LaRouche Backs Geneva Peace Moves: 'As President, I Will Stop This War'

Dialogue with LaRouche

From Volume 2, Issue Number 43 of Electronic Intelligence Weekly, Published Oct. 28, 2003

Latest From LaRouche

LaRouche Backs Geneva Peace Moves: 'As President, I Will Stop This War'

This release was issued on Oct. 23 by the LaRouche in 2004 Presidential campaign committee.

Washington, D.C., Oct. 22—Asked by an American Muslim newspaper journalist how he, as President, would "right the wrongs" of United States Mideast policy, Democratic candidate Lyndon LaRouche told his live and webcast audience, "As President, I'll have no problem in dealing with this. I will deal with it. I will sit on it, and I will get the support of enough people in the world that we'll stop it." LaRouche pointed to the current Geneva non-governmental peace meetings of Israelis and Palestinians as important for governments to support, but stressed that he would be an American President capable of stopping Ariel Sharon's Likud faction from destroying the Mideast and Israel in the process.

LaRouche's Oct. 22 event was attended by 300 people in Washington and hundreds more at satellite videoconferences in the United States, as well as broadcast on the Internet. In Washington, Abdulla el-Amin of Detroit's Muslim Observer, asked the candidate, "Mr. LaRouche ... how do you propose to deal with what obviously is an extremely powerful lobby in the United States, in order to be fair in the treatment of the Palestinian people?"

LaRouche's forceful but comprehensive answer follows: "First of all, there is a meeting in Geneva, which is an attempt—with [Yossi] Beilin and others involved whom I've had some cooperation with indirectly in the past on this question—which is an attempt to revive the Israeli-Palestinian dialogue. This is important. I think that governments and others around the world should support it. Not that it by itself is going to succeed, but an effort in that direction opens up the question of what is required to succeed. If you can establish that the intent exists, then I think it can succeed.

"Now, the other side is that Israel has no future under the present policies of Sharon. You have really a Masada complex in action. Sharon is more of a clever thief than a fanatic. He knows how to act like a fanatic, in order to get people to give him things.... But the danger is among the fanatics, especially the religious fanatics, who are always dangerous because they're not in the real world. The point is, if Israel were to pursue this course, which has been assigned to it by the friends of Dick Cheney, the neo-conservatives in the United States principally—it's a part of Cheney's policy, it's a part of the preventive war policy. Sharon is a patsy for Cheney, or for whoever takes Cheney's place in playing that role.

"In reality, as every sane Israeli knows—and every concerned Jew around the world who's well-informed knows—if Israel goes this road, Israel will cease to exist. Maybe other people, too, will cease to exist, but Israel cannot live with the present policy. I know this. I don't think that George Bush the president knows this. I think there are many things he doesn't know.

"But as President, I'll have no problem in dealing with this. I will deal with it. I will sit on it, and I will get the support of enough people in the world that we'll stop it...."

'Not a Nickel' To Sharon

"It is in the interest of the United States that the Middle East war end! It is in the interest of the United States that there be peace among the peoples of the Middle East. It is in the interest of the United States that there be justice for the Palestinians. Therefore, the United States President must express that interest; and he must express that interest with a certain deference to realities; he must look for others to join him in this, and not be dictatorial about it any more than is necessary; but he's got to be firm.

"He would have to say, as I would say, 'Hey, Sharon, I've got news for you. Your water is shut off. You don't get a nickel from the United States from this moment on, until you stop this nonsense. You're not getting anything from us.'

"We are on the side of the Palestinians, because they're the victims in this process. Oh sure, they kill back; but everyone who understands this process, understands that. When you push a people to the brink, you will get irregular warfare. You set the fire: Don't complain about the flames. When you abuse people, you deny them justice for two generations, you treat them as inhuman for two generations, they give up hope and they're willing to commit suicide to fight you, then you are wrong, wrong. You don't do that to the human race. And the United States has to take a clear position on that."

"We have the case of the ship, U.S.S. Liberty, which is coming up for discussion now. When the Israelis defied the United States by sinking a naval ship, the Liberty—that issue should be discussed again. On the other hand, we have people like Beilin and others who may not be so nice among the Israelis, but at least are rational, who know that peace is essential.... And the policy of the United States, for its own part, should be, 'We will tolerate nothing but peace, we do not buy your cheap excuses, Sharon. We know what kind of a thug you are. Now cut it out, because the full power of the United States will be applied in appropriate ways, to make you wish you had!' And that's the only way to deal with it.

"We could get support from other nations for such a policy. But what we're not doing, on the Israeli side, is we are not putting our support to those people whose interests and whose actions do correspond to our interest. Beilin typifies those who correspond to U.S. interests. Therefore, we should be supporting the Geneva process, not because it's a guaranteed success, but because it's keeping alive the only thing that will get the Middle East out of this mess. At the same time, we have to defend the rights of the Palestinians, in the way the United States should defend the rights of the Palestinians, not like a bull in a china shop, but consistently. And if we were serious about it, it would help.

Fire Ashcroft

"The first thing we should do, is, we probably should ask Mr. Ashcroft to resign too. He set up this myth about Arab terrorists being the cause of 9/11, and so forth. A bunch of lies. There's no truth to it whatsoever! There are many people who are in al-Qaeda and other organizations called the Muslim Brotherhood. They were recruited by the United States, as a part of Iran-Contra—together with the British—for the occasion of the war in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union. They were turned loose at the end of these events, and they're around as people who have worked for the U.S., worked for the British, worked for other intelligence services, sometimes because they think they're working for those services, sometimes because they think those services are working for them. Sometimes agents get confused in this way.

"The United States always has access to creating a number of dead bodies, to display on the sidewalks, to say, 'Look, the Arabs did it!' How do you know the Arabs did it? Because we've got Arab dead bodies all over the place here. Well, that probably tells you it wasn't the Arabs. If the dead bodies are Arabs, it wasn't the Arabs who did it, because the intelligence service that did it would have left somebody else there. Japanese or Africans, or people from Mexico. They might do that next, you know? So, the point is, what we've done is we're made this issue worse, by tolerating this absolutely unconscionable, immoral, disgusting attack on Arab-Americans and Arabs generally. This kind of racism. We have created a lynch mob spirit against anyone who's supposed to be Arab or pro-Arab.

"And in this circumstance, when you come around in the United States and say, we want some justice for the Palestinians, and present the case about the suffering of the Palestinians, they say, 'No, no, that's the enemy, that's the enemy! We've got to kill them. That's the terrorists!' And that's our first problem."

Dialogue with LaRouche

Here is a transcript of the 2-1/2 hour discussion which followed Presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche's historic Oct. 22 international Webcast. Moderator Debra Freeman opened the event up for questions to candidate LaRouche, including questions from the floor, from e-mail, which she read, and from other locations where groups had gathered to watch the webcast. The transcript of LaRouche's opening remarks can be found in EIW's "Need To Know This Week."

Debra Freeman: The first question comes from Abdullah el Amin of the Muslim Observer, which is a newspaper in Detroit that serves a very large American Muslim population: "Mr. LaRouche, it's a well-known fact that there is a very big difference between the United States' treatment of Israel and Palestine. This has become a major feature, obviously, and a major concern in American foreign policy, and we have committed many wrongs. Do you plan to right these wrongs? And how do you propose to deal with what obviously is an extremely powerful lobby in the United States, in order to be fair in your treatment of the Palestinian people?"

LaRouche: First of all, there is a meeting in Geneva, which is an attempt with Beilin and others involved, whom I've had some cooperation with indirectly in the past on this question, which is an attempt to revive the Israeli-Palestinian dialogue. This is important. I think that governments and others around the world should support it. Not that it by itself is going to succeed, but an effort in that direction opens up the question of what is required to succeed. If we can establish the intent exists, then I think it can succeed.

Now, the other side, is that Israel has no future under the present policies of Sharon. You have, really, a Masada complex in action. Sharon is more of a clever thief than a fanatic. He knows how to act like a fanatic, in order to get people to give him things. It's like a hold-up man. He says, he has a big gun, and he doesn't intend to have to actually kill you. He hopes that you'll just submit to that big gun. But, he can be pretty nasty. But, the danger is, among the fanatics, especially the religious fanatics who are always dangerous because they're not in the real world—how can you deal with somebody who's not in the real world? And the religious fanatics are usually not in the real world. The point is, if Israel were to pursue this course, which has been assigned to it by the friends of Dick Cheney, the neo-conservatives in the United States principally—it's a part of Cheney's policy, it's a part of the preventive war policy. Sharon is a patsy for Cheney, or for whoever takes Cheney's place in playing that role.

Because, in reality, as every sane Israeli knows, and every concerned Jew around the world who's well informed, if Israel goes this road, Israel will cease to exist. Maybe other people, too, will cease to exist, but Israel can not live with the present policy. The problem is, I know this. I don't think that George Bush, the President, knows this. I think there are many things he doesn't know.

