Dialogue with LaRouche
This is a transcript of the dialog which followed Lyndon LaRouche's opening address at his July 21, 2011 webcast.
[PDF version of entire webcast transcript]
[Video segments of the full webcast]
Freeman: ... I should mention, that this webcast was featured as the lead item on a very important website in Spain, complete with the Obama moustache picture. And it included a direct link to the live Spanish translation of the webcast. Very interestingly, the posting provoked dozens of commentaries from readers in Spain, and it really does lead someone to the conclusion that Lyn is becoming something of a folk hero in Spain, as well as the United States!
One professor writes,
"I'm not going to miss it. I'm also sending an e-mail to all my students and have them write an essay on this subject in September. This is what ought to be taught in all economics classes worldwide, the ideas of Lyndon LaRouche. To Hell with Adam Smith and Paolo Sarpi!"
There are a lot of things like that, but one of the last comments that was transmitted, was, "Lyndon, hit Obama hard, the way you know how to do it." And I think Lyn satisfied that request.
We also have a message that I will read. It's greetings from the Free Dutch, and it says:
Dear Mr. LaRouche,
Greetings from deep inside the Anglo-Dutch Empire, where this Dutch group has organized a webcast showing. As a modest representation of the Free Dutch, we want everyone to know, that we support your campaign to promote Glass-Steagall legislation in the United States and around the world.
No matter how thorough the corruption by Sarpi, Adam Smith, and Bertrand Russell among the people of the Netherlands, let it be known, that deep inside the Netherlands, lives the eternal spark of a Rembrandt, Erasmus, Anne Frank, and Christiaan Huygens.
—The Free Dutch.
And we welcome you to the webcast....
What Is 'America,' Really?
Lyn, the first question comes from one of the editors of the Russian weekly Zavtra, and he asks for your comments on an article that they just published, called, "Default, the United States on the Brink of Bankruptcy." He says,
"Lyn, the article says, that whether or not the Federal debt ceiling is raised before the August deadline, a default by the United States is inevitable, and is only a matter of time. And that what is happening now, is the ultimate outcome of 40 years of massive dollar paper-printing operations that began in 1971.
"Our article goes on to say that Germany will be unable to cope with a repeat of the Greek debt crisis in Italy and Spain, that soon the EU will have to appeal to China for financial aid, and that China would provide the aid, in the form of U.S. Treasuries. But since the creditors for the European debts are companies like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase, which not only own the U.S. government but are the U.S. government," [Freeman: I beg your pardon!] "the result would be a bankrupt debtor paying a bankrupt creditor with the worthless paper of the bankrupt creditor, i.e., a snake eating its own tail.
"Our authors go on to suggest that such a development will drive U.S. interests to attempt to export chaos and promote destabilization and wars, throughout Southwest Asia, while trying to take over Russia, by promoting U.S. agents of influence, through next year's Russian Presidential elections.
"Would you please comment on this?"
LaRouche: That's a rather large challenge, not as such, but it's a large challenge, because I don't agree with the point of view! There is a descriptive aspect to it, which obviously does correspond to an apparent reality. But I don't like to deal with apparent realities, I like to deal with the causal factors which determine these realities.
Now, first of all, yes: The entire system is coming down, not one causing the other. The entire damned system is coming down! And it's not because something is causing something, which is causing something, which is causing something. Just, forget it! That's the monetarist way of thinking, and trying to explain things in monetarist terms, and hoping that they'll get attention from people by giving the monetarist feedback, in terms of it.
The whole world system is now doomed in its present form. There is no way, under the present system, that during even as short a term as the months ahead, world civilization could survive the present policy-structures of the world; no possibility at all. So you don't need to factor, to factor, to factor, to factor—forget it! The system is now, in its present form, doomed to extinction, unless it is replaced! It will never survive! It can not survive!
What you have out there, you have lollapalooza money, all over the place. It's not real value. Money itself has no value! It has no physical value! It's a swindle! The idea that money has value, is a swindle! Don't we see that the use of money, called money, the same denominations, can be spent on prostitution in New York City? Particularly with some visiting Frenchmen? And then it can also buy bread, or something else. So there is no intrinsic value to money!
The United States' system was never a monetary system, not as the United States. Because the Constitution of the United States, which provided for the definition of the United States, was always based on a credit system. Just like the Massachusetts Bay Colony, until it was crushed by William of Orange, was based on a credit system. You assign credit to things which are designated as physically useful to humanity. These things then become of value, not because they have any inherent value—they have no inherent value. They are simply tokens.
Now, if you attach the token to a condition, like Alexander Hamilton did, you don't have a problem, because you give credit and utter credit only for things that are physically useful to mankind. And therefore, you may make mistakes in the estimate of the value, but there's value there, nonetheless. In general, among intelligent people who know how to manufacture things, and things like that, generally, if they've got any experience, the credit they utter for a result, will be in some general correspondence to that result.
So, forget this whole monetarist system, about money causing money. Money causing money is called hyperinflation. Period.
Now, this points out the fact, that the entire debt of the United States ain't worth a penny! It's worth nothing! All Wall Street's money is worthless. It can never be repaid, it never had any value. It's gambling money, gambling debts. Now, I never saw a gambler actually produce anything, except debt—and swindles. Or houses of prostitution—that they produce. So therefore, forget that stuff!
The planet at present is not going to survive unless a certain very specific kind of reform is made. Period. Make that reform, or die! That's the order. If you don't obey that, you're wasting your life. There's no redeeming. It's not that some nation's going to make a mistake and this guy's going to do this, and that guy's going to—forget it!!
I've been forecasting since, when? Guess when? My first forecast was in 1956, and I forecast toward the end of August, that under the present system it was virtually certain, that by February or very early March of 1957, the United States would plunge, at that instant, into the deepest depression of the postwar period. And it did!
Every other forecast I made was successful, in the same way. Everyone who forecast differently, except for people who made a different kind of forecast, not for a national forecast, but for a particular kind of production, or something of that sort; or for the harvesting of a crop you planted the seeds for. That is somewhat predictable; you can forecast that. What happens to money, especially my first forecast, in 1956, no, you can not forecast. You can only forecast the way I did. Not as prediction by monetary statistics. Everyone who does statistical method of forecasting is intrinsically incompetent in economics.
I've never failed, why? Because the competition was so poor. It's like the guy, you know the one-legged man who ran a race among zero-legged people. You can pretty much predict the result beforehand, unless he's very good at crawling on his hands.
So the nature of things lies in the issue of value: Value is intrinsically physical in nature. It's useful to human beings, as changes which are introduced, as replenishment, or repair, or augmentation, of the physical conditions of human life. Therefore, there's always a physical value. And you define the value in terms of what experience shows you are the normal relations of reproduction, that is, of economic reproduction, physical-economic reproduction. And that's what you can do. And I've never made a mistake in that, but that's only because I had lousy competition; I wasn't that good. I'm pretty good right now, but I wasn't that good back then. I just happened to know all the facts. And I was right, and they were always wrong. And they never improved, so I'm the champion, because they never improved! If the other guy fails all the time, you can win! That's the kind of thing that happened to me.
