Executive Intelligence Review, Volume 47, Number 9, February 28, 2020

- Cover

- Masthead

- EDITORIAL TREASON IN BROAD DAYLIGHT LaRouche on the Out-of-Control Justice Department

- PDF edition Table of Contents — Volume 47, Number 9, February 28, 2020

- I. Big Changes Underway in Washington

- Roger Stone Gets 40 Months, Spotlight on the Swamp Now by Barbara Boyd

- President Trump Speaks Out on the Unjust Trial of Roger Stone

- For a Pardon of Lieutenant General Michael Flynn Virginia State Senator appeals to President Trump to pardon General Flynn

- Mike Bloomberg’s Debate: Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain by Barbara Boyd

- II. Build Big!

- LaRouche Challenged the George W. Bush Presidency to Rebuild U.S. Infrastructure by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. (2002)

- President Trump Brings Water to California by Patrick Ruckert

- III. The View From Europe

- Only a Cultural Renaissance Can Overcome the Crisis of the ‘West’! by Helga Zepp-LaRouche

- AN ALBANIAN DIPLOMAT REMEMBERS China and Albania in Recent Decades, With an Eye on the Belt & Road Today

- LAROUCHE PAC STATEMENT Is Mike Pompeo Morally Fit To Be Secretary of State?

What We Can Do to Save Our Nation and the World

Founder: Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. (1922–2019)

Editor-in-Chief: Helga Zepp-LaRouche

Co-Editors: Marcia Merry Baker, Paul Gallagher, Robert Ingraham, Tony Papert

Managing Editor: Stephanie Ezrol

Editorial Staff: David Cherry, Charles Notley

Technology: Marsha Freeman

Transcriptions: Katherine Notley

Ebooks: Richard Burden

Graphics: Alan Yue

Photos: Stuart Lewis

Circulation Manager: Stanley Ezrol

INTELLIGENCE DIRECTORS

Asia: Michael Billington

Economics: Marcia Merry Baker, Paul Gallagher

History: Anton Chaitkin

Ibero-America: Dennis Small

United States: Debra Freeman

INTERNATIONAL BUREAUS

Berlin: Rainer Apel

Copenhagen: Tom Gillesberg

Lima: Sara Madueño

Melbourne: Robert Barwick

Mexico City: Gerardo Castilleja Chávez

New Delhi: Ramtanu Maitra

Paris: Christine Bierre

Stockholm: Ulf Sandmark

United Nations, N.Y.C.: Richard Black, Leni Rubinstein

Washington, D.C.: William Jones

Wiesbaden: Göran Haglund

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EDITORIAL

TREASON IN BROAD DAYLIGHT

LaRouche on the Out-of-Control Justice Department

Feb. 23—We have been witness to treason—in broad daylight—within the DOJ and FBI (among many other departments of our Government) for more than three years now. It is not new, but it is now in the open. It can, and must be cleaned up and shut down.

Lyndon LaRouche in 1995 faced this criminal operation. He testified at the Hearings on Gross Misconduct of the U.S. Department of Justice, on Aug. 31-Sept. 1, 1995 in Tysons Corner, Virginia, saying:

We have an out-of-control Justice Department, in my view, where the rot is not in the appointees, as much as it is in the permanent bureaucracy. We have a permanent sickness, in the permanent bureaucracy of part of our government.

When the time came that somebody wanted me out of the way, they were able to rely upon that permanent injustice in the permanent bureaucracy of government to do the job. As in the Fruehmenschen case, the Weaver case, the Waco case, the case of Waldheim, the case of Demjanjuk, and other cases. Always there’s that agency inside the Justice Department, which works for a contract, like a hitman, when somebody with the right credentials and passwords walks in, and says, “We want to get this group of people,” or “We want to get this person.”

My case may be, as Ramsey Clark described it, the most extensive and the highest level of these cases, in terms of the duration and scope of the operation.

So my case is important, in the sense that it’s more extensive, it’s more deep-going, long-going. But when it came to getting me, it was the same apparatus, that, I find, in my opinion, was used in these other cases. And until we remove, from our system of government, the rotten, permanent bureaucracy which acts like contract assassins, using the authority of the justice system to perpetrate assassination, this country is not free, nor anyone in it.

This is exactly what is happening today against President Trump, and against Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, and Julian Assange. This is a British Empire operation, which is committed to war and a massive “green” depopulation agenda. Clearing LaRouche’s name, who was sent to jail having committed no crime, is key to shutting this down once and for all. As Mr. LaRouche said in 1988, while under persecution from this faction within the DOJ, that if this could happen to him, it can happen to anyone including the President of the United States.

Work with us now for the exoneration of LaRouche and his ideas, to defend President Trump and free him from the creatures of Washington, so that together we can launch the greatest economic program in human history. LaRouche’s American System approach celebrates the beauty and creativity of the human soul. Nothing less will work.

EIR Contents

www.larouchepub.com — Volume 47, Number 9, February 28, 2020

Cover This Week

The article, “LaRouche Challenged the George W. Bush Presidency to Rebuild U.S. Infrastructure,” included in this issue of EIR, should be studied by all who desire peace and economic development. Shown: President Franklin Roosevelt arrives at the dedication ceremony for the Chickamauga Hydroelectric Dam on the Tennessee River near Chattanooga, TN, Sept. 2, 1940.

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WHAT WE CAN DO TO SAVE OUR NATION AND THE WORLD

2 EDITORIAL

Treason in Broad Daylight

LaRouche on the Out-of-Control Justice Department

I. BIG CHANGES UNDERWAY IN WASHINGTON

4 Roger Stone Gets 40 Months, Spotlight on the Swamp Now

by Barbara Boyd

5 President Trump Speaks Out on the Unjust Trial of Roger Stone

7 For a Pardon of Lieutenant General Michael Flynn

Letter of Virginia Senator Richard Black to President Trump

9 Mike Bloomberg’s Debate: Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain

by Barbara Boyd

II. BUILD BIG!

10 LaRouche Challenged the George W. Bush Presidency to Rebuild U.S. Infrastructure

by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.

August 18, 2002

26 President Trump Brings Water to California

by Patrick Ruckert

III. THE VIEW FROM EUROPE

30 Only a Cultural Renaissance Can Overcome the Crisis of the ‘West’!

by Helga Zepp-LaRouche

33 AN ALBANIAN DIPLOMAT REMEMBERS

China and Albania in Recent Decades, With an Eye on the Belt & Road Today

Book Review and Interview with Ambassador Hajdar Muneka

38 LAROUCHE PAC STATEMENT

Is Mike Pompeo Morally Fit To Be Secretary of State?

The Jan. 27, 1989 Jailing of Lyndon LaRouche

Defined an Era, Which Now Must End

Watch The LaRouche Case video

Watch the LaRoucheMemorial video

Sign the Petition to Exonerate LaRouche

at lpac.co/exonerate

I. Big Changes Underway in Washington

Roger Stone Gets 40 Months, Spotlight on the Swamp Now

by Barbara Boyd

CC

Roger Stone

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Feb. 20—Roger Stone was sentenced to 40 months in prison by Judge Amy Berman Jackson today, in a case in which Attorney General William Barr had become the primary target these past two weeks. Barr is investigating the origins of the coup attempt against Donald Trump, which involves all three branches of the U.S. government. A desperate effort is underway to get Barr to resign or limit his investigation. This effort has centered on faux outrage over Barr’s revision of the original Department of Justice sentencing recommendation in the Stone case, which sentence was, in fact, far outside the bounds of applicable precedent.

President Trump remarked on the sentence from Las Vegas, Nevada, where he was delivering the commencement address at the Hope for Prisoners graduation ceremony. Hope for Prisoners is part of the administration’s First Step initiative. He commented that those assembled knew all about bad juries and unjust prosecutions and said that Roger Stone had been treated very unfairly. He singled out the allegations of misconduct by the jury forewoman in connection with Stone’s case as part of his belief that Stone would be exonerated.

Judge Jackson has before her a motion for a new trial, based on the recently disclosed Twitter feed comments of jury forewoman Tomeka Hart. After a stunt in which the four original Mueller probe prosecutors resigned from the case last week when Attorney General Barr had overruled their original 7-9 year sentencing recommendation, Hart came forward to defend the prosecutors and revealed that she had an extraordinary and undisclosed bias against Donald Trump, and had been texting for the President’s impeachment during the trial. Confronted with this motion, Judge Jackson reversed what would be the normal process, namely, hearing the new trial motion first and then sentencing Stone. Instead, as one wag commented, it was execution first, trial later.

Stone remains free on bond until that motion is litigated, but the obnoxious gag order Judge Jackson has imposed on Stone and those close to him remains in place.

Judge Jackson’s Posturing

The faux controversy about Barr’s intervention continued right up to Stone’s sentencing, with the independent Federal Judges Association announcing on Feb. 18 an “emergency” meeting for the next day, based on the intervention of the Attorney General and the President in judicial proceedings, and expressing support for Judge Jackson who, the President said, correctly, was biased against Stone and Trump. The emergency meeting was cancelled before it was to begin on Feb. 19, obviously because it was an overt and outrageous attempt to influence Stone’s sentencing and, in all probability, the more rational members of the Federal Judges Association recognized this.

The sentence Judge Jackson imposed is exactly the sentence Attorney General Barr recommended. Close observers believe that is meant to continue to heighten tensions between Barr and the President, and to make Trump’s inevitable pardon of Stone more politically controversial. Jackson also provided news copy for those who assert that Barr is acting as Trump’s henchman, by defending the four resigning prosecutors and claiming that Barr’s lower sentencing recommendation defied current DOJ policy, which requires maximum charging and sentencing recommendations for serious crimes.

U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson

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Judge Jackson also berated Stone during sentencing, in remarks that underscored her bias on this and other Robert Mueller-directed cases. Conducting a scolding tirade against the 67-year-old grandfather who stood before her for lying to the Congress about an investigation that had no legal or factual basis, she claimed that Stone had been convicted, not for supporting the President, but for covering up for the President. There is absolutely no support in the record for this claim.

Stone’s lies to Congress, resulting from a perjury trap, were all about alleged contacts with Julian Assange concerning what the WikiLeaks director had on Hillary Clinton following WikiLeaks’ first release of emails from the Democratic National Committee in June of 2016. In reality, Stone had no actual direct contacts of substance with WikiLeaks and, it appears, his claims to the contrary were attempts to impress the Trump Campaign after Trump had publicly distanced himself from Stone.

The prosecution knew this, yet encouraged press coverage of Stone and the investigation of him as the Trump connection to WikiLeaks and Russian interference in the 2016 election. As LaRouche PAC and EIR have repeatedly documented, the Russian interference claim itself is utterly bogus. To bolster the defamatory claim that Stone was a traitor, he was arrested before sunrise at his Florida home by a swarm of SWAT teams carrying machine guns, with helicopters flying overhead, all witnessed by a film crew from CNN.

Stone was also convicted of tampering with a witness, Randy Credico. Credico testified at trial and in a letter to Judge Jackson concerning sentencing that he didn’t believe he was tampered with at all.

Jackson also made a big point in the sentencing about Stone’s disregard for her gag order, imposed after Stone posted a picture of the judge with what appear to be cross hair symbols in the background, claiming that Stone had sought to disrupt his own trial. Yet she had already held a full hearing on this, in which Stone apologized and she declined any punishment other than banning him from any use of social media. Most observers believe the gag order is a completely unconstitutional restraint on Stone’s First Amendment rights and his ability to defend himself in a venue which has been completely poisoned against him.

President Trump Speaks Out

on the Unjust Trial of Roger Stone

Excerpts from the remarks made by President Trump at the Hope for Prisoners Graduation Ceremony, in Las Vegas, Nevada on February 20, 2020.

Before we go any further, I want to address today’s sentencing of a man, Roger Stone. Roger Stone. He’s become a big part of the news over the last little while. And I’m following this very closely, and I want to see it play out to its fullest because Roger has a very good chance of exoneration, in my opinion. [Applause.]

I’ve known—and you people understand it probably better than anybody in the room. I’ve known Roger Stone and his wife, who’s really a terrific woman, for a long time. And Roger is definitely a character. Everybody sort of knows Roger. Everybody knows him. And most people like him. Some people probably don’t, but I do and I always have. He’s a smart guy. He’s a little different. But those are sometimes the most interesting. But he’s a good person. His family is fantastic. He’s got a fantastic family. And there’s always a reason for that, isn’t there?

Roger was never involved in the Trump campaign for President. He wasn’t involved. I think early on, long before I announced, he may have done a little consulting work or something, but he was not involved when I ran for President. And he’s a person who, again, he knows a lot of people having to do with politics. His whole life is politics. That’s what he is.

