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AN OPEN LETTER TO THE WASHINGTON POST by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. May 23, 2004
The Sunday, May 23rd edition of the Washington Post's "Outlook" section, featured an article by CSIS associate James Mann on the subject of the spectacle of self-inflicted catastrophe being exhibited by the recent behavior of the Democratic campaign of Senator John Kerry. The concluding six paragraphs of that published piece make an important point; but, it contemplates Kerry's problem, rather than identifying the underlying, correctable cause of Kerry's tragic performance so far.
On the surface, Senator Kerry's obvious problem is that, whatever the nobler qualifications he might have, those qualities are currently being suffocated by the Democratic National Committee's currently reigning financier mafia. The fact of such pressures on him by his current set of managers, might be tolerable in the case of a professional boxer, but are really no excuse for such submissive behavior by a man engaged in a different profession, seeking to become the President of our republic, at a time we are threatened by the onrushing, crucial problems facing us today.
A man proffering himself to become President under the present conditions of both a war and a global monetary-financial collapse now fully in progress, has no moral right to put his personal ambition opportunistically above the welfare of the nation and its people. As the Post's contributor Mann argues, Kerry's nitpicking amounts to a refusal to acknowledge, even now, that Vice President Cheney's continuing personal commitment, since 1991-1992, to preventive nuclear warsthat, in one country after anotheris already a more ominous disaster than the Vietnam quagmire turned out to be.
So far, Kerry is sometimes all sizzle, and no steak; but, there are long intervals, when even the sizzle can not be heard.
I have written and spoken of this matter in many locations. Here, I capitulate the bare essentials of that argument in language suited to typical readers of the Post.
Why, for example, was Kerry dumb enough, in 2002, to join the pack for Dubya's war? That is one of the two key doubts about Kerry's powers of judgment which is just not going to go away when the campaign against Bush-Cheney begins in late Summer.
"Forty-dollar-a-barrel" petroleum is a warning of the way in which the two crucial issues which Kerry ignores are intertwined: onrushing monetary-financial collapse and the realities of how we got into this Iraq war. Yet, once we agree that Kerry's pratfalls on both issues threaten to turn the November 2004 election into a caricature of its 2000 predecessor, we have to look deeper than Kerry's personal shortcomings, if voters are to achieve an adequate understanding of the challenge before them. As Mann gropes toward an inkling of that deeper reality; what does this show us about what is menacing about the present mental and moral condition of our celebrated two-party system?
The scandal in the Democratic Party's political bedroom, which Mann himself ignores, is the issue of the Party's shameless repudiation of the Franklin Roosevelt legacy. We are in an onrushing global depression, a depression of a systemic, rather than merely cyclical nature, a depression which demands a systemic cure, not the patchwork of "elect me and I will be good to you" promises presently proffered by a desperately flailing Kerry campaign. If Kerry intends to become a serious choice for President sometime between now and November, he must face the challenge represented, in today's world monetary-financial crisis, the need for a new President Franklin Roosevelt, the echo of a Roosevelt whose election proved later to have saved the world from a Synarchist-backed Hitler's Nazi world empire, while rescuing the U.S.A. itself from the kind of fiscal austerity measures which would have produced fascism in the U.S.A. as they did, throughout Europe, over the 1922-1945 interval.
Kerry could never become qualified to actually be President, until he had faced the reality, that, in fact, I am on the record as the only technically and emotionally qualified candidate for that office under present world circumstances. Since I have been not only hated, but feared by relevant elements of our financial establishment, since my 1971 exposure of the notable pro-Schachtian liberal, Prof. Abba Lerner, in a public New York debateand hated even more fervently since my role in prompting President Ronald Reagan's proffer of a Strategic Defense Initiativethings which would have been previously considered morally inconceivable, have been done, to exclude me from public candidates' debates. These immoral actions have included an implicitly racist Democratic National Committee's success in nullifying the 1964 Voting Rights Act. Kerry became the presumptive candidate because he was presumed to be incapable of taking the type of anti-Schachtian measures which Franklin Roosevelt employed to defend the U.S. from the kind of fascist takeover which, in March 1933, had just occurred in Germany. It is not entirely his fault, therefore, that he has shown stubborn incompetence in his campaign since his Iowa and New Hampshire victories; his personal fault was the quality which caused him to be chosen as a person of those attributes which now excite growing despair among those who had hoped to support him.
The "beast-man" characteristics which typified the Nazi system, as echoed in the Abu Ghraib scandal, as should have been foreseen in the case of Guantanamo, are warning of what the re-election of a Bush-Cheney ticket would represent, come about January 2005.
To give credit where credit is due, a German associate of mine took me aside one evening, to review his study of work of the 19th-Century German historian of Ancient Greek history, Ernst Curtius. The relevant passages from Curtius on the Peloponnesian War, which my associate cited, were new, to me, and a valuable addition to my knowledge; but, the point my associate made was, by no means, new. Curtius's account is useful, but it leaves the deeper, systemic roots of the matter to be found elsewhere, as in the dialogues of Plato. The fate of Athens remains a good textbook illustration of the kind of doom which the Bush-Cheney Administration threatens for the U.S.A. of the coming months.
Pericles' Athens, then the leading nation of the alliance which had defeated the Persian Empire's aggression, had turned upon its allies, attempting to establish an Athenian Empire. These crimes against humanity perpetrated by that Athens then, led to the Peloponnesian War which destroyed the power of Athens, and led to the process of cultural and moral decadence in European Civilization, from which the evil which was the Roman Empire later emerged.