No, what we have to do, is first of all, eliminate the idea of money as value. Money is value, only as it functions as credit, as valid credit, in a credit system, which is what the United States is, under its original Constitution. Ours is a credit system, not a monetarist system. Money has no intrinsic value; money has only the estimated value as credit, of what it's capable of producing, as a physical result. How many people are you keeping alive by feeding them? How many people are being cured of disease? These are the kinds of questions that measure value. And the ultimate measure of value is, what is the productivity, the power of creation, we call productivity, by the human species? That's value! Machine-tool design is value. Growing crops that feed people—value. Educating young people to go beyond, way beyond what their parents and grandparents were capable of— that's value. Changing the character of transportation systems, changing the conditions of life throughout the universe—that's value!
That's the American System. It's in our Constitution! It's the intention of the Hamilton influence on the Constitution; it's our system. And the problem with the Europeans, and beyond, is the fact, they are suckers for monetarism. They believe in money. They try to estimate value, in terms of money.
Now, money can be used, very usefully, as a credit system, but that's because you have predetermined the value of the product. If you hit the target, on the value of the product, then you have succeeded. That's a good estimate. It doesn't mean it's determined as a monetary thing; it means that your monetary estimates, which you're using for a credit system, are valid. And it depends upon the performance of the economy, as to what the value is. It depends upon what you get out of it: In other words, you produce something, like a machine tool. Now, what's the value of a machine tool? Can you eat it? Or, can you use it as a tool, which results in production, down the line, as a part of the process of production, which improves the conditions of life of human beings—as value, producing human beings is value! Don't expect two-year-olds to do it, but this is value.
And therefore, the problem here, that's posed by the question, is the reliance upon notions of monetarism. What is monetarism? It's a product of the oligarchical system. It always was. It's a slave system!
So the Europeans think they've got a money system—they're nuts! That's why we came over here, to get the hell away from them, and their nutty ideas. And, except for when we were chased by the British, we did pretty well, despite a lot of mistakes that were made in the process; in principle, we were right.
A credit system! A credit system means, what is the physical value, or physical effect as value, which is represented as an increase in the value for society? Period, that's value. Now, you want a money system, which is really a credit system, which is based on those relations. And what the Russia paper missed, is that.
They all, Europeans, still are slaves, in one degree or another, to the idea of a money system. They interpret everything causally, in terms of a money system. And a money system is not worth anything, intrinsically. And it's been demonstrated by hyperinflation. What do people in Europe invest in? What do people in Wall Street invest in? What do stockbrokers invest in? Gambling debts! There's no value in this stuff! It's gambling debts! The amount of money indicated, in value, as gambling debts, is the great amount of value in the world!
When we do what I want to do, cancel that crap!—we'll bankrupt the whole system, and we get back to an even deal. Because we then base everything on a credit system. We cancel everything that way. How do we do it? Glass-Steagall! Glass-Steagall, which says, only the commercial debts and equivalent debts, are guaranteed by the Federal Treasury, under law. The other stuff, the crap, goes to the gambling institution which is called Wall Street.
The United States has no obligation to pay the debts of Wall Street, not under our Constitution. We just take them—"sorry, buddy." "But it's my money!" "Sorry, buddy, it just got cancelled. We found it was worthless." "Well, it's my money!" "Well, I'm sorry, buddy, but you made a bad investment! Now, we'll probably try to find some home relief or something for you, to get through. That little mansion you're occupying in the Wall Street area, or up on the West Side of Manhattan or East Side of Manhattan, buddy, I think you're going to have to sell that. But don't worry, we'll be kind to you. We'll be generous, we'll give you a chance. We'll get you some sewers to dig out there, give you a job, useful work. Clean things up! And sewer work means that you really are getting down to the business of cleaning things up!"
So that's the point.
Our problem is, the world in general, and economists in general, and systems economics in general, are perfectly incompetent! Because they presume that something that has no intrinsic value, is the denomination of value. When in fact, we can know, very easily, that food, which is edible, is value. We know that other kinds of things, are value. If we denote these in relative values for a credit system, fine! As long as your estimates are reasonable, the system will work, as long as you're productive.
So, let's get away from all this idea of monetarism as determining the economy. Monetarism is the death of economy, not the birth of it.
Confusion in Russia
Freeman: The next question is also from Russia. This is from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, which is the university of the Russian Foreign Ministry. Now, this certainly expresses a different view, than Zavtra:
"Mr. LaRouche, most financial experts in Russia do not believe that the international financial system will crash any time soon." [Freeman: I don't think they read Zavtra!] "They think that such a forecast is either unfounded panic, or maybe something for the long term. They don't believe that the U.S. could really default—after all, the American economy is so big. They think that in Europe, some countries, like Greece, might default, but certainly not Germany. They don't want to see the signs of the crash, believing that this is invented by panic-mongers. This attitude is typical of the current leadership of Russia, as you could well see from the Russian President's remarks in Germany this week, about how the euro is a strong currency, that just happens to have been dragged down by some weaker countries.
"In that vein, we have two very specific questions: Number 1, can you list the particular signs that a full-scale crash is here." [Freeman: They should come to the United States!] Two, what will the impact be on other countries, in particular on Russia, China, and India, from the crash of the current financial system, and how long will the crisis continue—a year or two, or will it last for decades?"
LaRouche: Well, I must say that the description of economy in the latter cases is a disaster. Russia will not be able to survive the present crisis, as long as that belief is maintained. It's the end of Russia. So I would recommend, strongly, a change in thinking on the part of those folks.
The system will not work. It's a catastrophe in conception. It has no correspondence with reality. It sounds like the old time of the kulaks, in Russia, the so-called "kulak," the fist, the fist that's grabbing something it calls "money," and says, "This is my money!" And it's something left over from the worst aspects of the system of Russia, which is known as the kulak system, and so forth.
What we're facing now, contrary to what these fellows are deluded into believing, is an immediate, general, chain-reaction collapse, of the entire world system. No money system of the world will independently survive the crash which is now scheduled for this year. None! So such thoughts as those expressed by the authors of the question, they should get rid of those thoughts immediately, if they wish to survive.
Russia has a great potential.
Let me go back to something, just to emphasize something, and how this thing worked. During the year 1977, I developed a scheme, which was based on my study of certain things, including U.S. military systems, and Russian and other systems. This became known later, as the basis for what was called the Strategic Defense Initiative. My proposal.
I was the origin for that proposal. I acquired support in about '78, '79, from people who had been key parts of the intelligence service called the OSS during World War II. They just came knocking at my door, and said, "Well, we'd like to support some of the things you're doing." And so, it spread there.
I moved into an area during this period, especially the beginning of the 1980s, where I approached the Soviet Union. And I proposed to the Soviet Union that the United States and Soviet Union—this was done with the cognizance of key elements of the U.S. intelligence service. So, I was the author of a scheme which first became part of the U.S. intelligence service, became part of the policy of the National Security Council under Reagan, in which I was a key author of the whole project. I, at the same time, negotiated with the Soviet Union, for what became known as the SDI. This system would have worked. Many Russians, many Russian officials were negotiating with me, many Russian scientists were working with me, on the implementation of this project.
The immediate motive for this project by me, was to prevent a world war between the Soviet Union and the United States, because such a war would have been so destructive, that civilization would not have survived it. Therefore, we reached a lot of agreement with the Russians on this project. The question was, whether the United States would support it. So, the British factor, the Wall Street factor in the United States, including the leadership of the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, both voted not to support the President of the United States at that time, who proposed the support over the policy I had introduced as the SDI. Reagan and the Reagan Administration named it the SDI; it was my policy.
