'EMPOWERMENT RADIO' QUESTIONS LAROUCHE — ON 'CONFESSIONS OF AN ECONOMIC HIT MAN'

From Volume 3, Issue Number 51 of EIR Online, Published Dec. 21, 2004

Latest From LaRouche

'EMPOWERMENT RADIO' QUESTIONS LAROUCHE - - ON 'CONFESSIONS OF AN ECONOMIC HIT MAN'

Lyndon LaRouche was interviewed on Dec. 3, 2004, by Dallas/Ft. Worth station KNON's "Empowerment Radio" program, hosted by Tunde Obazee. The program is nationally syndicated, and the taped interview was scheduled to air on KNON 89.3 FM on Dec. 13, as well as by webcast at www.knon.org.

Q: KNON, this is Tunde.

LYNDON LAROUCHE: This is Lyndon LaRouche speaking.

Q: Good morning, sir. How are you doing?

LAROUCHE: Pretty good, for an old geezer.

Q: I want to thank you for joining us on Empowerment Radio on KNON, 89.3 FM, Dallas/Ft. Worth.

LAROUCHE: Great.

Q: Yes. And, you've been a hot subject for the longest time now. You ran for the Presidency of the United States about eight times now; and you're still just the hottest topic in town.

Our topic today—we're going to start with the globalization, WTO, and IMF. And I was also reading about the young man, who actually wrote a book about the Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.

What is your position on globalization, to start with?

LAROUCHE: Well, globalization is really a new name for imperialism. It's an attempt, specifically, to return to the kind of imperialism which existed in Europe between about 1000 A.D. and the beginning of the Renaissance in the 15th Century. It was the system that fell apart, what was called the New Dark Age, of the 14th Century.

And this is what it is today: It's an attempt to eliminate the sovereign nation-state. We're destroying the economies of our own country; we're destroying the economies of the world. We're turning people back into slavery by means of the so-called "cheapest price" formula. And we're looting people, by getting them into debt, and then sucking their blood to get them to pay for the debt.

So, this thing is actually a crime against humanity. It is not a policy. It's criminal policy—a crime against humanity, under moral law.

Q: Interesting. But, we have the World Trade Organization, and the International Monetary Fund, and all: What is the part that the World Trade Organization had to play in this?

LAROUCHE: The World Trade Organization has actually become an instrument, for the promotion of globalization.

See, the essential thing here, is that people who believe in the policies which are associated with the World Trade Organization, don't understand the ABCs of economics. For example, let's take one case I use often: Today, in the United States, if we wanted to set a standard for the development of our people, through education, we would say that we have to provide the equivalent of a professional level of education, for which the target would be the age of 25 graduating from university as a professionally qualified person, at the age of 25. That's the kind of role that the citizen of the United States, for example, must play in the world to do our job, and to do things we must do for other nations.

So therefore, that means we have to invest—for 25 years, we have to invest in the child and the growing young adult. That's an investment of 25 years: That's a capital investment. It's a physical capital investment, but it has a financial complement.

Similarly, if we have a machine tool, a factory, this involves an investment. The investment will have a life of 7 to 25 years. If we invest in a river system, a lock system on a river system, that has a physical life of about 40 years. If we invest in a power system, that has a physical life of about 35 to 40 years, depending upon the kind of system.

So therefore, the key thing is to ensure that we can afford to invest capital in people—25 years of developing a child; capital in public infrastructure that we need; and capital in means of production. Now, if we drive the price to the lowest level, then the price that would be paid would not be sufficient to cover the capital costs of doing that; and therefore, we would drive the person we want to have graduating as a professional, at the age of 25—which should be our objective today, as a social objective—

Q: But, well, we're not doing this.

LAROUCHE: No! We're not! But, we should be. But we have to be able to do that, if we're going to solve the problem.

We have people in Argentina, who are living as children by picking garbage! And this used to be the fourth-highest standard of living in the world, back in 1945. We've destroyed it, by these world trade policies.

We don't have industries in the United States. We're collapsing our industry. For example, we were campaigning in Cleveland—I wasn't there physically, but I was there with my people—and we went through the figures on Ohio: Ohio has been transformed from what was the leading state in the United States, as an agro-industrial state, into a poor state! And this has been done, in the past 14-15 years. And we did this, with globalization.

Q: This sounds like a very common sense issue! So, what do you think is the motive for this?

LAROUCHE: The motive is, that there are some very bad people in the world, who like the system that existed under so-called feudalism—that is, the medieval system. They want to go back to it! They don't like the nation-state. They don't like protectionism. They don't like people to have health care; they don't like people to have pensions. They want slaves! They want cheap labor. And they don't want any governments interfering with their power. They want to be above government.

Q: But, they aren't able, but at least the slave-master who hopes that his slave is healthy to do the work?