My associate's reference to Curtius had merely illustrated the point which was overlooked by historians sympathetic to the cause of Ancient Rome, a point long clear for me from my own decades-long studies of the Pythagoreans and the work of Plato. It was, as Plato presented this in his dialogues, those Sophists of Athens who perpetrated the judicial murder of Socrates, who expressed that moral corruption of the Athens under Pericles and Thrasymachus, the Sophists' corruption which had made the Peloponnesian War possible. It was the Thrasymachus who led the most calamitous phase of that war, who is typified today by the policies of the U.S. under Cheney puppet George W. Bush, Jr. Ironically, for those in the Democratic Party who are soft on Cheney today, the descriptive name of that sophist political party was "The Democratic Party of Athens."
However, my associate was mistaken in the narrow emphasis on Curtius's attention to the Sophists. The same reductionism was the essential quality of the Eleatics earlier, and also, essentially, the rhetorical method of Aristotle later. The Sophists who are the chief target of Plato's dialogues, were only one guise under a succession of corrupting influences which led Ancient Greek civilization into the ruinous effects of the Peloponnesian War and its aftermath. It is that same quality of reductionists' sophistry, typified in the worst extreme by the implicitly pro-fascist legacy of the Congress of Cultural Freedom. It is the Sophists' method, as otherwise known by the Apollo cult of Delphi and the Eleatics, which is expressed in the extreme by existentialist cults popularized in universities today. It is that crooked, "spin-doctor's" method of argument, which provides the philosophical impetus for that corruption of U.S. political life under the rule of the high priesthood of mass-media populism.
The root of Sophistry today is typified by the attitude of creating a commentary adopted as a guide to following an apparent trend in events, rather than acting to bring a truthfully defined outcome into being. It is searching for an explanation for preparing oneself to submit to what is presented as "inevitable," rather than acting to cause what is needed to happen, which is the form in which the negligent crimes of sophistry are widespread in the U.S., and elsewhere, today. Sophistry is merely a way of rationalizing that particularly disgusting sort of opportunism.
The Sophists who perpetrated the judicial murder of Socrates were only typical of the same tradition which has dominated the U.S. political culture increasingly, since the launching of the official, post-Kennedy U.S. war in Indo-China, and Richard Nixon's ominous 1966 meeting in Biloxi, Mississippi. Cheney's war will become our own reliving of the Peloponnesian War, unless we choose a President who will rid us of that reincarnate Thrasymachus which the tradition of Professor Leo Strauss and the Cheney-dominated Bush regime represent today.
The only hope is either that I am nominated, or that Kerry, if nominated, accepts my guidance in respect to improving his behavior in a degree which would be, otherwise, manifestly beyond his present capacity.
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LAROUCHE WARNS OF TERRORIST THREAT FROM LEFT-RIGHT SYNARCHIST OPERATION IN THE AMERICAS
WASHINGTON, May 19U.S. Democratic Presidential pre-candidate Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. today warned of the near-term threat of Synarchist-sponsored terrorism in the United States, and urged governments in the Americas "not to be taken into manipulation by right-left provocations, orchestrated in part from Cheney's crowd, as well as the Spain-pivoted Synarchist mob deploying throughout the Americas at this time."
"What we are concerned about, in the context of former Spanish Prime Minister José Maria Aznar's extraordinary statements from inside the United States, predicting an outburst of terrorism, possibly by mid-June, in the United States, is that Aznar's remarks are part of a Synarchist operation. His remarks signify exactly this: putting an Hispanic label on some terrorist operation. We are getting exactly the typically Synarchist left-right operation that's now being stirred up on Cuba and Venezuela, among other things.
"That's the way these things work: as left-right operations, with Cheney and company on the 'right,' and Castro and Chavez on the 'left.' They have agreed to make Cuba a hot spot. And Cuba being made a hot spot is part of what these Synarchist bastards in Venezuela, who run both sides again there, left and right, are trying to do to unleash violence there.
"This operation goes along with the Samuel Huntington thesis, which calls for anti-Hispanic conflict in the United States, and a related border crisis with Mexico.
"We now have to look seriously, very seriously, at the manipulation of political forces in South and Central America, in correlation with a plan to launch some kind of a terrorist operation of Spanish-speaking characteristics. And Aznar's connections are indicating that he is pointing towards terrorism of a Synarchist type. And we know, of course, that Huntington is essentially a Synarchist asset as well.
"The right-wing crowd in certain churches in the U.S., that are closely tied to the neo-conservatives in the Bush Administration, like Generals Boykin and Miller, these are also Synarchist assets. And this is precisely where the threat to the U.S. and other nations comes from at this time. We should not overlook the fact that the Fellowship crowd, associated with Boykin and Miller and company, have come to the fore in terms of these atrocities in the prisons in Iraq.
"Our warning is that governments should not allow themselves to be taken into manipulation by right-left provocations, orchestrated in part from Cheney's crowd, as well as the Spain-pivoted Synarchist mob deploying throughout the Americas at this time, which I have warned about repeatedly since August 2002.
"These are the same people. Therefore this security question, this security threat to the U.S. and to other nations, must be understood, and action on this must proceed now. We must not pussyfoot around this. These elements are a potential threat to the U.S. and other nations; these elements must be exposed now, and, by exposing them, neutralize them."