This policy was not merely a U.S.-Russian relationship. You would find in the ranks of the people with whom I was associated, the leading general officers in Germany, the leading general officers in France, leading general officers in Italy and elsewhere. This was my baby. The result of the failure to support it, by first of all this British agent Gorbachov, and Andropov before him, these British agents created a situation which led to the destruction of the Soviet Union. Not merely of the Soviet Union, but the destruction of whole sections of Russia as such, and beyond. It led to the general collapse of the European system in 1989-90, because the damn fools thought they were smarter than I was. It's that simple.
What happened to Russia? Well, the British took Russia apart; they destroyed it. The British did. Well, you had British agents like Andropov and Gorbachov, what do you expect? What do British agents do when they're working in leading positions in Russia, or the Soviet Union earlier? They do what British agents do. Andropov was a British agent. Gorbachov is still a British agent, even today, and so forth and so on.
So, my purpose was to save civilization from this kind of war. The damn British screwed this thing up with their agents in Russian guise, and the result was the destruction of the Soviet Union and of Russia itself. You take the destruction of the current Russia, under the post-Soviet system; one of the greatest destructions of one of the most powerful nations in the world. It was almost like turning Russia into another African state, in effect. Damned fools! And it was these kind of damned fool ideas, used by the British through agencies such as the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, based in Austria—but it's a British institution. British institutions have been running Russia. There are some people in Russia who are patriots, but on this question, their understanding of economy is highly deficient. Their belief in monetarist systems is the root of the problem, but there are complications—really kookish kinds of complications. You might say kulak thinking.
My determination today is still to save Russia, but I can't save Russia if they insist on foolish ideas. My intentions are friendly; very amiable. I'm concerned about the injustice done to Russians in general. I'm also concerned about the injustice done to Europe as a result of the collapse of Russia as a power against the British. Unfortunately, the Russians have made so many accommodations to the British, it seems almost impossible to save them. I think the only way Russia can be saved, really, from the destruction which is ongoing—. And it's physical destruction; the productive powers of labor in Russia are being destroyed! And they're being destroyed by British-influenced policy. In other words, the best way to kill somebody is to get them to commit suicide. And a lot of the Russian economics policy is exactly that.
We have to save nations. There's no more need for war, as wars have been fought before. The time for that is past. War has an inherently destructive character, and long wars are totally destructive, like the war in Vietnam, which destroyed the United States. Because somebody in the United States killed President Kennedy, who was against the Indo-China War, and that destroyed the United States. And just to make sure that Kennedy's death was secured, they killed his brother, who was about to become nominated as the Presidential candidate of the Democratic Party of the United States.
I'm dealing with a bunch of damn fools, most of the time; I've been living with damn fools for a long time. I know what a damn fool really is. I've shaken hands with some of the best of them; the most high-ranking—that's what I've been doing. These guys have got to finally wake up, on the government level. They didn't recognize that I was right, they were wrong. I tried to save them, and they let themselves be run around by the ring in the nose by the British, through people like Andropov and Gorbachov—I say Garbage-off, because the garbage must be removed.
Architecture and Classical Culture
Freeman: A couple of months ago, with some of the work that we were participating in with the Stanford Group, there was also the participation of a significant group from Northern Ireland. It was at a real crisis point for Ireland, that was reflected, I think, in the good news and the very big win for Gerry Adams and Sinn Fein. Now we have a question from there.
And it says,
"Mr. LaRouche, first and foremost, hello from Belfast! We bring you greetings, and I choose to ask my question with the assumption that, in short order, we will bring an end to this blasted British system. But then we have the task of building nations and undoing the destruction that was done to our planet. I've been studying, since I've gotten back home, and I, for one, am fascinated and inspired by many of the ideas so vividly presented on your website. As a currently under-employed architect, I fully expect that one day very soon, I will be able to participate in the kind of world-changing infrastructure projects that you champion.
But I have a question regarding your view of Classical composition in the arts, relating to the field of architecture and the "built" environment. And I should tell you that this has led to a great deal of controversy here, with some people saying, 'Look, let's just worry about how to rebuild the nation, and not worry about whether it's beautiful.' I'm sure that the subject of architecture has crossed your ever-inquiring mind, and I was wondering if, to your mind, Classical composition in architecture is fully compatible with the technological approach? Would they be separate motives at times? How do you see the built environment of the future? I personally believe, that in fact, the two are compatible; but I don't think this is a minor question, because we really are talking about building nations, and it's a time at which these questions are really quite urgent and quite compelling."
LaRouche: Well, you happen to be absolutely correct! And I'm standing here to prove it to you. I thought you'd like the proof. You deserve it. Being Irish, you deserve a lot of things, because, you know, you have the British around your neck, and that's a terrible thing to put up with. Ever since William of Orange in particular, a very nasty bastard, you know what I mean?
Anyway, the basis for this, the simplest illustration for this, is, you had a fellow called Brunelleschi, in the early to middle part of the [15th] century. He was a participant in the construction of the great cathedral of Florence, Santa Maria del Fiore. Just one part; but also, he was a discoverer in many other respects. Now, the principle of Santa Maria del Fiore, of the cupola, is very interesting in this respect, and goes directly to the point of the question, which I'm delighted to answer. Because it deserves it. The Irish deserve something good after all this stuff. Oh, their being so close to those beastly Brits, you know? They deserve something nice.
But what was the principle that Brunelleschi discovered? The principle which is called—well, it's famous in Italy—the funicular; that principle. The funicular principle, which applies to taking a rope and dropping it across a crevasse. And you put pins on either side of the crevasse, and you build a rope bridge. And when you're walking across it, you dance wonderfully, because the very nature of system does it for you! And he understood that this was not merely a clever trick, but this was a universal physical principle, which superseded the notion of the sphere and circle. Now, he's also known for a chapel, the Pazzi Chapel in Florence. It's a wonderful instrument; it's a tuned chapel. Absolutely tuned. If you sing in there, it'll sing back to you. It's a beautiful piece of work. It's the same principle of Brunelleschi. Now, this was also the kind of thinking which characterized the achievements of the founder of modern science—also a Florentine gentleman for a decent part of his career—Nicholas of Cusa. My favorite scientist; one of my favorite theologians at the same time. And this concept is exhibited in the Pazzi Chapel, or the Santa Maria del Fiore, in the cupola. It demonstrates that what we call art and science coincide in principle.
That's the virtue of the argument made by the questioner, precisely that. There is no difference. In point of fact, much more important to say about it, is that this kind of development shows a connection between science and art, Classical art, in principle. What's that connection between these two phenomena—Classical art, and Classical science? Well, the principle is simple: that all creativity, human creativity, is based on this principle. The art of science depends upon the art of creativity, human creativity. Human creativity is explicitly artistic, not physical. It belongs to the department of physics, yes, but it's in the imagination; it's in the principle of metaphor, as typical of the whole principle. The human powers of creativity, which we know as science, are born in art, and in great principles of art, as exhibited by the case of the Pazzi Chapel, which is a miracle in itself, and by Brunelleschi's development of the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore.
So therefore, there is no difference between science and art. Science is a product of Classical art. So therefore, my dear questioner, you are absolutely right.