C-SPAN

President Donald Trump

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And it’s my strong opinion that the forewoman of the jury—the woman who was in charge of the jury—is totally tainted. When you take a look, how can you have a person like this? She was an anti-Trump activist. Can you imagine this? [Laughter.] Now, you wouldn’t know about a bad jury. Anybody here know about bad? No? [Laughter.] These people know more about bad juries than everybody here, including the sheriff and the mayor and everybody. [Laughter.]

They know about bad juries. We’re not going to say it too much, so let’s not say it in front of more cameras than this. [Laughter.] But you’re my experts, okay?

No, but this is a woman who was an anti-Trump person, totally. Now, I don’t know if this is a fact, but she had a horrible social media account. The things she said on the account were unbelievable. She didn’t reveal that when she was chosen.

And she’s, I guess, from what I hear, a very strong woman, a very dominant person, so she can get people to do whatever she wants. And she got on, and then she became the foreperson, forewoman, on the jury. And I assume they asked her a question: “Do you have any bias? Do you have any. . . .” She didn’t say that. So is that a defrauding of the court? You tell me.

But does this undermine our fair system of justice? How can you have a person like this? Did she delete her social account? And when Roger was determined by the same jury to be guilty before the judge issued a sentence—and he was determined to be guilty—and she started going a little wild. She’s very happy. And she started saying things that people said, “That’s strange. That’s strange.” And then they started looking at it, and how can you have a jury pool tainted so badly? It’s not fair. It’s not fair.

And, you know, it’s not happening to a lot of other people, because you could—look, I won’t name names, but everybody knows who I’m talking about. What’s happening over there? Nobody, nobody.

There are people that are even in Roger Stone’s basic business of politics that were going to be in big trouble. Well-known people. The biggest people. Big trouble. They were forced to leave their firm.

One man was forced to leave his firm and he was going to—bad things were going to happen to him the following day. Nothing happened. Nothing happened. He was the biggest; nothing happened. But it happened to Roger Stone, and it happened to General Flynn. And it happened to—I won’t name names. [Laughter.] It happened to a lot of people, and destroyed a lot of people’s lives.

And I’m here to make a fair system. Again, Roger is not somebody who worked on my campaign. I know Roger, but a lot of people know Roger. Everybody sort of knows Roger. And what happened to him is unbelievable. They say he lied. But other people lied too. Just to mention, Comey lied. [Laughter.] McCabe lied. Lisa Page lied. Her lover, Strzok—Peter Strzok—lied. You don’t know who these people are? Just trust me, they all lied. [Laughter and applause.]

You had people that forged documents. You had people that wrote fake dossiers and brought them to the FBI, and used people in the Justice Department to get them to the FBI. And these people know—in the front row—you know better than anybody in this room what the hell I’m talking about, probably. [Laughter.]

So I’m only responding to you. A lot of bad things are happening, and we’re cleaning it out. We’re cleaning the swamp. We’re draining the swamp. I just never knew how deep the swamp was. [Applause.]

For a Pardon of Lieutenant General Michael Flynn

Virginia State Senator appeals to President Trump to pardon General Flynn.

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Mike Bloomberg’s Debate: Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain

by Barbara Boyd

Feb. 20—Bathed in the glow of the hologram he created in a barrage of ads costing well over $350 million in Super Tuesday states, Sir Mike Bloomberg made his debate premiere yesterday after the Democratic National Committee changed the rules for him. In the hologram, Mike is in a plaid shirt, working man’s khakis, involved in the most warm fuzziness possible. Wednesday night, as in the climactic moment in the Wizard of Oz, the curtain was pulled back and the spell was broken, revealing a snarling arrogant toad of a man, imperiously trying to simply stare down the multiple attacks against him, making responses best described as wooden.

Hammer and tongs, the extant candidates attacked Bloomberg on identity politics issues, his obvious racism (stop and frisk, the 2008 financial crash resulting from the demise of red-lining), and his feral sexism (the non-disclosure agreements lurking out there from female employees abused at Bloomberg LP, including the expectant mother, of whom Bloomberg demanded to know whether she was going to “kill it”). Bloomberg really had no answers and refused to release anyone from the non-disclosure agreements.

Tellingly, however, Bloomberg’s attacks on coal miners and his attacks on farmers and machinists, were not raised by the other Democratic primary candidates, since all of these mini-Obamas agree with the Green New Deal and the deindustrialization of the economy. Nor did they raise Bloomberg’s euthanasia comments about healthcare (95-year-old prostate cancer patients shouldn’t be treated), since none of their remedies involve the medical and scientific infrastructure necessary to expand the population and increase lifespans, or the absolutely necessary “de-financialization” of medical care.

Over at The American Conservative, Matt Purple has written a great takedown of the would-be American Bonaparte, calling him “the smirking id of America’s elites.”

“Now Bloomberg is running for President, and his years of behaving like a crossing guard drunk on the power of his reversible stop sign have come back to haunt him,” Purple writes. He lampoons Bloomberg’s numerous harassments of the common folk of New York City, parading under the rubric of public health measures, writing:

Bloomberg effectively turned the police into a task force on petty vice, sending them to write up people for harmless offenses (a move their union loudly protested). In a 2004 piece for Vanity Fair, Christopher Hitchens set out on a crime spree across New York where he tried to break as many of these enforced regulations as possible. This meant not just lighting up in a bar, but sitting on a milk crate ($105 fine for a Bronx man), feeding pigeons (summons for an 86-year-old), and riding a bike without both feet on the pedals. Strangely, though considered crimes against humanity in Bloombergistan, these particular infractions had nothing to do with public health. What they did have to do with was fines, which were then used to fill city coffers, authoritarianism in the service of deficit cutting. This enabled Bloomberg to boast about his fiscal responsibility even as he presided over a hefty expansion of the city’s budget.

Noting Bloomberg’s target of completely shutting down the coal industry, Purple writes:

Most progressives who rail against fossil fuels at least make some attempt to empathize with the laborers their schemes would displace (think the Obama-era attempt at a “blue-green alliance,” for example). Not Bloomberg. It’s that callous indifference that makes him truly unique. I’d sooner vote for a stalk of celery with googly-eyes attached (not that one would be able to tell the difference).

This was the reality of last night’s performance. But, we are not in reality, and it will not end there. Stay tuned folks, as we now have the right tone for taking this on.

II. Build Big!

August 18, 2002

LaRouche Challenged the

George W. Bush Presidency to Rebuild U.S. Infrastructure

by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.

Editor’s Note: This presentation was first published in EIR Vol. 29, No. 34, Sept. 6, 2002, pp. 24-37.

EIRNS/Claude Jones

LaRouche with young people in Philadelphia in 2003.

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This is the edited transcript of a briefing by then Presidential pre-candidate Lyndon LaRouche to a meeting of 90 youthful campaign activists, volunteers, and new recruits in San Pedro, California on Aug. 18, 2002. Subheads and three footnotes have been added.

Let’s have some fun, as I say: Fun means to face a catastrophe, to enjoy it, and to discover a solution for the catastrophe, which is why you enjoyed it, because you knew the catastrophe was going to force you to find a solution.

Now, we have a catastrophe: It’s called the [George W. Bush] Presidency of the United States. He was on vacation, from the Presidency. This is obvious, when you saw the performance, in the homestead of the deceased David Koresh. I don’t know why President [Bush] likes to have his house in the vicinity of David Koresh’s murder, eh? But he does, anyway. So, he lives in a tin shack, in a place called Crawford, outside of Waco, which some people, with his conference, might call “Wacko.” And, he expressed optimism about the economy.

Now, that is not having fun: Because we have a catastrophe. And you can have fun, but only if you recognize that it is a catastrophe. And the reason you can enjoy the catastrophe, is because you’re confident that you can find a solution. Now, the joy comes, not from having the catastrophe to solve; the joy comes from the sense that the catastrophe was something that you caused, by a long period of bad behavior, and the joy comes from the fact that the catastrophe is going to force you to discover a solution, and to prevent you from repeating that bad behavior. And, that’s what we have to do today.

Now, recently, as you know, we have a crisis in the United States, among other things, with the railway system. We also have a crisis with the air-transport system. Airlines are going belly-up, which is not the recommended attitude for a plane in flight!

So, what do we do about this? Everyone is saying, “Well, put them through bankruptcy; apply shareholder value. And, we’ll have to cut back, cut back, cut back: Raise prices. Raise fares. Raise prices.” Well, to some degree that’ll have to be done, because the el-cheapo fares were actually a game that was being played. It was not justified. We also have the rail system, and the Congress and President [Bush] are prepared to abandon the rail system, largely. Privatize it, which means that only one person can use it, or something of that sort.

So, these things are being destroyed. Now, what’s being destroyed, in these areas of rail and air traffic, air travel, is an essential part of the infrastructure, on which the economy of the United States depends. Now, you may become used to commuting by automobile. It may have occurred to some of you that that was a catastrophe, a bad habit. Some of you may have experienced the actual catastrophe in a more poignant way. But the point is, it’s much better to have the kind of organization of society that we had over 35 years ago, even over 50 years ago, than today.

A Continental Nation

The United States, for example, was built as a nation, by a policy of development of corridors of development, from the Atlantic Ocean reaching toward the Pacific. The idea of building a continental nation, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, is an old idea among Americans, since the 18th Century, since the times of Benjamin Franklin and his associates. Actually, since the beginning of the 18th Century, with the first efforts to open up the corridors across the Appalachians, into the great central plains: the Mississippi River Basin.

The unity of the United States was effected under the Presidency of Abraham Lincoln, who introduced the transcontinental railway system. This transcontinental railway system established the United States as a nation, functionally, economically, as a nation. Without it, we would not have become a nation. Now, what was built, were not just transcontinental railroads: What were built were development corridors, reaching actually from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Because, on the side of these rail rights-of-way, the U.S. government and other agencies, like state agencies, opened up areas for development, of agriculture, towns, and so forth. So that the colonization of the barren wilderness of the great American middle—the Mississippi Basin, the Great American Desert—to California, was accomplished by means of this railway development. Cities were improved. The functioning of the economy was improved by the development of local rail systems, like streetcar systems and other kinds of systems—mass-transit systems for the transport of both freight and of people. And, this process of transport systems was also a way of developing the economy, of increasing the productive powers of labor, in a way that could not be accomplished without that method.

So, we also had, later, more significantly, the development of power, especially electrical power. And electrical power, which was developed, essentially, as a process in the late 19th Century, actually became generalized over the course of the 20th Century. This was a great increase in the ability to produce: an increase in efficiency, an increase in the productive powers of labor. Again, and this was done under government protection, as the railroad development had been done, as a way of developing the economy—infrastructure.

Prior to that, the United States had been committed from the beginning to the development of water systems—water transport and water-management systems. This particular idea had been developed extensively in Europe by—guess who? Charlemagne, when he was the Emperor, in his time. And, even only recently, have we tended to complete what Charlemagne proposed 1300 years ago! A waterway along the Rhine, along the Main, into the Danube, to connect the North Sea with the Black Sea, which meant that all Central Europe is now, essentially, connected, by inland waterways.

And inland waterway development was a general water development. For example: We should be moving, in the United States, we should be moving water from the Canadian north, the Arctic Ocean, where the polar bears won’t miss it (they like salt water best); so, we’ll bring the water, or a large part of it, down from Alaska and Canada; we’ll bring it down, according to this Parsons development project [The North American Water and Power Alliance (NAWAPA)], bring it down through the Great American Desert—which is still a Great American Desert: You can fly over it, drive through it, it’s a Great American Desert. All this wasted land. You’ve got California, right around here, you’ve got the extension of the Great American Desert; it’s right here—staring at you! Or, burning your backside, you’re sitting on it.

So, we should be developing this area of the United States, into Mexico, through large-scale water management. We should be developing improved, mass-transit systems, including magnetic levitation mass-transit systems. We should be redesigning the way we build cities, and I’ll get to that, in a very particular way. We should be doing these kinds of things that will, in principle, express the attitude of the most effective nation builders of Europe and the United States, in an earlier period. And that will depend upon this kind of approach. [box: President Bush Should Have Acted ‘In an FDR Fashion’]

How FDR Saved the U.S.

We had, most recently, in the most recent century, Franklin Roosevelt, who took over the government in a period of great crisis, saved the United States from the kind of fascist takeover which was threatened here, which occurred in Germany. He started economic recovery. He got the United States through a terrible war, imposed by European follies, and built this economy to a level it had never been built before. He did it with the intervention of the Federal government, in coordinated efforts by state and local governments on the same principle; put the unemployed to work, largely in infrastructure at first, rebuilding things. Because unskilled people have trouble fitting into jobs, therefore, you take areas of great need, or work to be done, and you take people who are otherwise unemployable, with no chance, and you employ them. You employ them, not too efficiently at first, but gradually, they get up speed at what they do. And they devote their efforts to constructing things, or participating in that, which are necessary for the future development of the nation.

