Lyndon LaRouche Press Availability in New Jersey
May 21, 2023

On May 21, 2023, Lyndon LaRouche, pre-candidate for the Democratic nomination for U.S. President, made himself available to representatives of the press in Teaneck, New Jersey. LaRouche is on the ballot in the New Jersey Democratic primary election scheduled to take place on June 8. What follows is the transcript of that press availability, which starts in the middle of a reporter's question:

Q: ... the pictures of the abused prisoners in Iraq, lately. What the United States should do, to improve its image, and to correct the situation in the Arab world and the Muslim community in the United States, itself?

LAROUCHE: If we do not purge the U.S. government of the people responsible, not just the idiot, the President, who is not capable of fully understanding what he did, but Cheney's crowd: This crowd must be purged from government, because they have demonstrated themselves, not to be in error, but to be not men, but beasts. If we don't get the proven beasts out of the government, who will believe us?

Q: Thank you.

DENNIS SPEED: I want to thank various of you coming here, today, for the press availability that we're giving you. Mr. LaRouche, as you know, has been touring the United States, and in particularhe's touring the rest of the world, actually, also. He's developed over the course of particularly, the last couple of years, a group of, if you will, co-thinkers among and around the Presidency of the United States. He's changed the United States in a fundamental way, and many of the shadows of his actions are seen today, in the contemporary media. But, they don't really tell you who the man is, and the don't really tell you, in one sense, where the nation is, and why he believes himself necessary to be the President.

Not only does he believe it, it's the case. And you, many of you, have had some contact with us over the years. You've appreciated his ideas, and we thought that today, what we would do, is that given the critical, pivotal nature of the intervention he is making, in the United States today, give you the opportunity to come here today, and he'll give an opening statement, and then you can ask him any question that you wish, concerning in particular, the area of Southwest Asia doctrine and policy; but, there's a more general opportunity that you have here, and we hope you will avail yourselves of it.

There will be a few others that will join us in the course of the next hour or so, but we're going to begin the dialogue and the discussion now.

LYNDON LAROUCHE: Well, let me just give a very slight lecture, to situate the concept of what I'm going to say:

In the period from the time of Solon of Athens, through the death of Plato, there was a development in Europe, centered on Athens, but to some degree also, on what was called Magna Graecia, the southern part of Italy where a Greek civilization existed, in which there was a certain high point of development. This development is actually the birth of what became modern civilization.

However, this civilization failed, at that time. It failed notably in the case of the Peloponnesian War, which was this long war of Greece against its former allies in Sparta; which began, with Athens and the Athens alliance and extended to southern Italy, to Magna Graecia; a war which was begun under Pericles of Athens, continued under his successor, the notorious Thrasymachus. As a result of that, Greek civilization disintegrated, not entirelyits residue didn't disintegrate, but Athens, which had been the leading part of civilization at that point, worldwide as far as we know, disintegrated. It continued in a Hellenistic form, in the wake of the success of Alexander the Great, but it degenerated. It degenerated into what became its successor, the Roman Empire, which was decadent, and evil, from the beginning.

Now, what is happening now in the United States, is similar to that. You had in ancient Egypt and ancient Greece, you had this development, typified by the rise of what was called the Eleatics, by the Sophists, and by the followers of Aristotle. And this tradition continues to this day. What has happened now to the United States: The United States, which led the world out of the risk of a fascist world order in World War II, began to degenerate in the post-war period. Our degeneracy of the United States, todayour cultural degeneracyis analogous to what happened to Greece under Pericles and Thrasymachus: That we have become Sophists. People are no longer concerned with truth. We put spin on everything. They're concerned with popular opinion. They believe lies. You have to be seen "believing." And this has gotten us into this kind of mess.

The second part of this story, is that the Nazi system, which began to disintegrate after the battles of Stalingrad, and after the United States victory in Midway Island against the Japanese fleet, in which Nazi Germany were ultimately doomed: Some people in Nazi Germany, around Hermann Goering, decided that Hitler was a nut, and they were determined that the Nazi system would survive, as a tradition, survive the defeat of Germany in the war. These people entered into collaboration with certain people in the United Kingdom and the United States: people with the name, such as, Harriman, Morgan, du Pont, Mellon, who had originally supported Hitler in bringing him to power in Germany, but for strategic reasons supported Roosevelt against the Nazis, during the war.

At the end of the war, once Germany was being defeated, for the final defeat was on the way, these guys, typified by Allen Dulles, brought the Nazi system into the Anglo-American system. This became the Anglo-American right wing, typified by that pig, President Truman. Who we got rid of, and replaced him with Eisenhower, who gave us a period of relative peace.

But then, when Eisenhower left office, Kennedy was not capable of understanding or dealing with the situation. They killed him. And once they had killed Kennedy, they moved with the war in Vietnam, the Indo-China War. Under this period, there was a deliberate cultural corruption of the United States, called "contemporary liberalism" today. It's generally accepted ideology today in the United States. It's the reason why neither of the political parties, as parties, are capable of solving the problems before us. Only someone who recognizes the same problem, that happened to Greece under Pericles, the same kind of moral corruption which has gripped our institutions today, would avoid the destruction of worldwide civilization today, led by the self-destruction of the United States.

