LAROUCHE PAC WEBCAST
Use the Promethean Principle
To Meet Mankind's Needs
[PDF version of this transcript]
The LaRouche PAC Friday night webcast from larouchepac.com on Aug. 22, excerpted here, was hosted by Matthew Ogden; joining him in the studio were Lyndon LaRouche, and Benjamin Deniston from the LaRouche PAC scientific research team.
Destroy the 'Islamic State'
Matthew Ogden: ...We're going to proceed as we customarily do by beginning with a question from institutional layers in and around Washington, D.C.:
"Mr. LaRouche, Islamic State, or so-called IS militants, currently control large swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq. The United States has carried out airstrikes in Iraq since the 8th of August. Gen. Martin Dempsey, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that IS was 'an organization that has an apocalyptic end-of-days strategic vision,' which will eventually have to be defeated. Speaking at a news conference on Thursday, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel also described IS as an imminent threat. What is your view of the IS organization, and do you share Secretary Hagel's and General Dempsey's view that IS is an imminent threat and has to be defeated? If so, how do you defeat the Islamic State?"
Lyndon LaRouche: I am very happy to answer this question, because that's really very important. First of all, this organization should never have existed. It is simply a systematic murder machine, and therefore there's no reason for it. General Dempsey was on the case; I was fully on the case, as far as I was concerned, right then. Because we have to crush it; we cannot create monsters of that nature and hope to use those monsters as means of settling issues. Throw these guys out! Get rid of them immediately.
We have the means to do so. For example, Mexico, South America—this is "our" territory. It doesn't belong to Wall Street—they hate Wall Street. These are the people who are fighting, throughout South America. We have our great allies in Asia—China, the biggest nation and the greatest power on this planet right now. That's one of our friends, and they're going to do a good job for us, because they're actually pioneers in what's possible for mankind in terms of nearby space. So, these are the things that count for mankind's benefit, humanity's benefit. These things must be championed, and General Dempsey is right. He's right, and he needs every bit of backing he can get. It's a simple way of saying it, but the fruits of it will prove the case.
Remove Boehner from Office!
Ogden: My next question is on the subject of the removal of House Speaker John "Boner." Earlier this week, Mr. LaRouche issued a call for the immediate removal from office of House Speaker John "Boner." You stated that Boehner's role in Washington has been to run cover for Barack Obama; giving him the green light to bomb Iraq without coming to Congress, as is mandated in the Constitution, as well as doing everything he can to block the momentum for Obama's impeachment. Mr. LaRouche said, "The reality is that the collapse of nutrition and collapse of health care in the United States is a form of outright genocide. Without a clear program to meet the demands of the American people, we are headed for a far worse genocide. That is a crime for which Obama and Boehner are both guilty and must be immediately removed from office."
We were just informed today that a petition is circulating on the Internet titled, "Remove John Boehner," which reads as follows: "We, the people, would like to respectfully request that you remove John Boehner, Republican from Ohio's 8th District, from the office of Speaker of the House, due to his inability to perform the duties required of him by his constituents. We understand that Mr. Boehner is a very nice person, and that is exactly why we make this request. We need a leader, not a friend. We would like to request that the Honorable Trey Gowdy, Republican, South Carolina 4th District, be sworn in as Speaker of the House of Representatives." Gowdy, incidentally, is the chairman of the Special Select Committee on Benghazi.
We also found out today, that there is a national bipartisan coalition of organizations that are launching a "National Impeach Obama" week, beginning Aug. 23. It is calling on citizens around the country to stage demonstrations, go to their local government, go to their local courthouse, go to their local highway overpass, launch a letter-writing campaign and so forth. So, this is part of an increasing pile-on effect on both Boehner and Obama. This should be seen as a direct response to your call earlier this week for the ouster of Boehner. It just needs to be escalated very rapidly. So, I'd like you to make some remarks on this.
