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From Volume 3, Issue Number 42 of EIR Online, Published Oct. 19, 2004

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This Week You Need To Know

STRATEGY: MOTHS, MICE, AND MEN

by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. — October 13, 2004

The urgency of the following report is defined by the fact that I am relatively unique on this planet, currently, in my capacity to provide the following, crucially needed assessment of the most crucially determining features of present world situation. The essential nature of that evidence fully supporting my claims to relatively unique competence on this account, will be made sufficiently, if succinctly clear in the following, compact report.

I will only add the prefatory observation, that the writing of this advisory on current strategic issues is prompted by a report given to me on certain specific matters reported by a European associate earlier today.

To begin at the beginning, the most fundamental of the failures of strategic thinking among even the world's leading specialists today, is to be recognized as the result of overlooking what ought to be the most obvious of the distinctions separating the human mind from the genetically determined perception of the world among lower species such as moths and mice.

A solitary bee finds its way to fly to the targetted type of flower by reading the electromagnetic radiations of a specific type of molecule which has been caught in the relevant cavities of its body. It follows an optimal choice of search pattern not much unlike that used by a World War I or II spying aircraft or anti-submarine task-force, but along a course which is defined by increasing density of encounters with the "desired" type of molecule.

A mouse, or a cat, relies on sensory organs which have a different structure than those of human beings. Yet, all three types of cases—bee, mouse, or man, inhabiting the same vicinity—are each engaged in a successful mode of employment of sense-perception inhering in its species. The environment of each and all may be the same environment, but the reality which the creature's nervous system adduces from the same environment, differs in ways largely determined by the specific differences in the composition of their respective sensory systems. All are in the same universe; yet, each sees that universe in a different way: and, yet, mentally, none of their respective perceptions of that universe is the same in effect.

That illustrates a crucial point which must be taken into account to understand how and why even otherwise reliable and gifted strategic analysts will overlook the kinds of discoveries which this report is designed to introduce to the current practice of U.S. strategic assessments of the currently onrushing global situation.

Knowing vs. Perception

As I have often reported this, my own first inkling of the importance of the kind of fact I have just illustrated, came as a reaction against the doctrine with which I was confronted on the first day of my exposure to a secondary course in Plane Geometry. My mind refused to accept the notion of definitions, axioms, and postulates which were central to that notion of geometry, and were also more or less the same aprioristic assumptions, each central, and rejected by me, in every course in mathematics to which I was exposed in school, university, and general textbook instruction thereafter.

The idea that a universal principle could exist independently of the physical reality expressed as perceived forms, proved to be my correct rejection of what I encountered at first encounter with the teachings of secondary plane geometry, and in related matter thereafter. My commitments to a notion of a physical geometry, in opposition to a formal one, ultimately led me, with much help from Leibniz, to my original, 1948-53, discoveries in the science of physical economy.

Admittedly, the greater portion of what I have discovered on that account, has represented matters of rediscovery of what I was to learn from, chiefly, Leibniz, Gauss, and Riemann, as also Nicholas of Cusa and Kepler, and, through them, the Pythagoreans and Plato before them. However, within all that I have rediscovered in that way, there is a certain small core which is, to the best of my present knowledge, uniquely my own.

Within that portion of this body of acquired knowledge which is my own original work, the notable distinction of my work is chiefly in the field of an applied science of physical economy. Nonetheless, these discoveries have depended upon my reliance upon a unique quality of connection between principles of strictly Classical artistic composition and principles of physical science: my solution for what Britain's C.P. Snow famously presented as the "two cultures" paradox of modern higher education.

My point here, is that the principle of what Kant foolishly, and fanatically libels as "synthetic judgment" (i.e., hypothesis), or noesis, which is the process of generation of experimentally provable qualities of universal physical principles, is the same quality of individual's mental activity which is expressed by valid principles of Classical artistic composition in plastic and non-plastic art-forms (as absolutely opposed to Romantic, Modernist, Post-Modernist diversions). In the former, the noetic powers of the individual mind are applied to the individual's relationship to nature itself; in the latter, the same quality of individual cognitive powers is applied by the individual mind to the social processes of cooperation by means of which society is enabled to apply discovered physical principles effectively, as in the case of Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton's non-British, American System of political-economy.

The significance of this principle of physical economy which I have just broadly described, is that this defines the specific quality of essential superiority of man over ape. Were man an ape, as Friedrich Engels claimed himself to be, never more than several millions of the human species would have even existed at one time on this planet. Man repeatedly changes his species, in effect, first, by making discoveries of universal physical principle, and, second, by those methods, such as music, poetry, and drama, through which society develops those systems of cooperation which are essential to successful application of discovered physical principles through which man's potential relative population-density is increased.

Thus, man comes to recognize the difference between an object which he calls a "rock," and a similar, or identical object called an "ore." Only a human individual could make this quality of distinction.

Thus, the relatively most elementary considerations of the progress of society in determining the conditions of individual human life, show us that different species perceive the same environment in different ways, but, we know, as man, that that environment of each and all of them is the same environment. Science shows us that man's sense-perceptions do not supply us a direct representation of the real universe we are experiencing. As the Apostle Paul's 1 Corinthians 13 echoes Plato on this point, we perceive as in a mirror, darkly. The effect of universal physical principles is undeniable to sane men and women, but those principles themselves are mental objects, not sensory objects, objects existing outside the powers of mere sense-perception.

The foregoing, these discovered principles, improve our minds, qualitatively, such that we perceive reality differently than minds of less developed cultures. Animals have specifically determined perceptual capacities. Mankind is able to transform its perception of the universe presented to its relevant biological powers.

Thus, the followers of Cusa, Kepler, and Leibniz, such as Gauss and Riemann, defined mathematical physics in terms of what was called "the complex domain." In this view of experience, the sometimes so-called "real" component of the mathematical function corresponds to sense-perception, whereas what some name the "imaginary" component refers to the role of those unseen universal physical principles. It is the ability to see the principle (the mind-object) as primary, and the so-called "real" (the sense-object) as the mere shadow of reality, which is the distinction of the truly civilized individual mind. As Plato emphasized, perception pertains to the shadows of the impact of unseen, but efficient universal principles upon our sense-perceptual apparatus.

An understanding of the deeper implications of this feature of the physical domain of Riemannian physical geometry, sets the stage for an understanding of the kinds of strategic factors underlying and determining the presently onrushing threat of our planet's self-inflicted plunge into a new, generations-long period of a "new dark age."

What I Came To Know

My first sense of what was about to happen to our republic, came on the evening we, in the China-Burma-India theater of World War II, had received word of the death of President Franklin Roosevelt. I heard the relevant message on the significance of that death, first, from my own lips.

A group of GIs came up to me, asking: Will you meet with us to discuss something this evening? I had nodded assent and suggested a location. Their question was: "What do you think the President's death means?" My reply was that I did not know, but that I was greatly worried by the replacement of a great President by such a little man. When I returned to the U.S. about 14 months later, the U.S. was changing from the U.S.A. I had known before and during the war years under Roosevelt. As I was enabled, later, to pinpoint the change exactly, the day after the President had died, the U.S. had turned back to the right, as typified by Allen Dulles' bringing a section of the Nazi SS apparatus into what became that Nazi element of the Gladio secret system in Italy which assassinated Italy's former Prime Minister Aldo Moro, and represents a part of the still-existing Nazi international apparatus in Spain, Mexico, France, Italy, and elsewhere in the world today.

It is often that, in hearing what we ourselves utter, we first come to recognize a concept which we had already developed up to the threshold of recognizing that concept by some definite name. (The implied concept of science here is typified by the use of the German term Geistesmasse by, first, Herbart, and then Riemann. The Riemannian concept, as developed by him in treating the subject of Abelian functions, must be contrasted with the defective attempt at approximation of the notion of Gestalt by Wolfgang Koehler.)

Since my 1946-48 experience of my growing resistance to that right-wing turn toward what is called today the "military utopian" (e.g., neo-fascist) faction of the Americas and Europe, I have maintained a deep commitment to defending civilization against that relic of the Nazi past in our midst today. That impassioned commitment led me to coming to know as much as what I know of such matters today.

In that time, I already knew that behind the Nazis were certain powerful family interests, the same set of financial-oligarchical interests behind the 1922-45 wave of fascist insurgencies, and lodged in relevant right-wing financier and associated circles of the U.S.A., Europe, Mexico, and elsewhere, still today. In the course of time, especially after my 1983-84 receipt of declassified U.S. intelligence reports on the development of the 1935-45 Nazi threat to the U.S.A. from Mexico and elsewhere, I now know at least the hard core of the history of fascism from proto-Hitler Grand Inquisitor Tomás de Torquemada's anti-Semitic and related crimes, to the present day. I know the essential features of the interconnected internal and external threat to our Federal constitutional republic today.

Naturally, I am by no means alone among the many, but still relatively few, who share this classification of knowledge. However, my scientific qualifications equip me with the power to develop crucial insights into certain aspects of what are, in fact, those chief internal and foreign threats to our republic of which Vice President Dick Cheney is a more conspicuously visible reflection. I do not know how much Cheney actually knows of his own role, or even of exactly who is really behind him. If President George W. Bush is essentially Cheney's puppet, Cheney himself is a puppet on a slightly higher echelon of power; but, Cheney himself probably shuddered in stark fear at discovering what his secret masters had done on fateful Sept. 11, 2001, and is probably shuddering still, to the present moment. Since then, to the present day, that recurring, haunted man's shudder, is probably the most honest thing about the otherwise essentially dishonest Cheney.

The essence of our republic's most urgent counter-intelligence problem is to understand the controlling motivation not of Cheney, but of those ominous forces which control him, and which he himself (quite visibly at times) devoutly fears. Cheney is a crude, larcenous bully, comparable to an organized-crime thug, a mere tool of the type that the higher-ranking financier circles caused to be eliminated on a whim. What Cheney thinks is of no more than third-rate importance; any professionally trained investigators could discover the essentials of that. It is what Cheney's actual masters think which ought to be our concern. This latter concern takes us now into the highest realm of strategic studies and thought.

This is where my particular specialty in scientific thinking comes into play in an essential way.

How Men Perceive

Contrary to reductionists such as Euclid and Descartes, human knowledge is not limited to the fishbowl boundaries of a fixed set of allegedly self-evident, a priori definitions, axioms, and postulates. Rather, as Riemann's work provides the keys to the application of this to the domain of mathematical physics, and also a to science of physical economy, it is necessary to discard all "a priori" notions of definitions, axioms, and postulates, and to replace these with nothing by experimentally proven discoveries of hypotheses which we then term "universal physical principles." These are not limited to the principles of physical science so-called, but also include those comparable principles of Classical artistic composition which make society, as well as nature, comprehensible for our efficient practice.

However, not all of those mental objects which might be regarded as principles are also true. That is a subject-matter in itself. It is sufficient here, to put the emphasis on one issue, the issue implicitly posed by the second part of the Prometheus Trilogy, Prometheus Bound, of Aeschylus. In this, the immortal Prometheus is condemned to eternal torture by the relevant financier-oligarch, Zeus, for the alleged crime of having taught human beings the use of fire. Think of that legendary criminal Zeus as a Doge of Venice, the chief criminal of a gang of usurious financial oligarchies, a gang of ancient organized-crime families.

Since no later than Solon of Athens, European civilization has sought to establish true republics, in which the creative powers of all persons are developed to bring about those changes enshrined in the Preamble of our own Federal Constitution: perfect sovereignty of the republic; promotion of the general welfare of all of the people; and, security of the posterity in the enjoyment of the benefits contributed by their predecessors.

The contrary faction within the history of European cultures is typified by the evil oligarchy of Zeus's Olympus. The great struggle in all cultures, most emphatically European culture since it first bloomed in the shadows of the Great Pyramids of Egypt, has been to free humanity from governments under which the majority of the population is degraded to the status of human cattle, such as the herded human cattle of Quesnay's code of "laissez-faire" and Adam Smith's "free trade," or the hunted cattle of Brzezinski crony Samuel P. Huntington's target, Islam. The collateral form of the oppressor of mankind has been the reigning oligarchy. Since ancient imperial Rome, the leading expression of that abomination known as financier-oligarchy has been Venice and Venice's clone and successor, the Anglo-Dutch Liberal system of predatory usury. Among the latter, neo-Venetian Liberals, the most feared and hated adversary of financier-oligarchical power, has been the American System of political-economy as associated with the work of U.S. Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, the latter the foe of the treasonous Aaron Burr, of the Bank of Manhattan, who was himself an intelligence asset of the British Foreign Office secret committee head Jeremy Bentham.

When all of Western and Central Continental Europe, fell under the control of fascist tyrannies, during 1922-45, it was the U.S.A. of President Franklin Roosevelt, the Roosevelt who had freed the U.S. from the fascist danger inherent in a Hoover re-election, which provided the crucial margin needed for rescue of the Soviet Union, Britain, and the world in general from global fascist tyranny. It was Roosevelt's Bretton Woods design, based upon the Hamiltonian tradition, which enabled the U.S.A. to organize the recovery of ruined Continental Europe, and led the U.S. to its highest point of achievement as a producer nation, during the two postwar decades.

What has happened, is that the same financier-oligarchy, the so-called Synarchist International, which had launched the fascist movements in Continental Europe, and in Mexico, survived the defeat of Hitler almost intact in its financial power. The so-called "right-wing" turn in U.S. policy which came to the surface on the day after FDR's death, has now reached the point it has destroyed the role of the U.S. as a producer power, over the recent four decades, and is now moving, in concert with its financier-oligarchical allies in Europe, to launch a new effort to wipe even the memory of the existence of the U.S.A. from the pages of history.

When we understand this, and what it means in practice, there is no real mystery about the trends being unleashed on this planet at this time. Were Bush to be re-elected, new wars would occur, such as attacks upon Syria or Iran, perhaps even before Nov. 2, 2004, which would make the Nov. 2 election more or less irrelevant, and would go on to ensure the plunge of the entire planet into a prolonged new dark age, during which the level of the Earth's population would drop to about one-sixth, or less, of today's.

I know of a series of measures, now deeply embedded in the policy-shaping structures of the U.S.A., Europe, and elsewhere, which have prepared such a monstrous outcome for humanity now.

1. Apart from the seizure of power by the so-called "utopian" faction at the point of FDR's death, the most significant long-term factor in the destruction of civilized culture of the U.S.A., Europe, et al., has been the pernicious countercultural program of the fascistic Congress for Cultural Freedom, the pioneer in the cultural decay which erupted in such forms as the "rock-drug-sex youth-counterculture" of the middle to late 1960s. The goal of this Congress for Cultural Freedom, better named the pro-Nietzschean (e.g., existentialist) Congress for Cultural Fascism, was the uprooting of the European Classical Humanist culture upon which the very existence of the American Revolution had depended.

2. The plunging of the U.S.A. into a 1964-72 hopeless quagmire in Indo-China, lured the U.S.A. and others into a replay of the asymmetric folly of the Korean War from which President Eisenhower and others had extracted us, and prepared the way for the Brzezinski-led adventure in Afghanistan ("the underbelly of the Soviet Union") which unleashed the now-burgeoning druglord rampage of Central and South Eurasia today, including the Anglo-American launching of the career of Osama bin Laden during the Vice Presidency of George H. W. Bush and Oliver North.

3. The destruction of the economies of Western and Central Europe through the treaty agreements dictated to a united Germany by Thatcher, Mitterrand, Bush, et al.

4. The destruction of the U.S. economy at home through "deregulation," "free trade," and "globalization."

5. The destruction, under Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, of the solvency of the world's present banking system through the hyperinflationary virus of financial derivatives.

But, those are only some of the more significant included actions responsible for the present threat to global civilization.

Prior to 1971-72, the principal factors of rot introduced to the world system were the post-FDR launching of the "utopian" right-wing, with its included leftover Nazi assets, and the role of the cultural degeneracy promoted by the Congress for Cultural Freedom. The launching of the rock-drug-sex youth-counterculture is to be seen, like the launching of the U.S. official war in Indo-China, as essentially an outgrowth of effect of the moral decadence propagated through the "Congress for Cultural Fascism." Now, turn to crucial developments since I came onstage in an increasingly significant political role internationally.

Why The Oligarchy Fears Me

Take the following series of developments. Then, from my personal role in these developments, and the reaction to them by the relevant right-wing financier-oligarchy, observe the emergence of a pattern of reactions by those enemies which define the global strategic threat to all humanity which those right-wing forces behind Cheney et al. represent for the human species for generations yet to come.

1. When President Richard Nixon collapsed the Bretton Woods monetary system, on Aug. 15-16, 1971, he also confirmed my outstanding long-range economic forecast of the preceding decade: That, if the corrupting tendencies associated with the influence of Arthur Burns' role during the 1950s, were continued into the mid-1960s, the second half of the 1960s would see a series of critical monetary crises, leading toward a break-up of the existing Bretton Woods monetary system. All other leading economists had denied this as even a possibility; many had ridiculed me for suggesting it. When it happened, I rightly denounced the principal figures of the economic professions as "quackademics," and challenged them to debate the evidence on which I based that charge against them. They chose a champion to meet me in debate, Professor Abba Lerner. I won the public debate, hands down, but, as the Congress for Cultural Freedom's Professor Sidney Hook insisted: Since I had thus proven an effective adversary, I would be treated with silence, or simply ridiculed.

Why should they have been so terrified of me?

2. During the middle 1970s, I was engaged in a) forecasting the epidemiological effects of 1971-72 monetary policies on the Sahel and other vulnerable regions; b) working for Arab-Israeli peace; and, c) launching an effort which resulted in the adoption of my proposal for a "just new world economic order" by the August 1976 Non-Aligned Nations Conference at Colombo, Sri Lanka.

It became clear, later, that what I was proposing was directly counter to Henry A. Kissinger's NSSM-200, under which the mineral and other strategically crucial raw materials of the world would be effectively seized by a concert of U.S.-led potencies, using measures deployed to prevent existing indigenous populations (e.g., of Africa) from consuming those materials either by technological progress, or simply maintaining present levels of populations.

They were terrified of my role to contrary effect, lest what I was proposing might catch fire with broader forces.

3. In 1976, I discovered documentary evidence of the commitment of Trilateral Commission associates of Zbigniew Brzezinski, such as James R. Schlesinger, to revive the Committee for the Present Danger, including nuclear-confrontation adventures with the Soviet Union. This I exposed on national TV during October 1976. Immediately following, I pursued the matter of devising alternatives to the existing nuclear strategic posture of the U.S.A.; this led to my Summer 1979 proposal for what later became known as SDI. This latter was later taken up for study by the Reagan Administration, involving my back-channel discussion, on behalf of the Administration, with the Soviet government. This proposal was presented by President Reagan on March 23, 1983.

This proposal of SDI, based on "new physical principles," was considered anathema by the right-wing in the U.S., as typified by the Heritage Foundation's expressed personal hatred of me, and led to an open Soviet demand for my elimination during the months preceding Oct. 6-7, 1986.

What is under way presently, is, as various sources emphasized, a four-way system of bargaining over control of the principal raw materials of the world, among the U.S.A., Western and Central Europe, Russia, and China. This involves the raw materials (minerals, including oil) of South America, Africa, Northern and Southwestern Asia, and China. There is an emerging bloc between Western Continental Europe and Russia, a distinct role by China, and the U.S. faction.

Two Conclusions

Faced with considerations of the sort I have indicated here, most people, including many in privileged positions, would either deny that such policies are afoot as leading policies, or would, on the other hand, insist that such ambitions will be successful. Both of those assumptions are false. This can be best understood from the standpoint with which I began this report.

For the ingenuous true believer, the motives of powerful forces must be explained in "common sense" terms, treating existing institutions and traditions as, more or less, both self-evident truisms about institutions and the force of popular opinion. It does not occur to them that virtually every leading bank of the world is currently bankrupt, and without the aid of FDR-style measures, hopelessly so. "But, that's my money," the credulous fellow shrieks! "They will never let it happen!" another shouts! "Nobody will ever believe you!" the most irrational of those hysterics responds.