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LAROUCHE INTERVIEW WITH WORLD AFFAIRS MONTHLY May 19, 2004
TOM POCHARI: This is World Affairs Monthly, and I have on the line today, Mr. Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., a prominent American economist, politician, and the publisher of the Executive Intelligence Review. He was born in 1922 in New Hampshire in the United States, and he's currently running a campaign to win the Democratic Party's nomination for President of the United States. Welcome, Lyndon. It is a pleasure to have you on the line, and welcome to World Affairs Monthly.
Let me begin, Lyndon, with this little thought here. We know that politics is a bizarre business, a bizarre ritual, yes. [both laugh] And we were just talking off the record there about, what is the truth? Well, today, I want to just get from you, if I can, a summary of a lifetime of thinking about politics, about the United States, and of course, about the United States and its relations with the world. And of course, we know today, right now, that the U.S. has a great deal of trouble getting along with the world, and the United States is perceived at least, right now, to be engaging in quite a bit of troublemaking, especially in the Middle East.
So, why don't I present this idea to you? Everyone talks of peace. I noticed, in your publication often, your writers are saying, "We really ought to have peace, we ought to reconcile opponents to a good," and everybody always talks about prosperity. But, Lyndon, isn't it the goal of the rich, and powerful, to make war, and to impoverish the masses?
LYNDON LAROUCHE: Well, I think you have to look at certain long-term axiomatic features of the nature of humanity. First, man is not an animal. No animal could make a discovery of universal principle, and apply it to change the characteristic behavior of a species, our species.
POCHARI: Okay.
LAROUCHE: Therefore, but the problem has been, that over the course of humanity, even to the present date, the state of humanity has been largely a few people controlling a mass of people, as either herded or hunted human cattle.
POCHARI: That's what I'm getting at, yes.
LAROUCHE: So, therefore, the conflict, the idea of conflict is embedded in this kind of relationship.
Now, progress has been based, especially as in the case of Europe, beginning with the 15th-Century Renaissance, which was spoiled by the Spanish Inquisition, hmm? Which led to another turning point, the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648, which defined a civilized behavior within European civilization, at least at that point, among Jews, Christians, and Islam. That's a principle.
Now, as long as we find ourselves getting outside religious conflict, and looking at the common features of our civilization, which is to recognize the distinction of man from the beast, we can get along quite nicely. The problem is, once you say, "Let's have conflict, let's reduce somebody else to the status of a relative animal," then the conflict is embedded.
That's our essential problem.
But since then, particularly since the U.S. victory in World War II, especially almost at the moment that Roosevelt died, you had people like Allen Dulles and company, who were able to conclude their agreement with the Nazis, especially with Schellenberg. As we saw that through the "rat-line" and similar processes, we brought people out of the Nazi system and incorporated them in what became the NATO system. And therefore, we've had terrorism and other things in our system as a result of that.
Our problem today is that
POCHARI: You're saying that the bad guys really essentially got into the system.
LAROUCHE: They were in it already, but they had a little disagreement, because some people thought, "It's all right to have a British fascist running the world, or an English-speaking one, but not a German-speaking one." So, once the war's over, then they said, "Okay, the English and Germans can come back together, and both have fascism together, happily and merrily."
So, we had this kind of, what we had as a part of this, an attempt to destroy that aspect of European civilization which reflected the Renaissance, the Treaty of Westphalia. And this attack came from people like Allen Dulles and others, through what is called the Congress of Cultural Freedom. And this was an attempt to destroy the Classical culture of Europe, as well as the United States, on which positive development among relations among people within the European civilization, and elsewhere, had previously depended.
Now the problem is, that cultural degeneration, which I call the "Sexual Congress of Cultural Fascism," has induced among our people on both sides of the Atlantic.
POCHARI: So, the wrong ideas, the wrong type of notions of how to live, have gotten into our minds, and we're just degenerating into a barbaric state. Is that a fair summary?
LAROUCHE: Exactly. That's what's happening now. We are barbarians.
Look at this crazy war in the Middle East. It's barbarism!
POCHARI: Yeah, it is, it is, but... but, do you think that this conflict in the Middle East, between, essentially between the Arabs and the West, would it really have reached this feverish pitch had Israel not have been created?
LAROUCHE: Well, in a sense. But the problems of Israel are actually a byproduct of this problem.
Israel is not a sui generis. I mean, Israel... I've had dealings, you know, with the Zionists and other Jews, for years, being raised in Boston and New York City, you know, you can't avoid that. Most of your friends are them. The point is, that you had people like Nahum Goldmann, whom I deeply respected. Ben-Gurion whom I respected less, but whose courage I respected in what he did at the point of the victory in the war, when he said, "We've got to give the land back to them."
So, the problem is not Jewry. The problem is not a Jewish-Arab conflict. But it's something which is orchestrated from the outside, and that's a long story. You may know some of it. So, what has happened is, that in trying to set up a system whereby we use the oil reserves of the Middle East, which are the richest in the world there's probably 80 years of petroleum sitting there in the Arab Gulf, for the world as a wholethey try to use that, ever since Admiral Fisher began to organize for what became World War I: a monopoly of control of oil, and restrict energy development to dependency upon petroleum.
So, what we have is a game is played in the Middle East, in which the Arab-Israeli conflict has been played as a tool of international interests, largely associated with the international petroleum cartel.