LaRouche: All right. Something more important than that is needed. We have to understand that the productive powers of labor are the issue which we depend upon. Therefore, our commitment to the productive powers of labor as such is the standard. Now, Boner, Burner, whatever, Bunsen Burner or whatever, is a joke; he is a bad joke. That's the best thing you can say about him, but that's about as far as you want to go.
The point is that we have to realize that we have a lot of jokers in the Congress. Boner's just one of them. These jokers must be sieved out, because they're not productive. They don't do anything that is productive. They don't act in a single way.
The Productive Powers of Labor
Look, what's the condition of most of our people here in the United States? They're poor, and hopelessly poor. So how are we going to supply them with the alternative that they need, which is productivity? That's the issue, and therefore, when somebody says, "We'll give you a nice little job. We'll give you an opportunity to earn an income cheaply," that's crap! What you have to do is, you have to raise the standard of productivity of these citizens. And you have to do it for every citizen. You have to have an intention of providing for the members of our body; to have an intention to do that. To actually increase the productive powers of labor.
In other words, this is not "work"; this is not filling something up. This is a policy of, "If it ain't worth doing, don't do it. If it's necessary to do, do it!" No more of this crap about we're going to give you work opportunities, we're going to give you job opportunities. That's crap! Cut it out! ...
Now, you know, my wife Helga is travelling throughout Asia—or radiating throughout Asia now, or will be soon. And what we're doing is, we're trying to create a new conception of mankind, as a process. She's focused on this question of this process, her process. And that's going to work. That's the basis for the new system of science, the new system of ability. She's plunged herself into that thing in a big way.
But the important thing about us, is that our people, our members are precious to me. Because what they can do—and they've shown it to me before—and I've seen them when they have not shown it, because they were intimidated by other processes and they didn't do what I know they're capable of doing. My concern is to get them back fully in function at what they are capable of doing. These young people—relative to me anyway they're young people—these young people are the essential root of the future of mankind inside the United States. That's my position, and that's what I will protect. And I do not allow anybody cheapening our members. Our members are too important, because they have capabilities which are too rare to be lost.
Bill Clinton's Potential Role
Ogden: Let me ask you a question which I think is very important for our viewers, and it's very relevant for an initiative that you launched this week. You have a 40-year record on leading the fight internationally for a new international economic order for mankind. This stretches all the way back to your call in 1975 for an International Development Bank, which was picked up directly by the Non-Aligned Movement at their summit in Sri Lanka in 1976, consisting of 88 nations representing 2 billion people. And they issued a declaration calling for a new international economic order, and also the creation of what they called a bank for the developing nations. This was echoed later that year by the Foreign Minister of Guyana, Frederick Wills, who spoke at the United Nations and called explicitly for the creation of an International Development Bank, as well as saying the time has come for a debt moratorium for the developing world. That history proceeded, a few years later, to your work with José López Portillo, the President of Mexico, when you crafted Operation Juárez, which defined an entirely new economic order for the Western Hemisphere. And of course, this coincided directly with your work with President Reagan to draft the proposal for the SDI.
More recently, you worked in conjunction with another President, Bill Clinton. And you proposed the convening of a New Bretton Woods conference to reorganize the world financial system, which specifically was intersecting your work at that time with the political and scientific leadership of Russia, whom you travelled to Russia several times during the 1990s to meet with.
After the Russian bond crisis, President Clinton responded to the work that you had done, and issued a call for the creation of a new financial architecture, at a speech he made in New York City—incidentally, immediately after himself returning from a trip to Russia. And he stressed that the future of the United States depends upon the future of the developing world, and that in the face of what, at that time, was the biggest financial crisis facing the world in over 50 years, he said the time had come to create "a new financial architecture for the 21st Century."
Now, fast forward to today. We've reached a point at which, as we've documented, half of humanity has now picked up on the work that Mr. LaRouche has done over 40 years, and has declared that they have created a new economic order as fact, with the new [BRICS] development bank being led by Russia, China, India, along with other nations now joining in, including Argentina and Egypt. Meanwhile, however, we have Barack Obama carrying out the Queen's orders to push us into world war against these countries; against Russia; against China.