But as President, I'll have no problem in dealing with this. I will deal with it. I will sit on it. And I will get the support of enough people in the world that we'll stop it. The problem has been, and where Clinton failed at the Camp David talks, is: You've got to take the position of the United States. And in my view, his actions were too much playing the part of lawyer for Barak, between Arafat and Barak. He did not take a position which corresponded to the interests of the United States. He forgot in that moment, in his passion to try to negotiate—as a lawyer, perhaps—that he's the President of the United States, and his job is to express the interests of the President of the United States, and of the United States itself, not some wheeling and dealing, not some compromise. It is in the interest of the United State that the Middle East war end! It is in the interest of the United States that there be peace among the peoples of the Middle East. It is in the interest of the United States that there be justice for the Palestinians. Therefore, the United States President must express that interest, and he must express that interest with certain deference to realities, he must look for others to join him in this, and not to be dictatorial about it, any more than is necessary, but he's got to be firm. He would have to say, as I would say, "Hey, Sharon, I've got news for you. Your water is shut off. You don't get a nickel from the United States from this moment on, until you stop this nonsense. You're not getting anything from us."

We are on the side of the Palestinians, because they're the victims in this process. Oh sure, they kill back, but everyone who understands this process, understands that. When you push a people to the brink, you will get irregular warfare. You set the fire, don't complain about the flames: When you abuse people, you deny them justice for two generations, you treat them as inhuman for two generations, they give up hope and they're willing to commit suicide to fight you, then you are wrong—you're wrong. You don't do that to in human race. And the United States has to take a clear position on that.

We have the case of the Liberty—"Give me liberty or give me death"—the ship Liberty, which is coming up for discussion now. When the Israelis defied the United States, by sinking a U.S. naval ship, the Liberty, that issue should be discussed again.

On the other hand, we have people like Beilin, and others who may not be so nice among the Israelis, but at least are rational, who know that peace is essential. And the policy of the United States, for its own part, should be, "We will tolerate nothing but peace. We do not buy your cheap excuses, Sharon. We know what kind of a thug you are. Now cut it out, because the full power of the United States will be applied in appropriate ways, to make you wish you had!" And, that's the only way to deal with it.

We could get support from other nations for such a policy. But what we're not doing, on the Israeli side, is, we are not putting our support to those people whose interests and whose actions do correspond to our interest. Beilen typifies those who correspond to U.S. interests. Therefore, we should be supporting the Geneva process, not because it's a guaranteed success, but because it's keeping alive the only thing that will get the Middle East out of this mess.

We, at the same time, have to defend the rights of the Palestinians, in the way the United States should defend the rights of the Palestinians, not like a bull in a china shop, but consistently. And if we were serious about it, it would help.

The first thing we should do: We probably should ask Mr. Ashcroft to resign, too. We set up this myth about Arab terrorists being the cause of 9@nd11, and so forth. A bunch of lies. There's no truth to it whatsoever! There are many people who are in al-Qaeda and other organizations, which is called the Muslim Brotherhood. They were recruited by the United States, as a part of Iran-Contra, together with the British, for the occasion of the war in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union. They were turned loose at the end of these events, and they're around as people who have worked for the U.S., worked for the British, worked for other intelligence services—sometimes because they think they're working for those services, sometimes because they think those services are working for them. Sometimes agents get confused in this way.

The United States always has access to creating a number of dead bodies, to display on the sidewalks, to say, "Look, the Arabs did it!" How do you know the Arabs did it? Because we've got Arab dead bodies all over the place here. Well, that probably tells you it wasn't the Arabs. If the dead bodies are Arabs, it wasn't the Arabs who did it, because the intelligence service that did it would have left somebody else there. They would have probably left Japanese, or Africans, or people from Mexico. They might do that next, you know. No, the point is, we've made this issue worse, by tolerating this absolutely unconscionable, immoral, disgusting attack on Arab-Americans and Arabs generally. This kind of racism. We have created a lynch mob spirit against anyone who's supposed to be Arab or pro-Arab. And in this circumstance, when you come around in the United States and say, we want some justice for the Palestinians, and you present the case about the suffering of the Palestinians, they say, "No, no, no, no! That's the enemy! That's the enemy! We've got to kill them! That's the terrorists!" And, that's our first problem.

For the rest of it, what I've said goes.

How Cheney Undermined the Heart of National Security

Freeman: Lyn, we have several questions which actually raise the same issue, so I'm going to ask them all as one question. The subject is the continuing issue of Vice President Dick Cheney, particularly as it is raised in a piece that appears in the current issue of New Yorker by Seymour Hersh: "Mr. LaRouche, Seymour Hersh's piece raises a critical point, that I believe the layman might miss. And that is that, as a nation, as some people know, we spend approximately $40 billion a year to maintain the capability to provide professional intelligence analysis. This apparatus serves the institution of the Presidency, and has for quite some time. Its intention is to provide an independent vetting process of the plethora of intelligence data that comes our way.

"What is apparent in Seymour Hersh's article is that Dick Cheney ignored the normal and necessary vetting process. By doing that, he did something far worse than simply misleading the American people and the Congress. His actions, we believe, undermined the heart of national security. Although George Bush is too stupid and too corrupt to understand it, Cheney's greatest betrayal was not of the Congress or of the American people, but actually of the President that he serves. I'd like you to address this, because in discussions here"—this question comes from a Washington institution—"we see this as an extremely dangerous precedent and an extremely damaging one, and we think it provides a far greater indictment of Dick Cheney than the fact that he is merely a liar. Would you please address this, and address possible things that can be done?"

LaRouche: This, of course, is that serious. Some years ago, I was aware of the potential of this type, but I didn't think it could get so bad. What I proposed back during the period of the early 1980s, during the Reagan Administration period, I raised again something I had thought about earlier, of the need to establish for the United States an intelligence service institute, in the tradition of West Point, Annapolis, and so forth. That we had to improve the coherence and quality of our intelligence, above that which is available from graduates of private universities. The problem is that because of every division over the understanding of U.S. history in universities, that people going into intelligence services, while they may have other skills—because they are screened a bit—lack a grounding in the issues, or the past centuries' issues of history, which I considered at the time essential to understand certain problems and make certain policies.

For example, if you don't understand the issues of the 15th-Century Renaissance; if you don't understand accurately the religious warfare in Europe from 1511 through 1648; if you don't understand the change in English policy introduced under William of Orange through the inauguration of George I; if you don't understand the issues of the American Revolution as global issues of the time; if you don't understand the issues of the French Revolution; if you don't understand some of the issues of science and science policy; and so forth, you really don't know how to judge processes.

For example, let's take the case of our experience in the United States. Take my lifetime. As I said in California in a similar occasion, that I knew the population of the United States in the 1920s, and it disgusted me, because this "Flapper Era" was morally disgusting. I saw them go through the shock of the 1929-1933 Depression. I saw the effects it had on them. I saw the fear, the change, the abandonment of certain cultural values. For the better, in many cases. I saw the rise of American morale, and morality, during the period up until about the time that Roosevelt left office, by his death. I saw the terror, the disappointment, the sense of betrayal, and the fear, caused by the succession of the bombing in Europe against civilian populations, not military targets. The nuclear bombing, the starting of a nuclear conflict with the Soviet Union, right after the war, the right-wing terror unleashed by Truman in 1946. I saw my generation, the people of my military service generation, I saw them turned into wimps by these fears. I saw them flee into suburbia and tell their children never to tell the truth, lest it get you into trouble, or get our family into trouble, or cause your father to lose his nice job, or his career.

I saw, then, the children of this generation, the Baby Boomer generation, who were then still in adolescence, going through the experience of the Bay of Pigs, of the Missile Crisis, where for several days everybody froze. Nearly everybody—I didn't. I watched, like a sole survivor, the spectacle of terror, of fear in my fellow Americans. I saw us go through, and felt, what happened in the assassination of President Kennedy. I experienced the launching of the Indo-China War and the horror that involved. I lived through the assassination of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and Bobby Kennedy. I saw the effects of these things on the minds of that young generation entering university age, young adulthood and adulthood at that time. I saw how our people, terrified by this succession of events, transformed our society from the world's leading producer nation into a pleasure-seeking consumer society, which is now a bankrupt piece of wreckage on the landscape, on the beach of history.

I saw these effects, and if you look back at history, and think about how the good things and the bad things are transmitted as influences from generation to generation. I think of my own family, where my direct experiences go back 200 years, to a great-great-grandfather, who was someone notable, who was born about the time that Abraham Lincoln was. He was part of our dinner-table conversation, in the family in my childhood. These multigenerational tendencies extend. They extend, also, through longer periods than mere centuries, or two centuries as in my case. They go back 300-400 years, and longer. The great revival of Classical culture in Europe goes back to ancient Greece, goes back to Thales and Solon and Pythagoras, and then on to Socrates and Plato and so forth. So these long waves of culture have to be understood, to understand what is inside the mind of present generations, in our own culture and in other cultures.

Therefore, my view was that this search for truth, the most important thing in intelligence is, what is the truth? And the truth involves the determination to tell nothing but the truth, to know how to tell the truth, and to know enough to be able to tell what the truth is, culturally. And therefore, my view was that we need a national intelligence institute paralleling West Point, Annapolis, and so forth, which would ensure that we have a capable corps of intelligence officers of the highest grade for this mission.

What we have, from my experience with people in the intelligence community today, we have an approximation of that. I've made many acquaintances among people who are retired or active intelligence, on many issues. We've had many discussions, and I've been able to gauge this. I think that, by and large, to the degree they have the courage to do so, that our intelligence officers are patriotic and do wish to be able to tell the truth. One of the reasons I wish to become President, is to free our intelligence operatives to tell the truth! And not to have to lie.

