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From Volume 2, Issue Number 48 of Electronic Intelligence Weekly, Published Dec. 2, 2003

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This Week You Need To Know

Restore Iraq's Constitution

by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.

On Nov. 28, Mr. LaRouche, the second-ranking candidate, in popular financial support, for the 2004 Democratic Presidential nomination, issued the following statement on withdrawal of U.S. forces from the presently, catastrophically deteriorating situation in Iraq.

The continued floundering of my putative rivals on the matter of U.S. military disengagement from Iraq, prompts me to issue the following statement. This statement is intended to help them clarify the presently confused states of mind which nearly all of them have expressed publicly on this subject, so far, and is also intended to signal to President George W. Bush, Jr., some of his immediate options for liberating the President from the sucking quagmire into which Vice-President Cheney's brutish, anti-constitutional blundering and fraudulent interventions have plunged the nation and its military forces.

1. My Proposal

I propose that the U.S. take, immediately, three clear steps toward withdrawing from its presently indefensible, and rapidly worsening position in, not only Iraq itself, but the Middle East as a whole.

1. Declare the intention of the President of the United States to be, to cease the U.S. military occupation of Iraq at the earliest feasible occasion, and to notify the UN Security Council of the U.S. intention to reopen the matter of Iraq's earliest restoration to sovereignty in its affairs, and of the U.S. government's solicitation of UN Security Council assistance in bringing about this desired state of affairs.

2. Abandon the foolish attempts to craft a new constitution for Iraq. Promote the restoration of the outstanding, historically rooted Constitution of that nation, foreseeing the establishment of a provisional government under that Constitution as rapidly as feasible. New-fangled concoctions tainted by the lurking presence of the notorious Chalabi, will not bring peace, but only nourish endless asymmetric warfare, and needless numerous deaths suffered by U.S. forces deployed to play the role of targets in an endless, all-day shooting-gallery.

3. Free the notable Tariq Aziz from captivity immediately, that he might assume his obvious, and internationally respected role of influence as the most typical representative of the ecumenical spirit of Iraq's constitutional sovereignty.

2. The Present U.S. Situation in Iraq

The hope of avoiding the recent escalation of popularly-based asymmetric warfare, ended with the instructions to cease cooperation with the Iraq military in the urgently needed reconstruction. Through the costly effort to replace that military's role as a stability and engineering force, by tens of billions of U.S. dollars dumped into the coffers of the corporate friends of George Shultz and Vice-President Cheney, combined with continued dallying with the notorious Chalabi, the U.S. government wrecked any possibility of success of the mission which had been newly assigned to Paul Bremer at that juncture.

By abandoning its obligation as an occupying force for the efficient reconstruction of the nation it had conquered, the United States has, for the present time, lost, by aggravated default, all credibility for directing the internal affairs of the occupied nation. By turning the occupation of Iraq into a carpetbaggers' pork-barrel raid on both the U.S. Treasury and Iraq itself, the U.S. role has been degraded, by the overreaching influence of Vice-President Cheney, from the pathetic to the emetic.

Now, as a result of the policies foisted upon the Bush Administration by its usurpatious Vice-President Cheney, hatred against the U.S.A. has become a unifying force for asymmetric warfare, not only within Iraq, but the adjoining region as a whole. Nothing has done more to revive the rapid growth of terrorism throughout the region, than the follies which Vice-President Cheney's continuing overreaching influence have wreaked in this deteriorating situation. This situation is, on principle, far worse than the folly the United States suffered in the 1964-1972 Indo-China war. We must therefore remove the U.S. military forces' futile role as a sitting target for that mounting hatred. Get out, and get out now!

The evidence is, that were I presently the President of the United States, the peoples of the Arab world would trust a reasonable proposal made by the United States. Unfortunately, I am not yet President. Under the current, Cheney-tainted Administration, or under any among my current rivals, there is no chance that the U.S. government could credibly sustain its position as an occupying force. Therefore, for lack of a U.S. President with relevant qualifications, we must get out, and let the UN Security Council step in where both the present U.S. Administration and the Democratic National Committee have each failed so miserably thus far.

The following assessment of the situation must be taken into account.

At a certain point in the recent U.S. war on Iraq, the Iraqi military vanished from the fields of battle, retreating, as a national militia in mufti, into a waiting position. When the United States ceased to coopt that militia into its proper role as a force for national reconstruction of its war-torn nation, the present U.S. Administration pushed the militia into reacting as the core of an asymmetric-warfare resistance movement against both the occupying U.S. forces, and also, any agency which made itself a cooperating partner of that occupation.

U.S. specialists should study the lessons of the Yugoslav resistance to Nazi occupation, as an introduction to the kinds of complexities which the U.S. military forces have incurred in their ill-fated occupation efforts within Iraq. The presently floundering, evasive General Wesley Clark, for example, like Madeleine Albright, still needs to learn that lesson.

Now, as a result, we have not only the millions of trained Iraq military reserves being rallied against our occupation, but a growing flood of volunteers from other places, all to the effect today, that the usurpatious acting President, Vice-President Cheney, is currently the principal source of the nourishing and spreading of the role of terrorism through West Asia and beyond.

3. The Existing Constitution of Iraq

The modern nation of Iraq was forged in its popular struggle against repeated British imperial occupation. The unity forged in those successive wars against imperial occupying forces, provided the basis for the existence of the extant Constitution of Iraq. The members of the U.S. Congress, among others, should actually read that Constitution, and absorb reasonably succinct summaries of the resistance warfare which prompted the Iraqi people to unify their nation around such a Constitution.

The present tendency of a Cheney-tainted U.S. Administration, to fragment the nation of Iraq into an array of pathetic, rival micro-states, can have no effect but to incite the kind of enduring hatred and contempt for the United States, throughout the entire region and far beyond, a pattern which we witness today in the presently worsening strategic situation created by the handiwork of, and toleration for the Israeli assassins of Israeli Prime Minister Rabin.

A nation's constitution has no more authority than that embedded in the history of the struggle which brought it into being. The continuity of that authority must be repeatedly renewed by bringing the broad base of the population, including the economically poorest strata, into fresh affirmation of the crucial principles embodied in that agreement. For example, in former times, when the United States supported a national militia, and universal military service, this relationship affirmed and strengthened the reciprocal ties between the constitutional arrangement and the population in general.

A viable constitution of any modern nation-state republic, is not a financial contract to be drafted by unscrupulous law firms associated with lustful financial houses, but, must be, like our own 1776 Declaration of Independence and the Preamble of our Federal Constitution, an affirmation of universal principles of natural law. Iraq has such a Constitution, forged in struggle against oppression, and in the search for unity of common interest among the communities of which that fighting nation was composed.

The troubles which that Constitution had suffered, up to the outbreak of the recent U.S. war in Iraq, were not only tendencies toward usurpation of the powers of the state from within Iraq, but the meddling of international powers within the affairs of not only Iraq itself, but the larger region. Presently, since Sept. 11, 2001, within our own U.S.A., certain forces within the Congress, among the parties, and in the Executive Branch, have exploited a perception of crisis to undermine and virtually nullify crucial features of our own Constitution in the misused name of "emergency." How could such an Administration and party factions as those, be permitted to adopt a holier-than-thou attitude toward the recently toppled government of Iraq? At the spectacle of such official U.S. hypocrisy, the watching world vomits.

Today, Iraq is faced with the same kinds of constitutional challenges under which its presently outstanding Constitution came into being. Therefore, the U.S. Government were a fool, if it attempted, as it is now, to fix that which is not broken; to replace a true Constitution forged in history, with a pact drafted by crooked lawyers. Nothing better fits the situation in Iraq today, than that outstanding Constitution. That should be the opinion of the government of the U.S.A.

Meanwhile, now, as sometimes, the humiliation of one's own government, when done for the sake of freeing that government from self-destructive practices, is the most patriotic act of all. We should not be awed by scoundrels who, like Vice-President Cheney and his Richly-endowed I. Lewis Libby, wrap their wicked deeds in the name of "patriotism."

Latest From LaRouche

LAROUCHE IN PLYMOUTH, NEW HAMPSHIRE

Here is a the transcript of Lyndon LaRouche's remarks to a forum for Presidential candidates, at Plymouth State College in Plymouth, New Hampshire, on Nov. 13, 2003. LaRouche was introduced by a student moderator, who read from a summary of the biography on the LaRouche in 2004 website.

I have not yet, nor do I expect to reach the record set by Harold Stassen, who had more Presidential campaigns. He was formerly the boy-wonder of Minneapolis, Minnesota, as a mayor, and he was, then, the governor of the state of Minnesota, during the period of the Eisenhower Administration. He was man of conscience, who had belonged to a time when conscience was stronger, and therefore, he was less well received, in the 1960s and 1970s, than he was earlier in his life. But, he was still a man of principle, and his memory should be honored today. But, that's not my game.

We're now in a world crisis and a U.S. crisis. And, I'll speak on three themes, which are relevant to this crisis, and relevant to you. First, is the nature of the military crisis. You could be in a general war, of a special kind, which could spread globally during the coming years ahead. This war is not necessary, but it could happen. And therefore, preventing this war from happening, is a prime concern, and should be a concern to all of you.

Secondly, we're now in the period of the breakdown of the monetary system, called the floating-exchange-rate monetary system, established between 1971 and 1972, both by Nixon's actions in August of 1971, and by the Azores Conference decisions of 1972. This system is now disintegrating. And, it will fall. Now, with economic processes, the difficulty in predicting exactly, when a collapse might occur, is that, governments can take action, such as printing a lot of money, to postpone a collapse. They can not prevent the collapse. They can not prevent its occurring within a limited timeframe. But, they can make it come sooner, or they can make it come later.

This collapse is now on. We're looking at things like a collapse of the real-estate bubble. You won't see it so much in this area, but if you look around New York City, or you look around Washington, D.C., or parts of California, you will see shacks—which are really tar-paper shacks, they're wrapped with shrink-wrap, and then they put some plastic exteriors on them, and they sell at mortgage prices at $400,000 to $600,000 apiece. If the mortgage bubble collapses, these houses will collapse in mortgage value, from a half-million range, to about half that or less. And, the people will no longer be homeowners, but they will probably remain as squatters.

This is the kind of situation you have to expect. Which we can deal with: It's a soluble problem.

The third question is something I'm very much involved in: About four years ago, I decided the time had come to build a new kind of youth movement. And we started it in California, and a couple of years ago, we began to spread it, and it's spreading around the world, now. It played a significant role in the recent election in California, where we tried to defeat Arnold Schwarzenegger's run for governor, and recall of Governor Davis. In the part of the area we took as our responsibility, in Los Angeles County and the Bay Area, where we played a significant role—the youth did—we turned it around. When we went in there, it was 60%-40%, for Schwarzenegger against Davis. By the time the election occurred, in Los Angeles County, it was 51-49% in favor of Davis; and we had a much more successful effect, in the Bay Area.

We recently were asked to participate in the Philadelphia campaign for reelection of the mayor, who was targeted by the Attorney General of the United States, John Ashcroft, and we turned that around. We didn't do it ourselves, but we all agreed on the policy; we went in there, did our job, and we had a small landslide victory over the Attorney General of the United States—not by vote, but by the results of that election.

We're now doing other things. And, this matter pertains, of course, very much to you and your future, and your future in the university, your future after the university.

A little more question: The thing which is probably lacking in most education today, on the secondary and university level, is an actual study of history, in the sense that history was presented as a course in better universities and secondary schools, in the United States, years ago—for example, in my generation. There was actually a serious course, in secondary schools, in American history. There was also a second course, in good high schools in the United States, in modern European history. And some touches of other things. So, people understood some history. There was a teaching, of some degree of competence, of basic science, basic physics, basic mathematics, in a more competent form than is generally taught in schools today, in universities today. There were changes made, to the so-called "New Math," at the end of the 1960s and beginning of the 1970s.

But, the problem is, that today, the students generally have a very poor background in history. People coming out of secondary schools, the so-called honor students, say, "I wasted my time. I got really nothing out of it. I passed the courses, I passed the tests, but I really don't know anything. And, that's bad." And therefore, for a generation such as your own, which is going to have to take the reins of power—10, 20 years from now—more and more, it's important to have a grasp of history, so as not to repeat some of the mistakes that have been made over the past 40 years, in changes.

And therefore, the idea of the youth movement was to, first of all, to emphasize an understanding of what ideas are. And for that purpose, I picked Gauss's 1799 paper on "The Fundamental Theorem of Algebra," which actually is the modern definition of what's called the "complex domain." And that, which references Classical Greek studies, in so-called "constructive geometry," is actually one of the most efficient ways of presenting what we mean by ideas in European civilization, from the time of Thales and Pythagoras, and so on, and Plato, to the present time. Once we understand what an idea is, and there's some confusion about that in modern usage, then we look at the history of ideas. And, in European civilization, or globally extended European civilization, we begin with Greece, in debt to Egypt. For example, we might take a picture of the Great Pyramids of Egypt, which are very significant astronomical phenomena: That is, they were constructed as actually devices, to show principles of astronomy, on a long-term cycle.

This knowledge from Egypt went to Greece. It's reflected in the work of Thales. It's reflected in the work of the Pythagoreans, and others.

So, we often start there. And, we trace the evolution of European civilization, through the disaster called the Peloponnesian War, through the rise of the Romans; through the tyranny of Europe by an alliance of Venetian bankers and Norman knights; into the emergence of modern civilization in the 15th Century, and the struggles that occurred since then, including the founding of new nations in the Americas, beginning at the end of the 15th Century.

Now, in this period, there are a great number of ideas, which are embedded in our history. And, unlike the animals, which do not transmit ideas from one to another, human beings transmit ideas. They go from one generation to the next, and what we have, as a culture today, is based on an accumulation of the effects of the transmission of these discoveries from one generation to the next. So, to understand ourselves, to understand history, to understand how we got here, it's important to know where we came from. And what we came from is buried in the history of ideas. And therefore, the youth movement is based on those two conceptions: What is an idea? The history of ideas.

The youth movement is independent. I don't run it. I inspire it. I provoke it. I try to protect it. But they're on their own. They are essentially a university on wheels. They spend a good deal of their time on these subjects, of study; they spend the rest of their time, intervening in the political process, and therefore, there's their course in sociology. And they're doing a very good job. They're the most effective political force we have in the United States, per capita, when it comes to mass organizing. So, that's the point.

Now, what's the nature of the financial crisis? You have to look at this from the standpoint of history: The United States went into a Great Depression, with much of the rest of the world, between 1928 and 1933. In Europe, this resulted in the spread of fascism, as typified by Mussolini, earlier, and Hitler, Franco, and so forth. In the United States, we were saved from that, by the election of Franklin Roosevelt. And Franklin Roosevelt led the United States up, out of the Depression, over a long process, and into the point that, at the end of the World War II, we were the most prosperous, most powerful nation in the world.

Despite the mistakes that were made after the death of President Roosevelt, we continued to be the leading nation, in productive power, in the world, through the middle of the 1960s. Then, after the Missile Crisis, which scared the pants off most people, in 1962; after the assassination of Kennedy; and the entry into the Indo-China War, we began a process of change, which was called a cultural paradigm-shift: a change from a producer society—the world's leading producer society—to a post-industrial society.

And this change progressed under Nixon. In 1971-72, there was a change from the monetary system, which had built up the world, built up the United States, in the post-war period. We began to shift, by exporting our jobs from the United States, into places where the poorest people in the world would work cheaply for us. And, we're now in a situation, where most of our industries—say, in New Hampshire: You can travel up and down the Merrimack Valley, and see areas that used to be centers of industry. You could see areas in this state, which used to be centers of agriculture, apple-growing, and cattle, and so forth—they are now destitute. They're depending upon other kinds of income. The state was depopulated, in part, because young people left the state, to go to other parts of the country, to get jobs. Families were broken up. The population became older, in the sense of demographically, because the young people moved away. This happened all over the country.

Today, most of our jobs are exported, as jobs, to other countries, where poor people live. Poor people in China produce a lot for us. Poor people in Mexico, a broken country, produce for us, at slave-labor wages, and the jobs have run away from the United States.

So, in the process, we're now in a state, where 47 states, of the 50 states in the United States, are now bankrupt, in the sense, that the state can not raise enough money to pay for essential services, except by taxing people or doing other things which will injure the tax revenue base of the state. In other words, a losing cause. If you increase the taxes, you will lower the incomes of the state. Therefore, you will ruin the economy. If you try to cut more, you will collapse the state the other way. So, the states are in that position, and they need the help of the Federal government, to take changes, which will enable these states to go through a process of recovery.

That's the mission before us.

Also, we have, at the same time, this terrible war. How did it start? There was a big change, which came in the course and at the end of World War II: A change in military practice, internationally, for the worse. The signal of that change, was the dropping of two nuclear weapons on the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There was no military necessity for dropping those weapons: Japan was already defeated, was waiting for an approval of the terms of surrender, to officially surrender. Those terms were withheld, in order to let the bombs be dropped, unnecessarily, on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

This was the beginning of a philosophy, which was called "preventive nuclear war." The principal author of the policy was Bertrand Russell, the well-known Bertrand Russell, who developed this nuclear strategy: The idea of using nuclear weapons, as weapons so terrible, that nations would submit to world government, and give up their sovereignty rather than submit themselves to a war. From 1945 until the Soviet Union developed a deployable thermo-nuclear device, the United States was operating on the basis of a long-term policy, of preventive nuclear war, to bring the rest of the world into subjection.

When the Soviet Union developed the first deployable thermonuclear weapon, that had to be called off. You can't have a preventive nuclear war, when the other side's got a thermonuclear weapons. And, soon after that, we developed thermonuclear weapons.

So, we went through a long period, until the present, which was called a period of "Mutual and Assured Destruction." Shortly after the retirement of President Eisenhower, that became policy. The 1962 Missile Crisis, the negotiation between the United States and the Soviet Union, with Bertrand Russell in the middle, we went into a system, which later became known as détente, after the 1972 period. So, we went through a new idea of warfare: We would now create weapons systems, which are so horrible, that a thermonuclear war would destroy the planet, or virtually destroy it. Then, you had conventional war, at the other extreme.

So, the policy began to focus on what was called "Utopianism," of how to find a way, to fight nuclear war without actually going to thermonuclear war. And that is what preoccupied the world, from the time of the Korean War, to the present time. At present, you have the Vice President of the United States, Dick Cheney, is committed to preventive nuclear war, a policy which he recommended in 1991-92, when he was the Defense Secretary. After the events of Sept. 11, 2001, he brought the policy out. It had been resisted earlier, by the U.S. government. The United States is now, more or less, operating on the basis of a doctrine of preventive nuclear war.

Now, this created another situation, which is called "asymmetric warfare": That is, how do you fight war, how is war fought, between the past history, of the pre-1945 level of so-called conventional warfare, and general thermonuclear war? How do you find a way to fight war in that area? Well, this leads to what's called asymmetric warfare. We saw it, clearly, in Vietnam. The United States, which was foolish enough to get into the Korean War, by the stupidity of President Truman, got into Indo-China War in a similar way: The United States assumed—correctly, at that point—that China would not make a big fuss about a U.S. attack on North Vietnam. So, the United States proceeded to go ahead with the attack on North Vietnam, assuming that there was not going to be any serious opposition from China or other countries.

What happened is, the Soviet Union intervened, to assist Vietnam, in planning an asymmetric defense. And, we lost the war. Because, one of the things that arises out of this middle area, is that, people say, as was done to Napoleon in 1812: "Come into our country. We can't defeat you at the borders. But, invade our country, and you will be face-to-face with our general population. And our general population will attack you, man-to-man." And when it's man-to-man, superweapons don't work. This is precisely what happened in Indo-China, because everybody was around everybody, in terms of Indo-China. The same thing is now happening in Iraq, when the Iraqi population, in general, is in touch with the American soldier, the American soldier has no place to go. He can go into Hedgehogs and try to hide, that's all. But this thing is going to come to an end—it's a failure.

The problem is that those in Washington—chiefly in Washington, and chiefly Cheney's friends—who are determined to attack Syria, to attack Iran, to attack North Korea, and other countries; to keep this process of spreading war as far as possible, aiming to use nuclear weapons, or so-called "mini-nuclear weapons," in the process. The result of that will be, in the next President's term, unless we stop it now, will be a spread of warfare, involving Russia, China, India, and many other countries—most of the world against the United States, in the sense of being opposed to this war, or the spread of this war, as you've already seen since 2002, when this began. Under those conditions, with mini-submarines, with special nuclear weapons, and with various other features of so-called "low-intensity warfare" or "asymmetric warfare," the world will be tied into a war, of a type that most of you could not imagine. It could be the death of civilization.

And therefore, we must stop this war. It's not necessary. We don't need it. There's no problem we can't solve without it.

We have to bring about a new order on this planet, which, from my knowledge of dealing with countries abroad, and leaders in some of them, they're ready to accept: If the United States would change its policy, to a prospect of what John Quincy Adams, as Secretary of State, put in the mouth of President Monroe: The objective of the United States, from the beginning—it was a Constitutional objective—was to establish, here, a republic, and to make that republic secure, by fostering the development of other republics, in other countries; and to enter into a community of principle among republics, among these nations. John Quincy Adams laid that policy out for the states of the Americas. We should now proceed, as Roosevelt had intended to do during his time, and make that the policy for the United States toward the rest of the world.

We don't need world government. We don't want a world empire. We must respect cultures, because people can not have democratic representation unless they're able to express it in terms of their own culture. Therefore, you must have a principle that different cultures, or people who choose to form different cultures, should be sovereign in their self-government. But that we, as nations, as a group of nations, so committed, should find common principles, principles of agreement, where we can solve our problems: Not through world government, and not through supra-government, but by simply adopting common principles, which we think are the common principles of humanity for this time.

So, the war can be controlled.

One of the drives for war, is the economic crisis. If you look back in history, we just went through Veterans Day, which was once called Armistice Day. Armistice Day was Nov. 11, 1917, when World War I paused. Then, we got into another war, a Second World War, in my generation. My parents' generation were in World War I; my generation was in World War II. The generation of your parents was in the Vietnam War, among others. You're now in the Cheney-era wars. So, we have these cycles of war. You find that the pulsations of these wars, coincide with major financial changes and major financial crises. At any time that you have a major financial crisis, somebody gets the idea, of trying to manage the financial crisis by setting up dictatorship, or using dictatorial measures—as it's tried now; as it's being pushed in the United States by Ashcroft, by people who are complaining about this.

And therefore, these are dangerous times, in which the impulse to go to war, is suddenly increased. And that's the ways these other wars have occurred. And these wars have presently have occurred. They occurred because the present administration of George Bush, came into office, not having created the depression—it was already fully in process, before he came to power. But, as I observed, just before he was inaugurated in 2001, that, since he's a dumb man, as not very intelligent on these matters, he was going to be stupid, and we were going to have a very serious economic crisis. And, I warned, that under these conditions, we would probably be heading into crises, or internal crises and international crises—and we have been!

So, we have to look at the war danger, and the problems of the economy, as related. If we solve the problem of managing the financial crisis, the economic crisis, we can manage the world military crisis. Because, there are opportunities for cooperation with China, with the nations of Eurasia in general. There are opportunities in some of our neighbors in South America, who would like to cooperate with us. So, we could rebuild a world economy, in much the same fashion we proceeded to rebuild the war-torn economy, at the end of World War II. That's possible.

But, we have to do one thing above all: The American people are frightened and confused. The lower 80% of family-income brackets have been dropping down in the physical conditions of life, since 1977. The lower 80% of the family-income brackets of the United States, have become almost a lost generation. And, politics has been limited to the upper 20% of family-income groups—the so-called "suburban policy" of the Democratic National Committee is an example of that. So, the majority of the population has been neglected. And the neglect shows, in the faces and conditions of life of our people.

We can solve this the way Roosevelt did. There are opportunities to build up our industries. We need large investments in basic economic infrastructure: For example, New England will go into a collapse, if we do not begin to develop new sources of generation and distribution of power. We're on the verge of a power crisis throughout New England—that is, at least, in planning terms, from the government standpoint. We must get to work now, not only in New England, but other parts of the country, to begin to build up power generation and distribution networks which are reliable. We must deal with some of the water crises we have. We have sanitation crises. We have urban crises. We have a breakdown in mass transit. We're clogging highways with traffic. People are spending more time using the highways, the superhighways, as parking lots, than they are sometimes working! It's a waste! It's destroying family life.

These things have to be done.

We have to rebuild our hospital system. We have to rebuild our health-care system: Go back to Hill-Burton, and forget this HMO system. These changes have to be made.

Many involve expenditures by government, long-term expenditures: Not current costs, as much as capital expenditures. When you create a big project, you create jobs. If you create enough jobs, then the income of the state rises above the breakeven level for operation of the state. So therefore, the object, in a condition like this, is not only to increase employment, but to increase certain kinds of productive employment, which are a stimulant for the growth of the private sector. That's where government comes in. Government can make rules, which help investment proceed. Government can also, directly, on the state and Federal level, can take action, for long-term infrastructure projects, to build new utilities, which can become private utilities, but to rebuild what we've lost.

If we start in that direction, we can convince the American people, that we care about them. And the problem is, people today think that government no longer cares for the people. The people are often against government, big government in particular, because they think it doesn't care for them. When government intervenes on behalf of the people, people like government. When government intervenes against the people, as people believe that the leading parties have done recently, and policies have done recently, then they're against government. So, if we're going to restore confidence in government, we have to start to pay attention to the needs of the majority of our people. And the time has come, that I think we can do that.

But, to do this all, someone has to tell the truth. Some politicians have to tell the truth. They can't give you the usual political guff you've been getting from these so-called "candidates debates": ducking the issues, doing fast-talk, with no substance to it. Where's the action? They promised this. They promised that. What are they going to do? Well, in order to explain what you're going to do, they have to do what I do: You have to discuss the nature of the problem, define the problem, and define the actions by which you're going to solve the problem.

Those who say, "We have to defend the U.S. policy of going into war in Iraq," are insane! They're not addressing the problem! Iraq was simply one of the stepping-stones toward a global war, a spread of global war. We have to stop it. It was the wrong policy. There was no reason to go in: Cheney lied! That's the way, we got into it! They lied about the problems! There was no reason to go in. There was no need to invade the place! It had nothing to do with terrorism—not against the United States, anyway.

So, we shouldn't have gotten into it. But candidates, even Democrats—Gephardt will not admit it was wrong. And Kerry, who's probably one of the best of my rivals, will not admit it's wrong. He will fudge around it.

On the economic question, none of them will tell the truth on the economic question. The U.S. government has given a new meaning to the word "Snow job," through Treasury Secretary Snow. There is no U.S. recovery. It's a Snow Job. The U.S. economy is collapsing. The jobs are collapsing, the industries are collapsing. What he's talking about is a big accounting swindle, with fake figures.

So, first of all, to get this process, political process, there has to be a discussion, in which people who intend to run for high office, should go before the people, and stop the guff, and talk about the kind of problems I've addressed. You have to talk about the war problem, how to stop it, what the alternative is. They have to deal with the economic problem, discuss it, define the problem, debate the problem, and debate the solutions. What's important is not whether they're right or not. What's important is to change the character of the political discussion, from this guff, of swapping guff, and funny stories, to actually present to the American people, to the public, each candidate's conception of what the nature of the problem is, the real problem, and what they have proposed to do, by whom, to solve the problem!

They have to do that on the question of war, they have to do that on the question of economy, and they have to do it in relationship to your generation. Because you are going to be the decisive factor in this election campaign. You are the muscle, the political muscle. When you organize, you have more impact, per person, on the political process than any other citizen of the United States. Because when people see you—and you are the future of your parents' generation. You are the future of your grandparents' generation. And what happens to you, determines the outcome and meaning of their lives. When you mobilize yourselves, and demand that the questions be discussed, demand that the answers be concrete, demand that the debates among these different proposals occur, when you intervene, you shake it up.

We've demonstrated it with the youth movement now. We demonstrated it in California, we've demonstrated it on the streets of Washington, D.C., we've demonstrated it in Pennsylvania, and we'll demonstrated it elsewhere. You can be the difference.

What has happened in this country, because of the change from a producer society, to a consumer society, which hit your parents' generation, we have become a consumer society. Now, what happens is, you come along, and the consumer society is a failure. The world is bankrupt. We're going into new general wars, where somebody's going to ask you to fight. And you're saying, "There's no future."

You also know around you, that the people you deal with, of your generation, and younger, you're dealing with a drug problem. Not just because of drugs as such, but because the lives of many people in your generation, and younger, are completely screwed up by this drug problem. Ritalin, in schools. Prozac, in schools. Other drug problems. People trying to manage their problem. Trying to function despite the drug habit they've got. Trying to fight the drug culture which invades them all around.

You find yourself saying, "We're part of a no-future generation, that we have been given no assured future."

You have to realize that, you do realize it, and you have to somehow reach out, to your parents' generation, and your grandparents' generation, and say, "We care. We want a future." And because, once they remember, that you are their future, and the children that you bear, will be their future, then you've got a grip on them. Because they're all going to die—we're all going to die. And therefore, what are they looking forward to, as the meaning and outcome of their life? You contain the secret of the meaning and the outcome of their lives.

And when you deploy, when you deploy effectively, you have an impact in the political process, which cannot be matched by any other stratum of the population.

