Electronic Intelligence Weekly
Online Almanac
From Volume 2, Issue Number 47 of Electronic Intelligence Weekly, Published Nov. 25, 2003
This Week You Need To Know
Democratic Presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche addressed a packed town meeting in St. Louis Nov. 18, hosted by three Missouri state legislators: Rep. Juanita Head Walton, Rep. Esther Haywood, and former Rep. Quincy Troupe. Representative Haywood introduced LaRouche as "a leading critic of the Iraq War," adding that, "he has also led the fight to restore the policies of President Franklin Roosevelt. His number one goal, is to reopen public hospitals, as well as repealing the HMO bill, and begin putting millions of people back to work in necessary infrastructure and manufacturing. He's an economist, an international political figure."
Here is an edited transcript of LaRouche's opening remarks.
Thank you.
I shall just make a preliminary comment, first of all, on what I've been doing, since Jan. 1, of 2001, when it was evident that the election outcome was rigged, prematurely, in order to make poor George W. Bush, Jr. the President, whether he were elected or not. I think, frankly, that both candidates should have lost the election, and Gore did a better job of losing the election, than George W. Bush did.
Since that time, it was obvious to me, which way events were going to go. I gave a series of website and similar kinds of addresses to a wide audience, beginning January of that year, before the inauguration of Bush. And, among the other things I said, I spoke of two things we had to look for in the immediate two years ahead: First of all, although George Bush did not create the present depressionhe rather inherited it from Clinton. But, since he was a foolish man, and a stupid one, he was obviously not going to stop the depression, and it was going to become worseand it did.
I also said, that under these conditions, if we study the history of the world, notably what happened during the 1930s, we note, that in times of great financial crisis, of certain systemic characteristics, such as the present one, there is a danger that certain financial interests which control central banks, independent central banks and similar institutions, will be at the point that they will say, "We want our debts collectedeven if it means killing people." The tendency of government, to the extent that it is representative government, is to say, "That's fine. But, we must defend the people first. People come first." And therefore, there is a collision, between a certain type of financier interest and representative government, in which various kinds of tyrannies tend to erupt, at the behest of financier interests, as happened in 1789, when the British used a particular cult, called the Martinists, to organize what became known as the French Revolution. And this was done in banking interests, at that time.
Since that time, there has been a frequent coincidence between major financial crises, and the outbreak or threatened outbreak of terrible wars. This was the characteristic of the 20th Century.
You had the rise of Germanyunder American influence! Very important: that, in 1877, Bismarck changed the law of Germany, based on the influence of the leading American economist of the period, Henry C. Carey, and on the influence of the writings of a person, who had similar views, Friedrich List. And, this resulted in the transformation of Germany, with a great industrial development, agro-industrial development, where Germany emerged as a major power.
During the same period, Mendeleyev, the great chemist, who had been in Philadelphia to join the Centennial celebration of the founding of the United States, went back to Russia and persuaded Czar Alexander II to proceed with the industrialization of Russia, led by the creation of the Trans-Siberian Railroad, which was modelled on the experience of the United States, in our transcontinental rail system.
Similar influencesJapan, for example, at about the same time, was also influenced, from the United StatesLincoln's model, the Henry C. Carey modeland made a transformation into the first modern industrial society in Asia.
So, at this point, the British Empire was threatened. It was threatened from continental Eurasia, as well as from the Americas. The rise of independent, powerful nations, in Europenations committed to the development of the people of these nations, through industrial and agricultural development, and scientific developmentrepresented a challenge to the British Empire. And therefore, the then-acting King of England, the Prince of Wales (his mother was off taking drugs in Scotland, and doing other things, and being hauled out for state occasions, like a stuffed dummy from the closet), and he was actually running things, as the acting King of England. He organized a plot to put the nations of continental Europe at each others' throats. This became known as World War I. So, that crisis, the financial crisis of that period, as reflected by the 1905-1907 international financial crisis, led into World War I.
As a result of the Versailles System, which was insane from the beginning, again, by 1928, the European international financial system was faced with a new, systemic crisisnot a cyclical depression, but a systemic breakdown crisis. At that point, leading banking interests, in the United States and Britain, in particular, moved to copy what they had done in Italy by bringing Mussolini into power then, by bringing Hitler into power in Germany. This was done, largely, through the financial backing from London, of Montagu Norman, the head of the Bank of England, who represented Brown Brothers interests. Brown Brothers had merged with Harriman & Co. in New York City, to form Brown Brothers Harriman.
Brown Brothers Harriman moved the money into the Nazi Party coffers, to bring Hitler back to power from bankruptcy. And then, on Jan. 30, 1933, Hitler was named Chancellor by Hindenburg, under blackmail. His son was involved in financial scandals, and that was used to bring this about. Then, the following month, Göring organized the Reichstag Fire. This was used, using emergency powers, to bring Hitler into a dictatorial position. And from that point on, World War II was inevitable. Again, coinciding with financial crises.
We're in a similar situation, today.
Now, we've come to the point that we are now remembering what happened 40 years ago, in the assassination of John F. Kennedy, President Kennedy. Every television network is doing a feature on the Kennedy assassination. My own organization is producing, this weekend, a review of the lessons of the Kennedy assassination.
But, the Kennedy assassination was not an isolated event. It was an event which fits into the middle of this pattern I referred to, from 1789: a certain tradition, located essentially in certain financier interests, who, when faced with a financial crisis, will tend to tear down the walls of the temple, rather than accept government's role in defending the general welfare of the population. That's what happened then.
But, look back. Look at some other incidents, to understand how we got into the present mess, which threatens us today, worldwide and inside the United States. Look, in that same period, at something else: 1962, October of 1962. Remember, some of you are old enough to remember, when most people were in barrooms, look for God, because they thought the world was going to blow up, with a thermonuclear exchange, any moment, any day. This preceded the Kennedy assassination. The Kennedy assassination was followed, within less than a year, with the outbreak of the Indo-China War, which was a real bummer.
But go back a little bit further. Go back to the end of World War II, which some of us in this room today remember. Some of us were either in service, in that period, or were children of people who were in service. What happened? We were optimistic, at first, going into war. We took people from the farms, and from the streets, from the poor, and so forth; we put them into military training, between 16 and 17 million people, were under military training, at that time, or in service.
We became optimistic: We took people from the swamps, and from the slums, and we trained them. We lined them up in a company street, coming in from the bus. They dropped their duffle bags on the street, and you tried to line them up, and you said, "We just lost World War II." But then, something came out of this, after 16 weeks and more of trainingand we produced a force which was not the greatest combat force in that period, but which was the greatest logistical force, strategic-logistical capability. And it was through our strategic-logistical capability, that we came out of the war, having recovered from the Depression, as the greatest power, the greatest productive power on this planet.
But then, it turned bad, before the end. V-E Day was a day of great rejoicing in the United States. But V-J Day was not a day of great rejoicing. Why? Because the United States, under Truman, had done something evil. People didn't understand what it was, but they smelled the evil. For no sufficient military reason, whatsoever, President Truman ordered the dropping of the only two nuclear bombs in the U.S. arsenal, on the civilian populations of two Japanese cities: Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Shortly after that, the so-called "Iron Curtain" myth was created. And the world was back at war, when the war was scarcely over.
In order to motivate this war, this hysteria, under Truman, a right-wing witch-hunt was launched inside the United States. People lost their courage. At the same time, the Roosevelt economic program was shut down, temporarily, and there was a very serious recession, in the United States, in 1946 and early 1947.
So, the veteran, who had come, in the middle of the war, to a position of optimism about history, about the United States, was plunged into something else: the horror of nuclear weapons! The threat of a war, which would involve nuclear weapons! And, a return, from the upturn under Roosevelt, to a recession, a major recession. Pessimism. Fear. People turned against people. Everyone was afraid you were going to turn the other one in as a communist, or something like that. This became known laterfirst, it was known as "Trumanism"; then, it was known as "McCarthyism."
During this period, the Truman Administration's policy, was to launch preventive nuclear war, to establish world government, under British and American domination. The problem was, we didn't have the nuclear arsenal yet. We had just spent, and dropped, the only two bombs we had. And the crank-up of significant production of nuclear weapons, was delayed. Also, the question of the development of something beyond the B-29, as a delivery system, for delivering these bombs, presumably on the Soviet Union, was not yet provided.
But, we were hovering on the intent, assuming we had an Anglo-American monopoly on nuclear weapons, on the intent, to threaten to use, or to use nuclear weapons to bring about Anglo-American imperial world domination. And this was used, this terror, internal terror, which came to be known at the end of the '40s as McCarthyism, turned people against people, neighbor against neighbor. This was the rot, which came in. But then, at that point, the Soviet Union was the first to develop an operable thermonuclear weapon. At that point, the possibility of using preventive nuclear arsenals, nuclear-fission arsenals, for preventive war, was out of the window.
Therefore, we went into a new phase. Truman was dumped. He was told not to run again. Trumanism was to be uprooted from government. And rather, a traditional military officer, General Eisenhower, was made President, in order to combat the military factionthe pro-nuclear-war factionwhich had come into power under Truman, with the dropping of those bombs.
People were terrified, especially people who had scientific and related professional business careers. They tried to move into the suburbs, into the new suburbs around new industries, which were developing around the developing military industries, and related industries. They had to be careful! Make sure our children don't say the wrong thing! "Your father may lose his job!" "The FBI may get you!" And children were told, "be careful." Truth is not important. What's important, is how you are perceivedespecially by repressive agencies and influences of government! There was a reign of terror that prevailed, even under Eisenhower.
Then Eisenhower came to the end of his Presidency. And he made a speech, warning about what the danger had been all along: He called it the "military-industrial complex." Which was a name for this fascist tendency, which had existed since the launching of the French Revolutionwhat we call "fascism" today. Dictatorship, in the interest of groups of bankers, such as the admirers of John Foster and Allen Dulles. These kinds of peopleand J. Edgar Hoover. This problem.
So then, Kennedy was a promising young fellow. But he didn't have the connections to control this problem. The Bay of Pigs was an example of the problem, one of Allen Dulles's stunts, to try to get the war machine started again. And they were intent on going to thermonuclear war. They were intent on the same kind of policy, of the thermonuclear policy, which existed in the 1940s, under the nuclear preventive-war policy. So, we had the Bay of Pigs.
Then, we had the orchestration of the 1962 Missile Crisis. Do you know, do you remember, do you recallsome of youthe emotions that passed through you, in the month of October? Do you recall, some of you, who are old enough to remember: Do you recall the emotions around the time of V-E Day, and around V-J Day, after the bombs had dropped? Do you recall your emotions, your sense, when you heard that we were headed for a new war, this time with the Soviet Union? Do you recall your emotions, in 1946-47 and later, when the right-wing thing called Trumanism, later called McCarthyism, hit the country?
Do you recall people who had been courageous people in war, in the 1950s, turning into cowards? And telling their children to lie, to keep out of trouble? Instead of looking for the truth, you would look for what would get by. What would keep you out of trouble. What would advance your career. You were up for sale, morally up for sale.
Then you were given a respite, the Eisenhower years: Things were somewhat easier. Do you recall that? Some things got better.
Then, do you recall the Bay of Pigs? Weren't you afraid, at the Bay of Pigs, if you were an adult, or an adolescent child, at that point? Weren't you nervous? Particularly after what Eisenhower had said, warning against the military-industrial complex?
How did you react emotionally, with this experience? Or the experience in your family, to the Missile Crisis of October 1962?
Once you had absorbed this succession of impacts, what happened in your mind, on the day Kennedy was shot? And the cover-up went into effect? How did you react then?
How did you react, less than a year later, when President Johnsonthe same President Johnson, who with an act of courage, was responsible for pushing through two pieces of civil rights legislationone of which was partly repealed under the influence of Al Gore, the Voting Rights Act. Which was repealed by the Federal courts, under the influence of Al Gore, a great Democrat. Do you recall this process?
Now, do you understand where we are today?
Now, we are now faced with another financial crisis, another systemic crisis: The whole system is coming down! It's finished! Despite the great "John Snow job," from the White House: There is no recovery in progress. There is no prosperity in prospect. None! This economy in its present form is finished! When? It's not certain. But, it will be soonunless we change.
Now, we're at the edge of war. Where has the war broken out? Cheney broke the war out, on Sept. 11, 2001. As I said, under these conditions, as I said in January, before Bush was actually inaugurated, I told a broadcast audience: You must expect the risk of a Reichstagsbrand . You must expect the same kind of thing to happen, soon, under these kinds of conditions.
And that is exactly what happened on Sept. 11, 2001.
As a result of that, Cheney's policy for preventive nuclear war, a revival of the original policy of preventive nuclear war, from years ago, struck again. We're now at the Cheney policy of global, preventive, nuclear war! Against a series of countriesnot Iraq, not Afghanistan, not North Korea, not Iranbut many countries, including China! And, the world outside the United States, at a high level, knows it!
The world knows that the United States is acting right now, as a war criminal! For no legitimate purpose, in violation of moral law, and natural law, it is moving toward war: criminal war, of the same degree of criminality, as we tried people for at Nuremberg. Such a criminal is Dick Cheney. Such a criminal are those associated with Cheney, we call "neo-conservatives." The President is only a foola usable puppetcontrolled by Cheney.
That's what we're up against.
Now, look at this situation. What is the situation? Look at the military situation. Let's return then, to this question about the Kennedy assassination memorial, 40 years ago. The results of the two world wars was, the conviction was, that a conventional war would be a horror-show. World War I was a bigger horror-show, for Europe, actually, than World War II, in many respects. The understanding was, we don't fight war like that any more; particularly, you don't allow somebody to fight, because they choose to. That strategic defense is admissible, and necessary. But you don't look for war, as a instrument of policy. You look for war, only as a way of dealing with the danger of warif it's real. And you react, only under attack, or under immediate attack.
People who came up with this nuclear weapons idea, said, "Ah! We don't have to fight conventional war any more. We don't need large armies! We don't need the consent of large populations, to be willing to go to war. Millions of people from each country, willing to go to war as soldierswe don't need that any more. We can use superweapons! We can use air power! To deliver superweapons." And then, they came up with nuclear submarines, and big aircraft carriers: "We don't need civilian armies any more. We will use limited, professional armies, like Roman Legions under the Caesars! From many nations, who will go out and fight war for us, as professional killers, who will not ask whythey will just kill, and be killed."
Like kids trained on video-trained point-and-shoot operations, trained as soldiers. They have no judgment! They have no logistical capability. They have a weapon, with high firepower: They see something that disturbs themthey will let loose with high precision in aiming, and probably keep firing until all the ammunition is gone. Even at a puppy, or at a child.
These are not good soldiers.
Now, it became obvious then, as a result of the Missile Crisis and things before, in the 1950s, that with the development of deployable thermonuclear weapons, that we are reaching the point where a full exchange of thermonuclear capability, could virtually exterminate civilized life on this planet, if not humanity as such. So, this became known as "Mutual and Assured Destruction": We can not go to nuclear weapons. So, the policy then was, "Let us use the threat of thermonuclear war, to force nations to make concessions, political concessions, by giving up sovereignty of their governments." That was the policy which was adopted after the Missile Crisis, during the course of the 1960s and 1970s. This was the problem.
But then, after the Soviet Union collapsed, some people got the idea, "Ha! Now there is no danger, or will be soon, no danger, of a general thermonuclear deployment against the United States. There are thermonuclear weapons which might be used, but they wouldn't dare use them. Therefore, we can proceed now, in going back to various kinds of nuclear weapons, to do what had been intended back in the late 1940s, after Hiroshima: The Bertrand Russell policy of preventive nuclear warfare."
This is what we're dealing with.
Now, there are several cases of warfare, in modern history, which show this didn't work. Truman was an idiot. He was not a good person, but he also was a qualified idiot, strategically. He got around, in the Truman Administration, to playing games with Russia and the Soviet Union. He assumed, that since the Anglo-Americans had a monopoly on nuclear weapons, that he could play with various parts of the world, with no fear of any reaction from these two powers (China was not really much of a power, in a sense, at that time, except regionally). And, he made a mistake. He was wrong: As a result of his bluffing, in Asia and elsewhere, North Korea invaded South Korea, and destroyed the South Korean army, entirely; and had the U.S. troops in there, stuck around the Pusan perimeter in southern Korea. Until MacArthur did a flanking operation at Inchon.
That went on. The Korean War is still going on, in a sense, today. We have the relics of it, still, out there: unresolved war.
Indo-China: Same mistake. The United States understood, in the '60s, that the United States could proceed against North Vietnam, with relative impunity, on the basis of their estimate, which was correct in a sense, that China would not intervene forcibly, against U.S. operations against Vietnam. They miscalculated. The Soviet Union gave logistical and other advice, and assistance, to Vietnam.
And they made a fundamental mistakethe same mistake that is made by Cheney and Company in Iraq today; and Afghanistan: They overlooked what is called asymmetric warfare. That under conditions in between the two levels, of conventional war and full-scale thermonuclear war, what happens when somebody tries to use superweapons to take on a country, the response will be a policy, modelled upon the advice by the Prussiansthe Prussian military adviceto Alexander I against the invasion of Russia by Napoleon Bonaparte's Grande Armée. The advice, which came from von Wolzogenwho was an in-law of Friedrich Schillerwas based on the study of the works of Schiller. And the advice was: Do not attempt to make a decisive engagement, with Napoleon's Grande Armée at the Russian border. But, engage in a withdrawal action, drawing the enemy back, toward either Petersburg or Moscow, as Napoleon might choose. When Napoleon's forces had occupied Moscow, or Petersburg, blow the place upin winter. And thus, bring about a case, in which the remaining, surviving Russian forces, and the Russian population, would fall upon Napoleon's army. And, when Marshal Ney, as the rearguard of Napoleon, came out of Russia into Poland, he said, "I am your rearguard. There are no others."
This is asymmetric warfare. Instead of accepting the warfare, on the terms proposed by the attacker, to attack from a different standpoint.