POCHARI: Absolutely. I think you've got it right there. So, that would be, according to your vision there, the central problem.
LAROUCHE: Yeah. For example, why don't we have nuclear energy? Why do we take a cheap product, like petroleum, haul it at great expense around the world, rather than using it where it lies, largely as a chemical feedstock for various biological and other purposes?
POCHARI: Sure, sure,
LAROUCHE: Why don't we have nuclear energy, produce hydrogen-based fuels in local areas? And it's a much more efficient way, and we'll save a lot of smut and other kinds of things running loose.
POCHARI: Sure. And now, we've got this war. Saddam Hussein's people, as I see it, planned for it. They invited the United States inand Israelto attack Iraq. And of course now American forces are occupying Iraq, almost on behalf of Israel, so this conflict that you're talking about, is escalating in a really rapid way.
LAROUCHE: Yes. We....
POCHARI: And what would you, what kind of analysis, and what kind of predictions would you have, regarding this conflict in Iraq?
LAROUCHE: Well, because my views have been known in this area for so many years, particularly since the middle of the 1970s, I'm in a position where I'm the only American leading figure who has respect among the Arab world, and who understands something about the way the sane Israelis think about this thing, about the Arabs.
So therefore, when I say, that I propose a policy for Southwest Asia, a security agreement which should be backed by the United States, these forces are listening to what I'm saying. They're saying, they would agree. Can we get this out of the United States? And thus, I'm working on that. And I would say that if we get rid of what Cheney represents, and that crowd, and get a saner operation, the United States would have to recognize, that it's in the U.S. interest to get out of this operation maybe not entirely out in terms of helping to rebuild the area but out in terms of a conflict factor. Turn it over to the United Nations. Give the country back to the Iraqis, and let them develop their own country, with this experience under our belt.
If we at the same time, put our force to get an agreement between Palestinians and Israel, along the line that Rabin, for example, proposed, that line, which is equitable, then I think we can have a security agreement for the Southwest Asia region, which could hold.
POCHARI: You were implying, of course, that the forces, the interests, the economic interests, promoting the conflict between the Jews and the Arabs in the Fertile Crescent, is a quite strong one. I mean, why would they give up this huge, huge boon to their business?
LAROUCHE: That's up to largely the American people. We're now in an election campaign, and the popularity of Bush, and the popularity of Cheney, and what he represents, is falling by the day. So, you're in a situation, we're in a world depression, we're in a monetary-financial crisis beyond anything modern Europe has experienced. This crisis means... We're also in a war, which is hopeless. It was stupid to begin with; it can not be won; it can only lead to a Dark Age, and everybody with brains, who is not a fanatic, like Hitler, knows it.
Therefore, out of a negative feature, the fact that there is no way to live by continuing this policy, is inspiration enough for people to say, "Let's find a solution." And I can say, that in the United States establishment, that is, among the military, the intelligence community, and many other people, the Congress, ...
POCHARI: They would agree with you and I...
LAROUCHE: On this thing, on this point. They might disagree on the years and months; but to go in this direction, yes, and now, do it. They're for it.
POCHARI: Now, when World War I got started, Lyndon, it was widely perceived to be sort of a war fomented by the rich, and economic interests in Europe. And yet, millions of boys did end up in the trenches, and getting mutilated and blown away. And of course it went on for years. So, I just, I don't want to be a devil's advocate here, but I don't know if I see this 50-60-70 year conflict winding down so rapidly.
LAROUCHE: Well, there's a historical feature to this which people don't understand. Once you understand it, you become more frightened about the future of humanity, precisely for the reasons you said.
POCHARI: I'm glad you brought that up. Explain this.
LAROUCHE: Well, but you also, you also understand it. Now you know what to do about it, if you can get people to do it.
POCHARI: So, you're figuring, that if we do discuss this, and get people to understand at least some part of it, or beginning to understand it, then we're going to go forward.
LAROUCHE: Yes, because look what's happened to Europe. Europe today, continental Europe today, as a result of two world warsthere's no guts in Europe, continental Europe! The British Isles are sitting in a kind of predatory position, but as a former power, which tries to control the world as much as it can, through influence on the United States. So, therefore, you have a continuation of what has been going on since Shelburne was taking over the leadership of the British East India Company, politically, from 1763 on.
The idea of maintaining an Anglo-American-Dutch liberal imperial power, by orchestrating events, such that the nations of Europe are constantly put at each other's throat, so continental Europe can not become a challenge to this maritime financier power. That's been the mechanism, which has taken various forms at various times, but it's still here.
If we understand that, and maybe this great depression, which is going to wipe out most of the banking system, except that that's put into government receivership, for survival, that this may teach us a lesson about, maybe imperialism of this financial type is not the way to go.
POCHARI: It's not viable. Well, I'm glad you mentioned the meltdown that you feel is coming, the financial meltdown.
But, let me first ask you this, Lyndon: What about the American empire? Do you believe that it can ... I believe it is collapsing right nowbut can it collapse, essentially, without destroying the world, and bringing the world into some sort of global conflict, as many empires do, when they collapse?
LAROUCHE: That's the reason I'm immediately concerned about becoming President. Because if Cheney were brought back into office, through the re-election of Bush, I can guarantee you, that by somewhere between November and January, of this year, and next year, that Cheney would launch a nuclear weapons attack on Iran; an attack, maybe by sending Sharon to do it, on Syria; nuclear weapons dropped on North Korea, and so forth and so on.