So, think of yourself as important. And I turn it back to you. Any questions you have. [applause]

STUDENT MODERATOR: At this time, we're going to open up the floor to any questions you may have for Mr. LaRouche. So, step right up.

QUESTION: Hi. I've read that you advocate a universal service policy, and I was wondering if you could speak a bit on that, concerning the military service.

LAROUCHE: Yeah, I'm for it, first of all, because I don't think we ought to have a professional army as such, controlling us. Secondly, we've got a big problem in the United States, of an employment problem. We've got to create a lot of new jobs. These jobs are going to be in categories which people in the United States are not generally employed with, or are not trained for.

Now, we had an experience in World War II, when I for a time was in a training capacity, and we would have these fellows scraped from the streets, and slums, and swamps, of America, and I would have a platoon to train. And when I'd line them up on the company street, the first time they got there, with their duffle bags, I would think to myself, "We just lost the war." And you would think pretty much the same thing today, taking a bunch of people into that.

But what happened was, we transformed, in a 16-week basic training program, and then the supplementary programs beyond that, we transformed a population of people who had been crippled by the effects of the Depression. We transformed them into an effective force, a productive force. The United States was not a military great show, in World War II. We were a great logistical force, and the way, as MacArthur dealt with the problem in the Pacific, we relied on as few battles as possible, and as much logistical superiority as possible. And that's where the United States was superior.

Therefore, our people came out of the war as a more productive people, both through the war production efforts, and through the military experience. And they went out, and they built a society, a prosperous nation, on the basis of that upgrading of our population through military service.

During a similar period, during the 1930s, we had a thing called the CCCs. And we'd take people who were otherwise headed for gang life, or misery, and we put them in these military-like camps, in forestry and other things, and we gave them some background. For example, from Michigan, you had division, an entirely military division, that came virtually out of the CCCs, and just marched out of the CCC camps, went into military training, and went overseas as a division.

So, this kind of process.

Now, my military policy is strategic defense, and it's defined by Lazare Carnot, and Scharnhorst, and others earlier. I do not believe in unnecessary wars. I believe in strategic defense. But, I do believe in an adequate capability. But I also realize that the military, by having a military of that reserve—every citizen has his duty, or Selective Service kind of thing—by having that kind of program, we can use a military program, for developing an engineering force, because a good military force is primarily an engineering force. That's its essential capability. And we need to take a population which is paperwork oriented, or soft oriented, to be able to build things: to build bridges, to build systems, to build highways, and to do it with modern engineering.

We need to have a population reoriented, toward production, and toward technological production. So therefore, I have two things that I think are necessary. I've joined Charles Rangel, who proposed this, and I echoed it immediately: I said, we should restore military service. Why? Look at the mess in Iraq. I'll tell you what the problem is.

We have generals and colonels and so forth today, in the Army and Marine Corps, who by all standards are competent. But: What are we doing with our youth? Some of you may know about it. What happens is, the military will go into a family, a 17-year-old kid, and give a donation, or help, to the parents if the kid will sign up for military service. They go into military service, what do they get for training? They didn't get the benefits of my excellent training, they get something else. They got a computer. They've got video point-and-shoot training.

What are they good for? Point and shoot. They're like the Columbine killers! They were point-and-shoot experts. They were trained on these videos, which are military-style, point and shoot training. We have police forces, special units of police forces, which are dangerous. All they know is point and shoot. They get a suspect, and they'll unload every weapon they have, and then say, "What'd we do that for?" They just have this instinctive point and shoot.

So, we're sending point-and-shoot people into a situation which is largely an occupation, engineering job, and we didn't have the troops for it. We didn't have the Corps of Engineers. We used the little Corps of Engineers we had, for policemen, for traffic policemen, in Baghdad. So, we had no capability of occupying the country; we didn't have enough troops in there to do an occupation job, if we were going to do it, and the troops we had were not generally qualified to deal with that kind of situation, they weren't trained for it.

So, my view is, we need a military which is competently trained. We need to listen to the generals and colonels, about what an operation, before going to war. And when they say "Don't do it!" and give you a good reason why, don't do it! As the generals, and the Marine Corps generals, and the Army generals, said to Rumsfeld: "Don't do it! It's a mistake, it's horrible."

And the second thing is, we need to get a sense that this country is ours, and when you're in military service, even as a reservist, you sense that you're part of a country that is yours. It's not somebody else's army, it's your army. And you demand the kind of training which fits your requirements. And therefore, to me this idea of special programs of education, work and education, to get some of the people who are on drugs and so forth off the streets, out of the crime areas—get them out there, give them a future! Put them to work in ways that they can get their dignity back, and get some knowledge.

And also use the military with the idea of not having something that's going to go to war necessarily — something that's competent if it had to go to war, as in World War II—but the basic training is to produce a military Corps of Engineers, which would do, when emergencies come up of any kind, you have a military Corps of Engineers which is qualified to step in, and adapt itself to any task in the national interest, or be called upon as National Guard, by the governor for an emergency in a state. And that's the purpose.

QUESTION: I'm kinda talking about that too. Gen. Wesley Clark has a proposed program called Civil Reserves, which is kind of like the National Guard, but it's for civilians where they can volunteer their time. They can be called up like National Guard with job security and everything, and they can do civilian projects for the country, like fight wildfires, terrorist attack relief, and stuff like that, and to into humanitarian situations abroad. And that's a way of helping the country through civilian work, and non-military. Do you have a plan for civilian volunteerism? Because, I mean, President Bush has cut Americorps funding by 30%. Because not everybody wants to wield a gun, even if it's not really for shooting, so...

LAROUCHE: I know. Well, that's fine. I have no objection to that. It makes not difference. When people are taking some, what's called alternate service, fine. We have plenty of room. We don't have to get worried about that.

I'm not too enthusiastic about General Clark. He's a well-trained staff officer, but he's lousy in command. That's why we bounced him out of the Balkans. He made a mess of things. And he doesn't understand it.

The thing is simple. Don't come with these kind of programs. Go with a basic Corps of Engineers approach, to a strategic-defense-oriented military, with the idea of a national reserve, which is a reserve which can be used by the President, and the National Guard can deal with emergencies in that way. What I propose is, of course, a special training program, which is a better version, shall we say, of the CCCs, to deal with this other project, or projects. For emergencies, yes. For emergencies, the military is a reserve, and the reservists are part of that reserve. And therefore, yes, the National Guard, yes. But that's not the way to approach the program.

See, the problem is what Clark leaves out is, what kind of jobs do we need? What should the government do? Not just jobs.

What we need are, basic power generation and distribution. That's a big—we're talking about trillions of dollars, in capital investment, over a 25-year period, a 25-year cycle. Trillions. Remember, the national product of the United States is estimated in the order of magnitude of $11 trillion. That may be generous. But we're talking about something in the order of magnitude of more than the national income of the United States, being spent over the next 25-year cycle, in basic economic infrastructure. In things like power, water management. We have a great water project, if we get Canada into it, which will change the character of the United States, in terms of opening up new areas for development, in what's called the Great American Desert, which involves cooperation with Mexico, as well as Canada. We have that kind of project.

We need a national rail system. It's crazy. I mean, if you've been on the highways, maybe not in northern New Hampshire in the off-tourist season, but otherwise, we have—our superhighways are often parking lots, where people spend time. It's crazy! An efficient mass transit system, both for freight and for passengers, is an essential part of life, for communities, for urban communities, for inter-urban areas, and for long term. We must rebuild it. We should be building maglev, magnetic levitation, for very long-haul methods. We can do it. Germany is doing it. China is now doing it. China has a magnetically levitated railway system—we don't have one! They have one in Shanghai. We don't have one. I'd buy in China on that one.

So, we need this sort of thing. So, what we need is a program, somewhat like what Roosevelt conceived, but a program which has earmarked targets, which means investment. It means raising the capital investment, with Federal credit, run through various kinds of institutions like Jesse Jones' operation under Roosevelt. But these have to be kinds of projects, like the TVA project. So you have to come up with a menu of projects, which I'm doing. A menu of projects, and then say, how are we going to fill the job on these projects.

My big thing is to use the idea of building a Corps of Engineers, a military Corps of Engineers, around the military, for that purpose as such. And something in that direction will work.

Many people are kicking these things around now, because everybody knows you need a jobs program. But the problem is, that you have to find the right one, and the right jobs program is twofold: First of all, you've got to change the rules of business, the rules of taxation, to foster investment in the private sector. We've got to stimulate the national economy, with Federal and state projects, backed by the credit-creating capacity of the Federal government. And the basic thing therefore, is the military and other things, would play a part. And also a program such as an alternate service program, for projects. Define a project, and have an alternate service program for training in that project, and for implementing it. Fine. No problem.

QUESTION: Recently the Bush Administration has been slacking on with the EPA. I'd like to know what your feelings were about conservation, and if you're planning on developing railroads, how are you going to conserve? The United States area is 4% of the world's population, and we consume one-third of the world's natural resources. I just wanted to know what your feelings on conservation were?

LAROUCHE: Well, I'm involved in, I spend half my time outside the United States, and I'm involved with circles of governments in many parts of the world, including Asia, Russia, Europe, South and Central America, and so forth. And also with the Africa problem, which is a different dimension of problem, especially sub-Saharan Africa.

What we have now, is, in Europe, is something I got involved in, especially in 1998, when the Russian bond crisis occurred. I proposed that we should, I proposed actually to the Clinton Administration, that we should support a Strategic Triangle policy, of cooperation among Russia, China, and India, on the basis that such cooperation among three nation with somewhat different objectives, and different cultures, would create a basis for uniting cooperation, throughout Eurasia. Because Western Europe needed the market of development of Asia, seriously; they desperately need it. And therefore, you're talking about the major part of the world's population involved in Eurasia, with large nations, such as India, over a billion people. China, 1.3 billion at a minimum. Southeast Asia, a tremendous population. Pakistan, Bangladesh, and then the Koreas and Japan, and so forth.

So, and then you take Europe. This is the largest part of the world, is the Eurasian continent. That's what we're involved in.

My policy essentially has been, and I've been involved in this: I developed this policy called the Eurasian Land-Bridge policy, which was actually part of my work in 1988 on, with this content. For example:

You have all these populations. You have in China, 1.3 billion; India, 1 billion. Bangladesh, Southwest Asia, Myanmar, Indonesia, a large country, and so forth. Where are you going to get, for a growing population, with China moving more and more inland from the coastal areas, through infrastructure development, large-scale water projects, and so forth; where are you going to get the raw materials, the minerals, to meet the requirements of those coming generations? Of this large section of the world?

Well, that's in Central and North Asia. In Kazakhstan, in Russian Siberia—that's where the minerals are. Under tundra, in desert areas. There are also problems in managing minerals in this area. In some parts of the world, you know, most of the minerals we get, come from fossil deposits, that is, forms of life concentrate minerals, and when the forms of life die, in these stratified fossil areas, you get some of the minerals are located. Why? Because the animals, when they died, or the plants, when they died, left a concentration of these minerals. And that's how we find many of them.

Now, we are presently using up, in some categories, we're using up some of these minerals more rapidly than we can replace them. So, therefore, we have a great management problem—which actually goes into Russia's science, and geology, where they're experts in this area — in which we have to have a twofold program. One, the general development of Central and North Asia, as habitable territory, inhabited with industrial and similar development. That makes it possible for us to develop the use of areas of mineral resources.

We also then have to have a larger program, which is global in its implication, over the coming generation: of how are we going to manage the mineral requirements of this planet, since we're using up some minerals more rapidly than we can readily replace them? We can deal with that problem. It's a problem in advanced science; we know what the area is, the work has to be done.

So, therefore, what we will be doing, in the United States, for example, where we have tremendous mineral resources, in undeveloped areas of South America, for example, we will be cooperating with these areas of the world, scientifically and otherwise, to develop a global program for mineral resource management, to make sure we have the programs to use the kinds of minerals, or to replenish, or alter, the kinds of minerals we require, for future needs. And thus, we're able, then, to deal with the needs of countries like China, India, Bangladesh, and so forth, by assuring them that they have a future. And thus, we have a role to play, as the United States, in that respect.

We also have another role to play, as the United States. Ours—which some people don't know—ours is the only Constitutional republic, whose Constitution has not been overturned repeatedly, since ours was founded. No other part of the world has a Constitution as durable as ours. This durability lies in two things. First of all, we're a Presidential system, not a parliamentary system: that's one of our great strengths. When you assign executive functions to a parliament, as if you assign it, say, to the Congress, you will get a lousy government. It won't function.

You need checks and balances, which include the Congress, on the Federal function. But without our kind of Federal government you can't function—it's the best way, this way.

Secondly, now have durability. Every crisis will crack a parliamentary government. Our government is the only one that's capable, under our Constitutional system, to deal with that kind of crisis effectively, without a fundamental change in our Constitution.

Secondly, we are free, in principle, under our Constitution, from control by private banking interests. Admittedly, that has changed. That has been corrupted under Jackson, who brought in the Land Bank system, which was corruption. We were corrupted by the introduction of the Federal Reserve System, which has undermined our sovereignty to a significant degree. But under our system of government, where every other government in the world has troubles, when it comes to a financial crisis, when the debts are so great that they can't be paid, when you're under the control of the banking interests, they will say, "Let the people die, the debts get paid first."

If you're under the U.S. government, with a President like Roosevelt, you say, "The people come first. We'll manage the banking crisis. But the people come first, the general welfare comes first." It's a peculiarity of our system of government, which is relatively unique in the world, and therefore, despite what we've become, under some bad governments, bad Presidents, we are still the model republic for the world. Because things happened in Europe, it never really worked there, yet.

And therefore, we have two roles. We a historically determined role, despite the lousy performance we have now. We are a key republic for the world. We used to be admired by the world, before the present Administration, when Roosevelt was still alive. We were admired by the world, before. They wanted us, they trusted us. No more. But we still have a historically the position, that we are a nation to be trusted, when we are true to ourselves.

And therefore, we look at the problem of Eurasia, of trying to bring together diverse cultures, many nations representing diverse cultures; of dealing with the genocide in Africa; dealing with the crisis of Central America and South America: We in the United States, if we are committed, we can change the world. And I know it personally, because I'm in touch with many of these people. I know what we can do, I know what I can do as President. We have the people in the United States, who are available; I can throw a government together quite easily. We have people around the world, who are willing to cooperate with this kind of program. We can do it.

We are not the great power in numbers, but we're a great power in terms of an idea, the idea of the American Revolution, the idea of our Constitution, which is still a viable instrument. And with that instrument, we can be a force for good in the world. We can bring people together for cooperation, who will not otherwise come together for cooperation.

So, we are important. But we have to understand what our importance is, and when we try to use force to repress the rest of the world, we're no longer important.

MODERATOR: I think we have time for one more question.

QUESTION: I just want to say, I was a student at the University of New Hampshire years ago, and now a resident of Vermont. And Howard Dean is in this area, and making a big splash. A lot of people aren't convinced about his actual faith in ideas, versus just making the bottom dollar work. There's a certain bullying nature, people are anxious about. But what I've seen in this area, observed, is that many people that have very progressive ideas, and would leap at your answers—as I do, because I think they're the soundest ones out there—are swayed by the idea, or the concept, false concept, that they have to elect the candidate based on the most amount of following. And this is sort of a lemming approach, following the sense of build-up in momentum around one candidate, with the idea that their primary target is to beat Bush, no matter what.

I was just wondering if you could comment on the thinking, the fallacy in that thinking.

LAROUCHE: Well, you see, people think that they have to, they think that government is a delicatessen, and they go into the delicatessen, and they have to take what's offered in the delicatessen. They don't realize that our government is such that it doesn't belong to anyone, really, under our Constitution. The Constitution is something that the people who are elected, must conform to. Our government has an implicit mission-orientation, embedded in us, from the formation of the government, from Benjamin Franklin, and Europeans who supported us.

So, the person who becomes President finds that, instead of occupying the office, the office will occupy him. The office will take over the President. Because the President can't give orders. The President can give a command, give an Executive Order, but how is it carried out? It's carried out by a vast apparatus of government institutions, with the consent of the Congress. The President has special powers, but they lie in the institutions of government: the military, the intelligence services, the various departments of government. These institutions are the ones that actually make the Executive decisions that move things.

And when a President walks in there, he works for them. He's a part of the Constitutional system; he can make certain kinds of decisions, but he's limited by that.

So, therefore, the President is not usually as important as most Presidents think they are. He's a functionary of government. He's elected to serve for four years, but government goes on. He's part of the continuity of government, and has to have a sense of that mission.

Now, then you get these ideas that the parties control the government: the Democratic Party, or Republican party, control the candidacies. But that's not what our system was set up to be. There's no Constitutional provision for political parties, in the Constitution of the United States. There never was. They have no intrinsic Constitutional authority. They have no Constitutional right to determine a candidate. Anybody can. But they are convenient methods of association.

Now, we have a situation where the Democratic Party is disintegrating, and the question is, under the present Democratic National Committee, it's not, who's going to win the next election, but, who's going to lose it? Because you have people, instead of competing to win, they're competing to lose, by what they're doing in practice. All of the Democratic candidates I'm up against, are losers. They're not doing anything to win.

So, the question now is, the person has the myth that somehow there's a system, such as the news media, or some other system, that's going to determine who's a credible President. Well, a credible President depends upon having a credible population, a credible citizenry.

Let me go back one step, just to get this clear. The nature of history, the nature of government, is, it proceeds in long cycles. Why?

Because, often, popular opinion and institutions, make wrong policy decisions, as we made back in the middle of the 1960s, in going into the Vietnam War, and going from being a producer society to a consumer society. That was a mistake! This mistake became popular. It became more and more popular. Changes occurred. Deregulation. So-called free trade. These were insane ideas—they became popular. They were taught.

So, now the American people have destroyed themselves over 40 years, with bad ideas that most of them have adopted. Eighty percent of the population hates the policies, because they're suffering under them! But they still believe they're obliged to go along with it, because it is so-called "official popular opinion."

Now, then you come at the end of a cycle, where bad ideas, like bad axioms in a geometry, will lead to a crisis, sooner or later. Then, somebody has to make a change. We are now in a time of change. The reason the Democratic candidates, I'm running against are so bad, is not that all of them are bad. Some of them are not bad. Some of them are, for ordinary times, very good. A Kerry would be a good man for ordinary times. But they're not measuring up to the fact of the situation.

We're in a time of fundamental change. We have to go from being a consumer society, to being a producer society. We have to go from a consumer society, on its way to Hell, by way of war, to a society going back to prosperity, and peace. This means a change in the assumptions of behavior held by most of the population. The person who is qualified to be a President, is the person who goes out there, and changes, or is qualified, to change the ideas of the people about their own ideas. It's to convince the people, it's time to change their own opinion.

So, popular opinion, or convention, should never be allowed to govern who is the President. Somehow, sooner or later—and you have to be patient around this, as I can tell you—sooner or later, you have to have the right ideas, but you have to have patience. Because if the country's going to survive, sooner or later, they're going to accept the change in ideas. And they're going to accept the person who is qualified to implement, not accepted ideas, but the necessary changes in ideas, the way they elected Franklin Roosevelt in 1932.

And, in a sense, I'm analogous to Roosevelt in 1932. And I have all of the people against me, who were against Roosevelt in 1932, or the comparable people. And if I make it, we make it. If I don't make it, I don't know whether we make it or not.

That's the way history is. Nations go down. They pay terrible penalties for mistakes. The Germans made a mistake, when they allowed Hitler to stay in office, in 1933! Because when the Reichstag Fire occurred, Hitler became a dictator, and world history was determined. The German people did not have the sense to react against Hitler at that time; before, they had a chance to do so.

And that's often the case in history. The penalty is, you make a change in a nation, when you have to, when the time comes that you have to make the change, against bad ideas, bad habits. You have to have people who will lead the charge, on changing habits. And you have to have a population who's willing to accept that change. That's all I can do, all anyone can do. I do the best I can.

Thank you. Thank you all. [applause]

Lyndon LaRouche gave the following address, by telephone hookup, to Youth Movement cadre schools in Mexico, Colombia, Peru, and Argentina, on Nov. 23, 2003.

There is a problem, which is international, with existing populations, partly because of a general defect in popular culture and in public and higher education: That people today, generally, do not have a practical understanding of the difference between man and a beast. And I speak of this difference now, as it applies to politics.

The point is, that animals can not develop ideas. Not in the sense that human beings have ideas; they're incapable of it. An animal dies; it leaves no personality behind, except in the memory of human beings, who may be associated with that animal. But, a human being, as Plato said, is capable of doing something no animal can do.

So, man is capable of discovering ideas, typified by—and I've used the example many times—is the principle of universal gravitation, which was uniquely discovered by Kepler, not by anybody else. Kepler discovered this, by looking at things, such as the apparent looping of the orbit of Mars, which showed that there is no regular sense-perceptual system to the Solar System. And therefore, the behavior of the Solar System had to be located in something external to perception, but which could be formulated as an idea. And once you understood the idea of this efficient presence, which itself you could not see with your senses, then we had a notion of universal gravitation.

Everything else we know, in terms of principles of the physical universe as such, and in terms of the principles of society—that is, as opposed to opinions about society—but the principles which will make a society effective: All of these things are invisible to sense-perception. To animal-like sense-perception in human beings. They exist only in the mind of the human being.

Now, if a human being were an ape, there would never have been more than several million human beings living on this planet, at any time, during the past 2 million years or so, and under the conditions we know of the past 2 million years. Today, we have reported over 6 billion people as living on this planet. This means that there's some difference between man and an ape, a fundamental difference, a difference of three decimal orders of magnitude, right now. The difference is, that we, by discovering two kinds of principles, are able to do two things: We're able to change the relationship of the individual's behavior to nature, as through the discovery of physical principles; and we're able to have concerted action by society, in making those changes of man's relationship to nature, through the discovery of social principles, such as the principles of the Preamble of the Constitution of the United States. Which is a universal, physical principle, discovered by man, and applied to design a nation-state on the basis of that principle.

Without these two kinds of principles, society does not function. That is, without the sense of the individual's relationship, physical relationship to the universe; and also, the individual's relationship to the universe through social processes, which are governed by discoverable social principles, which have the same force and effect as principles of natural science.

In the latter case, the best example of these kinds of social principles, is uniquely, Classical forms of artistic composition: No form of artistic composition, except the Classical, has a correspondence to natural principles. All other notions of social relations, or artistic composition, are unnatural principles. That is, they have no basis in the natural organization of the universe.

All right, so this is the difference between man and the ape.

Now, obviously the important thing here, the difference between having, say, several million individuals as human beings on the planet, and over 6 billion today, is that we, by discovering and applying these principles, are able to achieve this affect. We do this, because ideas developed over many thousands of generations before us, have transmitted their contributions to our knowledge of universal principles, to us through culture. This includes artistic culture. It includes political culture, and so forth. And, through physical ideas.

Looking Back Generations

So therefore, to understand a person, today, you have to understand what culture is embodied in their development, as something more than a piece of flesh, as something more than a beast. Now, for this reason, to understand the problems of the world today, you have to look back, immediately, several generations. For example, to understand the history of European civilization, including that of the Americas, you have to go back to the 18th Century, and earlier, but particularly the 18th Century. Because that's when the crisis which we face today was born.

Now, as you recall, or should recall, in the 18th Century, you had a King of Spain, Charles III, who was a good king, and who fought for the improvement of the lives of people, inclusively, in the Spanish colonies in the Americas. He was replaced by kings who were not so good, and by a Spanish 18th-Century monarchy, which widely promoted slavery. The Spanish monarchy was one of the chief vehicles for the capture and import of African slaves into the Americas, including the United States. That's during the 18th Century.

And this continued until Abraham Lincoln stopped it, and until the overthrow of Maximilian, in Mexico, and the restoration to power of Benito Juárez stopped the process, as well. Or, began to end it, essentially, in the Caribbean area. And, then later in the century, the Spanish monarchy, finally, abandoned the practice of officially sponsoring the trafficking of African slaves into the Americas.

So, we go back to this period.

Now, what happened? Why did this change, in the policy which created the United States, where Charles III of Spain supported the independence of the United States, together with the King of France, and others? Why did this change come? Why the problems? Why didn't the founding of the United States result in the spread of independent republics, immediately, back into Europe, as well as throughout the Americas? What was the problem?

And therefore, our history, today, what we experience inside ourselves, is most immediately a reflection of more than two centuries, of the extended history of modern European civilization. And, of course, lots of things before then—2,000 years before. But, to understand why we behave, why we as peoples, why we as nations, change our behavior, we have to look back at the accumulation of cultural paradigms, which were built into us, by transmission, from generations—of older generations still living, but also many generations which are long dead.

And these effects are built into us: For example, language. The development of language, is a process of culture, which is transmitted over many generations, which starts with people who are long dead. For example, Spanish started with Italian, principally. It started with Italian, of Italian soldiers as Roman soldiers, as in France, who settled in the southern part of France and in Spain. And, since they were Italian, and therefore tended to speak Italian in their homes—not Latin—the language is a combination of the natural people's language—Italian, the predominant language of the period of Italy in the Roman Empire—and then, added to that, technical terms which were imposed by Roman rule. So that, the Spanish, French, Italian language today, is a combination of Latin words imposed upon an Italian popular root. Therefore, that's what our language represents, in this case.

So, we have to understand this transmission of culture, including language, and its development, over many successive generations. And what we speak, the way we speak, the way we communicate, reflects this embedded in us, to the transmission of culture, in the family, in society, and so forth. And, by studies, of course.

The 'Venetian Party'

So now, look at what happened to us generally. Go back just to what I referred to often as the end of the 18th Century: The United States had just then, formulated the final phase of its adoption of a Constitution, the Federal Constitution. This was formulated first in 1787, and was completed in 1789. Now, at this point, the intention was, in France and elsewhere, to use the example of the American Revolution, the establishment of the U.S. republic, as a model for the reform of the nations of Europe.

But, something stepped in: The British monarchy, or rather, the British East India Company, which is otherwise known as the Venetian Party—that is, the name by which ruling forces in England identified themselves, was as "the Venetian Party." The Venetian Party was also a name used to identify the so-called culture of the 18th Century: The so-called 18th-Century Enlightenment, was a morally degenerate form of culture, called the French and English Enlightenment of the 18th Century, which was typified by England under George I, II, and III; or better said, under Lord Shelburne, who was the chief political figure of that century, the middle and latter part of that century, in dominating the British system, and also in the role he played in Europe.

Now, this Shelburne, from the British East India Company, intervened into France, as well as into the Americas, beginning in 1763, at the time that France was defeated by England on the seas, signed a peace treaty, and Shelburne launched a policy of destroying the possibility of the emergence of an independent nation in North America—that is, the United States. And also the spread of the American model into Europe, especially through the destruction of France, which the British monarchy (or actually, the British Empire at that time) saw as its chief continental European rival, the chief threat to British imperial rule over continental and adjoining Europe.

So, what this fellow did, this Lord Shelburne, he organized the French Revolution, every essential part of it: From 1789, the storming of the Bastille was done by agents of Lord Shelburne, under his personal direction. The Jacobin Terror was done by Shelburne, or under the direction of Shelburne, through people like Jeremy Bentham. Napoleon was brought into power, through the organization of Shelburne. So, the entire history of Europe, from 1789, particularly from July 14, 1789, through the Vienna Congress, was organized by Shelburne.

Out of this process, there emerged, what was called then the Martinist cult, a form of freemasonry, which was later renamed as Synarchism; which was later spread into, for example, in part, into Mexico through Maximilian. Maximilian was actually an agent of what we would call Synarchism, at his time: Introduced by a follower of Napoleon Bonaparte, his nephew Napoleon III, with the aid of the Spanish monarchy, and with the backing of the British, and of course with the Hapsburg family involved, also.

At a later point, the Synarchist International was used in the organization of World War I. It was also the key to the existence of fascism, from 1922, with Mussolini, through 1945. It was Synarchism which was run by the Nazis, through Franco's Spain, into Mexico, and by way of Mexico, into all of South America. It's where the pro-Nazi organization, the Synarchist International, operated in the Americas in that period.

Today again, the Synarchist International, as represented by the forces, or the so-called forces around Cheney, who are looking for preventive nuclear warfare, as a way of dominating the planet: This is an expression of Synarchism. The neo-conservatives, who tend to dominate the present Bush Administration, around Cheney: These are Synarchists.

Civilization vs. Synarchism

So therefore, what you have today, in terms of the immediate political culture, the immediate conflicts in society, in Europe, in the Americas, and by reflection, worldwide, we have a war between civilization and Synarchism. Synarchism, the same Synarchism, which gave us Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, the Pétain government, the Laval government in Europe; the same Synarchism that invaded Mexico through the Nazi Party and through Franco, the same Synarchism is now threatening civilization again.

That is our essential strategic problem.

In the process—come up closer to the present; what happened to us, just to review what I've said many times, on many occasions, around the country and around the world: The problem started with a fellow called Bertrand Russell. Bertrand Russell is very influential—he's very evil, but he was very influential. For example, he was, in a sense, the author of this religious cult around Norbert Wiener, the so-called "information theory." The same kind of religious cult around John von Neumann, of systems analysis, this whole branch of modern economics, of the idea of synthetic intelligence, or artificial intelligence.