'Natural Disasters' in Africa
Freeman: The next question comes from an American foundation, and the person who's submitting the question just came back from a trip to Africa. He's an American, though. He says,
"Mr. LaRouche, as I'm sure you're aware, right now there is a severe drought in East Africa. And this has caused, among other things, the greatest food shortage that I believe the continent has ever faced. I think that the most modest estimates that approximately 12 million East Africans could now be classified as being at risk. I do appreciate, and I agree with, your call for the imposition of food price controls, and for the end of the current use of food for fuel, which over the course of the last five years, has eaten up over 40% of the U.S. corn crop. Obviously, this poses an even more critical question now, as the U.S. itself has been hit with aberrant weather, and the size of the crops are themselves in doubt.
"However, I have another question really, because as we debate what policy should be for the United States, as the Europeans talk about whether or not the European monetary system and the EU will continue to live, or will be replaced by another system, the fact of the matter is, that this seems to keep on happening in Africa. And, what some would argue is that there is just absolutely nothing you could do about these kinds of things; it's the nature of the geography; droughts; this, that, etc., that these represent the equivalent of natural disasters. And really, the only question is, how quickly the rest of the world responds with relief. However, I just find it very hard to accept that overall view, and I don't think that it's reasonable to tell this large continent that they just have to sit around and wait until the advanced sector gets around to solving its problems. I think that my question really goes to the heart of some of what you had discussed last year, regarding NAWAPA [the proposed North American Water and Power Alliance] and other such great projects. But I think to simplify things, I would just ask you, do you think that these kinds of catastrophes are simply natural disasters that we have to put up with, or things that we can change in shaping the general terrain of this planet that we inhabit?"
LaRouche: I think you missed the point. Your argument is irrelevant to the point! The point is, we're dealing with genocide on a global scale, as I've addressed this over this evening. And don't play with it! Don't do goody-goody shoes. It's nonsense, don't do this. We have a policy of genocide against Africa, which is not something that came recently; it's been going on for a very long time. And the policy of genocide is now going on in Europe. The policy of genocide has now come to the United States, when you're going to see your food supply next January and February. So, let's not talk around the issue. Let's not talk about petty little things. "I've got a little suggestion to fix something." Crap! Forget it. You're changing the subject from the real subject to a subject that's absolutely irrelevant!
The problem is there, no question about it. Anybody can comment on it, it's true. But it doesn't address the problem; it doesn't address the solution. You're not going to save Africa unless you get Obama out of the Presidency; you're not going to do a damn thing for it. You can prate all you want to about suggestions for this or that. It's not going to happen! And your suggesting it might happen is no good, because it's not going to happen! You have to make suggestions, and raise issues, which go practically to the issue, in fact—how you get the damn change made.
There's too much of this smarty stuff. Oh, you've got a suggestion as to how that might be considered, or ask a question how we might improve something. Forget it! Stop it! You're wasting time. You're substituting a posture for reality. You're saying we've got to pose this proposal; we're going to propose this improvement. That's not going to do a damn bit of good. You've got to force the issue on a global scale. There is no African solution for Africa; there's only a global one. It means getting rid of the beast in the White House, among other things. You don't include the beast in the White House; why do you put all these other details in there, which are irrelevant? It's the beast in the White House that's your main problem, or the bitch in Buckingham Palace. That's your problem. It always has been the problem. Africa's been subjected to generations of genocide. It's a target of a system of genocide. You want to come along with some suggestion? You want to duck the issues? You want to raise the issues that are important? That will decide the question? We shouldn't play, we shouldn't masturbate with history! That's what it amounts to—coming up with cute suggestions, cute questions. Cut it out! It's childish!
If you want to do something, don't worry about Africa. Get your nose out of Africa. Stick it right up the you-know-what of the United States and Britain, because that's where you'll do some good. Otherwise, you're just babbling, wasting time on something that's not going to work. And that kills us! That's the kind of thing I was addressing from the beginning of the remarks tonight. Stop it! Stop this nonsense! Stop playing games! Stop trying to make yourself look pretty, instead of doing what has to be done.
You have to get rid of this President! Don't talk about Africa, until you get this guy kicked out of there first, because you don't have a chance if you don't kick him out of there. Your talk about Africa is self-deluding, and it's actually disgusting! Because you're talking about how we're going to do something about Africa, we must do something about Africa? You're not going to do a damn thing for Africa, unless you clean out the White House. Face truth! Don't posture. I intend to solve the problem. How? Get the bum out of the White House! That's the first step. If you're not going first to the question of the White House, you're kidding yourself. That's what we're dealing with here in the United States. We're dealing with the gut issue. Don't run away to Africa, and talk about issues in Africa, when you're running away from the problem in the United States, because the solution lies within the United States. And Africa's going to die from it. No scheme proposed by anybody for Africa is going to be a damn bit of good unless it's premised on getting this bum out of the White House, and the other bum, the Bitch of London, out of Buckingham Palace.
That's the way to look at this thing. We have the concept of what to do. I know what to do, I don't have to be told to know what to do. I know what the solution is, and I've got the Africans and others available to us, who know how to implement the solution. We've got to clear the way to actually make the solution possible. Masturbation is not pregnancy!
On Dams and Earthquakes
Freeman: I'm going to have an interesting weekend!
Let me just preface the next question by saying that these guys have submitted about eight questions, and we're not going to be able to take them up in this forum. There are some discussions planned over the next couple of weeks, where I think they can be examined in detail, and I know Lyn will make himself available to do that. The questions come from a group of Russian and American geologists, scientists in economics, who have been doing some work in the wake of Lyn's proposals on NAWAPA, and in the course of that, they also got involved in a certain number of studies since the Japanese earthquake and tsunami, and on this whole question of whether or not earthquakes can be predicted and other such things.
The question that they're posing, was provoked by a study that was released in late June, done by a combination of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, of UC San Diego, the U.S. Geological Survey, and the University of Nevada. They were looking at the question of predicting earthquakes, and apparently what their study was examining was the theory that the Hoover Dam had inadvertently tamed the San Andreas Fault. What they said in the study was that until the late 1800s, the San Andreas Fault jolted southern California with very large quakes about once every 180 years. But that now, it's been three centuries since the last really major earthquake, and what the study said was, that they were baffled by this. They looked at certain sonar readings and other things beneath the surface of the Great Salton Sea, and examined the fact that there hasn't been a quake in that area. There's been underground turbulence, but there hasn't been a major quake. And they say that they believe that this has occurred since the Federal government built dams that controlled flooding on the Colorado River.
Now, what our friends are saying, and I mean there's a lot more detail in this that we could examine, but what our friends are saying, is that the people who did the study are saying well, you could look at this one of two ways: Either water management did inadvertently tame the San Andreas Fault, which has very interesting implications vis à vis NAWAPA and other large-scale water management programs, but it could also mean something else. It could mean that this is paving the way, by containing this—one of the people in the study compared it to a woman who was 15 months pregnant—saying that this may in fact be paving the way for an even bigger megaquake. And therefore, they're arguing that these kinds of water management projects may be a problem; that they're not looking at all the factors involved.
Now what our friends say, is that they'd really like you to comment on this overall, because obviously there are big implications here in terms of water management in general; but they also pose the question as to whether examining precursor indicators by simply looking at questions like flooding and things like that, might actually be scientifically faulty, and that really the causes of quakes are coming from other issues. As I said, there are a lot of questions here, but I think you get the gist.