Therefore, the criticism, the comment made on Hersh's article is more than valid. We have got into a war based on lies. And the criticism is correct: Getting us into the war through lies was already a crime, an impeachable offense. Remember what our law is, on warfare. When our Constitution was framed, the issue of the power to make war was one of the hottest issues in creating the Executive branch of government. And checks and balances were set up in the Constitutional process, to limit the power of the President to make war, so we wouldn't have a George III making war in the name of the United States, as we have suffered before. And therefore, the issue of using lies to induce the United States to make a war that it wouldn't make if it knew the truth, by any elected official, is an impeachable offense per se, and it's an impeachable offense tantamount to treason, even if it's not technically treason. Bypassing, in general, using that method to attempt to intimidate and tame the intelligence services of the United States into functioning like a Goebbels information agency, this is a high crime against our Constitution and our nation.

The Shape of a LaRouche Government 'Team'

Freeman: The next question is from a former elected official in New York: "Mr. LaRouche, obviously, regardless of your qualifications for the office, your candidacy—as your past candidacies have also been—is steeped in controversy. Inside Washington D.C. institutions, it happens to be well known that although both you and the several administrations that you have worked with have always maintained mutual independence, it's nevertheless the case that your advice and counsel have been frequently sought. Things being what they are, you are still perceived as the penultimate outsider. To some, that probably is your greatest qualification for office, but for others, it causes nervousness. In an attempt to address this, one thing comes to mind, and I do believe that there is a historic precedent for it in the United States. Would you actually consider naming your government in advance, and actually submitting that to the American people as they consider your candidacy?"

LaRouche: Yes, absolutely. I intend to do so. However, the problem is this. I am watching many people. I'm collaborating with many people. Now, people think of Cabinet offices and such. I think of the Presidency of the United States, as I understand it, probably better than most Presidents do, is: The President of the United States, if he's a serious thinker as I am, particularly one who has to make major changes in the policy of the nation, realizes that he as an individual, sitting in the office of the President, can not by personal will bring about the changes that he selects. You not only have to have people willing to carry out instructions, but you have to think about the way they will carry them out, ineffectually or effectively. Therefore, my primary concern which I'm concentrating on right now, and have been for some time, is to look at especially experienced officers in government who I would consider the people I would want to place in various key positions in the government, in order to have a team, the way that Franklin Roosevelt went into office, in creating a team.

The time for making that kind of statement will come soon. I think it's on the way now. The problem has been, that people who should have been openly discussing with me in this way—where I can really look at them for the purpose of creating a team—have been intimidated by what goes on in the Democratic Party machine itself. There should have been a process of discussion inside the Democratic Party, among the candidates, from which I was excluded from direct participation. And you saw what it did to the other candidates, they're all incompetent, from lack of my participation. Some of them would have been incompetent anyway. But, the fact that we didn't force the issue of discussing the policies meant that the kind of policy discussion which should occur in shaping and crafting a new administration, as I conceive of the Presidency, was in a sense hampered.

I would hope that people who share the concern expressed by the questioner, would find the courage to talk to me directly about this, because I think they have something to contribute to this as well. I need a team to run the U.S. government, a team which assumes the same general type of responsibility, as a team, which President Franklin Roosevelt's selections did for him, in his time. I need that team. I need a team, not only of people who will be part of government, but also a team of people to whom I can turn, in the Congress and elsewhere, and other sources, for the best advice, on how to handle something, as well as what to do about it.

Freeman: From Rep. Joe Towns of Tennessee: "Lyn, what should the Democratic Party as a party be doing, as it relates to the leaking of the name of one of our covert agents? Obviously, that agent could have been killed, her contacts could have been hurt, and our national security has been seriously compromised. Could you please address this?"

LaRouche: Obviously, the motive for the leaking of the information was clear. The motive is clear in terms of the policy source from which it came, and from the nature of the combination of capability as well as interest. This should be pursued, in the way it's been proposed by others—I don't have to add to that. I just endorse it. It has to be done. We have to get to the bottom of this.

But I don't think it's just one person we're looking at, as indicated by the Hersh article. We're looking at a complex of people, who are complicit in letting this happen, and this means people in the press. See, any person in the press who knows this has happened, who has received that information, should be able to contact discreetly an FBI office based in Washington, D.C.—without the Attorney General being involved; he should recuse himself on this—and be able to say, "I heard the following information from so-and-so."

We do need an adequate investigation, but we've got to get not just one individual as a scapegoat. We've got to get the rats' nest cleaned out, because this couldn't have been done otherwise.

Solving the States' Budget Crises

Freeman: This question is from Eric Fleming of the Mississippi House of Representatives: "There's been a lot of talk of a Federal bailout for the states, to help them deal with the current fiscal crises that they face. Do you have a plan, an approach concerning this issue?"

LaRouche: Yes, precisely. Remember, the states under law, under our Constitution, can not operate under a deficit. The power to deal with these kinds of situations therefore lies exclusively with the Federal government. The Federal government under our Constitution is the only agency which can create debt against the U.S. government, or its subsidiary agencies of government. Therefore, what we need is the following: we need an emergency legislation, Roosevelt-style, which faces the fact that at least 47 states of the 50, are more or less bankrupt now. That is, they're unable to fulfill their responsibilities to the state and its people, within the framework of the present sources of income.

And, of course, the Federal responsibility for this, has been curtailed greatly from the Federal side, by these crazy fools who came in with deregulation. There were many ways in which the Federal government successfully absorbed responsibility for assistance to the states in former times: health care, education, transportation, many other things. We created Federal facilities, which absorb things. Many of these things were thrown back to the states, and the states were victimized by an insane economic policy, which destroyed the nation as a producer society, and said that we can be a consumer society, living on cheap goods, produced by cheap labor, imported at cheap prices from abroad. We destroyed our farms; we destroyed our industries; we destroyed our infrastructure, and so forth. So, in this case, the Federal government must take action, which is like financial reorganization of the budgets and debt of the states. We have to help them.

But the other thing is more crucial: You can't do this unless you've got a way of digging your way out of the hole. And if we were to simply approach the states' deficits and their debt now, from the standpoint of bailing them out, it wouldn't do much good, because the states would remain as bankrupt afterwards as they were before. Going into bankruptcy systemically is not an event that happened to them, it's what they're doing. They're becoming more and more bankrupt.

So therefore, we have to change the economic policy of the United States from the top down! We have to go back to becoming a producer society again, we have to have large-scale investment in infrastructure, as I've indicated: That means power generation and distribution, a Federal program of power generation and distribution, a re-regulated power and distribution system for the nation. Assigning the authority preferably to the states, and to state public utilities, which are regulated for this purpose. This means also rebuilding our national rail system. This means large-scale water management projects, including sanitation that goes with water management. It means these kinds of measures, which, therefore, will act as a stimulant for the economy of the state, so that we can see our way out of the bankruptcy of the states.

The way to do that is to employ more people productively. If you go into a state, you build power stations, you build distribution networks in a regulated way, you will attract savings into public utilities—if we protect them again! Remember, public utilities used to be the safest thing for aging people to invest in for their retirement, or contingencies. They had fairly low yield, but they were secure. There was no gambling involved. They were almost as good as gold, next thing to a Federal bond. We create that again.

When you build a large project within a state, as the Tennessee Valley Authority development is an example of this from past history, you stimulate all kinds of private investment and activity and employment in the state. What you have to do at that point is have some kind of a master draft policy, of how are we going to increase the amount of employment in the state sufficiently to bring the state back into balance on essential services? How can we use Federal responsibility for assisting in large-scale infrastructure projects, to stimulate the state economy, to stimulate the by-product development of private businesses, which gives you the overall employment?

So what we need is a national reconstruction policy. And then, a plan to fit the policy, which says that the Federal government acknowledges its responsibility to assist the 47 virtually bankrupt states—maybe there's 52 of them now; you know, maybe some of them are bankrupt twice, like California—in getting out from this mess, and the policy is to help them reorganize their finances, their debts, by Federal assistance, to develop large-scale infrastructure projects which are appropriate to each area, to help stimulate the employment in each state; and to also find enabling legislation, by the states and by the Federal government in cooperation, which stimulate and foster increases of employment.

The essential thing is to get enough people employed, at sufficiently skilled levels, so that the total income per capita of the state exceeds the operating budget of the state. On that basis, then you can go in with the Federal government and say, we can reorganize the debts of the states, we can get them through this mess, and we can do it as you do in any good bankruptcy reorganization: You reorganize the bankrupt, on the basis that he's going to come out of it alive. Therefore, you've got to fix what's wrong. The indebtedness is the result of wrong policies. We are willing, and must be willing, to move in to help the states get out of the mess created by wrong policies. But, we and they must eliminate the wrong policies that got us into the mess in the first place.

Freeman: From Rep. Walton of the Missouri House of Representatives: "Mr. LaRouche, when the Congressional Black Caucus had their candidates' debate, what reason did they use for not inviting you?"

LaRouche: Money! The real reason is they weren't going to get money if they did, and terrible things would happen to them in the Congress and elsewhere, if they didn't go along with that. It's that simple. Straightforward blackmail muscle. Thuggery, in short!

And, there are promises of money.

Look at the whole thing that was done with the Black Caucus operation. The thing was filthy. What the Democratic National Committee did, was a bunch of filth. They were going to set up some side-shows, and "you guys who behave yourselves can come to these side-shows if you obey our rules." You pay! We take your money. We take away the freedom of legitimate organizations to run their own affairs, to say "We want to have a meeting with this-and-this person." Isn't this supposed to be a democracy? Do you have to go to the Democratic National Committee Goebbels or Himmler, to get permission to meet? No, no! You have to have approved meetings! Terrible things will happen to you, in the Congress and elsewhere, in the state legislatures, if you don't go along. "Buddy, you go along to get along, understand?" It's that simple.