Now, in dealing with the age of nuclear warfare, the natural action is what's called "people's war": a form of asymmetric warfare based on people's war. We went into Indo-China with superweapons. The Vietnamese came against our forces with people. People-to-people. At short range, thermonuclear weapons don't work. Superweapons don't work.
We went into Iraq with the same assumption. Absolute superiority. At a point, in decisive battle, the Iraqi Army disappeared! Now, it's back, person-to-person. Over 2 million Iraqis with military training, adequate military training, back into action, surrounding the U.S. forces, which will have to leave.
So therefore, we're into that kind of situation. The world is planning to defend itself against such policies as those of Cheney. Russia is planning. China is planning. India is planning. Other parts of the world are planning what they would do, if they came under attack, under the policies of Dick Cheney.
Now, the problem I have, is none of my fellow Democrats have the guts to say that. Every one who's qualified in military training, today, who has studied the characteristics of asymmetric warfare knows exactly what I said to you right now: We have an insane government. And we have politicians on the Democratic side, who are also insane, because they don't have the guts to name the story. Do we want that kind of a world, under this kind of asymmetric policy, simply because someone behind Cheney wants to try to set up a world empire with this kind of policy?
Do we, as an American peopleare we so gutless, are our politicians so worthless, that we will sit back and let this kind of politics run our country? That's the question.
Now, let's look at another aspect of this thing. I'm going to pose this problem. As I said, we're in an economic crisis. Now, what happened? How did this happen? How did we stop being the world's leading producer nation, and become the kind of junk heap, which is preying upon other nations for their cheap labor, to produce our food? And Vietnamizing our own population, with Wal-Mart?
The most important subversive enemy against the United States people and economy today, is Wal-Mart! People say, "Why do you buy at Wal-Mart? Don't you realize it's not the patriotic thing to do?"
"Yes, but I need the cheap food. I can't afford higher prices."
"Why can't you afford it?"
"Because I don't get paid enough to buy that stuff, at higher prices."
So therefore, the collapse of the actual, physical income level, of the American people, is combined with this swindle, under which Wal-Mart demands of its vendors, that they shut down employment in the United States. And instead, get their products to sell to Wal-Mart, from countries such as Mexico, China, and so forth, which supplies these from cheap labor.
So, we're now put in the position, where the American consumer is now depending upon the virtual slave labor, or cheap labor, of people in countries that are being bledas China is making a willing sacrifice, in this caseMexico is being bled. Other countries are being bled. We depend upon the death, this slaughter, of cheap labor, to destroy our economywhich we destroyed, by going in and buying in Wal-Mart! Because we are supporting the destruction of the industries and farms in our own country! Saying, "I can't afford to do it otherwise. I need that cheap food. I need those cheap garments. I need those cheap parts."
We don't make our products any more! "Made in the United States" is a lie! Maybe "Acquired by the United States"; maybe "Specified by the United States"but we shut the company down here, and shipped the production over to China, or someplace else.
Why do we do that? What I described before, explains it, in large degree:
When we went through the incidents of the Missile Crisis, the Kennedy assassination, and the Indo-China War, young people, who had been trained in the 1950s not to tell the truth, but to say what was "wise" to be overheard thinking, were faced with a challenge. And when they were faced with the challenge of the Missile Crisis, the Kennedy assassination, and war, young people going into universities in the middle of 1960s, went through a cultural paradigm-shift, inaugurated by the appearance of the British Beatlesa form of insect lifeon the Ed Sullivan Show.
We went through a cultural paradigm shift, of rejecting science-driven technological progress. We went through a paradigm-shift, against being a producer nation. We went to becoming a consumer nation, which other people, with cheap labor, would work for us. Just like the Roman Legions, returning from the Second Punic War, and related conquests, looted the world! To support Rome. And turned the population of Italy into "bread and circuses".
We have bread and circuses in the United States, today. We have mass spectator sports. We have mass entertainment, dance entertainment. We have rave dancing, rave parties. We have similar kinds of things: Mass entertainment, no different than the decadence of Rome. Bread and circuses. Get a little, and watch a lot.
Entertainment is the name of the game. Pleasure is the name of the game. Instead of accomplishmentpleasure.
So, what happened is, the people who went through that experience, or the population in general, became known as the Baby-Boomer generation. They're now in their 50s, or very early 60s. They are a population who occupies most of the leading positions in government and private life. They are the post-industrial society. The consumer society. The pleasure society.
And they don't believe in immortality.
Normally, the expression of immortality, as a practical expression in society, is through children and grandchildren. People who came to this country as immigrants, would come in poor, from various parts of the world. They were called "green-horns." We're a melting-pot nationwe're not Anglo-Saxon, we're a melting-pot nation. We have people from all over the world. Asian people. We have people of African descent, who were not brought here willingly, but they were brought here, and they became part of the culture, and they have a culture. We have Hispanic-Americans from many sources. Lots of Asians. Every part of Europe is represented, in terms of cultural influences. We are not a race nation. We are a melting-pot nation, a republic based on the culture we develop, by our joint efforts.
Our sense of immortality does not lie in some sense of race, or some sense of this or that origin, as such. Our sense lies with our nation. Two ways: What are we doing for the future of this nation? What are we doing for our grandchildren? We're all going to die: What is going to come of our lives? What does it mean, to be a human being, and be alive? Are we doing something good? Can we die with a smile on our face, because we know we've done something good, and because we believe it will survive, the good we've done?
That went away! Those are the ideas of a productive society: A society that produces, that makes things better, that produces better products; that is more efficient; that is more productive; that makes the land more fruitful. And so forth.
We went away from that.
When you go away from that, when you go away from being a producer society to a consumer society, a post-industrial consumer society, a pleasure society like the decadence of Rome, what happens to the generation which assumes that role? They have no sense of immortality, because they have no adopted mission in life! No purpose for living! No mission that makes life, and death, meaningful. If you die, on a mission, and the mission is successful, then you have achieved a certain kind of immortalitya typification of immortality! If you make a contribution to knowledge, you have won, over death.
So, what happened is, we produced children who are now in the university-eligible age-group. These young people have been given a no-future society: A no-future society, which is headed toward the kind of warfare I described. A no-future society, whose economy is disintegrating. And they don't want it.
A Sense of Mission
My job, is to try to get you to, in your own mind, and others, relive the kind of experience I've described to youan experience which many of you have had, either directly in your personal experience, or know of from your experience in society generallyas you know your parents and your grandparents, and so forth. Much of this you know: It is your experience. You know it!
So, rather than just assuming this or that, as the so-called news media says, why not think about that? Why not think about how we were manipulated, for better or worse, by these kinds of processes. Why did we, in one time, make the right decision? Why did we, in another time, make the wrong decision? Why did we do this to ourselves?
These young people, with whom I've been workingthey're only in the hundreds, but they're going to be soon over a thousand, and they will soon, by next spring, be 10,000 at least: They're the most effective organizing force ever invented. When they get you, they got you. When they go to work on you, they got you. Because they have a sense of mission. They have all the problems you might imagineand more! Most of them, many of you are blind to, because you don't see them the way I see them. And the way they describe themselves to me.
But, they have a sense that they have to save society. They have to achieve a certain kind of immortality. They have a sense that they have to go to the older generations, and say, "Come join us. Let us save humanity. Let us save the immortality of the people of this nation. Let us adopt, again, a sense of a mission in society. Let us develop this society. Let us feel good, morally, about who we are, and what we're doing."
Now, what I'm doing, isbeing a wise, old owl, in some senseknowing these things, and knowing how they work; knowing how the economy's going, I'm taking this, as right now, as I've been doing since the 1st of January 2001, is to do this: to explain the story, in various aspects, and various facets, and with varying emphases from one subject to the other, to record it; to put it on the Internet; to play it back to people, even to the people who were in the audiences, when the thing was done. And, let them see themselves, not just as individuals, but let them see themselves as part of a processa process of trying to organize the conscience of the people of this nation, and other nations, to a sense of what they represent; a sense of their participation; a sense of a new political morality in the United States, in which we will rely, more and more, upon trying to convey this understanding, these ideas, this knowledge, this experience, to these young people, typically in this 18-to-25 university-eligible generation: To give them a sense of mission. To give them the ability to develop a sense of mission. And to use that sense of mission, as they develop it, to influence their parents' generation and others, to bring about a new political movement in the country.
And, as the crisis comes downand it is coming down; as the politicians who are my rivals, so-called, are failingas they will failthey are going to go from failures, to disgusting (some have already achieved that status, like Lieberman): We will build a movement in this country, to, in a sense, take the country back. Take the country back to the sense of mission, we had during the early years of World War II. The sense of hope of mission, that we had with the Civil Rights Movement's rise, in the 1950s, and the achievements into the middle of the 1960s. Go back, to capture these great moments of our past, and give rebirth to them, in this situation. That kind of movement.
And, that's what I'm up to doing. And now, go at me.
KWMU radio in St. Louis, a National Public Radio station, aired two five-minute spots, based on a 20-minute interview with Democratic Presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche, conducted Nov. 10. The text of the spots, which aired at morning drive-time on Nov. 18, at 5:35 am and 7:35 am, is reproduced here, as it was carried on KMWU's web site.
LAROUCHE: My concern politically has always been to revive the Franklin Roosevelt factor in the Democratic Party's tradition as an essential element of a possible recovery....
We're on the edge of a general monetary and financial collapse.... And therefore, the policy from the Presidency of the United States, has to be in a sense to return to the precedents of Roosevelt, if not exactly copies in detail of everything he did.
QUESTION: Your supporters interrupted a Democratic Presidential debate in September demanding that you be a part of it. Did you put them up to that, or were they acting on their own?
LAROUCHE: Well, I knew of it, but they were acting on their own. I just sat back and watched. What are you guys going to do? And they did it. And this is in the civil rights tradition of civil disobedience. That's how you deal with a fraud. And that entire proceduremorally, politically, and every other way ... was a complete fraud, run out of some very foolish people in the leadership of the Democratic National Committee.
QUESTION: Is your current campaign for President any different than the seven previous campaigns you ran?
LAROUCHE: Well, the issue is the samethe underlying, long-term issue is the same. Obviously, I've been right and the voters have been wrong. because my issue in every campaign has been the need, essentially to go to a change in monetary policy, financial policy, back to the Roosevelt tradition, the post-war Bretton Woods tradition, that is the pre-Indo-China tradition, the pre-Nixon tradition.... The voters were wrong; I was right. But I got a lot of support, despite what the reports are....
QUESTION: You are more of an opponent of Dick Cheney than you are of George W. Bush. Why is that?
LAROUCHE: Well, look, George Bush is a dummy. But, ... Cheney is the guy we've got to be rid of, because we can not be going into this policy of nuclear preventive war, which is the policy the United States will be dragged into, if we don't get him out before the next election.
QUESTION: I know, by law, you can't actually vote for yourself, since you have been convicted of felonies. Are there laws on the books now that would prohibit you from becoming President, if your campaign gets to that point?
LAROUCHE: People don't remember our country's history. Every major leader of our country, from the founding, was a felon under British law, When you get into this area of political convictions, that's what you run into.... And therefore, our Constitution was crafted, that the people of the United States, through the Federal electoral process, control the choice of President. Any other consideration, is irrelevant.
QUESTION: Sir, do you believe that a lack of mainstream coverage of your campaign has been a hindrance?
LAROUCHE: Not really.... [T]he importance of the national commercial news media has greatly diminished from what it was in the 1980s and even early 1990s.... My campaigning is mass-based. The youth movement is that. What I can accomplish, with one dollar, is as much as they can do with $10 or $20....
QUESTION: So, what do you do when you're not running for President? You've been doing it for 25 years or more now, 27 years actually. What do you do in the meantime?
LAROUCHE: Well, I'm the world's leading economic forecaster, on the record. If you take the record of forecasts which have actually been publicized.... That's been my concern, is a just new world economic order, in which the condition of human beings, as human cattle ... has to come to an end. The dignity of the human being must be established....
"A PEOPLE DETERMINED NOT TO BE SLAVES, WILL NOT BE SLAVES"
Here is Lyndon LaRouche's keynote at the campaign event in Detroit, on Nov. 20, 2003. Michigan State Rep. Ed Vaughn introduced Lyndon LaRouche.
Rep. Ed Vaughn: We've got some problems ahead of us, and we've got to fight; I believe we should always be prepared to fight. The man I'm going to introduce to you tonight, is always prepared.
He reminded me of this Michigan Senator. His name was Dominic Jacobetti [ph]. He went to Washington one time, and Jake told me this story. He was the most powerful man in the Michigan House of Representatives. He was Speaker. Jake said he was at the Waldorf Astoria, and he was supposed to make a speech, and he said, he just remembered that he left his teeth at home. And he had no teeth. He said, "I can't speak! What am I going to do?"
So, the man next to him, went into his pocket, pulled out a set, gave them to him, and said, "Try these on." So, he tried 'em on and they were too big. He said, "I can't talk with these!" So, he went back in another pocket, and he said, "Well Senator, try these on." And he tried those on, and they were too small. He said, "No! No! What am I going do?" So, the man said, "Hold it. Wait." He went back in his pocket and brought a third set out. He said, "Now Senator, try these on." They were perfect fit!
So, the Senator said, "Sir, you must be a dentist." He said, "No, I'm an undertaker."
But, he was prepared. And, the man I'm about to introduce to you, this evening, is always prepared.
Now, I took Economics 101. Samuelson was the author. And I tell you, I didn't learn nothing until I started taking Economics 102, 3, 4, and 5, from Lyndon LaRouche! The man is brilliant. He's a spiritual humanist.
He is the man who oversees a new youth movement in Americathe LaRouche organization youth. He is the man who won the last Democratic Presidential primary in the state of Michigan. He is America's premier economist. And he is the man with the sensible answers, to be the next President of the United States of AmericaLyndon LaRouche!
Lyndon LaRouche: You always do it! You always do it, Ed. Thank you.
Well, I'm happy, on this particular occasion, even though our Internet connection is going to many other parts of the world population, that here, I see before me, some old friends and people who were old friends, but I didn't know of it, of my generation. And therefore, as I speak before various audiences, in particular, I will make that generation, my generation, a point of reference.
For the following reason: We, in my generation, had a particular experience, and there's no one older than us, generally, who's had that experience. And all of you, here in the room, or hearing by way of the webcast, Internet, who had that same experiencethat is, our generation.
We were raised, in the beginning, under the reign of Coolidge and Hoover. It was a terrible time. Some people thought it was prosperity, but it was terrible. We were, as a nation, essentially immoral. This was the Flapper Era, the era of pleasure-seeking, the era of get-rich-quick, and no particular morality.
I know. I was there. I lived through it.
But then came 1928-29, and already, in 1926-27, the farm belt in the United States began to collapse. Other people didn't care. But the farm belt was collapsing as a result of Coolidge's policies. And then, came '29, and the great foolishness came to an end. And then, we had the "Great Snow Job," thentoday, we have John Snow, as Treasury Secretary, who tells us that the economy is growing, that prospects are wonderful. Then, we had pot in every chicken, or something of that sort. Or two cars, or two garages in every car, or something of that sort. Prosperity was just around the corner.
And the poverty got worse and worse, and it became worse around the world, and people called it the Great Depression.
Now, Hoover was not unintelligent, nor did he cause the Great Depression. But, he succeeded in making it worse, for which he gets full credit. Franklin Roosevelt, who was then the Governor of the State of New York, who was a descendant of a collaborator of Alexander Hamilton, Isaac Roosevelt, who headed a Bank of New York, which was allied with Hamilton against the traitor Aaron Burr. And Franklin Roosevelt maintained the tradition of that ancestor, in the patriotic tradition of the founders of our nation. He prepared for his role as President, by preparing the kinds of measures he would take, to pull the nation out of this disaster, which was ongoing while he was Governor.
The Hoover Administration tried to dictate to Roosevelt, the terms on which he'd go into office; to impose on Roosevelt, before he actually entered the Presidency; to impose policies, which in a sense, would have been something like the Bush policies of today. Roosevelt rejected that offer from Hoover. And the Hoover Administration cut him off. So, he walked into the White House without even a pencil, from the Inaugural Address. And from that moment, however, he ordered the beginning of the recovery of our economy.
Today, we face a similar situation. We've gone through a long period of idiocyand I'll go through some of the experiences, starting from my experience, and the experience of some of you in this room, to give you a sense of who you are. Of whatever generation you are, whatever your age is: I can tell you, who you are. In the sense of who you are as a generation, what the experiences are, which over the course of the past century, have struck you. You may not have experienced them in your flesh, but you experienced them transmitted from your parents, your grandparents, and so forth. And they're part of you. And, if you understand what this experience is, what is part of you, passed down from one generation to the next, then you are better able to cope with the great crisis, which faces us now, when we're in the worst financial-monetary crisis of modern world history, which is now ongoing.
Some of you younger ones, have conditioned yourself to think that these conditions are bad, but more or less normal; to think that these things that are going on now, can continue; to think that there's an alternative for the next President of the United States, which is not me. And, I'll shock you: There is no such alternative. And you're not going to find one. And I'll make it clear to you, why.
Under Roosevelt, most of you my age remember, the United States turned up. We were gray-faced. You had people who had been on the bread lines for two or three years, when Roosevelt came to power. I saw some of them. I saw their faces. Their faces had turned gray, because they didn't know where they were going. They were more or less like the homeless of the United States today. No place to go home to. No future. Struggling from one day to the nextmany people were like that.
Take this part of the world; take the winter of 1932, which was a particularly cold winter. Many people who had had jobs, and had homes earlier, were surviving in "hobo jungles," and there was a bitter-cold Winter, that 1932 winter, and people died in hobo jungles, which in those days were usually found alongside the railroad tracks someplace.
Those were the conditions of life, and Roosevelt changed that, in gradually infusing in the American people a sense of optimism: that things were going to get better. Well, they got better slowly. But they got better.
Then, you had programs, public employment programs, and other programs which began to move things upward. By 1935, 1936, we had begun to become human again; we began to have some sense of confidence. 1938, after a slight recession that year, we became a little more confident.
