This transcript appears in the January 14, 2005 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.

LAROUCHE WEBCAST:

Confronting the Deadly Crisis
of International Relations

Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. addressed a webcast conference on Jan. 5, 2005, speaking by video hook-up from Germany to an audience in Washington, D.C. The event was sponsored by the Lyndon LaRouche Political Action Committee. We publish here his opening remarks, introduced by his spokeswoman, Debra Hanania Freeman, along with the lenghty discussion which followed. Audio and video archives are available on the LaRouche PAC website.

Debra Freeman: My name is Debra Freeman. On behalf of the LaRouche Political Action Committee, I'd like to welcome all of you to today's event. For those of you who are listening over the Worldwide Web, we are broadcasting today's event live from Washington DC, and certainly we are doing so on the eve of an historic event, during a week in which we have seen a series of historic events. As I think most people know, tomorrow, a joint session of the United State Congress will meet, and they will meet to certify an election whose legitimacy is still questioned, and I think that some of the questions surrounding how this election was conducted, and how this campaign was conducted, are questions that will persist for quite some time. It has set off a level of activism and activity that has been carried from the days of the presidential campaign into this period of January, just weeks before the inauguration.

But while the question of the legitimacy of the election looms large, there are also other questions that loom very large. This Administration has come back to Washington with the deluded idea that somehow they have a mandate, and somehow they are unstoppable, and this President has in fact outlined an agenda which consists of a systematic dismantling of every principle upon which this nation was built. But the fact of the matter is that this president does not have a mandate. He does not have a mandate from the American people, although he seems to believe that he does, and he most certainly does not have a mandate from God, which he also seems to believe that he does.

And the fact of the matter is that events will be determined not by his delusions, and not by the delusions of the power-mad fascists who surround him, but in fact reality will be determined by the force of truth. And I think that one of the things that we have seen this week is the absolutely remarkable impact that a relatively small group of young people can have on the Capitol of the world's most powerful nation.

Beginning on Monday morning, approximately 60 members of the LaRouche Youth Movement descended on Washington, with the idea of having the effect on this city that they had on the city of Boston during the Democratic Convention. And in fact, the effects of that mobilization are being felt. Spearheading their drive was a pamphlet which had been commissioned by Mr. LaRouche, which addressed in the sharpest possible terms this president's intention to dismantle the Social Security system.

Now, the question of Social Security is not an issue in and of itself, but in fact is a question which serves as one of the cornerstones, one of the foundations of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's defense of the principle of the general welfare. And there is perhaps no other issue that has provoked a more visceral and passionate response from the American people. Armed with that pamphlet, these young people have proceeded on a drive to transform this city according to the principles of truth as Lyndon LaRouche expresses them. Not only as he expressed them during his presidential campaign, but as he has expressed them repeatedly over the course of the last three decades, as an economist, and as America's probably best known statesman.

There are also other events that are unfolding, over which the Bush Administration has no control. One is the rapidly escalating financial collapse. The other is of the nature of the tragedy that we saw occur approximately ten days ago, with the tsunami that hit the Indian ocean region. And that set into action a course of events that was absolutely unprecedented. Questions remain as to whether or not the United States adequately warned the nations of the region. But even more compelling than that, was the lack of response of the world's most powerful nation. For four days, President Bush continued to ride a bicycle around his ranch in Crawford, with absolutely nothing to say about the greatest catastrophe that has hit humanity in modern history. He said nothing! And then, when he finally did say something, he said that he was praying for them. Well, I'm sure that they welcomed his prayers, but when 200,000 people are dead and other 500,000 are injured, and when you're faced with a situation in an impoverished region that will require 10 or 15 years of rebuilding, a little bit more than prayers are required. But the President figured that out, and he offered $15 million, which is approximately 25% of what he is spending on his inaugural ball.

The fact of the matter is that our nation simply failed to function in the midst of a great global catastrophe. Ten days later, as a result of actions by a former president of the United States, there was indeed a U.S. response, and that response continues. I think as people know, former President Bill Clinton, along with the President's father, is heading up a commission that's meant to mobilize private contributions. But more importantly, former President Clinton and the President's father put on the map the fact that America is capable of responding. Nevertheless, although the institutions of this nation are moving forward, the stupidity, the lack of compassion, just the miserable rot that right now is exuding through the ventilation system of the White House, will harm the image and the aroma of this nation for probably a generation to come.

It's in the midst of this situation that we launched this mobilization in Washington this week, and it is in the midst of this situation that Mr. LaRouche will address you, and will continue to address you, as not only America's leading spokesman, but as the person who symbolizes and epitomizes the principles that made this country great, and the principles that in fact are necessary if this civilization of ours is going to find any safe passage through this 21st century.

So, ladies and gentlemen, without further delay, I want to introduce to you Mr. Lyndon LaRouche, who will be addressing you via satellite from Europe, where he currently is. Lyn?

Lyndon LaRouche: Yes, I'm here.

At a meeting with some of my associates here in Germany, on the fourth of January, the question was asked of me as to whether, in an article which I had written and which was published in EIR on the 17th of December, whether I had actually prophesied, in a sense, the coming of this tsunami. Let me just read the paragraph in question, the opening paragraph of that article, to you. It will go up on the screen, but I'll read it to you in my own voice at the same time, and then come back and explain to you what this is all about.

The article begins as such, in the first paragraph:

"Let such caricatures of poor King Canute, as President George W. Bush, Jr., howl their denials, while they can still be heard. Let him shriek in futile rage against those thunderous winds of chaos which were already hurling themselves against the increasingly bankrupt national financial systems of the world. That chaos, now excited to the greater turbulence caused by the desperate antics of such poor, enraged fools as he, now descends with its own added uncontrollable fury, upon our hapless, present world monetary-financial system. So, now, just a few weeks following our modern Canute's recent claims of electoral victory, the oncoming waves of a great storm of global breakdown crisis are striking on the gates of the governments of the world, and are already pounding the hoaxster's illusion of Bush's economic recovery to shreds. The terminal breakdown crisis of the 1971-2004 world monetary system is thus now fully under way."

Now, my answer to that question, which was prompted by this paragraph I just read to you, was that this was obviously not a prophecy by me. I don't prophesy tsunamis. But it does have another lesson we must learn from it.

First of all, when the tsunami was known to the U.S., the U.S.—as Debra just said—did absolutely nothing, from the Presidency, from the official institutions, nothing to warn people in those parts of the Indian Ocean whose lives could still have been saved, from the effects of the tsunami. Nothing was done.

The thing got up to a G-7 or someone of that rank in the State Department, and according to him, it stopped there, because he had no authority to go further. Nothing was done. Obviously, tens of thousands of people who might have lived, died as a result of that negligence by the United States. But worse, as Debra has indicated, four days passed before the President of the United States had anything to say of relevance about that catastrophe, or proposed anything to do to deal with the effects of the greatest international catastrophe in modern history.

Now, the question is this, the question posed to me on the 4th of January. Was I being prophetic in some ironical way, when back in November when I wrote that first paragraph of that article? No, but this is the nature of history.

You know, the history of mankind on this planet, which is probably about 2 million years long, so far—if we don't make a mess of it, it may continue—it's been besieged by natural catastrophes. Gradually over the period of passing generations, with the help of science, we've learned to deal with some of these castastrophes, to anticipate them, to ameliorate their effects, to control them; in some cases, even prevent them. And we would hope that that would continue. But natural catastrophes are a part of living on this planet. And therefore, what happens is, mankind has a system of government, a system of society. Everything seems to be going according to plan, and then something intervenes, a natural catastrophe, either foreseen or not foreseen. And the whole culture is put into jeopardy.

For example, about sixteen hundred years before Christ, you had an explosion on the island of Thera, in the middle of the Mediterranean, something like this type. It just blew the whole island apart—fragments still exist today—but the island was blown apart, and the entire region was subjected to an effect like this, that we saw in the Indian Ocean. And much of civilization of that period, in that part of the world, was wiped out by the effects of that sort of thing.

What happens in a crisis like this, a great natural catastrophe, is that the question is, can the existing society, can the existing culture, respond effectively to that crisis? Can it respond in a way that enables it to survive? And on that evil day in this past month, George Bush and the United States did nothing, until finally Europe shamed us into doing something, and President Clinton and President George Bush, the former President, took joint action to get the United States to recover some of its dignity.

But still, this President, the incumbent President, does not understand the situation. And the culture he expresses by his Presidency is a culture of a people who have lost the moral fitness to survive. And the challenge before us, the challenge posed by the tsunami, by George Bush Jr.'s failure to response to it appropriately, is, are we, our nation, morally fit to survive? Is this a test of us?

Now, there have been crucial moments in history before. Sometimes man-caused, or natural catastrophes. One was the great religious warfare which was launched beginning actually in 1492, when the Grand Inquisitor of Spain expelled the Jews from Spain, in a manner which presaged what Hitler was going to do to the Jews of Germany some centuries later. And that event, that religious persecution of the Jews, and later the Moors, by Spain, set into motion throughout Europe, religious warfare that continued for more than a century, about a century and half until the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia. All of the accomplishments of the 15th century, the Renaissance, the founding of the modern nation-state, the beginning of modern science, the beginning of modern culture, were put in jeopardy. It didn't destroy this entirely, but it nearly did.

