FROM THE BOSTON DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION:
Here are the opening remarks by Democratic Presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche, at a campaign webcast from Boston, on the eve of the Democratic Party Convention, July 25, 2004.
Thank you! Thank you, all. This is going to be fun time!! So, prepare for the fun.
You know, I've advocated fun over a number of years, repeatedly. People sometimes have misunderstood me, and I've had to correct them, as to what I consider fun. Fun is doing good, in a world that likes to do badand then, laughing at the reaction you get!
All right, now, today, I received a copy of this magnificent document: It's the New York Times Sunday magazine section. It's infamous around the country. Today, it has a feature, written by Matt Bai, which is actually an example of the folly we're going to laugh about when we're having fun in future times to come. Now, the author of this has consulted with a number of people, who are passable idiots, including the son of George Soros, and so forth, who think they have a map to take the election in 2008, by reorganizing the party.
Now, the problem is, that the fellow who is leading this [Andy Rappaport] is 45 years of age. He's a fairly wealthy person, by his standards, at least. And they think that they're going to rebuild the party, based on what? On a Democratic imitation of what the Republicans, or the Republican apparatus, has done to the Republican Party over a recent period. Now, laugh at them now! Be the first to laugh: Because, it's not going to happen!
The point is, what you've got here, in the case of this article in the New York Times, you have people who are typical of the underside, that is, a 45-years-of-age Baby-Boomerthat's the underside of the Baby-Boomer generation; the last gasp of the Baby-Boomer generation. They gave up after that, making Baby-Boomers. The model production line collapsed!
But, they have a certain disease, which I'll get to, here. But, the essential thing is, is that they have a conception of themselves, of the United States, and history, which is unreal. It is this generation, which was created in the middle of the 1960s, in the aftermath of the missile crisis, the aftermath of the assassination of Kennedy, and the launching of the official war in Indo-China. This is called the "Baby-Boomer generation," for their noise-level, especially. This is the '68er generation.
As a result of an operation, of which they were victimsthey were not the authors of this, they were the victims of itas a result of this, we had the '68er phenomenon. As a result of the '68er phenomenon, and of things that ensued, the United States, which was, up to that time, the world's leading producer society; was the nation which had defeated the Depression; the only force which had taken leadership, in actually preventing a fascist world dictatorship; of saving the United States from a depression; of building us into a leading power, againand all that began to be destroyed with the advent of the Baby-Boomer generation onto leading universities of the United States, where they were being trained to become the leaders of the country, which they largely are, today. They occupy most of the chairs (if they can still fit within them; they do tend in that direction); they're running the government. They're running the leading institutions, they're running the companiesinto the ground. They're running the economy into the ground.
The Baby-Boomer generation is the generation which changed the United States, through their development and their continuing role, from the world's leading producer society, into the world's leading parasite, and a bankrupt parasite, at that.
We transformed our country, from a country of the world's leading farmers, or leading labor force, in terms of industrial productionmachine-tool design, and things of that sort. We were the leaders. We have been transformed into a bread and circuses societyand less and less bread.
We have, in the past 20-odd years, we have destroyed the lower 80% of our population, in terms of income brackets. These groups are living on less and less and less, in real terms. The upper 20% of the U.S. population, owns more than half of the total income, while those in the lower 80% become more and more poor. The growth of homelessness, of destitution, of people living in $400,000-mortgage shacks, which they will probably lose anytime soon, now, when the real-estate-mortgage bubble collapses.
This is the great transformation! These guysin the New York Times reportedwho propose to rebuild the Democratic Party, are its grave-diggers! They will rebuild nothing! In fact, they're finished, one way or the other. They are not the future. They're an ugly caricature of the recent past.
Now, what I've done, largely because of prompting, is produce "A Real Democratic Platform for November 2004," because of the fact that the Democratic Party has a platform which is not a platform. That is, the Democratic Party, this season, did not want to have a platform. They intended not to have one. But, as a matter of form, they had to produce one. So, they produced one. Now, it's a travesty; it's garbage. What is said about the United States and policy, means nothing! It's worthless! It's a completely worthless effortand it was never intended to do anything! But, for the sake of appearing to be a platform, it has a special committee on foreign policy. Now, the committee on foreign policy, of the Democratic National Committee platform, as proposed, is going to one thing: It's going to give us more wars overseas! And, it's put people in foreign countries on notice, that they're going to be at war with the United States: That is not very good policy, for a putative, presumptive candidate, John Kerry, who wants to make himself the friend of the world. It's not going to work.