This guy was against the existence of the nation-state: He hated the United States. He was determined to create a world empire. This form of world empire he conceived was called "world government." That was not an original idea, with Russell. The idea of world government and empire are interchangeable ideas. They mean the same thing: The idea of a universal system of law, imposed from the top-down on what had been nations or nationalities, is a form of imperialism, in the same sense as the Roman Empire, in the same sense as feudalism under the combination of Venice and its Norman allies, over the period from about the time of the Norman Conquest of England, up through the modern civilization.

So, this is the problem, this fight.

Most recently, what happened with Russell, is that Russell devised the idea, together with his buddy, H.G. Wells—who was a bit of a pig, himself—and they devised the idea of using nuclear weapons, or developing them and using them, as weapons so terrible, that the people of the world would submit to world government, as a way of avoiding being hit by nuclear weapons. At the close of the Second World War, the war concluded with the deployment of those nuclear weapons, by a pig, who was then President of the United States, Harry Truman, against the civilian populations of two cities of Japan: Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There was no military reason, which required or justified, the use of those weapons on that occasion. The reason it was done, was to terrify the world, and to commit the United States to a policy of threatening to conquer the entire world, by threatening preventive nuclear war—the specific language adopted by Russell, and used by Russell, to explain his policy.

From that time on, the United States, and many other countries, were divided, by two political currents: One was the traditional military current, which at that time, was typified by Generals of the Armies Douglas MacArthur and Dwight Eisenhower, as leading generals. On the other side, the opponents of this military tradition of civilization—the so-called tradition of classical strategic defense—were these so-called Utopians, the followers of Bertrand Russell, who were determined to use nuclear weapons, to bring about the establishment, through terror, of world government.

Now, these people, the Utopians, were all Synarchists. They were controlled by bankers behind the scenes, whose idea of world government was based on the interest of that kind of private banking, as usury. As we see, throughout the Americas today, you see the debt of the nations of South and Central America, is all illegitimate. The outstanding debt claims against these countries, are far in excess of anything they ever owed. That is, these countries have already more than paid off, the debts which existed, say, by 1982. They're paid off. The debts that exist in these nations today, are artificial debts, imposed by syndicates of private bankers, who have used institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF to artificially impose these debts on these countries.

This is the Synarchist character. This is the thing we're up against.

The Cultural Paradigm-Shift

Now, why do people put up with it? Well, take another step: As a result of the terror, of the Missile Crisis of 1962, the assassination of Kenney, the launching of the Indochina War, a section of the U.S. and European populations, and also spilling into Central and South America, the young people who were then in the process of becoming adults, such as university students, at that period, went crazy. They went crazy, because of the effects of the terror they'd lived through: the Missile Crisis, the launching of the Indochina War, and things related to that.

As a result of that, we went through a change, in the United States and Britain first; then later, spilling over into continental Europe and into the Americas—a change from a belief in a producer society, into a belief in a post-industrial or consumer society. What happened is, that the United States and Britain, or the bankers there, said: We're not going to pay people to work in our countries much longer. We're going to shut down our industries, and instead get our things we need, manufactured products and food, from other countries, who will work as slaves for us, because we have reduced the value of their currency, artificially. And they now work as virtual slaves, as cheap labor, as you see, in the slave-relationship of much of the population of Mexico and the Mexican economy, to the United States, under this system. Where the United States has shut down much of its industry, much of its agriculture, and depends upon the cheap-labor products that it extracts from other parts of the world.

The U.S. economy, of course, is now disintegrating. The world economy is disintegrating, because of that arrangement. But therefore, to understand ourselves, we have to understand some things. We have to understand, that many people today accept the idea of globalization. They accept the idea of post-industrial society. They accept the idea of free trade. They accept the idea of deregulation. They accept the idea of so-called "natural energy systems," as opposed to modern energy systems. Where do these crazy ideas come from? It comes out of history. It comes out of this long process, in which the nations of European cultural extraction, emerged in the 18th Century—again, after the period of the religious wars of 1511 to 1648—emerged as a great force in culture, the greatest force that world civilization had ever known, in terms of productive potential, in terms of the improvement of the conditions of mankind. But then, the French and British Enlightenment, as typified by Lord Shelburne, the British East India Company, and the forces behind the French Revolution of 1789-1815 decided to try to turn the clock back, in a form which includes what we call Synarchism today. The destruction of civilization.

And, what has happened? We have had many steps upward, by humanity. There's been much progress during this period, since 1789 to the present. But there has also been much retrogression. And, since the assassination of Kennedy, the Missile Crisis, and the beginning of the Indochina War, the direction of civilization has been—in Europe, the Americas, in particular—has been chiefly downward.

People, therefore, today believe, in standards of behavior, in ideas, which have been foisted upon them by this so-called cultural paradigm-shift—a cultural paradigm-shift which coincides with the influence of Synarchism. If we respond, if we say, we are going to be governed by popular opinion, or prevailing, generally accepted opinion up to now, we will destroy ourselves. Therefore, to understand ourselves, we have to decide, who are we? Are we the junk, the garbage, which is dumped upon us, in the typical university classroom or other classroom today, or by the international mass media? Is that who we are? People who believe in that garbage? If so, we are going to be destroyed, self-destroyed.

Take the example of the United States: I'm running for President. Do you know, there's not a single rival candidate for President, who's fit to be President? Not because, say, Kerry, who is a Senator and who is also a rival of mine, is not generally considered a competent politician. He is. But, he is stuck, with adherence to a philosophy of government, a cultural philosophy, which dooms the United States. Other candidates running for office, rivals, are worse. Or less good, or worse.

I'm the only candidate who is qualified to become President of the United States, if the United States is to survive. That's a cultural phenomenon. Why? Why? Because I'm such a genius? Well, that's not the case. Because I resisted, rejected, the cultural process which led to this self-destructive role of the United States. I'm the only matured politician, who has the influence and the knowledge, to turn the United States back from depression, to recovery, in the sense that Franklin Roosevelt did back in the 1930s.

But, the problem here is, that I've got to deal with the American population: I've got to induce them to change what they believe. I've got to educate them out of their bad opinion, their self-destructive opinions.

Habituated Thinking

You have a similar situation in Mexico, it's a little different, but it's similar. In other parts of the Americas, similar, but different. In each country, you've had the conditioning of the population, to accept as conditions of life, as almost natural conditions, ways of behaving which would ensure the perpetuation of a process of self-destruction of these nations, including the United States. The problem is, the belief that you must accept this, is deeply embedded in the habituated thinking of the people themselves. Therefore, if you're appealing to popular opinion, you're going to lead the people to their self-destruction, like leading cattle into the safety of the slaughterhouse.

Therefore, you have to lead people against their opinion! Against popular opinion.

Take the case of the United States. The key to the United States, is the fact that 80% of the lower family-income brackets of the United States are living under depressed conditions. Their conditions of life have become progressively worse. Politics has been largely located, in the upper 20% of family-income brackets; whereas, the lower 80% sort of goes along, or simply impotently rejects the political process. Now therefore, the key to politics in the United States, which I'm following, is to go directly to the people—not through the controlled mass media—but directly to the people, especially the people of the lower 80% of family-income brackets, among those parts of that population, the lower income brackets, who are more sentient, more responsive. And also, other individuals in society, who are people of conscience—maybe from the upper 20%—who are people of conscience, who also respond.

So therefore, you have to make an overturn, in the social process, an overturn, in which the upper 20% of family-income brackets have been ruling the United States, to a system in which the lower 80% are given justice, and given expression of their vital interest, as the interest of the nation.

To do this, we have to understand several things, and what I emphasize in the lecture circuit in campaigning, is to make people aware, of what the present three living adult generations represent: That is, you have my generation, people under 90 years of age—my generation; you have a generation of my children, the people who are now in their 50s—that age-group; and then, a younger generation, of 18 to 25, the so-called university-eligible age-group. These are the three politically significant layers inside the United States, in particular.

Now, my job, as a candidate, is to appeal to all three of these layers simultaneously, with the greatest emphasis on the youth. Why? Because, if people understand what my generation has gone through, and understand why the moral decadence of the second generation, my children's generation—why they decayed morally and intellectually, then, to turn to the last generation—the young ones, the ones who are now between 18 and 25—who now recognize that their parents' generation has given them a no-future society, and they know, if they're sentient, that they have to change the way this society is going, or there is no future for them, or for any children or grandchildren they have. And therefore, the problem here, is, to somehow get the generation which dominates the institutions of government, the generation of my children, to accept an impulse of leadership from a generation of young adults, of this 18-to-25 youth generation. That is, to recognize, that the youth generation has the right, to demand of their parents' generation, a joint effort to change society, so that we all have chance to survive.

And the way to get this clear, is to get the young ones, and the ones of my children's generation, to recognize the historical process of cultural change, which I have experienced, which each of them has experienced, and to see this all as one continuous process. And, in the meantime, to use that experience, to guide them to look back further, more deeply into the history of European civilization, in particular: to see where ideas came from, beginning with ancient Greece, for example, the Greece of Pythagoras, the Greece of Thales, the Greece of Solon, the Greece of Socrates and of Plato. To see, tracing from there, and from the Egyptian culture which informed Greek scientific thinking, see how the whole process of European civilization, with its ups and downs, has evolved, to bring us into existence today. And to recognize that, inside ourselves, that we are not animals, that we embody within us, large elements of the culture, which had been transmitted in some accumulated way, from successive generations to the present.

Then, we understand ourselves as human, which unfortunately, too few people today, do.

And that's my essential message.

Dialogue with LaRouche

Here is a brief excerpt from the discussion that followed LaRouche's presentation.

Question: Yesterday, we were discussing, what is the soul in the human being? But, we also were discussing how Leibniz defined the fact that some animals also have souls? So, I didn't quite understand that part, so I would like you to talk about that. Also something else, which I was asking myself: If Gauss understood in the same terms in which Schiller writes the "Aesthetical Letters of Man"? Did he understand with that same vision as Schiller personally? How would you comment in this regard?

LaRouche: Well, Schiller was a genius, a true genius, in the sense of being an individual who developed ideas which were unique in his time and place, who also uplifted the conception of drama, from the foundations given to him by ancient Greece and also Shakespeare, in particular, to get to this conception of the Sublime....

Maria Stewart is an example of this. The case of Jean d'Arc, is the most famous, and simple, and clearest examples of this. That the individual, faced with a crisis, is capable of finding that their fundamental self-interest is located in what they do for humanity. That mortal life is short, but there's an immortal aspect to human life, which is immortal, and that is what we represent with respect to preceding and coming generations. What do we do while we are visiting this mortal planet, that gives satisfaction to the aspirations of those who went before us? Which solves the problems left unsolved by generations before us? And which provides a foundation upon which a better future can be built by humanity. This idea of the Sublime: That you locate your identity not in what you experience within your biological existence as such, but what you develop under the circumstances of your biological existence, which is of external value. And therefore, you find the true meaning, true self-interest.

Schiller made this clear; he made this clear with his drama; he made it clear with his politics. The important thing about Schiller, which is an idea which Shakespeare would have accepted, but which is unique to him, is that Schiller developed this concept of the Sublime, as a true self-interest of mankind, and developed this as a method of popular education, using Classical drama. That is, Schiller never composed a drama in the way that Shakespeare is often explained in universities, in my lifetime as a student, and earlier, and later. The influence on the English language, of course, you would have people who I was opposed to, like Bradley and Coleridge, and people like that: Romantics.... Romantic interpretation of aesthetic or morality examples. Schiller did not do that. Schiller approached everything from the standpoint of the Sublime, or as a negation of the Sublime—the true tragic principle.

For example, I just gave you an example of this in my outline on the history of culture since the 18th Century, of European culture as it exists in the Americas today. Therefore, to understand the tragedy of European civilization, since the 18th Century, you have to see the tragedy as posed, as if on the stage, by the disgusting immorality of the French and British 18th Century Enlightenment. And then, you have to see the struggle to free European civilization from this tragic force of the Enlightenment, this corruption, this degradation. You see the struggle upward, in the case of the support from around the world of the American Revolution, as typified by the support from France, the support from Charles III of Spain. An upward struggle. Then you see this terrible thing happens: The French Revolution, organized by Shelburne and company from London. We see to the present time this degeneracy, a worsened form of Enlightenment culture, this degeneracy—pulsations of it have taken over. And now it has brought us to the virtual end of the existence of civilization.

Therefore, to put this on the stage, in such a way that the audience is sitting on the stage, looking from their imagination, lifting themselves up from being little people on the street, into being people in society, looking at society over the long term, over generations, and seeing the mistakes, and seeing the challenges which man has faced. And seeing the role of the Sublime, the role of leadership of this quality, of pulling man through these crises, to levels of safety. That is the way in which to see this.

Now, going back to the question of the individual soul. As I said, the individual soul can be defined in only one meaningful way. There are many ways in which this is described, and most of it is nonsense. It's taught as nonsense, probably by priests who don't understand what the soul is anyway, so they try to give an explanation despite their ignorance of the subject. The soul is simply the fact that the faculty of mankind, which in the first instance, is capable of discovering universal physical principles as Kepler did, for example; and doing this not only for man's individual relationship to the physical universe, mentally, but also in terms of soul processes. That's one aspect. No other creature has this capability.

In the animals in general, the animal dies with its death as a mortal creature. Man does nothing with his or her death. Man may live on, through the work he does in influencing the domain of ideas, the domain beyond the mortality of biological life. That's the difference.

Now, in terms of the animal soul. Well, the animal can get a soul as Nicholas of Cusa emphasized, by the concept of participation. Cusa used the conception of man's participation in God, as the animal's participation in man. That is, when you adopt a puppy or kitten, especially a puppy—puppies are much better at this; kittens are much more asocial, essentially. Dogs tend to be a little more social in their behavior, as some of you know. But, when you take a dog who, met in the wild, is a very nasty fellow, more or less like a wolf, hmm? But you raise a dog from a puppy, you humanize the creature. The creature depends upon you. With its own little doggie way, it finds a way of participating in you. It becomes an emotional reaction to you, an emotional reaction with you, and therefore, we see a reflection in the animal of that. You see this also in the relationship of the farmer to his horse or even to his cow, who he may slaughter later on, or the donkey. (I like the donkeys very much on this thing.) They participate in you, they look at you, they depend on you. They act to please you, so to speak, they act to help you.

For example, we have a donkey here. The donkey's called Ambrose....

Now, the horse was feeling sick, and the horse fell down. The horse is old, it's arthritic, it's stiff, and so forth. Ambrose went over to the horse, and Ambrose nudged the horse, and he bit the horse in the rump: "Get up!" As if he sensed that the horse's life was menaced if he didn't get up. You know, it's bad for horses, when they're sick, to lie down like that, at least for long periods. So, he's concerned about the horse.

Ambrose would be concerned about us, too. He would be concerned about our dogs. So, they participate in us, in the sense that their participation in us, through our cultivation of them, projects qualities which are human-like, into them. But they never achieve the power of reason. They have a certain kind of animal insight, but it's not human reason.

So, the attempt to find the human soul as a product of the animal soul, is a mistake. More adequate would be, that we give to the animal a sense of soul, when we take an animal, such as the horse that works for us, the ox, or a mule—we give them a sense of soulness, through participation in us, and therefore they participate in our soul. And thus, as man participates in the Creator, so these creatures, as Cusa put it, participate in us.

The General Welfare

Question: I want to ask you why only the Western artistic conception corresponds to the human conception of the universe? And, how can we get the human character in the different Latin American nations, with traditions and philosophies which are also millenarian?

LaRouche: Millenarian philosophies and traditions are a disease, not a culture in the ordinary sense. They don't belong to human beings. The problem here is this: Remember, there's been a long struggle of humanity, to do what? To free man from forms of culture in which the majority of people were treated as human cattle, either as wild human cattle to be hunted down, or herded human cattle to be raised, used, and culled, as necessary. So therefore, prior to the emergence of the idea of the modern state in Greece, the prevalent culture of every part of the world we know, was an inhuman culture, in the sense that it treated the majority of the human species, not only of other nations and languages, but its own, as human cattle. That problem persists to the present day.

So the idea of the modern nation-state, as typified by the influence of Solon, and by the work of Socrates against the Sophists, and by Plato, gave birth to the idea of the republic. It's a nation which is accountable, and government which is accountable, to the general welfare of all of the people, and their posterity. In other words, a government which is committed to the service of the upward progress of humanity, and of the condition of the individual in human society. This progress depends on developing a notion of two facets. One, a notion of truth, a notion of absolute truth. Second, a specific notion of truth, of the truth that man and animal are completely different forms of existence. Man is not something that evolved from an animal, or from animal processes. Man has a quality which we call reason, that is, the power to discover universal physical principles, and to apply them, which no animal species has, which no living process per se has, as a living process. This is something which has intervened in the universe, into the existence of an animal form of life called humanity, which has something which is human, not just animal. And that is this power of reason, this power of discovery.

Therefore, the composition of society, and the notion of truth, are inseparable from this quality of reason which is typified, for example, by Carl Gauss's attack on Euler and Lagrange, in Gauss's 1799 paper on the question of the fundamental theorem of algebra, on the question of the complex domain.

So, therefore, there is only one conception of truth, and this is specific to the nature of man.

Now, most of the cultures of this planet are still cultures which are based predominantly on traditions of treating most people as cattle. For example: In Mexico, how are most of the people of Mexico treated today? As human cattle, not as citizens! The exploitation, the maquiladoras, the way the Mexican population is herded across the border. Oh sure, Mexicans do good work for the United States. We depend upon them! Somebody says they exploit the United States? We depend upon them! Who's going to do the work for us?

But the point is, the struggle is that Mexico must be sovereign. It lost its sovereignty in 1982. The swan song of Mexico's sovereignty was the great address by President Lopez Portillo, to the United Nations in October of 1982. After that, after the defeat of me, and of Lopez Portillo, Mexico lost its sovereignty. Now, there are still Mexicans who believe in sovereignty, and will fight for it. And I'm all with them. But the fact is, the problem exists.

The same problem exists in Venezuela, where certainly the people are not treated as sovereign. They have a couple of oligarchies squabbling over the spoils, like vultures over the dying, over the people of Venezuela. This Chavez thing is a monstrous thing. This terrible situation in Colombia; the fact that there is no option provided in Bolivia to help people get out of the grip of the cocaleros . Look what's happening to Argentina. This is immoral! What's happening in Africa, especially sub-Saharan Africa: It's immoral! It's done by the United States and Britain, in particular; and Israel. What is done in most of the world is immoral, still today. People are still treated as human cattle. And the principle—the difference between man and an animal—must be the law. It is natural law. And any action which is contrary to that law, should be nullified, is unlawful. Any cultural tradition which is contrary to that, which bases itself on human pleasure, sense-certainty, is immoral. It's rotten. Only a Classical humanist culture.

Now, look at the history of mankind from that standpoint. How old is Classical culture? It's very old. It's as old as the human race, undoubtedly. Always, the way the human race has survived, has been this impulse, of some, at least, to recognize human nature for what it is, and to try to order the processes of society, accordingly. There's always been this struggle to find the true principles of the universe. But this struggle has been limited essentially to a few. Sometimes, the ruling stratum is dedicated to this idea, as you see in the case of the Classical culture in ancient Greece. There were people who were dedicated to this conception. But Greece didn't achieve it. But the idea of it existed in Greece.

The Negro Spiritual

You find, for example, in the United States, you have the case of the so-called Negro Spiritual. The Negro Spiritual was a product of several things. It was a product of an intersection, largely, of African cultures, cultures embodied in African people, intersecting the culture of the United States. When this was looked at, at the end of the 19th Century, by great musicians, it was recognized that there was, in the Negro Spiritual, as it evolved as a body of practice, from among slaves, originally, that this contained a Classical principle: an aspiration for the affirmation of the distinction of man from the beast. And a self-affirmation of one's role in that. And therefore, you saw in this, in the Negro Spiritual, often great beauty, which was refined and honed, to become an integral part of Classical culture by some of the great musicians of our time, particularly of the 20th Century. As opposed to the so-called pop-art, or pop-culture, which is drug-related degeneracy.

So, all through humanity, there is a Classical principle. What we have, fortunately, in European civilization, in the development of the Classical principle based on the heritage of ancient Greece and its influence, and based on the development since the Renaissance in particular, the highest level of development of Classical culture, has occurred within European civilization, because of our successes, our political successes, in particular, of the type which were impelled by the examples of ancient Classical Greece. So therefore, we're more advanced in terms of science and arts, than other parts, non-European parts of the world, but the Classical principle, is intrinsic to humanity. It just is more or less well developed, according to the circumstances, whether it finds itself as a seed, or on fertile or impoverished ground.

LYNDON LAROUCHE AT MIDDLEBURY COLLEGE

Democratic Presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche addressed a college audience in Middlebury, Vermont on Nov. 14. The event was sponsored by the Middlebury College Democrats. Opening the meeting were Laura Kelly and John Brand, co-presidents of the College Democrats.

KELLY: Welcome to this afternoon's presentation. I'm Laura Kelly and this is Jon Brand, and we are co-presidents of the Middlebury College Democrats. Today's forum is one of a series of events that will be facilitated by the College Democrats, in order to increase dialogue, regarding the Presidential primary. The views expressed by the speakers throughout the series are not reflective of the positions or beliefs of the College Democrats organization, or its members. In accordance with our mission statement, this series will stimulate an active interest in politics, promote awareness and participation in all levels of the democratic process, and ideally, increase social awareness, and voter registration.

BRAND: The exposure to a full spectrum of views is obviously the point of the democratic process, as well as broader academic learning, both on and off Middlebury's campus. Recognizing that the democratic process rests upon the responsibility as participants, we ask that present individuals, regardless of personal views, conduct themselves in a respectful manner towards all those involved.

Today's forum will begin with a talk by eight-time Presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche, and followed by a question and answer session. We have provided index cards on all of your seats for questions, which you can pass forward towards the conclusion of Mr. LaRouche's speech.

KELLY: And first, to introduce Mr. LaRouche is Bruce Marshall, who has introduced us to the entire LaRouche campaign. So, without further ado, Bruce.

BRUCE MARSHALL: Thank you, and welcome. Hello, everyone.

Middlebury College was the first institution of higher education in this country, to call for the abolition of slavery, a legacy to uphold. It is befitting that the Middlebury College Democrats have so invited our speaker here today, thus sending a historically significant message of fair play, which the Democratic Party's other Presidential candidates, and mainstream media, have patently ignored. It is the abolition of slavery in its many variations—the slavery of economic injustice, the slavery of war, but more importantly, the slavery against the mind, which is the most important thing that's hurting our world today. It is the life, passion, and work of Mr. LaRouche to save this country, and rectify these evils.

So, today, I'd like to introduce Mr. LaRouche, who's a great teacher, perhaps one of the greatest living today, a Promethean genius, that genius being that he is so proven, and brought forth, in the tradition of Plato, that genius can be taught. It is the message of truth and freedom that so invigorates the international youth movement. And it was that with desire which I wished to bring to this college, and so made contact with the Middlebury College Democrats.

These is no mere animal race between mules and pachyderms. This is a true concern for the future of not only humanity—well, it is humanity, it's the universe.

It's Mr. LaRouche, live at the Chateau! [applause]

LAROUCHE: Thank you all. In order to squeeze in as much as we can in this scheduled event, I shall limit myself to four basic things. First, I shall summarize three points, the three points which I believe are most crucial for the United States at this time, for choosing policies, Presidents, members of Congress, and so forth. Then I shall turn to the third of these themes, which is on the subject of the generation gap, and the problem it represents in politics today.

The first three themes are, in themselves: first of all, we have unnecessary war. We are now in the grip of the Vice-President's policy, a policy which was not invented by the President, but has historically the policy of the Vice-President, Mr. Cheney, and is associated with the neo-conservatives. That policy is preventive nuclear war. And we are in the process of a spreading preventive nuclear war. This has led to a deep division between the United States and the nations of Eurasia. The United States is at its lowest ebb, known to me, in modern history, in relations with its traditional partners in Europe, and with Asia, over the policies which have been more actively pressed, since President Bush's speech, State of the Union speech, in January of 2002.

The situation became aggravated, by the developments in September of 2002. It was aggravated further, by the break with the United Nations Organization in having an unnecessary war, over the objections of the United Nations Security Council, when that negotiation should have continued. As we see today, with the mess in Iraq, it was a mistake for us to go into that war. And now, we're going to have to turn to the nations which we opposed, in the United Nations Security Council, to get us out of this war.

I'll come to that later.

The second problem is, we're in the greatest economic crisis of more than a century. The situation presently is comparable to that which we experienced between 1928 and 1933. In that period, we saw, in the 1920s, '21-'22, the rise of Mussolini. We saw the rise of Hitler, orchestrated in 1933; we saw Franco; we saw the spread of those conditions and movements in France, which gave us the fascist movements in France, around Petain, around Laval, and so forth. And we were at war. We were virtually at war, and by 1934, it was inevitable that we would be at war, because you couldn't stop the juggernaut that had started.

So, there's a relationship in history, between the occurrence of major wars, especially over the course of the 20th Century and the present. My father's generation was involved in service in World War I. I was involved in World War II. The generation that's younger than I was, were involved in the Vietnam War. The present generation is now involved in the Cheney wars. And these pulsations of economic crisis, and similar crisis in war, continues.

We've reached a point, that this must stop. Because what we're seeing in Iraq—which the President is denying, and others are denying—we're seeing the outbreak of something comparable to what happened in Indo-China. Let me just quickly review this, because I want to get to the other subject.

The United States was convinced that China would not object strongly under the government of Mao Zedong, to a U.S. attack on North Vietnam. On the basis of that false assumption, the same kind of false assumption that Truman made, which led us into the Korean War, we found ourselves in a kind of war we didn't expect, in which, what's called asymmetric warfare, was used to try to defeat the U.S. forces. We had absolutely superior air power, and so forth, in the situation. But, we really lost the war. Why?

Because in asymmetric warfare, which is a modern version of the principle of strategic defense, military defense, what populations do, when they're faced with an enemy with superweapons, or relative superweapons, is, they say: "We will retreat. We will let you invade our country. But once you've invaded our country, and your troops are man-to-man with our people, then you are put on an equal footing with us, or an almost equal footing with us." And then, you have "people's warfare," as it's sometimes described, breaks out, where a population which is apparently disarmed and defeated, surrounds and attacks a military invader at close quarters. That's what happened in Indo-China, an impossible war. That is what is happening now in Iraq.

Now, some of the people involved that were targeted by Cheney, are great powers. Russia has nuclear weapons, and similar weapons, which are still comparable, despite the fall of the Soviet Union, to our own. China has modern technology. We gave it a lot of it, and destroyed our own. India is involved in this. These nations are not going to submit to a world imperial demand, from the United States.

But these are also our friends. For example, Russia is trying, under Putin, is trying to establish a relationship of cooperation with the United States. And yet, at the same time, he's preparing for war, or a future war, by the United States on Russia, as well as on China. That's the situation.

So, what we're faced with is an unnecessary war. Not a war designed by our military specialists, but designed by civilian nuts, who don't know what they're doing. And this kind of thing must stop. We must go to our friends in Europe, and elsewhere, and we must find a basis for cooperation, to address these problems in a new way, in a fresh way, to build upon this planet a community of sovereign nation-states, which are united in principle, but divided by their sovereignty. This was intent of John Quincy Adams, when he wrote the words read by President Monroe, as the Monroe Doctrine, under John Quincy Adams' policy: a community of perfectly sovereign states, within the Americas. This has been the implicit desire of all great patriots of the United States, is to establish a world community of sovereign nation-states, each sovereign, each committed to the general welfare of themselves and others, but at the same time, united by those principles.

That is feasible. That's what I'm struggling for. That's what I intend to do.

Now, on the economic process. This goes to the generation gap question.

In 1963, when President Kennedy was assassinated, we were, and had become, the most powerful nation on the planet, and the wealthiest per capita. We were the greatest productive machine on the planet. Then it changed. We made a shift, beginning about the time we went into the Indo-China War, into becoming a post-industrial society.

After '71, with the change in the monetary order, in '72, we began to arbitrate the prices and values of currencies, of various countries. We told them what the value of their currency was, and we did it arbitrarily. Then we forced them to work for us, as virtual slave-labor. We shut down our farms and industries. We imported what we used to produce, from these countries which we had reduced to slavery.

Today, cheap labor from China is the biggest single factor in replacing U.S. labor, and U.S. production. Nothing wrong with China progressing, but the point is that we have destroyed our society. We have destroyed our culture. We've now come to the point where we are the victims of what has become, ironically, recently, with the appointment of John Snow as Treasury Secretary, the present administration is committing the biggest "Snow job" on finances in history. This country is bankrupt. There is no recovery. Yes, there is a zooming, nominal monetary output. There is still a somewhat zooming, and large, financial growth. But the physical economic production, and consumption, per capita and per square kilometer, of the American people, is collapsing.

We are on the verge of a collapse of the mortgage-backed securities system. It can happen at any time. These kinds of things can not be predicted as to date, you can only predict the condition, and governments will try to postpone things, by printing money and other similar kinds of tricks. And these will work for a while — while making the situation worse. So, we're going into this kind of situation.

Now, let's go back to this question of the war theme, and look at the generational crisis, from the standpoint of the war issue, and the economic issue.