To understand how another responds to a change in his environment, you must first recognize the way in which his special set of adopted ways of perceiving reality shape his reaction to stimuli. The usually good strategic thinker, thinks in terms of the rules of the game defined by the kinds of institutions taken into account; that strategic thinker fails, usually, only when he blinds himself to the way in which a different kind of institution perceives that same reality.

Among lower forms of life, it is biological heredity which determines how perception is shaped into ideas for practice. Among human beings, it is different. Animals can not change their heredity; with humans, cultural evolution, and cultural differentiation, are determining.

The fatal error of those who think that four-way partition of control of raw-material resources can succeed in superseding the existing financial-economic order, is that they refuse to see the inevitable doom which is ensured by what they foresee as their intended success. That is, for example, the terrible mistake currently adopted by President Putin's Russia, to say nothing of the rest of Europe and the U.S.A. itself.

But, nonetheless, be cheerful. At least one among us understands what this is all about.

Latest From LaRouche

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

The following are excerpts from the discussion period at a LaRouche Youth Movement cadre school in Toledo, Ohio on Oct. 9, addressed by telephone by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. For LaRouche's opening remarks, see "InDepth."

Q: This is Diba from Iran.

My question is, who is God? And, if we are, because of all the events happening in the universe, and all the changes in the society and all this different stuff, then, what is God doing? I mean, is it that he just created the world once, and then he doesn't have any part in our life?

LAROUCHE: Good, good, good, good, good. That's an old question, there was a gentleman, a Jewish gentleman, Philo Judaeus, a long time ago—he's a contemporary of the Christian Apostles, and was closely associated with the Apostle Peter, for example—who wrote a famous attack on that faker Aristotle, on precisely the question you asked. Who is God? And, if He created the universe, does He, or anybody else, have the power to change the predetermined course of the universe?

Now, what Philo said is, of course, Aristotle is a faker—which is pretty much what the followers of Plato had said earlier, and what I've said frequently, so Philo and I are in the same category, in that sense—that Aristotle is a faker. Aristotle's mistake, was to assume that God created a universe like a clock—Newton's clock, for example, Isaac Newton's clock, another faker—such that, once the clock is set into motion, no one can change it. Aristotle's argument, and the argument against which Philo argued, was the assumption that the universe was made up only of a fixed set of rules, and that even God himself couldn't change the rules. So, from this kind of theory, came the quasi-Aristotelean argument of people like Nietzsche, who said, "God is dead." In other words, they're saying: God, having created the universe as a fixed clockwork system of rules, was therefore prohibited himself, from intervening in the universe, to change the universe, from the trajectory defined by this set of rules. That's the "God is dead" theory. And that's the "End of History" theory of Francis Fukuyama, the same kind of thing: the existentialist view, in general.

Well, first of all, Aristotle was totally anti-scientific. And, this is an old issue, and what you struck upon, is like striking upon a gold mine, when you were looking for sand, with that kind of question. It goes to the deepest question: How do we know the universe? And, know is a very interesting verb. How do we know, what no animal knows? And, how do we demonstrate that we have that knowledge, and what conclusion do we draw about God, and similar things, from that knowledge?

The typification of the problem, is given by the Greek tragedian Aeschylus, in his Prometheus trilogy, of which only the second part, the so-called Prometheus Bound, survives, to our knowledge, today. But, in that, Aeschylus presents a crucial problem, which is the key to understanding all of human history as we know it, or inferable pre-history, today. Now, Zeus, who is, shall we say, the equivalent of Satan—he is a pseudonym, or other name, for Satan—Zeus takes Prometheus and chains him to a rock, and condemns him to eternal torture, for doing what? For giving knowledge of universal physical principles, in this case fire, to mankind.

The history of mankind—as Aristotle represents the evil legacy of Zeus, of Aeschylus' Zeus—is that man is a creature, which is capable of discovering universal principles, and applying them to increase man's power to exist in the universe. For example: If man were a higher ape, of the type of the gorilla or the chimpanzee, for example, then, in the past 2 million years, as we know the past 2 million years archaeologically, of the conditions of life on the planet during that period—the period of many, many ice age cycles—the maximum potential for the existence of a species such as a higher ape, would have been several million living individuals—and rather miserably living individuals for the greater part. Whereas, man today has a population of over 6 billion people. How did that occur? Because mankind, unlike any animal species, was able to discover universal physical principles in the universe, like fire, like Promethean principles of fire, and to apply these discovered principles, as controllable principles to increase man's power to exist, and to change the character of the planet Earth, in such a way as to create the conditions necessary for increased population and a higher standard of living.

So, this is the issue.

Aristotle represents those in the tradition of the Olympian Zeus, who say that mankind, most mankind, must be kept as human cattle, either to be hunted down, the way we hunt down wild cattle, because we consider them pests, or we eat them for food. Or, they are kept as tame cattle, as herded cattle, who should not be allowed to change anything, except go into their stall at night, eat in the stall, and, when they become too old, slaughter them for food, or just slaughter them, because there are too many of them. And that is the issue. So, Aristotle is the representation of evil, the denial of that quality of man, the human mind. Whereas the human mind is capable of understanding the laws of the universe, and therefore understanding the universe; and once understanding the universe, has a conception of God, as the Creator of the universe; has a conception of man, as a reflection of the personality of God. That's what God is.

And that's what was attacked by Philo: That the Creator did not create a fixed clockwork universe, but a system of creation, a system of ongoing creation, in which man, made in the image of the Creator, is a participant and, in a sense, an apprentice. An apprentice in the business of creation, who's discovering creation. And that the universe is not a fixed thing, it's a developing thing.

For example, let's take the case of the planet Earth. Where's the planet Earth come from? Well, according to our best knowledge of astronomy—astrophysics—there was no Solar System initially. That is, not in terms of objects. There was a fast-spinning Sun, when it was younger and more vigorous, more frisky, more like a young adolescent, or something, out there having sex with everything, huh? And this fast-spinning Sun spun off material, from itself. It formed a kind of corona around itself, a disk. And it irradiated this disk, with radiation from the Sun, such that the fusion reactions, thermonuclear reactions, in the disk, achieved a higher temperature, than existed inside the Sun otherwise itself. This disk, then, spun off, like a fractional distillation process, along predetermined orbital pathways, which are the planetary pathways as defined by Kepler, in principle. The material spun off was a kind of plasma; according to Gauss, was distributed rather uniformly along the planetary orbit. But then, because the orbits are elliptical, and have this eccentricity, they didn't stay as material distributed uniformly along the orbit, but they were condensed, through a shock-like effect of the elliptic orbit, into planets and moons; and these orbits were placed against each other in a certain predetermined way, according to principles. And we have the Solar System.

We look at the stellar system. What we're looking at in the stellar system, is a process of ongoing creation. We're getting new states of matter, which were apparently not known before, which are being created. So the universe is a process of ongoing creation. Mankind is distinct from the animals, which can not change their species characteristics, because we, without changing our species characteristics, can change our behavior qualitatively, to such effect, that we have over 6 billion people on this planet today, where only several million were possible, had we been merely an ape, as our greenies today would think we are. Our so-called, you know, Naders. If there were Ralph Naders on this planet, there would never have been more than 3 million such creatures. Fortunately, Ralph Nader is an exception to humanity. He lies outside normal, healthy humanity. And, therefore, we have, in large degree, managed to progress by leaps, in changes in culture, over a period of time.

And the fight within mankind has been, to elevate all persons, to the status of Promethean individuals. That is, individuals who participate in the creative process, and who are actually allowed to function, as creatures made in the image of the Creator. And the Creator is not the Big Clockmaker. The Creator is the personality of an ongoing process of creation, of self-creation and development of the universe as a whole. We are participants in that process of universal creation. We ourselves, as human beings, are properly, efficient agents, in assisting that process of creation.

Q: Good morning sir, this is Jimmy Sharp from Columbus.

You've been put to a lot of slander, and in turn, so has the Youth Movement, such as being called "anti-Semitic," "cult-like," and my favorite, my personal favorite, "fascist."

So, my question, I've been thinking about this question for a while now, has to do with what I call the "omnipotent factor." And, it's a contradiction, yes, but what I mean by that is, it blocks Youth members, making them preachers more than organizers. And, I was wondering, could you please tell me, without deflecting like Bush and Kerry did last night, when have you been wrong? And what is fascism?

LAROUCHE: Well, I don't think I've been particularly wrong, because, the fight I've been engaged in, for all my life, has kept me rather busy, doing the right thing, or fighting against the wrong thing so much, that I don't think I've done much wrong. Mistakes, yes, lots of them; but that's not important.

The question is, whether the controlling considerations, in determining choice of policy, were correct, not whether the policies were always correct. As you know yourself, that it's from making discovery of errors in your opinion, that you discover truth. So, the fact that you make errors, or encounter errors, or adopt them, or simply accept them from what you're taught, is not really a mistake—it's a part of a necessary process.

The question again, as in the previous question, on this question of God: Do you try to look at the universe as a fixed universe, in which there is a very simple right and wrong, as Aristotle prescribes, and that's sort of Satanic? Or, do you see the universe as one in which you are obliged to progress? And, if you are progressing, you are not wrong. You will make mistakes, but it's precisely those mistakes in which you learn.

For example: How do we set up a process of education, a competent process of education? We do it by a Socratic dialogue. In other words, you take a bunch of people; you want to teach them something. They come into a classroom, their opinions are ignorant, they're wrong. Are they stupid? Are they mistaken? No, they're not mistaken. They're right in being there! But, they come in with ideas about nature, or lack of ideas about nature and about circumstances, which are wrong.

Now, how do you overcome this? You have to activate something in the human being which is called the cognitive process. How do you do that? Well, I say, let's take a classroom of 15 to 25 people. Not less than 15, optimally, not more than 25. If you have less than 15, you're less likely to have the kind of activation of a dialogue that you need. If you have more than 25, you're going to tend to exclude some people outside the dialogue; they won't participate. But, you want everybody to participate, so therefore you try to create a unit of discussion which enhances participation.

Now, what do you consider? What you do is, you pose to these young fellas, or to older people, you pose to them a question. The question is in the form of a paradox. It's a contradiction. Now, by aid of their discussion, they are able to come to a point where they recognize a principle, which overcomes their mistaken opinion. Was having the opinion a mistake? Not necessarily. Sometimes yes, but it wasn't their mistake, generally; it was a mistake they acquired by the circumstances which they had gone through, before coming to that particular event, that dialogue. So, therefore, as long as they are proceeding along that line of dialogue, and working through the apparent contradictions, which are presented to them by a rigorous examination of themselves and of society, they're not mistaken. They made no mistake. They followed the right path.

A mistake, is to take the wrong path. A mistake, is to vote for George Bush.

Q: Hello, Lyn! This is Lewis!

I really like what you said, about looking at economic processes in terms of them being like an orbit, and we kind of have to set that orbit into the right intention, so that time will develop it. You know, develop the economy and everything else. Also, these animations: It's interesting how they represent the idea of a locus of action, rather than some fixed, Cartesian insanity; where you are looking a whole process. But, what these animations show you, is an orbit that's going off its course.

I've got two questions for you. One is, can an actually planetary orbit go off its course? And, number two, why is it, that within human processes, human economic processes, orbits lose their truthful intention, and go towards the direction of destruction?

LAROUCHE: Why, sure, a planet can go off its course; but it's not going off its course. Unfortunately, it's on a course of destruction. That's the problem there.

Human beings are different. When human beings act as animals, first of all, they don't act as human, when they're acting as animals. And, secondly, the failure to act as human, in a human context, produces the development of ideologies, as we call them sometimes, which are destructive.

For example, let's take now, fascism. Or let's get nasty—how do you like that, Lewis, something really nasty? Let's take so-called Christian fundamentalists. Who are neither Christian, nor fundamentally sound. For example, Bush. Bush, the President of the United States, is not a Christian. Now, that's not a difference of opinion; that's a fact. Because Christianity is a known fact, New Testament Christianity is fairly clear on this point. For example, the case of the Gospel of John, or the I Corinthians: 13 of Paul, are very clear as to what Christianity is. And Christianity is, above all, a conception of man, as made in the image of the Creator.

As opposed to those who see man as, like an animal, those who, for example, Scalia. Antonin Scalia, the Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, is morally, intellectually, an animal, and not human. He's nominally a Christian, but that doesn't mean anything, because he's not a Christian. He's a beast. He believes, essentially, in the tradition of Locke, of slavery; or he's a degenerate version of Locke, more degenerate than Locke. His "shareholder value" is a conception of man which is consistent with the idea of chattel slavery as property.

Let's go through this thing as evil, since in this context, Christianity came up, and so forth, earlier. What is evil? Well, evil is typified by the case of the Grand Inquisitor, Tomás de Torquemada. And he is in a sense, the antecedent, in more ways than one, of this evil fellow, who is the Associate Justice Antonin Scalia. Now, Torquemada was the real model for Adolf Hitler. In other words, what Adolf Hitler did to Jews, is modelled upon what Torquemada did to Jews in Spain, and threatened to do to Moors, in some degree or other. Torquemada was a racist.

He was also part of that function in the Hispanic peninsula, which introduced modern chattel slavery, modern society's chattel slavery, to practice. It was the Spanish and Portuguese, of that persuasion, that racist persuasion, who said that, in the history of the Americas: Number one, that Africans, that is, black Africans, so-called, are not human; therefore they are animals. And therefore, as we capture wild animals, and tame them, and cull the herds to produce tame animals, or herded animals, so we must do with the black African. That was done by the Portuguese, at a certain point, one faction of Portuguese; it was done by the Spanish. It was done under the same ideological structure as Torquemada then, Hitler later, and Antonin Scalia with his conception of property rights, today.

What happened, then? It was introduced into the United States, and into the Americas generally: systemic slavery, African slavery. That the Portuguese, and Spanish, and others, would organize slave wars in Africa. They would go out and kill most Africans, but they would take a small group of children and young women, whom they preferred, and they would ship them across the water, to South, Central, and North America, as slaves. These who arrived there were called "property." They were treated as property, in the same sense that a cow is treated as property. And, it was said that, if you tried to free a slave from the condition of slavery, you were stealing another man's "property." So, therefore, the denial of humanity of man, led to the conception of man as property, which led to an evil, whose legacy curses the United States today!

For example: In the United States, you have, not only in the Southern states, but also in people like George Bush's friends, you have a conception of man which is evil. And this conception of man that's evil, is located in the notion of property. You can go through the back woods of Mississippi, Alabama, and so forth, and you will find lots of people who are unimproved followers of the Ku Klux Klan. This ideology, which is a depraved ideology, is a criminal state of mind, is considered a constituency. This constituency, this state of mind, is a key part, a key element in the structure of so-called Christian fundamentalism, today. You find it in the Catholic Christian fundamentalism of the Pope-haters: Those who hated Pope John XXIII, those who hated Pope Paul VI, those who hate John Paul II. So, you have Pope-hating Christians, so-called, who are really part of this. You have so-called fundamentalist Christians of the Nashville Agrarian type, who are close allies of George Bush and the Pope-hating pseudo-Christians, Catholic pseudo-Christians, and it becomes evil. Thus, the denial of truth, the rejection of truth, when you try to institutionalize it, creates evil.

The process of education today, in the United States, is evil. As in the case of Aristotle, as I responded on the first question, on this question of Philo Judaeus: That, when you deny, as the Zeus of Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound denied, the divinity of humanity, you deny the existence of the creative powers in the human individual, which are comparable to those of the Creator, which make man in the image of the Creator. When you deny that, you have started down the road toward evil, evil in practice. Now, remember, in the United States today, the legacy of those who have not freed themselves from the implications of the toleration and apology for the Confederacy and slavery, is the greatest source of corruption in the United States today. You see it, for example, in the ideology of people who, in the United States, are the descendants of slaves.

You see it in those who are of Hispanic origin, from Mexico—particularly Mexico—who are victims of the pseudo-Catholic, pseudo-Christian doctrine, that you'll find proliferating in Guadalajara, among the so-called Cristeros, who are racists, in the tradition of Torquemada. And who in fact trace themselves from the legacy of Torquemada, who had a second policy for Indians, in the Americas. They said the Indians are not animals, but they are an inferior quality of human, quasi-animalistic humans. They must be controlled. They must be made peons. So, you have in Mexico, you have racism of a form, which is not usually of the anti-African form, but of another form, the anti-peon form. You have the right-wing Catholics, who hate the Pope, who are part of the Cristero traditions, who are part of the Nazi Party's organization in Mexico during the period from 1938 on, to the present time!

So, therefore, the denial of the quality of humanity, a denial which afflicts the conditions of life, of the largest so-called minority groups in the United States today—those of African descent, and those of Mexican descent, in particular—they are victimized, culturally and otherwise, by the legacy, the uncured legacy passed on from generation to generation, down to the present time, of the legacy of Tomás de Torquemada, the Grand Inquisitor, who is the progenitor of Adolf Hitler, and his crimes.

And this is the kind of problem we face. We have to recognize that: That when you turn against good, you manufacture evil in yourself. And the problem is not that people don't accept what I teach them. The problem is that, in rejecting it, on this issue, they become wicked, even evil.

Q: Hello, this is Patrick Frost.

The world has been globalizing for thousands of years, like people travelling the Earth, talking to one another, sharing knowledge, and also what they've learned. But, just within the last century, the pace has really picked up, and it's really been speeding up very drastically, and I feel like we're heading towards a major transition within our world, where territorial boundaries are being broken down, and we're heading towards full globalization.

And I guess, I was just wondering, what your thoughts on corporate globalization were, and whether it was a good thing, or a bad thing, for this world. And I don't necessarily mean, at the very beginning of corporate globalization, because there will be some hostility, and people taking advantage of other people. But I mean, further down the line, once there is more equality on the planet, do you think that corporate globalization would be more beneficial than the system that we have now?

LAROUCHE: Globalization is inherently evil. It is not new. It is the characteristic of society, the repressive aspects of human society, for as far back, as we know. The struggle for the emergence of the modern, sovereign form of nation-state, which we trace in European history from Solon of Athens, and from especially his revolution, which was made under his leadership in Athens, against the usurers. And his letter, as a poem, to the Athenians, who he said had gone bad, after what he had led them to do for good before, is the history. So, the struggle for the existence of the modern nation-state, the modern nation-state republic, as best typified by the creation of the United States, is the only model which is fit for society.

Now, the modern nation-state came into existence, in the first form, it was struggled for, it was known and struggled for, for as far back as we know in ancient history back to Solon and so forth, but, the rise of empires, which are globalization, introduced evil. Feudalism was evil. There's no good in feudalism, as such.

Finally, as a result of the aftermath of a great collapse of civilization in Europe, in the 14th Century, the weakening of the powers of evil, made it possible to have an Italy-centered Golden Renaissance in Europe, which led to the revival of the Classical Greek culture as a foundation, as opposed to a corrupt Latin culture. This led to the formation of the first nation-state, Louis XI's France, and then the subsequent establishment of a follower of Louis XI, that is, a person who had been in his court, Henry VII of England.

The powers of evil, typified by Venice, struck back, and organized religious wars, and related kinds of wars, on the continent of Europe and beyond, over the period 1511 to 1648. This period of religious wars, was ended under the influence of Cardinal Mazarin and his protégé, Jean-Baptiste Colbert of France, in the form of the Treaty of Westphalia. The Treaty of Westphalia was an agreement for peace among sovereign peoples, sovereign nation-states.

Now, the question here is: What's wrong with globalization, morally? Why is globalization inherently immoral? Why does it lead always to forms of imperialism? Why is imperialism nothing, but the generalization of globalization, which is not a new development? Why will globalization never lead to anything good, but lead actually only to a dark age, and to the destruction of mankind?

The answer to that lies, essentially, in the nature of the individual. The human individual is a creative personality, that is born creative, not like an animal. All ideas of globalization are based on herding the human herd as a pack of animals, as a pack of cattle. Globalization is already destroying civilization. If it is not halted, I can assure you, that within the next decade or so, humanity globally will go into a dark age, in which the over 6 billion people today, will be replaced by, maybe, a couple hundred million—maybe less, under globalization. So, there is no redeeming quality in globalization down the line, nor ever in the past of mankind. It has always been evil.

