuclear bombs on Japanhe'd never use them. This came from London and Washington. Truman decided to drop the bomb. There was no military need for dropping those bombs. Ever. Japan had been successfully blockaded by an aerial and naval blockade. And Japan, which depends upon imports of raw materials for its existence, the United States, principally, had so effectively blockaded Japan from the air and the sea, that the military faction, which was still in opposition to the Emperor Hirohito's determination to surrender, would have to give up soon.
So the U.S. policy, in the Summer of 1945, under MacArthur, was not to drop bombs. The policy was to sit. Not to attack a defeated nation. Standard military policy: Never attack a defeated enemyyou might start a new war. But Washington was not happy. The utopians were not happy. They wanted to use those bombs. They had intended to drop them on Berlin, if Berlin had not surrendered by the end of June 1945, Berlin would have been obliterated, with one or two nuclear bombs. That was U.S. policy. But Berlin surrendered. Hitler surrenderedor, didn't surrender, but the Germans surrendered. They couldn't use the bombs. So, they said let's drop them on Japan. They dropped them on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
One of the reasons they dropped them, was to take the credit for the victory away from Douglas MacArthur, because the issue was military policy. Douglas MacArthur represented the traditional military policy of modern civilized society, the policy of the United States, the policy of Lazare Carnot of France, who was one of the great revolutionaries in making modern military policy, the policy of Gerhardt Scharnhorst of Germany. This was the military policy of the United States, especially after Lincoln's victory. MacArthur represented that policy. President Eisenhower, with all his wavering on some political-economic issues, nonetheless, represented that same tradition and that same policy.
What happened? The firing of MacArthur, which was ordered by the financier interests of London and New Yorkit was a set upresulted in what? A no-win war in Korea, which has not been ended, in fact, to the present day. The issue about Korean policy is: The President of South Korea, with the encouragement of President Clinton, at a certain point, proposed a new policy for the Koreas, for the effective reunification, as a process of cooperation between North and South Korea. But the Korean War continued to the present day. And those who still put North Korea on the list of the "Axis of Evil" are actually expressing that determination to have a perpetual war in Asia, called Korea. They probably would like to do it in Indochina, where they did make a perpetual war, based on the precedent of Korea, after the successful assassination of President Kennedy.
What they've done in Iraq is a perpetual war. They went in and conducted a war against Iraq: The war has never ceased. Peace has never been declared. The war goes on. The Bush Administration went to a silly war in Afghanistan, which nobody but a brainless, militarily incompentent idiot would do. After what the Soviet experience in Afghanistan was, you'd never go in and do that again. A few tens of thousands of fighters, as long as they continued to be supplied, can pin down 200,000, or more U.S. troops in Afghanistan, permanently, the way the Soviets were pinned down. And it's happening, and will continue to happen. We're still in it. A perpetual war. We're about to reactivate the perpetual war in Iraq, against Iraq, throughout the Middle East.
So the policy has been one of: Pick enemies, the way the Romans did, the way the Nazis did, and declare perpetual war. How do you fight perpetual war? By conventional warfare means? No. You fight wars of annihilation and intimidation. You force nations to submit to your will, the way the Romans did. These are the utopians. What they hated above all, is they hated the United States. It's a long tradition in the United States, which very few people outside our borders have really come to understand.
You have two traditions in the United States. One, which I defend, which is called the American Intellectual Tradition. Something that Kissinger denounced on a number of occasions. And that is the tradition of those who founded this country and its republic. The idea of creating a modern nation-state, whose purpose was not to dominate the world, but in the advice of John Quincy Adams, as Secretary of State, to President Monroe, to create a community of principle among perfectly sovereign nation-states, which was John Quincy Adams' recommendation to Monroe, on the case of the Americas, and was the basis for the so-called Monroe Doctrine.
The United States was not in a position, at that point, militarily, to kick the Hapsburgs and the British out of the Americas. But Monroe said, and Quincy Adams said: The United States should be determined to build up its strength, to the point that it is able to kick the British and the Hapsburgs out of the Americas. And to allow the people of these countries, who aspired to their own governments, their own sovereignty, to enjoy a perfect sovereignty, under the umbrella of alliance with the United States. A community of principle for common purpose, but respective sovereignty, in terms of power. That was the intention of Franklin Roosevelt for the postwar period. It's my intention today.
Let me just explain what this is, and then get on to this.
The fundamental question which has to be askedand it's not asked often enough, and sometimes our churches are the worst enemy of religion on this account: The foundation of Christianity, of Judaism, and Islam, is the concept of man, as created in the image of the Creator of the universe. This defines the individual as different than any animal. That each individual has, with the cognitive powers of reason, a power of creativity, which no animal has. And therefore, each human being is born good, or at least redeemable to good; and each human being is a life which is sacred in the eyes of the Creator because we embody the quality of the Creator. And therefore, the function of government must be, not to impose religion, but to recognize this as a principle of natural law: that government has no right to exist, except as insofar as it is efficiently committed to promote the general welfare of all of the people, and their posterity. And to honor the aspirations and achievements of those who have gone before us, who created the foundation upon which we are able to do good. That's the function of government. That's the meaning of the Preamble of the Constitution, which is the fundamental Constitutional law of the United Statesthe principle of the General Welfareto promote and defend our sovereignty, and to promote the common good, both for our people, and in our relations among states abroad. That's our law. That's the American Intellectual Tradition. It's a European tradition in particular, a tradition of those who struggled to build the kind of society, which is free from what was characteristic of Roman society, in particular.
Under Roman society, or under Mesopotamian dictatorships before, man was never free, because man was classified generally as a form of human cattle. And there were three kinds of cattle: There were the cattle that ran; there were the cattle that were captive cattle; and there were the wild cattle you hunted down. Now, the captive cattle, you raised like you raise cows. You cared for them; you fed them; you helped them to reproduce to the numbers you desired; but insured they did not reproduce to numbers in excess of what you desired. You'd kill them and slaughter them when they were no longer useful to you. That was economy. That's called agriculture.
And, that was the kind of society. The majority of human beings were human cattle, under the subject of rulers who behaved like beasts. Now, some of these societies made significant contributions to culture, but they made them out of societies that were ruled in a bestial fashion, as if by beasts. Like the Roman emperors, for example; or the Byzantine rulers, for example; or the feudal system, for example; or the Hapsburgs of Spain and Austria, for example, with the exception of Joseph II, who did some good things.
So, the question was, to form a society, which developed the qualities of the individual, in the image of the Creator, which freed mankind from the destiny of being captive or wild human cattle, which treated mankind as mankind. And thus, in order to promote that, it is necessary to develop among the people, their own taking of responsibility for maintaining this kind of order. You can not have this kind of order, unless the people themselves will work to maintain it. And therefore, the people themselves must participate in the promotion of the general welfare; the promotion of education; the promotion of scientific discovery; the promotion of longevity, and so forth and so on. The people themselves must resolve to do that. And the function of government is to be responsible to the people, as an executive function, as a governing function, to ensure that that practice is continued and promoted. That's the American Intellectual Tradition, in essence.
You see it reflected in the discussions leading into the Declaration of Independence in 1776; you see it in the discussions around the Constitution. You see it expressed most nobly by Abraham Lincoln, who understood this. And there's not a critic of Abraham Lincoln I've ever heard of, from any side, who is not wrong. He was right on everything, on every count, on every decision he made. He was not always right in terms of knowing what to do, or knowing the correct decision, but he was always right in principle.
Now, as long as Eisenhower was President, the military faction, the utopian faction, which had intended to create this new Roman Empire/Waffen-SS-like system which we have today, were not able to function. And the Suez Crisis, under Eisenhower, was an example: Eisenhower responded to his understanding of the fundamental interests of the United States, and said: "We crush them. This is a crime against humanity; it will be stopped now." And he stopped it. He was a real President. He may be have been on the golf course too much, he may have played too much golf with George Bush's grandfatherthe President's grandfather, Prescottthey were on the golf course a lot together. (It was a kind of a racist golf course, too. Noted for that around Washington.) But, when it came to the question of U.S. policy, and U.S. interests, internationally, Eisenhower knew what it was to be, to be a soldier, and a President. And he acted accordingly.
You had tendencies in that direction by President Kennedy, but he was killed. The last time we saw that, as I referred to before, by a President, consistently, was by President Johnson in 1964, where Johnson had the courage, to know that the fundamental interests of the United States, demanded that the Civil Rights Act, the two Civil Rights acts, be pushed through. And he pushed them through. Not because he liked this or liked that, or had this influence or that influence. He did it because he knew what it was to be President. When you're President, you embody the executive capacity of the self-interest of the people and the nation, and the intention of its existence. You are responsible to its past, and you are responsible to its future. And you, if you stand absolutely alone, if you're an elected President of the United States, you must act as a President against all comers, including your own citizens. You must stand alone as the conscience of the nation, as the defender of its fundamental interests. If they kill you, you still do it, because that's your responsibility. And no one should run for President, unless they're willing to take that responsibility. Unfortunately, many do.
Once Eisenhower was out of the way, the utopians went wild. We had, throughout the world, waves of assassination: the attempted assassination of Charles de Gaulle in 1962done by whom? It was done by the fascists, including Jacques Soustelle, known to me from his career in Mexico and elsewhere. Evil man. With the backing of Franco, a fascist, an evil man. The backing of the Spanish Carlists, who are evil, and their sympathizers of the old Pétain regime in France, who are evil. They were determined to kill him. These were the same crowd that targettedwe don't know who shot Kennedy. It certainly was not Oswald, but we don't know who the three riflemen were. But we do know who targetted him. It was the same crowd that went after de Gaulle. We do know who killed Matteithe same crowd that went after de Gaulle. We do know why Macmillan was ousted with the Profumo scandal in Londonthe same crowd.
So, this crowd, which we call the special-warfare intereststhe Allen Dulles crowd, people like thatmoved to set into place, a new kind of warfare, which they affirmed by launching the war in Indochina, in the middle of the 1960s. This crowd was constrained by the fact that, though it had a deal with the Soviet government, a so-called détente deal, which went in various degrees: first with the British and Khrushchev, who made negotiations with London through Bertrand Russell, in the middle of the 1950s; later, with Khrushchev again, on the basis of the [Cuban] Missile Crisis, and so forth and so on. Despite these agreements, the Soviet power was real, and other nations of the world who resented U.S. arrogance, would sometimes align with, or play with the reality of Soviet power, as a way of playing against the threat of a utopian dictatorship from London and from Washington.
With the collapse of the Soviet system, over the period 1989-1991, they thought they were free. When the paperwork was signed on the agreements among Thatcher, Mitterrand, the former President George Bush, and Gorbachov, these fellows were convinced that the Anglo-American Empire would now be able to rule the world, or proceed to establish the changes which would eliminate the institution of the sovereign nation-state; which would institute global population control; which would eliminate all forms of competent education; turn the people, mentally, into human cattle, which we're seeing today; and thus, set up a military system, modelled most immediately upon the Nazi Waffen-SS, which would rule the world. And that is the essential background of the Middle East war.
You have, for example, in Israel, you have a group which is notpeople will sometimes say, the Israelis run the United States, through the Zionist Lobby. That's not true. The utopians run Israel through their asset, which is the followers, chiefly, the followers of Vladimir Jabotinsky, who is not only an avowed fascist, whose movement the Betar, was a fascist movement in the Mussolini sense, but a Jabotinsky who publicly offered to support Adolf Hitler's government, if Adolf Hitler would come to the term of dropping anti-Semitism.
So you had in Israel, coming more and more into power, especially in the late 1970s, you had the emergence of a fascist power, centered around the party called the Likud, in Israelwho are fascists, and actually, there's no difference between fascist in the generic sense and Nazi. It's just a matter of colors and details. So we created this thing in the Middle East. We had createdthe British and we had created in the Middle Easta situation of perpetual warfare, as a way of managing the Middle East.
This thing started in two ways: It started with the British during the period of the Napoleonic Wars, when the British were determined to intervene in the destruction of the Ottoman Empire, by finding some inside influences inside the Ottoman Empire to control the destruction. And they took the area of Palestine as one of the areas, key areas, for this intervention.
Then, toward the closing decades of the 19th Century, the time of the British Admiral, Admiral Fisher, the British had decided that they were going to have a war, a jolly war, a jolly world war, in which the British Navy would reign supreme. And to this end, they decided that what they would do, is build the so-called Dreadnought Navy of Fisher. And with this Dreadnought Navy they would power it, not with coal, but with petroleum, with oil. And that's when they stole the oil at the head of the Gulf. And it became the personal property of the King of England, later the Queen of England, and was then called British Petroleum, at a later point. One of the biggest assets of the British monarchy.
They decided then that the entire oil-bearing region of the Middle East would now become a basis for their control of world petroleum and world energy supplies, for strategic purposes. And therefore, the object was to take and chop the people into little pieces, to play one against the other, to create parties and factions against each other, and thus control this area of the world, which is of strategic significance. It is the junction point of Eurasia and Africa. It is the junction point from the Mediterranean into the Indian Ocean. It is implicitly, and has been historically, the strategic pivot of the world. So to control politics in this region of the world, was the strategic objective of the British Empire, and became, under Wilson, and under Coolidge, became the strategic objective of what became the Anglo-American Empire, in fact. And that's the genesis.
For this purpose, they needed to create a destabilization factor in the Middle East. Now initially, as you recall, the Israeli, the Jewish settlement in the Middle East was limited, and it generally involved a certain degree of cohabitation among Jews and their neighboring Palestinians, among whom they settled. But somebody said, that's no good, so they organized a movement to create some atrocities against the Jewish settlers in Palestine, and the Jewish settlers, through some Russians who were sent to them by the head of the Secret Police of Russia, Colonal Zubatov, created what became later Haganah, the defense organization, which was sent in there by the Russian Secret Police from Odessa, in response to the provocations which were orchestrated through British circles of anti-Jewish provocations, so the Jewish defense effort against the provocations which the British organized, became the basis for creating the seed of a permanent Arab-Jewish conflict in this part of the world.
And thus, by playing this and similar kinds of things to play parts of the Middle East against each other in order, so that the outside force, the imperial force, the Anglo-American force, would control the region. And thus control, not only, then, the petroleum interests, which were crucial, but to use the petroleum interests as a key part in controlling the world, not only the navies but the world in generaland also to prevent other things from happening. To create a factor of permanent destabilization in the strategic pivot, the Middle East, which connects Africa, and Eurasia, which connects the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. That's where the problem lies.
So what we face is not athis is not an Israeli question, it is not a Palestinian question. It is not an Arab question. It's a strategic question: Are we going to be able to live on this planet? Because if what is proposed now, the "Clash of Civilizations," of Samuel Huntington, of Bernard Lewis, of Zbigniew Brzezinski, of Henry Kissinger, and other swineif these things are allowed to continue, this kind of war, which they've got young Bush tied into right now, then I assure you, given the realities of the economic situation, given the military realities, given the political realities, you will not have civilized life on this planet for generations yet to come: a dark age for all humanity.
Are we willing, are we morally capable; do we have a President of the United States who's morally fit to be President; who's capable of making the decision tougher than Eisenhower made on the Suez crisis? The principle remains the same. The same principled decision we had to make against Hitler, to fight Hitler. Are we sufficiently aware of our responsibility as a nation-state, as a nation as such, are we aware of our responsibility to protect the people of this planet and ourselves, our own people, from this kind of horror, or are we not? If we are, we will stop this thing right now. Now let's get onto it.
Now, let's look at what the world crisis is.
In 1995, as an outgrowth of my participation in the Vatican conference on health care, some discussion came of what the problems of health care were, and I, my attention turned to the issue of the economic-financial aspect of the collapse of health care worldwide, the danger to human life as a result. So to try to make clearbecause you know, you had a great assortment of religious bodies, you had priests and others, nuns and others, who were in that conference, and they don't know much about economics. So how do I make clear to them, what the danger is, with which we have to deal, if we're going to have the resources needed to meet the health-care standards of humanity in this coming period?
So what I did is, I drew this Triple Curve, which was a representation, for pedagogical purposes, of what my studies showed the problems have been of the United States and the world, since about 1966. Because in 1966, the world economy changes character on the initiative of the British and the Americans, from what had been a producer society, a society based on production of wealth, based on educating populations and investing in order to increase the productive powers of labor, to a society which, like Ancient Rome, following the second Punic War, had become a parasite society. That is, Rome stopped producing for its own needsItaly. Rome instead reached out and looted neighboring countries, to supply the food and other things it required for its wealth, resorted to unproductive slavery inside Italy itself, and created a class of citizens who were nothing but parasites, much like our citizens today are becoming. Which is why they vote the way they do. Bread and circuses.
You don't think we're corrupt? You don't think that we, like the Romans, who were corrupt, go into large stadiums to watch bodily contact sports? We haven't got officially gladiators yet, except on the screen. What do you see on the screen, the television screen? You see mayhem. And you see that the kind of thing coming out of Hollywood, not only Nintendo games, which I'll get to, the kind of things which Joe Lieberman doesn't oppose, Sen. Joe Lieberman.
Now what happened with this change to a so-called consumer society, which is really an imitation of degeneracy of Ancient Romechange from a producer society to a consumer society? Well, what happened was, is we began to reduce, from about 1966 on, we began to reduce the per-capita physical output of our economy. We kept the economy going, how? By pouring money into the system, from the Federal Reserve and other sources, and from foreign sources, to pump up financial assets, and to give us the buying power to buy what we didn't produce from abroad.
We send our industries overseas to cheap-labor markets overseas. How do we buy our food, if we send the industry over there? How do we buy our goods from cheap labor markets abroad? We printed the money. How do we get the buying power to print the money to buy? Well, we use the money to build up the financiallike stock values and things like that, real estate values. The biggest bubble that's ready to pop in the United States is the real-estate bubble, mortgage bubble. A big giant bubble that's about ready to pop. And when that goes, the U.S. system goes, financially.
So these were the three tendencies. You would havethe physical economy was being stripped down, from about 1966 on, with the 1966-67 budget. From the same period, about '66, you had a rapid increase in monetary aggregates, which were initially explained as the need to finance the Vietnam War. You had, as a part of that, a shift of stock-market values into an appreciation of stock values. Then you had, in 1971, it became worse when Nixon shut down the economy. He shut down the monetary system which had worked very well for us in the immediate 20 years following World War II, and we went to a floating-exchange-rate system which wrecked everything, and this process accelerated. Then we went, recently, in the year 2000, to a second step.
Now what happened there, what happened to the United States, in particular, in the year 2000 was the same thing that happened in principle, in Weimar Germany in June-July of 1923. Now, Weimar Germany, postwar Germany, was being looted under the Versailles agreements. Assets were being stripped out of Germany to feed the French and the British. And the British and French owed us a great deal of money, to the United States, were paying the United States. So the system was the United States was the creditor of the world; the British and the French were living by looting the Germans. So the German economy was being stripped, asset-stripped.
So. what the German government did, was to print money. Reichsmarks, to generate a flow of cash, which was then used to pay off the British and the French, from 1921 on. There was no significant inflation, no exciting inflation, in Germany until late Spring and Summer of 1923. At that point, what happened was, is that the amount of money that had to be printed to roll over existing financial assets, was greater than the amount of financial assets rolled over. The result of that was, under conditions in Germany at that time, a hyperinflation which wiped out the existence of the Reichsmark in that form by October-November of that year.
What happened to us in the Summer of 2000, was essentially something similar. The amount of monetary aggregate which Alan Greenspanand what he's able to extract from abroadis able to generate, to keep the stock market and other markets from collapsing, is greater than the amount of financial assets they're supporting. That's why you see the kind of stock-market behavior you're seeing in the U.S. stock markets. The stock market collapsed; they had to accept maintaining the financial values of the stock market at a lower level, so the value of market indices dropped, as a reflection of the inability of the U.S. system to continue to pump money into the system at that ratebut they're still doing it.
Where they pumped the money, was into something which many of you know about. The phenomenon of cashing out. The way the economy is being sustained, apparently, today, is that mortgages are being artificially pumped up, through the mortgageFannie Mae and Freddie Mac and so forthwith the Federal Reserve System. The bankers who take mortgages are able to bundle these mortgages and dump them on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, for example. The bankers thus have the cash turned loose, they turn around and with the payments they receive, on their deposit of these bundled mortgages with banks, the banks now issue more credit. Then the real-estate operators in that areaas in the Northern Virginia area, around Washington Beltway, for examplethe real-estate dealers will get together with the bankers, and they'll pull an operation. They will then front an operation which boosts the indicated sale price of real estate.
Now the people who have, are already mortgaged, as the mortgagees, they now go to the bank and they cash out. They write the mortgage up, to reflect the new value which the realtors establish for these properties. They then take the case, and they spend that for food, clothing, and whatnotand for their credit card debt. And that is what this economy is based on.
If you look outside Washington, D.C., the Beltway in particular, what you will see is exactly this phenomenon. You see shacks, which are Hollywood set-style tarpaper shacks, built with a few sticks, some shrink-wrap, some plastic exterior, and some gold fixtures inside the place; these things are going for up to $500,000 to $1 million, apiece. They're nothing but shacks, sitting on top of a hillside, or on a plot. They're disgusting, their rear ends are sticking out on the highway, they're mooning youthey're junk, and people are living in them, and they are not, the person who's now, who's mortgaged, the person is now an instrument for creating the illusion of a flow of payments into the banks for the mortgages, and this illusion is now the basic value of the understructure of financial values in the United States. And it's about to pop. So, that's what happened then.
All right, now, the third one: These figures are '96 to 2001 figures, and these are figures that correspond essentially to what I'm talking about. The manufacturing employment collapse, which is a reflection of this; you have corporate profits fluctuating, you have the debt growthlook at the rate of growth of debt, and look at the rate of increase here of money supply, relative to growth of debt. So what you have, is an economy which is not producing wealth, is producing debt. Debt is being used as wealth, and the way it's being done is by pumping money, including money from Japan, from the Japanese yen and so forth. And that's how the economy is functioning.
