Electronic Intelligence Weekly
Online Almanac
From Volume 2, Issue Number 18 of Electronic Intelligence Weekly, Published May 5, 2003
This Week You Need To Know
LaRouche's U.S. Foreign Policy
by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.
The following is a summary statement of the U.S. Foreign Policy of one of the currently leading candidates for the 2004 U.S. Presidential nomination by that nation's Democratic Party. Although this statement will be widely circulated inside the U.S.A., it is intended to serve as a compact summary, as suited for translations, which might be desired as information by governments and citizens of other parts of the world at this time.
The candidate is currently the leading Democratic Party contender in number of contributors who have supported his campaign to the present date.
The 1989-1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, created a state of world affairs in which the U.S.A., then under President George H. W. Bush, Sr., assumed the role of a virtually unchallenged world power.1 Unfortunately, this occasion was used to unleash a strategically motivated, looting-down of the physically productive aspects of the economies of not only both the former Soviet Union and former Eastern European Warsaw Pact members, but also the intent, aided by Balkan wars, to bring about a cumulatively significant weakening of the so-called "rival" economies of pre-1989 European continental allies, Germany most emphatically.
This combination of developments encouraged the presently continuing insurgence of two varieties of imperial intentions already lurking among some of the most powerful political factions within the United States. One of these factions represents a U.S. liberal-imperialist impulse copying the British tradition known by that name. The second is an echo of the Roman imperial legions and Nazi international Waffen-SS. The latter, fascist impulse, was pushed unsuccessfully, during 1991-92, by then U.S. Secretary of Defense Richard "Dick" Cheney and his so-called neo-conservative ("neo-con") associates. However, later, that same policy has been pushed, since Sept. 11, 2001, by the same Cheney, now Vice-President, and also by the same set of associates of Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld as then.2 The utopian Cheney-Rumsfeld clique's nuclear-airborne parody of the international Waffen-SS, has been known otherwise, during recent decades, as the U.S. "Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA)."
So, the practical difference between those two kinds of imperialist impulse within today's U.S.A., is between a slower, more cautious liberal approach, and that explicitly fascist, quick-march plunge into the Hell of a planetary new dark age. The latter is represented by Cheney and his long-standing crony Donald Rumsfeld. It is the latter, explicitly fascist policy, which must be repelled, urgently, explicitly, and directly, now.
The recent partial successes of the virtual twins, Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, in foisting certain crucial parodies of Nazi policies upon the administration of President George W. Bush, Jr., has resulted in a demoralizing state of mind among governing circles of those nations, in Europe and elsewhere, whose interest is to defend themselves against this new strategic threat. However, even those same governments which resist the threat, have also tended to waver, out of fearful regard for the hope that they might minimize the risk of becoming virtually a declared adversary of the U.S.A.
This currently ominous trend in U.S. military affairs, is accompanied, and accelerated, by a presently on-rushing economic collapse of the 1971-2003, "floating exchange-rate" form of world monetary-financial system. The present unwillingness of the U.S. Bush Administration even to consider allowing urgently needed monetary-financial reforms of the IMF system, represents, as I shall show here, a matter for concern as crucial as the ongoing, pro-fascist military threat.
It is unfortunate, for all of us, that I am not yet the incumbent President of the U.S.A. However, in my role as the Democratic candidate currently leading in popular financial support, I represent a significant force for those ideas around which concerned leading forces around the world could, and should now rally, to present to the people and leading institutions of the U.S.A. and other nations, an image of the changed, better future role of the U.S. which would be consistent with the true interest of the world's respectively sovereign nations.
Presently, the impetus for this needed change in the world's outlook, must, probably, come from within the U.S.A. itself. Currently, no different prospect is to be seen from around the world. Essential contributions have come from France, Germany, Russia, China, and elsewhere. Nonetheless, it is the fearful imperial power enjoyed by the U.S.A., today, which fosters what I see as an underlying, potentially fatal tendency for vacillation shown by many leading governments when faced with U.S. bullying. His Holiness Pope John Paul II excepted, perhaps it is only from a spokesman from inside the U.S.A., a Presidential candidate who knows, and feels the global power of the U.S.A. in this respect, and who knows, confidently, how to use that power to the marginal effect, that groups of leaders from other nations might be encouraged, as I seek to encourage them now, to join in acting in concert for those urgently needed reforms which are presently in the urgent interest of us all.
The basis for such an approach is to be found in that history of the creation of, and internal partisan battles within the U.S., a history which has been scarcely remembered, and little-understood in Europe and elsewhere today. I situate my U.S. foreign policy against the following summary of relevant elements of that history, define the principled adversary to be defeated, define the root of the present economic crisis, and then state that intended U.S. foreign policy which I submit as a proposed active premise for practice among nations, even at the present moment.
My foreign policies as a present and former candidate for President of the United States, have always been premised on the stated American Whig tradition of President John Quincy Adams, leading economist Henry C. Carey, and President Abraham Lincoln. That set of policies is neither a slogan, nor an algebraic formula, but a principle. It is a principle, like any valid principle of physical science, premised upon a stipulated history of human experience. In this instance, that history is, as the great German Classical poet and historian Friedrich Schiller would agree on principle, the experience of the U.S.A., as situated within the development of European civilization since Solon of Athens.
The creation of the U.S. Federal constitutional republic, as an intended echo of the tradition of Solon, was led as a combined effort of many of the leading figures, scientists and others, from both sides of the Atlantic. These forces saw the birth of the U.S. republic as Lafayette once described it, as a temple of liberty and beacon of hope for all mankind.
Unfortunately, as the post-July 14, 1789 events in Paris, the Jacobin Terror, the rampages of Napoleon Bonaparte, and the Metternich-Castlereagh roles at the Vienna Congress attest, modern Europe then had not yet attained that degree of political maturity which it should have derived from the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, the ability to enable it to erect true and stable republics.
Nonetheless, even under the conditions of isolation and periods of decadence which the U.S. suffered, from 1789 until President Lincoln's victory over Lord Palmerston's asset, the Confederacy, the U.S. Constitution has proven itself, repeatedly, to be a remarkably durable instrument. President Franklin Roosevelt, who picked the U.S. up from out of the cumulative acts of wrecking of our institutions under Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover, demonstrated the continued vitality of that Constitution when it were placed at the disposal of faithful and competent hands.
The underlying purpose of the American Revolution and its leading European supporters, was, from the beginning, to establish the U.S.A. as a republic which would contribute, in the manner of a seed-crystal, to inspiring the emergence of a community of principle among the independent sovereign republics of the world. That was the goal expressed by one of our greatest statesmen, John Quincy Adams, the policy summarized by President Lincoln in his celebrated Gettysburg Address. This same commitment was invoked by President Franklin Roosevelt's warning to British Prime Minister Churchill, that, he, unlike the later President Harry Truman, was committed to a decolonized post-war world. On this account, one must understand the unique importance for the world, then as now, of the Preamble of the 1787-1789 drafting of that adopted Constitution.
That intention should be copied as the unifying statement of purpose among the majority of peoples now. This intention, which properly defines the founding law and self-interested foreign policy of U.S.A., were made efficiently clear, when the principled nature of the authority of the Preamble of the U.S. Federal Constitution were understood. I explain, as follows.
Admittedly, the U.S.A. has often violated that principle of law on which it was founded. Since 1763, the leading political currents of English-speaking North America have been divided chiefly between two opposing principles. The one, the patriots who created the U.S. republic; the other, those, like the leaders of the Essex Junto, who were known, by name, as "American Tories," from the time of Benjamin Franklin through President Franklin Roosevelt, as by me today. These American Tories were originally allied in business and philosophy with the British East India Company and have continued that philosophical heritage of Lord Shelburne, Aaron Burr, and Jeremy Bentham to the present day. These American Tories represent the essential root and continuing political-philosophical base for both of my nation's pro-imperialist factions. The sometimes wild swings in U.S. policy-shaping express nothing as much as the pattern of resurgence and ebb of that patriotic tradition of which I am a veteran representative today.
Franklin Roosevelt's Presidency was a time of a great resurgence of the American patriotic legacy. Since the combined aftermath of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the launching of the U.S. war in Indo-China, and Richard M. Nixon's 1966-68 campaign for the Presidency, the American Tory legacy has been predominant in all notable U.S. political parties, until the present crisis.
Despite the differences in policy and shifting relative strength, between the two factions, it is the current of Benjamin Franklin, which I represent today, and which President Franklin Roosevelt represented, which crafted the 1776 Declaration of Independence according to principles defined by Gottfried Leibniz, and which composed the Preamble of the Federal Constitution.
That Preamble expresses three principles which were adopted as expressions of natural law. These principles are, by name, the principle of perfect national sovereignty, the principle of the general welfare, and the principle of dedication to posterity. No interpretation of any other feature of the Constitution were allowable, nor amendment, nor any enacted law, which were read in a way which were inconsistent with the combined impact of those three principles. The notion of the extension of those same principles to a community of principle among a community of perfectly sovereign nation-states, has been the variously stated, or implied intention of every thoughtful spokesman of past generations of my nation's patriotic party. It is the thrust of U.S. history, that its military policy should be, similarly, a reflection of that goal of desiring, and defending a durable such community of principle among the nations of the world.
Then Secretary of State John Quincy Adams' letter to his President James Monroe, launching the 1823 Monroe Doctrine for the defense of the perfect sovereignties of the emerging republics of the Americas against the predatory powers of Europe, as soon as the U.S.A. were able, is a leading expression of this principle. This U.S.A. acted so, when it were first able, when the defeat of Lord Palmerston's asset, the Confederacy, provided the opportunity for the U.S. to expel Napoleon III's military forces supporting the murderous tyrant Maximilian, from Mexico.
The task for today, is that leading nations of the world must act now to establish an effective form of such a principled order for peaceful collaboration among all willing nations, once and for all.
It is the implicit historical conviction of my nation's continuing patriotic tradition, that the role of European civilization, from Solon of Athens to the present, must be to serve the promotion and practice of those principles, in our nation, and our common contribution to the world at large. This policy has been the essential premise of our actual national interest since the beginning of our struggle for national independence. These three principles, which the founders of the U.S. took largely from the influence of circles associated with Gottfried Leibniz, have deep and ancient historical-philosophical roots in the history of globally extended European and other civilizations.3 I describe them, summarily, as follows.
The common root of all of these principles, is the notion of human nature as specifically apart from, and above that of the beasts. For example, the great Russian scientist V.I. Vernadsky addressed this matter in his definition of a higher order of existence, which he named the Noöphere, as distinct from, and superior to the Biosphere. Only the human individual has the inborn capacity to do what no beast can do, to create and build a Noösphere: to accomplish this by the discovery and employment of universal physical principles which are invisible to the senses, and, yet, are universally efficient.4 The sharing of that experience of discovery of efficient universal principles, and of the benefits of those powers, within contemporary society, and in efficient transmission of such knowledge, from past, to present, to future generations, shows us that the true practical, and immortal meaning of individual human life, resides in those uniquely human qualities. It shows that the interest of mankind lies essentially in this principled distinction of man from the beast.
For such reasons, the natural yearning of civilization has been to craft forms of society which efficiently uproot those traditions under which some persons hunt or herd other persons as dumbed-down human cattle. This correction requires a mode in society in which each individual is encouraged to participate consciously in the generation and replication of those acts of discovery of universal principle which are the means of mankind's progress in self-development. This defines the principle of the general welfare, as derived from that notion of justice known as agape@am, in the ancient Greek of Plato's Republic, and in the Christian's I Corinthians 13, and otherwise known as the common good. This defines the principle of dedication to posterity, the true principle of history as a lawful process.
Implicitly, it also defines the principle of perfect national sovereignties.
The partial realization of that goal of statecraft occurred in birth of modern Europe, during the Fifteenth Century. This was expressed by the birth of those first nation-states, France under Louis XI and that England of young Sir Thomas More established under Henry VII. These were states committed to the principle of the general welfare. Although expressions of contrary ancient and medieval imperial law persisted, the admittedly troubled emergence of the modern sovereign nation-state, against reactionary, pro-medieval institutions, has been a great net boon to mankind as a whole. The Preamble of the U.S. Federal Constitution adopted that as its governing constitutional principle. This works to the following intended effect.
The rightful sovereignty of a nation-state lies in the uniquely appropriate and obligatory function of government to promote the causes of general welfare and posterity efficiently, and the responsibility never to act contrary to that.
The effectiveness of that sovereignty depends upon the development, sharing, and preservation of knowledge. This must be accomplished by a continuing process of improving the existing culture of that people, including the crucial language-culture within which the social processes of deliberation chiefly proceed. Without that use of its culture for the development of the human individual, the names for the rights of the individual tend to become empty phrases, and a people is effectively disenfranchised by its own ignorance, in that way. Thus, the freedom and development of the people, and the perfect sovereignty of the nation-state are inseparable principles.
In the end, the principles of the universe are expressed as a coherent, expanding body of knowledge. Yet, to achieve that knowledge efficiently, a people must come to it by means of use and development of the culture they have, including the language-culture. The most essential feature of that language-culture is not what are regarded as those literal meanings of words and phrases which might be plucked from a dictionary, but, rather, those subtleties of metaphor and other ironies which are, as Percy Bysshe Shelley points out, the medium through which a people is capable of imparting and receiving profound and impassioned conceptions respecting man and nature.
The goal of bringing into being a true community of principle among sovereign nation-states, is therefore a reflection of a universal, and natural principle of law.
The chief internal adversary of today's globally extended modern European civilization, has been the social empiricism of that one-time tyrant of Venice, the Paolo Sarpi whose conception of neo-Ockhamite empiricism was reflected through the activity of his lackey Galileo Galilei. This empiricism emerged, under Galileo's tutelage, as the root of the hideously misanthropic conceptions of Thomas Hobbes. From Hobbes, through such as John Locke, Bernard Mandeville, Jeremy Bentham, Thomas Huxley, Friedrich Nietzsche, and H.G. Wells, came today's widespread, principled misconception of man, as instinctively a feral, existentialist beast. The modern international fascism of such followers of the late Professor Leo Strauss and his ally, the synarchist Alexander Kojeve, as Vice-President Cheney's circles of so-called "neo-conservatives," is a typical, Hobbesian-Nietzschean outgrowth of what is fairly described, variously, as the contemporary existentialists' bestial, dionysian, or satanic misconception of human nature.
This misconception of man, so exemplified, is the single greatest danger to global humanity today.
The present condition of our planet, its population, its technologies, does not permit the continued existence of civilization according to a regime ordered by the percussive interactions of persons and institutions, a regime to be recognized as the legacy of the social empiricist Hobbes. The maintenance of present or higher levels of population on this planet, requires the defense, and further improvement of those man-made physical-capital improvements in nature which are among the most obvious distinctions of the Noösphere. The combat against the lack of added improvements to that stock of physical capital, and combat against the want of a richer education and for improved living conditions of the populations generally, define indispensable measures for preventing the slide of mankind into a planetary new dark age.
That hateful destructiveness typified by Hobbes, includes today the wont for the outlawed practice of preventive nuclear war, as expressed by the fascist policies of Cheney, Rumsfeld, and their neo-conservative lackeys; the latter is a threat to civilization which this planet itself could not tolerate.
The fascism of Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al., is admittedly a wild extreme within the larger legacy of Hobbes, but we must not evade the fact, that as long as the practice of statecraft were informed by a notion of inevitably percussive relations within and among nations, there would be not only a recurring tendency toward fostering of useless conflicts, but an insensibility to those measures which would supersede old issues by means of urgent and beneficial actions in the common interest. Much Hobbes breeds too many Cheneys.
Man is born to do good. The potential ability of a child from any part of the planet to be developed as a virtual genius, to be an individual who loves discovered truth and the common good, and devotes his or her mortal life to its meaningful outcome for those yet to be born: That typifies that inborn goodness which is specific to human nature. It is providing the circumstances and motivation for that development of the individual's potential, which is the pervasively underlying true mission, and duty of the sovereign nation-state republic.
If, instead of such a view, the policy of states were premised on the axiomatic assumption that man is a predatory beast by specific natural disposition, the practice of societies would continue to be that of man as beast to man. If every man were considered such a beast, every man were to be regarded in a Hobbesian view, as a war-like threat to every other. The consequence of that were perpetual, global "preventive warfare" in the mode of the Adolf Hitler regime and the policies of the fascist circles of that modern echo of the celebrated medieval scoundrels "Biche and Mouche," Cheney and Rumsfeldor, perhaps Burke and Hare.
The specific feature of Sarpi's empiricism which leads to such malignant expressions of hatred, is the denial of the existence of that specific power of the human individual which sets the human species apart from, and above the beasts. The expression of this specific power which is called the potentiality of the individual human soul, is typified by both the discovery and sharing of those efficient universal principles of the universe which can not be, and are not the objects of mere sense-certainty. This specific kind of power, so termed by Plato, and sometimes called spiritual, is also expressed and thus typified, in a similar way, by great Classical artistic composition.
This specific power of mankind is illustrated in practice as the Classical humanists, such as Friedrich Schiller and Wilhelm von Humboldt, recognized. This includes those beneficial advances in technology by means of which mankind has progressed from the potential relative population-density of a higher ape, to one which is three decimal orders of magnitude greater than that, today. The cultivation of social relations to similar effect, through great Classical art, expresses the same specific distinction of the quality of every member of the human species. The attempt to degrade science and art to the level of statistical interpretation of mere sense-certainty, expresses a culture which seeks to degrade man into the likeness of a mere beast. This bestiality is the assumption of Galileo's pupil Hobbes; this degradation is the axiomatic root of Hobbes' view of man as a beast to man. This is the axiomatic root of the bestiality of such followers of the late Professor Strauss and Kojeve as the neo-conservative accomplices of Vice-President Cheney.
The commitment to specifically human progress in science, art, and their application, is a form of practice without which society tends to degenerate into the behavior of a beast-like creature. The goodness of mankind, of nations, is assured only when the circumstances of life are afforded under that state of affairs which is consistent with an environment of that quality of progress, a progress which expresses the appetites of the soul's true, higher nature.
Therefore, let us not design societies to fit a population largely conditioned to behave as beasts. Let us not be sophists who use the Hobbesian-like degradation which our nations' follies have imposed on the culture of our people, as an excuse for treating our citizens and their children, or those of other nations, as if their nature required zoo-like cages to restrain them.
The circumstances under which Cheney, Rumsfeld, and their fascist lackeys were not prevented from taking concerted action to usurp much of the constitutional authorities of the President, the Congress, and the Court, were chiefly economic conditions. As in the case of the actions of certain financier circles, from London, New York City, and elsewhere, to award Adolf Hitler dictatorial powers on Feb. 28, 1933, the policies foisted upon the U.S. Bush Administration following Sept. 11, 2001, were not caused by, but were nonetheless a reflection of the relatively hopeless state of dilapidation of the existing monetary-financial system.
The 1932-33 actions of the London/New York City circles of Montagu Norman, to rescue the Nazi Party financially, to deploy Hjalmar Schacht and other German assets of London to foist Hitler upon the German government, and to secure Hitler dictatorial powers on Feb. 28, 1933, were intended to ensure that no German Chancellor who might follow the plan of Dr. Wilhelm Lautenbach would be in that position, at the moment that U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt were inaugurated. The virtual coup d'etat organized by Vice-President Cheney, immediately following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has been steered to the effect of preventing the methods of President Franklin Roosevelt's economic recovery from being considered for application to the presently ongoing economic collapse of the bankrupt 1971-2003, floating exchange-rate, monetary-financial system.
Then, as now, the purpose of the fascist usurpation was world-wide war as the means for avoiding the needed economic reforms on behalf of the general welfare.
Today, we must assimilate and apply two lessons from that experience.
First: Knowledge of the historical role of certain financier interests, in backing the trans-Atlantic synarchist (fascist) operations of the interval 1922-1945, such as Mussolini's and Hitler's rise to power, and, also in the U.S.A. today, affords us insight into the exemplary connections between the events of 1932-34 in Germany, and the relevant post-Sept. 11, 2001 developments in U.S. policy-making.
Second: Notably, despite an assassination attempt and one famous coup plot, the elected President Franklin Roosevelt was inaugurated, to launch the economic recovery which prevented a fascist takeover in the U.S.A., and which secured the ultimate defeat of Hitler and his allies. This experience of 1932-45 is key to reversing the threat to global civilization today.
The kind of permanent world war which such followers of Carl Schmitt, Leo Strauss, and Alexander Kojeve as Cheney and Rumsfeld intend, must be recognized as a new expression of the same root as the two so-called "world wars" of the past century. In effect, that pair's war for the cause of what U.S. neo-con Michael Ledeen terms "universal fascism," should be understood as the intent to unleash "Geopolitical World War III."
The explosion of economic and related power of the U.S.A. during and following the defeat of Lord Palmerston's Confederacy asset, resulted, from about the time of the 1876 Centennial celebration, in a great surge of admiration for the achievements of the U.S.A. up to that point. This was expressed by admiration for the world's leading economist of that time, Henry C. Carey, and for the kindred views of the German-American economist Friedrich List. The economic policies of Bismarck's Germany; the industrial development launched by the impetus of D.I. Mendeleyev under Russia's Alexander II; the influence of Carey over the Meiji Restoration's economic policies, in Japan; and related developments in a post-Napoleon III France; typify a powerful convergence, centered in transcontinental Europe, for accomplishing there, what the U.S. had accomplished, in agro-industrial growth by aid of its railway-centered, transcontinental development.
Circles of the Palmerston-trained British Prince of Wales, and especially the Fabian Coefficients, reacted with their so-called geopolitical schemes for pitting the nations and peoples of continental Eurasia against one another's throats. Aided by the virtually criminal folly of pettiness exhibited by the relevant heads of state, World War I occurred.
Similarly, Adolf Hitler was brought to power in Germany, with the intention of the London sponsors, at that time, that London's asset Hjalmar Schacht would arrange the financing of the build-up of Germany's military forces for a strike east, for the invasion and destruction of the Soviet Union, with France to strike later at Germany's rear when German forces were bogged down in the Soviet Union. London's subsequent discovery that, under an incumbent Hitler dictatorship, Germany's military policy would be to begin with a strike westward, prompted London's impulse to seek U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt's cooperation in preparing for the rescue of London from Hitler's coming attack.
For the present-day Anglo-American utopians of their nuclear-airborne age, the prospect of a peacefully cooperating continental Eurasia, is an intolerable affront to the cause of geopolitical fantasies. For the circles associated with Cheney's and Rumsfeld's neo-Nietzschean neo-cons, peaceful cooperation within Eurasia, is a prospect to be crushed by the persistent force of a perpetual warfare in continental Eurasia, using the targetting of the Muslim populations as the inflammable human potential to be ignited for the purpose of disrupting the continent as a whole.
The conditions under which the fascist clique around Cheney and Rumsfeld acquired their present influence, have been built up over more than forty years, beginning with the cumulatively shocking impact of a succession of terrifying events, events typified by the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, the series of attempted assassinations of France's President Charles de Gaulle, the unsolved assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, and the launching of U.S. utopian warfare in Indo-China. The eruption of the anti-progress rock-drug-sex youth-counterculture, the integration of the Ku Klux Klan tradition into the 1966-1968 Nixon campaign, the 1971 wrecking of the world's fixed-exchange-rate, regulated monetary system, and related subsequent economic developments of the 1970s, transformed the U.S.A. from the world's leading producer nation, into an increasingly predatory, post-industrial consumer society, as ancient Rome's economy and morals had degenerated similarly, from approximately the aftermath of Rome's Second Punic War.
The moral collapse of the U.S. political-party system, under the combined impact of the accelerating material decline in the incomes of the lower eighty percentile of U.S. family-income brackets, and the eradication of entire categories of independent farmers and other true entrepreneurs, has put the Democratic Party, for example, under the bureaucratic control of a right-wing formation known as the Democratic Leadership Council. The typical eligible voter from the lower eighty percentile of family income brackets, is left with the prevalent belief that there exist only apparent two apparent choices: "buy" selections from the shelves which that political mall called political parties' displays, or stubbornly shun the elections, because he or she believes that they have no efficient representation in those parties.5
This moral collapse within the political parties, fostered the momentary lack of any significant opposition to the fascist impulses and related economic-policy follies which the Cheney-Rumsfeld clique foisted upon President George W. Bush, Jr.
If significant leaders from relevant nations combine their resources, we, together, can present a genuine alternative to the chaos which the combination of ongoing monetary-financial collapse and fascist schemes represents today. However, that means returning the agenda of governments and political parties, back to the crucial issues of economic insecurity gripping the nations and their populations. Ending the currently continued, ongoing attempts at a fascist coup in Washington, is essential, in and of itself. The constitutional functions and separation of powers must be restored, and the recent usurpation ended. That task can not be evaded by persons of good will.
However, that necessary restoration of the U.S. to its Constitution, will not be successful unless such remedial action is provided a relevant, international economic basis. The potential for constructing that basis exists, provided relevant degrees of cooperation among at least most of the nations of Eurasia, provide the pivot on which needed, broader, global measures of monetary-financial stabilization are premised.
Some of the exemplary preconditions for Eurasian continental cooperation already exist. Under a reformed world monetary system, using successful features of the 1944-1958 interval of the original Bretton Woods system, long-term, protectionist agreements on credit, tariffs, and trade, would allow the realization of an accelerating growth in Eurasia, which could be the catalyst for the greatest known, and most equitable improvement in the condition of mankind to date. It must also be a remedy for the genocide and related injustice which overreaching power has imposed upon Africa, and the looting of peoples of Central and South America under the 1971-2003 floating-exchange-rate monetary-financial system.
For those of us of a civilized persuasion, China and India today, are important powers, representing the weightiest components among a group of nations which must seek large-scale, long-term, technology-sharing arrangements with Europe for meeting the requirements of expansion to meet the needs of its own populations. Europe, in turn, urgently requires exactly those markets to bring Europe out of an increasingly perilous internal economic collapse. Russia's role, in strategic cooperation with western European nations grouped with keystones such as Germany, France, and Italy, is also of pivotal significance for its own part in the de facto Russia-China-India triangle of Asian cooperation in security and economic development.
This role of Eurasian development is a matter I have discussed widely under the complementary headings of what are known, respectively, as the "Eurasian Land-Bridge" development6 and "New Bretton Woods" proposal.7 These measures are part of, and are typical of a cluster of emergency economic and related reforms.
The success of such an alternative depends upon agreement to several measures of reform in relations among nations.
First, the U.S.A. must exchange that "rambling wreck" which is its current imperial influence, for a different, more durable vehicle. We must recognize the moral responsibility for promoting the welfare of other nations, which our acquired power imposes upon us. The U.S.A. must act in way consistent with the power it has accumulated among nations, but also consistent with the intent expressed, and otherwise implied, by its own 1776 Declaration of Independence and Preamble of its Constitution.
All nations of the world acknowledge today's relative power of the U.S.A. as a fact. Most, I suspect, believe they must deal with that fact. So must we in the U.S. itself. The distinction to be made, is not whether or not nations must deal with that fact; the question is, whether the U.S. will deal with other nations as partners, or as clients of an empire. We must manage the problems of the world at large, but the authority and responsibility for what happens in the international arena must lie in the cooperation among equally sovereign powers.
Therefore, it is my intention to call the representatives of nations together, in an emergency conference sponsored by the U.S.A., for a general reform in bankruptcy of the presently bankrupt monetary-financial system. Governments must face the challenge, that the present system is hopelessly doomed, and that the following types of measures are therefore urgently required.
1. Under such a reform, all relevant monetary-financial institutions, including relevant central-banking systems, would be taken in receivership by the sovereign authority of the relevant nation-state. This and related measures would require the support and cooperative assistance of all the governments party to the agreement.
2. The first concern is to prevent a chaotic degeneration of the existing essential, public and private institutions of deposit, to protect the personal, modest financial assets of individuals and households, sustain the pensions of ordinary people, maintain the traditional institutions of supply of credit, and, in general, to ensure the orderly continuation, and improvement of essential production, trade, local government, and general welfare. Financial assets with the character of gambling, such as financial derivatives, would be ordinarily eliminated, and many other forms of debt taken in custody for reorganization.
3. Within the framework provided by such measures, which put the sick system into bankruptcy-reform under receivership, we must mobilize sufficiently increased employment in sound investments to bring the total current costs and expenses of the national systems above annual breakeven levels. The principal stimulant for this will be governmental operations in basic economic infrastructure, or government-sponsored investments in regulated public utilities which are either partly, or entirely government-owned. In cases deemed appropriate, a public utility may begin life as government-owned, and later shifted to private ownership.
4. Under such conditions, the future of the individual national economies will depend largely on national and international mechanisms of and among governments, for generating low-cost, long-term credit-issuance with maturities of between a quarter and half-century: one or two generations. Generally, this means borrowing costs for credit created at standard rates not in excess of 1-2% annual simple interest. This were not a feasible proposition outside the context of a well-regulated, fixed-exchange-rate monetary system whose design were modelled on the best features of our experience under the pre-1971 Bretton Woods monetary system.
5. Two kinds of sources for the creation of state credit are available. The first, is a national banking system of the type implicitly specified by the U.S. Federal Constitution. The second, is credit generated by long-term treaty agreements on trade and investment, between, or among sovereign states. A third method, the Keynesian-multiplier factor specific to central-banking systems of the Anglo-Dutch Liberal model, is not admissible under the extreme conditions which will continue during the several or more years of general monetary-financial reorganization.
It must be taken into account, that the economic revival of Europe during the two decades following 1945, depended upon the unique role of the gold-reserve-backed U.S. dollar. This exceptional position of that dollar, during that interval, enabled the IMF system to shield European and certain other currencies and their credit systems, until the sterling-dollar crises of 1967-71. In today's crisis, we must accomplish a similar benefit at a time the U.S. dollar is inherently weak in real-value content. Keynesian supplements to a solid system are not tolerable at this time.
Take the case of the U.S. Federal Reserve System as an illustration of the present challenge.
The resort to "wall of money" tactics which continue to use electronic and other monetary printing devices, especially since October 1998, to bail out implicitly bankrupt portions of financial markets, has produced a hyperinflationary potential within large-scale areas of what are fairly described as "financial bubbles" in the tradition of John Law's escapades. This defines the U.S. Federal Reserve System, among affected other central-banking systems, as bankrupt. This condition of the U.S. Federal Reserve System is reflected, in large part, in the currently zooming U.S. Federal deficit and related deterioration in U.S. balance of payments accounts. At the moment, the prevalent thinking of the U.S. Presidency and Congressional parties, if it could be actually called thinking, has no connection with the real universe.
Thus, were I President at this moment, my Treasury Secretary and key leaders of the Congress would be scheming in preparation for placing the Federal Reserve System under the protection of receivership in bankruptcy reorganization. As in the fairly comparable instance of President Franklin Roosevelt's "bank holiday" measures of 1933, the most immediate object of this action would be threefold. a.) To prevent a disorderly chain-reaction collapse within the domestic monetary-financial system; b.) to maintain the unbroken continuity of the nation's essential public and private economic functions; c.) to clear the way for a vigorous expansion of employment, with large emphasis on credit for public works of the Federal, state, and local governments.
Before taking such action, I would be obliged to assure relevant governments as to the nature of the measures to be taken whenever that might occur. Those actions would prompt immediate confidential discussions occurring in or near Washington, D.C., with representatives of governments. These discussions would lead toward relevant treaty agreements establishing a new world monetary-financial system.
My issuing this present report of my intention at this time, takes those considerations into account. Government must sometimes act to surprise the onlookers, but those surprises should be few, and never violate previously stated principles.
Under the U.S. Federal Constitution, the creation of public debt is a function of the Executive, within the bounds of the consent of the U.S. Congress. This includes a Federal monopoly on the emission of legal currency, and obligations implicitly incurred against the future issue of such currency. This power is the principal source of relevant net credit-expansion by the government. This power were prudently used to create the credit used by both the Federal and state governments, chiefly for both Federal and state infrastructure-building programs. I have already designated principal kinds of programs I intend to launch or support, and have supplied guidelines for some of these.8
6. The advantage of reforming the IMF according to the model of the regulated, 1944-1958 fixed-exchange-rate system, lies in the contrast of the successes of the former to the systemic failure of the both a.) the 1964-2003 shift of the U.S.A., U.K., and notable other economies, from a successful model of producer society to the currently bankrupt form of consumer society, and b.) the presently bankrupt, 1971-2003 floating-exchange-rate system. The principled features of the emergency reform to be made now, have the advantage of experience: a change premised on the proven success of the fixed-exchange-rate producer-society model, in contrast to the calamitous cumulative failure of the subsequent, doomed, deregulated, floating-exchange-rate model.
The world's Titanic monetary-financial ship is sinking; reality will show little patience with the passengers and crew who demand that all of us stay with the recent tradition of that doomed ship.
Therefore, once it could be assumed, that the bankrupt, floating exchange-rate form of the IMF is being replaced by an essentially global, regulated, fixed exchange-rate version of the Bretton Woods system, it is feasible to use the intended monetary system as the context for long-term, reciprocal, bilateral and multilateral trade and tariff agreements of 25-to-50 years span, with charges in the range of 1-2% per annum simple annual interest-rates.
These treaty life-spans of such duration are defined chiefly by the dominant role of component elements representing long-term programs of development of basic economic infrastructure, under such headings as: regulated generation and distribution of power; mass-transportation systems for freight and passengers; water resources development and management systems; forestation, and other large-scale land-management and related systems; sets of urban-industrial complexes; and health-care and educational systems. These programs, typified by the multinational Mekong development agreements, and the presently expanding array of China's infrastructure programs, define the market for stimulation and financing of expanding arrays in the entrepreneurial and related production of marketable goods.
The long-term infrastructure elements define the market which is the economic water within which the happy entrepreneurial fish swim. The life-span of the relatively longest-cycle infrastructure investments, defines the span within which payments must be resolved by pre-agreements on financing, tariffs, pricing, and trade.
The global system required is broadly defined for illustration as follows.