Now, the characteristic of mankind, is the ability of the human mind to discover a universal physical principle. And we have to think about, how that is done? How is this quality of the human mind, developed in a baby, a child, an adolescent, to produce a civilized adult? What it involves, is: A human being is formed within a culture. It's a language-culture, largely, it's a culture of practice associated with a language. A human being is able to discover ideas by means of the equivalent of what we would call, in a refined form, a Platonic or Socratic dialogue. It is not through the literal meanings of words, as dictionary meanings, but through the ironies of meaning, found in the paradoxes in the way in which terms are used, in which ideas are spread—the quality of humanity.

Therefore, you have to take a people, and you have to use its language, not for its literal dictionary qualities, but for its ironical qualities. We're constantly coming up with ideas, for which no names previously existed. How do we get those new names, for the things where the names, the definitions, terms, didn't exist for them beforehand? They occur, for example, in poetry, in what's called irony, or Classical irony: a juxtaposition of terms, in such a way, that a term which has two contradictory meanings is juxtaposed together, two different connotations. And the juxtaposition of these connotations, in a proper circumstance, suggests to the mind, a new idea, which didn't exist before; and the juxtaposition, the contradiction, the paradox, now becomes the basis for the name of the new concept in society.

The development of mankind, is always the development of new ideas; the generation of ideas through these methods of paradox. The culture which people have, the national language-cultures, or the bringing together of, say, two or three languages in the same people, as we have done the United States. The best part of the United States is, that we are a melting-pot nation; we are the true republic, because under optimal conditions, people coming into the United States, from any part of the world, bring their cultural heritage to us, to interact with our existing cultural heritage, and become part of the process of developing a more universal concept of mankind.

But, we act together in a process, a decision-making process. The crucial thing is, that the individual member of society, is enabled to participate in the deliberative processes concerning principles of the nation-state. And without a cultural context, a national cultural context, of the type best typified by the melting-pot character of the United States—when we have a good system of public education, for example—that is the model of a true republic. As a matter of fact, our republic, as defined by our Constitution, particularly with its Preamble, is the only true republic on the planet at this time.

The objective is to bring the world as a whole, into a family of republics, true republics, like our own, to cooperate as nations, according to the same principle which is reflected in the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia. That's the only way that humanity's going to survive. Any continuation of the present trend toward globalization, means a prolonged dark age. It means the disintegration of most existing culture.

Q: Hello Lyn, this is Danny from New Jersey. I'd like to know if you can explain the context in which the war in the Balkans took place during the Clinton Presidency, with the role of Madeleine Albright and NATO. And is this similar to the current conflict which the neo-cons are provoking, using Chechnya and the Caucasus region?

LAROUCHE: There is a relationship. This was an abomination. You know, Clinton is an interesting fellow. He's very intelligent and a good-hearted person at heart. He's a Baby Boomer. He came into Washington from Arkansas, which is not the great metropolis of the United States. And he had a lot to learn. and he had to adapt to a lot of things which he might not have liked. But, in order to maintain his position as President, he went along with them—maybe not too happily, but he went along with them. Madeleine Albright was one of those things.

Now, before Clinton came to Washington, you had a long fight—and I was part of it, a key part of it, from the inception. Actually, I go way back to the end of the World War II period, where my political character was defined, by the shock of returning to a different United States than the one I had left under Roosevelt, to the United States under Truman.

So, what happened was, in this case, with the fall of the Soviet system, there were Anglo-American currents—of which Brzezinski, for example, is merely typical; Kissinger is typical—who believed in a British Commonwealth conception of empire. In other words, you have a certain alliance and rivalry, between certain imperialist tendencies in the United States, such as Kissinger, Brzezinski and so forth; and British imperialism, as typified by, for example, Tony Blair. It's the liberal imperialism of the Fabian Society, and this is about as nasty as you can get on this planet. These people quarrel among each other, as to who is going to have what degree of supremacy. but they generally agree on the idea of an English-language union. They think of themselves as being a new empire, the Liberal model, the Anglo-Dutch Liberal model. And the question is whether the United States is going to control the remains of the British Empire as an asset, or whether the British interests are going to take over the foolish United States and steer it. That's the direction.

So what happened when the Soviet Union collapsed, or began to collapse, as I had forecast it would, first you had Desert Storm. Now, the real reason for Desert Storm was imperial. There was no good reason for it. Saddam Hussein had been a George Bush asset, and I know it. I know it, personally. We had some fuss about that with the Iraqis. I told the Iraqi ambassador, at one point in Washington, "Watch out for Vice President George Bush. You think he's your friend today. Watch it! There's going to be a change." Anyway, Desert Storm was an imperial operation, which went on essentially from 1990-1992.

The second phase was the Balkan War. Note that the instant we pulled out of Desert Storm—and correctly so; I mean that was no mistake in pulling out of that—we went into the Balkans. We have destroyed the Balkans! Anglo-Americans destroyed the Balkans, with the cooperation of France's Mitterrand government. That's a fact. And the Clinton Administration came in, as an author of the tail end of that series of Balkans Wars, from which the Balkans have not recovered, and under present policies would never recover.

We're now moving into Transcaucasia; the Anglo-American interests are moving into Transcaucasia, attacking Russia. The same imperial interests are moving on this Iran question; moving on the so-called Middle East question; moving toward setting up a conflict between Taiwan and mainland China, which could lead to a war in the year 2007, according to the best estimates of people looking at this thing.

So, it's this imperial trust which was represented and typified by the role of Madeleine Albright and others in the Balkan Wars under Clinton, which is simply a manifestation of this. The problem was, with the Clinton Administration, they had no comprehension of this, and were rather influenced by the very strong pressures—particularly take the pressure that Clinton was under from the right wing, from the fascist wing in the United States; the Bush wing, the fascist wing, in the United States. And therefore, he adapted to a lot of things he didn't have time to understand.

Clinton did not understand the economic crisis. He didn't understand that. He believed in the "golden generation," which is a screwed-up generation actually, but he believes that somehow that they had some mystical quality, which I think he probably may be reconsidering now.

So, that is the fact. These are the facts. This was a crime, in which the United States participated, a crime against the Balkans. But we've got mess in the Middle East, so-called, is a crime—an Anglo-American crime—which our government got into partly by foolishness or blindness, ignorance or whatnot. But it's a crime. What Bush did was simply take that, under Cheney's direction, and continue it. It's a crime. It's a piece of evil. And, we as a nation have to grow up and recognize that when we make a number of mistakes as a nation, we have to correct them. And that's one of the mistakes we have to correct.

Q: Hi Lyn, this is Alison [ph] from the Detroit office. My question is a two-part question. The first part, is the relationship between freedom and leadership. And I was wondering, because I think you have a lot experience with this, if you could talk about that. And maybe, use Christ as an example.

The second part was, in Detroit, it's really an abomination to humanity, what happened there. I was wondering if you could talk about the role of the fundamentalist churches. Because there's lots of them there. There's also lots of liquor stores and prostitution!

LAROUCHE: Got you.

Well: Freedom and leadership, that's important. In the post-war period, you had a bunch of former Communists and others, who, as we outlined in our reports in this book we have out now, on the Children of Satan, became fascists. And they moved very easily from Communism to fascism, as the case of Sidney Hook, for example, typifies this. Sidney Hook also typifies an enemy of mine, typifies the way in which the Congress for Cultural Freedom—better called the Congress of Cultural Fascism—was set into motion, largely by people who had been Communists or influenced by that, you know, left-wing Trotskyists, and others. Our neo-cons today are a product of that.

Now, what they did, was to spread fascism in a very interesting form. Take the case of Hannah Arendt. Hannah Arendt and Theodor Adorno were key figures in the process of spreading of this propaganda in the United States, which has caused the kind of issue of discussion, which you reflect in discussing this alleged conflict between freedom and leadership. This is what they did.

Now, the nature of humanity is leadership, and especially leadership among the people. You must contrast leadership with dictatorship. You have a President of the United States presently, George W. Bush, who is a mental case: an incompetent mental case, and anyone who saw him last night on television, should have been able to recognize a walking mental case; a virtual case of psychosis; a psychopath, walking, before a national television screen. That is the opposite of leadership.

Cheney is a sociopath, a brutal, fascistic sociopath: A lying sociopath. You saw him on television, the previous week, or earlier in the week. That is the opposite of leadership!

Leadership is, essentially, the fact that in society, so far, a limited percentile of the population is willing to base itself on a commitment to knowable truth. Most people will say, "You have to go along with public opinion." They say, "You have to be democratic." By what? By submitting to lies! If you overhear most people saying something about somebody, or some nation, or something, you say, "Oh! Well. I guess I'll have to agree, because all my friends agree." You raise the matter of truth, you have the evidence, they say, "Well, I'm sorry, I can't agree with you! All my friends tell me..." Now this is non-leadership.

This is worse than non-leadership: It's an opposition to leadership! Leadership essentially takes the form of the innovative discovery of truth, or re-discovery of truth, where it's needed, or where it might be needed. That's leadership. That's what I do. I provide leadership. I have no particular power. I don't command things. Even people associated with me don't do what I think they should do most of the time! So, I don't have any dictatorial abilities. I have a certain amount of influence, but that's only because I have a mind. And my mind is a little bit better or better-developed, than the minds of some people around me, so therefore I'm able to exert some influence. That's leadership.

Jeanne d'Arc, sitting before the Inquisition, who burned her alive, was exerting leadership, even though she exerted no command over the people who were holding her there, and murdering her, there. So that's the difference. Leadership, freedom is a commitment to truth. A rejection of public opinion, when public opinion is recognizably wrong. Leadership is the ability to resist social pressure from your family and friends, when you should know they are lying, or simply wrong. Leadership is learning how to stand up to that, and how to react—not violently, not wildly, but react with careful calculation. What do I do in this situation?

Look, I was raised, for example, under a father who was bipolar. I've seen other people raised under bipolar fathers. Often, they have an abreaction against the father. And they become sick and they become bipolar themselves. You have legacies in the United States, of fathers beating children, generation after generation, down the line. The child who was the victim of the father, becomes the beater in the next generation. His son becomes the beater in the next generation—or his daughter! Many mothers are beaters: They may use different methods than beating, as such: manipulation, cruelty, sadism. But these sadistic practices associated with bipolar behavior are commonplace in society.

And that's, of course, what Cheney represents. That's what George Bush the President, represents: an acute case, a mental case—a psychopathic case, actually—of a fellow, who was in effect beaten by his family. That is, the psychological effect, is a beaten child, who hates his father—and yet, who does to an entire nation, what his father did to him, or what he thinks his father did to him. You have Cheney: Cheney is a complete bipolar sociopath! I don't know, I think his wife beats him, in one way or the other. She controls him. Perhaps she uses a whip. I don't know if she's a dominatrix or not, but that kind of process.

So, that is the difference. In the case of Christ, it's the same thing. Christ exerted leadership, and is the epitome of the exertion of leadership, which is admired by all Christians in that respect. The martyrs of Christianity, are examples of leadership. Leadership is not command. Though, when you have a capable leader in military command, or in leadership in responsibility for a nation, they will exert command, because that's the function which is assigned to them, in the role they are playing at that time. But leadership is usually the fellow who's being beaten upon, not the one who's doing the pushing around. He's beaten upon, because he's the black chick among the white chickens. But he's right. He's right.

Now, in the case of Detroit, and, in particular, this fundamentalist thing: Fundamentalism is actually a form of insanity. And it is accepted by people who are beaten down. Accepted as, "I'm denied everything," either psychologically or even physically, "but I'm gonna get mine. I'm gonna get mine. Jesus is coming! I'm gonna get mine! When he comes, I'm gonna get mine. And when he kills all these people I hate, I'm gonna get mine. When he kills all those people in the Middle East I hate, I'm gonna get mine. When he kills all those black people, who I think are oppressing me, I'm gonna get mine. When he kills all those white people who I think are oppressing me, I'm gonna get mine."

Liquor stores? What else? How else are you going to get spirituality, except out of a bottle, in that circumstance?

Q: Hello, Lyn, this is Randy from Philadelphia. I asked Harley a similar question on World War I, and I wanted your input...

LAROUCHE: You think I was there?!

Q: Maybe, I don't know. What happened, I mean, what went into World War I? Because it seems, just doing some cursory study, that a lot of the stuff is very relevant to even things going on today. And I wanted to know what went into it? And who is behind the Treaty of Versailles coming out of it?

LAROUCHE: Okay! Well, that's a nice big question! Which fortunately, I'm equipped to answer. Being an old geezer, I get to pick up a lot of knowledge around, in the course of life.

I've written about this at great length, so I'll just summarize the point, because you'll find in the things I've written, that back up the documentation, or the allusion of documentation which refers to this.

In 1763, as I've pointed out, the Anglo-Dutch Liberal system established imperial power, in February of '63, with the defeat of the nations of Europe, in the process of taking over India, and taking Canada for the French. So, the British East India Company became an empire, even before the British monarch became an emperor.

So, at that point, we face a crisis in civilization, European civilization. We had, in a sense—defeated, with the Treaty of Westphalia—we had defeated the initial form of the Venetian system, that is, the so-called Catholic form of Venetian system. But then, we had the Anglo-Dutch Liberal or Protestant form of Venetian system: Because the Anglo-Dutch Liberals were literally clones of the Venetian financier oligarchy, who had established a new maritime power, to replace the political maritime power of the Adriatic, by a maritime power based on the old Hansa connection: northern Europe, the Baltic Sea, Scandinavia, the Netherlands, and England.

What happened is, in the struggles which occurred between 1688 and 1763, the British Empire, the British monarchy as defined by the British East India Company, became the dominant factor consolidating power over Scandinavia, over the Baltic, over Northern Europe, the coast, and the Netherlands in particular. For example: Hamburg was essentially a Dutch city, an Anglo-Dutch city; Denmark was largely an Anglo-Dutch province; the Netherlands itself, of course. So, they established this. So therefore, the British monarchy, in effect, as a monarchy which was then a captive, or a stooge, for the British East India Company, or the Anglo-Dutch Liberals, became an empire.

This meant for us, in North America, that we were threatened, in 1763, which began, in effect, the open struggle. We had already had struggles to establish a republican form of government in North America. That went back to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. It went back in principle to Miles Standish, in the Plymouth Colony. But we had been struggling in that direction. But, in 1763, things were laid down to us—between 1763 and '66. And Franklin made noble efforts to try to avoid a war with England, in defense of our liberties. But, this led, then, to inevitable war, because the British East India Company was not prepared to tolerate the emergence of a strong nation, or the equivalent of a strong nation, in North America, even an English-speaking one. So this led in a process.

Now, the forces in Europe, from that period on, from the middle of the 18th Century on, the same forces associated with the rise of Classical humanist culture in the 18th Century, against the so-called liberal culture, against the so-called empiricist culture, the so-called Enlightenment culture. These forces saw in Benjamin Franklin and his associates, a core of people in North America, who had the capacity, the potential, to create a republic with help from friends in Europe.

So the formation of the United States, as a republic, was the result of this relationship between the Classical humanist current in Europe, including especially France, as typified by the case of Lafayette, with the people of the United States.

With the defeat of us, by the burning of the Bastille, which was a British intelligence operation, intended to prevent France from becoming a constitutional republic allied with the United States, and it worked. The people who ran the siege of the Bastille, was largely Philippe Egalité, a British asset. It was run on behalf of a British agent, Jacques Necker. And so, you had passage of that, run by British intelligence through Jeremy Bentham, who was the secret committee head, the equivalent of the British Intelligence Service, for the British Foreign Office, then. And Danton, Marat, were British agents, and so forth; Robespierre effectively was a British agent. But then the thing was done, through a Freemasonic organization on the continent, which was associated with Comte Joseph de Maistre, who created Napoleon Bonaparte.

So, you had this period from July 1789 through 1815, in which the Bonaparte-dominated French Revolution screwed everything up in Europe! And Europe has not had a true republic, from that time to the present, as the result of this process. The so-called liberal economies, the parliamentary systems of Europe, and their slight modification in the direction of a Presidential system, have never been true republics. There is no true republican tradition, in the constitutional structure of Europe to the present day. None.

So, in this process, we were isolated. And the imposition of expanded slavery upon us from Spain, which went back into the slave-trading business, went on. We were corrupted, we were controlled, dominated by the British East India Company. We were threatened, by the Hapsburg system.

We attained our freedom, under Abraham Lincoln. And we emerged in 1876 as the leading nation-state power on this planet. The British could no longer attempt to destroy us by external application of force. We had defeated the British, the French, the Spanish, in throwing Maximilian, in effect, out of Mexico. We affirmed the John Quincy Adams principle of our nation, the principle of the Americas.

So the British had to operate against us in a different way.

The result of this was, the son of the dotty Queen Victoria, became the fulcrum of a plan, to conquer the United States by absorbing it. The method was to intervene in U.S. politics, to destroy all those who represented the American tradition, by introducing the British Liberal tradition into the United States as much as possible, using largely leftovers from the Confederacy combined with New York bankers, in the tradition of Aaron Burr, whom the British controlled.

So, the British monarchy set about to break up the cooperation among nations of continental Europe, cooperation which had been based on admiration of the American model, particularly from 1876 on. This included Russia, whose Czar Alexander II, an admirer of Lincoln, had adopted according to Mendeleyev's proposal for the Trans-Siberian Railroad and similar kinds of development. In Germany, Bismarck changed the policy, by adopting the American System of industrial development as a model. Japan, through the influence of Henry Carey, adopted Carey's model of the American System, as the model for the modernization of Japan. Similar things happened in France, between 1872 and 1898.

So, the British moved in to set the nations of Europe against each other's throats, starting with the capture of France, as a stooge for the British Empire, pitting France and Russia, against Germany, and so forth and so on. So, Edward VII organized World War I, which came, in fact, after his death. Now, this was an anti-American operation, during this period: The assassination of McKinley in the British interest; the Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, both of whom were complete British agents—and Wilson was a Ku Klux Klan fanatic. I mean, somebody call him a democrat! This man was a fascist! An out and out fascist. So we had that.

We had the corruption of the United States following World War I, in the form of the Coolidge Administration and the Hoover Administration. The 1929 crash did not cause the Depression in the United States, Hoover did. Hoover reacted to the 1929 crash, in the way Annie Krueger, the mother of Freddie Krueger, reacted to the debt of Argentina. Hoover collapsed the United States economy by 50%, and the incomes of Americans by 50%. Roosevelt saved the United States. And saved the world, because the world was going fascist, at the time that Roosevelt became President. Had Roosevelt not become President, if Hoover had been re-elected, the United States would have joined Hitler, in a world fascist system. And we wouldn't be talking today.

So, that is the general nature of our situation. We still have the same problem. We have, again, the people who organize fascism, were the Anglo-Dutch Liberals, and as I've said repeatedly, as I said recently in the webcast: "Liberalism on Sunday, is fascism on Monday." Liberalism is the power of a Venetian-style collection of private banking interests, financier oligarchic interests of the type called fondi. That is, the old Roman tradition of the members of a family become the voting interest in controlling a financial entity. This entity acts like a pirate. But groups of pirates, as in the case of Venice, while cutting each other's throats in rivalries, gang up together against the rest of humanity. This is the Liberal system.

This bunch of Liberals, at the Versailles Treaty, set out a plan for destroying the nation-state. Their plan was to set up a fascist system. And these were bankers. What they did—they planned a post-World War I system, which they knew from the beginning, as Keynes described it, was doomed. And it was doomed. They set up a system, based on reparations by Germany to France and Britain. Britain and France, which were in debt to New York, used the payments from Germany to them, to be able to pay their debts to New York: That was the post-World War I system. It was doomed to collapse. And it did collapse. And the people behind it, like Keynes, knew it was going to collapse. Keynes was a pro-fascist, as he wrote in 1938, in the introduction to his General Theory, which was published in Berlin, in German.