Now, what this means, is we're looking at the potential of a dark age. Just like what happened in the 14th Century. Different circumstances, but the same logic. So, the point is: Can we come to our sensesinstitutionally, not just in terms of individual people, but institutionallyto realize that this is not the way to go. To get rid of Cheney, to get rid of what he represents.
I'm looking also at this very interesting thing about what's happening to Conrad Black these days. Conrad Black's embarrassment has become a real vulnerability of what we call the neo-conservatives within the United States, because he was sort of a Mother Hen for this crowd for a while, financially.
But if we could break through, and break out of this, I think it's possible to succeed.
Now being what I am, I don't say I've got a guarantee on anything. What I'm saying is, we've got a chance.
POCHARI: What would you say this chance is? Give it a probability, for the audience out there. They're weighing their probability there. Do you think that we have a fairly good chance, or is it a small chance?
LAROUCHE: We have a chance, probably a good chance. Look, there are, in the United States, me working from the inside, in terms of our military, in terms of our intelligence professionals, in terms of other people, things like that, it's an excellent chance.
POCHARI: Well, tell me a bit about your thinking about this international financial system that youyou've thought about this a lot. In fact, I noted that Viktor Gerashchenko, former Central Bank governor in Russia, has praised your thinking on this subject: So I wanted to see if you could just summarize, not in too many words, but in some detail, what exactly are we facing, and what can we expect, say, in the next five years, regarding this depression, that, obviously, is heading our way?
LAROUCHE: If you had a President in the United States, who followed the thinking of Franklin Roosevelt, as Roosevelt in 1932 campaigned, 1933 as President; if you followed that kind of thinking on monetary reform, as expressed in large degree by the 1944 agreement on a Bretton Woods system; if you have Russia collaborating with that, because Russia represents a very peculiar kind of potential, global potential, at this time; if European nations will give up the so-called kind of monetary banking system they've had so far, in favor of this so-called U.S. type model, the Roosevelt model, then a President of the United States, with his partners in other countries, could rescue the world from the danger of a new dark age, and could, over a period of a quarter century, build up the world economy to a better condition than it was, say, in 1960-1964.
That's possible. This means hard work. But it does mean, as I see from history, if you can set into motion justified optimism about the future, that then you have the political situation in which you can actually carry forward solutions for the concrete problems.
POCHARI: Well, don't you think, though, that as some of my contacts tell me this, that these distressing events are playing out because, in a way, history is ... this is our fate, history is being written for us, and we really don't have much role in determining these events. I mean, what would you say to that kind of argument? Not exactly a deterministic argument, but you know, how much can we really affect? For example, if Tony Blair is a fanatic, can we really do anything about that?
LAROUCHE: (laughs) I think the British institutions could do something about it, if they wish to do something about it.
Now, the fact that the whole thing, shebang, is coming down, may get somebodyand I don't think that Gordon Brown is necessarily the solutionbut nonetheless, there is tumult in the United Kingdom, on this issue. There are many people who have not always been friends of mine, who at this point will tend to agree with me, some influential circles, on the concrete issues of economy, concrete issues of war and peace.
So, I think the condition exists where, if we get the kind of agreement, which I think we can get, not guaranteed, I think we can get it. There are enough people in Europe, in the United Kingdom, in the United States, in Russia and elsewhere, who appreciate, from their knowledge of history what kind of a threatthat this is it.
So, therefore, we have to finally grow up, and come to some kind of agreement, a partnership among sovereign nation-states, and get the world out of this mess while we can.
POCHARI: I tend to agree with you. At least, I believe that it's possible. But I just, from my own personal experience, I just doubt that these important, powerful people around the world, are that afraid of the risk. They still are a bit arrogant, aren't they? Don't you think that?
LAROUCHE: Oh, that's the Baby-Boomer generation! You have people in their 50s and 60s who are running the world, who never did a lick of work in their life, and don't know what work is!
We used to be, the United States used to be the world's leading producer society, in agriculture and industry, as nation-state. Other parts of the world admired that, and emulated that. We turned away from that, and we produced a generation which went to college and took their clothes off, and took drugs in the 1960s, and never really came back to reality. And they're now running the world, in most of the top positions in the United States!
Now the point is, we have a young generation, who, in a sense, are the children of the Baby-Boomer generation. They're now in their 20s, particularly that in the 18 to 25 bracket, which I'm working with. These young people are of a different temper. They are the constituency to run the world a quarter-century from now. They are a constituency which, like a youth movement, of any time, is the vehicle by which you change the prevalent trends in philosophy and behavior of the older generation in society. This is our one chance, and I'm concentrating largely on building that youth movement.
POCHARI: So the young people, in your mind, are going to respond. They see these realities then, Lyndon.
LAROUCHE: In their own way. They don't fully understand it, but they see that this reality exists. They see themselves as dumped into a no-future society. And they see 25 to 50 years ahead of their life, is condemned to prison in a no-future society. They don't like it. Their parents are flying into comfort-zone fantasies, away from reality. They would like to get their parents, set fire to the house, and get their parents to come back to reality, in the hope, that by the combined forces of those who are now in their 50s and 60s, who are occupying positions of power, will be influenced by the younger generation, to work together, to get us out of this mess, as youth movements in the past have done that.
POCHARI: Okay. Do you believe that Arab youth is going to help us reach this reconciliation, worldwide reconciliation?