As a result of this cultural change, a cultural change which occurred, and became known as the rock-drug-sex counterculture (there are other names for it), which occurred during the 1960s. You have a generation which is running government and most business today, which has become habituated to the habits of the post-industrial, pleasure-seeking society. A non-productive, post-productive society. At a time that our physical economy is collapsing, and that we are so deeply in debt, we could never pay our debts, at present.

What this represents, this change from a productive society, the world's most productive, to a bankrupt, post-industrial, pleasure-seeking consumer society, living increasingly on the basis of virtual slave labor of production in other countries, while denying employment to our own people: How did this come about? This is not unusual in history. And some of you have been studying history, I suppose, a few of you study Classical Greek. And, if you study Classical Greek, you will look at the Peloponnesian War, as a paradigm for the kind of problem which hits civilizations.

Here was the mightiest power of the Mediterranean in that period, Athens with its alliance. And it destroyed that alliance, and went into a long war, called the Peloponnesian War. And Greece never recovered from the effects of that war. There was a Hellenistic period in the aftermath of Philip of Macedon. There was the Roman Empire. But it was not until the 15th Century, that a full-blown restoration of Classical Greek culture was established as a leading influence inside Europe, in Italy and other countries. And the first modern nation-states, France, under Louis XI, and England, under Henry VII, were the beginning of a new process which we call modern civilization.

So, in studying history behavior, in studying elections and so forth, do not look at things merely in the short-term, because the determinant of history is measured in generations, or many generations, or one generation. In this case, we're talking about two generations. Approximately 40 years, of a change from the world's leading producer society, to a bankrupt consumer society. A bankrupt consumer society, which, like Rome, in its decadence, is going to unnecessary wars around the world, rather than working together with its friends abroad, to find practical solutions, for problems which do have solutions.

What happened, therefore, the pleasure society becomes a no-purpose society. It means the generation in power, thinks in the short term. They think of pleasures. They think of seeking new kinds of fads, and pleasures. Now, you come along, and you're a generation. And you probably are better off than most in your generation, in terms of your prospects for the future. But many of you may become diplomats in the future, and become parts of government, may go into U.S. intelligence services, and so forth, because of these kinds of skills. Or other kinds, the same kinds of skills as they occur, in the financial community, or the business community, where language skills and related skills, and knowledge of history, are essential for these functions.

But it's your generation, the generation you typify, that has to look at this situation: How are we going to get out of this mess? You know, that your parents' generation, by and large, are part of a no-future culture. That 40 years of folly, 40 years of overconfident sliding into a new way of life, called a post-industrial consumer society, has brought us to the end of the skein. Like the end of the Peloponnesian War. It must stop, now!

You know, looking around you, and looking at people in your generation, looking at the conditions of life of the lower 80% of family-income brackets in the United States, over the past period, since 1977, you know this is a no-future society, in the way it's going. You know your lives are before you. The lives of your generation are before you. You have a possibility, of what we're trying to do with a youth movement, with me, of activating people of your generation, that is, the generation especially of 18 to 25, the university-eligible generation. And we have a special program—that's something we'll discuss otherwise. And we have shown, so far, in recent years, especially—this thing started about four years ago — we have shown that youth, of your generation's age, 18 to 25—with this kind of understanding, are the most effective political force per capita, in the population, per capita.

We almost stopped, for example, in the case in California, we stopped Arnie Schwarzenegger in Los Angeles County. It was done largely by the added effort of the youth movement. We stopped Schwarzenegger in the Bay Area, largely through the work of the youth movement. We were asked by the Democrats in Philadelphia, to come in with our youth, to assist them in dealing with the fight against John Ashcroft, over a mayoral campaign in Philadelphia. We turned it around, not just by ourselves, but by the added effort we had put into it. We all agreed, in the fight to save the situation. And we conducted a fight, and we had a landslide victory.

These are cases which only demonstrate, in a conspicuous war, that when people of your generation are properly organized and oriented, motivated, with a sense of a mission orientation, you are the most effective people per capita, in politics today. Because you are the ones, who can go to your parents' generation, your grandparents' generation. You are the ones who say: "We are your future. Our children are your future. The kind of society our children will enjoy, is your future. The way your lives will be judged, is what comes out, in the form of our children's generation. Are you willing now, to correct your mistake, to abandon the consumer society? To abandon the pleasure society? And to go back to those things, perhaps in a different way, but the same principle, which made us successful under Franklin Roosevelt, which made us the most powerful producer nation on this planet. The most powerful nation on this planet."

Are you willing to do that? Can you get them to do that? I think you can.

But I think that what is needed in this, is, you have to proceed from the standpoint of knowledge, not merely enthusiasm. You need enthusiasm, but you need knowledge. The American people today are deprived of any real knowledge of history. They may know history as a collection of facts, reported in textbooks and other sources, but they have not re-lived history. You have to imagine yourself, as a Greek in Athens, huh? in the age of Pericles, and seeing the Sophist on the streets, corrupting the society. And seeing doom there, in the beginning of the Peloponnesian War! You have to be a Greek in your own mind, living in the time of Alcibiades, when the Peloponnesian War was spread to Magna Graecia, which was the doom of Greece, of Greek culture.

You have to re-live that history. You say, we're part of European civilization, which began there, it began in Greece, and with a great contribution from Egypt, from the Egyptian culture of the Great Pyramids, for example. And then we are a European civilization. Not to deprecate other parts of the world, but we are a European civilization. How did we, as representatives of European civilization, develop into what we are today? What were the ideas that were transmitted from one generation to the other? How were they transmitted? What were the experiences? What were the wars? Imagine you lived through each one, each one of those experiences, and try to understand what people went through, in each crisis, as if from the inside.

So, you're not talking about comments, comparative comments, on history. You are reliving history, and you realize that what you know today, especially if you take your education seriously, is what you know because of that history. You are a living expression of a history which is expressed in you, and your job in education, is to come to know what that history is, and recognize it in yourself.

When you do that, when you have a passion about the past and the future, you can impart to your parents' generation, and other generations, a sense of the future, and ask them to give you, a commitment, to building the future, that gets us out of this mess.

Thank you. [applause]

QUESTION: The first question for LaRouche: How do you see the role of the Jewish bank owners in the international financial system?

LAROUCHE: What?

QUESTION: How do you see the role of Jewish bank owners in the international financial system?

LAROUCHE: I don't think that that is a determining feature of international politics. The role of bankers in the international financial system, politically, is typified by—I normally get to these things, as many questions as possible, I'll keep these answers short — there's an organization that's called the Synarchists, which was traditionally called the Martinists. This was a group that was organized by the then-head of the Bank of England, or the British East India Company then, Lord Shelburne. They were called the Martinists; they included people like Mesmer, Cagliostro, Joseph de Maistre. These were the people who were used by the British intelligence service, to orchestrate the French Revolution. Out of that process, and out of Napoleon, who was a part of that process, there came a tradition in Europe which became called the Synarchist tradition, which is responsible largely for the First World War, it was clearly responsible entirely for the Second World War. Hitler was a Synarchist, and so forth.

You take the names of the bankers. The bankers in question were, the British East India Company, and Barings Bank. Now, there are many bankers who happen to be Jewish bankers, who were involved, like the Rothschilds in this process. But the question of Jewish bankers is irrelevant. The banking tradition involved is the Venetian fondo, the Venetian-style fondo banking system, or private banking. That's the problem. And whether someone happens to be a Jewish banker or not, is rather irrelevant to the outcome of history.

QUESTION: As a student at Middlebury College, I've come to value environmentalism more than I have in the past. My question for Mr. LaRouche is, how do you think our environmental policy could be improved?

LAROUCHE: Our environmental policies actually stink, because we talk about preventing some things, and we're...

Let's take the case of energy. We have in this country, presently, as a result of deregulation, and a result of certain ill-conceived environmental ideas, we have a situation like that which exploded in California, around the energy issue. We have in New England, a similar situation. We have a catastrophe about to hit the entire economy of New England, on the basis of a collapse of production, and distribution of power.

Now, we're going to have to, as our job-creating effort, in connection with this bankruptcy we're in now, we're going to have to employ people—and we're talking about trillions of dollars, over the next 25 years, of investment in simply sufficient energy production and distribution, to maintain the economy at least on a comparable level to what it is now.

So, therefore, this is the direction. There are other things. I am, shall we say, a follower of Vernadsky, on the question of the environment, and I think rather than taking these ad hoc questions on environment, we should be looking at it scientifically, from the standpoint of Vernadsky, the discoverer of the so-called Biosphere concept, and the Noosphere concept. That's my policy.

QUESTION: Again, these questions are just coming from audience members.

How do you defend your anti-Semitic, anti-Irish, anti-Chinese, anti-homosexual, and other generally racist hateful comments to the public?

LAROUCHE: Well, there's one way to do that, and those of you studying here have a way of looking at it, because you have access, just in studying languages, in particular. The attention to language gives you an idea of what the community of peoples is.

And therefore you ask the question, what is the difference between man, and a beast?

If we were beasts, there would never be more than several million of us, because if we were higher apes, our population potential, of living population, would never have exceeded about 3-4 million animals. We have now reported on the planet, 6 billion people or more. We have achieved this, because the human mind is capable of discovering universal physical principles, not only of man's relationship to nature, individually, but also of those principles by which we are able to cooperate, in using and promoting scientific discovery to change man's relationship to nature.

Therefore, when we recognize that, without putting it in the pocket of religion, we come up with what is sometimes called a religious idea: the conception of man as divine. That man is distinct from any animal species, and the characteristic of human reason, of the ability to discover universal principles, not only of man's physical relationship, as an individual, to nature, but also relations among people in cooperating, to deal with the problems of man's mastery of the problems man faces as a whole.

In this respect, all persons are the same, so any attempt to make good or bad, defined on a division of the human race into different types, is wrong, and evil. What you have to recognize, however, is that man is able to express this quality, through cultures. As you know from studying language, I presume, that metaphor and irony, are the essence of language, not dictionary words. It's a culture, which enables a people to know how to communicate with one another, through irony and metaphor, to impart new ideas, and to understand paradoxes.

Therefore, if you deprive people of their culture, they are disarmed, they are unable to communicate and share the communication of important ideas. Therefore, we must have sovereign republics, based on the right of a people, with a culture, to work out their problems, as individuals, within the context of that culture. They must be sovereign.

But, at the same time, since we are, despite our differences in cultures, are all the same, in nature, have the same ultimate destiny, therefore, we must be united as sovereign nations, by a community of principle. To try to find fault in humanity, by blaming some people, of some ethnic or racial or national designation, is wrong. And the answer is not just to fight against those kinds of ideas which are evil. The answer is to work, to bring people to an appreciation, of what every human being is: that every human being has the potential, of expressing a quality which theologians and philosophers call divine. Unique to the human being. Every child born expresses that quality. Our concern is to be sure that every child born has the opportunity to express and develop that quality. [applause]

QUESTION: Could you expand upon the relationship, between the British monarchy and U.S. foreign and economic policy?

LAROUCHE: Well, the British monarchy is a very complicated animal. Because it's not a Constitutional form, it's a relic, in part, of several things: It's a relic of the Norman-Venetian system of maritime power. And when Venice collapsed, toward the end of the 17th Century, as a military naval power, at that point, the Anglo-Dutch Liberal model emerged, over the period between William of Orange, and the coronation of George I in England. So, the world is now dominated in most part, except the United States itself, is dominated in Europe, by this Anglo-Dutch Liberal parliamentary model, which is different than our system of government.

So therefore, there are many forces in England. For example, right now, there are leading people in Britain, some of them are Conservatives, some of them are Labour, who are very sympathetic with what I'm doing on an international scale. I don't have a problem with these Brits, on that level. We may have disagreements on other things.

But, the complication is this: We are the first republic, in the world, created from Europe, largely, during the 18th Century. But, because of the French Revolution and things that happened afterwards, the intention of the Classical humanist movement in Europe, to spread the American Revolution throughout Europe, as reforms of government, didn't occur. So, we remained the only Constitutional republic, based on a Presidential principle of our type; based on the principles of the Preamble of our Constitution.

We have survived, with our Constitution, without any essential change, in our core of our Constitution, to this day: No other government of the world, has done that. No other government has a Constitution, which has survived as long as ours. We've gone through great crises—the Civil War, the Depression. We still exist!

Our existence is threatened, today, by the present crisis. But, we have within us, a heritage, given to us largely by Europe, by the best minds of Europe, embodied in the founding of our country, which is a model, in terms of its intention, for what republics must be. We have to make that our conscience, and we have to act with respect to the rest of the world, on the basis of that point of view. We have to be true patriots, not patriots like the jerks in the street with a little Confederate flag or something. We have to be true patriots, who understand the mission for which this country was created: The mission of our republic; the mission of our Constitution; the mission of the fight against slavery, by Abraham Lincoln and others; the mission of Roosevelt, to save the country, and save the world from fascism.

In that sense, we must be patriotic, about what the United States represents as a historical phenomenon. We must use that tradition, to help bring other countries together—with us—to form a community of principle among nations.

QUESTION: As you stand in front of an audience as diverse as this one, can you honestly expect us to take your "pseudo-you have the power" message seriously, when you've been deemed a racist by both the Washington Post (I assume), and the New York Times?

LAROUCHE: Well, the Washington Post has been my declared enemy for a long time. And, they're not just nice enemies, they're very dirty. The New York Times has also been my enemy, since 1973 in particular. But, they're different. The Washington Post is much more inclined toward neo-conservative ideas, which are—not quite like those of Cheney, but a little less irrational.

Whereas the New York Times has sometimes found itself "in bed with me" so to speak, as recently, on the question of Cheney: That they agree, as do many of our leading circles in government, in the State Department, in the intelligence services, in professional military services, agree with me. We've discussed these matters—that what is done in Iraq is insane. It's insane from a military standpoint. It was said so, before it happened: Our military said, "Don't go there! You are insane." Europeans and other people said, "Don't go there. That would be insane!"

If you read the autobiography of Colin Powell, when he refers to reflections on what the experience in Vietnam was, when he said, "We must never allow that to happen again," it is now happening! On his watch. Maybe he's not responsible, but it's happening on his watch. Maybe he's just staying in there, to hold the fort down, hoping that when Cheney goes, he'll be there to pick up the pieces for the President. But, that's the issue.

No, there is no simple solution to this. Look, take the other side, because really what's implied is something else. Let's take my criticism of the Democrats—I won't go to the worst losers, but let's take the case of Kerry for example. Senator Kerry: Senator Kerry probably will suddenly surge back, because I've known in the past week or so, that they've decided, in those circles of the Democratic Party, to dump Dean, and to bring up Kerry. And, that's in process now.

But, Kerry's weakness is, that he's never faced up to certain questions; he's ducked the issue. And, as you, I guess with your education, should be able to recognize, that some of these politicians are giving a lot of guff, and a lot of propaganda, a lot of slogans, a lot of phrases, but we're in a condition of war; we're in a condition of an economic crisis; we're in a condition a social crisis; we're in a generational crisis. And, nothing is being said about that, concretely. We are the victims of a "Snow job," the John Snow job, from the administration. Nobody's talking about it.

Here we are, the country is facing a crisis, and leading politicians—such as Kerry, who in my view is a competent politician; I don't think he's doing a good job, but he's a competent politician—when he gets on television, when he gets before an audience, he will not mention these things! He will not directly address the Cheney question, even though he did in the Congress—but then, never said it again. He was told not to.

That's the nature of our problem. The Democratic Party has degenerated over the past period, for obvious reasons, the ones I indicated. The Republican Party has degenerated. Therefore, the conflict between Republicans and Democrats does not mean what it used to mean. If I'm President, how am I going to form a government? I'm going to form a government, which is going to include some Midwestern Republicans, whom I need for their skills, and to unify the country; as well as some Democrats, who probably will outnumber the Republicans, as it did with Roosevelt.

So therefore, the question now, is, how to unify the majority of the people of the country, around an idea, as Roosevelt did; and then, to assemble people from all kinds of backgrounds, with indifference to previous differences, as one force to rebuild and save this nation?

And therefore, the Times, the Washington Post, their differences, their problems, these are things that belong to a fallen, failed era. We now have come to the end of that fallen era. We must start a new era. We must survive. The world must survive. And therefore, the question before us all, is not what are our antecedents and what are our prejudices, but what are we willing to consider, and do now? And can we do something to kick Kerry, and a few other politicians who I might name, into talking more seriously, and actually discussing the real issues? I think Kerry is capable of discussing some of those issues. I wish he would. [applause]

QUESTION: The last question from the audience: "Mr. LaRouche, what do you say to the fact that your youth movement has been termed a cult? And that a former member has said that it would be best understood by reading Orwell's 1984?"

LAROUCHE: Well, I think that pretty much is gibberish. I don't think anyone who thinks seriously would take that kind of criticism seriously.

It comes essentially, from one well-known source, a fellow called John Irwin III. He's a grandson of a former governor of Arizona. He now resides in Arizona. He's involved with rackets, involving the Indians down there, trying to steal things from the Indians. And, he's also associated with the Watson family. And they set up a group called the American Family Foundation, and most of this specific kind of garbage, you mentioned, in the question, it comes from him; it comes from his American Family Foundation. So, you know the source: Instead of worrying about the question—say, "What source does it come from? And where's the evidence?"

QUESTION: I would. I'm actually a reporter, with the Addison Independent. This is now the eighth time you've run for President. I'm wondering what sets this year apart, whether this year will be any different from previous campaigns? Are there any specific things you can point to, that sets this year aside? Sort of fill us in on, what may distinguish this?

LAROUCHE: See, I implicitly answered you—. You asked the question, which I implicitly answered, but I didn't explicitly answer it, in the process.

As I said, we've been in a 40-year cycle, a cycle in the change in the world's most productive society, the most powerful, to a junk heap, an economic junk heap, a wasteland. Now, that means that the American people, or the majority of them, over an increasing period of the past 40 years, have been lax, and lured, into stupid ideas, which have become considered as prevalent popular opinion. You can not blame governments alone, for the stupidity of governments, particularly in a government like our own, where popular opinion does count for something, at least sometimes. The reason that governments have been able to get by, with swindles of the type that have occurred, is because the people believed, that popular opinion had moved in favor of those policies, which caused this disaster. This is not unusual. You take the Thirty Years' War in Europe, from 1618-1648: People were killing each other, over stupid ideas! Which were finally resolved under the intervention of Cardinal Mazarin, with the famous Treaty of Westphalia, of 1648—which is still the foundation of law, of international law, in civilized European culture, today. The same thing happened again, with Roosevelt. We went through insanity in the 1920s, under first Coolidge and Hoover. Popular opinion thought Coolidge was good. They were wrong. Popular opinion thought Hoover was good, at first. They were wrong.

Now, the way things work in politics, is they work, as I said, in terms of generations. And stupid ideas, or the failure to correct ideas, when they need to be corrected, carry society into long waves of disaster. Now, what saved society, the way that society got out of these messes, like the Peloponnesian War, the Thirty Years' War, and so forth, was because someone, at that point, was listened to, at a certain point. The question is, are the American people today, ready to listen to what I warned them against, accurately, and for what I proposed, accurately, over the past nearly 40 years, but especially since, shall we say, 1975-76?

I was right. I made commitments. I made forecasts. I proposed policies. Today, those forecasts have all been confirmed. Today, those policies look good. Have the American people gone through the experience, of learning from their mistake, built up over 40 years of public opinion?

So, eight years or eight campaigns, is far short of Harold Stassen's record. It doesn't mean a thing. It means the American people, in various ways, did not decide to support me at that time. They were wrong. But, that's often the case in history, with people. Now, they have a chance to be right. And, they don't have much of a chance to go along with the bad policies, they had from the past.

That's the way to look at it. Look at this from the standpoint of history, not connecting the dots.

QUESTION: Just to revisit some of the other questions that were asked: You accused John Kerry of ducking a lot of questions. I would say, that some of the questions that were asked here today, you ducked. Returning specifically to the questions about potential racist or anti-Semitic remarks that you've made, and also the British monarchy. If you could, you know, address those, in perhaps a less circular manner, in talking about how the British monarchy influences the government today? The past, you know, couple of administrations? And, you know, talk about specific remarks you may have made?

LAROUCHE: Well first of all, the questions were based on people being subjected to false information by various channels. And therefore, I did not duck the questions. Because the questions presumed something false. I simply asserted positively what the truth was. And that was the truth. The information to the contrary to what I said, the appearance that I ducked the question, is only based on too much credence for false rumors, spread through various channels, such as the John Irwin channel.

How many people would quote Dennis King? Or Chip Berlet? Or sources such as that, who are part of the property owned by a section of the intelligence community, including the American Family Foundation? Or the Smith Richardson Foundation, and so forth.

QUESTION: Just one last point. I read an interview with you in 1995, with the EIR, where you claimed the British monarchy was partly behind the Oklahoma City bombings. If you could just expand upon that?

LAROUCHE: No, I didn't say that. I said something else. I said something quite different: I said, a statement by a rather distinguished chief editor of the London Times, had pointed to certain things about the Oklahoma bombing.

Now, what I was concerned about in this case—we were concerned about it before it happened. We knew that there was something fermenting, in the direction of an incident of that type, among certain groups which were internationally influenced, but domestic groups, apparently tied to a certain part of our intelligence services. And they were targetting some operation of that type. When the bombing occurred, I insisted that we investigate—take that line of investigation into account.

What happened was, they got the defendant in the case, the principal defendant, in the case, to cop a plea. And his coping the plea was used as a pretext for burying the investigation. We do not know, to this day, who orchestrated. We do know, that my acquaintance in London, who was then chief editor of the Times, had published a statement on the effect, that some rumbling was occurring in the United States in that direction. And I referenced the fact, that part of the British press and part of the British Establishment, was aware of what was happening.

We knew something was there, we had to stop it. I was involved in the investigation of trying to deal with it, to discover it. We still don't know the answer. We do know, that we don't know the answer. And we know that we don't know the answer, because the Justice Department, for some reason or other, decided to close the investigation, with an execution, rather than continuing the investigation.

I mean, this goes to this death penalty thing: We don't know who killed Kennedy. We don't know to this day! The thing was sealed! Now, I don't want to offend the sensibilities of the Kennedy family, over the assassination of both Jack and Bobby; but, I think our government should have know, even if we keep it under secret seal and don't reveal it unless absolutely necessary, should have known what really happened in the Kennedy assassination. Because this kind of thing may come up again. It may have some relevance to what happened with Kennedy—which was not simply Oswald. The Oswald story was a fake. There was something more involved. We don't know what it was.

But, we know we don't. We should know. Because, if something as important as the assassination of a President, which changes the course of our national history occurs, we should know what happened. We should know it, for justice; we should know it also, for justice for us, as well as for the victim; we should know it as a matter of precautions, so that it doesn't happen again! And, I think it could happen again. But, I think it could happen again, because we have not been serious.

For example, the 9/11 investigation was essentially shut down! It's frozen. I think it's wrong. I think, at least, responsible agencies must conduct the investigation. Must inform the public of what the public has a right to know, which is not going to compromise things. And keep that information, and pass it from Presidency to Presidency, so that, if the time ever comes, that that knowledge from the past, is relevant to a present development, that that knowledge is available to the people who need to have it. And, if that's the American people, they need to be told—tell them!

QUESTION: In your talk, you've taken a broad account of history, trying to draw lessons from the past, from the Peloponnesian War to the war in Iraq. And I'm interested in your comments on, what the limit is, as far as what we can learn from history? And when we cross into territory, in which historical lessons are so narrowly defined, you take one lesson from the Peace of Westphalia; one lesson from the Peloponnesian War—when that becomes kind of a scare tactic and slightly misleading? What is that line, and how do you walk it?

LAROUCHE: I don't think it's a line. Implicitly, on one side, you're saying something I agree with: I do not think that you should study history, by comparing—the way Plutarch did: You have to know that Plutarch was a chief priest of the cult of Apollo, in Roman times. And he used Sophists' methods, in the comparison of the lives of so-called "great men," Roman and Greek. And that was not quite too accurate. So, comparing one case with another is not the way to do it. History must not be studied as a comparison, on a flat plane, as a connect-the-dots thing. History must be studied as a process. For example, what is the issue of European civilization? The issue is, of trying to struggle, to bring man out of a situation, which had been prevalent in all earlier history, in which some people held other people, as human cattle, either to be hunted, or to be herded and culled. This was issue posed by the question of Athens versus Sparta, for example.

So, the question is the struggle to try to find the form of society, and to develop a form of society, which recognizes the nature of man, as being divine, in the way that Socrates defines this, in the first books of Plato. Or, Moses Mendelssohn, for example, in his famous resurrection of the argument on the soul, of Plato, in the 18th Century. This is the thing. Study the process.

Then, take things like, you have figures like Plato. Let's take the case that I use often, among the youth movement: The case of Gauss's 1799 paper on The Fundamental Theorem of Algebra; in which he attacks Euler and Lagrange, for fakery, empiricist fakery. All right. What's he referring to? The significance of that paper, is, he refers to the constructive geometry—a pre-Euclidean constructive geometry: that of Pythagoras, Thales, and so forth, especially the school of Pythagoras. Which did not have postulates of Euclid—the definitions, axioms, and postulates of Euclid—but had a purely constructive approach, based on what was called "spherics." That is, observing the spheroid, which is the universe above.

This became the notion of universal law, developed by the Pythagoreans, of what are the universal laws, which we see, in the universe, in this spheroid above us? And, the anomalies, the paradoxes in our observations, as typified later by Kepler's discovery of gravitation, through the anomaly of the looping of Mars: That these anomalies force us to recognize that there are principles in the universe, which operate, but which are unseen by the sense, but which we can discover and learn to control.

All right. Then, you take figures in that case—. Call this "ideas." Then you take a figure, like Archimedes, for example. Today, you can take the work of Archytas, on the solving of the tripling of the cube; or Archimedes on many things, there are many books in French and otherwise, on the works of Archimedes. You can take these experiments, and you can re-live the process of the discovery of the experiment, of that person. How many thousand years ago! You, today, can leap across millennia, to re-experience what happened in the mind of a person, as a human being, thousands of years earlier. You can look at the pyramids, and study the Great Pyramids. You can go back, almost 3,000 years, to the design of the Great Pyramids—and, by studying the pyramids, you can see how the mind of the Egyptians who did that, worked! Because it's based on astronomy, therefore it's verifiable. You can experience the discovery of that person now, almost 5,000 years ago.

So therefore, history is based on the ability to leap across generations, to leap across thousands of years, and to leap, in the imagination, to what must have happened to man, when the ice was on the top of the Northern Hemisphere, for over about 200,000 years. This is what's important.

So therefore, we should look not at history, as the history of events, or the history of gimmicks, or the history of practices. We should look at it, as the history of ideas: Like the ideas of the Pythagoreans, the ideas of Plato, the ideas of Socrates, the ideas of Archimedes, or Eratosthenes of Egypt, as a contemporary. So, by re-experiencing these ideas, and seeing how they work in each generation—the idea of man; the idea of society—these are ideas which have a continuity, which all the great minds of history, who have shaped history, used, and thought about, and talked about, and discussed. The work of Petrarch, the work of Dante Alighieri, the work of Nicholas of Cusa in founding the concept of the modern nation-state; or founding modern experimental science. The work of Leonardo da Vinci. The extensive work of Kepler. The work of what the significance of what the discovery of the principle of quickest action, by Fermat and his followers. These are ideas. They are not slogans. They are not memory tricks. They are not policies.

And, it's only by understanding human beings struggling, against the condition of people being human cattle—being put out in the field, say, "We treat our people right." In China, and other places, "We treat our people well." They don't treat them well. They put the cow in the field; they put the cow in barn; they feed the cow in barn; they let the bull enjoy the cow. All these nice things are done, as in our society, in our human society today. But, then, when the cow gets old, or the bull's calves get weak feet, the bull goes to the slaughterhouse, and so the cow goes to the slaughterhouse, thus saving on medical expenses: Sort of, animal HMO.

So, the issue of what is a human being? What are the rights of a human being? As an idea, as a principle, is also an idea which we can trace through the entirety of history.

So therefore, yes: To make simple comparisons and try to judge, like Plutarch did in his Lives of Great Men, that's the method of Sophistry. No, you're right: No good. But we have to work from ideas, as ideas. We have to work from concepts, and situate them in this historical process. That's why European civilization is so important to us: Because, in European civilization, we are capable of tracing European civilization back to ancient Greece.

What we're engaged in now—my wife, and I, and so forth—are dealing with this problem, we're dealing now with Asian cultures, as well as European culture: How do we come about with a reconciliation, an ecumenical reconciliation, among the different cultures of Asia, and that of European civilization? How are we going to establish global peace, based on ecumenical principles? Therefore, we must deal with these ideas. We must discuss with Asians, what these ideas are in their culture. We must find a commonality of understanding, of how cultures develop. And therefore, we can work together. And, that's what's important about it. [warm applause]

QUESTION: You describe yourself as being in the tradition of the American republic. And as a child I would love to read Edgar Allan Poe, who, you know, is completely—. When I went to school, I was told he was a drug addict; he was an alcoholic; he was insane, pederast. And, you seem to be the only one defending him. And, I was wondering, you know, where is that coming from? And, in particular, I wanted to ask, where is that—Poe describes being a mathematician as being the most limited way of communicating an idea; where a poet is the most efficient way, the highest way of communicating an idea. And, what's funny is that, you know, Poe does write in other languages, but when he writes in English, his books are actually edited. And most of the books we see, today, are edited. And, I was wondering why such an operation against him?