So, 1922: British-controlled banker Volpi di Misurata of Italy, a Venetian, put Mussolini into power in Italy. And from that point on, there was a wave of fascist dictatorships and movements arising, which in the wake of the Hitler success of 1933, became, over the period from 1933 through 1945, the dominant system of continental Europe. The United States under Franklin Roosevelt, not only prevented fascism from coming to the United States, which it would have if Hoover had been re-elected. You have the same thing today. If George Bush is re-elected, you must expect a fascism regime in the United States, almost immediately; even after the election, and not wait until the inauguration.

Roosevelt saved us from that. Roosevelt had plans, to prevent Russia from being crushed by this fascist movement. Roosevelt had the good fortune of a Churchill, who was himself a fascist in every respect, but was a British fascist, and did not want to surrender the British Empire to control by a bunch of German fascists. So therefore, out of this kind of peculiar imperial patriotism, Winston Churchill led the British into an alliance with Franklin Roosevelt, which prevented the Nazis from establishing a world empire. And then, the United States, with the encumbrance of Churchill and company, went on to lead in crushing the fascist movements around the world, temporarily.

When Roosevelt died, the day after he died, under Truman, the fascists began to come back into power. The same group, who had been pro-Hitler at the beginning of the 1930s, but who had joined the British, in fighting fascism in order to defend the British Empire, now came out of the closet in seeking to establish and Anglo-American system, based on the same principles. At first, they couldn't succeed too much. They could start what became known as the Cold War. But, after the Missile Crisis of 1962, the assassination of Kennedy, and the launching of the Indo-China War, we were transformed into a junk heap. Not all at once, but step by step and remorselessly. We are now an international junk heap.

And we're now back at the same point. We're now back, where we were when Roosevelt became President. This election is the same. Kerry is not a Roosevelt. He lacks the noble qualities of a Roosevelt. He's an intelligent person. Under the right influence, he can be useful, he can be decisive, in defeating this process. But he's no Franklin Roosevelt; he doesn't have that depth of character, of understanding, of commitment. He's shown it. He doesn't.

So therefore, we're back to the same thing. Our job, today, is to take a Kerry election, and ensure that the Kerry election becomes the launching of a solution for this great danger that faces the world today. Our opportunity to do so lies in the fact, as today, in the morning reports, that George Bush lied his head off last night, to the extent he knew what he was saying at all, in saying the U.S. was in recovery. George Bush lied about the U.S. economy, as he lied about a number of other things, last night. But the collapse of the economy is not going away. Oil is $53 a barrel. That's going to come down and hit the pumps soon. It's going toward $60 a barrel at present. That's going to hit the pump, too. The U.S. economy is collapsing. The world economy is collapsing. Some time before the time of the next inauguration of the President, it will have gone into full-scale collapse.

This is our last opportunity: Either we defeat Bush-Cheney now, or the United States and its people don't have a chance.

And so, we have to learn the lessons of history. We have to learn the significance of the United States in world history, where the United States came from, what it came out of. We have to understand what the forces are, on an historical scale, over the greater part of millennia, which have shaped the circumstances which confront us today. We have to respond, with that understanding, to these circumstances, not on simple man-in-the-street idiocy and babbling. We need leaders, true leaders, not ones who go along with public opinion, but those who educate the people to give up popular opinion! In order to become sane, and safe, again.

Q: This is Vicky from L.A. You might have answered this question before, but looking at the debate last night, Kerry keeps mentioning killing people and stuff like that. And actually having conversations with people in the campuses around Ohio, and a lot of these kids are having the reaction, especially Republicans, that they really don't want to vote for Bush anyways, but they really don't know who they want to vote for, seeing what Kerry is doing. And I was just wondering, how are we going to organize them around voting for Kerry, knowing that he's saying these kinds of things? Because even I wouldn't vote for him, if I wasn't in the LaRouche campaign. So how do we convince them, that this is the best thing to do?

And also, I wanted to ask you, because you had said in your webcast that you had never actually spoken to him; but I wanted to ask you if you were actually planning on doing that?

LAROUCHE: Oh, I plan to speak to him any time. What I'm speaking to now is his campaign organization, which I'm very closely informed of, and in touch with. And, there are a lot of people who are working in this campaign in the Democratic Party, for example, who are close to me. We are the hard core, in the sense of what might enable Kerry to win. This includes President Clinton, who is recovering from a serious operation, and recovering I understand very well; but not recovered well enough to be an active factor on the stage, in campaigning at this point, unfortunately. That's where we are.

Kerry knows this. He's well aware of me. And his people have been in touch with me, particularly on clarifying certain things, which needed clarification. But he's a stubborn guy and he has much to learn.

The point is, the education of Kerry is going to occur in two stages. First of all, we've got to get Bush and Cheney out of there, defeated. But Kerry's going to face immediately, the shock of his life, in the way this financial crisis comes on. He can not continue to flop around, as he's doing on these issues. You know, there's various kinds of leaders in society. One of the leaders in society, is history itself: When history intervenes, and shatters the delusions of some people, it's the only way that delusions get shattered. And if Kerry has any delusions, of the type he's talking about, they're going to be shattered.

Another thing is this. Kerry's a very bright guy. He's very well-informed and he's not been a lazy Senator. Very active, very well-informed, under normal circumstances. But he does not have certain qualities of judgment, which are found among people who tend to be a little older than he is; people who tend to be on the retired side, who are doing other things, not in government proper today.

In getting in these crises we're into, Kerry is going to find out that his particular program, as he indicates it now, it will not work; it can not work. And faced with the awesome responsibility of the Presidency of the United States, under these circumstances, he's going to have to come to some of the rest of us, for help in learning how to deal with some of the terrible, frightening problems he's going to have to face, beginning about now. Look at the actual reports, from the world, about what the truth is, respecting the lies which George Bush spewed so copiously about the economy in last night's events. Now, Kerry did not respond to that and call them lies. He should have! He didn't. A couple of days from now, or maybe a little bit more, he's going to have to. By the time the next debate rolls around, we're going to see a more interesting world, than you've seen so far.

MODERATOR: Lyn, thank you very much.... And we look forward to ensuring the delivery of the State of Ohio, not simply to the Kerry campaign, but to the LaRouche movement, to which I think we've made significance progress on, over the course of the last three weeks.

LAROUCHE: And don't forget those good, Ohio Republicans: We're counting on them!

Feature:

Statecraft in Eurasia Can Defeat 'Strategy of Tension'
At the conference of the Schiller Institute near Wiesbaden, Germany on Sept. 26, analysts from Russia, Turkey, and Armenia, speaking at a panel titled 'Strategy of Tension,' presented their perspectives on the history of their nations, the conflicts which are currently rending Eurasia, and their hopes for a better future. Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. then addressed the meeting to underline the importance of looking at these issues from the standpoint of universal history and statecraft, to avoid the trap of being drawn into a 'who hit whom' theory of strategy. He returned to one of the principal themes of his keynote to the conference (published in EIR, Oct. 8), on the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, which brought to an end the Thirty Years' War in Europe, relying on the concept that each sovereign nation-state would seek to enhance 'the advantage of the other.' The moderator was Michael Liebig, of EIR's Wiesbaden bureau. We publish all the speeches here.

Economics:

LaRouche: Reverse the Policy That Created the Flu Crisis
by Linda Everett and Marcia Merry Baker
After half of U.S. flu vaccination stocks were suddenly cancelled in mid-October because of contamination at the source of supply in England, a chaotic scramble was on across the United States for scarce flu shots—not only for the elderly, the young, and the chronically ill, but for front-line civil defense staff such as nurses and doctors, hospital and healthcare workers, firefighters, police, emergency team-members, rescue squads, and the military.

  • LaRouche: We Need A Crash Program
    On Oct. 6, following the previous day's announcement by British-based Chiron Corporation that it had cancelled its intended supplies of 48 million flu shots to the United States for the 2004 season, Lyndon LaRouche gave a pre-scheduled international webcast in Washington, D.C. A group of medical students, participating from the University of Maryland Medical School in Baltimore, asked for his comment.
  • Could Avian Flu Cause A New Pandemic?
    by Colin Lowry
    Influenza originally from birds has killed 30 of the 42 people infected with it in Southeast Asia over the last year. This particular flu virus has been mainly transmitted from birds to humans; but recently, in Thailand, there is a probable case of human-to-human transmission, which has experts quite worried about a new flu pandemic.

Federal Budget Impasse Squeezes the Economy
by Carl Osgood
The longer the Republican Party has been in control of the U.S. Congress, the more nonfunctional the Congress has become...

LaRouche to Argentine Journalists: 'I Do What I Must To Stop The Murder of a Country'
The following interview with Lyndon LaRouche was filmed on April 2, 2004, in Leesburg, Virginia. The interviewer was Argentine journalist Romina Manguel, and selections from it were used in the movie documentary 'Debt,' directed by the well-known Argentine television personality and journalist Jorge Lanata. 'Debt' was released on Oct. 7, 2004.

Argentina Sees LaRouche in New Film on Debt
by Cynthia R. Rush
At a moment when Argentina is under vicious assault internationally, charged with not showing proper respect for speculative vulture funds that are demanding that more Argentines die to pay 'their' debt, former Democratic Presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche has shaken up the political scene with a forceful intervention on behalf of this once-prosperous South American nation.

Speech to Philippine Senate: Who's Manipulating The Oil Problem?
by Sen. Aquilino Pimentel
On Sept. 15, Aquilino Q. Pimentel, the Minority leader of the Philippine Senate, presented a speech on the floor of the Senate titled 'Manipulating the Oil Problem,' which provided his nation with the truth behind the recent oil price spike—i.e., that it has nothing to do with 'supply and demand,' and everything to do with the speculative, deregulated markets now controlling oil production and distribution.

International:

Terror Bombings Target Egypt for Destruction
by Dean Andromidas
The terror bombings Oct. 7, which targetted the Taba Hilton and other tourist resorts in the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula, killing 15, and wounding nearly 60, mark a major assault on Egypt. Hala Mustafga, a commentator for the Egyptian government- backed Al Ahram daily, wrote: 'The choice of the target was very symbolic. It will damage Egypt's standing in the region, challenge Mubarak's authority, and probably hurt the economy, where tourism is the main source of income.'

Israeli Anti-Sharon Peace Leader Tours U.S.
by M. Woodward
On Sept. 12, Adam Keller, life-long Israeli peace activist, prominent member of Gush Shalom, author of Terrible Days: Social Divisions and Political Paradoxes in Israel, and editor of the quarterly The Other Israel, began an impassioned, 19- day tour of nine cities in North America (including Toronto), bringing a voice of reason and dialogue, which is excluded from mainstream U.S. news media: that of the Israeli citizenry which is working with Palestinians for a just, two-state solution to the ongoing crisis in Israel/Palestine.

U.S. Runs Afghan Polls: But What Next?
by Ramtanu Maitra
Despite repeated threats issued by the anti-Kabul and anti-U.S militant groups prior to the Oct. 9 Election Day, Afghanistan's first-ever Presidential poll went off peacefully. The election, however, was full of irregularities, and at the time of writing, after five full days, the vote counting has finally begun.

Insanity Wins in Australian Election
by Allen Douglas
Prime Minister John Howard's Liberal/National Party Coalition went into the national election Oct. 9 with a narrow edge over the opposition Australian Labor Party (ALP), under Sydney Member of Parliament Mark Latham, but emerged with a decisive victory.... with the aid of one member of the religious fundamentalist party, Family First.

French Court Slams Cheminade for 'Slander'
The following press release was issued on Oct. 11 by EIRNS, under the headline 'French Lyon Tribunal Heavily Sentences Jacques Cheminade for 'Public Slander Against a Government Member Exercising His Functions.' ' Cheminade, a longtime friend and associate of Lyndon LaRouche, ran for President in 1994 and 2002, most recently with the Solidarity and Progress (Solidarite´ et Progre`s) party. He was sued by Justice Minister Dominique Perben, because of a leaflet his party distributed.

Report From Germany
by Rainer Apel
Time Is Running Out for the Neo-Cons. The prospects for an end of the Bush era herald the political demise of German CDU chief Angela Merkel. The American voter has not yet decided, but the mere prospect that John Kerry might be elected as the new U.S. President, and the increasingly bad headlines for the Bush camp, have forced the German political establishment to rethink its positions.

National:

Final Debate Shows Again That Bush Is Insane
by Nancy Spannaus
The third and final debate of the 2004 Presidential elections on Oct. 13 once again rammed home the essential point which Democratic leader Lyndon LaRouche has made in the course of the post-Convention campaign: George W. Bush is a liar, and he's insane. Anyone who decides to vote for him is of questionable sanity as well.

LaRouche Aids Mayors' Infrastructure Push
by Paul Gallagher
American mayors and county and other local officials came out strongly for large new economic infrastructure investments to reverse the physical economic collapse, in press conferences in the midst of the Presidential debates in early October. The 'Mayors '04 Metro Agenda' was immediately backed by economist and Democratic leader Lyndon LaRouche, who is organizing for an 'FDR-style' infrastructure recovery program and a John Kerry landslide victory.

Interview: Sen. George McGovern
'Come Home America' to What Is Noble and Just
George McGovern served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1957 until 1961, when he became the first director of the U.S. Food for Peace Organization under President John F. Kennedy. He was the U.S. Senator for South Dakota from 1963-81. In 1972, he ran as the Democratic candidate for President, in opposition to incumbent President Richard Nixon. He served as U.S. Permanent Representative to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization, appointed by President Bill Clinton. During World War II, McGovern was a decorated fighter pilot. He also holds a PhD in history from Northwestern University. President Clinton awarded the Senator the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2000.

Understanding the Economy's Orbit With the Help of Animations
by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.
Mr. LaRouche made the following remarks to a LaRouche Youth Movement cadre school for organizers in the Ohio- Michigan region, which took place in Toledo on Oct. 9. Because of Ohio's importance in the Nov. 2 election, we also include some discussion on the organizing that followed LaRouche's remarks. The discussion was moderated by Bob Bowen. The audio and full transcript can be found at www.wlym.com.

World War IV Is Real Bush Policy
by Michele Steinberg
While the Clown Prince President, George W. Bush, has worried himself with the 'hard work' (for him) of reading and memorizing material for his debates with John F. Kerry, the Administration's controllers have been busy with their agenda of repeating the Iraq war debacle in Iran and Syria. On Sept. 29, three top officials of the current Cheney- Bush Administration—Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, and two neo-conservative warmongers on the Defense Policy Board, James Woolsey and Eliot Cohen—appeared at a bizarre Washington, D.C. meeting, on the topic, 'World War IV: Why We Fight, Whom We Fight, How We Fight.'

From the LaRouche Youth Movement

This article is reprinted from The New Federalist of Oct. 18, 2004.

'Wild Animus' Beast-Man, Rich Shapero, Exposed! (Please, put your pants back on!)

by Wesley Irwin LaRouche Youth Movement

Four months ago, while organizing politically on the streets of Seattle, I noticed people distributing, free of charge, without any "catch," a massive number of novels with the title "Wild Animus." "Just take the book home with you and read it," they said. Over the course of the next few weeks, I began seeing the same operation at youth festivals, and even at a John Kerry campaign rally in Tacoma. Last week, a fellow organizer in the LaRouche Youth Movement Oakland local called and told me that the same thing was happening in San Francisco. In fact, at the event in the Bay Area, there were older people dressed up as "nerds" waving signs and shouting negative things about the book, who admitted, while on break, that they were paid actors demonstrating, in order to draw attention to the books, and that the goal was to distribute "1 million." The back cover of each book says 50,000 copies will be distributed to the public for free.

The book's author, Rich Shapero, who founded "Too Far: Fiction that ventures one step beyond" (www.toofar.com), wrote the book as close to a personal account as possible, while maintaining it as fiction, he says. The story is about a "disillusioned UC Berkeley graduate" who "leaves behind a world of protests and riots to follow a wild, inner calling." The main character, "Sam," who, like Shapero in the '60s, takes mind-bending trips on LSD, ends up following his "wild animus" up to Seattle, and then into the remote regions of Alaska where he has an inner "truth-seeking" experience that takes him all the way to the "breaking point" of his sanity. In the book, he turns into an animal, specifically, a ram, renames himself "Ransom," freaks out on his girlfriend, and ends up dying in the wilderness of Alaska.

- Twisted Philosophy -

This book is a detriment to the mental health of anyone who reads it, but far worse than the book itself is Shapero's own twisted philosophy. The Romantic and perverse notion that a human being can become more in touch with who he "truly" is, by isolating himself in the wilderness, and thinking about himself as an animal, is just plain stupid and insane. Shapero, in his own words, says, "What could be more natural than for humans to identify themselves with an animal that seems to mirror their temperament?"

What Shapero, a Baby Boomer who seems to have never outgrown the '60s, denies, however, is that the essence of what separates man from animal, is the innate principle of creative human reason, infinite potential for human discovery, and application of human discovery through technology. It's through the creative process of discovery, that we, who live in modern industrial civilization, have come to have the life expectancy, population growth, and standard of living that has been achieved only in relatively recent human history. That process is not only beneficial for us, but is built into our nature as the very purpose for human existence in the Universe. It allows us to transform the Universe's biosphere in profound ways, improving it, making it better than it was without us. We are, in essence, the gardeners of the Universe. Shapero's philosophy not only erases this truthful philosophical tradition, it "ventures one step beyond."

In an interview with the author, posted on his website, Shapero openly states his view of modern civilization: "We may as well enjoy it, because it won't last long. There will be more Dark Ages, and at some point, humans won't rule the Earth. I can imagine a couple of grimy fellows in animal skins carving up their kill with flint knives, talking about 'the dream time' when food was available on demand in brightly lit huts from people in funny costumes." Shapero goes on to call "infrastructure" (water, power, transportation systems, sewage treatment, etc), which is urgently needed today to maintain and increase the human population and standard of living in America, and the world, "superficial." The truth is, that without increased investment in the infrastructure Shapero calls "superficial," we won't be able to build civilization out of the past two generations of the free-market decadence that has destroyed our real, physical economy, and has brought America to the point where millions of children can't even afford basic health care.

- A Frightening Personal Life -

Not surprisingly, after majoring in "pharmacology" at UC Berkeley in the '60s, Shapero went on to become a successful "venture capitalist" in the current anti-"general welfare," "dog-eat-dog," "free-market" economy, and ended up working as managing partner for a company in Silicon Valley. It appears Rich not only ejaculated his "wild animus" onto the business world of high tech/communications, but also in his personal life, which I personally found quite frightening. When asked about it being unusual to use "the predator/prey relationship as a model for love," Beastman Shapero responded, "Often intimacy involves a dance in which those relationships shift. But there is always a hunter, and there is always a hunted. If there's love, there's going to be surrender. That's what's going on. One individual is the aggressor and the other succumbs." "In a love relationship there has to be surrender. And the model Ransom has for this is one animal killing another." Hey ladies, want to go on a date? This guy makes Freddie Kruger look safe.

Another troubling aspect of this Romantic, or should I say Satanic, ideology, is that the people at "Too Far" are pushing the idea that there is something "Classical" in these bizarre writings. "Ransom's sheep persona is reminiscent of Dionysus." "Animus feels like Zeus. He's temperamental. One moment he'll rage and be impossible.... This feels very Classical to me," says the "Too Far" interviewer, to which Shapero responds, "For sure. The religion of the ancient Greeks put the sacred very close to wilderness and nature.... [They] appreciated and were passionate about the inner wilderness and its relationship to the outer." This inner wilderness, or "animus," is described by Ransom (Shapero's own infantile-ego image), as "the passion within us that attacks to possess, and surrenders for love."

In other words, "animus" is the irrational ego, free of that pesky thing known as "reason" or "cognitive thought," without which the "savage" man acts like an existential sex monkey. Shapero proudly states as much when he says, "Writing has a cognitive element. It's through the mind.... The truth is that writing is about as interesting as a sensory deprivation experiment. It's all output and no input." Ransom prefers, instead of reasoned thought, to "use chants to invoke the stages in his mythos," and Shapero himself admits his own "explorations have taken the form of meditations on transcendence."

