THE LAROUCHE SHOW
Cheminade Campaigns
For `Soul of France'
This is a slightly edited and abridged transcript of an interview Feb. 3, with French Presidential candidate Jacques Cheminade by Harley Schlanger, host of Internet radio program "The LaRouche Show," and with LaRouche Youth Movement members Elodie Viennot in Paris and Natalie Lovegren in Leesburg, Va. The full radio interview is archived at www.larouchepub.com. The program airs every Saturday at 3:00 p.m. Eastern Time.
Schlanger: As we speak, the world is moving rapidly towards a strategic showdown. In a memo sent out by Lyndon LaRouche today, he said, "We've come to the end of an era. The era of preventing nuclear war by non-proliferation treaties is over, due largely to the insanity of the Cheney-Bush-Blair doctrine of preemptive war, including the possible use of preemptive nuclear strikes. It no longer does any nation any good to abide by these treaties, when Bush has said that he will act regardless of treaties."
So, while resistance against Bush and Cheney is growing in the Congress, and that reflects even more anger from the general population, LaRouche is emphasizing that it's not enough to "just get rid of" Cheney and Bush, that we need a new generation of leadership, which has qualified itself by re-experiencing the crucial discoveries of universal physical principles in physical science, and in the arts, especially music.
This work has been undertaken by advance teams of the LaRouche Youth Movement, which have been working on Kepler in particular, the scientist Johannes Kepler, under the direction of Mr. LaRouche, and by LYM choruses everywhere in the world. Thus, as we enter a zone of extreme strategic instability, facing a plunge into a dark age directly ahead, it is the LaRouche forces internationally which are uniquely acting to provide a satisfactory alternative, both through mobilizing to end the rule of those who control this deadly Cheney-Bush-Blair regime, but also by bringing back the principles of physical economy, based on real physical science.
To discuss both the deepening of this crisis and the unique LaRouchean solution, we are honored to bring back to "The LaRouche Show," Jacques Cheminade, candidate for President of France.
Cheminade: Thank you. I am very honored to be with you.
Schlanger: So, Jacques, as the crisis we face is deepening, your campaign has taken on growing importance. How does your campaign look, and what are you doing as a candidate for President of France, to intervene in the crisis?
Cheminade: Well, at this point, France is a mess. President Chirac knows very well, with his political experience, what's happening on a world scale, the threat of war, and the collapse of the financial system. I know that from direct sources. But, he doesn't know what to do. And the other Presidential candidates are like a bunch of poor people, absolutely unable—and this is what they have in common—to break with the system of reference which has permitted them to reach a position, and now they are set in the trap.
So, France is a mess. And my mission is, with the LYM, the LaRouche Youth Movement, to recover the soul of the nation, and to transform this Roman circus that the Presidential election is, as of now, into a school for the soul of the Republic. Because, the way it works in France, is that a Presidential election is something unique in Europe, as in the United States. To run, you have to get the support of more than 500 mayors and elected officials, among a total of 44,000. It's a lot. It's more than 1% of the total.
And I unexpectedly qualified to run in 1995, causing a big scandal then. I was punished by the oligarchy through two legal tricks, in a Venetian style: I was accused, first, of robbing an old lady—exactly as Lyndon LaRouche was accused in the United States; they did exactly a carbon copy of what they had done in the United States. And then, they said in 1995, that my campaign accounts were wrongly presented, and I had to reimburse the state the equivalent of $100,000. So, they ruined me, they seized my apartment, and they thought that they had put my head under water.
Now, in this campaign with the LYM, suddenly, we reappear on the scene, creating a big, big impact, this time. Why? For two reasons: First, when Chirac put his veto, the French veto, against the Bush-Cheney war on Iraq, those who had attacked France from the United States were the same who had attacked LaRouche at the end of the '80s through the end of the '90s. So, the French realized, suddenly, that there was something with LaRouche which is highly interesting for France. It doesn't mean that the authorities helped us, but there was a certain change in the way they conceived of us.
So, in the field, whereas before the police would chase us all over, now they gave the field [organizers] the freedom to organize.