For example: The United States military was not the greatest fighting force in the world, in that period. In point of fact, we had become a great military power, in the course of the Civil War. We emerged from the Civil War with the leading military capability in the world, which was largely logistical: the military capability based on railroads, based on engineering training of officers, based on the Corps of Engineers and its work. But we were not the greatest shooters, and in the latter part of the 1870s and 1880s, the Congress, in its great wisdom, had destroyed the U.S. military. And, that policy generally continued, into the time of Roosevelt, except for the period of the First World War.

So, when we went to war, the soldiers were really not trained. I was involved in that, and I tell you: They were not trained. Because we dragged them off the streets and the hill farms in peculiar places, and they were suddenly dragged into a company street, where some poor guy like me, would be lining them up for their first time on the company street, as a new training platoon. And, I tell you, I looked at these, and I’ve said it many times before: I looked at these guys lined up, I’d look around, and I’d say, “We just lost the war!” But, nonetheless, we put this thing together, and we came out with an American military force in the order of magnitude of 16 million. Women of the United States went to work, because the men had gone abroad in those numbers. And we won the war.

Now, how did we win the war? Well, we won the war, because of what Roosevelt had done in the 1930s. Roosevelt, of course, had known the war was coming, from 1936 on; it was obvious to him that the war in Europe was inevitable, and that we would be drawn into it. So, he met with his associates, sometimes secretly, but sometimes in ways that are known today. And they planned what a war mobilization would be, of the United States, for the United States’ role, in a generalized war, spread out of Europe. In 1940-41, we went to work, full steam, in developing that system for defense of the United States. We developed it on the basis of things like the TVA—Tennessee Valley Authority—and many other projects, which were projects of things like the WPA [Work Projects Administration], or similar kinds of government projects.

So, the government intervened, to take a bankrupt nation, when the so-called “private sector” had failed utterly, to create the foundation for the revival of an economy. We won the war, not because our soldiers were the best shooters—they weren’t. They were not the most effective military force, man for man.

They were very poor, compared to the German army, which was far superior to the U.S., both in the training of the soldier—including the moral training of the soldier: because we train our soldiers, too often, like Marines, which is the worst thing you can do to a person. You train a Marine: You destroy them. “You are a piece of filth. We are now going to destroy you: We are going to make you a man!” Eh? And it’s like [adopting a robotic monotone], “I have learned to talk in the way a good Marine should talk.” “I shoot, frequently.” Whereas, in the German system, as the training goes on, the objective of the training is to get an individual, who may be in a position of leadership from corporal to colonel or lower general, who is faced with a situation, where he has a mission—either on the platoon level, or the section level—he has a mission. And the mission is clear; he must carry out the mission. But the problem he faces was not something that was anticipated when the mission was given to him. So, the effective military force relies upon a soldier, who is developed and well-trained, but is also trained to think, to solve problems, to solve the mission.

Now, what we did in World War II: We solved the mission. We did not solve it with our shooting ability. We did a lot of shooting; we threw a lot of hardware around, and so forth. We went with logistics: We had logistical capabilities that no country in the world had. We emerged from the war, as the only world power, because of our logistical capabilities: Nobody could match us, in logistical capabilities.

That, we have destroyed. We now have the so-called “utopian” conception of brainless killers, like the ones in Columbine [High] School, trained, as the military now admits, by videogame training, point-and-shoot games, who react to a provocation, a sign, a signal—react by pulling out a weapon, and shooting desperately and accurately at everyone in sight, with no human quality whatsoever to their behavior. They become a zombie, a killer-zombie. And, you see that in what goes on in Afghanistan: killer-zombies on the loose—no discretion, no judgment.

In fact, in Afghanistan, you notice, there is no exit strategy. In a war, competently conducted, you don’t conduct a war unless it’s necessary; and you never conduct a war, without an exit strategy! What do you mean by winning the war? If you declare peace, what kind of a peace are you going to have? How are you going to live with these people you were shooting at? So, you have to have an exit strategy. Your objective is not to enrage the situation. The objective is to bring about an agreement, which will lead to a new arrangement among the nations—called “peace.” You don’t achieve peace by war. You don’t win peace by war. The warfighting has the objective of creating the conditions, under which a willingness to discuss and negotiate peace occurs. But the peace is developed by other methods.

Figure 1

Enplanements at Large Traffic Hubs: 1975 and 1999

millions

Source: “Transportation Statistics Annual Report 2000,” U.S. Department of Transportation.

In 1978, after deregulation, 78% of all airline passenger traffic concentrated at 29 major metropolitan areas, as airlines competed for the most profitable routes. By 1999, the five largest hubs handled 25% of all passengers.

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Infrastructure as National Security

But, anyway, back to the point of the Crawford-Baylor, so-called “economic summit” of a sleeping President—the President that wasn’t there. What we should do, of course (just to get back to that part of it), is, recognizing that the rail system and the air-transport system, as presently constituted, is an essential, national security asset—national economic security asset—meaning, the nation would be seriously damaged if this thing were to be disrupted, if this were not developed. Therefore, under a situation like this, the government must intervene into areas of basic economic infrastructure, put them back under regulation, provide credit for their rational reorganization, and expansion, and improvement.

For example: The problem with rails in the United States, the fundamental problems—why we can’t even use trains that are improved trains—is because the track has not been maintained. The track is not safe to use at high speeds. The systems are old and antiquated. We need, therefore, a national railway development program, as an emergency program, at this time. We need a national air-transport development program, so that, while we’re trying to reorganize air-traffic companies rationally, we must make sure they continue to function; that the maintenance required for aircraft continues, and competently; that aircraft are upgraded, so they don’t crash on your roof, or trying to get out of the airport—that sort of thing: So, you must go back to a regulated system, which is government-protected. That does not mean you have to de-privatize everything, but it means you have to regulate it.

And, the only competent response—and it’s an urgent, emergency response, which a real President would have made, at the time that the vacationing President was talking nonsense in Texas—what we should have said is, “The United States government is going to ensure that rail and air traffic are maintained; that we do not lose that quality, we do not lose that capability. And, the Federal government is going to intervene to get that thing straightened up.”

Now, that’s going to mean raising some money. It’s going to mean a change in the present Federal Reserve System; a change in the laws in Congress, going back to a Franklin Roosevelt approach to these kinds of problems. That must be done now: What if these companies break up in three months? What if the leading air-transport companies of the United States begin to break up, go into irreversible disorganization, over the next three months, which is now a quite-probable situation? This would be a national-security disaster.

We have no national-security disaster in Iraq. We have an Iraq policy, which is a national-security disaster, but Iraq is not our problem. Our problem is chiefly right here! In the United States: our mismanagement of our own society.

Figure 2

Main Passenger Lines of Amtrak and Via Canada

The Amtrak passenger rail system in about 2002—all that remained of an American passenger-rail network that was once 50% larger.

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Roosevelt faced that kind of situation in 1932-33, when he was running for President, and when he first became President: Take emergency action, to save this nation; not merely to deal with the crises, which were presented, but to launch programs, using the power of government to do this, to set things into motion. As a result of what he did, in the public sector, and by certain reforms, he created the condition under which we had a very successful—on balance—a very successful progress in economic development, over the period from 1933, actually until 1964. There was a general improvement, despite the injustices; there was a general, net improvement, in the conditions of life in the U.S. and, to a large degree, outside the United States, as a result of that change.

From after 1964, with the beginning of the Indochina War, we lost it. Nineteen seventy-one, Nixon’s change of the monetary system, we lost it. We’ve been going downhill for 35 years and carrying much of the world with us.

We’re now in the greatest depression in modern history. It’s here. It’s not something to debate—“Is it here?” It is here, without question. Don’t pay any attention to the market— that doesn’t mean anything. Look at unemployment, look at closed firms, look at disasters; look at the effect of a collapse of the real-estate bubble, where people begin to get mass evictions from areas of recent buildup.

So we have a national crisis: Therefore, the response should be, to respond immediately to this air-traffic crisis, as the President did not, and take the immediate measures for a restoration of a policy, which will ensure, that those areas of national infrastructure, which are in the vital national economic-security interest, are protected, and maintained, and improved.

Understanding Infrastructure

Now, look at some of the other aspects of this thing, the broader aspects: What is called “infrastructure” consists of several typical types of elements. We have “hard infrastructure,” which means, generally, physical infrastructure. This includes such things as rail; it includes air traffic, today; it includes ports. You can see right out here, an example of a problem, a great problem: a great incapacity to handle freight. What do you do when you get it here? It’s a problem! How do you transport the freight and distribute it in a timely fashion to places where it’s economically needed? How do you get the stuff shipped out in a proper way? So, the ports are extremely important—to have adequate ports for ocean traffic and ports which deal with inland waterway traffic, because inland waterway traffic and ocean port traffic are very closely interrelated. That’s one kind of infrastructure—transportation.

This also includes urban transportation and suburban transportation. It’s notorious in Los Angeles, of course: traffic. Well, this is insane! I think many of you think it’s insane. You suffer through it. And, take a little example of this: How many hours of the day, does the average person spend commuting? What portion of the living time of the day, do people spend commuting—and also hating it, while they’re doing it? It’s not exactly an uplifting experience! Well, this is insane! Why don’t we have mass-transit systems, which move people efficiently so they don’t get out there in that stream—which is very inefficient; economically, extremely inefficient! To pile people individually into cars, or two in a car; drive through this congestion, to get to work, an hour, or two hours and so forth; being forced to drive long distances, in many cases, because of the patterns of employment these days.

Then, what is the effect of this kind of society on raising children? If parents are working two jobs; if they’re commuting two hours, or four hours a day totally, various ways; where’s the time to raise the child? If you don’t have neighborhoods based on active family participation in the neighborhoods, controlling the neighborhoods effectively, just by living together as neighbors, what kind of an environment are you creating for the children? What kind of school systems do you have, if you don’t have the intervention—efficient intervention—of an active parent generation, community generation, in this process? Who do you go to, to complain about it? The brainwashers, who say, “Give the kid Ritalin”? Why’s the kid jumping around? Because the teacher’s boring! Get some competent teachers in there!

So, having an efficient mass-transit system, which delivers people in comfort, and with certain reliability, to reduce the hours wasted in unpaid travel time, to get to and from work, in the process of helping to destroy the functioning of the family, and destroying the conditions under which we raise children. So, therefore, this extension of a mass-transit system, is also essential.

Also, the way we’re developing communities—zoning— is insane! Look at what happened to Los Angeles: Isn’t this insane? The way this city is organized, is absolutely insane! It’s not organized for people: It’s one vast slum! Sometimes more obviously so than others! It’s a city, in which hate is inherent in the physical organization of things!

You know, in the better times, you would have places of employment—often in better areas, several opportunities of major places of employment. And people would tend to be concentrated in their residences around areas where they either had employment, or were otherwise likely to find replacement employment. So, therefore, you had people living in a community, which would often be defined by a group of major employers, as well as all the other auxiliary employers, of small machine shops and so forth, that went with it. So, you had a sense of community. And you had a primary motion, in the course of the day—whether shopping, or going to work, coming from work, going to school, meeting with neighbors, these kinds of connections—were all within a fairly restricted area, almost within walking distance, if not absolutely within walking distance. And this was achieved, partly by having an efficient mass-transit system, which enabled us to do that.

So, we need good mass-transit systems, as well as inter-city systems.

FDR Library

With his Reconstruction Finance Corp., President Roosevelt made credit available to ensure prompt steps to expand power production. Shown: FDR at the dedication of the Boulder (now Hoover) Dam on the Colorado River in 1936.

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FDR Paradigm in Energy Production

We also have other areas of infrastructure. Power: There’s a big crisis in California, with the Enron rip-off, and similar kinds of rip-offs. This was a swindle. Deregulation was a crime against humanity. The way we would set up power production in earlier times, the assumption was, when you would make an investment, an investment in a power plant or power facility, we’re talking about a quarter-century or more. When you talk about “site development,” you’re talking about a much longer period: 50 years, or so, because of the impact of having a central power system, with respect to any community and its functioning. So, therefore, we’re talking about long-term investment.

How do you construct the investment? Well, it’s regulated. Now, the regulation, in the case of power, is chiefly, even though there should be Federal oversight on interstate aspects, the regulation of power is largely a function of states, the Federal states, and of the communities, the municipalities. What happens is, a state creates an authority, authorizing the forming of a corporation, whose purpose is to produce and distribute energy, in such a way that the aggregate of such entities will meet the needs of the community, both presently and for the foreseeable future of growth and requirements. Therefore, you integrate. From the beginning, the concept is the integration of responsibility for production and distribution of power. This is done, usually, by oversight of state governments, with some Federal intervention in the process of setting national standards, and interstate standards. California is going to die, if it does not have, does not return to this kind of energy production, and expansion of it.