And then, when the Treaty of Westphalia was signed, which established modern international law and civilized behavior among nations, at least those of Europe, the people of Germany who had been the chief target of this war, rejoiced. And they rejoiced in the form of a hymn, named "Jesu, Meine Freude." Later, at the beginning of the 18th century, a great man Bach re-set this hymn, which was already an established hymn, which celebrated the relief of mankind from this terrible century-long, more than century-long epoch of religious warfare. And today, I think we should celebrate in a similar manner and in a similar spirit, and therefore, I have planned that, on this occasion, we shall precede the discussion, the further discussion tonight, with another performance, a somewhat still more enhanced performance of what you heard back on November 9, enhanced performance of Bach's "Jesu, Meine Freude," in memory of the victims of this great tragedy, which was a natural catastrophe, and an affirmation, the affirmation of Europeans following the Peace of Westphalia: that we're going to go on to build things, rather than destroy them. So let's have the youth deliver this, and then we'll get back to other business.

[LaRouche Youth Movement Chorus, directed by John Sigerson, performs J.S. Bach Motet Jesu, meine Freude]

Now, there are three topics which I wish to address, but I wish to put them under an umbrella.

What we're talking about, today, is essentially Classical tragedy. We're looking at a Classical tragedy of humanity.

Now, there are several ways of looking at tragedy. You have the Classical Greek tragedy, which ended in the worst for all concerned, generally. And from these great Classical Greek tragedies, great lessons were learned, and they pertained to things largely which involved the culture of all the people of that time.

But then Plato criticized that kind of tragedy, because it left out one thing. It left out the factor of the Sublime. It left out the fact that there has to be a solution for mankind, out of every tragedy; maybe not a happy ending for that particular story, but there must be a clear lesson learned, from study of an actual case of tragedy, a lesson learned which gives people hope for a solution, just as the great tragedy—

Remember, the Thirty Years War in Central Europe. Two-thirds of the population barely survived, in terms of population level. But out of that came international law, the first founding of modern international law, based on the rights of nation-states, and the obligations of nation-states to consider the advantage of the other nation, to help the other nation. So there was a sublime solution, the Treaty of Westphalia, to a great tragedy, over 100 years of religious war.

We have entered into a great tragedy. Our tragedy in particular, in the United States and Western Europe in particular, has been a tragedy of about 40 years.

In the post-war period following World War II, we were still, despite the mistakes we made, we were still, in the United States and increasingly in Western Europe, we were producer societies. We in the United States were known for our production of wealth. We were proud of our production of wealth. We were proud of increasing the standard of living of our people. We were proud of these achievements, and then, about forty years ago, about the time that the Vietnam War was launched, we went through a cultural change, from a producer society to a post-industrial Utopian society. More and more, particularly after the establishment of the present monetary system, which wrecked the old system which did us well, the new monetary system transformed the nations of South America, other parts of the world, into nations to be exploited.

We ceased to produce our own wealth more and more over the course of the 1970s and 1980s. Instead, we relied upon the cheap labor of others. We lowered the standard of living in Mexico, throughout the Americas, and we prospered on their cheap labor. But we didn't prosper so well because we began to abandon our places of work. We dumped the lower 80% of our family income brackets in the United States, into a relatively more destitute position. And only the upper 20% of family income brackets were really in on the system, in on the benefits.

Now, we've come to a point, like that in Europe and that here, we've come to a point where that system is dead; it's hopelessly finished. This international financial monetary system can not be saved. The IMF system can not be saved in its present form. The World Bank can not be saved in its present form. Wall Street, as we call it, can not be saved in its present form.

We've come back to a condition somewhat like that faced by Franklin Roosevelt in March of 1933, but worse. We're in a situation where the President of the United States then acted, as Roosevelt did, to put the bankrupt banking system into bankruptcy reorganization under Federal control, and by these measures, prevented a panic, prevented destitution. It also prevented us from going the way that continental Europe went, into fascism, one nation after the other, because they didn't take the kind of steps that we in the United States took under Franklin Roosevelt.

Roosevelt gave us a system, he built a system during the time he was President, a system which was perfectly consistent with the intent of the founders of the United States. A system the said that the government is responsible for the general welfare. We must defend the general welfare. He did an excellent job. We escaped fascism here, we helped to free Europe from fascism, we provided the margin of support which defeated that monster, and we gave the world a post-war world which we proceeded after Roosevelt's death to make a mess of.

But the institutions he gave us, like the Social Security system and what that implied, systems of regulation and protectionism, this made us a strong economy, the strongest in the world. We were able to assist other nations to develop in a similar way. Europe was reconstructed because of us. Parts of the world as a whole benefited because of us. Even under the conditions of this conflict with the Soviet Union, we still prospered until the middle of the 1960s, when we became idiots, and decided to flee from the finest system of economy that existed on this planet, and go into a post-industrial Utopia. We became pleasure-seekers, instead of producers.

And we stopped producing. We shipped our jobs overseas, and now we've come to the point where the great swindle, the great financial swindles, the swindles of credit financial derivatives, have brought us to the point that the present international monetary system, the present banking system, the banking system of the United States, the banking system of Europe, are now hopelessly bankrupt on their own. Only government intervention of the type that Roosevelt took, could save this system from chaos.

Take the case of one of these crisis cases, the Schwarzenegger syndrome. You have a predator who escaped from Hollywood, who was turned loose on the people of California. He's now the governor. He walked into a mess which he helped to create, because of he and his financial friends who helped to profit from the Enron system. It was the Enron system which bankrupted California, or virtually did. He moved in and took credit for saving California from what he created, under the direction of George Shultz, his controller. As governor, he made the debt of California far worse than what it was when he came in, and everyone who understood it, knew that was going to happen. Now California is about to go off the Pacific shore, into the Pacific Ocean. That is, financially, because the real estate bubble in California, everything else in California, is more bankrupt, more hopelessly bankrupt since Schwarzenegger has been governor, than ever before. And Schwarzenegger represents that interest. Not only is he a predator, and a tasteless creature, but he represents that interest, that financier interest typified by George Shultz, which has created the mess.

And unless we have a government that says, "George Shultz, you're wrong, the Mont Pelerin Society is wrong, and we've got to go back to a Franklin Roosevelt way of thinking about the nation," unless we do that, California is doomed and the rest of the nation is doomed. What is about to happen to Schwarzenegger, in the emergency conferences that he's having in California, is only a foretaste of what is going to happen to the United States as a whole.

The same thing is true in Western Europe. Except for the markets in Asia, the markets in Russia, India and especially China, of Germany, in particular, without those markets, the economies of Western continental Europe would go flat today. So therefore, we're in that kind of situation.

So, we have three crises. One, we have a monetary-financial crisis. The system is going down. Anyone who tells you differently is either insane, stupid, or lying, and I don't know whether maybe George Bush the President is all three. The President. Secondly, we have a crisis of economic decadence. We in the United States no longer have the ability in our labor force to produce as we produced before. We've shipped our technology overseas, we have not developed improved technology of production in the United States, we've shut down our factories, we've shut down our farms, our people have lost the skills they used to have to be productive. We have a major job of putting the country back together again.

Now, forty years is also, to speak of economic decadence, the lifetime of investment in basic economic infrastructure, such as a power station, a power system, a river system, a water management system, a system of locks and dams, highway systems, mass transportation systems, and so forth. For forty years, we've moved into a net shrinking of investment, wasting our investment of forty years ago in basic economic infrastructure. Our railroads are gone, our farms are largely gone, our river management systems are gone, our power systems are going, our cities are rotting, and the housing crisis is about to collapse. Also, a similar situation exists in Europe.

We also have a second class of issues; we have certain immediate issues, apart from the crisis itself. We have Bush's intent to rape Social Security. Now, the Bush people—I'm not going to accuse Bush of understanding anything. I wouldn't stretch people's imaginations that much. I mean, the man is sitting down at his ranch there, and the greatest natural crisis in his lifetime has blown out, affecting the world as a whole, and he's sitting around bicycling around the shrubs of his little patch down there, and saying that it has nothing to do with me. It's an act of God. Go blame God.

But this guy is nonetheless intent on bringing the Nazi program of Augusto Pinochet from Chile into the United States.

Now, Pinochet is a Nazi. At the end of the war, some people like the friends of George Shultz, before George Shultz was fully grown then, but the friends of George Shultz, like Allen Dulles, protected the Nazis. They took a whole chunk of the Nazis, including the cartels, which are the real financial part of the Nazi system, and they saved them, and they brought them into leading institutions in the United States and into Europe. They moved some of them down, by the "rat-line," into South America. And they nested down there, in places like Bolivia and Chile and Argentina and so forth, and other parts there.

So these fellows were used by people like Shultz and the people behind them, in the beginning of the 1970s, to start to bring Nazi forms of operations into South America, using live Nazi veterans of the type that had been saved by Allen Dulles and company, and using them to overthrow governments and to commit mass murder, like Operation Condor, which was done under the supervision, from the United States, of George Shultz, Henry Kissinger, and others. They did it.

So, we built up Pinochet as a new Nazi dictator in Chile, and through him, we also ran Operation Condor, with a lot of missing persons, mass killings of people, just the way Hitler did mass killings—not as many, but the same way—under the governments of that time: the dictatorship in Argentina, the dictatorship in Chile, and so forth.

Now, come the 1980s. The Pinochet system doesn't work. They're about to go bankrupt. Fascism is not exactly a very good system. What do they do? They steal the social security system of Chile, which is the only thing left standing of much worth, and they steal it. They privatize it. And it's about gone now, and people have died as a result of that.

Now, George Bush, the President, has announced he's determined to privatize the U.S. Social Security system, and also, if we can believe one of his aides, that he intends to do something else. To default on the sovereign debt of the United States, which George did in order to cut taxes on the wealthy who least needed the tax cuts. What he did was he stole the money from the Social Security fund, the paid-in Social Security amounts. He took it! To cover it, he created a debt, a bonded debt, a promise to pay by the Federal government, the same thing as a Treasury bond. A promise to pay by the Federal government. And now he's going into a situation where the Social Security system is going to be collapsed, and he intends to pull it off—or at least his advisors do—by defaulting on the sovereign debt of the United States. If the President of the United States, at this time, defaults on the sovereign debt of the United States, what the hell is the dollar worth in the morning? We'll go into the same category that we've put Argentina into, immediately.