This is the complete opposite of the Greek method upon which modern European civilization is based. The method of Socrates and Plato was one of a dialogue process through which paradoxes were worked out by taking false axioms to their logical, infinite extensions, thus seeing where the contradictions lay. The participants in the dialogue thereby came closer to the truth through rigorous cognitive thinking and discussion, not though chanting, meditating, or rubbing their wild animuses up against each other.

- 'Too Far' Well-Funded -

This book is the first of a number to be promoted by "Too Far," whose staff is made up of well-educated venture capitalists/environmentalists. They are advertising that they are extremely "well funded" and are hiring "idea" people that fit their mold. Their editorial and creative director is a graduate of Oxford, and has worked on major Hollywood movies; their woman in charge of sales and marketing worked for the RAND Corporation, just to name two. Beyond the obvious cultural implications of the degenerate "Too Far" ideology, the stated intent of the publication is to raise funds for the Wilderness Conservation Project, which preserves "wilderness lands in the neighborhood of the settings for the Too Far stories, ... to help ensure that parts of our globe remain forever wild." The American Institute of Philanthropy is promoting the WCP heavily.

Why is this book being targetted into youth/political areas across Washington, Oregon, and California, weeks before what is probably the most important Presidential election in our lifetimes? It clearly promotes running away from facing today's frightening political realities, into a drug-induced schizophrenic escape into the wilderness, instead of effectively fighting (which the LaRouche Youth Movement is) against the mentally ill George Bush's, and Dick Cheney's preventive-war policy, which must be smashed if our U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence are going to survive. Why such heavy promotion of ideas that are a blatant cultural attack against the U.S. anti-oligarchical, republican tradition; specifically the idea that man is not an animal to be hunted and herded, but rather is "made in the image of God" because he has a mind, and his purpose is to use his mind to creatively change the world in which he lives through technological inventions? Cognition, expressed in physical-economic growth, is the principle for which our generation of youth must fight if we are to save our species from a new Dark Age. We cannot allow ourselves to be Romantically stroked into the fantasy world of the Boomer generation, by the likes of monkey-man Rich Shapero.

The next time you see Beastman Shapero or Dick Cheney expose themselves, tell them to keep their "wild animus" in their pants!

U.S. Economic/Financial News

Kerry Backs Investment in Water & Sewer Infrastructure

Presidential candidates George W. Bush and John F. Kerry responded to a series of questions from Pollution Engineering magazine, published in its Oct. 1 issue. Here are their responses to a question on water and sewer infrastructure:

Q: "Our water and sewer infrastructure is in need of repair. As many of these systems, especially those in areas where rate-payers are too poor to finance renovations, will need to be fixed in the next four years, what plans or ideas do you have to help Americans receive quality water and how will we pay for it?"

Bush: Talked about a "new water-quality monitoring initiative" through "information-based management," adding that he would relax regulations on issuing permits for pollution discharge elimination.

Kerry: "Federal infrastructure resources should be focussed on critically needed projects that allow us to spur the economy, replace jobs, increase future productivity, and improve our quality of life—including water and sewer infrastructure projects. I would work to leverage federal resources for these projects through state-federal partnerships and guaranteed financing and bonding. Investing in infrastructure jobs is a 'win-win' strategy that is part of my economic recovery plan."

Multi-State Conference To Discuss Ohio River Water System

Rep. Nick Rahall (D-WV) is planning a multi-state conference in January, to expand the waterway system in the Ohio River Region, according to local news reports. "The goal of this conference is to create the forum for promoting and protecting our region's vital contribution to the national transportation system through its rivers, ports, terminals, and workforce," he said. "This region's maritime workforce and facilities are a national security and economic asset, and are positioned to play even a larger national role in the future. Expanding this role will help increase the number of well-paid transportation jobs in the region." Rahall is the top Democrat on the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure's subcommittee on ground transportation.

A steering committee meeting was held on Oct. 12 with Federal and state officials, including the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and the West Virginia Department of Transportation. The focus was on the port of Huntington, WV, the nation's busiest inland port, and seventh-largest overall in tonnage shipped.

Temporary, Contingent Work at Record Level in U.S.

The Nazi labor-recycling model has become a feature of the U.S. labor force. Rather than maintain a permanent workforce and pay decent wages, with full workmen's compensation, pensions, and benefits, businesses have been hiring what the Bureau of Labor Statistics classifies as "contingent workers," which includes temporary workers, "independent contractors," on-call workers, and contract company workers. For example, many laid-off telephone workers now offer their services as "independent contractors," working often the same job they held before, but at lower wages, having to foot the bill themselves for their health costs and other benefits, the Washington Post reported Oct. 11, in an article entitled, "Permanent Job Proves an Elusive Dream," by Jonathan Weisman. In 2001 (the last year that records were available), the BLS reports, 16.2 million American workers—12.1% of the labor force—were thrust into the "contingent workforce."

The fastest-growing segment of the "contingent" workforce is "temporary workers," whose number has increased from 417,000 in 1982, to 2.5 million today. While nearly half of temps work in the traditional venue of clerical work, an increasing number are being shunted into manufacturing. Tens of thousands of industrial plants now use temporary workers, often to replace permanent employees. Typical is the case of Philipp Hicks, who, desperate for work, hired on at the Toyota auto plant in Georgetown, Ky., four years ago. Toyota told Hicks that after two years he would be folded into the regular, permanent workforce. The difference in pay between a temporary and permanent worker at this plant is significant—$12.60 per hour versus $24.20 per hour. Plus, Hicks's earnings are insufficient to allow him to purchase health insurance. But, Hicks was never offered the permanent job. After a while, workers like Hicks will be fired, and they may work at the nearby E.D. Bullard Company making fire helmets, and then perhaps at an auto-parts supplier, before they go back to work for Toyota.

As for George Bush's fraudulent claim that the economy added 96,000 "new jobs" during September: Temporary workers accounted for one-third of these jobs.

Millions of Jobless Are Without Any Benefits

One of the pre-Presidential debate flurry of economic reports, a study released Oct. 13 by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, finds that since late December 2003, a record number of jobless workers have exhausted their regular 26 weeks of state-funded benefits, gone without Federal aid, and received neither a paycheck nor an unemployment check. Three million jobless workers are now in this predicament—the highest level ever for a 10-month period, based on official data going back to the early 1970s.

In late December, Congress declined to renew the Federal Temporary Extended Unemployment Compensation program, which provided 13 extra weeks of aid to jobless workers who had used up their 26 weeks of state-funded benefits.

In Ohio, for example, some 91,600 unemployed workers have exhausted regular benefits without finding work, and are now not receiving a paycheck or unemployment benefits.

The official number of long-term unemployed workers rose in September to 1.747 million—the 24th straight month that more than 20% of the unemployed have been without a job for at least 27 weeks.

Nobel Economics Prize Goes To 'Certified Idiots'

In perhaps a quaint intervention into the U.S. election debate, the Nobel Prize Committee on Oct. 11 gave the Economics prize to Edward Prescott of Arizona State University at Tempe (the site of the third and final Presidential debate Oct. 13), who then told CNBC that the U.S. still hasn't cut taxes enough: "If you want to have more employment, you'd better cut taxes."

Lyndon LaRouche commented on these awards in general, "The difference between an idiot and a Nobel Prize winner, is that the Nobel Prize winner is a certified idiot."

Prescott shared the prize with his former graduate student at Arizona State-Tempe, Finn Kydland. Their work, which has concentrated on how central banks, including the Federal Reserve, should work, is a very strong advocate for deflationary "inflation-fighting" central bank policies.

Otherwise, Prescott and Kydland, in their articles and papers have insisted that the development of economies arises from "push-pull" in the very small—from the individual consumer, businessman, or inventor—and certainly not from any long-term, Keplerian "orbital principles" of the physical economy as defined by Lyndon LaRouche. Said the Nobel Academy in awarding the prize, "The laureates laid the groundwork for more robust models by regarding business cycles as the collective outcome of countless forward-looking decisions made by individual households and firms regarding consumption, investments, labor supply, etc. [They] have been widely adopted in modern macroeconomics."

Bush Backs Dismantling of Federal Gov't Safety Net

Speaking to the National Association of Home Builders at a campaign event in Columbus, Ohio, on Oct. 2, President George W. Bush declared, "The fundamental systems of government—the health-care plans, the pension plans, the tax code, the worker-training programs—were designed for yesterday, not for tomorrow."

Cheney's Halliburton Loots Its Pensioners

Halliburton Corp. has used a loophole in pension laws governing mergers, to cheat its employees out of millions of dollars in early retirement pension benefits, the New York Times reported Oct. 15. Compared to the retirement package that Dick Cheney got, "worth millions of dollars ... through a special vote of the board," employees of Dresser Industries, which was acquired by Halliburton in 1998, have been robbed. Cheney presided over the Dresser acquisition in 1998, which included a pension fund which was far larger than Halliburton's fund. But in 2000, Halliburton sold off its stake in a unit in Olean, N.Y., that had been Dresser's, and through a loophole, was able to categorize workers—who remained at the same job, at the same desk—as "terminated employees." Halliburton did not inform its employees—for two years!—that this meant they were no longer building up funds in their pension for early retirement.

Halliburton only informed the employees after a Federal law, passed after Bush-Cheney had come into office, made it legal for Halliburton to drastically cut the benefits, by tens of thousands of dollars per employee. One head draftsman was offered only $28,000, when his fund should have been $60,000. He took it, saying, "if I stayed ... what would keep them from stealing more?" Other early retirees who received full benefits are being hounded with letters telling them to repay thousands of dollars back to Halliburton. Pensioners in Texas are demanding a Congressional investigation.

Columbus Schools Told To Pull the Plug on Small Appliances

Columbus, Ohio teachers have been told to get rid of small appliances because the school district cannot afford to pay for the electricity to run them anymore, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported Oct. 13. Anticipating a $420,000 shortfall in the district's electricity budget, Columbus officials have issued an edict demanding teachers unplug the microwaves, coffee pots, mini-refrigerators, toaster ovens, space heaters, and other small appliances they keep in their classrooms. Columbus Education Association president Rhonda Johnson denounced the measure as "idiotic."

World Economic News

Locusts Devastate Crops in West Africa

Swarms of locusts began devastating the crops and pasturelands of West Africa, during the year's copious rainy season, a UN agency reported October 4.

The desert locusts are moving into southwest Libya, southern Algeria, and the border areas of Morocco. The worst affected countries are Senegal, Mauritania, Niger, and Mali. Algeria has already noted the arrival of locusts in its southern desert province of Tamanrasset. Observers worry that the second wave could be more dangerous than the first, as 3.5 million hectares are already infested in the sub-Saharan region.

The Food and Agriculture Organization has spent about $200 million using crop dusters. But, now it has sent out a distress call to all nations, and as of Oct. 13, less than $20 million in cash has been delivered. The international community has promised $58 million so far, but FAO now says it needs $100 million.

According to one FAO analyst, the situation is still manageable. But the analyst pointed out, "The movement of swarms mainly to the north and northwest is already happening, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to stop the next stage." He also pointed out that if rains in countries like Morocco, Libya, and Algeria are plentiful, the current generation can give birth to a much larger group of offspring. The concern is that the swarms may multiply under such circumstances in two to three years, as happened in the last 1987-89 locust plague.

German Finance Minister Tries To Hide Fiscal Crisis

The week of Oct. 4, German Finance Minister Hans Eichel invoked the "economic imbalance" clause, which enables him to increase borrowings beyond the present level by several billion euros, a source in the Bundestag told EIR Oct. 12.

In line with the constitutional clause that obliges the state to always invest as much money as it spends for consumptive purposes (like paying debt), the "imbalance clause" goes into effect if the government can argue convincingly that for reasons outside of its own powers, a general imbalance of the economy has emerged that leaves the state with less tax revenue, and burdens it with increased expenses at the same time. The extra borrowings that Eichel can take, will be presented in an "added budget" proposal, likely in the range of several billion euros, for the current fiscal year, which then will also predetermine the volume of the budget for FY 2005—to be debated in the parliament in early November.

This is the third time that Eichel has resorted to this trick. The source, inside the parliamentary group of the opposition CDU (Christian Democrats), told this news service that Eichel is resorting to the budget trick, because it helps him to cover up certain ugly facts and disasters about which he wants no debate.

A debate on the real fiscal situation, which Eichel is sabotaging, would also expose what the government does know about the near future and what it expects to happen, but will not tell the public now.

United States News Digest

Are Cheneys Trying To Deflect New Scandal About Lynne's Lesbian Book?

Is Lynne Cheney's 1981 lesbian porn novel Sisters the real reason for the Vice President's belated outrage over Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry's reference to the Cheneys' daughter Mary, in his answer to a question about gay marriage, during the Oct. 13 debate? Another question is: Did someone in the White House decide to turn this into a big attack on Kerry, lest Lynne Cheney's lesbian fantasy-book become a major topic?

The fact that Vice President Dick Cheney quietly accepted—and even thanked—John Edwards for his polite, but very extended discussion of the Cheney daughter's lesbianism during the Oct. 8 Vice Presidential debate, and then went ballistic on Oct. 14, after Kerry mentioned the same thing, possibly has nothing to do with daughter Mary, but everything to do with wife Lynne's 1981 book. EIR recently obtained the book, and has reviewed its contents, verifying that it has graphic, detailed scenes of lesbian sex.

On Oct. 13, Lynne Cheney was the first to complain about Kerry's remarks, at a rally of Republicans, after the debate in Arizona. Mrs. Cheney described herself as a "distraught Mom," and said Kerry is "not a good man." The following day, Dick Cheney repeatedly attacked Kerry for mentioning his family.

A well-connected Washington insider told EIR that Cheney's "delayed reaction" over the mention of his daughter's lesbianism—which is not a secret—has become a hot topic in Washington. But when informed about Lynne Cheney's book, the source said, "People should know about this," first of all, because Lynne Cheney is known as the "book banner," for her role in the campus censorship organization, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA). And, secondly, because George W. Bush has been so insistently self-righteous about saying that he is protecting the institution of marriage as only between a "man and a woman" from activist judges making court decisions.

In April 2004, Newsweek ran a short article by reporter Holly Bailey, called "Cheney: 'Sisters' Gets Outed." The article says, "April 5 issue—In 1981, long before her husband was elected Vice President, Lynne Cheney wrote Sisters, a steamy bodice-ripper set in the 19th-century American West, featuring vivid tales of whorehouses, attempted rapes, a suspicious murder and several lesbian love affairs, of which Cheney writes approvingly. The paperback, published in Canada, has been out of print for nearly two decades.

"But on April 6, the book is scheduled to be released for the first time in the United States. Many of the novel's most lurid details have already been unearthed on the Internet and by gay-rights activists, who believe Cheney's treatment of lesbian relationships in the book is at odds with the Bush Administration's stance against gay marriage. (Cheney's been silent about gay marriage, although her daughter Mary is openly gay.)"

Subsequently, the new publication of the book was cancelled, reportedly due to White House intervention.

Three Intelligence Chiefs Criticize Intelligence Czar

As the Bush Administration pushes for a "photo op" to sign an intelligence reform bill into law before the election, three of the Bush Administration's intelligence agency leaders—former Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet, and current officers, Lt. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, head of the National Security Agency, and Lt. Gen. James R. Clapper, Jr., head of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (satellite-based surveillance and mapping for the CIA and Defense Dept.)—told an industry conference that reshuffling top management of intelligence agencies will not improve security against terrorist attacks.

While they did not attack the legislation, the remarks were believed to refer to the pending intelligence reorganization bill, which is now in a Senate-House conference committee. If it is rammed through, then Porter Goss will likely be named the "National Intelligence Director" by Bush.

But Bush's grandstanding about a new "czar" will not improve security, said the intelligence chiefs. What is needed is improved cooperation among "rank-and-file analysts, spies, investigators, and military officers" across the agencies. They were speaking at an industry conference of the U.S. Geo-Spatial-Intelligence Foundation, a private group. Tenet said, "Speed and agility are key to the war on terrorism, not more levels of bureaucracy in Washington. We must not create another level of bureaucracy between the head of American intelligence and the people doing the work." Tenet had not allowed reporters in to hear his speech, but reporters for the New York Times heard a "complete recording of his remarks."

This is another example of the leaks about Bush's intelligence and policy failures that are deluging the White House. Porter Goss was supposed to stop the leaking, but it's not happening, and the CIA just awarded its highest honor to Buzzy Krongard, the CIA Executive Director just fired by Goss.

GOP Gears Up Vote-Suppression Dirty Tricks

With record numbers of new voter registrations being filed in many states, the Ashcroft/GOP vote-suppression operation is moving into high gear.

* In Colorado, Republican Gov. Bill Owens and other officials are screaming that many of the more than 100,000 new voter registrations are fraudulent; this is the subject of a front-page story in the Oct. 13 Washington Times.

* In Nevada, a former head of the Republican Party is demanding that state officials strike 17,000 Democrats from the voter rolls as "inactive."

* In Oregon and Nevada, officials are investigating allegations that a GOP-linked private voter-registration organization has discarded Democratic voter registrations, shredding them and throwing them in the trash.

* In Florida, several labor unions are suing the Secretary of State over her rejection of thousands of voter registration forms on the grounds they are "incomplete."

* In Ohio, Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell has ordered local election boards not to issue provisional ballots unless voters are in the correct precinct—a violation of Federal law, which requires only that a voter be in the correct county. His decision is being challenged in Federal court. A Case Western University professor calculates that this could affect the outcome of the race, not only in Ohio, but perhaps nationally, given Ohio's crucial importance.

New Scandal Breaks During Iraq Donors Conference

During a donors' conference in Tokyo on Oct. 13, Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh called on participants to fulfill their promises of aid to help rebuild Iraq, and accused the United Nations of failing to provide crucial support. Of the $13.6 billion in grants and loans promised last year by nations and lending institutions, only about $1 billion has been deposited in World Bank and UN funds for Iraq.

"Development and stability in Iraq cannot be driven through the barrels of guns," Saleh said in an impassioned speech to open the two-day conference. "Assistance and aid in the short term is the key to destroying the causes of terrorism. It is also the only way we can build a sustainable, long-term future for our people."

Saleh said Iraq's wealth had been "utterly squandered by tyranny" before the U.S.-led invasion. "Please do not delay—the time to make firm commitments is now. Honor your pledges now," he said.

While the U.S.-backed Iraqis were begging for money, the story broke on the front page of the Guardian, that James Baker III, the same man named by Bush as a special envoy to negotiate precisely such debt relief, has been working secretly with a consortium, to get Iraqi payments made to Kuwait! Baker's Carlyle Group was apparently part of a consortium which has been trying to collect $27 billion on behalf of Kuwait.

The Guardian published several letters concerning the consortium's proposal to Kuwait, to get funds back. A preliminary reading of the letters shows that the consortium first threatened Kuwait, that it wouldn't get a penny if it didn't move fast, then promised it that the money would be forthcoming.

In the wake of the story breaking, the Carlyle group came forward to claim that it had never signed a memorandum of understanding with the consortium, and that the consortium had misused its name.

Open Letter Calls for Urgent Change in U.S. Foreign Policy

As of Oct. 12, 698 foreign affairs specialists had signed an open letter calling for an urgent change in American foreign and national security policy, which was posted on the website www.sensibleforeignpolicy.net. The open letter, circulated by the non-partisan Security Scholars for a Sensible Foreign Policy, calls the current course in Iraq "the most misguided one since the Vietnam period, one which harms the cause of the struggle against extreme Islamic terrorists."

The argument of the open letter is much like that made by Presidential candidate John Kerry:

* The initial focus on destroying al-Qaeda in Afghanistan was diverted;

* The justifications for war have been proven untrue;

* Iran, North Korea, and Pakistan pose a much greater risk of nuclear proliferation than did Iraq;

* Policy errors during the occupation have made things worse;

* Military voices like former Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki were ignored.

* American actions in Iraq—including but not limited to Abu Ghraib—have harmed the U.S.'s reputation, making Osama bin Laden more popular than President Bush in some Middle Eastern countries.

The signators are leading professors, and heads of international affairs and political science departments in prestigious universities around the U.S.A.