What you're seeing in Iraq, you're seeing fascism in the form of Cheney. Cheney's policy was perpetual warfare; it was perpetual nuclear preventive warfare. The wars we've seen in Afghanistan, what we've seen in Iraq, are intended to be extended, against Syriaby January, if Bush were re-elected, and Cheney was still his Vice President, we would be attacking Syria by January of this coming year. We would be putting nuclear weapons, bombing the sites of the power stations in Iran. We would be dropping nuclear weapons on sites in North Korea. The planet as a whole would degenerate, in a way comparable, to the way that the Greek civilization underwent a partial degeneration into a relative dark age, as a result of the Peloponnesian War.

The problem is, that we have no standard of truth generally accepted in the United States, today. Or, in European civilization generally today. Truth has been destroyed, especially over the past 40 yearsthe idea of truthin favor of what's called opinion: popular opinion, or what's called "spin." The press lies, the major press lies. The major political figures lie! The judgment is based on, "Don't tell the truth. It will get you into trouble. Work within popular opinion. If you want to accomplish something, argue for it, from the standpoint of generally accepted popular opinion."

So, now we come to a point, in which we have a war in Iraq, which can not be won. Because it's not a war in Iraq. It's a war against civilization. It's a war on the part of some people, who intend to create an English- speaking world empire, a new Roman Empire, of the British and the United States. The idea is to eliminate all of the nation-states, to do the same thing the British Empire has done since 1763: Is play the nations of Europe and other nations against each other, with struggles to neutralize them, so they will not be a challenge to the empire. And foolish nations agree to be played by that game.

The U.S. Constitutional tradition

Now, I come along. The advantage is here, in the United States, we have- -the United States is the only place this problem can be solved. Because, if the United States were to act upon certain elements of its tradition, its Constitutional tradition, we could intervene, and rally most of the nations of the world, to cooperate with us in getting out of this mess. You have institutions in the United States, in the intelligence services, in the professional military, and others, who typify powerful influences inside the Executive branch of government, who have friends in the Legislative branch of government, and within certain institutions within society. These circles tend now to agree with me, at least in the direction I'm taking. My course of action is to provide an element of cohesion and leadership, among these circles in the United States, especially around the Executive branchthe opposition to Cheney and to what poor Bush represents, in the Executive branch. These circles are capable of recognizing, that the existence of civilization depends upon acting, to get rid of what Cheney represents, and to find a peace in the Middle East (or, so-called Middle East), which is being used as a cockpit to destabilize the world.

The key aspect of this, which is often misinterpreted, is this question of petroleum. In the preparation for what became known as World War I, by Edward VII, the King of Englandand even when he was Prince of Wales, before he was actually Kingthe idea came, of taking the area of southern Mesopotamia, now called Kuwait, and making it a personal property of the King of England. The purpose was to take the oil, which was the richest source of petroleum at that time, available petroleum, from the Gulf, and grab that petroleum, to use it as a way of equipping the British military fleet, the naval fleet, with oil-burning vessels, which would be superior in their mobility to coal-burning vessels; and to use this as a factor of strategic control.

Once that was established, the British then conceived about opposing, or making the world dependent upon consumption of petroleum, by eliminating alternatives to petroleum as a source of cheap power. (It's not actually cheap power. You haul it all over the world. It costs more to carry it around, than it does to produce it.) All right.

So therefore, the Middle East area, which has the richest and cheapest source of supply of petroleumprobably, has at least 80 years' supply for the world as a whole, from the Gulf and adjoining areas. You take the area from Iraq down to the Gulf and beyond; that area contains at least 80 percent of 80 years' worth of the world's petroleum supplies.

Therefore, by making the world dependent upon petroleum, and putting it in the hands of what's called the London marketing cartel, which controls thisit's not the Arab world that controls it, it's the London marketing cartel, which controls the way oil is sold around the world. Then, you have the grip on the world.

What is happening right now, is that the world financial system is collapsing. It's doomed. Nothing can save the present world monetary-financial system. It's finished now. Just a question of when it goes over the cliff. It's going over. At this time, they're trying to prop up the financial system, and the best way to prop up the financial system was to use hedge funds to gamble on a rising price of petroleum. In other words, the profits on investment in petroleum, the petroleum stocks, on financial markets, is the major source of impetus for profits in the world system as a whole. It is not the price of production at the source of petroleum production, which is the problem, the problem of the inflationwe're now over $40 a barrel.

That is not the price of production. It's not OPEC, that is responsible. It is the London marketing cartel, which is using the margin of profit, on the basis of an increase in price on the contracts per barrel of oil, which is now using this as the major prop of the world financial system: the U.S.-British-dominated world financial system.