Now, what will probably actually happen, if he were to do that, he would steal about $2 trillion, which he'd give to his friends on Wall Street, the financial gamblers. But that would cause the dollar to go up on the market for a short period of time. What would the Chinese and Indians and others do, who have large holdings of U.S. dollars? They would dump their dollars on the market quick, as the last chance to get the best option for getting out from under a dollar that was going to collapse totally. Where are we then?

So this is not just a smart predatory deal by President Bush. This is stupid beyond belief, and that stupid person down in Texas, has gone for this, under the pressure of certain swindlers who are concerned only for what they can steal in the short run, and not the future of the nation, or the future of humanity. They're willing to destroy the United States, and you have some suckers in the United States who are still willing to support George Bush in the privatization of Social Security.

Now, Social Security is not broken. If you can keep George Bush's paws off it, it's not broken. If we maintain the system, and we may have to increase some rates of pay-in on social security by people who are earning income in the upper brackets—we did that before, we may have to do it again. It didn't hurt anybody. We maintained the levels. the guaranteed levels, and we actually made some improvements in what people received, monetary-wise, in Social Security. The Congress went through this in the last session, this question. There is no threat to Social Security in the United States today, except the threat from President George Bush and his friends: the threat to privatize.

So, if you want to save the United States and save your Social Security, don't privatize it. Remember ...

[interruption when connection drops briefly]

... investment wiped out. What is going to happen if you go into the private sector at the point the economy is going to crash? You're going to make a profit, on the magic of compound interest, in a collapsing economy, an economy which you're helping to collapse? No, Social Security is, in general, the only security left for families in the United States. The pension plans, the private pension plans are collapsing. Major pension plans are about to collapse now. You don't want to put people in private pension plans now. That means no pension. And therefore, we must save and defend the Social Security system. And these guys are planning to steal for a short term, for the sake of power. Now I know what is really going on in the minds of the people who are doing the manipulation. The mind of George Bush, that's another question. Everyone can make their own guess. But the guys behind—I know what's on their mind.

The only way that you can get by with this, is the Pinochet way, the Hitler way. You know, in the final analysis, there's no guarantee that money is worth anything. Any money system, any banking system, can go under. There's no such thing as an infinitely protected, guaranteed banking system or money system. Money is only worth the backing behind it. The backing behind it is usually governments. Currencies have been cancelled before. Many currencies have ceased to exist. National currencies. They go out of business, and new currencies replace them. What these guys have in mind, the guys on the George Shultz level, not the guys on the poor George W. Bush level, but on the Shultz level, they know that if you establish a dictatorship, a Hitler-style dictatorship in the United States and Europe, you don't have to worry about anything. You make your own money. You declare new money. You cancel the old. You cancel old debts, repudiate them. Create new debts. You and your friends get along just fine. The people don't.

So, what's in motion here, if anybody's foolish enough to rally to support George Bush in his intent to go the Pinochet way with U.S. Social Security, tell 'em, "You're crazy, buddy. You're not going to get anything, except dead."

Now, we also have some other immediate issues. We have the Iraq issue, and that's kind of interesting, as General Hoar, formerly from the Marine Corps has emphasized, and others, who have come to the same conclusion that many of the rest of us have come to. They may not all agree with me, but we all agree on one thing, and that is, that the danger is that if we don't get out of there, or get out of this war quickly, which we never should have gotten into, we're not going to have a U.S. military anymore. Because what we're doing to people we're cranking through this Iraq war scene, is we are destroying the U.S. military, the volunteer system. We're losing. People don't want to sign up for the reserves anymore. They don't want to join the National Guard anymore. They don't get health care, there's negligence. We're just not going to have a capable military anymore. That's one of the things. We've got to get out of there.

Now, how did we get into there? We've got to face the truth about that. We got in there because Dick Cheney wanted to go there. I don't think George W. Bush knew where it was on the map. He just heard his daddy was there one time.

But Cheney wanted to do that, when Cheney was Secretary of Defense back under George H.W. Bush. He planned to go to, preventive nuclear warfare, it was called, with things like mini-nukes, and planned to use warfare around the planet to establish a new global system. The idea was, the Soviet Union was collapsing, so why can't we become an empire? We have the muscle, we have the power. Why don't we just become an empire, and declare that history is over? The United States has become a world empire, and there's no more history. Everything is simply administration of this thing that has suddenly taken over the planet.

And the way they thought they were going to do it was to go back to what some people thought back in 1945, '46, '47, when they thought that the use of nuclear weapons, when we had a monopoly on them, that we could intimidate the Soviets and others, and we could establish a world government. We'd turn the United Nations into a system of world government in which sovereign nations would no longer really exist. They'd be simply local departments of a world government. But then came the Korean war, and simultaneously the discovery that the Soviet Union had developed a thermonuclear weapon which was already operational, and we didn't have one yet. So, they called off preventive nuclear warfare, for the time being. We then went to a new system, called Mutual and Assured Destruction, which developed over the course of the 1960s, 1950s, and the idea that we would create weapons so terrible that nobody would dare go to war, and we could bluff our way through somehow with that system.

Now, that's dead. But then, once the Soviet Union had collapsed, some idiot thought, "Ahhh! Land of Opportunity! We've got superiority in nuclear weapons, let's use that superiority to go around clobbering countries one at a time, clobber them into submission. Pick Islam as an enemy. Start a general religious war against Islam, and let's get going, buddies." These were the so-called neo-conservatives.

And therefore, because they wanted to start that process, they took a spot, Iraq, as a place to start the game. Go into Iraq, then go after Syria, take on Iran, take on North Korea, and keep going. The intended targets for warfare included China, and what remains of Russia. That's where they intended to go.

So, on the basis of falling for that, the policy that was represented largely by Cheney—he's not the brains behind it, there's a fellow in London who's a little bit more important on that—but this is the policy. And because of 9/11, because the American people were terrified by this spectacle of 9/11, which was like the Reichstag Fire in Germany, set by Hermann Goering, which induced the German people to submit to decree government under Adolf Hitler—Hitler became a dictator because of Hermann Goering setting fire to the Reichstag, and saying the enemy did it, the Communists did it, and they needed emergency powers. And they gave Hitler emergency powers, and he never gave it up, willingly. And that's what Cheney was up to.

So they were intent to use the power, the intimidation of the American people, to believe that the safety of the people depended upon backing George Bush and Cheney against the terrible Islamic peoples, who are coming to get us, or other people. Anybody who's coming to get us. "We've got to kill 'em all!"

So they got into a war, on a pretext. The pretext was a lie. There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. There never were, and Cheney knew it. He lied! If the President of the United States understood anything at all, he must have lied! Or maybe he simply believed what Cheney told him was true. But they lied. They all lied. The entire Bush Administration, collectively, lied, to get us into a war. Now the Congress shouldn't have capitulated, but because of 9/11, they too decided to go along to get along. And they gave Bush a wedge, an unconstitutional wedge, to get into a declaration of war by the back door. And Bush used it.

At the time, he was afraid that the United Nations was going to come up with a settlement of the problems that were mentioned in Iraq. Bush acted on that weekend, to go to war, for fear that the United Nations would take the action which would remove the pretext for war that he was playing with. We got into this war.

That was bad enough. First, when we went into war, we had a fellow called General Garner. Garner was assigned to take over the function of managing things in Iraq, after Iraq had surrendered. That was his position. Iraq did surrender, about the time of that famous battle at the airport outside Baghdad. But then, what did they do? They sent in Bremer to replace Garner.

Now, what Garner had started to do—he'd done the intelligent thing that any general officer in the field would do, in a territory which had just surrendered to you. He would call in the relevant forces, including the military, which had surrendered to him, and the people who run government, who had surrendered to him, and say, "Okay, we're now in charge of this place, and you're working for us. We're not going to stay here, but for the time being, you're going to work for us. Because, in the meantime, while you're still working for us, we're going to get this country back in shape. You in the military are going to be responsible for certain logistical things, and you're going to be responsible for security in the country." You're talking about a fairly modern army, to run security, 200,000 approximately, a modern army to run security in Iraq, the former Iraqi army, minus a few people we had some strong objections to.

And all the Ba'ath Party, who were the bureaucrats, who ran all the deals of government, all now working for us. We didn't need to have an extra bunch of troops in there. They were going to do it themselves, under our auspices. But Bremer was sent in there, and he fired all the Iraqis who were supposed to work for us, and who would have worked for us. He fired the Ba'athists, who would have worked for us, and we got a mess. And then somebody inside the thing started a real resistance against the United States. It wasn't al-Qaeda! That was a lie too. It was Iraqis, and probably part of the old secret services of the Iraqi system. And now you had approximately 200,000 people, trained military people, who were out of jobs, who were a little patriotic, and they wanted to fight. And you had Ba'ath bureaucrats, who know how the country works and who know where the monkey sleeps, and they're now available as recruitable people. And what we got was a case of what's called asymmetric warfare.

It's the kind of foolishness that we got into in Vietnam. The kind of foolishness which the French got into, in a more difficult situation in certain respects, in Algiers. We were going into a replay of an Algiers kind of asymmetric warfare, which has been corroding our troops, corroding everything we try to do there. Because the Bush Administration is clinging stubbornly to trying to keep this war going. And the only mess we have in Iraq today is not Saddam Hussein. It's the mess we created under the Bush Administration.

Now, we've got to get out of there. And I mentioned before, we have to go to the positive. In crisis, you have to find positive solutions, not just go at the negatives. What's the alternative? My alternative personally—and I think it's a model for anything anybody else wants to do—my alternative is, I said, let's take Southwest Asia. Southwest Asia is bounded on the north by Turkey, it's bounded by Armenia and Azerbaijan, it's bounded by Iran, and it includes all the Arab countries, down into Egypt and beyond. This is Southwest Asia.