We then entered a war, which Roosevelt knew was coming. We participated in that war, we mobilized for that war, we were pre-mobilized for it. And we won that war. We won it, not because we were best soldiers in the world. We weren't. I was therewe weren't. But, we had the best logistics in the world. And, we won the war because we had the best logistics in the world. And the best logistics came from our farms, and our factories, and things like that.
We were a great producer society. And when V-E Day came, the day of peace in Europe, the world was happy, and we were happy. And then, came V-J Day: And we weren't so happy any more. And that's the beginning of an ugly story.
What happened? First of all, we, with our logistics, and with the generalship of MacArthur, had won the war in the Pacific. True, there had been some very serious battles. A lot of Americans and others had died. There were some unnecessary battles: Iwo Jima was not necessary; but a lot of courageous men died at Iwo Jima, fighting because they were told to fight, a battle that was unnecessary. But, MacArthur, by avoiding battles where they were not necessary; and using our air and naval power, and other logistical superiority to dominate increasingly the entire Pacific region; we were able to bring Japan to the pointwith a blockade, a naval blockade, an aerial blockadewhere the island-nation of Japan was dependent on imports of raw materials and so forth from the continent of Asia, could no longer secure those imports. Japan was a defeated nation, not merely on the field of battle, but defeated by American logistics.
Japan had already negotiated the attempt to surrender, through the Emperorthrough the Papacy, through the Vatican, through the Office of Extraordinary Affairs, with a gentleman then known as Monsignor Montini, later known as Pope Paul VI. That offer of surrender had been negotiated with Washington, but Truman refused to accept it.
It is said, what Truman did, is Truman took two nuclear bombs, which we had in our arsenalthe only two nuclear bombs we had in our arsenaland he dropped those bombs on the civilian populations of two Japan cities: Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
And we weren't too happy, when V-J Day came. We were glad the war was over. But, the smell of victory had turned to a stink, as a result of what happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We had done the unnecessary. Then, when Japan surrendered, Japan surrendered under exactly the terms, which had been negotiated through the Vatican, before this happened. The occupation of Japan occurred under exactly the terms and conditions, that had been planned and conceded by the Emperor of Japan, prior to those bombs being dropped. There was never a need to do it.
But that was not the end of the story. That was just a bad experience. The idea of this superweapon, that could kill masses of peoplea single weapon, so many, so terribly, all at once. Take the case of the Enola Gay, which now going up in a museum outside Washington: The pilot went crazy, from the sense of guilt over what they had done, in dropping the bomb on Hiroshima.
But, it was worse, as I said. We had people, like a man of peace, called Bertrand Russell: Bertrand Russell was the inventor of the nuclear weapon. He admitted it. He was the one who had started the nuclear-weapons program in the United States. He was the one, who planned nuclear preventive war, to bring about world government. And that's why some of you, of my generation, were very unhappy about the end of the war. Because Winston Churchill came to Missouri, and made a speech about the "Iron Curtain," and we were then committed, in fact, under Truman, to prepare for conducting preventive nuclear war against the Soviet Union. And that continued.
And Truman, who was a little manvery little in soul, in spirit, if any at allwho made adventures against nations of the world, assuming that Russia and China would not fight back, because they were afraid of the nuclear weapons we didn't yet havewe could produce them, but did not yet have them. So, they made a provocation against China. As a result of it, suddenly the North Korean army overran South Korea. The South Korean army was wiped outlater to be rebuiltwas wiped out, then, and the American forces were trapped in a small perimeter, at the southern tip of Korea in Pusan. And then, MacArthur outflanked the situation with the Inchon landing. It was on. And then Truman got rid of MacArthur.
Because, what Truman's policy was, was Russell's policy: To establish an Anglo-American world empire, through the use of weapons so terrible, that the world would submit to world government, rather than face the deadly weapons of this type. And, many of you who came back from military service, at the end of the war, had been optimistic near the end of the war, because they knew we had won the war; we knew we had become a prosperous and powerful nation again; we had recovered from the effects of the Depression. Your optimism was spoiled, because the FBI came sneaking around, to find out if you really were ready to fight those Commies and drop the bombs on them.
One neighbor turned against another. Everybody was turning everybody else in, and became rotten. Men who had been courageous fighters, courageous, dedicated patriots coming out of the war, lost it. I know them. I knew them personally. I saw them after the war. Naturally, you know, the war's over, you go look up your old buddies, and you talk to them and find out what they're doing. It wasn't good. They turned into cowards.
Some of us fought against it. I did. I was convinced to. I tried to get Eisenhower to run for President, in 1947. He sent me back a nice letter, acknowledging my argumentget this bum Truman out of there; run for President. That we, who had gone to war, the best of us at least, had come back with some sense that we had a mission. We were the one nation, the power on this planet: We had a chance to bring about a just world order, as Roosevelt had promised. We could end colonialism. We could create a world, with our influence, of sovereign nation-statesnot an American Empire, but a world of neighbors, of sovereign nation-states. We could help them become strong with our economic power. We could cooperate with them. We could eliminate the possibility, of putting the world through another kind of war, such as the two world wars we had just gone through in that century.
We were optimistic. Suddenly, this went. We turned against each other. We lost our optimism. Then, Truman got us deeper and deeper, and the Korean War had started.
Then, in the course of that, someone discovered that the Soviet Union had developed the first deployable thermo-nuclear weapon on the planet. At that point, a nuclear-armed United States was not going to be capable of making a surprise nuclear attack on the Soviet Union.
We entered therefore, into a new order of things. Truman was told not to run again. And he didn't. They wouldn't even let a Democrat become President, because of what Truman had done to the Democratic Party. It was not McCarthyism that was the problem: It was Trumanism! And now, as then, the Democratic Party has some bad things in it.
So, we turned to a man, who, like MacArthur, was opposed to these kinds of military policies: Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, whose first act, in campaigning for Presidentsignificant actwas to go to Korea, and say, "I can end our war in Korea."
So we elected Eisenhower. And we felt better, even though Adlai Stevenson was not disliked. We felt better, because we thought we had avoided the worst. And we had eight years of relative peace, under Eisenhower. But, we had skunks in theretwo Dulles skunks, Allen and John Foster. And some others, who were lurking there in the woodwork, ready to strike. Eisenhower left office, at the beginning of '61, and made a speech, warning the American people against what Truman had represented: the "military-industrial complex." That wasn't the name I call it, but that was a fair descriptive name.
Jack Kennedy was President, but Jack was not prepared quite to deal with what he was getting into. He was taken by surprise by certain things he didn't understand clearly, until he understudied a few things at the bedside of Gen. Douglas MacArthur; who explained some things to him, that caused Jack to realize he had to pull out of the Vietnam/Indo-China operation, and not have an Indo-China war. MacArthur told him: "Don't go into a land war in Asia. No U.S. land war in Asia!"
Kennedy thought it was a good idea. He took this fellow you knowMcNamarahe took him to the White House and he gave him a tongue-lashing. He probably has still got scars on his back, from the tongue-lashing that Jack Kennedy gave him. If you could get him to come out in the open, he would probably admit that. And, Jack humiliated McNamara: He made him stand on the White House steps and forswear everything that McNamara was committed to. He said, we were going to pull out of this Indo-China operation. We're going to get out of there.
But then, Jack was killed. And, Johnson was terrified.
Now, Johnson did a couple of good things: The two best things he ever did, were two Civil Rights bills. One was the Voting Rights Act, which he put his neck on the line, personally for. And, Johnson was still courageous on some things.
But: When it came to the issue of war, he could see those three rifles that had aimed at Jack, were aimed at him. And he signed on to the war in Indo-China.
Now, in the meantime, we'd gone through one other terrible experience: In 1962, October of that year, in the United States people were running into bars, looking for God, because they thought they were going to be blown up by a thermonuclear barrage, any next morning. This shock not only hit my generation, but hit the generation of young people, who were then adolescents, who were about to become the Baby-Boomer generation of the mid-1960s.
As a result of that, and the Vietnam War, many of the younger generation then entering university, went crazy. This began about the time the Beatles scuttled across the stage of the Ed Sullivan Show, and the great cultural paradigm-shift, or the cultural degeneration shift occurred. Because these young people were so terrifiedterrified of the reality with which they had been associatedthat they decided, "This society is no good. We've gotta drop out. Technology is bad."
And so, we had the Baby-Boomer generation. The flight from reality.
So, we were transformed from the greatest producer nation on this planet, into becoming a post-industrial society. In going from the great producer nation, to becoming the predatory, great consumer nation. This happened as a process, a process which was accelerated by 1971-72. In 1966, Nixon went down to Mississippi, to Biloxi, and there, he met the Ku Klux Klan, and he saw God. This was the beginning of the Southern Strategy. Which the Democratic Party, in more later years, began to try to imitate. They called it the "Suburban Strategy." You may have heard about it.
So, we became rotten. And under the influence of Nixon's Administrationor actually, he was a captive of Henry Kissinger, but that's all rightunder that, in 1971-72, the post-war monetary system, which had been developed by President Roosevelt, was shut down. And we had new kind of monetary system, the so-called floating-exchange-rate monetary system, which is this now.
What's happened is, over this period, from the period of the early '60s: the Missile Crisis, the assassination of Kennedy, and the entry into the Indo-China War; there has been a cultural transformation in our people. This cultural transformation has gone on, it's unfolded, it's developed. But we're now at the fag-end of it.
We've now reached the point, where we live on the basis of virtually slave-labor in China, on the basis of Mexican laborof a Mexico which no longer has real economic sovereignty; we destroyed that, from 1982 onlooting much of the world, to produce for us, what we no longer produce for ourselves. Our farms are ruined. Our farmers are ruined. Our industries are ruined. Our jobs have fled. What is made in Detroit, is no longer made in Detroit: It's assembled from what's made in many parts of the world, and that increasingly so. Our productive industries are gone. Our infrastructure has collapsed. Our mass transit has collapsed. Our air-travel system is crazy, and collapsing. Our power-generation and distribution systems are disintegrating.
We've come to the point that the debt of the United States, under present conditions, could never be paid; and that is the condition of much of the world, besides.
We are now at the end of the great cultural paradigm-shift, from being the great producer nation, that Roosevelt's recovery enabled us to become, to becoming a ruined, and rotten, post-industrial society, a consumer society, living by driving down the values of currencies of other nations, and forcing them to work for us, as virtual slave-labor, by ruining themselves.
But we, while ruining and sucking on the blood of these other nations, have also ruined ourselves at home. We've destroyed our own people. The HMO program is mass-murder; it accelerates the death rate, and a willful acceleration of the death rate through the HMO system, is nothing but systematic mass-murder. Mass-murder of our own citizens. Our education system is an abomination, as well as our health-care system. Our general infrastructure is rotten. Our industries are fled.
We are now at the end of a process, under which the values which people have been conditioned to accept, as normal valuesthe values which have guided them in voting, in deciding what they put up withhas changed the population, to the point that what people think they ought to do today, by instinct, is wrong. And, the candidates they think they should vote for, are the wrong choices.
Now, take a look at some of the candidates. Take a look at Senator Kerry, the Democratic candidate. (I'll say nothing about the poor dummy, who's now the President. He has no qualification whatsoever, except meanness, and that doesn't get you very much.) Look at Kerry: Now, Kerry's not a stupid guy. Personally, man to man, he's not an uncourageous person, he's an intelligent person. Why is he behaving so stupidly? You know, Gephardt is not a great genius, but he's sort of a normal political man. Why is he behaving so stupidly? Well, on the rest I won't say much.
But, why do we choosewhy does the party itself, the national Democratic Party, produce nothing but stupid candidates? Or unqualified ones, even among people who themselves are personally qualified as human beings, to make many kinds of important decisions in government?
Why can't we find a President? Who is qualified for the office, at this time?
Why can't we find voters, who are qualified to choose a suitable President, at this time?
So, that's the nature of the problem: We're not really in the process of trying to choose a President. We have to recognize, there's something wrong with the voters themselves. Otherwise, we wouldn't have picked the idiot we picked recently. There's something wrong with the voters! Not merely a lack of courage. Admittedly many people are afraid: They vote for certain candidates, because they're afraid to be caught not voting for them. When you have a trade union and a political party machine, which is ready to ruin you and destroy your life, if you don't "go along to get along"hmm? Sure, it's true: People are terrified into voting for these candidates. Terrified into not voting for me! They're terrified with threats on their job; they're terrified by their union, of victimization there. There's a reign of terror by these institutionsincluding the Democratic Party and some of the unions in this countrya reign of terror against the people, to try to intimidate them, into voting for incompetent candidates, and incompetent policies.
But, that's not the end of it. The problem lies in the people themselves. A people that is determined not to be slaves will not be slaves.
What are we enslaved to, then? What are so many of our citizens enslaved to? They're enslaved to their habits: the habit of post-industrial society; the habit of living in this kind of consumer/pleasure society.
Look at Detroit: The jobs have gone! What comes in? The casinos. Is a casino a productive enterprise? It produces the money from your pockets into somebody else'sthe croupier takes your money. You had the case of this boat on the Mississippi, a gambling boat, floating casino: It went to one city, got the money out of that population, and moved on to the next city! Moved down to St. Louis, to try to loot the people of St. Louis next! Why do people gamble? Why do they gamble, when they're poor? Don't they know they're going to lose? Otherwise, they wouldn't set up gambling casinos, unless it was rigged to have the suckers lose! So why do people go in there, like shark-bait, to be eaten?
Why do they consider that an alternative, to industry? To agriculture? To efficient power production and distribution? Why do they accept that? Because they've been conditioned that that's the way it is. This is what we've learned. In 40 years, we've learned how not to be like what we were 40 years ago.
We've learned, like the Romans: The Romans had conquered pretty much of the world, from Italy. Beginning with the end of the Second Punic War, they introduced mass slavery into Italy itself. They shut down production inside Italy, because they began to steal from the rest of the world, the conquered world. They turned their population into a system of "bread and circuses." Bread was passed out, like welfare. There were no jobs, no real income. To keep the population quiet, you open up the casinos: the Colosseum. You got in there, and watched people kill each other, for your entertainment! You watched animals eat people, for your entertainmentas you do, when you watch television or go to movies today. It's what you do, when you go to one of these mass rock concerts, and so forth. The same thing: "bread and circuses." Crumbs to get by on. Entertainment to take the pain; drugs to take the pain away.
We are destroying our population, because we are accepting this change in values, which came on, as it did for ancient Italy, upon us, today.
That is the reason why I started tonight, the way I did. Because, when you look back, and look at the experience of those of my generation, who are here, tonight: Recall what our experience was. Recall the experience of our generation's children; the experience of our generation's grandchildren. And then, look at our grandchildren and our children, from my generation, and see what happened to them. What happened to their minds? How they were changed, to become people who would willingly submit to a process, by which they are destroying themselves.
Because you have the power. People have the power, intrinsically, if they're willing to exert it, to change things. A generation older than mine, my parents' generation, voted for Roosevelt, supported Roosevelt, and took us out of a time, when we were culturally rotten, back in the 1920s, and brought us back to becoming ourselves, so we emerged from the war, as a great producer nation, a power in the world for good, if Roosevelt had lived.
We were still a producer nation, up till the middle of the 1960s. We helped Europe develop. We contributed to the development of many other parts of the world. We were useful, despite the fact that we were being bad at the same time. But, then, with the Missile Crisis, the Kennedy assassination, and the beginning of the Indo-China Warand the beginning of the great cultural paradigm-shift, which started on the stage of Ed Sullivan's CBS show with the Beatleswith that, we became something else. We didn't become rotten all at once. We became rotten, step by step, by step, by step. Every time you accept doing a rotten thing, you become a bit rotten yourself. But that becomes a habit. And that's what happened to us.
Now therefore, what will change us? What will save us? We have to change our way of thinking. And the first thing to do, is to recognize what the changes were, in these three successive generations, which have brought us to point, that we are inflicting upon ourselves our own destruction as a nation. That's the problem.
It's my job, not merely as a candidate, to do that for you. To try to induce you to look into yourselves, to look into the experience of my generation, look into the experience of my children's generation, my grandchildren's generation. See what they've gone through, how the cowardice of the returning veteran, in suburbia, taught their children never to tell the truth: "It might get you into trouble. Say what is expected of you! Never say what you think: Say what you want to be overheard saying." This is a typical Baby-Boomer mentality.
When the Baby-Boomer mentality was hit, by the combination of the Missile Crisis, the Kennedy assassinationand "Lord! Horrors! We have to go over, us nice little kids, we have to go to Vietnam, and fight that war? We don't do that! That's not nice!" So, by these kinds of terrors"We'll flee into drugs, instead of going to Vietnam; we'll destroy ourselves with drugs." So, by this process, we've corrupted ourselves as a people.
But people, who are capable of making scientific discoveries, intrinsicallypeople can see what's wrong with their own minds. They can see how their minds were ruined over successive generations, by the change in opinion.
People can change themselves. Animals can not change themselves. People can change themselves. And they can change themselves, because they have a higher power, to reflect upon themselves, to decide what they wish to become.
People of my generation also have another advantage: We're going to die soon. And therefore, our values are improved thereby. Because we don't think of what we're going to get. We think of what we're going to givewhat we're going to give to coming generations. The meaning of our life, our sense of immortality, is what we give, that is, if we're smart; if we're not stupid. We don't expect to take anything. We expect to give.
And that's our strength. If we look at ourselves as people who are going to give, rather than take, then we use our lives to say, "I can die with a smile on my face, because I have given something! My life means something, because I gave something to humanity. I gave honor to the achievements and contributions of the generations that came before me. And I give a future to my grandchildren, and those of my grandchildren's generation."
That gives you strength, because you have a sense of spirituality, a sense that man is not a piece of flesh: that man is a mind, which exists only in the human being. And that mind has a quality, immortality. And therefore, the meaning of your life, is what you do with what you are while you're here. Something that will last. Something that will make your ancestors smile, and make your descendants happy, and proud of you.