LAROUCHE: You've touched on something that's very well worth studying. Edgar Allan Poe was a foreign counterintelligence agent of the United States. He was the grandson of the Quartermaster General in the Southern District for the American Revolution, and therefore, because his parents had died, he was a member of the Society of Cincinnatus. Now, the Society of Cincinnatus, which is the organization of the officers and their first, primus descendants, functioned as the intelligence service of the United States, the foreign intelligence service.

He was a sergeant major in the Army, at the age of 19. He went into it on that basis. He went into it on that basis. He was then recommended by James Monroe—or, was it Madison—to West Point. He went to West Point, but in his first year, he developed epilepsy. So, he was discharged from the military, from West Point, because of epilepsy. He then went into service, as a writer, and functioned as a counterintelligence specialist for the United States. For example, without going into the full story, for example, in about 1832 (somewhere in there), he was in Paris, on a letter from James Fenimore Cooper, who was also an intelligence agent of the United States, especially on naval intelligence, and a specialist in foreign intelligence. As was Washington Irving, for example. This is all the same kind of people.

While he was in Paris, he came into contact with the work of Dupin. And he sort of immortalized Dupin—the real-life Dupin—as the figurative Dupin of his two mystery stories. That's what he was.

Now, when he died, because his enemies, including an editor called Griswold, went to his wife; got control of the estate by paying money to the wife, who needed money. And Griswold began a campaign to defame Edgar Allan Poe. And, what you get today, in the general line on Poe, is defamations of Poe, which were originally minted, by Griswold, the New York publisher. And this keeps going on, and on, and on, and on. It's a lie. We've done some writing on this thing. We've done a lot of the research; we have manuscripts on this thing; we've worked on it for years. I proposed a book on this subject. Some of our friends have the work that I did and others did, and we're going to try to get this book published soon.

It is a very important subject. It's a matter of justice, for a great American. It's also a lesson, to all of us, of how we sometimes commit injustices against our patriots and heroes.

QUESTION: In a New York Times article, written by David Kirk [ph], you are quoted saying, that a person with AIDS running around is like a person with a machine gun running around. Your Prevent AIDS Now Initiative Committee, which you often refer to as PANIC, aimed to promote, and I quote again "the universal screening and isolating, or quarantining, of all individuals in active carrier states." Do you still believe that this is a realistic solution to the global AIDS epidemic?

LaRouche: Ah, do you remember tuberculosis? All right. What I proposed was simply—the insanity—here we had a new disease, which we did not fully understand. There was a lot of fakery to cover it up. I pressed hard on the Reagan Administration, which I had some influence on, at that time, to get the Attorney General to make a declaration: We proposed a $40 billion program, for dealing with the HIV problem, in the United States. We also demanded that something be done, seriously, about the problem in Africa: And that problem has not been effectively addressed to this time! So, there's nothing wrong with that.

We had some people who were very "het up," because they were incited to be "het up" about what I did. But, now, recently, having looked at what I wrote, after the reflection on what I wrote back then, today, the same people who were among my strongest critics then, said I was right.

We still have an unresolved disease problem in Africa. We have, in parts of Africa, absolute mass death, and it's hitting the best-educated sections of the population, in this part of Africa. And we still will not allow the medication to get to these people, which will help them control the infection, if not remove it.

The problem is, our health policy in the United States, today, stinks! We went from a Hill-Burton policy, which was sound, with a commitment to treat people whether they had money, or not. Today, we are culling the crop, the way you would cull an animal crop. We're culling people who are the most vulnerable, by denying them health care. The HMO system is a swindle. It's mass murder. And, that's what we fought against then. That's what I'm fighting against now. What I proposed was right: That people who have a deadly disease, as we dealt with tuberculosis, should be dealt with in that way. And, we should try to get to the bottom of it quickly, cure them, and free them of disease.

We didn't know what to do about it!

We had some ideas of what to do about it. But we—it was the first time we'd been hit by that kind of retrovirus infection, affecting the human species. We had no record, of any similar retrovirus infection affecting the human species. We didn't know what the area was. We hadn't done the work. We knew something in animal areas about it, but not then.

So, I think there's nothing to apologize for, in my policies then. I think it's the right policy for today. Today, we know something about it. Today, we can do something, so the solutions are different. We can, we can neutralize the carrier—and they can help neutralize the thing themselves.

BRAND: Thank you for everyone who organized and attended the meeting, especially Mr. Lyndon LaRouche. We feel this is an excellent series of discussions, and it will be continuing, with another speaker in the next few weeks. So, thank you very much. [applause]

LaRouche to Ibero-American Cadre School:

The Classical Principle Is Intrinsic To Humanity

Lyndon LaRouche gave the following address, by telephone hookup, to LaRouche Youth Movement cadre schools in Mexico, Colombia, Peru, and Argentina, on Nov. 23, 2003.

There is a problem, which is international, with existing populations, partly because of a general defect in popular culture and in public and higher education: That people today, generally, do not have a practical understanding of the difference between man and beast. And I speak of this difference now, as it applies to politics.

The point is, that animals can not develop ideas. Not in the sense that human beings have ideas; they're incapable of it. An animal dies; it leaves no personality behind, except in the memory of human beings who may be associated with that animal. But, a human being, as Plato said, is capable of doing something no animal can do.

So, man is capable of discovering ideas, typified by—and I've used the example many times—the principle of universal gravitation, which was uniquely discovered by Kepler, not by anybody else. Kepler discovered this, by looking at things, such as the apparent looping of the orbit of Mars, which showed that there is no regular sense-perceptual system to the Solar System. And therefore, the behavior of the Solar System had to be located in something external to perception, but which could be formulated as an idea. And once you understood the idea of this efficient presence, which itself you could not see with your senses, then we had a notion of universal gravitation.

Everything else we know, in terms of principles of the physical universe as such, and in terms of the principles of society—that is, as opposed to opinions about society—but the principles which will make a society effective: All of these things are invisible to sense-perception. To animal-like sense-perception in human beings. They exist only in the mind of the human being.

Now, if a human being were an ape, there would never have been more than several million human beings living on this planet, at any time, during the past 2 million years or so, and under the conditions we know of the past 2 million years. Today, we have reported over 6 billion people as living on this planet. This means that there's some difference between man and an ape, a fundamental difference, a difference of three decimal orders of magnitude, right now. The difference is, that we, by discovering two kinds of principles, are able to do two things: We're able to change the relationship of the individual's behavior to nature, as through the discovery of physical principles; and we're able to have concerted action by society, in making those changes of man's relationship to nature, through the discovery of social principles, such as the principles of the Preamble of the Constitution of the United States. Which is a universal, physical principle, discovered by man, and applied to design a nation-state on the basis of that principle.

Without these two kinds of principles, society does not function. That is, without the sense of the individual's relationship, physical relationship to the universe; and also, the individual's relationship to the universe through social processes, which are governed by discoverable social principles, which have the same force and effect as principles of natural science.

In the latter case, the best example of these kinds of social principles, is uniquely, Classical forms of artistic composition: No form of artistic composition, except the Classical, has a correspondence to natural principles. All other notions of social relations, or artistic composition, are unnatural principles. That is, they have no basis in the natural organization of the universe.

All right, so this is the difference between man and the ape.

Now, obviously the important thing here, the difference between having, say, several million individuals as human beings on the planet, and over 6 billion today, is that we, by discovering and applying these principles, are able to achieve this effect. We do this, because ideas developed over many thousands of generations before us, have transmitted their contributions to our knowledge of universal principles, to us through culture. This includes artistic culture. It includes political culture, and so forth. And, through physical ideas.

Looking Back Generations

So therefore, to understand a person today, you have to understand what culture is embodied in their development, as something more than a piece of flesh, as something more than a beast. Now, for this reason, to understand the problems of the world today, you have to look back, immediately, several generations. For example, to understand the history of European civilization, including that of the Americas, you have to go back to the 18th Century, and earlier, but particularly the 18th Century. Because that's when the crisis which we face today was born.

Now, as you recall, or should recall, in the 18th Century, you had a King of Spain, Charles III, who was a good king, and who fought for the improvement of the lives of people, inclusively, in the Spanish colonies in the Americas. He was replaced by kings who were not so good, and by a Spanish 18th-Century monarchy, which widely promoted slavery. The Spanish monarchy was one of the chief vehicles for the capture and import of African slaves into the Americas, including the United States. That's during the 18th Century.

And this continued until Abraham Lincoln stopped it, and until the overthrow of Maximilian, in Mexico, and the restoration to power of Benito Juárez stopped the process, as well. Or, began to end it, essentially, in the Caribbean area. And, then later in the century, the Spanish monarchy finally abandoned the practice of officially sponsoring the trafficking of African slaves into the Americas.

So, we go back to this period.

Now, what happened? Why did this change, in the policy which created the United States, where Charles III of Spain supported the independence of the United States, together with the King of France, and others? Why did this change come? Why the problems? Why didn't the founding of the United States result in the spread of independent republics, immediately, back into Europe, as well as throughout the Americas? What was the problem?

And therefore, our history, today, what we experience inside ourselves, is most immediately a reflection of more than two centuries, of the extended history of modern European civilization. And, of course, lots of things before then—2,000 years before. But, to understand why we behave, why we as peoples, why we as nations, change our behavior, we have to look back at the accumulation of cultural paradigms, which were built into us, by transmission, from generations—of older generations still living, but also many generations which are long dead.

And these effects are built into us: For example, language. The development of language, is a process of culture, which is transmitted over many generations, which starts with people who are long dead. For example, Spanish started with Italian, principally. It started with Italian, of Italian soldiers as Roman soldiers, as in France, who settled in the southern part of France and in Spain. And, since they were Italian, and therefore tended to speak Italian in their homes—not Latin—the language is a combination of the natural people's language—Italian, the predominant language of the period of Italy in the Roman Empire—and then, added to that, technical terms which were imposed by Roman rule. So that, the Spanish, French, Italian language today, is a combination of Latin words imposed upon an Italian popular root. Therefore, that's what our language represents, in this case.

So, we have to understand this transmission of culture, including language, and its development, over many successive generations. And what we speak, the way we speak, the way we communicate, reflects this embedded in us, to the transmission of culture, in the family, in society, and so forth. And, by studies, of course.

The 'Venetian Party'

So now, look at what happened to us generally. Go back just to what I referred to often as the end of the 18th Century: The United States had just then, formulated the final phase of its adoption of a Constitution, the Federal Constitution. This was formulated first in 1787, and was completed in 1789. Now, at this point, the intention was, in France and elsewhere, to use the example of the American Revolution, the establishment of the U.S. republic, as a model for the reform of the nations of Europe.

But, something stepped in: The British monarchy, or rather, the British East India Company, which is otherwise known as the Venetian Party—that is, the name by which ruling forces in England identified themselves, was as "the Venetian Party." The Venetian Party was also a name used to identify the so-called culture of the 18th Century: The so-called 18th-Century Enlightenment, was a morally degenerate form of culture, called the French and English Enlightenment of the 18th Century, which was typified by England under George I, II, and III; or better said, under Lord Shelburne, who was the chief political figure of that century, the middle and latter part of that century, in dominating the British system, and also in the role he played in Europe.

Now, this Shelburne, from the British East India Company, intervened into France, as well as into the Americas, beginning in 1763, at the time that France was defeated by England on the seas, signed a peace treaty, and Shelburne launched a policy of destroying the possibility of the emergence of an independent nation in North America—that is, the United States. And also the spread of the American model into Europe, especially through the destruction of France, which the British monarchy (or actually, the British Empire at that time) saw as its chief continental European rival, the chief threat to British imperial rule over continental and adjoining Europe.

So, what this fellow did, this Lord Shelburne, he organized the French Revolution, every essential part of it: From 1789, the storming of the Bastille was done by agents of Lord Shelburne, under his personal direction. The Jacobin Terror was done by Shelburne, or under the direction of Shelburne, through people like Jeremy Bentham. Napoleon was brought into power, through the organization of Shelburne. So, the entire history of Europe, from 1789, particularly from July 14, 1789, through the Vienna Congress, was organized by Shelburne.

Out of this process, there emerged what was called then the Martinist cult, a form of freemasonry, which was later renamed as Synarchism; which was later spread into, for example, in part, into Mexico through Maximilian. Maximilian was actually an agent of what we would call Synarchism, at his time: Introduced by a follower of Napoleon Bonaparte, his nephew Napoleon III, with the aid of the Spanish monarchy, and with the backing of the British, and of course with the Hapsburg family involved, also.

At a later point, the Synarchist International was used in the organization of World War I. It was also the key to the existence of fascism, from 1922, with Mussolini, through 1945. It was Synarchism which was run by the Nazis, through Franco's Spain, into Mexico, and by way of Mexico, into all of South America. It's where the pro-Nazi organization, the Synarchist International, operated in the Americas in that period.

Today again, the Synarchist International, as represented by the forces, or the so-called forces around Dick Cheney, who are looking for preventive nuclear warfare, as a way of dominating the planet: This is an expression of Synarchism. The neo-conservatives, who tend to dominate the present Bush Administration, around Cheney: These are Synarchists.

Civilization vs. Synarchism

So therefore, what you have today, in terms of the immediate political culture, the immediate conflicts in society, in Europe, in the Americas, and by reflection, worldwide, we have a war between civilization and Synarchism. Synarchism, the same Synarchism which gave us Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, the Pétain government, the Laval government in Europe; the same Synarchism that invaded Mexico through the Nazi Party and through Franco, the same Synarchism is now threatening civilization again.

That is our essential strategic problem.

In the process—come up closer to the present; what happened to us, just to review what I've said many times, on many occasions, around the country and around the world: The problem started with a fellow called Bertrand Russell. Bertrand Russell is very influential—he's very evil, but he was very influential. For example, he was, in a sense, the author of this religious cult around Norbert Wiener, the so-called "Information Theory." The same kind of religious cult around John von Neumann, of systems analysis, this whole branch of modern economics, of the idea of synthetic intelligence, or artificial intelligence.

This guy was against the existence of the nation-state: He hated the United States. He was determined to create a world empire. This form of world empire he conceived was called "world government." That was not an original idea, with Russell. The idea of world government and empire are interchangeable ideas. They mean the same thing: The idea of a universal system of law, imposed from the top-down on what had been nations or nationalities, is a form of imperialism, in the same sense as the Roman Empire, in the same sense as feudalism under the combination of Venice and its Norman allies, over the period from about the time of the Norman Conquest of England, up through the modern civilization.

So, this is the problem, this fight.

Most recently, what happened with Russell, is that Russell devised the idea, together with his buddy, H.G. Wells—who was a bit of a pig, himself—and they devised the idea of using nuclear weapons, or developing them and using them, as weapons so terrible, that the people of the world would submit to world government, as a way of avoiding being hit by nuclear weapons. At the close of the Second World War, the war concluded with the deployment of those nuclear weapons, by a pig who was then President of the United States, Harry Truman, against the civilian populations of two cities of Japan: Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There was no military reason which required or justified, the use of those weapons on that occasion. The reason it was done, was to terrify the world, and to commit the United States to a policy of threatening to conquer the entire world, by threatening preventive nuclear war—the specific language adopted by Russell, and used by Russell, to explain his policy.

From that time on, the United States, and many other countries, were divided, by two political currents: One was the traditional military current, which at that time, was typified by Generals of the Army Douglas MacArthur and Dwight Eisenhower, as leading generals. On the other side, the opponents of this military tradition of civilization—the so-called tradition of classical strategic defense—were these so-called Utopians, the followers of Bertrand Russell, who were determined to use nuclear weapons, to bring about the establishment, through terror, of world government.

Now, these people, the Utopians, were all Synarchists. They were controlled by bankers behind the scenes, whose idea of world government was based on the interest of that kind of private banking, as usury. As we see, throughout the Americas today, you see the debt of the nations of South and Central America, is all illegitimate. The outstanding debt claims against these countries, are far in excess of anything they ever owed. That is, these countries have already more than paid off, the debts which existed, say, by 1982. They're paid off. The debts that exist in these nations today, are artificial debts, imposed by syndicates of private bankers, who have used institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF to artificially impose these debts on these countries.

This is the Synarchist character. This is the thing we're up against.

The Cultural Paradigm-Shift

Now, why do people put up with it? Well, take another step: As a result of the terror, of the Missile Crisis of 1962, the assassination of Kenney, the launching of the Indochina War, a section of the U.S. and European populations, and also spilling into Central and South America, the young people who were then in the process of becoming adults, such as university students, at that period, went crazy. They went crazy, because of the effects of the terror they'd lived through: the Missile Crisis, the launching of the Indochina War, and things related to that.

As a result of that, we went through a change, in the United States and Britain first; then later, spilling over into continental Europe and into the Americas—a change from a belief in a producer society, into a belief in a post-industrial or consumer society. What happened is, that the United States and Britain, or the bankers there, said: We're not going to pay people to work in our countries much longer. We're going to shut down our industries, and instead get our things we need, manufactured products and food, from other countries, who will work as slaves for us, because we have reduced the value of their currency, artificially. And they now work as virtual slaves, as cheap labor, as you see, in the slave-relationship of much of the population of Mexico and the Mexican economy, to the United States, under this system. Where the United States has shut down much of its industry, much of its agriculture, and depends upon the cheap-labor products that it extracts from other parts of the world.

The U.S. economy, of course, is now disintegrating. The world economy is disintegrating, because of that arrangement. But therefore, to understand ourselves, we have to understand some things. We have to understand that many people today accept the idea of globalization. They accept the idea of post-industrial society. They accept the idea of free trade. They accept the idea of deregulation. They accept the idea of so-called "natural energy systems," as opposed to modern energy systems. Where do these crazy ideas come from? It comes out of history. It comes out of this long process, in which the nations of European cultural extraction, emerged in the 18th Century—again, after the period of the religious wars of 1511 to 1648—emerged as a great force in culture, the greatest force that world civilization had ever known, in terms of productive potential, in terms of the improvement of the conditions of mankind. But then, the French and British Enlightenment, as typified by Lord Shelburne, the British East India Company, and the forces behind the French Revolution of 1789-1815, decided to try to turn the clock back, in a form which includes what we call Synarchism today. The destruction of civilization.

And, what has happened? We have had many steps upward, by humanity. There's been much progress during this period, since 1789 to the present. But there has also been much retrogression. And, since the assassination of Kennedy, the Missile Crisis, and the beginning of the Indochina War, the direction of civilization has been—in Europe, the Americas, in particular—has been chiefly downward.

People, therefore, today believe in standards of behavior, in ideas, which have been foisted upon them by this so-called cultural paradigm-shift—a cultural paradigm-shift which coincides with the influence of Synarchism. If we respond, if we say, we are going to be governed by popular opinion, or prevailing, generally accepted opinion up to now, we will destroy ourselves. Therefore, to understand ourselves, we have to decide, who are we? Are we the junk, the garbage, which is dumped upon us, in the typical university classroom or other classroom today, or by the international mass media? Is that who we are? People who believe in that garbage? If so, we are going to be destroyed, self-destroyed.

Take the example of the United States: I'm running for President. Do you know, there's not a single rival candidate for President, who's fit to be President? Not because, say, Kerry, who is a Senator and who is also a rival of mine, is not generally considered a competent politician. He is. But, he is stuck, with adherence to a philosophy of government, a cultural philosophy, which dooms the United States. Other candidates running for office, rivals, are worse. Or less good, or worse.

I'm the only candidate who is qualified to become President of the United States, if the United States is to survive. That's a cultural phenomenon. Why? Why? Because I'm such a genius? Well, that's not the case. Because I resisted, rejected, the cultural process which led to this self-destructive role of the United States. I'm the only matured politician, who has the influence and the knowledge, to turn the United States back from depression, to recovery, in the sense that Franklin Roosevelt did back in the 1930s.

But, the problem here is, that I've got to deal with the American population: I've got to induce them to change what they believe. I've got to educate them out of their bad opinion, their self-destructive opinions.

Habituated Thinking

You have a similar situation in Mexico, it's a little different, but it's similar. In other parts of the Americas, similar, but different. In each country, you've had the conditioning of the population, to accept as conditions of life, as almost natural conditions, ways of behaving which would ensure the perpetuation of a process of self-destruction of these nations, including the United States. The problem is, the belief that you must accept this, is deeply embedded in the habituated thinking of the people themselves. Therefore, if you're appealing to popular opinion, you're going to lead the people to their self-destruction, like leading cattle into the safety of the slaughterhouse.

Therefore, you have to lead people against their opinion! Against popular opinion.

Take the case of the United States. The key to the United States, is the fact that the lower 80% of family-income brackets of the United States are living under depressed conditions. Their conditions of life have become progressively worse. Politics has been largely located, in the upper 20% of family-income brackets; whereas, the lower 80% sort of goes along, or simply impotently rejects the political process. Now therefore, the key to politics in the United States, which I'm following, is to go directly to the people—not through the controlled mass media—but directly to the people, especially the people of the lower 80% of family-income brackets, among those parts of that population, the lower-income brackets, who are more sentient, more responsive. And also, other individuals in society, who are people of conscience—maybe from the upper 20%—who are people of conscience, who also respond.

So therefore, you have to make an overturn, in the social process, in which the upper 20% of family-income brackets have been ruling the United States, to a system in which the lower 80% are given justice, and given expression of their vital interest, as the interest of the nation.

To do this, we have to understand several things, and what I emphasize in the lecture circuit in campaigning, is to make people aware, of what the present three living adult generations represent: That is, you have my generation, people under 90 years of age—my generation; you have a generation of my children, the people who are now in their 50s—that age-group—and then, a younger generation, of 18 to 25, the so-called university-eligible age-group. These are the three politically significant layers inside the United States, in particular.

Now, my job, as a candidate, is to appeal to all three of these layers simultaneously, with the greatest emphasis on the youth. Why? Because, if people understand what my generation has gone through, and understand why the moral decadence of the second generation, my children's generation—why they decayed morally and intellectually—then, to turn to the last generation—the young ones, the ones who are now between 18 and 25—who now recognize that their parents' generation has given them a no-future society, and they know, if they're sentient, that they have to change the way this society is going, or there is no future for them, or for any children or grandchildren they have. And therefore, the problem here, is, to somehow get the generation which dominates the institutions of government, the generation of my children, to accept an impulse of leadership from a generation of young adults, of this 18-to-25 youth generation. That is, to recognize, that the youth generation has the right, to demand of their parents' generation, a joint effort to change society, so that we all have the chance to survive.

And the way to get this clear, is to get the young ones, and the ones of my children's generation, to recognize the historical process of cultural change, which I have experienced, which each of them has experienced, and to see this all as one continuous process. And, in the meantime, to use that experience, to guide them to look back further, more deeply into the history of European civilization, in particular: to see where ideas came from, beginning with ancient Greece, for example; the Greece of Pythagoras, the Greece of Thales, the Greece of Solon, the Greece of Socrates and of Plato. To see, tracing from there, and from the Egyptian culture which informed Greek scientific thinking, see how the whole process of European civilization, with its ups and downs, has evolved, to bring us into existence today. And to recognize, inside ourselves, that we are not animals, that we embody within us, large elements of the culture, which had been transmitted in some accumulated way, from successive generations to the present.

Then, we understand ourselves as human, which, unfortunately, too few people today, do.

And that's my essential message.

Dialogue with LaRouche

Here is an excerpt from the discussion that followed LaRouche's presentation.

Question: Yesterday, we were discussing, what is the soul in the human being? But, we also were discussing how Leibniz defined the fact that some animals also have souls. So, I didn't quite understand that part, so I would like you to talk about that. Also something else, which I was asking myself: If Gauss understood in the same terms in which Schiller writes the "Letters on the Aesthetical Education of Man"? Did he understand with that same vision as Schiller personally? How would you comment in this regard?

LaRouche: Well, Schiller was a genius, a true genius, in the sense of being an individual who developed ideas which were unique in his time and place, who also uplifted the conception of drama, from the foundations given to him by ancient Greece and also Shakespeare, in particular, to get to this conception of the Sublime....

Maria Stuart is an example of this. The case of Jeanne d'Arc, is the most famous, and simple, and clearest example of this. That the individual, faced with a crisis, is capable of finding that their fundamental self-interest is located in what they do for humanity. That mortal life is short, but there's an aspect to human life which is immortal, and that is what we represent with respect to preceding and coming generations. What do we do while we are visiting this mortal planet, that gives satisfaction to the aspirations of those who went before us? Which solves the problems left unsolved by generations before us? And which provides a foundation upon which a better future can be built by humanity? This idea of the Sublime: That you locate your identity not in what you experience within your biological existence as such, but what you develop under the circumstances of your biological existence, which is of external value. And therefore, you find the true meaning, true self-interest.

Schiller made this clear; he made this clear with his drama; he made it clear with his politics. The important thing about Schiller, which is an idea which Shakespeare would have accepted, but which is unique to him, is that Schiller developed this concept of the Sublime, as a true self-interest of mankind, and developed this as a method of popular education, using Classical drama. That is, Schiller never composed a drama in the way that Shakespeare is often explained in universities, in my lifetime as a student, and earlier, and later. The influence on the English language, of course, you would have people who I was opposed to, like Bradley and Coleridge, and people like that: Romantics.... Romantic interpretation of aesthetic or morality examples. Schiller did not do that. Schiller approached everything from the standpoint of the Sublime, or as a negation of the Sublime—the true tragic principle.

For example, I just gave you an example of this in my outline on the history of culture since the 18th Century, of European culture as it exists in the Americas today. Therefore, to understand the tragedy of European civilization, since the 18th Century, you have to see the tragedy as posed, as if on the stage, by the disgusting immorality of the French and British 18th-Century Enlightenment. And then, you have to see the struggle to free European civilization from this tragic force of the Enlightenment, this corruption, this degradation. You see the struggle upward, in the case of the support from around the world of the American Revolution, as typified by the support from France, the support from Charles III of Spain. An upward struggle. Then you see this terrible thing happens: The French Revolution, organized by Shelburne and company from London. We see to the present time this degeneracy, a worsened form of Enlightenment culture, this degeneracy—pulsations of it have taken over. And now it has brought us to the virtual end of the existence of civilization.

Therefore, to put this on the stage, in such a way that the audience is sitting before the stage, looking from their imagination, lifting themselves up from being little people on the street, into being people in society, looking at society over the long term, over generations, and seeing the mistakes, and seeing the challenges which man has faced. And seeing the role of the Sublime, the role of leadership of this quality, of pulling man through these crises, to levels of safety. That is the way in which to see this.

Now, going back to the question of the individual soul. As I said, the individual soul can be defined in only one meaningful way. There are many ways in which this is described, and most of it is nonsense. It's taught as nonsense, probably by priests who don't understand what the soul is anyway, so they try to give an explanation despite their ignorance of the subject. The soul is simply the fact that the faculty of mankind, which in the first instance, is capable of discovering universal physical principles as Kepler did, for example; and doing this not only for man's individual relationship to the physical universe, mentally, but also in terms of soul processes. That's one aspect. No other creature has this capability.

In the animals in general, the animal dies with its death as a mortal creature. Man does nothing with his or her death. Man may live on, through the work he does in influencing the domain of ideas, the domain beyond the mortality of biological life. That's the difference.

Now, in terms of the animal soul. Well, the animal can get a soul as Nicholas of Cusa emphasized, by the concept of participation. Cusa used the conception of man's participation in God, as the animal's participation in man. That is, when you adopt a puppy or kitten, especially a puppy—puppies are much better at this; kittens are much more asocial, essentially. Dogs tend to be a little more social in their behavior, as some of you know. But, when you take a dog who, met in the wild, is a very nasty fellow, more or less like a wolf, hmm? But you raise a dog from a puppy, you humanize the creature. The creature depends upon you. With its own little doggie way, it finds a way of participating in you. It becomes an emotional reaction to you, an emotional reaction with you, and therefore, we see a reflection in the animal of that. You see this also in the relationship of the farmer to his horse or even to his cow, who he may slaughter later on, or the donkey. (I like the donkeys very much on this thing.) They participate in you, they look at you, they depend on you. They act to please you, so to speak, they act to help you.

For example, we have a donkey here. The donkey's called Ambrose....

Now, the horse was feeling sick, and the horse fell down. The horse is old, it's arthritic, it's stiff, and so forth. Ambrose went over to the horse, and Ambrose nudged the horse, and he bit the horse in the rump: "Get up!" As if he sensed that the horse's life was menaced if he didn't get up. You know, it's bad for horses, when they're sick, to lie down like that, at least for long periods. So, he's concerned about the horse.

Ambrose would be concerned about us, too. He would be concerned about our dogs. So, they participate in us, in the sense that their participation in us, through our cultivation of them, projects qualities which are human-like, into them. But they never achieve the power of reason. They have a certain kind of animal insight, but it's not human reason.

So, the attempt to define the human soul as a product of the animal soul, is a mistake. More adequate would be, that we give to the animal a sense of soul, when we take an animal, such as the horse that works for us, the ox, or a mule—we give them a sense of soulness, through participation in us, and therefore they participate in our soul. And thus, as man participates in the Creator, so these creatures, as Cusa put it, participate in us.

The General Welfare

Question: I want to ask you why only the Western artistic conception corresponds to the human conception of the universe? And, how can we get the human character in the different Latin American nations, with traditions and philosophies which are also millenarian?