This is the richest oil-producing area of the world. It probably has an oil supply for cheap oil, at probably one-tenth of the price of most other sources around the world, producing cheap oil, probably for about 80 years to come, maybe more. It's dominated largely by the role of Saudi Arabia, who has been in this sense a partner of the United States since the days of Franklin Roosevelt and his deal with King Saud. Why does somebody want to make a mess of that? Here is a key part of the world's essential, presently, of its power systems: petroleum, plastics, and so forth. Why do we want to make a mess of that territory, where petroleum will cost ten times, twenty times as much in other parts of the world, just to produce? Why do we want to do that, after we've boxed ourselves into limiting ourselves to petroleum as a major source of supply for power sources in various parts of the world?

So therefore, we have an interest, and other nations have an interest, in stability in an area called Southwest Asia, which includes the countries I named, in particular. It means stability along the Nile River, because if you have civil war in the area of the Blue and White Nile area, or below that, if you have a disruption of the water flow of the Nile north, you're going to have hell in Egypt, and that hell is going to spread throughout the region. So don't play games with that area of the world in that way, either.

So what we need, is we need an agreement among these nation-states, to administer their own region on certain principles. In order to bring that off, there's one sticking point in the whole system, and that is the Arab-Israeli conflict. Now, if we don't stop that conflict, there are not going to be many Palestinians, and probably no Israelis left. We're in a process of an end-game there, which can only result in the extinction of Israel, and the extinction of a lot of Palestinians.

Therefore, an Israel-Palestinian peace, whether as one nation or as two nations, is necessary. And this has to be done by aid of power exerted by the United States government, and by the cooperation of other governments. But it has to be based also on a community of interest, of mutual security interest, in the region of Southwest Asia. We now have an excellent situation—Turkey is an excellent partner in that region for such a venture. We can get along with Iran. Get along fine. We don't have a problem that can't be solved, if we go at it in the right way.

Now, we have a third issue, for the time being, apart from the Iraq issue and its implications: Vote suppression. What the Bush Administration did, and the Bush campaign did, is relied on a massive campaign of vote suppression.

Now, another name for vote suppression in many parts of the country, was racism. And what Karl Rove's crowd did: pick an area, which they think that too many people of African descent are in that area. "Let's cut down the vote, because they're likely to vote Democratic. So let's assume that everyone who looks black must be a convict. And let's assume they have no right to vote. It may not be true. They may not be convicts. They may have the right to vote. But let's assume they don't, and let's treat them on the basis of that assumption. And let's send in goon squads. Let's threaten them. Let's scare the devil out of them. So they won't vote. Let's rig things, so their votes aren't counted."

Vote suppression. Now, that's a violation of our Constitution! It's a violation of the Voters Rights Act. It's a Federal crime, but a lot of Republican agents did it. They are known. It is known they did it. It's a crime! It's a Federal crime!

What are you going to do about it? Do you believe in law and order? Do you believe in justice? Do you believe in due process? Do you believe in catching criminals? Well, these guys are criminals! If they did that—they committed a couple of offenses, which are confirmed. If they engaged in vote suppression, particularly the racist variety, which is one of the common varieties, you know where they belong.

Are we going to do it? Is the Republican Party going to clean up its mess and turn these guys in, for court administration, shall we say? Are we going to say that the vote means something in the United States? Are you going to let hysteria, and muscle, and mob violence determine who can vote and who can't? And then say that this guy in Texas, who doesn't know what a natural catastrophe is, has been honestly and fairly designated as the re-elected President of the United States, with that stinking mess sticking out there?

Vote suppression! We don't know what the result of the election was, because we don't know what the effect on the election was of corrupt practices such as vote suppression and related kinds of things which, if they're not formally crimes, ought to be considered as tantamount to crimes.

Let's go to the third issue: the question of the opportunities before us. Now, one of the reasons I'm in Europe at this point, well, the principle reason for my schedule, is that I'm engaged in exploring, in ways that I can do better than anyone else, as the kind of citizen I am, in exploring some options for new kinds of understanding between the United States and our partners, not only in Europe, but new relations with the nations of Asia and coming to common decisions on what we're going to do about the injustice, the terrible situation in Africa, for example.

In the Western Hemisphere, we could do something ourselves; if we wanted to behave ourselves, we could fix our relations with the nations to the south of us. It might take some patience, but we could do it. But in the world at large, in a world in crisis, we have to develop new kinds of ties, new kinds of relationships, with the world at large.

We have to develop a new understanding with Western Europe and Russia, for example. We have to bring in a new system.

Now, for some time I've been on this case, back to the 1980s, for example, in particular, when I was pushing the Reagan Administration to adopt the SDI, which it did do. And as a part of that, one of the things that I was doing in my negotiations with the Soviet government on behalf of the Reagan Administration, was to propose this kind of arrangement. I said, let's get rid of this immediate threat of a thermonuclear confrontation. Let's do this by getting other nations to agree with us—and I did find a lot of agreement in Italy, Germany, France, and so forth on this—why not propose that we consolidate, scientifically, the technologies needed to develop systems which are superior to any kind of system which we have now, but which we know exist and can be developed, in order to intercept missiles of this type, in such a way that we can prevent anyone from winning a war by the use of thermonuclear ballistic missile barrage? And use that technology which we develop for this particular purpose, and use it immediately for many other purposes, to improve the economy of the nations of the world, and share this technology with people.

Various people proposed that. Let's build a world, a new kind of world in which we have new kinds of cooperation among nations. This is the way to resolve these political problems, by creating a platform from which we can negotiate the political problems by platforms which represent common interest.

So what we need today, we need to get rid of the terrible relations which the Bush Administration has created with Europe. We have almost lost our friends in Europe, at least as far as this administration is concerned. Some people in Europe are frightened of the United States. They try to be nice to Bush, as Putin does in Russia. But they know that the United States is really their enemy. You saw this come to the fore again recently when Brzezinski was meddling in Ukraine. You saw the angry reaction from Russian President Putin.

Things are not good. Don't believe it. Just because Germany is nice, and because the French ask to cut deals, and the Italians are nice, don't believe that they're happy with the United States. They're not. Going into the greatest crisis in modern history, which we're in now, we need to come to common action and understanding for common action, with nations in Europe. We need to think in the long term, of our relations with China, our relations with India, with Asia in general. We need to think about justice for Africa, as well as other things. So therefore, these are the kinds of discussions we ought to have, and my job is to pioneer in finding out, and spreading the propaganda, and finding out people in Europe and elsewhere who are interested in that kind of proposition.

There's a movement in the world today which was somewhat activated by George Bush's unleashing of war against Islam. One of the figures in this, of course, is Pope John Paul II, with his continuation of his efforts for peace among religions, a dialogue among religions, ecumenical program, which became expanded into a general dialogue of cultures. And there's a move for a dialogue of cultures in many parts of the planet. The time has come to do that. We have to think about this kind of future relationship. And I'm involved in particularly one thing, in particular.

At present, as you probably know, one of the central features of conflict in the world today, is a fight for control for ownership control, financial control, over raw materials. The United States is one of the nations involved in this. You'll find that the smart money, the smart predatory money in the United States, is reaching out to grab long-term control over raw materials. You'll find in Europe, in the United Kingdom, the same thing. An effort to grab as much as possible, of the future raw material resources of the world. Russia is itself, with the nations immediately adjoining it, a raw materials power. The mineral resources of Russia, of that area, are immense.

China is not much of a raw materials power, in terms of its own immediate territory, but China is the biggest bidder for raw materials, future control of raw materials, in the world today, moving down into South America, Brazil, Argentina, Canada, and so forth. The great shields of raw materials that we have least explored in Eurasia, including going down into Africa, the African shield, or the Eurasian shield.

Now, there is no shortage of raw materials on this planet, at least for the foreseeable future. If we manage things properly, and use the science we have and the science we know we can develop, we can ensure that this planet has a sufficient flow of required raw materials to ensure a modern and technologically progressive society available to every part of this planet for an indefinite period to come.

For example, the richest source of raw materials is the ocean, not the land; it's the ocean, and what lies under it. So, if we proceed with the proper science, we can manage this. One of the things that we have to do, obviously, is we have to work out under a revised world system of soveriegn nation-states, agreements among states to cooperate in a program of development and sharing of raw materials at fair prices, which means that every part of the world can get access to the raw materials that it legitimately requires, at fair prices.

This is one of the differences in the situation today from what it was, say, fifty years ago or a hundred years ago. We are now so expanded in terms of the advanced utilization and occupation of the planet, we can no longer assume there are frontiers that we can loot, like barbarians, indefinitely. We are taking over the planet, economically, physically, we're taking over more and more of it. But when you take over the entire territory, you don't have neighbors to loot. You've got to think about how you manage what you have. And so therefore, one of the common problems, the common interest problems of the planet, is to develop a relationship between European civilizations which have one kind of culture, and the assortment of cultures which are called Asian.

The point of unity with the great expansion of the population of China, India, and some other parts of Asia, which are the great population centers, is to deal with this problem of guaranteeing the raw materials for all, at fair prices, on fair terms, for the indefinite future. And therefore, what we need is a new, what we would call a new Treaty of Westphalia, where we enter into a global agreement, probably through facilities of a reinvigorated United Nations Organization as a medium for doing it, to set up multi-layered agreements, multi-layered contracts, for management of things like raw materials on this planet for the future.

It goes together with things like the space program. We live in the solar system. We're part of the solar system. The conditions on earth are dependent upon the conditions in the solar system in which we live. Therefore, we do have to reach out, scientifically, and find out what's out there. We do have to discover principles that are otherwise not available presently.