Now, this week, you called on former President Bill Clinton to step in and exert a Presidential leadership role in his capacity as the only living former President qualified to lead the United States, and capable of mobilizing the United States population as a Presidential figure. My question is, now that most of the world is acting to initiate your idea for a new financial architecture of the type that Clinton invoked during his Presidency, what do you have to say about Clinton's necessary role at this time in bringing the United States fully into this dynamic and liberating itself from the self-imposed death sentence now being dictated to us by the British Empire?
LaRouche: Well, these are sometimes called sensitive matters. And they are very important; extremely important. But the way they work is not explained in simple terms. For example, with all the things I did with Bill—and I did a lot with Bill at various points; we were actually working together, despite his Vice President and other kinds of things that were going on at the same time. But the point was, we were never working actually for me to make him a President, or as a President. My point was to take what his intention was and to use that intention for good. No one can draw conclusions from that emphasis on their own. I have never done that. I have done some things, which I knew were absolutely necessary. But I never have assumed that I was going to do this and cause this. I've done some things that were very important—the SDI was very important.
What you have to do, is you have to put yourself into a commitment to produce what is necessary for the sake of mankind. And, wherever that steers you, that's where you've got to go. Now, most people don't understand that. They have to learn. And, I would hope that perhaps we can, in this form, help some people to understand, that it's not given to them, to make a God-like decision, to say that the creation of a new President, is our work, is our devotion.
Bill—what do I think of him? Well, I know Bill, at least functionally, very well. He's probably the most talented and most capable and most important person in the whole situation to date, right now. Bill Clinton is probably the most important living person in the United States today. This is not because of some achievement, some gimmick. (His wife had a failure in her behavior, when she pulled a swindle in Germany, and tried to pull a swindle against him. That's not my business, I'm not concerned with that. I know about it.) But, I do know that he has the characteristics, that if he brings them to the fore, he can provide a kind of leadership, which can contribute to what we, the people of the United States, require most urgently, now.
I'm not proposing him to be President, I'm not making any such proposal. I'm simply saying, I know Bill Clinton, and I know what he represents. And, I can tell you also, I don't know of anybody else, who I would be comfortable in supporting.
A 'New Conception' of Mankind
Ogden: Today, the Voice of Russia published an interview that they did with you Wednesday, under the title "Lyndon LaRouche: The Danger I See Is Chaos," published on the website of RIA Novosti.... This coincided with an interview with your wife, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, who, as you mentioned, was interviewed by Xinhua.
What I found very provocative, is that you were asked by the interviewer, whether this new system implies a fundamental change in ideology. And you said, "Absolutely. It requires a new conception of mankind." And you said, "The point is, that mankind needs that kind of change, and I think, we're ready for it." I want you to elaborate: What is this "new system of government" that you're referring to going to look like? And what is this "new conception of mankind" that you indicated has to provide the foundation?
LaRouche: The problem, generally, as most of you can reconstruct, is the assumption that things are deductive, that the deductive process is the process of reason. It is not! Deduction is not reason. Deduction is a loss of reason. That's what it amounts to, in effect.
Let's take the case of animals, in the history of [the biosphere, presented by V.I.] Vernadsky. They were not human beings; they were animals. But, the treatment of the animals had a significance for Vernadsky. Because he had a deep insight to understanding that, just like the question of Kepler's discovery of the principle of the universe—he was the first to successfully define a principle of the universe. And, therefore, it's those kinds of discoveries, which lead to those kinds of results, and which deal with the question of animals, humans, etc.—all these kinds of things together. The question is, mankind's function is to create a new mankind, as a true mankind.
If people really understood Vernadsky ... and, his insight, to the degree that I know it—and my knowledge is not perfect, but to the degree that I know it, this is what's important. Each of us, as human beings, insofar as we are human beings, has the ability within us, if we have the muster to do it, to create a new condition in the universe, beyond anything that man has known heretofore. And that's our mission. Our mission is to discover what we never knew before, to create what we never knew before, and to rejoice in doing it.