We are now in a hyperinflationary spiral, which is in the process of blowing up. Just give an example: At about $20 a barrel of petroleum, presuming no hedge-fund intervention, the price of petroleum around the world, at $20 a barrel, would not be a threat to the stability of the world economy. At $30 a barrel, it's a problem. At $40 a barrel, it's a crisis. One more crisis and $50 a barrel, and the whole system will blow up. But, this is caused entirely by this hedge fund speculation in this area.

So, that's the nature of the problem.

So, we have an intertwined relationship, between a war policya nuclear war policy, a world imperial nuclear war policyby Cheney and what he represents, behind him. You have at the same time the same financial group, which is behind the Cheney phenomenon, is playing this other game with a wrecked financial system. So, we now come to a point, that the entire world financial-monetary system is in the process of collapsing.

And in this process, they've unleashed a way of trying to control the planet in the long term, the way the Roman Empire did: by perpetual warfare. Perpetual warfare, which can not be conducted today, by conventional warfare methods, but only by aid of nuclear warfare. And therefore, since Israel was created as a nuclear power in the Middle East, for this purpose of destabilization, we're now trapped into a nuclear warfare scenario, as the controlling scenario.

The only way we'll get free of it, is by getting rid of what Cheney represents. That also means, overturning those in the Democratic Party, who are tailing what Cheney represents, who are not exposing it, who are not fighting it. And therefore, only those forces in the world, which recognize, that the United States could lead a way out of this problem, and only those in the United States, who recognize that we in the United States have the responsibility of providing that leadership, could avoid a collapse of civilization into a dark age right now.

My unique role

My problem is that I'm relatively unique, in terms of political figures who's actually leading that process. And you see in the reaction of many parts of the so-called Arab world, and others, to my proposal on the alternative, on a doctrine, there are many parts of the world which are prepared to act in support of what I propose.

That's the seriousness of the situation.

Whatever these clowns say about my candidacy, whatever they say about what is inevitable in political candidacythat is reality. And it's the way the system reacts to that reality, not to the polls, which is going to determine the way this situation goes. They can choose against me: They can lose everything. We all lose everything. But, we've now seen, with the response to my proposal on the Doctrine, that, if my influence in the United States is acceptedwhich will only happen under conditions of perceived monetary-financial crisisunder those conditions, there is a way out. And, much of the rest of the world is prepared to cooperate with the United States, on that basis, including Europe.

So, that's the situation. It's not a simple kind of problem, which you hear talked about in the news media. This is reality. And reality is not what happens from time to time, under ordinary circumstances. Reality is what happens in times of crisis, when civilizations themselves, are threatened with collapse. We are now at a breaking point, of potential collapse of a world civilization. This has happened several times before. It's threatened now. Sometimes we escaped from that threat. Sometimes, we did not.

The question is, are we going to escape from that threat? Or, are we not? And that's what my candidacy represents. That's what the issue is.

Q: My name is Brother Leroy from WHCR and my question relates to one of the last points that you made: You said, sometimes we have escaped from these crises. An example in history, of having escaped from the crisis?

LAROUCHE: Most recent, was the case of Franklin Roosevelt. Franklin Roosevelt saved the world from fascism. If Hoover had been re-elected, then the policies of the United States, under Hoover, would have been a continuation of the same ones that were going on in Europe, under the Germans. Then we would be living, today, in the aftermath of a Nazi world system. It was Roosevelt that saved humanity from that.

Earlier, the United States was saved from extinction, by Benjamin Franklinor what became the United States. And after that, by Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln. These were revolutions. They were called revolutionaries. Roosevelt was a revolutionary, even though what he did was nothing but uphold the U.S. Constitution. Lincoln was a revolutionary, but he did nothing but defend the intent of the Constitution. Franklin was a revolutionary, but he expressed the opinion of the highest levels throughout Europe, of civilization.

So, we have had in European experiences, that kind of thing. For example, we had a dark age in the 14th Century, in Europe, as a result of this Norman system, the Venetian system. We had a rescue from that in the 15th Century, with the birth of the Renaissance. But, then, beginning 1480, with the rise of this fascist Tomaás Torquemada, the Grand Inquisitor in Spain, we had a process of attempted breakup of civilization by Torquemada. We had a plunge from 1511 to 1648 into religious war throughout Europe, which we were saved from by the Treaty of Westphalia.

So, we've accosted this thing, in all known history of European and adjoining civilization, of periods of crisis. In times of crisis, sometimes leadership and people come together, and take an action, with great difficulty, which saves civilization, and may take it a step upward.

The basic problem we have, is, as far back as we know, mankind has been engaged in a struggle to free us from a condition, in which some peoplea relative fewhold the rest of the people in a condition of virtual or actual slaves, as human cattle, either herded cattle of the type that 80% of the people of the United States are today; or, as hunted cattle, as we treat the people of Southern Africa. That's the whole thing: The slave system is an example of that. What is that? They went in there, they killed a lot of people, they hunted them down. The Spanish called them "animals." They said, "They're not human. Therefore, we have a right to take them captive, like we take wild animals captive. We kill the strong ones, the old men, the tough ones. We keep the young women and the children. We put the young women and the children into slavery." That's herded and hunted cattle.