And second, combined with the campaign to get the support of the mayors, this created a very interesting impact. We have yet to capitalize on it at a higher level, but the impact works in two ways: It's the youth, working on Kepler, working on the chorus, working on Schiller, organizing the population with a higher form of principle. And the French are caught in a Cartesian system: They run around with a box full of tools, and they think that these tools will help them forever.
Suddenly, the issue is no longer the exchange of tools, or using certain tools in a certain environment, but it's a break with a system, rompre la regle du jeu, to break with the rules of the game. And this is what the youth are bringing into this debate. As Einstein said, he had made his discoveries, because he had started from principles, trying to validate them experimentally, while the others had started from experiences, trying to synthesize principles, and had failed.
So, we bring this sense of a anti-Cartesian campaign with the youth to the population. And then, with the mayors, we have a unique impact. Because at this point, we have called tens of thousands of them, and 240 have signed; 4,000 are getting our newspapers, and 8,000 are getting our mail. And you have to conceive of the importance of this in European terms, because we cannot, as in other European countries have a direct intervention into the French Parliament, because it is closed to lobbying activities. It's exactly the same as in Germany: You can't go to the Parliament, as you go in Washington to the Congress, open office doors, and start discussing with people.
Here in France, you have to go through a check-in, you have to go through a special admission proceeding, and so on and so forth. So you can't intervene in the same way.
Schlanger: Well, I know there are some Congressmen in the United States who wish they were closed off from the LaRouche Youth Movement!
Cheminade: Yes, yes! But, here, they have all this in a mild (or not so mild) police state. They don't want the people to come to the Congress, the Parliament.
So therefore, our organizing of the mayors is our equivalent of your work there with Congress.
Schlanger: Now, Jacques, you mentioned that Chirac opposed the war against Iraq. Of course, with little effect, because nothing was going to stop Bush and Cheney from going in there. What is the sentiment today, in France, about the prospect of a new war with Iran? And what about the people? What do the people of France whom we're talking to, say about the United States?
Cheminade: First, the main point is that Chirac stopped his intervention, because he didn't want to go into the question of the world monetary and financial system. I have sent a special letter to people close to him, very close to him, and their answer was, they were not going to do that: not go beyond the opposition to the war against Iraq, into the necessity for a New Bretton Woods and a new Eurasian Land-Bridge. They won't go that way.
So, this should be a lesson for the American Congress today, because, by not doing that, they [the Chirac circles] set themselves up, for what's happening to them now: which is, to be in a situation where they are going to be kicked out of power by Nicolas Sarkozy, who is one of them, but became the traitor. He went to the American neo-conservatives, he went to Washington to adopt the position of Cheney, Bush, and Shultz on the war against Iran.... And Chirac did not kick him out of the government! Look at that! He's Interior Minister, he goes to Washington, he endorses the position of Bush, Cheney, and Shultz against Iran, against the policy of his own government, against his own President, and he's still Interior Minister, and he's running in the same party as Chirac.
So, you have this treason at the highest level of the nation, today.
Ségolène Royal, who is the Socialist candidate, on this question, she's an abomination: She said that Iran should not be granted the right to produce, to enrich uranium, even for civilian purposes. Because, she said, civilian purposes are dangerous and they could become military. So, she went against the Non-Proliferation Treaty. She's even worse than Sarkozy on this issue. So, you have a total mess!
So, the population, and even the press, react to it, by saying: "This cannot be. We have to stop this move towards war." The mayors react in the same way: They know that it's an issue of war and peace. But, at the same time, they are afraid. They realize it in a certain way, but they are afraid to move, because they are paralyzed by the tradition of the country, this Cartesian block, and the police-state measures, which come from the period of Napoleon and Louis XIV, and the Jacobin measures during the French Revolution.
So, there's a paralysis, while, at the same time, people know what's true. For example: When we go to organize mayors, those who sign are the ones whom de Gaulle called the "men of character," the people who have the will to do something. Even if they don't understand fully our ideas, even if they think that we are wrong on this or that, they understand that our faction, linked to what LaRouche is doing in the United States directly, is what's needed in French politics. Others, who understand much better the details of our policies, who understand much better what we're doing, chicken out because they are cowards within the logic of the Cartesian system. So this is why we have to break through.
