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Published: Tuesday, Oct. 4, 2005
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Volume 4, Issue Number 40
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This Week You Need To Know:
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A political hurricane, as devastating as Katrina, has struck the Bush-Cheney Administration. A string of long-simmering criminal probes, targetting top White House officials and key Congressional allies, has hit all at once, and the right-wing Republican juggernaut of dirty money and political corruption is now on the chopping block.
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Asked on Sept. 30 to comment on the series of devastating blows delivered to the Bush-Cheney-Tom DeLay apparatus during the last week of September, Lyndon LaRouche said that "beyond the specifics of the individual instances of crime and sleaze that are now apparently being brought to account, we are seeing an overall reaction to the breakdown of the functioning of our government. The reaction is coming from various places within and around the U.S. governing institutions..."
full article, pdf format
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This Week in History
October 4-10, 1858
Lincoln Exposes Douglas's Sophistry on the Issue of Slavery
The seven debates between Abraham Lincoln and Sen. Stephen A. Douglas during the U.S. Senate campaign of 1858, known today as the Lincoln-Douglas Debates, dealt overwhelmingly with the effects of the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the Dred Scott Decision. But each debate had a slightly different focus, and the one at Galesburg, Ill. on Oct. 7 was memorable for Lincoln's ability to reveal the inconsistencies in Douglas's arguments, and the intentions behind the constant sophistries which Douglas employed.
Douglas was a slippery orator who would speak for hours, but never directly answer Lincoln's questions. What Lincoln aimed at, was to make both his and the Senator's actual policies crystal clear, even if the Senator would not, so that citizens could easily choose between them. And it was not just the voters of Illinois that Lincoln was talking to. Lincoln's view was that when most Americans saw clearly what the choices were, the looming danger to the nation might be averted.
Senator Douglas always stated that the words in the Declaration of Independence, "All men are created equal," was never intended to apply to the Negro. Douglas claimed that he did not care whether slavery existed or not; it was of no concern to him, and certainly not a moral issue. What he did provide for dealing with this "problem" was what he called "popular sovereignty," the supposed right of a state or territory to regulate slavery as it pleased. Despite the overwhelming evidence contained in the drive to bring slavery to America's new territories, and the national legislation and Supreme Court decisions which presaged making slavery legal in all states, Douglas maintained that a new territory could use "popular sovereignty" to keep out slavery.
He put it this way to the citizens of Galesburg: "Chief Justice [Roger] Taney has said, in his opinion in the Dred Scott case, that a Negro slave being property, stands on an equal footing with other property, and that the owner may carry them into United States territory the same as he does other property. Suppose any two of you, neighbors, should conclude to go to Kansas, one carrying $100,000 worth of Negro slaves and the other $100,000 worth of mixed merchandise, including quantities of liquors. You both agree that under that decision you may carry your property to Kansas, but when you get it there, the merchant who is possessed of the liquors is met by the Maine liquor law, which prohibits the sale or use of his property, and the owner of the slaves is met by equally unfriendly legislation, which makes his property worthless after he gets it there.
"What is the right to carry your property into the territory worth to either, when unfriendly legislation in the territory renders it worthless after you get it there? The slaveholder when he gets his slaves there finds that there is no local law to protect him in holding them, no slave code, no police regulation maintaining and supporting him in his right, and he discovers at once that the absence of such friendly legislation excludes his property from the territory, just as irresistibly as if there was a positive constitutional prohibition excluding it.
"Thus you find it is with any kind of property in a territory, it depends for its protection on the local and municipal law. If the people of a territory want slavery, they make friendly legislation to introduce it, but if they do not want it, they withhold all protection from it, and then it cannot exist there." This sanguine view, of course, did not comment on the still-recent events in "Bleeding Kansas," where the pro-slavery Lecompton Constitution had been stuffed down the throats of the anti-slavery settlers.
The firepower for enforcing this decision had been provided by heavy funding to gun-toting, pro-slavery forces imported from Missouri. Less than two months before the Galesburg debate, the majority of Kansas settlers had finally succeeded, despite the murders of Free-State men at Lawrence, in rejecting the pro-slavery constitution and had come into the Union as a free state.