LaRouche: Millenarian philosophies and traditions are a disease, not a culture in the ordinary sense. They don't belong to human beings. The problem here is this: Remember, there's been a long struggle of humanity, to do what? To free man from forms of culture in which the majority of people were treated as human cattle, either as wild human cattle to be hunted down, or herded human cattle to be raised, used, and culled, as necessary. So therefore, prior to the emergence of the idea of the modern state in Greece, the prevalent culture of every part of the world we know, was an inhuman culture, in the sense that it treated the majority of the human species, not only of other nations and languages, but its own, as human cattle. That problem persists to the present day.

So the idea of the modern nation-state, as typified by the influence of Solon, and by the work of Socrates against the Sophists, and by Plato, gave birth to the idea of the republic. It's a nation which is accountable, and government which is accountable, to the general welfare of all of the people, and their posterity. In other words, a government which is committed to the service of the upward progress of humanity, and of the condition of the individual in human society. This progress depends on developing a notion of two facets. One, a notion of truth, a notion of absolute truth. Second, a specific notion of truth, of the truth that man and animal are completely different forms of existence. Man is not something that evolved from an animal, or from animal processes. Man has a quality which we call reason, that is, the power to discover universal physical principles, and to apply them, which no animal species has, which no living process per se has, as a living process. This is something which has intervened in the universe, into the existence of an animal form of life called humanity, which has something which is human, not just animal. And that is this power of reason, this power of discovery.

Therefore, the composition of society, and the notion of truth, are inseparable from this quality of reason which is typified, for example, by Carl Gauss's attack on Euler and Lagrange, in Gauss's 1799 paper on the question of the fundamental theorem of algebra, on the question of the complex domain.

So, therefore, there is only one conception of truth, and this is specific to the nature of man.

Now, most of the cultures of this planet are still cultures which are based predominantly on traditions of treating most people as cattle. For example: In Mexico, how are most of the people of Mexico treated today? As human cattle, not as citizens! The exploitation, the maquiladoras, the way the Mexican population is herded across the border. Oh sure, Mexicans do good work for the United States. We depend upon them! Somebody says they exploit the United States? We depend upon them! Who's going to do the work for us?

But the point is, the struggle is that Mexico must be sovereign. It lost its sovereignty in 1982. The swan song of Mexico's sovereignty was the great address by President Lopez Portillo, to the United Nations in October of 1982. After that, after the defeat of me, and of Lopez Portillo, Mexico lost its sovereignty. Now, there are still Mexicans who believe in sovereignty, and will fight for it. And I'm all with them. But the fact is, the problem exists.

The same problem exists in Venezuela, where certainly the people are not treated as sovereign. They have a couple of oligarchies squabbling over the spoils, like vultures over the dying, over the people of Venezuela. This Chavez thing is a monstrous thing. This terrible situation in Colombia; the fact that there is no option provided in Bolivia to help people get out of the grip of the cocaleros . Look what's happening to Argentina. This is immoral! What's happening in Africa, especially sub-Saharan Africa: It's immoral! It's done by the United States and Britain, in particular; and Israel. What is done in most of the world is immoral, still today. People are still treated as human cattle. And the principle—the difference between man and an animal—must be the law. It is natural law. And any action which is contrary to that law, should be nullified, is unlawful. Any cultural tradition which is contrary to that, which bases itself on human pleasure, sense-certainty, is immoral. It's rotten.

Now, look at the history of mankind from that standpoint. How old is Classical culture? It's very old. It's as old as the human race, undoubtedly. Always, the way the human race has survived, has been this impulse, of some, at least, to recognize human nature for what it is, and to try to order the processes of society accordingly. There's always been this struggle to find the true principles of the universe. But this struggle has been limited essentially to a few. Sometimes, the ruling stratum is dedicated to this idea, as you see in the case of the Classical culture in ancient Greece. There were people who were dedicated to this conception. But Greece didn't achieve it. But the idea of it existed in Greece.

The Negro Spiritual

You find, for example, in the United States, you have the case of the so-called Negro Spiritual. The Negro Spiritual was a product of several things. It was a product of an intersection, largely, of African cultures, cultures embodied in African people, intersecting the culture of the United States. When this was looked at, at the end of the 19th Century, by great musicians, it was recognized that there was, in the Negro Spiritual, as it evolved as a body of practice, from among slaves, originally, that this contained a Classical principle: an aspiration for the affirmation of the distinction of man from the beast. And a self-affirmation of one's role in that. And therefore, you saw in this, in the Negro Spiritual, often great beauty, which was refined and honed, to become an integral part of Classical culture by some of the great musicians of our time, particularly of the 20th Century. As opposed to the so-called pop-art, or pop-culture, which is drug-related degeneracy.

So, all through humanity, there is a Classical principle. What we have, fortunately, in European civilization, in the development of the Classical principle based on the heritage of ancient Greece and its influence, and based on the development since the Renaissance in particular, the highest level of development of Classical culture, has occurred within European civilization, because of our successes, our political successes, in particular, of the type which were impelled by the examples of ancient Classical Greece. So therefore, we're more advanced in terms of science and arts, than other parts, non-European parts of the world, but the Classical principle, is intrinsic to humanity. It just is more or less well developed, according to the circumstances, whether it finds itself as a seed on fertile or impoverished ground.

U.S. Economic/Financial Digest

World's Biggest Speculators Shorting Dollar

Rumors are rife, according to the London Independent Nov. 28, that Warren Buffett and George Soros, described as the world's most famous speculators, are betting that the U.S. currency will plummet. One unnamed hedge fund manager is quoted as saying: "I have heard that both Soros and Buffett are shorting the dollar. There's a growing belief on Wall Street that the dollar is looking like a one-way bet downwards." A spokesman for Soros said he never commented on speculation. Buffett was also unavailable for comment.

L.A. Times on the 'Wal-Mart Effect'

The Los Angeles Times echoes Lyndon LaRouche on the job-devouring Wal-Mart, in an article in the Nov. 23 edition by Abigail Goldman and Nancy Cleeland. Blasting the "empire built on bargains," for the loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs, the collapse of towns, and the impoverishment of the workforce, the Times reflects the impact of LaRouche Youth Movement organizing in California. In the first of a three-part expose on "The Wal-Mart Effect," the Times charges, that Wal-Mart's rapid growth, based on "cutting prices relentlessly," ironically "exacts a heavy price" on both the U.S. economy, and global economy overall.

"By squeezing suppliers to cut wholesale costs, the company has hastened the flight of U.S. manufacturing jobs overseas," the article notes, adding, "By scouring the globe for the cheapest goods, it has driven factory jobs from one poor nation to another."

As the world's largest corporation—with sales nearly twice those of General Electric—and "a global economic force," Wal-Mart is driving down wages and working conditions, the article declares, "from the shopping centers of Las Vegas to the factories of Honduras and South Asia." Indeed, "Its business is so vital to developing countries that some send emissaries to the corporate headquarters in Bentonville, Ark., almost as if Wal-Mart were a sovereign nation."

Wal-Mart's wages for its own 1.2 million U.S. employees are so low, the article notes, that a full-time worker is not be able to support a family on a Wal-Mart paycheck—unlike General Motors, a company that "brought prosperity to factory towns and made American workers the envy of the world." "With a high-wage union job, an assembly-line worker could afford a house, a decent car, maybe even a boat by the lake."

The article attacks Wal-Mart for increasing the ranks of the unemployed, and impoverishing cities and towns with its low-wage policy. It is "causing upheaval" in the grocery sector. "When a Supercenter moves into town, competitors often are wiped out, taking high-paying union jobs with them." Each Supercenter eats about 200 union grocery jobs, by one estimate. In Las Vegas, for example, California-based Raley's closed all 18 of its grocery stores in the area last December, laying off 1,400 workers, when Wal-Mart invaded.

Small towns are left with "boarded-up commercial centers," the article charges. Meanwhile, cities such as Las Vegas see a sharp increase in the number of employed, but uninsured people, who use emergency rooms for routine medical care, because Wal-Mart's low wages make health insurance unaffordable.

As an example of Wal-Mart's role in the loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs, the article cites the case of Carl Krauss, who owns Chicago-based Lakewood Engineering & Manufacturing Co. He was forced by Wal-Mart to outsource the company's box-fan factory to Shenzhen, China in 2000, where workers earn 25 cents an hour, compared with $13 in Chicago, to meet Wal-Mart's low-price demands. The box fans are now only assembled in Chicago. A staggering 40% of Lakewood's products now are made in China, including most heaters and desktop fans.

Wal-Mart Gobbles Up Rubbermaid Jobs

More than 100 employees were laid off from their jobs at the Rubbermaid manufacturing plant in Winfield, Kansas on Nov. 24, as part of the company's plan to "consolidate" factories, the Winfield Courier reported Nov. 24. The company denied that it plans to close the plant. Four days earlier, Rubbermaid said it will eliminate nearly 300 jobs as it shuts down its factory in Cleburne, Texas (near Fort Worth) by April, claiming it will shift production to Greenville, Texas.

Rubbermaid sells most of its consumer products through Wal-Mart. Since January 2001, under Wal-Mart pressure, Rubbermaid has shut down 69 out of its 400 facilities, and fired 11,000 workers.

Wal-Mart Demands Huge Tax Cuts from Cowed Communities

Wal-Mart is suing the Wyoming County, Penn. Board of Assessment for a 58% reduction in its property taxes in 2004, according to the Tunkhannock New Age-Examiner. The background is this: In January 1993, Wal-Mart purchased 17.5 acres in Eaton Township, located in Wyoming County, Pennsylvania. The Wyoming County Board of Assessment, which assesses taxes, as a matter of procedure, added the Wal-Mart property to the tax rolls for 1994. In September of this year, Wal-Mart demanded a 58% decrease in property taxes from the Board. When it refused, Wal-Mart sued. This is an example of Wal-Mart, the world's largest corporation, bringing throws its enormous weight around to force communities to capitulate to its demands. Were Wal-Mart's suit to be successful, the Tunkhannock Area School District would lose $30,680 annually, Wyoming County would lose $9,186, and Eaton Township would lose $2,922.

Pennsylvania, N.J. Towns Face Extinction as Industry Vanishes

Former thriving "Main Streets" of small towns across the United States, which have been closing down over the past 50 years, are now facing extinction, the Philadelphia Inquirer cautioned Nov. 23: Now, dozens of "older towns teeter on the brink," with vanishing tax bases, due to the industrial blight which surrounds them. More and more "depressed" older towns and boroughs throughout the suburbs, are "buckling" under rising poverty and budget deficits, to such an extent that they threaten even "well-off" communities located miles away.

Every part of the nation is dotted with "deteriorating towns and small, decaying cities," the paper warns, with two of the worst cases being the suburbs around Philadelphia and Camden. These seven counties contain "a ring of decline unusual for its depth and severity," says the Inquirer's Myron Orfield.

According to an Inquirer analysis of the region's 339 municipalities, some 35 are economically "distressed," while an additional 63 are "at risk" of becoming distressed themselves. The total population of the 96 ailing communities is almost 1 million (not including Philadelphia and Camden)—nearly one-third of all suburban residents.

The paper points to the disastrous impact of the collapse of the industrial Northeast, including lack of Federal investment in railroads that "had kept towns hopping as commuter hubs." For example, "Once a thriving industrial center on the Schuylkill, 251-year-old Pottstown has never recovered from the cataclysmic closings of the Bethlehem Steel plant in 1975, and Firestone's tire factory in 1980. In a population of 21,000, more than 3,000 were thrown out of work."

As a consequence of deindustrialization, the "once solidly middle-class" trio of townships comprising Delaware County's eastern end, has declined into "one of the suburbs' largest economic trouble spots." In just 17 square miles are a dozen distressed and at-risk municipalities with a total population of 157,000.

International Economics Digest

Worldwide Hunger Rising Rapidly

In its latest annual report issued Nov. 25, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, titled "The State of Food Insecurity in the World, 2003," reveals that hunger is rising rapidly in the world after having fallen off in the first half of the 1990s.

After falling by 37 million during the first half of the 1990s, the number of hungry people in developing countries increased by 18 million in the second half of the decade.

The FAO report estimates that 842 million people were undernourished in 1999-2001, the most recent years for which figures are available. This includes 10 million in industrialized countries, 34 million in "countries in transition," and 798 million in developing countries.

Only 19 countries, including China, had some success in reducing the number of undernourished throughout the 1990s. The report claims: "In these successful countries, the total number of hungry people fell by over 80 million." At the other end of the scale, however, are 26 countries where the number of undernourished people increased by 60 million during the same period. In 17 countries, including some of the most populous countries in the world, such as India, Indonesia, Pakistan, along with Nigeria and Sudan, hunger is rising, and the report warns that "these countries can no longer be expected to propel progress for the developing world."

With regard to southern Africa, the report says the food crisis of 2002-2003 showed that "hunger cannot be combatted effectively in regions ravaged by AIDS, unless interventions address the particular needs of AIDS-affected households and incorporate measures both to prevent and to mitigate the spread of HIV/AIDS. Estimates are that 60-70% of farms have suffered labor losses due to HIV/AIDS, lack the labor, resources, and know-how for "survival" cultivation and in many cases have abandoned farming, but the report also underscores the critical lack of water.

'Decline and Fall' of U.S. Dollar

Headlined "Decline and Fall," the lead editorial in the Nov. 24 London Guardian comments on the collapse of the U.S. dollar. Beginning with an ironic assessment of the allegation that "the world economy is clearly on a roll," the Guardian's editors express great concern about the international effects of "feeding the 'feel-good factor' in the U.S." The Bush Administration "is prepared to do almost anything, however imprudent, in its dash to increase jobs and growth in advance of next year's election," the Guardian muses.

Then, there is the fall of the U.S. dollar, now exacerbated by the collapse of foreign investment into U.S. stocks and bonds, which the paper calls "a kind of Marshall Plan in reverse as the rest of the world lends money to the U.S. to finance its import binge.... There are now worrying signs that the rest of the world is no longer willing to finance the U.S. spending binge.

"The danger is that the Bush Administration's ham-fisted attempts to play politics with international trade and currency markets may turn an orderly decline of the dollar into a rout as investors lose confidence.... Of course, predictions that the U.S. economy is about to collapse under the weight of its own debt have been made for years without—as yet—coming true.

"We can only hope and pray that doomsday will continue to be postponed."

Gold Jumps to Over $400; Dollar Continues Decline

The dollar dropped to $1.1941 per euro on Nov. 26, near the record low around $1.1975 set Nov. 19, reflecting worries about capital inflows from foreign central banks needed to finance the U.S. current account deficit. "The U.S. is struggling to finance its deficit, and the underlying flow picture is poor," warned Shahab Jalinoos, senior currency strategist at ABN Amro in London.

Underscoring these concerns, was the poor showing at an auction of two-year Treasury notes, which drew bids for only 1.75 times the amount on offer, well below the 2.12 achieved at the last sale, in a sign of falling demand from foreign bidders, particularly central banks. Indirect bidders, likely foreign central banks that have been major buyers of Treasuries, purchased only 32% of the total amount sold, below the 44% level in October. "The market is obsessed with ... the deterioration in the external deficit," said Mitul Kotcha, head of global foreign exchange research at Credit Agricole Indosuez.

Meanwhile, gold jumped nearly $10 on Nov. 26 to $402 per ounce in New York trading, its highest price since March 1996. The story being peddled for the price rise, was that six New York City subway workers were hospitalized for exposure to fumes from an unknown source, raising fears of a terrorist attack. In fact, this subway incident "certainly [was] a good excuse" for the gold price to move higher, said the president of Altavest Worldwide Trading, but he pointed to the fall in the dollar as the real reason.

OECD Warns of Housing Market Crash Due To Sudden Interest Rate Hike

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's "Economic Outlook" report, released Nov. 20, predicts a rise in interest rates, and expresses real concern that nations such as Australia, the United States, and Britain "may suffer large wealth losses, especially in the housing sector, should interest rates increase abruptly."

OECD also cautioned that the U.S. dollar could face a "sudden weakening," triggered by a reversal of capital flows into the U.S. from foreign central banks—money which the U.S. depends on to finance its "persistent," "very large" current account deficit.

Alarming Decline of Investments in German Industry Sectors

The latest, updated report on investments for 2002, issued by Germany's Federal Office of Statistics on Nov. 25, points to a major decline for 2003 as well. The report documents that in 2002, investments dropped by 11%: minus 9% for the industries in the western states of Germany, and 25% for the eastern states.

With the exception of the automobile and food industry sectors, investments were down in all other sectors of industry, in 2002. Especially alarming, is the fact that the machine-builders invested 8.2% less, metal-processing manufacturers 13.2% less nationally. Chemical industry investments dropped by 3.2%.

Wal-Mart To Buy Brazil's Third-Largest Retail Chain

Wal-Mart is in the advanced stages of negotiations to buy Bompreco, Brazil's third largest retail chain—which owns mostly supermarkets—from its current owner, the Dutch company, Ahold, according to the Brazil daily Valor Economico Nov. 26. The U.S. Godzilla of retailers is trying to acquire Ahold's credit-card operation, HiperCard, as well, Valor Economico's sources report. Wal-Mart is also trying to buy a smaller Brazilian supermarket chain, Barbosa Commercial, from Ahold, but a court injunction is delaying that deal.

Wal-Mart arrived in Brazil in 1995, and has subsequently opened 25 stores, mostly in the southeastern region, including Sao Paolo and Rio de Janeiro. Were it to be successful in buying the 120-store Bompreco chain, the mega-superstore would leap from sixth- to third-largest retail chain in Brazil, and would be in a position to dictate a restructuring of the entire Brazilian retail business, one economic consultant told Valor. Wal-Mart is, already, the largest retailer in Mexico, with over 400 stores, and is expanding in Argentina.

Russian Economic Data Indicate Significant Growth Dynamic

New economic data published by the Russian Economics Ministry indicate a significant growth dynamic in the Russian economy, according to the Neue Zuercher Zeitung Nov. 28. Gross Domestic Product grew 6.6% from January to October, on an annualized basis. Industrial production increased by 6.8%. Investment increased by 12.2% Real wages increased in the first 10 months by 9.1%, and the perspective is that the growth dynamic will continue. In October, Russian GDP grew on an annual basis by 7.3%. For 2003, the ministry reported that the official growth prognosis grew from 5.9% to 6.6% (in 2002, it was 4.3%.)

Aside from the stability-oriented economic policy and robust domestic demand, especially high raw-materials prices are credited with driving the economic recovery in Russia.


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Feature:

LAROUCHE IN DETROIT
A U.S. President for All Generations And All Nations

Here is Lyndon LaRouche's Presidential campaign speech to 230 supporters at the Pontchartrain Hotel in Detroit, on Nov. 20. The candidate was introduced by Midwest campaign organizer Robert Bowen; by Michigan State Representative LaMar Lemmons, who hosted the meeting; and by State Representative Ed Vaughn.


Strategic Study:

Cheney Faction Goes Berserk Over LaRouche Expose´s
by Jeffrey Steinberg

According to a well-placed Washington source, in October of this year, a series of heated, closed-door debates took place in the office of Vice President Dick Cheney. The subject: whether or not to launch a public smear campaign against Democratic Party Presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche, over LaRouche's year-long campaign to expose the Vice President as the leader of the neo-conservative war party inside the Bush Administration, responsible for the disastrous Iraq war and schemes for a string of future, similar senseless military engagements, all aimed at promoting a unilateral American imperium.


Economics:

How Much Investment Does Europe Need for a Recovery?
by Lothar Komp
The ambitious Tremonti Plan for a dramatic increase of infrastructure investments in Europe has nowbeen rudely reduced, so that, for the most part, only a small 'growth plan' remains.The details were publicly presented by the European Commission on Nov. 11.

France-Germany:
Poland Says 'Let Me Be The Third of Your Union'
by Frank Hahn
While talk of a German-French union has been buzzing European capitals, too little attention has been paid to an important initiative, involving the cooperation of the two nations with an eastern European partner, Poland. On Nov. 20, a conference was held in Potsdam, near Berlin, in which French-German-Polish campaign for growth and innovation was discussed, which would surpass the Tremonti Plan for European development.

After Dying Maastricht: New Bretton Woods!
by Rainer Apel
On Nov. 25, the 14 finance ministers of the European Union member governments voted 10-4 not to apply Maastricht Stability Pact sanctions against Germany, the 15th member, for continued violation of the Pact's rule: state deficits cannot exceed 3% of GDP. And in a vote France, the constellation was the same. Afterwards, finance ministers gave assurances that the Pact was ' dead.' But the fact that the Pact is no longer alive, cannot be denied.

Dominican Republic: In The Eye of IMF Hurricane
by Jorge Luis Meléndez Cárdenas
Those poor Heads of State attending the XIII Ibero-American Summit Nov. 14-15 in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, just couldn't escape reality. Not only had their host government hastily taken office less than a month before, after mass protests against International Monetary Fund (IMF) policies drove its predecessor out of office; but the first speaker to address them was Hipólito Mejía, the President of the Dominican Republic,who just three days before had ordered the military out against a national strike against those same policies. This crude repression had left nine dead, but done nothing to stop the strike; its organizers announced more actions to come.


Science and Technology:

'A Brightly Shining Star':
Susan McKenna-Lawlor
There is a small number of women space scientists, fewer yet who run their own space technology company. Marsha Freeman interviewed this extraordinary Irish scientist at a European conference.


International:

Restore Iraq's Constitution
by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.
On Nov. 28, Mr. LaRouche, the second-ranking candidate, in popular financial support, for the 2004 Democratic Presidential nomination, issued the following statement on withdrawal of U.S. forces from the presently, catastrophically deteriorating situation in Iraq.

Philippines Faces 'Total Collapse'
by Michael Billington

'I'm afraid the country is heading for total collapse,' said former Philippines Sen. Francisco 'Kit' Tatad on Nov. 25; and he is not alone in fearing such a catastrophe. Although Presidential elections are scheduled for May, there is mounting concern that military action may intervene—or, if the election proceeds, that the results will not be credible.

Georgia: Soros, Stalin, And a Barrel of Wine
by Roman Bessonov
On Nov. 21, two correspondents of the Russian newspaper Kommersant Daily travelled from Gori, Georgia, the birthplace of Iosif Stalin, to the Georgian capital of Tbilisi—accompanying a column of opposition activists headed by Michael Saakashvili, an ambitious young man with an American education and economic views considered by Georgian businessmen to be 'complete nonsense.'

  • Amb. Richard Miles: Man for Regime Change
    by Rachel Douglas
    The conviction that Washington engineered the overthrow of Georgia's elected President is widely held in the country, Tbilisi sources report, in part because the figure of U.S. Ambassador Richard Miles has been so visible. Flitting between opposition headquarters and government offices, making pronouncements on the quality of the electoral process, Miles and his intimate involvement in the events could not be missed.

Why Is Turkey Being Destabilized?
by Muriel Mirak-Weissbach
The two massive bomb attacks on Nov. 15 and 20, against synagogues and British institutions (the British Consulate and the HSBC bank) in Istanbul, have initiated a process intended to destabilize the strategically located nation of Turkey. No sooner had the smokecleared after the attacks, than the official line went out internationally, that 'al-Qaeda did it.'

Pakistan Extends Olive Branch to India
by Ramtanu Maitra
Pakistani Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali, in his address to the nation on Nov. 23, on completion of the first year of his government, announced a unilateral cease-fire along the Line of Control (LoC) that divides the disputed state of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) between India and Pakistan, beginning with the holy Muslim day of Eid (Nov. 26). India has accepted the proposal, while urging Pakistan to stop crossborder infiltration.

For a New Schiller Era, Not 'A Bit of Schiller'
by Gabriele Liebig
Germany's President Johannes Rau, in an unusual Nov. 12 speech commemorating Friedrich Schiller's birthday, wished for 'a little bit of Schiller' to enrich modern German culture. Helga Zepp-LaRouche and the Schiller Institute, who celebrated the event with beautiful celebrations of the poetry and drama of the 'Poet of Freedom' throughout Europe, were not at all satisfied with Rau's timid formula. Nonetheless, it was noteworthy that the state President became so engaged in the subject of a Schillerzeit (an era of Schiller) through a major speech. A few days later, the president of the Berlin Academy of the Arts, Adolf Muschg, announced in an interview with the Berliner Zeitung, a 'Schiller Year' for 2005, for which Schiller's On the Aesthetical Education of Man is to provide the basis.


National:

LaRouche's Youth Movement Key To Capital Primary Victory
by Marla Minnicino
With six weeks to go before the Jan. 13 Democratic Presidential primary in Washington, D.C., the LaRouche Youth Movement is taking the city by storm. Every day between now and the primary, 50-100 LaRouche youth will hit the streets of the nation's capital, increasing the presence, strength, and visibility of LaRouche's Presidential campaign in the District, both in communities where the lower 80%of income brackets live, and in the 'corridors of power.'

  • LaRouche's D.C. Declaration
    This is Lyndon LaRouche's Nov. 22 declaration of candidacy for the Washington, D.C. Presidential primary, defining the leading principles of his campaign for the capital district's voters' guide.

The Kennedy Assassination, Kennedy's Presidency, and Our Mission
This round-table discussion of the crucial points of history of John F. Kennedy's Presidency, took place on 'The LaRouche Show' Internet radio broadcast on Nov. 22, the 40th anniversary of the fateful shock to the nation and the world, which was the killing of America's 35th President. Participants were Jeffrey and Michele Steinberg, EIR Counterintelligence Editors; EIR White House correspondent William Jones; Technology editor Marsha Freeman; and members of the LaRouche Youth Movement over the Internet. The questions and discussion are excerpted.

  • The American University Speech
    In the June 10, 1965 mold-breaking speech in which he halted U.S. nuclear testing and offered the Soviet Union a peace based on common principles of mankind—only months after the Cuban Missiles Crisis—President Kennedy included these statements.

United States News Digest

EIW Told You First: Memos Theft Is 'Electronic Watergate'

In issue #47, EIW's InDepth reported, "Plumbers Under Investigation in Cheney-Gate," referring to a series of reported thefts of confidential Senate memos, that Vice President Dick Cheney's agents were using to accuse the Democratic Senators of "partisanship," and thereby shutting down crucial investigations. But last week, one such "Memo-Gate" blew up in the face of Senate Judiciary chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and the GOP, when Hatch was forced to reveal that his own staff member had engaged in file-theft by computer hacking. The investigation and discovery of the computer-file theft from the Judiciary Committee sets a precedent for the far more important case of file theft—the stealing of a staff memo from the staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

After Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats charged that Democratic staff memos, leaked to the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Times, had been stolen from secured computer systems, committee chairman Hatch labelled the complaints as theatrics, used to divert attention from the content of the memos. "Whenever they get their hands caught in the cookie jar, then they start to attack the process," Hatch fumed.

But, on Nov. 28, the Washington Times—one of the newspapers that allegedly received the pilfered memos—reported that Senator Hatch announced that one of his own staffers was put on leave in connection with hacking into the Democratic staff files on the Judiciary Committee computer. In addition, Hatch also said that a former Judiciary Committee staffer might be involved in the leak.

Then, also on Nov. 28, the Washington Post identified Miguel Miranda, who left the Judiciary Committee staff in February, to become a senior aide to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, as someone who was circulating the pilfered Democratic memos. Miranda denies having physically been in possession of the memos, but he was quoted in mid-November, in the Washington Times and elsewhere, as having been circulating the memos and promoting them to discredit the Democrats for blocking Bush's judicial nominees.

Gingrich Economics Behind Medicare Looting

He's ba-a-a-ck! The gangrenous Newt Gingrich that you thought we'd gotten rid of back in the 1990s, has returned in the form of the newly passed Medicare bill (see next item), which represents the first step in the dismantling of assured medical insurance for the elderly in the U.S.A.

Gingrich economics, you'll recall, was a contract, a contract that gave you the "freedom" to starve, go without medical care, and go without a job. In that contract, the government refused to take responsibility for the general welfare, and you, the citizen, had to pay, and compete, for everything you got. That was the policy which Medicare, established by President Lyndon Johnson in 1965, was intended to put an end to, in order to provide security for senior citizens.

With the passage of the Medicare bill—for which the Democrats presented no reasonable alternative—the intent of the original Medicare legislation has been reversed. What has been passed is a gigantic set of subsidies for pharmaceutical companies and HMOs, to help them "cherry-pick" the most lucrative clients among the elderly, and then dump the others on an increasingly insolvent Federal government.

The entire approach should be dumped, in favor of Lyndon LaRouche's call for opening public hospitals, and restoring the Hill-Burton approach of guaranteed health care for all. Anyone who voted for this Medicare bill is a Gingrichite, whether they like the name or not. And the only alternative is the one provided by LaRouche.

Medicare Bill Sent to Bush

The drive to privatize Medicare took a giant step forward, on Nov. 25, when the Senate voted 55 to 44 for the Medicare reform package.

The bill was muscled through the House, in the early morning hours of Nov. 22, when House leaders held open the vote on the conference report on the bill for three hours, instead of the customary 15 minutes, while votes were changed by crude arm-twisting and deal-making by the majority. This intervention was made necessary because some 20 conservative Republicans had voted against the bill as a "massive expansion" of the Medicare program, with its $400 billion prescription-drug program. So, for more than one hour, during which the vote should have been closed, the bill was actually losing by a vote of 218 to 216. House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill) and Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) had no intention of closing the vote until they succeeded in getting some of those recalcitrant Republicans to change their votes, which they finally succeeded in doing at about 6:00 the next morning.