When you look at yourself, and say, "That is my interest; that is what I wish to become, that kind of person. To achieve that kind of immortalitylegitimate immortalitythat I have earned." Then you have the power to change yourself, and change the way you think, in a scientific way, by looking at experience, as I tried to summarize that kind of experience to you tonight: To look at the experience of successive generations, to see how ideas and passions are transmitted from one generation to another. And how the young generation coming into the field now, the one I'm so happy aboutthe youth generation, the 18- to 25-year-old, university-eligible age youthwhy they're so important, to me and to you: Because, if we can enable them to help convince their parents to come back to the human raceleave Baby-Boomerism, and come back and start thinking about the future of humanity. If those two generationsthe generation of my children and my grandchildren's generationif those two generations start working together, to change society, to meet the challenge of the present, we have, in our nation, a great tradition, if we can recognize it. We have the power, the influenceif we do thatto influence the course of world history.
Not as an empire. Not as a dictator. I have friends in India, I have friends in Russia, I have friends throughout Europe, I have friends in South America, I have friends in Africa: These are my friends. We have the power, in the United States. If I can act as a friend of these friends, we can bring the nations together, with the example of the struggle to establish our republic, and to bring forth in us the best that we have been: We have the ability to bring these nations together, and say, "Here we are. We're in this period, where we're all afraid of the spread of a nuclear-armed war, being organized by people like Cheney and the so-called neo-conservatives; and some of the Democrats, like Lieberman and so forth, who are going along with itwe can avoid this. We can avoid plunging this planet into war. We have a great economic crisis. We can lead, in creating a recovery from this world economic crisis, as Roosevelt led, in bringing us out of the last world crisis. We can do that."
We can take my friends abroad, we can bring them together, and we can say: We all going to be sovereign republics. No empire. Nothing like empire. We're going to create what John Quincy Adams and other great leaders of the United States intended: On this planet, a community of perfectly sovereign republics, which are united by principles akin to those enshrined in the Preamble of our Federal Constitution. We can actually create an order of peace on this planet, a durable peace. Which can survive.
We can do that, now.
I can do that now, if I'm President. I could do it, today, if I were President. All the resources are there. We could recover from this depression. All the potential is there. We simply have to decide that we're not going to continue to play the gamethe game which was brought upon us, when we submitted, one after the other, to these things that betrayed what Franklin Roosevelt had tried to give us in his lifetime.
Not as a result, but as the ability to make the decision, to achieve those results: We can do it.
And now, there are other matters you want to discuss, and I will discuss them, as you ask about them.
Thank you.
Links to articles from Executive Intelligence Review*.
*Requires Adobe Reader®.
Economic Nationalism Has Re-Emerged in Mexico
by Alberto Vizcarra and Jesús Martínez
The renewed effort to privatize Mexico's energy sector and its national oil company has awakened a strong nationalist reaction by diverse political forces, labor organizations, and within the population in general. These sectors reject President Fox's drive to deregulate the national electricity market, which would open the door to looting by multinational energy pirates.
Wal-Mart 'Eats' More U.S. Manufacturers
by Richard Freeman
In mid-November, Wal-Mart, the world's largest corporation and leader of the 'globalization' drive, forced the closing a national children's clothing store, Kids 'R' Us, and pushed the famous Hoovervacuumcleaner manufacturer to the brink; by the end of November, it is expected that Hoover may announce the shift of a substantial portion of its production facilities to Mexico, laying off hundreds of American workers.
Conference Report
The Kyoto Protocol Is In Shambles
Prof. Kirill Kondratyev, a specialist in the field of atmospheric research and environmental science, reports on the World Climate Change Conference, held in Moscow.
U.S. Lurches for the Exit in Iraq: `Fall of Saigon II'?
by Muriel Mirak-Weissbach
The U.S. ``policy shift'' toward a hoped-for accelerated departure from Iraq, does not signify a viable solution, but only denotes the level of panic that has gripped the White House over the escalating resistance in Iraq.
Voices Against `Desert Vietnam'
by Jeffrey Steinberg
A growing chorus of American national security and defense experts has targeted the Bush Administration's 'Vietnam in the desert'fiasco in Iraq, providing a welcome and widening domestic flank against the Dick Cheney-led neo-conservative 'war party' in official Washington.
Italy Wakes Up to Iraq 'Post-War' War Reality
by Claudio Celani
The Nov. 12 suicide attack against the Italian Carabinieri police force headquarters in Nassiriya, southern Iraq, which killed 33 (19 Italians and 14 Iraqis) and destroyed part of the compound, not only resulted in destruction of innocent lives, but blew up the fundamental ambiguity behind the Italian military deployment in Iraq.
China's Nation-Building, America's 'Mustifying'
by Mike Billington
An extraordinary meeting sponsored by the U.S.-Indonesia Society (USINDO) in Washington in November put in sharp relief the failure of American economic foreign policy in Asia, and the role of China in replacing the United States as the primary source of support for 'nation-building' in Asia.
India Is Widening Its Relations in Asia
by Ramtanu Maitra
In recent years, Indian policy towards Asia as a whole has gone through a sea-change. A number of factors brought about this policy shift. Perhaps the most important one is the massive growth of China's economic power, which forced the Indian political leadership to realize that unless they find a way to broaden India's economic sphere in the region, and become less dependent on the western economies to increase trade, the country will be left far behind.
India-Russia:
Summit Builds 'Strategic Triangle' Potential
by Mary Burdman
India and Russia enjoyed decades of very close political and economic ties during the last half-century. The Nov. 11-13 summit of Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow showed the two governments committed to transforming their relationship to deal with a crisis-ridden world.
UN, Israeli Institutions Tell Sharon: Make Peace
by Michele Steinberg and Dean Andromidas
In an unprecedented move, on Nov. 13, four former heads of the Shin Bet, the Israeli national security service, blasted the hardline policies of Israel Prime Minister Ariel Sharon towards the Palestinians. They declared, in a joint interview to Israel's largest-circulation daily, Yedioth Aharanot, that Israel faces 'catastrophe' unless it makes peace with the Palestinians.
Mitzna: 'We Are Back' For Peace
by Michele Steinberg
Gen. Amram Mitzna (IDF-ret.) former chairman of the Israeli Labor Party and current member of the Knesset (parliament), gave this Nov. 1 keynote speech in Boston, Mass., to a conference of Brit Tzedek v'Shalom, the U.S.-
based Alliance for Justice and Peace. Mitzna also spoke to capacity crowds in Philadelphia andNew Yorkbut not one major U.S. newspaper reported his speeches, showing thus the media bias for the pro-war Likudniks.
Germany Bonds With France Put Perle in a Neo-Con Rage
by Rainer Apel
A heated verbal confrontation between U.S. defense advisor Richard Perle and former French Navy commander Adm. Jacques Lanxade was among the spectacular events at the annual WeltamSonntag Security Policy Forum, held in Berlin during the first days of November.
Demand German Reform In Schro¨der's China Trip
by EIR Staff
'Germany needs a Deng economic reform, too!' demands a mass Bu¨So party leaflet going out across Germany, as Chancellor Gerhard Schro¨der prepares for a December economiccooperation trip to China, while hundreds of thousands of Germans have been demonstrating throughout November against layoffs and depression-cutbacks in every sphere of economic life.
`Plumbers' Are Under Investigation in Cheney-Gate
by Jeffrey Steinberg
The neo-conservative claim trumpeted throughout U.S. media on Nov. 14--that links between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda had been ``conclusively proven'' by a memo from Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith to the Senate Intelligence Committee--boomeranged, amid the exposure of what appear to be dirty tricks to steal sensitive documents from opponents of Dick Cheney and the neo-conservatives.
Neo-Con Sponsor Black May Go Down in Flames
by Scott Thompson
Lord Conrad Black of the Hollinger media cartel empire has been forced to resign, but the investigation continues into this hedonistic Canadian patrician.
LaRouche Vows To Reopen D.C. General as Capital's Health Crisis Deepens
by Edward Spannaus
In preparation for his Oct. 22 campaign webcast, Democratic Presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche issued an outline of the actions he will take within the first hour after he is inaugurated in January 2005. 'First, to let the nation and world know I mean business on the issue of health care, I shall act not only to restore the D.C. General Hospital as a full-service public hospital, but set into motion steps to make that hospital a leading edge of our improved national security capabilities, and a leading national hospital-institution of its type in the world.
U.S. Economic/Financial News
The U.S. dollar plunged to an interday trading low on the New York Comex exchange Nov. 18, of 1 euro to $1.1974. This represents the biggest one-day drop in the value of the dollar against the euro since April 3, 2001 (the dollar moved upward, but by a very small amount, at the end of New York trading).
The fundamental force driving the dollar's fall is the United States' inability to finance its current account deficit, within the context of a bankrupt world financial system. The Treasury Department released a report last week showing that net foreign capital inflows into the U.S.that is, foreign purchases of U.S. Treasuries, stocks, etc.fell from $49.9 billion in August of this year, to a miniscule $4.19 billion in September. According to the Financial Times, this is the lowest level of foreign monthly capital inflow since the Long-Term Capital Management hedge fund failed in September 1998.
During the second quarter, the U.S. ran a record current account deficit of $138.7 billion, and it is on a trajectory to run a current account deficit of above $550 billion for the whole year. The only means by which the U.S. can finance such a huge deficit, is through attracting foreign capital inflows into the U.S., which are drying up. "This goes back to the question of how can the U.S. fund its fiscal and current account deficits," Bryan Smith of Barclays Global Investors said Nov 18. "The Treasury report shows it's not going very well." Should foreigners reduce their inflows of capital into the U.S., and in fact, reverse it, and pull dollars out, the U.S. dollar would shatter, and along with it, the dollar-based world banking system.
At the same time, gold futures for December delivery rose on the New York Mercantile Exchange by $2.60, to $400.30 an ounce, which is the first time gold has crossed above the $400 level since April 1996. Jonathan Best, finance director of AnglGold Ltd., the world's second-biggest gold producer, stated, "We've been saying ... it wouldn't surprise us to see the gold price go through $400, because it is driven by dollar weakness."
Some "experts" have attributed the dollar's fall to the U.S. government's announcement this week of some restrictions on U.S. imports of Chinese textiles, but this analysis is an attempt to obscure underlying realities. However, it appears that a secondary cause of greater significanceintersecting the primary cause of the unsustainability of America's current account deficit and the over-valued dollaris America's losing the war in Iraq. Mary David of Credit Suisse First Boston in London, stated Nov. 19, "The broader issue is how the U.S. is doing in Iraq. If there is further deterioration ... [it] will impact the dollar."
A front-page article in the Wall Street Journal Nov. 21 highlights the decimation of the U.S. machine-tool sector, at the heart of the nation's once-mighty economy. The National Tooling and Machining Association estimates that 30% of U.S. tool-and-die shops have shut down, in just the past three years, and expects many more to close in the next few years. Manufacturers' orders for machine tools have plummeted 63% during 1997-2002; and in the first nine months of 2003, have fallen 16% from the level in the same period last year. Machine-tool makers produce the metal-cutting and -forming machines (such as dies and molds), used by manufacturers to make everything from televisions to cups, from car doors to surgical devices.
The collapse of the machine-tool sector, the Journal warns, also endangers national security. Unmanned drones and body armor for troops in Iraq, consists of composite materials made using special molds and advanced machine tools. Ingersoll, which recently declared bankruptcy, was one of only two U.S. companies that made tools needed to produce components of stealth aircraft.
As an example of the destruction, the Journal cites the case of Ernst Buchmayer, the head of Western Industrial Tooling in Redmond, Washington, who is depleting personal savings in order to keep his machine shop operating. He has already slashed more than 50% of his workforce, from 55 workers to 25. Sales have plunged 70% from their peak in the 1990s, to just over $3 million in 2002, when the company lost $500,000.
The plunge in machine-tool orders reflects factory bankruptcies and manufacturers' moving of production to countries such as China, under the paradigm down-shift to a predatory consumer society, dependent on cheap labor overseas. Manufacturers are demanding low-cost machine tools. As a result, some U.S. toolmakers, Buchmayer notes, are forming joint ventures with companies in China. Buchmayer's newest company client, has outsourced manufacturing to Singapore.
Top U.S. automakers Ford and General Motors are demanding steep price cuts from their parts suppliers, in a move reflecting the broader industrial breakdown, and likely leading to more job and wage cuts, and outsourcing of engineering work and product development, the Detroit News) said Nov. 18. The struggling automakers seek to slash purchasing costs and boost profits, in order to offset the painful impacts of rising rebates and low-cost financing deals.
In early November, Ford executives told 100 of the company's top suppliers, that prices eventually must meet the industry low, which is charged by suppliers based in low-wage countries, such as China. As a first step, suppliersled by Delphi, TRW Automotive, and Visteonmust cut prices by 3.5% by Jan. 1, 2004. Then, Dearborn-based Ford wants suppliers to slash design costs by 20% compared to 2003 levels. By the end of next year, suppliers must reduce the price gap with lowest-cost firms by a "minimum" of 50-75%.
Detroit-based GM threatened that if a supplier's price were found to be higher than that of its European or Asian rival, the supplier would have 30 days to apply corrective measuresor it would not lose its business with GM.
The Nov. 17 issue of the GOP-linked newsletter, The Big Picture, featured a lead story by Richard Whalen on the collapse of the American middle class, citing a recently published book, and the Nov. 8-14, 2003 special issue of The Economist, on the U.S. economy. Summarizing the London Economist story, Whalen wrote, "We Americans are working ourselves to death and borrowing ourselves into bankruptcy to pay for wildly overvalued housing and 'good' schools, falsely promising secure middle class status, income and lifestyles for our children and ourselves." The Economist study noted that, while in 1982, Americans and Europeans worked the same number of hours a year, now Americans work 300 more hours, with an average 45-hour work week and four-six hours mandatory overtime.
Moreover, "One hundred million Americans shop at Wal-Mart, and many of them are forced to live from paycheck to paycheck," according to the Economist. The giant retailer now finds a mid-month dip in sales from the 14th of each month to the 16th, even in purchases of essential food and pharmacy staples. Consumers are tapped out. "The consumer's liquidity crisis is the worst that Wal-Mart has seen and is the most pronounced in the last five to seven years," writes Wall Street retail analyst Bill Dreher, as reported in Barron's."
"The disturbing news from the outwardly prosperous U.S. is that America's middle class is going broke at an alarming but little-noticed rate," Whalen also notes. "Between 1981 and 1999, one in seven of America's seemingly most solid familiesmarried, middle class, middle income and in early middle age, with childrenwas being forced to file for bankruptcy.... This year, more people in the U.S. will end up bankrupt than will graduate from college, be diagnosed with cancer or suffer a heart attack." Those alarming statistics came from a recently published book, The Two Income Trap: Why Middle Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke, by Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren and her Wharton MBA daughter, Amelia Warren Tyagi. Whalen concluded by reviewing the "Mafia-like" usury policies of credit card companies, concluding, "The two-income debt-trap problem has long since grown beyond individual irresponsibility and profligacy. A systemic bias now pushes vulnerable middle-income Americans into over-borrowing and bankruptcy."
Even syndicated columnist David Broder reports that the celebrations for the so-called economic recovery that followed the "Snow job" report of a 7.2% increase in U.S. gross domestic product, is premature. Writing in the Washington Post Nov. 16, Broder observes that, in the real world, state budgets, and programs funded by them, are being devastated, because states are undergoing severe budget crises.
* Arizona's Joint Legislative Budget Committee staff reports that, "without smoke and mirrors, fund transfers and other gimmicks used to balance the 2004 budget, revenues for fiscal 2005 will be about $961 million less than anticipated spending."
* In California, the Associated Press reports that, "to solve the state's budget problem and help pay for new school construction, voters may face a March ballot featuring more than $30 billion in proposed bondsby far the largest amount ever put forward on any statewide ballot." Though Broder does not say this, this is on top of $10.7 billion in outstanding California bonded debt. Meanwhile, doctors are suing to stop a 5% cut in reimbursements for services to 6.5 million Medicaid payments. The doctors' lawsuit says the new cut "is being imposed on a system already in crisis." The state Transportation Commission says that expected lower gas receipts mean a five-year moratorium on new highway or transit construction. This is what Beast-Man Arnie will have to deal with.
* In Connecticut, Republican Gov. John Rowland told the Associated Press that, "We don't see the revenues to the state picking up until next year. We're not going to have any easy sailing budget-wise for at least two years."
* In Iowa, Democratic Gov. Tom Vilsack is rescinding a $1.6 million cut in the budget of the Department of Public Safety because of his discomfort at learning "there are fewer troopers on the road than there were 30 years ago." Vilsack said he would have to cut elsewhere to make it up, but he could not say where.
* In Michigan, Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm is touring the state, seeking ideas about where to cut spending and deal with a $920 million shortfall. She is raising private money to pay her travel expenses.
* In President Bush's home state of Texas, 54,000 children have been dropped from the Federal-state health insurance program, under new regulations from Austin.
Broder concludes that "the celebrations of economic recovery in Washington, may be as premature as that 'Mission Accomplished' banner hung behind Bush on the USS Abraham Lincoln to hail the end of major combat in Iraq."
Some 43 million Americans15.2% of the populationwere forced to go without health insurance in 2002, according to the Census Bureau of the U.S. Commerce Department. State budget cuts are making matters worse: In Texas, Gov. Rick Perry cut state subsidies for health insurance as part of a larger set of cuts, to close a $10 billion budget gap, which will cost Texas $500 million in Federal matching money, and is expected to further spur the rise in the number of uninsured.
A growing share of those without health coverage are middle-class families whose annual wages are insufficient to cover the cost of health-insurance premiums. Examples abound of health insurance rising so high that low income families have to drop it.
According to the Commerce Department, one-third of all foreign-born are without health insurance coverage.
U.S. employment in the Information Technology (IT) sector dropped 8% to 6.0 million in 2002, from 6.5 million workers in 2001, the American Electronics Association reported. In addition, AEA warned that more than 200,000 jobs will be lost this year in electronics manufacturing, communications services, software, plus engineering and tech services.
The largest decrease in jobs was in electronics manufacturing, which fell by 233,000 jobs (or 13%), representing more than half of all tech jobs lost between 2001 and 2002intersecting the industrial breakdown.