LaRouche: I don't like the whole discussion. A friend of ours, a Russian specialist[1] in this, at a recent conference we had in Germany, emphasized this in answer to a question from Sky Shields and others. His statement, the Russian's statement, is that we are not capable of predicting, because we're not doing enough work in the area. Therefore, there's a fallacy in all these discussions; that people are adapting to the incompetence of the practice of governments and economies today, because they don't have the means to make a decent forecast. Now, we do know, from scientific work by people who are responsible, and it's one of my specialties in on this thing in terms of physics.
What we're dealing with here—and it's an important question; if others don't make it, this is probably more important, because it's more general. First of all, the general conceptions that you get in most institutions today, academic and otherwise, are fraudulent. Why are they fraudulent? Because you have a policy group inside the British system and the United States and elsewhere—but especially the British and the United States—where the actual, competent scientific work, of which some people and professors and so forth are capable, refuse to do the job. Why? Because they would lose their job and their subsidies if they did. So, we live in a nation of vicious scientific incompetence among the very layers which, in the main, would be considered competent. Their hides depend upon being incompetent. And because they need money, they need careers, they need access to resources, university-established things, they lie like Hell! And they produce frauds to say, "Well, we can go along with you, Mr. Obama, because we're obedient Obama-kissers." And this whole thing becomes a hoax!
Now, the point here, the most crucial thing, which is what my specialty is, on this scientific work, is, the human mind is not located in the simple functions of the brain. Now, this is a point which was made very clearly by my dear friend in this area. The issue here is that we don't know; we're not looking at the thing from a competent physical standpoint. The human mind, the human brain, does not represent the principles of nature. The human brain had five categories [senses] in it originally. It was capable of only a very limited, cheap approximation of knowing anything about the universe in which we live. Therefore, what we have done, we no longer talk about the five senses, unless we're idiots or poor, ignorant people who don't know any better.
What you have now, what's happened is that mankind has discovered supplements to the five senses. This point was made clear by Bernhard Riemann in the concluding, third section of his habilitation dissertation. So therefore, the problem is that we are teaching people to believe in sense certainty, and sense certainty does not exist. The best kind of sense certainty you can get is in Bach, because in Bach you have the implicit principle, which governs these types of things about the relationship of the mind to sense perception. Crucial, hmm? So therefore, what we do have, we are able to develop, as Riemann defined the problem in that third section. We are able to develop approaches to the universe, to replace and supersede sense perception, by instruments, by scientific instruments. And we can use the standard of the discovery of gravitation by Kepler, and the way he defined gravitation. We can use these methods of sense-perception-like instruments; we can use them in contrast, exactly as Kepler proved and demonstrated the principle of gravitation, in which he defined a principle which is not located in any of the instruments, but it was located in a paradoxical conjunction of elements of the instruments.
Now, what happens now? We come along, and we take our five miserable senses, if they're still there, and we now use these sense organs, the five senses, to enable us to use instruments that we create. We develop complexes among instruments we create, and these complexes now serve as new instruments, which correspond, in the same way that Kepler defined gravitation, to some other principle of the universe. These discoveries then, are adopted by the human mind as extended principles that supersede sense perception. That opens up the gates for an expanding amount of instruments that humanity defines. Not only instruments as such, but combinations of instruments, which have the same effect as defining a universal physical principle. It's never a perfect universal principle; it's an approximation of one.
Now, to correct your view of the universe, you have to discover new, additional physical principles. And on top of this, then, you get to a state where the idea that you're going to be able to determine, by instruments of the type we are using, what the universe is like, is nonsense. And as our Russian friend said, you have to develop and deploy the set of instrumentation which gives you access to this knowledge. So, we don't know, because we're not doing the kind of work with instruments in space, which enables us to explore this process and to understand the universe in a larger scale than we can now. It's that simple.
So therefore, what you get is, people are trying to make a career in science, and they're prohibited from having access to an approach which is correct, because the President of the United States outlaws it! So therefore, they are working with an enforced incompetence; enforced by the Federal government under Obama, and other similar institutions, to commit a fraud. Then, in order to try to make their keep and get a record of having discovered something, they fake something up, by eliminating things they know they should be taking into account.
Now, our Russian friend said exactly that. He was asked, can we predict earthquakes? He said, "No, but let me explain why: because we are not creating the kind of instrumentation, and maintaining the kind of instrumentation which is necessary to do this kind of investigation."
The lid's on it. When President Obama cuts out all these instruments that we could use, that we had been using—like space instruments—you realize that what you're dealing with is, this is not something you can find out by taking a local area. You can not define a universal principle of physics by looking at one area inside the United States. You can not draw that kind of conclusion. You can say, here's something we are estimating with these limited conditions, and we're getting this lousy answer. But you don't come around and have big arguments over matters you have not investigated.
So we're dealing then with a great degree of utter incompetence, practiced in science under the Obama doctrine. That's our problem.
The White House and the Budget Crisis
Freeman: The next question comes—I'm kind of putting together several questions from some people up on Capitol Hill, Democrats from both the House and Senate side. They say,
"Mr. LaRouche, as you may know, over the course of the last 24 hours, several of us have held press conferences to talk about this Gang of Six proposal, and the deep cuts, as well as the cut and cap nonsense that has been going on. However, it's increasingly the case, that we are coming to the conclusion that really all of this is being run by the White House. And that, in fact, the whole question of the lifting of the debt ceiling, is simply being used as a pretext to impose cuts that President Obama has wanted to impose from the very beginning. But this does raise several questions, that it would be helpful if you commented on.
"Number one is on this very question of the debt ceiling. Because we are now beginning to doubt that this really is as much of an existential question as Mr. Geithner is portraying it as. We don't right now really know what President Obama is up to, but we are being forced to vote on a package which is being negotiated without our participation, and which frankly, at this moment, is a package in which we're not even aware of the details. But we'd like you to comment overall, on first of all, what your thoughts are on this whole debate of the lifting of the debt ceiling, and then also whether or not you would agree that President Obama is using this with other motives."
LaRouche: Utter motives? Udder motives? No, this is a fraud, a complete fraud; there's no truth to it. The point is, what we have to do—and there is no substitute for doing it—is, we have to crack down with a Glass-Steagall law. Otherwise, anything you're doing is just nothing but an act of masturbation. Without Glass-Steagall, you're not serious.
First of all, you've got to eliminate the monetarist system. That's not money—it's money, yes, but it's worthless money. It can never be redeemed. What are you kidding yourself for? It can never be redeemed, it's worthless! It's part of the instrument of destroying the United States, for example, which is British intention. You've got a British stooge for the President of the United States; he takes his orders from the Queen of England—literally. You want to talk about this. It's irrelevant! Put Glass-Steagall through now! If you're not putting Glass-Steagall through, you're wasting your time and you're wasting our time. Because there's no chance of saving the United States from Hell in the immediate future unless you get Glass-Steagall through now. It has to be that way.
See, the problem is, you find, people get themselves asking questions based on the assumption that something is accepted practice. And they try to take what they believe is currently accepted practice, and they try to interpret it to solve a problem. When what you have to eliminate is currently accepted practice! You have to shoot the enemy, not your foot. And that's the problem here. That's exactly it. Don't get sucked into this stuff. I know exactly what to do, and we have other people who know exactly what to do about this. Let's do it; let's not change the subject into worthless discussions.