The principal impetus for such long-term agreements comes chiefly from continental Eurasia. This means a Europe led by a set of nations gathered together with France, Germany, Italy, and Russia, with a Eurasia group gathered together around Russia, China, and India; and, hopefully, a Middle East group functioning as a developing cross-road of economic growth between the Mediterranean Sea and Indian Ocean.
The second largest component is cooperation within the Americas.
The third component is Africa.
Other regions dovetail with those three.
The common feature of each of the regions, is that each is defined by the fossil and related raw materials resources concentrated within each of the components. The improvement and management of the biosphere, and its essential, long-term raw materials component, defines the principal features of functional relationships among raw materials, habitation, and production within each of the regions.
In the special case of Africa, the accumulated effects of imposed looting, genocidal practices, and suppression of most of Africa by present and former pro-colonialist agencies has reduced the per-capita, and per-square-kilometer development of the continent to such a degree that Africa presently lacks sufficient internally generated capital resources to develop the primary elements of basic economic infrastructure indispensable for its healthy development. Large-scale outside aid, in the mode of graduated technology-transfer programs, are needed to provide strategically crucial, large-scale elements of main-trunk basic economic infrastructure, thus to enable Africa to develop its own means for both operating and maintaining the primary systems, and developing the secondary systems interfaced with the primary ones.
Such indispensable assistance for Africa would not be possible without a climate of vigorous development within Eurasia and the Americas generally.
The experience of the U.S. War of Independence, the continuing development of the concept of strategic defense by France's "Author of Victory" Lazare Carnot, the related role of the Prussian reformers around Wilhelm von Humboldt and Gerhard Scharnhorst, and the Nineteenth-Century development of the U.S. West Point and Annapolis academies, pointed toward the foreseeable, if still distant end of the kind of military policies associated with ancient Rome, feudalism, and Eighteenth-Century cabinet warfare. The defeat of the fascist Napoleon Bonaparte on the initiative of Czar Alexander I and his Prussian-reformer allies, and the Soviet defense and counteroffensive against Hitler's invading forces, demonstrate a notion of a fresh view of the principle of strategic defense as the presently overdue replacement of those notions of war so pathetically parodied by Secretary Rumsfeld's revolting notions of military affairs.
Contrary to the followers of the empiricist Thomas Hobbes, war is neither a natural nor necessarily permanent institution of mankind. As long as nations must be prepared to fight justified wars of defense, relatively powerful, well-developed military capabilities remain necessary. However proceeding from such lessons as the genius of France's Louis XI, the part played by Mazarin and Colbert in the negotiation and implementation of the Treaty of Westphalia, as continued by Carnot's representation of a principle of strategic defense, and the original work of the pro-Classical Prussian reformers, points us toward what should become the natural process of phasing well-trained military-logistical capabilities into a time when the role of capable military institutions blends into a role of a broadened notion of a corps of military engineers.
The brutish incompetence of Secretary Donald Rumsfeld respecting the conduct of the U.S. war upon Iraq, contains an illustration of that point.
Admittedly, the government of President George W. Bush, Jr. violated moral and treaty law, and the U.S. Constitution, in the recent, continuing invasion of Iraq. However, once U.S. forces had invaded and occupied Iraq territory, those military forces were, and remain responsible for the general welfare in the territory they occupied. Well-trained and adequately supplied heavy divisions are indispensable for competent military operations under even the circumstances of such a depleted military opposition as poor Iraq's. Such divisions represent the bulk of the effective capability to assume efficient responsibility for the peaceful, and beneficial occupation of the inhabited and other territory they have occupied. Using a lightened force relying largely on post-adolescents trained largely in video-game point-and-shoot routines, does not typify the conduct of a competent U.S. Secretary of Defense.
The continuing role of engineering and related military functions in the closing period of combat operations, presages the way in which a policy of strategic defense leads toward the supersession of warfare. The policy of General Douglas MacArthur's leadership, of winning a war by controlling the largest territory with avoidance of unnecessary combat, contrasted with the immorality of President Harry Truman's totally unnecessary nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, points in the same direction. The object of the justified practice of warfare lies in the early success of its peaceful outcome. Military and related strategic capabilities designed and deployed for actually accomplishing the durably peaceful outcome not presently in sight for Afghanistan, Iraq, or the Middle East generallynot in sight for as long as Cheney and Rumsfeld remain in control, are a necessary capability for reaching the higher goal of humanity's exit from war itself.
The history of the impact of the fortifications by Vauban, as these were understood by Carnot, and later appreciated by "Old" Moltke, testifies to that principle.
Today, the increasingly apparent fact of globally ominous lunacies of Cheney, Rumsfeld, and their neo-con lackeys has the perverse sort of usefulness of pointing to the urgency of those kinds of economic reforms which defeated the cause of fascism during President Franklin Roosevelt's terms in office. The solution is to be seen in the fact, that even for that typical family which may not be remarkable for its knowledge of science or theology, traditional morality finds its practical expression in the good which one generation intends to contribute to the children's and grandchildren's generations, and beyond. It is through the engagement of peoples in creating the improvement of mankind's condition, through great works of progress, especially in cooperation with other nations, that we foster an efficient sense of a moral connection of oneself to future generations of mankind.
The danger is, that if greedy and small-minded men and women continue to quarrel over the diminishing scraps of a collapsing economic system, rather than bringing the needed new system quickly into being now, such stubborn clinging to the old habits of the presently bankrupt monetary-financial system, would, almost certainly, doom all humanity to an early plunge into several generations of a new, planetary "new dark age." If, however, we make the kinds of changes which I would introduce, as a currently prospective next President of the U.S.A., we may find we have entered a safer world, in which widespread warfare would never come again.
Footnotes
1. In 1983, I had forecast, that if Soviet General Secretary Yuri Andropov continued to refuse President Reagan's offer of SDI cooperation, current Soviet policy would lead to the collapse of the Soviet economy, "in about five years." It collapsed in approximately six years. On Oct. 12, 1988, I delivered a statement in my function as a U.S. Presidential candidate, in West Berlin, forecasting the imminent economic collapse of the Soviet bloc, with anticipated reunification of Germany, with Berlin probably designated to become the future capital of a reunified Germany. This Berlin statement featured my policy for U.S. "food for peace": cooperation in economic rebuilding of the nations of the Soviet bloc. That televised Oct. 12 Berlin press conference was featured in a U.S. national television-network broadcast a few weeks later that same month.
2. It is notable that the wilder notions of Defense Secretary Cheney were checked by the administration of President George H.W. Bush, Sr., but largely adopted under Bush, Jr. and Vice-President Cheney.
3. For example, the U.S. 1776 Declaration of Independence, crafted under the direction of Benjamin Franklin features Leibniz's concept of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," as Leibniz counterposed this concept to the pro-slavery "life, liberty, and property" of John Locke.
4. For example, in experimental physical science, we can sense the effects of gravitation, the principle of quickest time, the principle of universal least action, and the effects of the complex domain generally; but, we can not sense those demonstrably efficient universal physical principles themselves. This is not only modern knowledge; it is the principle of powers emphasized by Plato in such locations as his Theaetetus dialogue.
5. I am acting to bring the citizen's voice back into the party's deliberations, a prospect which is generously hated by the presently aging DLC bureaucracy itself.
6. "The Eurasian Land-Bridge: The 'New Silk Road'Locomotive for Worldwide Economic Development"; EIR Special Report; January 1997.
7. "Now's the Time for LaRouche's New Bretton Woods"; LaRouche's Committee for a New Bretton Woods; June 2000.
8. "LaRouche's Emergency Infrastructure Program for the U.S."; EIR Special Report; November 2002.
LATEST FROM LAROUCHE
The following paper by Lyndon LaRouche was commissioned by the editors of Yarin for their May issue. The paper has been translated into Turkish and published.
Since U.S. President George W. Bush, Jr. uttered his "Axis of Evil" address of January 2002, the honor of the United States has been risked in three Middle East wars: the presently continuing irregular warfare of Israel versus the Palestinians, the unsettled war against Afghanistan, and now a war with no credible exit, over the objections of the UNO, against Iraq. In each, the military forces of the U.S.A., or, its ally Israel, have successfully applied crushing force to a relatively helpless military adversary. Despite the crushing power of the attacking forces in each case, each war now continues, in a new form, without exit, with no workable plan presently in sight from those governments, for getting out of the war-torn situation.
From the beginning of these wars, the community of both serving and retired ground-force generals of the U.S.A. have duly expressed their professionals' understanding of the deadly incompetence of that civilian war-party inside the U.S. government which is led by Vice-President Cheney. But, even now, Cheney's civilian warriors are pushing hysterically for new wars, while announcing their intention to punish France, Germany, Russia, and others, for refusing to support President Bush's virtually unilateral launching of the Iraq war. Had U.S. Vice-President Cheney served in the U.S. Indo-China war, when he might have done so, he might have developed some modicum of insight into the opposition to his policies from among the professional senior ranks of the U.S. military today.
Nonetheless, there is important and rapidly expanding opposition to President Bush's current economic policies within both major U.S. parties. On the list of announced Democratic Presidential candidates for 2004, three of the top four, as ranked by number of campaign contributors, including this writer, plus two former Presidents, Carter and Clinton, are in relevant kinds of growing opposition to one or more leading aspects of the Bush Administration current policies, while the Republican opposition to the President's disastrous tax-cut policies grows in both parties.
This kind of growing opposition to Bush Administration policies from within the U.S., echoes a concern heard from around most of the world. Most of the government circles from around the world with whom I have contact, consider Bush's war policies as a dangerous kind of attempted distraction from the realities of a presently worsening economic collapse of the world's present monetary-financial system. None of these concerned governments have yet adopted workable solutions for the economic crisis; but, they, unlike the Bush Administration, admit that a serious, worsening global economic problem does exist.
So, the issues of war and economy are so intermingled, that no competent assessment can be developed in either area without considering the other. From where I sit, the present situation of Turkey is part of that picture. Warfare on Turkey's Arab and Trans-Caucasus borders threatens to drag all Iraq's neighbors, and more, into a fire-storm of religious and ethnic warfare of the kind which, over 1511-1648, plunged pre-Treaty of Westphalia Europe into what Britain's Hugh Trevor-Roper and other historians once described as a threatened "Little New Dark Age." The situation in Afghanistan is becoming worse again. The Kurdish situation is ominously incalculable, especially with increasing entanglement of Iran's expressed interest in the state of affairs in southern Iraq.
The strategic issue this pattern poses, is: Vice-President Cheney's President Bush has shown how to spread unnecessary wars, but no competent plan for actually getting out of any of them. Under the presently ongoing terminal phase of collapse of the international monetary-financial system, the spread of such war with no safe exits, is presently the greatest of all threats to the security of mankind throughout our planet. It is past time to stop looking at economics from the standpoint of war, and look, instead, at avoiding unnecessary war by formulating strategy from the standpoint of an economic reality for which the Bush Administration has shown no comprehension so far.
For example, if we consider Turkey's present economic difficulties from the standpoint of what my associates and I have named "The Eurasian Landbridge" reform, the present tendencies for new forms of economic growth in Eurasia, represent the context in which a related integration of Turkey's economy into a new, expanded Eurasian-trade orientation by Europe would "spill over" into Turkey along lines already pioneered for Turkey during the period of Germany's post-World War II reconstruction under the original, pre-1971 Bretton Woods system.
I present the following simplified explanation of the technical features of the present world economic crisis to point out the importance of taking the kinds of emergency international economic reform I shall describe shortly after that explanation.
My frequently published series of pedagogical "Triple Curve" charts show the origin and character of the global monetary-financial crisis which has been building during the 1966-2002 period to date, especially since the 1971 shift to a "floating exchange-rate" monetary system. As the case for the U.S.A. illustrates the trends, there has been an interrelated expansion of nominal financial assets and monetary emission, while the net physical output of the U.S. economy, per capita, has declined at an accelerating rate.
Recently, beginning 1999, the increased monetary expansion required to prevent a chain-reaction collapse in the U.S. and certain other financial markets has exceeded the nominal value of financial stocks rescued in this way. This recent, 2000-2003 trend defines a limit for the continuation of the world's present U.S. dollar-based monetary-financial system. The date of collapse is not yet known, but the precondition for a terminal collapse now already exists. The point has been reached, that the attempt to delay that collapse, is like fighting forest fires under severe drought conditions while the Summer temperature is soaring: What will happen is already inevitable, but exactly when is not yet certain.
Under those conditions, the greatest part of the world's present debts could never be paid. The attempt to enforce collection of such debts, would, as we have seen in the case of Argentina, destroy civilization in the Americas, Europe generally, and elsewhere. Without simply cancelling most of that debt, especially financial-derivatives debt, real-estate mortgage bubbles, and so forth, civilization would collapse. Therefore, governments must join forces to accomplish two things.
First, the governments must take over most existing central banking systems, putting them into receivership for financial reorganization. These governments must act, at the same time, to reform the existing world monetary-financial system, to the effect of creating a fixed exchange-rate, philosophically protectionist form of monetary-financial system, one copying many of the features of the 1944-1958 IMF.
Second, through that reform, large-scale, long-term, low-interest-rate financing of long-term infrastructure projects of between 25 and 50 years financial maturities must be launched, especially for large-scale development of coordinated development of such elements of transcontinental and lesser projects of development of coordinated basic economic and related projects of basic economic infrastructure as mass transport, power generation and distribution, water-resources development and distribution, urban development, and health care and research and education institutions. The infrastructure programs should be used as stimulants for both employment and for investments in technologically progressive forms of private entrepreneurships in production and distribution of goods and services.
In Eurasia, the focus of such development is the improved development of central and north Asia's potential resources and the coordination of Europe's role in the increase of the productive powers of labor in East, South-East, and South Asia.
The development of Turkey in such a context of Eurasian development, should be obvious, including the role of Turkey's labor-force, and also Turkey's integral role in reforestation of relevant areas of Anatolia and the water-management and power programs of the Middle East. These, and related potentials overlap the fact, that, on the one side, Turkey's integration into the European continent's economic-development potential is essential for Turkey's economic future, as the wiser heads in the United Kingdom wish to avoid those forms of attachment to current U.S. Bush Administration adventures which would tend to spoil the U.K.'s opportunities for participation in economic development programs of the Eurasia continent.
In the end, if the U.S. government comes back to its senses, the U.S.A. will adopt a policy of conciliation and cooperation with continental Europe. Given the economic disaster of the foolishly stubborn President's failed economic policies, the fact that I am fourth, or perhaps third in rank of number of contributors to my 2004 Presidential-nomination campaign, shows a degree of support for my candidacy which suggests a good future for renewed closer cooperation between the U.S.A. and Europe. That would be good news for Turkey's, and the Middle East's future.
Latest From LaRouche, part 2
LAROUCHE AS NUMBER-ONE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE REPRESENTS A STRATEGIC PHASE-SHIFT GLOBALLY:
LaRouche Addresses West Coast Youth Cadre School
Here is the transcript of Lyndon LaRouche's opening remarks to a California cadre school, on April 26, 2003.
Harley Schlanger: Okay, Lyn. Well, we're up here in the San Bernardino Mountains, at about 8,000 feet, and we have about 120 people here waiting to hear from you. How long can you be one with us?
Lyndon LaRouche: Well, I figured you were going to take me for up to two hours, between a presentation, and by the time you younger guys get on me.
Harley: Well, I figure that's at least a good bet. Ready to start?
LaRouche: Well, I should start with telling people, we had an occasion for grief here today. A long-standing associate of about a quarter-century died very unexpectedly and suddenly, and so that has caused a certain amount of shock here. But the reason I mention it this was Romie Schauerhammer the reason I mention it is because it's relevant, I think, under these circumstances, which affect many of us, directly or indirectly, to reflect on immortality and politics.
The thing I remember most about Romie, most recently, one incident, was, she participated in a Schiller Institute Dichterpflaenzchen event here in Germany, in Wiesbaden, and she played a very special role in presenting the case of Lessing. Now, the significance of that is, that actually in life, we seldom really know people. Oh, I think I have more fortune than most in that, but generally, people really don't know other people. They know their opinions, they know their faces, they know events and incidents, but they really don't know the inside of the other person's mind.
And in this case, what I remember of Romie she died this morning, shortly after 9 our time here is that one incident, which came immediately to my mind: That is her. That incident, which was, actually she was being creative to present a role in the presentation of Lessing, and that thing that she presented, just stuck immediately in my mind. That was her personality.
That's what we sort of cling to, don't we? If we have decent relations. Also, if we study the work of great minds before, great leaders in society. This is something which is extremely important. It's the issue raised by Shakespeare in defining Hamlet's failure as being a fear of immortality. Which is, he fled to death, like a death wish, because he could not face the idea of immortality which is what Shakespeare details through Hamlet, in the famous Third Act soliloquy.
But anyway, so, what we have now as a problem in the United States, in particular also in Europe we have a generational conflict, between the so-called Baby Boomer generation, people who entered adulthood, oh, about 1963-64, or later, into 1972, who became, partly directly through the rock-drug-sex counterculture, but others as just part of the same generation, became influenced by what became known as the "now generation." The "me generation," and so forth.
And this went together with a change of society from a producer society, to a consumer society. So, we have in the "now generation" are people who in their adult lives, have lived lived in Europe or the Americas, or the United States, in particular as part of a "now society," or consumer society culture. Therefore, their sense of connection to reality is very shallow. And they think as consumers. And they think even emotionally as consumers, which is why their marriages are so unstable. Their interpersonal relations generally are so unstable. Because they're in mood swings, as they age. And the mood swings involve me, me, me, me, me.
Now, these people, who are now approaching 60, or slightly less or more, had children. Some of you are, as young adults, children of people of that "now generation." You find yourself in a "no future" generation, a society which, on the surface, has no future. Things are going down. Conditions are becoming worse. Illusions are being popped. We're getting into the threatened death of society, with crazy wars, a government that people are afraid of. Political parties whose leaders are really not leaders they're a mess. There are some decent people out there, but on the general impression of the young person today, it's a dismal society. And they sense a no-future.
Now, this question of "no future" brings up the issue of, what is the future? We're all going to die, sooner or later. We don't know when. So therefore, what is our interest? Our interest is what we do with the life we have. And that generally means not only benefits of our life to people who live with us, live around us, but to coming generations. And also, looking backward, to thinking about parents, and grandparents, and so forth, who may have gone through difficult times. And thinking about what they wished for their children and grandchildren. And wondering, perhaps, maybe you can make real what some of your forebears wished. It's a sense of immortality. It's a very practical of immortality, but it's very meaningful.
So, in approaching a crisis and we're in an existential crisis, internationally we have to think in such serious terms. Think not superficially, but we have to plunge deeply into ourselves, to find out what are we really committed to. What is really important to us? What would we not be ashamed of discovering, was important to us, when we look at the world around us.
With that, let me proceed.
Now, there's a couple of things I want to mention before getting into the main theme of my presentation today.
First of all, as you probably know, because I think that Harley's the kind of person who would confide this secret to you, that we have done a re-examination of the FEC figures on the relative standing of candidates. And we have produced a report, which will be widely circulated in the coming days, as a mass leaflet, reporting the fact. The fact is, that, in terms of support, in terms of numbers of Americans who have contributed to my campaign, I am the number-one candidate for the Democratic nomination, perhaps for any President today.
We're not number one in money, but that's because some of the candidates had money from their previous campaigns they dumped into this one.
So, the situation is such that, at the time when the Democratic Party leadership, especially the fascists of organized-crime related types in the Democratic Party, are trying to squeeze us out, and squeeze me out, the fact is, the brutal fact is, I'm the number one candidate for President in terms of popularity, as measured by financial supporters sometimes very small financial support, but supporters in the United States. And I have that significance also as an international figure, in which I'm more significant as an international figure than any of the other candidates in the United States, except perhaps the current President. He's significant only because he is President.
That's a strategic phase-shift, for us to have this fact, and to be able to report this fact. This means that, as we organize, we organize around this fact. We're organizing around a candidacy, which is the number-one candidacy in terms of financial supporters, numbers of financial supporters, in the United States today. And that is a very important fact.
Now, we've also had recently an interesting and disgusting case: It's called the Gingrich case. I sometimes call him Congressman Gangrene. Armitage of the State Department has had something else to say about him, which is also quotable, but I'll leave it up to him, to say that.
Now, Gingrich was a big mistake, in a sense. Gingrich is a fascist. Literally. Not, in the sense of a descriptive terms, or an opinion: This Man is a fascist by profession. He's a fascist of the Leo Strauss type, Professor Leo Strauss type. He's of that school. He is a long-standing associate of "Bugsy" Rumsfeld, the current Secretary of Defense of the United States. They're associated since the 1970s, in a project called the "Revolution in Military Affairs," which the four-star generals call the Revulsion in Military Affairs.
Now he was run out of government, essentially, partly by us. We were a key factor in getting him kicked out as the Speaker of the House. He did the rest for himself. He made an ass of himself, and was kicked out, as Speaker of the House. Somebody decided to bring him back. Obviously, the way it happened: Rumsfeld brought him back, with the idea of trying to drive Colin Powell out of the position of Secretary of State, and possibly even making Gingrich the Secretary of State.
It didn't work too well. It was a very bad idea, of the people behind Gingrich, but it's blown apart, and it's blown the politics wide open. Gingrich is not that important, but the significance of the scandal around Gingrich being blown up now, is one of the circumstances in which we will be living in the coming days and weeks.
Now, the main subject I want to take up is, something that's related to a paper I wrote on the subject of the "Pantheo-cons." Pantheo-cons are people who come from various professed religious denominations, often would be considered total competitors of each other, but they've come together as an association, of a kind of right-wing association, of right-wing pseudo-Catholics, some of whom, many of whom, hate the Pope; violent Ku Klux Klan types of Protestants, the so-called fundamentalists; and Jews, who are fascists by profession. And they're all joined in a kind of unity, around the policies which are pushed by people like Vice President Cheney, the war policies of Cheney and people like that, who are out to build a world imperial fascist system. That's simple fact.
So, what has happened is, you have a political movement, not in the parties as such it's across the parties which have a quasi-religious/political movement of different religious groupings: The Southern Protestants are usually anti-Semites, so what are traditional anti-Semites doing in affiliation with Jewish fascists? That sort of thing. So, what we have is a kind of pantheon, a retooling of religions, or a group of religions, around a common theme, very much as was the case with the Roman Empire, in which the Roman Emperor was actually the dictator of religions. And the religions of the Roman Empire, was called a pantheon.
You had different strange-looking objects sitting in the building called the Pantheon. Each one represented a different religion, but all the religions were under the supervision of the Emperor, who made the rules as to what the religions could profess, believe, and practice.
What we have now, as you see the conflict between these Pantheonic fascists, around the Bush policy, especially around Cheney, and the so-called traditional religions the Pope, most of the traditional Protestant churches, and also, honest, ordinary Jews, religious Jews will have nothing of this kind of policy. And yet, this is a religious movement, which is the religious movement considered the underpinning of the current Bush Administration better called the Cheney Administration which is, in a sense, running the policy, driving the United States into one war after the other, and destroying the U.S. economy in the process.
So, this is the problem.
Now, the question is, what does this mean? The existence of this kind of pantheism and I call it a pantheo-con. Not a neo-con, but a pantheo-con.
What this reflects is the way in which the mind of populations is controlled, en masse, by some kind of Big Brother operation. Now, the way this works, is not by getting people to adopt opinions, but to adopt certain axiomatic assumptions, like the definitions, axioms, and postulates of a Euclidean geometry.
Now, if you believe in a Euclidean geometry, which doesn't happen to be a very good geometry it's false but if you believe in it, the way it's presented, then your mind as long as you are playing the game of geometry will always be governed by these sets of assumptions called definitions, axioms, and postulates.
The same way in politics. If we accept certain assumptions, what are called common beliefs, or generally accepted beliefs, which lurk in the back of our mind, we will find that we will form our opinions, and make our decisions on action, under the control of these axiom-like assumptions. Therefore, in dealing with mass behavior, we have to study, first of all, the underlying deep assumptions which determine, the way people form their opinions, and form their behavior.
For example, let's take the case of the Constitution of the United States. Look at the Preamble.
The Preamble contains three principles. The first principle is that the government of the United States, and its people, are sovereign in every matter within the boundaries of the United States. We are a sovereign nation, and the government is responsible for, in a sense, everything. It's accountable for everything.
But the government is not considered legitimate, according to the second principle, unless the government is efficiently committed, to what is called the "general welfare." Which is called in Greek, agape, or in ancient Classical Greek, in Plato's Republic. Or, it's known as the common good, as it was understood by the founders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and by Benjamin Franklin. The principle of the general welfare: the government of the United States is responsible to efficiently promote and defend the general welfare of all people, of all its people.
Third, the Preamble of the Constitution. The government is responsible to serve the interest of posterity, as much or more than the presently existing population. That is, the future generations. Again, coming back to this generational thing. Good government, principled government, depends upon the commitment of an existing generation, to its role as a sovereign people, to its role in ensuring the promotion of the general welfare of all of the people, and also, above all, to ensure the well-being of posterity of the yet-unborn. Right?
In our system of law, when the Revolution is accepted for what it was, under our system of law, there is no part of the U.S. Federal Constitution, nor can there be any Federal law enacted, or any amendment made, which conflicts with the implications of these three principles: sovereignty, general welfare, and posterity.
The problem we have today, in government, is that we have, since Franklin Roosevelt in particular, and since Kennedy tried to revive the general welfare, before he was killed, we have turned away from the Constitutional principle of both sovereignty, and the general welfare, and with the change that occurred in our society with the Baby Boomer generation's entering adulthood, in the late 1960s, since that time, we've turned away from posterity. We no longer accept what we're giving to posterity, as a standard of performance of government, or ourselves, today. And that's where the problem lies.
So, therefore, these ideas, these general ideas, which are analogous in law, and in opinion-making generally, to the definitions, axioms, and postulates of a Euclidean geometry, these kinds of ideas, called general principles, are the key to understanding politics.
Take for an example, empiricism.
Now, empiricism is a system which was invented by a very evil gentleman, called Paolo Sarpi, who was the tyrant of Venice for some decades. And he had a house servant who was called Galileo Galilei. And the house servant was really he was a pig, essentially, and Paolo Sarpi instructed his house servant, Galileo, to promote a system of thought called empiricism. This was the system of thought, which was, under Paolo Sarpi's and Galileo's influence, was taught to Francis Bacon, in the early part of the 17th Century, in England. Thomas Hobbes was personally a student of Galileo. This was the system of John Locke. This is the doctrine of Mandeville, the doctrine of Adam Smith. It is also the doctrine of Quesnay, the putative founder of Physiocratic dogma. It is the doctrine of free trade today is a product of that.
How does it work?
The argument which is made, also by Hobbes, and also by Francis Bacon, implicitly, but most specifically, by Locke, by Mandeville, by Adam Smith, and by Quesnay: The argument is, in effect, that there are little green men in effect under the floorboards of reality, who are controlling the throw of the dice, so that some people become rich, and some people are destitute. This is called free trade. That there's a principle, a hidden principle, called the Invisible Hand, the little green men under the floorboard, which is determining the future of mankind. The argument is, that you must not interfere with that Invisible Hand.
Now, Mandeville, Bernard Mandeville, who was one of the predecessors of Adam Smith, and who is essentially the founder of the American Enterprise Institute today, argued that, the way that you get good in society, through free trade, is by promoting, and allowing, evil. His argument was, that private vices promote public good. By letting any practice occur, without intervention, you will get automatically, by the intervention of the Invisible Hand, this little god under the floorboards of reality, will automatically produce the best good. Therefore, you must not interfere with it.
So, the modern economic systems of free trade are based on that. The so-called Anglo-Dutch liberalism, and parliamentary democracy of that form, are based on this assumption. That government must not try to interfere with evil, in the form of free will. Let people do anything they want to. Don't interfere. Let prices be managed anyway the people want to manage them. Let competition settle everything. This is free trade. And it's a form of insanity. As long as people believe that free trade is good, then, as we've seen over the recent years, the population will allow itself to be self-destroyed.
Now, another word for this is, "the price is right." "The price is right" means you can get what you want, at the cheapest price. Even if you had to steal to get it.
So, therefore, we no longer have protectionism, the thing that got us out of the Great Depression, the thing that got us through World War II. The thing that got us through recovery of the U.S. economy, and the European economy, during the immediate postwar period, was regulation. It was a regulated stability among currencies, a fixed-exchange rate system. It was regulation of trade and tariffs. It was regulation of fair prices, in terms of goods: that is, to guarantee to a person who produced, the right to be able to sell their goods at a price which is a fair price, the price at which they can continue to produce those goods.
This was all thrown away, in the late 1960s and after that, after 1971. So, this is the way in which the belief in free trade, causes people to accept ideas which cut their own throats.
You have a similar thing, related thing, on empiricism, in the difference between physical economy, and accounting. Some people think that financial accounting is the standard of economics. Well, it's not!
If you look at the Triples Curves, which I've used as pedagogical examples for education, you see there are three curves, which go from 1966, approximately, to the present. One is, you have a rising curve of so-called financial market values, all kinds of financial markets. This has been galloping ahead.
You have also an increase of the amount of money being created, and this money is being used to pump up the financial markets, to drive up the so-called financial market values. As by Volcker, and Greenspan, and so forth.
But, if you look at the third curve, you find that the actual per-capita output in the United States, the consumption of people in especially the lower 80% of family-income brackets, has been collapsing. That infrastructure's been collapsing. The production and generation and distribution of power has been collapsing. Water management is collapsing. The railroad system is going out of existence. The airlines are now crashing not necessarily the planes yet, but the airlines as such are crashing. All kinds of things are crashing.
The health-care system is crashing. The cities are crashing. The budgets are crashing. Forty-six of the 50 states are bankrupt, as a result of this kind of policy. So, obviously, it is not financial values, as a financial accounting reports them, which determines reality. It is physical values. It is food on the table. It is health care. It's improvement in the productive powers of labor, partly through education, through investment. It's management of our water system. It's management of the environment. It's management of the production of energy, and its distribution. These are the kinds of things that determine physical values, and physical profitability.
But, instead, people say, "No, financial accounting, financial accounting." You have people in the Congress idiots! Imagine, idiots in the Congress you talk about the economy, and they say, "How's the market doing today?" The market? The market is fake, and it's about to collapse anyway. The IT bubble collapse. The threatened, now, real estate bubble collapse in California, and on the East Coast, around Washington, and elsewhere. These bubbles are about to collapse. Truth is the physical values.
Now, what is productive, then? Some people say, productive is that which makes money. Not necessarily so. We're not a very productive economy. Look at the physical condition of life, of our environment, our power systems, our water systems, our transportation systems, our educational systems, our health-care systems. No, we're not a productive society we're a collapsing society.
But what is product? Productive is the development of the mind of the individual, and the development of the opportunity for that individual to use that mind, to make a physical improvement in the quality of a product, the way it's produced, or just a physical improvement in the environment which helps society. That's productive.
But this concept of productive, is gone. Because you have axiomatic assumptions definitions, axioms, and postulates which are absurd. These axioms act as a kind of religion, and the ideas that you get with the combination of right-wing Catholics, who are generally against the Pope, as the American Enterprise Institute illustrates the point; racist, traditionally Ku Klux Klan-type Protestants, and Jews who are fascists, as fascist as Hitler. The common features, the common beliefs, the common standards, as typified by Wolfowitz, by Dick Cheney and his crowd, by Bolton in the State Department, Wurmser in the State Department, Wolfowitz in the Defense Department, and Bugsy Rumsfeld these kinds of values are now dictated, as by Ashcroft, the Attorney General, to be axiomatic values.
Policies on foreign policy, preventive war, the use of nuclear weapons, preventive nuclear war as a policy of Dick Cheney, and therefore of the current Administration these have become definitions, axioms, and postulates of the system. People are saying, "You have to go along with the system. You have to go along to get along." Going along to get along means, don't fight any of that current of popular opinion, which is represented by these kinds of assumptions, these kinds of definitions, axioms, and postulates.
So, we've come to the question of how we conduct the campaign. Some people say, you have to address "the issues." "The issues." And they have a list of issues. People go to school, secondary teachers give children lists of issues, and the children are supposed to harass the candidates, any kind of candidate, with these lists of issues. "Where do you stand on the list of issues? Of each of the so-called issues of the campaign?"
Who says they're the issues of the campaign? Most of them are totally idiotic, and have no relevance to anything of importance to the United States or its people.
Well, then, what should a campaign be based on? Should not a campaign be based on principles which the United States Constitution was founded upon, as its Preamble expresses it? Do we not wish to have a world, which is safe for our nation to live in, hoping that others in the world would share the same principles? The idea of the sovereignty of each nation? The sovereign responsibility of government, to provide for the general welfare of the people of its nation? The sovereign responsibility of government to provide for posterity? And do not we desire a world in which nations each independent, each sovereign cooperate, in order to promote mutual benefits, consistent with those principles for each of them.
To me, that's real politics.
Now, the question of what the issues are, to me, are: what you have to do, now, in the current situation, to ensure the sovereignty of the United States, and its people; to ensure the general welfare of its people; to ensure the welfare of the posterity of the people, and of the nation. Whatever that takes, is what the issue should be. Whether somebody wants to park on the left side of the street, or the right side of the street, or so forth, these things are distractions from reality.
Then, the question is, what about this issue about "public," or "private"? What about so-called free enterprise?
Well, the President is not exactly our President is not a genius, as many of you may have observed. He doesn't understand these things. He honestly, the one thing that I know about him that's honest, he honestly does not understand any of it. He's honestly not qualified to be a President, but neither was Al Gore, so what about the dumb people who reduced the candidates to that selection, between those two?
Well, the issue is, there are, under our Constitution, there are certain things which we must take care of under government: Federal, state, local government. These are matters which pertain to all the people, and all the territory. This includes the responsibility of government to make sure there's health care for all the people. That doesn't mean the government has to provide it, but it has to make sure that arrangements have been made under which everybody will be covered.