We also have to break through a certain anti-Americanism which is spreading in the country, as in many other countries, because of what Bush and Cheney are doing. So rationally, we are showing the difference between those who kidnapped the American institutions, the Bushes and Cheneys, and the Founding Fathers and LaRouche. So, this is understood, but at, let's say, an "intellectual level." And at the intellectual level, things in France don't work. You need the emotional level supporting the ideas, but really in depth. This country is a country where this has to be done more in depth. So the most effective way to deal with that, is the evocation of the work of a chorus.
People ask, how could the choral work be political? Has this chorus work something to do with French and American history? And what we explain to the mayors is, first, that this is a discovering of the voice of the other, the principle of cross-voices, counterpoint, the comma. The concept of the "Advantage of the Other" corresponds to this work in the chorus. And then, we show to them—and this is very, very effective, because it gives a sense of time to these people (Cartesianism has paralyzed a sense of time, since the Revolution). So, we give them the sense of time, by saying: "Look, you see when the kids are very, very young, all the voices are sopranos; they're all the same. So then, they move towards a change: You have basses, tenors, altos, sopranos, and so forth. And they have to define the unity within diversity. And this is the same philosophical principle as the "unity of the contraries," and this is the principle of a Republic: an accord of discords, as a French writer put it in the 16th Century—Jean Bodin: un accord de discord.
You have also another thing that the mayors appreciate: the idea of rehearsal in public, and then the singing of the piece. And this rehearsal, gives to people in this country—who are shy when something emotional happens in public—encourages people to participate in the chorus and to conceive of the work in progress. Then, when you have started to develop all this, and the mayors see the chorus, and they see the youth, or they see them on a video that we bring to them, how the chorus work happens. Then you have a metaphor of a chorus of sovereign republics. And this chorus of sovereign republics, they see, is the original conception of John Quincy Adams, and today's conception of Lyndon LaRouche. And the reason why Roosevelt could save the world from Nazism.
So then, these mayors discover that there is a more perfect harmony, that it can exist, that it's for real. It's not something beautiful in the sky that cannot come to Earth. And they discover the "Advantage of the Other," and then they move.
Schlanger: Now, in the current political situation in France, is there any echo remaining of the principles of statecraft of Charles de Gaulle? Or has that been pretty much obliterated by the heir apparent, Sarkozy, to Chirac?
Cheminade: Well—me! That's what's remaining, what I'm doing.
In the others, there are some shadows; and there is something in the mayors of that: It's the soul of the country. The soul of the country, these mayors—most of them are Boomers at this point, but Boomers that decided to fight for the good of their people. So when they connect their local fight, or their regional fight for the good of the people, with our fight at a European-wide, at a worldwide level, then they understand what the Youth Movement is doing in the United States, then they understand why the LYM was a decisive factor, a detonator, in the vote of Nov. 7 in the United States; then they understand that.
And then, in France, they see the youth enrolling in the election lists. There was a big, big movement of the youth. In France, you have to register to vote in the next election, and the deadline for doing that is Dec. 31. So, in December, more than two or three times the number of people who usually do that, registered on the voter rolls, and mainly they were the young people. So there is this move by young people toward something new, and we have to give to that a meaning and an orientation. But the intention is there, and we, together with the mayors whom we have organized, have to catalyze this intention.
It's what I said to people: "I cannot be a leading factor, but I can be, as in a chemical reaction, a catalyst, which becomes a leading factor once the reaction starts."
Schlanger: So, we're seeing in France with the youth, the equivalent of what LaRouche called the "New Politics" in the United States.
Cheminade: It is, but it is more difficult, in the sense that we have to revive in the minds of people that they have a "second America." It's a funny thing that [LYM member] Elodie Viennot and I started to do when we were in Berlin: Which is, to say to the people: "You have America and you have LaRouche, who represents the true America, to support. But, also, in yourselves, you have in your mind, an 'America' deeply buried, because Europe has made America. And we are here to tickle you, to go inside you, and to get this America out of the grave, into the reality of today's politics. If we don't do that, the French Republic is lost."
Schlanger: Well, let me bring in now, Elodie Viennot, who I understand has been doing some of these meetings with mayors and is involved in the French Youth Movement.