LAROUCHE: I think you're in the kind of crisis, where if you have positive developments toward the Arab world, from outside the Arab world, then you are going to find a responsiveness. If you can get a peace between the Palestinians and Israelis, as part of that. I think that is an absolutely indispensable element of getting world peace, right now.
POCHARI: Do you believe that the Arab leaders, the bunch that the West is supporting, and maintaining in power, do you believe that they see any interest in getting a peace achieved in the Middle East?
LAROUCHE: Oh, absolutely, there is. For example, Syria is a realistic country in its own terms. It has its own game it plays. Turkey is very serious. It's not an Arab country, but it's a very serious factor. You have neighboring countries like Armenia and Azerbaijan, which are significant flanking factors. Iran, significant. Egypt is a very significant country.
Now, they understand some of these things. They understand them fairly well. They also know that if we don't get this kind of change, that they are finished. So, therefore, better to make an accommodation to a new arrangement in the region, a Southwest Asia arrangement, than to be chopped into pieces.
It's that simple. And everyone who really understands the situation, from the Arab side, as well as from our side, understands that: Either get peace now, or get chopped up.
POCHARI: When do you think people in the Middle East started to realize this, that they'd better get with it, or be chopped up? A couple years ago? When did this consciousness begin?
LAROUCHE: I've seen more and more of this. I've been at trying to get Middle East peace, particularly starting with the Palestinian-Arab peace, but then even back in 1975, even then, I was going to various Arab countries, and pitching the same thing.
Now, at that point, you had the Labor-Zionist faction, was the dominant faction in Israel. And in 1976, my friends in Israel said, "Look, you've got to get it now, because what's about to happen is be gone," which has sort of been the way it's been since then.
So, the Arab world understands this. The most sophisticated people in the Arab world understand this. And if we make them credible, by supporting a package which ensures a future for the security of their region, they will work to defend that, and they will get the support of their own people in doing so.
I mean, apart from the, you know, apart those around the Muslim Brotherhood and so forth, these factors, this can all come back together.
POCHARI: What would you say to the question that, well, the issue, that I perhaps raised recently in my last feature article: that the world's population is at the breaking point? You know, the so-called carrying capacity of the planet is reaching a rather dangerous level. And, you know, there's only so many resources to go around. You know, we in the West hog up most of these resources. And of course, billions out there, outside the walls of civilization, Western civilization, want a piece of the action. What about that, Lyndon?
LAROUCHE: I just had, was a co-sponsor of a conference which occurred in Moscow at the Vernadsky Geological Museum. The people who are associated with that are the world's leading experts on Eurasian raw materials, things like thatearthquakes and that sort of thing. The scientific potential which Russia developed, together now with Kazakstan, in dealing with the region of Central and North Asia, which contains a very large portion of world resources, that implicitly, this group knows how to deal with it.
We do not have a catastrophe facing mankind because of population. We have a catastrophe threatening mankind, because of mismanagement. If we want to manage things properly, and regenerate resources, and things of that sortwhich we can dothen we can solve these problems. There is not really a crisis of humanity; there's a crisis of political leadership of humanity, not a crisis of humanity.
POCHARI: I would agree, I would agree. However, I have been to these major cities around the world, Bombay, Mexico Cityyou know, they're really all alike. They're just huge, huge numbers, up to 20-30 million people, really, in a small area, as you know. And you begin to wonder, I think any sane person would begin to wonder, how do all these people manage their affairs? And how can they be gainfully employed?
LAROUCHE: Well, you have, the question was posed recently by the just concluded election in India, in which you had about 300 million Indians, who are fairly well off by European standards, physically. You have over 600 million who are terribly off.
POCHARI: Yeah, in the countryside.
LAROUCHE: Exactly. But, the point is, I've seen this stuff. In parts of Delhi, where people have fled from the countryside into these new slums, right in Delhi itself, where disease in rampant. So, the point is, that there was a revolt by the Indian population against the kind of ideology which is characteristic of the leadership of the leading layer of the Democratic Party in the United States today, as well as the Republicans. This idea of the upper stratumthat the lower classes exist for the pleasure oand comfort of the upper stratum.
POCHARI: Well, essentially slavery.
LAROUCHE: Sure.
POCHARI: That's what I started the interview out with. It's this idea that, we talk of peace, we hear of peace, we hear of prosperity, but: Isn't it the goal of the rich to make war, and of course, to impoverish the masses?
LAROUCHE: I think it's the other way around. There are certain people in society, who think of themselves as an elite, and the model for this, of course, is the Venetian financier oligarchy, which has been a pestilence of Europe for a very long time. That this kind of mentality, which sometimes disguises itself as liberalismthat is, they're liberally oppressive, liberally predatory, and they call it "free trade": That this indifference to the well-being of humanity, this hostile indifference to the well-being of humanity, is a disease. And I would hope that in the process of bringing up a new generation of young people, faced with a kind of no-future society we now have threatening us, that we can finally have an impact on the conscience of the world, that we can no longer go on like that.
POCHARI: I hear what you're saying, I think people are beginning to recognize this around the world. Yet, you have this fellow, the former prime minister of Spain, Jose Maria Aznar, and I understand he's given a speech, May 15, I believe, at Chapman University outside Los Angeles, in which he says, "I think we're going to see another 9/11, before the election."
LAROUCHE: He should know. He should know.
POCHARI: (laughs) Can you tell us about him?