So, anyway, I'll take a break now, for a tape change.

Questions and Answers

Freeman: Lyn, we have a couple of questions that have been submitted via email from a variety of institutions. I would like to start with those.

We can start first with a question on the events of tomorrow, because we do have a number of questions that have been submitted in this regard. One very specifically comes from the House side of the U.S. Congress where, once again, the challenge to the certification of the Electoral College vote is being mounted.

The question is, Mr. LaRouche, at this point while we are still involved in intense negotiations, it is the case that there is still no member of the Senate who is firmly committed to sign the resolution that is necessary to actually initiate a full debate on the question of whether or not this vote should be certified. The question that I wish to pose to you today is one which has come up in the course of these negotiations, and that is, when does tenacity become fixation?

The events in Washington State proved that the enormity of the illegitimacy and the suppression of the vote actually was beyond what anyone had previously thought. And, when the Washington State Democratic Party maintained a tenacious fight, it did, in fact, change the outcome of the election. There are some members of the Senate who, while they are sympathetic to the question of voter suppression, still maintain that it was not sufficient to change the outcome of the election. We contend that nobody knows that at this point, and no one will know that unless there is a full inquiry conducted.

Either way, the fact that there was any suppression at all, whether or not it was sufficient to change the outcome of the election, still represented a breach of law, both in terms of the letter of the law and the intent of the law. It is our view that it is still important to make the challenge, but the question has been raised, when does tenacity become fixation? What would you recommend in terms of how we conduct ourselves during the certification debate tomorrow?

LaRouche: First of all, you can not accept what happened in the election, in the election process. For example, let's take the case of voter suppression. The estimate based on counting of votes, that people chose to count, is not a determination of the election. That is, simply recounting the vote is not going to determine what will make right, what was done wrong. People, who were deprived of the opportunity to vote, who wished to vote, who were eligible to vote, who leave no record of having voted, but had an intention and were denied the right to vote—particularly when they were in areas where the Republican Party was acting on the assumption that this was an area of likely Democratic voters—. Now, how can you take the procedure that we've had so far and say, the question of voter suppression was adequately addressed in this process. It was not.

We're now back in the same trap, in a different form, that we were in, back in 2000. Probably Al Gore honestly lost the election. But, there were a lot of irregularities. Now, at that time, James Baker III, who may have reasons to regret it now, stepped in on behalf of the Bush candidacy and pled for finality. And they rushed up to the Supreme Court. They got a corrupt Justice, Scalia, — and when I say corrupt, I say it advisedly — and he intervened to cause the certification, or the process of selection of the President, to go by a way which violated the Constitution, on the basis of pretext of finality, or I think it was more likely shareholder value.

So, in this case, are you going to let the pressure to don't dig your heels in — are you going to allow that to intimidate you into giving up the key issue? The question here is not just this election! It's the next one. If we don't crush what we know was done to create a fraudulent election — in other words, this election was fraudulent by virtue of the mass of voter suppression alone, and we know of that — it was a fraudulent election in character. Are we going to make no remedies, make no assurances, set no precedent to ensure that no S.O.B. dares to do that to a U.S. election ever again? Are we gutless wonders, that we find some reason to squeak out like frightened little mice to back off from a fight, in order to look good with people who might criticize us? Or are we going to defend this Constitution? We don't have a constitutional government the way it is functioning now. The people of the United States, especially in a time of crisis, need constitutional government. You need, above all, the protection of the general welfare, the protection of the rights of every citizen, including, especially the right to vote. If you lose the right to vote, we don't have a republic any more.

And somebody took a lot of people's right to vote away from them, illicitly. And, it was mostly the Republicans, who were engaged in this voter suppression campaign, which was massive. Somebody has to come up and say, what is the figure for the amount of voter suppression that occurred in this campaign, and, who's going to go to jail for doing it? That's vote fraud. And, if we don't get that, we haven't got anything. If we walk away from this now, we end up with no republic. I believe in tenacity in defending the Constitution. We need tenacity to defend the Constitution.

Freeman: The next question is from a scientist, actually a biochemist, who's affiliated, previously with the World Health Organization, and who now works in Florida as part of the tropical disease section of the Centers for Disease Control. He says, Mr. LaRouche, I'd like to go back, for a moment, to a thesis that you uniquely developed in the 1980s, when I first met your organization. At that time, you outlined that the policies of the advanced sector had essentially created a giant petri dish or breeding ground for exotic diseases in the developing sector. While I don't wish to address the origin of the HIV virus right now, whatever its origins were, the result, once that virus began to reproduce, clearly knew no borders. For anyone who thought that it would be contained in the developing sector, well, what actually happened is now history.

Looking at the current situation in the Indian Ocean region, I believe that we may be looking at the same danger. The estimates that I've seen are that at least 200,000 people are dead, and if we applied classic public health measures (and I personally believe that these measures are inadequate), we can expect that the immediate deaths as a result of injuries suffered in the tsunami will be at least double the actual deaths that we have already counted. Given the fact that the number of injuries is already estimated to be over 500,000, I think my presumption that this is going to be far worse than the classic sampling would indicate — I do believe that if we do not act quickly, to address the situation in this part of the world, that we may be courting a biological holocaust that will affect that entire region and that will not be limited to the four nations immediately affected by the tsunami itself. I'd appreciate it if you would comment on this in terms of its implications both in the short term and in the long term.

LaRouche: Well, obviously it is a policy which has been in place for some time. The policy is based on the idiocy of assuming that the Universe contains a number of fixed options, including biotypes; which is obviously insane. When we consider the fact that the very existence of the Solar System is a byproduct of evolution of what was initially a solitary, fast-spinning Sun; that all the higher levels of the Periodic Table above things such as helium and above cyanogen, and so forth, didn't exist in the Solar System until the Sun generated them in a very complex process of self-development. The characteristic of everything we know about the Universe, whether in the inorganic (so-called, as defined by the division established by Vernadsky) or in the abiotic area, is development. We are looking at a Universe of galaxies which is obviously a Universe, not only of our Solar System, but of development. Of a Universe, even in the abiotic area, that is generating things that didn't exist in it before.

The same thing is true with the biological sphere. The development of species, the development of varieties, the development of types of diseases. These were created, They did not exist before. They developed from a natural process which is built into the nature of living processes generally.

We then have man, who is a different category. It's the only creative being walking around. Man has undergone great development. The characteristic of the Universe is development. Now, development goes in various directions. It goes in desirable and undesirable directions. So, science must always look beyond what is presently known, to discover what is about to become, or what may have become behind your back.

And, as far as the general thesis you state, it's true. We did this study back in the early 1970s on the effects of the changes in international monetary policy on Northern Africa. We came up with some forecasts for spreads of disease, of epidemic diseases, and so forth; and they were right. They happened that way. The death rate increased.

And, the death rate is increasing in Africa today, because of the same kind of conditions: foreseeable consequences of policy. The question of HIV, foreseeable. All right, we did not have this type of disease in the Human Kingdom, but we had it in the Animal Kingdom. Suddenly, one day we found this kind of infection in the Human Kingdom, where we should have expected it. And carelessness would cause it, would help to cause it. Or favorable conditions would help to cause it. When we got hit with HIV we should have had a program of the type we never developed. But, it cost too much money. So, they said, don't develop it. This was under Reagan. Don't develop it. It came up one day, when the Surgeon General of the United States had to make a decision. He made a decision: don't do it. I was talking about $40 to $60 billion in terms of funding in dealing with HIV and its implications, or the care of patients, for the understanding of this problem.

We did nothing about Africa. With the conditions in Africa, it was determined, as you know from your experience of this tropical disease factor, it is a very important factor. And, you have dirt and filth and tropical disease conditions, you're going to have trouble. You're going to have new diseases, new kinds of diseases. And the kinds of diseases we develop in Africa or develop in Southwest Asia are going to be the diseases that hit us next. And therefore, what we are trying to do with our HMO policy, with our health policy, with cutting down the number of doctors, with cutting out the whole medical practice, with restricting what physicians can do, because we don't authorize them to do the things they should be doing, for just this kind of reason. We're insane.

We have to go back to work. Produce a lot more wealth per capita, with the aid of high technology, and spend a lot more money in supporting research institutions, scientific institutions, and just plain health care. If we don't have that, we are not going to survive, because, by not having that, by those who want to save money, save money for them to waste on their entertainment, instead of putting people to work in high-tech jobs and educating people for high-tech jobs, we are making ourselves vulnerable to the unexpected.

And we see this today. Look at what happened with the tsunami. The tsunami is something that was waiting to happen for a long time. These have happened periodically in the known history of mankind on this planet. It happened. We had a policy. It was the Asia-Pacific policy, which I fought against, back in the 1980s. I said, we have to have development in these areas. What did they say? They said, no. We're going to have a policy of investment in tourism, and hotels. What did that mean? Instead of developing Southeast Asia, instead of developing Indonesia, what we did is we created these places, these hideaways, for sex entertainment. We had these at the beaches where they could go swimming and find sex with the sharks, or whatever they wanted. We had people who were very poor people who worked and came to live there, in order to get jobs working around these hotels and entertainment centers, or providing sex for people who wanted it in various flavors and so forth. So we had cheap living, poor living, slum conditions, on the beaches in these areas where the inland areas where not developed. And people were down there to have sexual or other kinds of entertainment, in resort centers. And this was policy!