All right. Now this is one characteristic of the system. There's another characteristic. In Germany, recently, in the city of Erfurt, which is in the eastern part of Germany, there was a killing which involved 19 victims, two students and 17 teachers, in a school, from a fellow who came in with a pump gun and pistol, and killed these people. Like Columbineone guy. Like Columbine.
Now, the Germans did a better job, a more honest job, than we've done in the United States, because Hollywood and Joe Lieberman will not tell you the full truth about what's going on inside the United States. Because Hollywood makes a lot of money out of people dying through things like Columbine. And Joe is very close to Hollywood. That's where his money comes from.
It's a problem, a part of the same thing: Years ago, back in the Korean War period, people like those who admired Sam Huntington up at Harvard, The Soldier and the State, complained about the kill ratio in World War II and in the Korean War. That the American soldiers were not firing their guns often enough, and they weren't killing enough people. And therefore, they decided to develop a program, a psychological program, to condition U.S. forces to kill more people, more rapidly, without thinking about it.
As an outgrowth of this, particularly in the course of the Vietnam business, the Indochina War, that was intermediate, the United States began to experiment more extensively with increasing the kill potential, not only of soldiers, and policemen, but also ordinary teenagers. So what you have, you have in the Nintendo games, for example, and related types of games, these games are intended to condition young people to become stone, mass killers. Now in case of Germany, they investigated this case, and other cases, and the police reports in the recent two weeks, have covered a lot of this: how he was trained; where he was trained; how it worked; how it was set up. And the fact that in Germany, which has about one-third the population of the United States, there are listed by these agencies, 170,000 young people who are potential killers of the same type.
Guess how many we have in the United States?
Now, look at it. What're we looking at? We're looking at Nintendo games; we're looking at Hollywood-produced entertainment, which has the same essential content. We're having the sexual entertainment of Hollywood, essentially the same content. We know this is going on. We have police departments that are being trained on that basis. We have these wild shootings by policemen, who've been trained to respond in this wayone of the great problems in urban areas. We have kids: a young kid picks up a pistol, never used one before in his life, turned into a stone killer. A marksman. Never fired a pistol before in his life. Picked one up and became a stone killer, one of these types.
Is this a national security risk? Is this a concern? Should we be aware of this? Should we be aware of what Hollywood represents, of what it's doing to us? Should we also be aware of something else: How many Americans know this is going on? How many American parents know their teenage and younger children are addicts of Pokémon or Nintendo games or similar games, which produce the same effect? What's their attitude about it? What's their attitude about Harry Potter? This British production, which induces people to believe that they can solve problems by exerting arbitrary, magical powers to bring about the destruction of people who offend them.
What about the Tolkien cult, the "Lord of the Rings" cult, which is a milder form, but the same thing? How many parents know this? You have people talking about pornography on television. Well, that's something. But what about this? Mass killing, and training your child to be, to kill you? You get two kids sitting out there in the room saying, "Let's go in and burn Mommy and Daddy tonight." This is the kind of culture we're creating. And thus, this kind of culture then reflects itself in what? It reflects itself in our military policy overseas, which is insane.
Now, let's look at what happened in the Middle East. Let's start with Warsaw, Warsaw 1943. Let's see what Sharon is actually doing, look at what we're up against. This is the title page of a report which is produced by a Nazi general of police, Juergen Stroop. Juergen Stroop was assigned by the Nazis, by Himmler, to go into Warsaw and clean up something which in 1943, the Germans, Nazis, wanted to clean up. Remember, the Nazis had taken those Jews they hadn't killed otherwise, in Poland, and they herded a great number of them as cheap labor, into Warsaw, into the Warsaw Ghetto. As a matter of fact, the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto were often chiefly occupied in producing things for the German military. In the Warsaw Ghetto, some people in the Warsaw Ghetto, decided to resist. And with a few carbines and pistols and ingenuity, they staged an effective resistance. At that point, the Nazis said: "How do we clean this thing out?"
And Stroop came up with a policy for eradicating the Warsaw Ghetto, the Jewish Warsaw Ghetto, and killing all the inmates immediately, or sending them off to camps where they died soon after.
Then he sent a message to Hitler, "The Warsaw Ghetto is no more." And he published this report.
Now, here's what you're looking at [PIX OF WARSAW GHETTO]. These are the typical kinds of scenes from that picture, being marched out of the Ghetto to death camps. Typical line-up. Another scene from the same place, same time. This is the Stroop report. This is what the Stroop report represents. Again, same thing. Warsaw. 1943. Jewish victims about to be killed. Sent off to concentration camps to die. 1943; Stroop report. Nazi. So forth and so on.
Now we get to the next one. Now let's look at Palestine today [PIX OF PALESTINE]. Think of the Stroop report. Palestine today. See? Again. What's the difference? What's the difference? It has the same purpose, is to get ridit's called the settlements policy, or the Eretz Israel policy of the Likud, which is the fascist movement in Israel. The idea was to make Warsaw Judenfreifree of Jews. Now, it's to make the West Bank free of Arabs, of Palestinians.
So a few people resist, among the Palestinians. The tanks march in. The killing goes on. There's no difference. Moreover, as Ha'aretz reported, the way in which this operation was designed, which was done under Sharon's direction, designed by the Israeli Defense Forces command, was modelled on a study of the Stroop report. To study the problem which the Nazis faced in dealing with the Warsaw Ghetto, and to say: We have the same kind of problem here, in Israel today. We're gonna clean 'em out. The same kind of process.
And when the President of the United States refers to Sharon as a man of peace, I'm sure that Sharon feels insulted.
But the point is: Why, then, does the United States support this? It's not because there's a Zionist Lobby. As a matter of fact, you have some of the worst anti-Semites in the United States, are the so-called pro-Armageddon Christian fundamentalists. They're anti-Semitic. Anyone who comes from the southern part of the United States knows that. These guys were, these are the real anti-Semites in the United States. These are the real Nazis. They think like fascists, anyway. You think these guys like Jews? No! They don't care about Jews. They don't care about that. What they care about is their policy. They're saying, look, if you can get the Rapture next week, I don't have to pay my rent next month! I mean, it's that bad. So this, we have created a society of madmen in these so-called "thunder cults," these thunder religious cults inside the United States. They're crazy. Psychotic, in effect. Not in the real world. They have begun a significant political force behind people like Pat Robertson in Virginia, for example. They're dangerous. This is the constituency, the constituency of hate, the Ku Klux Klan constituency. They have to have somebody to hate, somebody to kill. And they say, "Them A-rabslook like black people to me." They do, don't they?
Look, I'm an old man. I've been around this country for a long time. I know what goes on in this country. I was training troops in the Army back during World War II. I know what we were sweeping in from southern parts of the United States. I know what they said. I had to deal with them. We've got thatthat rot is deep in our country. And it's come forth. And it's used as a weapon. The purpose is to do what they're doing. You think these Nintendo games are some accident that crept up on us because of Hollywood? Yeah, Hollywood is doing it, doing that kind of thing. No, this was done by the U.S. military. It was done intentionally, to do what? To create among our youth, stone killers who can be recruited to be sent in various parts of the world, and do there, exactly what the Israelis are doing there.
No, it is not the Israelis who control the Zionist Lobby, who control the United States. It is an Anglo-American faction of this type, which has an instrument inside Israel, called the right-wing Likud, typified by Netanyahu, who's more dangerous than Sharon is. These guys are the killers who are doing the work of the Anglo-American Roman Legion mentality in the Middle East.
What do these guys want? Well, they come outIsrael cannot continue this operation. It will lose, if it continues this operation, for military reasons, which are well understood in some circles in Israel. Matter of fact, Rabin, the former Prime Minister, understood this very clearly. Israel cannot continue to do the kind of thing that Sharon represents, and Netanyahu represents, and survive. How then can Israel survive? Well, they really don't care. There's a Masada complex among some of these nuts. They'd rather go over the cliff, than be defeated.
But the key thing is Iraq. The key purpose behind this operation is to use this, to get a wider war going, to get the Clash of Civilizations war that Sam Huntington, Brzezinski and company want. So what you have here is a combination. The training and recruiting of large numbers of otherwise useless youth, psychotic youth or quasi-psychotic youth, by Nintendo games designed by the U.S. military, put into general circulation through the military, with cooperation of Japan's production of Nintendo games and so forth.
We are now taking from our population, our youth, our adolescent and other youth, we're turning a large portion of them into potential intended killers, who are trained killers, trained on their videogames, who then simply have to go out and get trained with actual weapons and do what they've been trained to do on videogames. Recruit them as soldiers and send them in various parts of the world, as part of a Clash of Civilizations war. Put the two things together, and you have the new Roman Legions, the new Waffen-SS, to send around the world.
So what we're suffering, our corruption, is a result of our policy, which many people in our country in high places know, but they haven't got the guts to say. And therefore, we come to the position that I have to say it, because there's nobody else. In almost any significant circle in Europe or the United States, you drop my name in a meeting and you're going to have a freakout. The place is going to go wild. Just say the name LaRouche; the whole place will go wild. So actually, that my impact inside the United States and also in Europe, and other places is rather large, especially so in the United States. So when I speak, people listen. They may not like it, but they listen. So I use the voice I have, and the influence I have, to try to force people to face the truth about the situation.
Now, how is peace possible? Implicitly, it should be obvious. We have the power in the United Statesand Europe is prepared to join the United States in such an effort, I can assure you; most of EuropeItaly, most of Germany, so forthare willing to support the United States in such an effort: to say that we are going to bring an economic basis for durability of peace in the Middle East. That we're going to do what was proposed earliertwo states, equally sovereign, side by side, living together in peace.
Why? Because, first of all, you've got to provide the water so that they can all have something to drink, something to live, and there isn't enough water. Some of the big impetus for war in the Middle East comes from a shortage of water in the aquifers. We're capable of generating large-scale, efficient desalination programs which can produce water economically, for drinking and other human purposes. We can overcome the water crisis of the Middle East. The Middle East is, because of its position, as a point of traffic of Africa, through Eurasia, a crucial point of transport from the Mediterranean into the Indian Ocean; is an ideal place for the development of industries which are on the line of transportation. You can take the Sinai, you could take whole parts of the Middle East, and you could develop them as areas of industrial and related development. Very relevant, to the relationship not only to Africa, in general, but the relationship of Europe as a producer of high-technology goods, into areas of Asia which desperately need infusions of high-technology goods.
So there is no basis, in either the interests of the people involved, or in the interests of Europe, or the United States, or Asia, to have this war go on. The purpose of justified war was to produce peace, was to bring about a state in which the person you fought against, would accept you, to live with you in peace because they saw the reason to do so. Because you gave them a reason to do so.
The purpose of war is not to kill; not justified war. The purpose is to bring about peace in the quickest possible way, for the most people. You want to bring about peace? We have the power to bring about peace in the Middle East, because we have not only the capability ourselves, but we have friends in Europe and elsewhere who would enthusiastically join with us in any program of reconstruction of the entire Middle East region.
Now, we don't have much as a President of the United States, but the man is President, and therefore, why don't we work on the problem of trying to create around him an environment where it is communicated to him, that the United States does have an interesthe may not fully understand it, but make it clear to him what that interest isthe way it was clear, in a sense, to Eisenhower, the way it was clear to Johnson, in terms of the civil rights legislation. That something has to be done, because it's in the interests of the United States. Tell him not to be afraid of the so-called Zionist Lobby in the United States. We'll take care of that for him. Do the job, and give him some good advisers, so that you say to himhow do you motivate a guy like George Bush? There's only one way to reach a fellow thatwith his limitations, and that is to say: "You've got a job here, it's an important job."
He says, "Yes, it is an important job."
"Well, do you want to be a success?"
"Yes."
"Do you want to be remembered in future generations as having been a great President?"
"Yes."
"Okay, you agree to that, we'll make you one."
And that's what we have to do.
Thank you.
ECONOMICS NEWS DIGEST
Time To Wake Up on the Economy: No 'Dracula' Recovery
In comments to collaborators at EIR magazine and EIW, 2004 Democratic Presidential pre-candidate and renowned economist Lyndon LaRouche stated that an April 30 Times of London article by Anatole Kaletsky (see following story) was the big story of the day, and that it should be shoved under the noses of American policy-makers and citizens. Tell them: "Here's what Europeans are saying about the fraud of the 'recovery' in the U.S., and the coming dollar crash."
Except for publications associated with LaRouche, the world's media are stubbornly refusing to put together the picture which has become evident over the past week: Dracula did not recover. The report of a 5.8% growth in the U.S. Gross Domestic Product is a fraud, just as the accounting numbers from Enron and other U.S. bubble corporations are fraudulent; the party is over. Both the European and the U.S. sides of the financial edifice of are collapsing. By May 1, the numbers already showed that all three major U.S. stock indices skidded downwards in April: The Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 6.7% for the month, as index companies' 1Q earnings slid 12%the biggest monthly loss since September 2001. The Nasdaq index lost 11% in April, while Dow[n] Jones lost 4.7%. Chief investment officer of MFS Investment Management Kevin Parke said "This is probably the most scared market I've seen in 18 years."
London Times: 'Is America's Ascendancy on the Wane?'
Top voices in the City of London are echoing Lyndon LaRouche's assessment that George W. Bush is becoming a "lame duck." This was the analysis of Anatole Kaletsky, a well-known London insider, in his April 30 column in the Times of London titled "Is America's Ascendancy on the Wane?" In keeping with the insane blackout policy of the Anglo-American establishment, Kaletsky does not mention LaRouche by name at all, but any informed observer can see the impact of LaRouche's international warning two weeks ago, that Bush's failures on the Middle East, and in every other policy, spells "lame duck."
Kalestky also notes that, although last week's U.S. economic figures show a growth rate of 5.8% in the first quarter (while, at the same time, the British economy grew at only 0.4%), Wall Street fell sharply, and the dollar sank to its lowest level since December, against the euro and the pound. The simple explanation is the classic case of "buy on the rumor and sell on the news." Kaletsky continues by saying that he suspects that the weakening of the U.S. dollar and Wall Street, after last week's economic figures, conveyed a more important message: that investors may be starting to lose faith in the long-term strength of the American economy, and are starting to take seriously the possibility of a reallocation of global capital towards Europe and Japan.
Kaletsky suggests that things are looking up in Europe and Japan, but that in America, long-term trends point mostly in the opposite direction. The Bush Administration has backed away from free trade and competitive principles with its protectionist concessions to the steel, textile, and farming lobbies. Macroeconomic policy is veering in a dangerous direction, with tax cuts and military spending putting additional pressure on both trade and budget deficits. U.S. politics is becoming increasingly uncertain, as President Bush blusters ineffectually against Israel, and fails to deliver on his threats against Iraq and the "axis of evil." It is even conceivable, Kaletsky ads, "that President Bush could become a lame-duck leader by the end of this year.
"Regular readers of this column may find this gloomy statement about America surprising," he continues. "Throughout last year I was at the optimistic extreme in my views about the U.S. economy, arguing that the U.S. recession would never have happened at all had it not been for September 11." But now, he says, "I now see reasons for short-term caution." After going through various factors which augur ill for the U.S., Kaletsky continues: "Regular readers may find my pessimism about investment surprising. Throughout last year, I argued against what I called the 'prophets of doom' who predicted that the technology investment binge of the late 1990s would precipitate a Japanese-style slump.
"In sum, there are several reasons to question the strength of the U.S. economy suggested by last week's figures," he says, concluding: "A shift in the relative attractiveness of the U.S., European, and Japanese economies would have big effects on currencies and financial markets. It could mark the end of the period of ascendancy enjoyed by the dollar and Wall Street for most of the past decade."
EIR: GDP Growth Is a Pitiful Coverup
The U.S. Commerce Department-released figures of a real, inflation-adjusted GDP growth of 5.8% for the first quarter of 2002 are a ludicrous attempt at a coverup of the true situation. According to the official figures, released April 26, GDP in real (1996 constant dollars), allegedly rose from $9.346 trillion in the fourth quarter of 2001, to $9.482 trillion in the first quarter of 2002. There are several forces that show that this GDP figure is completely faked.
1. Private-Business Inventories. During the first quarter, private businesses reduced inventories by $36.2 billion; by comparison, during the fourth quarter of 2001, private business had reduced business inventories by an even larger $119.3 billion (all stated in so-called 1996 dollars). Since business reduced its inventories, during the first quarter, by $83.1 billion less than it had during the fourth quarter of 2001, the Commerce Department counted this as a positive $83.1-billion contribution to GDP!
How? According to the fraudulent GDP accounting system, since private businesses were lessening the amount by which they reduces inventories, then, in an offsetting way, they must be building new production, even though the economy was not really building new production. The $83.1 billion, supposedly contributed by inventory changes, added 3.1% to the "growth" of the GDP, all by itself, during the first quarter of 2002. Thus, of the alleged first-quarter 5.8% GDP "growth," 53.4% derives from this inventory accounting.
2. The Commerce Department used so-called "hedonic adjustments" to inflate the alleged purchases of information-processing equipment, and computers and peripherals. Consider the actual amount spent for information processing equipment and for computers, and what was done after the hedonic adjustment:
Table 1($ billions)
*********** |
Actual Spending
|
***** |
Alleged Spending In 1996 Dollars, with 'Hedonic' Adjustment
|
__4Q/01 | __1Q/02 | _Change | ___ | 4Q/01 | _1Q/02 | _Change | |
|
|||||||
Information Equipment |
404.2
|
408.1
|
+ 3.9
|
567.4
|
577.7
|
+10.3
|
|
Computers |
79.8
|
83.4
|
+ 3.6
|
286.0
|
310.1 |
+24.1 |
Thus, there was an increase of $7.5 billion in the combined spending for information equipment, and computers and peripherals, in the real world during the first quarter of 2002, over the level of the fourth quarter of 2001. After adjusting for the real inflation rate, that increase would likely be zero, or a neglible amount. However, the Commerce Department used the "hedonic adjustment," under which, allegedly, computers and information processing equipment are more powerful, and therefore, this is counted as an alleged increase in production. One can see that, during the first quarter of 2002, businesses actually spent $83.4 billion on computers and peripherals, but the Commerce Department counts it as if businesses spent $310.1 billion on computers and peripherals, a 3.5-fold increase.
During the first quarter, using the fraudulent hedonic method, the Commerce Department said that information equipment and computers added $34.4 billion to GDP (when it actually added close to zero), which all by itself accounts for 1.3% of the 5.8% fake increase in GDP. (Nonetheless, even with use of the hedonic adjustment, the overall category of business capital spending fell).
3. Consumers spent $17.9 billion more for home purchases during the first quarter of this year, than during the fourth quarter of 2001, according to the Commerce Department. But, this is largely passing on of the process of the hyperinflationary housing bubble. The purchase of homes, by itself, accounts for 0.55% of the 5.8% fake increase in GDP. Thus, just by taking account of the three fraudulent above items, one reveals 5.0% of the so-called 5.8% GDP increase.
There are additional problems: the rates of inflation and of consumer spending that the Commerce Department uses to calculate GDP, are fraudulent. However, there is the underlying fraudulent methodological nature of the GDP by its own construction: more than two-thirds of GDP is services, and when services increase, that increases GDP; it fakes its accounting of real production, and it does not account for the immense breakdown of real infrastructure. Rather, as LaRouche has asserted, the real physical economy is plunging.
FAZ: Even Foreign Capital Inflow Can't Stem U.S. Deficit
On April 29, a front-page analysis article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung expressed fears that even massive foreign capital inflow cannot contain the U.S. government deficit, which will, in turn significantly affect the value of the dollar. The leading German daily voices strong doubts in the upfront news on the alleged U.S. recovery. FAZ writes that: 1) the fact that U.S. firms have replenished their emptied inventories, does not signal an upswing; 2) even with U.S. interest rates at their lowest level in years, corporations would not invest. The alleged U.S. upswing stands on "unsteady legs," the FAZ notes. Additional problems can be expected with the budget, which will run into a $100-billion deficit this year, because of the visibly dropping tax revenues, and because of expenses for the military mobilization.
But the bigger problem is the current account deficit, which rose above 4% GDP, coming close to the 5% ratio which, according to the Fed's own standards, would set off a red alert. The $440-billion deficit rests on foreign capital inflows, largely: 11% of all U.S. stocks, 21% of corporate shares, and 36% of all government bonds, are held by foreigners. Because of that, it does not come as a big surprise that there is fear on the markets of a weakening of the dollar, the FAZ reports.
Financial Times: Financiers Don't Know Anything About Economics
The jig is up: Financial analysts were wrong and bankers don't know anything about economics, reports an April 30 article, "The Trail of the Bears" by Fredmund Malik, in the German edition of the Financial Times of London. Like the Kaletsky article reported above, it scrupulously avoids any reference to LaRouche, but betrays his influence, in every word. Excerpts follow:
"The financial analysts have become quiet; the terror, that they were able to exert for a couple of years, on the basis of their supposed infallibility, doesn't work any more. It is being acknowledged that the financial economy and the real economy were being confused, in an unhealthy manner. The illusion of endless bull markets and the New Economy euphoria, are now showing themselves to be what they always were: a lack of professional understanding of economics, even though well packaged in the glamour of the Zeitgeist, lack of knowledge about the history of economics, youthful inexperience, not infrequently, sheer economic stupidity, casino mentality, pretending, and sometimes simple economic criminality...."
There follows a discussion of how an economy works. "This wayand only this waythrough correct management of a firm, can the economic result in the form of productive potential be achieved, be it in factories, or computers, be it in bricks or in bytes, in the form of goods and services, personal revenue [for the population] and social product, in the form of wages, taxes, interest and profits.