This thing is finished.
On top of it all, while these fellows babble about the future, they babble about what's going to happen between 2004 and 2008: They're silly babblers! It'll never happen! The world is going into the biggest financial crisis in modern history! This thing is about to collapse, it's only a matter of when. It is already collapsing!
Most people who think they're rich, are bankrupt! They're living on fictitious income. They're living on faith, not on income, but on the "wealth effect," on borrowed money! On loans, they will never be able to repay. It's called "wealth" these days. On stocks, that are really worthless. On financial assets, that are really worthless.
The United States Federal Reserve System is bankrupt! Why is it bankrupt? Because the major banks, of which it is composed, are bankrupt! The European national banking systems are bankrupt! We're heading into the biggest financial collapse the world has ever conceived of. This is not a depression: It's an international financial-monetary-economic breakdown crisis!
Now, that's what we have to deal with. It is a worse crisis than Franklin Roosevelt faced when he came into office, in March of 1933. But, he solved the problem then. And by using the same philosophy, the same conception of the United States, the same conception of the world, that he employed then, and applying that to the present situation: we can save this nation and save civilization.
Now, you look at the convention which is about to open up, tomorrow afternoon. It will be, in large degree, a silly affair, at least to the degree that the people who control the convention, are able to control it. Because there's not a brain in a carload, in the kind of thinking that's going into the leadership of that convention. It's an orchestrated farce; it is not reality.
But, nonetheless, I am determined that the Democratic Party shall win the November election. And, we are going to do it. Because they've created a mental and moral bankruptcya vacuumin the leadership of the Democratic Party. But, we can not stand by, and say, "Okay, we are right, and they are wrong." We can not let this country go to Hell, out of spite and anger, against their foolishness. This is our country! It belongs to us, historicallynot to them! And, we have to defend it. We have to defend it, through the institutions of government, which were created, in a republic and a Constitution, which is the oldest in the world! No Constitution of any other nation, has lasted as long as the Constitution of the United States! This is the finest system of government, which has ever existed on this planet, despite some of the rogues and thieves that have taken over and run it. This is the nation, under whose Constitution, the world was saved from a depression; the world was saved from the threatened empire of world Nazism!
There is no other nation on this planet today, which could, with its present Constitution and present leadership solve this problem! The United States, not by being an empire, but by being a leader, can play the kind of role that Franklin Roosevelt played, back in the 1930s and 1940s, while he still lived. This nation is the only thing, in terms of available leadership, which can turn the world around, bring nations together, with the kind of effort, typified or echoing what Franklin Roosevelt did before, can make this nation, again, a leadernot an empirebut a leader among equals, in building a world which is fit to live in.
The only instrument we have for this, formally, is the Democratic Party. Not as owned by some bunch of fools who wrote that silly thing that they're going to issue as a platform this week, for the sake of form. Or, maybe they'll withdraw it, after they see mine. Not because they like my program, but because they're scared. And they tend to run away from things, you knowthey're that type, Baby-Boomer type.
But, what we have to do, is take the party, which really belongs to us, because it belongs to the people who are not represented by the present leadership of the party: It belongs to the lower 80% of the family-income brackets in the United States, who are not represented, although Cynthia McKinney won an election recently, which the Democratic national leadership doesn't like too much. It belongs to us.
The Republican Party has many good people in it. We're going to coopt them. We're not necessarily going to coopt them into the Democratic Party, but we're going to cooperate with them, because there are many good Republicans, who don't like the idiocy that's going on under Republican auspices now. They also have a sense of patriotism. And we intend to have a Congress, which will be dominated by patriots, patriots who will be designated variously as Democrats or Republicans. But, as patriots, they will learn to work together, and live together, as they did under Franklin Roosevelt: To work for the common good of the nation. To look at issues, on the merits. To look at proposals on the merits. And to rebuild this nation.