LAROUCHE: No. They don't care. You see that—look at that! Look at that. They don't care! You should see these people, as they ran society during the so-called medieval period in Europe. These people are actually—they're the same thing that we had in the 1920s, and 1930s, and early 1940s, in Europe: It's Nazism, fascism. These people are ideologues. And, don't judge them by whether the system will work, or not. They aren't concerned with whether it works or not. They're like lunatics. They want their way. And they're going to have their way, and they'd rather die than not have their way.

That's what Cheney represents. That's what George Shultz, who was the guy who sort of created Cheney, represents. The people who are behind this sort of thing, are actually the same kind of people that we fought against, when we fought Hitler during World War II.

Q: The World Trade Organization, you said, is just an instrument. But one would see, that probably the initial reasons for having the World Trade Organization, it sounds good. Why do you think it's an instrument of exploitation or of imperialism?

LAROUCHE: Well, that's because it's the usual thing with the con man. The con man comes in with a story, and sells it to people. He tells them things, that they think they will believe, that they think are beneficial. It's like the loan shark who comes in and helps you out, right? He's coming in like a real friendly guy. He's going to help you out. And what's he going to do? He's going to suck your blood! And that's the same thing the World Trade Organization is. The suckers bought the story. And the reality, and what they thought they were buying, are two different things.

Q: Hmm. International Monetary Fund: How are they different?

LAROUCHE: International Monetary Fund was originally created as an institution, by the United States government, with the concert of the United Nations. It was originally a good institution. It was based on providing a fixed exchange rate system for currencies, and promoting low-cost international loans among nations, for the development of the post-war world. Beginning about the middle of the 1960s, with the launching of the war in Indo-China, but especially under Nixon in 1971-72, we destroyed the so-called Bretton Woods System, and took the IMF system—which had been a product of the Bretton Woods system—and now we've made it something quite different. We made it a predatory organization: a floating-exchange-rate system.

And the transformation, for example, if you look below the borders, if you look at the condition, from Mexico on down to the tip of Cape Horn—you look at the condition of these countries, which admittedly were not in the best condition—but look at the condition they had then, the industries they had then, the standard of living they had then, and compare it with what they got today: We have sucked the blood of the countries of Central and South America, while at the same time, putting our own people into unemployment, by turning people in those parts of the world into virtual slaves to produce for Wal-Mart what we no longer produce for ourselves.

Q: Well, the average American who says, "How? We, Americans gets blamed for everything. How did that happen? How could America remote-control other nations, and actually virtually put those people to slavery?" Can you give me a typical example? You mentioned Argentina.

LAROUCHE: Well, you want to see something in our country. For example, take the case of the Confederacy. We had, from the 1820s until the end of the Civil War, we had a group in this country who were pro-slavery, and they controlled a certain number of states. Now, you look at the breakdown of the Republican vote as against the Democratic Party vote today, in the most recent election and in earlier elections: There's been a transformation since Nixon, of an anti-civil rights movement—since Nixon; and remember, the Nixon election was based on an anti-civil rights movement. Nixon met with the Klan in Biloxi, Mississippi, to cut the deal. And then, a lot of Southern Democrats began migrating out of the Democratic Party into the Republican Party, and became the hard-core of the Bush Republican Party today.

Now, in this process, you're dealing with people who have a pro-slavery mentality. Now, they don't call it "slavery." They would call it "shareholder value." Shareholder value is actually a new word, for the same thing in the Preamble of the constitution of the Confederate States of America: under which people could be property. And therefore, people could be kept in slavery, because they were "property." Or, if they weren't kept as slaves, formally, you could enslave them indirectly, without calling them slaves, by other means, which is what's happened to us, today.

There are people who destroyed the ability of the United States, which 40 years ago, was the most productive power on this planet. We destroyed that power. We're now living by sucking the blood, of the labor of other countries, and putting our own people into unemployment, destroying our health care systems, destroying our hospitals, destroying our pension system; they're about to destroy the Social Security system. Bush intends to privatize the whole system, right now—and he's working on it.

Q: You were quoted as saying a Bush Presidency is illegitimate. Why is that?

LAROUCHE: Well, first, it's illegitimate morally. What it represents, it was conceived in fraud. For example, in this particular election, recently, the key issue is not the vote count. The vote count is important, and I know there was significant fraud in the vote count.

But, the key thing we have them on, and we have them dead to rights, is voter suppression. We had campaigns, which the NAACP started complaining about. Others complained. I was involved in the investigation of this: In various states, the Republican Party went out, selectively, against African-Americans and others to eliminate their vote. In the recent election, we have instance after instance of voter suppression, involving efforts by the Attorney General of the United States John Ashcroft and others, to bring about voter suppression.

Q: What's the difference between voter fraud, and voter suppression—before you go on, so the listeners can understand?

LAROUCHE: Voter suppression is a crime. It's a crime under the Voting Rights Act. It's an act. That act is defined in terms of the Constitution. So, it's a crime against the Constitution.

In other words, if you catch one person in two acts, engaged in voter suppression, that person can go to prison. So, anyone who engaged in voter suppression—and large sections of the Republican Party did engage in voter suppression, caught dead to rights, as the NAACP presented a documentation on some of this. We saw some of it personally, in some of our investigations. So, the Republican Party engaged, in large degree, in a crime.