International policy was, we do not allow these areas of the world to undergo development. This has been U.S. policy and other policies since the 1970s, especially since the 1980s. This is why we did not develop a second, sea-level canal in the Panama region, which could have been had. This is why we didn't develop Mexico, when Mexico was ready for large-scale development projects, inside its borders; and it would have worked. So, what we have done, we have gone with the wrong policy. We have created the conditions of poverty, extreme conditions of poverty and lack of sanitation. We've destroyed the medical facilities and biological weapons to defend us against these kinds of things. And, now we have created, by negligence, in this area of the world we are talking about—and you probably would agree, we are talking about millions of people will die as a result of the effects of this, under present conditions, because we do not have, presently in place, the delivery system to get into those areas in the way needed to arrest the implications of this disaster. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

And we have to take this into our conscience. And we have to, as the United States, be proud of ourselves and do something in the direction and get other nations to join us. We've got to change our policies, so we think about the fact that this Universe is a developing Universe. It is developing good things; it's also developing bad things. And we are responsible for making sure the bad things are detected and taken care of.

Freeman: We have a pile of questions on Social Security. These questions are coming from state legislators, a couple from Capitol Hill. There's a question from the principal lobbyist of the American Association of Retired People. The AARP representative poses it in a very particular way. He says, Mr. LaRouche, my own view of the thing is that ultimately, the issue which is driving the attack on Social Security is not the impending shortage or emergency in the Social Security Fund. In fact there's a much larger shortage looming in medical funds and no one is addressing that.

My question is this: You contended in your remarks that it's the desire of the Administration to steal approximately $2 trillion for short-term use on Wall Street. That may be true, but I have a slightly different view. And, I would argue that what is actually at the heart of this is not simple thievery, but also a desire to dismantle the Social Security system. The fact is that the neo-cons have always hated any and all programs associated with the legacy of Franklin Roosevelt. It's a problem that's not simply limited to the neo-cons. It's a problem in both parties, in fact. We all recall the Democratic Leadership Council insisting that it was time for Democrats to turn away from the policies of FDR and to find a third way. More recently, journalist Alexander Cockburn has made it clear that we can not count on Senator Edward Kennedy to hoist the FDR banner for reasons of his family history, despite his own liberal leanings. I'd be interested in your view on this. Is this simply a question of stealing, or are these people actually trying to dismantle the system as we know it?

LaRouche: There's no contradiction between the two motivations. There's just a different—it's a convergence of two different views or two different tendencies. The first thing is that, what has happened here in terms of the George W. Bush initiative, is comparable, as Bush himself has said, to what Pinochet did in canceling Social Security on a similar program in the 1980s in Chile. And that's where the immediacy comes in. Because, you have to realize, that right now, contrary to what some people think on the other motives, this international monetary financial system is doomed. We're talking about days, or weeks, or months at most. This system is doomed. It is not going to live. The banking system of the United States is bankrupt.

Do you know what that means? Where are your savings? Where are your assets? Your stocks, your bonds, everything? What do you have for assets? How about your mortgage? People of the United States are intensely vulnerable now, and they try to pretend that they're not. They try to pretend that somehow it's going to work out. That somehow the bad things will be limited to this or that. We're talking about a general collapse of the world economic financial system, and a collapse of the economic system unless the government intervenes to deal with that problem the way that Franklin Roosevelt did. What Franklin Roosevelt did was deal with a much less severe problem, but of the same type, not as extreme. The present one is more extreme.

On any given morning this system can go! It can go if the California real estate bubble goes under Schwarzenegger, as it's threatening to go right now. If that goes, the whole Fannie Mae business goes down. The whole real estate bubble comes down. Do you know how much is tied up in the United States and the implications of the real estate bubble? What's going to happen to all those people who thought they had a mortgage or a $600,000 home, and they find that it has a market value of less than $100,000?

This is the kind of thing we face. And, therefore, that's the difference, that in the case of Chile, you had one country which is a country within a system. The system was buffered by the international system. The disease was confined, at that point, to that country. Pinochet had a problem. He was about to go belly-up. And, he had good reason not to go belly-up because he had committed so many crimes that he knew he would be tried and executed, for the crimes he had committed against humanity. And, because he was so deeply in bed with the Nazis who had come into his country to help him. So, what he did is that he stole the Social Security funds to tide him over to get him through his lifespan in Chile. And to hold on to the Presidency as long as he could, because otherwise, he was dead.

Now, you've got a similar situation right now in the United States. George W. Bush, whether he knows it or not, the people around him know it, that this thing is coming down. Don't believe the press. Don't believe the stuff about the prosperity around the corner. Don't believe it. The system is dead, it's coming down, now. And, the problem is, we don't have a Franklin Roosevelt in the White House. And, therefore the solution to this problem is to create a mess in the Congress, so that we create a situation in which we can force, under pressure of the American people, we can force measures to be taken, even by this Presidency, which by its total instinct, it didn't want to do, Roosevelt-style measures.

Now, that takes us into the second area. You have people who were for Hitler as long as he didn't try to eat up the British Empire, including many in the United States. People like Harriman, who funded Hitler. It was the Harriman family, and Prescott Bush, the grandfather of the present President, who wrote the paper to a German bank which refunded the bankruptNazi Party to have the Nazi Party in place so that Hitler could be made a dictator. And, this was done by Harriman, with the consent of other big bankers from the New York bank crowd. It was done under the direction of the British.

So, they didn't like Hitler for one reason. When Hitler decided to go westward first, instead of eastward, in his war plans, to go against France and England, rather than the Soviet Union first, then the British got upset. That wasn't their war plan. So, they fired Edward VIII, who was a Nazi lover, because they knew they were going to go to war with Hitler, not because they were opposed to Nazism, but because they were opposed to Nazism going westward rather than eastward.

And, the people of the United States also changed their views. They were still Nazi in their sympathies. They were still part of the cartel that put the Nazis into power, du Pont, Morgan, Harriman, and so forth, they were all part of this cartel which came out of the Nazi system still owning their assets in the Nazi system. Some of the Nazis were killed but the bankers who owned them were still the bankers that had owned them, in the financial cartel tied around the Bank for International Settlements. They are still a powerful force inside the United States. And the one thing they hate more than anything else is the memory of Franklin Roosevelt. And all you have to do is ask, who somebody's grandpappy was and how they stood on these issues, on the issue of Roosevelt vs. the Nazis in the United States in the 1930s. I mean Nazis like Morgan, du Pont, Harriman, and so forth. These people hate Franklin Roosevelt. And hate everything he stands for.

And so, you've asked two questions, you're going to get yes to both. You have people, on the one hand, who are desperate now, to try to buy time to hold on to control of their system until they get their dictatorship in place. Then, you have other people who, in any case, have been working, ever since the day Roosevelt died, like Harriman, who destroyed the life's work of Franklin Roosevelt, which includes Social Security and a lot of other things. Fannie Mae, for example also, which had been destroyed, was a Roosevelt creation.

So, both are going. It's a confluence of these two tendencies which creates the force which is expressed by this rape on Social Security now. Two motives are there, not just one. One motive, is the present Administration is not ready to be a dictatorship yet. Cheney, gum-chewing Hermann Goering, Cheney, is not yet a dictator. Therefore they have to try to control the system. To control the system means try to control it in the short term: Steal a lot of money from Social Security to try to make the system stand up for a little bit longer. The long-term objective is dictatorship.

On the other side, you have those Roosevelt haters, who have been moving in the direction of destroying Roosevelt's life's work, ever since the day that Roosevelt died. When Truman came in — remember, Roosevelt was for decolonization. That was an active program of Roosevelt's, it wasn't just a dream. It wasn't just words, it was an action program. The day that Roosevelt died, Truman went the other way for recolonization of areas that had been liberated during the wartime period. Since the day that Roosevelt died and since some of the people who took over, brought the Nazis under protection, in the U.S. and elsewhere, and used them, these guys have been out to destroy the legacy of Franklin Roosevelt and to destroy the United States. So, you have the two things: the emergency and the long-range. And these two things are converging. That's where the danger is.

The point is that this is like a situation in warfare. You have to fight a certain battle. You have to fight a battle against forces which are allied for different reasons, but they're in alliance. But you must win that battle! If we lose the battle for Social Security, or defense of it against the Bush attack, we are not going to have a nation. We are going to have hell! With no chance of getting out of anything.

People who will not fight to defend Social Security won't fight for anything. They are prepared to give up all the way, all the way to the gas chamber. They may not know it now, but they are.

Freeman: Lyn, the next question is on the topic of Dick Cheney, and it comes from someone who is a senior Senate staffer on the Democratic side. He says, Mr. LaRouche, you're probably best known over the course of the last few months for the expose you did of the circles around Dick Cheney and Cheney's influence in this Administration. And, people frequently see your organizers with billboards that say things to the effect of, "Fire Dick Cheney," or "Impeach Dick Cheney." As we come into this new session of the Congress, what you call bureaucratic rot and inaction in the face of the tsunami, we have since learned was largely exacerbated by Dick Cheney's repeated hammering of Condoleezza Rice, who, regardless of what my opinion of her politics is, is essentially, an otherwise articulate woman, who has been turned into an incoherent fool, and who failed to brief the President adequately. This has been all documented by Sidney Blumenthal and others in the press.

Also, in today's Washington Post, we learned that it was not Alberto Gonzales who was the intellectual author of the now-infamous torture memos that led to the atrocities at abu Ghraib, but in fact, the author of those memos was none other than Dick Cheney's lawyer, Addington. I don't think that I have to remind you that tomorrow's joint session of the Congress, where the question of voter suppression will be debated, is one which will be chaired and presided over by the same Dick Cheney. So, I guess my question is, are we still talking about getting rid of Dick Cheney? And, do you think we could do it by tomorrow?