The rest of us, who are not hunted down and herded that way, were herded. We're not allowed to know anything. We're not supposed to be "taught things" above our station.

It's like the whole fight in the Reconstruction period, the fight around education, away from Frederick Douglass's policy: That the person is free, to the extent their mind is free; to the extent their development has reached a highest enough level, so they are part of society. They're thinking members of society. They're free! And once free in their mind, they'll be free in their body. It went the other way: You can be free in your body, as long as we enslave your mind. And therefore, the educational policy, was "let's not educate the freed slaves above their proper station in life." The educational policy in the United States, today: "Let's not educate our children above the expected kind of employment they're going to have." And that's how we've destroyed ourselves.

So, it's always this kind of struggle: The struggle against the tradition of some people holding other people, as herded or hunted animals. And that's what's happened to the lower 80% of our people in the United States today, the lower income brackets. In these times of crises, civilization will degenerate, unless someone, in the form of leadership, intervenes, and arouses the people, awakens them, to a great struggle to fight against this tradition of treating human beings as cattle.

So, we win and we lose. And the most important thing you can do with your life, is find yourself in the midst of a great crisis, like this one, and to be able to act in such a way, that you turn the tide, away from destruction into something good.

Q: I have a question. Since 9/11, the Arab-American community, of which I'm one of them, was under attack physically in different ways, even though we are part of the American society. And we emigrated to this country out of love and seeking freedom, and freedom of speech and good things we couldn't get in our countries. We've been, almost like targetted, and we feel like under watch by the authorities for no reason. How do we cope with this?

LAROUCHE: Well, first of all, you look at where this came from. You have two such policies in the United States: One against the Islamic world. Where did this come from? Zbigniew Brzezinski and Samuel P. Huntington: The Clash of Civilizations. This is also the Crisis of Democracy: Samuel P. Huntington, which gave us Project Democracy that runs the United States Congress today.

The third one is the one that's now outcoming, is a crisis of the Hispanic populations of the Americas, against the United States Anglos.

So, what do you have? You have this Aznar, this fascist former premier of Spain, out in Californiaa Bush beloved, a Cheney belovedout there preaching about a new terrorist crisis for June, which is going to put the United States government under FEMA, Federal Emergency Management Agency control. And this guy, I know, is tied to the Nazis! The Nazi organization, which is operating fully out of Spain, in parts of ItalyMussolini's granddaughter is part of it; and in the Americas, to try to get a conflict, a racial type of conflict, between Hispanic-speaking, or Hispanic-accent-speaking, Americans, and Anglos, in the United States.

So, what you have, is the method of destruction, and conquest of a proud nation, by this kind of conflict. What the Arab population, the Islamic population of the United States, has faced, under Ashcroftwho is a racist and a fascist, as well as a lunatic!is actually fascism! This is Heinrich Himmler. This the Nazi system! And people, like the Jews in Germany: "What did we do wrong?" The German Jew had become an essential part of German culture and German economy. They were among the leading contributors to German culture. Why would Germany want to exterminate some of its own citizens, who happen to be Jewish, who were a valuable asset of their country?

That's the answer. And they're getting the same thing here.

There is no good reason, there's no justification, there's no issue: There is the need to create a kind of conflict, by which you can introduce a fascist regime in the United States. And that's what

We're in a depression. What's the issue? In a depression, like the present one, when you look at the rate of inflation in the United States, the rate of price inflation, we are in hyperinflation in the United States! Look at milk prices! Look at fuel prices. Look at all kinds of food prices. We are already in hyperinflation!

So, what happens? The system is about to collapse. The financial system is bankrupt. All right. You have two choices: Either, as under U.S. law, as Roosevelt did, you say, the United States Executive branch, with the consent of Congress will put the system into bankruptcy reorganization, to defend the general welfare of the people, and reorganize society, as Roosevelt did, to defend the general welfare of the people. Or: as was done in Europe, under the fascists, you say, "The bankers have to be defended, first of all, and the people have to be eaten, if necessary." As they're proposing toward Argentina. Let Argentina be lootedeven though the people are starving to death, in large masses, in Argentina, which was once the fourth-highest standard of living in the world! And they say, "Rape them! Loot them! Kill them!"

So, you're coming to a point, where so-called democracy is no longer tolerable to these financier interests. Therefore, how do you play the population? You play it against itself. You orchestrate conflicts between sections of the population. You make one the victim today, another the victim tomorrow. And what happened, is simply, as a part of this ideology, a fascist Cheney, and what he represents, said, "The financial crisis is coming on. We're going to create a dictatorship, a fascist dictatorship."

And what did Ashcroft do? Ashcroft, who is a follower of the philosophy of Carl Schmitt, who was the legal authority for Hitler's coup d'eétat in GermanyAshcroft tried to follow his predecessor Carl Schmitt, on the day after Sept. 11, to immediately move in, to try to put in a fascist "Patriot Act" and now going to Patriot II, and trying to interpret this thing, all the way through to actual fascism.