Where’s the money to do it? Are you going to go to [Gray Davis,] the present Governor, and get him to get something through the legislature, to fund, or bail out, these existing entities? No. You’re not going to get it that way. You’re going to have to have a Federal reform of the present financial and banking system, which is now bankrupt, under which credit can be generated through the Federal government, the way that was done by Roosevelt with his Reconstruction Finance Corp., to make credit available through local, designated financial institutions, in cooperation with the states and the municipalities, to ensure the existing power production and distribution function, and that the necessary prompt steps be made to expand power production.

Without that, how are you going to restore the lost industrial opportunities, which used to exist in this state? How are you going to guarantee protection to the farmers of this state—and this is the big agricultural state? You can’t do it.

So, therefore, the Federal government may not be the party to actually set these things into motion in the state and municipalities, but the Federal government’s intervention is essential to create the conditions under which a state like California, which can not, by itself solve this problem, is given the Federal assistance of the type it needs, to reorganize its affairs, and get on with the work of providing power.

Figure 3

The NAWAPA Plan for Bringing Additional Fresh Water to the United States, Canada and Mexico

The North American Water and Power Alliance project, on the drawing boards since 1964, would provide a 20% increase in water supply to the United States, while making additional water available to Canada and Mexico.

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Water Projects for the Americas

Another key area, which I already referred to, is the area of water. Water is another part of the essential, physical infrastructure of a national economy. We have enough water, available, if we’re willing to look ahead to Alaskan Arctic sources, and look ahead to Canadian Arctic sources. And, to enter into agreements with neighboring Canada, for joint development, and agreements with Mexico! Because, any efficient line of the Great American Desert development, of water development, is going to move water, in great amounts, from the north, from Alaska and Canada, through the area between the Rocky Mountain and Pacific Range area; going to move great amounts. And the end-line of that, will be Mexico.

So, therefore, an Arctic Ocean to Mexican border system is needed, which should integrate with what Mexico should have, which is to open up the canals, which have been projected by Mexico for over a century: canals to move water from the south, where there is excess rainfall in Mexico; to move it along the coastal canals to the northern areas, such as Sonora, which need water, in order to develop agriculture.[fn_1] Sonora, like the Imperial Valley, has a tremendous natural potential for agricultural development—if the water were there; if the water management were there.

We need to protect the agriculture in California alone. Fighting with Arizona, and the gangsters who control Arizona, over water—like [Sen. John] McCain, for example, the Keating Five—that is not the way to solve the problem. That may be necessary, but the way is, to find new sources, new arrangements, in water management, for transport and for other essential uses. To take this area of the Great American Desert and turn it from a negative factor in the U.S. economy, and turn it into a positive factor, for all of the economy around there. And we can do that. So, these are essential things.

‘Soft’ Infrastructure

Then, you have other things, which are called “soft” infrastructure: health care. Health care is a national security issue. Let’s take the nasty case of DDT: There was never any legitimate grounds for banning DDT. It was purely a cult, fanatic program. DDT never ruined a robin’s egg. It may have cut down its meal a bit, by killing flies and worms, but it did not ruin the egg. It was all a fraud.

We are now exposed to West Nile virus, a deadly, mosquito-borne, or mosquito-vectored virus, which is moving into the middle of the United States, from Africa. It’s moving in from Africa, because we didn’t do anything to help Africa. We didn’t bring the conditions in, which would have enabled Africa to control the thing at the source. We say, “We’re not going to put money in Africa!” “We’re going to take gold out, not put money in!” That’s the idea: “Oh, gold! So, take it out!” So, therefore, because we didn’t give them the means, and the support to get up the pest-control systems and health systems they required—as a matter of fact, we bombed Sudan’s pharmaceutical plant, because some idiot in Washington, some right-wing kook, pushed the President into going along with it. And the President had to quietly admit afterwards, that there was no reason for bombing that plant; no excuse for it.

EIRNS/Stuart Lewis

DDT is the most effective pesticide we’ve ever had against various diseases. It must be brought back.

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So, it now comes here. Diseases from Africa are going to come to visit the United States, no matter what the Customs agents and Immigration officers say. We used to be able to control—we had the mosquito, malaria and so forth, under control in the United States, by DDT, which is the most effective drug we ever had, against this kind of problem—the most effective. And, for some crazy reason, it was banned—arbitrarily, with no supporting evidence for the banning. Everything about, “DDT was a danger to the environment,” or something, or health, was a lie: There never was any scientific evidence presented to support that.

So, we’re going to have to get it back.

Now, that’s only one aspect of health control. In the postwar period, as a result of our experience in warfare, especially, we adopted a piece of legislation, called Hill-Burton.[fn_2] Hill-Burton was a very intelligent approach to improving the health care of the citizens of the United States. It said, simply, this; it started with an assumption. The assumption was, because of the way medical practice is structured, the major hospitals and clinics in a county are the center of the functioning of the medical profession and of public-health facilities. What you need in any area is, you need a very high-grade, full-service teaching hospital, the kind of institution which covers the entire spectrum, which trains nurses and physicians, and educates them and produces them as a by-product of its function, which has extensive research facilities of scientific, as well as other, nature.

And therefore, when you get into a national health crisis, you have doctors out there. The doctors, for major care, rely on their relationship with clinics and hospitals. The hospital is the center of mobilization of a community, of a county, for health-care problems, new diseases. What do you do? Laboratories: extensive research, tied to other research institutions, in touch with research institutions throughout the country and internationally. They go to work on a problem, which is newly discovered, and try to quickly discover an approach for dealing with a new type of problem. Or an outbreak of an old disease in a new form, like bubonic plague, for example, which may come out as pneumonic plague.

So, the doctors, now, are able to function, because you have a team relationship, between the individual physician, the local hospital or clinic, and the central hospitals, which are the mobilization points, the rallying points, for national security in health care, in health protection.

Now, Hill-Burton specified, therefore, that the United States should adopt—it’s a very simple piece of legislation, not one of these pieces of nonsense, but simple legislation stating a principle: It is the objective of the United States, that we shall increase the number of beds of a predetermined, required quality, in hospitals, based on a county-population requirement. That is, every county should be getting an equitable approach to treatment of disease in that county. Because, if you do that, for the reasons I just gave, then you have a system which is capable of responding intelligently, sometimes in concert with government, to any kind of disease problem.

Now, the idea was, that you would form organizations in each state, with Federal protection—Federal sponsorship and protection. These would be organizations based on state facilities; they would be based on public facilities; based also on private hospitals and similar institutions. And these institutions would meet on an annual planning basis, to set out a budget based on required number of beds, estimated in that area, to improve the situation. And, to determine where the money is going to come from to support this number of beds, of these qualities, in that county. Therefore, what they would do is, the various institutions would estimate expected revenues from various sources that could be obtained, define the deficit, and then say, “Where are we going to get the money to fill the deficit?” They would go, first of all, to voluntary fundraising for hospitals and health care, in general. They would then go to municipal and state governments: What can the municipal government, the state government put into the kitty, to fill the deficit? And, if that isn’t adequate, then they go to the Federal government, which is sitting there as an interested party, and say to the Federal government, “This state, in the coming year, is going to have the following deficit, based on currently determined sources of applicable revenues. We need some help. Get us a bill through the Congress, to authorize a special allotment for this state.”

That’s the way it worked, until 1973. It was one of the best health systems the world ever knew.

And Nixon destroyed it—with the help of a “great Democrat,” Daniel P. Moynihan, who was in charge of this social reform, at that time. What came in, was the HMO legislation—health-management-organization legislation, repealing Hill-Burton. And you may have some idea of what happened to health care, as a result of the HMOs and the replacement of Hill-Burton.

So, we need a health-care system, as a matter of a national security interest. A health-care system, while it probably includes many private aspects, must have the backing and support of public agencies and the public sector, including the Federal government. And the Federal government must act as a coordinating agency among the states, to determine a national-security approach to health-care requirements: whether strange diseases, or simply other disease problems discovered; maybe like how to remove a video game from a child, huh? To save the kid’s life, or his neighbor’s life.

Education for Citizenship

So, you have another area of national security interest, which is primarily the responsibility of government. Education: Now, I know that most of you hate education, because you’re not getting any of it. But we’re doing the best we can, with our limited resources, and by going on the things which we think are most essential.

So, if you can’t get a decent education at a university, create your own. It doesn’t have to be a university, it has to be a process, in which you’re engaged, in yourself, developing yourself, in a social kind of way—individually and socially; by getting at things you need to know, to make you capable of understanding society, and understanding your place in it. And how you can do work, that sort of thing. Base it in science, base it in Classics, base it in social relations—history. Those things, if you can’t get them from the schools, or the universities, you must organize and provide them for yourselves.

EIRNS

The purpose of education is to raise up individuals who can think for themselves as citizens, who use the powers of their own minds, usually as part of a social process. Shown: Colombian youth learning about geometry and physics with soap-bubble experiments.

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Remember, healthy university systems were not created by God. He left some things up to man, to create for himself. And the best educational systems, came in opposition to previously established, failed institutions. And they were organized by young, vigorous people, who were dedicated to discovering the truth, and learning to master it. And, by mastering a few areas, in a few topics, they would open up themselves to the capability of knowing how to master others. So, what you need in education, essentially, is a foundation. You need a foundation, which enables you to fit yourself in society, as a person who can think scientifically, who knows what social relations are, who knows how ideas function in history, who knows how societies collapse or succeed; and you start from that kind of basic knowledge, and then reach out, to anything else which you think is important, or interests you. And you’re able to do it, because you’ve created a process, in which you yourselves, can do it, for yourselves.

You become, then, a true citizen, not a beggar. The typical citizen of the United States, today, is a beggar. They beg! They beg from the news media. They beg for a place at the table, with public opinion. They beg for this; they beg for that. They don’t think about what they can do for themselves. This is called “free trade”: What can I sell myself for?

So, the basis of citizenship is essentially education, as Benjamin Franklin emphasized, and warned, when the Constitution had been adopted. And education means that you are, first of all, that you are a citizen, who is capable of thinking for himself or herself, as a citizen. This means, that, instead of depending upon doing as you are told, or thinking what you are told to think, that you have gone through the experience of discovering universal principles, which are universally true, with the powers of your own mind, usually doing this as part of a social process of dialogue with other people.

Once you know that something is true, in your own mind, in that way, then you can stand up, and say: “I know.” And when you can say, “I know,” then you’re a citizen. Then, you are entitled to instruct government to pay attention. And if it doesn’t pay attention, to make some changes. Not the kind of beggars that call themselves “citizens” today: “I have to go along with the Party. I have to go along with public opinion. I have to go along with this.”

And here you are, sitting in the middle of a failed society—this society has failed! Over 35 years, this society, this United States, has gone from the most powerful nation on the planet, the richest, the most productive, the most progressive, to one of the worst! It’s the bucket shop, of humanity! We’re bloodsuckers. We don’t produce our own wealth; we steal it! We steal it, by free trade. We’ve rigged the value of the currency, of the peso in Mexico; we rigged this; we rigged that. Other countries slave for us, work under virtual slave-labor conditions, to give us the cheap goods that you buy at Wal-Mart! By some poor creature, standing, unable to move, because they represent destroyed people, who somebody’s employing at X number of dollars per hour, to stand there and look as if they’re working.

This is what we’ve done to the American people! We’ve done that to them. We’ve taken away their dignity, and one of the ways we did it, was with education. Look at what is taught in universities and schools. Look at the nature of the curriculum. Some kid thinks the teacher is stupid, he’s got to have Ritalin. Do you know what Ritalin, and Haldol, and Prozac do, physiologically, to a human body, over several years of application? Do you know what this is? Read a book (but don’t take it too seriously): Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley. Soma. What you are getting, no education in the schools, and if you don’t sit there like a happy little zombie, the teacher says, [very nasal] “You’ve got an Attention Deficit Disorder.” And you say to the teacher, “No, Teacher, I don’t have ADD. You’ve got BDD—a Brain Deficit Disorder!”

EIRNS/Richard Welsh

The student who has been trained in Classical culture, reliving the creative discoveries of the past, has a solid foundation to understand universal history as well as physical science. Here, at a Schiller Institute Summer camp in Lucketts, Virginia, in July 2002, children painted a life-size mural of Raphael’s “The School of Athens,” (below) and gave a performance of drama and song, based on Plato’ s Dialogues.

EIRNS/Jacob Welsh

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But this is a kind of menticide: The obvious purpose is, is to destroy the mental capability of the American youth to function. Because, once you get him on this dope, you don’t come back so easily. Some of you have some experience with it, in yourself, or know it with others: You don’t come back so easily. And, when you lose the years of your life, the years when you are most susceptible of actually developing concepts; when you’re going through the secondary-school age, and the university age, 18 to 25, that area, is the period of life, in which most people have the highest potentiality for developing the power of conceptual thinking. Once you have mastered that, in those age intervals, then you don’t stop developing. You go on, and you become more powerful in your ability as a thinker, from that point on. But, if you don’t lay the foundation, in cognitive thinking in those age intervals, you’ve lost those years—precious years of your life, you can’t make up for so easily.