LaRouche: The first thing in fighting war is guts. What we have is a shortage of guts in a whole generation, which is the generation which is generally in the Congress today. They were the generation of the 1960s, the 68ers. And younger. And, when it comes to war, or anything resembling it, they can always find a way to avoid it. They suddenly get struck by a conscience, which they never knew what it was before. Suddenly they get a blow of conscience. The basic thing is they don't want to be involved in the war. Or they don't want to work. Or they think that they are likely to get a lot of sex if they go in this area where people are resisting the war. Or they can have sex with trees, or whatever. Whatever they did. So this was a generation which does not have the temperament of a World War II generation. A World War II generation would not, under present conditions, have put up with what this generation has put up with in the Congress and elsewhere. They'd have fought.

But, remember that this is the generation which was victimized, largely, by the Congress for Cultural Freedom. It's actually, I call it, the Sexual Congress for Cultural Fascism, which is a better term. And, the basic characteristic of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, which was led by a lot of Marxists, among others, who were doing work for the fascists such as Allen Dulles, was that you can't have authoritarian personalities. And an authoritarian personality is a person who makes up their mind based on ideas of principle, from fact. You've got to have people who don't have that kind of commitment.

And, the basic argument was, after all, there is no such thing as truth. Nobody knows truth. Nobody could have a monopoly on truth. There is no truth. Therefore, how can you defend something, since you can't define anything as truth? Shouldn't you compromise everything, including yourself, especially your own morals? So, you had a generation, and a political system, as a corruption of the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, both, in which the composition is, the effect of the Congress for Cultural Freedom on the morals and behavior and intellectual life of people in these positions.

Now, under such conditions in past history, only a great shock will turn a bunch of cowards like this into fighters. They will all find a smart way to deal with the problem and try to keep a show, a face of courage, when they actually are hiding cowardice in the seat of their pants. Now the fact that has come, donated to us, that we now face, is a situation where the people of the United States are about to lose their Social Security, absolutely. Absolutely. There's no return. The private social security program, the private Social Security fund, they don't exist. The pensions don't exist. You're going to find pension systems that you thought were private pension systems are going belly-up, now. You have a threat to the airline system, that the whole private pension system of the airline system may go belly-up. Right now.

Now, when people are faced with a shock, like the dropping of the bomb, suddenly they react, and they break free of conditioning. We now have, with the attack on Social Security, the opportunity to break free of the bondage, of — not Dick Cheney. Dick Cheney's just a thug. He works for these guys. The bondage of the people behind George Shultz. The bondage of the people of the Mont Pelerin Society, who are about as Nazi as Nazis can become, the whole pack of them. The Milton Friedmans, one of the worst of them.

So, therefore, we have to say that we are going to fight. And, by having the courage to fight, we are going to give the guy next to us the courage to fight. And, by both of us having the courage to fight, then that guy next to both of us may get the courage to fight. This is the time and the chance to fight. You are fighting to save everything, including the Constitution, including our nation. This is the time to fight. Pack all your issues in one, and fight. And don't give up. You can break Cheney. Break him! Take this case of Gonzales. Demand Addington. They withheld information. They lied! They held back documentations on Abu Ghraib, they lied. It wasn't Gonzales. It was Cheney. Cheney's a fascist. Get rid of him. Get him out of there! He's impeachable. You can impeach him twice, once for his incumbent term and one for the one he thinks he's getting next. A double dose.

Impeach him as a candidate and impeach him as an incumbent. But, if you fight, you can win.

But I know the American people, especially the lower 80% of family-income brackets. They've lost their courage, over the years, since 1977, when the standard of living of the lower 80% was lower, and lower, and lower, and lower. And today, the lower 80% of the family-income brackets have a lower total income than the upper 20%. They don't fight anymore, in politics, for big issues. They pick a little issue, a single issue, or maybe two single issues. Or, they fight about a neighborhood issue. They fight about little things, and try to nag the politicians to give them something. But, they don't fight anymore on principle. They don't defend principle.

They say, well I need money. People have given up civil rights fights, saying, well I need money. I'll give up the principled fight for civil rights, if I can get some money. This is typical of the lower 80% of our family-income brackets today. They won't fight. They're cowards. The stuffing has been taken out of them.

But, we are now at the point, when the lower 80% is about to lose everything, it all. You fight now, or you ain't human no more. This is the opportunity to fight, the best one you've ever had. Let's fight and take it back. Beat these guys on the question of Social Security. Beat the Boykin initiative on the issue of the Addington role, of Cheney. Go for the gut. Get them out. And show people you have the courage to fight. And then, maybe, they'll have the courage to join you in supporting the fight. That's our only chance.

Freeman: We have what are virtually identical questions. One was submitted by a member of the LYM in Denmark, and the other is by a fellow at the Economic Policy Institute here in Washington. The question is regarding the nature of the financial collapse. I will take a certain amount of liberty in summarizing the questions, because the two are so similar. The fellow from the Economic Policy Institute says: "Mr. LaRouche, a few years ago, I probably would have argued with you about the question of the overall bankruptcy of the system. However, today, I can't really make that argument, especially as the dollar continues to collapse against virtually every currency in the world. Let's presume that we are facing a collapse of that type. I've done a great deal of study of Alexander Hamilton. And although Alexander Hamilton does make certain reference to the relationship of the nation's currency to gold, what he discusses, most notably in his Report on the National Bank, was the necessity for public confidence in the credit system, in order for the government to be able to increase the amount of credit in circulation.

"My question is, how, in fact, do we restore credibility in a credit system in the immediate aftermath of a dollar collapse?

LaRouche: Franklin Roosevelt, in 1933, in March, took a number of measures which asserted the authority of the Constitution—particularly the General Welfare principle. And remember, Roosevelt was not just stumbling around with this and coming up with a quick idea to deal with the Depression. In his Harvard graduation proceedings—or that period of time in his life—he wrote on this subject, at Harvard University, as a student there, in the process of graduating. He also was a descendant of Isaac Roosevelt, a New York banker of the Bank of New York, who was an ally of Alexander Hamilton. So, on his side of the family, the Roosevelt family tradition, Franklin Roosevelt was proceeding from a well-informed knowledge of the history of the American System as a system, not just like the British system but with different gimmicks. Our system is not the British system.

As I've written in this most recent paper, which is just being published now, on these kinds of questions, we've got to get away from the fetishism about money, and money systems, and credit systems. Our system, of Hamilton, was a revolution—a world revolution. At that time—in 1763, when the British had used the Seven Years' War to establish a British empire, through the mutual defeat of the nations of Continental Europe who had been played against each other by the British—since that time, the Anglo-Dutch liberal monetary system, which is really a Venetian model, has dominated the world.

The American System, which had its inception before then, in what happened, in particular, in Massachusetts, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony prior to 1688-89, under the Winthrops and then under the others of that group, had established a credit system in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, which was internal to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and which resulted in a great expansion of growth of the economy of the Commonwealth. Now, the Commonwealth was then suppressed, to a large degree, and the Perkins Syndicate crowd came in afterward. That is, the British loyalists, who came in, and corrupted New England, pretty much. But this was the precedent which Franklin carried from Mather and Co.; and carried down into his work in Pennsylvania, and in contact with people in Europe, such as the famous mathematician Kaestner; on a principled conception of a new type of republic based on this tradition, which started here in the United States, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, prior to 1688-89. That's the root of the thing.

Now, the point was: We do not accept money as having an independent role or existence in the universe. Our view is, as Americans, that money is something which is created only by the government—by no one else. Anybody else who creates money, in the United States, is guilty of uttering, and could go to jail for fake currency. Which makes one wonder about the Federal Reserve System, sometimes.

But, in any case, therefore the credit of the United States must not be corrupted. The credit of the United States must be defended. The credit is the credit we give to one another. We make contracts. We make agreements. We agree to postpone receipt of payment in return for this and that, and so forth. And it is this, by drawing off a part of the total product of society, and drawing it off in the form of capital—capital to improve a farm; capital to build an industry; capital which is something which lasts in its effect over coming generations—the formation of useful capital. In other words, instead of just producing, and consuming everything we produce, we withhold from our expenditure for consumption, some part which we use as capital. To improve farms, for public works, all these kinds of things.

These things increase the productive powers of labor, and enable us to charge some kind of interest on the creation of capital, as compensation.

That's the kind of system that works.

So, we're now in a situation where the international Venetian-style monetary system, the IMF-World Bank system—is now hopelessly bankrupt. Therefore, we put it into bankruptcy reorganization. We put it under the conditions of the American System of Political Economy, in which the U.S. government, with the consent of Congress—that is, the Federal Executive with the consent of Congress—is sovereign in matters of money and credit.

And therefore, we absorb the bankrupt system into our hands. And we reorganize it on our terms, to the purpose of creating an American-style system of money and credit, of the type that Hamilton is talking about; rather than trying to work within the framework of the present international monetary system.

As I lay this out, in this paper, on this subject, you have to realize that here we are, living, in a sense, physically, in a modern economy; a modern industrial economy, based on—presumably—equal rights for everyone, for opportunity, on the basis of increasing the productive powers of labor, on improving public works, and so forth, for the common benefit. But we are living in a monetary system which belongs to feudalism! It's a relic of feudalism. It's a relic of the Venetian system, where the Venetian financier-oligarchy and the Norman chivalry were dominating Europe in a government-free system.

And that's the point.

So, there is no contradiction in this. What I'm talking about, clearly, is having the guts to establish the American System—again—as what was the intent of the Constitution; and to say to Europeans: "Come in and join us, and do the same, and we'll cooperate with you."

That is the only way out of this crisis. We're going to take most of the monetary aggregate—the monetary claims which exist in the world today—they're going to disappear, one way or the other. Now, either we engage in a mercy killing, or we have a general slaughter. We propose a mercy killing.

We take these assets. We take them in. We look at them. We decide which ones are justifiable, which are not. Those that were justifiable, those claims will ultimately be paid. And nobody is going to suffer unjustly because of the collapse of the system.