And you'll find people in the Arab community in this country, who are terrified, because they see a fascist threat coming down and breathing down their neck, that they can go into something Guantanamo prison camp next. And that's what's being threatened.

Q: [followup] I myself was a survivor of the World Trade Center. My office was on the 86th floor. I was traumatized twice, actually. Once because I lost 40 of my co-workers, with whom I worked for many years. You know, I served in New York State for 29 years, 25 years at least of them, I was working with those guys, whom I lost on 9/11. But, I was traumatized again because I'm Arab-American. I don't feel like America today, is the same America when I came to this country in 1968. It's completely different.

LAROUCHE: Yeah, absolutely.

Q: [followup] As far as safety, as far as respect of everybody as a human beingyou know? We're not safe any more.

LAROUCHE: Well, the point is, I keep referring to a couple of things from Shakespeare who gives you an indication, from that time, and for an earlier time, of this kind of problem.

In the first act of Julius Caesar, of Shakespeare, one of the plotters, Cassius, talking to the leading plotter, Brutus: "The problem," he says, "dear Brutus, lies not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings." The problem with the typical American, is that he or she thinks like an underling, which is, "I can't do anything, I must go along. I must fight my little fight, in my community. I must fight this fight. But I must not try to take on the powers that be, the big fellas, the big powers." And thus, the importance of leadership, in the United States, or in any sane society, is not to exert dictatorial power. The function of leaders is to have the courage that the people themselves don't have. It's to not think like an underling. And to provide the kind of leadership that will give courage to the people, so they will rise above this thing of being underlings.

You know, people say, "I don't want to talk about politics. I'm concerned about my community, my family concerns, my pension, my this." "I'm fighting for this."

Then, they get them divided on so-called "wedge issues." "I'm against abortion." "I'm for abortion." "I'm for sex with animals." "I'm against sex with animals." These kinds of divisions.

So, you play the people. And they behave like underlings. They don't think about being citizens: they don't understand what it means, that you're born, and you're going to die. And if you think of your interests in those terms, you say, "My interest is what I do for humanity. Because I'm going to die! What am I going to give to humanity? What am I protecting from the past, that was given to us, by previous generations? Am I going to protect that? Am I going to make a contribution?" That's your real interest! That's the interest of a true human being. But, many of us are conditioned to think likelike cattle. We think like cows who want the best place in the barn. And we fight among each, to get the best place in the barn. We don't think about being human.

And therefore, you have to have leaders, who have a sense of spirituality, who will lead the fight. You've got to have leaders that people can depend upon, and have confidence in. In a time of crisis, that's what makes a difference. It always has: The lack of presence of leaders, who have the courage and insight to provide the kind of leadership that gives the people courage to be reasonable. And we don't have that: We have a bunch of liars, that the people don't trust. People hate most of their leaders. They consider them tricky, untrustworthy, lying, deceitful, cheating, double-talkingthat's our problem.

And that's why exerting a role of leadership, is, to me, it's the most important thing I do.

Q: My name is [inaud] I'm from [Muslims Weekly newspaper. You just mentioned about education policy, so I would like to know more about the American education system, and what is your concept of this?

LAROUCHE: Well, as I laid out in the Doctrine, but, of course, there's a lot more to it. I laid it out in highlights of what it is, as a doctrine.

You have a situation, which is an impossible situation. You have a general so-called Middle East war, which is a result of a long phase of orchestration of events in the region, and more specifically, what happened with the collapse of the Soviet Union, in which a new game came into play. And the first Bush Administration played a more cautious role. What Cheney, at that time, as Secretary of Defense, was a bastardbut they checked him. Then, later, under the new Bush Administration, at a later point in the crisis, this guy went loose. And we now have unleashed, as I said, this policy of perpetual warfare, preventive nuclear warfare: an imperial policy! This is not an issue of Iraq; it's not an issue of Afghanistan, it's not Syria, it's not Iran. It's global intent. One by one, with the threat of nuclear warfare, to bring these nations into imperial submission.

This creates a situation, which we see in Iraq, which from a military standpoint, was insane. Now, in other countries, Cheney would use nuclear weapons. For various reasons, they did not use nuclear weapons yet, at least not, except for one incident at the airport, outside Baghdad, where there's a question about what was done there. They did not use nuclear weapons.

But against Ira/n, the intention is: nuclear weapons. Either nuclear weapons used by the United States, or by Israel. And the alternative is an Israeli attack on Syria, or a U.S. attack on Syria, in January. The alternative, is either an Israelidropping of Israeli nuclear weapons on the oil stations and the nuclear stations in Iran; or the U.S. doing it. Or, the U.S. dropping nuclear weapons on sites in North Korea.

We're leading an imperial thrust, at the time that the international monetary-financial system is collapsing.

Now, what this would mean: The United States can not conquer the world. We're a degenerate culture, at the end of our skein, under the present system. Therefore, all this can mean, is U.S. superiority, military superiority, in this way, could lead the whole planet into nothing but a new dark age, of asymmetric warfare.