Implementation of Glass-Steagall
Freeman: The next question is also on Glass-Steagall. It's from a member of the professional staff of House Ways and Means, and she says:
"Lyn, I know you're aware of the fact that there are now two Glass-Steagall bills before the House, and soon there will be a Glass-Steagall bill before the Senate. Momentum continues to build, and those bills are, we believe, likely to pass before the end of August. However, in reviewing the bills for my boss, one of the things that has come up is that both bills seek to restore Glass-Steagall, but they have no mechanism for implementation. And my question to you is, should we be doing something? Do we need to worry about this? Should we be writing additional legislation, or is it sufficient to just say, 'Reinstitute Glass-Steagall'? Because certainly, the first time that Glass-Steagall was passed, you had a President who was friendly to it, and took the appropriate action."
LaRouche: It's very simple. There's no problem. Get Glass-Steagall rammed through, both versions, and in the process, kick the President out of office. If you don't do that, you're wasting your time. You've got to get Glass-Steagall through. You cannot have a United States continue to exist without Glass-Steagall. So, don't talk about alternatives to Glass-Steagall. Glass-Steagall in its original form, is copied more or less accurately by the two sets of candidates for the bill. Ram it through! Throw the bum out!
When you ram this thing through, what do you get? You get that Wall Street goes bankrupt, right away. Because all the dirty money that's worthless, is given to Wall Street, to pay, all the worthless debts are given to Wall Street to pay. Now, the problem is going to be the following: The problem is, if we clean out all the garbage which belongs to Wall Street, there's very little money left in the banking system. So what's your solution? It's elementary, buddy. Hey, Sherlock Holmes, you've missed the point! The point is, we don't have enough money after we enact Glass-Steagall, to cover the debts; to maintain the banking system, the legitimate banking system.
So what do we have to do? We have to create, and utter, a mass of U.S. Federal credit, which then is applied to a credit system to make sure that we are running large projects, and smaller projects as well, on the Federal and state level. We are putting the unemployed back to work. As Alexander Hamilton prescribed, we take these jobs and the people who are fit for them, and we give them the work. These projects, then, become the basis for the assets which are being created to pay the debts, which we're covering with Federal credit, in the various parts of the nation.
So, suddenly, we create—as Alexander Hamilton's reform, which was called the U.S. Federal Constitution—we use that thing, because Glass-Steagall is nothing but that, exactly that. We use that form, immediately, to get large projects going, especially, because the smaller projects will come free. In other words—take NAWAPA, for example: If we decide to launch NAWAPA immediately, we know what the costs are, in fair terms. We know what the benefits are. We know, for example, in addition to NAWAPA, we've got to carry the thing further, because we've got to have a link, as we need now in the Missouri, Mississippi, and Ohio rivers; we have a flooding condition there, which means no food supply from that area, this coming year. So we do need this project.
We need these projects, and what we do is we extend NAWAPA, we go back to the Tennessee Valley Authority organization, rebuild that, extend it through other systems. Now we have a system, whereas we had a flooding in that river system, earlier this year. We now have a drought in the complementary area. With the volume of water involved in this, if you had a connecting system, you would be able to absorb the excess water from the north, and you would supply the water to the area in the south.
With the NAWAPA system, we would have the means to do that, and then we would have a balanced water supply system inside the United States' territory. And we would have a project, which is one of the greatest drivers the world has ever seen, in terms of large-scale development of territory.
So, you have to think in these terms. You have to think of production. You have to think of putting people to work. You've got to think about increasing the productive powers of labor. You've got to increase the skill levels of people in labor. You've got to rebuild the nation the way it was built, by the United States under the Constitution: same way. Same thing done by Lincoln, and after Lincoln, the Transcontinental Railway, all of the great projects that we did, which were imitated by Europe. All the great railway systems were done by Europe, on the basis of U.S. inspiration.
So, we have vast projects, including emergency projects, which are needed immediately. We still have people who have skills, high-level skills, in production. We need to put them to work while they're still alive! We need to create cadres around the people who have these skills, but who are getting old. And by doing that, we are creating an engine of progress, for the people and the nation of the United States. And there's the money. There's the credit. It's sitting up there, and what's happening? The value is being produced that backs up that credit. We have re-created the United States, which is what the British are terrified of. And we sit there laughing, while the British cry.
Gutless Politicians
Freeman: ...The next question comes from someone who serves on the staff of the Angelides Commission. And she says,
"Mr. LaRouche, I'm sure you're aware of the fact that some of the disclosures by Congressman Elijah Cummings over the course of this last week, promise to rejuvenate the credibility of the Angelides Commission, despite the fact that there have been significant attempts, since we issued our report, to just put a lid on the content of the report itself.
"But, having said that, what I wanted to ask you was this: I know that you have frequently talked about [Italian Economy Minister] Mr. Tremonti, and you've talked about him in a favorable light. I know also that some members of the Commission had the occasion to talk to him when they were in Italy. I'm asking this question because I find it very confusing, and I think that it's also confusing from the standpoint of the actions of certain people here in the United States: On the one hand, Mr. Tremonti has been an advocate of things like the convening of a New Bretton Woods system. What I don't understand, and my boss hasn't been able to explain it to me either, so perhaps you can, is why is Tremonti pushing the kind of austerity that he's pushing in his own country? It would seem to be contradictory to what he has done over the last ten years."
LaRouche: Ah, but one must not underestimate contradictions! Most politicians are contradicting themselves all the time, because they want to please this one, placate that, and so forth. It's all done, this kind of thing.
You see, we have a gutless government. Now, I'm not President of the United States. Even now, if I were in there for a few weeks, we'd have a lot of fun. You'd also have people scampering out of the United States who would be wanted for arrest, you know; because I can be an arresting person, you know. And I'd delight in doing something like that, these days!
No, just give me a little time to shake things up.
And that's exactly the problem. You have the politicians of Europe, even the ones who have some good instincts and so forth—they're gutless wonders! The leading people of the United States are gutless wonders. Most of the politicians of the United States of the highest rank, are gutless wonders. Members of the courts are gutless wonders, fakers. What do you expect? You're looking for consistency? What are you, baking a cake? My God, man, what do you want? We've got a bunch of gutless wonders out there, and [with Scottish accent] ye need a little kick in the rear end, now and then.
No, that's why I say, if I were President for just a short period of time—I'm not eligible for that position for a long period of time—I could do a fine job in a short period of time. I know exactly where to plant the foot, and with vigor, shall we say.
The point is, you've got gutless people in politics. Our politicians are gutless wonders. I know it. The whole generation since the Baby Boomers came into existence, has been gutless wonders, ever since the beginning of the Indo-China War. They're gutless wonders! There's not a gut in the carload! Right?
And that's the situation. Tremonti is maneuvering in a situation of a world of gutless wonders, in Italy and elsewhere. The most crooked system you ever saw in your life. And manifesting it all over the place. But, we rival them in gutlessness and corruption. What are you talking about? You shouldn't treat such questions so seriously. When the one-term gutless wonder, another gutless wonder, is what you're talking about. Now, he's not a gutless wonder, but he's living in a nation which is full of gutless wonders.