Not surprisingly, Democrats were enraged. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D- Calif) declared, "We won it fair and square and they stole it by hook and crook." Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md) added, "We ... prevailed on this vote. Arms have been twisted and votes changed."

Senate Democrats were ready to sit back and let the bill sail through without a fight, but the behavior of the House GOP leadership caused Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass) to launch a filibuster against it, even though it was not clear he had the votes to stop the bill. Kennedy said, on ABC's "This Week," on Nov. 23, that he had told Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn) he would drop his filibuster if the House took a re-vote on the bill. "In the House of Representatives," Kennedy said, "with this program that is supposed to be so good, why did they have to effectively abuse the rules?"

Kennedy's filibuster was defeated on Nov. 24, by a vote of 70 to 29, ten more votes than needed, but other Senators promised to bring the fight "to the ballot box." Besides subsidizing pharmaceutical companies to the tune of $139 billion over 10 years, the bill includes a 45% cap on the level of Federal revenues that can be used to fund Medicare. When Medicare spending reaches that arbitrary level, the program will be declared "insolvent," the budget will be capped, services will be cut and premiums will be increased. With tax revenues generally declining, it is likely that the program will exceed that limit within a few years, or less, of the bill's enactment.

Energy Bill Stopped in Senate

Seven Senate Republicans joined with 32 Democrats and one Independent on Nov. 21 to kill the Administration's Energy bill, by sustaining, by a 57 to 40 vote, a filibuster against the conference report (joint House/Senate version of the bill). Opponents of the bill complained about many of its provisions, but ignored the worst aspect—the repeal of the New Deal-era Public Utility Holding Company Act. Under the PUHCA, electric utilities were able to provide highly reliable, affordable, and universal electricity service, when regulatory agencies forced them to. The repeal of PUHCA turns electricity grids over to the "free market" where companies will decide to build additional capacity when it is "profitable" for them to do so. The bill also includes $20 billion in tax incentives to coal, oil, and natural gas producers, many of which reportedly helped Vice President Dick Cheney write the bill.

The provision that drew the most opposition, however, was the exemption put into the bill to exempt producers of the gasoline additive MTBE from liability for ground-water contamination. It drew together an unusual coalition of New York Democrats and New Hampshire Republicans to lead the filibuster against the bill. Senator Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) called the MTBE provision "a disgrace," because it "chose the large oil companies over homeowners." Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) charged that the bill was "almost a gratuitous attack on the Northeast," because MTBE was mandated for use in the northeastern part of the country, where it is causing many problems, but is manufactured in Texas, which stands to benefit from the provision.

However, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, increasingly looked upon as the Senator in Cheney's pocket, used a parliamentary maneuver that allows him to recall a bill for further consideration by voting against it, in the hope that the two more votes for the energy bill could be found. But, the only way that this might happen, is if changes are made to the bill, to placate some of its opponents. Then, that would, in turn, require that the new bill go back to the House, which passed it on Nov. 18, to vote on the revisions. Frist's success is doubtful; Democratic Sen. Schumer vowed that the opponents of the bill "are going to stick together as a coalition. We are going to do our best [to see] that no one is picked off by giving one little thing, because this is a bad policy."

The earlier House action on the bill was accompanied by the GOP thuggery which has come to characterize House proceedings under House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.). The leadership brought the conference report to the House floor only some 10 hours after the conference negotiators finished work on it, instead of waiting the three days called for by the House rules. Democrats charged that the Republicans negotiated the bill in secret, in exactly the same way that Vice President Cheney's 2001 energy task force functioned. "This is not just an outrageous abuse of the process," charged Rep. Martin Frost (D-Texas), "it is an insulting attempt to pull the wool over the eyes of the American people." But the bill passed the House by a vote of 246 to 180, with that at least two dozen Democrats joined the Republicans.

CFR 'President Emeritus' Proposes Partitioning Iraq

Leslie Gelb, a former editor of the New York Times, proposes in a Nov. 25 Times op-ed, a "Three-State Solution" for Iraq, which is not much different from the most fanatical neo-con proposals to pull out of the Sunni Triangle and "flatten it." Gelb doesn't go quite that far in print, but does call for dividing the country into Kurdish, Shi'ite, and Sunni sections (this is "natural," he says, claiming that a unified state was forced on them by the British), and then pulling all U.S. economic aid and military forces out of the Sunni Triangle, which would free U.S. troops "from fighting a costly war they may not win." Then, American officials could "wait for the troublesome and domineering Sunnis, without oil or oil revenues, to moderate their ambitions or suffer the consequences."

Gelb, who is now president emeritus of the New York Council on Foreign Relations, writes that President Bush's new strategy of transferring power quickly to the Iraqis, and the alternatives posed by his critics, all "share a fundamental flaw," which is that they commit the U.S. "to a unified Iraq, artificially and fatefully made whole from three distinct ethnic and sectarian communities."

"Central Iraq is largely without oil," writes Gelb, "and without oil revenues, the Sunnis would soon become poor cousins." Of course, liberal imperialist Gelb knows that "without power and money, the Sunnis may cause trouble," so, as his mentors in London did with India and Pakistan, he says we must help the Kurds and the Shi'ites within central Iraq move north or south. "This would be a messy and dangerous enterprise, but the U.S. would and should pay for the population movements and protect the process with force.... Washington would have to be very hard-headed and hard-hearted, to engineer this break-up, But such a course is manageable, even necessary."

GOP To Ram Through Omnibus Appropriations Bill

The long-rumored omnibus appropriations bill finally emerged on Nov. 25, when House Appropriations Committee chairman Bill Young (R-Fla) filed a conference report merging the seven remaining appropriations bills into one. As has become characteristic of the legislative process in the 108th Congress, the conference report includes changes in language and provisions that were not voted on by either the House or the Senate, and has removed provisions that were widely supported in both chambers.

Democrats denounced the package when it was released, and charged that it was made up of backroom deals that were made to placate the White House. Rep. David Obey (D-Wisc), ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee noted that, rather than the engaging the Constitutional legislative process, conference negotiators "disregarded the will of members of both Houses, went into a back room, and decided on their own, without consulting anybody but themselves and the White House, that they were going to cut the cards a different way and deal a new hand to everyone."

Two major changes have infuriated both the House and the Senate: the media ownership limits ruling; and changes in the labor rules that would eliminate overtime pay for some 8 million workers.

The conference report raised the media ownership limit from 35% to 39%, even though the Senate had added—and passed—an amendment to the Commerce, Justice, State Department, and Judiciary appropriations bill setting the limit at 35%, in response to the June ruling of the Federal Communications Commission raising the limit to 45%. The House had also approved the 35% media ownership limit, on a motion to instruct the conferees on the bill.

Opposition has also been provoked over the removal of language in the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Departments funding bill that prohibits the Labor Department from implementing new overtime work rules that would have the effect of making up to 8 million workers, who are currently eligible for overtime pay, ineligible. Senator Arlen Specter (R-Penn), the chairman of the Labor-HHS appropriations subcommittee, practically admitted, in a floor speech, that he was blackmailed into agreeing to remove the prohibition in the face of a threat to cut $4 billion out of the bill.

The House and Senate return from their Thanksgiving break on Dec. 8-9, to take up the omnibus bill, but, at this point, it is anybody's guess as to whether or not it can be passed in its present form.

Ibero-American News Digest

'LaRouche: Mexico's Ally Against Cheney and the IMF'

Under that banner, U.S. Presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche's message on how to defeat the financial predators out to destroy Mexico, was delivered to giant anti-privatization demonstrations held in Monterrey and Mexico City on Nov. 27. Trade union and Congressional leaders organized the simultaneous marches across the country in support of Mexico's Constitutional prohibition against energy privatization, as a nationalist show of force. Some 130,000 turned out in Mexico City, despite torrential rain, with thousands joining them with similar rallies in other cities around the country.

A contingent of the LaRouche Youth Movement (LYM) participated in the Mexico City march, and one organizer succeeded in reaching the podium, and the microphone, whereupon he told the crowd of almost 130,000 people that the crisis Mexico is undergoing, is just the result of the collapse of the international financial system, and that what is needed, is to replace it with a new one, such as that proposed by the U.S. Presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche.

In the northern city of Monterrey, where LaRouche's local leader, Benjamin Castro, was invited to participate in the march organizing committee, LaRouche's ideas shaped the march from the beginning. The slogan, "Sovereignty, Yes; No to the Structural Reforms of the IMF," was adopted as the overall theme of the march. The banner which created the biggest impact, however, and which stole the attention of the local newspapers and TV news, was the one carried by the LYM contingent here: "LaRouche: The Ally of Mexico Against Cheney and the IMF!"

Castro read, in full, a message sent by LaRouche to the more than 7,000 people attending the rally. "The crisis that you in Mexico are facing today, is a result of the destructive disintegration of the IMF-led international financial system," LaRouche told them. "As the second leading Democratic pre-candidate for the Presidency of the United States, I have repeatedly warned about the danger of this systemic financial crisis, and how to solve it, as I also alerted the world that the pro-Synarchist bankers today controlling the Bush Administration, would launch wars of aggression around the world to impose their fascist globalist order....

"Either we turn the United States around, or Mexico won't exist, the Americas won't exist, and Europe won't exist. This is the choice: either the crisis is solved our way, or there will be no future.

"It is therefore of importance to publicly state opposition to these IMF policies, as you are doing today. Then we have a chance to win. So I support your efforts to defend your nation from destruction at the hands of the IMF, and look forward to coordinating efforts to solve the broader crisis I have identified," LaRouche wrote.

When one group attempted to stop Castro from reading LaRouche's message, others spontaneously began applauding and shouting "Viva LaRouche!"

Markets Trash Mexican Peso, as PRI Rebels Against IMF Policies

On the eve of the Nov. 27 national march against energy privatization, an extraordinary late-night meeting of the PRI Congressional faction was convoked, to discuss the urgent need to remove Elba Esther Gordillo as head of the PRI Congressional forces, because of her insistence that the PRI support Wall Street's demand that a minimum tax of 10% be slapped on all basic necessities, so that Mexico's poorest help pay the debt, too. Over 90 PRI Congressmen supported her ouster.

Gordillo had announced with great fanfare on Nov. 18 that the PRI delegation as a whole supported a proposal to impose a 10% tax on producers, importers, and intermediaries. The rebellion against that was so tumultuous, that PRI national chief Roberto Madrazo (no nationalist), joined those charging that Gordillo's 10% proposal had been drafted by Fox's Treasury Ministry.

At that point, the motion to remove her as PRI faction chief began—and so did a run on the peso, which drove the peso down to a record low. Spokesmen for various banks—ING Bank, BBVA Bancomer, Bank Boston Mexico, among them—declared straight out that "the lack of political agreement on the pending reforms [is] being penalized by investors." The bankers promised a "more drastic" response, should the PRI continue to hold the line against the reforms. Central Bank governor Guillermo Ortiz chimed in also that only if the PRI buckles to Wall Street, would "the volatility" of the markets stop.

Rio Group Begs for Reform of the Unreformable IMF System

The Rio Group, which includes the leading Ibero-American and Caribbean nations, announced at the Ibero-American Heads of State Summit in Bolivia on Nov. 15, that they are requesting an urgent meeting with IMF and World Bank representatives, to tell them: "Latin America cannot withstand the financial asphyxiation any longer, and we need to build—together, not unilaterally, together, and without falling into populisms, in an innovative way—some financial architecture which gives a respite, in order to increase public investment."

That is how Peru's President Alejandro Toledo, speaking on behalf of the Rio Group (Peru is the current chair), summarized the request, after meeting with UN Secretary General Kofi Annan during the summit. Annan reportedly agreed to press for the proposed meeting. Mexico's Vicente Fox and Brazil's Lula da Silva are charged with presenting a document outlining this proposal at the next meeting of the Group of Eight industrial nations.

The proposal to negotiate a softening of IMF conditions is hardly daring, and can't work, but it reflects just how desperate the debtors are. The overthrow of the Bolivian government was the writing on the wall for every government in the region; they know it is simply no longer possible to continue to stay in power, with current policies.

The Rio Group gave four parameters for proposed changes in the global "financial architecture": the creation of a mechanism to finance the construction of highways to integrate the region; that capital investment be excluded from current expenditures, when fiscal deficits are calculated; that debt service to the Paris Club be "recycled"; and that attention be paid to meeting to social expectations, in order "to guarantee democratic governability."

Miami FTAA Trade Ministers Meeting Flops

Trade Ministers of the Americas attending the latest round of negotiations on the Free Trade Accord of the Americas (FTAA) in Miami Nov. 16-21, finally agreed to disagree on the scope of the FTAA, declared their negotiations as success, packed up their bags, and left Miami a day early, on Nov. 20. The face-saving "compromise" reached, dubbed a "FTAA light" by the Ibero-Americans, was the only way the United States could get Brazil, which co-chairs the FTAA negotiations with the United States, to sign anything. The agreement allows nations to pick and chose which clauses of the FTAA that they would accept, and which not. Everyone knows the FTAA is now a dead duck, but it was considered too politically dangerous for the free-trade agenda, to have the Miami negotiations end without even a piece of paper to show for it, which is what happened with the World Trade Organization (WTO) talks in Cancun, Mexico in October.

U.S. Treasury Champions Dollarization for Dominican Republic

The Wall Street Journal's Americas column editor, Mary Anastasia O'Grady, trumpeted Oct. 31, that U.S. Undersecretary of Treasury for International Affairs John Taylor says the U.S. Treasury would support a move by the Dominican Republic to drop its peso, and adopt the dollar as its currency, as have Ecuador and El Salvador.

On Nov. 22, Taylor paid a 24-hour visit to the Dominican Republic, in which he met with the President, the Finance Secretary, the Central Bank Governor, the Industry and Commerce Minister, leaders of three political parties, and prominent businessmen. His visit coincided with an "important meeting" to evaluate whether the country should dollarize, one newspaper reported. Finance Secretary Rafael Calderon was reported to have admitted that dollarization was on the agenda, only to claim later, disingenuously, that he had been misquoted by the newspapers. He did not retract, however, his statement that the country would sign a new accord with the IMF, "in coming days."

According to El Nacional, some say that dollarization could occur immediately, if the Dominican Republic received a $4 billion loan, because the peso is so devalued. (It has lost 40% of its value since September. 2002). Since the Constitution specifies that the country have a sovereign currency, one scheme being discussed is for the Central Bank to simply suspend monetary emission, leaving the dollar, de facto, as the only currency in town.

There is strident opposition within the Dominican Republic to giving up its sovereignty, and becoming, as one columnist put it, "another Commonwealth," like Puerto Rico. One columnist mocked the proposed move as equivalent to killing the dog, to get rid of the rabies. Others charge that the government let the peso devalue, unchecked, in order to create acceptance for the dollarization plan. Dollarization won't solve the underlying economic problems, but it makes it easier to buy up the country, dirt cheap, they point out.

Argentina Is Paying Its IMF Debt

Argentina is not only paying interest on debt it owes the IMF, but also principle, making the Fund a "privileged" creditor: i.e., one who gets paid. By September of 2004, the Kirchner government has committed itself to paying $800 million in principle, in addition to interest payments that come due in February, May, and August. The first $300 million payment was made in September, using Central Bank reserves. Apparently this arrangement is included in the agreement signed with the Fund in September, the duration of which is actually only 12 months, and not the three years reported in official dispatches. At the end of the first year, the government is expected to sit down again with the IMF and negotiate new goals for 2004 and 2005, of which the primary budget surplus will obviously be one.

Vulture Funds Prepare to Confiscate Argentine Assets

New York Federal Judge Thomas Griesa has ruled that the Argentine government, and creditors holding bonds on which the government defaulted in 2001, must begin talks to identify which Argentine assets can be seized to compensate those creditors, most of whom are in reality the infamous vulture funds. In October, Griesa had given Argentina until Jan. 30, to get its debt restructuring plan moving. Since bondholders say that they won't accept the plan, because the its 75% writedown of their debt is "unfair," it is unlikely that it will get underway by the January deadline.

During the "discovery" process that Griesa is now authorizing, the vultures will indicate their desired timetable, as well as the scope of the search for assets. Argentina will have a chance to counter this, but the stage appears set to let the vultures move in for the kill. Argentine lawyers have already conceded that only government assets based in the U.S. and used for commercial purposes, may be sought out. But the financial predators have other ideas. A lawyer for one of the bondholders warned, "It's a little broader than this. If Argentina owns or controls a company that does business in the United States ... their assets are fair game." If by January, nothing is moving on the restructuring plan, it's clear there will be a wholesale vulture assault on Argentine assets, wherever they may be.

Brazil-Chinese 'Strategic Partnership' Strengthens

After meeting Brazilian Defense Minister Jose Viegas Filho during his visit to China, Chinese Vice President Zeng Qinghong spoke of the great importance China attaches to developing its strategic partnership with Brazil, which benefits not only the two peoples, but also regional and world peace, Xinhuanet reported on Nov. 25. Zeng praised the aerospace cooperation between the two countries (which have a joint satellite program), and said the cooperation in this field provided a sound basis for further cooperation in other high-tech fields.

Chinese Vice Minister of Agriculture, Faan Xiaojian, meanwhile, visited Brazil from Nov. 23-26. He signed a memorandum of understanding with his Brazilian counterpart, Jose Amauri Dimarzio, outlining cooperation on everything from agricultural biotechnology, to food processing. The Vice Ministers announced that a joint committee on agricultural cooperation will be formed, to coordinate these efforts.

China is now the second-largest export market for Brazilian goods.

Chavez Waves Banner of Che Guevara

The lunatic Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez, invoked the name of Che Guevara and called for an Ibero-American-wide "revolution" as "the only path" for the continent, during the closing session of the Nov. 15-16 "alternative" conference to the Ibero-American Heads of State meeting, taking place simultaneously. The "alternative" conference was called by Bolivia's narco-insurgent Evo Morales in Santa Cruz. Chavez shared the podium with Morales, and with Cuban Vice President Carlos Lage. Speaking to 10,000 peasants, after purported rites to the "Incan gods" were performed, the three called for a continental insurgency to defeat neo-liberalism and "U.S. imperialism." Morales said that he, Chavez, and Lage had decided to organize for "the coming battles in the region," and proceeded to proclaim Chavez and Fidel Castro as the "commanders of the liberating forces of America."

These ravings are in contrast to the message delivered to Evo Morales by Brazilian President Lula da Silva, who urged Morales to be patient, and give the new Bolivian government of Carlos Mesa time to address Bolivia's pressing needs.

Lage made brief remarks hailing Bolivia's role in "digging neo-liberalism's grave." But the Cuban Vice President was far surpassed by Chavez, who, in his rambling three-hour speech, announced that "Latin America has raised the revolutionary banner." Chavez quoted that icon of guerrilla movements, Che Guevara, as to how "the present is the battle, but the future belongs to us." "There is only one path to follow in Latin America," he said, pointing to the Venezuelan "revolution" as the model "that the people must follow." Two hundred years ago, he said, "the revolutionary wave that liberated America began in Caracas [with Simon Bolivar]. Today, ... a new wave has been born in Caracas." In Bolivia, he concluded, "the land where Che Guevara took his last breath, Latin America has arisen once again, and let us see whether anyone can stop it." (Guevara was killed in Bolivia in 1967.)

Peruvian President Insists on Pushing Soros Line

On Nov. 23, Peru's President Alejandro Toledo issued a public "apology" for the 70,000 deaths which allegedly occurred in the country during the 20-year rampage against the population by the narcoterrorist Shining Path. But instead of condemning the narcoterrorists, Toledo targeted the armed forces, echoing the lying report published three months ago by the George Soros-financed "Truth and Reconciliation Commission." Toledo, whose Presidency is hanging by a thread, vowed to punish Army officers who, he said, had committed "painful excesses," in the war against Shining Path, and he promised to incorporate aspects of the Commission's fabricated findings in school textbooks.

Western European News Digest

France and Germany Succeed in Blocking Maastrict Sanctions

France and Germany prevailed in blocking Maastricht sanctions at the European Union Finance Ministers meeting in Brussels Nov. 24, when only four of 15 EU ministers voted for the sanctions against the two countries. France and Germany have exceeded the budget deficit limits imposed by the Stability Pact. The session confirmed the pro-Maastricht view of the four Eurozone Finance Ministers of Spain, Austria, Finland, and the Netherlands.

The Finance Ministers of Sweden, Denmark, and Britain cannot vote on internal Eurozone matters, even if they oppose the French and Germans, because they are outside of the zone.

Behind the scenes, the EU Commission, which otherwise is against the Franco-German line, was pulled into a "neutral" position, in a deal arranged through Italy's Finance Minister Giulio Tremonti, in which sanctions are off for an entire year, in "return" for a promise from France and Germany to reduce deficits in 2004 and 2005, by about 0.5% GDP, instead of the 0.8 to 1.0% originally demanded.

Nominally, the Maastricht Pact is still in effect, but, in the words of Deputy Finance Minister of Sweden Gunnar Lund, "It is seriously amputated, it is almost dead, but not dead yet."

As far as France and Germany are concerned, they certainly can be satisfied for the moment, but they are in urgent need of a real economic policy if they are to prevent worse things ahead.

Schroeder Affirms Vision of Franco-German Alliance

Interviewed in Der Spiegel Nov. 24, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, asked whether talk of a Franco-German union was a realistic design or pure nonsense, answered, "One should not call it nonsense. It is, indeed, an attractive vision that will not become real in the near future, but why not think about such steps? Isn't it wonderful that people think about bringing Germany and France closer to each other—rather than the opposite?... We have always wanted the process of European integration, and if Germany and France march forward again, it can only do good. This process must be kept open for everyone, naturally."

Does Bush Reject Rumsfeld's View of 'Old Europe'?

U.S. Commerce Undersecretary Grant Aldonas, speaking in Brussels, said that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, in referring to "old Europe," was "missing the point of the dynamics that are unfolding in Europe right now," and that, "that is not the way I look at the world, and it is certainly not the way the President looks at the world." He added that "there is no 'new' Europe or 'old' Europe; there is just Europe."

UPI says that Aldonas is the first leading official to reject the Rumsfeld statement. Aldonas's remarks were report by Gareth Harding in the Nov. 25 Washington Times.

German Chancellor Sees 'Privatized' Networks in Turkey Terror Attacks

In an interview with the Der Spiegel weekly, which was taped during his return flight to Germany on Nov. 20, and published in the Nov. 24 edition of the magazine, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder characterized the latest Turkish terror attacks as a "new threat of privatized violence" which "must be decisively countered by the community of nations.... I fear it will be a long battle. It has to be answered with the use of force, but not exclusively with force."

Schroeder came back to the new terrorism issue later in the interview, saying: "it is not war in the classical sense, which is a conflict between states, but it is attacks by privatized violence—organized crime, that is."

Regarding the use of non-military means in the fight against terrorism, Schroeder said, "what is important for us is the commitment not to let the dialogue with non-fundamentalist Islam break off, and that we learn to differentiate between those who support terrorism and those who want to fight it together with us."

Turkish Editor: Al-Qaeda 'Scapegoated' in Turkish Attacks

The German left-wing daily Junge Welt published an interview Nov. 24 with Mehmet Ceviker, foreign affairs editor of the leftist Turkish weekly Aydinlink, in which Ceviker said al-Qaeda only served as a scapegoat for others, who carried out the recent terrorist attacks in Turkey.

The situation in Turkey is rather complicated, Ceviker said, because an Islamist government tried to push through a parliamentary decision in favor of Turkey supporting the U.S. in Iraq, but it was the military which overturned that decision.

"This left Washington quite embarrassed. Because of that, one might interpret the recent terrorist attacks as a warning also to Turkey—and other states skeptical about the war in Iraq, for example, France and Germany."

Al-Qaeda is nothing, Ceviker says, it did not even exist before 9-11, adding that earlier Turkish groups, such as IDBA-C is a co-product of earlier Turkish and the CIA anti-insurgency operations in Turkey of the 1990s.

As far as the Turkish military is concerned, Ceviker accuses the German left of "prejudice," in not recognizing that, "after the collapse of the Soviet Union, new constellations came into being. Already, in 1991, the Turkish army watched the Gulf War very critically. Even then, it was clear that the U.S.A. wanted to use control of Iraq to redraw the borders in the Middle East, including the establishment of a Kurdish state. That, however, would also threaten the existence of Turkey, and that is why the Turkish military opposes it," Ceviker explained. But, he adds, this is "not just in theory. In 1996, Turkish and Iraqi security forces jointly moved against U.S. agents in northern Iraq, who then had to be flown out by the U.S.A."

Schroeder Offers Civilian Assistance to Iraqi Government

In an interview published in the Nov. 24 Der Spiegel weekly, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said that he does not rejoice over the U.S. problems in Iraq, or take an "I-told-you-so" attitude. "It would be completely wrong to have an attitude like that. I have no interest in throwing anything in anyone's face.... It is in Germany's and Europe's interest that the process of democratization and reconstruction in Iraq succeeds. We are ready to help in that."

Germany would, however, not take part in any military mission in Iraq, he reaffirmed: "We haven't been asked to send soldiers, and we do not have any intention of making an offer.... We can talk about doing even more for the civilian efforts to rebuild Iraq, but there won't be any military deployment."

Concerning Iraqi debts, Schroeder said that the Club of Paris had to discuss a long-term, generous rescheduling, resembling the solution found for Germany's debts 50 year ago. "Germany will certainly be helpful on the issue. We have not forgotten what helped Germany after World War II. Without the generous rescheduling of Germany's foreign debts, thanks to efforts led by the Americans, there would not have been any reconstruction or the economic miracle."

Iraq should be master of its own resources and on the basis of that, the money generated could be used for reconstruction, Schroeder said, not ruling out that partial debt forgiveness could be considered, in addition.

Europe Demands Israel Label Exports From Occupied Territories

Following the European Union threat to slap import duties on Israeli imports, Israel has agreed to label all products made in the occupied territories, Ha'aretz reported Nov. 26.

The EU has conducted no less the 4,000 investigations of Israeli companies exporting goods under preferential tariff agreements, which goods were in fact made in the occupied territories.

Israeli Industry and Trade Minister Ehud Olmert announced that all goods will have a label of origin. The labels will not say "Made in Occupied Territories," but will give the city of origin. Thus, products made in Ariel, which is in the Occupied Territories will have a label saying "Made in Ariel" and be subject to import duties. This labelling also applies to goods made inside Israel itself. Thus, products made in Tel Aviv, which is inside Israel, will have a label saying "Made in Tel Aviv."

This absurdity is a compromise, since the Sharon government did not want "Made in Occupied Territories" or even worse, "Made in Palestinian National Authority Territory," which means acknowledging reality. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon approved the compromise, which has led to a uproar by right wingers in the government. Sharon had no choice since the EU is Israel's largest export market.

Blair Kicks Up New Storm in Parliament After 'Queen's Speech'

Some 120 Labour Parliamentarians have signed a motion criticizing Prime Minister Tony Blair for his proposals to sharply increase university fees next year, and other proposals for imposing stricter measures with regard to asylum seekers, both of which issues were presented in the annual "Queen's Speech" to Parliament, as reported in major British press Nov. 27.

The stricter measures regarding asylum seekers, include taking away the children of "failed" asylum seekers, who refuse to return to their home countries. The measure is strongly criticized by opposition Liberal Democrats and Tories.

The 120 Labour "rebels" include five former Cabinet Ministers: Robin Cook, a strong critic of the Iraq war; Clare Short, who left Blair's Cabinet after the war was launched; and three others. One commentary report that Labour MPs have rebelled more against the Blair government, than the MPs of any ruling government since 1945.

A high-level British policy-maker told EIR that the Members of Parliament are not making any distinction between Blair's domestic and foreign policy: MPs who oppose Blair's Iraq policy and his all-out support for U.S. President George W. Bush, are also voting against Blair's domestic agenda.

Other contentious measures proposed in the Queen's Speech include a proposal to introduce "high-tech" ID cards within a decade, and a "Patriot Act"-style law increasing police powers in response to terror attacks.

Blair Promotes Wind Power

Britain's Prime Minister participated in the opening ceremony of an offshore wind farm in North Wales on Nov. 21, taking the opportunity to praise an alliance between environmentalist Greenpeace and a British energy supplier,

According to a press release issued Nov. 24 by ICwales.co.uk, Blair gave the opening address at the switch-on of the wind farm Nov. 21. The wind farm will produce 60 megawatts of power—when all the turbines are working, and the wind is blowing. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds noted that the area's bird populations would have to be carefully monitored to ensure that they don't decline after the switch-on.

Russia and the CIS

Russian General Staff Officer Warns vs. U.S. Mini-Nukes

General-Colonel Yuri Baluyevsky, the First Deputy Chief of Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, voiced strong concern over U.S. plans to develop low-yield nuclear weapons, saying Moscow might be forced to review its own nuclear doctrine. General Baluyevsky told reporters on Nov. 26 that the Pentagon's plans to develop such weapons would be destabilizing.

A defense bill signed by President George W. Bush two days earlier lifted a decade-old ban on mini-nuke research and authorized $15 million for continued research into nuclear weapons capable of destroying underground bunkers. "That causes us concern," Baluyevsky said. "Should we somehow review our nuclear strategy? Yes, I believe we should."