"This perspective aims at the real economic side of economic activity, instead ofwhat the shareholder value doeson the financial economic side. Through shareholder value theory, combined with the explosion of the stock markets, it has come to a confusion between the two sides of economic activity: the real economy and financial values. The inevitable result was also the confusion of the businessman [entrepreneur] and the businessman's tasks, on the one hand, with the investor, and his different task, to build up investments, on the other.
"Both are required; both fulfill important functions in a modern economy, but they follow completely different logics. Earlier, financial values and the real economy had a clear relationship: financial instruments served the needs of the real economy. Financial volumes therefore, until about the end of the 1980s, stood in a stable relationship (ratio) to world trade flows and world investments. Thereafter, the two developed so independently of one another that one has to talk actually about wo different economies...." In conclusion, the author cites Peter Drucker, who "put it, perhaps with a bit of exaggeration: Bankers know everything about money, but little about the economy."
New York Financial Reporters Criticize 5.8% GDP Data
"How can the economy look so good on paper, but feel so bad in the real world?" asks the New York Post's John Crudele in his column of April 30. "Answer: The paper pushers are out of their mind[s]." Crudele takes apart last week's announcement of 5.8% growth of GDP in the first quarter. In fact, he says, the economy is softening, not getting stronger, as shown by recent stats on existing home sales, durable goods orders, and the jobs index of the Conference Board. As to the 5.8% GDP growth: 3.2% was inventory build up. Plus there are guesstimates/assumptions built in, such as a 3.5% annualized rise in personal consumption (in reality, retail sales are falling), and 0.8% of inflation (CPI was rising at an unadjusted 4.8% annual rate over the past three months).
If inflation is taken into account, Crudele concludes, and don't count the inventory buildup, then economy was actually contracting in the 1st quarter. Another voice debunking last week's GDP data is New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, who writes, on April 30, "Hype Springs Eternal," in reporting the GDPwhile business investment has been declining. How did economic forecasters become cheerleaders for the "boom"? Krugman asks. He notes that Morgan Stanley's Stephen Roach, one of the few to defy the economic orthodoxy, has been ostracized; Roach signs his e-mail "From the wilderness." Krugman himself says that it's likely that the recovery will stall, it could be a "jobless recovery" with growing GDP, while unemployment stays high and profits low.
New Farm Bill Passes House of Representatives
A new "anti-free-markets" farm bill sailed through the House of Representatives May 2, with a vote of 280 to 149, in the form agreed to by the House/Senate Conference Committee. President Bush said he will sign it, as soon as Senate votes it up, which is expected next week. The bill is a rejection of the radical "markets-based" 1996 Freedom to Farm law (expiring in September), in that it extends and increases subsidies to producers of many farm commodities. Bush and lawmakers call it a "safety net" for farmers. Despite the lack of cost-of-production, or parity-based concepts, and despite the continuance of U.S. commitment to cartel imports for food supplies, the new bill is raising shrieks of protest from free-trade ideologues, and trading partners.
Cheerleaders for the Boom: Treasury Secretary O'Neill
U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill exhibited his usual lack of concern for what he has, in the past, called "the so-called current account deficit," at a hearing before incredulous U.S. Senators May 1, where the unspoken issue was the threat of a collapse of the U.S. dollar. O'Neill said that his "feeling" about this deficit, is that it is "financed by international capital flows, which have risen because of foreign interest in investing in the United States. As long as we continue to have the best investment climate in the world, people in other nations will send their savings here, where those resources fuel our economic growth and job creation."
Continuing in this vein, O'Neill said: "I believe we should strive in both the private and public sectors to always be the best place on earth to invest. As long as we are the most productive economy in the world, our nation will continue to be prosperous." Pursued on the current-account-deficit question, O'Neill cited a report by Alan Sinai, which claimed to show that any attempt to reduce this deficit "hurts the U.S. economy, as compared to leaving the current account deficit alone."
Most Senators were complaining about the elimination of industries in their states (Zell Miller about the timber industry in Georgia, for example), which they said could not compete internationally at today's high dollar-exchange rate. But John Corzine of New Jersey pointed to the possibility of sudden, catastrophic foreign disinvestment in the U.S., as the sort of problem to be feared. Senator Phil Gramm supported O'Neill's anti-interventionist mantra, with his usual kitchen-table economics on the value of "free trade."
The 'Recovery' Continues: U.S. To Step Up Borrowing
The U.S. Treasury will sell $33 billion in new Treasury bills, at its regular quarterly auction next week, and has scrapped, for the entire second quarter, its plan to buy back Treasury debt, Bloomberg reported May 1. The Treasury has to float the new debt, because it has a growing U.S. budget deficit, due in large measure to the collapse of the U.S. economy.
Biggest U.S. Bank Lending Collapse in 30 Years
The first-quarter collapse of bank lending was the biggest rate of decline in 30 years. Lending fell by 7.4% compared to the first quarter of 2001, according to the Federal Reserve. This follows a 6% fall in the last quarter of last year. This is the second-largest recent extended fall in bank lending, after that of August 1990 to December 1993. Bloomberg ascribes this to both the lower need for financing in the current business environment, and to fears by lenders that borrowers could default. Bloomberg also reports that Citibank, J.P. Morgan, Bank of America, and others, are "refusing to finance businesses that don't retain them for other services."
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Water Projects To Be Halted
Major General Robert H. Griffin, the civil works director of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (ACE), announced April 29 that the Corps will suspend work on 150 Congressionally approved water projects, in order to assess them for environmental impact and cost-benefit analysis. No work will go forward on these projects until the review is completed. This is the first time this has happened in the Corps' history, as work is being suspended on billions of dollars of worth of essential projects.
For the past few years, there has been a two-pronged assault on the Corps. On the one side are the fanatical budget-cutters like Sen. Robert Smith (R-NH), who has proposed legislation to "overhaul" and gut the Corps. Smith was instrumental, along with Bush's OMB Director Mitch Daniels, in forcing the recent ouster of the Corps' civilian chief, Michael Parker, who had complained bitterly about the budget cuts of Corps projects. Also pushing for gutting the Corps of Engineers, is the group Taxpayers for Common Sense.
On the other side, are the environmentalists, who want to tear down every dam and river project built since the Depression. In 2000, the Washington Post published a series of articles that targetted a $1-billion project to expand and improve the locks on the Mississippi River. The environmentalists and the Post also targetted a $165-million flood-control pump in the Mississippi Delta; a $690-million barge-canal widening in New Orleans; and a $311-million widening of the Delaware River.
In response to the Corps' announcement that it was putting under review and suspending work on 150 water projects, National Wildlife Foundation senior vice president Jamie Clark stated, "I'm just blown away. This is a terrific opportunity."
Children's Diseases Return with Global Economic Breakdown
Infectious disease experts who met in Milan, Italy during the week of April 25 reported that whooping cough Bordetella pertussis, the childhood disease which is often fatal, is making a dangerous comeback. A growing number of teens, adults, and elderly are carrying the disease and exposing unvaccinated infantswhich leads experts to believe that protection from immunization wears off after a few years, and that the bacterium has outsmarted vaccines used to control it for decades.
New outbreaks of pertussis in the Netherlands and Canada recently, indicate that the bacteria circulating today are different than those circulating in the past. Until immunization against whooping cough became available, it was one of the most frequent and severe illnesses for infants in many countries. In countries where vaccine is not used, it is a major cause of death in children, with an estimated 51 million cases and 600,000 deaths annually. In the United States, there were 7,796 cases in 1996, the highest annual number reported since 1967.
As EIR has reported recently, there is an acute, long-term shortage in the United States, of eight of the 11 standard childhood vaccines, including for DTaP, or diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis/whooping cough. The current U.S. supply of DTaP meets about three-fourths of the nation's need.
UNITED STATES NEWS DIGEST
Catholic Leaders Under Attack To Silence Criticism of Israeli War Crimes
On May 3, Lyndon LaRouche's Presidential campaign committee, LaRouche in 2004, issued the following press release.
LaRouche: When You Violate the Sanctity - - Of Holy Sites, You Provoke Religious War
May 3During his international webcast on May 1, Democratic Presidential pre-candidate Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. responded to a statement from a prominent Roman Catholic official, regarding the Israeli siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, with a strong warning that the attack on the Bethlehem holy site was aimed at provoking a religious war.
The official's statement referred to the siege as a "Calvary," adding that "The Pope is informed constantly and is most concerned. He called into the church, as you know, to express his solidarity with them and thank them for their 'Christian witness.'" The Pope seeks to affirm, he said, "the initiatives of dis-tension and dialogue in the Land of Christ and in every other place on the planet marked by violence and pain." The official described conditions inside the Basilica, which was placed under siege on April 2, "When Palestinians took sanctuary in this holy placeas churches for centuries have been the places of sanctuary." There are some 200 Palestinians and 40 Franciscan and Greek and Armenian religious, with very little food, water, electricity or medical supplies.
"The Church of the Nativity is one Calvary," the statement concluded. "Ramallah, Jenin, and other places of sorrow are under siege. We pray for cooperation between the Palestinians and Israelis, of course, who must concentrate all efforts to find a peaceful solutionbut the Israelis are the ones who must withdraw and end their siege.
"The few Christians who inhabit the Holy Land are wondering what are the other 2 billion Christians in the world, thinking? What are they doing?"
LaRouche's Reply
"First of all," LaRouche responded, "when you look at the Nativity Church, what you're looking atthink in terms of another place: Al Haram al Sharif, the Holy Mountain," he replied. "Remember that when Sharon started his last campaign for Prime Minister, he unleashed an attempted assault on one of the holy places of Islam, on the top of this mountain in Jerusalem. This ... particular location, was the crucial breaking point in the attempt to get a Camp David agreement, where [then Prime Minister Ehud] Barak, under pressure of this crowdthe Likud crowd (remember, he used to work for Sharon; Barak did, in the Israeli military)that, that was a breaking point.... Al Haram al Sharif, this is on the mind of the butchers, who are going at the Church of the Nativity. Because, remember that one of the conditions for Middle East peace, for avoiding a Clash of Civilizations war, for avoiding a Thirty Years' War scenario, is that the holy sitesthose of Islam, various confessions of Christianity, and Judaismare sacred: They are sanctuaries. That nobody can tamper with them.
"The condition of religious peace is a policy of sanctuary, which means that, in whatever agreement is reach, the sites of the holy places must be assured, of being able to function and be intact. And, whatever governments exist, they must respect that law. Without that, there is no peace. Anyone who attacks this, the Church of the Nativity, in this waywhich is not really an issue; it's not a military issue; not a police issuemeans that they want religious war."
Why Are America's Christians Silent?
He continued, "Now, the thing to put the pressure on, that's obvious to everybody in the area. It's obvious to people in Rome. What's wrong with the American Catholic Church? Why has the American Catholic Church allowed itself to be shut up, under intimidation of an orchestrated scandal against Cardinal Law in Boston, who would normally be the person speaking out on this issue, on behalf of the American Catholics? Why are the American Protestant churches not speaking out on this thing? Because they're afraid of some of their Protestants of the Bush variety? Of the Attorney General of the United States, perhaps, and his particular religious persuasion? Why is no one speaking out, in the United States? Where's this pack of cowards, called 'Christians' in the United Statesthey call them 'the Cowardly Lions,' not the 'Christians'?
"What are we doing? Have we looked the Catholic Bishop in the eye, and said, 'What are you doing about this?' Have we looked at Christian figures in the eye, and said, 'What are you doing about this? Do you believe in religious war? Because that's what you're promoting, if you don't do something about this. At least, if you don't take a stand against it. If you don't put moral condemnation on it. If you don't say, Anybody who says they're for peace, and tolerates this kind of thing, is a hypocriteor worse.' You know, sometimes, we can't do much. Sometimes, we can only make an appeal to conscience. And, that is particularly true of the religious profession: Often you have no authority; you have no power; you can't do anything, actuallyyou can't command, you can't write laws, you can't give orders, in that sense. But at least, you can appeal to conscience. And, if you don't appeal to conscience, what are you? You're nothing.
"And, this is where the pressure has to go. It has to go on the American Catholic Bishops, and others, not to submit to a dirty operation, run by the people, who targetted Cardinal Law in Boston at this particular time, when he would have been the normal channel, through which to issue a condemnation of what's being done against the Church of the Nativity. Realizing that what is being condoned, is not merely an insolence against that church: What is being condoned is a denial of the existence of the policy of sanctuary. And, if you deny the issue of policy of sanctuary, if you make holy, religious sites battlegrounds of religious warfare, you are going to have global, religious warfare. And, you won't have much left, standing, in any part of the world, if you start that kind of a war."
LaRouche in Dialogue with Cairo, Egypt on Mideast Peace Conference
At the May 1 international webcast by Lyndon LaRouche, the first question came from Dr. Selim in Cairo, Egypt, who said: Thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to talk to Mr. LaRouche. In Egypt, we have been following, with a great deal of interest, his comments on the deteriorating situation in the Middle East. And his voice has been, as a matter of fact, one of the few voices in the West that have been able to point out the basis of the conflict. And he was able to diagnose the Nazi tendencies of the government of Sharon in Israel. Now, I want to ask a question, concerning the suggestion by Mr. Sharon, supported by Colin Powell, to hold a conference for peace in the Middle East, after the massacre that he has commited in the Palestinian occupied territories. This proposal is being widely suggested in the Middle East, and, as I said, it is being supported by the American Administration. Also, I was surprised that the Japanese Foreign Minister came in support of this project. This project is widely perceived in Egypt, as an attempt to give Sharon an opportunity to get the political gains of the massacre that he has committed. What are your views on this proposal, Mr. LaRouche?
LaRouche's reply:
Well, if Sharon were anything but Sharonor maybe Netanyahuhe would have had the decency not to even suggest it. Because, if you wanted a Middle East agreement, if you took away one of the unreasonable demands, which was imposed upon President Clinton, which Clinton mistakenly accepted, by Barakthat the holy sites in the Middle East be tampered withthen, I think that Arafat agreed to about everything that the Israeli government wanted, at that point. Of course, the Israeli government, at that point, was not sincere. And, I think the reason that the question of Holy Mountain came into the discussion at that point it did, was to prevent from being reached. And, the pressure was on the President to make the mistake, of falsely blaming, publicly, Arafat for the failure of the agreement. The problem with the failure, was that of Barak, whose extenuating circumstances were that probably, he was afraid that the people who had killed Rabin, would kill him, too, from the Likud.
And, you have to remember that the murderers of Rabin, the Prime Minister of Israel, were never really prosecuted. The people who arranged the possibility for the assassination to occur, were never prosecuted. They were the Likud! So, the fascists killed the Prime Minister of Israel, and the policies of Israel were then under the control of the fascists, the Nazis. What is new? So, this simply that Sharon is under great pressure, from the United States, to give the United States some language, to convince the world that Sharon is something that Sharon would hate to be called: "a man of peace." I can't imagine that Sharon desiring to be a man of peace: It's like telling Adolf Hitler, "You're a man of peace." There's no difference! What's the difference between Hitler and Sharon? They're really, in the scale of history, of all the different varieties of criminals that come into a court: One is this and one is that, but they commit the same crime, and they should be tried for the same crime. He's a Nazi like Hitler, and he behaves like Hitler. Maybe not as smart, but he behaves like Hitler, otherwise. And, that should be said. If you want peace, there's only one basis for peace: The other mistake in Camp Davidand we should go back to Camp David, because Camp David represented a point in time, at which the agenda was on the table; the opportunity was on the table, to actually bring about an agreement, at least among the parties represented. Maybe not with the Likud, as represented back in Israel, but the parties represented.
The issue of economic development, including water development, should have been on primary public agenda in those negotiations. Because, how can you have peace, without water? Look at the operations of Israel against Syria, against the Golan Heights, against Lebanon: What were the causes of that war?Water! To steal the water, from the aquifers! Because there's not enough water in the present system in the Middle East, to sustain even the existing population. So, without desalination, there is no peace! Without economic evelopment, there is no peace! If you can't give the Palestinians, who have been brutalized, for decades, a sense of economic development, of opportunity for their children, what do the deaths of their children mean? Can you say to the Palestinian, "We'll give you something, in honor of your children, who were killed? To make their lives meaningful? That some outcome came from this, which makes their sacrifice worthwhile?" That's the condition of peace.
Sharon is incapable of offering anything, that any respectable human being, called a Palestinian, could decently accept; or any other human being in the same situation. It's up to the United Statesnot to say, "We want Sharon to make a gesture, to make Bush's stinking policy look good." We want to make Bush's continued present policy look bad; very bad. Bad enough, so that he wants to change it. That's the only chance."
Christians in America Mobilize To Defend Palestinian Rights; Holy Sites
Traditional Christian organizations in the United States are being blacked out of the media in their ardent appeals for the Bush Adminsitration and the U.S. Congress to take a firm policy against the Israeli attacks on Palestinian lands and on holy sites in the Middle East. While the so-called "Christian Zionist" and other rightwing fanatic organizations have been given big media play to give the appearance that "America supports everything Israel is doing," the truth is that Christians are anguished over the violence, and fascist actions by the Israeli regime of Ariel Sharon. A selection of the many statements issued to this point appear here, and will be reported in more depth in future issues of EIW.
"Palestinian Christians are treated as non-people," reported the Holy Land Christian Ecumenical Foundation (HCEF) on its website, which contains many accounts of the Israeli oppression and brutalization of Christians in the Palestinian territories. The HCEF also reports a number of thorough refutations of the Darbyite theological outlook which justifies the Israeli expulsion of Palestinians from their own homeland. One example, is article, excerpted here, by one Professor Abe W. Ata, who now resides in Australia. "One is struck," writes Ata, "by the indignity of the American Christian Right who conveniently drop from their memory tales of oppression experienced daily by their Palestinian Christian compatriots....
"Thirty-five years ago, one in five of the 'Arab' inhabitants of Palestine was Christian; now it is about 1 in 50. Once Bethlehem was 95% Christian; now Christians are a mere 15%. Why? What brought about this catastrophic decline?
"On the face of it, the answer is obvious. Christians are leaving Palestine for the same reason that any Palestinian leaves: They see no future. But this does not explain why they are more inclined to leave than their Muslim compatriots. Part of the reason, it seems to mea ninth-generation Christian born in Bethlehemis that Christian Palestinians are treated by the West as non-people. Few outside the Middle East know they exist.
"Another is the persistent denial of their plight by a frighteningly influential American Christian Right ... they were not given any thought by millions of so-called American fundamentalist Christians, particularly by those who have visited the Holy Land during the past few decades.
"Wake up Rev. Gary Bauer, Rev. Jerry Falwell and other setters of religious agendas.... How will you account in Heaven for your apathy to your very brothers and sisters' suffering...?"
Another example is the response to the Mideast crisis by the National Council of Churches, which assembled a delegation of 13 U.S. Church leaders to visit the Mideast April 16-27. They urged the Israeli government to cooperate with UN investigation of events in Jenin, and objected to the withholding of food, water and medical supplies to the Church of the Nativity. The group, which also delivered humanitarian supplies, included United Methodist, Lutheran, Episcopal, United Church of Christ, Presbyterian, Armenian Orthodox, National Baptist, and Syrian Orthodox church leaders. The delegation said it continually heard pleas from Middle East leaders for outside intervention in the crisis. The group noted the need for the United States to constrain the government of Israel to abide by UN resolutions, and to do so as a matter of the highest priority. A World Methodist Council leader said that if the United States can't bring an end to the crisis, he didn't know who could. The group met with several Arab leaders, including Syria's President Bashar Al Assad, Jordan's King Abdullah II, and Lebanon's Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, but were not able to arrange a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
United Methodist leader Jim Winkler said that what made him angry was the obvious attempt of the Israeli government not just to root out terrorists, but to destroy the civil infrastructure "to set back the possibility of a Palestinian state being set up and running any time in the near future." Their official report emphasizes "the urgency of the crisis in the region and our sense that the Middle East, and, indeed, the entire world, stands on the brink of catastrophe." They issued a seven-point statement which includes calling for an end to the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories, the cessation of building Israeli settlements, and dismantling most of the existing settlements, and addressing the right of return of Palestinian refugees.
More than 20 such statements from major Christian denominations appear on the website www.elca.org/story/me . Until recently, the churches generally tried to be even-handed in their criticisms of Israel and the Palestinians, but the events since Sharon's invasion of the West Bank have caused a dramatic shift. The General Secretary of the Middle East Council of Churches, Dr. Riad Jarjour, who hosted the recent National Council of Churches delegation, wrote an open letter to President Bush reflecting the approach to the President that Lyndon LaRouche discussed in his May 1 webcast. He said: "I appeal to you, Mr. President, to oblige Prime Minister Sharon to step back from the brink of horror and humanitarian abomination. He must set his personal and emotional agenda aside and begin to act as a mature moral agent for both the sake of his own people and the sake of people everywhere.... As a first step, he must make it possible for the Palestinian National Authority (all its flaws and weaknesses notwithstanding) to resume its role as a credible partner in dialogue and to desist forthwith from brutalizing and mauling Palestinian cities and centers.... You, Sir, are in a unique (if, perhaps, unenviable) position to interfere in the degenerate dynamic that now pervades geographical Palestine and all its people. You have it in your power to force the introduction of a process that will leave to ... peace. The Arab states have clearly shown their willingness to support you in such an initiative.... It will be a shame were history to record that, in the presence of manifest evil, and with rewards of goodness within reach, the President of the United States chose not to act."
FBI Chief Admits: Not a Shred of Written Evidence on Sept. 11 Planning
A speech by FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III and official records of the Czech and U.S. governments have proven that the U.S. has no written evidenceafter nearly eight monthsabout al-Qaeda, or any of the so-called identified "19 Islamic hijackers," having planned and carried out the Sept. 11 irregular warfare attack on the United States. Speaking on April 19 to a meeting of the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, Mueller said: "In our investigation, we have not uncovered a single piece of papereither here in the United States or in the treasure trove of information that has turned up in Afghanistan and elsewherethat mentioned any aspect of the Sept. 11 plot." The Washington Post article notes that "Law enforcement officials say that while they have been able to reconstruct the movements of the hijackers before the attacksall legal except for a few speeding ticketsthey have found no evidence of their actual plotting."