For example, in New Hampshire, today, there is a case, dating from events in 2002, of voter suppression in the state of New Hampshire, in the election campaign of Sununu, in 2002. That case is now coming to a conclusion, to trial.

That case is a model for what should be happening in the state of Ohio, and elsewhere—in Florida, in Louisiana, and elsewhere, where voter suppression is a matter of fact.

Q: That was my next question, then. How come somebody is not bringing charges against the Republican Party?

LAROUCHE: We're doing it. I'm part of the Democratic Party. We're talking with people in the Democratic Party. I started a campaign to this effect on Nov. 9, officially, publicly. And we're pushing a campaign, on the issue of legal action, against relevant Republicans in particular, who are caught dead to rights in the attempt at voter suppression. And we have the goods on them. We just have to reduce this to a legal form. We are working with other Democrats, leading Democrats, on exactly how we're going to handle this.

Q: You touched on moral issues, but most people would say that President Bush was voted for this time, supposedly overwhelmingly because of his moral standing. Is that just an illusion?

LAROUCHE: Yeah. It's a fast—it's a swindle. I mean, for example, morality involves, especially, the way we treat people. And when you think that the President of the United States, in a campaign debate, publicly, on national television, lied when he was charged by Senator Kerry with intending to privatize the Social Security. The President lied, and said repeatedly, on that broadcast, he did not intend—he had no scheme—for privatizing Social Security.

Now, under the team he's pulled together, the new economics team out of the White House, he's pushing for the privatization of Social Security.

Now, that is a good test of morality. And my view is, that Bush is like the preacher, at a revival meeting who preaches against sin, and then goes out behind the tent and impregnates some of the sisters of the congregation. That's called "morality."

I have a different standard.

Q: There was a newspaper article in London, England, which said, how could 59 million people be so dumb? What do you think is going on with Americans? I would expect something like what is going on in Ukraine—people taking to street, but everybody just seems to have curled up and accepted it the way it is.

LAROUCHE: Looks like the Ukrainian election was pretty much like the U.S. election of Nov. 2, doesn't it?

Q: That goes without any question. But, it seems like the Americans who seem to be championing the so-called "democracy," now aren't taking it too seriously, while the Ukrainians seem to be gung-ho about it.

LAROUCHE: Well, actually, the Ukrainian business—the problem with the election there, it was run by Americans: Americans such as, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Madeleine Albright's friends, Holbrooke—good Democrats! And also, the International Republican Institute. So, the problem in Ukraine was chiefly created by American organizations, deployed as a front organization for the U.S. government, or part of it!

So. This is the way things are! The problem is, that we Americans have, by and large, become dumber and dumber.

Now, the problem—one of the reasons for this, is, that if you look at the economics of the situation, since 1977, the lower 80% of the income-brackets of families in the United States has been dropping in terms of income, real income, physical income. Whereas the upper 20% has been increasing its share of national income, to the point that the upper 20% of family-income brackets are getting the same income, as the lower 80%. The result has been, is that the people in the lower 80% have been effectively disenfranchised. They're allowed to vote, often, but they're not allowed to actually shape the policies of the political parties which come up for the vote.

So therefore, you have people who feel, justly, in the lower 80%, that they are being disregarded. Most voters in the lower 80%, if they bother to vote at all, do not vote with the idea that they are shaping national policy. They're begging for favors. Or, they're trying to blackmail a politician into doing a favor for them. It's not really a vote, on how to run the country. It's a vote on, "How do I get something? Despite, the fact that I'm being cheated on all fronts, can I get at least something?"

Q: Later on in the interview, we'll still talk more on exporting democracy, which this administration seems to want to do, also. But, let's go back to the book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, because we're still talking about globalization, World Trade Organization, and IMF. What's that book all about? I haven't had the opportunity to read it; but, what's the gist about this hit man? Who's John Perkins?

LAROUCHE: Well, John Perkins is a guy from Boston, or New England—he was born, I think, in New Hampshire. And, he went to work—he was born I think in 1949, or something like that. And he went to work for, actually, the Peace Corps, and the National Security Agency—he was cleared with the National Security Agency. He was given a job in a private company, based in Boston, Massachusetts, Chas. T. Main, for which he worked when he became the chief economist.

Now, what he did, was—this was a private organization, which actually works for the financier interests of the United States, and it works like an imperialist organization. It goes into foreign countries, and induces countries to go deeply into debt. Then, uses the debt, the money for which comes largely from the World Bank or IMF, and uses that as a way of taking over the country, politically. Now, if they get resistance from that, as he says—and I know it happens; I've quite a bit of experience in this area myself, practically, going back before John Perkins was in the business: But, people are killed. Heads of state are killed, are murdered, by what John refers to as "jackals." I know them also as "jackals." They're assassins. There're quasi-military agencies that conduct assassinations, when governments abroad offend the financier interests, behind the kind of job that John refers to.