Freeman: The next question is from somebody who is a good friend of this movement, and who is very well-known here in Washington, D.C.—Dr. Abdul Alim Muhammed of the Nation of Islam: "Lyn, what is your position on therapeutic cloning, as opposed to reproductive cloning, as the basis for regenerative medicine to deal with some of the diseases of old age?"

LaRouche: I think you use therapeutic stem cells, self-stem cell operations, and things like that: Of course we're for it; absolutely for them. It's needed. You know, you have people who are suffering. I don't know what effects it can have on the onset of Alzheimer's disease, for example, or other kinds of degenerative diseases, but certainly, if we can do that without doing something morally wrong, why not do it? It's being done in some places in Germany, I understand, with some degree of success. I think what we can learn from this research in doing this, would be very helpful, perhaps, in finding other things.

Remember, the problem here is, we really know a lot less than we think we do, in terms of living processes. You have people running around who don't know what the difference is between a living and a non-living process. And that's not just an easy question to answer, but it's an easy question to settle, that there is a difference. We don't know what the difference is—only man is capable of ideas; no animal is capable of actual ideas. No living process, except man, is capable of ideas. No species, but man, is capable of developing a cultural development process.

If we were higher apes—which Cheney looks like, or maybe lower, I don't know—but, in any case, if we were higher apes, there would never have been on this planet in the past 2 million years more than about 3 million of us. That's our species potential, if we were apes. There are now reported to be over 6 billion people on this planet. How did that change come about? As Vernadsky, the great Russian physical chemist, defined this: He said, the process of the human mind is a process of efficient power over nature, over both living and non-living processes, which ultimately will dominate the Earth, and transform it. There's something in the human being which distinguishes the human being from any animal. We can prove that that's the case, but if you try to define it in a physics textbook, we don't know. Just as if you try to define life from the standpoint of physics, we don't know. We know the difference between life and non-life, but we don't really understand the difference in those kinds of terms. We know that the human mind is different than the mind of a monkey—Cheney excepted—but, we don't know in physical terms what that difference is.

So therefore, in these areas, where the concern is to preserve human life and to enhance its function as human life-we have friends right now who are faced with death. And it hangs on: Can they get the kind of medical assistance, does it exist, which will deal with the problem, which is definably curable or controllable, but can they deal with it? Do we have the means? Can they have access to the means?

Questions on this kind of research and development? Yes, we must develop protocols. We must define protocols which sustain life, not experimenting with human life as such, because we don't know yet what we're playing with. When we're doing something therapeutically, we know what we're doing. We have a standard through proper protocols, but when we try to reinvent life without knowing what life is, then we are behaving like dangerous fools. And, I think that distinction is sufficient.

Ashcroft: The Tradition of Nazi Law

City Councilman O. Mays, Cleveland: Mr. LaRouche, I have two questions, and I'll make them real brief. One, you spoke in reference to the Black Caucus which did not invite you to the candidates' debate, and you alluded to the fact, that some of it was, I guess, they have no backbones. And that doesn't seem to emanate only from the Black Caucus: It seems to emanate from Washington, D.C., period. And that is, with the Congress as well as with the Senate.

Having said that, I would like for you to respond to the fact that: Do you feel that Bush has, the Congress, as well as the Senate,—kind of, I wouldn't say baffled—but afraid to speak out, because he has said that anyone who challenges him is unpatriotic?

My second question is in reference to Ashcroft, the Attorney General: Do you feel that he's trampling over the Constitution? I'm a little discombobulated, as to whether he knows his role as Attorney General, or does he still feel that he's in the Senate making laws? And I say that, in reference to a statement that came out in a paper, where he spoke about state and Federal prosecutors as well as judges, not giving longer sentences and being more aggressive in their prosecution. Please respond to those questions.

LaRouche: It's fear in part. It came from the Democratic Party, more than the Bush Administration. I mean, the Democratic Party, what they did in thuggery, the Democratic Party did to the Democratic Party. It didn't require Bush. Now, if you want to point at who did it, well, take Al Gore and Lieberman. They're two of the people who typify the forces that did it. I don't know how Joe Lieberman got to be a Democrat. I understand he was elected largely by William Buckley and some right-wing Cubans at the tip of Florida. This does not, in my view, qualify him as a Democrat. And there's a lot of questions on that issue. Gore—I know Gore. I know Gore.

What you have in the Democratic Party, among the so-called right-wing Democrats, you have something just as bad as you can find on the other side of the aisle among the Republicans. So, this was not Republican pressure, on Democrats to be bad. This was Democratic right-wing pressure, to be bad. And people like Lieberman and Gore were, to my knowledge, at the center of this operation, insofar as it was anything involving my name. They have been the problem. There are other people, like Don Fowler from South Carolina. We know him, he's a racist from down there. He's part of it. He should have gone with Nixon years ago. I don't know what happened, some misunderstanding.

Anyway, on Ashcroft. You can't make any apologies for Ashcroft. He's pure bad—the "Crisco Kid." This fellow, look, he was trained at the University of Chicago. He was trained under the influence of Leo Strauss and company, that crowd. He represents the tradition of Nazi law. His thinking is in the tradition of Nazi law. So therefore, this man has no business being in any public seat, any public office. We don't need Nazis in the United States!

On this other thing on the state and other prosecutors, the guidelines I referred to in my remarks today, the first and second set of guidelines, you had a dictatorial procedure by the right-wing on the Supreme Court, supporting from the Justice Department, a guidelines policy which actually became a headhunters' policy. It became a scorecard for prosecutors. How many years of imprisonment can you get, how many dollars of value can you confiscate, or take in some way or the other? And that would be the score, which measures your performance as a prosecutor, especially in the Federal system, spilling over into the state system. So, they set up a score-card system, and took sentencing out of the hands of the judges, corrupted the courts, and so forth, so we have a system of justice which, as I've described it, is in its effect more criminal than the criminals. It's doing more damage.

Now, Ashcroft represents that. We had Newt Gangrene, and you have the "Exterminator" Tom DeLay. That's his profession, as exterminator. He used to be a pleasure-seeking exterminator. Now he's trying to exterminate the Palestinians. You have the same thing with Ashcroft. You have people who, if our voters had their rights senses and their parties had their right senses, these fellows would never appear in politics. You know them. You wouldn't want them as neighbors, let alone running our government.

And the problem here is, well, let's come back to what my role is. I do things that other people don't have the guts to do. And if you don't have people who do as I do, if you don't have people in leading positions who have the guts to do what other people in politics don't have the guts to do, then everybody runs scared. And we have a bunch of frightened people in politics—most of you who know anything about politics know why, And we have very few of us who have the guts to stand up.

There's this principle called the "Sublime" in Classical art. Take the case of the mountaintop speech of Martin Luther King. Once Martin was taken from us, what happened to the civil rights movement? It disintegrated at the top, even people who had been top leaders stopped being top leaders and began running off into their own projects. Because a Martin Luther King, who had the guts to be a leader, who had a sense of the Sublime, who said, like Jeanne d'Arc, that rather than betray this cause, I will face death, even horrible death, rather than fail this cause. In politics, you have very few people with a sense of the Sublime. It's a part of the rottenness of our culture.

You see, people say, you earn pleasure, you earn rewards, you earn money, you earn honors. You work for those. That is not morality! Morality is doing something because you know you should do it, and because you derive pleasure, motivation, and satisfaction from doing what you know you should do. You don't do it for a reward! You do it because it must be done! It's called mission orientation, it's called that in German military practice, or it used to be: mission orientation. You do what must be done, because you know it must be done, and you're there, therefore you better do it.

Most of our politicians do not have the moral courage to do that. Some of them call themselves religious. What does that mean? They say, "I go by God." Well, if you're working with God, then why don't you show a little more courage?

Freeman: As I said when we started, that there were satellite meetings going on in various places. Some of them have just sent greetings that I thought we should acknowledge. In Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico, Alberto Vizcarra and Leonardo Espicia have sent in a message saying, "After a few minutes delay, we were finally able to link up with you. We have a meeting here at the University of Sonora, with over 35 students, and we just wanted to tell you that we are online. We send our greetings to you from here."

We have also a message from Elodie Viennot in France, saying that there are 30 students and others gathered in Rennes, and they are submitting some questions. We have a number of questions that I will try to ask from the satellite meetings in Detroit and also in Los Angeles. I want to welcome all of you to this ongoing discussion. One of the questions submitted comes from Isabel Moreno, who is a Salvadoran resident of Washington, D.C., and it echoes some other questions: "Mr. LaRouche, if you are elected President, how will you solve the problem of immigrants in the United States, whose rights have been restricted, and in many cases, almost exterminated? We consider this to be an abuse of human dignity and human rights, and we would like your comments on this."

LaRouche: The basic answer, I gave in a pamphlet which was published in California, and around the United States, on the question of the relationship of Mexico to the United States. Now, in California and the Southwest, the largest single group of Hispanic Americans is from Mexico. They're citizens, or have been for some generations, even; or they are legal immigrants; or illegal immigrants from a second or third generation now, working inside the United States. They work here, partly because of choice, that they like to be here in the United States, and because of a lack of choice, that they can't get a job any place else. And therefore, in California, for example, whole states in Mexico are largely supported, the majority, by remittances from Mexicans working in California, back to their families.