LAROUCHE: Well, sure. What you have, remember that, in the context of the Versailles Treaty, there was the creation of a European world monetary system, called the Versailles monetary system, which was the fag-end of the British gold standard, which collapsed then later in 1931. Now, in that time, as Keynes indicated, in the context of the Versailles agreements, that what had been agreed upon was a system that would not work: that is, German war reparations, which sustain a bankrupt France, and United Kingdom, which in turn would pay its debts to New York City, and that was essentially the structure of the world.
From the beginning, this thing was doomed.
So, at the same time, a group of international financier agents, oligarchs, decided on what became known as the Synarchist International. This group of people created every fascist regime in Europe, on continental Europe, from the 1922 appointment of Mussolini by Volpe di Misurata, all the way through the end of Hitler. And we have now taken some of that back. It continues life in the United States today, and elsewhere.
So the problem has been, that this particular oligarchy, this oligarchical force, which is the legacy, even before fascism, but of fascism, is operating. Now this was terrorism in the 1970s. These were the remains of an SS General Wolfe in Italy, which were brought into power by Allen Dulles at the end of the war. They were saved.
The rat-line that went to Argentina; the Nazis of Spain. So the Nazi apparatus, under Walter Schellenberg and company, exists today.
POCHARI: So, they're still alive and kicking.
LAROUCHE: This is our big problem. This crowd is up to the same tricks. And this is what Cheney represents. This is what I've called the Beast-Man phenomenon, which identifies itself with Tomas Torquemada, the Grand Inquisitor, from 1480 on. It was a typification of this kind of evil.
POCHARI: So, a dark vision of humanity.
LAROUCHE: Exactly.
POCHARI: Kill 'em now, before they even come at me, at all.
LAROUCHE: This is, you know, you had the case of Southern France of the Crusade there: "Kill them all and let God sort them out."
POCHARI: Right, right.
LAROUCHE: And this kind of mentality is still going on. This, people have to become aware of.
POCHARI: What the source of this mentality, Lyndon? Try to explain your vision of how this came up in humanity's radar screen. I mean why are we prone to this.
LAROUCHE: I studied ancient Babylon; I studied the cult of Apollo; I studied the Eleatics; I studied the Sophists, the Peloponnesian war, the Romans and their wars; the ultramontane system from the end of the 8th Century, or beginning of the 9th Century AD, up into the Renaissance and so forth. This tradition of evil in society, has continued over a long period of time. And we have to become conscious of this, as a force of evil. Don't mystify it. Understand it: That you can turn man into a beast. And this is the problem we have. This is what Cheney represents: the behavior in the prisons in Iraq, the perfect image of the Beast-Manthis is Hitler, the Hitler system, the same mentality.
POCHARI: Horrific treatment of human beings.
LAROUCHE: This is the idea of power, like Inquisition; the religious warfare from 1511 to 1648 in Europe. This is the kind of problem. This is what Hugh Trevor-Roper described as the Little New Dark Age. This warfarethis is the problem.
And I think, if we finally become aware of this, as people should be, and we can see in ourselves the corrupting influence of this kind of Beast-Man attitude, and see what it means for our future today, we may decide that that is evil, and get rid of it.
POCHARI: We may decide. Now, you seem hesitant to say that we will decide.
LAROUCHE: I'm a warrior, I know the wars I have to fight, and I have no guarantee of victory. I simply have to be prudent, and hopefully wise as well, in seeking victory.
POCHARI: But, but, you do have this gloomy frame of mind.
LAROUCHE: Not really.
POCHARI: Yeah, a little bit. Not really? Because in your lifetime, Lyndon, you've seen these enormous upheavals.
LAROUCHE: Yeah, I know.
POCHARI: Doesn't it seem like it's just our destiny to go through these cycles?
LAROUCHE: No, I don't believe it. What I've seen over the time, I've seen the failure of leadership. I've seen those characteristics of individuals which represented a failure of leadership. And I know that if you can be aware of this dangerthe Hamlet problemif you can understand this, if you can understand what we should understood from the study of Classical tragedy: If we can eliminate this factor of tragedy, within the leadership of society, we can avoid these things. But if you don't take this into account, if you don't understand the Classical conception of tragedy, as a historic phenomenon, not just a dramatic phenomenon, if you don't understand that, I think you don't have the competence to go through this sort of thing.
POCHARI: Please explain the tragedy, that you see as fundamental to the human condition.
LAROUCHE: Well, one of the tragedies, is people think that money is real. Money is only a fiction, which governments should create and regulate, because it is intrinsically insane. We need it as a medium of exchange. We need it for the arrangements for long-term capital formation, which we need to have long-term physical capital formation. That is, you must create wealth today, which can not be paid back as debt, maybe until 25 years from now, when the thing has been used up.
So, but you must control that. You must have a regulated system of economy, a protectionist form of economy, and protectionist form of world economy, which should be todayuse the model of what Roosevelt prescribed as a fixed-exchange-rate monetary system, for the post-war period. That served us well.
POCHARI: So, all the major currencies should be fixed, as some rate of exchange to one another.
LAROUCHE: Exactly. And in that way you could have a 1-2% long-term interest rate, for things like basic economic infrastructure. If you can prevent inflation in relative prices of currency, then that debt is fungible over a period as long as a generation or longer. If you can do that, then you can come out of this depression, and you can go on to prosperity as we have not seen before.
POCHARI: So, we need an updated Bretton Woods.