That's the way we do it. That's the American System. And we just have to have a clear understanding of this, and get out of our heads, the idea that we have to play within a notion of money, which is taught in every university and so forth, generally, in the world today, which is absolutely nonsense. It's feudalism! It's not modern society. It's not capitalism. It's feudalism! We want to get back to the American System.

And if we think in those terms, there really is no serious contradiction. There's a great challenge. And I ran for President because I have the guts to do it, and the knowledge to do it. That's why I ran for President.

So, there are people, such as me, who have the guts and knowledge to do this. And I'm prepared to do it. And I'm prepared to help anyone who is President of the United States to do it, if he doesn't know how to do it already.

Freeman: The question that I'll end with, is a question that's been submitted by a large number of the young people who are gathered here today, and are also listening from around the country.

But first, I want to pull together a composite question—we're getting questions from all over the world, on a recent paper that Lyn has authored, that has been posted on the website: "For a New Treaty of Westphalia."... We can't possibly take all of them.

Imani Jones, who has had Lyn as a guest on her show a number of times, and who's from Cleveland Talk Radio, says: "Mr. LaRouche, with regard to some of your current writings, I wanted to call to people's attention, an interesting passage in the Scriptures—which I know I take great risk in bringing up, because your people don't like to quote Scriptures. But in James 5—and I would urge people to look at it. She said, there exists there a warning to rich oppressors. And I, actually, will read it because it is a good passage.

"Now, listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming upon you. Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. Your gold and silver are corroded; their corrosion will testify against you, and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. But look, the wages you failed to pay the workman, who mowed your fields, are crying out against you; the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. You have lived on Earth in luxury, and self-indulgence; you have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered innocent men, who were not opposing you."

My question, Mr. LaRouche, is, how long can this nation's so-called solvency rest upon the backs of the poor, coupled with these outlandish interests rates, and attacks on Social Security? Further, in some of your recent writings, you've talked about a new Treaty of Westphalia, concerning the current situation. How can we succeed in agreements with these countries, when we are in a state of such deep crisis? How can we have a concrete union among nations, which from their past, to the present, have done nothing but seek profit, and power?

[Brief interruption of question; end of question resummarized, ending: How do we approach this in concrete terms, to forge a dialogue?]

LaRouche: That's what I'm working on; exactly what I'm working on, with my discussions internationally with various circles. This involves exactly what I've written about. The solution to the problem is described in a number of things I've written; the problem is, today, we are conditioned to beliefs about human nature, which are not human nature. The ability to deal with this, lies with those of us who are not afraid of the word immortality. The problem is, see, most people are concerned with, say, 'What do I get in my mortal life, that I can experience and enjoy in my mortal life, which, as a bribe, would induce me to accept this deal?' That's the way it goes: 'What's my gratification? What's the payoff? What do I get out of this?'

Now, among normal, healthy, moral people—who did, believe it or not, used to exist—parents would sacrifice for themselves and their grandchildren, taking their satisfaction from the fruit of their labor, as expresed in the accomplishment of their children and grandchildren. They had a sense of immortality, or an intimation of immortality, in this sense: That the purpose in life was what they used their life for; not what they got out of it. It was not a gambling deal; it was not a tradeoff.

The problem we have today, is, most people who are leaders of government, who are in leading positions, most of the time, are of that morally inferior type like Hamlet. Remember the Third Act of Hamlet, the soliloquy, where he can not fight, because he's afraid of immortality—the uncertainties of immortality. And only people who—as I am—who are not afraid of the uncertainties of immortality, are capable of going all the way with a fight. And only people who have that quality in themselves, can inspire other people to confidence to do the kind of thing that must be done today.

We have a world of frightened people, and they're going to become much more frightened fast. Therefore, we need leaders; we need people who will step forward, with a sense of immortality: who devote their life to the outcome of what their life means for the future of humanity; not for what they get out of it. Only people who are of that type, are capable of responding, in this kind of situation. I can do it; I want others to be able to do it. I would hope that the youth movement will produce the kind of people who can do that. That's one of the goals of my work with the education work on the youth movement—to concentrate on that problem.

If we don't do that, then we're looking at a Dark Age.

So, you have two things: you have the fact that there are solutions; there are remedies; they would work. What will it [take] to get people to agree to these remedies? What had made them agree to the Treaty of Westphalia in the first place: they had seen the impossible pit of horror in the Thirty Years War. And, because of their horror of that experience, they're willing to do what Cardinal Mazarin, the chief inspirer of the Treaty of Westphalia, proposed they do. Read the Treaty of Westphalia—the original one. Study the original document; the original resolution. Take into mind the circumstances under which that was done. And remember, that what you heard done by the youth, the chorus, the Jesu, Meine Freude, was an expression of the explosion of joy in the people of Germany, at relief from the Thirty Years War; something which continued into Bach's lifetime, which was, of course, more than 60 years later, when he did his versions. And what you heard, as Jesu, Meine Freude, was an expression of mankind grasping the fact, that it had achieved something: it escaped from a terrible evil, 'the old dragon'—the abyss.

And that's what you need today, and you find that, when people work in the Jesu, Meine Freude, as a motet, and actually get on the inside of it, they find there's something that is very awesomely mysterious about it. There is something in it that can not simply be explained by formalities. It is something that Bach understood, as to how to communicate these higher orders of ideas.

And, that's really the answer. We have to have leaders who understand that we must do it. And we'll do it, because we must do it, the way the Treaty of Westphalia was brought about as an agreement. And, we need enough leaders who will agree to that, to get the others to go along. And they'll go along, not because they really have insight, or they have belief, or competence, [but] because nothing else is going to work. And that's the way you're going to bring about a new Treaty of Westphalia now on this planet. When people realize, in coping with things like we've seen with this incident of the tsunami, that they are faced with forces beyond their ability to control—and that's only one example of it—the forces of the collapse of an international financial-monetary system, beyond their individual control—things that can destroy whole civilizations, beyond their control—and, for that reason, men and women unite to common purpose, to develop the power to deal with these things, which are frightening beyond belief. That's the answer.

Freeman: OK, Lyn, the last question, which has come in many different forms from the young people gathered here, is, "Lyn, our task and our mission this week was clearly defined and clearly focussed, around today's activity and around tomorrow's debate. We still have a couple of more days of the Week of Action to get out the remaining allotment of the 50,000 pamphlets we were given, but after this week we will no longer have the forces in D.C. that we have had thus far. What's the next crucial point in our mission? Is it the Inauguration? Is it the ICLC Conference? Please help us to define the mission, and tell us exactly what you want us to accomplish here in Washington."

LaRouche: Washington, D.C. is not just a population center, it's the nation's capital. Therefore, you want to change the policy of the nation, its government? You've got to pay direct attention to the nation's capital. Therefore, the intensity of concentration on the nation's capital must be primary.

Now, we have certain areas I've laid out in the United States, which we now have, are able to concentrate significant forces to do enough. Some with youth movements, and some with other parts of an organization, the adulterated part of the organization, shall we say?

So we have a Boston base, which has to be developed. It must go on. New York City is a major center, and I have a lot of supporters up there, who have to be organized, and they will fight. Remember, New York did not give up. Many other parts of the country were more fearful after 9-11 than the New Yorkers were. The New Yorkers have shown more guts about 9-11 than the people outside New York. And I know why. I understand New Yorkers. They have a terrible situation up there. Terrible economic situation. It's hard to live, but they have a certain manner. So, that's important.

We have to get Jersey out of the mud. You used to have Jersey mud, you took it for intestinal diseases. Now we've got to get the Jerseyans out of the mud, and get them functioning.

Philadelphia is doing what it's doing. Washington, D.C. is crucial. What we have in Texas is crucial. The Midwest is crucial. We've established a position there, we've not going to give it up. The Michigan-Ohio area. We'll organize there.

Texas, we have that, and it's also a border connection, important. California, we have a powerful situation. From Washington State into Oregon, California. It's a very ripe situation. All right, we'll concentrate there.

Now, what have we got? We now have, what we're doing is engaging other organizations, other networks, as you've seen in the fight around Social Security. The way we will spread is not by trying to spread ourselves all over the landscape. We have allies! Allies in a common cause. The common cause typified by Social Security and other things. Therefore, we are going to associate ourselves within the orbit of the Democratic Party, where we're already established as part of the Kerry campaign assembly, but also with Republicans who are sane people. There are many sane Republicans! They don't all think like George W. Bush, or Dick Cheney!

So, we are going to have a kind of networking arrangement, around common cause, around the nation, with groups which are fighting for these causes, and our work will be, marker-buoys in all situations, where we are sitting the pace, and our operation in Washington, D.C. is key for maintaining the pace-setting center, by which we try to tie all these organizations, most of which are oriented to Washington anyway, as lobbyists, or whatnot, or have lobbyists, to try to create a national movement, in which we are a catalytic element, an independent but catalytic element, in bringing together many kinds of forces that are coming together with us now, so we don't have to be every place simultaneously. They're are not enough of us.

But there are people who will work with us, with whom we will discuss, with whom we will come to agreement on policies and tactics. We will spread these networks, overlapping networks, throughout the nation, and that's the way we're going to change the nation, if we're going to change it at all. And that's the way to go.

Take the areas that we have. Understand how each part of the area functions, what function it performs. We're functioning as a keystone of a network of organizations which are coming together around our initiative. The position of initiative we've gained because of the last two months of the recent Presidential campaign, and because at November 9th on, we pulled the Democratic Party off the floor, and got it into some kind of semi-living motion again. And so, that's where we are.

Take the objective situation. We're going to build our networks, and they're going to be national. We're not going to be proprietary, because we're going to work with them, but we're going to build our own organization at the same time. And what we do, in limited areas in the United States, is going to be crucial for what many people do in all areas of the United States.