This is partly a result of a destruction of the economy of Mexico since 1982, by policies introduced then. The same situation becomes a little bit more horrifying, when you go into Central America, where the states have less power, in a sense, than they do in Mexico. And as you see, Ecuador is practically a failed state; it's not functioning; it's been destroyed. Bolivia is now being destroyed. Colombia is more than two-thirds destroyed. Venezuela is in the process of being destroyed. Argentina has been wrecked—remember, Argentina had the fourth-highest standard of living in the world in 1945—look at it today. Brazil is still holding up, but threatened; and so forth.

So, we have a general problem throughout the Americas, which is consonant with what I wrote about the relationship between Mexico and the United States. There are two things, obviously—just to generalize the answer: one, is that we have to be concerned about increasing productive employment and development in the countries, which are suffering these problems. Secondly, we have to develop a consciousness, as well as a practice of law, in the United States, which recognizes the intrinsic rights of human beings, in the way we treat human beings.

For example, this whole questions of illegals from Mexico is a part of the problem. Illegals came into the United States from Mexico because people wanted, in large part, cheap labor—this is before the maquiladoras. And so you had people importing these; it's almost a slave system, packing somebody in a truck or rail car, and slipping it across the border. And often letting them die, rather than get the purveyors caught. Absolutely inhuman conditions! We have the drug trafficking across the border, which is largely tied to this kind of problem from the Americas. And therefore, we have to take an attitude—from the United States—and I hate to say this over and over again, but if I'm President of the United States, this is going to change.

It will change for two reasons. It will change because I will act to change it; and I will get support from institutions in the United States to do that. It will change because my saying so will give some of these other countries the gumption to stand up and do the things on their own behalf, which enable us to provide cooperation with them, to solve these problems.

The worst problem you face—in places like Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, where genocide is rampant, or effective genocide going on in South and Central America, through economic and other means—is that the people who are the victims become engaged in their own self-destruction, out of pessimism.

We must once again become what we were at our founding as a republic. We must be a "temple of liberty, and a beacon of hope" to other nations of the world. If the President of the United States says, "In the Presidency of the United States, you have a friend who cares about you. Let us find out how to work together to solve some of these problems"; then the factor of optimism engendered in the people of these countries will be a major contributing factor to our ability to help them do something for themselves, or help them on our own part.

Giving a Future to Youth

Freeman: Lyn, this is a question from a young man by the name of Don Gonzales, who is a political science student at the University of the District of Columbia, and who has formed an organization called "Mental Warfare," which is "designed to enhance community awareness and encourage youth organizers to achieve financial independence in the Latin and Black communities." His question is: "After factors such as slavery, poor education, and poverty, the Latin and black community finds itself in "social mud," preventing significant progress on the American social ladder. We went from being enslaved to, in an abstract sense, enslaving ourselves, through poisoning ourselves by becoming minority drug dealers and criminals; rejecting the American System, etc. What we need, though, is more than a change in politics. We need self-empowerment. How would you help young people of color, who are still affected by the issues that I mentioned above, operate and turn their communities around, and gain political clout, and become fully respected citizens of this nation?"

LaRouche: Well, it's very simple. I'm already doing it. We just have to get the word spread out a little more, and the activity spread a little more.

What I did some years ago, was to form the beginnings of a youth movement in the United States. What you described is the kind of problem which could be dealt with by a youth movement; not on a parochial basis, but on the basis of everybody the same. What we have in the Youth Movement as it is, we have people from every kind of condition and background you could imagine. They're all in it. And they're in it together. What you have to do is break down the barriers; because the very fact that you accept the idea that "we are an underclass," is an impediment to your rising above it. You have to think of yourself, not as a victim of the past; you have to think of yourself as a person.

You're living now! You can not carry the burdens and sufferings of the past inside you, all the way through life. You've got to think about developing yourself now as a person. And think about the fact that your achievement as a person, does honor to your ancestors. You give meaning to their life. They're dead. But shall they be buried as if they were nothing? Or shall you be something, coming out of them, which makes their having lived, meaningful?

Therefore, my view is, we have a youth movement which is functioning. It's a pilot movement; but it's shown some claws and teeth, in California and elsewhere. We can do the job. The program on which we're embarked will work; it must be further developed and enhanced. But my remedy is this. We must take youth in the United States—especially those in the university age group, 18-25; where they feel like adults, they don't feel like adolescents any more, and sometimes that frightens them; but they feel like adults, that is, they have an adult sense of identity, an adult sense of the desire and capacity to act; but they also feel, extremely, that they have much to learn, much development to do; that's a wonderful combination.

We have an older generation of Americans, called Baby Boomers, who have retreated into pleasure society, into a consumer society, into a no-future pattern.

So therefore, what you have to do as young people, is, you have to think about what you are going to do for society, not what's going to be done for you. What you have to do is locate your identity—the first thing you're going to do, by doing a good job as a youth movement; and I think there should be a sort of a national youth movement coming out with all kinds of people being involved in this process—what you should be doing is awakening the semi-dead. Your parents' generation; who are now trying to find a new sex, or some other form of recreation, to replace the ones they've used up. To give them back their souls, in the sense that you are their future. That your children—their grandchildren—are their future. They're going to die; we're all going to die. Our future is expressed in our children and grandchildren, and humanity at large.

What youth can do, is to try to reawaken, in a soul-dead generation called Baby Boomers, to reawaken in them a sense of the future; a sense of what they can contribute now, to helping to build a future, even by voting the right way, or some foolish thing like that!

And therefore, if you have a sense that you are on a mission in life, to give rebirth to this nation; to give rebirth to humanity; and you are together; the fact that you have many differences in background is a plus, not a minus. The great strength of the United States lies in the fact that we were created as, and still are a melting-pot society. We are not a collection; we are not a zoo of different races on exhibit, each trying to fight for a better condition in our cage! Let's not build cages around ourselves!

Let us realize we're all human; we're all the same; we all have the same potential, biologically and otherwise.

Freeman: One of the things that has caught the attention of many people in the United States, is the role that youth are playing in Mr. LaRouche's Presidential campaign. I think that probably one of the most notable things about the campaign that Mr. LaRouche ran in California, to defeat the Recall, was that it was a movement that was staffed, almost entirely, by young volunteers from the state of California. It's something that has inspired people; it has given many people in the United States renewed hope; and I think that above all else, it really does signify that this Presidential candidate, and this campaign, belong to the future.

In line with that: At the last webcast, we started something that I think should become a general procedure in the course of these events. Rather than having me entertain questions from the Youth Movement, this movement—as it operates nationally, has its own leadership, and gives itself direction—and I think it's more appropriate that they conduct this portion of the webcast.

I'm going to ask Lyn one more question, that was submitted by Sen. Joseph Neal of Nevada. While I'm asking and Lyn is answering that question, I'm going to ask LaRouche Youth Movement leaders Alex Getachew and David Nance to come up here, because I want them to conduct the next part of the discussion. Senator Neal's question is: "Many states, including the national government itself, are supporting privatization of government services. What's your view of this issue?"

LaRouche: No privatization. Privatization is a modern term for what used to be called castration. Taking away that which is essential!

It's crazy. Fifty percent of any sane government's operations in the economy, are by government. Think about what the physical components of economy are. A privatized economy, as I said, is a castrated economy—and you're living in one now, that's why we're bankrupt.

Think of what is involved in an economy, that is, in total domain, it can not be privatized effectively.

Mass transportation: You're servicing an entire area of a nation. To what company does that belong? It's a nation. Generation and distribution of power. What, do you have a business decide who gets power and who doesn't? No: in order to have productivity, you must have a certain availability of power, of a certain quality and reliability, for an entire area. Because the ability of a firm to be productive depends upon the public infrastructure in which it lives, which includes power. Do you have water management in one neighborhood? Or is water management a responsibility of the nation, or of the state? Do you have a private city? Or is the city a composite of many private interests, which requires public services, which depend upon government?

So, therefore, when you add these things up—education, government, health care, and so forth; those things which have to be public by their nature—this amounts to about half of the total economy. So therefore, half of a national economy can not be private. It can be privatized only in such forms as were used in the past: for example, public utilities.

The Federal government and the states agree that certain kinds of utilities can be created by the states. So the state creates, say, a power utility. Or a group of states creates a power utility as a joint operation. That power utility is to provide the necessary power for that region. The government undertakes the launching of it; then brings in private investors—savers, essentially—who invest as capital in this public utility. Now the community has a public utility; the state, or group of states regulates the public utility, to regulate it functioning, is responsible for it. The people who invest in this kind of thing are usually people who don't want to lose their money, they want a secure investment. And since the government is intervening to supervise it, they feel protected. And they used to be protected; it used to be a very advantageous way to have things. Roosevelt improved this greatly.

So, in this area of large-scale transformation of the area of the United States as a whole, these must be the functions of government. And, if you try to privatize them, see what you get. Look what you got with the privatization of energy. Look at what happened with Enron. Look at what happened with our energy system as a result of privatization. Look at what happened to our railroads as a result of a similar process. Look at the whole process: It's been one catastrophic failure after the other.