Sanitation, education. We don't have to always provide all the education ourselves. Certainly, we don't want the Federal government running every school. But we have to be sure that education is provided the necessary education is provided.
Health care, disease control, all these kinds of things. Power: the generation and distribution of power. The regulation of prices, so that everyone has a fair access to power, a fair access to transportation, and that sort of thing. This is the responsibility of government.
But then, there's another question. What's the difference between man and a beast? We are not simply animals, who are taking care of our interests. We are human beings, unlike the beasts, who each have within us, the capability of discovering and applying universal principles; to learn them by re-enacting the discovery of other people's discoveries. By transmitting these discoveries. By applying these discoveries.
So, therefore, we want in society a certain kind of general private entrepreneurship, typified by the independent family farmer, the independent manufacturer, the independent professional. We want a person who is using his or her brain, and his or her ability to generate and apply principles that advance the general condition of mankind, increase our productivity, and help solve our problems.
Therefore, we have to have a form of government, as Alexander Hamilton, the first Treasury Secretary outlined some of these things: a form of government which is committed, first of all, to public responsibility for basic economic infrastructure. Either the government provides it, on the Federal, state or local level, or the government charters private utilities to do it, and makes laws governing that, to ensure that the general welfare, in terms of this, is taken care of.
We also must promote, and protect, individuals who are, as entrepreneurs, are developing our farms, developing our machine tool plants, and so forth, and our professions, our learned professions.
So, we don't need a so-called free enterprise society, one in which you minimize the role of government. We need a rational division, between the responsibilities of government, and the opportunities of the entrepreneur, and the individual in general.
So, that's what we stand for, I think, today. That's where I stand, and we therefore have to resist recognize and resist the way in which the American people have been largely brainwashed, by being conditioned to accept the equivalent of definitions, axioms, and postulates which are false, and limiting their opinions to things which conform to those assumptions. And the case, when you see the pantheo-cons, this bunch of fools, who are the main constituency of Dick Cheney and John Ashcroft, you see them running the country, you see the policies on warfare, and so forth, being run by our government now, you must recognize, that a mental illness is controlling the country. That mental illness is a set of definitions, axioms, and postulates, which is causing the generality of the population to behave in a way which conforms to, and tolerates, this kind of misgovernment.
That is what I have to say at this point.
Latest From LaRouche, Part 3
Harley: Who wants to start? Come on up here. Okay, speak loudlybel canto.
LaRouche: Not belly canto!
Q: Good morning, Mr. LaRouche. Thank you so much for addressing us. My name's Ed Park [ph], I'm an organizer in the L.A. office. Well, it seems like we've really messed up our chances, as a nation, of disarming North Korea's nuclear weapons peacefully. As a Korean, the son of Korean immigrants, I don't exactly want to see the Korean Peninsula go up in flames; but, you've done a lot of work, trying to bring about a different political environment, in which the various countries in Northeast Asia could cooperate, and get a peaceful resolution to the North Korean nuclear standoff, I guess, if you will. Can you give me your thoughts on that, and how we can move forward, even in the kind of Iraq mess period, to fix the situation?
LaRouche: We've got a very interesting situation. You know, this government may be largely insane, but it's not entirely insane. Even President George Bush, the incumbent President, did reject Gingrich, definitelyand in no uncertain termswhether it's because Gingrich stepped into an area he's not supposed to. But, what Gingrich did: Gingrich went after the Secretary of State, Colin Powell. Now, if Colin Powell were to be run out of the government, or forced to resign, the Bush Administration would disintegrate. And people in the White House know that.
Therefore, when Gingrich, on behalf of his buddy, "Bugsy" Rumsfeld, moved in to attack Powell, on Middle East policy and other policies, the White House, in its own self-defense, had to reactand kick Gingrich in the face. They didn't kick Cheney in the face; and they haven't kicked Rumsfeld in the face, yet. They should have. But so, it's not an entirely hopeless situation. Sometimes you can deal with the situation, even when you don't have a "good guy" in the picture, you can sometimes operate on circumstances, to move things in a useful direction.
Now, no one with any brains, wants to force North Korea into a confrontation with its limited number of nuclear weapons. Nobody wishes to do that. The majority of people in Asia, and in Europe, do not want a heated-up conflict between North and South Korea. They don't want it. Apart fromin JapanI don't know where the Prime Minister stands; he's rather a funny fellowbut other Japanese do not want that kind of conflict.
So therefore, there are people from the old Bush crowd, typified by Scowcroft or Donald Gregg, or so forth, in the situation, who would agree with me, on the importance of an open-door approach to discussions with the government of North Korea.
Evidently, something has occurred to that effect this past week. There were discussions in China. One should not look for remarkable results from the discussions themselves. The most important thing, is that the discussions have occurredand they did not involve Bolton from the State Department. If Bolton from the State Department had been involved in those discussions, he would have blown them up! So, he's one of these Cheney types. He shouldn't be in government at all; but, he's there.
So, anyway: So far we've covered that hurdle. It's still dangerous. But, my view is this. You have two ways to look at this: You have a defensive position, by some people in governmentincluding inside the Bush campwho are simply sayingand I think people like former President Carter, former President Clinton, and many other Democrats, who've come into this on that side; the question is, what's the bottom-line real solution for the problem. Now, my view, the only way we're going to avoid warand we're stumbling into itis, we're going to have to do that by putting the economic questions first.
First, the economic issue: North Korea is a very poor country. It has, within it, a relatively small portion of privileged people, associated with the government, with the military. So therefore, you have, in a sense, a conflict on the ground, between very poor people, and a government by a group of people who are trying to retain their relative privileges. There is no hope for this situation, if you leave it that way. So therefore, what we have to do this, is, do this: We have the Sunshine Policy, put forth by the people in South Koreasome of whom I've talked with, and whom we've been in touch with directly or indirectly over some time.
Now the policy here, the Sunshine Policy, starts on two railroad systems which used to be in the united Korea. One branch of the system goes into China. The other branch goes north towards Siberia, toward the Trans-Siberian Railroad route. Now, if these railroad systems are repaired and restored, brought up to snuff, then we have, from Pusan at the tip of Korea, to Rotterdam and so forth in Europe, we have continuous lines of transportation of goods, by either the Siberian route, which goes through Russia, Kazakstan and so forth; and through China, which is called the "Silk Road" route. So therefore, we have a revolution in the trade relations, between North Asia and Europe.
At this time, Europe is bankrupt, like the 46 or more Federal states in the United States are bankrupt, nowhopelessly so. So therefore, Europe needs new markets. The great new markets are in Asia, which going through a large-scale development program, as in China. But, Japan is bankrupt, financially. It's banking system is hopelessly bankrupt. But Japan still has a core industrial economy. That industrial economy is marketable, in terms of long-term contracts for industrial technology, into the countries of North Asia and Asia generally.
So therefore, China, the Koreas, Japan, Russia, and so forth, have a common interest in peaceful economic cooperation, there. Western Europe has a vital interest, in that cooperation, in the Koreas. My view is, in this case, as many other cases, the overriding approach must be an approach toward economic reconstruction of a planet, which is now in the midst of a general collapse of the existing monetary-financial system. Therefore, I'd start from the standpoint of the fight for the reform, of the present international monetary-financial system, around a set of recovery agreementslong-term treaty agreements on trade and development. And these kinds of things present fundamental solutions for problems, which otherwise may lead to conflict.
In other words, if you lettake the case of the Middle East: There's not enough water, presently in area around Israel and Palestine, to meet the needs of all the people in that area. So obviously, if you don't have water development, you're going to have conflict. No military or other agreement is going to eliminate that conflict, if you don't have water. That means, we have to have power, too. We have to have enough water, enough power, to meet the needs of all of the population, and their development opportunities. Therefore, we need a generalized Middle East economic approach to providing a peace policy, in the Middle East. The road map thing is coming up now.
Similarly in other areas, such as North Korea. The real solution will come through the application of a general economic recovery to each of these areas, as the basis of building the conditions of life and opportunities, which people would rather fight to defend, than fight over. And, that's the basic approach.
Q: Hi, Mr. LaRouche; my name's Orion Teng [ph] from San Leandro. I was wondering exactly how issue-based politics has been destructive. I mean, is it just that people aren't taking the right approach to the right issues? Is it enough to have just kind of an over-arching, epistemological philosophy in tackling the Presidency?
LaRouche: Yeah, it is, partly that. The problem is, issue-oriented policy in the United States is disgusting. It's immoral. What it means, it's actually, it works like single issues: You take some beef, by some group in the population, and you say, that group in the population will support a certain candidate, who supports that beef. Another may be in a community; it may be in a local area; it may be in a category of sexual preferences, or whatever.
Therefore, what happens is, you divide the population into a zoo, of different kinds of animals. Each animal has its own cage, its own single issue, or two or three single issues. Some animals have related issues; they gang up. So, you no longer have a national policy. What you have is, people squabbling over scraps, instead of solving the problem.
For example: The general problem in the United States is, what? General health care: In 1973, the Nixon Administration, under the influence of a Democrat who was a pigMoynihanintroduced what was called the HMO Bill. The HMO Bill, which has killed probably more people than AIDS, was a replacement for the Hill-Burton legislation, which had worked in the postwar period, and had served us well.
So then, you had this crazy thing of Hillary Clinton, who, in an absolute act of mass idiocy, produced a health-care bill which is a monument to insanity, in terms of legislationthousands of features, and it all must be voted up without amendment. A piece of insanity! All we have to do, is go back and look at the Hill-Burton legislation, which is a few pages, which set forth the principal policy of the United States on health care. It worked! The monster that Hillary Clinton passed, almost destroyed the Clinton Administration. It was just too much to swallow.
So, these attempts to deal with health-care issues, and other issues, on a single-issue basis, is insanity. What we have to have is, number one, a policy, on any area of problem: a policy. Then, you have to elect people, and employ people to implement that policy. Then you have a monitoring device, to determine how well the policy is being conducted. Now, in our system, the Federal government, this works generally in two ways: You have the agencies of the Executive branch of government (or, we used to have them). Those agencies were supposed to implement the law. In other words, as the law went downsay, health care: So, you would have a department of government, which was responsible for health care. The Hill-Burton legislation would be the basic law. In that department, you would also have a monitoring capability, which would go out to the people in society, different parts of society, and determine how the law was being implemented; how efficiently, or effectively it was being implemented.
So, you had a Federal government responsibility. You then had a Congressional responsibility: permanent standing Congressional committees, with oversight over these areas, assigned oversight, would also investigate, to see how well the law was working: Was it enough? Was it too much? Whatever. Or, if it was failing.
You would then have, also, on the state level, and on the local level, you would have corresponding agencies, who would be participating in the implementation of this law, and they, too, would be involved implementing the law, and also in determining how well the implementation was performing.
So, that generally is the approach to sound government. You make broad definitions of law, clearly understandablenot too many pagesfour, five, twenty pages. Remember some of the greatest, important scientific papers or discovery ever produced, consisted of only a few pages, or a couple dozen pages of writing. So, you make the basic statement, not simple, but concise, short, to the point. Everyone should understand it. Now, you put it into departments of government, or private sector, if that's the agency involved. You then follow up on that, in administration, both in positive administration, regulatory administration, and also in auditing. And that's the way good law works.
For example, we have homeless people in the United States. In my impute, the law should be, there should be no homeless people in the United States. You do not require a whole bunch of single issues, on that issue. We know what it means to have people have homes. Therefore, we say, we're not going to have homeless people. We say that nobody's going to be denied necessary health care. It will happen. And people are going to be assigned to carry that out. We're going to make broad guidelines on how it's going to be carried out.
So, if you go through all the things that government should be responsible for, and you find that you can reduce thatand I've been doing this for a long time, in terms of proposals, and looking at other people's work at the same time. You make a few broad things, which affect everybody in a whole area of concern, and that is sufficient. Because you're not trying to write a recipe, a mechanical recipe for reinventing the wheel. What you're trying to do, is simply assign people, responsible people, or authorize responsible people, to do something, and authorizing the follow-up on that proposal to make sure it's being competently implemented, or discover if changes are needed.
And, that's the way politics should be made. We should not have these single issues. They're simply ways of dividing people, of confusing them, of setting one group of people against another. Whereas, if we design legislation the way we used, in the best times in the past, we find that relatively simple Federal legislationsimple in terms of number of pagesadministered by good Congressional committees, by well-staffed agencies of government, can do the job. And, don't make too many "'causes," and "whereas," and "whereats," because you'll just make a mess of it. And, keep the single issues out.
Q: Lyn, my name is Germain [ph], I'm from the San Leandro office this time. The question is, what is the mission for the youth? As a member of the youth movement, I've heard different answers from different people, as far as this question goes. It's primarily been to build the Renaissance, which I imagine, to take no less than 25 to 50 years, or more. And, secondly, the answer that I get is, "to get Lyn in the White House." But, I also hear that, this isn't really necessarily the focus. And thirdly, from reading speeches which you gave for cadre schools like this one, I've gotten the notion that it is to inspire the older generation to change their thinking, for the best of their and our future, which, again, I would think would make the focus: to organize the people in public office, and portend a better future relatively soonmore or less, five to ten years, or something like that. But, the reason why I ask this question, is to have more of a clear idea of what I'm actually doing politically, when I'm out in the streets, and to get a sense of what are the actual means to fulfill this end?
LaRouche: [chuckling] Okay, good! I got you.
Well, first of all, running for President generally means, these days, some guy running around in a mental clown suit, saying, "I want to be President. And, I'll make everything funny." Or, we get Bozos, the other type of guy in the clown suit.
And, I'm not running for President in the year 2004. I expect to be President in the year 2004that's different. I'm running to be, effectively, the President, actively in the wings, the shadow President now. You see, President Bush has a shadow, right now: It's called Dick Cheney, otherwise known as "Dirty Dick" Cheney. He and "Bugsy" Rumsfeld are pretty much running the government. And Bush doesn't know what government is, yet. He knows he's in it, and he thinks he's boss, but he doesn't know what that means.
All right. Now, I'm running as a shadow President. That means that I'm doing the thingsI have no powers of the Presidency; I have no particular powersbut I'm movingyou see, I'm travelling in Europe, right now. I'm moving in world affairs, as well as our national affairs, to give direction in the way, by policy enunciation and presenting ideas, to people who are in government, or who have been in government, or who are important political institutions, in various parts of the world. I'm providing leadership, of the type that a President should be providing, for the role of the United States as a nation, and the role of the United States in the world. So, I'm running as President, not just for becoming President.
Also, there are some characteristics of the youth movement, which are quite important for this. Now, the new characteristic of this youth movement, as opposed to those I've known of from beforeexcept the original American Revolution was a youth movement. You look at the age of Alexander Hamilton, at the time he was a leader at Valley Forge and other thingsthat was a youth movement! This is your age group. They made the American Revolution. Oh, a few older guys, like Benjamin Franklin and so forth, played a role. But it was a youth movement, under the direction of what's called a Junto, led by Benjamin Franklin, which wrote the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson actually did the handwriting, but the Declaration of Independence was authored by Benjamin Franklin, not Jefferson. Jefferson was his clerk. Similarly, it was not John Hancock that actually wrote the Federal Constitution, or the Preamble. Again, this was under the leadership of Benjamin Franklin, who represented some of the finest thinking of Europe.
So, you are a youth movement, in that sense, to me. Now, the difference isas then: You look at some of Franklin's European sources of ideas of the things he was involved in, he was doing something analogous to what I'm doing. He was the leading scientist of the world, at that time. He played a very important part in the development of the science of electricity, and chemistry! Together with his friends, Priestley, in England, and Lavoisier, in France. He was associated with leading scientists in Sweden, in Germany, and elsewhere. And, the way the American Revolution developed, during the middle of the 18th Century, was around this body of scientific idea, for which he had a whole network of newspapers and other publications, and other devices, for mobilizing the population. So, the population of the United States, at the time of the formation of our nation, had a degree of literacy in the order of 90-plus percent! Whereas, in the United Kingdom, or Britain of that time, the literacy rate was 40%, and it was a very poor 40%. So, we were a morally, intellectually superior people, because of the organization of the movement led by Benjamin Franklin, with much help from Europe, from his friends in Europe.
Now, my view today, is today, unlike youth movements I've known historically, in recent times, in the 20th Century, we are different. Because we started from a principle of truth, which is why I emphasize this issue of the Gauss 1799 paper. To make the difference between scientific thinking, actual scientific thinking and truth-seeking, and empiricism, because the people that Gauss attackedEuler and Lagrange, among others in that paperwere people who were empiricists. And, the greatest cultural and intellectual affliction, of modern European civilization, that is, European extended civilization, is the influence of empiricism and related diseases, like existentialism. And therefore, the important thing, is to have a movement based, not on empiricism, or not on opinions, or reactions to gut feelings, but a movement of young people, who know that they are committed to truth. That doesn't mean they know all truth, it means they're committed to it.
And therefore, by being committed to truth, they can trust themselves. Because we're in a situation of special quality, in which the preceding generation, the so-called "Now Generation" or Baby-Boomer generation, has lost its historical connection. It gave up, by becoming a "Now Generation," by becoming a consumer society generation, it gave up its moral connection to earlier and later generations. This is why there's such a conflict, within the Baby-Boomer generation, why they can't seem to find a stable form of marriage. It's why so many young people are not quite sure who their half-brothers and half-sisters are; who have a very poor sense of identity; who have a terrible education in public schools; and very little sense of real opportunity in life any more, especially after the recent years' economic collapse.
So therefore, because of the break in generations, you can not trust the older, Now Generation, as a source of tradition to guide us in dealing with the present problems. However, if we have an effective youth movement, and that youth movement is committed to the idea of truth, of becoming masters of truthnot knowing everything, but committed to truth, then they will inspire their parents' generation into coming back and rejoining the human racepicking up their abandoned membership card from the human race.
And we see that happen: When youth move, as some of you guys move, you have changed the United States significantly. One of the reasons I'm a leading candidate, and the leading candidate in terms of financial support, popular support, in the United States today, is largely because of you! Yes, it's because of what I've done over years. I used to have as high as 25% voting support, from within the population, back in the 1980s. I'm not exactly a stumble-bum, when it comes to politics; I'm fairly good at it. Better than most of the ones I'm up against, I'm sure of that. But, you guys have changed society, in a certain degree, already, because you, as a youth movement, have stunned the attention of politicians of the older generation. They realize you represent something. And, you have demonstrated to yourselves, in that way, that you can change society, by getting the older generation, in part, to come over to our side, and to get their optimism back. And that's the whole purpose. That's really what we're up to.
Otherwise, consider us an educational movement, and educational movement of truth-seekers. We're just trying to find the truth, and we're talking about the truth with everyone, just like Socrates. We're out on the streets, like Socrates, talking about the truth. And we're talking to everyone. And we're sharing opinions with everyonealways looking for truth. And that's a very healthy way to be; it's a very happy way to be.
I know, a lot of you guys, because of your generation, you have problems. I run into them. They're reported to me. Young people bring them up to me, a lot of them; I understand. But, I understand, that your strength lies, when you are in motion. If you're sitting, one by one, or two by two, on the sidelines of the current politics, you feel impotent, and all the problems inside you, come to the fore. When you find yourself out there, organizing, mobilizing, or in discussion groups, discussing truth, you're a force! You're effective! You're good! And you know it. And, that's what we're about, isn't it?
Q: Hello, my name is Eric, I'm a finance student at CalPoly Pomona. I was just wondering if you could tell us a little bit about how far into this recession we're currently in, and how much worse it could get, or much more there is ahead of us?
LaRouche: What work? What kind of work?
Q: How much more of this recession do we have to go through?
LaRouche: Oh, I don't know, I think it's endless! I think it's absolutely endless, because the discovery of truth, is a long, long way in the future. The process of getting there, is, getting there is the fun. And, if you're having fun, you don't want to stop the journey. Look, I've enjoyed life, doing this all my life. I enjoy it more all the time. And, what you have to do is, get the sense of the satisfaction, of going through this struggle, and it becomes, then, a habita habit you enjoy. It's like eating a good meal: You don't want to do it 24 hours a day, but two or three times a day would be fairly nice. And probably the same thing is true about this kind of discussion. You get a meal occasionally, and between meals, do other things, that flow from being satisfied with the meals, you've enjoyed.
Harley: Lyn, I think the actual question, you may not have heard. He was askinghe's a finance major, and he was asking about the nature of this recession. How long will this recession last?
LaRouche: Oh! This is not a recession! Oh, ho, ho, ho, ho! This is the end. This is the bottom, that's dropping out. This is the bottom that's dropping out of the Doctor Dentons.
There is no possibility of the present world monetary-financial system, continuing much longer. Now, if you look at the history of these kinds of problems, and you look at how long this thing has been dyingand it has been dyingyou realize that you can not predict exactly when something's going to happen. I'm the best forecaster in the world, on performance, in the past 40 years, but I would never try to predict exactly when something's going to happen. I've come close a couple of times, but I was right, when I did it, because I saw what was going to happen. And I always dictate, in forecasting, exactly what the choices are. Because, there's always a choice. There's never a simple, predetermined result: There's always a choice. That's the nature of mankind: We always have choices.
Now, the choice is this: We now have ended, as we've documented, about the year 2000, certainlyit started in 1999. Let me just go back on this, because it is a technical question, and probably requires a technical answer: In the middle of the 1990s, I was concerned about the way the Clinton Administration was going to go. We had, at that point, we had a very destructive force of the Newt Gingrich rampage, the fascist. And, he came in, as Speaker of the House in January of 1995, where he made the famous French Revolution speech, advertising himself, by description, as a fascist. He set out to destroy the U.S. government, using the ideas of Prof. Leo Strauss, of whom he is follower.
So, we got into this fight, and Clinton was on the fence. We had people in the Clinton Administration, who were defending the General Welfare, as Clinton had done, up to that point, against Gingrich's Conservative Revolution. But, at that point, Clinton capitulated. He capitulated largely under pressure from Dick Morris, and Al Gore, and people like that. It was a terrible mistake. And, he enthusiastically endorsed Gore for Vice Presidentit was a mistake. He should have thrown the thing open, as President.
But, I saw, and I warned at the time, that we were headed for an immediate crisis, as a result of this change in policy, which had been forced through under pressure from Gingrich. In 1997, we had what was called the "Asia crisis." It was not an Asia crisis; it was a crisis of the system, which happened to hit hard, because the speculators tried to defend the system in Europe and in the United States, by looting Asiathat's why it was called an Asia crisis. It was not that something happened in Asia, it happened that powers, centered in Europe and in the United States, especially Anglo-American power, moved in to loot Asia, as a way of trying to bail out the United States and Great Britain and so forth, from what was threatened to be a collapse crisis.
The following year, 1998, you had the GKO crisis, the Russian bond crisis. Now, the Russian bond GKOs were a fake, set up by British and American speculators, hedge funds, largely; just like the hedge funds that had set up the Asia crisis the year before. At that point, in August of 1998, when the hedge fund collapse came, the GKO bond collapse came, Clinton was convinced that I was right on the crisis, and he and his Secretary of the Treasury, and others, were movingas he announced in New York in Septemberto consider some reform of the monetary system.
However, they had the Lewinsky scandal thrown at them, by Gingrich and othersLewinsky was not the reason for the impeachment: It was Clinton's threat to move toward monetary reform, that turns all the cats and dogs against him. We, at that time, acted, with some marginal value, to stop the impeachment, or to defeat the impeachment, which succeeded. We mobilized people to mobilize some other people, and we turned the corner, and the impeachment was defeated.
But then, in October of 1998, after Clinton had backed down from the monetary reform, the problem they faced was something I had warned about, that we would face a Brazil crisis, which was due for approximately February of 1999. So, the Administration went to various people and said, "What do we do about this? How do we stop the Brazil crisis?" And George Soros and company said, "Wall of money. Print money like mad. Create money by all kinds of electronic and other means. Flood the market with money, to keep the system from collapsing, to keep the financial markets from collapsing." And that's what they did.
The result was, that in the course of 1999, we began to pick up the fact, that the rate at which money was being generated, was faster than the financial system was growing. Which meant that the stabilizing of the financial markets, depended upon a hyperinflationary printing of moneyelectronically, or otherwise.
In the year 2000, it became obvious to us, that this was not merely a short-term trend, because of the "wall of money" policy, but this had become a long-term, integral feature of the system. So, this was a case, as of Spring of the year 2000election year 2000. At the time that the nominations were locked up for Bush and Gore, as the only two contending candidates for that year, the depression was already inevitable.
So, when Bush came in, after this confused mess, after this crisis in the election, I made a forecast, in January, saying what was going to happen to the Bush Administration. And I forecast two things: The aggravation of the economic crisis, which has accelerated, as I warned, since that time. Secondly, under these conditions, as it happened in Germany in 1933, the attempt of some forces to prevent a Franklin Roosevelt-type of action against the Depression, would tempt them, as the former head of the Bank of England had done in 1933, to raise the money from New York to keep Hitler's party alive, and to put Hitler into power in Germany, in January of 1933, in time to have Hitler in power, before Roosevelt would be actually inaugurated.
So, then they had the Reichstag Fire, which was organized by Goering, in Feb. 27 of 1933; on Feb. 28, 1933, a dictatorship was established in Germany, which never quit until the end of the war. And therefore, we had World War II, as a result of a coup, organized to prevent Germany from being under a government which would cooperate with Franklin Roosevelt, with Roosevelt's recovery program. Because Germany had, under Dr. Wilhelm Lautenbach, had a policy which was comparable to Roosevelt's policy, for German recovery, for dealing with the Depression. And, Lautenbach, later, as I've learned, praised Rooseveltthat is, as an economistpraised Roosevelt's program as contrasted with the failure of Hoover's program.
So, there's no question that, with the Lautenbach factor, and with von Schleicher as Chancellor, instead of Hitler, in March of 1933, that Germany and the United States would be on parallel tracks on international policy. And, under those conditions World War II would have never happened.
What I warned against, in January, was such a thing happening in the United States. It happened, on Sept. 11, 2001. And, out of the woodwork came Cheney, with a Nazi-like program, which Cheney had already had in 1991, when he was Secretary of Defense. And, that's what we're living under.
So, we're now living under a condition, where you have a President who is not competent mentally; under a world financial system, which is disintegrating by the day; you have 46 states, at least, in the United States, which could not possibly balance their budgets, their state budgetscan't do it; no way to do it. Nothing will work, except a Roosevelt-type approach. Which means we have to put the international financial system into reorganization, through receivership; bankruptcy receivership of the IMF system. That, governments can agree to do, and we must do it. It's analogous to what Roosevelt did with the bank holiday: We must do that, or we'll not get out of the mess, hmm?
And, we must also move toward measures of economic recovery, which are largely in large-scale infrastructure project stimulus, in rails, power generation and distribution, water management; keep the airline system alive, don't let it sink; rebuild the health-care system; rebuild the educational system, and a few things like that.
And, give the credit, in many cases, not just as Federal projectsthere are some cases where Federal projects are neededbut also to the states. The states need credit. For example, the state of California: The state of California has an energy crisis, which was caused, largely, as a result of the crazy deregulation law. Now, what is needed, to reverse that crime, called the deregulation law (which I think more and more people in California are inclined to, right now); but the state of California requires the source of credit, given its present financial condition, which has been aggravated, precisely by deregulation. It needs the credit, which must come largely from the Federal government, directly or indirectly, for the large-scale investment in rebuilding both the generating and distribution capacity of the power industry. You have, also, for example in California/Arizona: We have a disaster in some of the aquifers, in water management system. We need large-scale investment there.
So, necessary investments of that type, in public utility areas, can provide the stimulant, of employment and to business, which are needed to get a recovery going. If we don't do that, which is the otherthat's the choiceif we don't do that, we're going to Hell.
Harley: Fine, Lyn. I think you answered that one! Next.
Q: Hey Lyn, this is Jeremy from L.A. I'm curious as to when I'm out in the field, talking to these people that have read some of your literature, they seem to get a little bit afraid, that what we're talking about is communism or socialism, and like globalization. And, I'm not really sure how I can address them, as to correct their mistaken thinking.
LaRouche: Don't worrythat's spread, that's gossip. That's spread. You have right-wing stuff, and you have a lot of gossips out there. You get in the street, and you findLook: If you look carefully, you go out with about five or ten of you. Now, you have a couple of people that are not only identified with me, they're really yours. Now, you go along, say five or six of you are going along the street areayou're organizing. Now, you have a couple of guys who are dressed, say, in suits and so forth, you know?on the other side of the street, as if they're watching you, hmm? Now, these guys should be watching, who's coming toward you. And, you'll find out, that in many of these of cases, that the people who are coming toward you, with this kind of chatter, are people who are being deployed, to try to confuse you, by asking you and making these silly statements. They may be John Birchers, or similar guys, or maybe Republicans, or crazy Democrats.
But, what we have, is a pattern, and it's more conspicuous in the Washington, D.C. area than anywhere else, of the deployment of operativespeople are being deployed, because they're afraid of you. And what they're trying to do, is fix your heads, by coming around and nagging you, with crazy chatter.
Now, there are very few people in the United States today, except a few Gingrich types, huh?, who are actually concerned about communism and socialism. You have a number of John Birch Society fanatics out there, wandering around loose without their keepers. They may raise these questions. But, in general, in the United States today, people are not afraid of the bogeyman of communism or socialism. If you tried to sell them socialism, they may not agree with you. If you preach communism, they would reject you. But, they don't think it's a big bogeyman that's about to eat them. They think that George Bush is the thing that's about to eat them!
So, a lot of that stuff is phony, and brush that aside. But, as I say, if you want to have some fun, you get a couple of guys dressed in suits, looking like so-called "straight" Baby-Boomer citizens, or something (or maybe they're not so straight, but anyway), following you around or at a distance, as if they had nothing to do with you. And have them watch, what is coming at you. And, you'll often find that you've got a bunch of things that are "stuck on" you; and that's where you get that kind of conversation from.
Q: Good morning, my name is Lakeesha Rogers [ph], and I am from the Houston, Texas office.
LaRouche: Aha!
Q: In the book Bridge Across Jordan, you write of the Garden of Gethsemane. My question is, where was your inspiration taken from, in this writing, and at what point to you know that you have come to that point in time of your life, that you have done all that you can, to contribute to the existence of mankind, before you depart from this Earth?
LaRouche: Well, as Christ says in there: The cup. If the cup is presented, accept it. You don't choose a time of departure. I have no plans to choose a time of departure. But, I am concerned with what I do in the meantime! And, that's the way I look at it.
But, for us, you know, we're looking at cases, like the case of Christ, or the case of Jeanne d'Arc, for example, another case of that type; you look at people, who, unlike Hamlet, when faced with sticking to their mission, or betraying it, or running away from it, decide that they would rather die, then, than lose the significance of their life for time to come.
That's the true sense of immortality. It's the sense, you have a mortal life; it has a beginning and an end, and there is no open-ended clause on permanent life. Therefore, if you understand your own self-interest, what you have to worry about, is what you choose to spend your life on. Because, it's the permanent effect of that expenditure, which is the meaning of your life for all humanity. That is your identity. That's an adult sense of identity, and people who have not yet reached that sense of identity simply have not yet reached full adulthoodat least moral and intellectual adulthood.
So, it's a "real big deal," as they say. It's simply sense. But, if people don't have that sense, then that sense of self is something outside them, and they look at somebody who has that sense of identity, and they say, "I see what they're saying. I hear what they're saying. But, I don't feel that myself, inside myself." So, it's a feeling of being outside that sense of identity. And, this is really, what is called "alienation."
Now, my concern is, is that you shouldn't feel alienated! Enjoy life. I enjoy life richly. I have no intention of parting from it. I enjoy it immensely, and I want you to enjoy it, too!
Q: Good day, Mr. LaRouche, my name is Dax [ph] from Los Angeles. My question is, there's a lot of activity in Latin America, right now, with regard to economic policies. What do you seehow do you analyze Toledo's government in Peru? What intentions he might have? And would it be a good idea to "clone" Operation Juarez, and how can this help your campaign, and save the U.S. economy?
LaRouche: First of all, Operation Juarez never stopped! We have our dear friend, the former President of Mexico, Lopez Portillo, and we're still committed to it. [laughing] So, it never stopped! He made an important speech in the United Nations on that subject-area. It's an historic speech by him, and it's a speech which is still aliveand he's still alive. And, I'm still alive.
In the case of Toledo: Toledo's a disaster. He's a U.S.a coup was run against the Fujimori government. Now, the coup was run for two reasons: The coup against Fujimori was run by the United States government, during Clinton's second term of office. It was run, for two reasons. First of all, the backer of the coup, was George Soros, and George Soros is involved in drug trafficking. He's a backer of drug trafficking. And the Fujimori government, the Peruvian government, was the most efficient opponent and resister of drug trafficking in all of the Americas. More effective than the United States! Secondly, that Fujimori had made a speech in Brazil, not in the context of the Mercosur [the Common Market of the South] exactly, but in spirit. And that speech, which involved the proposal of cooperation between Peru and Brazil, and adjoining nations, was the reasonpolitical reason, general reasonwhy the coup was put through, and Fujimori was thrown out; and Toledo, who is nothing, but a totally owned U.S. political figure, was put in.
Now, the institutions of Peru are still there, in [name inaud], and Peru has a very strong tradition. It's like Mexico: Mexico has a very strong tradition, the patriotic tradition of Mexico, which is what the PRI used to represent, and still does in some large degree. There are other elements, of course, as opposed to the Maximilian, which is the other faction; or the so-called "synarchists" in Central and South America.
We have problems throughout the hemisphere, in that part of the hemisphere. Colombia: the drug wars, the FARC wars; Venezuela is in a crisis; Argentina is being ground up and destroyed, by the international bankersmass murder, by the IMF and World Bank. The IMF and World Bank are committing genocide against the people of Argentina. Brazil is interesting, and Lula is an interesting person. I'm not one of his supporters, but he's acting somewhat like the President of Brazil, as opposed to what some thought he might do, and he's done a few useful things.