Elodie, you've heard what Jacques has said about the mayors. What kind of response do you get, when you sit down and talk to a mayor?
Viennot: It depends; you have really different cases. In a way, what I found in the last three days—because I was out in different regions in Normandy, Brittany, and so forth, meeting about ten mayors in the last days—there were several of them who had really something alive, that hadn't been killed by the mechanisms of the system, that end up dulling people. And these respond immediately to the kind of commitment that we have politically. And one thing that struck me, is that at the same time, several of them will be discouraged—because what you see is a lot of people, who are, as Jacques was saying, trying to do something for their population, and more and more, they see there is less and less they can do.
One mayor I met this morning was saying, "It seems like more and more the mayor is just going to be an emblematic figure, but having absolutely no power to do anything." And gradually, throughout the discussion, he started coming out from being really fixated on that, and seeing that that's actually going on for nations, for national governments; it's going on for individuals. That, generally speaking, you have a whole dynamic in the society which is leading towards that. And gradually, as he started to realize that more and more, in a way his mind was moving towards another direction than usual, and starting to see a way out. And he took a lot of documentation to read, to see how can we build another viewpoint, and another world, really, to have a future built up.
So, for example, another one was a farmer. We ended up talking with him, he's about 38 or so, and then his father, who was born on the farm when there were no roads around, and so on. And what he was saying, is that in unions—for instance, he's a cattle grower, so he's in the union for cattle growers—everybody's corrupt. That they all have deals with this or that government, with this or that company; and there is nobody, as a farmer, that you can count on, at all. And he was saying: How in the world can we get out of such a system? And that's when we started telling him about the choral work in the street, with how much [happiness] that brings—because usually people are really shocked when they see us singing in the street, happy! So, they say: "You guys are having fun. What are you doing out here?" It's quite a rare sight in France to see people come out in public doing political activity, and having actual fun doing it!
Schlanger: Elodie, what is the response from young people when they see the LaRouche Youth saying, "We're out to elect a President of France, to change the system, but also to break you out of the Cartesian chains of the French system." What are you getting from the youth?
Viennot: Again, there are different types of responses. We've been relatively focussed in Paris, for the few deployments we've been able to do in the field, out on the streets to meet young people in the last month, because we've all been focussed on the mayors' recruitment. But, generally speaking, a lot of people exactly know what it means to be a Cartesian. And what happens is, that these things come out gradually.
For example, as we've been working with the Kepler in particular, what comes out is that Kepler's view is that you can actually discover how the world works, not as a formula obviously. But you don't have to be stuck making speculations on how things occur. And usually what that means for people our age, is, you shouldn't consider yourself as somebody who cannot do anything, because, that's what comes out the most, including with young people: "But what can we really do? What are we, really? What strength do we have, at all?"
And what happens, usually, is there's kind of a long mental pause in people's minds, where they start to actually think that they might be worth something. And bringing that into the political realm, and showing people how that is so much political, with an official candidacy in the campaign today: I think that this is going to trigger a huge reaction in young people in general, and our Youth Movement here is going to really multiply. Especially given that there are more young people who have registered to vote than ever in the last years. It's like 95% of young people are registered now.
Schlanger: Hmm! Jacques, there's an e-mail that came in from Eugene in California, who wanted to know, what are the dynamics of the change in France, related to Bush. He seems to be saying that France flipped and is now working with Bush, as opposed to being in opposition. Is there anything to that?
Cheminade: No, the French population hates Bush. I know nobody who likes Bush, even among the right-wingers who obey his orders. He's utterly disliked. In the government, you have a sort of—I don't know how to call it in English—pas de deux: They do something, and then they become afraid, and they come back, and they do something and they become afraid, and they come back. That's more of their situation.
What Chirac was trying to do, was to send an envoy to Iran to appease the situation, and it was his Foreign Minister Douste-Blazy (Douste-Blazy is a total pig, and an idiot pig!). So, he told Sarkozy, and Sarkozy revealed this mission, and it became public. So Chirac became afraid, and there was this whole story with the interview with the International Herald Tribune and the New York Times, and the Nouvelle Observateur. And Chirac, well, in these situations, he's not very courageous, so he stepped back.