So, it's what he describes as, describing the method of operations and how it has worked, in the book, is absolutely accurate. This is murder.

And you have, for example, one of the key figures in this operation, is George Shultz. George Shultz is, I believe, about 84 years old, now. He's the guy who crafted the George W. Bush Administration. But, he was the guy who was in charge of Cheney and Condoleezza Rice, and he sponsored them; and they put together a team which became the present Bush Administration.

Shultz, who is part of Bechtel, and is allied also with Halliburton, these two corporations, are the swindlers and they key to the power behind the Bush Administration. They represent international financier interests, who are involved in this: who are looting the world; who are overthrowing governments; who are threatening heads of state, getting people killed, or thrown in prison, framed up, so forth. And so, you've got, really, a Nazi-like organization, in which the IMF, the World Bank, and George Shultz, the architect behind the Bush Administration—all these people are nice, sweetly involved.

I know these guys. They happen to be my personal enemies, so I keep good track of them!

Q: But, then, some people may say, like what you said, they're being your personal enemies is the reason why you're saying what you're saying. And not—

LAROUCHE: It's because of what I'm saying that they're my personal enemies! [laughing]

I happen to have to have a loud mouth, and tell what I know. And they don't like that very much.

Q: You have campaigned for the resignation of Dick Cheney. Why's that?

LAROUCHE: 'Cause Dick Cheney's a fascist. And I don't think we should have a fascist as Vice President of the United States.

Q: Give me an example. It's easy to call names, but when you say "fascist," give the average African-American an example.

LAROUCHE: Well, I mean fascist like Hitler. Hmm? We published a number of papers, including a book, on this subject. We have documented the evidence against Cheney: That he is a fascist. It's published. It's a long story, but we presented all the evidence.

And when I say—remember, I was in World War II. I came back. And I found out, when I got back, that something was wrong. I got back in '46 from overseas. And what I found out was, that the right wing, which we had associated with Hitler, had survived under other covers, and they were taking more and more power in the United States. This right wing is what we've been fighting all along. It's what Eisenhower fought against, for example, when he was President. This right wing is, essentially, a continuation of exactly the same financial interests which were behind Hitler back then.

So, the problem has been, that our country has been subverted—and other countries, too—by a resurgence by the same international financial cartel, which was behind Hitler and similar things earlier. And that's where the problem is.

What we're faced with, is not a question of trying to find some guy to go in jail—though many of these guys should go to prison!—but, what we're dealing with, is trying to save the country. And, if we don't get rid of these guys, we're not going to have a country.

Q: Free trade agreement: What is wrong with the current free trade agreement? And, you actually again campaigning against the restructuring or reforming of free trade agreement. Give us a state as is, right now, and what you would like to see.

LAROUCHE: I would cancel the free trade agreement. I would go back to what we had beforehand, under the old Bretton Woods system, of the first 20 years after World War II. The Bretton Woods system which was established under the leadership of President Roosevelt. That is, we had a protectionist system.

My concern, for example, as a patriot of the United States, in the tradition of the founders of our nation, such as Alexander Hamilton, in the tradition of Abraham Lincoln, in the tradition of Franklin Roosevelt, and others: My policy is, that we are a protectionist economy. We put up tariff barriers to ensure, to protect our jobs in our country, and protect the investment in essential industries, in infrastructure, in agriculture, and productive industries—goods producing industries—which are needed.

And we give to other countries, the right to do the same thing.

We seek to negotiate agreements on trade, general agreements on trade and tariffs, among other countries as we used to under the GATT arrangement, before the changes occurred. And this ensures that everyone has a fair shake. We used to call this a "fair trade" policy—as opposed to a "free trade" policy. Now, as a result of the change in policy, the United States, which was once the greatest producer nation on this planet, up until about 40 years ago. It was unquestionable: We were the great producer. We had the technology; we had the industry; we had the infrastructure. We weren't perfect—there were a lot of injustices. But, we were the best at what we did, relative to any standard worldwide.

Now, we've destroyed that. We've become a pleasure-seeking society. We don't care about long-term investment any more. We let our infrastructure collapse. We destroy our medical system, our health care system. We destroy our educational system; the educational system we've got is not worth almost anything, any more! It's worse than it ever was 40 years ago—on all accounts! Now, you get a fake education, instead of poor real education.

So, this is the kind of situation. And what we have to do, is go back to a system of the sovereign nation-state, where nations are sovereign; where citizens in nations share the sovereignty of their nation; where they have the right to employment; where they can have, again, health care, which is being taken away from them now—the things that Roosevelt gave them. That's what we have to do.

This so-called free trade, this WTO, should be cancelled. The IMF should be put into bankruptcy—it's bankrupt anyway—and reformed, to make it back into a Bretton Woods-type system. The World Bank should be reformed, similarly, for the same purpose. This used to be the back-door bank, for helping poorer countries get cheap loans for long-term capital investment. It became something else again.

So, these changes that were made 40 years ago and since then, changes under, say, Kissinger and Brzezinski as National Security Advisors, these changes should be reversed.