An older generation of Italian gentlemen, whom I used to know, were less gutless. They had some stuff in them. But things are so rotten these days, ever since the milk scandal in northern Italy, everything has gone to hell. Take the milk scandal, as an example. This company was producing milk products; it was an excellent product. And some thieves got in there and made a mess of it, and the company is sadly damaged. And the milk product in northern Italy is damaged in terms of production. Gutlessness, pure gutlessness!
We have a collection of the most gutless politicians in the world. They snarl, like the character in the Wizard of Oz, who sits behind there with the organ and makes big noises, and says, "I'm the king of everything." He's a coward, and he doesn't have an idea in his head, usually.
Tremonti? Well, he's a sophisticated gentleman. Talk to him privately, very smart. Talk to him publicly, don't expect too much.
Where the Gutlessness Came From
.Jessica White: Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Jessica White and I'm from the New York City LaRouchePAC, out of New Jersey. My statement is—and then my question—over the last few days, after gaining the support and encouragement of the New Jersey/New York LaRouchePAC embodied in one of the six LaRouche candidates, Diane Sare, I and several of my colleagues embarked on a mission to lobby many of the Congresspersons in the House of Representatives. We insisted that they sign on and co-sponsor H.R. 1489, the "Return to Prudent Banking Act of 2011," which in principle is the FDR Glass-Steagall of 1933. In too many cases, we were met with resistance, to say the least, from some of these Congresspersons, who seem unable to commit to ending the systemic collapse of the United States, and Europe by collateral damage, and insisted on blaming everyone and everything except Obama and their own cowardice. How can we continue to rally the necessary patriotic response and move past this sophistry? Thank you.
LaRouche: Okay, very nice! Very, very nice. Precise and to the point. Simple. It's called guts. Now you have shown guts. But I find that many people in the same environs have not shown guts. This is the principle of leadership.
Now, I was in World War II. I was not very important in the war itself. I achieved my importance in World War II after the defeat of Japan, when I was shipped back to India and I began creating trouble. But I know from this experience, and from the experience of my generation which went to war at that time, that the Baby Boomer generation that came after me, is gutless. It's systemically gutless. It's not just many gutless people; the generation itself is systemically gutless in its character.
Now, what do you do with that? You go back to World War II and you think about how leadership was conducted during World War II. It was conducted on the basis—in my experience on Dec. 7, 1941, when I happened to be in New York City, and I was going down the street, across Midtown, to visit a hotel where I was going to meet some people on a business basis. I walked up the street. The streets were silent. Central Manhattan—silent! I walked toward the East Side—silence! I walked into the hotel where I was going to meet—silence! Then I looked and I saw the reason for the silence. Pearl Harbor had been struck.
In the early aftermath of that occasion, suddenly there was an influx of young American males going to recruiting stations—which were not even open at that time in many cases—to be recruited into military service—a response to the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Now, because Roosevelt was President, the reaction of the American people was the sense that Roosevelt was going to act. And these fellows who packed the recruiting stations—and I was almost one of them, I was close to it—were reacting to the fact that Roosevelt was the President. The confidence in the leadership shown by this man, in peace, corresponded to their trust in this man as a leader in war.
And it worked out that way. About 17 million of us were engaged in military service during that period.
What happened was, immediately after, Roosevelt was out. Dead. And Truman took over, who was a British whore. A Wall Street whore. The American people lost their guts. It didn't happen all at once, but it became a creeping thing. The wives were really at first responsible for it. The men who had been in military service generally retained their experience in military service as their attitude, but the wives would say—and it's typical:"You've been away for five years. We don't have a family. You don't have a good job. You don't have a university education. You've got to behave yourself! Don't get our family into trouble." That was when cowardice moved in.
Now, I was in that period. I was sometimes the brunt—not that I wanted war, but I was the brunt of opposing Truman and what he represented. I saw people cringe; and these people who I saw cringe, were the mothers and fathers of what became the Baby Boomer generation.
That was bad enough! But then with the killing of Jack Kennedy, the cowardice spread. Real cowardice! And the cowardice was accompanied by a great movement in a war, on hashish and other kinds of recreational substances, shall we say. What we got out of that whole process, and out of the university generation of the 1960s, we got a bunch of prostitutes—that is, equivalent to prostitutes. No guts! No morals! No purpose. Just pleasure, different kinds of pleasure. Practically every week, a different kind of pleasure! Smoke this, drink that. A new fancy kind of sex—no human being required. That sort of thing was going on. And that's what we faced.
Now you have a generation which is born to the Baby Boomers. Those were the Baby Boomers—just because of the loud noises they made from their rear ends, I guess. And you have another generation, which has come along, and it's not quite as gutless, but it's uncertain in its choice of values. It's confused on values, moral, all kinds of values. Now, what that generation is waiting for, is a clear voice, on a choice of a system of values. Right now, that generation is somewhat shattered, to more or less degree, by the lack of a sense of specific kinds of values which actually function, in the sense of providing the moral guidance for leadership.
And you have to look at leadership. There are some people in society who tend to become leaders, and the values adopted by those who tend to become leaders are the key to what society is capable of doing.
We have now a youth movement, which is not just a youth movement: It's a movement among a certain layer, a small layer generally, of people who have the guts and are looking for the light to find the way to making their lives meaningful. The problem is that the politicians generally do not provide that courage. They don't! And those among us, the young people who are doing this organizing out in the field, are facing exactly that. How do we define for a certain number of potentially leading people, within that age group in society—say, between 25 and 35 is a key area you have to look at; are we providing them an assurance and knowledge required for them to fulfill the role of the kind of leadership which they are disposed to supply, provided they can get a decent answer as to what leadership is, as to what the standard of leadership is? That's the issue.
I'm an o-o-o-ld man, with certain pretensions of a certain kind. An old man, among the oldest you can find these days, but I'm a fire they'll remember from the time I walked the streets of Manhattan to that visit. I'm still the same fire, and I'm looking for people who want to become the modern equivalent of my passion back then. That's the solution. Accept the standards of value, the goals which are right, and provide leadership to people who want to become part of that process. And the great crisis that we face today will tend to create the opportunity, if the leadership of them is provided. My job, my role, is to try to make that real. That's how leadership works.
We have people in this room who have a sense of moving in the direction, of assuming that role of leadership. We've got a couple here in the front row. Exactly that. They represent the Group of Six,[2] which is not just the Group of Six. They're six people who are the core of an organization which is in part smaller, and in part larger. A leadership within the leadership; and then the broader mass of people who these leaders are going to pull together around an adopted sense of the moral principles and ideas which are needed to defeat the enemy in this struggle. That's us! Including this o-o-o-ld man, me. And the old man is around, just to show you there's a connection between then, as the Irishman said, and now.
'Why Not Windmills?'
Freeman: Lyn, some of your earlier remarks set off a whole series of questions on the question of environmentalism. Now, those questions can be divided up into two groups. One are questions by people who, in the way that they phrase their questions, express that they do hate humanity, and they think that human beings have screwed up the planet and things like that. I don't see any point in entertaining those questions, because if those people feel that strongly, they should just all kill themselves and that would be a big plus for the environment. But there are a series of other questions from people who are honest, and honestly confused about some things, and I'm going to try to put those together generally, although I will read you one which came from one of our Irish friends, because it's a funny question.