So, in a sense, the function of education is not simply to produce people who are qualified to pass tests which are designed by idiots. You know, multiple-choice questionnaires. (If you pass a multiple-choice questionnaire, you must have taken a lot of Ex-Lax.) Those tests, by themselves, are evil.

What is a reasonable question? You’re probably getting some of this here. But what is a competent examination, in a secondary school or a university, say on a science subject? Fill out a questionnaire? No. Fire the teacher. If the school issues a questionnaire, fire the school administrators. If the teacher gives you a multiple-choice questionnaire, fire the teacher. You’re not getting an education.

What is an education? The test of an education is a test of the school and of the teacher, as much as it is of the student. What are you testing for? A good test, which is done with the best—the best so-called “intelligence test,” would always have this feature in them. A good test will always challenge the student with a question, for which they have never been prepared in class or textbook. And you would test the student, therefore, on the ability to solve that challenge, at least in a credible and competent way at that time. That would tell you how well the school program and the student combined, had developed over the preceding period. So, the ability to think cognitively, to discover solutions for problems, to discover new principles, under stress: That is the test of education. Because that’s what it is in production.

Entrepreneurship in production is the same thing. In production, what you face are problems you never saw before. In government, you face problems you never saw before. So, who do you want to deal with that problem? Do you want some bureaucratic idiot, who’s filled out multiple-choice questionnaires? Or do you want someone, faced with an entirely new experience, a new challenge, unexpected, in some area, in which they have a certain competence, to be able to respond to that challenge in an intelligent, effective way? This is developing a new product, solving a problem that’s never been solved before; this is what the best military training is: Auftragstaktik, it’s called in German—the ability of the soldier, the commander, under a situation, which he did not expect, to be able to carry out a mission, under conditions which are slightly different than those which were anticipated. By finding a solution to that problem. Not by changing the mission, but accomplishing the mission, by discovering a new way of correcting for the difference between what was expected and what you have.

The Problem Gauss Solved

That’s what a good education is: the ability to think. The ability to invent valid approaches to previously not-known issues. For example: One reason I specified in response to the question, this issue of the 1799 paper by Gauss on the fundamental theorem of algebra.[fn_3] Every faker will go to a Lagrange approach to that problem. Every faker in school will teach that: It’s one of the most important developments, in all modern mathematical physics, that particular paper by Gauss. And virtually every school, which teaches in that area, in that subject-area, fakes it. And says, there’s a solution at the blackboard, as such; a mathematical solution at the blackboard, as Lagrange said, for that problem. If you accept that, in mathematical physics, if you accept the assumptions on which the Lagrange argument is made, you will never be competent in science, because you have never faced the crisis that you must face, the crisis posed by Gauss’s attack on Euler and Lagrange, in that paper. You’ll never understand what the word “physical science” means. You’ll fake it. You’ll think of some formula, you get out of a textbook, or look it up on the computer. And, it’s not.

Also, important, that particular case, because it refers to knowledge which existed, long prior to that; knowledge which existed at the time, in particular, of a student of Pythagoras, Archytas, who was associated with Plato. And the circles of Plato, Archytas, and so forth, through the death of Archimedes and Eratosthenes, developed an understanding of the same issue, which was presented by Gauss’s solution for the question of the fundamental theorem of algebra.

So therefore, if you solve this and understand this, not only do you know what real science is (and otherwise, you don’t), but you also have an understanding of something about history. If you look at the connection, between what was known by Archytas, by Plato, by Eratosthenes—if you know that—then you say, “Where’d we get this?” “We got this from them! We got this from them, in a period 2600 years ago, or so. We got this, by a transmission of Classical culture—despite the Roman system, despite Romanticism—which was revived in modern Europe in the 15th Century, which was the birth of modern science, and the birth of modern society.

So therefore, the student who has gone through that kind of educational experience, has a foundation to understand both physical science, mathematics, and history. Because history is the relationship of the transmission of ideas that no monkey could ever understand, by human beings from generation to generation. Culture is the same thing. Language is the same thing. Languages have been developed, by the human species; different languages have evolved in this process of development. These languages are transmitted from generation to generation, as ideas. When you wish to communicate with people, as I spent some of the weekend communicating with people who are Chinese speakers, you run immediately into problems of understanding on both sides, where it’s very difficult to communicate certain ideas. Because the language culture is different, and people think in ways, in which language is a crucial part.

And thus, the way to administer society—yes, we are a community of nations. But we must also recognize that the primary responsibility of citizenship, is to organize around a specific national historical language-culture. Not because one culture is better than the other, in any intrinsic way—some have advantages, true—but, because you must reach the ideas. You must, in the case of giving an idea in a different language than you’re using, you must also find some way to get the root of that idea, the paradox, into the mind of someone who’s using the other language, in their national language culture.

So thus, our education of the American young person, into age of 25 and so forth, in terms of our national language culture—a Classical form of our national language-culture—becomes an essential basis for citizenship. Because it is through a language, so understood, so mastered, that we’re able to communicate what Shelley describes as “the most impassioned and profound conceptions respecting man and nature.” And that’s what citizenship is: To have a sense of what needs to be done, or at least what question needs to be asked. And, to be able to put that forward as a citizen, in a way which commands attention to what you propose, it commands attention to the matter of the answer.

That’s the way we can govern ourselves. We don’t govern ourselves by opinion. Most of the opinion in the United States, as you know, is idiocy. Would you want to be ruled by popular opinion? It’s a mass of babbling idiots! Does that mean that you hate the people, because they’re babbling idiots? No. You want them to be good people. You want to develop them. So therefore, you want to ensure that every child has access to that quality of education, which is required. You wish that for yourself; you wish to make that kind of Classical approach to communication, an integral part of the way society functions and makes decisions. We are not monkeys; we are not baboons. We do not communicate by sign languages or grunts or snarls. That should not be the way that we function, though often that happens in the Congress. We should be people, who are able to communicate by reason, and reason means exactly that.

So therefore, an educational system, based on reason, is a vital matter of national security. It’s primarily a responsibility of government, in the collective sense, as such is the nature of things.

What We Can Do to Save Our Nation

This is what we have lost. This is why George Bush was— not elected, exactly, but inaugurated. They just said, “Well, who’re we going to inaugurate? Which of these bums that wasn’t elected are we going to inaugurate?” And we did. But, how did that happen? How did we get to the process that we had a Dukakis, running for the Democratic nomination for President in 1988? An absolute mental case. Going into a severe crisis, do you want to put a mental case into the White House? Well, Gore is the same thing—a different kind of mental case. Bush is, shall we say—the only thing spectacular about him, are his disabilities. But, he’s the President: And you and I have to manage this Presidency. I mean, you can’t shoot him. It’s not a good idea; and it wouldn’t do any good. It would do bad. That’s not the way you settle problems; you may do it in some neighborhoods—try to settle problems, by shooting the guy you don’t like. That doesn’t settle anything; that just makes the problem worse.

You don’t try to overthrow the government, the way some populists do. You know, “The government’s always bad. If we could only get rid of government, everything would be good.” You baboons would run the place, huh?

No, the point is, we have the responsibility of affecting the institution of government, to cause the constitutional institutions of government in particular, to respond to our perception of what our national security requirements are, as a nation, as a people. What we think is just, in terms of our relationship to people in other countries. We have to force government to behave itself. Not as the adversary, but just like a foolish child, that you have to sometimes keep them from putting their hands on the hot stove. That sort of thing. You must intervene as a citizen, to take responsibility, as a citizen, for what your nation does. And, we have a Presidency. We have the finest Constitution ever devised, so far: Use it! But know how to use it: Be ingenious, in using it. How do we get the Presidency to respond in a way which George Bush were not likely to do? How do you shape the environment around the President, such that the institutions of the Presidency, and government generally, and other influences, will act upon him, to accept what I’ve proposed, say, today: “Please, George Bush. Stop this nonsense! Accept reality. This system is coming down. No recovery will ever occur. I don’t care what Dracula says, there’s no recovery in progress.” “Please Mr. President, do a simple thing: Put DDT back in circulation. We don’t want our people dying of West Nile disease. Just do the intelligent thing. Protect the national security interest, in terms of railroads; in terms of our air-traffic system; and a few other things like that—for starters.”

And, that’s, I think, what we, as Americans, among other leading things, should be saying. That’s what should have been said, in effect, at Crawford, or at Baylor. We should have said, “Hey! This is stupid. This system is coming down; let’s stop kidding ourselves; let’s stop the delusion. There are things we can do to save our nation and save the world. Let’s do them! They’re not perfect solutions, but they put us on the road toward solutions.”

And that’s the gist of the matter.

[fn_1]. For Mexico’s Plhino and Plhigon water management projects, see the article, “Plhino: Water to Green Mexico’s Farmland,” by Alberto Vizcarra Osuna, in 21st Century Science & Technology, Spring 2009, pp. 50-53. [back to text for fn_1]

[fn_2]. The 1946 Hospital Survey and Construction Act, sponsored by Sen. Harold Burton of Ohio and Sen. Lister Hill of Alabama. [back to text for fn_2]

[fn_3]. Carl Friedrich Gauss, “New Proof of the Theorem That Every Algebraic Rational Integral Function in One Variable Can Be Resolved into Real Factors of the First or the Second Degree” (Helmstedt: Fleckeisen’s, 1790. English translation by Ernest Fandreyer, Prof. of Mathematics, Fitchburg State College. [back to text for fn_3]

President Bush Should Have Acted ‘In an FDR Fashion’

Lyndon LaRouche laid out his post-Labor Day drive for national infrastructure security, in an Internet radio broadcast Aug. 24, 2002. To watch the full broadcast, click here.

After Labor Day, we shall release a new phase of the campaign. This phase will be in response to the utter failure of President Bush to deal with reality in the so-called Waco Conference, which he attended briefly, at about four times, I understand. At the time that he was speaking in Waco, we had two crises developing, which are of immediate significance, and require immediate action by him, and by other elements of our government.

First of all, we are losing our rail system, the last vestige of it. We are also in the process of crippling, and virtually destroying, our air-traffic system. Now, if we understand the effect of this, if you continue this process, you have the following things to consider. The breakdown in the economy—the private economy of the air-traffic system—means that we must shift from the less economical routes, which are the short-term routes, to concentrate only on the longer-term routes, which are essential air travel. Short-term routes are not essential for air travel. Quite the contrary. As a matter of fact, sometimes you have high-speed rail—say, between New York City’s Pennsylvania Station, and Washington’s [Union] Station—you could probably make the distance with high-speed rail in a shorter time than you could make it by using air. So, it obviously is foolish to rely upon air travel, between New York City and Washington, D.C., when you should have rail travel.

Now, also, more strategically, to get rail traffic, and to eliminate these kinds of problems with air travel, we would have to restore a true, interconnected, transcontinental rail system, which means you could get to every principal center in the United States—whether freight, or passenger—conveniently and efficiently, by rail. This, of course, means improvements in rail, over what we had before. But now we don’t even have what we had before. The track is old. It’s last century vintage, early last century, probably 1926, approximately, with some slight repairs in some cases, in between.

If this were to occur, if you have a continued break-down of the rail system, away from the idea of a transcontinental, interconnected system; if you have an accompanying crisis in air travel, then the United States ceases to be an integrated nation.

What are you going to do? Drive by Tin Lizzy, from the East Coast to the West Coast? The United States is no longer efficiently connected. It is no longer a unified, efficient national economy.

Key Issue of November Elections

So, therefore, these areas are one of the first areas the President must act upon, in a Franklin Roosevelt fashion. First of all, for government intervention and regulation, to defend, and improve the national rail system, as a high-priority investment project. Number two, we must save the air-traffic system. Both of these are essential parts of our national economic security. So he must do that. He should forget the nonsense that was babbled out at Waco, and similar locations, and get down to business.

And the Congress must be pushed into doing this. But it must be done now. Otherwise, no nation.

This has to be made a key issue of the coming elections, the November elections. It should be clear by election time, for these state, Senate, and so forth elections, that anyone who is not pushing for infrastructure, is not working in the national interest. Therefore, we have to have a weeding-out of those members of Congress, who, among their other faults, are not pushing for immediate restoration of rail service, and defense of air traffic.

Now, that’s only the beginning, but those are two areas, integrated areas, on which the President must act immediately, now! And the testing time is the November election. Nobody should vote for anybody who is not for this. Otherwise they’re being silly.

Now, that opens up a larger area. We are now in the greatest depression in more than 200 years, right? This means that we have to make some fundamental changes, away from the policies of the past 35-odd years, back to the policies of Roosevelt, and the policies of the post-Roosevelt period, from 1946 through 1964. We have to go back to that kind of economic system, now. Which means a regulated system: End privatization, end deregulation, end the funny monetary policies, all these things—get back to things that worked before, and do it immediately!