So, I'm hopeful about the Americas, but I'm also have a sense of my own personal responsibility, because of my influence in various ways, in various parts of the world, including the United States, that I take it as my personal responsibility, to try to save the states of Central and South America. And I don't think it will happen, unless I do it. They need help. And I'm the one that has to provide a key margin of help, and I'm doing it.
Q: Hello Lyn, and thank you. My name's Ali and I'm from L.A. I'm been with the organization for about two years. I haven't been full-time, so I have a pretty personal question, regarding my own psychological impotence. [general laughter]
LaRouche: Oh, my God!
Q: Well, I kind of see myself as a type of Iranian Hamlet, without the nobility[more laughter]. People here might call me a "Persian prince," because of how I act, but that doesn't really count. I can see how people, a thousand years from now, depend on us and your youth movement today, to get your ideas passed into U.S. policy, as official U.S. policy. But, I fear death, because I haven't acted selflessly in the sublime, by examples set forth by yourself, Amelia, Joan of Arc, and so forth. So, more often than not, I've chosen to put on my own shackles, you know, as a slave, and they consist largely of escaping reality, pessimism, and, to be honest, mother-dominance in my own head. [Lyn chuckles] I usually don't have a problem, helping out, writing a check, organizing here and there. But, when it comes to my own personal "me time," when after work I can be myselfand I've even read Freud or Jung!I might have said, escape to a virtual computer world, or go hang out with a degenerate friend.
Now, these things are honestly making me crazy! What advice can you give to me, and other people like myself? And please don't pull any punches.
Thank you.
LaRouche: Well, I don't have to do much punching: You've done a good job, yourself! But, the thing is, there's a sensuous crossover, from a sense of impotence to a sense of potency. And, people have to make that decision themselves. They can be helped by example; they can be helped by discussing it; they can be helped by situation.
You know, you go through an experience, where you make a real commitment, a commitment which involves your sense of identity, and you say, "I am going to accomplish this." It doesn't have to be a big thing. It just have to be a crossover, from the sense ofdo you ever find yourself feeling like you're walking through a shadow world? Where you are walking in a shadow, on the one side, and sometimes you walk into reality? Then, you walk back into the shadows? And, you wonder whether you're living in the shadows, or the reality? You wonder where the real you is living: into a kind of fantasy or a life which is organized by fantasy, and life which is real.
For example: Concern for saving a life of someone in danger. Concern for helping someone, who's in jeopardy. Putting yourself at risk for doing something you know you should do. These kinds of things give you a commitment to yourself, as an important person. Not important, because you've got the press following you around, praising you. But important, because you know that you are a needed person in society. That you do the kinds of things, and are the kind of person, who will do the kinds of things that will meet needs. That you have a sense of what is important in society; that is, what is an important need, as opposed to something which is marginal. And you're committed primarily to trying to fulfill an important need, of some kind.
When you make that attachment, which is sometimes called in psychology, "cathexis," that attachment to a sense that you are an important person, because you have a commitment to some sense of mission, as opposed to being a person wandering in the shadows, and looking at missions, as if as a spectator from the land of shadows.
This problem is aggravated today, by television. Because people find themselves living in a television world, as a spectator of a television screen. Or, with a computer, playing games with a computera spectator of that. Your identity is not there. You have an identity, but you have, at the same time, this sense of lackand this is the Hamlet sense. Hamlet, of course, flees into actionthat is the other way of doing it. By killing people: That's his recreation. He enjoys doing thathe hates it, but he enjoys it. It's like an alcoholic: He finds that compulsion to take that next drink of blood. But, he has no sense of immortality, so he goes out and gets drunk, on blood. That's another kind.
But, there's also the kind, of the passive, the spectator sense. You sense yourself as a spectator of reality, and you sometimes intervene in reality. But then you leave, and you feel that, [voice dropping to whisper] "Basically, I'm a spectator!"
That's just something you have to work out with yourself. The only thing that I can do, or anybody else can do, is to help you see that, and see your way to, what is called in psycho-medical literature, cathexis.
Harley: I think there are a lot of people here who are willing to help Ali with that...
LaRouche: Okay.
Harley: Including himself.
LaRouche: A willing volunteer, huh?
Jason: Hey, Lyn, this is Jason. So, looking at back at how the youth movement originally got created, which was you, about 60-70 years ago, that was based on, you had read Leibniz, and you, as a young man, attacking Kant based on Leibniz. Now I don't really know exactly what the intention was, what the center was, when the Boomers were being organized, back a number of years ago, but now we've got Gauss, and this constructive siege on the Ivory Tower, I was kind of wondering, how we did we get here? How did we wind up, how did you, how did this become the center of things, how did you get here?
LaRouche: It's very simple. It really is awfully simple when you look at it, as I can look at it from the inside.
Very early, I knew that my parents lied. And everybody else lied. It was obvious, you know. You have, company comes I don't know if you ever had an experience like this, but company comes to visit the parental household. And everybody is very lovey-dovey, a nice conservation "Oh, we must do this again." And the minute the guests are out of the house, the parents start to gossip about the guests who just left.
You said, "Uh-uh. I got honest parents, huh? Very sincere people."
Then you get into school, you get into class-mates, and even as a young child, or playmates, as a young child, and you find they're all lying. Most of the time, they're lying. They're not telling the truth. They're trying to cultivate, they're trying to project other people's opinion of them. They don't care what they are. They're most of the time concerned about what other people, they think, other people think about them. So, they have a very weak sense of inner identity.
Well, I resented that. I didn't like any part of that, and I always got into a lot of trouble. I got whopped on the side of the head frequently on this issue, but I decided I would stick to it. Better to get whopped in the head, than be a person who depends upon reflection as a spectator of himself. Don't make a spectator of yourself, huh?
So, anyway, so I just got into one thing after the other. And when I would get run into something I didn't agree with, didn't believe, I didn't have to disagree with it. If I didn't believe it myself, if I didn't know it myself, I refused to believe it. So I had great troubles with schools, because they kept telling me things I knew were not true, and in later life, I realized I was right most of the time.
But that was easy, because, as I later discovered, they lied most of the time, so it was not difficult for me to make that kind of judgment.
So, I just took a sense of mission, and had that kind of sense.
So, coming into the wartime period, I was in India, in service, coming out of Burma. I sense a mission. I became involved in the cause of Indian independence. It was a mission. I came back. I found that my fellow soldiers were morally degenerating, under the influence of Trumanism, which was later called McCarthyism. So I first put my bets on Dwight Eisenhower, who I encouraged to run for President. He sent me a nice letter saying why he wouldn't, at that time. But, then I got involved with socialists, because they were the only ones who were fighting McCarthy.
And then, after McCarthy was defeated by Eisenhower, I looked at the socialists, and I said, "What a bunch of dummies! What am I doing here?" And got out of there.
Then came the 1960s, the Missile crisis, the assassination of Kennedy, and the rock-drug-sex counterculture began to run amok, and I decided I had to do something about it. I'd been a management consultant, which I liked doing, because I'm an economist. So, therefore, naturally I liked this stuff. And the clinical aspect of the reality of what goes on in a firm. When people tell me about business, they say they took a course in business, I say, "You don't know anything about it. I was there. And what they tell you about business, is all a big lie. It's much simpler than that. It's more complicated, but it's also simpler."
So then, I decided I had to do something. So, I ended up teaching a course at one location, a one-semester course, and I began doing it elsewhere. In the middle of things that were happening. I knew where the world economy was headed, the U.S. economy was headed. I was right. And I became more and more involved. And one day, I found, gradually, that what I had started to do, was not something I had taken over, but it had taken over me. And I've been at it ever since.
So, I've had many missions along the way, but it's that simple. I wander through life with a certain, shall we say, tropism, a certain disposition, which I can trace back to childhood, early childhood, even pre-school childhood. A stubborn cuss, who would never accept what I didn't believe, and could not be beaten into believing it, or appearing to believe it. They tried to beat me into believing it, I would disbelieve it all the more violently, and all the stronger. Because if they were beating me, they were wrong.
So, I just ... that's the way it happened. And it was very fortunate, because by having this kind of attitude, I missed a lot of the mistakes that other people make, who try to adapt too easily to the garbage that's floating around them.
I think that's - Jason, what else can I say? I mean, that's me, in a nutshell, that's the whole. I just keep getting grabbed up by missions, and the mission grabs me, and I'm not running the mission, the mission's running me. I'm not running for President. Working as a shadow President of the United States has taken me over; I haven't taken it over.
Harley: There are about four or five more questions, Lyn. Is that all right?
Lyn: Okay.
Q.: My name is Serab, I actually asked you a question from UCLA a couple days ago, but I accidentally hung up, so I couldn't ask a follow-up question. So, I'll try to sneak an extra one in right now.
My question was, involving the Arab Renaissance, which came up with a lot of good conclusions, and discovered some truths, but it was based largely on a translation of Euclid. So, my first question, I guess, was how does starting from a point where you say it's basically assinine, how do you start from that point and arrive at some beautiful conclusions? And, the second one, I guess... well, actually, that's it. Just go ahead.
LaRouche: Well, first of all, well, it wasn't quite so simple as Euclid. By the Arab Renaissance, we usually mean, at the beginning, we mean the Abassid dynasty, the Abassid Caliphate, which was located in the area which is now called Iraq. This was in a period in which the collapse of Rome, and the progressive degeneration of the Roman Empire of the East, Byzantium, had created a situation in which and also with developments in India in the same period, positive developments, radiating from there, culturally had produced this Arab Renaissance, and the Arab Renaissance was based on getting every bit of available knowledge from every part of the world that could be gathered, into a great library center, in Baghdad. Right? The Baghdad caliphate.
Then you had the continuation of that, as the Turks moved in. The Turks were taken in first, as enforcers for landlords, which is how the culture was destroyed. But in the process, you had al-Farabi, who was a leading thinker very important. And who actually worked on some of the ideas of music which came from the Pythagorean tradition, which is the famous Plato tradition. You had also the great Iranian figure, a physician and philosopher, ibn Sina, otherwise known in Spain as Avicenna, who was a great thinker, and was largely in the Platonic tradition, particularly on the ideas of the soul, things of that sort, very much that.
So, at that point, you had in this part of the world, you had this fusion of the Mosaic tradition, which was then being traced largely from Philo of Alexandria, who was a great influence on the Hebrew tradition, and of course, the Hebrew tradition and the Platonic tradition were actually fused in Christianity in the form of John, the Apostles John and Paul, in particular.
So, all of these forces were playing there, and this continued to radiate around the world, as it did through St. Augustine and his circles in Italy, which then moved into Isidor of Seville, which then moved into the Irish monks. The Irish monks Christianized the Saxons, which was a very difficult thing to do, and then established Charlemagne's system, which was a great reform. And then the Normans killed the Saxons, and there hasn't been a Christian seen in England since.
But in any case... So, this is a long process, in which humanity is humanity, and actually, this is an example of the reason why you have to be optimistic, to be right. Because, humanity is a wonderful thing. Humanity is good, intrinsically good if it ever grows up. Or if it ever gets a chance to grow up. The human being is naturally good; not bad, naturally good. But they have growing pains, and if they get through the growing pains successfully, and don't get bad parents, and bad education, they do pretty well. And so this optimistic goodness, of the human spirit, will tend to break free, and express itself in society, wherever the opportunities arise. It's like flowers arising out of the lava, from the volcanic eruption beforehand. Humanity keeps effervescing.
And humanity always goes back, as much as possible, and seeks from the past, the best from the past, and uses it to build the future. That's the character of man.
Now, Euclid is a mixed bag. Euclid was a systematization, an attempt to systematize, and actually castrate it's called the eunuch principle. You have a very good geometry by the Pythagoreans, and Thales, and Plato, and so forth, and his collaborators, an excellent geometry, which is a physical geometry, a constructive geometry, with none of this Euclidean nonsense. Along came the castrators, and they removed the testicles from geometry, and they called it Euclid.
Now, in Euclid, in the Heath presentation of the 13 books of Euclid, it's a volume which evolved over a period of time, from some guy, originally Euclid, but it was to systematize, to codify, what had been accomplished in geometry. Now, if you go into the Euclid, and you look at the 10th through 13th books of the Euclid Elements, you find that many people who are strict Aristoteleans, could not understand these last three books, of the elements. And even denounced them, and thought they were false. Whereas the smart ones, the smart people, as I do, will always tell you, start from the 10th through 13th book, on the question of spherical functions, and work backwards, and that is exactly how the original geometry was developed. It was developed from astronomy, and astronomy is what? Astronomy is essentially it's not exactly spherical, but as Gauss's principles of curvature, you can compare the tendency of an actual curvature of a system, with a spherical curvature, and that is a typical measure of curvature.
So, the actual ancient people remember, for example, Pythagoras referred to Sphaerics, which was actually a name for spherical geometry, which was a name for astronomy. So, actually, the original ideas of geometry came from astronomy, from astronomical calendars, and study of astronomical calendars. This was the idea of universal principle. It came, if you could look up at the sky, and study the behavior of the stellar system, you would derive principles you called universal. You assumed that man somehow was affected by these universal principles which could be seen in the sky. And this developed the original kind of geometry.
So, that in, even the transmission of what's called Euclid's geometry, as treated by people like al-Farabi, in the case of the Abassid heritage, that even there, the elements of the original intention, the original discoveries, are reflected. As we saw in the case of the 15th-Century Renaissance, where a few teachers, young teachers from a center there, educating, started a Renaissance, in terms of ideas. By taking the material from the ancients, the ancient texts, as from, then, they got them mostly from Greece: With the Greek texts, reworking these, were able by constructive approaches to understanding them, to reconstruct much of the knowledge which had been buried over centuries, in these lost works.
And that has happened again and again.
Look, what I'm doing, what you guys are doing, with Gauss, is exactly that. We had a great scientific revolution, called the Renaissance: This was typified by Brunelleschi; typified by Nicholas of Cusa, who was the great theoretician of this experimental measurement in modern science; and by explicit followers of Cusa's, such as Leonardo da Vinci, Kepler, Leibniz in particular, and Gauss.
So, despite the destruction of modern science, by the introduction of empiricism, or what is called generically, "reductionism," despite that, that by studying Gauss todaywhich is why I laid the program out the way I didby studying Gauss today, you can, now, re-create knowledge, which was essentially the lost knowledge for most people who thought they were scientists, over the recent several centuries, since the introduction of empiricism.
So, that's the way it works. One should be optimistic about this. My view is, that if you gain a sense of personal identity, in the sense that you are mastering something, which opens to you, the minds of some of the greatest thinkers before your time; and find yourself, in a sense, in harmony with them, and find yourself as a person who is continuing that knowledge, to the future, that you're not going to leave people in the abyss of empiricismtheir minds in the abyss of empiricismbut, you're going to free their minds to be able to know the truth, and be able to construct the proof, to prove it for themselves, and build a generation of people who are really well-educated: that's, I think, the lesson to be learned from the Arab Renaissance.
Latest From LaRouche, Part 3
CALIFORNIA CADRE SCHOOL IN DIALOGUE WITH LAROUCHE, Continued
Q: Hello, Lyn. This is Summer from San Leandro. After the Iraq War started, you said that we were experiencing a Riemannian phase-shift, and I was wondering if you could elaborate on that? And how can we be the most efficient organizers, right now? Because, I have seen among members, I've seen a change in the way they react to the situation, and I've seen some, a little escapism, in terms of.
LaRouche: Well, you'll see that. That happens you know. People sometimes slip on the sidewalk.
Riemannian: very simple. By Riemannian phase-shift, I mean exactly what I said. I think it's fairly clearclear, at least from the standpoint of description. It's a question of how good is the grasp, of what I've said.
By Riemannian, we simply mean that there are no definitions, axioms, or postulates in the universe. We don't accept any of them, as Riemann said himself. We recognize only those ideas, which are experimentally validated as universal principles. And we replace the idea of dimensions, by these concepts.
Now, a Riemannian universe is not simply a fixed universe, at least not for man. Every time we discover a new universal principle, we change the geometry of our universe, in terms of the way we act within the universe. And, the universe changes for us, because we're acting differently. These changes mean downshifts and upshifts: If you have a loss of principles in practice, your society will decay. Then, if you have an addition of valid discoveries of principles, or rediscovery of principles, and you practice them, the power of man per capita in the universe, will tend to increase. Society will improve.
So, a Riemannian phase-shift, to me, is: I'm always focussed on these questions of how we discover, and apply, or lose, ideas of principle, which man should have. And therefore, whenever you have one of these changes, a shift, I refer to this as a Riemannian phase-shift: That is, it's not a change within a fixed set of definitions, axioms, and postulates; but it's a change in the axioms, and a change in the axioms underlying a system, is what we mean by a Riemannian phase-shift.
It also involves a notion of a change in curvature, of the universe; at least the universe of our action on the universe. Hmm?
Q: Mr. LaRouche, I think your political [ideas] are incredible, and I look for that. But, a question: In the past, no revolution has really worked, basically because once they get in power, they kind of discover a reality, and they kind of change everything, the economy, and anyway. Are you a revolutionary? And, when you get in office (which I hope you do, actually), will reality hit you? Because I mean, you are actually kind of close, but when you get in office and reality hits you, are you sure you're going to be able to actually carry this out?
LaRouche: To do what?
Q: Because the ideas, seem sometimes to be too good to be true! So, I'm thinking: When you get in office, are you going to be able to actually carry some of these principles out?
LaRouche: Oh, absolutely! I intend to do it, before I get into office.
We are doing it, now. Look, society is a process, it's not just a fixed thing. Look, there are people who are, in a sense, collaborating with me, directly or indirectly, who collectively represent a considerable amount of power in the world. We're acting. We are acting, we did act to try to jam up the war. We didn't stop it, but we jammed it up, for some time. And jamming it up was a good thing, because it gave us the opportunity to change a few things, and we're in a better position now, than we were when this process started, back in, say, January of 2002. We're in a much better position. From the time when the President announced the "axis of evil" in his State of the Union address in January 2002, we were in real trouble. And over the summer months, it was getting more dangerous. We managed to jam it. And we jammed it up internationally, largely from people inside the United States. But others also played their part. And we were able to do that, because I had the trust and confidence of a lot of groups of people, who understood what I was doing. I was exerting leadership.
Now, I can assure you, that if I were President of the United States today, we would have tremendous fun. Why? Because here we are in a financial crisis nobody in the world has the guts yet, to propose actually doing what has to be done.
What has to be done? Very simply. If I'm the President of the United States, I call these guys together, or a number of them. From Russia, from Germany, and from France, from China and from other countries, and I say,
"Gentlemen, Ladies, here's what we're going to do. We're going to put this system, this bankrupt system, into governmental receivership by joint action of nations, and by each nation. We're going to put it into receivership the way you put anything into bankruptcy. We're going to protect the people, and protect the economy, from the collapse. We're going to get ... Necessary financial institutions will function under our direction. We will create credit so they can function. We're going to cause growth of the economy. We're going to fix what needs fixing as fast as we can. We're going to go back to some of the ideas that worked in the past, and use them as a model of reference, to convince people that they will work in the present."
Such as: Roosevelt's actions of the 1930s they worked. Now we're not going to copy them exactly, but they show how to do it.
The question of a new monetary system. We created a fairly good one, designed in 1944, and carried into the 1960s. It worked. We built a United States which had the highest rate of productivity in history, per capita. We continued to improve in the post-war period. It worked! It wasn't perfect, but it worked. So, therefore, these ideas, used more effectively now, perhaps, than in the past, will work again. And on that basis, I tell you, with the fear of war, with the fear of what the Bush Administration has come to represent, especially since January of 2002, the world is aching for escape from the terror, and the fear.
The people of the United States would like to have health care again. We can organize it. We're going to have to put a lot of physicians back to work, but we can organize it. We can reorganize the system again. We knew how to build it before; we know how to rebuild it. It's going to take time, but we're going to rebuild it.
We know how to repair the educational system. It'll take time, but we're going to do it.
My objectives are of that nature. A number of things that I think have to be done. That somebody in a powerful position must bring other people in relatively powerful positions together, to agree to do. And I think I could get things done, at least probably better than anyone else right now. Because I know clearly what the problem is, and therefore I have confidence in proceeding on how to settle it. Other people may be less confident in a solution. I'm not. I don't lack that confidence.
So, I think I can promise you, that if I live, and I get there, you're going to see a lot of fun. It may not be perfect, but it's going to be a lot of fun. And, after all, I have to leave something for somebody else to do, don't I?
Q: Hello, Lyn, this is Cody in Los Angeles. My question is about culture. Now, you've written in some of your papers that, in a Classical work of composition, actually I have two parts.
In a Classical work of composition, [you've written that] that the composer's communicating ideas about how you communicate ideas. So I was wondering if you would elaborate on that, number one.
And number two, from the standpoint of what you've discussed in terms of the generation of a singularity, from the point of generation, to the point of impact, is an unmediated relationship. Now, from, say, the point of generation of a singularity by a Beethoven, or Shakespeare, or something, to the point that you want it to impact the mind of an audience, it has to be performed by someone, but yet, how do you make that performance an actual unmediated relationship between the composer and the audience?
LaRouche: Let's take the second one first. It works better that way. Because the answer to the second question illustrates what the meaning of the first question is.
Now, take the case of a composer. A Classical composer and I have in mind, just to have a specific focus I have in mind a performance that was done in my birthday celebration, by a leading string quartet in the world today, and it was the Opus 131 of Beethoven, late string quartet. This is an excellent performance. They may, when they issue the things themselves, they may touch up a few spots here and there, but, to my standpoint, it's a very good performance. And in those of good musicians who've heard it. It's an excellent performance.
All right, now, this work, this late work of Beethoven, and these late compositions the 127, 131, 132, and so forth, 135 they're very intense compositions. The Great Fugue, the 133, is an example of that. They are a new kind of composition. It's a revolution in composition. It's an evolving development concept, as opposed to the structures which Beethoven inherited for the string quartet, and so forth, earlier.
But when these compositions, which actually follow a line of principle, defined by Bach, which is accessible to many people in terms of the preludes and fugues, first and second book, these contain the germ of many things. For example, you take the second fugue, the C minor, from the first book of Preludes and Fugues, contains in germ the same principle which is elaborated in the later Musical Offering by Bach, and also is a subject implicitly in the Art of the Fugue of Bach. So, these principles are all the way through.
Now, how does it work? The fugal counterpoint makes the point clear. The composer starts from a single idea that's your singularity.
Now the composer wants to convey that idea, which, to that composer, that single idea elaborates to a large concept. The composer is now then going to work out the composition, from the standpoint of that generating point. And he's going to perfect, he's going to pare it, he's going to improve it, and so forth, but to make it coherent with this generating point, the single idea. And the Beethoven, say, the 131, is an example of that. It's a perfect example of a single idea, as a germ, elaborated through successive phases, seven successive primary phases of development, from beginning to end. It's a unit idea.
And that's the general nature of all artistic composition.
Now, the conductor. the composer, and the performer.
The problem of performance is that the performer must never play notes. The performer must never play different notes than are specified, but the performer must never play notes. He must never interpret the notes that's romanticism. He must perform the unit idea, the germ idea. He must first adduce what that germ idea is, that principle of development, which is single idea, and he must present that in the following way.
Take, now shift to the Classical in general. Let's take a drama, let's take a Shakespeare drama. Now, look at Hamlet of Shakespeare from the standpoint of the opening of Shakespeare's King Henry V, in which he has a character come on stage, before the stage, of the Shakespearean stage, who's speaking a soliloquy to the audience. And he's telling the audience that they're not going to see the drama on stage, they're going to see this, and they're going to see that, the actors and so forth but they're not going to see the horses, they're not going to see all the things that are being... the events that are occurring in the drama. They have to see them on the plane of the imagination.
So, in a great drama, the test of a great dramatic performance, of a great drama, you get in the theater, and very soon, in the beginning of the performance, you no longer see the actors. The actors have disappeared. You now actually are thinking, and following, a drama which is going on on the stage of your imagination. And when the play is finished, and your eyes are opened to the actors coming forth on stage, you see the actors again, as opposed to the characters of the drama. And you have this experience that they're somehow, they're not the same, but they are the same. They are the same actors who played the characters. They're costumed as the characters were costumed, in your imagination. But they're not the same people. If you talk to one of the actors afterward, you're convinced they're not the same people it's not the character in your imagination.
Or, go back to the ancient Greek theater, in which a few people, wearing masks, maybe two people wearing masks, would present a Classical drama. And they would convince the audience in the amphitheater, that the audience was seeing what they were seeing in the imagination. The actors on stage were simply holding masks, and they were playing different characters from behind the masks, but just holding masks.
So, in musical composition, the same thing is true. The performer, must, from the first note, must capture the imagination of the audience. Because everything must be heard in the imagination, not just as heard sounds. You see this in Keats' Ode to a Grecian Urn. He describes some of the figures painted on this urn, and he says something which is very true, and uses that poem as a way of saying it: "For Truth is Beauty, and Beauty is Truth." He's speaking of the permanence of those figures. That those figures on that vase have been proportioned in such a way, they do not represent still life. They represent life in motion.
For example, take the case of Rembrandt's Aristotle, or shall we say, Homer Contemplating the Stupid Aristotle. You see the bust of Homer, and the figure portrayed by Aristotle, putting his hand on the head of the bust of Homer. Aristotle is looking straight ahead. Homer is looking up at this stupid Aristotle.
So, therefore, in the imagination, the characters come to life. Homer comes to life. The point is made.
The great performer take a conductor such as Furtwaengler. Now, Furtwaengler would sometimes play a trick which we call the lunge. He would rehearse the orchestra, chorus or orchestra, thoroughly. Then he would come on stage. The orchestra is alert. They're tense. They're waiting for the first stroke. And it comes to them as a surprise. And by that method of conducting, Furtwaengler often is able to achieve the instant capture of the attention of the audience to the domain of the imagination, rather than the sound of a note. And that's what all great drama does, what all great art does. It captures the imagination, and it takes the mind beyond the domain of sense perception, into the sense of real relations beyond sense perception. Just as good science does.
And Classical art, and Classical science, all have that quality. It is that quality, the quality which is against everything Ernst Mach ever stood for, against everything empiricism ever represented, against every idea that Bertrand Russell ever had, which are the ideas also of Plato. To look,... our senses are imperfect. Our senses do not show us the real world. The senses show us the reaction of them, to the real world. Our problem as human beings is to discover what the real world is, what the real relations are in the world. That's a practical question, but the question is, how can we change our experience in a way which we could acquire knowledge. Therefore, we have to go beyond sense perception, into the world beyond senses, and find principles out there, which we can now command.
Take, for example, microphysics. Think of nuclear microphysics. Think of the power of man which is lodged in control of the principles of nuclear microphysics. Tell me when the senses have ever seen a principle of nuclear microphysics. No human sense could ever see such a principle. Yet we as man, by discovering those principles, are able to discover those principles, and discover how to control them.
The same thing is true in art. The same thing is true in all science. That we're trying to get beyond the feeling, by finding the paradoxes, the ambiguities, in sense perception. We're trying to find the cracks in sense perception, which give us a clue, as to what is really out there, beyond our sense.
All great Classical art, Classical drama, tries to do. All great science tries to do that. And that's the unifying principle of the two. The problem often is, that people don't know those principles; they don't understand that concept. What we try to do in art, and great artists do this, they do this in the great performance of the Classical stage, they do it in great musical performances. A great musical performance, a great Classical drama, performed in a language that people understood, will be a powerful thing, which will open the minds of people to things about themselves that they didn't know existed earlier. It's called insight, insight into one's self. You go out of the theater, after a musical performance, or a drama, as Schiller said, and you go out a better person than you walked in. Not because you've been taught some precept, but because you've had an insight into what it is to be human. And you go out feeling better about yourself, because now you know you're human. You feel stronger about being human, and you feel less attached to the infirmities of the flesh.
Q: Hi, this is Anna from L.A. This might be kind of a continuation, but I'm going to go for it anyway.
There's two. First, why did God design the voice with register shifts? Why does the voice have them? Why do we need the shift?
And then, we have a program; it's called Operation Revive Plato, out here. And people are a little bit freaked out about Plato. We've been reading it for months, some people only a couple weeks, some people a couple years, and it seems that we get easily freaked out about the slanders. He's a fascist things like that. And you mentioned in this Essential Fraud of Leo Strauss memo, that the constructive geometry is the method to actually know Plato. And then, the mapping of the mind. And so, how do we do this? How do we come to know the real mind of Plato?
LaRouche: Well, it takes a lot of work. Plato's a very big mind, and there's a lot to explore.
But, essentially, the constructive geometry is simple, because, you remember... Let's take the two cases which are the most crucial, for the simple part of the thing. The doubling of the square, which is a simple mean problem, but then the doubling of the cube, which is a double mean problem. And look at that, realize that Plato's understanding of that, as in his understanding of the Theatetus construction of the proof of the Platonic solids, that these kinds of proof or that, say, the proof of the Pythagorean principle. What Pythagoras gives us, for example, which is really a Platonic principle, is only a description. We only have a description of what Pythagoras did. We don't have a writing by Pythagoras in which he says how he defined the comma. His students tell us. And his students say, you compare the human singing voice, with a monochord, and by intervals sung by a human singing voice, as opposed to a monochord, the same proportions by a monochord.
Now, if you have a trained human singing voice, you see that there is a difference. And this difference defines the comma. So now the comma is not a mathematical magnitude, of an algebraic or mathematic type, but is a physical phenomenon, so therefore, we know that Pythagoras was right. Or at least he was right because his students, who had to be honest people because they made an honest report, report an experiment that works. And all the other things, the same thing.
So, therefore, you say, "All right." Now the method by which Plato in his dialogues, Socratic dialogues, demonstrates principles like this, in respect to geometry, which is constructive principles it all involves construction, not deduction, but construction is a standard of truth in Plato. So, Plato is based on truth. Now, we look at the other aspects of Plato, where the same method is applied to other subjects, such as social subjects. We see the same thing.
Then you look at it as against the background of Classical tragedy, which Plato was a critic of. The tragedies of Sophocles and Aeschylus. You get the same thing. Ah! Then you look at Solon, who's a hero for Plato, and look at Solon's poem. Oh, that's the truth too, isn't it? Of how a society degenerated. Going back to their old Baby Boomer ways. Again, it's an example.
So, therefore, it's this sense that's why I did this work with the Gauss. One has to start with the sense of a standard of truth. We're living in a society in which the Baby Boomer generation, in particular, has lost its connection to a relationship to truth, and has become a generation of opinions, based on pleasure, in experiencing what is associated with expressing such and such an opinion, or following it. So, therefore, we're in a decadent society, which is based on opinions, not on truth. Therefore, my concern was, get us back to truth, and give young people a standard for knowing what the truth is.
Now, the question of God is I've dealt a great deal with it. It's really quite simple, isn't it?
If you look at the question of discovery, of principle, the discovery of universal principle... Discovery of a principle is never a result of a sharing of opinions. If it's an opinion, it's not a principle. The discovery of a principle is always done by an individual mind, by a capability which exists only in the personality of individual minds.
Now, what is the universe composed of? Well, the universe is composed of principles, the kind of principles we discover. They were always there. They're interrelated. Well, where did the universe begin? It has no beginning. It has no end. It has no outside. It is the universe. Where did the principles come from? Principles are determined only by a personality, a human-type of personality. So, there is a personality behind the universe. The universe has a personality, a willful personality, of which man's personality, as a creative personality, is a copy. And by knowing ourselves as a copy, we know the Creator.
Q: Hi, Lyn. My name is Emmet. I'm Muslim, and I follow my religion very closely, not as closely as the FBI follows it.
I wanted your intake on the fact that, after the regime change in Iraq, the Iraqi people are demanding the system of God, and not any man-made system. They want to establish caliphate, or falafeh, and not any man-made system like capitalism, socialism, democracy, or communism.
LaRouche: I don't think that that's clear. What you have is several things going on.
What you have is a situation of chaos, which was produced by this intervention, and by other factors. Iraq has been divided, essentially, into three principal states, or maybe more, but essentially it's Kurdish, it's Shi'ite, and it's Central Iraq, which is identified by the Ba'ath.
Now the Shi'ites are not so simple, because there are two major groups of Shi'ites, that is, in terms of nationality. You have Arab Shi'ites, and you have Iranian Shi'ites. And not all and some of the Shi'ites in Iran are Arab Shi'ites, because the southern part of Iran contains an Arab population as part of Iran, even though they speak Iranian. And so forth. There's still that culture left in the Bakhtiar part.
All right, so, now what's happened is, that with the disintegration of Iraq, what has happened is, you have different factions in Iran, Shi'ite factions in Iran, and different Shi'ite factions in Iraq, are all contending for power. There's a state of chaos, which threatens to involve the neighboring countries, in chaos spilling over from there.
At the same time, you have the Kurdish section, with two major Kurdish sections, among which many are essentially warlords. The characteristic of the mountain areas of many of the Kurds, are, they tend to be warlord families. And the quarrels among them are traditional. Now the Kurdish population intersects not only Northern Iraq, it also includes part of Iran, it also includes extensive parts of Turkey, and goes into the Transcaucasus area generally, which is part of the same mountain system. There's an impulse among the Kurds to set up Kurdistan: the idea of taking all the areas which are Kurdish in ethnic background, and in the majority of the population, from Iran, from Iraq, from Transcaucasia, and from Turkey, and establishing Kurdistan.
Now, there's not agreement among the forces, among the Kurds, on what kind of a government they'd form. Because they have traditional conflicts. And various agencies, including U.S. agencies, have been playing games out there.
The Iranians, apart from having their own internal differences on these things, and the Arab Shi'ites, who include things like the biggest turnout there was essentially the flagellant Shi'ites, who were one of the biggest contingents that turned out at Kerbala. So, there is no clear understanding of what kind of a state to create, in former Iraq. There's a conflict, among Shi'ites, and with other groups, on what to do.