Under those conditions, you have to respond in a special way, which is what I've done. We know that, my knowledge of the Middle East, and my role in the Middle East gives me a special position: That I can be trusted. I'm the only leading U.S. figure, who can be trusted, and that is a view shared by many people in the region; it goes back over a quarter of a century, more than a quarter-century. So therefore, I have to use that, to state a policy, as my policy, for what I've defined Southwest Asia, as a policy which the United States should support, once it's determined that certain representative institutions in the region, accept that kind of doctrine, that approach.

The second thing that's required, is that Israel, the Israeli-Palestinian question be resolved, or be put into a form which is assuredly resolvable, immediately. Otherwise you can not bring unity, in effect, for this purpose into the region.

That's my policy.

Now, this involves a number of complications, which I've alluded to in my remarks here today. Because of the sophistry in the situation, the Israeli-Arab conflict is of a special nature: It's based onit's very similar to the religious warfare in Europe between 1618 and 1648. There is no way, in which an ordinary conflict negotiation would work. A long period of cultural-religious warfare in the region, is not something you can negotiated away, "like that." You therefore have to introduce a commitment, like that that was introduced by Cardinal Mazarin, in the case of the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia. Therefore, we must bring the concept of the Treaty of Westphalia into play, in that region.

Now, what the problem has been, since I first became involved in this problem in this region, on the Israeli-Arab and related conflicts in the Middle East, has been that, you could not succeed in getting an economic development program adopted as the basis for negotiating a solution. Because the Treaty of Westphalia was based on each nation, each person in conflict, must agree to commitment to the "advantage of the other": That is, must agree to give primary concern to the welfare of the other. That, if the parties that have been warring, will commit themselves to the welfare of one another, then you can have peace. And that's the only way you get peace in this kind of warfare, religious warfare.

Now, the issue here, becomes water. You fly over the whole region, you see sand, sand, sand, sand. You see desert. There's lots of territory, but there's no development. There's not sufficient energy, despite the fact petroleum's all over the place. There's not sufficient water. The Israelis have been taking water from the Jordan, from the Litani region, and from the area of Syria. They've been stealing all the water. There's not enough water to meet the requirements of the population inhabiting the area. Therefore, without an energy policy, without a power policy, a power-development policy, without a hydroelectric policy, without a water policy in general, without a growth policy in the region, there is no way, to provide true "advantage of the other," through development.

Israel has nuclear power, it has nuclear weapons. But, it doesn't have any nuclear power, to take care of its own territory, as well as around it. There's no power. There's not enough water. There's no desalination program, on a scale needed for the population, also.

So therefore, to deal with this, you have to have a commitment, to peace through development. You have to have agreement among most of the powers of the regionthis includes Turkey, which is a positive factor here; you have to include Armenia; you have to include Azerbaijan, as a stability factor, as well as dealing with Iran. You must dealing with Syria as a state. You must deal with Egypt as a leading state. You must give a sense, that we are giving security, to an implicitly increasingly insecure set of states in the region. Every one of these states, so-called Arab states, are threatened with destruction, chaos, where government exists today, unless this changes.

Therefore, you have a situation, where we know we have to hang together, and work together, otherwise, we're all going to go Hell together. Under those conditions, when that perception comes across, and where there's a commitment to the solution, I believe that you can get a solution, which you can otherwise not get.

Q: [followup] Actually, you missed my point. I asked about education policy.

LAROUCHE: Oh, education. Oh, for the Middle? Where?

Q: [followup] You mentioned about the education policy.

LAROUCHE: Oh, I see. All right, I get you.

Our education policy today, in the United States, is, memorize what you're taught. Teaching people to think, is not desired. Also remember, we went from being the world's leading producer society, to the world's leading parasite society. We sucked the blood of the world, from its cheap labor and its resources. We don't produce any more. We have people managing things, but they don't produce. We have a generation, which, from the past 40 years, which is now running the United States institutionsthe 40s, 50s, and 60s age-groupand they don't know what production is! They don't know how to produce! They don't know the idea of man's relationship to nature, and to man, as being based on principle.

You look at the education policy: There is no education! We used to have a better education policy, because, to survive, you needed to qualify for a job. In former times, qualifying for a job, for most people, meant working in a factory producing something. Working in a machine-tool shop. Or a farmer. Or some other skill which involved technological progress. You, therefore, had to have an education, at that time. You also had qualitative social relations. You need Classical artistic education. You need Classical artistic culture, because only in that way, can you transmit from one generation to the other a sense of the contributions, the cultural contributions, of one generation to the next. We've destroyed all that.

This was done by a group which was headed by people like Allen Dulles, in the post-war period, but many others. Time magazine was part of this: It was called the Congress for Cultural Freedom. This institution, which was established, actually as an adjunct to the pro-Nazi elements that were brought into the United States, destroyed Classical culture and education in the United States, and in Europe. There was resistance in Europe. I call it "the Sexual Congress of Cultural Fascism."