Lincoln avoided the controversy over Kansas, but deftly pointed out the fallacies in Douglas's argument: "The Judge [Douglas had been an Illinois Supreme Court judge] has alluded to the Declaration of Independence, and insisted that Negroes are not included in that Declaration; and that it is a slander upon the framers of that instrument, to suppose that Negroes were meant therein; and he asked you: Is it possible to believe that Mr. Jefferson, who penned the immortal paper, could have supposed himself applying the language of that instrument to the Negro race, and yet held a portion of that race in slavery? Would he not at once have freed them?
Full article on separate page...
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Feature:
From Kant to Riemann:
The Shape of Empty Space
by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.
September 10, 2005
Within the state of education today, including higher education, regrettably, little attention is paid to the crucial importance of rigorous studies in the theory of knowledge (i.e., epistemology), whether in poetry, science, or government...
- Heine on Immanuel Kant
Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) was one of Germany's most beloved poets and commentators, known for his biting criticism of Romanticism. The following is exerpted from 'Concerning the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany,' Heinrich Heine, Selected Works, trans. by Helen M. Mustard (New York:Random House, Inc., 1973).
From Plato's Theaetetus to Gauss's Pentagramma Mirificum: A Fight for Truth
by Bruce Director
In 399 B.C., as Athens reeled from the economic and political turmoil associated with the Peloponnesian Wars, an aged Socrates had a remarkable conversation about the cause of that crisis, with an extraordinary young man. More than 30 years later, facing the continuation of that same crisis, Plato immortalized that discussion in an historical drama that has since become known by the name of Socrates' interlocutor, Theaetetus. ...Plato, as a protagonist in that history, insisted that the central question of that colloquy'What is knowledge?' was of momentous importance for the immediate survival of Greek culture. Thus, he set this drama in the historical context in which it occurred, intending to provoke his contemporaries, and all subsequent generations such as ours, to face this question as it should be facedas the defining issue of life and death for civilization.
National:
Cheneygate!
by Jeffrey Steinberg
A political hurricane, as devastating as Katrina, has struck the Bush-Cheney Administration. A string of long-simmering criminal probes, targetting top White House officials and key Congressional allies, has hit all at once, and the rightwing Republican juggernaut of dirty money and political corruption is now on the chopping block.
DeLay Indictment
Major Step Toward Bringing Down Corrupt Cartel
by Anton Chaitkin
The control of Congress by the far right, and by the BushCheney Administration, has been shaken by the Sept. 28 felony indictment of House Majority leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas). DeLay's fall came on the heels of the Aug. 11 arrest and fraud indictment against lobbyist Jack Abramoff, an architect of DeLay's political machine, and the sensational Sept. 27 arrest of suspects in the gangland-style murder of the Florida man Abramoff is charged with defrauding....
Lyndon LaRouche commented: 'This is extremely important. There is a phase shift under way in Congress, which is timely. Many things are coming together with this. If this country is going to survive, it's going to have to change its ways, without DeLay. This gives the Congress an opportunity to make the necessary policy shiftswithout DeLay.'
Economics:
You Can't Carpool in a Combine;
Hyperinflation Hits Food Supply
by Marcia Merry Baker
Apart from the vast hurricane damage to agriculture in the Gulf Coast states, the shock effects from speculation, financial bubbles, and out-of-control energy prices are slamming the U.S. farm-belt at large. Taken together with the economic breakdown effects internationally from the same causes, the demand by commodity cartels for continued domination, and the lack of Federal action, a food supply crisis is in the making.
Interview: Rep. Earle Banks
What Katrina Has Done To Mississippi's Economy
Mississippi State Representative Earle Banks, a Democrat, has represented House District 67 in Hinds County since 1993.Heis an attorney, a funeral director, and insurance executive as well. Representative Banks serves with the Jackson State University Foundation, and 100 Black Men. He was interviewed by Mary Jane Freeman on Sept. 21, shortly after he had toured some of the state's counties which were devastated by Hurricane Katrina.
- Casinos or Development: Mississippi After Katrina
by Mary Jane Freeman
A casino economy, or a 'Super TVA,' to create an economy upon which Mississippians could finally leave the oppressive legacy of poverty behind and create a future for their children? This is the choice posed by Hurricane Katrina's path of destruction. Disaster often presents opportunity. But will Mississippi's and the nation's leaders seize this moment to mobilize human, economic, and scientific resources for economic justice, or will they be small-minded, offering bandaids and casino chips when economic development is needed? The current condition of Mississippi's economy starkly poses this life and death question.