What's required is simply this: the United States has made a mess of the situation. The Israelis now want the United States to get out quickly, because the Israelis see that what was happening in terms of the religious conflicts which have been engendered, and set into motion, and including religious warfare, among various religious factions, this becomes an impossible situation, and becomes a source of threat to Israel itself. Therefore, the Israelis are pushing their stooges in Cheney's part of the U.S. government, to pull the U.S. forces out of there quickly, by forming a quick government and leaving. Which would be an absolute disaster.
The condition of Iraq now is in a state of disaster. U.S. forces are in there, the country doesn't function, disease is spreading, life in general is endangered, therefore the United States has responsibility, in a sense, to stay there, but with the approval of the United Nations, to at least build up the infrastructure of the country, so that, in a quiet and peaceful way, some kind of unified government can emerge from among the Iraqi people in general. And therefore, the religious conflicts have to be kept quiet now. And let them settle down. And let people peacefully resolve on what they want to do with their own future. Not be stampeded into struggles among different factions, including struggles among different Shi'ite factions, some of whom have been killing each other, already.
So, this is not a unified Shi'ite movement, which is trying to take over Iraq. No. It's a movement already... grand ayatollahs have been slaughtered, as part of the religious warfare which has broken out among different factions in that areas.
So, what's needed now is a process of pacification, in the sense of positive construction effort, to bring stability to that part of the world, and the United States has the leading responsibility.
Harley: I think there are a lot of people here who are willing to help Ali with that...
LaRouche: Okay.
Harley: Including himself.
LaRouche: A willing volunteer, huh?
Jason: Hey, Lyn, this is Jason. So, looking at back at how the youth movement originally got created, which was you, about 60-70 years ago, that was based on, you had read Leibniz, and you, as a young man, attacking Kant based on Leibniz. Now I don't really know exactly what the intention was, what the center was, when the Boomers were being organized, back a number of years ago, but now we've got Gauss, and this constructive siege on the Ivory Tower, I was kind of wondering, how we did we get here? How did we wind up, how did you, how did this become the center of things, how did you get here?
LaRouche: It's very simple. It really is awfully simple when you look at it, as I can look at it from the inside.
Very early, I knew that my parents lied. And everybody else lied. It was obvious, you know. You have, company comes I don't know if you ever had an experience like this, but company comes to visit the parental household. And everybody is very lovey-dovey, a nice conversation "Oh, we must do this again." And the minute the guests are out of the house, the parents start to gossip about the guests who just left.
You said, "Uh-uh. I got honest parents, huh? Very sincere people."
Then you get into school, you get into class-mates, and even as a young child, or playmates, as a young child, and you find they're all lying. Most of the time, they're lying. They're not telling the truth. They're trying to cultivate, they're trying to project other people's opinion of them. They don't care what they are. They're most of the time concerned about what other people, they think, other people think about them. So, they have a very weak sense of inner identity.
Well, I resented that. I didn't like any part of that, and I always got into a lot of trouble. I got whopped on the side of the head frequently on this issue, but I decided I would stick to it. Better to get whopped in the head, than be a person who depends upon reflection as a spectator of himself. Don't make a spectator of yourself, huh?
So, anyway, so I just got into one thing after the other. And when I would get run into something I didn't agree with, didn't believe, I didn't have to disagree with it. If I didn't believe it myself, if I didn't know it myself, I refused to believe it. So I had great troubles with schools, because they kept telling me things I knew were not true, and in later life, I realized I was right most of the time.
But that was easy, because, as I later discovered, they lied most of the time, so it was not difficult for me to make that kind of judgment.
So, I just took a sense of mission, and had that kind of sense.
So, coming into the wartime period, I was in India, in service, coming out of Burma. I sensed a mission. I became involved in the cause of Indian independence. It was a mission. I came back. I found that my fellow soldiers were morally degenerating, under the influence of Trumanism, which was later called McCarthyism. So I first put my bets on Dwight Eisenhower, who I encouraged to run for President. He sent me a nice letter saying why he wouldn't, at that time. But, then I got involved with socialists, because they were the only ones who were fighting McCarthy.
And then, after McCarthy was defeated by Eisenhower, I looked at the socialists, and I said, "What a bunch of dummies! What am I doing here?" And got out of there.
Then came the 1960s, the Missile crisis, the assassination of Kennedy, and the rock-drug-sex counterculture began to run amok, and I decided I had to do something about it. I'd been a management consultant, which I liked doing, because I'm an economist. So, therefore, naturally I liked this stuff. And the clinical aspect of the reality of what goes on in a firm. When people tell me about business, they say they took a course in business, I say, "You don't know anything about it. I was there. And what they tell you about business, is all a big lie. It's much simpler than that. It's more complicated, but it's also simpler."
So then, I decided I had to do something. So, I ended up teaching a course at one location, a one-semester course, and I began doing it elsewhere. In the middle of things that were happening. I knew where the world economy was headed, the U.S. economy was headed. I was right. And I became more and more involved. And one day, I found, gradually, that what I had started to do, was not something I had taken over, but it had taken over me. And I've been at it ever since.
So, I've had many missions along the way, but it's that simple. I wander through life with a certain, shall we say, tropism, a certain disposition, which I can trace back to childhood, early childhood, even pre-school childhood. A stubborn cuss, who would never accept what I didn't believe, and could not be beaten into believing it, or appearing to believe it. They tried to beat me into believing it, I would disbelieve it all the more violently, and all the stronger. Because if they were beating me, they were wrong.
So, I just ... that's the way it happened. And it was very fortunate, because by having this kind of attitude, I missed a lot of the mistakes that other people make, who try to adapt too easily to the garbage that's floating around them.
I think that's - Jason, what else can I say? I mean, that's me, in a nutshell, that's the whole. I just keep getting grabbed up by missions, and the mission grabs me, and I'm not running the mission, the mission's running me. I'm not running for President. Working as a shadow President of the United States has taken me over; I haven't taken it over.
Harley: There are about four or five more questions, Lyn. Is that all right?
Lyn: Okay.
Q.: My name is Serab, I actually asked you a question from UCLA a couple days ago, but I accidentally hung up, so I couldn't ask a follow-up question. So, I'll try to sneak an extra one in right now.
My question was, involving the Arab Renaissance, which came up with a lot of good conclusions, and discovered some truths, but it was based largely on a translation of Euclid. So, my first question, I guess, was how does starting from a point where you say it's basically assinine, how do you start from that point and arrive at some beautiful conclusions? And, the second one, I guess... well, actually, that's it. Just go ahead.
LaRouche: Well, first of all, well, it wasn't quite so simple as Euclid. By the Arab Renaissance, we usually mean, at the beginning, we mean the Abassid dynasty, the Abassid Caliphate, which was located in the area which is now called Iraq. This was in a period in which the collapse of Rome, and the progressive degeneration of the Roman Empire of the East, Byzantium, had created a situation in which and also with developments in India in the same period, positive developments, radiating from there, culturally had produced this Arab Renaissance, and the Arab Renaissance was based on getting every bit of available knowledge from every part of the world that could be gathered, into a great library center, in Baghdad. Right? The Baghdad caliphate.
Then you had the continuation of that, as the Turks moved in. The Turks were taken in first, as enforcers for landlords, which is how the culture was destroyed. But in the process, you had al-Farabi, who was a leading thinker very important. And who actually worked on some of the ideas of music which came from the Pythagorean tradition, which is the famous Plato tradition. You had also the great Iranian figure, a physician and philosopher, ibn Sina, otherwise known in Spain as Avicenna, who was a great thinker, and was largely in the Platonic tradition, particularly on the ideas of the soul, things of that sort, very much that.
So, at that point, you had in this part of the world, you had this fusion of the Mosaic tradition, which was then being traced largely from Philo of Alexandria, who was a great influence on the Hebrew tradition, and of course, the Hebrew tradition and the Platonic tradition were actually fused in Christianity in the form of John, the Apostles John and Paul, in particular.
So, all of these forces were playing there, and this continued to radiate around the world, as it did through St. Augustine and his circles in Italy, which then moved into Isidor of Seville, which then moved into the Irish monks. The Irish monks Christianized the Saxons, which was a very difficult thing to do, and then established Charlemagne's system, which was a great reform. And then the Normans killed the Saxons, and there hasn't been a Christian seen in England since.
But in any case... So, this is a long process, in which humanity is humanity, and actually, this is an example of the reason why you have to be optimistic, to be right. Because, humanity is a wonderful thing. Humanity is good, intrinsically good if it ever grows up. Or if it ever gets a chance to grow up. The human being is naturally good; not bad, naturally good. But they have growing pains, and if they get through the growing pains successfully, and don't get bad parents, and bad education, they do pretty well. And so this optimistic goodness, of the human spirit, will tend to break free, and express itself in society, wherever the opportunities arise. It's like flowers arising out of the lava, from the volcanic eruption beforehand. Humanity keeps effervescing.
And humanity always goes back, as much as possible, and seeks from the past, the best from the past, and uses it to build the future. That's the character of man.
Now, Euclid is a mixed bag. Euclid was a systematization, an attempt to systematize, and actually castrate it's called the eunuch principle. You have a very good geometry by the Pythagoreans, and Thales, and Plato, and so forth, and his collaborators, an excellent geometry, which is a physical geometry, a constructive geometry, with none of this Euclidean nonsense. Along came the castrators, and they removed the testicles from geometry, and they called it Euclid.
Now, in Euclid, in the Heath presentation of the 13 books of Euclid, it's a volume which evolved over a period of time, from some guy, originally Euclid, but it was to systematize, to codify, what had been accomplished in geometry. Now, if you go into the Euclid, and you look at the 10th through 13th books of the Euclid Elements, you find that many people who are strict Aristoteleans, could not understand these last three books, of the Elements. And even denounced them, and thought they were false. Whereas the smart ones, the smart people, as I do, will always tell you, start from the 10th through 13th book, on the question of spherical functions, and work backwards, and that is exactly how the original geometry was developed. It was developed from astronomy, and astronomy is what? Astronomy is essentially it's not exactly spherical, but as Gauss's principles of curvature, you can compare the tendency of an actual curvature of a system, with a spherical curvature, and that is a typical measure of curvature.
So, the actual ancient people remember, for example, Pythagoras referred to Sphaerics, which was actually a name for spherical geometry, which was a name for astronomy. So, actually, the original ideas of geometry came from astronomy, from astronomical calendars, and study of astronomical calendars. This was the idea of universal principle. It came, if you could look up at the sky, and study the behavior of the stellar system, you would derive principles you called universal. You assumed that man somehow was affected by these universal principles which could be seen in the sky. And this developed the original kind of geometry.
So, that in, even the transmission of what's called Euclid's geometry, as treated by people like al-Farabi, in the case of the Abassid heritage, that even there, the elements of the original intention, the original discoveries, are reflected. As we saw in the case of the 15th-Century Renaissance, where a few teachers, young teachers from a center there, educating, started a Renaissance, in terms of ideas. By taking the material from the ancients, the ancient texts, as from, then, they got them mostly from Greece: With the Greek texts, reworking these, were able by constructive approaches to understanding them, to reconstruct much of the knowledge which had been buried over centuries, in these lost works.
And that has happened again and again.
Look, what I'm doing, what you guys are doing, with Gauss, is exactly that. We had a great scientific revolution, called the Renaissance: This was typified by Brunelleschi; typified by Nicholas of Cusa, who was the great theoretician of this experimental measurement in modern science; and by explicit followers of Cusa's, such as Leonardo da Vinci, Kepler, Leibniz in particular, and Gauss.
So, despite the destruction of modern science, by the introduction of empiricism, or what is called generically, "reductionism," despite that, that by studying Gauss todaywhich is why I laid the program out the way I didby studying Gauss today, you can, now, re-create knowledge, which was essentially the lost knowledge for most people who thought they were scientists, over the recent several centuries, since the introduction of empiricism.
So, that's the way it works. One should be optimistic about this. My view is, that if you gain a sense of personal identity, in the sense that you are mastering something, which opens to you, the minds of some of the greatest thinkers before your time; and find yourself, in a sense, in harmony with them, and find yourself as a person who is continuing that knowledge, to the future, that you're not going to leave people in the abyss of empiricismtheir minds in the abyss of empiricismbut, you're going to free their minds to be able to know the truth, and be able to construct the proof, to prove it for themselves, and build a generation of people who are really well-educated: that's, I think, the lesson to be learned from the Arab Renaissance.
Q: Hello, Lyn. This is Summer from San Leandro. After the Iraq War started, you said that we were experiencing a Riemannian phase-shift, and I was wondering if you could elaborate on that? And how can we be the most efficient organizers, right now? Because, I have seen among members, I've seen a change in the way they react to the situation, and I've seen some, a little escapism, in terms of.
LaRouche: Well, you'll see that. That happens you know. People sometimes slip on the sidewalk.
Riemannian: very simple. By Riemannian phase-shift, I mean exactly what I said. I think it's fairly clearclear, at least from the standpoint of description. It's a question of how good is the grasp, of what I've said.
By Riemannian, we simply mean that there are no definitions, axioms, or postulates in the universe. We don't accept any of them, as Riemann said himself. We recognize only those ideas, which are experimentally validated as universal principles. And we replace the idea of dimensions, by these concepts.
Now, a Riemannian universe is not simply a fixed universe, at least not for man. Every time we discover a new universal principle, we change the geometry of our universe, in terms of the way we act within the universe. And, the universe changes for us, because we're acting differently. These changes mean downshifts and upshifts: If you have a loss of principles in practice, your society will decay. Then, if you have an addition of valid discoveries of principles, or rediscovery of principles, and you practice them, the power of man per capita in the universe, will tend to increase. Society will improve.
So, a Riemannian phase-shift, to me, is: I'm always focussed on these questions of how we discover, and apply, or lose, ideas of principle, which man should have. And therefore, whenever you have one of these changes, a shift, I refer to this as a Riemannian phase-shift: That is, it's not a change within a fixed set of definitions, axioms, and postulates; but it's a change in the axioms, and a change in the axioms underlying a system, is what we mean by a Riemannian phase-shift.
It also involves a notion of a change in curvature, of the universe; at least the universe of our action on the universe. Hmm?
Q: Mr. LaRouche, I think your political [ideas] are incredible, and I look for that. But, a question: In the past, no revolution has really worked, basically because once they get in power, they kind of discover a reality, and they kind of change everything, the economy, and anyway. Are you a revolutionary? And, when you get in office (which I hope you do, actually), will reality hit you? Because I mean, you are actually kind of close, but when you get in office and reality hits you, are you sure you're going to be able to actually carry this out?
LaRouche: To do what?
Q: Because the ideas, seem sometimes to be too good to be true! So, I'm thinking: When you get in office, are you going to be able to actually carry some of these principles out?
LaRouche: Oh, absolutely! I intend to do it, before I get into office.
We are doing it, now. Look, society is a process, it's not just a fixed thing. Look, there are people who are, in a sense, collaborating with me, directly or indirectly, who collectively represent a considerable amount of power in the world. We're acting. We are acting, we did act to try to jam up the war. We didn't stop it, but we jammed it up, for some time. And jamming it up was a good thing, because it gave us the opportunity to change a few things, and we're in a better position now, than we were when this process started, back in, say, January of 2002. We're in a much better position. From the time when the President announced the "axis of evil" in his State of the Union address in January 2002, we were in real trouble. And over the summer months, it was getting more dangerous. We managed to jam it. And we jammed it up internationally, largely from people inside the United States. But others also played their part. And we were able to do that, because I had the trust and confidence of a lot of groups of people, who understood what I was doing. I was exerting leadership.
Now, I can assure you, that if I were President of the United States today, we would have tremendous fun. Why? Because here we are in a financial crisis nobody in the world has the guts yet, to propose actually doing what has to be done.
What has to be done? Very simply. If I'm the President of the United States, I call these guys together, or a number of them. From Russia, from Germany, and from France, from China and from other countries, and I say,
"Gentlemen, Ladies, here's what we're going to do. We're going to put this system, this bankrupt system, into governmental receivership by joint action of nations, and by each nation. We're going to put it into receivership the way you put anything into bankruptcy. We're going to protect the people, and protect the economy, from the collapse. We're going to get ... Necessary financial institutions will function under our direction. We will create credit so they can function. We're going to cause growth of the economy. We're going to fix what needs fixing as fast as we can. We're going to go back to some of the ideas that worked in the past, and use them as a model of reference, to convince people that they will work in the present."
Such as: Roosevelt's actions of the 1930s they worked. Now we're not going to copy them exactly, but they show how to do it.
The question of a new monetary system. We created a fairly good one, designed in 1944, and carried into the 1960s. It worked. We built a United States which had the highest rate of productivity in history, per capita. We continued to improve in the post-war period. It worked! It wasn't perfect, but it worked. So, therefore, these ideas, used more effectively now, perhaps, than in the past, will work again. And on that basis, I tell you, with the fear of war, with the fear of what the Bush Administration has come to represent, especially since January of 2002, the world is aching for escape from the terror, and the fear.
The people of the United States would like to have health care again. We can organize it. We're going to have to put a lot of physicians back to work, but we can organize it. We can reorganize the system again. We knew how to build it before; we know how to rebuild it. It's going to take time, but we're going to rebuild it.
We know how to repair the educational system. It'll take time, but we're going to do it.
My objectives are of that nature. A number of things that I think have to be done. That somebody in a powerful position must bring other people in relatively powerful positions together, to agree to do. And I think I could get things done, at least probably better than anyone else right now. Because I know clearly what the problem is, and therefore I have confidence in proceeding on how to settle it. Other people may be less confident in a solution. I'm not. I don't lack that confidence.
So, I think I can promise you, that if I live, and I get there, you're going to see a lot of fun. It may not be perfect, but it's going to be a lot of fun. And, after all, I have to leave something for somebody else to do, don't I?
Q: Hello, Lyn, this is Cody in Los Angeles. My question is about culture. Now, you've written in some of your papers that, in a Classical work of composition, actually I have two parts.
In a Classical work of composition, [you've written that] that the composer's communicating ideas about how you communicate ideas. So I was wondering if you would elaborate on that, number one.
And number two, from the standpoint of what you've discussed in terms of the generation of a singularity, from the point of generation, to the point of impact, is an unmediated relationship. Now, from, say, the point of generation of a singularity by a Beethoven, or Shakespeare, or something, to the point that you want it to impact the mind of an audience, it has to be performed by someone, but yet, how do you make that performance an actual unmediated relationship between the composer and the audience?
LaRouche: Let's take the second one first. It works better that way. Because the answer to the second question illustrates what the meaning of the first question is.
Now, take the case of a composer. A Classical composer and I have in mind, just to have a specific focus I have in mind a performance that was done in my birthday celebration, by a leading string quartet in the world today, and it was the Opus 131 of Beethoven, late string quartet. This is an excellent performance. They may, when they issue the things themselves, they may touch up a few spots here and there, but, to my standpoint, it's a very good performance. And in those of good musicians who've heard it. It's an excellent performance.
All right, now, this work, this late work of Beethoven, and these late compositions the 127, 131, 132, and so forth, 135 they're very intense compositions. The Great Fugue, the 133, is an example of that. They are a new kind of composition. It's a revolution in composition. It's an evolving development concept, as opposed to the structures which Beethoven inherited for the string quartet, and so forth, earlier.
But when these compositions, which actually follow a line of principle, defined by Bach, which is accessible to many people in terms of the preludes and fugues, first and second book, these contain the germ of many things. For example, you take the second fugue, the C minor, from the first book of Preludes and Fugues, contains in germ the same principle which is elaborated in the later Musical Offering by Bach, and also is a subject implicitly in the Art of the Fugue of Bach. So, these principles are all the way through.
Now, how does it work? The fugal counterpoint makes the point clear. The composer starts from a single idea that's your singularity.
Now the composer wants to convey that idea, which, to that composer, that single idea elaborates to a large concept. The composer is now then going to work out the composition, from the standpoint of that generating point. And he's going to perfect, he's going to pare it, he's going to improve it, and so forth, but to make it coherent with this generating point, the single idea. And the Beethoven, say, the 131, is an example of that. It's a perfect example of a single idea, as a germ, elaborated through successive phases, seven successive primary phases of development, from beginning to end. It's a unit idea.
And that's the general nature of all artistic composition.
Now, the conductor. the composer, and the performer.
The problem of performance is that the performer must never play notes. The performer must never play different notes than are specified, but the performer must never play notes. He must never interpret the notes that's romanticism. He must perform the unit idea, the germ idea. He must first adduce what that germ idea is, that principle of development, which is single idea, and he must present that in the following way.
Take, now shift to the Classical in general. Let's take a drama, let's take a Shakespeare drama. Now, look at Hamlet of Shakespeare from the standpoint of the opening of Shakespeare's King Henry V, in which he has a character come on stage, before the stage, of the Shakespearean stage, who's speaking a soliloquy to the audience. And he's telling the audience that they're not going to see the drama on stage, they're going to see this, and they're going to see that, the actors and so forth but they're not going to see the horses, they're not going to see all the things that are being... the events that are occurring in the drama. They have to see them on the plane of the imagination.
So, in a great drama, the test of a great dramatic performance, of a great drama, you get in the theater, and very soon, in the beginning of the performance, you no longer see the actors. The actors have disappeared. You now actually are thinking, and following, a drama which is going on on the stage of your imagination. And when the play is finished, and your eyes are opened to the actors coming forth on stage, you see the actors again, as opposed to the characters of the drama. And you have this experience that they're somehow, they're not the same, but they are the same. They are the same actors who played the characters. They're costumed as the characters were costumed, in your imagination. But they're not the same people. If you talk to one of the actors afterward, you're convinced they're not the same people it's not the character in your imagination.
Or, go back to the ancient Greek theater, in which a few people, wearing masks, maybe two people wearing masks, would present a Classical drama. And they would convince the audience in the amphitheater, that the audience was seeing what they were seeing in the imagination. The actors on stage were simply holding masks, and they were playing different characters from behind the masks, but just holding masks.
So, in musical composition, the same thing is true. The performer, must, from the first note, must capture the imagination of the audience. Because everything must be heard in the imagination, not just as heard sounds. You see this in Keats' Ode to a Grecian Urn. He describes some of the figures painted on this urn, and he says something which is very true, and uses that poem as a way of saying it: "For Truth is Beauty, and Beauty is Truth." He's speaking of the permanence of those figures. That those figures on that vase have been proportioned in such a way, they do not represent still life. They represent life in motion.
For example, take the case of Rembrandt's Aristotle, or shall we say, Homer Contemplating the Stupid Aristotle. You see the bust of Homer, and the figure portrayed by Aristotle, putting his hand on the head of the bust of Homer. Aristotle is looking straight ahead. Homer is looking up at this stupid Aristotle.
So, therefore, in the imagination, the characters come to life. Homer comes to life. The point is made.
The great performer take a conductor such as Furtwaengler. Now, Furtwaengler would sometimes play a trick which we call the lunge. He would rehearse the orchestra, chorus or orchestra, thoroughly. Then he would come on stage. The orchestra is alert. They're tense. They're waiting for the first stroke. And it comes to them as a surprise. And by that method of conducting, Furtwaengler often is able to achieve the instant capture of the attention of the audience to the domain of the imagination, rather than the sound of a note. And that's what all great drama does, what all great art does. It captures the imagination, and it takes the mind beyond the domain of sense perception, into the sense of real relations beyond sense perception. Just as good science does.
And Classical art, and Classical science, all have that quality. It is that quality, the quality which is against everything Ernst Mach ever stood for, against everything empiricism ever represented, against every idea that Bertrand Russell ever had, which are the ideas also of Plato. To look,... our senses are imperfect. Our senses do not show us the real world. The senses show us the reaction of them, to the real world. Our problem as human beings is to discover what the real world is, what the real relations are in the world. That's a practical question, but the question is, how can we change our experience in a way which we could acquire knowledge. Therefore, we have to go beyond sense perception, into the world beyond senses, and find principles out there, which we can now command.
Take, for example, microphysics. Think of nuclear microphysics. Think of the power of man which is lodged in control of the principles of nuclear microphysics. Tell me when the senses have ever seen a principle of nuclear microphysics. No human sense could ever see such a principle. Yet we as man, by discovering those principles, are able to discover those principles, and discover how to control them.
The same thing is true in art. The same thing is true in all science. That we're trying to get beyond the feeling, by finding the paradoxes, the ambiguities, in sense perception. We're trying to find the cracks in sense perception, which give us a clue, as to what is really out there, beyond our sense.
All great Classical art, Classical drama, tries to do. All great science tries to do that. And that's the unifying principle of the two. The problem often is, that people don't know those principles; they don't understand that concept. What we try to do in art, and great artists do this, they do this in the great performance of the Classical stage, they do it in great musical performances. A great musical performance, a great Classical drama, performed in a language that people understood, will be a powerful thing, which will open the minds of people to things about themselves that they didn't know existed earlier. It's called insight, insight into one's self. You go out of the theater, after a musical performance, or a drama, as Schiller said, and you go out a better person than you walked in. Not because you've been taught some precept, but because you've had an insight into what it is to be human. And you go out feeling better about yourself, because now you know you're human. You feel stronger about being human, and you feel less attached to the infirmities of the flesh.
Q: Hi, this is Anna from L.A. This might be kind of a continuation, but I'm going to go for it anyway.
There's two. First, why did God design the voice with register shifts? Why does the voice have them? Why do we need the shift?
And then, we have a program; it's called Operation Revive Plato, out here. And people are a little bit freaked out about Plato. We've been reading it for months, some people only a couple weeks, some people a couple years, and it seems that we get easily freaked out about the slanders. He's a fascist things like that. And you mentioned in this Essential Fraud of Leo Strauss memo, that the constructive geometry is the method to actually know Plato. And then, the mapping of the mind. And so, how do we do this? How do we come to know the real mind of Plato?
LaRouche: Well, it takes a lot of work. Plato's a very big mind, and there's a lot to explore.
But, essentially, the constructive geometry is simple, because, you remember... Let's take the two cases which are the most crucial, for the simple part of the thing. The doubling of the square, which is a simple mean problem, but then the doubling of the cube, which is a double mean problem. And look at that, realize that Plato's understanding of that, as in his understanding of the Theatetus construction of the proof of the Platonic solids, that these kinds of proof or that, say, the proof of the Pythagorean principle. What Pythagoras gives us, for example, which is really a Platonic principle, is only a description. We only have a description of what Pythagoras did. We don't have a writing by Pythagoras in which he says how he defined the comma. His students tell us. And his students say, you compare the human singing voice, with a monochord, and by intervals sung by a human singing voice, as opposed to a monochord, the same proportions by a monochord.
Now, if you have a trained human singing voice, you see that there is a difference. And this difference defines the comma. So now the comma is not a mathematical magnitude, of an algebraic or mathematic type, but is a physical phenomenon, so therefore, we know that Pythagoras was right. Or at least he was right because his students, who had to be honest people because they made an honest report, report an experiment that works. And all the other things, the same thing.
So, therefore, you say, "All right." Now the method by which Plato in his dialogues, Socratic dialogues, demonstrates principles like this, in respect to geometry, which is constructive principles it all involves construction, not deduction, but construction is a standard of truth in Plato. So, Plato is based on truth. Now, we look at the other aspects of Plato, where the same method is applied to other subjects, such as social subjects. We see the same thing.
Then you look at it as against the background of Classical tragedy, which Plato was a critic of. The tragedies of Sophocles and Aeschylus. You get the same thing. Ah! Then you look at Solon, who's a hero for Plato, and look at Solon's poem. Oh, that's the truth too, isn't it? Of how a society degenerated. Going back to their old Baby Boomer ways. Again, it's an example.
So, therefore, it's this sense that's why I did this work with the Gauss. One has to start with the sense of a standard of truth. We're living in a society in which the Baby Boomer generation, in particular, has lost its connection to a relationship to truth, and has become a generation of opinions, based on pleasure, in experiencing what is associated with expressing such and such an opinion, or following it. So, therefore, we're in a decadent society, which is based on opinions, not on truth. Therefore, my concern was, get us back to truth, and give young people a standard for knowing what the truth is.
Now, the question of God is I've dealt a great deal with it. It's really quite simple, isn't it?
If you look at the question of discovery, of principle, the discovery of universal principle... Discovery of a principle is never a result of a sharing of opinions. If it's an opinion, it's not a principle. The discovery of a principle is always done by an individual mind, by a capability which exists only in the personality of individual minds.
Now, what is the universe composed of? Well, the universe is composed of principles, the kind of principles we discover. They were always there. They're interrelated. Well, where did the universe begin? It has no beginning. It has no end. It has no outside. It is the universe. Where did the principles come from? Principles are determined only by a personality, a human-type of personality. So, there is a personality behind the universe. The universe has a personality, a willful personality, of which man's personality, as a creative personality, is a copy. And by knowing ourselves as a copy, we know the Creator.
Q: Hi, Lyn. My name is Emmet. I'm Muslim, and I follow my religion very closely, not as closely as the FBI follows it.
I wanted your intake on the fact that, after the regime change in Iraq, the Iraqi people are demanding the system of God, and not any man-made system. They want to establish caliphate, or falafeh, and not any man-made system like capitalism, socialism, democracy, or communism.
LaRouche: I don't think that that's clear. What you have is several things going on.
What you have is a situation of chaos, which was produced by this intervention, and by other factors. Iraq has been divided, essentially, into three principal states, or maybe more, but essentially it's Kurdish, it's Shi'ite, and it's Central Iraq, which is identified by the Ba'ath.
Now the Shi'ites are not so simple, because there are two major groups of Shi'ites, that is, in terms of nationality. You have Arab Shi'ites, and you have Iranian Shi'ites. And not all and some of the Shi'ites in Iran are Arab Shi'ites, because the southern part of Iran contains an Arab population as part of Iran, even though they speak Iranian. And so forth. There's still that culture left in the Bakhtiar part.
All right, so, now what's happened is, that with the disintegration of Iraq, what has happened is, you have different factions in Iran, Shi'ite factions in Iran, and different Shi'ite factions in Iraq, are all contending for power. There's a state of chaos, which threatens to involve the neighboring countries, in chaos spilling over from there.
At the same time, you have the Kurdish section, with two major Kurdish sections, among which many are essentially warlords. The characteristic of the mountain areas of many of the Kurds, are, they tend to be warlord families. And the quarrels among them are traditional. Now the Kurdish population intersects not only Northern Iraq, it also includes part of Iran, it also includes extensive parts of Turkey, and goes into the Transcaucasus area generally, which is part of the same mountain system. There's an impulse among the Kurds to set up Kurdistan: the idea of taking all the areas which are Kurdish in ethnic background, and in the majority of the population, from Iran, from Iraq, from Transcaucasia, and from Turkey, and establishing Kurdistan.
Now, there's not agreement among the forces, among the Kurds, on what kind of a government they'd form. Because they have traditional conflicts. And various agencies, including U.S. agencies, have been playing games out there.
The Iranians, apart from having their own internal differences on these things, and the Arab Shi'ites, who include things like the biggest turnout there was essentially the flagellant Shi'ites, who were one of the biggest contingents that turned out at Kerbala. So, there is no clear understanding of what kind of a state to create, in former Iraq. There's a conflict, among Shi'ites, and with other groups, on what to do.
What's required is simply this: the United States has made a mess of the situation. The Israelis now want the United States to get out quickly, because the Israelis see that what was happening in terms of the religious conflicts which have been engendered, and set into motion, and including religious warfare, among various religious factions, this becomes an impossible situation, and becomes a source of threat to Israel itself. Therefore, the Israelis are pushing their stooges in Cheney's part of the U.S. government, to pull the U.S. forces out of there quickly, by forming a quick government and leaving. Which would be an absolute disaster.
The condition of Iraq now is in a state of disaster. U.S. forces are in there, the country doesn't function, disease is spreading, life in general is endangered, therefore the United States has responsibility, in a sense, to stay there, but with the approval of the United Nations, to at least build up the infrastructure of the country, so that, in a quiet and peaceful way, some kind of unified government can emerge from among the Iraqi people in general. And therefore, the religious conflicts have to be kept quiet now. And let them settle down. And let people peacefully resolve on what they want to do with their own future. Not be stampeded into struggles among different factions, including struggles among different Shi'ite factions, some of whom have been killing each other, already.
So, this is not a unified Shi'ite movement, which is trying to take over Iraq. No. It's a movement already... grand ayatollahs have been slaughtered, as part of the religious warfare which has broken out among different factions in that areas.
So, what's needed now is a process of pacification, in the sense of positive construction effort, to bring stability to that part of the world, and the United States has the leading responsibility.
U.S. Economic/Financial News
Treasury Borrows Against Even Bigger Deficits
The U.S. Treasury announced it will increase the number of bond sales it makes during the yearsupposedly to have more flexibility to deal with what it now projects will be a $425-billion deficit, the Washington Post reported May 1. (You read it first in EIR in January, that the U.S. deficit was heading toward $400-500 billion.) Reflecting the reality of the disintegrating U.S. economy, the Treasury also took the unprecedented action of selling government bonds to raise money to cover a deficit in the second quarter of the fiscal year, since tax revenues coming in from April filings do not provide enough cash to keep the store open. Moreover, it now states it will have to borrow in the third quarter as well, to the tune of $76 billion.
Nota bene: Treasury says its $425-billion deficit estimate does not include the cost of the Iraq war, nor the President's tax cuts, should they be adopted.
Many African-American Children Live in 'Extreme Poverty'
Underscoring the impoverishment of the lower 80% of U.S. family-income brackets, a report by the Children's Defense Fund, released April 30, found that the number of black Americans under 18 years old, who live in "extreme" poverty, i.e., with after-tax family income (including food and housing benefits) below half the official poverty line, jumped by 25%, since 2000, to 932,000 children in 2001, the highest level since the government began collecting such data in 1980. Half the poverty line in 2001, as defined by the U.S. Census Bureau's Current Population Survey, which data formed the basis for the CDF report, was $7,064 for a three-person family, obviously way below what is needed to support a family.