Putin on Georgia Crisis: Warns Against 'Pressure' for Regime Change

Opening a Cabinet meeting Nov. 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke out on several aspects of the political crisis in Georgia and the resignation of President Eduard Shevardnadze the previous day. Putin pointed to the economic crisis (which resulted from Georgia's toeing the IMF line, and allowing the privatization and shutdown of core industries, as well as from the rampages of criminal gangs) as the cause of the political one. Also of note, are his reference to Georgia's geopolitical situation (having been cultivated by circles in the U.S., as an asset on Russia's southern flank), and his warning against people who resort to various methods of pressure to achieve such regime changes. Here are Putin's words about the events in Georgia:

"We see nothing unexpected in these events. The change of regime in the republic is the logical result of a series of foreign and domestic policy and state economic policy mistakes made by the former authorities.

"The country's foreign policy failed to take into account the deep cultural and historical roots of the Georgian people and the current geopolitical situation. Domestic policy, instead of strengthening democratic institutions and the foundations of Georgian statehood, gave us a display of futile political lobbying by various political forces in the country, and economic policy was reduced to no more than a battle for humiliating handouts from abroad. Georgia's foreign debt rose to $2 billion, approximately 60% of the country's GDP and the country was essentially in a state of default.

"Over recent years around 1 million people have left Georgia, many of them settling in Russia. Georgian specialists themselves estimate that the sum total of currency inflow from Russia, both official and shadow flows, comes to around $2 billion a year—far more than the total foreign aid the country receives. We, of course, are aware here of the difficult situation the Georgian population is in and of the low incomes there. I think the problem is not just that people are living badly, but they can no longer even see any light at end of this long tunnel. Corruption has taken more and more of a stranglehold on the country's political and economic life.

"Relations between Georgia and Russia have not always been simple over recent years. We have each had our share of complaints about the other and Russia certainly had plenty of questions for the former Georgian authorities. But what is very clear, and what I want to emphasize, is that Eduard Amvrosievich Shevardnadze was never a dictator. This is why we feel a legitimate concern at the way pressure was used to help bring about this changeover. Those who organize such actions and those who encourage them take upon themselves an enormous responsibility toward their people, in this case the Georgian people, with whom Russia has a tradition of centuries-old fraternal relations. We hope that in the future, legitimately elected authorities in Georgia will do all within their power to restore these traditions of friendship between our countries. This can be the only objective of Russia's policy towards Georgia."

Shevardnadze: U.S. Engineered His Downfall

In a Nov. 27 interview to the London Daily Telegraph, former Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze directly accused the United States, particularly Ambassador Richard Miles, of having organized his downfall. Shevardnadze expressed a sense of deep betrayal, by Miles, as well as the opposition figures backed by American financing. He said he couldn't understand why they abandoned him, after he had backed U.S. foreign policy, including on Iraq. "When they needed my support on Iraq, I gave it," he said. "What happened here, this I cannot explain."

Regarding Miles, he said: "In relation to the Ambassador, I have serious ... suspicions that this situation that happened in Tbilisi is an exact repetition of the events in Yugoslavia. Someone had a plan." This refers to the fact that Miles had been in Belgrade at the time of the overthrow of Milosevic. Opposition leader Mikhail Saakashvili has already said that he went to Belgrade earlier this year to study the events there three years ago and wanted to repeat them in Georgia.

Shevardnadze criticized the storming of the Parliament as wrong. He said he decided to resign, to avoid bloodshed. "Everything was ready—the army, the internal troops, the police—but I looked at the huge crowd," he said. "I saw in their faces it would be impossible to calm them, that they were not afraid of anything, and I knew there would be bloodshed. That morning I told my colleagues the only way out was my resignation."

Shevardnadze recalled his role as Soviet Foreign Minister, in rescuing the world from the Cold War. "If the Cold War had not stopped there would have been a Third World War," he said. "We rescued the world. I'm not saying that I did it alone but I played one of the most important roles. There were 40,000 Soviet tanks in Europe and hundreds of thousands of guns. Within 24 hours they could have been on the Atlantic coast [of France] but we didn't do that, even when the hotheads wanted to use force in Berlin and crush Solidarity in Poland," he said.

Ukrainian Opposition Figures Cite Georgia Model

Ukrainian opposition leaders Victor Yushchenko, Alexander Moroz, and Pyotr Symonenko have issued a warning to President Kuchma, European press reported Nov. 26. He was told to heed the lessons of Georgia. Moroz said he did not exclude that a similar scenario could unfold in Ukraine during next year's Presidential elections. They say Kuchma cannot qualify as a candidate again.

Caucasus Spiritual Leaders Meet Russian Church Patriarch

Armenian Catholicos Garegin II, Patriarch-Catholicos of Georgia Ilya II, and spiritual leader of the Muslims of the Caucasus Sheikh-ul-islam Allahshukur Pasha-Zade held talks in Moscow with Patriarch Aleksi II of the Russian Orthodox Church, to seek ways of stabilizing the Caucasus, especially Georgia. A document was to be issued, Itar-TASS reported on Nov. 26.

Mideast News Digest

U.S. Cuts $250-300 Million from Israel Loan Guarantees

Between $250-300 million is being cut from U.S. loan guarantees to Israel, the Bush Administration announced Nov. 25. The announcement followed a meeting between National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's special assistant Dov Weisglass, in Washington, which was also attended by the Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Danny Ayalon. The penalties are being imposed because of money spent by Israel on West Bank settlements, and for sections of the apartheid wall that encroach on Palestinian land. But this amount is a pittance of the $9 billion given in the loan guarantees.

Germany Refuses To Build Mores Subs for Israel

The German government refused a request by Israel for the purchase of two Dolphin-class diesel submarines, the Jerusalem Post confirmed Nov. 26. Germany had built three such submarines and delivered them to Israel, but after learning that Israel had armed these submarines with nuclear-tipped cruise missiles, Germany reportedly refused a request for more. This was reported in the German Focus magazine.

Although Juergen Rohweder, spokesman for the German submarine manufacturer HDW, confirmed that there was "Israeli interest" in acquiring more subs, he nevertheless refused to confirm whether such an order was in fact made, or turned down. The Israeli Defense Ministry refused to comment on the story.

The Jerusalem Post cites unnamed officials and analysts as saying such a sale would be very remote, since Germany has refused the sale of all weapon systems to the Israelis because they are being used against the Palestinians.

Two Peace Resolutions Before U.S. Congress

A draft resolution was submitted in both houses of Congress on Nov. 27, urging President Bush to adopt and promote two initiatives for Israeli-Palestinian peace, the Israeli daily Ha'aretz reported on Nov. 28. "The People's Voice," launched by Ami Ayalon and Sari Nusseibeh, and the "Geneva Initiative" drafted by former Justice Minister and Oslo architect Yossi Beilin and former Palestinian Cabinet Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo.

Sponsors of the resolutions include Senators Frank Lautenberg, Dianne Feinstein, and Patrick Leahy. Congressional Quarterly reports that they may be joined by Senators John McCain and Lincoln Chafee, who, respectively, sit on the Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees.

Also, on Dec. 4, Secretary Colin Powell will meet with Beilin and Rabbo—just 72-hours after the scheduled signing of the Geneva Initiative at a ceremony in that Swiss city.

Israelis and Palestinians Meet in London

A meeting of Israeli and Palestinian politicians took place in London under the sponsorship of British and Israeli Labor Party organizations, according to the Nov. 27 Ha'aretz. It seems that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's son, Omri Sharon, who is a Knesset member, is also at the meeting. The others include Israeli Labor Party Knesset members Ephraim Sneh and Isaac Hertzog, who are both on the right wing of the Labor Party. The Palestinians include Palestinian National Security Advisor Jibril Rajoub and Palestinian Legislative Council member Ziyad Abu Zayad.

The meeting, which is entitled "Rabin Peace Seminar," is sponsored by the Yigal Alon Educational Trust and the Association of the Labor Friends of Israel.

A senior Israeli intelligence source commented to EIR that this meeting is an effort to compete with the Geneva Accords peace initiative, which has clearly stolen the show, demonstrating where the peace process has to go. He pointed out the significance of Omri Sharon participating in a conference sponsored by Labor Party institutions. The source said that Sharon père is clearly worried about the Geneva Accords. The Palestinians are participating only because it will demonstrate that even Sharon's people, i.e., his son, will meet with Palestinians who are clearly identified with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat despite Sharon's claim that Arafat is "not a partner."

President Katsav Meets Geneva Accord Drafters

Israeli President Moshe Katsav met with the leading Palestinians who participated in the drafting of the Geneva Accords peace initiative. The four-person Palestinian delegation was led by Yasser Abed Rabbo.

Although President Katsav, who is a member of the Likud Party, said he did not personally agree with the Geneva Accord initiative, he nonetheless said he attributed great importance to meetings with Palestinians, and that his door is always open to "moderate Palestinians who want to hold a dialogue." He added that he was worried about the "rupture that has existed between the sides for the last three years," and would like to meet with new Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia.

This meeting is significant, since Ariel Sharon refused to meet with the Israeli team on the initiative and refused to receive the Geneva Accords document, which the Post Office attempted to deliver to his doorstep.

Sharon in New Anti-Peace Provocation

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is intent on making sure that the Road Map is never implemented, as evidenced by the fact that, just prior to his upcoming meeting with Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Quraie, Sharon told Yediot Ahronot that he has been contemplating unilateral action, should the Road Map fail. Among other things, the "Sharon Plan" would include the provocative unilateral drawing of the border with Palestine, that would be delineated by the security fence now under construction! A few Israeli settlements would be eliminated, restrictions loosened on movement of Palestinians, and Israeli soldiers withdrawn from some West Bank cities. But, Sharon added, construction of the fence would be accelerated. "I have been thinking for some time about unilateral steps that would ease things for Israel and protect its interests," he said, "without addressing the question of whether they are also good for the Palestinians."

Sharon's discussion of his plan, which he has not yet presented to his Cabinet, provoked an immediate response from hard-line members of the government coalition, who warned that their parties would leave the government, were settlements to be dismantled.

U.S. Adopting Israeli Methods in Iraq Occupation

Many of the tactics U.S. forces are using in Iraq, especially destroying the homes of suspected insurgents, strongly resemble those of the Israelis against the Palestinians, the Washington Post observed Nov. 22, in an article on the intensification of the war. Iraqis have also noticed the similarity. One elderly Iraqi resident of the town of Hawijat Ali, where U.S. troops demolished several houses after a fruitless search for two insurgents, said, "The Americans want to follow the Israeli plan. It doesn't work there. Why will it work, here?"

The Los Angeles Times was more explicit, however, reporting that the U.S. is actively seeking advice from the Israelis on how to fight counterinsurgency warfare. Stephen Cambone, the Straussian Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, commented on the comparison at a defense reporters breakfast, on Nov. 21, "Those who have to deal with like problems tend to share information as best they can." He added that while there is no formal dialogue between the two countries, the U.S. and Israel are working together. The Times went on to report that not only is the U.S. seeking advice, but U.S. soldiers have gone to Israel to train for urban combat in a mock Arab town.

The effectiveness of the intensified U.S. operations is an open question, however, not only because the Israelis have still not won their war against the Palestinians. A spokesman for the 4th Infantry Division said that the bombing and shelling of empty buildings, and other operations, including the rounding up of hundreds of suspected insurgents, is meant to "send a message." The bombing of empty buildings is supposed to throw the insurgents "off guard," by raising the possibility that their shelter will be bombed with them inside. However, whether this type of "shock and awe" operation is militarily effective is a different question. The Post quotes a military engineering officer that the advantage lies with the guerrillas, because while they are difficult to target, they have plenty of targets to shoot at.

U.S. Will Keep 100,000 Troops in Iraq Through 2006

The U.S. Army has already begun planning for the 2006 troop rotation in Iraq, and their present assumption is that the number of troops in Iraq will remain at about 100,000. This planning reflects concerns among senior officers that stabilizing Iraq could be more difficult than originally planned, according to the New York Times. One officer told the Times that maintaining such a force level beyond 2006 would cause the Army to "really start to feel the pain." Some apparently believe that the Army is already feeling the pain. Alexander Cockburn, writing in a commentary in the Nov. 19 Los Angeles Times, quotes one senior officer telling him, "We are one stressed-out reservist away from a massacre."

Cockburn continued, "He was expressing the fear, that a soldier, possibly a reservist, pressed beyond endurance by the rigors and uncertainties of his or her condition in a hostile land far from home, might open up with a machine gun on an Iraqi crowd, with obviously disastrous consequences for the future of the occupation."

Iraq's Grand Ayatollah Kills U.S. Power Transfer Scheme

Najaf-based Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Al-Sistani, who is the highest Shi'ite religious authority, has made it known that the draft proposal for transferring sovereignty to the Iraqi people, presented by the U.S. occupying authority CPA, and agreed to by the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC), is not acceptable. Al-Sistani held a meeting on the matter with Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim, a member of the IGC from the Shi'ite Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). Following the meeting, al-Hakim told reporters that al-Sistani has expressed "deep concern over real loopholes that must be dealt with" in the power-transfer plan by Bremer. "Otherwise," al-Hakim continued, "the process will be deficient and fail to meet the expectations of the people of Iraq.

"Among the main objections [of al-Sistani] is the lack of a role by the Iraqi people in the process of transferring powers to the Iraqis." He warned that without dealing with the "loopholes, the entire process will not be concluded in a normal fashion, and [expressed the] fear that there will be negative consequences that lead to much suffering and many problems for Iraqis."

This refers to Bremer's plan to have a transitional national assembly elected in regional meetings, by politicians, scholars, professionals, tribal leaders, legal experts, and others, who will be selected. This group is supposed to elect a provisional government to take power in June 2004.

Al-Sistani has always emphasized the need for any such body, which elects a government or drafts a constitution, to be democratically elected by the people of Iraq. This is what he told Hakim, who said: "This method is not enough," referring to the U.S.-backed caucus idea. "In it we see the lack of real reflection of the will of the Iraqi people." Hakim said what they require is "for an election to be held for a transitional National Assembly. Elections can be held in at least 80% of Iraqi territory," he said.

Hakim also stated that al-Sistani thought the Constitution, which Bremer and the IGC want to draft, did not contain enough guarantees to protect Iraq's "Islamic identity."

Israel-Egypt Nuclear Reactor To Be Built

According to quotes in the Arab daily Al Sharq Al Awsat and reported on Israeli radio Nov. 22, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher said the United States is about to present a plan for the construction of a joint Israeli-Egyptian nuclear-power plant. The electricity-generating reactor would be built under American supervision with a third party, most likely South Africa. It would be built in the Negev region along the Egypt-Israel border.

If true, and there is South African involvement, this could very well involve a high-temperature reactor. The U.S. company General Atomics also has a version of this technology and has cooperated with South Africa on it in the past. EIR also knows from its contacts, that there is considerable interest in Israel for such a reactor. Of course, as everyone in the region knows, an HTR-type is part of Lyndon H. LaRouche's Oasis Plan for a Middle East peace through development.

Asia News Digest

Positive Approach to Resolve India-China Border Dispute

Following the first round of discussions between the Special Representatives of India and China at the end of October, it is evident that the two countries have taken positive steps to resolve their age-old border dispute. India's National Security Adviser Brajesh Mishra and Chinese Senior Vice Minister Dai Bingguo were given specific instructions to negotiate the framework of a boundary settlement from a political perspective.

On Nov. 1, a few days after the first round of discussions, the Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, speaking to the Indian military commanders, said resolution of the boundary problem with China would release India's "military and financial resources," and was therefore a "strategic objective."

Vajpayee also suggested that India must be prepared to take "pragmatic decisions." The use of the phrase "pragmatic decisions" by the Prime Minister has been widely interpreted in New Delhi to mean that India is prepared to make concessions on the dispute.

On Nov. 22, addressing the Admiral R.D. Katari Memorial Lecture in New Delhi, India's External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha said the two countries should finally resolve the border question and resolve all outstanding bilateral disputes "without postponing the tough decisions for the next generation."

Sinha pointed out that "the relationship has reached a level of greater sense of urgency." This updated paradigm of our relationship is both desirable and sustainable."

Sinha added that the resolution of the border dispute "will also send a powerful signal to the rest of the world that India and China have broken out of the shackles of the past."

High-Level Delegations Exchange Visits in India, China

Indicating the growing interest, in both India and China, in strengthening bilateral relations, was a number exchanges of visitors and delegations.

A high-level, six-member Indian army delegation, led by Lt. Gen. Mohinder Singh, commander of India's Tezpur-based 4th Corps, made a week-long visit to China. This was the first Indian military delegation to visit Tibet; they also visited the National Defense University and People's Liberation Army Facilities in Chengdu in southwest China.

On Nov. 24, Jia Qinglin, the visiting chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Committee (CPPCC), met with Indian Prime Minister Vajpayee at New Delhi.

Another Chinese delegation representing the Yunnan province is now visiting Kolkata in the Indian state of West Bengal. Their objective is to expand business ties and "restore the glory days of the ancient Silk Route."

According to the head of the delegation, Yang Jiannong of the Yunan Development Research Center, relations with Yunnan would be of great importance to West Bengal. There are plans to build a "grand international corridor" between Eastern South Asia and Southern Asia by 2020.

Is Patten A Stalking Horse for the Tamil Tigers?

EU External Relations Commissioner Chris Patten visit to Sri Lanka for two-days (Nov. 25-26) was greeted by public protests and media attacks there. During his visit, he met President Chandrika Kumaratunga and Prime Minister Ranil Wickeremesinghe. However, it was his announced meeting with the Tamil Tiger leader V. Pirbhakaran that drew the public wrath.

Patten's visit was also criticized because it took place at a time when President Kumaratunga and Prime Minister Wickremesinghe were in the process of working out a solution after a power struggle between the two had broken out on Nov. 4. The subject of the power struggle, among other things, was their conflict over the way the government's peace talks with the Tamil Tigers were progressing. Patten's visit followed the Norwegian peace-broker Erik Solheim's visit. Sri Lankan media claims that both visitors were urging the President to allow the peace talks to continue. President Kumaratunga is convinced that the talks were leading towards the formation of a Tamil Nation within Sri Lanka.

Prior to Patten's arrival, in a resolution passed on Nov. 20, the EU Parliament expressed "deep concern" about recent developments in Sri Lanka, including the sacking of the three Cabinet Ministers and the suspension of the parliament by President Kaumaratunga. As a direct interference on behalf of the Tamil Tigers, who have been identified as a terrorist group by India, Britain, and the United States, and who were involved in the assassination of former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa, among others, the EU resolution said: "The House urges the President to work together with the democratically elected Parliament and the Prime Minister."

Following Patten's meeting with Pirbhakaran, the Tamil Tiger supremo raised the slogan for seceding from Sri Lanka and accused divided Sri Lankan politics of carrying out an "absurd drama." He alleged that "Sinhala racism" that "has been denying the rights of the Tamils."

EU Pressures India To Lower Tariffs

During the Fourth India-European Union Business Summit at New Delhi, the EU Commissioner for External Relations, Chris Patten said on Nov. 27 that India retains the reputation of a hard country in which to do business. He criticized excessive red tape, poor infrastructure, and rigid labor laws as the reasons why the EU finds it difficult to increase business with India.

Subsequently, Patten urged the Indians to lower tariffs to make the Indian market more attractive to the EU. "The European Union is one of the most open markets to Indian goods in the world. Out of a total of some 10,300 tariff lines, Indian exports are subject to either zero or reduced tariffs on 9,100 lines," Patten told the Business Summit. "European exporters to India, however, do not find trade as easy. India retains the reputation of a hard country to do business with. This is largely due to tariffs ... still high by international standards," Patten added.

Myanmar Releases Five Top Pro-Democracy Leaders from House Arrest

Five senior members of Aung San Suu Kyi's pro-democracy party have been released after nearly six months under house arrest, Myanmar's military government said.

A junta official told AFP that four members of the National League for Democracy (NLD)—Hla Pe, Nyunt Wai, Than Tun and Soe Myint—were freed on Nov. 23, while the fifth, Lun Tin, was released on Nov. 24.

Aung San Suu Kyi and all members of her party's decision-making Central Executive Committee (CEC) were detained after May 30 clashes between NLD supporters and a pro-junta gang in northern Myanmar. Aung San Suu Kyi remains under house arrest along with the NLD chairman Aung Shwe and secretary U Lwin while the party's vice-president Tin Oo is in jail near the Indian border. Apart from Aung San Suu Kyi, who is 58, all the NLD top leaders are in their 70s and 80s.

The five were released as a six-month deadline approaches under which the junta is required by law to either renew the restrictions for another six months, or set them free.

The United Nations' human rights envoy to Myanmar, Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, earlier this month had demanded the junta release some 1,300 political prisoners, particularly the elderly and infirm. "These old gentlemen, their place is not prison," Pinheiro said after his sixth mission to the military-run nation.

Thai Military Leaders in Myanmar and Laos

Thai Defense Minister Gen. Thammarak Isarangkura na Ayudhya made a three-day visit to Myanmar Nov. 26-28. "The military must also revise its strategy if it wants to help bring peace and economic growth in the area. This is in line with the Pagan Declaration," Said the Thai Minister. The Pagan Declaration was endorsed on Nov. 12 by the leaders of Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos.

At the same time, a team of 15 senior officers of the Thai army is visiting Laos to solidify cooperation in developing border villages and tackling drug problems along the border areas.

Meanwhile, the proposal to build a northern road link between Thailand and Laos is still on the table. Vientiane has requested more time to study the loan conditions before progressing with the construction. Under the proposed deal, Thailand would provide Laos with a 252-million-baht grant, covering approximately one-third of the estimated construction cost. The rest would be provided by Thailand as low interest loans.

The 49-kilometer road will run from the Huay Kon checkpoint in Nan's Chalem Prakiat district to Pak Baeng, a small town by the Mekong river in the northern Lao province of Oudomsay. Traders and officials have been pushing for the link road for the past year. The road would open up their province to trade and tourism with landlocked areas.

Reports indicate the Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has directed the foreign ministry to try and clear all problems that concern the loan.

Leading Philippines Political Figure Fears 'Total Collapse'

Speaking to EIR, a former member of the Philippines Congress, who is now involved in an effort to unite the opposition behind a single candidate for the May Presidential elections, said that he fears the nation is heading for a financial and social collapse. The resignation of Finance Minister Jose Camacho was recently tied to the impending bankruptcy of the military pension fund. This has been followed by reports that the government's cash position is so bad that all maintenance operations have been suspended. With the national debt climbing at record rates, and the steady devaluation of the Philippine peso, the cost of servicing the foreign debt has increased significantly. As a result, the potential for national bankruptcy is growing. With military pensions, and perhaps even salaries, threatened, the potential for a military coup in the coup-ridden Philippines is also great, he pointed out.

Reports are circulating that Camacho has been warned not to talk about the economic mess, or face prosecution over past accusation against him about corruption.

At the same time, the chronic kidnapping problem—mostly of Chinese-Filipinos—has reached a new peak, with a new victim every three days. Some of these kidnappings are ending up with murder of the victim. Opposition candidate Ping Lacson, a former chief of police, has blamed President Arroyo's suspension of the death penalty for the increase in crime, rather than the economic crisis that the country faces.

The source pointed out that the institutions of government, especially the Supreme Court, are discredited as corrupt. This includes the electoral structure, leaving little confidence that there will be fair elections, and thus encouraging those who prefer extra-legal methods of "regime change."

Malaysia Mends Fences with Saudi Arabia

Following protests in Saudi Arabia over an article published on Nov. 12 in Malaysia's New Straits Times, which ostensibly called for the overthrow of the Saudi regime, Malaysia's Foreign Minister Datuk Seri Syed Hamid Albar has informed Riyadh that the New Straits Times article did not reflect the official views of the Malaysian government and was only a personal view of the writer. Meanwhile, the Times' editor-in-chief Tan Sri Abdullah Ahmed has been sacked.

The article, "Freeing the Prophet's Land," criticized the conservative brand of Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia, and urged reform of the absolute monarchy. The article provoked an immediate protest from the Saudi government, which was sent to Kuala Lumpur as a formal note of protest. On Nov. 22, Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmed Badawi announced that Tan Sri Abduallah has been sacked.

Talking to the reporters, the Malaysian Foreign Minister said Malaysia considers the matter closed, and he hopes that ties with Saudi Arabia would not be affected by the matter. Syed Hamid Albar also said that he hopes to go to Saudi Arabia soon to continue discussing issues like the one about Malaysian pilgrim going to Hajj to the holy land.

This Week in History

December 1 - 7, 1955

December 1, 1955 would well be remembered as the seed-kernel of the mass-based civil rights movement in the United States, under the leadership of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. While it would be another four to five years before a youth movement took off, around the launching of the freedom rides, the sit-ins, and ultimately, the voter registration drives, the refusal of Mrs. Rosa Parks of Montgomery, Ala. to give up her seat on the bus to a white man, on this date, set in motion the famous Montgomery Bus Boycott, which began to put non-violent resistance to segregation on the political map.

Rosa Parks was a 42 year-old African-American seamstress in Montgomery, who was coming home from work on that Thursday evening. She had sat down in the middle of the bus, which was designated as a "mixed" area for blacks and whites. At that point the bus was not full. But, under the segregation laws of Montgomery, if the bus became full, black (then "Negro") riders were obliged to give up their seats to whites, and move to the "back of the bus."

When the bus filled up, and a white man was left standing, the bus driver ordered Mrs. Parks to give up her seat. She refused, and was arrested for violating the segregation law.

In reality, this was not a unique situation. Other women had done the same thing. But Mrs. Parks was a well-known member of the Negro community, having been a former secretary of the NAACP, and a beloved, gentle woman. The news of her arrest outraged her friends, and spread like wildfire throughout the black community.

The immediate idea for a bus boycott seems to have come from a group called the Women's Political Council, but it immediately became the talk of the ministers and political leaders of the community. A meeting of leaders was scheduled for Friday evening, Dec. 2, which included Rev. David Abernathy, and Rev. Martin Luther King. King was a relatively new member of the Montgomery community at that time, and not noted for political action. On the agenda of the meeting, was the launching of a boycott of the city buses, to commence the day that Mrs. Parks had to appear for trial, Monday, Dec. 5.

The Dec. 2 meeting issued the following message, which was reproduced on leaflets, and then, fortuitously publicized on the front page of the major local newspaper (in an ill-fated attempt to discourage participation):

"Don't ride the bus to work, to town, to school, or any place Monday, December 5.

"Another Negro woman has been arrested and put in jail because she refused to give up her bus seat.

"Don't ride the buses to work, to town, to school, or anywhere on Monday. If you work, take a cab, or share a ride, or walk.

"Come to a mass meeting, Monday at 7:00 pm, at the Holt Street Baptist Church for further instruction."

On Monday, after publicity through Sunday sermons, leaflets, word of mouth, and the newspaper, the boycott was over 99% effective. The mass meeting that evening, which drew thousands more citizens than could fit in the church, voted to continue it until the following demands were met:

1. Courteous treatment by bus operators was guaranteed.

2. Passengers were seated on a first-come, first-serve basis.

3. Negro bus operated were employed on predominantly Negro routes.

From that time forward, under a newly established organization headed by a newly elected President, Dr. Martin Luther King, the Montgomery Improvement Association, the boycott continued for a full 381 days—more than a year—until the court appeal of Mrs. Parks' conviction led to a Supreme Court decision that nullified the segregation law. A victory for non-violence resistance was won, which would be repeated again and again in the years ahead.

The Deeper Issues

The Montgomery Bus Boycott reflected the intersection of two factors, that of leadership, and that of the social climate which had brought the African-American community to the point of being willing to brave the wrath of the authorities, and take action.

First and foremost, of course, there was Mrs. Parks, who explained her refusal to move this way: "It was a matter of dignity; I could not have faced myself and my people if I had moved." And alternately, "The only tired I was, was tired of giving in." In other words, Mrs. Parks made an individual decision that she was not going to act like a slave, and submit to injustice. This was a matter of personal courage, of leadership.

The second necessary element of leadership came from the clergy of Montgomery, which decided to act. Among this group of clergy, Reverend King came to the fore, and became the spokesman. But he was not the only one. There had been years before, when "professionals," such as ministers, teachers, lawyers, and others from the African-American community, had refused to buck the blatantly discriminatory laws, in the interest of holding on to their relatively more advantageous positions. This time, however, they decided to act.

The third element appears more elusive: the fact that the African-American population of Montgomery responded. This was not a foregone conclusion, and, actually shocked King and others, who were expecting 60% compliance with the call for the boycott, at best. Why were they ready? Perhaps it had to do with the fact that the Federal courts had begun to rule for desegregation, starting with the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. Perhaps it had to do with the courage they saw shown by respected members of their community, who did have something to lose by acting. King himself can't explain it—except perhaps as God's providence.

From the standpoint of today, and the LaRouche movement's unique understanding of the tradition of the American Revolution within the history of our people, we can even better comprehend this sea-change in American politics, where people rallied behind leaders who called on them to put their lives on the line for those principles on which the nation was founded. At that time, the African-American population of Montgomery had the moral qualities to respond. Under today's conditions, where such action against economic and social injustice globally is long overdue, we can only fight to arouse the same sense of sublime morality in our fellow citizens, for their good, and that of our nation.

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