LAROUCHE: Absolutely. We need a Bretton Woods model as a precedent, applied to the different circumstances but similar circumstances, today.
POCHARI: Do you believe that Jean-Claude Trichet, or Greenspan, would agree with that?
LAROUCHE: No, Greenspan is an idiot, when it comes to economics. But he's a dangerous and fanatical idiot. He has created more bubbles than all of the other heirs of John Law put together! We call him "Bubbles" Greenspan, who sits in his bathtub, probably playing with his rubber ducky, coming up with these schemes.
POCHARI: But isn't he doing this at the behest of the financial powers there in Wall Street? This is what Wall Street wants, right?
LAROUCHE: In a sense. Wall Street doesn't really want, in a sense. What Wall Street wants
POCHARI: I mean, it's a short-termit's a short-term party.
LAROUCHE: Anybody under 65 years of age on Wall Street is clinically insane and stupid. There are a few people around, who still know what an economy is, even from a monetarist standpoint. These guys, as you see by these scandals, the Enron scandal: typical. They have no idea of what they're doing. They are obsessed by money per se. Nominal wealth, per se.
And, what happened in 1987 was a shock. 1987, the stock market collapsed then, in October, called the shot. At that time, Greenspan, who took over from Volcker, stepped in and invented a new kind of money, called side-bets, otherwise called financial derivatives. You're talking about quadrillions, trillions of dollars worth of financial derivatives, turning over each year, against a world economy whose net product is measured in a few $10 trillion or so a year.
It's an absolutely insane situation. Everyone should recognize it. But those who like to have the parties, who like to have the skyscraper penthouses, and things like thatthey want their "lifestyle." They don't care about the future. They want their "lifestyle," and they're not worried about this wife they have, because they're going to get a next one, another one next week.
POCHARI: That's right. Well, then ultimately, we're looking at human greed. That is just overpowering.
LAROUCHE: Exactly. We're looking at a form of mass clinical insanity.
POCHARI: And, you know, you mentioned the tragedy. I mean, Shakespeare talked about this, and great philosophers have looked into this, but, is there any solution, Lyndon? I mean, explain. I mean, I'm not teasing you here. I've reallyhow are we going to deal with human greed?
LAROUCHE: Ahhhh! There's only one way to deal with it. That is, in a formal sense. And that, we have it in forms of Classical forms of art. We have it, you look for it in Classical Greek sculpture, Phidias and so forth. You find this the Classical Greek tragedy, to some degree. You see it in Plato, in his dialogues. You see it in all great Classical art: this quality of insight into the difference between man and a beast. When man recognizes that he's not just an animal, but that he has a quality of insight into the laws of the universe, at least on a modest scale, he sees himself as different, and sees ideas which empower man to rise above the condition of beast, that ideas are the most essential asset of mankind.
And this Classical viewpoint, which we used to have, at least in many of our privileged institutions, this Classical viewpoint is what we need.
POCHARI: I think you're right. I think that's brilliant. In other words, this huge brain we have, and I've written this, is our solution. The old brain, the reptilian brain, or the cerebellum, this thing is obviously a menace, because this is the brain that Cheney represents, that Cheney worships. And yet, humankind does realize, that we don't need to descend into the depthswe can rise up.
LAROUCHE: Yes, well, this is called the Sublime, the tears of joy. The sense of "tears of joy": To see the sadness of a tragedy we're in, and to see the solution which would bring us out of the tragedythat's the highest level of emotion, which of course is called by Plato in his Socrates, out of the mouth of Socrates, as agape@am, in the Greek. Which is what Western civilization was presumably based upon: This concept of agape@am.
POCHARI: Lyndon, one final question. You mentioned young people. Do you find that they are listening to this message? Do they really sense the profound tragedy that's under way?
LAROUCHE: I tell you what's funny. I have a fairly large group of young people internationallyit's growing rapidly, of this 18 to 25 group. And I understand them. Other people try to imitate this kind of youth groupit doesn't work. They don't understand them. You have toand the reason I understand them, is because I think in terms of the Sublime. I think in terms of trying to give them a sense of a mooring, in a sense of their own humanity, in a Classical sense.
The problem with these guys, they're trying to exploit them! They're trying to use them as political cannon-fodder. I don't. I say, don't try to run them, don't try to direct them. Stimulate them, give them some leadership, give them some inspiration.
POCHARI: Give them what they want.
LAROUCHE: They'll do it themselves. And that's...
POCHARI: And they're responding quite vigorously, then.
LAROUCHE: I have a wonderful time with these young guys.
POCHARI: Well, Lyndon, thank you so much joining me, and I reallydo you have any final? That's how I'll end this interview: Would you like to sum up your most important message? How would you sum up your most important message?
LAROUCHE: We are on the verge of throwing out of the United States government, those elements which have to be thrown out. That is what is the good news.
Now, the bad news is, we haven't done it yet.
POCHARI: Now, why? You've got me asking another question. Why is it taking so long, Lyndon, to throw out these bad cats?
LAROUCHE: When you've lived as long as I have, and you know history as I do, you cultivate a certain patience about the whole business. Don't look for instant gratification. Just do the job.
POCHARI: So, we know what the job is, we're going to accomplish it. However, it does take time.
LAROUCHE: It's taken a long time, many generations.
POCHARI: Thank you, Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. Thank you so much for joining World Affairs Monthly.
LAROUCHE: Thank you.
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