Lyndon LaRouche has said repeatedly that not a shred of evidence has been presented by the U.S. government to prove that Sept. 11 was carried out by Osama bin Laden. Although Mueller has the concrete proof that he has no proof, the FBI and others committed to the "Clash of Civilizations" imperial war line maintain, incredibly, that the lack of evidence proves the "professionalism of the hijackers." As LaRouche has noted, this so-called "professionalism," is nothing less than a highly sophisticated "inside job" using members of the U.S. military.
As Mueller's admission came out, another piece of "evidence" that has been used by the neo-conservative Empire crowd has turned out to be false. On May 1, the Washington Post reported that the U.S. has no evidence that 9/11 "suspect" and alleged leader of the suicide hijackers Mohammed Atta met with Iraqi intelligence, citing an unnamed senior U.S. official, and collating his statements with a public statement by FBI Director Mueller. The Czech government is no longer certain that the man at the Prague meeting was Atta. From the U.S. side, no evidence has been found that Atta left or returned to the U.S. during that period, despite an exhaustive search.
FBI Director Mueller said that hundreds of thousands of leads had been run down. The FBI had checked every record they could get their hands on, from flight reservations, to car rentals, to bank accounts.
Neo-Cons Dump Former CIA Official from Heading Probe of Sept. 11 Failure
There is no question that the joint Senate-House Intelligence Committee investigation into the "intelligence failures" of Sept. 11 is nothing but an impotent gesture, especially in the context of the Congressional lockstep to retail Israeli disinformation about Palestinian and other so-called Arab terrorism in two resolutions passed this week. However, the neo-conservative fanatics succeeded on April 29 in their long-desired goal of dumping Britt Snider, the former CIA inspector general who was to have run the joint House-Senate Intelligence Committees' investigation into the Sept. 11 massive intelligence failures, resigned "under pressure," just weeks before the investigation was to have started. The type of pressure, and the specifics of the firing have not come out yet.
The Committee is headed by Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla), and Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala)who had opposed Snider's original appointment since last February, claiming that Snider was "too close" to CIA Director George Tenet. The House Intelligence Committee is headed by Porter Goss (R-Fla), who is touted as the CIA Director (favored by neo-cons) if Tenet can be ousted. The neo-conservative mafia, the Christian right, and the American Jabotinskyite Zionists have been on a crusade against Tenet, blaming him for the Sept. 11 attacks, and also claiming that he is anti-Israel.
One of the causes for their attacks are sections of the Tenet Plan that demand that Israel not attack any offices, buildings, prisons, police stations, or other facilities of the Palestinian Authority. Snider was opposed by neo-conservative clown Frank Gaffney, who runs the small, but well-financed Center for Security Policy. Gaffney would be virtually penniless without the constant infusion of funds from the nexus of rightwing foundations: Olin, Bradley, Scaife, and Smith Richardson, which are profiled in the LaRouche in 2004 Special Report, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Sept. 11.
Congress for Sale? Backs Fascist Actions of Sharon Regime
At his May 1 webcast address, Lyndon LaRouche replied to one question about U.S. institutions' uncritical support for Israel's crimes, including ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, by saying that Congress members apparently are wearing a sign on their backs which states "This Space for Rent."
Indeed, the combination of the power of the neo-conservative "Big Brother press," and the financial power of the Christian Right/rightwing Israeli lobby alliance, has cowed Congress and the Senate to the degree that they have supported massacres modelled on the Nazi actions against the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943. As EIW has reported, the resolutions come directly from the April 27-29 conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Council (AIPAC), described by observers and some attendees as a frightening "Nuremberg Rally."
On May 2, the House of Representatives debated and passed a rabid resolution calling fro the destruction of the "Palestinian terrorist infrastructure," by a vote of 352-21, with a significant number of Congressmen voting "present," but not having the courage to vote "no." The rabid resolution was introduced by House Majority Whip Tom Delay (R-Texas) and Zionist Lobby "Golem," Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Calif) on April 18, 2002.
The resolution is filled with outright Israeli intelligence lies and disinformation, which many members of Congress know to be untrue. The six-page House Resolution 392, which can only be summarized here, states that: "Israel's military operations are an effort to defend itself agains the unspeakable horrors of ongoing terrorism and are aimed only at dismantling the terrorist infrastructure in the Palestinian areas."
In terms of this infrastructure, the Resolution claims that:
"Whereas Palestinian organizations are engaging in an organized, systematic, and deliberate campaign of terror aimed at inflicting as many casualties as possible on the Israeli population, including through the use of suicide terrorist bombers ... [and]...
"Whereas the al-Aqsa Martyr's Brigades, which is part of Arafat's Fatah organization and has been designated a 'Foreign Terrorist Organization' by the United States Government and other Fatah forces have murdered scores of innocent Israelis... [and]
"Whereas forces under Yasser Arafat's direct control were involved in the Palestinian Authority's thwarted attempt to obtain 50 tons of offensive weapons shipped from Iran to the Karine-A, an effort that irrefutably proved Arafat's embrace of the use and escalation of violence... [and]...
"Whereas the Israeli Government has documents found in the offices of the Palestinian Authority that demonstrate the crucial financial support the Palestinian Authority continues to provide for terrorist acts, including suicide bombers ... [and]...
"Whereas Yasser Arafat continues to incite terror by, for example, saying of the Passover suicide bomber, 'Oh God, give me a martyrdom like this'... [and]...
"Whereas the process of Israeli withdrawal is nearly complete: Now, therefore, be it Resolved, that the House of Representatives
"1) stands in solidarity with Israel as it takes necessary steps to provide security to its people by dismantling the terrorist infrastructure in the Palestinian areas ... [and]
"2) remains committed to Israel's right to self-defense and supports additional United States assistance to help Israel defend itself ... [and]
"4) condemns the ongoing support of terror by Yasser Arafat and other members of the Palestinian leadership;
"5) demands that the Palestinian Authority at last fulfill its commitment to dismantle the terrorist infrastructure in the Palestinian areas, including any such infrastructure associated with PLO and Palestinian Authority entities tied directly to Yasser Arafat;
"6) is gravely concerned that Arafat's actions are not those of a viable partner for peace."
In introducing the Resolution, House Majority Whip Tom DeLay said: "We must support Israel as they dismantle the Palestinian leadership that fosters violence and hate.... Arafat and his Authority have been an impediment to peace and a threat to the emergence of moderate Palestinian voices. During four decades of terrorism, Yasser Arafat has proven his total contempt for human life. And "Golem" Tom Lantos said: "This bipartisan resolution forcefully expresses the strong support in Congress and the nation at large for Israel in its fight against Palestinian terrorism. The United States must stand shoulder-to-should with our democratic ally Israel in our shared struggle to eradicate terrorism. There is no neogitating with terror, it must be defeated."
Not to be outdone by the Tom Delay initiative, Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn) created his own resolution that is being presented as the "soft cop" version of the same Delay ranting. Lieberman, who introduced Israeli fascist Benjamin Netanyahu to the U.S. Senate on April 10, stresses in his resolution that the Israeli "fight against terrorism" is identical to the U.S. "fight against terrorism," following Sept. 11. Knowing where the "big bucks" that he needs for his 2004 Presidential campaign, are, Lieberman is on a campaign attacking President George W. Bush for "going soft" on terrorists because of his "concessions" to the Palestinians.
On April 14 in Orlando, Fla., in the midst of the Israeli massacres in Jenin and other places, Lieberman attacked Bush at a Democratic Party fundraiser. He admonished Bush by saying, "the Bush Administration has publicly and persistently pressured Israel not to do exactly what we ourselves have done to fight terror in Afghanistan.... The President risks losing the moral high ground and compromising our own war on terrorism.... How can we credibly continue to search for and destroy the remaining al-Qaeda terrorists in Afghanistanand all over the worldwhile demanding that the Israelis stop doing exactly that in the West Bank. The answer is: we cannot....
"We need a consistent foreign policy that doesn't bend to pressure.... And those who fight these terrorists are friends of the American people. No ifs, ands, or buts. And that is why America cannot rest until the most dangerous anti-American terrorist is the world, Saddam Hussein, is removed from power in Baghdad. And that day can't come to soon."
O'Neill: $400-Billion Current Account Deficit Not a Problem
Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill Showed his usual unconcern with what he has in the past called "the so-called current account deficit," at a hearing before hostile, skeptical, and incredulous Senators on May 1.
The real issue here, is the threat of a collapse of the U.S. dollar. O'Neill said that his "feeling" about this deficit, is that it is "financed by international capital flows, which have risen because of foreign interest in investing in the United States. As long as we continue to have the best investment climate in the world, people in other nations will send their savings here, where those resources fuel our economic growth and job creation. I believe we should strive in both the private and public sectors to always be the best place on earth to invest. As long as we are the most productive economy in the world, our nation will continue to be prosperous."
Pursued on the current-account deficit question, O'Neill cited a report by Alan Sinai, which claimed to show that any attempt to reduce this deficit "hurts the U.S. economy, as compared to leaving the current account deficit alone." Most Senators were complaining about the elimination of industries in their states (Zell Miller about the timber industry in Georgia, for example), which they said could not compete internationally at today's high dollar-exchange rate. But John Corzine of New Jersey, more correctly pointed to the possibility of sudden, catastrophic foreign disinvestment from the U.S., as the sort of problem to be feared.
Rumsfeld: U.S. Troops Overstretched; $$ Needed, Lots of It
Newsweek reporter John Barry reports in the issue dated May 6, that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld secretly warned that "it is time to aggressively reduce our current commitments." Although Rumsfeld has publicly blasted the officers who have warned about the U.S. military being stretched thin, in a March 13, 2002 memo to the secretaries of the Army, Navy and Air Force, Rumsfeld himself said: "The entire force is facing the adverse results of the high-paced optempo [number of operations] and perstempo [the strain on troops]." He warned, "We are past the point where the [Defense] Department can, without an unbelievably compelling reason, make any additional commitments." And, "It is time [to] begin to aggressively reduce our current commitments."
Why did Rumsfeld rebuke General John Ralston and Admiral Dennis Blair for saying in Congress what he had earlier said himself? Clearly, he had gotten slapped down for what he had saidhow and by whom, would be interesting to know. Newsweek reports that the U.S. Budget Office will only cover $3.5 billion of the $5.3-billion cost, in the current fiscal year, for calling up 83,000 Reserves and National Guard. Rumsfeld thus decided to send 14,500 of the reservists back homethus increasing the strain on remaining troops.
MIDEAST NEWS DIGEST
Arafat: Rabin 'Was Killed by These Fanatic Groups Who Are Now in Power in Israel'
Upon the lifting of the Israeli siege of his headquarters on May 1, Yasser Arafat gave a press conference denouncing the Israeli government, saying that the killers of slain Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin are now in power. "I can't forget myself the peace of the brave which I had signed with my partner Rabin, who was killed by these fanatic groups who are now in power in Israel."
Arafat, speaking on CNN, also said, "I hope that you have heard President Mubarak, who is worried like me over these barbarian activities from the Israeli Army."
Portions of Arafat's substantive statements to various media are reported here. Speaking to CNN, Arafat said that, "What is important now is this big crime which has happened against this holy sacred place for the Muslims and for the Christians, the Nativity church. You have followed what they have donetwo big places have been burned, in the Franciscan area and in the Orthodox room.... I am asking you personally. This happened the same some years ago, if you remember, against the Al Aqsa Mosque, now against the Nativity Church. Who can believe it, in the whole world?"
Arafat revealed that the "negotiations" conducted by the U.S. and the British to lift the siege was not isolated to his release, and the IDF was already violating the discussion "in progress." He said a settlement of Bethlehem "was [in progress]. The [process] which I hadstarted with the American consul and the British consul; [when they] came to me, I was not discussing only my headquarters. I was discussing with them the Nativity Church before my headquarters. And we agreed upon that, the two sides and the two places would find a solution for it. And you [photographed] what they have done against me here. Three explosions. Three buildings have been destroyed. But I remained silent, because for me it makes no difference even if they had destroyed this room in which I am working. What is important for me and for the whole world [is] this Nativity Church and what they have done against the statue of St. Mary.
"You remember the whole world moved when the Buddha statues had been [destroyed] in Afghanistan. The whole world moved. Why are they not moving against what is happening at this holy sacred place for the whole Muslims, for the whole Christians, all over the world?"
CNN: What pressure are you prepared to bring to bear on militant groups to get them to stop their attacks on civilians? What pressure, specifically?
Arafat: "Not to forget, forget myself, the peace of the brave that I had signed with my partner Rabin, who has been killed by these fanatic groups that are in power now in Israel. But for this, I have to follow up, not to forget the peace of the brave that I had signed with my partner Rabin.... I believe that if there is a will, there is a way. And not to forget, the majority of the Israeli people are with the peace of the brave. And our people are the same, and [I am] the same, and the Arab summit conference declared the initiative and adopted the initiative, which had been declared by Crown Prince Abdullah and became an Arab initiative. And the resolution of the Security Council, and the resolution of Kofi Annan for this committee, and for the observersand for this we are in need of a quick move from His Excellency and the superpower now....
"And we cannot forget that some [Israeli] soldiers and some high officers have refused to follow up and to continue these dirty crimes."
CNN: Let me ask you, sir, what do you intend to do in the morning? What's your first act?
Arafat: "First of all..., I will go to see what has happened in all of our cities and towns, the disasters, the crimes, the losses. All our infrastructures have been destroyed. All our infrastructures...." CNN: What about travels in the Arab world and elsewhere, in Europe?
Arafat:This is not the first item for me.... The most important thing, I have to go see and shake hands with my people who have suffered, who have faced the crimes, the disasters.... It became Jeningrad instead of Stalingrad. You remember something like that? Stalingrad? Now, Jeningrad."
War Crimes Detailed by Palestinian Emissary to U.S.
In a special report called "Burying the Truth," about the Israeli government blocking of a UN Security Council mandated fact-finding commission to investigate Jenin, CNN television interviewed PLO Ambassador to the United States Hassan Abdel Rahman who said that Israel is engaging in "unacceptable behavior," which is a violation of international law. He said that the refusal shows that Israel "committed obvious war crimes in Jenin," and by lying to the UN and ignoring the Security Council resolution, Israel is "creating anarchy in the international system."
When the Israeli UN Ambassador "countered" that the reports of a "massacre" were "hyperbolic" and extremist and "alarmist," saying that "only 47 Palestinian gunmen were killed," Rahman calmly and firmly reported that "it is not the numbers" but the acts that Israel committed. He said that:
*The use of Apache helicopters in areas of high civilian population is a violation of international law;
*The blocking of humanitarian aid for more than 14 days to save the wounded, and provide medical care is a violation of international law;
*To destroy homes with bulldozers right over the heads of the occupants is a violation of international law. Indicating how nervous the Sharon government is about Israeli culpability for war crimes, Shimon Peres, who has often been reported as shouting in Cabinet Meetings that the IDF and Israeli leaders will be "going to the International Court in the Hague" as accused criminals, on Israeli and international televsion. Peres said that if the UN fact-finding mission were allowed into the camps, then it would set a dangerous precedent because "we can't have every Israeli soldier travelling with a lawyer."
Portions of the Peres statement were carried on CNN TV.
Israeli Military Operation Far From Success
Israeli military commentator Reuven Pedatzur, writing in the May 1 Ha'aretz daily, declares that the Israel Defense Forces "Operation Defensive Shield" (known to EIR readers as Operation Warsaw Ghetto) was "far from a military success." Far from its declared goal "to defeat" terror, the military claims it will "minimize its dimensions." Pedatzur writes that even from a military operational standpoint it was a failure: "But even the military activity did not always excel at efficiency and professionalism....
"The IDF's explanation that not using the air force and artillery was the reason for what went wrong in Jenin, cannot hide the fact that the Army was forced to fight for more than 10 days and pay a high price in human lives to take over a refugee camp where a few dozen fighters were hiding. The failure was inherent in faulty planning, improper use of forces, and lack of foreseeing the results. If the decision was made to occupy a refugee camp, why do it after more than a week of fighting, thereby giving the Palestinians ample time to prepare for the battle...?
"It makes no difference that the IDF managed to occupy the campin any case the battle will go down as the Stalingrad of the Palestinian nation. And that doesn't count the insensitivity and basic lack of understanding on the part of those who spent more than 10 days preventing humanitarian aid from reaching the camp. So far, nobody has explained what made the IDF decide to prevent doctors from entering Jenin to treat the wounded and evacuate the corpses. Not only could the UN fact-finding mission, and tales of a massacre, have been avoided...."
The IDF's incompetence went so far as not supplying food to its own troops. "When the post-operation inquiries take place, another matter for investigation will be the scandalously unprepared reserve force. Why wasn't there food for the reservists? Why, more than a week after being drafted, did fighters have to make do, at the end of a day's combat, with candy from the Shekem canteen? If that's the level of logistical readiness in the army, there's reason to worry."
Pedatzur then writes that far from the destruction of "terrorist infrastructure", the IDF "destroyed the civil infrastructures, like electricity, water and computer systems, as well as the political leadership. Will that prevent terror in the future? The IDF answer came without hesitation: on the contrary, the motivation to harm Israelis and take revenge has only grown." He then warns that the IDF will go into Area A again and this time also go into the Gaza Strip. "If the IDF indeed goes into Gaza, then what happened in Jenin will be by comparison a pleasant hike."
Israeli Reservists Call for Pulling Out of Occupied Territories
On May 1, the Israeli daily Ha'aretz revealed that 20 Israeli reserve paratroopers who recently took part in the so-called "Operation Defensive Shield" addressed a letter to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon calling for a unilateral withdrawal from the occupied territories, the building of a fence separating the West Bank from Israel, and the evacuation of isolated settlements. Initiated by Ronen Wolfson and Shahar Baruch, they called their request "an emergency call-up for the responsibility of the prime minister and the Israeli government."
They speak of themselves as "reservists who received emergency call-up orders to Operation Defensive Shield and took part in the fighting ... we enlisted in the cause of protecting the state out of belief that it was our moral duty to repel the terrorist attacks and topple its infrastructure.... But it is clear to us that without a political plan and supplementary steps, this operation will lose its effectiveness, and won't achieve its goals. If the government of Israel continues with its vague policies, the day is not far when we will be called to Operation Defensive Shield 2, and over and over again. With that kind of repetititve operation, it is not difficult to imagine that faith in our military will fade, as will support for a government that lacks leadership and a political horizon."
They conclude, "Prove to the nation, to the soldiers and reservists that you not only know how to send soldiers to war, but also know how to be the nation's emissary for peace." The 20 signatories showed up at the protest tent set up across from the Prime Minister's office by the unilateral withdrawal groups called "Coming out Winners" and the Council for Security and Peace.
'Israel Will Likely Kill Arafat'
So said a leading Israeli historian close to the peace camp, who has researched Sharon's activities, and the Jabotinsky faction more generally; he spoke in great detail in an interview with EIRNS in Europe on May 1. "The basic premise of the Sharon government, is that the Palestinian Authority is a terrorist organization, and that Arafat is the arch-terrorist. The American Administration has been won over to that view, or at least Sharon is certainly convinced of that. So, what I think will happen, is that Arafat will be released from his confinement in Ramallah, but then, there will be a major suicide bombing killing Israelis, and there will be a shoot-out, and in the shoot-out, Arafat will be killed."
Options for Implementing 'Jordan Is Palestine' Expulsion Underway
There are several "live options" for the "Jordan is Palestine" plan to go, full-scale, into operation, Israeli military historian Martin van Crefeld told EIR. In recent weeks, a major article by van Crefeld had been published in the London Sunday Telegraph and other major newspapers in Australia and Holland, laying out, in great detail, what this mass expulsion of the Palestinians from the West Bank would look like. In his published article, which actually had been written some weeks ago, van Crefeld had assumed that such an Israeli move would be mounted under the cover of, and simultaneous with, an American attack on Iraq, which Israeli planners were expecting as early as this summer. Now, he has doubts that such an Iraq attack would occur so soon, because of reticence about doing so, both in elements of the American Establishment, and in the American population.
But that is not likely to hold back Sharon et al., he insisted: "There might be other opportunities. For example, we could see the collapse of the Hashemite regime in Jordan, with or without our help. There is a Palestinian majority there already, and the regime could just collapse. A second possibility is, what would happen if there is a big act of terrorism in Israel, in which not several, but several hundred people are killed? For example, a lorry full of explosives crashes into a skyscraper in Tel Aviv, something like what happened to the World Trade Center in 1993. Then, Sharon would simply say, 'To hell with the Americans,' who are, after all, the only ones that count."
But van Crefeld by no means excluded, that the Americans would back an Israeli "Jordan is Palestine" operation, under certain conditions. "What if there is a massive new act of terrorism in America, another Twin Towers? Or what if we read some days from now, in the New York Times, that there was a vast Saudi plot, cooperating with bin Laden, for Sept. 11? Under such circumstances, the Americans would probably not only tolerate such a Sharon design."
He was asked then, given everything he was saying, what was the possibility that Israel itself might engineer a giant act of terrorism in the U.S., to bring about the desired result? He might be upset to be asked that, but.... "Why should I be upset? I don't believe it, we got burned doing those kinds of things in the 1950s [with the Lavon Affair, when Israeli agents got caught setting off bombs in Egypt against American installations, in order to get the Americans to move against the Nasser regimeed]. But what I can tell you, is that if you go onto the Internet Chat Rooms here, you can read ordinary Israelis, regularly, suggesting that the Mossad deliberately commit a giant act of terrorism in the U.S., make sure the Arabs are blamed, and use the opportunity to make the Americans support whatever we do. These are crazy ideas, but you can read them on the Internet."