AEA denounced budget-cutting in education and R&D. AEA's president and CEO William Archey lamented the "decline in basic research, particularly in technology, by the federal government." "We worry that we have eaten the seed corn of Federal research of 20 and 30 years ago; that is not being replenished."
All but three states lost IT jobs in 2002, led by California and Texas.
World Economic News
Derivatives holdings by financial institutions jumped by $41 trillion, or 33%, in the 12-month period ending June 30, 2003, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) reported Nov. 12. The steep rise was "driven strongly" by increased use of derivatives by financial institutions with mortgage holdings (e.g., Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac). The notional value of the global over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives market, surged from $127.5 trillion at the end of June 2002, to $169.7 trillion at the end of June 2003a staggering 33% increase, rising in all categories except gold.
In particular, there was "vigorous growth" in interest-rate swap contracts, the largest single group of derivatives, the BIS said. Foreign-exchange derivatives, "an area which had not seen double-digit growth since the BIS began collecting these statistics," shot up by 20% in the first half of 2003. Precious metals derivatives, a "normally quiet" category, jumped by 31% in notional value in the first six months of 2003.
Mortgage lenders are calling for setting up a European version of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, obviously, in order to prepare for a bailout by the taxpayers, once the European mortgage bubble bursts. The project for creating the "European Mortgage Finance Agency" (EMFA) is currently led by four European banks, which are heavily involved in mortgage loans: Credit Agricole (France), Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (Spain), Life & Permanent (Ireland), and Banco Comercial Portugues (Portugal). Many other European financial institutions in Belgium, Britain, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Italy, and Sweden are also discussing the EMFA plan. The proposal for EMFA has been sent to members of the European Parliament, the European Commission, the European Central Bank. and the European Investment Bank.
The idea sounds nice at first glance: The banks themselves would deliver the core capital for the new mortgage agency, which would then help to create "a single European market for mortgage-backed securities." Like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the U.S., EMFA would buy up mortgage loans from the private banks, and then re-sell the debt in the form of mortgage-backed securities or bonds. To be successful, EMFA is supposed to achieve a triple-A rating by the rating agencies. Therefore, the proponents of the project argue, EMFA should have at least an implicit financial guarantee by the European Union.
London's Financial Times on Nov. 18 ran an editorial on the subject, headlined "Euro Fannie Mae: No thanks. The EU should not underwrite the mortgage market." It emphasizes that the EMFA promoters don't want just a "sponsorship" for the mortgage market by the European Union. "The problem is that the EMFA wants the EU to go much further by providing sufficient implicit or explicit guarantees." "It proposes a special tax status, preferential status for EMFA debt and access to a European Central Bank credit line."
In several European countries, including Britain, Ireland, Spain, and the Netherlands, incredible mortgage bubbles have been built up in recent years, which, in proportion to the respective economies, are at least as explosive as that in the U.S. Long-term interest rates, after reaching historic lows in June 2003, have already started to rise. And in some countries, such as England, interest rates on mortgages are not fixed but automatically zoom up in line with market rates.
A study issued by the World Bank insists, in genocidal tones, that the Argentine labor market is "distorted" by such things as "high non-salary costs"benefits, health insurance, etc.and that these make it much more expensive to hire workers, according to Clarin of Buenos Aires Nov. 13. Severance pay is too high, collective bargaining is a problem, and oh-so-many more "rigidities" are built into the system. More "flexibility" is needed, it demands, to get rid of all those nasty benefits.
Why reduce these unjustified expenses? Why, to pay the foreign debt, of course. The study, authored by American William Cline, demands that Argentina increase its primary budget surplus to 4.5% of GDP, rather than the current 3% figure. You'd think they were worried about the dead IMF financial system, since all this must be done, the study says, in order to pay the multilateral lending agencies the debt owed them. The Kirchner government's plan to restructure $94 billion in debt, should also be altered, the study demands, by reducing the size of the writedown, or "haircut," to 47% (instead of the current 75%).
Note that several Argentines collaborated with Cline in the study, all of whom are either associated with the Mont Pelerin think tank, FIEL, or are former employees of the IMF/World Bank, or Wall Street banks. Included on the list is the name of current Finance Minister, Roberto Lavagna.
United States News Digest
General Brent Scowcroft, National Security Advisor to former President George Bush ("41"), and the head of the current President Bush's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB), gave an interview to the German-language edition of the Financial Times, published Nov. 17, in which he slammed the Bush Administration's policy of "democratizing" Iraq. Scowcroft was in Berlin, Germany, attending a policy symposium. He criticized the U.S. government for attempting to use Iraq as a base for democratizing the Middle East, warning that such an effort is both unrealistic and highly dangerous. He cited the case of Algeria, where a similar "democratization" effort 12 years ago led to a bloody civil war. He also warned that plans to reduce the number of U.S. troops inside Iraq was another bad mistake, echoing the statements recently by Gen. Anthony Zinni and others, that more American troops are going to be needed to stabilize the situation in Iraq.
Scowcroft warned that, the longer the U.S. waits to reinforce the troop presence, the more incalculable the consequences. He declared that the U.S. was pursuing a wrong policy, driven by a missionary zeal, which has not been thought out. If the U.S. wants to help launch democracy in the region, they should start with Palestine, or even with Iran, where there is a recent history of free elections. He returned to the Iraq fiasco, noting that the Administration went to war with Iraq, based on the assumption that Iraq had large stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, and had ties to al-Qaeda. When both assumptions proved false, the Administration foisted the democracy argument. As an alternative, Scowcroft called for the U.S. to pursue close cooperation with its allies and NATO partners.
Given Scowcroft's position, this interview sends a powerful message to the Bush Administration, which is otherwise floundering, due to its failure to break with the neo-con agenda. It reflects a major faction within the Republican establishment that disagrees with Cheney's flightforward, and is prepared, in some degree, to act.
Despite concerted efforts by Vice President Dick Cheney and the neo-con "Plumbers" (see InDepth) to stop any investigation into Cheney's role in securing the war against Iraq, and manipulating President Bush and the Congress, the story won't be snuffed out.
On Nov. 13, ABC-TV's Nightline program, aired a scathing attack on Cheney, as a sullen right-wing extremist, who has unprecedented power, and was the architect of the Iraq war fiasco, and virtually every other significant decision nominally made by the President. The show featured interviews with Richard Clarke, former White House counterterror czar, former CIA official Vince Cannistraro, columnist Robert Novak, former Clinton National Security Council aide Ivo Daalder, Heritage Foundation fellow John Hulsman, and historian Doug Brinkley.
Nightline host Ted Koppel started out the show, "For a while there, we were going to call this program, 'Dick Cheney, the American Prime Minister.' But that, we concluded, would have gone way too far. That would have suggested that Cheney was actually running things, and that President Bush was merely the symbolic head of government, rather like one of the crowned heads of Europe. There is no evidence to support that. By the same token, describing Dick Cheney as simply Vice President of the United States doesn't go nearly far enough."
The broadcast highlighted Cheney's mega-staff, which functions as a second National Security Council, often beating out the actual NSC with policy papers which then shape the Administration's decisions. Given Cheney's close ties to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Koppel noted, the State Department often found itself out-voted automatically on major policy issues. "As one former top official in the Bush Administration told me," Koppel told the audience, "Cheney gets two whacks at every issue. He's in the interagency meetings where policy is considered.... then, he is usually the last person to talk to the President privately before a decision is made."
Cannistraro nailed Cheney for his visits to the CIA, where he grilled analysts who failed to produce data backing up conclusions he had already reached. An unnamed senior military official, Koppel reported, said Cheney's "staff's reports were distorted and ideological."
Doug Brinkley, the author of a new book on John Kerry and Vietnam, said, "I think Dick Cheney, while on one hand has been the most influential Vice President in American history, has now become a bit of a political albatross for the sitting President, for these reasons. If the war in Iraq is not going well, and post-war Iraq is not jelling, that we're getting Americans killed all the time, somebody's going to have to be sacrificed on the altar. It's the thought in a close election that Dick Cheney is going to go campaigning around the country, state by state, in what could very well be a referendum on the war in Iraq and post-war Iraq. I think you will see him stepping aside, staying on as a senior adviser, and filling in as one of the great speakers for the conservatives for Bush. But I think you're going to have to have somebody more vigorous on the campaign trail."
Koppel noted that the Vice President was asked to appear on the show, but his office never even responded. "If the Vice President would like to chat anytime soon, his place or ours, we'd be only too delighted. I'm not counting on it." While past Veeps had good reason to stay in the background, not so Cheney. "Dick Cheney is a mover and shaker of the first order. That is the President's prerogative. But when an elected official in this country is granted an extraordinary amount of power and influence, there ought to be some transparency and accountability, which means something more than giving an occasional speech to a conservative foundation and making a couple of appearances on Meet the Press." Koppel concluded.
A debate over pre-Iraq war "intelligence" broke out in the House Intelligence Committee session on Nov. 18. While the spotlight has been on the Senate Intelligence Committee over misinformation, lying, and leaks regarding Iraq intelligence, the parallel House Committee held a closed-door, classified session to investigate Bush Administration pre-war claims about Iraq. At a conference on fusion energy Nov. 18, Rep. Rush Holt, (D-N.J.), a former fusion scientist, arrived directly from the Committee meeting. He said he had queried "a senior intelligence analyst" who had helped develop the National Intelligence Estimate a year ago.
Holt said that since chief U.S. weapons inspector Dr. David Kay "had searched and searched," and not found any Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD), he asked the intelligence analyst about it. The analyst said he was "absolutely certain" Iraq had WMD. "What evidence do you have?" Holt asked. The analyst said he had 27 years of experience in the intelligence community, and offered other obfuscations. Holt asked again for any evidence, but got none. Holt asked if the country were "well served by a senior intelligence analyst who speaks in absolutes, in the absence of evidence." The intelligence community, Holt said, is supposed "to watch for self-deception" on the part of the Administration, and "be a safeguard against that."
Holt also criticized the House energy bill as a "grab-bag of special interests that doesn't do what the country needs." To the fusion scientists at the meeting, Holt advised that they maintain their integrity, and continue to refuse to talk in "absolutes."
In his Whitehall speech in London on Nov. 19, President Bush read the following words about post 9/11 terrorism: "The attacks that followedon Bali, Jakarta, Casablanca, Bombay, Mombasa, Najaf, Jerusalem, Riyadh, Baghdad, and Istanbulwere not dreams. They're part of a global campaign by terrorist networks to intimidate and demoralize all who oppose them."
On Nov. 12, EIR had reported on a New York Times article in which unnamed Bush Administration officials complained about Vice President Dick Cheney's continuing efforts to link the recent bombings in Iraq, with the bombings in Bali, Casablanca, and Riyadh, which authorities believe were carried out by al-Qaeda-linked groups. These officials said that Cheney, by implying that al-Qaeda is operating inside Iraq today, is attempting to reinforce his discredited claim that Saddam Hussein was linked to al-Qaeda before the war.
"At this point, it isn't clear who's responsible for those bombings," one unnamed Administration official was quoted as saying. The official said that it is "premature" for Cheney to even suggest that al-Qaeda terrorists are responsible for the bombings within Iraq. "We just don't know," he said.
EIW is investigating the connections between Dick Cheney's insistence on the al-Qaeda/Saddam/Sept. 11 connection and the recent leaked memo by Cheney's neo-con insider, Under Secretary of Defense Doug Feith. The links asserted in the memo were denounced as "inaccurate" by the Defense Department.
California's "former" Hitler admirer and new governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, on his first day in office Nov. 17, promised government by referendum, budget cuts, and layoffs, while conducting a charm offensive with the press.
In his first press conference, Schwarzenegger presented a picture of the fascist state he hopes to create, complete with direct "democracy" instead of representative government. The reaction of the star-struck media to this horror show was typified by this headline in the Sacramento Bee: "He Meetsand Charmsthe Press." Veteran reporters, obviously under the sway of their brush with glamor and celebrity, overlooked the preposterous proposals put forward, which threaten the survival of the nation's wealthiest and most populous state.
Schwarzenegger made the following proposals:
* Place a $15 billion bond issue on the March ballot as a referendumYes or No to huge borrowing, to cover the expected budget deficit. He had made no mention of such massive borrowing while campaigning;
* A second ballot initiative, tied to the first, to place a spending cap on the state budget. Schwarzenegger said he would not allow the first, without the second. The effect of the two ballot initiatives would be to take the state budget out of the hands of elected legislative representatives, and put it into the hands of the vox populi.
* Cut $11 billion from the state's $29 billion workman's compensation system, to give "relief to businesses" (at the expense of injured employees);
* More lay-offs of state workers, though the compassionate Austrian emigré promised, "I could guarantee you that I will not lay anyone off in December, or before Christmas."
However, LaRouche Youth Movement organizers, during a lobbying day on Nov. 18 in Sacramento, upset the apple cart, organizing a core of Democrats to pledge that they will mobilize for a fight against the Beastman Governor. Some Republicans privately acknowledged concern with the gigantic size of the bond offering, which will lock in interest payments for 30 years, on top of the massive budget deficit.
A recall drive against Washington, D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams, who shut down D.C. General Hospital in 2001 on behalf of Wall Street's Financial Control Board, is being organized by Barbara Lett Simmons, one of Washington D.C.'s representatives on the Democratic National Committee, and the senior member of the State Democratic Committee for the District of Columbia. Simmons has spoken at a number of Lyndon LaRouche's webcasts in Washington.
The Mayor's attacks on health care, as well as on education, will be a central feature of the recall drive. Since a Mayor cannot be recalled during either his first or last year in office, the petition campaign will begin in January, Simmons said on Nov. 18. According to the timetable, the actual recall election will probably take place sometime during next year's September-to-November period.
President George "41" Bush sent an interesting message from Texas to President George "43" Bush on Nov. 7, by granting The George Bush Award for Excellence in Public Service, to Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass), a frequent and eloquent critic of the war in Iraq, along with many of Bush's domestic policies. Said George 41: "The good Senator's prescription for what ails America may be different than mine, but it is born of patriotism and compassion." To which Kennedy responded: "Three generations of Bushes and Kennedys have devoted their lives to public service. The friendship between our families and our respect for each other go back for more than half a century."
Bush Sr. also quipped: "It is a well known political fact of life, particularly here in Texas, that when you want to fire up a Republican crowd and give them a little red meat, nothing works quite like jumping on Ted Kennedy." But despite the obvious political humor, Washington took note that it was not Bush "41"'s former cabinet secretaries, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, who were granted the Bush Award in Texas, but rather the Senator who publicly called Bush, Jr.'s war in Iraq "a fraud made in Texas."
The Excellence award has been given by Bush Sr. only twice before, to heads of state, Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl.
Two judges of the three hearing a habeas corpus petition for Jose Padilla on Nov. 17, questioned the constitutionality of holding a U.S. citizen as an "enemy combatant" without any legal rights, according to the New York Law Journal. Padilla has been held incommunicado since June 2002. One judge said that to give the Executive such power would be a "sea change in the constitutional life of this country and ... unprecedented in civilized society." Said another, "As terrible as 9-11 was, it didn't repeal the Constitution."
Ibero-American News Digest
Brazil's state-owned development bank, BNDES, announced Nov. 11, that it would increase its share of holdings in the giant Companhia Vale do Rio Dulce (CVRD) mining and industrial company, specifically to head off any possibility of a foreign multinational company gaining control over what was, before its privatization in 1997, the most valuable and productive of Brazil's state-sector companies. The purchase of 8.5% more of the shares of CVRD's holding company, Valepar, went ahead two days later, giving the State a majority of six of the 11 seats on CVRD's board of directors. "Our general concern is to keep control in national hands, of companies which are strategic for development," the director of BNDES's industrial affairs division, Fabio Erber, explained.
Merrill Lynch and J.P. Morgan attacked the purchase as not financially justifiable, because the Lula government paid more to repurchase shares than the Cardoso government had made by selling them. J.P. Morgan's report, however, made clear that what really worries the financiers, is the Brazilian government's assertion that economic activity is subordinate to national interest. J.P. Morgan complained, nervously, that this is a movement away from privatization, and "a return to the past."
Similarly, on Nov. 17, Communications Minister Miro Teixeira announced that the government will closely follow the re-sale of Embratel, the former state-sector telecommunications company which was privatized in 1998 by the Cardoso government. Bankrupt WorldCom Inc., which currently owns a controlling interest in the company, has announced that it intends to sell its shares in the Brazilian company. The Communications Minister defended the government's right to be involved in the sale, on the grounds that Embratel owns a network of satellites whose orbital positions belong to the Brazilian state, and which provide for secure communications for the Brazilian military. Furthermore, the government is concerned about the potential interest of Citibankone of Brazil's largest creditorsin buying the company.
The impulse of Brazilian President Lula da Silva's government to protect national sectors of the economy continues to be limited to only that which is deemed possible, without breaking with Wall Street and the IMF system. Thus, the Finance Ministry is now demanding weekly financial reports from Petrobras (the state oil company) and Eletrobras (the state electricity company), demanding they prove that they are "doing their share" in helping the government meet the IMF's primary budget surplus conditionality. The Finance Ministry has been hounding the companies, to get them to further cut back investments.
A furious Eletrobras President Luiz Pinguelli charged his company was being victimized by "rogue" Finance Ministry officials, who manipulate Eletrobras's statistics, whichever way helps the Treasury statistics look the best. If the Treasury counted government revenues earned from the giant Itaipu dam as part of Eletrobras's income, as they should, it would be seen that Eletrobras had "done its part" for the overall government surplus, and that would permit the company to make 1.5 billion reais in needed investments, Pingueilli said.
The primary budget surplus is calculated as public revenues minus all expenditures except debt payments; i.e., it is the surplus generated in order to pay the debt. The Lula government had sought to get the IMF to permit it to exclude capital investments made by the state companies from its calculation of current expenditures for the surplus, to thus free up revenues for desperately needed investments in infrastructure. But when the new IMF accord was announced Nov. 5, it became clear that battle had been lost.