The Water Crisis
Benjamin Deniston: To get back to what you just put on the table with Vernadsky, I want to pose it from the specific context of the water crisis, which is an issue we have been following very closely. The situation in the Western United States has been getting worse, week to week to week, in terms of the drought, the effects on food, etc., and I really would like to get your views on the record here, on what needs to be done in this crisis, but also how you see the crisis now, from the standpoint of all the dramatic changes we're discussing—China's new orientation, the BRICS new orientation, this whole shift in global developments.
But just to go through some of what's happened, some of our organizers in California have picked up that over the past month there's been a real shift in the media coverage. There was an attempt to kind of downplay the crisis for a while, but it's really broken out into the open. And you're getting headlines like "Doomsday Trigger for Mega-Drought in California," "California's Drought Just Got Absolutely Terrifying," and another headline, which is, I think, indicative of the issue we're facing: "California Drought: We May Have To Migrate People." And in this article it states, "If the state of California continues on this path, there may have to be thoughts about moving people out of the state." This was said by Lynn Wilson, a career academic chair at Kaplan University [in Davenport, Iowa], and who also serves on the climate change delegation to the United Nations. She said, "Civilizations in the past have had to migrate out of areas of drought. We might have to migrate people out of California." So that's the kind of discussion that's going on under the framework, the mentality, of this old system. Let me get back to that in a second.
The Washington Post, a week ago, had a article saying, "The West's Historic Drought Stokes Fears of a Water Crisis," and they emphasize this isn't just in California: "The parched zone now spans a dozen states in the West, nearly 600 counties, ranging from southern Texas to the northern Rockies. And this includes fields and grazing land which produce one-third of the entire country's beef cattle and half of its fruit, vegetables, and winter wheat."
Back to California in particular, there's been a new study just released by the University of California at Davis, which has now concluded that this is the greatest water loss ever seen in California agriculture, and they've estimated that this year, there's going to be 6.3 cubic km of water withdrawn from the groundwater supplies. That's the equivalent of a decent-size river being withdrawn from the ground, a dramatic acceleration in the rate of the depletion of groundwater. A lot of time could be spent going through many details and aspects of the crisis.
Two weeks ago, we discussed the situation in the Colorado River Basin, also a worsening situation, with a dramatic depletion of groundwater and a lowering of the flow of the Colorado River itself, which is a major danger.
But when we're dealing with water, we're not talking about a finite resource here. We're not talking about something we're going to use up and it's not going to exist any more—water's everywhere. It's in the sky. A lot of the planet's covered in water, pretty much most of it. So it's an issue of dealing with cycles and managing cycles and creating cycles of water supplies.
And what we're seeing in the West, is the fact that the required rate of activity, the required rate of water cycling provided by the natural conditions of the desert is not enough to meet the needs of mankind, and I think, coming back to what you just stated about Vernadsky, and Vernadsky's conception about mankind's role as a creative force on the planet, I think this is a very clear illustration of that point: that mankind has before him the potential to improve, augment, and even create his own water cycles.
We've discussed this a lot. There are all kinds of options available—for river diversion projects, for large-scale desalination systems, for weather modification systems to begin to actually influence and control atmospheric moisture flows, and also a lot of short-term emergency measures that can be taken. These are all part of a broad approach to handling the crisis, but handling the crisis by mankind, taking an active role, becoming a conscious force for the creative development and improvement of the conditions of the planet—the conditions of the West and more broadly.
So my question is, we have all these technologies available, we have these policy options available, they've been available. But it seems like the more fundamental issue is what you've just addressed in the last question, which is really, what is society's image of mankind's position and mission on the planet? And so, I'd like you to address the water crisis from that standpoint.
LaRouche: Well, the water crisis is really a misnomer, because, while on the one hand, it is true, it's a disaster, that's not the point. The point is, we rely upon our ability to use certain media in order to benefit mankind. But, these media as such, are not things that simply flow from you.