Avian Flu Experts Sound the Alarm
by Christine Craig
At a Sept. 19 forum in Washington, D.C., two experts on infectious diseases sounded the alarm. The ultimate biological disaster is looming on the horizon: pandemic avian influenza. Epidemiologists overwhelmingly agree that a flu pandemic is inevitable, and that the most likely agent will be the highly pathogenic A/H5N1 avian influenza virus, which has already killed at least 65 people and wiped out poultry flocks in several Southeast Asian countries. The main questions on the table wherever these experts gather are: How much time do we have, and what can we do to minimize the catastrophe?
International:
Geometry of World Politics Can Be Changed in Dresden
by Rainer Apel
The Oct. 2 by-election in the Dresden-I district delayed the publishing of the final vote result of the Sept. 18 national German election by two weeks, and this development may change the political line-up in the German Parliament. The three-seat advantage of the Christian Democrats (CDU) over the Social Democrats (SPD), as of Sept. 18, may be confirmed, or lost, in Dresden. And because a tiny majority will determine the outcome of the brokering between the CDU and SPD in the likely Grand Coalition government of the two parties, numerous prominent figures, including incumbent SPD Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and CDU challenger Angela Merkel, have streamed into Dresden in an effort to affect the final outcome. But in Dresden, they were confronted by a strong campaign intervention force composed of about 60 activists of the LaRouche Youth Movement, who were determined to make sure that neither the candidate of the CDU nor of the SPD, wins that district. The LaRouche Youth backed Katarzyna (Kasia) Kruczkowski, the candidate of the LaRouche movement's BüSo party.
Wall Street Wants To Buy PhilippinesCheap
by Mike Billington
In a blatant display of servitude to the lords of the collapsing global financial system, Philippines President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and one of her leading economic advisors, Speaker of the House Jose´ de Venecia, travelled to New York and Washington in September to offer up the nation's patrimony its industries, forests, mineral wealth, and moreto the holders of the nation's huge, unpayable, and illegitimate debt.
Is Sharon Launching A Third Intifada?
by Dean Andromidas
Five years ago, on Sept. 28, Ariel Sharon made his infamous march on the al-Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount, and ignited the Al Aqsa Intifada. Now his bloody anti-Hamas military campaign, Operation First Rain, could ignite a third Intifada.
Russia Freezes Gasoline Prices
by Rachel Douglas
Russian Industry and Energy Ministry spokesman Stanislav Naumov announced Sept. 19 that LUKoil, Sibneft, Rosneft, TNK-BP, Tatneft, and Surgutneftegaz, the country's largest oil companies, have agreed to freeze prices on gasoline at least until the end of this year. Heads of the companies met on the matter that day with Minister of Industry and Energy Victor Khristenko, after a Sept. 9 resolution in favor of a price freeze for agricultural enterprises passed the StateDuma unanimously, and Presidential Representative for the Far East Federal District Konstantin Pulikovsky warned that gasoline and fuel-oil prices were making it impossible to prepare for Winter in that area.
Editorial:
It Wasn't President Reagan
Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.
Eugene Robinson, writing on The Washington Post's OpEd page for September 30, was wrong, when he wrote, 'Reagan changed everything, shifting the nation's center of gravity to the right,' although he was fair to add, in his next sentence, '. . . the man had at least a certain generosity of spirit.' As Presidents come and go, it was not Reagan who identifies 'the shift of gravity to the right,' it was President Harry S Truman who, as soon as FDR was dead, faithfully followed the lunatic, anti-Roosevelt recipes of Britain's Winston Churchill, in carrying out the sharpest right-wing turn yet experienced inU.S. policy orientation in our national history since our republic's selfinflicted catastrophes under the Coolidge, Hoover and Andrew Mellon administrations.
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EIR DVD
LaRouche: `The Immortality of Martin Luther King'
Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.
speaks to the Martin Luther King Day Prayer Breakfast in Talladega County, Alabama on Jan. 19, 2004
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