The area in which we can employ people—because we have many people who do not have the skills they had 35 years ago, the population had—therefore they are unemployable for many high-grade jobs. The way we handled it with Roosevelt, the way we have to handle it now: We have to take areas of primary need, primary national need in infrastructure, where people with poorer skill levels, can be efficiently employed in work which would be of national importance, and national economic significance. That work, which is in the area of infrastructure, will create the basis for the expansion of the private sector: in agriculture and industry. We must have policies with that goal.

Policy for the Next Two Years

Now this covers several areas, which should be the basic policy of the United States for the coming two years, and longer, up to the run-up to the 2004 election. First of all, a national infrastructure policy. Air travel and rail represent aspects of the transportation sector of basic economic infrastructure, which is largely government-funded, government-controlled, government-regulated. You can have the private sector in there, but they are regulated, the way we used to do it. So, air and rail are one of these areas.

In transportation, we also have ports. We also have power and water, which are other areas of physical infrastructure which are necessary. We must end deregulation of power. We must have a policy of national support for a system of state-regulated utility systems, of utilities which have long-term investment with government backing, and regulation, for the generation and distribution of essential power. We must have a water system, which is not only to supply our water needs, for human and related consumption. We must have a water-inland transport system, like the Mississippi River, other rivers, the cheapest way of moving freight, which is of low value per ton, and therefore is not high priority in terms of time of delivery. We depend upon that for grain, for ores, things of that sort. Inland waterways are ideal for that purpose, much more efficient than rail for that purpose.

For sensitive high-value freight, rails are indispensable. For the highest sensitivity, yes, we require international, and national, air travel.

In addition to that, we have soft infrastructure. Public health: We have destroyed public health since 1973, the HMO [orientation]. We no longer have a public health system. We are now faced with the increment of diseases, caused by economic conditions, caused by other conditions. We are not equipped for disease, epidemic disease. Therefore, we must rebuild the health care system now. Forget this HMO, repeal HMO, go back to Hill-Burton. That worked; HMO [Health Maintenance Organizations] do not work.

Education: Today, in universities, the price of tuition is in inverse proportion to the value of the education delivered. This is a scandal. Look at what’s taught in universities. Frankly, its garbage, and the students know it. They deeply resent it. Many of these students who are more intelligent, realize that they have to go outside the university to get a competent education. The case, as I’ve been emphasizing, the importance of Gauss’ Fundamental Theorem of Algebra, as presented in 1799, for the first time; to understand this is an ABC of education. And I guarantee you that most college graduates today, have no comprehension of the actual significance of that 1799 discovery, on which the fundamentals of 19th-Century scientific achievement were based. So we need a revolution in education.

And these are areas of national priority, upon which the strength of our population, the maintenance of our economic potential in general, depend. My campaign, for this period, will be a massive campaign, on a larger scale than the recent campaign of the past month; go up immediately after Labor Day; and it will continue, with the target being the immediate November elections. To begin to weed out the chaff. To get rid of those politicians, as much as possible, who will not support urgent infrastructure-rebuilding measures. To go on from that, to deal with the larger issues. [back to text]

President Trump Brings Water to California

by Patrick Ruckert

Shealah Craighead

President Trump displays his signature after signing a Presidential Memorandum on Developing and Delivering More Water Supplies in California. Bakersfield, California, Feb. 19, 2020.

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Feb. 21—President Trump’s visit to the fertile Central Valley in California was part of a four-day western states trip. On February 19, he spoke at Meadows Field Airport in Bakersfield to a mostly agriculturally oriented audience of 2-3,000; met with members of the region’s Congressional delegation to review his Administration’s accomplishments to date in improving the supply and delivery of water to California farmers and others; and discussed what more is to be done.

Trump had visited Bakersfield during his 2016 campaign, and at that time had promised that he would ensure that farmers had access to the water they needed. California was in the midst of the worst drought in its recorded history and its farmers were battling the state government and environmentalists for water. A three-inch bait fish, the Delta Smelt, was dominating the headlines. Water was being allowed to empty into the San Francisco Bay, rather than being routed to aqueducts to provide water for farms and homes further south.

In his visit to Fresno in the southern part of the valley in 2016, candidate Trump promised that he would “open up the water” for farmers. He denounced as “insane” the environmental rules that prioritized fish over farmers.

For this return visit, the White House announced that the President would be “speaking with hardworking farmers in the Central Valley about efforts to dramatically improve the supply and delivery of water in California and other Western states.”

Previewing the President’s upcoming visit, Congressman Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) made these comments on Fox News Sunday, February 17:

We need the security of our food supply. Making sure that it’s grown in America, that it’s safe, and secure. We have a real concern in California because we send most of our water out to the ocean [instead of] sending it down to Southern California, to our farmlands in the San Joaquin Valley, and others.

This President has worked greatly, using science—not based on politics—but on science, to allow more of that water to stay with the Californians, and for America, to make sure we’re secure in our food supply as we move forward.

USDA

When provided with sufficient water, California’s Central Valley is one of the most fertile in the world. Shown: an aerial view of a pistachio farm in Showchilla.

FWS/ B Moose Peterson

The Delta Smelt, a bait fish that is native to the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta region of northern California.

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In an email, California Assemblyman Vince Fong praised U.S. Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s efforts on behalf of Kern County farmers in response to a question about the President’s visit:

The Central Valley can only continue to be the breadbasket for the rest of the nation if our local farmers have access to water. The public expects our elected representatives to do what is in the best interest of the communities they serve, and I believe the arrival of the President of the United States to our community represents just that.

In Bakersfield, joined by Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt, Congressman Kevin McCarthy, and other federal officials, President Trump did more than talk. Just as the state may again be entering the first months of a new drought, he signed a “Presidential Memorandum on Developing and Delivering More Water Supplies in California,” supporting more water development and delivery in California, and reworking environmental rules involving the pumping of water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, the inland delta on the western edge of Central Valley.

With little precipitation in January and virtually none thus far in February, there remains but another six weeks of the normal rainy season to make up for this very dry winter. The press is filled with articles asking if a new drought is about to begin. That may be; we shall see in the next two months.

Paralleling the visit of the President to the Central Valley, Secretary Bernhardt, joined by Congressman Devin Nunes (R-Tulare), delivered a speech to the California Water Forum in Tulare on February 18, about the current regulations related to species protection and how to “waste less water,” sending more to the canals that go south to the farmers and the people of Southern California.

Bernhardt said that federal agencies would now use real-time monitoring of the endangered Delta Smelt and would only slow water flows if necessary, but would no longer rely simply on the calendar:

We will be utilizing the best science . . . and we will be able, we believe, to be much more efficient in these operations. I think you are going to find out tomorrow that the President doesn’t think we are done. This is step No. 1 to create room to run.

Streamlining Regulations

There is no question that this administration is determined to streamline regulations and accelerate the approval of projects, as has been done with regard to the flow of water to the Delta and Southern California.

USDA-ARS/Dong Wang

The San Juaquin Valley area of the Central Valley produces the majority of U.S. agricultural production (by dollar value) that comes from California. Shown: a lush peach-tree orchard.

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In 2014, two years before Trump was elected, California voters approved a ballot measure which provided more than $3 billion to build new water infrastructure. Today, six years later, not one penny of that money has been allocated for such projects. The President has repeatedly challenged state leaders to get to work to ensure adequate water supplies for the nation’s most productive agricultural land—land that provides more than half of the nation’s vegetables, fruits, and nuts. Perhaps the state’s leaders should learn a lesson from the President on how to streamline needed projects to get them done.

In October 2018, the President signed a wide-ranging bill to improve the nation’s water infrastructure, including adding water storage in California’s San Joaquin Valley. America’s Water Infrastructure Act of 2018 authorized more than $6 billion in spending over 10 years for projects nationwide.

President Donald Trump’s Fiscal Year 2021 budget proposal will fund multiple Sacramento District projects (Northern California) with several hundred million dollars in his plan for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers civil works program. This is in addition to the more than $1 billion he provided in 2018.

Trump’s commitment to California water was outlined in a White House news release that recalled that—

• In October 2018, Trump signed a “Presidential Memorandum on Promoting the Reliable Supply and Delivery of Water in the West,” prioritized the review of the Central Valley Project and the State Water Project, and directing the Secretary of the Interior to issue a plan of action by the end of January 2019. These are the two main systems delivering water to Valley farmers, that would allow the bringing of more than 1 million acre-feet of water to the Central Valley.

• In February 2019, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation released the “Biological Assessment on the Long Term Coordinated Operation of the Central Valley Project and State Water Project,” completing an assessment advocated by Congressman Kevin McCarthy. This is important in updating various regulations governing water supplies in California, including exports from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to communities in the Central Valley and Southern California.

• In October 2019, a new “Federal Biological Opinions and Proposed Action” continued to reflect the President’s commitment to helping California’s communities and farmers succeed.

And, in fulfillment of Executive Order 13788 (“Presidential Executive Order on Restoring the Rule of Law, Federalism, and Economic Growth by Reviewing the ‘Waters of the United States’ Rule”), the “President’s Navigable Waters Protection Rule,” finalized last month, dramatically limits the scope of environmentalist protections for the nation’s waterways, excluding many smaller bodies of water, including seasonal ones, from federal oversight. This overturns an Obama administration rule that, as farmers rightly complained, regulated even mud puddles. The President had promised to do just that in his 2016 campaign, calling it “one of the most ridiculous regulations of all.” The farmers had charged that the Obama Rules were such that even small bodies of water on their property were subject to federal regulation.

For those unfamiliar with the California water management system, two huge projects—the Central Valley Project and the California State Water Project—move water from the north of the state, through hundreds of miles of canals, pumps, and dams more than 400 miles to the farms of Central Valley and as far south as San Diego. Until China built its Move South Water North project, the California system, completed in the early 1970s, was the largest and most complex water management system in the world. That virtually nothing has been built since, is the root of the state’s water problems today.

Trump’s four-day western states trip also included giving the Commencement Address at the Hope for Prisoners Graduation Ceremony in Las Vegas [see excerpts from Trump’s remarks to that event in this issue] and a campaign rally, also in Las Vegas. He attended fundraisers in Los Angeles and also made fundraising stops in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and Phoenix, Arizona, on his way back to Washington.

‘Mini-Mike’ Is Persona Non Grata with California Farmers and Trump

In his February 19 dialogue with farmers in Bakersfield, California, President Trump and several of the farmers spoke out against Mike Bloomberg’s disdain for the intelligence of American farmers—called “gray matter” by Sir Michael Bloomberg.

Responding to citrus farmer Matt Fisher, who thanked him for defending farmers, the President remarked:

You have to know that this meeting . . . was set up long before—Devin [Rep. Devin Nunes] and Kevin [Rep. Kevin McCarthy] set it up long before we heard that Mini-Mike hates the farmer. Long before we learned about his hatred of the farmer, disrespect of the farmer. So I don’t know—I don’t think he’s going to be the candidate anyway, to be honest with you. We’ll have to start working on Crazy Bernie pretty soon. But it was set up a long time before that.

Another farmer, Larry Starrh, described water as a life and death matter and effusively thanked the President for acting to ensure adequate water supply for the Central Valley—referring to Trump’s actions to ensure that water flows to agricultural sectors, rather than running off into the Pacific Ocean. He said:

Well, I’m no expert, and I know a certain Democratic presidential candidate who says farmers need more gray matter. You know that. Yeah. [booing] But this ain’t rocket science. The reason we’re seeing these new rules implemented is because of President Donald Trump. And I want to publicly thank you, sir, and ask you to please keep fighting for us. Thank you very much.

For his part, Trump commented:

For too long, authorities have needlessly flushed millions and millions of gallons of fresh, beautiful clean water from up north, straight into the Pacific Ocean. It’s nothing for the Pacific Ocean. . . . But it can help us to a level that nobody can believe. On the basis of old science, obsolete studies, and overbearing regulations that had not been updated in many, many years, and sometimes for decades.

The resulting miscalculation and misallocation of water helped turn natural droughts into man-made catastrophes. I mean, it’s really a catastrophe, when you think. You have farmers that own land that are paying taxes on the land that aren’t allowed to farm your land. Going forward, well use the latest science and most advanced technology to monitor and adjust water distribution in real time, ensuring that the environment remains protected while directing as much water as possible, which will be a magnificent amount—a massive amount of water—for the use of California farmers and ranchers and all of these communities that are suffering from a lack of water.

III. The View From Europe

Only a Cultural Renaissance

Can Overcome the Crisis of the ‘West’!

by Helga Zepp-LaRouche

MSC/Müller

The Munich Security Conference 2020 in Munich, Germany.