He says,
"Lyn, one of the main arguments of the environmentalists is that 'the gene pool must be preserved because it provides for the development of medicines and other useful things for humanity.' Now, I think the gene pool being referred to is the genetic information contained within a population of organisms, rather than my own family, of course, which has consisted almost exclusively of Genes until recently. My father, my uncle, my cousin, myself, we're all Genes. But I think that there is an inherent fallacy in this—my own family aside—that I'd like you to address."
But then a question from someone here in the audience, who obviously doesn't hate humanity and whose questions is actually reflected by half a dozen other questions that have come in, and that question is: "Lyn, I'm truly puzzled as to why you see solar and wind energy as harmful. I want to understand this, and what I can't understand is why something that doesn't pollute the environment is wrong to use." A number of people have written in saying, "Look, I'm pro-nuclear, but why not use this, as long as we have it available to us? Why do you see it as such a problem?"
LaRouche: Because the windmills and solar collectors are pollution. That's a fact. The standard of proof of cleanliness, is energy flux-density, and the incremental rate of energy flux-density, which is produced by certain kinds of technology and scientific progress. The problem is those who say there's pollution. There is no pollution in nuclear power, any more than there is in anything else. The worst pollution is the lack of nuclear power, because the ability of the human species to exist now depends absolutely on nuclear power. If you're against nuclear power, you're against humanity, because humanity now depends upon it. The greatest pollution is the pollution of ideas with that kind of character, because those kinds of ideas determine your behavior. Your choices determine your behavior. Your behavior is either beneficial to the human species, or it's not. If it's not beneficial for the human species, or is used as a substitute for that which is beneficial, that is pollution.
You choose to define pollution in the wrong terms. You're giving it a very restricted meaning, which it does not rectify. Excess windmills are pollution! They are inherently pollution. The birds will tell you that immediately, and they may come down in great numbers and unleash their bowels upon you, to let you know about that! I wouldn't blame them if they did it. It would probably help fertilize the territory at the same time as—you know, this kind of thing.
No, this is the point. It is pollution! It's a scientific question. These are not things of what I like and what I feel, or what I don't like and what I don't want to feel. That's not the standard of anything. That's nonsense. It's pure gibberish. Lack of critical judgment.
Our job is to maintain the human species, and the function, as I said earlier this evening. There's the immortal species, mankind. Or an immortal species, among others we may yet discover, is mankind. Anything that worsens the conditions of life and progress for mankind in that direction, is pollution. The President of the United States is a pollution, because he's destructive. And the thing lies in a process of developing a nation.
Look what's happening; look what the pollution is. These windmills are killing people. Is that pollution? Look at these damned things up there! They're pollution. Look at the energy flux-density of a windmill. Look at the cost to build it, to maintain it. It's pollution, pure pollution! Solar collectors are pollution by any rational standpoint. They substitute something which is rotten, inefficient, and actually criminal in effect, the solar collectors. Pollution! Pollution is as pollution does. That's your standard, not whether you like it or not. You want to kiss it, or you want to do something else to it. Who knows what? Want to sodomize it, I don't know. But that's the point. That which is not useful to humanity is questionable. It's pollution. That which causes a deterioration of the spread of the standard of living of humanity is pollution. Something can be pollution for what it does not do, as much as for what it does. You cannot pick and choose, and set a standard which you pick and choose because you want to prefer something. It's sophistry. And the argument that I heard in terms of pollution, is a clear case of the use of sophistry. To make something sound pretty when it stinks.
A Question of Leadership
Freeman: Okay, now, there are some other questions, but I don't think I'm going to ask them, because given the mood Lyn is in and given the fact that I know these people, I would like to see them continue to exist for a while longer. To the people here who have submitted questions asking for tips on practical survival techniques and tactics, you guys owe me, because I'm not going to ask him those questions.
Now Lyn, there have been a number of questions submitted which really get at the same point, and this question I will ask, because it's people asking for direction.
One question, interestingly, comes from a group of members of the Congressional Black Caucus, and they say:
"Mr. LaRouche, we are increasingly upset, obviously, with the actions of President Obama, although we are not prepared to move for his impeachment, for a variety of reasons which we know you don't agree with, but they are what they are. But there's a larger question which is posed, which is that if Obama and his team were to go, then the question comes of what in fact would replace them. You yourself have said that you're too old to be President, and the problem that many people have—and I'm not saying that we would move for impeachment if this were not the case, but I think that this is coming up with many American citizens who would turn away from President Obama if they had someone else to turn to—the question is, number one, who are people supposed to rally around? Number two, the so-called elite or establishment are not about to go down without a fight, and even if they did, the question is, what do you propose to do with these people? Many of them have committed criminal acts!
"And finally, do you still hold that you want to limit your slate of candidates to just six, or would you be open--given the fact that there doesn't seem to be much out there--to expanding it?''
LaRouche: Well, first of all, on the six, that's not true. The six are very big! They're infinitely expandable, if you're willing to do it, as the Irishman said. Now, on my leadership role, don't kid yourself, buddy. I may not be becoming President, but I'm prepared to run this whole damned shebang, if I get a chance at it. As a matter of fact, there are more people who are afraid of me in this country than anyone else. And they can prove it, very easily. The reaction our people get, at the mention of my name. "Awwhhhh!!" Right? You got the picture? These guys are scared bunnies. So I just say, "Boo!" And they jump.
The minute they think, that X number of people are agreeing with me vocally, they'll be out there trying to kiss my butt! I won't let them do that, of course. I want to keep my butt clean! But you've got to take the whole thing with a certain sense of merriment. It's necessary.Leadership is defined by circumstance, by trend and circumstance. Now if people want to survive, and they've got half a brain to do it with, they're going to support me if I'm put in that position; if these wonderful six young people do the job, they'll do it. It'll work. It can spread fast. Look what happened in New Jersey recently, with this sudden surge in turnout against the Obama Presidency. And the crowd grew rapidly, because it had a trade union complement, and that helped it grow, very fast.
There can be very sudden changes in the composition of the political process now. The hatred of Obama is enormous, and anyone who wants to say, "But he's the President!" He's the President for expulsion! More people hate this SOB than almost anyone else. They're only inhibited in their hatred of him by their contempt for him! They don't know whether to hate him, or show contempt for him, or to urinate on him, perhaps. All of these things are likely things to happen, if the people get a chance.
The question is one of leadership. Have you got the guts to get out there and stand and provide some leadership to get some other people to show some leadership and get this thing moving? It's up to you! You are the people. Don't you think you're a people? Don't you think you can push things? Don't you think you can influence people on the streets? Of course you can! It's the lack of confidence, that prevents you from doing it. And you also have to watch very carefully for the weather vane: When are the people ready to go? And you'd better be ready at that time, or you're going to lose.
Now, as for the action, I may make my last shot with that kind of thing, in this life. I don't give a damn about that. My job is to do that. My job is to make things happen, which you need. And I'll expend myself for that one, but not for anything less, not willingly. You want leadership? I'll give you leadership. I know these jokers there. I may have my limitations, but I don't have their limitations.
Freeman: Well, I promised you clear solutions, and I think that we have provided them. I have nothing to add. I'd ask you to join me in thanking Lyn.
LaRouche: I can only say to all of you: Have a hell of a good time!
[1] See Sergey Pulinets, "Are Earthquakes Foreseeable? Overview of the Current State of Research." Synopsis in EIR, July 15, 2011.