Q: Well, looking actually, it was just on the news yesterday, that the dollar is at an all-time low against the euro. Is the dollar near a collapse?

LAROUCHE: Yes, it is. The dollar is probably headed for, right now, $1.40 to a euro—that's where it's headed. It could go to $2, that is two dollars for a euro.

Q: What is the cause of that?

LAROUCHE: Well, we're bankrupt. [pauses]

We're not worth anything any more.

Q: We're supposed to be the richest nation in the world. We're going around saving everybody else!

LAROUCHE: [laughing] We're not doing that! You see, that's a lie! They say we're doing that—but we're not. That's the propaganda.

You know, it's like the man—. I remember, back in the 1930s, there was a restaurant in the city I lived in at that time, in Lynne, Massachusetts. And, it was a restaurant, called Hunt's Restaurant, right in the center of the city. And this restaurant, people were standing there, who hadn't eaten all day, but they were picking their teeth with a toothpick outside the restaurant, in order to try to impress somebody that they had eaten ... and they hadn't eaten that day.

And, we're doing the same thing. We have a country, in which a lot of people have not eaten today, or not eaten decently, or they don't have health care. That sort of thing. And we're running around the world saying, "We're the great, rich success model around the world!" We're not.

What is happening, that China, we're going to China, beginning for a bailout. We're going to Europe, demanding a bailout. We're going to other countries, demanding a bailout. We're not paying; we have a current account deficit that's going to drive us bankrupt. The U.S. Treasuries are about to collapse. The real estate market in the United States is about to collapse.

We're going to lose jobs more rapidly than we ever did, before. We're headed toward a depression, that would make the Hoover Depression seem like prosperity.

And we call ourselves the richest country in the world? We once were! That was 40 years ago ... but not any more.

Q: What are the few things that can happen for a total collapse, if we don't change the course?

LAROUCHE: Well, it's happening right now. We are now in the onset of a process of a general collapse of the world monetary-financial system. This system will collapse. It will never come back, in its present form.

What we can do, the alternative, is to save the nations, and let the system go. Now, the way we save the nations, is we assert this sovereignty of the nation-state. We say that financial systems, banking systems, and so forth, are all subject to control by sovereign nation-states. We put these systems into reorganization.

We create jobs, by creating the credit, by government, for infrastructure jobs, other jobs. We've got to put about 10 million people in the United States back to work, to get this economy back in shape. We can do it. We can do it by the methods that Franklin Roosevelt used. That should be done immediately.

The same thing has to be done, similarly, in Europe. For example, there are 8 million lost jobs in Germany. Now, Germany's a country of about 80-odd million people, as opposed to our approximately 250 now. And they have 8 million unemployed there. And the country is collapsing. Italy is collapsing. France is on the edge of collapsing. There still is some high-tech, in some orientation there. They could recover.

But, we're in a situation, in which Europe and the Americas, are presently headed for the ash-can, unless we put this system into reorganization. And only sovereign governments, or agreements among sovereign governments can do it.

So, we're already finished. It's not "will the crash come?" It is now! It is coming! The question is, "How fast is it coming? And who is it going to hit next?" But, this thing is going down, and there is no bottom. And it's already going down.

Q: I first read about you, or knew about you, actually, from negative propaganda about you. And thank God, I was curious enough. And it was even written that, for your effort over the years, you were targetted by friends of Henry Kissinger and President Bush, and eventually incarcerated in the '80s. What was that all about?

LAROUCHE: Well, the key reason—the 1980s thing was specific. There have been various attacks on me, all by the same crowd. You can imagine who they are, the people I attack. They attacked me, first.

But, anyway, what I happened is: I, in 1982, undertook a project, which was my project, which I had proposed to the Reagan Administration. The project became known later, as SDI. It was a project for an agreement between the United States, the Soviet Union, and other countries, on a way of disengaging from the threat of a general thermonuclear exchange by ballistic missiles. President Reagan adopted this policy. I worked on it. I conducted a back-channel discussion with the Soviet government, on behalf of the Reagan Administration.

This created a furor, in the United States, and abroad. In 1986, the Soviet government was demanding that I either be killed, or imprisoned. And that view was shared by people on the Bush side of the Republican Party; and was shared also by the British monarchy, and others. So, there was a concerted effort to have me eliminated. Just the way that John Perkins describes the elimination of some heads of state, who were a "problem" for financial interests.

So, they went after me, in '84. It started in '83, but they went after me in '84. The whole thing was based—these forces, including the Soviet government, which was out to have me assassinated. Then, in 1986, they came up to my door! With over 400 armed forces—and they were about to assassinate me by a shooting expedition in the morning. And, only an intervention from the White House, or White House circles, told them to "get off it." Otherwise, I'd have been dead.

So, what they did, is they said, "Well," to the people in the Reagan Administration and others, they said, "Well, if you don't put him in prison, we're going to kill him!" And so, some of the people in the government got discouraged about protecting me, and said, "Okay, let him be imprisoned."