'U.S. Envisions Blueprint on Iraq, Including Big Invasion Next Year'
The "utopian" plan for a war with Iraq that Lyndon LaRouche has frequently cited as proof of the insanity of the "new imperial war" faction of the Anglo-American establishment was detailed in the April 28 issue of the New York Times.
In an article headlined, "U.S. Envisions Blueprint on Iraq, Including Big Invasion Next Year," unnamed senior officials told the newspaper that the Administration is concentrating on a major air campaign and ground invasion, with initial estimates of 70,000-100,000 or even up to 250,000 troops. (Other than troops from Britain, no significant contribution of allied forces is anticipated.) This was the thinking after the Administration had concluded that a coup would be unlikely to succeed, and that a proxy battle using local forces would be insufficient to topple Saddam Hussein.
Any offensive will probably be delayed until early next year, allowing time to create the right military, economic, and diplomatic conditions. The earlier plan to attack this fall now seems less realistic, after conflict in the Middle East has widened a rift within the Administration, over whether military action can be undertaken without inflaming Arab states, and prompting anti-American violence throughout the region. There are, of course, serious questions as to where U.S. forces could be based. As to any war plan itself, the military expects to be asked for a more traditional approach than the unconventional campaign in Afghanistan.
But "the modern American military has never fought the kind of dangerous and complicated urban battles that might be needed to oust the [Saddam] Hussein government." Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld are said to maintain that Arabs would publicly protest, but secretly celebrate Saddam Hussein's downfall. But at the State Department and among some at the White House, counter-arguments are posed that efforts to topple Saddam Hussein would be viewed by Arabs as a confrontation with Islam, destabilizing the entire region, and complicating the broader campaign against bin Laden and al-Qaeda. On May 3, new revelations emerged about some intense infighting in the Bush Administration over the war on Iraq and the "war against terrorism."
After pushing for months for a conference to turn the Iraqi National Congress, and other opposition groups into a second "Northern Alliance" in order to conduct "Afghanistan II" in Iraq, the neo-conservative mafia inside the Bush Administration moved to block millions of dollars for a conference for the opposition, because the money would go to Middle East experts who had criticized Israeli actions in the West Bank.
WESTERN EUROPEAN NEWS DIGEST
Zepp LaRouche Calls for International Protocol Banning Violent Videos
Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp LaRouche, the headof the BueSo Party in Germany and a candidate for the Parliament, or Bundestag, from Berlin-Mitte, issued the following, second statement in the wake of the Erfurt, Germany school massacre:
After Erfurt: - - We Need an International Protocol - - For the Banning of Violent Videos!
In the wake of the gruesome massacre committed by 19-year-old Robert Steinhaeuser, responsible citizens can only have one reaction: Germany must call upon the United Nations to establish a protocol for a worldwide ban on the production and sale of films, computer games, and videos glorifying violence. This is necessary, because this "New Violence," as manifested in the massacre in Erfurt, is by no means a "sociological accident" or a "freak incident." Rather, it is a worldwide phenomenon, one which represents as grave a threat to human civilization, as does the outbreak of a new life-threatening epidemic disease.
It is certainly true that here in Germany, public discussion of the background of this incident has been conducted in a more honest and competent manner than occurred, for example, in the United States, following the massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton. A good number of psychologists and educators here have been pointing out the direct connection to violence-glorifying videos and computer games, and many of them have been rightly calling for the outlawing of such products. Nevertheless, that alone is not enough, because only once we have truly understood the nature of this "New Violence," will we be able to protect our children effectively against it.
For example, take the case of those who argue that these sorts of horror film and killer computer games only lead to the commission of violent acts, in cases where the children and youths involved are already at risk, whereas the majority of "normal" young people can consume these media products without undue harm. Such people are, in the best of cases, simply deceiving themselves. Because in factand we will have more to report on this later onthese computer games were originally developed in the United States for use by the military, for the purpose of breaking down the inhibitions which new recruits would experience when ordered to kill enemy troops. Namely, it had been recognized that during World War II and the Korean War, only about 15% of all soldiers had been willing to shoot at the enemy with the intent to kill. But by using computer games involving repeated shooting at virtual enemy troops, the act of killing could be turned into a routine, mechanical activity, unhindered by any burdensome moral scruples.
So, if this de-sensitization works with military and police personnel (and we should recall here the infamous Diallo case in New York, when police fired 41 bullets into an unarmed African man), why wouldn't these games have the same effect on children and teenagers, who, after all, are even more impressionable than adults are? The ugly reality is, that even if the sale of such satanic computer games were banned tomorrow, this would not repair the damage that has already been done. We must therefore ask ourselves: What has brought a considerable part of our society to the point of tolerating ever more perverse forms of violence in such "action movies" as Terminator (Robert Steinhaeuser's favorite movie), and in such games as "Doom," "Quake," and so forth? What is wrong with the axioms in the minds of many adults in our society, who notice only now (if they notice anything at all) that these products are bestial, and that they aim at producing a bestial outcome?
The idea of molding soldiers into blind obeyers of orders and eager killing machines, comes out of the utopian military doctrine of such people as Samuel Huntington, as he set this forth in his book, The Soldier and the State. It runs directly contrary to the tradition of Lazare Carnot and Scharnhorst, who developed the concept of the citizen-soldier, whereby the officer in particular should be of exemplary character, with an especially refined sense of the General Welfare, one who should be able to think for himself, and be able to creatively carry out the assigned objective. Huntington, on the other hand, promotes the idea of the soldier who never permits himself to think, who never involves himself in political affairs, and who is thus part of a military hermetically sealed off from the "chaos" of civilian life. Huntington's concept is, in fact, nothing new: It is merely the old form of the Roman imperial legions, whose role was to secure the Empire's borders; Huntington also explicitly mentions, in this regard, the international Waffen SS.
Already back in 1972, the U.S. Surgeon General warned that there could be no doubt about the connection between violence in the media, and violent acts committed by children and young people. Shortly thereafter, the American Medical Association warned that violence in the media was the greatest health care emergency in the U.S.A. And that was 30 years ago! Has anyone in the meantime been restricting Hollywood and the producers of these computer games? Thanks to this failure, the only way one can enter a American school building today, is by walking through a metal detector, not to mention the armed policemen patrolling the hallways. In American cities such as Washington, an average of three murders are committed every day, with most of the victims being young people killed by "random shootings"i.e., shootings in which the killer and the victim do not even know each other.
If one takes stock of the past three decades' history in the United States, it becomes quite evident that the responsibility for this phenomenon of youth violence must be placed at the feet of those military and elected officials who, despite overwhelming evidence presented by medical and psychological experts, and despite the empirical experience of a widespread de-sensitization among youths, did nothing to halt this process of degeneration. Indeed, one cannot help but get the impression that this process was intentionally encouraged. After all, how could global military operations be carried out, if it weren't for a steady supply of emotionally immature, trigger-happy young recruits?
With the massacre in Erfurt, American conditions have now come to Germany. Only six days afterward, "unpolitical" youths went rioting in Berlin, including 13-year-old girls who were hurling stones at policemen. And if Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit thinks he can get away with claiming that with "only" 180 police injured, this was a "successful strategy," then perhaps he should go out there himself the next time! There is simply no doubt that the phenomenon of the "New Violence"i.e., of a violence whose cause does not lie exclusively in the criminal energies of individual perpetrators, but rather in the cultivation of socially tolerated media violenceis a massive problem here in Germany, too.
This plague of violence-glorifying horror films and computer games has now spread around the globe. The fact is likewise inescapable, that this has led to a dangerous state of spiritual desolation and demoralization among a large percentage of those who consume these media products. And whoever attempts to deny that fact, is acting like the drug addict who claims that his drug consumption has no negative effect on his capacity to think: How could he, after all, have any memory of the brain cells which he's already lost?
A ban on violent videos, and cooperation with responsible representatives of the media, are correct and necessary measures. But these alone will not be sufficient to block access via the Internet or across national borders, nor will it succeed in reversing the effect of those products which are already circulating among our young people, and generally in the population. Once it is understood that it is not a one-time freak incidentalbeit the most horrible incident to datebut that on the contrary, this New Violence is a just as much a threat to human civilization, as a global outbreak of cannibalismonly then does it become clear that we must react in a far more fundamental way.
Therefore, Germany should propose that the United Nations establish an international protocol for the banning of these violence-glorifying videos.
And, secondly, we will only be able to heal the damage that has already been done in our country, by returning immediately to an educational policy based on the Christian-humanist image of man, in the tradition of Wilhelm von Humboldt. That is the only way we will be able to give our children and young people the spiritual strength to reject these bestial conceptions on their own.
Erfurt Massacre: Humanity Cannot Afford Killer Games
What follows comes from a recent EIR by German correspondent Rainer Apel.
The school massacre in Erfurt, Germany on April 26, has been a brutal wake-up call to Germans about the crisis of education and the loss of human values in today's liberalized society.
That Friday, when students of the Johannes Gutenberg School in Erfurt were studying for their final exams, a former student, 19-year-old Robert Steinhaeuser, stormed into classrooms, firing at teachers, killing 13 of them. He also shot and killed two students, a school secretary, and, after police arrived on the scene, a policeman. Confronted by a courageous teacher at the moment that he had to reload his pistol, Steinhaeuser had a psychic collapse, allowing the teacher to push him into a nearby room, and lock him up. Steinhaeuser then shot himself.
His weapons were a Glock 17 pistol, which can fire 17 shots from one magazine, and a pump-gun (which he did not use). He fired 40 shots from the pistol, and he had 500 more rounds of ammunition in reserve, which police found in a black bag Steinhaeuser had left not far from where he shot himself. He had apparently prepared for a much larger massacre. But already, this one, with 17 victims, was the worst in Germany in the last five decades.
A Killer-Game Obsession
As preliminary police investigations determined the day after the massacre, it was not a wild, run-amok incident, but had been prepared systematically over nearly a year. Steinhaeuser had engaged in intense target practice at an Erfurt gun club, but worse, his mind had been conditioned by his obsession with killer video/computer games, such as "Ninja," "Doom," and "Counterstrike" (produced by the notorious firm Sierra Entertainment). When he carried out his massacre, he was dressed in black with a black mask, imitating the Ninja warriors found in such killer games. A police raid on Steinhaeuser's room found many such killer video games, some downloaded from the Internet, on his personal computer. Steinhaeuser also had plenty of hate comics, as well as hate-promoting heavy metal music. One of those heavy metal songs contains a phrase that says, "Kill your teacher with a pump-gun."
Where Steinhaeuser purchased his weapons, and whether the purchase was legal, based on a weapons permit issued by the Erfurt gun club, remained unanswered several days after the massacre.
The release of these preliminary facts by the Erfurt police, instantly sparked a debate on the need for a total ban of such killer video/computer games. Unlike February 2000when Helga Zepp LaRouche, founder of the Schiller Institute and chairwoman of the BueSo (Civil Rights Solidarity Movement) party in Germanyfirst issued a call for such a banher re-issuing of that call in the wake of the Erfurt massacre has found the German public more open now to engage in such a debate.
Zepp LaRouche put the call for a ban in the broader context of the education issue: She called for a return to an in-depth Classical education system that would educate the youth in a manner appropriate to human beings. Faced with mounting pressure from parents, teachers, youth experts, judges, and politicians from all parties, the government has begun to consider a ban on such killer games. The Chancellor and the governors of the 16 German states were scheduled to meet for a first "summit against violence," in Berlin, on May 2.
Three important points have been addressed in the debate so far, outside of the "task force against youth violence," which Zepp LaRouche set up in February 2000:
1. In an interview with SFB radio on April 29, Uwe Wetter, vice president of the German Association of Psychologists, pointed out that the killer games are not at all "toys for the youth of today," but were designed to train policemen or military pilots in specific combat methods. This included training a person to overcome the psychological resistance to killing another human being. Whoever plays these games frequently, is exposed to the same effects as the policemen or soldier who is trained by these games, Wetter said. This implies that a ban on such killer games must hit the designers and producers, to dry out that blood-curdling swamp.
2. In a radio interview with the Berlin Inforadio station on April 29, Elke Monssen-Engberding, director of the Federal Agency for the Protection of the Youth, said the crucial point is that the German Constitution (in its first two articles) recognizes the dignity of human beings and the integrity of the human body. Therefore, society simply cannot allow practices that openly violate those provisions. A ban on killer games is clearly mandated by the Constitution. Her agency banned "Doom" several years ago, and is expected to decide on a full ban of "Counterstrike" by mid-May.
3. Imposing an efficient ban, would have to include action against Internet providers that offer "users" (addicts, one should rather say) the downloading of such killer games, and the formation of virtual "teams" on special websites. German Minister of Family and Youth Affairs Christine Bergmann conceded, in an April 30 interview with the daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung, that the kind of indexation and ban of killer games that the government is considering would, as far as the Internet is concerned, be "mandatory only for German providers." Asked about American Internet providers, she said: "This is a problem. What we view as violence-glorifying here, the Americans view as freedom of speech; therefore they see no reason not to place that on the Internet." If U.S. authorities are not cooperative, German authorities would have to block U.S. providers from operating on German Internet territorythis is technically possible.
'Modern Reforms' of Education
One has to add a fourth point: Measures against youth violence must include longer-term initiatives that improve the moral standards among the population in general, including among the parents. The gradual liberalization and degeneration of the German education system, which has occurred over the last 30 years of "modern reforms," must be reversed. If access to the humanist works of Classical literature is blocked, if video/computer games and television programs continue to construct a virtual reality for the population, the battle for human values, for humanity, cannot be won. You cannot have a dialogue among people if their predominant interaction proceeds via computer-based, brutalized virtual realities.
The numerous teachers, parents, and education experts who have made this latter point in the wake of the Erfurt massacre, have so far not yet called for a return to the Humboldt system of Classical education which prevailed prior to the late 1960s. But the campaign that Zepp-LaRouche initiated for the revitalization of the Humboldt tradition, is certain to find supporters in Germany. This way, the nationwide shock about the Erfurt school massacre can yield something positive.
Interview: David Grossman
Media Violence Gives Children 'The Skill and the Will To Kill'
Here we reprint an interview with Lt. Col. David Grossman (ret.) that originally appeared in the EIR in March 2000. Grossman has co-authored a book, Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill: A Call To Action Against TV, Movie & Video Game Violence, with Gloria DeGaetano (New York: Random House, 1999). EIR's Jeffrey Steinberg and Dennis Speed heard Colonel Grossman speak at a conference on "Shock Violence," sponsored by the New Jersey Psychological Association, in Princeton, New Jersey on March 4, 2000, and then interviewed him by phone on March 7.
A former U.S. Army Ranger, Colonel Grossman now helps to train military, police, and emergency rescue units throughout the United States. He is a former professor at West Point and the University of Arkansas, and he is now the director of the Killology Research Group, in Jonesboro, Arkansas.
Steinberg: I'd like to start out by asking you about a new book that you've co-authored, called Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill. It's a very provocative title. Can you give us a summary the book, and tell us something about what prompted you to write this book?
Grossman: Well, my first book is on killing. It's being used as a textbook worldwideit's about enabling killing, in the way the military does it. And, at the end of that book, I put a short section on how the techniques that the military uses to enable killing, are being used indiscriminately, without the safeguards, on our children.
And, that really, really generated an enormous amount of attention. The book is being used as a textbook in law enforcement, and in military communities, and in peace studies programs around the world. It just draws in topics from different directions.
Well, then I ended up livingI retired from the Army in February 1998, and in March 1998, two boys, 11 and 13 years old, gunned down 15 people in my hometown. In the absence of anybody better qualified, I was one of the trainers of mental health professionals on the night of the shootings, and helped do the debriefings of the teachers, the next morning, 18 hours after they'd been in the kill-zone of the largest schoolyard massacre in American history.
And, after what happened there, I found myself to be pretty motivated to make a statement about that. I ended up speaking at a couple of peace conferences. I had an article that was incredibly well-received, an article of mine, called "Teaching Our Kids To Kill." I just got an e-mail today that says that the German translation of it has 40,000 reprints sold. It was printed in Christianity Today, Hinduism Today, U.S. Catholic, and the Saturday Evening Post; and translated into eight different languages. Just Christianity Today, alone, as of last summer, has sold 60,000 reprints of it. It really laid the foundation for us to understand that this is a topic that people are open to.
We started writing this latest book. My co-author, Gloria DeGaetano, who is one of our nation's leading media literacy experts, had written a previous, wonderful book on this topic. And, then the Littleton shootings happened, about a year later, and we were in the process of marketing the book. All of a sudden, the level of interest in this topic just skyrocketted. We were able to sell it to Random House, their Crown Books division, and they've been very, very supportive. I got the first royalty statement that came out in mid-October, and just in October-November-December, we'd sold about 20,000 hardback copieswhich is not too bad. We are continuing to crank along at a real high rate. I just looked it up on Amazon.com, and we're about number 1,700 out of 4 million titles in the world: That's not too shabby.
We're out there touching some lives and making a difference with this book, and we feel pretty strongly about it. Certainly, I was honored to read the review that EIR wrote on the book, and I certainly appreciate your very kind and perceptive words about it.
Steinberg: In the opening chapter of the book, you state, pretty definitively, that every major serious study, medical and otherwise, that's been done for the last 25 years or so, shows that there is a very high correlation between exposure to violence in the media, and the rate of growth of violence in society. Could you say something about that?
Grossman: It's important to point out, up front, that we're talking about visual violent imagery; that, the written word can't be processed until age 8, and it is filtered through the rational mind. The spoken word can't be processed until age 4, and it, too, has to be filtered in the forebrain before it trickles down to the emotional center. But, these violent visual images: At the age of 18 months, a child is fully capable of perceiving and imitating what they see. And, at the age of 18 months, these violent visual images, whether they be television, movies, or video games, go straight into the eyes, and straight into the emotional center.
The body of research on this is simply stunning. And, we catalog it in the back of our book, in a chronology of findings on this topic. The American Medical Association [AMA], the American Psychological Association, the Surgeon General, the National Institute of Mental Healthit just goes on, and on, and on. There's a major Unesco study on the topic. Just last week, I got an International Committee of the Red Cross study on the topic, identifying how a worldwide culture of violenceand especially some horrendous barbarism in warappears to be directly linked to media violence. As the United Nations study put it (not a direct quote), but essentially what the Unesco study said in 1998 was, that a worldwide culture of violence is being fed by media violence. And, in particular, American media violence is being exported, like some Colombian drug lord, exporting death and horror, to put money into the hands of a few.
It's so pervasive, it's so overwhelming, that those who argue against it, are like those who argue that tobacco doesn't cause cancer.
Now, there is a body of research out there, that is horrendously irresponsible; essentially, this group of individuals, who are funded by the media, who have sold their soulit's kind of like the people who deny that the Holocaust happened. And, it's pretty scary.
You and Dennis just happened to be in a conference there, in New Jersey, when we had a closing panel. I had presented that morning, and this one guy stands up, and says: You can't prove media violence makes violent crime, and it's never been demonstrated, and it's not true. Well, that was the New Jersey Psychological Association, which is a member of the parent organization, the American Psychological Association.
In 1992, the national body of the American Psychological Association said, "The scientific debate is over." In 1999, the American Psychological Association said, to argue [that media violence does not cause real violence], is like arguing against gravity. So, for the man to stand up, in front of thisthe New Jersey Psychological Associationand claim it, is like standing up at B'nai B'rith and claiming that you can't prove that the Holocaust happened, and it never happened.
Steinberg: The guy should have had his Ph.D. confiscated on the spot!
Grossman: I certainly think he should have! And, it's like this, guys: If you ask the tobacco industry about the link between tobacco and cancerup until very recentlywhat would they do? They'd deny it. They'd lie. In the face of the Surgeon General and the AMA, they'd lie. They'd bring out their pet scientists, their stooge researchers on a leash, and try to deny the undeniable.
Well, in the same way, if you were to ask the media industry about the link between their producttelevision, movies, video gameswhat would they do? They would lie. In the face of every major scientific and scholarly body in the world, they'd bring their pet scientists, their stooge researchers on a leash, to come out there and claim otherwise.
But, it truly, truly, is as though somebody was trying to claim that the Holocaust didn't happen, or that tobacco doesn't cause cancer. And, it's pretty sad stuff.
Steinberg: Let's take up the question of the point-and-shoot violent video-games. I was very struck by some of the examples that you gave in the book, that some of the training simulators that are being used by the U.S. Army and by the majority of law-enforcement agencies are virtually identical to some of the most popular arcade violent point-and-shoot video games. Tell us how this works.
Grossman: One of the things you've got to understand is this: We discovered, in World War II, that the majority of our soldiers were not able to kill in combat. And, the fundamental flaw was in our training. We gave them wonderful weapons. We had magnificent Americans. We put them in the front lines, and we had trained them to shoot at bulls-eye targets. Now, when no bulls-eye appeared in in front of them, the training failed them! The vast majority of the time. Under stress, with fear, and other dynamics, the training simply failed them.
What we know today, is, that if we want a soldier to be able to use the weapon that we've issued himI mean, God forbid, that a soldier, a police officer, should take a human lifebut, if we give them the weapon, then we have to acknowledge a responsibility to give him the ability to use that weapon. We realized that shooting at bulls-eye targets was not where it was at. If we take a pilot, we don't just suddenly put him in an airplane, and have him fly that airplane after having him read a manual about it. We put him in flight simulators first. Even in World War II, we had a vast array of data about simulators, in which they could rehearse, rehearse, rehearse the action.