And also, in looking at the present reality of the situation: We have to revive the U.S. economy. The one thing that government can do most effectively, is to use the public credit of the Federal government to generate large-scale infrastructure projects which are needed. And these are big items. We're talking about a power plant: you're talking about a considerable amount of investment. You're talking about a water project; about things of tens and twenties, and thirties of billion of dollars in an area. These things, as projects, involve subcontracting by private agencies. They involve the employment of people in each community they're done in. These things, therefore, create a market, a private market, which can then flourish. And the problem before government now, is that we have to increase the productive employment, largely through capital improvements in the U.S. economy, spectacularly—in order to work our way out of the bankruptcy we're in right now.

And we can only do that through public investment, as distinct from private. Yes, private investment is important. Government must mobilize credit to assist private investment through local banking. But, over half the job must be done by the Federal and state governments. And the states can't do it without backing of the Federal government.

How Do You Keep Your Morality?

Freeman: Okay, I'll come back at the very end, but at this point, I'd like to turn the podium over to Alex Getachew and David Nance, who are two leaders of the LaRouche Youth Movement.

Alex Getachew: So at this point, I would ask members of the youth movement, and other youth, who have questions, who haven't yet submitted their questions in writing, to line up and someone will take down your name, and you'll be called. We're going to alternate back and forth between questions submitted in writing, and questions that will asked live.

So, I'll at this moment read a question asked by Nicole from Philadelphia: "You were talking about what you saw through your life, seeing Americans lose their morale, and the society turning to a consumer one. Well, what gave you the ability to keep your morals, and your mind? If everyone around you was turning into cowards and consumers, then how did you turn into one of the most straightforward, influential, cognitive people in the world?"

LaRouche: I was stubborn. I've told this story many times, you know. My poor parents are dead, so they needn't feel hurt about what I'm about to say. But I found out early in life, that my parents lied most of the time.

Now, the way this lying occurred was not unique to those times. It was based on being popular. So, what would happen is, you'd have company in. And I observed this from an early age. And my parents would lie to the company, and the company would lie to them. And as the company would leave, everyone would say, "We must do this soon again." Once they had left, my parents would begin gossiping about the company. And in similar ways, I discovered that among parents, other adults, peers of my own age, and so forth, they were lying most of the time.

So, teachers lied. Everybody lied. It was obvious. So, I either had to go along with the lying, or get into trouble. And I got into trouble. And I got into a lot of trouble. Not serious at that point, but trouble. I became very unpopular, called all kinds of names. I stuck to my guns.

And I found around me, friends who I otherwise liked, had this weakness. That, when faced with the pressure of what they considered popular opinion, they would remind you—you know, in those days I knew something about the Bible, you know. As a matter of fact, I was heavily exposed to it, at that time. And I thought about Peter, and the cock crowing thrice. And I used to think of my friends Petering out.

Getachew: Please tell people who are you, and speak up.

Q: Hello, my name is Steven Jeffrey. I'm from the Philadelphia office. Hello, Mr. LaRouche.

You've described a long lineage of this Synarchist movement, and one aspect I have trouble grasping, is: How you can prove the actual intent of these people, to destroy what people are, what we represent, and what we can do to progress? I've got a little bit more to that.

Or, how you can prove that they've been deployed specifically against certain individuals? I mean, I guess it becomes clear. But, on the side of that, for my own good, you've covered a lot of ground today, and in my general work, I have trouble retaining what I study. I find that when I'm doing research for an actual—like, if I'm going to teach, you know, or if I'm going to do research to have a discussion with somebody, I find that I retain, it gives form to the stuff that I'm studying. So, what kind of mission can you, I mean, how do you direct yourself in a mission that will pass through from one event to the next?

LaRouche: This goes back to a very interesting problem, the problem of why did I insist on Gauss's 1799 paper on the Fundamental Theorem of Algebra, in which he attacked Euler and Lagrange, among others, as incompetents.

And remember that Euler and Lagrange are generally accepted, by reference, as a standard for mathematics and scientific instruction, in most of the world today. And they were incompetent.

Now, what's the issue of incompetence here? There are two sides to it.

The first side is the formal side, which you can get actually from going through the exercises, replicating the exercises, which Gauss used, and others, to understand the problem. But the other thing is the question of emotion.

You see, the problem in mathematics instruction, is, people say, "Let's keep emotion out of this. Let's go to the blackboard and prove, deductively, what is true, and what is not true." Now, after you've gone through the deductive proof, do you believe it? It's been proven apparently.

You say, "Yes, I know the proof. Wait a minute! I know the proof, I remember the proof, I remember the proof." But, do you believe it?

For example, let's take the classic case, the case of Kepler's discovery of gravitation. Now, Kepler's observation, of course, was that the Mars orbit was essentially elliptical in form. Now, the characteristic of an ellipse, is that it is not a regular action, subject to simple deduction, and there'd been a lot of work done on elliptic functions. An ellipse is a very simple thing. You make a cone, and you have circles, and you have parabolas, hyperbolas, ellipses. And these are all cross-sections of a cross-cut of the cone, or the surface of the cone.

What is so mysterious, then, about why can't you explain an ellipse, the way you would explain a circle? You can't. Why not? Because the ellipse is actually changing its trajectory in most fine, instantaneous moment. It's changing direction, and in the case of the planetary orbits, also speed. Constantly changing.

So, therefore, you can not use a simple deductive approach. You are now forced into the complex domain, to understand how this thing works.

Now, what does Kepler say about this? The other fellow tries to explain by going to the Mathematica, and making a construction, or something like that, to say, "Look, I can construct this formula to make it work, make it fit, make it curve-fit." But it's bunk, it's garbage!

What's the key thing? Kepler said, no. This shows that there is some intention that we don't see, which is not accessible to the senses directly, which is causing this behavior. That became known as gravitation. And then you discovered other things from it.

So, this intention indicates motivation. The discussion in the Gaussian case, the study of can you double a line, within the definition of a line— No, you can't do it. How do you double a square, by construction? How do you double a cube, by construction? This poses questions of powers. It's like the Kepler case of discovery of gravitation—it gets you into a new dimension of thinking. What is the intention? What is the motive, which creates these new forms, or these anomalous forms?

The same thing is true in drama, in Shakespeare. Can you grasp it?

Let's take the case of Jeanne d'Arc. I used that the other day—it's an excellent case: The concept of the Sublime.

Jeanne d'Arc embarked upon a mission for civilization, to end the condition in which there were no nations, by going to this king, the Dauphin, who was qualified as a semi-king, and saying to the Dauphin of France, "I want you to make France a nation." He said, "What do you want from me?" She said, "I don't want anything from you. God wants you to do it, to make France a nation. To free France from occupying powers, to make France a nation."

This is real life, as portrayed by Schiller in the drama, actually. There's one slight change for dramatic purposes, in the conclusion of Jeanne d'Arc, but it's merely a technicality from this standpoint.

Jeanne d'Arc, at some point in this trial, this Inquisitional trial, was told that if she would capitulate, that she could escape death. And she, knowing that the punishment would be being burned alive in the public square, said, "No, I can't. I can't."

And she accepted death, or faced death, willfully, for the sake of mankind.

Now, that is intention. That is passion.

What we have is deductive learning, the way we behave. We feel if we can make a cheap explanation, a nice insincere, but persuasive explanation of something, we can get off the hook—and that's where the problem lies. Knowledge is not a matter of deductive proof. Knowledge is a matter of knowing that it's true, which is why experimental method in physics is so important. You have to know that it's true. You have to be able to prove that it's true. You have to demonstrate that it's true. As a physical thing, not simply as an idea, on a blackboard, but as a physical reality.

Can you apply this to reality, to make a change? Does it work? Does it always work? And these kinds of questions.

The issue here is the question of passion. And what you realize then, in the way culture has been developed, under the influence of what's called reductionism categorically, empiricism, existentialism, and so forth, has largely destroyed and numbed people emotionally. That's why people have such a problem with sex. They have a big problem with that, because they're looking for pleasure. To them, emotion is pleasure, or fear, or hatred. The idea of the emotion which defines you as a human being, as having a passion to do good, and the joy in the exercise of that passion being good, and that joy being a form of knowledge, that's what's lacking. And that's what a rotten culture has done to us—it's taken away a naturally human quality, the quality of love of mankind. Not just liking people, but love of mankind. Being willing to do something, to sacrifice your life, for mankind. And doing it, in a sense, willingly, not that you choose to die, but you'll risk that, because you care for mankind.

And we've taken away the passion of life. And we've made people stupid, and they think they're learned because they can do monkey-tricks, including with mathematics. And the problem here is, in this inner sense of conviction, is, this is the problem. This is why I raised the question with the youth movement, of the Gauss question. It was to take a problem, which took us from the blackboard, so to speak, from the deductive proof on the blackboard, and didn't let us stop there. Forced us to go into other areas, to try to discover that the problem we had, is lack of passion, lack of intention. And to realize that intention means, what Kepler meant by God's intention, in moving the Solar System.

That's what intention means. It means it moves things. It changes things. It does good, and you like yourself because you're doing good. And that's conviction, that's certainty.

What Is Freedom?

Getachew: This question was submitted by Jane from L.A. She says, "Hi, Lyn. A simple question that may involve a complex answer. What is freedom?"

LaRouche: Well, freedom is the right to be human. That's essentially what it means.