Virginia Elementary School Rejects Testing

The principal of Bailey's Elementary School in Falls Church, Va. has sent a letter to every parent defying the so-called "No Child Left Behind" law, the centerpiece of President Bush's education policy, the Washington Post reported Oct 12. The letter says that teachers are forced to spend "valuable instructional time preparing students to take the Standards of Learning (SOL) tests, to the exclusion of activities that extend and deepen student learning...." Principal Jean Frey says she wants children to learn how to think like scientists and historians, but "this is not what standardized tests measure or encourage."

The No Child Left Behind mandate states that if children fail, the county can fire all the teachers and give parents the right to transfer the children to other schools. "It's an ax hanging over our heads," Frey said. "The test is enormously time consuming.... As a citizen, I want these kids to grow up to be literate problem solvers.... We give up over two weeks in May to the tests. So the rest of the year, we try very hard not to do 'SOL Prep Time,' like many schools do. How important is knowing how to fill in ABCD? I don't do that very often as an adult."

Hackworth Says Rumsfeld Is Wrong About the Draft

Retired Col. David Hackworth, who runs a website for military and their families to tell the truth about the mess in the military, wrote in his Defense Watch column Oct. 4, that "Rummy has been flat wrong on every major call regarding Iraq.... With both our regular and the reserve soldiers stretched beyond the breaking point, our all-volunteer force is tapping out." Neither the regulars nor the reserves will get their quotas, as the word is rapidly spreading. "It's a no-brainer that there will be a draft by 2005 or 2006."

Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY), who has proposed to renew the draft, wrote a letter to the Wall Street Journal saying essentially the same thing.

If Congress Knew Then What It Knows Now...

Pete Coors, Republican candidate for Senate in Colorado, said on NBC's Meet the Press on Oct. 10 that if Congress knew then what it knows now about the war in Iraq, it would not have voted to authorize the war. Coors was scheduled to host President Bush at a fundraiser the following day. Coors is currently in a tight race with the state attorney general, Democrat Ken Salazar, who was also critical of Bush's handling of the war, citing the recent comments of three Republican Senators. The Senate seat they are fighting for became vacant when the popular incumbent, Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell (R), dropped out of the race after his office became the target of a Federal investigation involving alleged "kickbacks."

Senate Passes Corporate Windfall Tax Bill

What started out as an effort to repeal a $4 billion-per-year tax break that was ruled an illegal subsidy by the World Trade Organization, wound up as a $140 billion corporate tax giveaway bill, when it passed the Senate on Oct. 11 by a vote of 69-17. The Senate began work on what was then an approximately 30-page bill to repeal the subsidy and replace it with equivalent tax breaks that would not be considered subsidies, in September 2003.

What emerged from the conference committee, on Oct. 7, came in at 650 pages, and included 276 provisions that benefit everyone from restaurant owners to makers of bows and arrows to importers of Chinese ceiling fans. The central provision is a reduction of the corporate tax rate from 35% to 32%, worth $76.5 billion over 10 years. House Democrats complained that it would actually increase benefits to corporations that move their operations offshore, thus costing another $42 billion over ten years. The "manufacturing benefit" in the bill will be extended to oil and gas producers, corporate farms (but not family farms), electric generators, engineering and construction firms, and private water utilities. The House Democratic critique announces that "Christmas will come before Nov. 2, this year, since this legislation contains so many unrelated tax breaks."

The conference report passed the House by a vote of 280-141 on Oct. 7, but was held up in the Senate by Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La) who wanted to include tax breaks for employers who keep activated National Guard and reservists on their payrolls (those tax breaks were passed as part of a separate bill). It's been derided in the Senate by members of both parties. Despite all the criticism, however, there was little effort to actually kill the bill, and the White House has indicated that Bush will sign it.

Ibero-American News Digest

Venezuela: Municipal Elections Could Be Flashpoint for Crisis

Mayoral and gubernatorial elections are to be held in Venezuela Oct. 31, two days before the U.S. elections. The apparatus of President Hugo Chavez is prepared to take over most of the 23 state governments which are up for election, as well as more than 300 mayoralties throughout the country. The opposition currently controls state governments in major states, but they are likely to lose them all, as a demoralized middle class is expected to abstain from voting, in the wake of the failed Aug. 15 recall referendum. Learning nothing from that loss, the opposition parties disbanded their umbrella organization, Coordinadora Democratica, after the recall, and began fighting each other over individual candidacies, despite the fact that unifying forces would be the only potential route to win anything, given Chavez's full control over the electoral institutions.

Meanwhile, the radical opposition in the "Bloque Democratico"—whose Secretary General Alejandro Pena Esclusa publicly supports Spain's leading Francoite fascist, Blas Pinar—is holding weekly meetings in middle-class neighborhoods in Caracas and other state capitals, recruiting those demoralized by the abject failures of the democratic opposition, to the Bloque's strategy: abstention, and throwing up street blockades to sabotage the elections.

Adding to the tension, was the Oct. 11 decision by a military court that Gen. Jose Uzon—who was Chavez's Finance Minister until he resigned during the April 11, 2002 coup against Chavez—was guilty of "defaming" the Armed Forces for his denunciations of interference by Cuban intelligence officers in Venezuelan barracks. He was given a five-year prison sentence. From the "underground," another anti-Chavez officer, Gen. Nestor Gonzalez, promised that Uzon's sentence would receive the response it merits, at the appropriate time, and called upon people to reject the regional electoral process.

Mass Protests in Colombia vs. IMF Austerity, Free-Trade Pact

Hundreds of thousands of Colombians took to the streets in a dozen cities across Colombia Oct. 12, to protest the Alvaro Uribe government's foolish embrace of IMF austerity, which is rapidly eroding the anti-terrorist President's popularity. Particularly targetted by the protesters, was Uribe's newly-submitted "reform" legislation, which was allegedly designed to redress a serious budget deficit, but which will in fact drive a population already estimated at 60% below the poverty line, into abject misery and even violent upheaval under narco-terrorist orchestration.

The major labor federations, students, indigenous rights groups, human rights NGOs, and the opposition Liberal Party had organized the "national strike" to both protest Uribe's economic policies and ongoing negotiation of a Colombia-U.S free-trade agreement, and his campaign to win a constitutional reform that would allow his re-election.

Somewhere between 100,000 and 300,000 marched in the capital city of Bogota alone, and while the anger in the ranks and among the labor unions was most clearly directed against Uribe's tax increases, privatizations, and shredding of the public health, pension, and other general welfare protections, the most organized groups in the marches were dominated by the narcoterrorist FARC-linked coalition of left parties, the only visible anti-IMF force in the country, and by the degenerate Lopez Michelsen wing of the Liberal Party. In combination, the FARC-allied left and Lopez's political spawn are intent on building up a power base designed to take back the government for the narcoterrorists, in the next Presidential election.

IMF Man in Peru Sent Fleeing by Furious Pensioners

In early October Peruvian Finance Minister and Wall Street's best friend in Peru, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, was driven out of the state of Arequipa by retirees, members of the Macro Sur Federation, enraged at his efforts to (un-)constitutionally effect a so-called "pension reform," which casts pensioners as useless eaters and, according to Macro Sur Federation president Jorge del Carpio Lazo, "represents the expropriation of our just rights."

The pensioners had set up a picket line outside a building where both PPK, as Kuczynski is known, and Energy Minister Jaime Quijandria, were holding a meeting with mining company officers, and threw eggs and stones at the ministers, forcing a suspension of the meeting. The ministers were then escorted out of the city by an armed police guard.

Arequipa was the site of mass strikes in 2000 which succeeded in halting the privatization process ongoing at the time.

Trade Tensions Build Between Chile and Bolivia

Trade conflict is the latest manifestation of the building tensions related to Bolivia's claim on the Pacific Coast territory seized from it by Chile during the 1879-81 War of the Pacific. Two weeks ago, the Chilean government withdrew its consul Emilio Ruiz Tagle from Bolivia—its only diplomatic representative in that country—after he had stated publicly that Bolivia's territorial claim was reasonable.

Bilateral tensions have grown in the recent period, over higher rates being charged at the Chilean port of Arica—some, as much as 300% higher—after Chile sold the port to private interests; Bolivia ships 70% of its exports through the port. Bolivia was granted free access to the port in the 1904 Peace and Friendship Treaty signed between the two nations, and Bolivia is now requesting that the port privatization be annulled. In response, the Chilean government cancelled an agreement for preferential import of 12,000 tons of Bolivian sugar, which was to go into effect in January of 2005. Bolivian Foreign Minister Juan Ignacio Siles said he hopes relations between the two countries don't come "to blows."

Watch Out for Luigi Einaudi!

Known as "Kissinger's Kissinger" for Ibero-America, Luigi Einaudi assumed the post of Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS) on Oct. 16, after a convenient "corruption scandal" forced out the previous chief. Former Costa Rican President Miguel Angel Rodriguez submitted his resignation as OAS Secretary General barely 20 days after assuming it, when the Costa Rican government suddenly charged that when Rodriguez was President, he had taken a half million dollars from a French company, in payoffs for awarding them the cellular telephone service.

While EIR has not yet confirmed the corruption charges, we do know something about Luigi Einaudi, with whom we have battled since exposing his role in 1976 in attempting to foment a new war between Chile and Peru. His specialty since the late 1960s, when he worked for the RAND Corporation, has been manipulating border wars, to the end of establishing supranational regional governments. He served as a top official in Policy Planning for Ibero-America in the State Department for more than 20 years, proudly bragging that he "came in with Kissinger." As George Bush, Sr.'s ambassador to the OAS, he was the architect of the "democracy" clauses which were used later to overthrow Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori, and he did everything he could to defend the synarchist, Cali Cartel-linked then-President of Venezuela, Carlos Andres Perez.

When Bill Clinton, much to Einaudi's chagrin, won the U.S. Presidential election in 1992, Einaudi returned to the State Department, only to be removed entirely from State in the second Clinton Administration. He set up shop in the Inter-American Dialogue for a number of years, before being tapped by Bush, Jr. as the U.S. choice for Deputy Secretary General of the OAS.

Einaudi's job as chief of the OAS should be temporary, if OAS rules are followed. An Extraordinary General Assembly of the Foreign Ministers is be called to elect a replacement, although no date is yet set.

Lula Survives Mid-Term Elections, But for How Long?

The first round of mid-term municipal elections in Brazil on Oct. 3, were the first elections held since President Lula da Silva won the Presidential elections in October 2002 with an overwhelming mandate to break with IMF policy, which his government then refused to do. Candidates from Lula's Workers Party (PT) received the largest number of votes nationwide of any party (16.1 million), and doubled the number of cities and towns where they will occupy the Mayor's office, from 193 four years ago, to at least 388 of the nation's total 5,562 muncipalities. Victory in several key elections eluded them in the first round, most particularly in the City of Sao Paulo, where the PT incumbent mayor (a former sexologist) will square off against a candidate from the PSDB (Social Democratic) party of Lula's predecessor, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, in the second round of elections, on Oct. 31.

There is much talk of Cardoso's PSDB emerging from these elections as the PT's major challenger for the 2006 Presidential elections, and much chatter from banking circles that the fact that the PT survived these election gives Lula the opportunity to now rip up labor protections and finalize autonomy of the Central Bank, but under current world conditions, such political projections are foolhardy.

Brazil: PRONA Party Builds National Base

The PRONA party, founded by Dr. Eneas Carneiro 15 years ago, won seven mayoralties, and 128 municipal council seats, across 15 states, in Brazil's Oct. 3 national elections. Eneas, as he is known, is the cardiologist-turned-political-fighter whose party organized Lyndon LaRouche's June 2002 visit to Brazil, where LaRouche was awarded an Honorary Citizenship by the City Council of Sao Paulo. In October 2002, Eneas received over 1.5 million votes in his race for Congress, a historic record, which stunned Brazil's political elite, and won PRONA, under Brazil's electoral system, six Congressional seats.

PRONA calls the latest municipal election results yet another surprise for the political system, because their victories demonstrate that the party is developing a national machine, despite the political games in Brasilia, which led to four of the five PRONA Congressmen elected on Dr. Eneas's coattails leaving PRONA for other parties which appeared "more successful" in late 2003.

Dr. Eneas and the Congressman who remained with PRONA, Maximo Damasceno, continue to hammer at the need for national economic sovereignty in more serious ways. In a June 2004 speech on the floor of Congress, Damasceno detailed how it is a lie that Brazil does not have the resources to develop, because those resources are being wasted on interest payments on the domestic and foreign debt. Damasceno reiterated PRONA's call for Federal investments in infrastructure, interest rates of 1-2%, and capital controls, among other measures necessary for a nationalist economic policy which must replace the "evil neo-malthusian policy" reigning today. In August, Damasceno also spoke out against the 1997 law which opened Petrobras's (the state oil company) operations to foreign multinationals, a law PRONA insists must be revoked, as unconstitutional, and a threat to Brazil's energy security.

Rato Names Aznar Associate to IMF Post

A close collaborator of former Spanish Premier Jose Maria Aznar has been tapped to be the IMF's delegate for Ibero-America. IMF Managing Director Rodrigo Rato, formerly Aznar's Finance Minister, requested that Congressman Juan Costa, from Aznar's Francoite Partido Popular party, join him in Washington, to help oversee the Fund's dealings with Ibero-America. Costa served as a Secretary of State and Science and Technology Minister in Aznar's government. It is noteworthy that just before taking up his post of Managing Director, Rato invited former Argentine Presidential candidate Ricardo Lopez Murphy, a rabid neo-conservative monetarist, to join his staff. Not wanting to be distracted from his task of overthrowing the Kirchner government, Lopez Murphy declined.

Western European News Digest

Italian Weekly Covers LaRouche Charge That Bush Insane

The Italian weekly La Rinascita Oct. 12 reported the LaRouche PAC's expose of President George W. Bush's mental illness. The Oct. 8 issue of Rinascita, the official paper of the opposition party Partito dei Comunisti Italiani (PdCI), published an article by Paolo Raimondi of Movimento Solidarietà on the first television debate between Bush and Democratic challenger John Kerry, and the ongoing election campaign fight. The article underscores the leading role of Lyndon LaRouche in exposing the clinical insanity of President Bush, and his initiatives to get Kerry on an FDR economic strategy to mobilize the lower-income 80% of the American population.

EU in Crisis Over Candidate Rejections

That Maastricht Europe is in bad shape, in terms of institutional cohesion as well as otherwise, has been underlined once again in voting on members of the new EU Commission.

The European Parliament rejected Rocco Buttiglione (Italy) and Laszlo Kovacs (Hungary), who were designated for the post of Commissioners in charge of justice and energy, respectively. The nominal reasons for the rejection were Buttiglione's position that as a Catholic, he must oppose the legalization of homosexual marriages; in the case of Kovacs, his qualifications to deal with the energy issue were contested.

The two failed candidacies call the entire list of new commission members (most of whom are neo-cons, anyway) into question, which leaves the European Union without an operative Commission for the time being. In other words, the EU has been thrown into a grave institutional crisis, because the Commission is an essential body of Maastricht Europe.

German Auto Works Strike vs. Mass Layoffs

GM-OPEL workers in Bochum, Germany went out on a wildcat strike Oct. 15, to protest mass layoffs, and other General Motors sites in Europe are expected to join the protest on Oct. 19. Workers at the Bochum car plant stayed off the night shift Oct. 14, joined by the two day shifts today, and will continue into next week, probably at least until Oct. 19, which has been designated a day of action for the 66,000 workers at all General Motors sites in Europe.

The Bochum strike is accompanied by protests outside the plant, by family members and sympathetic citizens. Similar spontaneous mass protests occurred in the city of Ruesselsheim, Oct. 14. The issue, which is the number one news item on all the media, is certain to also play a prominent role in the Monday rallies Oct. 18.

The spontaneous outburst of labor protests is creating panic among politicians: both Economics Minister Wolfgang Clement and Northrhine-Westphalia State Governor Peer Steinbrueck urged workers to go back to work instantly. Steinbrueck is especially worried, since Bochum is an important industrial city in his state, which is facing elections next May, and his statement Oct. 14, that the workers were "wrong if they believe the state can create several thousand jobs," apparently was not appreciated at all. A combination of the labor mass strike ferment with the Monday rally movement (with the crucial LaRouche input) which has not died away, although the media and political elite has tried to declare it over, certainly is the last thing that leading politicians want.

German Wave of Layoffs Triggers Mass Labor Action

GM-OPEL layoffs are just the beginning of major layoffs expected in Germany over the coming months. These include the following prominent examples: Dresdner Bank, 4,700; Bayer Chemical, 4,000; Schering Pharmaceutics, 2,000; Deutsche Post, 1,600; and Bombardier (rail tech), 1,500; SAP (computers), 1,300; FAG Kugelfischer (ballbearings), 1,000; Spar (retail), 1,000. In addition, there's the retail chain Karstadt, which announced plans to fire 5,000 on Oct. 14.

Furthermore, the German operations of Philips plans to fire 2,000 workers, 1,300 of these in Hamburg. Especially for the producing sector, for every one job axed by the big firms, an additional three to five jobs in the supply sector are threatened.

Forecasts by industry and labor experts that the official (massaged) jobless figure will jump up by more than a half million to 5 million in February, seem to be right on the mark. Real (unmanipulated) joblessness will likely be at 9 million.

Monday Rallies Continue Unabated in Eastern Germany

One-hundred sixty-five Monday rallies were announced to take place Oct. 11. The schadenfreude displayed by certain politicians and media last week that "only" 110 Monday rallies took place on Oct. 4, was premature: for Oct. 11, there have been 165 rallies announced, which is an increase by more than 40% from the Monday before. This confirms the trend in numerous smaller cities in eastern Germany, which report slightly increasing turnouts at rallies. In many, if not most cities, the rally organizing committees are being restructured, replacing the ATTAC and other deserters, with people who are committed to continue. The BueSo, led by Helga Zepp-LaRouche and the LaRouche Youth Movement are continuing to receive more invitations to speak or intervene, than they can logistically meet, presently—a problem that will soon be solved by the current surge of recruitment.

Despite Frustration, Populace Sustains Hartz IV Opposition

An opinion poll conducted by the Polis Institute for the German press agency (DPA), found that 75% of those who generally support the Monday rallies are frustrated that nothing has been achieved by the protests, so far. But desertion from the rallies does not at all mean that people are now for Hartz IV, nor have they capitulated, as the government and mainstream media claim. Only 20% of those polled, believe that the rallies have a decreasing turnout because protesters have begun to accept Hartz IV. Eighty percent, however, believe that opposition to Hartz IV is still strong, suggesting that the potential for new mass protests is there, but latent for the moment.

Low-Income Jobs, Deterioration of Health-Care Protection in Germany

Even without the Hartz IV measures, the economic situation of the German population is worsening. In a new series about low-income jobs in Germany, the Sueddeutsche Zeitung of Oct. 12 documents the wage-per-hour incomes of those job categories in which people regularly, by trade-union arrangements, earn only 4-10 euros per hour: e.g., haircutters (5.60 in eastern Germany, 7.70 western Germany), shop-sellers (8.20 Euro), bakers (7.70 Euro), etc. This means 1,000 euro per month for a haircutter (after-tax income).

Also, almost 200,000 people in Germany have no health insurance, which was impossible to conceive of only a few years ago. This is mainly due to the big "boom" in the "new economy" sector, where many people either started their own firm, or became outsourced in "new economy" firms. The number of uninsured people doubled from 1995, because most of these "new starters" could no longer pay their private insurance contributions, and were then dropped. Other private companies do not provide for them, and, since the German health-care system does not allow the change from a private insurance policy back into the state insurance system, these people now have no insurance at all. Worse, those people suspected to have a sufficiently high income while being unemployed, under Hartz IV, from January on, will not be automatically insured by the state any more. This applies to about 470,000 citizens. These people are expected to pay for private insurance, which they will not be able to do for a long time, leaving them uninsured.

All of this is being used by synarchist populists and others, to attack the "non-functioning" state social and health system, and call for sweeping changes, instead of changing the economic policies.

Transport and Labor unrest in Spain, France, Netherlands

Since the Dutch government has not come up with an acceptable concession on its planned variant of the German Hartz IV austerity program, after the mass rally of 250,000 citizens in Amsterdam, the labor movement made its next move: On Oct. 14 the transport workers staged a nationwide strike for 24 hours.