Well, we realized that what we had to do was create killing simulators. And, instead of bulls-eye targets popping up in front of our soldiers, we needed man-shaped silhouettes. Now, these are extraordinarily effective training devices. In recent years, we realized that, we don't even have to use a real gun; it's useful, it's effective to use real guns on real ranges, and we still do that, but it's quite expensive. There's a lot of lead, there's a lot of environmental problems. We need vast acres of land, we need lots of money. And, we began to realize that we can just simply use simulators.
Now, these simulators, again, are vivid depictions of human beings, and you're practicing shooting at human beings. You're imitating the act. You understand, that there is a vast chasm, between being a healthy American citizen, and being able to take a human being's life. And, in order to cross that chasm, you've got to put a stepping stonesome kind of intermediate step, in which you rehearse, rehearse the action, and wrap your mind around the act.
Well, we've got these devices now, we use for the military. The Marine Corps licensed the right to use "Doom," as a tactical training device. The Army took the Super-Nintendoremember the old Duck Hunt game? We replaced the plastic pistol with a plastic M-16, and, instead of ducks flashing on the screen, it's man-shaped silhouettes.
Now, we have several thousand of those that we use as training devices around the world. These are effective.
Now. What I tell people is this: The goal is, to allow our soldiers to respond properly. If our soldiers cannot fire, or if our soldiers are frightened, bad things are going to happen. Same thing with our police officers. So, I submit, that this kind of training is a needful thing: If we acknowledge that we have a need to give soldiers and police officers weapons, then we have a responsibility to give them the skill and the will to use those weapons.
But, good people can disagree on that. The thing that nobody should disagree on, is the fact that, if you're even remotely troubled that we provide these kind of killing rehearsalskilling simulatorsto soldiers, and police officers, how much more infinitely horrendous is it, that we provide them indiscriminately to children?
I was called as an expert witness by the government for the McVeigh case. I never had to go to the stand. I did some consulting, put together a couple of papers for them. What had happened was this: The defense was trying to claim that the military and the Gulf War had turned Timothy McVeigh into a killer. The reality is, that the data are just the opposite: The returning veteran, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, is less likely to be incarcerated than a non-veteran of the same age. And, certainly, the off-duty police officer is infinitely less likely to be incarcerated than a non-police officer of the same age and sex.
There are powerful safeguards. What are the safeguards? Well, number one, we do it to adults. Number two: The discipline, the discipline, the discipline, that's ground into your soul. The point is, that these same video gamesthe law-enforcement community uses what's called the FATS trainer, Fire Arms Training Simulator. They spend many, many hours in front a large-screen TV with human beings in front of them. And, when that human being commits an act, under which, by the law, it is legal and necessary to shoot, then, and only then, does that law enforcement officer shoot. And if he hits his target, the target drops; if he misses the target, the target kills him.
As I said, these are powerful devices that have great safeguards built into them, in which the goal is to teach under what circumstances you can shoot. And, we'll talk later about the Amadou Diallo case, and how important it is, that we refine this training to better levels. And, this overkill dynamic used to happen a lot more often.
The point is, the law-enforcement officer stands up with a FATS trainer, and he holds a gun in his hand, he pulls the trigger, the slide slams back, he feels the recoil; if he hits the target on the screen, the target drops; if he misses the target, the target shoots him.
Well, go to the video arcade, and play a game called "Time Crisis." You hold the gun in your hand, you pull the trigger, the slide slams back, you feel the recoil. You hit the target, the target drops. You miss the target, the target shoots you. This is a murder simulator. It is no longer a killing simulator for individuals who, reluctantly, under proper circumstances, we acknowledge, maybe have to kill. It is a device placed in the hands of children, whose only social characteristic is to give him the skill and the will to kill.
And, it's important, too, to understand, that whatever you drill in under stress, is coming out the other end.
Back in the old days, when we had revolvers, our cops would get out on the range, we'd fire six shots. Because we didn't want to clean up the range afterwards, we'd flip out the cylinder, drop the six expended cartridges in our hand, put the empty brass in our pocket, reload, and keep going. Now, obviously, you'd never do that in a real gunfightyou got better things to do. But, guess what? We found out that real cops, in real gunfights, would end the gunfight with a pocket full of brassand no idea how it got there. The point is, that whatever you do in trainingjust two times a year, the cops would qualifyand six months later, they're in a gunfight, and they end the gunfight with a pocket full of brass, and no idea how it got there.
Whatever you train to do, under stress, is coming out the other end. That's why we do fire drills. That's why we do flight simulators.
Well, when the children play the violent video games, they're drilling, drilling, drillingnot two times a yearevery night, to kill every living creature in front of you, until you run out of targets or you run out of bullets. Now, I usually stand in front of an audience, and I say to the audience, "Look, if I decide that she's one point, then he's one point, and he's one point, and he's one point, and he's one point, and she's one point, and she's one point.
"Now, what's my goal? To rack up as many points as possible."
So, when these kids start shootingwe're reasonably confident that in Pearl, Mississippi, and in Paducah, Kentucky, and in Jonesboro, Arkansas, these juvenile, adolescent killers set out to shoot just one person: usually their girlfriend, in one case, maybe a teacher. But, then, they kept on going! And, they gunned down every living creature in front of them, until they ran out of targets or ran out of bullets!
And, afterwards, the police asked them. They said, "Okay. You shot the person you were mad at. Why did you shoot all these others? Some of 'em were your friends!" And the kids don't know.
But we know. Like a pilot in a flight simulator, like a child in a fire drillwhatever is drilled into them, is coming out the other end. And we are drilling these kids to be killers, and to associate pleasure and reward with it! And to cheer and to mock, when the vivid depictions of human death and suffering occur in front of them. And, the result is simply staggering and horrendous, in the irresponsibility of this industry to provide [children with] law enforcement- and military-equivalent training. It is the psychological equivalent of putting an M-16 or a Glock pistol in the hands of every child in America.
Speed: There are a few things that immediately come to my mind: For example, let's take the killing in Flint, Michigan, with the 6-year-old. In your book, you make the point that killing is not natural.
Grossman: Yeah. A lot of people want to kill, and throughout history, we've had a tiny, tiny handful of people who are able to kill. But, for the average, healthy member of a society, it's not natural.
I'm an Army Ranger. They didn't just throw an M-16 in my hands, and suddenly, I'm an elite killer. It took years of training. We don't just create a SEAL team member. We don't just take somebody, and put 'em in a blue uniform, and throw a submachine gun in his hand, and suddenly, he's a SWAT team member. It takes years and years of training, to give people the skill and the will to kill.
Well, when these kids kill, we need to be asking ourselves hard questions. Because this is new, Dennis. This is a new phenomenon. In Jonesboro, an 11- and 13-year-old boy gunned down 15 people. When those kids turn 21, they will be releasedthere's nothing on earth we can do to prevent it. Because there were no laws on the books to deal with adolescent killers at that age.
Now, this 6-year-old. They thought, in Michigan, they had it licked: The brought the law down to 7. They said, even 7 year olds can be classified as adults: And now, we've got 6-year-old killers!
And, just days after the Flint, Michigan shootings, there was a kid in Washington, who took a gun off a high shelf, loaded, and jacked the ammo in the gun himself, and went ouside, and fired two shots at a couple of kids. When the police asked him where he had learned to load the gunthinking, I think maybe, that the father had irresponsibly given that skillthe kid very innocently said, "Oh, I learned it from TV."
The kid in Flint, Michigan: The sheriff went and told the father, who is in prison, about it, and the father said, "As soon as I heard about it, chills came down my spine, because I knew it was my boy. Because my boy," he said something to the effect, "had really, really, liked the violent movies."
Now, here was a kid that was already whacked-out on media violence; whose father had sat, and watched, and cheered, and laughed, and mocked, human death and suffering. And, usually, at 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, the children are horrified by this stuff. But, if you really, really work at it, by the age of 6, you can teach 'em to like it! And that is really, really despicable.
The Japanese, in World War II, used this kind of classical conditioning, teaching people to associate pleasure with depictions of human death and suffering, to enable some horrendous atrocities. They used Pavlovian conditioning: They took their young soldiers, that had never been in combat, and had them witness these horrendous massacres, butchery of these innocent Chinese, British, and American prisoners. And, the young soldiers were made to laugh and cheer and mock the suffering. And, later that night, they were given the best meal they'd had in months, and the sake is shipped in, and the comfort girls are shipped in; and, like Pavlov's dogs, they're taught to associate pleasure with human death and suffering.
I'd ask, how many of your readers have seen "Schindler's List"? And, I'd ask if there's anybody out there who laughed at "Schindler's List." I would hope not.
Well, they played "Schindler's List" to a high school outside of Los Angeles, and they had to turn it off, because the children were laughing and mocking at what was happening. Steven Spielberg came out to confront that behavior, and to speak at that high school, and they laughed and mocked him! Maybe that's just California; maybe they're all wacko. Well, in Jonesboro, Arkansas, the shootings happened in the middle school; right next door was the high schoolthe big brothers, the big sisters of the little kids, who were shot to bits. And, one of the teachers there in the high school told me that, when she walked in and told her students aboutthey'd heard the shots, they saw the ambulances pulling upshe told her students, and their response was: They laughed and they cheered.
One little girl wrote me from Chatham High School, in Littleton, Colorado, right next to Columbine High School, theretheir rival schoolshe said, that when they announced over the loudspeaker, in that high school that somebody had opened fire and gunned down a bunch of people at Columbine High School, she said the cheers were so loud, that they echoed through the hallways, and you could hear them in the office, way down the corridor!
Our children are being taught to derive pleasure from human death and suffering, and that's what happened to this little 6-year-old. Now, I'd bet you money, that this 6-year-old, also played the violent video games
Steinberg: Yes, I can confirm that, from some of the news coverage.
Grossman: And, again, why do I know the kid played the violent video games? I'll tell you why! Because he fired one shot, and got a direct hit in the base of the skull. And it takes great skill to point with accuracy. But the video games train you! And many of the video games give bonus effects for head shots. This boyI believe that the evidence would indicate that he had played on a murder simulator; his father had obviously gotten him extremely whacked-out on media violence, on the violent video games, and now we reap what we sow, at younger and younger ages.
And the result is a tragedy.
I guess the classic example was in Paducah, Kentucky. In Paducah, a 14-year-old boy stole a 22-caliber pistol from a neighbor's house. Now, prior to stealing that gun, he had never fired a pistol before in his life. He fired a few shots, on a couple of nights before the killings, with the neighbor boy. And, then he brought that gun into school, and he fired eight shots.
Now, the FBI says that the average officer in the average engagement hits with one bullet in five. In the Amadou Diallo shooting, they fired 41 shots at point-blank range, against an unarmed man: They hit 19 times.
The guy that went into the Jewish daycare center in Los Angeles last summer, fired 70 shots, and hit five of those helpless children.
So, this boy fires eight shots. How many hits does he get? Eight shots, eight hits, on eight different children. Five of them are head shots. The other three are upper torso. This is stunning.
I trained the Texas Rangers; I trained the California Highway Patrol; I trained a battalion of Green Berets. And never, in the history of law enforcement, or military, or criminal annals, can we find an equivalent achievement! It is not some deranged Ranger, like me! It's a 14-year-old boy, that's never fired a pistol before stealing that gun! Now, where did he get that incredible, unprecedented skill? Well, when he committed that crime, he planted his feetand, according to all witness statements, he never moved his feet throughout the crime. He held the gun up at a two-handed stance. He never fired far to the left; he never fired far to the right. He just put one bullet in every target that popped up on his screen.
He's playing his stinking video game! It is not natural to put one bullet in every target! The natural thing to do, is to shoot at your target until it drops. Anybody who's ever hunted with an automatic weapon, or has been in combat, will tell you, that the natural thing to do, is to shoot at your target, until your target drops, and then go to another. But, what do the video games train you to do? One shot, one kill, with bonus effects for head shots.
This is so stunning, that there is now a $130 million Federal lawsuit against the video-game industry. Butget thiswhen we're talking about legislation to control this industry: I testified before the Senate and the House, the New York State legislature, the Washington legislature, the New Jersey legislature, and just last week, I testified before the Minnesota state legislature. Well, the lobbyist from the video-game industry stood up in front of the Minnesota state legislature, after I talked, and said: Police reports say (she said the exact same thing to the New York State legislature), "Police reports say, that Michael Carneal," the Paducah killer, "had his eyes closed when he committed that crime."
Now, his first bullet went between his girlfriend's eyes. He got eight shots, eight hits, on eight different kidsfive of them head shots. Now, the truth is this: Not in the police reports, but in one of the psychological evaluations, Michael Carneal says this, "I'm not sure what happened. It's all kinda confused. I think I closed my eyes for a minute." Understand? He says, "I think I closed my eyes for a minute," and the video-game industrydespicable individuals, like the tobacco industrystands up before a state legislature, and says: Police reports say he had his eyes shut. They say no such thing! Every single witness statement says he had his eyes wide open, with this weird, blank look on his face.
Do you understand the kind of industry we're fighting here? As we try to reel this stuff in.
Speed: That actually leads to another question I have. Did you hear about a case, this was in 1997. The New York Post covered it, and it involves the show "Pokémon." I'll just read you what the coverage said: "A Japanese TV network cancelled broadcasts"
Grossman: Oh, I did read about that!
Speed: Six hundred children rushed to the hospitals with epileptic-type seizures, Tuesday night, after watching the program. The next morning, another hundred. There were various explanations offered for what happened, but no one actually ever quite concluded what happened. What comment do you have about that?
Grossman: Well, some of the recent statements on thatI think the AMA and others have looked at itis: They created colors in frequency that basically created epileptic seizures in the kids. This industry is actively seekingthey're spending billions of dollars on just the right frequencies, just the right colors, just the right rapid-fire screen changes, to addict the children to these images. And they are seeking, with all their might and soul, with all the cleverness of modern science, to find just the right way to do it. And they went over the top, on that one, andoops, they back off, now. But, something just short of that is being done every day!
Let me give you some of the stuff we know about TV. We know that there's a powerful link between television and obesity, and that's been reported in the national news, and everybody's nailed that one down. Why? Well, number one, you're addicted to TV. You truly are. It's an addictive, toxic substance, with those rapid-fire images. And the violent image is the most addictive thing of all to the childrenthey cannot turn away from it. It is, for them, vital survival data, and within 18 months, they develop the ability to scan their environment for survival information. So, number one, it's physically addictive to the kids.
Number two is the question of obesity. It's very clear-cut, that we're taking an addictive substance and giving it to children. And, they're like some kids sitting on drugs. But it's more than just that; it's more than the lack of activity. The most creative, innovative, ingenious people in America are paid vast amounts of money to convince you, and your child, to overeat. They've got just the right frequencies, they've just the right colors, just the right screen change, to convince you to go out and consume large quantities of sugary substancesnumber one. What does that do? It creates obesityan explosion of obesity. But that, also, has created an explosion of child-onset diabetes. And we know that that is also linked to television!
So, we've got obesity, we've got child-onset diabetes. What else have we got? Well, there's great data linking television and anorexia and bulemia. Around the world, we have wonderful little communities, that have never had anorexia and bulemia, like American Samoa. And, then Western television appears, and the twisted, distorted image of American feminine beauty comes on, and, in a very short period of time, we've got little girls, who are literally starving themselves to death in order to meet that standard.
Anorexia and bulemia, obesitythese things didn't exist before. There's a new factor, a new variable going on.
Let me give you the really hot area of research, and this is quite revolutionary, and quite new, and everything I've told you so far is solid; but now, we're into a realm that, I need to say, up front, is still being researched. But the initial data indicate that there is a powerful link between television and Attention Deficit Disorder. What we do is, these rapid-fire screen images are given to the kids"Sesame Street," for example. A great show in intent, but the rapid-fire images of "Sesame Street" pound away at the kids' brain. MTV, of course, is even worse.
And, these rapid-fire imagesbam! bam! bam!are hammering the child! What happens is, the child learns to take their data in at rapid-fire imagery, like that, and they never develop an attention span! What is Attention Deficit Disorder? It is a child who never developed an attention span. Television shreds your attention span. What happens is, the child has spent a lifetime, rivetted in front of that TV, growing fat, and having these rapid-fire images pounded into their brain, and then, at the age of 5 or 6, we put them in school, and the teacher stands up there and says [speaks like a slow-speed recording], "T-h-e t-r-a-n-s-i-t-i-v-e v-e-r-b i-s r-r-r-rrrrr." And, the kid is sitting there, trying to change channels! He's freaked out!
And what's our answer? Drug him! Our answer is to drug them. We have messed those kids up so badly, in their youth, by doing the thing that the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the Surgeon General, and the AMA, say, "Don't do it!" And, then, when they're whacked-out, we drug 'em! And the result is horror.
That thing that you talked about with Pokémon, was just the tip of the iceberg, of the way that they're using intense manipulation of screen imagery, colors, rapid-fire imagery changes, in order to make this a powerfully addictive substance for children. At the heart of the addictive substances, is the violence, which is being fed to the kids: Like nicotine, the violence is addictive; like nicotine, it has an unfortunate side-effect, and the unfortunate side-effect is fear and violence, and violent crime.
Speed: You don't seem to buy the argument of the some of the people who were pioneering the Violence Initiative, which is the idea that there are kids that are basically born violent; or, if not born violent, by a very young age, you can separate them out, and then you can track them. In Virginia, at one point, they were actually building jails in anticipation that one segment of the populationmany of them, in this particular case, African-Americanwere going to become violent. And they knew they were going to have a certain number of violent offenders, therefore, they were building jails for them in advance.
Grossman: Maybe, maybe, there is a tiny percentage of human beings who are going to be violent. But that percentage should not change, from decade to decade, or generation to generation. If there is some naturally occurringand I'm saying if, we're not conceding that, but maybe there isif there is some naturally occurring incidents of violence, then, that is a standard, a stable, a normal process. Like the occurrence of any other genetic process.
When you see an explosion of violence, you've got to ask youself, "What is the new factor? What is the new variable?"
Understand this: When we talk about violent crime, the first thing you have to realize is, you must ignore the murder rate. Because medical technology saves ever more lives, every year. A wound that, nine out of ten times would have killed you in World War II, in Vietnam you would have survived that same wound, nine out of ten times. This last year, I've written three encyclopedia entries, in the entry to the Oxford Companion to American Military History, and we've laid the scholarly foundation to say this: If we had 1930s-level technology in Americathink of the 1930s now: no penicillin, no cars, no telephones, for all practical purposes, in most placesif we had 1930s technology, the murder rate could easily be ten times what it is. You've got to look at the aggravated assault rate, the rate at which people are trying to kill one another off. With that as our measure of crimewe're allowing for population growthviolent crime, per capita, has gone up sevenfold since 1957 to the middle of this decade. It's gone down just a tiny bit, recently, mostly because of a fivefold increase in the incarceration rate, and a good economy, but we're still six times greater per capita in the rate at which we're trying to kill one another off, than we were in 1957.
But look: In Canada, since 1964, the per-capita assault rate has gone up fivefold, and attempted murder (a classification we do not have) has gone up sevenfold. In just 15 years, according to Interpol data, per-capita violent crime went up almost fivefold in Norway and Greece; nearly fourfold in Australia and New Zealand. There was a clean tripling in per-capita violent crime, in these 15 years, in Sweden. And per-capita violent crime approximately doubled in seven other European nations.
Some of these nations, like Norway and Sweden and Denmark, that have seen these doubling and tripling and quintupling of violent crime, they've been keeping track of violent crime for over a thousand years. And, never, in the last thousand years, have we seen anything remotely like this. This is unprecedented for violent crime to just double in 15 years; it's staggering, for it to go up fivefold in 15 years. It's stunning!
The question you need to keep asking yourself is: What is the new variable, what is the new ingredient? And, the new ingredient is, that we are creating killers, we are creating sociopaths.
The analogy I use is to AIDS: AIDS doesn't kill people. It makes you vulnerable to be killed by other things. What happens is, if you get AIDS, then pneumonia, or the flu, or a cold can kill you, because your immune system has been destroyed. What I calland it's now a widely accepted termAcquired Violence Immune Deficiency Syndrome, AVIDS. Most of us, have a natural violence immune system. If that violence immune system is destroyed, now, the things that shouldn't have killed us, will result in death: things like poverty, gangs, availability of guns, anger that generates from racism, child abuse. All of these are variables that can cause violence. But, whereas before, we should have been able to control those in a healthy organism, they're now resulting in death and horror to a degree we've never seen before.
There's a new ingredient, a new factor, in the equation that is causing death, and horror, and destruction around the world. In Japan, we saw a 30% increase in juvenile violent crime in 1997 alone. In India, in those same 15 years that Interpol was keeping track, they didn't have the assault rate in India, but they did have the murder rate: And it doubled in 15 years. Imagine that vast nation, in just 15 years, seeing the murder rate double. Why? Because, just a little while prior to that, they put a television in every village in India, and every night, the villagers gather together and watch, what? "Dallas." And, all kinds of strange, bizarre, American, violent footage, that has a profound impact on that community.
Brazil and Mexico: Same story. When we see an explosion of violent crime there. They export drugs to us, and we export electronic drugs to them. And, quite frankly, our exporters are just as vile as theirs are, if not more so. Ted Turner is quoted in the California House of Representatives resolution on violence, in May 1999, as saying: "Television violence is the number-one cause of violent crime in America." The president of CBS, after the Littleton shootings, he was asked if he thought the media had anything to do with the shootings in Columbine High School, and his answer was: "Anyone who thinks the media had nothing to do with it, is an idiot."
They know it! They know what they're doing! And they continue to sell it around the world, like some drug lord selling death and horror and destruction, just to put money in the pockets of a few. It is despicable. And, what we've got to do is, get these guys reeled in, as a civilization. Otherwise, the very fabric of our civilization is at risk.