More than 1.8 million black youth were living in extreme poverty in 2001, based on cash income (excluding food and housing benefits).
The proportion of black children living in extreme poverty (counting non-cash benefits) in 2001 jumped to a near-record high of 8.4%, slightly below the 23-year peak reached in 1992.
Large Numbers of Unemployed Are Dropped from the Labor Force
A front-page New York Times article April 27 highlights what EIR and New Federalist readers have known for years: the growing multitude of Americans without work, who are not counted in the unemployment rate. During the past two years, the percentage of Americans classified as "in the labor force"those who are either working or actively looking for workhas fallen to 66.2%the lowest level in 40 years. More than 74.5 million adults are outside of the labor force, in almost every demographic group, according to Department of Labor statistics.
This suggests that the official jobless rate, "offers an artificially sanguine picture of the labor market," notes the Times. Among those whom the government admits are unemployed, the average length of time out of work has been rising over the past two years, to 4 1/2 monthswith many out of work more than six months.
"There aren't any jobs, just not any," said Bill Jacobs, who had been laid off after working 25 years at a steel plant in Pittsburgh. "It's a dead-end street."
The surge in people dropped from the labor force, helped lower the official unemployment rate even as jobs were disappearing, in Metropolitan areas such as Boulder, Colo.; Binghamton, N.Y.; Bloomington, Ind.; and Spokane, Wash.
U.S. Manufacturing Falls to 18-Month Low
U.S. manufacturing activity fell in April to an 18-month low, due, not to war in Iraq, as some claim, but concerns about "soft demand" and rising prices paid by manufacturers, according to the Institute for Supply Management's survey of purchasing and supply executives at about 400 industrial companies, released May 1. The ISM's manufacturing index slid to 45.4% in April, the lowest level since October 2001, from 46.2% in March, meaning faster shrinkage in activity. (A reading below 50% indicates contraction). New orders index declined to 45.2% from 46.2% in March. The employment index dropped to 41.4%, compared to 42.1% in March, indicating the 31st consecutive month of lay-offs.
At the same time, Midwest U.S. manufacturing contracted for a second month in April. The National Association of Purchasing Management's Chicago index fell in April to 47.6 from 48.4 in March, according to a survey of purchasing managers in Northern Illinois and Northwestern Indiana, one of the largest industrial regions in the U.S. (A reading below 50 indicates contraction). The employment index fell to 43.7 from 45.1 in March; new orders fell to 44.6 from 52.5.
Greenspan Not So 'Upbeat' as Some Would Wish
Excerpts from Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan's testimony on April 30 to the House Financial Services Committee show that, contrary to the Washington Post's April 30 headline that Wall Street's oracle was "upbeat," he believes the "extent" and "timing" of the anticipated "expansion" of the economy, is "uncertain." He also said that there will be "further unwinding" of the "economic tensions associated with the war in Iraq," i.e., the economy. He sees no positive signs from business confidence or CEO's failure to invest and hire, thus his "cautious optimism" as characterized by the press. On Bush's proposed tax cuts: he supports the dividend-cut, but only if spending cuts are made to prevent an increase in the Federal budget deficit.
More Grim News from U.S. 'Mis-Fortune 500' Companies
* Goodrich Corp., the aircraft-parts maker, plans to lay off 1,700 workers by the end of 2004, driven by falling orders from Boeing and Airbus, which provide about one-third of the company's sales. The largest U.S. maker of aircraft-landing gear, also slashed its 2003 profit forecast by more than 70% to $0.27-0.42 per share, from $1.45-1.60. Excluding the proceeds from the sale of an avionics business, Goodrich lost $32.8 million from continuing operations during the quarter.
* Gulfstream Aerospace Corp., the business-jet maker, will shut down its primary manufacturing facility for a month, starting June 30, and lay-off 1,000 employees.
* General Motors is cutting 400 jobs at its Saturn plant in Delaware, representing 19% of the plant's workforce, after sales for Saturn's L-Series dropped by 29% in April.
* JDS Uniphase, the world's largest supplier of fiber-optic parts, said it will continue to cut jobs and close plants, and reported a net loss of $137 million for its third quarter that ended March 31.
U.S. Automakers Post Big Drop in April Sales
The "Big Three" automakers posted a 6.1% drop in sales for April, in spite of huge incentives, although results were better than the previous couple of months. General Motors' light vehicle sales, excluding Saab, fell 8.9% in April, compared to the level a year ago, despite zero-percent interest financing for loans of up to five yearswith car sales dropping by 22%. Ford's sales of its domestic brands (Ford, Lincoln, and Mercury) fell 6.9%. Chrysler said that its U.S. sales were off by 10.2% in April.
World Economic News
"Germany's Quiet Depression" reads the headline of an editorial in the German economic daily Handelsblatt April 30 by Lothar Spaeth, until recently chief executive officer at Jenoptik, Thuringia, and formerly Governor of Baden-Wuerttemberg. In Germany, he says, everybody now is "consolidating," and waiting for better times: Private households are cutting down on consumption; corporations are cutting investments; banks are becoming more reluctant to grant credits. People in Germany have fallen into a "fatalistic" mood, where they accept economic downturns as some kind of "natural law."
This is all complete nonsense, says Spaeth. The end of economic growth only comes, when you stop pursuing successful economic policies. The fatalistic belief in the economic downturn is nothing but a typical "self-fulfilling prophecy." Spaeth adds: "Quietly and without reflection, we step by step have slid into a depression, that cannot simply be blamed on world economic data."
The most important element to boost economic growth in Germany is an intensification of technological innovations. What turned Germany into a leading economy after the war was "the commitment to discover and to take risks, combined with a strong will." It's fine that Volkswagen was bailed out last year by a very strong demand from China. But in a few years, the Chinese will produce similar cars by themselves. We have to rapidly increase innovations and generate new products, says Spaeth. Germany once again has to focus on the export of those products, which are needed everywhere but which no other country is able to produce.
Europe Telecom Equipment Sector Continues Meltdown
The meltdown in Europe's mobile-phone infrastructure business continues. As Ericsson AB, the world's largest producer of wireless networks reported on April 29, sales fell again by 30% in the first quarter 2003 and new orders are down 35%. Alcatel, the second-largest producer of telecom equipment in the world, on the same day reported a 31% drop in sales for the first quarter. In view of this outlook, Ericsson will slash its workforce by another 13,000 jobs, stated the new chief executive officer Svanberg at a press conference in Stockholm. The Swedish telecom flagship had already reduced its workforce from 105,000 to 60,000 since the end of 2000; the latest reduction will reduce it to 47,000. Ericsson just announced its eighth consecutive quarterly loss. The stock price of the 127-year-old company, one of Sweden's most widely held, has lost 96% since the March 2000 peak, wiping out $280 billion in market value. This is roughly the present market value of all 30 companies listed in Sweden's OMX stock market index.
Ericsson, Alcatel, Nortel, and other mobile-phone infrastructure producers in the world have eliminated more than 200,000 jobs since the year 2000.
Banks and Insurers in Crisis, Worldwide
The latest string of disasters among financial institutions in the G-7 club include the following events, all from April 28:
* Mizuho Financial Group, the world's largest bank by assets, announced that it will post a loss of 2.38 trillion yen ($19.8 billion) for the fiscal year which ended March 31. It would be the biggest annual loss ever by any Japanese corporation. Final figures will be presented on May 26. On April 28, the Japanese Nikkei index plunged to another 20-year low, with Mizuho stocks crashing to an all-time low. Just in the recent six weeks, Mizuho stocks fell by another 50%. The annual loss of Mizuho will probably be about four times higher than the entire market value of the bank, which has imploded to $5.2 billion.
* Munich Re, the largest reinsurer in the world, fired its chief executive officer, Hans-Juergen Schinzler, following fourth-quarter 2002 losses 2.2 billion euros. In the first quarter of 2003, Munich Re generated more losses, in particular due to the crashing prices of its large shareholdings, such as its stakes in Allianz and in HypoVereinsbank and Commerzbank, the two German banks which suffered the biggest stock market losses in the recent 12 months.
* Ten of Wall Street's largest investment banks signed a settlement with U.S. securities regulators, forcing them to pay $1.4 billion in restitution. The banks were accused of deliberately luring investors into the late 1990s stock market bubble. In order to attract new corporate clients for their investment banking business, the banks promised the corporations cheerful reports by its "stock research" departments. In the center of the fraud allegations are Salomon Smith Barney (belonging to Citigroup), Credit Suisse First Boston", and Merrill Lynch. Several star analysts of the bubble times, including Internet revolution guru Henry Blodget, received life-time bans from doing stock research. Legal cases concerning the same allegations have been filed by groups of investors and could lead to much higher penalties than the $1.4 billion.
Bank of Japan Pumps Another $14 Billion Into Banking System
Following the new 20-year low of Japanese stock prices announced April 30, government reports underlined the worsening state of the Japanese economy: Industrial production in March, widely expected to have increased, indeed fell again by 0.2% compared to February; construction orders fell in March for the fifth consecutive month, down 9.3% compared to a year ago. Official unemployment in Japan is close to an all-time high, wages are down to the lowest level in 11 years, prices have fallen for 43 consecutive months, and bank lending has fallen for 63 months in a row.
In order to prevent a "possible crisis," new Bank of Japan (BoJ) governor Toshihiko Fukui said, at a press conference, the BoJ made a surprise move April 30, raising the target for current-account deposits that banks keep at the central bank, from 17-22 trillion yen to 22-27 trillion yen. In practice, this means that the BoJ will provide an additional 5 trillion yen ($41 billion) in cash to the banking system. Fukui said, "We cannot deny that there are some signs that exports, production, and consumer spending could weaken." The BoJ statement explaining the move notes: "The stock market continues to be unstable, particularly banking shares, and we must be alert to risks of this having a negative impact on financial markets and the real economy."
Children Continue To Die of Malnutrition in Argentina
As the Argentine government blathered about positive economic growth and a "recovery" underway, severely malnourished children in the northern province of Tucuman are dying, according to Dr. Lorenzo Marcos, head of the Children's Hospital in the provincial capital of Tucuman. The "Operation Rescue" announced with much fanfare by first lady Hilda "Chiche" Duhalde last fall, when news of malnutrition in Tucuman first became known, "has rescued no one from hunger," says Dr. Marcos. In fact, the situation has worsened. There has been a 30% increase in the number of children suffering from second-degree malnutrition, while the number of children suffering from the most severe form of malnutrition, has remained unchanged, according to a report in Prensa Sindical Internacional April 23.
Dr. Marcos stated that no one has addressed the fundamental cause of malnutrition: the social and economic issues. You can hand out bags of food for a week, a month, even a year, but in the end, such efforts are worthless. Handouts, in themselves, "resolve nothing," he said. In fact, they denigrate people, who would rather have a productive job and earn a salary, even if it is a small one. Graciela Salazar, a social worker with the Catholic charity CARITAS, warned that "poverty and hunger are threatening Tucuman's future. There is no hope for life ... our province's human capital is destroyed. Poverty conditions the person, and hunger destroys him." Tucuman is just a microcosm of all Argentine provinces, afflicted by malnutrition among all age groups, but where children are particularly vulnerable.
Snow Orders Ibero-America To Bow Down Before the Markets
Reporting to the Council of Americas annual conference April 28 on his April 21-25 visit to Brazil, Ecuador, and Colombia, U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow assured the Wall Street crowd that the three governments understand that "financial markets have to be dealt with.... There's no escaping them; they're relentless. They render a judgment on us. You may come to office thinking you can go off and pursue a set of policies to quickly build your popularity. But if that set of policies isn't consistent with sound underlying economic policies, your country risk premium will go up. Your debt will be put under enormous pressure, and you're very likely to have a default and a most unhappy set of political consequences to deal with."
With a perfunctory show of concern for the "social agenda" which each of those Presidents argue they must implement, Snow assured the Council of Americas that the fear of the markets "is really reflected in the hearts and the souls of those three leaders," and they understand the markets must come first.
Snow delivered brutal threats all along the way: In an April 23 press conference in Brazil, Snow reported that his message to Brazil's President Lula da Silva and officials, was that they have a long road in front of them, before the "markets" will be convinced that they are really committed to austerity. He specified that pensions, the tax code, and labor legislation must be "reformed," and laws guaranteeing central bank independence passed. Brazil cannot produce a primary budget surplus for only one or two quarters, nor for only one or two years; many years of surplus are required, before the markets will be convinced, he said.
As a "carrot," Snow made a big deal over how Trade Representative Robert Zoellick, scheduled to visit Brazil at the end of May, had instructed him to pass on the message, that the U.S. is willing to put "everything on the table" in the negotiations for the Free Trade Accord of the Americas (FTAA).
Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim, at least, was not impressed. Amorim told the Foreign Relations Committee of the Chamber of Deputies on April 23, that "to say everything is on the table, and to say nothing, are almost the same thing.... We cannot fall for this siren song that everything is on the table." Brazil intends to open up several topics which had been considered settled in the FTAA talks, for further negotiations, he also announced.
United States News Digest
Rumsfeld's Purge of Military Follows Hitler, LaRouche Says
Leading Democratic Party Presidential pre-candidate, Lyndon LaRouche, said recently that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld "follows Hitler in the purge of the military." Rumsfeld, and his Deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, the intellectual leader of the cabal of Straussian fascists (politely known as "neo-conservatives") in the Administration, fired Army Secretary Thomas White on April 28, and are now trying to ram through a fascist reorganization of the Defense Department that removes all civil-service protection from Defense Department personnelreplacing it with an arbitrary system, that will allow the Wolfowitz cabal to pack the Defense Department, and its vital intelligence agencies, with their ideological allies.
LaRouche likens this move to the Nazi Notverordnung (emergency laws)enacted after the Reichstag Fire, an incident staged by the Nazis to justify a dictatorship. The Cheney/Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz cabal is similarly ramming through their laws under the banner of "national security" in the aftermath of Sept. 11.
On April 30, the Washington Post reported that, "At a 31/2-hour hearing, Republicans and Democrats alike criticized David S.C. Chu, Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, over the handling of proposed legislation.... Defense officials quietly submitted the 205-page bill two weeks ago during the congressional recess and are now trying to fast-track it through the armed services committees in the House and the Senate, lawmakers said." Opposition is mounting to this railroading of the bill that would all but eliminate Congressional oversight as well. Hearings before the Government Reform Committee are now planned for next week, because of questions that were raised by members of both parties. Representative Jo Ann Davis (R-Va.) challenged the use of the term "national security" to justify any actions, without Rumsfeld ever defining what they mean by that term. On the Democratic side, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) called the bill a "blank check." Hearings and a "mark up" (preparation for a vote) was scheduled for May 1, but now has been moved to May 6.
Opposition was also voiced by organized labor. At subcommittee hearings of the Government Reform Committee, Bobby L. Harnage, Sr., president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), spoke against the Defense Department fascist reorganization plan, in testimony to the House Government Reform Committee's Subcommittee on Civil Service and Agency Organization. Excerpts follow: "[O]ur union represents ... 200,000 civilian employees of the Department of Defense.... AFGE strongly opposes this legislation on the grounds that it erases decades of social progress in employment standards, punishes a workforce that has just made a crucial and extraordinary contribution to our victory in Operation Enduring Freedom, and takes away from Congress and affected employees the opportunity they now possess to have a voice in crafting and approving the personnel and other systems of the Department of Defense. Today, no one owns the Department of Defense. It is a public institution, supported by U.S. taxpayers and administered by a Secretary of Defense appointed by an elected President, and overseen and regulated by the U.S. Congress. If this legislation is enacted, each individual Secretary of Defense, in cooperation with each President, will effectively own the Department of Defense as if it were a private concern. The Congress will have relinquished its oversight and legislative role with regard to approximately 654,000 government personnel." Harnage added that "DoD's 'shock and awe' strategy, designed to stun and confuse its opponents, has been wrongly applied to the legislative arena in this proposal.... We are at a loss to identify a serious or true rationale for this legislation...."
Cheney's Halliburton a Nest of Conflict of Interest
On Sunday, April 27, CBS TV's popular news magazine, "60 Minutes" presented evidence of a real conflict of interest dealing with Dick Cheney's former firm of Halliburton (which gives the Vice President a hefty annual payment as part of the $20 bonus he received when he left the firm to accept the nomination of Vice President). The show also revealed conflicts about the "Chickenhawks" on the Defense Policy Board. According to 60 Minutes, the Pentagon hired Halliburton, before the first shots fired in Iraq, through a classified contract placed through the Army Corps of Engineers with Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR). But the relationship goes back a decade.
Charles Lewis, executive director of the Center for Public Integrity (CPI) revealed to CBS that in 1992, then Defense Secretary Cheney, commissioned the Halliburton subsidiary Brown & Root to do a classified study on whether much of the U.S. volunteer army's logistics should be "privatized." Of course, Lewis said, Halliburton agreed "and over the next eight years Kellogg, Brown & Root and another company got 2,700 contracts worth billions of dollars." Halliburton vice president for government lobbying is Army Maj. Gen. Chuck Dominy (ret.), whose last assignment was Commander of the Army Corps of Engineers. As EIRNS has reported, in 1991, then Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and Straussian Paul Wolfowitz propagated the Defense Policy Guidance for "perpetual war," which was shot down by President George H.W. Bush. Dominy described Halliburton's work as: "You help build base camps. You provide goods, laundry, power, sewage, all the kinds of things that keep an army in place in a field operation. Among the areas where Halliburton has carried out such functions are Afghanistan, Rwanda, Somalia, Kosovo, the Caucasus, and now Iraq.
On May 1, new revelations about Halliburton's role in the Cheney/Chickenhawk Iraq war were covered in the Washington Post. It said that under nominal subcontract from the Army Corps of Engineers, Halliburton Industries' subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR), is supposed to be reconstructing the southern oil field in Iraq (formerly run by the Iraqi South Oil Co.) that had produced 60% of Iraq's petroleum products. This facility was bombed by U.S.-U.K. forces, who also stood by and watched as it was pillaged and armed gunmen still roamed its fields looking for loot.
KBR has so far only restored operation of three of 102 production areas in southern Iraq, that are producing 150-175,000 barrels per day. That is less than half of what the country requires for its basic needs for gasoline, cooking fuel, and electricity. Frequent black-outs still afflict nearly every town, and due to the lack of electricity, the whole water and sewer infrastructure has broken down. This spells the potential for massive outbreaks of cholera and diphtheria, as happened after the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
Army Corps of Engineers Brig. Gen. Robert Crear, who clearly knows that Dick Cheney had been the former Chairman and CEO of Halliburton, has betrayed a "manana" attitude, by stating that in 9-12 weeks, Iraq would be producing about 800,000 barrels per day approximately one-third of the pre-Second Gulf War production. Meanwhile, it is unknown how many Iraqis may suffer, or die, because of the continuing blackouts, lack of sanitation, etc.
Mohammed Mohee, an instrument technician, told the Post reporter that: "KBR just comes and gives orders, but they don't do anything. They don't give us anything to work with. This is our oil. This is our city, our company. Our country. We want to clear away the damage and move forward. We have no tools, no instruments, no spare parts. They do nothing. They just look and leave." Five minutes after Mohee had confronted a KBR employee, a combined unit of six U.S. and U.K. soldiers arrived to check his identification and interrogate him.
Meanwhile, the chief technician at a storage tank across the road reported that during the massive looting of any metal that could be stolen from the field, "The British troops here did absolutely nothing. They watched with their own eyes as thieves arrived and took away everything ... [stating] we're here for fighting. This is not our job."
Another Iraqi official said of the British troops occupying his office: "They allow all of the looters to destroy all of our equipment and even now they are sitting in our offices. They said they brought freedom for us. Where is freedom?"
Perle Under Investigation Again As Feds Probe Global Crossing Buyout
The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), an inter-agency grouping managed by the Treasury Department, started a formal investigation April 28 into the proposed sale of the bankrupt telecommunications company Global Crossing to Hutchison Whampoa in Hong Kong and Singapore Technologies Telemedia. The CFIUS probe will take up to 45 days and is to result in a recommendation to the White House for action on whether to approve the sale, reported an article in the New York Times by Edward Wong on April 30. At issue for the Bush Administration: the implications of foreign ownership of significant U.S. telecommunications capabilities involving national defense. Attacks against Rumsfeld adviser and neo-conservative ideologue Richard Perle came to a head over the public disclosure that Global Crossing was paying him $725,000 to lobby the Pentagon to approve the sale, forcing him to resign as chairman of the Defense Policy Board. Now Rep. John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, reportedly will propose that the Committee ask the Defense Department to turn over financial statements showing additional details on Perle's role. If he can't get the Republican-controlled Committee to take this action, Conyers reportedly will ask the General Accounting Office to pursue the documents.
It's the Economy...Again! Sen. Kennedy Exposes Public Health Cut to the Bone
In testimony to Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee (the HELP committee), on April 29, Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) revealed a study by his staff that shows that U.S. public health infrastructure has been cut to the bone by budget cuts, and deficits, and there is no excess capacity to deal with SARS. In his survey of health departments nationally, Kennedy gave the following devastating picture of the lack of health infrastructure to deal with Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS):
New Orleans Public Health Department Director Kevin Stevens: "We have very few resources, and should we have a SARS outbreak we are very poorly prepared."
Los Angeles Department of Health and Services (California) said that they have about 2000 people die every month from unexplained pneumonia. We have dealt with SARS to the detriment of other diseases. Philadelphiathere is no city-owned hospital; the health department has no funds to set up a quarantine facility of its own. It would have to rely on hard-pressed independent hospitals to house SARS patients in isolation.
Seattle has only limited facilities to isolate contagious patients. That city is already facing the highest number of TB cases it has seen in 30 years. They have only two full-time infectious disease physicians.
On the fiscal crisis facing hospitals, Kennedy said, that "the worst is yet to come." "Although hospitals have received $500 million for bioterrorism preparedness this year, these funds are dwarfed by cuts in other areas," he told the committee.
Graduate medical education lost $750 million, Medicaid, the federal/state program that provides health care coverage for the indigent and disabled, was slashed by $1.3 billion. Recommended increases that were not funded, Kennedy said, took $420 million from hospitals. "The resulteven with additional funds from bioterrorism grantsis that hospitals lost $1.9 billion last year. And the worst is yet to come this year."
At the same hearings, Dr. Julie Gerberding, Director of the Centers of Disease Control, confirmed the collapse of public health facilities, and said that we "are only as strong as our weakest link." She testified that SARS has taught us 1) that emerging infectious diseases are a fact of life; 2) that the whole public health system has to be intact; and 3) the importance of the continuity of public health with health care delivery system. "We've got to have both capacities, a viable and vibrant and robust medical care system with informed clinicians, but also beds and surge capacity and training. That has to be immediately linked to public health research to identify what is the best way to do all this."
State Funding to Public Health Labs Cuts to Extend to 2004
State funding to public health labs was cut for 2003, and further cuts are expected in 2004, according to new survey by the Association of Public Health Laboratories (APHL). In a recent survey on bioterrorism preparedness, APHL found that 30 state public health laboratories faced cuts in 2003; 19 of these had cuts in multiple programs. Some 33 laboratories expected cuts in 2004. 53% of local public health agencies say smallpox and bioterrorism planning are taking away from other public health services, causing reduction in influenza surveillance and cuts in other virology activities. Now, with the SARS crisis, states, like Massachusetts, for example, need hundreds of thousands of more dollars to test tissue samples for SARS.
Poll Shows Americans Reject Unilateralism
Journalist Jim Lobe of Inter Press Service, on April 30, reports that new surveys show that much of the U.S. public is more in tune with the views of "Old Europe," than the neo-cons around Rumsfeld. Lobe has opposed the neo-conservatives behind the Iraq war, and has written exposes on the long-standing plans by the Wolfowitz/Cheney/Perle cabal to launch war on Iraq and other Arab states.
Lobe reports that the survey, conducted from April 18-22, by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland, polled 865 randomly chosen respondents with the following results:
Three out of four said they believe the Iraq war was right. Two-thirds agreed that the "US plays the role of world policeman more than it should"; only 12% agreed that "the US should continue to be the pre-eminent world leader in solving international problems."
Asked what role the US should play in the world: only 12% favored the US in a pre-eminent position; 76% said, "The US should do its share in efforts to solve international problems with other countries"; 11% said the US should "withdraw from most efforts to solve international problems." Support for a "pre-eminent" US role has fallen from 17% since a June 2002 poll.
88% said the US should have sought UN Security Council authorization for military action; 66% said the US should not draw the lesson that it should feel more free to use force in the future without UN authorization; while 57%-67% said the UN, not the U.S., should lead in dealing with alleged threats from Syria, Iran, and North Korea.
57% disagreed, 38% agreed, that the US "has the right or even the responsibility to overthrow dictatorships."
Two out of three respondents rejected pressuring Middle Eastern governments, such as Saudi Arabia or Egypt, to become democratic.
Respondents were equally split on whether the US or UN should temporarily govern Iraq; 54% prefer a UN police force; 57% believe the UN should direct relief and reconstruction efforts. 25% said the US shouldn't spend money rebuilding Iraq when there are so many problems at home; nearly 75% said "it would be unwise and immoral for the US to overthrow the Iraqi government and then just leave."
Ibero-American News Digest
Brazil Moves Physical for Ibero-American Integration
Following meetings with the Presidents of Colombia (in March) and Peru (in April), Brazilian President Lula da Silva met on April 25 with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, and on April 28 with Bolivian President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, in which meetings the issue of physical integration and infrastructure development was high on the agenda. Meetings are scheduled with the Presidents of Ecuador and Uruguay in May, and the new President of Paraguay, Nicanor Duarte, has expressed a desire to work very closely with Brazil. The series of meetings show that "the integration of South America is no longer a sentimental integration, it is a policy which we take very seriously," Lula stated, following his meeting with the Bolivian President.
The final communiqués issued following each meeting, have emphasized their commitment to implementing the bold South American Regional Infrastructure Initiative (IIRSA), launched out of the First South American Summit in 2000. Development of the Venezuela-Brazil-Guyana-Surinam axis is one such IIRSA project mentioned in the Venezuela-Brazil communiqué. For Bolivia, the final communiqué underscored the need for energy integration, announced that studies would be out on the feasibility of establishing a joint petrochemical complex on the border, and the importance of the Corumba-Santa Cruz de la Sierra railroad, and the Paraguay-Parana Waterway, whose completion would permit the development of Bolivia's interior, and provide the land-locked country access to the Atlantic Ocean.
The communiqué announced that Brazil will finalize the details of its plan to forgive the debt Bolivia owes it, in May.
Also notable, is the role which Brazil's Economic and Social Development Bank (BNDES) is to play in financing key projects, a development role which had been undermined under the Cardoso government. BNDES is offering a $1 billion credit line to Venezuela, to finance the export of Brazilian goods, equipment and services to that country, as well as the financing of infrastructure projects to be completed in 2003 and 2004. It has initially offered $600 million to finance Bolivian integration projects, and is to work with the Andean Development Corporation (CAF), to devise mechanisms to finance various of the Brazilian-Bolivian integration projects.
Little public notice of this interesting line of diplomacy has been taken outside of the region. Associated Press, however, took note on April 29 that Brazil was throwing its weight around on the continent, interpreting this as a "message to the United States" that it intends to negotiate "hard" on the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).
Brazil's Lula Presses Chavez To Opt for Political Solution
President Lula da Silva used his April 25 meeting with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, to urge him to accept an agreement with the Venezuelan opposition, as the appropriate resolution to the political crisis in that country. Chavez had expected, it is said, that he would get Lula's automatic backing for his Jacobin ("off with their heads") approach, but his hopes were disappointed. Lula told Chavez that he hoped the agreement recently signed by government and opposition representativesagreeing that a referendum on whether Chavez should stay in office would be held in Augustwould be accepted as "the basis for Venezuelans, on their own, to find a constitutional, peaceful, democratic, and electoral solution to their country's problems." Lula also discussed the matter privately with the Venezuelan President.
Although Chavez later made some public remarks suggesting he had no need for such an agreement, and his Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel went further, saying that the government would actually veto the agreement, after Chavez's return to Caracas, Rangel changed his tune, and announced that negotiations would continue.
Argentine Elections: A Vote Against Menem
In an election characterized by very high voter turnout, with almost no "spoiled" ballots, the hated former President Carlos Menem, the man rightly held most responsible (along with his Finance Minister Domingo Cavallo) for Argentina's economic devastation, suffered a significant defeat, despite the fact that he came out the frontrunner, with 24% of the vote.
Despite his prediction that he would win handily in the first round of voting, Menem will now have to face Santa Cruz Governor Nestor Kirchner, who came in second with 22% of the vote, in a May 18 runoff. The winner of that round will assume office on May 25.
EIR's Buenos Aires Bureau points out, that taking into account the vote totals of the other candidates, Nestor Kirchner stands a decent chance of getting over 50% in the run-off, while Menem basically has his 24%, and perhaps the ultra-liberal portion of Mont Pelerinite Ricardo Lopez Murphy's 16.6% total. Though presenting no clearly defined program to rebuild the economy, in the remaining days of his campaign, Kirchner attacked neo-liberalism and IMF "adjustment," called for a return to productive activity, and said that the foreign debt can't be negotiated at the expense of the population's living standards and jobs. Menem has been vehemently pro-free-market, emphasizing the need to ally subserviently with the United States.
Also notable was the fourth-place win of ARI candidate Elisa Carrio, with close to 15%, who campaigned with almost no money or publicity. She won in Santa Fe province, the second most important provincial vote after Cordoba, and also had significant support in Neuquen, especially among youth. Adolfo Rodriguez Saa, President for a week in December 2001, came in fifth with 13.9%. The Radical Party, associated with former President Fernando de la Rua, was wiped off the political map, winning barely 2%, in the worst defeat in its history.
New Paraguayan President Faces Daunting Problems
Amidst economic devastation, Paraguay held Presidential elections on April 27. The victor was Nicanor Duarte Frutos of the ruling Colorado Party, who won with only 37% of the voteabstention was 40%has no Senate majority, and faces daunting problems. Unemployment stands at 35%, and a third of the population lives in poverty. It's negotiations with the IMF having not been successful, Paraguay is close to default, inflation is soaring, and the government has no revenue with which to pay public employees. The currency, the guarani, lost half its value vis-à-vis the dollar in 2002.
One consultant described the situation this way: "Every new President gets a honeymoon period, but for sure in our case, some men in dark suits and briefcases with 'IMF' stamped on them, will be attending the honeymoon too, to figure out what to do. We don't have any more band-aid solutions." The IMF is demanding the country privatize its telephone and water companies, and carry out further budget cuts.
Brazil, however, wants to assist in Paraguay's infrastructure development. Reportedly on the table is an offer by Brazil's National Economic and Social Development Bank (BNDES) for a $700 million credit line for the development of Paraguay's infrastructure, and another $700 million to assist Brazilian companies who want to establish themselves in Paraguay. Paraguay's new President, referenced the offer in the context of announcing his intention of strengthening ties to BrazilParaguay's most important trading partner, and on which it is financially dependentand to the regional Common Market of the South, or Mercosur. Mercosur, Duarte said, "is fundamental for us. I agree with President Lula's position that we have to increase the bloc's regional integration, if possible, also integrating it with the Andean Pact. By ourselves, we are nothing."
Brazil May Cancel U.S. Access to its Space Launch Site
Three Cabinet ministersForeign Minister Celso Amorim, Defense Minister Jose Viegas, and Science and Technology Minister Roberto Amaralsubmitted a recommendation to President Lula da Silva on April 23, that the government cancel the Technological Safeguards Agreement negotiated in April 2000, which permits the United States to launch rockets and satellites from Brazil's much-in-demand Alcantara base, located close to the equator. The agreement has been under heavy attack from diverse Congressional offices since September 2001, when Congress learned the terms of the treaty, which, in the words of one Congressman, expressed egregious "contempt for national sovereignty."
As detailed in 21st Century's Spring 2002 article, "Boosting Ibero-America Into Space," the accord prohibits Brazilian personnel from gaining access to areas of the facility during preparations for assembly and launch of U.S. payloads or vehicles; prohibits Brazilian customs officials from inspecting closed containers with U.S. equipment which go to Alcantara; and prohibits Brazil from using any of the monies raised from U.S. commercial launches, for development of its VLS rocket.
The revision or cancellation of the accord would give a boost to Russian, Chinese, French, and Ukrainian efforts to gain launch access, Jornal do Brasil notes.
Peruvian Government Cuts Deal with Coca-Growers
Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo met personally on April 24 with the narco-run leadership of the so-called "Federation of Agricultural Producers from the Coca Valleys," after they announced that some 3-4,000 coca-growers who had marched on Lima, would camp out there until the government struck a deal. That Toledo personally negotiated with them, was a major victory for the growers, whose crop is used to produce cocaine. A formal agreement was reached, whose key point is that coca eradication would henceforth be "gradual and agreed upon"i.e., eradication has to be approved by the cocaleros! This point was immediately given the force of law, by a Presidential decree issued following the meeting.
Hugo Cabieses Cuba, a controller of the George Soros-financed, Andean-wide cocalero movement, declared the accord to be a victory for the coca growers, even though they did not (yet) get everything they are demanding, because they are now established as a valid party with whom the government must negotiate. This victory strengthens the hand of the Soros narcoterrorist apparatus throughout the region, and particularly in Bolivia. Evo Morales, head of the Bolivian cocaleros, had visited Peru on April 15, on the eve of the cocalero march on Lima, to coordinate strategy, and boost the cause of his Peruvian counterparts.
Simultaneous with the cocalero deal came the ouster of one of Toledo's closest personal confidants, Cesar Almeyda T., as head of the National Intelligence Agency. Almeyda had been named to that post at the beginning of February, as part of a Cabinet shake-up which purged key members of the Soros apparatus in Peru from the government. The Soros crowd stated then, that they would oust Almeyda, and regain their full control over the Toledo government.