Schlanger: Douste-Blazy is an idiot pig....
Cheminade: He's not even a neo-con. He's a sucker of the neo-cons.
Schlanger: I'd like to bring in [LYM member] Natalie Lovegren, who's in Leesburg.
Natalie, you heard Elodie's description of the effect of the singing in France. Is the choral principle a universal principle? Does it work everywhere?
Lovegren: Yes, definitely. We've had, recently in the past couple weeks, since we began the new Congress, the 110th Congress, the "Week of Action" (as it's called in Washington, D.C.), where the LYM from the East Coast came to organize on Capitol Hill. The LYM tried a new strategy, a new way to communicate in the Congress, by breaking up into quartets and quintets, to lobby the Congress on a higher level. And because that was so effective, there has been since then, a follow-up in organizing all over the country—on the campuses and throughout the population—where we're now bringing young people from the deployments, off the campuses and off the streets, straight into the choruses, to rapidly integrate new people into learning how to communicate musically.
In Seattle, just in the last day, there were three new people in the chorus. The Detroit LYM has been organizing in Columbus, Ohio, and they're bringing at least one new person to each of their choral sectionals each day. You see the same thing in Boston: They've been going on the campuses and singing in the classrooms—at Harvard, Boston University, and so on, going in and asking the professors beforehand if they can make an announcement, do a little singing. Then they'll go in and sing a canon about impeaching Cheney, usually to the delight and the surprise of the class and the professors, as well.
Schlanger: And also, I understand we had quite an impact in Mexico City, with the musical intervention around the "Nuclear Tortilla" song.
Lovegren: Right. There was a huge march, there were over 100,000 people in Mexico City, because the price of tortillas has gone up 50% just in the last few months, and this is an existential crisis for the Mexican people. So, the LaRouche Youth Movement in Mexico City wrote a statement called, "Only Nuclear Energy Can Save Your Tortilla." They wrote a song called the "Tortilla Song," and they went out to this demonstration, and several times during this rally, they reported, they had up to 300 people singing the "Tortilla Song" with them.
Schlanger: Well, this brings me to the Kepler, and Jacques, I'd like to bring you back in on this: What Lyndon LaRouche has been emphasizing in the last few days, is the breakthrough that came out of the group working in Leesburg on Kepler, restoring this principle of real science again. Now, I want to remind you of an event more than 20 years ago, when I joined you in Paris. We had a press conference on the Strategic Defense Initiative, and, you remember, we had about 30 press there. I remember, there was great interest in the French military on LaRouche's ideas of strategic defense. Now, here we are, some 20 years later, and this issue's back on the table, following the reports that the Chinese may have used an anti-missile weapon based on these new physical principles, possibly a laser weapon. Or, if they did not do it, there's still evidence from a new report that was just released to the Congress, that the Chinese have done extensive work on nuclear missile deterrence, including new physical principles.
Now, this is also a huge issue in Europe, because for some reason, the Bush Administration is insisting on putting their kinetic anti-missile devices in Poland and the Czech Republic. To what extent is there still a resonance on this issue, the SDI, the new science, to break out of the danger of nuclear war, in France, and how does it look in Europe?
Cheminade: In particular, for the French, when something new happens, there is a lot of resonance, but most of it under the table; it's not discussed publicly. To give you a sense of it, I wrote as part of my "project"—I call it a project and not a program, because I don't want it to appear as an addition of single issues—so, in my Presidential Project, there is a part on military affairs, and on what sort of army and what sort of military policies for France. And it deals, precisely with this issue of a new strategic situation.
So, it was reported to me by a very key general, who was earlier the chief of staff for the two last French Presidents, including Chirac. He said, "Your program is the best; your military program is the best. It's circulated all around, and we remember what happened with the SDI. But, you have not the means, you are not supported by the networks, you are not supported by the insiders enough, to make it into a reality."