It's Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs. The foundation of our civilization is providing security and safety. And if the foundation of the building crumbles, the building crumbles. Or, to rephrase what Maslow was saying: People will always sacrifice liberty for security. If the situation gets bad enough, people will do whatever they have to do, to make sure their children aren't butchered on the streets. They will oppress minorities, they will oppress the underclass, they will give up civil liberties. They will do whatever they have to do.
Steinberg: Let me go on to something that your point raises. When you gave a television interview at the New Jersey conference, I was very struck by your discussion of a kind of hierarchy of responsibilities that law-enforcement officersand, to a similar extent, soldiershave, in fulfilling their particular role within society: to protect the innocent.
Grossman: When I train law-enforcement officers, across America, one of the things I tell them is this: "The single surest way to get a dose of post-traumatic stress disorderthe research is so solid, it shows it over and over again; the surest way to get a dose of PTSDwhat we call 'the gift that keeps on giving,' because it doesn't just mess you up, but it messes up your unmet spouse, and your unborn children, in the years to come. Now, the single surest way to make that happen, is to commit an atrocity or a criminal act." Now, in the moment of truth, when you're under great stress, there is a desire for vengeance. And, what I teach them, is, you must seek justice, not vengeance. Vengeance will destroy you: and not just you, but your spouse, and your kids. Whoever you think you're avenging, did not want to pay that price. And you must dedicate yourself, ahead of time, towards justice, not vengeance.
What I tell them is this: "As a law-enforcement officer, you have three goals: First, and foremost, above all else is: protect the innocent." I make the analogy of the sheep, and wolves, and the sheepdogs: The sheep are kind, innocent, gentle creatures, who can only hurt one another by accident. The wolves will feed on the sheep, without mercy. The sheepdog, is the thing that stands between us and the wolves. And, the thing that makes the sheepdog different from the wolf, is that the sheepdog can not harm the sheep. If he does, the shepherd eliminates him.
So, step number one, for the law enforcement officer is, protect the innocent. Above all else.
Step number two is, convict the guilty. It's the goal, but never at the price of number one.
And, step number three is, draw your retirement. Okay?
Protect the innocent, convict the guilty, and draw your retirement. After you've done those first two, and you've served honorably for a lifetime, you deserve that retirement.
And, I'll tell you, the suicide rate of the average law enforcement officer, the average cop out there, has two to four times greater chance of dying from their own hands, than they do from criminal gunfireand we're losing a lot to criminal gunfire. The average law enforcement officer, according to one body of research, has a life expectancy of over a decade less, than the average citizen. What I try to do is, provide the nuts and bolts for them to accomplish those three things, and to accept those priorities that will make it possible for them to do that.
And, that's what we must do.
Speed: In the Amadou Diallo case, one of the things that I raised in an article for EIR, is that one had to look at what I believe to be the problem of the "Nintendo cop," the sort of training that doesn't provide what he needs.
Grossman: I had the privilege to read that, Dennis, and I thought it was particularly well-written. But, I hope you'll forgive me, if I tell you that I would take a slightly different angle on that.
What we need to realize, number one, this business of emptying the weapon. That used to be the norm. That was the norm! Our cops were basically Barney Fife, you remember on the Andy Griffith Show? Andy Griffith was very wise, in not letting Barney have any bullets. You understand? Because Barney Fife is the most dangerous human being out there, and you put a loaded gun in his hand, and you're in a heap o' trouble.
Now, what we do, is we prepare our guys for combat. We do the FATS trainers, and we say, "Under this circumstance, when this stimulus is in front of you, you may fire! Under this circumstance, you may not!" And, if you drill and you drill on these things, and you shoot the wrong person, you don't graduate from the academy. And, we put them in "simunition environments," where you are firing paint pellets at one another. These paint pellets are very fearsome: They're coming at 200-300 feet per second, they're 9 mm marking capsules; when they hit, they hurt, bad. You're under a great deal of stressyou're inflicting pain on somebody else, they're inflicting pain on you. It's like a boxing match with pistols. What happens is, the first couple of times people do that, their heart rate is through the roof! And they're very fearful individuals. But, if we do more and more of this training, they become inoculated against that stress; they become cool, calm professionals.
I would say to you, that, around America, the answer is become very clear, that the answer to preventing the Amadou Diallo-type tragedieswhich, remember, back in the old days, it was the norm, except the guy would fire six shots. We had two officers, they would fire six shots each; they emptied their revolvers; they go "bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bangclick, click, click, click, click, click"and then they'd stopped. Because you get scared out of your wits, and your going to fire your weapon at your opponent until your opponent drops, or something interrupts you, like you run out of ammo.
But the major difference isthat's happening far less oftenthat we're giving them more ammo. They've got a 15-round magazine, and the average officer can empty that 15-round magazine in 4 seconds flat. And the average individual can't die that fast. So, you've got this bizarre circumstance, in which they need this, so, how are you going to teach them to use that? Well, the police department of a major Western city did some very nice research. They contacted many different police departments, and they found out how many shots were fired per officer, per engagement. This is our Amadou Diallo situation. How many guys are shooting too many rounds? And, then they correlated that to in-service training, especially in-service training with "simunition" and FATS, which are our simulatorsour paint-ball and our video simulators. What they found out was, that the more in-service training you did, the less number of rounds per officer fired. And, the more hits per officer: That is, when they fired, they hit their target, number one, and number two, they didn't go into this horrendous "spray and pray mode," in which, even at pointblank range against an unarmed man, less than half your bullets hit the target.
The fellow who was doing the research, called another city's police department, and asked: "Do you have trouble with officers firing too many shots?" And the other guy laughs, and says, "Yes! We call it the 'Metro Spray.' That was true a couple of years ago." He asked, "How did you prevent it?" He said, "We did the in-service training. We take every one of our cops, and we bring them through 40 hours a year of in-service training with 'simunition' and FATS."
This is the answer!
What happened in New York, was lack of training. And lack of proficiency. And, when you get a scary situation, and in this tragic situation, these officers, to a certain degree, they become four Barney Fifes, with 15 rounds each in their hands: And the result is tragedy.
How do you prevent a Barney Fife? You train him, train him, train him, with "simunition" and FATS. The result is, you've got an individual who's going to be a cool, calm, collected individual. I mean, who do you want stopping you in the middle of the night? Barney Fife, or Andy Griffith? Marshal Dillon, or Officer Wacko? And, that's what we're talking about, here.
They use a little bit of this training, but they need much, much more, and they need to be held accountable and responsible for it.
I just trained in one major Texas police department, and they don't do any in-service training, with this major metropolitan police department, except to get out on the range twice a year. That's unacceptable! But, they are starting to take these guys, and prepare them for school shootings, and having them do "simunition" training; and, the cops love it!
The problem is, that we're not allocating sufficient money and funding to get the training that the cops need.
And, I don't know about you, but, if I'm going to be out on the street, and there's a 22-year-old kid with a semi-automatic pistol on his hip, I want him to be trained to the gills! To perform appropriately. And, anything less than that is unacceptable. And, to have major police departments that aren't doing "shoot/no-shoot" and FATS and "simunition" training, at least once a year: I submit to you, it's unacceptable.
Speed: If we had had anybody in New York who had been that straightforward, at the point that this whole matter occurred, you wouldn't even have the kind of tensions, that you have in the city right now.
Grossman: Yes! If they would just stand up and say, "Our guys blew it! It was dumb! It was horrible!" And their answer is more training, and "what we're going to do is, we're going to train them, and we're going to prevent this from happening." That's why they're hiring me, across America, to do all of this stuff. And you're quite right, that this whole business of circling the wagons, is just tragic.
And, I appreciate your saying that, Dennis: It's well said.
Speed: Right. It helps a lot.
Now, since you've been going around the country, have you encountered a lot of people who want to do something about the video empire? That includes legislation and litigation. I wanted to know if you can tell us something about that.
mGrossman: When it comes to these violent video games, a lot of people have real second thoughts about cops and soldiers having them. They have serious second thoughts about adults having them. But, the one thing, that we can all agree on is: that children don't need them.
I believe in an America, in which we can trust the citizensthe adult citizens. I'm an adult. I can have a cigar, I can have a beer, I can have sex, I have a car, I can have a gun. But, if you give any of that to my 9-year-old, you're criminal. And, that's what we realize with these murder simulators.
Now, how are we going to deal with that? Well, first off, is simply education. Remember, we have an absolutely irresponsible industry, who will stand up in front of state legislatures and misrepresent things, horrendously. So, what we've got to do, is: We've go to get people educated, number one, and certainly, that's one of the wonderful things your organization is doing.
Number two, is legislation. I tell people, "When it comes to protecting our kids, even the most libertarian of us, understands we need laws." Do we need laws that say, you can't sell guns to kids? Yes. Do we need laws that say you can't sell tobacco, or alcohol, or pornography, to kids? Yes, we need those laws. And, everybody agrees. Now, can kids still get pornography, or tobacco, or alcohol, if they really want it? Sure. Does that mean the laws are no good? No, we need those laws. They're part of the solution.
The best thing that the laws do, is, they are a form of education. I put seat belts on my kids all my life. I was never buckled up, when I was kid. How did I know to buckle my kids up? Well, it's the right thing to do. That's why I do it. How do I know it's the right thing to do? Because, if I don't do it, a cop will give me a ticket. It's the law, and the law educates you as to what is the right thing to do. And that becomes the goal.
Now, what kind of laws do we need? All we need to do, is, take the industry's own rating system, and simply enforce that. The industry has games they rate "M." An M-rated video game means "mature." What does that mean? That's a pretty vague concept. The industry says, an M-rated game is: no child under 17. In case you haven't been keeping track, MC-17, is what we call X-rated movies, nowadays. An M-rated video game is identical to an X-rated movie, according to the industry. Except, the pornography industry accepts regulations on their products, when it comes to kids; this industry is functioning beneath the porn industry; beneath the tobacco industry; beneath the alcohol industry, or the gun industry. Guns, booze, tobaccothey all accept regulation on their product, when it comes to kids.
This one industry says, that you cannot regulate their productviolent visual imagerywhen it comes to kids.
So, when it comes to the violent video games, they're wrong. We can regulate those products, and we will.
You know what they say? They stand up and they say, "Look. People buy these violent things, so we sell 'em. The reason why America has all this violent stuff out there, is because Americans want it, and so, we sell it. We're driven by the marketplace."
What I say, is this: "Don't ever let anybody say that, without saying this: 'That's drug-dealer logic. That's pimp logic.' " Except even drug dealers and pimps don't try to sell to little kids.
So, we're going to regulate the video games. We're going to regulate these violent video games, just like we do with pornography, and enforce the rating systems.
There's other things that we can do: We can tax media violence. You have a Constitutional right to alcoholit was a Constitutional amendment that repealed Prohibition. You have a Constitutional right to guns, according to most people's reading of the Second Amendment. But nobody says that that Constitutional right for an adult to have alcohol or guns, means that you have the right to sell it to children.
We've got to put taxes on this substance, we've got to regulate this substance: If we don't, we're in a heap of trouble.
We've got the education, we've got the legislationthe final step is litigationthe lawsuits. There is a $130 million Federal lawsuit against the video-game industry, generated out of the Paducah case. Remember? Eight shots, eight hits, on eight different kids. Clear-cut video-game linkage. And, the lawsuit is progressing quite nicely.
Now, this kind of litigation, we think, is happening across America. I'll give you just one example. There was a subway tollbooth burning in New York: What happened, was a group of kids poured gasoline underneath the back door of a subway tollbooth. They left a trickle-trail, and then they ignited that trickle-trail, and the gasoline inside the tollbooth ignited, and burned the operator over some 70% of his body. As soon as that crime happened, there was immediate talk of lawsuits, because that was a precise copy-cat crime of the movie "Money Train." Step-by-step, precise copy-cat crime.
The family was talking lawsuits, and then, Boom! You never heard another word.
What happened? The head of the Washington Trial Lawyers Association told me that, he believes, in that case, and many others: They settled out of court. And, what they're going to do is, they're going to pay the victims, and their family, and their lawyer, a large sum of money, once a month, for the rest of their livesas long as they do, what? Keep their mouths shut. And, across America, these lawsuits are being settled out of court, for large sums of money. These people are responsible; they cannot tolerate the lawsuits: We have a legal obligation to hold them accountable. If you had a crib that strangled your child, if you had a gas tank that exploded in flames and burned your child to death, you'd have an obligation to hold that industry accountable.
We have the safest cars, the safest airplanes, the safest toys in the world, because, if they don't give us safe products, we sue them.
And, we have an obligation to hold these people accountable, and we need to let the average American out there know, that, if you connect the dots, and there's a media linkage to what happened, then, you have a responsibility to go after the accessories to the crime.
Now, as I'm training cops across America, I tell them this. I tell them, "Look, we're not necessarily excusing the criminal. This is not an excuse for the killer. But, if you catch a 12-year-old with crack cocaine, what are you going to do? You're going to bust 'em, right? And, what's the first thing you're going to try to find out?"
Steinberg: Who the dealer is?
Grossman: You got it! And, that's what we're talking about here. We're trying to find the accessories to the crimethe dealers, the dope dealersand make a direct, one-to-one linkage, between violent visual imagery and a specific violent criminal act. And, when we can see clear-cut linkage, in which kids were inspired by a specific movie, a specific TV show, a specific video gamewe're going to pin the tail on the donkey, and hammer these guys into the ground like a tent stake!
Education, legislation, litigation.
We're doing it; it's the American system. And God bless America, I think we can do it. And, I think we come out the other end of this thing, as a better nation.
From Our Archives: Joe Lieberman Helps Hollywood Peddle Its Violent Wares
In 1999, according to an September 2000 article by conservative William Bennett in the Wall Street Journal, Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn) was ripping into Hollywood, saying of Hollywood violence, "If they continue to market death and degradation to our children and pay no heed to the carnage, then one way or another, the government will act." That statement was made in the days when Lieberman and Bennett were working closely together against the Jerry Springer talk show porn, and against Seagrams and other producers of hard-core violence videos.
But everything changed in the year 2000, as Lieberman and Al Gore made their run for the White Houseand the huge dollars from Hollywood headed into the Democratic coffers. Starting with the year 2000, Lieberman began to play the role he continues to this dayhelping Hollywood hustle its violent, pornographic, and degrading products.
According to Bennett's Journal article, on Sept. 18, 2000, in Hollywood, Lieberman and Al Gore raked in $4.2 million at a fundraiser, and Lieberman assured the Hollywood moguls, "Al and I have tremendous regard for this industry. We're both fans of the products that come out of the entertainment industrynot all of them, but some of them.... I promise you this: We will never, never put the government in the position of telling you, by law, through law, what to make. We will nudge you, but we will never become censors."
Bennett complained that Lieberman had "sold out"; they "used to stand together to excoriate Hollywood filth. Now he's delivering a very different message to lavish Hollywood fundraisers." Bennett pointed out that Jack Valenti, head of the Motion Picture Association of America even says, "Frankly, if I were running for office I'd be trashing the movie industry myself." And he revealed that when Lieberman was named VP candidate, Tipper made "reassurance calls" to Hollywood. She called the head of the Recording Industry Association of America to tell them not to worry about Lieberman's history of attacking sex and violence.
The same day as Bennett's column, a piece by Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post went after Gore and Tipper for their hypocrisy, recounting the story of Gore's denouncing the Federal Trade Commission study on violence and the media, in a private meeting with some of his Hollywood friends.
IBERO-AMERICAN NEWS DIGEST
Argentine Government's Days Are Numbered
Argentine President Eduardo Duhalde named Roberto Lavagna, formerly Ambassador to the European Union, Economics Minister on April 26, five days after his previous Minister resigned. Lavagna's assignment, as he put it, is to walk "the delicate balancing line between the necessities of the foreign investors and those of the people." He told reporters that there are two extremes which must be avoided: those that say, "Everything with the International Monetary Fund, and nothing for the people," and those that say, "Everything with the people, and turn your back on the Fund."
Since satisfying both of these antithetical interests is no longer physically possible, President Duhalde's regime can have no longevity to speak of.
Within hours of Lavagna's being sworn in, Treasury and IMF officials communicated to Argentine officials in Washington and Buenos Aires, that they give the new economics team two weeks to implement three central demands: Eliminating the economic subversion law (under which several bankers have been jailed for looting their banks); changing the bankruptcy law to remove provisions which provide some protection for debtors; and signing bilateral austerity agreements between the Federal government and each and every province.
The idea that the provincial governments could somehow adhere to the IMF's demand for a 60% cut in the provincial budgets, or the Federal government attain fiscal deficit targets, is insane, given the economic hecatomb resulting from the failure to break with the IMF and dollar system, and reorganize national banking:
*In March, imports were 71% less than the same month the year before, totalling only $592 million. Imports of capital goods fell by 78%; of consumer goods, by 76%. Exports rose by 3%, but primarily because of the 28% rise in grain export revenues, resulting from the approximately 70% devaluation of the currency. Exports of manufactured goods, however, fell by 10%, reflecting the lack of production and trade financing.
*Tax revenues in April came in at 18.5% less than the year before, a collapse so severe that Economics Ministry spokesmen said they may have to postpone payments of Federal public-sector workers for at least a week.
*According to official government statistics released this week, unemployment now stands at 30%. In this, one of the world's premier agricultural producers, it is now the case that 40% of the population cannot afford to meet basic nutritional needs.
The survival of a generation of children is threatened: In the northwestern province of Catamarca, children are fainting in school due to lack of food, and the supplementary food programs for the poor, made available through the schools, have been axed due to budget cuts. Fainting occurs most frequently on Mondays, following the weekend, when children, at home for two days, obviously haven't eaten. School officials say education can't even occur, since undernourished children can't concentrate, or are too ill to do so. Of 10 million children under the age of 14 in the country, 6 million live below the poverty line, and 2.5 million of these are classified as indigent.
Last December, the average wage was $623 monthly; today it is $207. Argentina has fallen from first to ninth place in Ibero-America in terms of per-capita income, according to the Equis consulting firm. It is estimated that by the end of May, of 14 million people able to work, 7 million will be unemployed.
UNCTAD Secretary-General Attacks IMF Policy Toward Argentina
"Argentina has the bad luck to have been chosen as the test case for a new, inflexible political hard line, being followed by the IMF and U.S. Treasury," warned Rubens Ricupero, a Brazilian and the Secretary-General of UNCTAD. The country is on the verge of "political and social disintegration," and there must be a "more positive international effort to seek an emergency solution," he said.
In statements reported in the Brazilian paper O Estado do Sao Paulo April 26, Ricupero attacked IMF policy toward Argentina, likening that nation's current situation to that of Germany, Austria, and Hungary at the beginning of the 1920s. Powerful nations shouldn't overestimate Argentina's ability to elaborate consistent economic plans, he warned. "To expect Argentina to take the first steps [to impose austerity] is unrealistic. Today it can't do that." To make an example of Argentina, "only ends up punishing the innocent."
Ricupero, who was in Brazil to present UNCTAD's annual report, warned that if other countries don't act to help Argentina, "when political and social disintegration occurs, and no one knows where it will end, there is always the risk of contagion ... and even the IMF's calculation of non-contagion is risky, because sooner or later, it could occur."
Billionaire Cisneros at Center of Venezuelan Machinations
Bush family friend Gustavo Cisneros is at the center of operations to put something back together in Venezuela. It was Cisneros, the multi-billionaire head of the Organizacion Diego Cisneros business empire, who in 1985 got the Venezuelan Supreme Court to ban EIR's book Dope, Inc., because the book raised questions about Cisneros's ties to dope-money-launderers. He's now the man playing all four sides of the street in Venezuela: He was with President Hugo Chavez from the outset of his regime; he was all over the coup to overthrow Chavez; and he's now in the middle of attempting to shape what comes next.
After various Venezuelan Deputies charged that the U.S. and Cisneros financed "the coup within the coup" which split the opposition movement to Chavez, Cisneros called in Defense Minister Jose Vicente Rangel for a meeting at his Caracas mansion on April 24. The two assured the press afterwards that Cisneros had no role in the coup, and Cisneros denounced as baseless a Newsweek story on his involvement.
The next day, U.S. Ambassador Charles Shapiro met with Chavez briefly, and much longer with Rangel. Shapiro assured the press afterwards that relations between the two governments "are good, and we intend to improve them." He gave no details of what he discussed with Rangel, but said they covered "all subjects."
On April 28, Chavez named Rangel his Vice President, in his first big post-coup reshuffle.
The same day, the New York Times Sunday Business Section featured a laudatory story on Cisneros's role as the power broker in Venezuela, including his close personal relations with Assistant Secretary of State Otto Reich (the old Iran-Contra hand who was up to his ears in the coup within the coup) and former President George H.W. Bush. The article was clearly approved by Cisneros, who granted an interview to the Times reporter in which he modestly denied the reports that he has personal Presidential aspirations.
Meanwhile, the political situation in Venezuela remains highly volatile. On May 1, hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans marched for and against Chavez's fascist regime. The marches were peaceful, but the slogans demonstrated the implacable opposition between the two sides.
Brazilians Warn of United States' 'Oppressive Unilateralism'
The Bush Administration-orchestrated summary dismissal April 22 of Brazilian Ambassador José Mauricio Bustani as Director General of the United Nations' Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), coming on the heels of the fiasco of the botched coup attempt against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, is sending shockwaves through Brazil's elite.
The influential, usually pro-American, newspaper O Estado de Sao Paulo published editorials April 21 and, again, April 24, going after the attitude of "supremacism" dominating the Bush Administration. "The American superpower acts in coherence with the arrogant vision of the world of the neo-conservatives in power in Washington, the policy of what could be called 'supremacism.' We are dealing with the affirmation of an imperial-style hegemony, displease whom it will," Estado de Sao Paulo wrote April 21.