In Spain, the strike at the huge Izar shipyard, which actually goes against the insane decision of the European Commission to ban state support for the Spanish ship-building sector, is in great danger of turning against the Socialist government, if it does not act. Several thousand jobs are threatened, and as well as many firms which supply the sector.

In France, Finance/Economics Minister Nicolas Sarkozy had to call off his planned "industrial summit" meeting with Germany's Economics Minister Wolfgang Clement, because Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin has ordered him to work out a plan by the end of this month, for how to guarantee economic growth and to defend French production against the oil price rise.

Sarkozy's offer to farmers to reduce the diesel tax by $.04, is viewed as no more than a "whim" by the farmers, who have called off their threatened blockades of oil refineries only on the condition that the government comes up with something more serious. Some of the truck transport enterprises have already begun select road blockades, and the fishermen have called off blockades of the ports for two weeks, only on condition that the government provides financial support.

Also of note, is that Germany's Baltic Coast shipbuilders, who have carried out warning strikes already, have also threatened a march of protest on Schwerin, the state capital of Mecklenburg, and on Berlin, the nation's capital, if shipyard managers' plans to cut wages to "compete" with South Korean shipyards, are not called off. The first protests in Berlin have also been staged by the German farmers organization, on the diesel price inflation issue.

German Defense Minister signals support for Kerry view on Iraq

Interviewed by the Financial Times Oct. 13, German Defense Minister Peter Struck welcomed Kerry's proposal that, if elected President, he would convene an international conference on Iraq.

"This is a very sensible proposal," Struck said, "The status in Iraq can only be cleared up, when all those involved sit together at one table. Germany has taken on responsibilities in Iraq, including financial ones; this would naturally justify our involvement in such a conference."

Struck reiterated that, for the time being, Germany would not consider sending troops to Iraq, but left it open whether that position could change, if the conditions in Iraq changed in a way that permitted it.

The FT commented that whereas the German government has so far refused to comment on the outcome of the U.S. elections, "Mr. Struck's comments provide support for Mr. Kerry's claim that he would be able to persuade countries that opposed the war, to work in Iraq—a claim ridiculed by President George W. Bush."

Russia and the CIS News Digest

Foreign Ministers of India, Russia, China To Meet

On Oct. 21, in Almaty, Kazakstan, the foreign ministers of Russia, China, and India—what former Prime Minister Yevegeni Primakov called the Strategic Triangle—will confer, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in an exclusive interview with The Hindu published Oct. 12. Lavrov told correspondent Amit Baruah, that the meeting would be "about our common belief that multilateral approaches are the best solution to global problems and regional conflicts. It's certainly our belief that our three countries can do a lot together to keep and promote stability in the Asia-Pacific region, Eurasia in general, and in the United Nations." The three Foreign Ministers have been meeting at the UN General Assembly for the past several years, but did not do so this year. The Almaty meeting is a conference of governments, on Cooperation and Confidence-Building in Asia.

Lavrov also discussed the "very active" cooperation of India and Russia against terrorism. India wants to "universalize counter-terrorist conventions and also [has] initiated the adoption of a comprehensive counter-terrorist convention, [and] Russia, on its part, suggested a new international convention on fighting nuclear terrorism" to the UN, he said.

Putin Visits China

Russian President Vladimir Putin visited China Oct. 14-16, to mark 55 years of diplomatic relations between the two countries. In an interview with Chinese media at the Kremlin Oct. 11, Putin praised Chinese economic development, and the ability of both sides to "discuss any issue with frankness and sincerity." Putin said that economic cooperation would be a key issue of the visit, including among the two nations' border regions. He also emphasized that youth delegations from both sides would be meeting, a program which began during his historic China-India trip of December 2002. He called on Russian and Chinese youth to cooperate in joint development of high technology.

Oil was also high on the Sino-Russian agenda, as well as the long-delayed decision on building a pipeline from East Siberian oilfields, either directly to China, or to the Pacific port of Nakhodka (and on to Korea and Japan), with China as the destination of a spur. The decision has been complicated by the financial scandals around Yukos Oil, the main Russian company involved in the China route.

Putin told Chinese journalists in Moscow, before his departure, that Russia "must be guided by our national interests, first and foremost; we must develop the Russian Federation's eastern territories, as well as Far Eastern territories. Consequently, we must plan and implement large-scale infrastructure-related projects there." China wants to know just how much of overall Russian fuel-and-energy resources it can receive in the future, "including specific deadlines, in accordance with Chinese economic-development plans," Putin said.

Russia is also developing nuclear and thermal power, Putin said. "We would like to cooperate with China; and we are going to cooperate with China in the context of its northern, northwestern, and northeast territories' development; moreover, we'll cooperate in the field of fuel-and-energy deliveries."

Neo-Cons: Russia to Blame for Its AIDS, Demographic Disaster

Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute has released a report that blames Russians' bad social habits and proclivities, for their own looming demographic disaster. The report was issued in September under the auspices of the National Bureau of Asian Research, with the title "The Russian Federation at the Dawn of the Twenty-first Century: Trapped in a Demographic Straitjacket." The Eberstadt report was instantly seized by The Economist of London, recent source of scenarios for the fragmentation of Russia through ethnic conflicts, as the topic of its editorial in the Oct. 2-8 issue, "Russian demography: Death wish; Russia appears to be committing suicide."

The Economist quoted Eberstadt on how Russia's birthrate cannot recover rapidly from its plunge in the early 1990s, due to widespread infertility from abortions and STDs (sexually transmitted diseases). Meanwhile, the death rate, which fell "from the catastrophic to the merely gruesome" in the 1990s, is rising again. "Fewer than half of 16-year-old Russian boys will reach 60," said The Economist.

The early deaths of Russian men, the editorial continued, cannot be blamed wholly on poverty. Russian men are dying because of "wanton disregard for their own health," especially excessive alcohol consumption. "But alcoholism is itself just a symptom of the long, dark night of the Russian soul ushered in by the disorienting collapse of communism," it admonished (not mentioning how much Eberstadt's AEI and related Mont Pelerin Society fronts did to plunge Russia into the abyss). The article concluded, "How low could Russia's population go? Perhaps to 100 [million] by 2050, or less if the country continues to neglect its AIDS problem. Tuberculosis is rife. Russia's suicidal bent could eventually threaten its disintegration, if its vast, depopulated territory became ungovernable."

Minus the propaganda for disintegration and ungovernability, the numbers cited by The Economist correspond to a recently leaked Russian Academy of Sciences projection. And on Oct. 1, a State Statistics Service official said that the size of Russia's working-age population will begin to fall in absolute terms, in 2006.

The Oct. 11 issue of The New Yorker carried a lengthy article by Michael Specter, on the imminent explosion of HIV/AIDS in Russia.

Glazyev: Government Policy Against General Welfare

Economist Sergei Glazyev, now leader of the For A Decent Life political movement, has criticized the latest economic policies of the Russian government, as well as the administrative and electoral changes announced by the Kremlin. He says that the government's economic austerity moves, affecting the living standards of the population, are what most threaten the national security. In an interview with Novaya Gazeta of Oct. 4, Glazyev said that President Putin was violating Constitutional principles, first and foremost, by failure "to ensure social security guarantees and federal norms of financing for the [state] budget sector." Under the decentralization of social entitlements, "the central authorities are not responsible for Russia's living standards."

Glazyev also attacked the 2005 budget priorities of the government, which allocate one-fourth of all state spending to foreign debt service, and approximately one-third to all kinds of law enforcement and security spending, while cutting other critical areas. "The budget does not envisage economic development incentives. This is a typical colonial model. A police regime and a similar budget structure can be found in any African country."

The week of Sept. 27, Glazyev visited Washington, D.C., the Washington Times reported. Speaking at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Glazyev said he was preparing to collect two million signatures on a national referendum, which would call for restoring direct elections, more taxation of oil and gas companies, and upholding of state responsibility for health, education, and other vital services for the population.

Russian Orthodox Church Moves To Reunify

At an Oct. 7 news conference, the Assembly of Hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) summed up the results of a forum held on reunification of the branches of Russian Orthodoxy, separated after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Yuvenali, Metropolitan of Krutitsy and Kolomna, said that the assembly had appraised the revival of Russian Orthodoxy during the past several years and mapped out priorities for the future. The most important decision, adopted unanimously, was for the ROC/Moscow Patriarchate to reunite with the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR).

The Assembly also issued a special statement on terrorism. Patriarch Alexi II stressed at a meeting with President Putin at the Kremlin, "We should be united as never before in the face of the dreadful threat."

Putin Prepares for Visit To Brazil

President Putin will visit Brazil before attending the Asia Pacific Cooperation Forum (APEC) meeting in Chile in mid-November, Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov announced, following a meeting of the Russian-Brazilian High-Level Cooperation Committee, in Moscow on Oct. 11-12. It will be the first such visit by a Russian head of state. Brazilian Vice President Jose Alencar headed the Brazilian side of the Cooperation Committee meeting.

Alencar and Fradkov emphasized that Brazil and Russia must capitalize on their good relations, to move beyond trade matters. Russia and Brazil "have a right to aspire to forming a technological alliance ... including [in] the military-technical area," and should implement "long-term programs in the high-tech sector," Fradkov told the committee on Oct. 12. Alencar cited space exploration, the peaceful use of nuclear energy, civil aviation, shipbuilding, and energy as the among the most promising areas for cooperation. While in Moscow, Alencar toured the Sukhoi aircraft design and engineering plant, before proceeding onto St. Petersburg, where he addressed 100 businessmen from both countries at that city's Chamber of Trade and Industry. He reported that Brazil was interested in the creation of joint companies with Russia for the production of electrical turbines, extraction equipment for oil and gas, and aircraft construction. Brazilian Foreign Ministry sources report that Brazilian state oil company Petrobras is trying to interest Russian companies in bidding for oil exploitation rights in Brazil.

Southwest Asia News Digest

Russia Completes Construction of Iranian Nuclear Plant

Russia has completed the construction of the Iranian nuclear power plant at Bushehr, announced Iranian atomic energy head Golareza Agazadeh on Oct. 14. Energy production is expected to start in 2006. Iran has 80% of the technical materials needed to start the plant. Fuel is to come from Russia, according to an agreement to be signed soon, which calls for spent fuel to be re-sent to Russia. The head of Russia's atomic energy agency Rumyantsev, is to go to Iran in November, when the agreement is to be signed.

Will Israel or U.S. Attack Iran's Nuclear Reactor Site?

Israeli and U.S. intelligence sources have again warned EIR that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has told the Bush Administration in no uncertain terms that Israel will not allow Iran to bring its Bushehr nuclear power plant on line, and will launch a military strike, along the lines of the preventive war action taken against Iraq in 1980, against the Osirak nuclear reactor. Inside the U.S., the neo-conservative war-mongers also favor this action.

In August, immediately following the news of the FBI investigation of Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin for passing classified documents, including some policy papers on Iran, to the right-wing Jewish lobby group, AIPAC, Lyndon LaRouche noted that the news of the investigation was an important impediment to what was then being described as a near-term Israeli plan to launch the strike against Iran before the U.S. elections.

A well-informed Arab strategic analyst in Europe told EIR, however, that the neo-con/right-wing Israeli plan for military action against Iran is still the "preferred option" before the end of 2004.

Bush Pressured To Talk to Russia, Europe About Iran

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Moscow was opposed to seeing Iran referred to the UN Security Council over its nuclear program, reported the Iranian news service IRNA, on Oct. 10. While visiting Iran, Lavrov warned such a step could be "counterproductive."

"To start thinking of any scenario which is not constructive to our point of view is premature and could be counter-productive," Lavrov said at a joint news conference with his Iranian counterpart Kamal Kharrazi in Tehran. "We will be expecting the cooperation between Iran and the IAEA to continue," added Lavrov, who was in Iran for two days.

Meanwhile, the Bush Administration announced on Oct. 11 that it would convoke a meeting of envoys from the G-8 countries, in Washington, for a discussion on Iran, specifically, on what approach to adopt on Iran's nuclear program.

Prior to this move, President Bush was coming under intense criticism, especially from Democratic Presidential challenger John Kerry over his reluctance to work with the European allies on Iran. Kerry's running mate John Edwards, had floated the proposal, that the U.S. could offer incentives to Iran (promising deliveries of nuclear fuel, for example), to get Iran to stop producing uranium. One Iranian negotiator, Hossein Musavian, head of the foreign policy committee at Iran's Supreme National Security Council, had said Iran would review the proposal, noting that he thought the proposal was interesting. This may have prompted the Bushites to present themselves now as ready to deal with Iran diplomatically.

For example, Colin Powell's #2, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, said that, "We hold the view that Iran needs to be brought to account, and we would like to move to the UN Security Council after the November (IAEA) board of governors' meeting.... But we're open to all ideas that people have, because one thing has become clear, and that is that we all share—the G-8 [Group of Eight]—the same end, the desire, and that is that Iran should be free of nuclear weapons and be transparent and let the international community have sufficient confidence that that is the case."

Diplomatic sources say that the European Union had agreed on Oct. 11 to prepare a package of "carrots and sticks" to get Iran to comply with demands by the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to suspend its uranium enrichment activities—a process that can be used to make material for atomic bombs.

However, the Russian government, which was to participate in the Oct. 15 meeting on Iran, is saying "no" to the "stick" policy.

The EU ministers had urged Russia to join the initiative, but a source in Russia's Foreign Ministry said it was for the IAEA to investigate whether Iran was secretly developing nuclear arms. "I would not say it is appropriate to advocate the carrots-and-sticks approach," the source said. "[Russia's foreign] minister has confirmed our position, stressing that it is in Iran's interests to cooperate with the agency on all these questions. That is our position."

Shi'ite Militia Turns in Weapons to Iraqi Interim Gov't

Moqtada Sadr's Shi'ite militia began handing in a few weapons at the start of a deal with the Iraqi government to end months of violence in Sadr City, reported Agence France Presse on Oct. 11. It was the first day of a test agreement. Arab experts noted that these militiamen have numerous heavy weapons in their possession; thus, if one has 10 rocket-propelled grenades, and hands in three for cash payment, it receives payment, but retains most of the weapons.

About a dozen machine guns, 12 mortar rounds, 38 mortar launchers, and a sniper rifle were reportedly delivered to the al-Habibiya police station. The deal has had lukewarm endorsements by the U.S. military. U.S. battalion commander for Sadr City Lt. Col. Gary Volesky warned that his men reserved the right to carry out raids and arrests, despite the five-day test period for Sadr's men to relinquish heavy and medium weapons. "There has been no ceasefire agreement. The freedom of our movement has not been limited in any way. If we get the intel to support doing a search or raid on a target, we have that flexibility to do it," Volesky said.

Iraqi national security advisor Kassem Daoud hailed the agreement and said the government had more than $500 million to rebuild Sadr City, with $150 million coming directly from the Americans. Iraqi police and national guard will patrol Sadr City, and "the multinational force will intervene whenever is necessary," Daoud said.

Iraqi Interim PM Threatens Falluja

Interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi threatened a military assault on Falluja if the population does not surrender Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi. That Zarqawi is there is assumed by Allawi and the U.S., but not proven.

Reportedly boosted by joint U.S.-Iraq military operations against resistance strongholds, and the ongoing disarmament of al Sadr's militia in Baghdad, Allawi said on Oct. 13 that it was high time for Falluja to return to government control before elections in January. "We have asked Falluja residents to turn over Zarqawi and his group. If they don't do it, we are ready for major operations in Falluja," Allawi told Iraq's 100-member interim parliament.

It is curious that, just as talks between the government and a delegation of elders and leaders from Falluja seemed to be making progress, Allawi issued this provocation.

Meanwhile, bomb blasts inside the Green Zone in Baghdad killed 32 people on Oct. 14, and on Oct. 16, five more U.S. soldiers were killed in Iraq by car bombs. It is possible that October 2004 will develop to be the highest number of U.S. casualties since the war began.

As Violence Sweeps Iraq, President Moots Postponing Elections

In addition to the 32 Iraqis killed in Baghdad by suicide bombers Oct. 14, the following casualties were also reported in that single day:

* Two Iraqi army officers were shot dead as they drove through Baquba, northeast of the capital, according to police. Fifteen Iraqi national guardsmen were killed in an overnight attack in Qaim near the Syrian border, according to a police officer there.

In Baghdad, one U.S. soldier was killed and two wounded in an attack on the eastern side of the capital, the military said. Also in Baghdad, an investigative judge, and a woman journalist working for a Kurdish television station, were gunned down outside their homes in separate attacks, medics and the Interior Ministry said.

Elsewhere, four Iraqi National Guardsmen were wounded in a roadside bombing in the northern city of Mosul, an officer said, and one U.S. soldier was wounded in a roadside bomb attack in Hawija, west of Kirkuk, the U.S. military said.

The escalating violence is putting the elections in jeopardy, according to Interim President Ghazi al-Yawar. He said, in an interview published in Cairo, that the elections could be delayed if the security situation had not sufficiently improved. "We are deploying all our efforts to meet this deadline," he told the London-based Arab daily Asharq Al-Awsat. "But, if we judge that a ballot at this date—without security and conditions allowing free elections for all—will have a negative fallout on our country, then we will not hesitate to change the date," Yawar said.

German SW Asia Expert Sees Long-Term Chaos From U.S. Policy

Peter Scholl-Latour, the noted German expert on Southwest Asia, who has ties to intelligence circles, had a sober assessment of the region. Speaking at an Oct. 8 event at the annual Frankfurt Book Fair, where the Arab world was being honored, Scholl-Latour had the following to say:

The situation in Iraq is going from bad to worse, as the resistance grows, and Iraqi collaborators are becoming increasingly the main targets. The most serious mistake made by the U.S. was envoy Paul Bremer's order to disband the military. The military would have agreed to work with the U.S., at least in large part, once Saddam Hussein's regime had been toppled. The U.S. already had contacts with leading generals, and had advertised the fact. They could have organized essentially a military coup, but did not. The question is: Why not?

The situation in northern Iraq is particularly critical, given the ambitions of the Kurds for Kirkuk, and an independent Kurdistan. Turkey will have to intervene, if the Kurds attempt to realize these ambitions. The EU talks conducted with Turkey regarding its candidacy for EU membership are problematic, since the Europeans are pressuring Turkey to reduce the power and role of its military. The military is the main bastion of secularism in the country; if it is weakened, the trend towards Islamization, already visible, would increase.

On elections in Iraq: He said, if they occur, they will bring in massive votes for the Shi'ites. This is why most mainstream Shi'ite organizations (SCIRI, et al.) have refrained from active resistance. Scholl-Latour said he thought a Shi'ite victory would bring in an Islamic republic, but not the same type as in Iran. (EIR notes that this is not likely, however, considering that the highest Shi'ite authority, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani is opposed to anything of the sort.)

Interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi is a man who worked in Saddam Hussein's intelligence services, then went over to the MI6, and the CIA. This is well known everywhere. He has reorganized the security services of Saddam Hussein, and is setting himself up as a "Saddam-lite." It won't fly, however.

Syria is under pressure from the U.S., and is undergoing internal tensions as well.

Asia News Digest

Al-Qaeda Said To Be Recruiting in Pakistan

According to Karachi police chief Tariq Jameel, al-Qaeda, which had earlier exclusively recruited Arabs, is now seeking recruits from Pakistan. Al-Qaeda has set up a large number of small-sized cells within Pakistan, most of which consist of not more than 10 individuals. Tariq Jameel also pointed out that most of the 600 al-Qaeda members who were rounded up since 9/11 were Pakistanis. He said the Pakistani recruits come from Pakistani and Kashmiri militant groups such as Al Badr, Harkatul Mujahideen, Jaish-i-Mohammad, and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi—all of which are rabid Sunni sectarian groups. Each jihadi, depending on his performance, is paid $170 to $340 a month.

According to an article in the Pakistani paper Dawn on Oct. 9, based on interviews with security officials and some al-Qaeda suspects inside Pakistan, the new strategy of the al-Qaeda leadership has made it difficult for Pakistani security agencies to monitor the profiles of these new recruits and new groups.