So therefore, my intention is, while I'm focussed on the events of the convention, while I'm here; while I'm active in the environment of the convention; while I have many friends who are participating in the convention, at various levels of status in the Democratic Party, I will be doing that.
But, the thing I'm really going to do, is going to begin here, in Boston, on Fridaythe day after the convention: I will be launching my campaign of leadership, perhaps not as a Presidential candidate, unless they suddenly get struck by lightning here, or struck by the hand of God, or a Damascus Road conversion taking place. But, if that does not occurand I welcome if it does occur![laughter, applause] I'm prepared to take the job and do the job. And, the difference between me and them is, I'm qualified!
But, in any case, on Friday: I will be leading, and there's nothing they can do to stop itexcept kill me, and that wouldn't be a good ideaI will be leading the fight to bring a Democratic candidacy into the White House, in January. And you are going to be part of it.
They tried to exclude me out. I include them in! [applause]
So, that's the general war-plan. So, we will be launching a political action committeeofficiallyon Friday. The papers are already worked out. It's all formal and fine. On Friday, the day after the conventionstay! Don't leave right away. Stay! Because, on Friday, we're going to launch the official, real fighting campaign, to take the Presidency away from what occupies it now.
And, also, at the same time, to try to move the people of the United States, to move Republicans as well as Democrats, and people who don't associate with either party (probably for good reasons!), we're going to bring them together, to act for the nation. Because, you know, once you enter office, as a Presidentespecially as a Presidentyou no longer belong to your party: You belong to the people of the United States. You take an oath! An oath that you belong to the people of the United States! To its Constitutionnot to a party! When you become President, you become the President of the nation, not of a party. The party's authority goes to the sidelines. It becomes part of the political process, but it's on the sidelines.
In the matter of government, especially in a time of crisis, there are no parties! There are people. There are elected representatives, and people. There are institutions, in society, labor movements, farm organizations, others, part of society. They're the interest of the people. The President of the United States, assembling the forces of the government of the United States, the state governments, the Federal government's institutions, must put forth programs, programs of actionnot of sentiment, not of appearancewhich will save this nation from the worst depression that has ever threatened modern civilization. Which is going to strike now. It's not a question of whether there's going to be a depression: There will be one. It is on, now! It'll be in full force, in January.
Our job is to do what Roosevelt did: Not as Democrats, not as Republicans; but to save the nation, by the kind of leadership he represented, when he walked into the White House, and into the Executive office. And he sat there, as reported, without a pencil or a scrap of paper with which to govern. And he called in two secretaries in the adjacent office, and he began to govern. And what he did in the first few days, as well as the first hundred days of his Administration, is changed the course of history, from an inevitable fascist tyranny worldwide, into the victory over the Depression and fascism by the end of the war. And he did that.
He did that by calling together the institutions of the country, calling forth people, ordinary people, to form trade unions, as he did, by formingessentially supporting, what became the CIO, then. To break free of some of the old, encrusted ways of doing business. Of moving people, to save this nation. A man of conscience. And he brought many Republicans, to cooperate with him, in fighting against the Depression, and especially in preparing to fight the war.
He gave us institutions, including a post-war monetary system, which was shoved down the throats of the British: They didn't like it, but they had to take it. And for 20 years, that monetary system kept the economy going, until the eruption of the Baby-Boomer generation, with the Indo-China War in 1964-66, turned it around. And we began to go downhill. We're dying. We're decaying. We're rotten. We're morally rotten, as well as economically rotten. And that is going to change.
So, the campaign is not for the Democratic Party: It's to get this thing that's in the White House, now, out. To get Cheney out, first. To administer a shock to the political system: They're going to change their ways. And the job of the President will be to respond to that mission. We will deliver the victory. We will do what we have to do, to mobilize the forces of the United States, to win that victory in November. When we win it, however, we will take our right: We will tell the winner, he works for us.
And that's the change we're going to make. Okay [sustained applause]. Friday!
Mark Burdman Lives in Immortality:
How History Is Made
by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.
Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. begins his July 15 campaign webcast with a tribute to his recently deceased friend and collaborator, Mark Burdman, of EIR's staff in Wiesbaden, Germany. "We are the makers of history," he said of Mark. "The others experience history. We make it. We make it, because our intentions enable us to make it."
For Mark
by Helga Zepp-LaRouche
Helga Zepp-LaRouche opens the funeral ceremony in Wiesbaden, with a celebration of Mark Burdman as a "beautiful soul," in the sense of Friedrich Schiller.
In Tribute to Mark Burdman by His Wife
by Mary Burdman
Also: Remarks at the ceremony by other friends and family: Michael Liebig, Muriel Mirak-Weissbach, Reneé Sigerson, and Steven Meyer. Messages of condolence from abroad: Amelia Boynton Robinson, Jacques Cheminade, and Konstantin Cheremnykh.
LaRouche Warns of
Northern Virginia Terrorism Threat
Asked during his July 15 webcast, by a former senior Senate staffer, for his assessment of Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge’s proposal that the 2004 Presidential elections could be suspended in case of a terrorist attack, U.S. Democratic Party Presidential pre-candidate Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. responded bluntly: "If we were to accept the idea of calling off the Nov. 2 election, or postponing itwhich would mean calling it offwe would no longer have a Republic."
The `Quijano Dossier' and the National Security
Threat to the United States
Fernando Quijano is part of a serious national security threat to the United States: a bit-player in a third-generation Nazi International apparatus, involving Spanish Falange fascist Blas Piñar and leading Mexican Synarchist circles.
Russian Economy:
A Leap in the Wrong Direction
by Rachel Douglas
The government and the President appear committed to reforms that represent the free-trade, deregulation, anti-general welfare dogmas of Friedrich von Hayek's Mont Pelerin Society and its offshoots, in their purest form.
Mr. Taylor: Argentina Already Paid Its Debt!
by Cynthia R. Rush
U.S. Treasury Undersecretary John Taylor on July 15 told a gathering at the neo-conservative Cato Institute that Argentina must negotiate with foreign creditorsby which he meant the vulture fund front group, the Global Committee of Argentina Bondholders (GCAB), and also prove that its 2001 debt default was "a one-time event that won't be repeated." Taylor warned that Argentina's creditworthiness in the eyes of the world will be determined by "the way in which it restructures its debt, and how it negotiates with its creditors."
LaRouche to Argentine Radio:
`Can We Unite and Cooperate To Reverse This Crisis?
A July 19 interview with state-run Radio Córdoba.
Debt Frauds Threaten Mexico with Default
by Ronald Moncayo Paz and Gretchen Small
Will foreign banks soon be moving to seize Mexican assets abroad, as they are trying to do against Argentina?
U.S. Real Wages Have Fallen for Another Year
by Paul Gallagher
The Cheney-Bush White House was pushing the Congress hard, just before its recess began on July 23, to pass new tax cuts; extensions of the Administration's earlier tax cuts for five more years, and a new increase in the Earned Income Credit tax rebate.
Saxony: An Industrial Heartland of Germany
by Rainer Apel
The LaRouche movement in Germany, campaigning for the Sept. 19 legislative elections in the easternmost state of Saxony, is using the slogan "In Sachsen muß die Wirtschaft Wachsen!" ("Economic Growth Must Start in Saxony!"). Reviving the great industrial tradition of this depression-wracked area of what was once communist East Germany, is essential for the nation as a whole.
Lawmakers Warn: Take-Down of
U.S. Hospital System Has Reached Emergency
by Marcia Merry Baker and Mary Jane Freeman
Interviews with Mississippi State Rep. Credell Calhoun; Ms. Johnnie Pugh, City Director, Ward 1, Little Rock, Arkansas; and Alabama State Rep. Thomas E. Jackson.
Iraq Interim Government Can't Be the
Servant of Two Masters
by Muriel Mirak-Weissbach
Prime Minister Iyad Allawi is caught on the horns of a dilemma: On the one hand, he must show the occupation that his government is a faithful puppet; and, on the other, he convince the Iraqi people, and the world, that it is an independent authority.