The case of helium-3 right now is a good example of what this problem is. Helium-3 is really complex problem, a very complex problem. In some ways it's not complex, but it's also complex. What it means is, we're dealing with our friend Kepler, who founded this whole system, the first one to successfully do so—that mankind has powers, at will, to create a change in the Solar System. This is a modification of the Solar System, made by the will of mankind. And our challenge is to achieve the ability to do that, and that's what it's all about.
The rest of it is all what we can wish, we wish this, we wish that, we hope for that. But that doesn't do the job!
Kepler is much better on this than others are. That Kepler understood that there were forms of action in the universe, beyond the powers of mankind as mankind usually thinks of them, and that is what's important. Our job is to make discoveries of the principles of science, the true principles of science, to make those discoveries, and to apply those discoveries, to making possible, what otherwise seems impossible. And that's the challenge.
Bollivia's 'Promethean' Challenge
Deniston: Lyn, on this theme, I would like to get your comments on some recent remarks of the Vice President of Bolivia [Alvaro García Linera].
Just to set up the context for his remarks: You've been stressing that China is taking the lead in developing high energy-flux density, setting the standard for the world today, for mankind. And that any nation that wants to survive has to go by China's lead on this issue. And this was very clearly reflected in the remarks of the Vice President of Bolivia, which he made yesterday, where he explicitly invoked the concept of Prometheus.
LaRouche: Why not?
Deniston: And Prometheus' fire, in announcing Bolivia's decision to go further ahead with nuclear power. And this comes in the context of meetings between Putin and President [Evo Morales] of Bolivia on the sidelines of the BRICS summit recently, and also a meeting with President [Xi Jinping] of China recently.
Vice President García Linera of Bolivia had the following to say yesterday:
"Nuclear energy is the fire of the 20th and 21st centuries. It is the fire which our ancestors had 20,000 years ago, which allowed them to make philosophy, technical science, culture, agriculture. Knowledge of the atom, its regularities, its use, its functioning, is the touchstone of the 20th and 21st centuries, the fundamental core of new knowledge and new technologies, new theories and new means of production....
"Bolivia cannot remain on the periphery, if this is the case, if knowledge of the atom ... is the sacred fire of the 20th and 21st centuries, as fire was for the pre-agricultural civilizations of 20,000 years ago. Today, a society which is respected—and we respect ourselves—cannot remain on the periphery, and we are not going to remain on the periphery....
"Let us break the mental and colonial chains; break them! Let us dare to leave the cave, as our ancestors did 20,000 years ago. Let us dare to assume our responsibility before the world, before our history and our society. Knowledge of nuclear energy is knowledge of the ABCs of nature....
"[We have] the technical, scientific, and moral obligation to take responsibility for the knowledge, use, understanding, and beneficial development of this fundamental force of nature.
"It doesn't matter how long it takes us. We are going to do it, because we are convinced that that is how we cement the conditions for the technological development of Bolivians for the next 400 to 500 years."
So, in line with your previous remarks, I would like your thoughts on that.
LaRouche: Okay, very simply stated, there is the history of Prometheus, and Prometheus was an actual person. What form he was as an actual person, we're not always quite sure, but the point was, that is the case. All right, Prometheus is the principle, and that's the way to look at it: Prometheus is the expression of Prometheus, the expression of it. And that's what the difference is between mankind and everything else in the universe.
Strategic Shift in Egypt
Ogden: This question is on Egypt. I know you've put a premium on what we've seen coming out of Egypt [see last week's EIR—ed.]. These are very exciting developments, where Egypt is now aggressively joining the new economic order which is emerging under the leadership of the BRICS. The newly elected President of Egypt, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who is putting himself in the tradition of the great Egyptian leader [Gamal Abdel] Nasser, who was one of the founders of the Non-Aligned Movement—al-Sisi has committed himself to a very aggressive program for massive development projects in Egypt, including the construction of the New Suez Canal, and a great irrigation program to green the Sahara Desert. Egypt is also going through a strategic reorientation towards Russia and China.