And so, on that basis, George Bush stuck me in prison—that is, his father—and Clinton got me out!

Q: Tell me, how can—let's go back to, how can 59 million people be so stupid? Because everything you're saying, if all of this is a fact, that can absolutely be verified: How is it that we still have the Bushites governing?

LAROUCHE: In this case, in the case of the Bush business: Bush would not even have a chance of even coming near a re-election, except for 9/11. What is controlling the—. And what happened in 9/11 has never been, officially, revealed. The stories you hear, are not the true stories. There are some elements of truth in some of the things that are said by the 9/11 Commission. But, the whole story is not there. It's a fallacy of composition.

But, in any case, what's happened is, at that point—you know, I warned about this danger, in January on a webcast I made in January of 2001, before Bush was actually installed as President. And, I said, that because the Bush Administration is stupid, that Bush himself is stupid, that the financial crisis already oncoming will get worse. And under these conditions, we have to expect that somebody, in the background, will pull a stunt, like Goering did in 1933, in February 1993, in setting fire to the Reichstag and establishing Hitler as a dictator, on the basis of the Reichstag Fire as a terrorist act. And I said, the same thing can happen to us.

It happened to us on Sept. 11 of 2001. And, at that point, John Ashcroft and others, and Cheney and others, were already prepared to install measures, aimed at dictatorship, as the Nazis and Goering had done, back in 1933 in Germany.

And it happened.

Now, what has happened is, even though we didn't go to a full dictatorship, though we're headed in that direction, with this guy Gonzales from Texas, who's a terrible animal on this kind of thing—as Ashcroft has been; we're headed in that direction.

But, what's playing in the United States, what's affecting much of the population, is called "the politics of fear": People are voting for Bush, because they're afraid of him. It's that simple.

Q: Afraid of him. But, they think he's trying to protect us, supposedly, from those we should be afraid of, and that's the terrorists.

LAROUCHE: Well, no. It's the other way around. Yes—that's how the politics of fear works. The guy who's threatening you, your actual enemy, becomes now your friend, because you want him to like you—so he won't kill you.

Q: Interesting.

Let's go to the topic of "exporting democracy." First of all, what is the definition of democracy? And is America a democracy?

LAROUCHE: Ha-ha! "Democracy" is a bad name! [laughing] The name for "democracy" comes from Athens, in the time of Socrates—and it means dictatorship! It's called "Sophistry" at that point. The dialogues of Plato deal with this business of Sophistry. The Sophist faction, which committed a judicial murder of Socrates, was called the Democratic Party of Athens. And this was the same party, political party, which was responsible for the Peloponnesian War, which resulted in the actual destruction of the power of Athens, and the destruction of Greek political power in that period.

So, democracy is a dirty word, in that sense. What we generally mean, when we talk about our system of government, we should not use the term "democracy." It has a bad reputation. We should use the question of individual rights—the rights of the individual. Now, what they turned it around to mean, is, that you should go by so-called "popular opinion." But, what is popular opinion? Mostly, popular opinion is usually wrong. Most people are usually wrong in what they think is true.

Our system of government, with its checks and balances, as we defined it, was to force the population to engage, as independent citizens with individual rights, in a dialogue, by means of which the truth would be forced to the surface. What we have now, is, people are going by opinions they picked up off the street, yesterday, from some garbage pail, perhaps. Not what they've thought out, as their interest.

For example: You have people—say, people in Ohio. Ohio has had a tremendous loss of employment, in farms and industry. It's really catastrophic. Can you imagine, a significant number of people of farm background and professional background, and industrial background, in the state of Ohio, voting for an administration, which has destroyed more jobs, and destroyed more of the economy as it affects the people of Ohio, than any other Presidency? They voted for that, because he's protecting them? Because he's helping their economic situation? No!

There's no basis for them, rationally, to vote for Bush! Their interests all say, "vote against him." And they would have voted against him—except for: 9/11 and the politics of fear. They're afraid. They're afraid not to vote for him.

This is what this religious fervor is about. I mean, you know, you have people—I don't think they know who God is. And they're religious. But, it's nuts. It's the politics of fear.

Q: You talk about individual rights and popular opinion. If we had taken the popular opinion of the Arab world, if we're truly democratic, then we shouldn't have gone to war. And, again, in this particular case here, looking at Iraq, I don't think there's any individual right that we're seeing.

LAROUCHE: Oh-ho! No! You're right! No, of course not!

The war was un-Constitutional, illegal. And it's also immoral. The policy of regime change, which is the real policy behind the Bush war against Iraq, was not anything, except regime change. And to destroy the country! And that's not the only country they intended to destroy.

Of course! It's illegal! Of course, it's immoral! What they did to Arab citizens of our own country is immoral. What they did to Arabs around the world, is immoral.

Osama bin Laden was created by the British and Americans! He was created by George Bush's family—senior George Bush. The Osama bin Laden family, is a family very close to the Bush interests, to the Carlyle Group.