Take it in military policy. Take the military policies of poor Cheney and company, and all these jerks who believe he's a military genius. These guys are going by a set of assumptions. They say, "We know about this weapon. We know about this weapon. We know what this can do, we know what that can do. Therefore, we're going to put it together algebraically, and we're going to scare the world into submitting to our world government, our world empire."

Now, what happens along, as happened to Truman, when he tried to bluff the Chinese and the Soviets, with the threat of preventive nuclear war. The Soviets and the Chinese decided to fight. Despite nuclear weapons! And so the Korean War started. In the meantime, the Soviets developed a thermonuclear weapon, which sort of called off the preventive nuclear war thing, for the time being.

We're now in a similar situation. These idiots go into Iraq, "We can win! We can win!" No. They haven't won. They haven't won in Afghanistan. And they're not about to. The conditions are getting worse than ever before. Iraq will explode and spread. If they bomb Syria, it will spread further. If they keep killing Palestinians, it will spread further.

These idiots do not understand the principle of freedom. That is, when you press the human species, you press humanity, nations, expecting they have to submit because of your rules, you find that humanity discovers a solution. It's just like a problem in medicine. The physician comes up with a disease, for which there's no known cure. Does he say the case is hopeless? No. He struggles.

Freedom—to discover something that was not previously known, to solve a problem. Freedom, to react. We're not animals. We can not be trained to bark like seals! Some do, successfully, but they usually end up as Democratic National Committee members. But anyway, freedom is essentially, the ability of the human mind to create a different vision of reality, than you've been taught up to that point. Freedom is the sense of the ability to do that. That is, the quality of freedom, is the sense. It's a quality you may develop in childhood, by having many experiences of discovery, and you realize that you are not a fixed thing. You're not a wind-up toy. You're a self-generating person, and therefore you have confidence in that.

And when pressed to the wall, sooner or later, if you're really human, you're going to call on that impulse within you, to discover something that no man, perhaps, ever knew before, or at least that you never knew before. And you're going to respond in a way, as Cheney and company have discovered in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and elsewhere, and discovered in the United States—because I think, I think he's about to go; I'm not sure, but I see the signs, the quaking and quivering, suggest something is about to change. So, that's freedom.

Freedom is in the difference between a beast and a human being. Animals, you know, they go from generation to generation. They do the same thing. The only hope for an animal, is to be adopted as a pet by a human being, by a loving human being. No. Because what does an animal do? Helga can give you lectures on this, I won't bother giving you her whole lecture, it's her lecture. Little dog looks at you. Little dog says, "Mummy, mummy." And the little dog responds to the adult human being, and finds her meaning in participating in that human being. And that's somehow why we like pets. Because they get this sense, if they're treated well, of participating in us. And they partake of something human, because they participate in us.

But a little dog, or a cat, without a human being to adopt it, could never develop those qualities, except by participating in us. We, human beings, have that virtue. And the problem is, we sometimes forget, or don't know that we have it.

Getachew: We're going to take the next question from the floor here.

Q: Good afternoon sir. I think it's more than evident to see, especially with the Bush-Cheney reign that a lot of the problems we face domestically have been virtually put on hold. The focus seems to be on defense and, national security, which, as far as I'm concerned is a guise for imperialistic barbarianism, in many respects, to be brash. But, one of the most potent dilemmas that we face today is the energy crisis. It's the fossil fuel depletion crisis. And I was hoping you would address what you and your administration would do to solve these crises and the steps you would take to repair the damages.

LaRouche: Well, first of all the fact is we're going to have to get into nuclear energy, soon, in a big way. This is happening. Of course France is a success. The strength of the French economy depends largely upon nuclear energy, which has now come, temporarily, to a halt in terms of development of that.

But the main problem we have now, at the moment, is deregulation. It goes back to the, shall we call it, the Brzezinski Administration, because I don't think Carter really was in control of his own administration. So, we went through deregulation and we destroyed a system that had worked. Had we continued that system it would have continued to work. What we have now is a destruction of— just look at the history of, you can look it up yourself, the history of construction of power plants in the United States and distribution networks. And you look at that history, and you see that there is absolutely a decline, per capita and per square kilometer, in the reliability of power generation and distribution.

So, what we're going to have to do is this. Immediately as of January, no later, the third week in January 2005, we are going to launch a major program, Federal, state program, of regulated, re-regulated investment in large-scale power generation and distribution networks. So, therefore, for the immediate future, in the neighborhood of four or five years thereafter, we will have no real new problem in energy supplies and in most of production. As we get down the line, we will.

The problem will be that this whole conception of energy is a fallacious conception introduced in the Nineteenth Century—actually, it was introduced by Aristotle. The proper conception is power. Power means going to new physical principles which give you a higher order of magnitude of power to deal with things. We need that.

For example, with nuclear power, that is with a nuclear, say, a high-temperature gas-cooled reactor in the 130- to 200-megawatt range, the unit model, the pebble reactor model, which is the safest we have now. They can be installed fairly quickly because they're small. Therefore the concrete curing is less. With these kinds of high-temperature, gas-cooled reactors we can generate hydrogen fuels from water in the local area. We do not need to haul in large amounts of petroleum into any area to supply the energy. We will power our vehicles with hydrogen-based fuels with things like fuel cells and special other kinds of special processes. So, therefore, you will eliminate most of the environmental problems of combustion. We can supply centralized systems for home heating and other types of uses in the same way with the same kinds of plants. We will have to do something like that. And we'll move in that direction.

So, the future is such that we have new resources, which are coming on line. Eventually we're going to have to master the matter/anti-matter reaction which is about three orders of magnitude greater than anything we do in the thermonuclear area. Eventually, to go into space, we'll have to do that. So there is no limit to where we have to go, but even with what we have now, with contemporary standards of practice, for the next four to eight years, with these technologies that we now have already, we can put them to work on a large scale and thus we can bring the present degree of problem under control.

Urban Development

Nance: We have a written question, from Zach who works out of the D.C. office of the youth movement. "What about the housing crisis?"

LaRouche: We've got all kinds of housing crises. You've got these funny shacks that don't burn, they're out there, priced at anywhere from, what is it, $400,000 to a million-dollar mortgage apiece out there, all over the landscape around here. Part of the so-called mortgage bubble, or otherwise known as the mortgage-based securities bubble, so forth. This thing is about to pop. And finally, you're going to have very suddenly a lot of real estate coming on the market, essentially with no one to buy, to replace the incumbents who are being foreclosed upon. Because the collapse of jobs, the chain reaction in collapse in employment and collapse of incomes, and the collapse of— you see when you get the pressure of a collapse in the mortgage-based securities market, you get a downward pressure, deflationary pressure, on the Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac system. This then goes back to the banks. This goes back, now, to a collapse in the market, the real estate market for housing. This results in a negative flow. People are cashing-out on their, in a sense, on their appreciation of the nominal value of their property; they were taking the fact that the property had increased in nominal value according to real estate dealers. The banks will then issue credit to the mortgagees who would come in and get a cash-out loan to buy groceries with, with this money.

And now, what happens when that's reversed? Now, suddenly they are obliged to maintain, to cover the mortgage, they're required now to take extraordinary steps and they will be forced out. So we have a housing crisis in these areas, such as California, and such as Silicon Valley, a big crisis out there. We'll have a big crisis around Washington, D.C., in these housing areas, where you see these shacks. What they are is a sort of— you take a piece of material, you shrink-wrap it and you put some plastic coating on the outsides, a couple of faucets on the inside, and call it a house, and sell it for $400,000, one next to the other. And this thing is coming down.

So, we have actually more than a housing crisis. What we have is a problem of urban development and re-zoning. The way we are using land is crazy. Look at the other side of this. People can't live on one job any more for a family. That's been gone for a long time. Now, two jobs aren't quite the same. And the two-plus jobs involve a lot of commuting. And even short distances involve a lot of commuting because the traffic jams are such, particularly the travel hours. So we have people parked on the highway while commuting, which means that the family life has gone to hell. It means the amount of time spent by the family in getting to and from work and other essential functions is added to the hours spent in actual working, which leaves less and less time for life. It cripples social life. It cripples family life. It has devastating effects on the children, which we see in the spread of the drug problem, as compounded by teachers who shove dangerous drugs, such as Ritalin and Prozac, on students. And I won't even ask you what your knowledge is of the drug problem and the drug usage problem among people in the age group of our youth movement. We know all about it, in a sense, collectively.

So, the problem is a zoning problem, an urban development problem. We used to have places of work close to places where people lived. We used to have the shopping center.

I was in a place called Chaux de Fond, recently, in Switzerland. It's up north of the lakes there, near Neuchatel. And I went down a main street. And I thought I had gone back in time about three to four generations. It was a perfectly normal main street, which I think some of you have never seen. Some of you younger people have never seen a main street in the United States: Stores which were well maintained, a street which was clean, and you could walk up and down that street and buy about everything you wanted. No mall. No mugging. So, what we've done, if you look at what we did over the postwar period, we have destroyed the urban, rural, suburban structure that the United States had developed, with all the imperfections of that structure, in an earlier period. We have also destroyed much of life.