With this description, a PRI Congressman from the state of Oaxaca summarized the response of PRI nationalists to the latest attempt by allies of the corrupt free-trade fanatic, former President Salinas de Gortari, in the leadership of the PRI Congressional faction, to line the PRI up behind a tax reform acceptable to Wall Street's Fox Administration.
The 2004 budget plan sent to Congress by President Vicente Fox's government proposes to extend the VAT tax to currently exempted categories (including food and medicine, public transportation, books, magazines, and private schools), at a hefty rate of 10%. Initially, the head of the PRI delegation, Salinista Congresswoman Elba Ester Gordillo tried to get the PRI to back a 5% to 8% tax on food and medicines, instead. Unable to round up sufficient support for that travesty, she announced with great fanfare on Nov. 18, that the PRI would no longer vote for any VAT tax whatsoever being placed on these basic necessities.
Gordillo, however, offered a "new" tax proposal, for which she claimed she had the support of the entire PRI delegation: a 10% tax on production, and intermediary sales. This, she had the effrontery to claim, would not affect consumers!
This latest "proposal" is likely to have the same short lifespan as her 5%-8% tax on food and medicine plan. Her enemies exposed the fact that she was handed this "proposal" at a private meeting with Treasury Secretary Francisco Gil Diaz (a University of Chicago-trained butcher). Various Congressman publicly rejected the idea that the whole PRI delegation supported this proposal, which they labelled as nothing more than poorly "disguised VAT tax."
Or, as Congressman Elipidio Concha so elegantly put it: "This is the same filth, but with different flies."
Mexico's Foreign Relations Secretary Luis Derbez announced Nov. 18 that Adolfo Aguilar Zinser would be removed as Ambassador to the United Nations as soon as Mexico's rotation on the Security Council concludes on Jan. 1, 2004. President George Bush reportedly had complained twice, personally, to President Vicente Fox over Aguilar Zinser's open organizing, at the UN, against the war on Iraq.
The pretext chosen to finally get him out, was a Nov. 12 speech he gave at the Ibero-American University in Mexico City, in which he said that Washington wanted a "relationship of convenience and subordination" with Mexico, and "sees us as a backyard." Hardly the stuff of an international incident, but he made his remarks on the eve of the annual Binational Meeting between the two governments, and Bush's Secretary of State Colin Powell demanded his head, protesting that, "we never, ever, in any way would treat Mexico as some backyard or second-class nation." President Fox immediately issued a disclaimer; Aguilar Zinser was called in to account for himself, and his removal was announced. Aguilar Zinser responded by resigning, effective immediately, on Nov. 20, with a nasty open letter to President Fox, protesting his removal.
Aguilar Zinser, a '68-er leftist "intellectual," had happily joined the synarchists' Fox team, along with his good buddy Jorge Castaneda, in the run-up to the 2000 election, for which supportlike Castenadahe was rewarded with a government post. He and Castaneda had a falling out, however, over Castaneda's abject capitulation to the Bush-Cheney imperial war policy. His removal, at the U.S. government's behest, is already feeding into building rage against the United States inside Mexico.
Megaspeculator George Soros's Bolivian asset, cocalero leader Evo Morales, told UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, when they met on Nov. 14, that the international community should support an "indigenous government," which would be installed in that country very soon. Annan met with Morales during the Ibero-American Heads of State summit, held in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, and invited the drug-legalization advocate to attend an upcoming conference of the Permanent Forum of Indigenous Peoples, to be held at UN headquarters in New York.
Attending the meeting with Annan, also, was Mexican Marcos Matias Alonso, president of the Fund for the Development of the Indigenous Peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean, an overtly separatist operation set up by the IMF-subordinated Inter-American Development Bank in the mid-1990s. "Judging from what Morales said, the change [of government] will occur in the short term," Matias told the press after the meeting, "and a new government is taking shape." He did report that Annan had advised Evo to be patient, and give President Carlos Mesa a chance to solve the country's problems.
Matias's presence shouldn't be underestimated. In an op-ed published in Argentina's La Nacion Nov. 7, Matias warned that "a new network of indigenous leadership is being woven together, which can result in a conflictive supranational situation." The conflict will be unleashed very soon, he said, "even in countries of apparent calm." It is like a river of impressive strength, "which will drag other countries along" with it. Countries with large indigenous populations are going through "cyclical situations, which can collapse at any moment."
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has succeeded in provoking border tensions between Bolivia and Chile. The Chilean government recalled its ambassador from Venezuela, after Chavez declared Nov. 15, while in Bolivia for the Ibero-American Heads of State Summit, that "Bolivia once had a coast, and I dream of bathing at a Bolivian beach." This provocation, suggesting that Chile should give back the Pacific coast territory that once belonged to Boliviaseized by Chile in the British-instigated and financed 1879-1881 War of the Pacificwas strongly denounced by Chilean Foreign Minister Soledad Alvear as a clear intervention into Chile's internal affairs. The Chilean Senate also passed a resolution condemning Chavez's remarks. The recall of the ambassador "is a signal regarding expressions [Chavez] should not have made," said Alvear. "We, as a country, take care of our own bilateral affairs, and we don't like third parties getting involved."
Venezuelan Foreign Minister Roy Chaderton tried to backtrack by saying that Chavez's remarks were only "symbolic," and that all Venezuela would like to see is a negotiated solution to the sea access issue.
Reopening border conflicts at this time is extremely dangerous, given the unprecedented economic and political instability suffered by every Ibero-American country. Yet, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, too, brought up the Bolivian-Chilean border dispute, in his Nov. 13 meeting with Bolivian President Carlos Mesa, offering the UN's "good offices" to mediate between the two countries, to help Bolivia gain sovereign access to the sea. The issue is a highly emotional one for Bolivia, but it does not address why the country is impoverishedthe IMF did thatand is not the most pressing matter to be dealt with.
In recent discussions on Ibero-America, and particularly the danger represented by the cocalero rebellion in Bolivia, U.S. Democratic Party Presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche pointed out that the same forces that unleashed the first War of the Pacific, are seeking to create new ones today.
Vowing to take up arms to prevent Hugo Chavez's ouster, the "Nestor Zerpa Cartolini Tactical Unit" revealed on Nov. 12, from an unknown location west of Caracas, that were President Chavez to be deposed through a referendum, it would take up arms to prevent him from leaving office. This is the third such group to emerge in the country. The Miami Herald reported Nov. 13 that a spokesman of the hitherto unknown group told that daily that it would appear on the streets on Nov. 28 and Dec. 1, the days on which signatures for the referendum will be collected, with light arms to confront the "bourgeois coup-mongers serving imperialism." The group also says that while it is currently restricted to the Caracas area, it plans to set up "popular militias" around the country.
Thus, the conditions for all-out war of "terror against terror" are in place. From the right-wing synarchist opposition, Democratic Block leader Alejandro Pena is calling for the military to intervene now to oust Chavez, and for people to practice "civil disobedience," which he defines as armed defense.
Some faction in Wall Street, however, would appear to want Chavez to stick around. Both Fitch rating agency and Credit Suisse First Boston just lavished praise on Chavez's neo-liberal policies, and his firm commitment to paying the foreign debt. They also predict that the referendum will fail to oust him, and he'll complete his Presidential term.
Western European News Digest
On Nov. 8-9, in Berlin and Wiesbaden, Germany, the Schiller Institute held its annual Schillerfest events celebrating the Nov. 10 birthday of Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805), the Poet of Freedom and of the American Revolution. The events continue the tradition begun in 1984, when Helga Zepp-LaRouche founded the Schiller Institute, as an international organization of statecraft, culture, and dedicated to building a new renaissance. In Wiesbaden, 120 people attended; parallel events held in Berlin and other cities, were attended by many members and contacts of the LaRouche Youth Movement.
Zepp-LaRouche has long insisted that Friedrich Schiller can uniquely provide the insights needed to defend a true republic, and that it is especially relevant today, in the face of the U.S. unilateral war in Iraq. Right after Zepp-LaRouche's event, German President Johannes Rau, perhaps reflecting how far the international crisis has gone, on Nov. 10, for the first time, took up exactly this issue of Schiller. Apart from being the first speech on Schiller by a leading German politician in decades, Rau's Marbach speech (see next item) also reflects the massive impact which the LaRouche movement and the Schiller Institute, have had on the issue of the German Classics. And some of Rau's remarks sounded as if copied from the Institute's celebration events in Berlin, Wiesbaden, and other cities, during the days before.
The unique presentation, in which Zepp-LaRouche provided selections of drama, poems, and the essays and letters of Schiller, through narration, mostly by youth, "brought every aspect of Schiller's work to life for today," reported one member of the audience, especially because of the LYM members, who moved the audience by demonstrating "how deeply they all had captured the complex Schiller thoughts."
The full presentation by Zepp-LaRouche will appear in an upcoming issue of EIW as a feature.
President Johannes Rau, in a speech delivered Nov. 10 at Marbach, the birthplace of Friedrich Schiller, recalled the Schiller celebrations in 1955, but even more those of 1905 and 1859, as showing an adoration of Schiller throughout the nation, which is difficult to understand today, when the great poet seems almost forgotten. The first big celebrations in 1859 showed Schiller as a positive idol of the middle class and educated people; the celebrations of 1905 also showed Schiller as an idol of the working classesall 89 Social Democratic journals and newspapers had articles on Schiller, he said.
But even in 1955, Schiller's reputation as the great poet of freedom was indicated by the fact that an audience of several thousand attended the central ceremony in Berlin. Goethe's statement after Schiller's death that "he was ours," was an appropriate description of how much appreciation there was for Schiller, in former times.
Today, people are running after all kinds of idols, none of them of the greatness of Schiller, most of them not even knowing about him, Rau said, but adding, that the previous support for Schiller is gone forever, cannot be revived anymore. But "a bit of Schiller" would be good for contemporary Germany.
A Scottish journalist told EIR Nov. 11, that the depth and breadth of cynicism about the Iraq war is growing by the day. There is "extreme cynicism about the rationale" for the war. This comes out in casual conversations with people, as well as in political discussions.
On the fights within the Labour Party, he said that the Tony Blair-Gordon Brown rift has been "patched up a bit," but it is uncertain how long this will last. Blair realizes that he cannot afford to move Brown out of the Treasury position at this time: "It would spook the markets." Brown has been responsible for the "stability" of the British economy since new Labour came to power in May 1997, the journalist noted. "This is not the time to be axing your Chancellor."
As to the woes of the royals, there is a "big popular cynicism about the Windsors, especially in places like Scotland, where there are strong republican sympathies," he said. The revelations by Paul Burrell and others, have not done the worst damage, he noted. Some two-three years ago, the Daily Telegraphthe "heart of the establishment"brought out a series by Graham Turner about the Windsors. This "friendly fire" was most damaging, and that is when the rot really set in. Since then, it has been "drip, drip, drip," and you wonder how much longer this can go on.
Huge demonstrations are planned for George W. Bush's Nov. 20. visit to Great Britain, the first official visit by a U.S. President since Ronald Reagan in 1982, and the first-ever "State" visit (meaning his hostess is the Queen). This is causing enormous tension for Prime Minister Tony Blair. The Stop the War Coalition" and the Muslim Association of Britain, who organized the huge pre-war protests, expect 100,000 people to rally in central London; in response, U.S. authorities are getting very nervous, and demanding that a big "exclusion zone" be set up wherever the President goes, in effect banning demonstrations in Trafalgar Square and Westminster, the seat of the British government.
London Mayor Ken Livingstone is insisting that demonstrators be free to stage their protests against the war. The Metropolitan police are cancelling all leave, but Londoners are demanding that the national government, not the city, pay for all the security costs.
"It is an outrage that the most unwelcome guest this country has ever received will be given the freedom of the streets while a movement that represents majority opinion is denied the right to protest in ... the heart of government," said a spokeswoman for the Stop the War Coalition.
Addressing the annual Welt am Sonntag (Sunday World newspaper) forum in Berlin Oct. 31, top Cheneyac neo-con Richard Perle declared: "There are common values that we have to defend, there are apparently common interests which should be utilized for their protection. But one concept does not fit in: namely, the idea of a Europe as a counterweight to the U.S.A. We should not fool ourselves: there are members in our [NATO] alliance that really believe that Europe should be positioned as counterweight to the U.S. Chirac, for example; Dominique de Villepin, for example. And others in Europe think alike, too, it seems. That has to be clarified in Europe. Europe has to decide whether it wants to become a counterweight or remain an ally. These two exclude each other.
"If Germany supports the French concept, it is the end of NATO. If, however, Germany realizes that Europe should not be a counterweight to the U.S., that the community of interests and values is so important that a European counterweight were the last thing we would want, it would be the beginning of a new NATO.
"Too many in Europe, too many Germans, too many French and others believe that the Franco-German relationship is crucial for peace. And that the essence of that relationship is agreements between governments, in the last instance. I think that is a misinterpretation of history. Peace on this continent is not secured by talks between Chirac and Schroeder, not by agreements between these two either, but by millions of Germans electing their government in a democratic way. That is the key to peace and security in Europe, rather than pure diplomacy."
Italy's Defense Minister Martino declared the bombing of the Italian headquarters in Iraq, which killed 19, and injured more than 80, "our September 11," which is likely to trigger a political "seastorm" in Italy. Former Premier Giuliano Amato said in an interview with Corriere della Sera, Nov. 13, that even though the opposition praised Martino for his report to Parliament on the attack, the Corriere interviewer questioned whether the situation didn't "look very much like the lull before the storm.
"Maybe," Amato answered. "It is being reported ... that Saddam Hussein, from the beginning, decided to avoid an open battle against the U.S. and Great Britain. If that is true, it is clear that the army has disappeared, in order to appear again in the form of a guerrilla force. It is the same technique used by the Russians with Napoleon's armies two centuries ago, and with the Nazis during World War II."
While Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's official line was that Italy, the nation with the third-highest deployment of troops, at about 2,600, will not pull out, another reality may be setting in. After the Italian headquarters bombing, Japan informed the U.S. that it will not be sending troops, and South Korea is reportedly reducing its troops to 3,000, from the 5,000 pledgedand none of them will be combat troops.
Senior commentator and former diplomat Sergio Romana raised sensitive questions about Iraq in his Nov. 13 column in Corriere della Sera. Theoretically, Romano posits, the only way out for the U.S. in Iraq would be "the solution adopted by Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon in Vietnam in the Sixties." "This is possibly the solution which many members of the Bush Administration have in mind ... but in Vietnam, there was a southern government which could resist for a couple of years, and give the Americans the possibility to abandon the stage. In Iraq, there is nothing; and Iraq, after an American withdrawal, would immediately collapse into chaos." America's allies in Iraq are uneasy, Romano writes. "They cannot leave because it would be interpreted as a betrayal. But they start to ask the question whether their ally has, what in American political jargon is called, an 'exit strategy.' "
Le Monde correspondent Patrick Jarreau, writing in the Nov. 13 edition, implies that a process of a change of mind is beginning in the U.S., toward the French stand before the Iraq war, due to the problems the U.S. has met on the ground. Jarreau points to Philip Gordon of the Brooking Institution, who has said, "since the Americans began to meet problems in Iraq, the French position is seen in another way."
Another indication of a change in tone is given in weekly National Journal, under the headline: "The French were right." According to the Journal, Chirac was right on three points: There was no immediate threat from weapons of mass destruction; the Americans were not welcomed as liberators; and the Muslim world sees this intervention as an agression.
Jarreau speaks of a "French Caucus" which was created by Republican Congressman Amory Houghton (N.Y.) at the end of October, during the visit of the chairman of France's National Assembly Foreign Affairs Committee head, Eduard Balladur, in Washington. Members of the Senate's "French Caucus" are bipartisan: John Warner (R-Va), Chuck Hagel (R-Neb), Joe Biden (D-Del), and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif).
Following the publication of a prominent article in Le Monde on Nov. 13, headlined, "Paris and Berlin reflect on a common French-German Union," the paper carried a short interview with the former foreign-policy speaker of the German CDU/CSU faction Karl Lamers, in which Lamers definitively agrees that, "today, there exists a kind of French-German union," and that both countries have to present a "unified" political view, to "serve as a model for the type of European union which Jean Monnet had conceived of, as a contribution to a better world." This means that the two countries must be at the same time the "magnetic core for a big Europe."
Lamers sees the significance of this alliance as necessary for coordination and consultation on objectives in the domain of finance, defense, foreign, and European policy. Lamers proposes this could begin with closer coordination between high-level officials in the respective ministries of the two countries. For example, the National Assembly and the Bundestag could constitute a common parliamentary commission, composed of several representatives from different sectors, whose function is "to accompany the executive decision-making process."
The governments should likewise make regular reports on their political cooperation, and once or twice a year, report on the status of their cooperation before the plenum of the respective national assemblies in presence of the ministers of the other country. France and Germany should have a leading position in Europe, but not dominate it, says Lamers.
As for NATO, Lamers speaks of the need for a renewed alliance, which is neither vassalage for Europe, nor one in which the U.S. alone would make decisions.
In numerous news dailies of Germany, Nov. 13, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder published an official obituary for Brigitte Sauzay (55), his chief adviser on relations with France for five years, who died in Paris, on Nov. 11.
The text stated: "Mrs. Sauzay has, as my adviser at the Chancellery for German-French relations, helped to shape cooperation between Germany and France to a special extent. The fact that our two countries40 years after the signing of the Elysée Treatyare close to each other as never before, is also owed to her."
Schroeder added that for Sauzay, the promotion of relations between Berlin and Paris also was, beyond her official duties, a "matter of the heart," and a deep personal commitment. Associates repeatedly pointed out that Sauzay helped prepare the historic Paris-Versailles Summit in January 2003, in her own way, for example, through ironic cultural-historical memos called "notes d'humeur," which gave insight into the sentiments on each side, and into ways of dealing with that.