Terrorist Lobby Presses Colombia's Uribe To Release FARC Prisoners
There is growing pressure, both at home and abroad, for Colombian President Alvaro Uribe to release as many as 700 FARC narcoterrorists from Colombia's prisons, as part of a so-called "humanitarian" agreement with the FARC for the release of their hundreds of kidnap victims. More than a month ago, FARC head Marulanda issued a statement, calling on President Uribe to form a new "demilitarized zone" for the purpose of negotiating the "prisoner exchange," and re-starting peace talks, a demand President Uribe immediately rejected out of hand.
Now, however, four former Colombian PresidentsAlfonso Lopez Michelsen, Julio Cesar Turbay, Carlos Lemos Simmonds, and Ernesto Samper Pizanoare insisting that there is no other way to win the release of the FARC's hostages, who include a former Presidential candidate, numerous legislators, elected officials, and prominent business figures, along with hundreds of military and police captives. Two of the former Presidents, Lopez and Samper, insisted that there be no conditions imposed by the government on the FARC, as this would be a "humanitarian," not a political agreement.
Uribe responded to the former Presidents, with the statement that he would "not dance to the FARC's tune. Our tune is to recover security for all Colombians.... Do Colombians want me, their President, to release guerrillas from the jails, to simply hand them over to the FARC so that they can go back to crime? My compatriots must think carefully. Which is healthier for Colombia: to simply let them go back to reinforce the FARC, or for them to be taken from the jails and put in the custody of a friendly country which would guarantee to us that they not return to commit crime" in Colombia?
Bush Administration Buys Personal Data on Ibero-Americans
ChoicePoint, the very private data-system company which became infamous for its purge of the Florida voter rolls, is buying files on Ibero-Americans, and selling them to the U.S. government, Associated Press revealed in an April 13 wire, which, not surprisingly, raised hackles across the region. According to AP, over the past 18 months, some three dozen agencies of the U.S. government have bought access to data on hundreds of millions of residents in 10 Ibero-American countries, from the Atlanta-based ChoicePoint, Inc. ChoicePoint is a spin-off of the notorious Equifax credit-reporting firm.
In the case of Mexico, the data provided includes the driving records of 6 million Mexico City drivers and the country's entire voter registry. The entire citizen-ID database of Colombia's 31 million citizens, including each resident's date and place of birth, passport and national ID number, parentage, and physical description, was also one of the sales.
John Ashcroft's Department of Justice has an overall $67 million, four-year contract with ChoicePoint, most of which goes for purchase of data on U.S. citizens, which, by law, the government is prohibited from collecting. But the foreign records purchased were used by the Immigration and Naturalization Service to round up undocumented immigrants in the U.S., an anonymous INS official confirmed to AP.
ChoicePointwhich refuses to say who it buys the data from south of the borderswore up and down to AP, however, that it not would never turn around and sell the data it collects on U.S. citizens to foreign governments. That just wouldn't be "the right thing to do."
Ashcroft Promotes 'Rule of Law' in Ibero-America
U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft bragged to the opening day of the annual Council of the Americas conference on April 28, that the Department of Justice is out there, promoting "the rule of law" in Ibero-America. This includes re-writing the criminal codes of Colombia, Bolivia, and the Dominican Republic, at least. An Assistant U.S. Attorney General "will be placed in Paraguay" this summer, as a Resident Legal Advisor, to draft anti-terrorism laws, he reported.
Here was the man responsible for the creation of the Guantanamo concentration camp, going on about the benefits of DOJ programs to teach the Colombians about defending "human rights," and carrying out "ambitious legal reforms" required to "offer protection for the legal rights of the accused"! He reported that the DOJ's "Office of Overseas Prosecutorial Development, Assistance and Training," an outfit which clearly bears some investigation, and the "International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance Program," are involved in this Colombian program.
The Wall Street-run Council of Americas annual conference is taking place, as usual, inside the State Department.
Western European News Digest
Pro-Chickenhawk Current in CDU Shapes New Foreign-Policy Paper
Overseen by former CDU party chairman Wolfgang Schäuble, and significantly influenced by such German "Straussians" as Friedbert Pflueger (who arranged CDU Chairman Angela Merkel's scandalous U.S. trip at the end of February), the CDU national executive issued a new policy paper April 28, on the "Foreign Policy Interests of Germany."
The paper pays lip service to the "no" to any form of unilateralism, but its authors drop their masks with their attack on the Schröder government's "no" to the Iraq war, as allegedly to blame for the "fateful inaction of the United Nations in the Iraq conflict." The paper also criticizes France and Germany, by stating that Franco-German cooperation must never be more than a function of the trans-Atlantic partnership, i.e., proceed in the context of the Bush Administration's agenda. "Any attempt to unite Europe against the USA, is doomed to failure. He who wants to position Europe against America, is dividing Europe."
The authors drop their last mask, when calling on Germany to link up to the "questions underlying the new American security strategy," namely, to recognize the alleged necessity to redefine the traditional "principles of state sovereignty, territorial integrity, and the intervention ban of international law." These principles no longer apply to the new challenges and threats, and "international law has to be carefully transformed," the authors state." It fits in the picture that Schäuble and Pflueger are among the most vehement critics of the recent St. Petersburg summit of France, Germany, and Russia, as well as of today's Brussels "Defense 4" summit of France, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourgall four being governments against the Iraq War.
Schröder's 'Agenda 2010' Draws Fire From Labor, SPD
German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder says his critics will not change his agenda; if they block it, he "will have to draw personal consequences." The statement, issued before emergency sessions of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) executive in Berlin April 28, is widely read as yet another threat to resign from office, with the aim of armtwisting his SPD critics.
The first response from the labor unions has been a hardening of resistance: Metal Workers Union chairman Klaus Zwickel wrote an "open letter" to the SPD and Green Party Bundestag members, denouncing Schröder's Agenda 2010 as a policy that would lower living and welfare standards. The only exception, is the passage in Schröder's Agenda that calls for increased credit to Mittelstand (small and medium-sized) firms, because that alone will help to increase employment, Zwickel wrote. He urged SPD Bundestag members not to pass an agenda that is being dictated to them by the government, but to make sure that changes occur in that agenda.
German Labor Begins Broad Mobilization vs. Agenda 2010
German labor unions will begin a broader mobilization against Chancellor Schröder's "Agenda 2010": The week beginning May 12 will feature protest events, inside and outside factories, of especially the metal workers (in 170 cities) but also other labor unions, throughout Germany. What the unions are campaigning for, is a mixed bag of proposals for a property tax, a capital gains tax, and a public-sector investment offensive focused on municipal infrastructurethe latter aspect being the more reasonable among these.
The campaign in Germany will correspond to similar days of action in Austria, in labor protest against government plans for a pension reform; and a nationwide day of action of labor unions in France May 13. Also in Italy, Belgium, and the Netherlands, labor unions are expected to stage protests, and may strike, during the month of May.
Conceptually, all those mobilizations are rather limited, however, and require interventions like those coming from the LaRouche movement.
Nationwide, the SPD continues losing constituencies, with polls showing support below 30%. The same polls show, however, that even after the Iraq war, in spite of heavy media propaganda promoting acceptance of the "postwar realities," 74% of Germans still are against the war, view it as illegitimate, and are backing the Chancellor on his anti-war position.
Schröder Faces Mounting Opposition from SPD/Labor Constituencies
Among other arm-twisting efforts, German Chancellor Schröder hopes to be able to call his inner-party critics back to discipline, through four big regional conventions. Each of these conventions has been designed to rally between 4,000 and 5,000 SPD party officials. But the first one, which was held in Bonn April 28, only attracted 700and this, in Nordrhein-Westphalia, Germany's biggest state, which also has 25% of the entire SPD party membership.
Concerning the labor movement, which largely overlaps with the SPD constituencies, the Chancellor faces a much harsher tone of opposition: for example, the metal workers of Frankfurt/Main had launched a motion to get Schröder disinvited from the central labor federation (DGB) May 1 rally in Neu-Ansbach. The DGB did not disinvite Schröder, but DGB chairman Michael Sommer is expected to deliver a speech which will look quite different from the one which the Chancellor will deliver, at that event.
"The scene is one of increasing unrest among labor, which has not really burst into the open, yet," a labor union official from Saxony told EIR April 29. "Our members are deeply frustrated, and they would certainly not challenge the government directly at this moment, but that can change, over the coming weeks," the official said. "The situation is somewhat like the spring of 1996, when unrest was building among labor unions, and there were only smaller protest actions at that time, which the government [then, Chancellor Helmut Kohl of the CDUed.] did not take seriously," the labor official said. "But in the autumn, we had a very big strike at Daimler-Benz, and this escalated into the big protest wave of the spring of 1997 [when mine workers marched to Bonn, steel workers to Frankfurted.], if you recall that." He said he did not imply it would be the same this time, but something like that could develop, over a period of several months.
BueSo Banner at Central May Day Rally Shown on German TV
Reporting on the event at neu-Ansbach (near Frankfurt/Main), at which Chancellor Gerhard Schröder encountered massive and loud manifestation of discontent from the audience, N-TV, a major German television channel, for a few seconds showed the BueSo (Civil Rights Solidarity Movement) banner: "Helga Zepp-LaRouche fuer Lautenbach-Plan."
Labor's May Day Rallies Lack Policy for Ending Economic Depression
The overall turnout of labor unionists, supporters, and protesters was higher than at rallies a year ago, but this is not to be mistaken as a sign of increased strength of labor.
Apart from the fact that speeches given by labor leaders were rightly polemicizing against the German government's Agenda 2010 budget-cutting project, they did not indicate any farther-looking concepts, except calls for increased property taxes to fund labor-market and investment programs. For example, public-sector labor union chairman Frank Bsirske, at the rally in Hamburg, called for a public sector investment program in the range of 20 billion euros annuallybut financed, to a large extent, through extra income from property taxes.
At least, calls for a suspension of aspects of the Maastricht criteria were issued at some of the rallies, yesterday.
Czechia Breaks with Rumsfeld's 'Gang of 8' in Europe
Czech Prime Minister Vladimir Spidla and Foreign Minister Cyril Svoboda openly disagreed with former President Vaclav Havel's endorsement of the Bush-Blair war initiative, when it was made public. Meanwhile, as of early April, the Czech Republic had a new President, Vaclav Klaus, one of whose first acts in office, was to summon U.S. Ambassador Craig Stapleton to tell him to "take the Czech Republic off that list" of war supporters. Stapleton is married into the Bush family, which makes this affair even more interesting.
Soon after, Klaus told an interviewer for the daily, Lidove Noviny, that he would not be convinced if the U.S. found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, because it might well be the Americans had planted them. On May 3, in an interview with Germany's Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Klaus added another slap in the face to the Bush Administration, and especially Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, when asked about options for stationing U.S. troops in Czechia. He replied, "Because of our history, we are very sensitive when it comes to foreign troops on our territory. I think another stationing of foreign troops would not be welcome. I do not understand, either, what military significance such bases should have."
None of that means, however, that Klaus is in favor of the Franco-German anti-war team: In the same interview, he reiterates his "no" to the "Brussels 4" initiative of France, Germany, Belgium, and Luxembourg, on grounds that it would undermine NATO. On that, Klaus is in line with the Polish government, except that Poles are expected to grant the U.S. military bases and stationing of troops.
This just shows that the European terrain, including especially in eastern Europe, is rather complicated. There are no easy solutions for Bush-Blair, nor for Chirac-Schröder, and for the latter two, there is still a lot of work to do, especially in economic terms, to consolidate European unity.
Pope, in Spain, Appeals for Peace
Pope John Paul II, on his 99th foreign trip since the beginning of his pontificate, told an enthusiastic crowd of young people, estimated to be 600,000, at a Spanish airbase outside Madrid, "The spiral of violence, terrorism and war causes, even in our day, hatred and death. Your response to blind violence and inhuman hate should be the fascinating power of love. Conquer enmity with the force of forgiveness."
One million people were expected to attend the Sunday mass May 4, at which the Pope will elevate five Spaniards to sainthood, including a priest who died in the Spanish Civil War in 1936. The New York Times noted, in coverage prior to the Pope's departure for Spain, that he seems less "feeble" than he had previously, and that during a flurry of public appearances in April, he spoke with such clarity against the war in Iraq that European journalists had proclaimed a papal "renaissance." Quite a contrast to a year or so ago, when the news media were waiting for him to die.
Big 'No' to Blair Forecast for Municipal Elections in Britain
Municipal elections in Britain May 1 were expected to feature a massive "no" to Blair, with big losses for Labour, the German daily Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung reported. British media have returned to covering the highly controversial domestic issues, such as Blair's failure on public health, the disaster at the schools, and in the railway system. According to "postwar" opinion polls, 62% of Britons think that Blair shows no concern about the real, pressing issues of domestic policies; only 34% of Britons believe the government is not lying to them all the time, whereas 66% believe it is lying to them all or most or a lot of the time. Only 35% view Blair's government as competent on economics.
Frustration within the Labour Party is so big that it has failed to field a candidate for 30% of the 10,500 city council members seats up for election on May 1. Especially in Wales, less than 30% of the eligible voters plan to cast their ballots, anyway. Voter apathy is the main enemy of Labour, now. And, "the other Tony" is attracting much more public interest: This is Tony Collins, a man who recently had to spend 77 hours in the hallway of a hospital because there was no bed or room for him, there. His case has been broadly covered by the media, as indicative of the health system's disaster.
Most alarming for British policy-making elites is, however, that popular discontent is not favoring the opposition Tories, either, which implies that if Blair continued to collaborate with the Tories to compensate for Labour's opposition in Parliament, he may be no better off, in the long run.
Brussels 'Defense 4' Summit Initiates New European Defense Institutions
At their meeting in the Belgian capital April 29, the leaders of the European Union's "Defense Four"France, Germany, Belgium and Luxemburgresolved that, by the summer of 2004, a military-planing center will be set up on the outskirts of Brussels, "for operational planning and command of EU-led operations without recourse to NATO assets" emphasis added).
This decision, and the other summit decisions on the formation of a European intervention force, centered around the already-existing Franco-German Brigade, and on the creation of an air-transport command by June 2004, are certain to enrage the hardcore Atlanticists of NATO. Many of these have over the past days vehemently attacked the "Franco-German conspiracy against NATO" (as they put it), including Tony Blair in an interview with the Financial Times April 28 against the "Franco-German position." Instead of the multipolar world, which France and Germany want, Blair poses his idea of "one polar power but which encompasses a strategic partnership between Europe and America and other countries, tooRussia, Chinawhere we are trying to ensure that we develop, as I say, a common global agenda."
Italy's Berlusconi Losing Domestic Political Control
As a result of his pro-war stance, agreement with the government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has fallen off, among Italian elites as well as in the population, so that traditional conflicts issues have now become more lethal for Berlusconi's political survival. Typical of this, is the effect of the final sentencing of Berlusconi's former Defense Minister Cesare Previti to 11 years in prison in a corruption trial indirectly involving Berlusconi himself. Berlusconi has accused the trial judges of being "coup-plotters," thus reopening an old institutional conflict. But whereas, still one year ago, Berlusconi could convince Italian public opinion that he was a victim of a judicial conspiracy, now many of those who voted for him might not believe him any longer, writes establishment figure Sergio Romano in Corriere della Sera's editorial May 1. "This crisis," Romano writes, "will have inevitable effects on Italy's credibility, in one of the gravest international moments since the end of the Cold War."
Italy Will Send an Imperial Auxiliary Force to Iraq
Following a meeting with Toni Blair in London April 30, Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi confirmed that Italy will send a military police force to be stationed in Basra, under British command. In addition to the Blair-Berlusconi meeting, another meeting took place in London the same day, among military representatives of all countries which will play an imperial auxiliary role, in which the head of the Italian Interforce Operation Command participated, too.
Russia and Central Asia News Digest
Blair Ridiculed by Putin During Russia Visit
British Prime Minister Tony Blair was snubbed, taunted, and all-around humiliated by Russian President Vladimir Putin at their joint press conference on April 29, British dailies reported. The lead headline in the Guardian cited Putin: "We are not with you and we don't believe you."
Blair's "fabled special relationship" with Putin did not survive much of the 63-minute press conference. Putin had invited Blair to his private dacha outside Moscow, but that did not help Blair. Putin not only refused to go along with the U.S. and U.K.'s totally hypocritical demands to lift UN sanctions on Iraq, but also, much more importantly, rejected Blair's "vision of a new world strategic partnership," which would consist of kowtowing to Washington. Putin specifically said that "the role of the UN should be not only restored, but strengthened."
Blair began blathering that the world faces a choice between "partnership" between the U.S. and leading nations, or a continued "diplomatic stand-off," and wanted Russia to accept this "partnership" in return for an extremely vague "vital role" for the UN in Iraq.
Putin was not fooled. He said that Russia and its partners "believe that until clarity is achieved over whether weapons of mass destruction exist in Iraq, sanctions should be kept in place."
With heavy irony, Putin reminded the "grim-faced Blair," as the London Times put it, that he had gone to war over these very "weapons." "Two weeks later, they have not been found," Putin said. "Where is Saddam? Where are those arsenals of weapons of mass destruction, if indeed, they ever existed? Perhaps Saddam is still hiding somewhere in a bunker underground, sitting on cases of weapons of mass destruction and is preparing to blow the whole thing up and bring down the lives of thousands of Iraqi people."
Until professional weapons inspectors have certified Iraq clear of the weapons, the sanctions should stay. "It is only the [UN] Security Council that is in a position to lift those sanctions; after all, they introduced them," he said.
On Blair's "vision thing," Putin was also direct: "If the decision-making process in such a framework is democratic, then that is something we could agree with; but if decisions are being made by just one member of the international community and all the others are required to support them, that is something we could not find acceptable."
"The tone and content of Mr. Putin's rebuff will cause deep anxiety inside Downing Street," the Guardian correspondent in Moscow noted April 30. Already, Downing Street is "concerned ... over the implications of the mini-EU defence summit in Brussels yesterday."
Blair is obviously also not very keen to go through another diplomatic battle like that before the Iraq war. He complained in Moscow: "Getting agreement with the UN is important, and it is important we get a vital role for the UN, but we are not going back into the rigmarole we had the last time over the second UN resolution."
Russian President Putin Chooses 'Old Europe'
Putin prefers old Europe to new Europe and the Bush Administration, a senior British military strategist observed to EIR on April 30, the day after the meeting between British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Russian President Vladimir Putin. He added, "The Russians, not surprisingly, see it far more advantageous to become 'old Europeans' than new ones."
This source also said that the battle lines that existed before the war are continuing more or less unchanged. He saw the European defense meeting, which included France, Germany, Luxemburg, and Belgium, in that context, not as an attack on NATO, but a clear signal to the U.S. that they have not changed their positions. "The steadfastness of Germany and France on this policy has given Russia encouragement," the source added.
Top Ukrainian Scholar: LaRouche Leads the Resistance to Global Financial Oligarchy
The April 26 issue of the Ukrainian paper Dzerkalo Tyzhyna (Weekly Mirror) carried an article by Dr. Mykola Drobnokhod, President of the Academy of Higher Education, and member of the government's National Commission for Questions of Permanent Development. The title is "State labyrinth for the Ukrainian people: Will we find a way out?"
Discussing how "the globalized economy destroys national economies," the author writes that "the world financial oligarchy has no interest in stable development," human rights or helping the poor, but only wants to grab resources. But, he continues, "powerful resistance to these dangerous tendencies is definitely growing in the world. It is a thinking opposition, centered around the international Schiller Institute, the group of intellectuals around Lyndon LaRouche." In addition, Drobnokhod points out, countries like China and India, which have charted an independent path, are experiencing success.
May 29 Summit in Moscow for SCO
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) will hold a summit in Moscow on May 29a day or so before the international celebration for the 300th anniversary of the founding of St. Petersburg. Chinese President Hu Jintao will be visiting Russia for the SCO summit, and will also attend the St. Petersburg celebrations. Indian Prime Minister Vajpayee has already accepted the invitation to attend the St. Petersburg meeting, along with many other world leaders. India is not at this time a member of the SCO.
The Council of Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the SCO nations, met at Almaty, Kazakhstan on April 29. The ministers are discussing the agenda and main issues for the upcoming SCO summit. At this gathering, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing met to discuss "the preparation of the first visit of PRC President Hu Jintao to Russia," Ivanov said today.
Ivanov also told Li about the just-completed summits of the European-Asian Economic Cooperation Organization (EurAsEc) and the newly inaugurated Collective Security Treaty Organization, which were held in Dushanbe, Tajikistan.
The nations in the SCO are China, Russia, Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.
Putin Chairs EurAsEc Summit; Collective Security Organization Formalized
On April 26, the Presidents of Russia, Belarus, Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Armenia assembled in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, for a summit of the Eurasian Economic Community (EurAsEc). The first five countries are EurAsEc members; Armenia has observer status. Russian President Vladimir Putin chaired the session.
Following the EurAsEc consultations, the same six nations held a summit of the now formalized Collective Security Treaty Organization (ODKB), which grew out of their pooling of efforts against terrorism and the narcotics trade. The Presidents signed the final documents to create the ODKB, endowing it with a budget, secretariat, military command structure, and a rapid-deployment force. The ODKB will use the Kant Airbase in Kyrgyzstan, which is located not far from recently built-up U.S. military facilities.
While in Tajikistan, Putin visited the 201st Division of Russian Military Forces, which is based there.
Growing Freight Volume on Eurasia's North-South Corridor
The second meeting of the coordinating council of the North-South International Transport Corridor, established by Russia, Iran, and India, was held in Tehran at the end of April. En route to the meeting, RIA-Novosti reported, Russian Deputy Transport Minister Chingiz Izmailov said these are plans to double containerized freight shipments along the corridor, from 4 million tons in 2002 to 8 million tons/year by 2005.
The next construction project for the North-South Corridor is a 51-km. rail line from the port of Olya on the north shore of the Caspian Sea, linking to the Volga Railroad. Russia intends to finance the project with an EBRD loan, private investment, and government funds. The North-South Corridor runs by sea from India to Iran, across Iran by rail, then across the Caspian to Russia's rail network.
Russian Foreign Minister Praises Mideast Peace 'Road Map'
"The full realization of the 'road map' by both sides should bring about the stable, much-hoped-for peace in the Middle East, which will not only be in the interests of the Israelis and Palestinians, but of all people who live in the Middle East," Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said April 30.
Parliamentary Factions May Launch No-Confidence Vote on Russian Government
Grigori Yavlinsky's Yabloko party announced April 25 that it would gather signatures in Parliament in favor of holding a no-confidence vote on the government of Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov. Accusing the government of "absolute impotence," Yabloko offered to form a new cabinet. Yabloko by itself would not have the 90 signatures required, but on April 28 Communist Party (CPRF) leader Gennadi Zyuganov said that the CPRF and Yabloko were in consultation about an "action plan" to launch such a vote.
Yabloko's gambit is situated within the now-beginning campaign for this December's parliamentary elections. Yabloko parliamentarian Sergei Ivanenko said, "The critical mass of conflicts in the cabinet of ministers has exceeded the norm, and if the government is not changed now, when the situation in the country is rather stable, then a serious crisis might take place during the period of parliamentary and Presidential elections." At the same time, Russian press speculated that a power-play by economic clans was likely involved; Gazeta noted recent support for Yabloko by Mikhail Khodorkovsky's Yukos oil company (which just bought Sibneft, to become Russia's largest), and the possibility that Yukos vice president Leonid Nevzlin will run on the Yabloko slate.
Kasyanov's Cabinet continues to be caught up in turmoil among the ministers responsible for economic policy. Minister of Economic Development and Trade German Gref remains out of sight with unspecified health problems. On April 24, President Putin appointed two new Deputy Prime Ministers. Galina Karelova succeeds Valentina Matviyenko as Deputy Prime Minister for social policy. Boris Alyoshin, regarded as a protégé of Kasyanov, takes up the post of Deputy Prime Minister for Science, Industry and Technology. That job has been vacant since last year, since defense industry specialist Ilya Klebanov was booted, and relegated to the post of Minister of Science, Industry and Technology. The Moscow Times reports there is a plan afoot to disband the latter Ministry.
Mideast News Digest
U.S. Marine Lt. Colonel, Others Blast Rumsfeld Utopians
On April 24, Lt. Col. Dale Davis, a retired Marine Corps counterintelligence officer, now at Virginia Military Institute (VMI), was interviewed on the Public Radio International program, "To the Point" regarding the Pentagon's lack of preparation for the power vacuum in Iraq, which is now being filled by Shi'ite clerics. Asked if there had not been 12 years of study of the situation in Iraq, Davis said the problem is not a lack of intelligence, but "the refusal" of certain key leaders within the Administration to accept the advice of the people who are more familiar with the nuances of the region. He cited Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Doug Feith, and others, "who are motivated by strong ideological views," and who refused to accept the advice of "the people they refer to as the 'woolly-headed Arabists' in the State Department and the Pentagon, because it conflicts with their ideological view."
Davis said that the situation in the south of Iraq "can be traced back to one single flawed assumption that we'd be welcomed with open arms by the Shi'ites." Asked about Ahmed Chalabi, Davis said "Ahmed Chalabi and his band of merry men," the Iraqi National Congress, "have absolutely no credibility in Iraq." He said some of them are tainted by the association with the Saddam Hussein regime, and others of them are tainted by their involvement in fraud and corruption.
Quoted in the Baltimore Sun of April 25, Davis also said the U.S. had enough combat troops to topple Saddam Hussein, but not the military police, civil affairs officers, engineers, and water-purification experts needed to stabilize the country and begin returning to normality. As a result, Davis says, the mosques filled in the security and services needs of the population. David added that the Administration had a misconception that when Saddam Hussein fell, lower-level government workers would stay on the job.
The Baltimore Sun cited a rising chorus of criticism of the Bush Administration for misjudging the potential for this dangerous power vacuum in Iraq. This includes some senior Republicans, such as Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.), who said, "There are not sufficient troops.... There were sufficient troops to win the war but not sufficient troops to win the peace." The Sun article also notes that Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki had warned that several hundred thousand troops would be needed for occupation duty, an estimation that was ridiculed by Deputy Defense Secretary Wolfowitz as "wildly off the mark."
In addition to these public statements, it is widely reported that the Chickenhawks' Iraq war has created much ferment in both the military and foreign service community. One retired official has described the situation in the Bush Administration as a "peaceful coup d'etat" in the United States, by a "small ideological group" that have misused Sept. 11 to create an atmosphere of intimidation on the basis of "patriotism."
A very senior military official said that only when President Bush realizes that it was the group of Vice President Cheney's neo-conservative ideologues who are responsible for the chaos in Iraq, where they have created a new crisis like Tehran 1979, will Bush do what is necessarypurge these dangerous elements from the Administration policy making.
Where Are the Weapons of Mass Destruction, Mr. Blair-Bush?
With the humiliating message that Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered in Moscow to visiting British Prime Minister Tony Blair, this week, taunting him as to where Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction might be (see Russia Digest,) the long overdue questions about the disinformation and lies created by the Washington-London-Israel neo-conservatives is being examined. The former head of the UN weapons inspection team, Rolf Ekeus, who headed UNSCOM, the predecessor to Hans Blix's UNMOVIC, told the Los Angeles Times on April 26 that it is unlikely the U.S. will find WMD caches in Iraq. "There should be a few drums or some old artillery shells lying in scrap heaps, but the Iraqis were focusing on production capabilities," not stockpiles. Ekeus, and Scott Ritter, a chief weapons inspector with UNSCOM have repeatedly said that the UNSCOM teams destroyed the WMD that were found in Iraq between 1991 and 1998, when UNSCOM was withdrawn by the United Nations in New York.
Ekeus's comments came in the context of the release of debriefing transcripts of Hussein Kamel Majid, the brother-in-law of Saddam Hussein who defected in August 1995. According to the transcript of his session, which Ekeus participated in, Majid said that Iraq had built an impressive array of chemical and biological weapons that could be spread by artillery shells, but that he himself had ordered all such weapons destroyed. Majid also told the inspectors, "You should not underestimate yourself. You are very effective in Iraq." He said that the inspections had stopped the production of long-range missile engines, because "it was a losing battle" trying to get around the inspectors. On April 27, another piece in the London Independent is called "Revealed: How the Road to War was Paved With Lies. Intelligence Agencies Accuse Bush and Blair of Distorting and Fabricating Evidence in Rush to War." "The case for invading Iraq to remove its weapons of mass destruction," writes Raymond Whitaker, "was based on selective use of intelligence, exaggeration, use of sources known to be discredited and outright fabrication." Much of the information on WMD had come from Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress, which received Pentagon money, with the implication that "they polluted the whole U.S. intelligence effort," said Glen Rangwala, the British expert who has exposed the lies embedded in Downing Street's dossiers.
In response to a growing international criticism, the Bush Administration is scrambling to keep the UN inspectors out of Iraq while trying to come up with some explanation of where the WMD are. One assertion is that the WMD were destroyed on the eve of the invasionwhich experts find laughable since traces would easily be found in testing. Other Administration officials boldly assert that WMD was never the reason for the attack on Iraqit was always regime change, which both the UN Security council and the U.S. Congress had rejected. On April 27, the New York Times reported that the Bush Administration is planning to triple the size of its team searching for alleged Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, and for Iraqi scientists. About 1,000 people will be added to the 500 who are already involved in the search. One of the fears of the international community, and from U.S. intelligence sources, is that the Rumsfeld/Cheney operatives will plant weapons of mass destructionto cover their tracks.
Amram Mitzna Resigns As Labor Party Chairman
Israeli Labor Party Chairman Amram Mitzna resigned, May 4, reported Ha'aretz, quoting the Haifa mayor as saying, "Today, I am returning the mandate I received from members of the Labor Party and I will resign as head of the Labor Party." Mitzna added, "I was elected by a huge majority, but unfortunately there were people in the present [Labor] leadership who did not internalize or respect this... they put their personal interests before the party."
While Mitzna did not "name names," Ha'aretz states that Mitzna's "main opponent in both the Party primary last November, and since," has been former Party Leader and Minister of Defense in Ariel Sharon's "unity" coalition government, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer. Ben-Eliezer, now a Labor Party Knesset member was defeated by Mitzna in the leadership election last November.
Mitzna added that he had discussed the timetable with Labor Secretary-General Ophir Pines, who said he would convene the relevant Party bodies within ten days to discuss whether new elections would be held or whether a temporary Party leader would be appointed. The names that surfaced as possible replacements for Mitzna, according to Ha'aretz were Ben-Eliezer, Matan Vilnai, Avraham Shochat, and Party Whip Dalia Itzik.
As EIW reported, the Labor Party's strong showing prior to the January 2003 election, over Sharon's Likud seems to have been destroyed after Democratic Leadership Council Jewish Mafia figure and Mega member Michael Steinhardt, arrived in Israel in the middle of the elections, and denounced Mitzna for refusing to join any government with Sharon.
Ben-Eliezer has continued to work against Mitzna over the question of joining Sharon's government. With the delivery of the "Road Map" plan for beginning the process of talks leading to a Palestinian state, this week, the Israeli government may be going into a new crisis, along with the Labor Party.
Jordanian FM Prioritizes Israeli-Palestinian Peace
On the eve of his visit to Washington, where he met Secretary of State Colin Powell, Jordanian Foreign Minister Marwan Muasher, wrote in an op-ed in the New York Times of April 27, of a time of opportunity in the Middle East, if it is approached with respect and wisdom. On the one side, he writes, the moment has come for the Arab world to engage in a homegrown evolutionary and orderly process of democratization, "one that will respect Arab culture while at the same time giving citizens the power to be part of the political process." But, he warns, "It's important to remember, though, that ... forcefeeding democracy will lead not to reform but to radicalization. A wiser approach would be to respect the ability of Arab countries to take matters into their own hands."
Muasher also said that those in the U.S. who call for remaking the region, he says "would do well to stop such talk. They are alienating Arabs and jeopardizing the efforts of genuine reformers, who now cannot advocate democracy without being accused of doing America's bidding."
The U.S. must also take a larger role in helping to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict. He writes, "No action can better restore a sense of balance" in the region than that. On Tuesday, Muasher and Powell held a press conference, where Powell, to the chagrin of Administration "Chickenhawks" who oppose Middle East peace, preannounced that the "Road Map" would be released upon the confirmation of Palestinian Prime Minister Abu Mazen. It was in fact released last week.
Rumsfeld Speaks of 'Liberation' as U.S. Troops Shoot Civilian Demonstrators
At least three more Iraqi civilians were shot to death and others wounded, in a new attack on demonstrators in the town of Faluja, on April 30. On Monday, at least 13 were killed and 75 wounded by U.S. troops firing on the crowd. Witnesses and medical personnel told AFP that in Wednesday's incident there was no gunfire from the demonstrators. Witness Safa Rusli is quoted by AFP saying, it "was a peaceful demonstration. Religious leaders told us not to be armed." Rusli added that American soldiers riding in jeeps and armored vehicles opened fire after children started throwing shoes and stones at them. Rumsfeld's imperial march into Baghdad has caused even more anger, both in Iraq, and throughout the Arab and Islamic war. Within hours of the second day of U.S. military killings of civilians, Rumsfeld taped a statement for Iraqi radio and TV that says that the U.S. goals are to create a free country where leaders answer to the people, he said, "instead of murdering them." After Rumsfeld's statement, Viceroy Jay Garner angrily chastised reporters and said that the media should focus less on anti-American protests, and more on the good things that the U.S. troops are doingor else. Protests are still continuing over the U.S. military killing of independent reporters in Baghdad, when soldiers fired on the Palestinian Hotel, after having been informed that journalists were staying at that location. Washington sources say that the anti-American and British protests are going to get far worse. An indication of how bad it has already become, was the incident that occurred in al-Azzijah, near al-Kut, on April 28, reported by the German weekly, Der Spiegel. Two members of the Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Aid (ORHA), Garner's outfit, went to meet with a group of local tribal chiefs, at the "luxurious villa" of Sheikh Jamal Ali al-Bateech. As they talked with the 20 men, about cooperation to rebuild, a group of Iraqis gathered outside the villa, to demonstrate. The reason: the Sheikh is a well-known Baath Party leader. Demonstrators shouted "No Baathist! No Saddam! No USA!" As the crowd swelled to 1,200, the atmosphere got heated, and the first stones were thrown. A guard of the Sheikh fired shots from the rooftop, which further incensed the crowd, which then attacked the ORHA cars, and set them ablaze. The Americans had to call for help, and be airlifted out by helicopter. The incident shows what a dilemma the U.S. forces are in: They cannot organize the real political leaders of Iraqi organizations, so they have to fall back on tribal chiefs, formerly loyal to Saddam. This does not wash with the population. The two ORHA men went to Baghdad to discuss with Garner, what to do. The incident is not an isolated one, and by May 1, it was being reported that arrangements are underway to appoint a "superior" to Viceroy Garner. The name of Paul Bremer, the former head of counter-terrorism for the State Department, has been floated.