"For the Republican establishment, for example, the criticism of the role played by the United States in the Venezuelan crisis is of little importance,... The planned ouster of Brazilian diplomat José Bustani is also supremacism. The United States accused him of partiality. But it is because he was not a 'yes-man' that the Americans orchestrated his overthrow.... Then, the Americans ask why they are so little loved in the world." On April 24, O Estado de Sao Paulo again went after "The Oppressive Unilateralism of the USA," under which "the government of President Bush wiped off the slate the most elemental conventions which should guide relations between countries."
Journalist Miriam Leitaoknown as an unofficial spokesman of the Planalto Presidential Palacewrote in her O Globo column of April 28, that, so far, the Americas have been "either relegated to oblivion, or handed over to the logic of the anti-Castro Cubans, who hold various key posts. As if this vast region, with its potentials, differences, and dilemmas, was merely the island which for 40 years has been the stone in the shoe of the U.S. government.... In the case of Bustani, the Americans had to do their dirty work right to the end. They had to be explicit in their authoritarianism.... Brazil wants to look forward, but it is doubtful that it will be possible to have a more tranquil relationship with the United States of George W. Bush, which has surpassed itself in its ability to create problems."
Top FARC Officials Now Wanted by U.S. and Interpol
The friends of New York Stock Exchange head Richard Grasso in the narcoterrorist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) took two big hits last week.
First, the international police agency Interpol put FARC chief "Tirofijo" and 13 top commanders on its international terrorist wanted list. The list includes Raul Reyes, the FARC's "money man," whom Grasso, during his 1999 visit to the jungles of Colombia, had greeted for the cameras, and invited to the New York Stock Exchange.
Then, on April 30, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced a grand jury indictment on murder charges of six top members of the FARC for the 1999 kidnapping and murder of three American citizens, who were environmental and indigenist activists involved with Colombia's Indian tribe known as the U'wa.
Ashcroft portrayed the FARC as "a fiercely anti-American terrorist organization," as well as narcotics traffickers, and declared, "Today, the United States strikes back at FARC's reign of terror against the United States and its citizens. Just as we fight terrorism in the mountains of South Asia, we will fight terrorism in our own hemisphere.... Today's action is a step toward ridding our hemisphere of the narcoterrorism that threatens our lives, our freedom and our human dignity."
Ashcroft confirmed that the U.S. would be seeking the extradition of those charged, and said the Bush Administration would be working with the Colombian government on efforts toward their capture.
European Union Exempted FARC From its Terror List
The member-states of the European Union made a deliberate decision May 2 to exclude the FARC and ELN from its list of international terrorists, while adding Peru's Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso) and Colombia's paramilitary United Self-Defense of Colombia (AUC). Inclusion on the EU list means that all assets of the targetted organization must be frozen by member-states of the EU. According to France and Switzerland, the FARC was not included because of the difficulty it would pose removing them from the list, should peace negotiations be renewed under the next Colombian administration. Late last year, the EU countries reportedly (or at least, "officially") stopped granting entrance visas to known FARC members.
Mexican Supreme Court Rules a Fox Privatization Scheme Unconstitutional
In the wake of the Mexican Congress's rejection of the energy privatization scheme of the Vicente Fox Administration, the Mexican Supreme Court on April 27 ruled 8 to 3 that a decree issued last year by the Fox government which opened the door to private-sector electrical generation for the public market, was unconstitutional. The court ruled that it was "an authentic fraud upon the law," which, if allowed to stand, would "de facto and de jure," permit the privatization of electricity.
Fox's decree allowed industrial companies owning generators to power their own plants, to sell off any "excess" energy produced, up to 50% of their capacity, to the Federal Electrical Commission. At the initiative of the PRI and the PRD Parties, the Congress filed a suit before the Supreme Court, charging that the Executive Branch's decree was unconstitutional. The Supreme Court agreed, ruling that the Constitution is clear, that the generation, transmission, distribution, and supply of electricity, for public use belongs exclusively to the state, as established in Article 27, Point Six, of the Mexican Constitution.
U.S. Military Official Denies U.S. Deployment in Philippines Is Aimed at China
General Richard Myers, head of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Philippines Inquirer, during a trip to Mindanao, that current U.S. military operations in the Philippines are not aimed at China. Myers's response appeared in the April 28 edition, as a denial of the charge as it appeared in the private intelligence newswire Stratfor, which itself merely echoed February 2002 warnings from EIR's Lyndon LaRouche.
Myers told the press in Mindanao: "This is not directed at China. The U.S. has a lot of interests in the Asia-Pacific region.... This is not an issue about China, this is an issue about our presence in the region to promote stability and hopefully ... good commerce." Since his diversionary answer implied the desire for a U.S. base in the region, Myers was forced to deny that as well.
Myers insisted that the reason for the Philippines operation was to be on guard against al-Qaeda moving into the region, as they are, supposedly, being driven out of Afghanistan. The U.S. allges that the Philippines Islamic guerrillas of Abu Sayyaf are linked to al-Qaeda.
The Stratfor article from April 25 pointed out that the small, undeveloped island of Basilon, where the combat with the Abu Sayyaf is taking place, may be better situated as a forward U.S. basing area than General Santos City on the southern shore of Mindanao, despite the modern port and airfield built by the United States in General Santos. Both have the advantage of proximity to the Asian mainland and to Indonesia, which Stratfor suggests are likely next targets for U.S. military operations in Asia. This is the real purpose, charges Stratfor, for the expansion of the U.S. military deployment in Basilonadding 300 Seabees and Marines to construct roads, airstrips, and other militarily necessary infrastructurerather than the professed concern for the well-being of the Basilon residents.
Ramos's Control over Philippines President Out in the Open
The fact that former President Fidel Ramos, a leading asset of Anglo-American financial and strategic interests, is controlling current Philippines President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is so public that she has to deny it! EIR has documented over the past year how Ramos, who ran the coups against Presidents Ferdinand Marcos and Joseph Estrada on behalf of his American sponsors, has been running an inside-outside operation against Macapagal-Arroyo, threatening coups, while demanding that she accept his direction to retain her position. President Macapagal-Arroyo, in her weekly radio interview, said (according to the April 28 Manila Times): "The premise that Mr. Ramos could be part of the Freedom Force [the group of leading figures from various groups, which last week let it be known they were planning a coup], just because most of his political associates are involved in it, is very wrong." Arroyo was quoted as saying: "First of all, the premise is wrong. Not many of the Ramos boys are involved. In fact, a lot of Ramos boys are in the Cabinet."
Beside keeping President Macapagal-Arroyo tied to IMF dictates for the economy, Ramos has forced through the policy which has allowed the U.S. military to operate within the country, despite the explicit Constitutional ban on such operations.
A Coming Japan-Australia-U.S. Military Agreement?
According to a May 1 report in Stratfor, Japanese Premier Junichiro Koizumi and Australian Prime Minister John Howard recently met in Australia to discuss the formation of a Japan-Australia-U.S. military agreement. The newsletter also asserted that, despite denials from all parties, such a pact would specifically target China, and secondarily Indonesia.
Koizumi has been campaigning for the past year to establish bilateral free-trade agreements with Australia and New Zealand, and to bring the two "Asian" Anglo-states into the ASEAN+3 alliance. All of these proposals, military and economic, would disrupt the developing, but fragile, unity of purpose of the ASEAN+3 nations. To implement them, Koizumi appears willing to compromise on Japan's fiercely maintained policies regarding the protection of farmers, and the Constitutional restrictions on military operations. Stratfor pointed out that Japan and Australia "share a common bond as key U.S. allies in the Asia-Pacific; Japan is the northern anchor of the U.S. defense system, and Australia is the southern anchor."
Stratfor also reported that U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz on April 29 asked Japan to extend its May 19 deadline for logistical support to the U.S. military operations in Afghanistan, and renewed a request (thus far rejected) for Japan to send an Aegis-equipped destroyer to the Indian Ocean. Japan has not yet responded.
U.S. and China Will Reestablish Some Military Relations
According to Zhang Qiyue, the spokeswoman for Chinese Vice President Hu Jintao, speaking May 1 during Hu Jintao's visit to Washington, the U.S. and China will reestablish some military relations which had been suspended by the Bush Administration.
In addition to meeting with President Bush while in Washington, Hu met May 1 with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (who had stopped military-to-military relations with China), and with Vice President Dick Cheney, both of whom accepted Hu's invitation to visit China. On April 30, the American aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk and its battle group of four ships docked in Hong Kong, ending the past month's ban on such visits, imposed by China after the visit to the U.S. of the Taiwanese Defense Minister.
Hu spoke at a May 1 Washington dinner hosted by Henry Kissinger and 600 others; he was firm on the importance of the Taiwan issue, but low-key otherwise. He refused to accept a set of letters offered by Reps. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) and Frank Wolf (R-Va), requesting the release of Tibetans arrested under Hu's watch, and other dissidents held in China.
Malaysia's Mahathir Promotes Gold Dinar Among Islamic Countries
Malaysia plans to initially use the gold dinar as a currency for trading with a small group of countries, in the hope it will slowly gain international acceptance, said Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad to a Labor Day function in Kuala Lumpur May 1. "We are trying to work it out with three or four countries that we have close ties with," said Dr. Mahathir, who proposed the system in April to reduce the risk of speculation in bilateral trading.
"The Arab and Gulf states ... maybe they'll accept it," he told reporters. Some Islamic countries have proposed using the dinar, which is a gold-backed standard, in international trade instead of the U.S. dollar.
The Prime Minister, who recently visited Libya, Bahrain, and Morocco, said the three countries had responded enthusiastically to the plan. He said, however, that no deadline had been set for the launch. "We have to solve the problems first.
"There will be lots of problems," he continued, adding that Malaysia intends to host an international conference on the subject, entitled "The Islamic DinarTowards Economic Unity of Muslim Communities," organized by Ikim on June 25-26. That seminar will discuss theoretical working of the dinar system, the role of government and the central bank in regulating the system, its modus operandi, how it contributes towards economic unity among Muslim communities, its viability and challenges. Dr. Mahathir said gold was also open to some risk of speculation, but was safer than conventional currency, which has no intrinsic value and can be manipulated indefinitely. "You cannot speculate too much in the price of gold. You cannot say the price of gold today is 10 cents, because nobody is going to sell you gold at 10 cents."
China Facing Its Most Serious Unemployment Problem Ever
In the next four years, China will face the most serious unemployment problem it has ever had, said Wang Dongjin, the Vice-Minister of Labor and Social Security, speaking at a Labor Ministry meeting in Beijing April 27. Unemployment could rise to more than 20 million, he added. China has a "serious oversupply" of labor, with 12-13 million new workers coming into the labor market every year for the next few years. At the same time, 5 million workers have been laid off by state-owned enterprises, and there were 6.8 million registered unemployed at the end of 2001.
In addition, there are about 150 million "surplus" rural workers (unofficial figures say 200 million or even more), who are flooding into the cities looking for jobs.
"But it is estimated that only 8 million jobs can be generated annually over this period, even with the country's current economic growth rate," Wang said, a situation that could undermine social stability. One serious aspect of the problem, is the fact that the masses of unemployed are badly educated, and have low skills. Those who have been laid off, worked in traditional sectors such as coal, textile, and machinery industries, where the technology has changed, and their skills are outmoded.
Unemployment could be aggravated by China's entry into the World Trade Organization, Wang admitted. A particular problem is the increasing number of "surplus" rural workers due to WTO pressures on Chinese agriculture, and the worsening world economic situation after Sept. 11.
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization Meets in Moscow
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization foreign ministers met in Moscow April 26-27, in preparation for the SCO summit on June 7 in St. Petersburg (the SCO includes China, Russia, and four Central Asian Republics).
An article on the "Eurasianet" April 30 by Sergei Blagov said that the "SCO's self-perception and its potential value to other nations have both sharpened since the U.S.-led war on terrorism began.... Its identity as a regional counterweight to American interests seems to be solidifying."
In the context of the intensive diplomacy in Central Asia by U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Iranian President Khatami, and others, both Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan said to the press in Moscow April 26, that the June SCO Summit would "achieve international significance." The Russian news agency RIA quoted Tang Jiaxuan saying that the SCO is not "a club for empty discussions, but a viable institution capable of making an important contribution to the international war on terror."
Ivanov stated that "we want the SCO to become a modern organization of a new type in line with the demands of multi-polar world."
East Timor's New President Puts Social Justice Before Trials
East Timor's newly elected President Xanana Gusmao, speaking in Jakarta, said that social justice for his people is more important than a human rights tribunal. In Jakarta, where he had been held in prison for seven years for his leadership of the Fretelin independence movement in East Timor, Gusmao hand-delivered an invitation to Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri to attend the celebration of East Timor's statehood on May 19.
Gusmao has increasingly departed from Fretelin, from Nobel Peace Prize fraud Ramos-Horta, and from the Human Rights mafia, by arguing for a Peace of Westphalia approach to dealing with the huge crisis facing the mini-state: "I believe if we talk about justice we see a few people to be judged, to be tried. But if we talk about social justice, we have all our people to gain," Gusmao told a press conference on May 3. "I am not saying I don't agree with justice. Justice, yes justice, but what is my priority? Social justice. We suffered and died for what? To try other people or to receive benefit from independence?"
Gusmao has been advocating amnesties, after trial, for pro-Jakarta East Timorese involved in the campaign of violence and destruction surrounding the territory's overwhelming vote for independence from Indonesia in 1999. He has also been spearheading a campaign to reconcile pro-independence East Timorese and their pro-Indonesian compatriots. Gusmao has travelled to Indonesian-ruled West Timor to appeal personally to pro-Jakarta East Timorese living there to return home, including militiamen who laid waste to the territory.
Gusmao said the majority of East Timorese were living on less than 50 cents a day. "Our people are dying because of famine, because of disease. Women are dying, many children are dying, our elderly people are living in a very bad condition. It is a question of balancing the importance of issues," he said.
"You know what our problems are, social, economic problems, health, education, infrastructure. Many things to do. Independence is not [only about] having a flag ... having a President. It is useless if we don't make efforts to better the living standards of our people."
The UN Development Program Intervenes To Help Somalia
The UN Development Program's Somalia office is launching a program to formalize and legalize Somalia's largest money transfer system, Al Barakaat, five months after the U.S. shut it down, for alleged links to al-Qaeda. According to the Kenyan paper the East African Standard of April 30, the UNDP project comes amid growing international concern that the U.S. has no evidence that Al Barakaat had links with the al-Qaeda network. The U.S. labelled Al Barakaat "the quartermasters of terror" when they put it out of business, but U.S. officials are reported to acknowledge that the evidence of Al Barakaat's backing for al-Qaeda is minimal, if not non-existent. Some European countries that assisted in the operation, also say proof of a terror link has not been established. So far, only four criminal prosecutions have been filed, and none involve charges of aiding terrorism.
Concerned that the closure of Al Barakaatwhich is also the country's largest private-sector employermay cause a new humanitarian crisis, the UNDP plans to work with governments and Somalia's remaining money transfer and remittance companies "to ensure that internationally recognized procedures are followed in the flow of money in and out of the country." Sonya Lawrence Green, an information officer at UNDP Somalia, said the UN agency will give technical support to remittance companies, currently only two, to comply with standard financial regulations. "The humanitarian impact of the closure has been great," Green said.
IMF and World Bank Putting the Screws on Kenya
An April 26-27 meeting of the IMF and World Bank in Mombasa, Kenya resulted in a stand-off between the international financial institutions, on the one side, and at least 140 Kenyan members of Parliament, who rebelled against the demands of the "donors." The donors are demanding that the Donde Actwhich seeks to place controls on bank interest ratesbe withdrawn, and are withholding funds until that, and perhaps other, "conditionalities" are met.
MPs from both sides of the House were categorical that interest rates need to come down, and pledged their support for the Donde Act. No amount of lobbying by the government would deter them, they vowed. Kandara MP Joshua Toro challenged Central Bank Governor Nahashon Nyagah to resign if he were not ready to implement the Donde Act. Toro said that the Governor, who was not at the meeting, had announcedthat the law would never be implemented as long as he was at the helm. Toro accused the IMF of subjecting Kenya to suffering through its "misplaced" policies, which he equated to neo-colonialism and slavery. Quoting from Alan Paton's famous novel about South Africa, Cry, the Beloved Country, the MP told donors: "The IMF and the World Bank want to help the underdog, but they still want to dog to remain under."
Kenyan Vice President George Saitoti said the policies demanded by the IMF and World Bank came straight from Washington, without the involvement of the nation's Finance Minister, who was, however, expected to implement them.
Gatanga MP David Murathe accused the IMF and World Bank of being hypocritical in dealing with Africa governance issues. Webuye MP Musikari Kombo asked the two organizations not to push Kenya's Attorney-General into publishing "shoddy" bills. Citing the Kenya Anti-Corruption Bill, which was rejected by Parliament, Kombo said such laws must be homegrown. He promised the donors that bills drafted at the behest of donors, and not in the nation's interest, would be rejected by Parliament.
Cabinet Minister Raila Odinga accused the two institutions of constantly shifting the goal-posts, as they looked for reasons not to lend to Kenya. "The issue is not about bad governance, because is the country is well governed. But the IMF and World Bank have their own reasons for denying us aid," he said.
Ford-Kenya corporate leader Michael Wamalwa told the lenders that if they want to help Kenya revive its economy, then they should focus on the agricultural sector and assist farmersan area they have done nothing to help.
Zimbabwe Declares 'State of Disaster' Because of Food Shortages
On April 30, Zimbabwe declared a "state of disaster", because of food shortages. President Robert Mugabe announced hopes of stepping up emergency food aid to about 7.8 million people who need food relief (out of a total population of 13 million). Global help has been low. The week of April 22, the UN World Food Program announced that it had received only a third of the 117,000 tons of food it needs to feed the hungry in Zimbabwe. The nation's grain output fell by 50% this crop season. Maize rationing is underway in communal areas; some households are limited to sharing a 110-lb sack of cornmeal each month.
In Southern Africa more broadly, as many as 2.6 million people are already depending on the UN World Food Program for sustenance. The nations, with a total combined population of 54 million, include Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. The Program's director for this region, Judith Lewis, toured the area in late April, reporting that aid will have to at least double. Five million people could face starvation. The crisis could be as bad as that in 1992, when 18 million people lacked enough food, after severe drought. A UN response plan is being drawn up, to be made final by early June.
This Week in History
With this edition of Electronic Intelligence Weekly, we return to the period of the 1930s Great Depression, during that crucial turning point of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's first months in office. Roosevelt's leadership in putting forward policies consistent with the American System of Economics, reasserted the Constitutional principle of the General Welfare, and saved our republic from a move into disintegration and fascism. A revival of this institutional reflex is long overdue today.
On May 7, 1933, eight weeks after his inauguration, President Roosevelt gave his second Fireside Chat, a conversation with the American people about the measures which he, and the Congress, had taken so far. In addition to outlining the specific measures which were enacted, or in the process of going through the Congress, the President underscored the fact that they had been taken in the best tradition of American history, and in the interest of literally saving the accomplishments of modern civilization.
"We are working toward a definite goal, which is to prevent the return of conditions which came very close to destroying what we call modern civilization. The actual accomplishment of our purpose cannot be attained in a day. Our policies are wholly within purposes for which our American constitutional government was established 150 years ago."
The summary of what legislation had been put into effect is impressive, although preliminary to the full agenda which President Roosevelt ultimately accomplished, including the legislative commitments to the General Welfare which came in the 1935-36 period. We quote the President's summary here:
"The legislation which has been passed or is in the process of enactment can properly be considered as part of a well-grounded plan.
"First, we are giving opportunity of employment to one-quarter of a million of the unemployed, especially the young men who have dependents, to go into the forestry and flood-prevention work. This is a big task because it means feeding, clothing, and caring for nearly twice as many men as we have in the regular Army itself. In creating this Civilian Conservation Corps we are killing two birds with one stone. We are clearly enhancing the value of our natural resources, and we are relieving an appreciable amount of actual distress. This great group of men has entered upon its work on a purely voluntary basis; no military training is involved and we are conserving not only our natural resources, but our human resources. One of the great values to this work is the fact that it is direct and requires the intervention of very little machinery.
"Second, I have requested the Congress and have secured action upon a proposal to put the great properties owned by our government at Muscle Shoals [Alabama] to work after long years of wasteful inaction, and with this a broad plan for the improvement of a vast area in the Tennessee Valley. It will add to the comfort and happiness of hundreds of thousands of people and the incident benefits will reach the entire nation.
"Next, the Congress is about to pass legislation that will greatly ease the mortgage distress among the farmers and the home-owners of the nation, by providing for the easing of the burden of debt now bearing so heavily upon millions of our people.
"Our next step in seeking immediate relief is a grant of half a billion dollars to help the states, counties, and municipalities in their duty to care for those who need direct and immediate relief.
"The Congress also passed legislation authorizing the sale of beer in such states as desired it. This has already resulted in considerable reemployment and incidentally has provided much-needed tax revenue.
"We are planning to ask the Congres for legislation to enable the government to undertake public works, thus stimulating directly and indirectly the employment of many others in well-considered projects.
"Further legislation has been taken up which goes much more fundamentally into our economic problems. The Farm Relief Bill seeks by the use of several methods, along or together, to bring about an increased return to farmers for their major farm products....
"Well-considered and conservative measures will likewise be proposed which will attempt to give to the industrial workers of the country a more fair wage return, prevent cutthroat competition and unduly long hours of labor, and at the same time encourage each industry to prevent overproduction.
"Our railroad bill falls into the same class because it seeks to provide and make certain definite planning by the railroads themselves, with the assistance of the government, to eliminate the duplication and waste that is now resulting in railroad receiverships and continuing operating deficits....
"It is wholly wrong to call the measures that we have taken government control of farming, industry, and transportaion. It is rather a partnership between government and farming and industry and transportation, not partnership in profits, for the profits still go to the citizens, but rather a partnership in planning, and a partnership to see that the plans are carried out...."
Nancy Spannaus
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