So, there is this mixture, in France, of, at the same time, a consciousness of what happens, and pessimism over the incapacity to act upon it. It's exactly what de Gaulle in the past broke through, and this is what, absolutely, we have to bring in: That France has the capacity in coordinating the work, as we did in the times of the SDI, with what LaRouche is doing in the United States; then France becomes a universal country again. Now, it's a region of Europe, and it's a disaster. The only chance for France to become a universal country is through a question like that, and intervening.
And this is what we are spreading through the network, which does exist, of mayors. And some of them are telling me: "I'll sign for you. But you have to come back. Let's not stop at this point, we have to organize a movement." And I tell them, that it's very urgent, it's an issue of war and peace, here and now. And that's the debate.
Schlanger: In terms of this question of strategic deterrence, is there discussion of the role of NATO? Should NATO still exist? I know there's also the question of whether the European Union will survive. So, to what extent is this a living debate in the Presidential campaign, or how do you address this?
Cheminade: In the elites, nobody has the right to say that the euro is finished, but everybody knows that the euro is finished. It's there ... it's a very French situation: So, you don't talk about that in public, but in private you can discuss it—like a dirty story.
There are other Presidential candidates: there's a proto-Gaullist, Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, who told me: "I can't attack the euro! But, I can say that great public works, great projects should be done with the euro, and, because it is impossible, then I would say that the euro has to be dropped and we need therefore to come back to the French franc." So, these issues are discussed, and this Dupont-Aignan is like a feeler sent into the scene, in part to preempt the work that we are doing, but he's picking up things and spreading them. So you have this type of very byzantine Venetian situation. I have to be the one who puts his fist on the table, and it should be one fist across the Atlantic.
Schlanger: So, you're not exactly part of the polite French discussion?
Cheminade: Oh no! I am perceived as ... impolite, but at the same time, capable of being polite—which is the worst thing you can do in France, at a dinner: Because, if you are impolite because you are impolite, well that's a fact of nature, it's Cartesian. But, if you are impolite on purpose! That's terrible... and that's what I have to be.
Schlanger: Elodie, I'd like to ask you about the progress of the work on Kepler with the youth, because this does get to the question of putting nations back on the course of physical economy based on real science. I'd like to get a sense from you of how the project is going with the LaRouche Youth Movement in France.
Viennot: It's really funny, because we're going through all sorts of crises, basically. Because taking the authority of having an intellectual identity is really a struggle for people coming out of the counterculture from birth. And we've already gone through a lot of ups and downs. But to give you an idea, we read the Mysterium Cosmographicum to get a sense of how Kepler was thinking, especially also because he's 25 when he writes it, so it's really personal for us to consider somebody who's the same age. And it really gives you a sense that his approach is that you actually can master how you interact with the world, and you don't have to be doomed by whatever circumstances surround you.
And where it really gets funny, is that now we're reading the New Astronomy, and at first we were struggling through the first chapters, trying to understand and go through it. And after having several discussions with people like Natalie and others in the United States, and people in Germany as well, we took the advice of starting to read the whole thing, all at once.
So, we're now in the process of this, in what's called the "Second Book," and it's quite a marathon, I have to say! But really, what's the most interesting, is you have to, in a way, loosen up and go into the unknown; and not go from the standpoint that you can work on this, because either yourself or somebody else has something that is personally acquired—a knowledge or a confidence in it—but you have to step into it no matter what.
And it really helps to bring back the idea that we're dealing with something universal, and not with something that we try to have as a personal mastery, or something that's "Elodie's idea," or something. But really stepping into what's unknown right now, to go and fight through the economic science. That's something we're working on right now with everybody, including the newer members of the Youth Movement, of why this is key for economics.
Schlanger: Natalie, you attended the LYM presentations in Washington, D.C., and in Leesburg last week, which Lyndon LaRouche said is a revolution in science. Why is that so?
Lovegren: Well, the presentation that was given was the culmination of almost five months of work on mastery of The Harmony of the World, by Kepler. The New Astronomy, which most of the youth offices in the world are working through right now, is the book where Kepler discovers the principle of universal gravitation, and works through the orbit of Mars. Then, in The Harmony of the World, he's actually looking at the way that not just Mars is ordered, but the harmony of the entire Solar System, and the principles that are acting universally to harmonize and to organize our entire universe.