Garner's Meeting of the 'Opposition' Flopped
The April 28 meeting in Baghdad of opposition leaders was another flop ,?at the same time that the Bush Administration warmongers are desperately trying to form a "Government" of Iraq, made up of Iraqis, before June 3, when the "Oil for Food" program of the United Nations has to be extended by the UN Security Council. Under the UN resolutions, the oil money belongs to the people of Iraq, and their elected representativesandd cannot, and will notbe turned over to the U.S., which is demanding it. But the fast track for the Iraq puppet government is not working. Official reports stress that 250 persons attended representing Shi'ite, Sunni, Kurdish, and other leaders, including tribal leaders. The fact is, no LEADER of any of the organizations attended, but only very low- level delegates. Talebani and Barzani, the Kurdish leaders, did not go. The bulk of the attendants were tribal leaders, many of them linked to the Baath Party, whom the US must turn to, for lack of other support. TV coverage focussed on Garner, inside the meeting, speaking. But there was no coverage of what was going on outside, where 30-40,000 demonstrators shouted slogans, demanding an Iraqi government, formed without the US.
U.S. Eyes Iraqi Oil, But Could Face British Empire's Fate
An April 30 feature story in United Press International (UPI) by Hussain Hindaw & John R. Thomson, notes the importance of both Iraq's oil and its water. Iraq may eventually prove to have the world's largest oil reserves and highest production. It is expected to take two years to raise the current 2.5-2.8 million barrels day to the 3.6 million level that existed prior to the 1991 Gulf War. Beyond this, Iraq's Oil Ministry had been planning to expand to 6 million barrels/day with the help of France and Russia. One scenario expects the U.S. to go for 8 million barrels/day, with the intention of breaking OPEC. Iraq, uniquely among Arab nations, also has large water supplies, the UPI story notes; its agricultural potential is so great, that it could become a net exporter of food in 3-5 years. But, the key questions will be fought out in the political arena. Many expect the U.S. to dominate Iraq, but some Iraqi analysts don't rule out an armed Iraqi national resistance which would force the U.S. to withdraw, as it did 30 years ago from Vietnam. Analysts are reminding the Americans of what happened to the British after its World War I invasion of what is now Iraq. Hundreds of British troops died in the 1920 revolt. American Viceroy General Garner is now promising democracy and Iraqi control over its resources, but so did the British, the authors note.
U.S. Invasion Destroyed Iraqi Hospital System
More than three weeks after the fall of Baghdad to invading U.S. military forces, not one of the 34 hospitals in that city is functioning. Not only are war casualties suffering as a result, but also patients with chronic conditions such as diabetes, are unable to get treatment or the drugs they require to control their conditions, and people are dying, everyday, as a result. So reported Dr. Morton Rostrup, international president of Doctors Without Borders, on May 2, who spent the war and two weeks afterwards in Baghdad, volunteering his services in Iraqi hospitals. He particularly hit at the fact that the U.S. invasion force apparently had no plan to secure the hospitals, once the central authority collapsed, or to reconstitute the health care system in the aftermath. Dr. Rostrup said that the hospitals were not hit as hard by the looting as he had expected, since security was organized for some of them, not by the U.S. military, but by the doctors and militias organized out of local neighborhoods.
Inspirer of Rabin Assassination Visits the U.S.
On May 2 the Israeli paper Ha'aretz reported that the inspirer of the Rabin assassination, Rabbi Benny, Alon, one of the leaders of the Fascist National Union and a supporter of transfer (ethnic cleansing), left for Washington where he will campaign against the road map. Elon can be called the spiritual murderer of Israel Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. In fact, Yigal Amir, the man who shot Rabin in 1995, said in an open court that he told Elon that he was going to carry out the murder. Elon denies this, but cannot deny that he met Amir.
Elon was also the Rabbi at the Temple Mount Yeshiva, where he trained an entire generation of Temple Mount fanatics, who were dedicated to the rebuilding of the Third Temple of Solomon upon the destruction of the Islamic holy site Haram al-Sharif in Jerusalem.
Elon said he will discuss his "Marshall Plan" for the region, which is nothing but marshalling Palestinians into their new state, which will be Jordan. He proposes that the international community financially support this "population exchange."
Asia News Digest
Powell: Plan Offered by North Korea Is Under Consideration
Secretary of State Colin Powell asserted that the plan offered by North Korea at last week's tripartite talks (North Korea, U.S., and China) is under consideration. The Secretary's positive statement about the meeting was unambiguous: "The North Koreans acknowledged a number of things that they were doing, and, in effect, said that there are now up for further discussion. They did put forward a plan that would ultimately deal with their nuclear capability and their missile activities, but they, of course, expect something considerable in return. We are studying the plan, we are examining it with our friends and allies"; Powell added Australia to the standard list of Japan, Russia, China, and South Korea. He called the exchange "useful."
The "chickenfeathers" are flying, of course, about who knew what when about the North's nuclear weapons. Western press coverage of the North/South talks this past week focus on a supposed roadblock over the nuclear issue, although the talks are proceeding on multiple issues of mutual concern.
North Korea Opens Embassy in London
The British established diplomatic relations with North Korea in 2000, but there have been no ministerial meetings since the recent flap began last October. The events on May Day, on which the North Koreans opened a London embassy, directly derive from the Beijing talks, as stated by British Foreign Office Minister Bill Rammell. Meeting with his North Korean counterpart Choe Su Hon, Rammell said that the tripartite talks in Beijing last week had made "progress of sorts.... The fact that they have engaged in the talks last week in Beijing and in discussions today is positive, and there have been some positive statements."
A British opera singer entertained guests at the new embassy, while demonstrators from Christian Solidarity Worldwide shouted outside.
Scowcroft, Kanter Write New York Times Op Ed on North Korea
Brent Scowcroft, current chair of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and formerly National Security Adviser to "Bush 41"former President Bushand Arnold Kanter wrote an op ed column in the May 1 New York Times titled "A Surprising Success on North Korea."
Kanter, who co-founded the Scowcroft Group, was Undersecretary of State, 1991-93, and is now on the Defense Policy Board, as well as the CFR, IISS and etc..
Scowcroft and Kanter directly challenged the view held by "many inside the Beltway" that last week's tripartite talks among the U.S., North Korea, and China were a failure, arguing that the Chinese role in the talks marks a significant turn towards China's "playing an active and constructive role" in international security issues. They also pointed positively to Colin Powell's revelation of the North Korean plan for "dismantling its nuclear and missile programs in exchange for economic and security benefits." They wrote that China "did not simply convene the meeting, but participated actively, making the talks multilateral in fact as well as in form."
They say that the U.S. "should be willing to join with others in providing credible assurances to North Korea that it need have no concern about its own security, so long as it does not threaten others," and that "we should be prepared to take a leading role in ending North Korea's political and economic isolation."
North, South Korea Conclude Three Days of Talks, Through Layers of Spin
The entire Western media, as well as the official and media reports coming out of South Korea, described end-of-April talks between North and South Korea as destined for failure, over the North's refusal to deal with the nuclear question with anyone but the United States. Indeed, wording on the final communiqué was difficult (as suggested by Korea Herald and AP coverage April 29) and led to the extension of the meeting beyond the official closing time, but an agreement was reached that reveals that both sides are far more interested in the issues of development and reunification than the Chickenhawks would like.
The communiqué says the two sides "will thoroughly consult each other's position on the nuclear issue" and will "continue cooperation to resolve the issue peacefully through dialogue." The Southern delegation said "the public" would not be satisfied, but it was the best they could do.
Western reports delegate to the last page important advances such as the following: Joint economic talks will proceed in Pyongyang on May 19-22, to discuss joint infrastructure, road, rail, and the industrial park planned for the North; another day of reunions will occur on June 15; Cabinet-level talks will be held in Seoul July 9-12.
Thailand To Host 'Mekong Region Comes of Age' Conference
The Thai newspaper The Nation will host its Fourth Nation International Conference, June 12-13, focussing on business opportunities in the greater Mekong region. Organizers expect to 1,200 visitors over two days. Experts, ministerial-level representatives, and business executives from the six Mekong member countries and beyond have been invited. Others organizing the conference include Asia News Network, an alliance of 14 newspapers throughout Asia. The event is sponsored by Holcim Group, Siam City Cement Plc, and Thailand's the National Economic and Social Development Board.
The Mekong theme was conceived of because of the substantial progress that has been made in recent years by the governments of Vietnam, Cambodia, China, Thailand, Laos, and Burma, especially in terms of facilities and infrastructure. This is complemented by a strong political will on all sides to see the region, which has a combined population of 250 million, move forward.
Issues on environment, ethnic diversity, aspirations of member countries, and the potential of the Mekong region as Asia's new growth area will be explored and debated. Speakers include Thai Deputy Prime Minister Somkid Jatusripitak, who is in charge of Thailand's Mekong development strategy, and senior members of the governments of China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Burma. Participants include Asia Development Bank, Japan Bank for International Cooperation, International Finance Corp, the Ford Foundation, and the Pacific Asia Travel Association.
Australia To Float Idea of UN Security Council Overhaul
Australian Prime Minister John Howard is expected, according to Agence France Presse of April 30, to propose a plan to re-configure the UN Security Council; he will make the proposal during a trip to New York this week, after having met with President Bush at his Crawford, Texas ranch over the weekend.
Howard's plan calls for a three-tiered body:
Tier 1: The U.S., Britain, France, Russia, and China would retain their permanent membership and veto rights.
Tier 2: Five permanent, but non-veto, seats would be added. Howard's proposal is for Japan, India, Brazil, Germany, and Indonesia to assume these seats.
Tier 3: The final five places would continue to be elected and rotated every year or two.
Howard told the Bulletin: "I think the UN has been weakened, as I thought it would be, but I don't think it's terminal. There may be a greater momentum towards some kind of reform of the Security Council."
U.S., Britain Reimpose Travel Warnings on Indonesia
The U.S. and Britain have reimposed travel warnings on Indonesia, according to the April 20 Jakarta Post, citing two small bombings in the airport and in Jakarta. The explosions killed no one, but have been used as justification to recommend not visiting the country, or leaving it.
Are President Megawati's trip to Russia, and the Indonesian turn to "alternatives" to the U.S. dollar empire, the real reasons for this further harassment?
Former Thai Commerce Minister Tells Indonesia: Get Out From Under IMF
Former Thai Commerce Minister Narongchai Akrasanee, speaking in Indonesia, said (as reported in the April 29 Jakarta Post), "The formula of liberalization, deregulation and privatization as endlessly advocated by the World Bank and IMF cannot be taken as a cure-all strategy." Narongchai said that Indonesia must develop its own strategy on economic development by focusing on foreign trade, international financing and technology. Thailand pulled out of its IMF deal last year, and Indonesia is embroiled in a debate over whether or not to extend the program at the end of the year.
Thailand, Narongchai said, had started its own strategy, called the Dual-Track Economic Policy or Local/Regional Link-Global Reach, giving more attention than before to the domestic market, and targetting ASEAN, East Asia, and other Asia countries as its foreign markets.
"We must make sure that reliance on foreign financing is for the purpose of eventually owning businesses," he said. "Thus, we cannot afford a fully open capital account, despite what the IMF tells us."
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao Holds First Overseas Meeting with Thai Prime Minister
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao held his first overseas meeting with the Thai Prime Minister, Thaksin Shinawatra. Before the emergency summit on SARS in Bangkok, Wen and Thaksin agreed to conclude plans to establish an "Asian Bond" policy, to pool national funds for development and defense against speculators. China will also become more engaged in the anti-drug process in Thailand and the region.
Premier Wen agreed to lift the ban on Chinese visitors to Thailand, imposed in retaliation for a Thai ban on Chinese visitors due to the SARS crisis. This agreement came in the context of the SARS summit's agreeing that borders will remain open between all Asian nations.
French Defense Minister Meets in Delhi with Indian Counterpart
Visiting French Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie held talks at the end of April with her Indian counterpart, George Fernandes, and with Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advaniand her proposal to sell Scorpene submarines to India was expected to "reach fruition by the end of the year." France has also offered India a long-term military-to-military cooperation on joint development, technology transfer, and sale of high-tech weapons. The Indian government is examining a French proposal to sell an unspecified number of Mirage jets, she said.
Alliot-Marie, who is heading a high-level military and armaments industry delegation, also met the three Indian services chiefsAdm. Madhavendra Singh, Air Chief Marshal S. Krishnaswamy, and Gen. N.C. Vij. Alliot-Marie, however, noted she had not come to India to sign defense contracts, but to demonstrate France's desire to maintain its strategic partnership with India and to develop it.
Alliot-Marie had just come from a trip to Russia on April 25-27, and then went to India, after a short stop in Oman; Fernandes had just returned from a week-long trip to China. Alliot-Marie and Fernandes discussed international security issues, Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as bilateral relations. The French Defense Minister stated that the world must become multipolar, especially after the Iraq war. She also said that only countries which had a credible defense deterrent would be heard. (In that context, it is worth noting that, unlike much of the West, France did not impose arms sanctions on India after India's May 1998 nuclear tests.)
U.S. General Describes Parts of Afghanistan as 'Terribly Dangerous'
The Commander of the 82nd Airborne based in Afghanistan, Maj. Gen. John R. Vines, told reporters that in certain areas, Afghanistan is stable, but "in other parts, it is terribly dangerous." Vines blamed the state of affairs on some "renegade elements" in Iran who have an interest in controlling a portion of Afghanistan, and elements in Pakistan who have interest in creating instability in Afghanistan.
Responding to questions from reporters on the statement by U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who had said recently that he plans to declare an end to Afghanistan as a combat zone, Maj. Gen. Vines said the terrorist support from allies in neighboring countries has kept the coalition forces from eliminating the rebels. He also said that the "shadowy benefactors are motivated by a combination of tribalism, religious zealotry, a share of Afghanistan's lucrative opium crop, and, in some cases, raw power. The one thing that makes this extraordinarily complicated is that all of those factors are in play here," he added.
Attempt Is Made on Konar Governor's Life
Sayyed Fazl Akbar, Afghan President Karzai's latest appointee as Governor of Konar Province, escaped an assassination attempt when he survived a rocket attack in the provincial capital of Asadabad on April 30. According to the report (The Asian Age/Afghanistan Daily Digest), the attack was not a terrorist act, but was carried out to assassinate the new Governor.
In the bordering Dir district in Pakistan, two rockets hit a European Union-funded project that has been pushing women's development in the backward and remote northwest corners of Pakistan.
In recent years, radical Islamic leaders in the area have tried to close down international aid projects in Dir, and have scrawled graffiti on walls warning women not to leave their homes, and threatening to kill foreign workers. Dir, which is about 200 kilometers from Islamabad, is a deeply conservative region whose religious leaders have openly encouraged attacks on international organizations, particularly those that press for women's rights or employ women.
Africa News Digest
Iran Radio: Washington Covets African Oil; Plans Increase in Military Presence
Tehran radio quoted statements April 29, by U.S. Gen. Jim Jones, SACEUR (Supreme Allied Commander-Europe), that Washington plans to increase its military presence in Africa to protect its interests. An Iranian analyst for the radio's research and commentary group, Mr. Qannadbashi, reviewed what he said were America's motives: "In the wake of Sept. 11 events and the new policies adopted by the Republicans, we witnessed that America intensified efforts to establish presence in the oil-rich regions of Africa. They increased investment in West Africa and, under the pretext of fighting terrorism, staged some maneuvers in East Africa. Since they are now discussing plans to reduce the number of American troops in Europe, we can say that new motives have been created."
The analysis continues: "At present, some sort of discord exists among the NATO members. That is, NATO planned to set up a southern branch, but it seems that the Americans now intend to set up such a branch in North Africa and the southern Mediterranean region, comprising their own forces. In other words, they plan to establish some sort of presence in the Muslim oil-rich regions of North Africa. Of course, they raise the excuse of fresh threats to their interests in Africa. But it is obvious that the Americans are trying to compete with Europe wherever oil and gas resources exist. For instance, Algeria and Libya possess the largest resources of these two commodities in North Africa."
Rebels Seize 60% of Liberia; Calls for U.S. Intervention
Significant players from both inside Liberia and outside the battered west African country are calling for a U.S.-led force to take over the country. Chairman Cyril Allen of Liberia's ruling National Patriotic Party (President Charles Taylor's party), said on May 1 that Liberia needs an intervention force, but he made clear that the U.S. had to take the point: "We are suggesting that there be an international force." Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, head of the Unity Party, Liberia's largest opposition party, who has been in Washington this past week, is quoted by allAfrica: "The United States is looked on as the one to take the lead in resolving the Liberian problems, as the U.K. did in Sierra Leone, and France is doing in Cote d'Ivoire."
Rebels in Liberia have now seized 60% of the country, including most of its diamond-mining areas.
On April 30, the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG) that functions as a tool for the Anglo-Americans, issued a study calling for the U.S. to move in to stop what will be the equivalent of the Central Africa crisis in West Africa. The ICG report, released April 30, is titled, "Tackling Liberia: the eye of the regional storm." The ICG insisted that Liberia and related west African countries "can no longer be treated as individual countries," as "conflicts in the Mano River Union (Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone) and Ivory Coast are now so interwoven that they cannot be treated separately." The ICG says there must be an "internationally assistedor depending on circumstancesadministered interim government in Liberia." Notes ICG's West Africa Project Director Comfort Ero: The key mechanism is the International Contact Group, established in Sept. 2002. And the central players are the U.S., U.K., and France. But the U.S. must take the point, he says.
Alleged al-Qaeda diamond operations in West Africa were discussed at a Johannesburg meeting of 10 countries which ended April 30, on "conflict diamonds"another matter that will lend support to some U.S. initiative in the Mano River Union area. At this confab, Alex Yearsley, the lead campaigner for Global Witness, an Anglo-American watchdog group especially interested raw materials, released information about what were said to be al-Qaeda operations in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Yearsley claimed that al-Qaeda expanded its operations by moving into Sierra Leone and Liberia in the late 1990s, and by 2000-01 had a large-scale diamond laundering operation. The Global Witness official said, from the agency's new report, "For a Few Dollars More," that "the current regime in neighboring Liberia enabled these diamond-trading networks to be utilized by al-Qaeda." Yearsley said it is now uncertain how much money al-Qaeda is raising from diamonds, but that there are not enough controls to ensure against it, especially in Liberia and Democratic Republic of Congo.
African Oil Sends Cape Town Businessmen to Houston
A strong delegation of Cape Town, South Africa businessmen is headed for Houston, Texas to bid for contracts to service the booming West African oil industry, the Johannesburg Business Day reported April 22. Apart from the 15 businessmen and industrialists joining the delegation, there will be five delegates from the National Ports Authority, and delegates from Cape Province, the City of Cape Town and the South African Department of Trade and Industry.
The focus of the delegation will be the Offshore Technology Convention. The oil industry is moving closer to Cape Town as both exploration and production in the Angola oil fields in increasing by leaps and bounds. At present, Angola produces nearly 1 million barrels a day, but this figure is expected to double in the next few years.
The delegation's message is that Cape Town and Saldanha harbors are well placed to service the drilling rigs and floating production platforms operating off the west coast of Africa. In addition, South Africa has the engineering expertise and other necessary resources. Cape Town is already servicing oil rigs and service vessels and it was estimated last year that the oil fields off West Africa were sustaining about 5,000 jobs in South Africa.
The industry is driven by the Americans who are investing billions of dollars each year in exploration and development of the oil fields.
Most of the oilmen's supplies are being flown in from the U.S. and Europe at great expense.
Chris Nissen, president of the Cape Town Regional Chamber of Chamber and Industry, said that South Africa's own oil and gas industry could be moving to the country's west coast, where major discoveries of natural gas have been made.
IMF/World Bank To Operate Oil-for-Debt in West African Nation
The World Bank and International Monetary Fund will control the funds generated by offshore oil exploration and production in Sao Tome and Principe, Comtex reported April 11. The IMF's approach is that the country owes its debts to the international banks, so the Fund will control the funds generated by the oil industry, and take its share off the top. A joint team from the IMF and World Bank was in Sao Tome the second week of April.
Sao Tome and Principe is a small oil-rich country consisting of two islands off the coast of Gabon in West Central Africa. One of the world's poorest countries, it has a foreign debt of about 300 million euros, and has submitted itself to a structural adjustment program coordinated by the IMF and World Bank. Oil revenues are expected to start flowing into the micro-state's coffers later this year from the Joint Development Zone (JDZ) set up with Nigeria to exploit resources in the Gulf of Guinea.
Malaysia Seeks Strategic Oil/Gas Position in North Africa
Malaysia's Petronas is acquiring major oil and gas assets in northern Africa, in a US$1.76 billion deal that would not only give it a significant foothold in the Atlantic Basin liquefied natural gas (LNG) market, but also boost its status as a major player in the global LNG industry.
This deal is by far the biggest Malaysian overseas investment ever. The aggressive move is in line with Petronas' strategy to invest in strategic areas worldwide. In a statement yesterday, Petronas said it had signed an agreement to acquire a 50% working interest in, and joint operatorship of, the West Delta Deep Marine (WDDM) concession, offshore Egypt.
The Petronas LNG Complex in Bintulu is set to become the single largest LNG production facility in the world with a combined capacity of 23 million tons per annum by October 2003. Through its subsidiary, Malaysia International Shipping Corp Bhd, Petronas is also the world's largest owner and operator of an LNG fleet, with 15 tankers currently in operation and six more under construction.
In a complementary development, Petronas and PetroChina, in consultation with Indonesia's Pertamina, have agreed to a 50:50 joint venture to acquire Amerada Hess Indonesia Holdings Ltd. (AHIH) for US$164 million. "The joint acquisition signifies Petronas' long-term commitment to continuously invest in and actively pursue commercial opportunities in Indonesia," Petronas said.
Mbeki: Afrikaner Professionals Need To Reconstruct South Africa
Reversing the trend of past years, South African President Thabo Mbeki insisted this week that the skills of Afrikaner professionals (that is, South African whites of Dutch/Boer descent) are greatly needed to assist in the reconstruction of the country. "We know there are many professionals among minority groups, especially Afrikaners, who want to take up this challenge," he said, noting that the country desperately needs their skills. Mbeki was speaking at the presentation of a joint declaration by the African National Congress and the New National Party in response to the final Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) report released this month.
NNP leader Marthinus van Schalkwyk said that due to the completion of the TRC report, it was important for South Africans to realize they had become stronger and more united as a nation. "Our relations were characterized by mistrust, bloodshed, and appalling human-rights records. It is through political will by the two organizations that this perspective has changed for the better." Van Schalkwyk said all South Africans were enjoying equal privileges and minority groups did not need to feel marginalized. "We need not to walk away, and rather, bring all the required expertise to the table for the betterment of the country."
The declaration signed by the two sides said that although "much remains to be done further nurture the emerging spirits," the country has become a model for reconciliation among competing groups in a previously divided society. The British-allied opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, said through its spokesman Douglas Gibson, that the NNP and the ANC deserved each other.
British Labourite Suggests Commonwealth Army Be Sent to Zimbabwe
"With Blair suggesting in private that he would dearly love to see Mugabe overthrown," one Labour MP suggested this week that a Commonwealth army should be sent into Zimbabwe, according to the Mail & Guardian online April 29. "Why can't there be a Commonwealth military force?" Derek Wyatt, the Labour MP for Sittingbourne, asked. "We can go into Iraq, we can go into Kosovo. But where there are 7.5 million people being deliberately starved to death, we do nothing."
Glenys Kinnock, the Labour MP who recently published a pamphlet outlining the "gangsterism" of the Mugabe regime, believes the European Union should tighten its sanctions. But some MPs and ministers believe that Downing Street should do more. MPs and ministers claim that to accomplish their aims, pressure has to be put on South African President Thabo Mbeki.
Zimbabwe Government Denies 'Exit Strategy' for Mugabe
The Zimbabwe government has denied widespread reports in recent days that President Robert Mugabe is preparing an "exit plan" for himself now that his major remaining task, that of land reform, is essentially in place. "All the President did in the recent interview marking the 23rd anniversary of independence, was to invite national debate on a range of national questions including that of succession," the Department of Information and Publicity said April 28. It said that reports of a supposed "exit plan" have largely been inspired and originated by the British-linked news outlets in defense of white interests in southern Africa. The Department dismissed reportsas has President Mbekithat Presidents Mbeki, Obasanjo of Nigeria, and Bakili Muluzi of Malawi would visit to the country to work out President Mugabe's "exit plan."
In an 11-page interview with Zimbabwe's wire service April 24, President Mugabe reiterated an understanding of economics based on real production, which he contrasted to the way Britain has historically operated, and insisted that Zimbabwe must be primarily an agricultural nation. "What does Britain produce by way of resources? You talk of English tea, where do they produce the tea at all? We produce the teaTanganyika, Tanzania, Kenya, India, etc.... And so, you see, these countries have a long history of developing their economies using, as I said, illicit means, actually.... We are mainly an agricultural country and as an agricultural country we should emphasize agriculture as the mainstay of our economy."
U.S., EU Pressure Nigeria To Move Toward Government of National Unity
"A Western diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the EU and the U.S. had been having private meetings with Nigerian government officials, trying to persuade them to give up some of their power to opposition parties," Reuters reported April 23. The wire service also quoted Information Minister Jerry Gana: "If the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria considers that sharing power is the thing to move the country forward, we will do it, not at the instigation of the European Union or United States."
A written statement issued by U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher on April 24 says, "The U.S. congratulates the overwhelming majority of the Nigerian people for what was a peaceful exercise of their right to vote in many parts of the country.... [M]onitors have reported that in some states they witnessed widespread voting irregularities, as well as procedural flaws.... We call on all parties to resolve differences through peaceful, legal means." The statement pointedly did not congratulate President Olusegun Obasanjo on his re-election.
This Week in History
In this day and age of insane privatization, deregulation, and collapse of basic infrastructure, it is only right that we turn our attention to that great accomplishment of American government-industry partnership, the Transcontinental Railroad. Initiated by President Abraham Lincoln in the form of the Pacific Railroad Act in 1862, this crucial linkage between the eastern and western United States, was finally completed with the driving in of a golden spike on May 10, 1869, at Promontory Summit, Utah.
President Lincoln himself, who had run for office as early as 1832 on the program of building a transcontinental railroad, provided the top-down leadership for implementing this great project. He is reported to have told Union General Grenville Dodge, later a chief engineer on the project, that the road had to be built, "not only as a military necessity, but as a means of holding the Pacific Coast to the Union." The unifying function of the railroad was directly reflected in the statement engraved on the golden spike: "May God continue the unity of our Country as this Railroad unites the two gold great Oceans of the world."
The story of the building of the Transcontinental Railroad is a story of how the Federal government fulfilled its responsibility for developing vital infrastructure, by providing the means for financing, and the other prerequisites for the construction of a major national project, which would serve to promote the general welfare, and advance the culture, of the entire nation. The cross-country railroad was, in fact, a vital part of President Lincoln's conception of "binding up the wounds" of the nation after the Civil War.
Under the original 1862 law, which was amended numerous times later, provision was made for creating two quasi-public corporations. One was the Central Pacific Railroad, which was an already extant corporation based in California, and which was mandated to start construction from Sacramento eastward. The other corporation created was the Union Pacific Railroad (as historian Stephen Ambrose points out, a polemical title in itself, in the midst of the Civil War), which had the task of building the rail-line westward, from Council Bluffs, Iowa, right at the point of the Missouri River.
The engineering tasks to be accomplished, of course, were gigantic, particular the need to forge a pathway through the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The surveying needs were also daunting, as significant errors in mapping could end up with the two railroads failing to connect!
To meet the financing needs, the Federal government pledged a certain amount of money in low-interest Federal bonds for every mile of track that each rail company completed, and which had been certified as having been constructed up to par, by government inspectors. The amount of bonds provided ranged from $12,000 per mile for flat track, to $48,000 per mile for especially challenging areas, such as routes through the mountains. The rail companies were also given land grants along side the track, which served to provide the space for the building of living facilities, water and repair facilities, and the nuclei for towns. This was possible because most of the land in the West was in fact public land.
But there was another aspect to the Transcontinental Railroad, which underscored Lincoln's concept of this project as a development corridor, which would unify, and contribute to the development of, the nation. That was the fact that, along with the rail track, the rail companies were mandated to lay telegraph lines, which would provide for vastly enhanced communication from one part of the nation to the other. Thus, when the Golden Spike was actually driven on May 10, 1869a good seven years before the link-up was scheduled, according to the national legislationword immediately went out by telegraph all over the world: "DONE!"
Festivities, already well-prepared, broke out all over the country, as Americans from all walks of life celebrated what was recognized as a politically significant, and virtually heroic feat, to the benefit of the entire country. Former slaves, and former soldiers from both sides in the Civil War had worked side by side, along with Chinese immigrants and others, to bind the nation together.
In this respect, the Transcontinental Railroad is a model today, as a project turned national mission, which can mobilize the American people, along with others, to achieve both the economic development and political unity which is so needed today.
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Feature:
LaRouche Youth Movement: 'A Second American Revolution'
At the Schiller Institute's conference in Bad Schwalbach, Germany, LaRouche Youth Movement leaders presented a panel on the intellectual discoveries required to stop the world's plunge into a Dark Age, and to create, instead, a new Renaissance. Intertwined themes included the historic role of the sublime Joan of Arc, the axiom-busting discoveries of Carl Gauss, and the physical economy of Friedrich List.
Presented at the Same Conference:
Economics:
Vernadsky and the Biogeochemical Development of N. America's Desert
by Dennis Small and Richard Freeman
To reconstruct U.S.-Mexican relations on a sane basis, this in-depth economic study proposes the two countries to jointly develop the Great American Desert, with water projects, high-speed rail lines and other transportation systems, and power. The conceptual framework for such an ambitious enterprise was provided by the Russian biogeochemist V.I. Vernadsky
International:
Dick Cheney Has a French Connectionto Fascism
by Jeffrey Steinberg, Tony Papert, and Barbara Boyd
The ``Straussian cabal'' of warhawks in and around the Bush
Administration is linked to a network of World War II and postwar Nazi collaborators. The central figure in {EIR'}s investigation is the lifetime collaborator of neo-conservative ``godfather'' Leo Strauss--the Paris-based Russian emigré, Alexandre Kojève.
Palestinian-Israeli Peace Road Map Under Pantheo-Cons' Attack
by Dean Andromidas
The Palestinian Legislative Council overwhelmingly approved the government of the new Palestinian Prime Minister, Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas) on April 29. The move fulfilled the last precondition for the release, on April 30, of the international peace plan, and the 'road map' is now in the possession of both Prime Minister Abu Mazen and Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon...
India, Pakistan Pressed To Hold Kashmir Talks
by Ramtanu Maitra
In an unexpected move, Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, while visiting the India-held part of Kashmir in mid-April, said that India would send a top Foreign Ministry official to Pakistan to draw up a schedule for negotiations, if Pakistan announces an end to its support for the anti-India terrorists, and closes training camps for Islamic guerrillas on its territory.
Indonesia and Russia Make 'New Beginning'
by Gail G. Billington
After bruising battles in the United Nations, in both the Security Council and the General Assembly, followed by the 'shock and awe' campaign waged predominantly by British and U.S. military forces in Iraq, nations great and small are testing the resilience of institutions and relations, and seeking to regain, or, to create anew, ties of mutual cooperation and support.
LaRouche Movement Intervening into Germany's Economic, Political Crises
by Rainer Apel
Day by day since its full outbreak in mid-April, the struggle between Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, and his critics in the Social Democratic Party (SPD) left and the trade unions who reject over the planned deep budget cuts in Schröder's 'Agenda 2010,' has escalated.
National:
Indecent Exposure: Newt And New McCarthyites
by Michele Steinberg
'Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left, no sense of decency?'
Joseph Welch to Sen. Joe McCarthy, June 9, 1954.
No one ever accused Newt Gingrich of having a 'sense of decency,' even rhetorically. The above question, thrown against Sen. Joe McCarthy at the Army-McCarthy hearings, was the beginning of the end of McCarthy's four-year reign of terror....a massive McCarthyite propaganda machine has been geared upas in the case of the Iraq warto use lies, political blackmail, phony terrorist incidents, and any means necessary to get their new policies through. This time, the rallying cry of 'terrorism' replaces Joe McCarthy's 'communism.'
Ritter: Iraq War Like Nazis' Poland Invasion
by Carl Osgood
While many pre-war opponents of the Bush Administration's invasion of Iraq have been muted since the fall of Baghdad on April 9, Scott Ritter, the former UN weapons inspector, is not among them. Speaking on April 25 at the Palestine Center in Washington, D.C., Ritter showed that he is still determined to hold the Bush Administration accountable for what has happened.
Open Letter to Bush
Intelligence Vets Ask: Probe Iraq 'WMD' Fraud
by Edward Spannaus
A group of former intelligence officers sent an open letter to President Bush on May 1, asking the President to order an immediate investigation into the performance of the special Pentagon intelligence unit, the CIA and other intelligence agencies, that resulted in what they term a 'policy and intelligence fiasco of monstrous proportions' evident in the failure to uncover weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
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