We have destroyedwhat happened to the people, who were terrified by the Missile Crisis, were terrified by the killing of President Kennedy, terrified by the entry into the Indo-China War: People who were going to universities, the leading universitiesthe generation that was supposed to become the leaders of the future of this nation, back in the middle 1960s: They took their clothes off and took LSD, and called themselves "the future." This generation is running the United States today. In the private institutions, in the political institutions. It is making policy, for the large part.

They are, in a sense, have created a system of education in their own image. This image is not an image of man. It's an image of this kind of thing, which came out of the Congress of Cultural Freedom. And this is the problem: We have a deliberate destruction of the mind of our people in the United States, through this revolution, which has taken over, increasingly, over the past 40 years. That's what wrong with our educational system.

Q: [followup] Do you have any alternative education policy?

LAROUCHE: Yeah! First of all, a ClassicalI have this now, with a youth movement, which, to me, is a leadership, potential leadership, for the future of the nation: That is, when you have people 18 to 25 years of age, who think of themselves as no longer youth as such, but as young adultsthey are emotionally adultsbut they're in a period when they're preparing for a role in society, in the future, as an adult role: The way you shape a civilization, is, you develop this generation, in particular, as a self-conscious, future stratum of leadership of the nation. They come into power over the period of one generation, from that time on. And they exert an increasing influence, during the time they're progressing toward that goal.

Then, these people, from this generation, become the force which will fight for the education of the younger generation, who will actually go into the teaching positions, the key teaching positions, which transform education according to the needs of the people. This is not only true in the United States, where it's a critical problem, but it's also true around the world. It's true in Europe.

We need to take the younger people, that 18-to-25 bracket, the so-called university-eligible bracket, and we have to give them a new approach to their own education, give them a sense of power, over shaping their own education. Let them experience what education is in those terms. Let them, then, become dedicated to reshaping our educational and related policies. Let them become dedicated to assuming more and more responsibilities in society, out of their own process of self-education.

That's the only way we can do it.

What we need is what we've had before. We had it in the 15th Century in Europe, with the Renaissance. We had it in the latter part of the 17th Century, after the Treaty of Westphalia, in that period, the period of Leibniz and so forth, a great cultural renaissance in Europe. We had it in the second half of the 18th Century, a great European cultural renaissance, an anti-empiricist renaissance, typified by people like Moses Mendelssohn, and Lessing, and Goethe, and Schiller and so forth, in Germany. Which spilled over into this country, in the form of Franklin and the people around him, who made the American Revolution.

The time has come, where we need a cultural renaissance of a Classical cultural renaissance, like that which Plato attempted to realize in Greece. And, it always comes from the younger generation, of that age-group, which actually works out its new destiny, inspires the older generation with optimism, and moves on to assume leading roles in society. We need a renaissance.

Q: Would you go back, and touch on the embracing of the Nazi way of civilizationI'm paraphrasing what you said, I've been taking note on that. This is when the individuals in Nazi Germany saw that they were going to lose, and they made a determination that the Nazi way of life would survive. Okay? How was that effected here. Because, you mentioned that it was embraced by individuals on this side. They already had a relationship.

LAROUCHE: Um-hmm. Like Joe Kennedy. The father of Jack Kennedywas a Nazi! That simple! That's why Roosevelt dumped him.

Now, the point was this: It goes back to 1763, when the British Empire first emerged at the Treaty of Paris, as a victory at the close of the so-called Seven Years' War in Europe. So, you have the Anglo-Dutch Liberal system became, essentially an empire. From that point on, this imperial group, the Anglo-Dutch imperial group, was determined to have the British system, the Anglo-Dutch system, emerge as a world empire: a permanent world empire, as successor to the Roman Empire. At that time, under the leadership of Lord Shelburne, who was about 28 or 30, when this occurred, who became the leader of this process.

Since that time, the British played a game, always in the interest of the Venetian-style, financier oligarchical system, to play the nations of Europe, and other nations, against each other, in such away that nothing would arise from Europe which would be a challenge to the permanent power of this imperial power, based in London. At the same time, the determination was madeagain, in 1763that there would be no nation formed in the English- speaking colonies in North America. That's the general history of the thing.

That struggle is going on to the present time. The system exists. The system also exists inside the United States. What this evolved into, in the course of the 20th Century, was the idea of a large British Commonwealth, which would include the United States, as a major part of the British Empire. In other words, the United States became the physically leading element of the intended British Empirerun from the London, but with the power of the United States behind it. The center of this was largely in two areas: It was in the New York bankers, such as Morgan, Mellon, Harriman, du Pont and so forth; and in the Southern Confederacy, the legacy of the Confederacy. These two forces together, represented the idea of the empire.

Now, these forces, coming out of World War I, the Versailles Treaty, created a system that wouldn't work. They knew it. So, a group was assembled, called the Synarchist International, which created every fascist force on the continent of Europe, between 1922 and 1945. So, this was a unit, which was integral to the Anglo-American interest. The Anglo-Americans were the people that put Hitler into power in 1933. But then, toward the middle of the decade, they decided that they didn't want a German dictator of the world. They didn't dislike fascism. They just didn't like to have it German-speaking, instead of English-speaking.