So, the presentation was revolutionary. I have an interesting sense of the work and the anticipation leading up to that, from working in the War-Room, because we've been trying to open up communication among the different LYM offices throughout the planet, and you get a completely different sense, or I guess a greater power, that you are working on universal ideas, when these are expressed through different language cultures. So, we had a conference call a couple of weeks ago—Germany, France, and Sweden—and it's interesting to see that you get the same types of questions, and the same types of problems that come up, even though you're in a completely different culture. But then, you have specific situations: Some people were talking from California and Texas, saying, "Oh, it's important to go and do the physical observations, and stay out the whole night." And you had some guys in Sweden, saying, "Are you crazy! Do you know how cold it is out here?" And we said, "Oh, but you have a better environment. This is the environment that Kepler was working in."
Schlanger: Also you have a longer night.
Lovegren: Yes! Or, hardly at all a night, depending on what time of the year, you're in.
So, LaRouche just said today, we're not going to call these the "Animations groups" any more, but the "Minds of Kepler," and the groups that are creating a fundamental revolution in science. And people are very excited now. You have a couple of the members who were in the recent Animations group, who are now back in Washington, D.C., and who are going to be leading the rest of the crew. We already have a meeting set up with a Congressional aide, to discuss Kepler. And we're going to see a situation very quickly, where there's going to be meetings set up, when these aides are being told, by their Senator or their Congressman, "You need to understand Kepler, to be able to understand the economics that's going to get the nation and the planet out of this crisis that we're in."
And even though this may seem impractical on the surface, what you're dealing with, is the most efficient way to understand economics, because you're dealing with the universal physical principles that determine the specific policies that these Congressmen are going to be making. So therefore, Kepler is actually the most practical thing to work on.
Schlanger: Well, revolutions never occur because of "practical concerns." I mean, we are at a fundamental crisis.
Jacques, I'd like to draw upon your historical-philosophical understanding that, while you talk about the Cartesian problem in France, actually I know from my study of history, the first modern nation-state was Louis XI in France. And in fact, we're talking about modern physical economy: That came about largely as the result of a collaboration by one of Kepler's followers, Leibniz, when he was in Paris working with Jean-Baptiste Colbert.
So, what's it going to take to win the French population back to, really, its "soul" as you said earlier? Win it back to its heritage?
Cheminade: To pick up on what Natalie was saying, there is a big campaign by the French press at this point, to degrade people, and to depreciate the population, to rub their nose in a stinky little world. For example, they are full of articles on the money earned by the candidates, how rich are they? Are they full of money? Have they stolen money?
There is another type of article, "sexus politicus," what are the sexual habits of the French candidates? Then there are articles on politics as sport: Are all the neo-cons in a pack with Sarkozy, or in another camp? Would the Socialists' candidate Ségolène Royal hold?
Then, there is exploitation of fear: There is a big conference in Paris at this point on global warming. So, the whole campaign is full of an ecologist undertone. It is no longer a green movement as such—they're losing votes. But it's a green attitude spreading throughout all parties. And at the same time, a move to defend nuclear energy.
So, it's a very interesting conflict. That situation: If you give people a sense of their creative powers, to work on the unknown, the creative power to work on the unknown, and to organize people not on a fixed knowledge but on what you are in the process of knowing yourself, then it's revolutionary. Tomorrow we are going to watch with the LYM in Paris, the presentation given in the United States on the work on Kepler. So, it's our commitment—as you are doing in the United States—to bring that into French politics, here and now: the emotions associated with discovery of a universal physical principle.
It's very interesting, that somehow in the minds of people, because of what you said, because that under Charles V also, in the 14th Century; then Louis XI in the 15th Century; then in the 16th Century the whole work of French astronomers, around the faction of the Politiques, people who were against the wars of religion and who said that there should be a community of principle in the state; then Leibniz's work in the French Academy of Sciences (which was not French, it was European). And the way to see it, is, that you have the Peace of Westphalia, the forgiveness of wrongdoings done by one to the other, the principle of forgiveness, but also the advantage of the other.
So, this was given a real form, in the form of the work of the Academy of Sciences, in the form of giving to people the means to know, discover, and identify the best in themselves, the best in the history of their respective republics in Europe, to bring the best out against this idea of destruction through the wars of religion.