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Feb. 22—The mass murder in Hanau caused horror not only in Germany, but all over the world. If such a barbaric, insane act is possible out of the blue, as the act of a lone perpetrator, one must also consider the possibility that it is somehow the result of an ideological delusion in which racism and apocalyptic ideas of alleged “overpopulation” both play a role, a delusion that has been shared by a number of such assassins—then a more in-depth analysis is urgently needed. What is going wrong in our society? Why does the overall structure of society seem to be gradually crumbling, as seen in the growing tensions between the west and east of Germany? Did the events surrounding the state election in Thuringia give only a first taste of something that could also happen elsewhere?

Change of scene. Just three days before the Hanau attack, the Munich Security Conference 2020 concluded, this time with the theme “Westlessness”—a new word that is supposed to express the crisis of the West—both the reduced position of the West in the world, and the decline in its internal cohesion. At the very beginning of the conference brochure, there is a quote from Oswald Spengler’s book The Decline of the West, in which he predicted the impending decline and eventual demise of Western civilization.

In the course of the three-day conference, the extremes of the current strategic spectrum unfolded: from the U.S. side, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi were all on the same line that the West is winning, and that Russia and China are the problem. Diverse Europeans expressed concern in various ways that they were somehow being sandwiched between the United States and China, and therefore called for Europe to play a larger, independent role. These concerned Europeans ultimately remained vigorously inclined to “stay the course” with regard to neoliberal economic policies. The foreign ministers of China and Russia repeatedly referred to the offers of cooperation they had made, to which there had never been a response.

Pelosi emphatically demonstrated her neoconservative kinship with Pompeo regarding the demonization of China and Russia. But what took the cake, was Pompeo’s sidekick Esper, who accused China of long-term manipulation of the “rules-based order.”

Austerity to What End?

This accusation deserves a closer look.

It should be noted that despite the public relations use of the topic “Westlessness,” not a single representative of this West tried to look for the reasons for this relative loss of power in the policies of the West itself, i.e., to question the reasons for the global rebellion. This rebellion has continued to expand since Brexit, with Hillary Clinton’s election defeat, the yellow vest demonstrations and general strikes in France, the mass demonstrations from Chile to Lebanon and Algeria, and is directed against the neoliberal austerity policy that affects the population and only serves the profit of the financial sector.

The rise of the German political party, AfD (Alternative für Deutschland, Alternative for Germany), which started as an anti-euro party, is due to the same dynamic. And if Europe had not directly or implicitly supported the wars of intervention by the British and the Bush and Obama governments, and had instead turned away from its colonialist policy towards Africa and done what China has now started to do—namely, to develop the African continent by investing in infrastructure assistance—then there never would have been such an escalation of the refugee crisis, from which the AfD benefited in its second phase of gaining influence.

The monstrosity of racism in all its forms should not be excused or relativized in any way; it represents people at their worst. But you make it too easy for yourself if you pretend that all the “good guys” now have to stand together, and if the racists are excluded, then the problem will be solved. The question should be, “Where did these assassins get their end-times vision about an alleged overpopulation of the planet, as was expressed in the so-called manifestos of the assassins of Christchurch, El Paso, Halle, and now Hanau?” Once the notion that we have “only twelve years left”—or that the finite resources of the Earth are not enough for everyone—began to be propagated in the mass media and in the public debate, the aphorism that the sleep of reason that produces monsters, becomes real.

As a consequence, the radical policies of Mark Carney and Mike Bloomberg, the “green financing” sought by the central banks and the EU, and the “circular economy,” are no less racist, because they lower the energy-flux density used in production to such a point that billions of people will no longer be able to survive. And the fact that most of these people who live in developing countries are people of color, has certainly not escaped the attention of the supporters of “green financing.”

The blaming of China for the world’s problems—the China that has just demonstrated in its response to the Corona virus that it was prepared to accept significant losses in its own economy in order to protect people’s lives and curb the international spread of the virus—is immoral and mendacious.

Breaking the Rules in a Rules-Based Order

Let’s see how the West, which has puffed itself up so, actually keeps up with the rules of its “rule-based order.”

• Election according to the rules of electoral laws, admittedly with tricks by the AfD in the third ballot for the Prime Minister in the state of Thuringia? Suddenly “breaking a taboo” is more important than the electoral law system. Is that mentioned in the right to vote? Chancellor Angela Merkel made a short call from South Africa to say that the election result had to be reversed. Then we keep voting until we get the desired result.

• Do people still have the responsibility, established with the Nuremberg trials at the latest, to make public information about the most serious crimes committed by state officials, in order to protect human lives? Not so if your name is Julian Assange. All of Europe is watching as Sweden, Great Britain, and the USA attempt to make an example of Assange. It does not count that the UN special rapporteur on torture, Nils Melzer, sees the “credibility of the rule of law badly tarnished.” After all, rules are there to be adapted.

• The murder of an Iranian military leader in a third country using drones? The Bundestag’s (German Parliament) scientific service sees this as a “violation of the right to life” within the meaning of Article 6 of the UN Civil Pact. No reason for the federal government to take a position. International law is simply given a short vacation, the “rules-based order” can tolerate this much.

• The opposition leader in Venezuela, Juan Guaido, declares himself President instead of the legitimately elected Nicolas Maduro? Naturally the EU supports this; after all, this new guy belongs to the neoliberal camp. Rules-based can also mean that these rules are only used selectively.

• The Hong Kong-based opposition, generously funded by the UK and the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy (NED), uses terrorist methods against local institutions for weeks on end? But of course, they’re not terrorists, they are freedom fighters!

• The EU border control agency Frontex is cooperating with the brutal action taken by Hungarian border officials against refugees, including children, using tear gas and pepper spray, which among other things was criticized by Frontex Commissioner Inmaculada Arnaez and the UN Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet. The German public television investigative program, Munich Report, regards Frontex itself as being involved in fundamental rights violations in many of its operations. Oh, but the Mediterranean is an extralegal zone, and, of course, rules don’t apply there.

• Rules in the U.S. Presidential Election? Election meetings, primaries, equal opportunities for all candidates? For the late starter and multi-billionaire Michael Bloomberg, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) simply changes the rules and the White House is for sale to the highest bidder.

What does all this have to do with the mass murder in Hanau? Nothing directly, of course; quite a lot indirectly. If the behavior of the so-called leadership elites over a long period of time gives rise to the feeling that there is justice only for the rich, that in the end there is no authority for citizens to turn to if their own existential interests are threatened, then social cohesion gradually erodes. Then that dangerous mixture of basic opposition, vigilante justice, and dissolution of boundaries emerges, which creates the breeding ground for all possible evils.

The theme of the Munich Security Conference reveals a certain, albeit late, insight that the West is not doing well. A positive solution was not even offered there.

The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, by Francisco Goya.

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Europe’s leading nations have the potential to overcome the current crisis. We have produced some of the greatest achievements in universal history over the past two and a half thousand years of our history. The ideal of Greek classicism about the inner cohesion of the good, the beautiful and the true; the humanistic image of man in the Italian Renaissance; the irrefutable proof of the creative potential of human reason, demonstrated in the discoveries and inventions of Leonardo da Vinci, Johannes Kepler, and Albert Einstein; the universal view of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, for whom there was clearly only one human race; the wonderful image of man that is expressed in German classical poetry and music—all these and many more treasures are available to us, if we want to renew our society.

Admittedly, it is not easy to see where such a renaissance is supposed to come from. It would have to start with those who profess this humanistic tradition acting to reject the cult of ugliness that we are expected to accept in theaters, opera houses and by the so-called entertainment industry in the media. Of course, racism in all its forms must be condemned and weeded out of society. But this will only work if people again set up the ideal for themselves, to wish to become a beautiful soul in Friedrich Schiller’s sense.

—zepp-larouche@eir.de

AN ALBANIAN DIPLOMAT REMEMBERS

China and Albania in Recent Decades,

With an Eye on the Belt & Road Today

Feride Istogu Gillesberg’s interview with Ambassador Hajdar Muneka is prefaced by her introduction of the Ambassador and his book. She is Albanian and is the Vice President of the Schiller Institute in Denmark.

The Light and Shadow Sides of a Friendship that Surprised the World: History, Memories, Analysis and Reflections by an Ambassador

by Hajdar Muneka. Published in Albania, September 2019, 508 pages. Not available in English.

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Hajdar Muneka, has been an Albanian career diplomat, China scholar and journalist for Albania National Radio and TV (1979-1991). Born on March 20, 1954, Mr. Muneka’s diplomatic career began in 1991, as first secretary at the Albanian embassy in Beijing. In 1997 he became Albania’s ambassador to China, from which posting he was also responsible for Albania’s relations with other Asian countries, including Japan, South Korea, Australia, Singapore, and New Zealand. He was also Albania’s ambassador to Malaysia from 2001 to 2006.

His book relates how the Chinese Cultural Revolution came about; the tensions between China and the Soviet Union that led to the split between those two countries; how China and Albania were each other’s only ally for a period; how China emerged from the Cultural Revolution, while Albania remained stuck in its ideology; and how China not only pulled itself out of this dark time of the Cultural Revolution, but began a process of reforms for the economic development of the whole nation.

The publication of this book is timed well. This is the 70th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Albania and China—a relationship that has reflected a special bond, a bond that needs to be reestablished with full dedication, especially from the Albanian side.

China and Albania’s special relationship began in 1956. When the Soviet Union broke diplomatic ties with Albania in 1961, Albania’s only ally was China, and, for a time, China’s only ally in Europe was Albania. The paradox is that despite all the problematic elements of the Cultural Revolution, China helped Albania to develop its economy. Chinese ships unloaded grain, rice, oil, sugar, and chemical fertilizers in Durres, and China invested in Albanian mines, hydro-electric projects, agriculture, and infrastructure.

For its part, Albania played an important role in getting the People’s Republic of China recognized as a full member of the United Nations in October 1971. China was very grateful to Albania for this effort. The author writes that because of this, Albania gained something that you can’t buy with money—the love and respect of the Chinese people. Albanian culture, music, and film were promoted in all of China. Albania was, and even still is, in some ways, much bigger in the awareness of the Chinese people, than the size of the nation would justify.

The disintegration of the special relationship between Albania and China started when China began reaching out to the U.S., leading to U.S. President Nixon’s visit to China. Enver Hoxha’s Albanian regime saw this as treason to the Chinese Maoist ideology. Hoxha began attacking China very openly.

Mr. Muneka came back to Albania’s capital Tirana from his studies in Beijing (1973-77) during the tensions between the countries. He had lived through the end phase of the Cultural Revolution in China and personally saw China’s shift toward the reforms of “socialism with Chinese characteristics,” which paved the way for the start of economic development for the people.

Hajdar Muneka, Ambassador of Albania to the People’s Republic of China, 1997-2000.

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It was unfortunate for Albania that the Hoxha government was completely stuck in its own ideology. While China began the process of reforms to open up to the world, and achieve economic development for all, Albania isolated itself even more, and was left with no allies at all. Albania cut itself off from the rest of the world. Albania survived with the help of the economic reserves they had received from China, but they did not last very long.

Today, when we look at China and its enormous economic development, it is time for Albania to see, with new eyes, the possibilities that lie in cooperation with China.

Interview: China, Albania and the Belt & Road

EIR: You studied the Chinese language in Beijing, from 1973 to 1977, and became fascinated by the ancient Chinese culture, by philosophers such as Confucius, and by the country’s history. Can you explain to us what moved you?

Hajdar Muneka: China seems like a big ocean. The further you go, the deeper and more enigmatic it becomes. I had the fortune of becoming part of the Chinese ocean since I was a teenager.

Wikimedia Commons/Miguel A. Monjas

Confucius statue at the Confucius Temple in Beijing, China.

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I realized that the Chinese love their history, which is very rich, and somewhat unique. Even though Confucius lived over 2,500 years ago, his philosophy is so present in the daily life of the Chinese, that it gives you the impression that he is still alive. That is also the case with other scholars of this nation. For centuries, The Art of War by Sun Tzu has served as an orientation compass for dozens of dynasties, and, still today continues to be applied. The particularities of Chinese culture are embodied in their art, sport, food, medicine, everywhere. Many things have now changed, but when I first came to China as a student, I got the impression that everything had a Chinese seal stamped on it, and the impact of the cultures of the world was very tiny.

EIR: China has lifted some 700 million people out of extreme poverty in the last 30-40 years, and the national goal is to wipe out all extreme poverty in China by the end of this year. That should be a driver for poor nations, such as Albania, to join with China in the Belt and Road Initiative. Is it possible to get Albania to join?