Behind Butler Report: The LaRouche Issue
by Katherine Kanter
As readers will be well aware, the so-called Butler Report was published on July 14, almost one year to the day from the alleged suicide of weapons-inspection expert and BBC "informant" Dr. David Kelly. Its publication also happens to coincide with a front-page leak to the London Times through someone described as a "senior" American official, according to whom the U.S. Government is now considering an attack on Iran in order to destroy that nation's civil nuclear program, to which Russia is currently delivering fuel rods.
Asia Hits Cheney Doctrine, DNC
by Kathy Wolfe
A four-party group of 49 South Korean lawmakers on July 16 submitted a joint resolution to the Korean National Assemblyalso hand-delivered to the U.S. Embassy in Seoulcalling for Washington to apologize for asking Korea to send troops to Iraq, by providing false intelligence on weapons of mass destruction. "It was wrong of the Bush Administration to bring war against Iraq," they said.
Japan's Voters Punish Koizumi
by Kathy Wolfe
Japanese voters punished Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi in a national election on July 11, for endangering Japan's peace constitution by his one-man decision to turn Japanese troops in Iraq over to the new multinational UN force there, and for what an Asahi News editorial called his "arrogance" in failing to explain his slashing of benefits for Japan's large elderly population, and hikes in payments for pensions, under advice from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
The U.S., Not Myanmar, Is Isolating Itself
by Mike and Gail Billington
The level of hysteria in Washington against the military junta in Myanmar (persistently called Burma, its former name, by U.S. officials, as a form of insult to the regime) reached a fever pitch on May 18, when President Bush, in a letter to the Congress extending sanctions against the country, described the impoverished Southeast Asian nation as a "continuing unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States."
Probes Pile Up Around Dick Cheney, Halliburton
by Edward Spannaus
A contentious hearing on July 22 by the House Government Reform Committee focussed on Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root. Committee Chairman Tom Davis (R-Va.), who was compelled to hold it under pressure from Democratic members, complained that "if it weren't for the fact that the Vice President was the formerand I emphasize formerCEO of the parent company, we wouldn't even be here today."
The Threat of Fascism Today
by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.
The opening presentation from Democratic Presidential contender Lyndon LaRouche's campaign webcast in Washington, D.C. on July 15. "The point is: Who is going to control the next President of the United States? Is it going to be the people? Is it going to be the long- term interests of the United States? The two-generations-to-come interests of the people of the United States, and the world? Or, is it going to be this bunch of Nazisin fact?"
Many Floridas Loom in November Elections
by Edward Spannaus
What many activists and observers, including EIR have warnedthat the November 2004 Presidential elections could be far more chaotic and disastrous than those of 2000was officially acknowledged in a Congressional hearing on July 20.
Loser Bob Shrum: Kerry's Rasputin?
by L. Wolfe
In the late Fall of 2003, after fascist Beastman Arnold Schwarzenegger hadwonthe California Governor's race, Jason Kinney, a speechwriter for ousted Democrat Gray Davis, fired off a letter to fellow Democrat Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), demanding that Kerry fire his political guruthe manreputed to be the campaign's chief strategist, the political consultant Robert Shrum. How could Kerry listen to the advice of the man who had steered Arnie's campaign, defeating Kerry supporter and fellow Democrat Gray Davis? Shrum had betrayed Davis, betrayed the Democratic Party.
Wilson Stands Up to Cheney Smear Tactics
by Lawrence K. Freeman
The Vice President and his Cheneyac supporters are in a desperate flight-forward to discredit Ambassador Joseph Wilson, in an attempt to circumvent indictments expected bythe end of this Summer from the grand jury investigating the deliberate "outing" of Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, as a CIA agent.
Congressional Closeup
by Carl Osgood
Was Iraq War Caused by Politics of Oil?
by Paolo Raimondi
Review of La guerre del petrolio. Strategie, potere, nuovo ordine (The Oil Wars. Strategies, Power, New World Order), by Benito Li Vigni.
Electronic Intelligence Weekly
Online Almanac
From Volume 3, Issue Number 30 of Electronic Intelligence Weekly, Published July 27, 2004
All rights reserved © 2004 EIRNS