Dialogue with Cadre School, part 1

From Volume 2, Issue Number 18 of Electronic Intelligence Weekly, Published May 5, 2003

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 clear—clear, 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 today—which is why I laid the program out the way I did—by 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 empiricism—their minds in the abyss of empiricism—but, 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 clear—clear, 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.

Dialogue with Cadre School, part 1

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