Now, al-Sisi also came out in solidarity with Argentina's fight against the vulture funds; he wrote a letter to [President] Cristina Fernández de Kirchner last week, where he said, "We assure you of our full support for your tireless efforts to achieve the well-being of the friend Argentine people. I wish to attest to the firmness and strength of the ties that unite our brother peoples, and the pride that we feel in the history of our common struggle, since the establishment of diplomatic relations between our nations in 1947, in pursuit of freedom and independence."
Now, the program which al-Sisi has adopted domestically recalls the history of Nasser, who nationalized the original Suez Canal, and also built the great Aswan Dam. What al-Sisi announced is that he was launching a project to double the capacity of the Suez Canal, which is very significant for China, because China depends on this current canal as its primary maritime link to the Atlantic, and is the largest user of the current canal. And literally within hours of al-Sisi's speech, hundreds of bulldozers and thousands of workers were onsite, moving the earth, preparing the ground for construction. As of now, already, 13.6 million cubic meters of dirt have been removed from the area. This project's also going to include new roads, new railroads, tunnels underneath the canal so you can get from one side to the other, and it's going to have 200 km development zones on either side of the canal. And although the original plan for the first phase was that it would take three years to build, al-Sisi has mandated that it's going to be shortened to one year. So, this is really an aggressive pursuit!
The financing for the project is very interesting. It's going to be provided by the issuance of debt certificates, which the public, but only Egyptian citizens, can buy, and which will be issued through Egyptian banks. And only Egyptian companies will be involved in the construction.
So this is clearly indicative of a new paradigm which is sweeping the planet, but I also think it very much corresponds to a lot of your personal history and involvement in this region, going way back. So I want to ask you, what do you see as the significance of this shift coming out of Egypt, and also how do you see this in terms of the potential for both this Middle East/North African region, specifically, but also for the entire world?
LaRouche: Okay! Well, frankly, I believe in creativity! Essentially, that's it; that's what it's all about. That's it! That is what makes mankind, mankind, is creativity!...
Now, the question is, we are dealing with a universe which is intrinsically itself creative. And when we loop into an understanding of what this is, that is in our paws, so to speak, and we recognize that that's our solution, that's what we mean by what's going on in China right now. That's what it means. It means that we know that mankind has a power of creativity, human creativity, which is not found anywhere else, to the best of our knowledge, on this planet. And therefore, our business is to specialize in becoming discoverers of these kinds of things. We must discover the universe, as Prometheus would have done. And that's the way to look at it. All you have to do is bring Prometheus into play....
The Creative Spark in China
Deniston: I would very much like to have you address how you see creativity expressed in what China's doing, in particular, you've had some unique remarks on the significance of China's activity, and you said to a few of us earlier in the week: "What China is doing right now is a miracle! It's a miracle for which there is no comparable expression on this planet otherwise. It's unique. China has developed within itself a quality which no other people on this planet has yet been able to assimilate. How do you think the genius of the space program came about, in these terms? It came about because of a quality of thinking, a quality of insight, an imagination beyond anything that had occurred earlier, among the people of China earlier...."
There was more to be said, but I just want to leave it at that. It's not just that China's building a lot of things; that's good that they're doing that. But you're pointing more toward an awakening of a spirit within China, that's more the substance of what you see as the most important thing going on there, and I'd like a chance for you to address that.
LaRouche: Well, the problem here is that people want explanations of everything. And the problem is that what we have to know, what Prometheus knew—the actual Prometheus knew—is not something that you can jimmy up. This is a quality in mankind, which resides in mankind as a capability. And when mankind is able to develop that capability, mankind is then gifted, to rise to a point beyond what is known as space and time. And that's the matter.
So therefore, the desire of mankind, of any person who's really a thoughtful person, is to create a new way of thinking about the universe, as Kepler did, in his own way, in his own time. And that's what the problem is. You have to have an open mind, which recognizes that there are powers given to the human mind, which go beyond anything that you can describe otherwise. And those powers, if used properly, are the solution, for the meaning of the existence of the human species. And that's the way to put it.