So, that's precisely what we have to bring forth now in France, today, to recover the soul of the country. And the youth, the LaRouche Youth Movement in France, is precisely doing that. It's, in a sense, I think for them, a joy to be young in the middle of such a storm. The storm is terrible, but it's a joy to be young.
So, it's what I told the LYM the other day: Probably I would not be in this country, at this point of history, if they were not there. But probably they are there, because of the work we did. So, it's a very interesting way of thinking of our history in the future, with the eyes of the future, that we have done so little in terms of what we have to do in this coming period. And it's really a moment of enthusiasm, in that sense for all of us.
Schlanger: I think also the question of restoring real science, versus the quackery which we saw in Paris yesterday with the release by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, of their report on so-called "global warming." I mean, it should be obvious: If George Bush supports it, supports the burning of corn and switchgrass, and wood chips, and cow chips, this is going in the wrong direction.
But Jacques, you brought up this question of the green movement in France. What you're seeing then, in the campaign of the Socialist Party, in the campaign of Sarkozy, is that they're incorporating this phony science, this pseudo-science?
Cheminade: Yes, and also Chirac. Chirac made a big public statement—at the same time that he's trying to cool down the situation with Iran, he made this public statement calling for an ecological revolution in the world, and creating a United Nations for ecology! So, even the ecologists themselves, at this point, are a bit more sane than the public figures, because there was a resolution from the ecologists in the European Parliament against bio-fuels and against ethanol. They said: "How are we going to do that? We are going to destroy the whole land in Europe and in the United States? We are going to destroy all the corn in the United States, and we are not going to be able to feed people!"
So we are at the point in history, where there is a certain irony in seeing these ecologists being more sane than the actual leaders of the nation!
We are at the end of the end, which is always a very good moment to change things, and to bring forth this idea of the creative powers of the human being. It's a very, very interesting moment in history, in that sense.
Schlanger: Now, Jacques, just for the listeners who aren't aware of this: When is the election in France? And how much time do you have to get the signatures of the remaining mayors that you have to get?
Cheminade: Very little time, and it will be very difficult. But if something happens in the world, for example if you in the United States manage to launch the impeachment of Cheney, in a big way, then it will change everything. And I will be a candidate, and I can break through all the containment raised against me.
So, my message is: Do your best to impeach Cheney as soon as possible. And then, I would give back to you, in the form of the campaign I would lead, all that you have done for me in impeaching Cheney.
Schlanger: Natalie, the people who have been in Leesburg for the last five months will be going back out to the regions now, to reproduce the work that they did in Leesburg, and a new group is coming in.
Lovegren: Yes, that's the plan. You have some overlap this past week, where the old group was reading through the book The Harmony of the World with the new group, and the new group has realized that they're going to need to do a lot of work on the harmonies, before taking on how Gauss discovered the orbit of Ceres, which was based on what Kepler had recognized, and had discovered in The Harmony of the World.
So, the old group is going back out to the regions now, and they'll be ready to teach soon, after some recovery.
Schlanger: Jacques, I think it's worth saying, one more time. The relationship between France and the United States, has tended to be somewhat of a bellwether for where the world is going. The French support for the American Revolution was critical. We've been allies at key moments in history, on science, on politics. There is anti-Americanism, which is largely generated by Bush and Cheney. How do you see the developments going into this? I mean, if Bush and Cheney are not impeached, is Sarkozy going to end up as President of France?
Cheminade: He has a big chance, yes, in this situation. Because the Socialists are so stupid, that they may help him rise to power. So it's this I don't even want to contemplate for one second, because it will be for Europe a dark age. If you look at German Chancellor Merkel, she wants to have a transatlantic free trade agreement. She wants to impose a European Constitution, against the "No" vote of the French and the Dutch, and she wants also to have Hartz IV type of austerity throughout Europe, and that's what Sarkozy would do.
So, I don't want to even think one moment about that. And I am leading this campaign to prevent that, and I expect that impeachment of Cheney would help me in accomplishing it, as soon as possible. We are going to do something in any case. But, it would be much more difficult, if Cheney is not impeached.