Q: If the war, and our action right now is un-Constitutional, and regime change is illegal, isn't there a process for a trial, for charges being brought against the administration, or somebody?

LAROUCHE: Yeah, sure, if you've got the court. [laughs] But, you have to have the court. If the government now—we got a bunch of weaklings, among Democrats as well as Republicans, in the Congress, who won't fight! They will not defend the country!

I would defend the country! If something is wrong, I want my government to fix it. If we did it. And I would hope that our institutions would use the principle of law, the principle of our Constitution and the pertinent laws, to do that. We're not doing it! We are the criminal!

Because our people are afraid—or, many of them, are afraid. They're afraid of this government. This government already has the characteristics of a dictatorship. It's not a full dictatorship; we still have some formal rights kicking around. But, it's moving in the direction of a tyranny.

Q: What do you think the people are afraid of? Incarceration? Murder?

LAROUCHE: Being killed, murdered, incarcerated, destroyed.

Let's take the case—let's take African-Americans, so-called; let's take Arab-Americans, and other Americans of Islamic credentials; let's take the largest single minority of the country, the Spanish-speaking minorities, which come in largely from Mexico, but also from other places. These groups of people are frightened. They're frightened because they're either persecuted—.

Look what's happened since Gingrich; since Gingrich became the Speaker of the House: What happened to the African-American rights? The Black Congressional Caucus was put out of business. And the Democrats didn't do a damned thing to stop it. Look at what's happened to the Hispanic population—it's a state of terror. Look at the Arab-American population—absolutely terrified!

And other people are terrified, too. Politicians are terrified. They're terrified of frame-ups. They're terrified of thuggery. Look at the thug you have, Tom DeLay, in the Congress. The Speaker of the House—a tyrant. Some of the Republicans in the Senate, are similar. But, the House is the worst.

The courts can't be trusted. Look, you have Scalia, on the Supreme Court, close to becoming the head of the Supreme Court. Or, Clarence Thomas, the same thing.

This is tyranny! Our court system, our institutions are all corrupted by this kind of stuff. And it's going to take a shock. And I think the shock of a financial collapse will help that. But, it's going to take a shock, to get Americans to come back, and stand up on their hind legs, and fight to restore our rights, and our institutions which used to protect our rights.

Q: But, if you can't trust the court, the judicial system; you can't trust the political system, then who are we to export democracy, and can democracy—? Let's assume democracy is individual rights, popular opinion, but can it be transmitted or exported by force at the end of a gun?

LAROUCHE: No! It does not work!

For example: If you have a legitimate case for war, under the law of war. There was no legitimate case in Iraq. But, if you have to go into a country, as a military force, because of a war, what you do, is your objective is to put that country back into the hands of its own people. And to assist them in doing that. Because, if you take over a country by military force, you are responsible for those people. You are responsible for that country. And you are morally responsible for what you do with it.

Now, if you're sensible, you want to get out of there. You don't want to stay there. So therefore, you want to empower the people to get their own institutions functioning again. And when you leave, they're going to say, "We're happy to see you go. But, we don't hate you."

Now, regime change: No one has the right to make regime change. No one has the right, in the name of democracy, to go in and commit tyranny against another country. No one has this kind of right. There is no such thing as a "right for democracy." But, this whole idea of democracy, as proposed by—what you got, this fascist! You know, Brzezinski's buddy. And, he pushed this Crisis of Democracy policy: Samuel P. Huntington. Brzezinski's buddy—they pushed it. And it's wrong; it's a form of tyranny. It's a crime against humanity.

Q: If you were President, how would have encouraged other nations to respect individual rights and respect popular opinions?

LAROUCHE: Well, what you do, is very simply: You've got to clean up the system. I would restore many of the institutions that we built under Franklin Roosevelt, because they tended to protect us.

But, the key thing actually comes back to economics. If you're providing economic growth; if you're providing economic justice; if you're ensuring that people have access to the education they require; if you're ensuring that health care provisions are made, that public health is taken care of; if libraries and so forth exist; if improvements are being made in the landscape; if cities are better places to live in: you find that people, people in the country, feeling that they are individuals, they have rights, will tend to take these institutions and be proud of them, as we used to be. I mean, we used to be proud of a good library; proud of a good high school, good school system; proud of a good hospital; proud of a clean city; proud of the improvements we made, proud of our parks. Hmm? Proud of this and that sort of thing—proud of our highways, proud of our improvements. Proud of the things we produced in our localities.

And when you have a people who have a sense of their right to this kind of society, it's not hard to get them to mobilize to defend their own rights. And it's not hard to get them to respect the dignity of the other person, as having the same rights. Because, the other person is the person they cooperate with—it's their neighbor. They depend upon their neighbor's cooperation. You know, it's like, in the old days, if somebody got sick in the neighborhood, it was the neighbors that helped out. So, this is idea of a good, healthy society, with a good neighborhood, and a sense of good neighborhood among people, this is all you require, and that's your basic source of strength.