Hajdar Muneka: China is among the few countries in the world that has inherited extreme poverty. Defeating poverty has been the main battle of the Chinese government since the proclamation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. The current government has been the most successful in this cause, even though the objective of reaching the aim this year, as announced, is very difficult, but not impossible. If accomplished, it will be the next Chinese wonder. In terms of their determination to reach that objective, no other nation (especially my nation, Albania) can compare with China—not only because the Chinese people have extraordinary financial and human capacities, but also due to their professional skills, dedication and accountability. During recent years, this has been highlighted, even more, by their zero tolerance for corruption.

DoD

U.S. Marines in Kosovo in 1999 as part of the NATO-led Operation Joint Guardian.

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The participation in the Belt and Road Initiative by many countries, especially the relatively poor ones like Albania, is a golden opportunity for their development. But this demands a serious commitment, and even financial contributions by participating nations. As indicated by this initiative, China offers a lot, but each nation must contribute seriously, with its full capacities, in its own development. The Chinese train goes with extraordinary speed. The winner is that nation that manages to build a train station for this train in its own country.

EIR: Looking at Albania today, and at the economic paradigm shift that has occurred in China, is Albania ready for a new special relationship with China, based on that new economic paradigm?

Hajdar Muneka: Any country that wants to prosper economically would like to have close relations with China. Because of the very special relationship in the past, Albania has a great advantage over other countries. Today’s China is led by a generation of leaders who still have special feelings for the former friendship between our two countries. A clever Albanian leadership would take advantage of this fact, also because the Chinese, by nature, stand out for having respect and consideration for friends, and they are well known for their long memory. Unfortunately, this fact has not been properly used by those who run Albania. It is not just about the current Albanian leaders, but for all of them during the last 30 years.

Albania Fought for China at the UN

EIR: You were ambassador to China during the tragic Kosova war. This was a time when you worked hard to rebuild the Albanian-Chinese relationship. Out of the blue, Macedonia . . . established ties with Taiwan, and NATO bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. You describe this period of tension in your book, when Beijing was under pressure. It is clear that China does not think in geopolitical terms, but, on the contrary, is more focused on how to solve problems. Would you like to say something about this aspect?

Hajdar Muneka: That was one of the most difficult periods during my career as a diplomat, but, at the same time, a very impressive one. Even though I was officially representing Albania, and not Kosova, we have the same flag, the same nationality. In the Chinese press, they usually don’t speak about the Kosovars, but about the Albanians from Kosova. I had to work hard to explain to the Chinese authorities that the Albanians were not terrorists, but victims of Serbian terrorism. Thanks to my modest contribution, I am very happy to say, the Chinese government never became a barrier to the advancement of the Kosova process. The bombardment of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade was, naturally, a punishable act, which complicated the situation. The American administrations did apologize for this later on.

I would like to highlight here that even though China has not yet recognized the independence of Kosova, which is closely related to its internal situation, Beijing has opened a mission in Prishtina, and there is considerable trade between the two countries.

I am sure this barrier will be overcome as soon as Belgrade recognizes the independence of Kosova.

You mentioned the unwarranted mistake that Macedonia made in recognizing Taiwan at the end of the 90s, breaking its relationship with China. That was an adventure by some people in the leadership of that country, closely related to their personal interests. At that time, there were rumors that Albania would take the same step. I have guaranteed the Chinese officials that my country is never going to make such a big mistake. Regardless of the change of the ruling system in Albania during the last decades, our position regarding the existence of one China has not changed, and will not change in the future. I want to remind you that Albania had been one of the main countries that fought for the return of China to the UN, and the exclusion of Taiwan from the organization.

FAIR

The Chinese Embassy in Belgrade after U.S. bombing.

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EIR: At the end of your book, you present a review of Chinese history, which is important for Western countries—the U.S. and Europe—as it shows that China is a peaceful country, going back at least 2,000 years in its history. The Chinese seek to solve problems by peaceful means, even if that means in a pragmatic way. Can you elaborate that point?

Hajdar Muneka: In its five-thousand-year history, China has gone through extraordinary developments, but also through drastic declines. It is worth noting that the Chinese have not waged predatory wars, as well as not sending out any army to occupy other lands. Quite the contrary, they were sometimes attacked and occupied by other powers. Even when they were extremely powerful, they preferred to stay at home. I have to mention that the Great Chinese Wall was built to defend China from attacks by outsiders. This is part of the Chinese philosophy as cleverly and skillfully described by the scholar Sun Tzu in The Art of War.

Public Domain

Mao Zedong

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But there is one thing that people should keep in mind: they offer respect to others, to the same extent they hope for the same respect back, so that they can enjoy a calm existence. Their famous leader Mao Zedong has concentrated this philosophy in a wise saying, “If you do not offend me, I will not offend you. If you offend me, I am obliged to react.” Anyway, Chinese people are very pragmatic. So much so, that you could believe that pragmatism was born in China. This has also made them talented negotiators. When they talk about the art of war, they do not mean the use of weapons, but the victory achieved without firing a single bullet—a victory attained by peaceful means, through parley.

A Step Toward

Understanding China

EIR: Do you have any concluding words for our international readership?

Hajdar Muneka: After a 47-year relationship with China, I have come to the conclusion that the biggest problem the people of the world have today, is their lack of knowledge about China and the Chinese people. Thousands of books about China are in circulation around the world. Some of them are written by authors who have knowledge about the country and its people through documents and archives. Some from translations from other languages, but very few directly from Mandarin. After translation, Chinese literature is very difficult to understand for a foreign reader, with its genuine breadth and depth of expression.

cc/Jorge Láscar

The Great Wall of China.

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In explaining the lack of knowledge about China, there is one more reason I would like to mention. For a long time, the rest of the world left China quiet, in her sleeping stance, perhaps just because of Napoleon Bonaparte’s old saying, “China is, in fact, a sleeping giant. Let her sleep, for when she wakes, she will move the world.” They don’t want to awaken the sleeping giant. The reality is that China never slept. Not even during its darkest period of the Cultural Revolution. From difficulties, it emerged even stronger. Because in the deepest consciousness of any Chinese person is patience, and confidence in the future. They make long-term plans.

While most people think about today’s life, the Chinese are more concentrated on the future. Suffice it to recall that the plan for the modernization of today’s China was designed 40 years ago. Now, they are working for the decades to come.

Since I studied and attended to Chinese developments for nearly half a century, I thought that the China that has been created inside of me should be brought out to others, with the same content as I have known. I want to tell everything I know about the country and its people. During my stay in China as a student, and as a diplomat as well, I represented a small nation, but, for a certain time, Albanians were almost the only foreigners entering China. The Chinese considered us as part of a different world, the non-Chinese world. What we did, or how we performed, was not just an Albanian message for the ordinary Chinese people. In us they saw the other world, the one which, for many of them, was almost undiscovered.

cc/663highland

Statue of Sun Tzu in Yurihama, Japan.

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Without doubt, the 21st Century is China’s century. The Chinese have a huge population. Therefore, they make giant and safe steps forward. The better we know them, the more we can profit from them. I hope that with my new book, The Light and Shadow Sides of a Friendship that Surprised the World, I will help all those who are interested in taking one step forward towards knowing China. My book is an invitation to dive into the Chinese ocean, full of enigmas and curiosity, but, also, with plenty of challenges. There is also a clear message in it: Very soon China will be the most developed economy in the world. For this reason, it should not be ignored, but taken seriously, in all of its capacities. The Asian giant has already awakened from the lethargic century.

EIR: Congratulations on your book, and thank you very much for this interview. I hope that your book will soon be published in English and Chinese, so that non-Albanian speakers can benefit from your unique insights.

LAROUCHE PAC STATEMENT

Is Mike Pompeo Morally Fit

To Be Secretary of State?

Feb. 19—Though President Donald Trump scored a decisive victory February 5 in his three-year war with the Anglo-American intelligence establishment by being acquitted in his impeachment trial, there is no intention to allow him to depose the “War Party”—the permanent bureaucracy that actually runs Washington—from power.

Everything will be done by London and Wall Street insiders to prevent Trump from soon meeting with Presidents Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping in a three-way summit conference to end the danger of global war, and to reject “climate change,” which is nothing more than the pretext for reintroducing Malthusian genocidal colonialism to Africa, Asia and the world at large. China, in particular, can be a natural partner with a United States whose President states:

Our relationship with China, right now, has probably never been better. We went through a very rough patch, but it’s never, ever been better. My relationship with President Xi is an extraordinary one. He’s for China; I’m for the U.S. But other than that, we love each other.

In fact, the United States and China presently stand poised to shortly conclude one of the biggest trade deals in history—unless it’s disrupted from the inside.

So why, just one week after Trump’s acquittal, would Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, ostensibly a Trump ally, and House Speaker Nancy “The Ripper” Pelosi, both featured speakers at the February 13-15 Munich Security Conference in Europe, be found “reading from the same page” in a wild attack on China? Pelosi denounced President Xi Jinping for undermining American “democratic values, human rights, economic independence and national security.” Pompeo said, “China is increasingly trying to co-opt officials at the state and local level. . . . They’re trying to affect not only our federal level but our state and local officials as well.”

The idea that China is “the biggest threat to the U.S.” is “pre-Nixon 1972” saber-rattling, which goes completely against President Trump’s stated policy. And traditional American policy, as expressed by the Franklin Roosevelt Presidency’s approach to China and Asia 75 years ago, is that there is no problem on this planet that cannot be solved, if the world’s most important countries work as allies. This is the vital message that a summit meeting, occurring perhaps as early as April-May’s 75th anniversary celebrations of the end of World War II, could deliver to a hopeful world.

Instead of acting on behalf of this approach, is Mike Pompeo playing a London-inspired “Great Game” of war and division, acting against the national interests of the United States? Pompeo’s State Department has appointed high-level officials like former State Department Director of Policy Planning Kiron Skinner, who said about China last April 29:

Not to make light of the Cold War, and the reality of nuclear war that could have happened—and the fact that we came close in some instances—but when we think about the Soviet Union and that competition, in a way it was a fight within the Western family. Karl Marx was a German Jew who developed a philosophy that was really within the larger body of political thought . . . that has some tenets even within classical liberalism. . . . That’s not really possible with China. This is a fight with a really different civilization, and a different ideology, and the United States hasn’t had that before.

In response to a later question, Skinner stated, “it’s the first time that we will have a great-power competitor that is not Caucasian”—a statement that is not only racist, but also factually untrue, as anyone who can locate Pearl Harbor on a map or either remembers or has read about World War II knows.

A Question for Mike Pompeo

In early 2017, under President Trump’s direction, then CIA Director Pompeo was told to meet with former NSA Technical Director Bill Binney, an expert on surveillance systems who then informed Pompeo that there was absolutely no proof of a Russian hack. On the contrary, Binney had personally assembled evidence of an intentional insider leak.

Binney informed Pompeo that the entire idea of Russiagate was a fraud, yet Pompeo has to this day remained silent. The question is, Why? To this day, Bill Binney—who fully stands behind his 2017 assessment that the public account regarding the 2016 “Russia hack” is false, because the so-called “hack,” as described, was a physical impossibility—has not been given the courtesy of any response from Pompeo, positive or negative, despite his being tasked by the President to provide Pompeo with his expert assessment.

Had Pompeo taken appropriate action, the coup against President Trump would have been shut down in November of 2017, if not earlier. Why did Pompeo not act then? What has been the cost to the nation of his failure to act? What was the collateral effect of perpetrating the “Russia hack” hoax on undermining the essential working security relationship that the United States needs to have with Russia in various regions of the world, such as Syria?

Right now, it is urgent for the President of the United States, at the earliest possible moment, to hold a summit conference with the Presidents of China and Russia, and perhaps also the President of India, where President Trump will soon visit. A new, fair, financial architecture; a new set of defense agreements crafted around the mutual interests of all four nations; a possible joint “Four Powers” mission for the peaceful exploration of the Moon and Mars; and the development of advanced high-density/high-yield energy technologies, emphasizing fourth generation nuclear fission and thermonuclear fusion research, rejecting the Malthusian premises of the “Green New Deal”—such discussion requires new thinking, different from that of the “Clash of Civilizations” concept that Mike Pompeo espoused at Munich.

Although the clash of civilizations is often mistakenly attributed to author Samuel P. Huntington, the idea actually came from the late British intelligence agent Bernard Lewis, of whom Mike Pompeo said on May 20, 2018, “I owe a great deal of my understanding of the Middle East to his work.” Lewis was a central influence in advocating the Iraq invasion of 2003, which President Trump called the “single worst decision ever made.” Trump famously said in March of 2018, “That was Bush. Another real genius. . . . That turned out to be wonderful intelligence. Great intelligence agency there.”

A crucial experiment can be done to find out exactly which nation Secretary Pompeo really serves. Will he finally respond to the President’s request? Will he allow patriot William Binney to tell this country the truth about the Russia hoax? Or will he continue to serve the interests of those that wish to loose the dogs of world war?

If so, he deserves no place in a Trump Presidency, nor in any other.