Myanmar Rights Activists: Sanctions Are Pointless

In a stunning declaration of the bankruptcy of the U.S.-British policy of imposing sanctions on Myanmar (formerly Burma), the National League for Democracy, the party of Aung San Suu Kyi, the darling of the human rights mafia, said that the sanctions were useless, and called for dialogue. Following new sanctions imposed on Myanmar on Oct. 11 by the European Union, the official spokesman of the National League for Democracy, U Lwin told Reuters Oct. 12, "I don't think this measure will make any difference, since [the senior military leaders] hardly travel to the European Union countries."

U Lwin added that economic sanctions, especially those imposed by the United States, had been equally ineffective in persuading the government, which insists it is moving towards democracy in its own way. It is also worth noting that Japan, a major aid donor for Myanmar, also strongly criticized the E.U. sanctions.

Pakistan Will Not Send Troops to Iraq

Pakistan will not send troops to Iraq, President Pervez Musharraf made clear to both President Bush and Iraqi Interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, according to the Washington Times reporting from Lahore Oct. 19. Rejecting a personal appeal from Allawi a few days earlier in New York, Musharraf said: "As far as Pakistan is concerned, our domestic environment is not conducive. It continues to be not conducive. We cannot be seen as an extension of the present forces there."

Earlier, Musharraf had pointed out that the situation in Iraq "is not suitable for sending troops, but if India decides to send troops in this situation, then Pakistan cannot lag behind and let him take the fruits."

Musharraf's rejection all but ends a U.S. effort to enlist an international Muslim force to protect UN officials, who are supposed to return to Iraq to run the election in January.

Koizumi Calls for Some U.S. Troops To Leave Japan

"I'm not taking an optimistic view of how fast we can tackle this grueling work," Japanese Defense Minister Yoshinori Ohno said Oct. 8 of Washington-Tokyo negotiations over the neo-con U.S. military "transformation." U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld plans to pull 70,000 troops out of Europe and Asia in a decade in the Pentagon scheme, but is demanding Japan act as a strategic hub for U.S. Air Force, Navy, and other new "mobile forces," to be run by an expanded Pacific headquarters on U.S. Guam. Washington wants to integrate some functions of U.S. bases in Japan with facilities of the Japanese military, then put command of it all in Guam, outside Japanese control—and then use Japanese territory as a hub from which to "rapid deploy" U.S. forces all over the world. This violates the U.S.-Japan security alliance, and Tokyo has objected.

Even Bush's best poodle, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, is under pressure to break ranks. In a post-war first, Koizumi played hardball Oct. 7, saying he would ask for the removal of 2,000-3,000 U.S. troops from Japan altogether, as part of the "global review."

Okinawa hosts most of the 47,000 U.S. military on less than 1% of Japan's land mass, so local Okinawans have demanded reductions with increasing anger. Rapes and military accidents have fueled resentment; the crash of a U.S. helicopter onto a university campus in August drew 30,000 protesters, the largest anti-American rally in Japan in a decade.

Shi'a-Sunni Violence Escalates in Pakistan

On Oct. 11, a suicide bombing at the Shi'a Husainia Hall mosque, in Lahore, Pakistan, killed four people, including two security guards, the Khaleej Times reported from Dubai. The mosque bombing was the third this month against a religious target in the province of Punjab, in what has become an intensified warfare between the majority Sunni and the minority Shi'a sects in Pakistan. On Oct. 10, suspected Shi'a assassins gunned down two Sunni clerics in Karachi. About 10,000 mourners gathered to participate in the funeral on Oct. 10 at the Islamic seminary where the two slain Sunni clerics had taught. Funeral prayer for one of the clerics, Mufti Jamil, who had well-established links with the Taliban militia in Afghanistan, was held amid tight security, with police sharpshooters on rooftops and riot police outside gas stations and neighborhood banks.

Islamabad has also sealed off the Pakistan-Iran border to prevent the Shi'a assassins from escaping into Iran—a predominantly Shi'a nation bordering Pakistan to its east.

UN Confirms Myanmar Opium Production Is Falling

The UN Office on Drugs and Crime reported Oct. 11 that opium cultivation dramatically declined in Myanmar in 2004, even as the UN struggles to secure financial support for alternative economic development.

The total area used to cultivate opium poppies in Myanmar for the 2004 season was estimated at 44,200 hectares, down 29% on from 2003, according to the UN office's report, released in Bangkok and Rangoon. That figure represents a 73% reduction of opium cultivation levels since 1996, said Jean-Luc Lemahieu, the UN office's resident representative in Burma.

The reduction program began in 1996, after the surrender of opium warlord Khun Sa and ceasefire accords were signed between the Burmese junta and ethnic rebel groups.

Despite the decline, Myanmar is reported to be the second-largest source of opium, after Afghanistan. Some 260,000 households remain dependent on poppy cultivation for their livelihood.

Chinese, Russian Presidents Finalize Border

Presidents Hu Jintao of China and Vladimir Putin of Russia finalized the delimitation of their 4,370 border Oct. 14, ending a 40-year process to resolve all boundary disputes between the two nations, Itar-Tass reported. This was the leading item on the agenda between the two nations' Presidents. The accords included one on the eastern stretch of Russian-Chinese border.

The two sides also signed a protocol on completion of talks on getting Russia into the World Trade Organization.

The two sides plan to sign a Joint Declaration and adopt "a document, new in form and content," a Russian-Chinese Action Plan for 2005-2008, according to Russian President Putin's aide Sergei Prikhodko.

U.S. Lawmakers Oppose Military Funds for Indonesia

Now that retired General Bambang Susilo Yudhoyono, who is respected in the West, has been elected President of Indonesia, the Bush Administration is anxious to restore full military-to-military relations with the country, and make up for the U.S. loss of contact with the military, due to Congressionally mandated restrictions, especially since the East Timor fracas. However, a coalition of 45 Congressmen, both Democrats and Republicans of the "Project Democracy" mode, led by Patrick Kennedy (D-RI) and Christopher Smith (R-NJ), have written a letter to Secretary of State Colin Powell, protesting any revival of U.S. military aid to Indonesia. They cite alleged "gross human rights violations" by the military, and "no justice served" in prosecutions against military figures accused of responsibility for the East Timor riots and killings.

The Indonesian government provides only one-third of the military budget, while the rest is earned through business operations run by the military, a legacy of the 1965-6 coup against Sukarno and the takeover by Western-friendly generals.

Philippines Armed Forces Leader Faces Court Martial

The Comptroller of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), Gen. Carlos Garcia, will face a court martial for corruption, adding more chaos to the financial and social crisis in the nation.

Gen. Garcia's son was stopped earlier this year at the San Francisco airport for failing to declare $100,000 he was bringing into the U.S. Investigations then revealed that Garcia had purchased several million-dollar condos in New York, cars and other property, none of which could be explained.

There is pressure on Garcia to come clean on the corruption in the military, which he probably knows about in some detail. Thus far, he is keeping quiet, and has been admitted to the hospital with sleep apnea, preventing his appearance in court or Congress.

A report is circulating in the Manila press that the U.S. is also investigating two other generals and three cabinet ministers, including former Army Chief Angelo Reyes, for illegally harboring funds in U.S. banks. The U.S. embassy in Manila said it was "unaware" of any such investigation.

DynCorp Guards' Boorish Behavior Angers Afghans

The aggressive and ugly behavior of DynCorp Guards now in charge of protecting Afghan Interim President Hamid Karzai, has angered the Afghans immensely, BBC reported from Kabul Oct. 14. Last August, at least three of these guards died when a bomb was detonated outside DynCorp's offices in Kabul.

DynCorp, a subsidiary of Texas-based Computer Associates, has the contract, worth tens of millions of dollars, to train the Iraqi police force. A Pentagon favorite, DynCorp had earlier won the contracts to train the Bosnian police and was implicated in a sex-slavery scandal, with its employees accused of rape, and the buying and selling of minor girls as young as 12 years old. A number of employees were fired, but no one was prosecuted. The only court case to result involved the two whistleblowers, who were promptly sacked.

But the stink from Kabul has begun to waft into the higher chambers of the U.S. State Department. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told news media on Oct. 13 that the United States "is concerned about inappropriate activities by some guards from the firm DynCorp," and the State Department has passed on its concern to company officials.

Africa News Digest

Nigerian Parliament To Begin Halliburton Bribery Probe

The Nigerian House of Representatives' Committee on Public Petitions will open Oct. 20, with a three-day public hearing into an allegation of bribery against TSKJ consortium—a group including Halliburton's Kellogg Brown and Root unit, according to a statement signed by the clerk of the lower house of Parliament in Abuja, Umaru Sani, AFP reported Oct. 15. Illegal payments made to Nigerian officials when Dick Cheney ran Halliburton, helped TKSJ win a $12 billion contract to build a natural gas project at Bonny Island.

Those summoned to appear include: Dave Lesar, the chairman of Halliburton; Jeffrey Tesler, a London-based lawyer who funnelled at least $132 million in illegal payments from Halliburton to Nigerian officials; Mohammed Yusuf, former chairman of Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas Company; and ex-oil ministers Don Etiebet and Dan Etete.

Strike in Nigeria: The Background

The first phase of a nationwide strike in Nigeria—for the rollback of fuel-price increases—was executed successfully Oct. 11-14. The basis of the strike unfolded in September, when a judge ruled that the very existence of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) presidency is illegal. The NLC is the trade union umbrella organization. The judge also outlawed strikes not related to working conditions. Two days later, the government raised the price of gasoline 23%, and also increased the price of kerosene and diesel fuel. All 29 NLC member organizations then decided on the strike. NLC President Adams Oshiomhole called on Nigerians to "rise up to the occasion and stop this government from further pauperizing them.... [W]e're suffering and ... we can't have these injustices."

The Senate appealed to the government Oct. 7 to reverse the price increases, while imploring labor and human rights organizations not to strike.

The NLC and human rights organizations called Oct. 7 for President Obasanjo to resign. The rights leaders, who back the strike, bitterly attacked the government for following the prescriptions of the IMF and World Bank.

The fuel price-hike issue is indicative of the dialogue of the deaf between the federal government and mass-based organizations. All of Nigeria's own refineries have been shut down for want of repairs for quite some time, while the government is importing refined products at high prices. Obasanjo's reply is, "That's the free market." But the prices being received for Nigeria's exports of crude have, for some time, been above the baseline assumed when the government's budget was formulated. So the question is, why isn't this surplus being used to repair the refineries? The answer may be that the IMF ordered that they not be repaired, in favor of greater debt repayment. Obasanjo appointed an IMF robot as Finance Minister after his election in 2003.

Strike in Nigeria: Outcry Over Labor Leader's Arrest

Two days before the scheduled strike in Nigeria on Oct. 9, Nigerian Labor Congress President Adams Oshiomhole was held secretly for 10 hours by the State Security Service (SSS). He was released after a national outcry. Oshiomhole was dragged to a waiting car at Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja, by 15 armed SSS men, according to eyewitness reports and a statement issued by the NLC.

Several senators, reached by the Sunday Champion Oct. 10, condemned the arrest. Sen. Mohammed Kanti Bello of the All Nigeria People's Party (ANPP) described Oshiomhole's arrest as very unfortunate and dangerous.

The Secretary General of the Conference of Nigerian Political Parties (CNPP), Maxi Okwu, said that by arresting Oshiomhole, the government declared "total war" on the masses. The CNPP, a coalition of 18 lesser parties, is supporting the strike.

The Nigeria Bar Association, Abuja Branch, denounced the arrest as a violation of fundamental constitutional freedoms. The Nigeria Bar Association as a whole announced its participation in the strike Oct. 3, and will offer its services free to anyone arrested for protesting.

In addition to the All Nigeria People's Party (CNPP), the leading opposition party, for which Gen. Mohammadu Buhari was Presidential candidate in 2003, is supporting the strike, according to AP Oct. 11. The All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA), for which Gen. Chukwuemeka Ojukwu was presidential candidate, is also supporting it, This Day reported Oct. 10.

Strike in Nigeria: A Diary

Day One: Major cities in Nigeria come to a standstill, including Lagos, the commercial capital; Port Harcourt, the southeastern city from which oil production is managed; Ibadan in the Southwest; and Kano in the North. In Abuja, the capital, "the strike was only partially successful. Buses and taxis continued to ply the streets, while some offices and banks worked under heavy police guard," IRIN reported Oct. 11. "But in most of the country," according to IRIN, "government services were shut down and business activity was greatly reduced."

Day Two: Oshiomhole warns strike will be extended if killings and arrests by police continue. At a press conference in Abuja Oct. 12, Oshiomhole declared, "If we discover the police [are] still arresting and killing, we will elongate the strike." He continued, "Once they begin shooting, and once they begin to kill, the character of our struggle will change.... People have been arrested for flimsy excuses, such as 'breach of public peace' or 'unlawful gathering.'... We have a right to disturb the ears of our rulers."

The police killed two people over Oct. 11-12.

Police arrested nine trade union leaders Oct. 11 in Awka, the capital of Anambra state, as they attempted to stop taxi and minibus operators ignoring the strike call.

Armed gangs attacked NLC activists Oct. 12 in Lagos, while police stood by, NLC spokesman Owei Lakemfa charged. Police deny it. "Many people, including journalists and NLC officials, were injured," Lakemfa said, wrote AFP.

Day Three: Oil industry unions back the strike, high court rejects government suit to halt it. The two oil industry unions, Nupeng and Pengassan, threatened Oct. 13 to shut down the oil industry if the government continued to try to stop the strike, according to Femi Falana, a lawyer for the NLC. A high court rejected a government suit to stop the strike Oct. 13, according to Falana.

Day Four: Intermission declared. Oshiomhole announced that the strike would be suspended at midnight, Oct. 14, for a two-week period, as planned.

Some Leaders of Obasanjo's Government and Party Dissent

In reaction to Nigerian President Obasanjo's implementation of IMF policies, some leaders of his government and party are expressing disagreement, according to an editorial in Punch Oct. 12, during the strike. The two most significant cases:

The National Chairman of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Chief Audu Ogbeh, recently said, "We have international agencies saying deregulate, and yet, as a political group, we are aware that if you surrender your country to the fierce forces of the market, you will crush many people to the dust. We are in a dilemma, what do we do?", as reported by The Comet Sept. 30.

Special Adviser to the President on Legal and Constitutional Matters, Chief Ojo Maduekwe, in a lecture Sept. 30, said, "unless strategic moves both within and outside the polity and economy are undertaken in the months ahead, the nation is at risk of slipping back around 2007 to a failing state or even a failed state.... In most failed states, government troops are kept perpetually busy by several armed revolts which they have been unable to decisively put down."

Former Ambassador to Washington Elected Somali President

A warlord, long at odds with warlord Mohammed Aideed, and a former Ambassador to the U.S. under Siad Barre, has been elected President of Somalia. Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed was elected by the new Parliament, from among 60 candidates for President (including Aideed's son), in a final round of voting between only two candidates, by a vote of 189 to 79. The Parliament assembled near Nairobi, Kenya, for safety's sake. The election was supervised by the U.S.-dominated Inter-Governmental Authority on (Non-)Development (IGAD).

The senior Aideed, however, has military control of the parts of the capital, Mogadishu, where the seat of government is to be. However, if the Aideed family had won the Presidency, it would have had control only of that much of the country, according to Afrol News Sept. 17. How much will Yusuf Ahmed control?

The Parliament was founded by Somali warlords in August after two years of negotiating. Somalia has had no government since 1991, when Mohammed Siad Barre was overthrown. "Everything has been destroyed. They are starting from ground zero," Kenya's Ambassador to Somalia, Mohammed Affey, told Reuters Oct. 10.

This Week in History

- October 18-24, 1932 -

FDR Campaigns Against 'The Gospel of Fear'

As the Hoover Republicans and their backers sensed that the American electorate in 1932 was moving to decisively repudiate their policies, they resorted to the politics of fear. They threatened that if Franklin Roosevelt were elected to the Presidency, catastrophic events would occur. On his last campaign swing through the country, Roosevelt reacted to this attempt to terrorize the electorate in two speeches he delivered in mid-October.

In Pittsburgh on Oct. 19, he began: "It is fitting that I should choose Pittsburgh to sound a solemn note of warning, addressed not only to the Republican leaders, but also to the rank and file of American voters of all parties. There are some prices too high for the country to pay for the propaganda spread abroad in a Presidential election. That, my friends, is proved when as now, the Republican campaign management and people like Henry Ford and General Atterbury of the Pennsylvania Railroad are guilty of spreading the gospel of fear.

"That is true when in a desperate, futile, last-minute effort to dam the tide of popular disapproval that is steadily growing against the Administration, they become alarmists and panic breeders. This policy of seeking to win by fear of ruin is selfish in its motive, brutal in its method, and false in its promise. It is a policy that will be resented as such by men and women of all parties in every section of the country on November eighth. It is an insult to the intelligence of the American voters to think that they can be fooled by shifting the boast of the full dinner pail made in 1928, to the threat of the continued empty dinner pail in 1932.

"I assure the badly advised and fear-stricken leaders of the Republican Party that not only Democrats but also the rank and file of their own party, who are properly dissatisfied with that leadership, are still American patriots and that they still cherish in their hearts, as I do, the safety of the country, the welfare of its people, and the continuance of its institutions."

Again, on Oct. 21, Roosevelt made a major speech in St. Louis dealing with the eight types of credit groups of the nation. He began his remarks by stating that, "Faith is a delicate, though powerful factor in our economic life, and a party that sounds a note of alarm from high places is performing no decent service to the American nation. One of the most artful and plausible of Administration whip-crackers started this campaign of fear on the eve of the Maine election. At that moment our people were in low spirits. Millions of men who had tramped the streets for months feeling hopeless, friendless, and alone were listening to his words and he told them that if they did not vote for the Republican candidate in the Maine election it would be practically impossible for the administration remaining in power from election to March to save them from dire disaster. The good people of Maine were not disturbed by these false-faces of disaster. They saw that this horrible menace was only a painted mask, that the artificially created eclipse of the sun was nothing but a low-lying smoke screen, so light as to be blown aside by the first breath of fresh air....

"All of the good, old specters are snatched from the grave, but the mantles of the giant actors of the past now hang in a shabby and ill-fitting manner on the diminutive forms of these new apostles of disaster. The workers and the farmers of today have heard from their fathers of the old terroristic threats that were put into their pay envelope just before election. They have heard of the warnings originating from the Republican National Committee in past campaigns, and pasted on the walls of their factories just before election. And they are not being scared by these things any more.

"American labor has educated itself too well; American agriculture has learned too much in the bitter school of experience to be frightened by any new variations of the old terrorism of the past. We are living in another age. These stage properties are out of date.

"As a last resort, the President and the ex-President advance and attempt to throw political and economic tear-gas bombs among the people of the country. Now, my friends, you all know what tear gas is. It is one of the new inventions by which a few people can control a lot of people. A few do it by blinding the eyes of the many, by causing tears to flow; and in the midst of the confusion that thus results, a determined minority seeks to accomplish its selfish purposes....

"I want to take this occasion to say that in my opinion such efforts cast a deep reflection upon the principles for which this country has stood. The American working men and the American farmers are free men, citizens of a great Republic. The lifeblood of this Republic is the integrity and independence of the electorate. You American farmers and American workmen are entitled, by all of the fundamental rights that you have acquired in generations of fighting, to a free and untrammeled choice on election day. The politician or employer who tries to deny to you these rights and to use a gospel of fear to blind you to the true facts presented in this campaign is an enemy, not only of fairness and sportsmanship in politics, but of the very principles upon which this country has been established. To protect these rights, men have suffered and died. The principles they have won in such a bitter fight are chiseled for all the centuries to come on the granite walls of our American system of Government. The man who tries, for political or economic advantage, to chip away these rights is an untrustworthy leader in business and politics.

"And now to the business of conducting a campaign in the proper spirit, a spirit of good reason, good sense and good humor."

All rights reserved © 2004 EIRNS

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