The source of strength is not the whip. It's not the fist. The source of strength is a sense of love: a sense that you're in a society, the society's improving, you are working together, because you believe, it's in your interest to work together. And because you like to get along with people.

Q: The United Nations has been a body, that's supposed to be put together to oversee world affairs in many ways. I think the Bush Administration has made the United Nations, or supposedly called the United Nations, irrelevant, about four years ago. [LaRouche chuckles] What do you think their position is, right now? Is the UN still effective?

LAROUCHE: No. The UN should remain what it is. The UN should be considered, not as a government, but as a treaty organization. That's the way it was created, to be an international treaty organization, to deal, primarily, first of all, with the question of war and peace; but also, to deal with the question of promotion of the development of people.

For example, on the day Roosevelt died, the United States was still committed to liberating the world from colonialism. And from similar kinds of imperialism. What Truman did, after Roosevelt died, was to go back to enforce colonialism. So that we nullified that.

For example, I had a lot of dealings over time, in the 1970s and so forth, with the Non-Aligned Movement, which was an organization created to try to get the United Nations and others to do the things it was supposed to do: which is to promote the development of nations, the nations of the world, the family of nations, and it hasn't done that. It hasn't done that, because the powerful interests, the right-wing interests, which came in with Truman with the neo-colonial policy—you know, where they went back, and they invaded Vietnam—or Indo-China, and forced colonialism back on Indo-China. They invaded Indonesia, and fought a war, to put the Indonesians back under Dutch colonialism. They conducted wars in Africa, to suppress and maintain colonies.

The same kind of policy, as a quasi-colonial policy, was stuck in against our neighbors in South and Central America.

So, the United Nations has not functioned, because the great powers of the world, particularly, have not been willing to allow it to function, but have been fighting with each other, or playing to suppress the people of the world.

The United Nations should be a treaty organization, which is more efficient as a vehicle of cooperation, to assist in bringing about this long-sought desire for justice, among the poorer and weaker nations, and also to promote the cause of justice internationally, by the influence of governments.

Q: How would you address listeners who want to take action? First of all, where can listeners find resources, or materials that you've talked about?

LAROUCHE: Oh, the each one for me, is "larouchepac.com." That's the easiest one to get out. They also can get me otherwise, through the "larouchepub.com" which are the internet sources. We also have, LaRouchePAC has an address, which is in Leesburg, Virginia: It's at Post Office Box 6157 in Leesburg, 20178. And they can get me there.

Q: And I understood there's an 800 number, 1-800-929-7566.

LAROUCHE: Yep.

Q: And if, you have to say, in closing, first address those 59 million dumb people, then you address the others who voted the other way, what would say to the 59 million people who continue to, on their fear, support an administration you call illegitimate?

LAROUCHE: Well, what I do is, I go right at what the issues are. I go at the real things—the economy. And the main thing I have to do, and I encourage other people to do, who are in a position somewhat like my own: If we show courage, in fighting these evils, we will give moral strength to citizens to free themselves from mental enslavement by fear. When people have a friend, or friends, who are not afraid to lead, not afraid to fight, then other people who are hiding in the bushes, will come out and fight, too.

Q: We heard lately, that even some people were so disenfranchised, with there's so much evil now, they're checking on Canada for citizenship, or even migrating over there. What would you say to those, who are saying what you're saying, but are now very discouraged?

LAROUCHE: They shouldn't be discouraged. We're going to fight. I'm going to fight. I promised to fight. My friends'll fight; we have lots of good people with me, who are going to fight. I think John Kerry, who despite the fact that he seems to be officially out of race—I think he'll fight. He has certain capabilities; I think under those capabilities, he'll fight. There are other leaders, who'll fight. What we have to do, is make a show of leadership. So, that people know that they're out there.

You know, the worst thing, if people hear politicians say, promise this, promise that. Then, the politician turns around and don't do anything. So, the people get discouraged, and say, "You can't trust anybody." They say, "I'm a little guy. Who am I to fight? I can't trust this guy, he's supposed to be a leader—he won't fight. How'm I going to fight?"

And so, the important thing is, from my standpoint, I've got to do my job: And other people who are in a situation comparable to mine, must do theirs. We must fight. We must not run away from the fight. We must show the people they have leaders who will fight for them. And then the people will become less frightened, and more willing to fight.

Q: If you were one on one, with Mr. Bush—with nobody around—what would you say to him?

LAROUCHE: I'd say: "George. You're making a mess of it. Now, what I'm going to do for you, is this: You give me Condoleezza Rice's job, and you take it easy. And we'll take care of you, and you'll come out of this election, you'll come out of this period just right. But, just let us handle the job for you."

Q: Mr. LaRouche, I thank you. It's a great honor to have you with us. If you could do a plug for KNON—just say, "You're listening to Empowerment Radio, on KNON, Dallas."

LAROUCHE: You're listening to KNON, Dallas, and we've had fun here: I encourage you to do the same.

Q: I thank you very much, Mr. LaRouche

LAROUCHE: Thank you.

Q: Stay fighting.

LAROUCHE: I shall.

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