Russia and Central Asia News Digest
A hint of what some of the Russian siloviki (men from the uniformed agencies), directly involved in the prosecution of Yukos Oil ex-CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky and others, have in mind as necessary changes in Russian economic practice, was given in a Nov. 13 Pravda.ru commentary by Dmitri Chirkin. He reported that Deputy Prosecutor General Vladimir Kolesnikov took the occasion of a Nov. 12 conference on combatting pirated goods, to suggest some far-going economic policy changes. In particular, Kolesnikov offered his view that "the Central Bank should become a state agency, subordinate to the government or the President of the country, and the interest rate on loans should be zero.... What profit are we receiving in the Central Bank? The Central Bank ought to be supplying the circulatory system of the economy with money."
As Chirkin points out, Kolesnikov's remarks imply radical changes, insofar as the 1993 Russian Constitution and the Law on the Central Bank enshrined the principle of a legally distinct central banking institution, independent of the Federal governmenti.e., the Venetian/Anglo-Dutch model of an independent central banking system, imported into Russia in the 1990s.
The previous day, during a round-table discussion at the State Duma, Kolesnikov also spoke about "corruption in the upper echelons," as Russia's gravest problem: "that corruption in the elite institutions of power, which involves the largest-scale thievery of state assets, simultaneously inflicts the greatest moral damage, by creating a negative image of the state authorities." He said he was talking about people "who look really niceall smooth, with ties on." Kolesnikov, notes Chirkin, is a blunt speaker, but does not speak out often or without a purpose. He was the first to announce some of the criminal cases against Boris Berezovsky, and he warned of Khodorkovsky's impending arrest, a few days before it occurred.
An interview with former Russian Prime Minister Yevgeni Primakov on Radio Ekho Moskvy, Nov. 4, was widely reported because of his assessment of the ouster of Yeltsin "Family" member Alexander Voloshin from the Kremlin staff, as a good development. The full transcript, made by Federal News Service, reveals several other strategic evaluations by Primakov, including his assessment of the potential for shifts in Russian institutional and economic policies:
"I have closely watched comments regarding the anti-Khodorkovsky operation, ... and all these comments were devoted mostly to who was against whom up there at the top, whether these were the tricks of Leningrad FSB people against Leningrad lawyers, or whether these were the tricks of both Leningrad FSB people and lawyers against the Family.
"I'd like to step aside from this scheme. Let's look at the background. There are 40 million people in the country who live in poverty, who live below the lowest subsistence level determined by the government. There are no jobs in small towns and settlements. People drink alcohol not because it's some national traitthat is nonsensebut because they don't have a job.
"Amidst all this, a small group of people has concentrated huge resources, and these resources have been going back and forth between Russia and other countries, and are not invested here in the manufacturing industry or other sectors, in science and technical progress....
"Several days ago I read the latest issue of Forbes magazine.... It listed the 100 richest people in China. Most of these people work with high technologies.... Others represent the automobile industry and construction. But in Russia it's only oil or gas. But why? Apparently these people have huge funds that they have acquired, not because of excellent management, but because they use resources that were given by God to all the people. And they pocket these funds. Twenty seven percentI have found this figure in the pressof their revenues turn into net profit in the oil sector, and 12-14% in manufacturing.
"Now, this group of people, not all of them, of coursepersonally I think very highly of [Lukoil head] Alekperov, and as a rule he does not do such thingsso, this group of people uses various schemes to evade taxes. I have recently made a trip to the North, and everybody told me openly that most oil companies create subsidiaries. These subsidiaries are fully owned by these companies but are registered either in special territorial zones where taxes are low, or in off-shore zones abroad. Then products are sold to these enterprises at an artificially low price and these enterprises do not pay taxes to our budget at all....
"And look at the moral climate. We can't get rid of it. And the climate is as follows. I am the president of a fund that helps homeless people. This fund is a non-profit organization. We exist only on contributions from businessmen in the form of charitable support, and we extend this charitable support to children's homes, not in the form of money, but in the form of clothes, kitchen equipment, etc. All this is done under strict control of the contributors. They have a right to scrutinize everything we do, down to the last kopek. But the fund can raise a million dollars a year at best. At the same time, everybody knows that $230 million are spent on a foreign soccer team [the purchase of Britain's Chelsea team, by Roman Abramovich]. So, what moral context can you talk about in this situation?...
"I think it would now be correct to conduct some round-table discussion and, naturally, this should be done on a legal basis, and it would be good to talk with the large entrepreneurs working, say, in the petroleum sector, not in the spirit of 'you give us back everything, and on and on.' No expropriation. And the question should not even be raised in this way. But there should be a serious conversation held with them. It is 27% and it is 14%. This is the lag that exists and it is not due to management, it is due to the national wealth, due to the raw materials which are supposed to belong to the whole people. There are mechanisms whereby all this can be taken away."
The official announcement of Nov. 2 Parliamentary election returns in Georgia, made Nov. 20, confirmed President Eduard Shevardnadze's For A New Georgia Party and Aslan Abashidze's regionally based Revival movement, as the top vote-getters. The U.S. State Department promptly declared the results invalid due to vote fraud, based on their conflicting with exit polls conducted by NGOs. Michael Saakashvili's National Movement and Nino Burjanadze's bloc resumed mass protest meetings in Tbilisi on Nov. 20-21, having suspended them a week earlier. On Nov. 22, as Shevardnadze attempted to open Parliament, Saakashvili and his supporters crashed into the chamber and seized the microphone, announcing that a "velvet revolution" had arrived. As of the evening of Nov. 22, Shevardnadze has gone to his residence and declared a 30-day state of emergency, threatening to use the Army to restore order unless the Parliament endorses his declaration within 48 hours.
Fear is high in Georgia, however, that events will develop in the direction of a bloody civil war. Rumors are rife about the possibility of the Ajaria district's secession under Abashidze's leadership, and the attachment of other districts to Armenia and Azerbaijan.
The other two leading electoral blocsout of the six that cleared the 7% barrier to enter Parliamentare Nodar Natelashvili's Labor Party, which has endorsed the official results, and the New Right. Georgi Topadze's Industry Will Save Georgia bloc narrowly missed crossing the threshold to enter Parliament.
Abashidze's Revival has been holding large demonstrations against the opposition rallies. The widow of overthrown President Zviad Gamsakhurdia addressed a rally of her own supporters early in the week of Nov. 17, as well. She said that she remained an opponent of the Shevardnadze regime, but now Georgia is in danger from the extremism of Saakashvili, who aims to destroy Georgia. There were reports from southern Georgia, of clashes between supporters of Shevardnadze and of Saakashvili. Saakashvili et al. are calling for non-payment of taxes, boycott of government institutions, boycott of public transport, and schools.
At the Gamsakhurdia movement rally, pro-government MP Guram Sharadze, a well-known academic, said that George Soros, the American Embassy, and U.S. Ambassador Richard Miles personally, along with NGOs financed from the West, were instigating support for Saakashvili.
Sharadze's remarks are typical of the great attention being paid in Georgia to the role of the U.S. in the latest crisis. Besides Ambassador Miles' constant conferring with the opposition leaders, State Department official Lynn Pascoe also arrived in Tbilisi and met with opposition leaders, as well as Shevardnadze.
At a briefing Nov. 17, Shevardnadze himself brought up the Soros Fund again. He noted that George Soros said he would spend a billion dollars against Bush. Shevardnadze said that if Soros spends that kind of money against Georgia, he'll destroy the country. Earlier, it became known that Soros financed the anti-government agitation of TV Rustavi-2, to the tune of $18 million.
At a conference honoring 70 years of U.S.-Soviet diplomatic ties, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov on Nov. 18 said that today Russia remains "far from content with every aspect of U.S. foreign policy," despite the apparent easing of Cold War tensions. Ivanov said, "Russia is concerned about Washington's excessive tendency to use force in resolving international questions, its preference for unilateral actions to the detriment of international unity." The invasion of Iraq, in particular, has been "a serious upset." "We considered, and still consider, the war in Iraq a mistake. The latest events confirmed our view.... Irrespective of its economic or military power, a country cannot advance its interests, ignoring the collective will of the international community."
The next day, Interfax reported strong criticism by Deputy Foreign Minister Yuri Fedotov, of the Nov. 15 agreement signed between U.S. Coalition Provisional Authority head L. Paul Bremer and the Iraqi Governing Council, which Fedotov pointed out had been negotiated in secret, and had little chance of proving durable. He said that a timetable for the transfer of power in Iraq has to take into account the view of the UN Security Council and of Iraq's neighbors.
On Nov. 19, Russian President Putin received King Abdullah II of Jordan. According to Russian TV, their talks focussed on the Road Map for Mideast peace, to which Abdullah said there is no alternative. Bilateral trade and military-technical cooperation was also on the agenda. Putin thanked King Abdullah for Jordan's support of Russia's efforts to establish a permanent tie with the Organization of Islamic Conference.
Russian press reports that Sheikh Mohammad bin Sayid, chief of the general staff of the armed forces of the United Arab Emirates, was in Moscow at the same time.
Mideast News Digest
Israeli and Bush Administration officials were quick to blame the wave of terrorist attacks in Turkey on al-Qaeda, and therefore, by implication, on Iraq, which U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, the head of the neo-con coup d'etat group in the U.S., claims is the equivalent to al-Qaeda. But many intelligence experts are questioning this "instant" identification of the culprits as another "cooked" intelligence report without basis.
Even Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan, on Nov. 23, told BBC, when asked of the Nov. 15 and Nov. 20 attacks that killed scores of people in four locations: "Is it an al-Qaida conglomerate?... Or is it some other terrorist organization? We are not 100% sure, at this point."
Two commentaries that appeared in Germany this week point in another directionthe involvement of intelligence services linked to the U.S. One retired U.S. intelligence source told EIR that Turkey is being destabilized as "payback" for refusing to go along with the urgent request from the U.S. to provide troops. Turkey reversed its earlier "decision" to send troops to Iraq. The decision had been made under the "carrot and stick" method, with the carrot being an $8.5 billion loan from the United States.
In a Nov. 21 interview with the Germany radio Station, NDR, Udo Steinbach, director of the Hamburg-based German Institute of Oriental Studies, and a veteran expert on the area, said that he is puzzled by the incidents in Istanbul. "Turkey has no tradition of a really militant and extremist Islam. We know Islamic parties, that have been a tradition in Turkey for decades."
"But in the 1980s, certain cells emerged, partially supported by the state, by the intelligence service, in the context of the struggle against the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK). At that time, the intelligence service also encouraged the development of Islamist cells, known as Hezbollah, which were then to fight against the secular, Marxist PKK. This is a rather complicated context. The Turkish security forces tried to shut this down in the 1990s ... at least everyone thought so. But cells do still exist, apparently."
Writing from Ankara, where he is lecturing at Bilent University, Prof. Norman Stone (formerly at Oxford University in Britain), in an article in the Nov. 22 German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, poses the question in the headline: "Who Wants To Get at Turkey's Throat?" Stone writes that al-Qaeda is not the only enemy of Turkey's path into the West. There is relative political stability, and the economy is not so bad, either. Who would want to destabilize this rather stable Turkey?
Not spending one further word on al-Qaeda, Stone discards those who suspect the Turkish armed forces, saying that the armed forces are not at all involved in terrorist operations like this one. Nor are the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), because they were defeated. And, Stone remarks, there is remarkable improvement in Turkish-Greek relations, which actually could serve a model for the region as a whole. But, Stone writes, there is a linkage between this destabilization, and Turkey's opposition to the U.S. designs on Iraq:
"In Iraq, the Turks are categorically opposing a project which, in Western circles, has become of enormous significance: Kurdistan. The Kurdistan project would be an important factor for America to declare victory in Iraq, pull out troops and declare another non-Arab state which is friendly to the U.S.A. Also the Israelis would rejoice." Stone points to a previous wave of terrorism 20 years ago: Who is interested in weakening the state and the economy in Turkey? Let us think back 20 years, when there were 20 deaths a day, a collapsing economy, Stone says, and under those conditions, "Turkey was so weakened and became so dependent that it simply had to do what it was told by the U.S.A."
The U.S. is reported to have backed off from its demand for Iran's censure and referral to the UN Security Council on the nuclear issue, according to AP. Reports from Vienna on Nov. 22 indicate that diplomats involved in the IAEA discussions with Iran have been told by the U.S. that they will withdraw their demand that Iran be declared in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), or that the issue be sent to the UNSC for possible sanctions. IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei told the press Nov. 21 that there was progress in the negotiations, and that a consensus was being worked out. Earlier, he had rejected the statement by U.S. representative Kenneth Brill that ElBaradei was wrong to claim that there was "no evidence" of a weapons programthat he should at most say there was "no proof." ElBaradei called Brill's statement "disingenuous." The U.S., unable to get support for its demands, is now trying to get the board to "toughen up" the resolution submitted by France, Britain, and Germany, short of declaring Iran in non-compliance. The board is scheduled to meet again on Nov. 26.
Representative Anthony Weiner (D-NY) has prepared a "Saudi Arabia Accountability Act of 2003" for introduction into the House of Representatives. The bill by Weiner (who worked with New York's Sen. Charles Schumer (D) for years, and took his Congressional seat, when Schumer ran for the Senate) contains the same belligerent tone as other such bills: Whereas the Saudis have been shown by the CFR, MEMRI, the New York Times, etc., to have supported terror, blocked investigations, sponsored Palestinian opposition to Israel, therefore it is the "sense of Congress that it is imperative that the Government of Saudi Arabia immediately and unconditionally: provide complete, unrestricted and unobstructed cooperation to the U.S." in all investigations; "close all charities, schools, or other organizations that fund, train, incite, encourage, or in any other way aid and abet terrorism anywhere in the world," and so forth. Sanctions include weapons export prohibitions and travel restrictions on all Saudi diplomats in the U.S.
A Nov. 18 editorial in the widely-read Israeli daily Ha'aretz demands that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon be ousted. The title of the signed editorial by Yoel Marcus read, "The Captain Has to Go." Marcus writes: "It's not an easy thing to say that the Prime Minister is at a crossroads, fast approaching the last stop. It's no light-headed matter to say that the Prime Minister, wildly applauded at the opening of the General Assembly of the United Jewish Communities of North America now in session in Jerusalem, has failed in his job of leading the country.
"But these nice people from the GA will be going home in a few days and the problems will remain in our lapsa Prime Minister with no vision, no plan, no horizon; a Prime Minister who has brought the country to where it is now and stands, at a critical juncture where he is doing more harm than good, no longer capable or worthy of manning the controls.... Since Sharon has been P.M., we have reached the point where people are asking if Israel will still be a Jewish state 30 years from now. Surveys in Europe show that Israel is perceived as a threat to world peace, the root of the problem. It's only a matter of time before it is saddled with all-out responsibility for global terror.
Referring to the recent interview in Yedioth Ahronoth with four former Shin Bet chiefs, who issued a powerful indictment of Sharon, Marcus cites to Carmi Gillon, who said the country is going from bad to worse, preoccupied more with preventing the next terror attack than finding a solution to the whole rotten mess. Ami Ayalon says the problem is loss of hope. "The fact that neither the Palestinians nor the Israelis foresee a better future is a consequence of what we are doing today...."
Marcus added, "Sharon did nothing to help Abu Mazen.... Sharon has no political plan.... As Ayalon astutely observed: 'When the captain doesn't know where he's heading, no wind in the world will get him there. There is only one thing we can say to a captain like this who endangers his ship and his passengers, and it is not said lightly. Go Home.' "
A senior Israeli intelligence source told EIR that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is coming under more and more pressure from the public. He said the latest attacks on his policy by four former heads of the Shin Beth security forces is dramatic, but only the latest manifestation of this pressure.
"The public is slowly but surely coming to the conclusion that this government has to move towards a solution to the conflict." He said that this is not felt just among the left but also growing numbers of Likud Party voters who put Sharon into power. This source recently attended a conference on the theme of whether Israel can be defended without the Occupied Territories. He said none of the speakers tried to argue that the territories were necessary for Israeli defense. That's despite the fact that some of the speakers could be considered right-wing.
He also said that the attempts by Sharon's people to discredit the Geneva Accords peace initiative are all backfiring. "The more they attack the Accords the more the public sees them as an alternative." The source said he was no longer pessimistic about the situation, and said that despite the fact that the Bush Administration will not pressure Sharon to implement the Road Map for a Middle East peace, pressure within Israel is growing to the point where, in the not-too-distant future, Sharon will have to change policy or leave office. In this regard he pointed to the fact that the Palestinians and the Israeli military are moving to implement a ceasefire, something Sharon does not support.
The intelligence chief of Egypt, Omar Suleiman, is in the process of negotiating a Palestinian-Israeli ceasefire, or hudna. Suleiman, who is also a top aide to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, has been in Israel and the West Bank since Nov. 17. He has already met Israeli Mossad chief Meir Dagan, Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia, and other Palestinian leaders. He also met with U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Daniel Kurtzer.
Unlike in earlier attempts, Suleiman is endeavoring to get guarantees from Israel that it would cease offensive operations in the occupied territories and stop targeted assassinations. An earlier effort failed, despite the fact that Hamas and other militant groups agreed to a cease-fire, because Israel continued its targetted assassinations, which led to revenge attacks.
According to press reports, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has been under pressure from the Israeli military, as well as the security establishment, to support a ceasefire. The recent statement by four former chiefs of the Shin Bet security service, who were highly critical of Sharon, is an example of this pressure. Apparently, Israel has not conducted a targeted assassination in the last four weeks.
Hamas and other militant Palestinian groups are ready for a ceasefire, but want international and American guarantees that Israel will stop killing them.
Israeli Mossad chief Meir Dagan has issued a wild attack on Iran, claiming that the regime there poses an existential threat to the survival of Israel, Ha'aretz reported Nov. 18. Speaking in the Knesset, Dagan said, "We believe the Iranians will continue developing nuclear military projects, and in their hands, such weapons pose, for the first time, an existential threat to Israel." He also claimed that Iran was in the process of completing the construction of a uranium-processing plant in Kashan, which could produce 10 nuclear weapons. He also claimed that the Iranian nuclear power station at Bushehr would be used for the development of nuclear weapons. He said the nuclear power station "has no economic justification, unless they intend to arm themselves with nuclear arms."