So, we don't have just a housing problem, we have an urbanization problem, urban organization problem. What you see out on the landscape, as you go across the border to the south, into Northern Virginia, and other areas in Maryland, is mass insanity, which I saw developing in the immediate postwar period, and in the 1950's in particular, when this thing started. It's wild, it's nuts. We didn't organize urban organization and urban housing any more around the conception of individual family life! Originally we had, the idea was a community. You had workplaces available in the community. You could often walk to these workplaces or take a short trip by public transportation to these workplaces. You would come home, possibly at noontime, sometimes, for lunch at noontime. You would certainly come home in the evening. The evening was usually a family time. Breakfast period was a family period. Evening was a family period. You would have weekends. You would have families living in neighborhoods. You had the grandparents living here, the parents living here, and so forth. They were with each other. If you raised children, you had functioning neighborhoods in which the neighbors cared for the children of the other neighbors. It was a general, sort of, "help each other" movement. That's all been destroyed, or to a large degree destroyed.

What we need to do is to put the country back together again. We need an urban development program, which takes this question of adequate housing, and puts the housing question into the box of urban planning and urban development once again. And it also means mass transit. We've got to get the population off the highways. We've got to get them wherever possible into efficient mass transit. We've got to build mass transit systems of that type, where people can walk out, walk to a mass transit connection, and get to work or get to their destination in most cases, where they have to do it commuting regularly, without all this nonsense of jamming up the highways. It's insane. When you come down the Washington-Dulles highway, you see all these ghost buildings along the way where the IT collapse is going out, for sale or rent. We've got to get past that.

Nance: The next question will be from Derek Jones. Can you step up?

Q: Good evening, Mr. LaRouche. First of all I'd just like to say, that I think that it's a detriment to the Democratic Party that you weren't able to articulate on as many issues that you have been successfully tonight and in the past and previous. I really think so, based on some of the nine Presidential candidates, based on that debate that I saw on TV not too long ago, I think we really missed you there. [Applause] Seriously. We really missed you there.

Also, you know, you have all these strategies and long-term capital investments in infrastructure, etc., and I, as a former Navy guy, you know, it is ingrained in us that nuclear weapons are a deterrent, and in all likelihood it will probably be around for a long time. In the minds of many Americans like myself, not quite as much as me, because I am familiar with the nuclear program in the Armed Forces and how successful it has been, especially in the submarine Navy. But most Americans don't think that. I think most Americans think that nuclear energy as a whole is unsafe. You know, what is your strategy in part of your infrastructure plan to create safety, in the minds of Americans, that nuclear energy is safe? And that, the threat of any type of terrorism, inside or outside, what have you, is a possibility?

LaRouche: Well, death from disease is not safe. Death from want is not safe. Death from fire is not safe. Are you going to ban fire? All these things can kill you. Natural conditions can kill you. The question is that man's responsibility is to control his environment, including the environment he creates. Man must be responsible for the planet, in particular. Man must control the conditions on the planet, for the sake of the planet.

An example of this thing—I've discussed this before, but here's a good example of what the real problem is. You have 1.3 billion, admitted, people in China today. You have over a billion people in India. Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Southeast Asia are populous regions. How are we going to take care of these areas, where there are zooming requirements for mineral resources in the coming decades? China's going to grow. China's development which is now in progress will increase the requirement for minerals. Where are we going to supply these minerals? Well, they go up to the North, up to Central Asia and Northern Asia, Siberia, Arctic regions. There are a lot of minerals up there. What's the problem? Can't get at them. No development. Not sufficient development to find them. It's not easy to function in an Arctic, tundra region to get the minerals under the area, unless you have development there.

But that's not the limit of the problem. My expert friends indicate that in some of the resources which the planet has, the mineral resources, we're using them up faster than they are accessible to us. Now, most of our mineral resources are produced by life. That is, the way we find minerals, generally, is the result of what living processes have deposited as their dead bodies. Iron, coal, so forth, are all the dead bodies of living processes, the skeletons, so to speak. And the way you find some of these things is being clever and outwitting the living processes to find where they are. So, this is not a limit on our minerals, it's a limit on accessible minerals. The problem is in some categories, already the world is beginning to use up certain available mineral resources more rapidly than they can be replenished.

Now, what's our problem? Our problem is to develop the higher technologies which include—beyond simply fusion technologies, which can deal with some of these problems of generating new isotopes—nano-technologies for dealing with transforming some materials into more useful materials. All these kinds of things.

So, therefore the problem here is essentially that of managing the planet. And the planet is wonderful for us, it is also dangerous for us. Did you ever hear of volcanoes, earthquakes, things like that? The planet is a very dangerous place. It is also a beneficial place. How do we manage the difference? We learn to manage the planet. How are we able to manage the planet? By developing new powers which enable us to bring increasing control over the planet. In that way we can ensure the future of humanity.

Now, this is going to be a race against time. We have a lot to do, and we are going too slow. So, the question is a race for time. The high-temperature gas-cooled reactor is a safe nuclear energy system. Properly maintained, it's safe. And it is easier to maintain safely than some other, older systems. It is smaller than the large-scale systems, but that makes it more modular. You can put them down in bunches. If one gets a little cranky, you shut it down until you fix it. You don't try to figure out how to run it on half-power. You just shut the thing down, until you get it fixed. It also is useful because of its high-temperature characteristics for new chemical processes that we can't have otherwise.

So, if people would understand the problem, and understand one other thing which is important here—where did the idea come that nuclear energy was bad? Where did it come from? It came from the Missile Crisis of 1962, the assassination of Kennedy, and the launching of the Indo-China War. Now, anybody who is honest about their memory, who is 50 to 60 years of age or older, knows exactly what happened. What happened is, the generation of college age of the middle to late 1960s became anti-technology, got all kinds of queer things, decided that it was better to drug your mind with LSD than to think, confused LSD with sex—thought it came from LSD or something—and things like that.

So, what we had is an anti-technology attitude, which was developed as a reaction against a society which had produced the Missile Crisis of 1962, followed by the Vietnam War, so that the young generation, entering university age at that time, was convinced that technology and technological progress were the enemies of humanity, and we had to go back to a more primitive form of life, a more ecological form of life. And this cult of ecology which grew up under sponsorship of various agencies, dirty agencies, of the intelligence variety, during the 1970s, this ecology cult became the basis for this anti-nuclear policy. Once you know that, you know the history of the particular form of insanity, which is called anti-nuclear attitudes, then you can be cured of it. If you know how you became insane, you can become sane again.

A Not-So-Quiet Revolution

Nance: Because of time restrictions, we are going to take one more question here from the floor.

Q: Good afternoon, Mr. LaRouche. My question deals with the education system. Personally, I believe that the reason that the youth of this nation are in the rut they're in is, because everything, employment-wise, requires a degree. And in my opinion, I think most of them don't require a pretty piece of paper for you to get a job. I'm an aspiring artist and I don't think I need to pay $300 to go to class for an hour to listen to something that I already know. So, I think I can just very easily just go out to an art store, buy the supplies that I need, buy books, it would cost me about $200, $250 less than to go and listen to someone blab for about two to three hours. So, my question would be, what do you think could be done to change this point of view in, I guess, the employers, so that they can look for someone, to see them as someone with a talent and not someone with a piece of paper with fancy writing and a signature?

LaRouche: That's good. It's fun. Now what can be done? What can I do? All right, if I'm President, it's easy. But it's easier when you think about how I can get to be President. See, the thing is not something that happens, it happens through a process. Now, how do I get to be President? Well, you know the answer to that. You saw it is California, how we almost stopped the Recall, on the edge. You, of your generation, will make the difference, because you don't want to put up with this stuff any more.

And on top of that—what will happen is, if you do as I have asked you to do, not as I have told you to do, but have asked you to do, 'cause you're going to have to do it yourself, I'll help you, but you're going to do it yourself: You're going to assert yourself as a younger generation of your age interval, and you're going to turn this society's conscience on the problem. Now, if you can do that, as a young generation, they have to listen to you. That's the way—it's a kind of not-so-quiet revolution, as you know, because, if you demonstrate that you have the power to change society and change the direction by your influence on various generations of this—I think your grandparents' generation will probably be a little more receptive than the parents' generation, I think that the parents generation is also accessible—if you can cause society to change itself, for the better, they're going to listen to you!

Freeman: One of the questioners earlier talked about the controversy that swirls around this movement. And, it is actually true that at various times people will argue that there has to be something else going on. One recent rumor was that the difficulty between Mr. LaRouche and the Democratic National Committee was really just a dog-and-pony show and that they were really working together and some big conspiracy. You get things like that all the time. Because, actually you're gathered here and I assume that you are supporters, I'll let you in on a secret. It's true. We do have secret weapons. Two of them happen to be here. One is Lyn's secret weapon and the other is the youth movement's secret weapon. And I would be really remiss if I didn't introduce them to this audience before we moved on. We have Lyn's secret weapon, who is his wife, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, who is the leader of our European organization. And we have the youth movement's secret weapon, who is also Lyn's mother-in-law, Amelia Boynton Robinson.

For those of you here and for those of you gathered at the satellite meetings and for those of you who are just listening on your own, your questions will be answered as best we can over the next couple of weeks If you just give us a little time we will get to them.

Obviously we have a lot of work to do in the period immediately ahead. Time is very short between now and the beginning of the primaries and ultimately the Democratic National Convention. We really do need your help. There are people here who will help you to get engaged in this Presidential campaign. I think that after today's event it should be very clear to you, that it is not only something that is an absolute necessity, but it also a unique opportunity that we have to actually restore and rebuild our nation. Otherwise, I want to thank Lyn for taking the time out from what has been an absolutely excruciating schedule to participate and to be with us today. I'd like to thank all of you for your efforts and we'll see you on the battle lines. Thank you very much.

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