Dagan, who is a crony of Sharon, is the first Mossad chief in 18 years to have publicly addressed a Knesset committee.
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay pumped up the crowd at a Nov. 15 New York fundraising dinner for the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA). DeLay said that President Bush's peace proposal for a Palestinian state is wrong:
"Events continue to suggest there is nothing to negotiate .... Nobody should be negotiating a Palestinian state until the terror stopsor even thinking about it.... There is no middle ground."
DeLay gleefully boasted that the U.S. State Department has put his picture on a dartboard along with one of the ZOA's looneybird president, Morton Klein. "In case you need definitive evidence that I'm a defender of Israel, there it is," he said.
In his coverage of the dinner, a New York Sun reporter wrote that "Mr. DeLay framed his argument in almost Manichean terms."
This rug-chewing performance continues the role DeLay played in attacking the Adminstration's Middle East Road Map during his tour of Israel last summer. He told the Israelis to kill without restraint, saying in the Knesset: "There is no middle ground, no moderate position worth taking.... Israel's fight is our fightand so it shall be until the last terrorist on Earth is in a cell or a cemetery."
Asia News Digest
In a further indication that the war in Afghanistan has not been "won," the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) announced it is temporarily pulling out 30 foreign staff from southern and southeastern Afghanistan, following the killing of a French employee, Bettine Goslard, in the town of Ghazni, on Nov. 16. This would entail the closing of refugee reception centers in these areas. Earlier, there had been two attacks on UN offices located in southeastern Afghanistan. Those offices have since been closed.
On Nov. 21, the UN ordered a review of the size of its international staff in the country. About 800 UN international staffers are currently assigned to Afghanistanmore than 500 in Kabul; the rest in about dozen other locations. It is likely that the UN would withdraw most of the staffers outside Kabul. The UN said it also wants to postpone all but essential visits to Afghanistan by UN missions.
Following the UNHCR's decision to withdraw, an emergency meeting of a half-dozen aid groups was convened in Kandahar on Nov. 18. They subsequently issued a joint statement calling on the international community to do more to stabilize an "unacceptably dangerous security situation." One aid coordinator told the media: "There is time now to get ready [to leave], rather than waiting for us to get picked off, one by one."
In keeping with the "unacceptably dangerous security situation" that prevails, even in Kabul, the South Korean Embassy in Afghanistan was evacuated Nov. 18, following the receipt of a threat. Analysts speculate that the threat was issued perhaps in conjunction with the South Korean decision to send military forces in Iraq to assist U.S reconstruction efforts there.
On Nov. 19, the Japanese Foreign Ministry cautioned 180 Japanese aid workers, tourists, journalists, and others who are now in Afghanistan, that they may be targetted for kidnapping by members of ousted Taliban militia. The warning followed the Nov. 17 kidnapping of a local worker engaged in de-mining along the Kabul-Kandahar Road.
Former Rand Corporation analyst and the most well-known Pashtun in Washington's neo-con cabal, Zalmay Khalilzad, has now assumed the post of U.S Ambassador to Afghanistan, replacing Robert Finn.
Khalilzad, in an interview with the media, said Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's government had been helpful in arresting al-Qaeda operatives inside Pakistan, and in cracking down on domestic extremist elements. But, Pakistan could do more to help curtail the movement of the Taliban militia, who continue to linger in Pakistan's border regions and then, "come across and attack" the coalition forces inside Afghanistan, Khalilzad complained.
On Nov. 20 the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs, Christina Rocca, appearing at the House of Representatives International Relations Committee, refused to say publicly whether Pakistan had purged pro-Taliban elements from its intelligence services. Congressman Brad Sherman (D-Calif) asked pointedly: "There is a substantial support for the Taliban ideology in the ISI. Have the supporters of that ideology in that intelligence service been removed or converted?" Rocca, evading the question, spoke of joint U.S. and Pakistani operations against the Taliban in tribal areas along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
Meanwhile, Reuters has reported the abysmal state of affairs in Afghanistan. The much-vaunted NATO intervention to oversee the 5,700-strong International Security Assistance Forces (ISAF), has turned out to be a mirage. The ISAF troops, who are still inside Kabul only, has just three helicopters.
Belgium has offered more choppers, but then got cold feet once it realized the cost and the dangers that involved. Greece has declined to send any because it was too stretched by preparations for the 2004 Athens Olympics, and Turkey is now mulling over a last-ditch request to fill the gap. Considering the instability within Turkey, following the recent terrorist attacks, it is unlikely that Turkey would keep it under consideration for long.
Reuters pointed out that the situation within Kabul, arguably the most well-protected Afghan city, is no better. Two years ago this month, the Taliban militia fled Kabul under cover of darkness after weeks of U.S aerial strikes for their harboring the al-Qaeda supremo, Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network, which the United States holds responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks inside the U.S.A. Today, Kabul is still a wreck of rubble, rubbish, and grinding poverty, but, says the ISAF Commander Lt. Gen. Goetz Gliemeroth, it is at least "reasonably secure."
The three-day (Nov. 14-16) visit to Syria by the Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, following his summit meeting with the Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin, is laden with importance. First, the Indian Premier, by making it a three-day visit, conveyed, in no uncertain terms, that India's commitment to the Middle East, especially, on the Palestine issue, remains unchanged. This was necessary in light of the fact that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, was in India on a state visit in September. Besides the fact that Sharon's anti-Palestinian actions have been condemned worldwide, he became the first-ever Israeli Prime Minister to visit India. India's growing relations with the United States, and the Sharon visit, were interpreted by some as a genuine shift in the Indian position vis-a-vis Palestine.
Secondly, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had said, at least on one occasion, that Syria possesses WMD. By visiting Syria, in the face of such a charge, Vajpayee made clear that he completely disregards those allegations.
While in Damascus, Vajpayee told the Syrian President Bashar al Assad, that India's position has remained firm and unchanged on the Palestine issue. During the visit, India made several offers of scientific and technological cooperation with Syria. Syria has also indicated that it would invite the Indian public-sector giant, Oil and Natural Gas Corp. (Videsh), for exploration of its oilfields.
In addition, Vajpayee received from President Assad a clear endorsement of the resolution on Jammu and Kashmir, on the basis of the 1972 Shimla agreement between India and Pakistan. The Shimla Agreement called for resolution of all disputes between India and Pakistan through bilateral negotiations. For decades Pakistan had demanded an international intervention to resolve the bilateral territorial dispute, which India opposed. The endorsement by President Assad is considered highly significant, since Syria is a member of Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC). For years, OIC had endorsed the Pakistani views on the Jammu and Kashmir issue.
According to the Russian Atomic Energy Commission spokesman, Nikolai Shingarev, the Russian Atomic Energy Minister, Alexander Rumyantsev, offered India floating nuclear-power plants, during his meeting with the Indian National Security Adviser, Brajesh Mishra, last week in Moscow. Shingarev indicated that Mishra, who is also the principle secretary to the Prime Minister, has shown interest in the offer.
The subject was discussed in the context of a ban, imposed by the 40-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG)also known as the London Clubon nuclear cooperation with India and other countries which refused to place all their nuclear plants under international control. Russia has supplied India with two 1,000 MW nuclear reactors at Koodankulam in Tamil Nadu, now under construction. The Russian supply accord was signed before the NSG clamped down its restrictions in 1992.
India has requested Russia to supply two more 1,000 MW reactors for completing the Koodankulam cluster. But the NSG ban has prevented the sale so far. Moscow, however, has promised India to bring up this issue with the NSG, and urge the London Club to lift the ban, citing India's unsoiled record on non-proliferation.
But the floating nuclear-power plants circumvent the NSG ban, because the floating plants would remain Russian property while providing power to the Indian coastal towns. The specific offer to which Shingarev referred, involves a 77MW plant which would be able to generate enough electricity and thermal energy to meet the demand of a town of 50,000 people, or provide enough fresh water for 1 million people.
"We won't be breaking any NSG restrictions if we build a floating nuclear-power plant and trawl it to the Indian shores.... The plant will be operated by the Russian personnel and we'll be just selling electricity to India," Rumyantsev argued.
Thailand's Office of Narcotics Control Board (ONCB) has indicated that it would set a target of two years to wipe out opium production in the country. This will be done to coincide with the celebration of the King of Thailand Bhumibol Adulyadej's 36th anniversary of the initiative on integrated rural development. Phittaya Jinawat, director of the ONCB, said poppy cultivation fell from 5,200 rai in the year 2002 to 400 rai in 2003. Most of the opium plantations were destroyed in remote and mountainous areas of Tak, Chiang Rai, Chiang Mai, and Mae Hong Son provinces. When His Majesty the King had started the rural development initiative in 1969, more than 54,000 rai of land was under poppy cultivation.
Phittaya said the ONCB now believed that all opium plantations can be destroyed in two years. The hill people would be encouraged by the ONCB to take up crop farming to replace opium cultivation.
"We are confident we can eradicate opium planting in two years to mark the 36th anniversary of His Majesty the Kings' initiative which began in 1969," Phittaya told the Bangkok Post. Phittaya also requested the United States to take Thailand off its list of countries involved in drug production and trafficking. The U.S list has seriously tarnished Thailand's reputation, Phittaya said.
Indicating pitfalls in the way of achieving the objective, Director of the Survey and Report Unit of the Northern ONCB, Pipop Chamnivikaipongm, said drug financiers were likely to attempt to hire hill tribesmen to grow opium after the government declared Thailand drug-free.
The drug crackdown by the Thai authorities has shifted opium cultivation investments across the border to Myanmar and Laos, reports indicate. But the campaign against the Thai drug kingpins, said local and foreign observers, has yet to show real progress and concrete result.
Some point out that three years ago, when the current government under the leadership of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra came into power, there were high hopes in Thailand that the Thai Prime Minister would convince China to exert pressure on Myanmar to clamp down on the drug armies. With the help of various economic incentives, the Thai premier believed that Myanmar would respond positively to the Thai demands.
Three years later, it is evident that the expected pressure from China was never exerted. It is evident to both Thailand and Myanmar that it would require a lot more than mere fence-mending trips between the two countries to turn the page on the turbulent Thai-Myanmar relations.
The new securities bubble in Thailand, the result of legalization of day-trading, which now makes up 80% of trading volume on the Thai Securities Exchange, is the center of new storm in the Thai government.
The Securities and Exchange Committee (SEC) ruled Nov. 14 that day traders must put up 10% of their credit line with brokers, beginning Dec. 1, and 25% by May. This is an effort on behalf of the SEC to limit the speculation which has created an 80% increase in the market size this year. The SEC said the day trading increased this year from less than $2 billion in the first quarter, to over $11 billion in the third quarter.
But the SEC has not convinced everyone. Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and the Thai Exchange strongly objected to the SEC move fearing the sudden change would cause a collapse of the market.
Prime Minister Thaksin has directed Deputy Premiers Somkid Jatusripitak and Pokin Polakul to review possible measures to clamp down on speculators, while minimizing the impact on general investors.
"I have already informed Finance Minister Suchart Jaovisidha, the SEC and Stock Exchange Thailand to clamp down on speculation, but that any measure must be targetted, and not blanket one, across-the-board approach, the Prime Minister told the Cabinet Ministers at a meeting at Bangkok on Nov. 18.
Africa News Digest
Before returning home, South African President Thabo Mbeki called his Nov. 17-19 state visit to France a success, saying, "What is very, very good is that it is quite clear that there is a consensus across the political spectrum in support of that strength of partnership with South Africa and in support of that partnership with regard to meeting the African challenges."
Mbeki also said the business deals signed during the visit amounted to hundreds of millions of rands (the rand is at about 6.5 to the dollar). At the state dinner in Mbeki's honor, French President Jacques Chirac mentioned that an increase in economic cooperation in "promising sectors such as aeronautical engineering, nuclear power and aluminum [smelting]" had already come into being in recent years.
Chirac received Mbeki very warmly and, at their Nov. 17 joint press conference, said it was time for Mbeki to invite him to South Africa. This was Mbeki's fourth visit to Franceand to Chiracin 2003.
In addition to meeting with Chirac, Mbeki also met with Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, the mayor of Paris, the Senate president, the speaker of the National Assembly, and leaders of political parties. He was accompanied by First Lady Zanele Mbeki, Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, Trade and Industry Minister Alec Erwin, Public Enterprises Minister Jeff Radebe, Social Development Minister Zola Skweyiya, and executives of state-owned companies.
In addressing the French National Assembly Nov. 18, Mbeki said that Africa would work for its renaissance whatever the obstacles, but, "it will be extremely difficult for us to achieve this goal of social and economic renewal of Africa without the support of France and the rest of the developed world."
Mbeki asked that international "structural funds" be established to help Africa develop, like the European Union's Structural Funds for Eastern Europe. He developed the rationale for the EU Structural Funds at some length, using the texts of EU documents to do so, and citing a study of the positive effects already achieved. He said, "Solidarity, economic and social progress, and reinforced cohesion were objectives all written into the preamble of 1997's Treaty of Amsterdam."
He concluded, "Reason tells us that it was correct for the EU to decide to intervene in the less-developed regions within the Union using public sector funds, since it was clear that the market on its own would not be able to solve the problem of underdevelopment.
"Reason therefore also tells us that in our approach to the challenge of African poverty and underdevelopment, we should apply the same correct reasoning.... Thus, we should repeat, using the words of the European Commission:
"'Solidarity and cohesion should sum up the values behind policy of the developed world towards Africa: solidarity because the policy aims at benefitting citizens of a continent that is economically and socially deprived, while cohesion recognizes that there are positive benefits for all in narrowing the gaps of income and wealth between the poor of Africa and we, who are better off.'
"... To free the 800 million Africans from poverty is to create great possibilities for the expansion of the world economy, for the benefit also of those who are better off."
Mbeki had begun by saying that Africans "have a right to make demands on a nation which cannot but be a great nation"; he ended by calling on France and the rest of the advanced sector to rise above their constraints and act as reason demands.
Mbeki's address to the French National Assembly was covered Nov. 18 by AFP and Nov. 19 by Le Figaro, Le Monde, Le Nouvel Observateur, and French TV5, all of which cut out the centerpiece, Mbeki's proposal for "Structured Funds" for Africa, and reported only the frills. L'Humanite, the Communist Party paper, did not cover the address at all. The only press coverage of the proposal seen so far is a brief, but accurate, item from the South African Broadcasting Corporation, partly controlled by the government. Other South African media monitored so far have also blacked out the proposal, including the Mail & Guardian and News24.
The French Development Agency and the Development Bank of Southern Africa signed an agreement Oct. 18 by which each contributes half of a $3.35 million fund for preparatory studies for African infrastructure projects. The projects will be limited to the transport, energy, water, sanitation, and communications/IT sectors. They must have regional or continental impact, and priority will be given to public-private sector partnerships. It is being done in the name of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD).
On Nov. 19 the South African Cabinet approved a national program for treating HIV/AIDS that includes free anti-retrovirals. There will be at least one anti-retroviral service point in every health district within one year, according to the plan.
Over the next five years, more than half of the program's money will be spent on upgrading the country's health infrastructure. It will involve "recruitment of thousands of health professionals and a very large training program," Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang told reporters in Cape Town after the Cabinet meeting.
South Africa has suffered from a brain drain of health professionals over the past decade.
Reporting on the new speed record of 560 kph reached a few days ago by Japan's experimental maglev train MLX01 on a test track west of Tokyo, a leading South African daily, Mail & Guardian, wrote Nov. 17 that "at this speed, the train would travel from Johannesburg to Cape Town in just under three hours, and from Johannesburg to Pretoria in about six minutes."
The maglev experiment in Japan is part of a "government financed project to develop faster trains for a country that is already home to some of the world's speediest," the daily wrote. "Germany has developed a maglev train, which made its commercial debut in Shanghai, China, last year."
This Week in History
In these times of crisis, the celebration of Thanksgiving Day should take our minds back to two of our greatest national leaders, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, who made it a national holiday in 1789, and 1863, respectively.
Both declarations of a Day of Thanksgiving at the end of November, came at decisive political junctures in the history of the United States. Washington's came right after the successful battle to ratify the U.S. Constitution, and immediately before the new government was to take up its responsibilities. In it, we find a statement of the purposes for our government, which should inform our lives and activity today.
Lincoln's declaration came at a time when the United States was under dire threat, from the British-instigated Civil War. More than two years into that bloody battle, the outcome was still not certain. Yes, in July of 1863, the battles of Gettysburg and Vicksburg had been won, but Lincoln's perspective of a victory for the Unionrather than a peaceful separation of the North and Southwas under constant assault, leaving the future uncertain.
Under these conditions, one of a difficult peace, and the other of an uncertain war, these Presidents sought to mobilize the populations under their care, to turn their minds to the God-given purposes for which their republic, and their personal lives, were dedicated. We would do well, to do the same today.
We quote both declarations in their entirety.
"Whereas it is the Duty of all nations to acknowledge the Providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His Benefits and humbly implore His Protection and Favor; and
"Whereas both Houses of Congress have, by their joint Committee requested me 'to recommend to the People of the United States a Day of public Thanksgiving and Prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful Hearts the many favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of Government for their Safety and Happiness.'
"NOW THEREFORE, I do recommend and assign Thursday, the twenty-sixth day of November next, to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our service and humble Thanks for His kind Care and Protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation; for the signal and manifold mercies and the favorable interpositions of His providence in the course and conclusion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquillity, union, and plenty which we have since enjoyed; for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted; for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have to acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and, in general, for all the great and various favors which He has been pleased to confer upon us.
"AND ALSO, That we may then unite in most humbly offering our Prayers and Supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations, and beseech Him to pardon our national and other Transgressions, to enable us all, whether in public or private Stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually; to render our National Government a blessing to all the people by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed; to protect and guide all sovereigns and nations (especially such as have shown kindness to us), and to bless them with good governments, peace and concord; to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and us; and, generally, to grant unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as He alone knows to be best."
The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God.
In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.
Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore.
Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.
No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.
In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed.
Done at the City of Washington, this Third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the United States the Eighty-eighth.
All rights reserved © 2003 EIRNS