So, for that reason, forces behind Churchill, turned against people like Joe Kennedy, Lord Halifax and company, who wanted Hitler, who were friends of Hitler and Goering, who wanted an alliance between the British and Hitler. But other forces, including Churchill, united with Roosevelt against this. The reason they united was, they said: We are not going to have a continental European-based world fascist system.

So therefore, we had an Anglo-American alliance, around Roosevelt, against Hitler. But, as soon as 1942, after Stalingrad was obvious, and after the ensuing events at Midway in June, where the U.S. Navy defeated the Japanese, which meant that the Nazi empire was doomednot immediately, but in the long runat that point, Goering and company began to move. And they decided that this nut Hitler, would go on with the warthey couldn't stop thatbut they were going to prepare to create something which would come out of the war as a rebirth of their system.

Now, all the way through, the Goering circles were closely tied to Anglo-American-Dutch and so forth financial interests. That is, there were common stock companies, which were holding companies, which were owners of the Nazi system, industrial system, and owners, also ot part of the American system. In July 1944, when the doom of the Nazi system was obvious, militarily, after the breakthrough at Normandy, these guys moved. And they moved against a guy who becamewho's an enemy of mine, but a guy who also became an enemy, François Genoud. François Genoud, in Switzerland (who became one of my notable enemies during the 1980s), was the go-between between the Nazi interests and Allen Dulles, who brought this Nazi system inside the U.S. system, and the British system.

So, Truman was the realization of this. Truman was, in effect, a Nazi! The President of the United States, a Democrat. And Truman and the British launched the so-called Cold War policy. This was moderated by Eisenhower, because Truman brought us to the edge of nuclear war. And, once the United States knew, that the Soviet Union had developed a thermonuclear weapon deployablethe United States said to Truman: "Retire, buddy! You're finished." And they brought Eisenhower in, who was opposed to that kind of policy.

Then, when Eisenhower retired, Allen Dulles and company went back with the same process, unleashed the Missile Crisis, killed Kennedy, and moved on to the Indo-China War. And the transformation of our culture into this so-called post-industrial degeneracy we have today.

Q: [followup] So that, based on that, at that time of Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhowerthere're two forces at play? There're two forces at play: the ones that representthat Dulles represented.

LAROUCHE: Yes.

Q: [followup] And the ones who would say, "No, this is enough. Enough is enough."

LAROUCHE: Or, more"got to get rid of it."

Q: [followup] Okay. But, there are two forces at play. One, you laid out was the Anglo-Dutch financial piece. Who was the other one?

LAROUCHE: That's us. I mean, in this country, in our institutions, in our traditions, we have a Constitutional tradition, which is not just us living today. It's something we have from the 18th Century and earlier; it's a cultural tradition which we have, which is transmitted from generation to generation.

And, you find that people in our government, that is, in the Executive branch, either retired or serving, as militarynot Boykin or Miller, but more sane peoplethat these sane people, certain people in our intelligence services; like Colby was like that. Colby was a mixed bag, but Colby was, in a sense, on my side.

So, you had people who were devoted, to the American tradition. Because we think of ourselves as being responsible, for this country! We're responsible. I mean, the country needs some leadership. We have to be the repository and supply of leadership, to help pull the people together, to defend our nation.

Q: [followup] That group was outflanked in 2000. It was outflanked.

LAROUCHE: Well, in part. Because Clinton is a complication. Gore, yes. Gore's a terrible character. But, Clinton is probably one of the brightest political figures we've had, in high office. But he belongs to this generation. And, he's very bright. He can actually thinkunlike many of politicians of the type we have running loose today. They can't think! They really can't! They can scheme, but they can't think. But he can actually think conceptually.

But, Clinton believes the mystique of his generation. That's his weak point. So, what happened in 2000, what was outflanked was me: What you had, is, you had a bunch of racists who excluded me from the election campaign. And that kept off the platform.

In other words, if I had not been excluded, the way I was excluded that year, Gore would have been elected. But it would have been largely to my credit. And, we, Clinton and so forth, and others, would have preserved control over the governmental process. We'd have saved the country. But, when Gorethe damned foolblew the election, with his nonsense, then you had this Bush thing!

The fascists took over! And Bush is nothing but an idiot, the young Bush. But Cheney and company, and what's behind him, took over. And they were on their way, as I saidas I said in January, before Bush was inaugurated: It was inevitable, because Bush is stupid, because the Administration's party is stupid, we're going into the worst financial crisis, which is already coming on. And because of this, we have to expect that some Hermann Goering is going to do something, like setting fire to the Reichstag, in order to bring about dictatorship in the United Statesand that happened on Sept. 11, 2023.

That's the issue.

Now, we've got a point, that I was right. Many people in the institutions recognize that I was right. They don't control the parties, but they are part of our system. And they recognize I was right. And you now have a fight to get rid of Cheney, which happened, because we did it. We haven't got rid of him, yet.

Q: [followup] The reason I said "outflanked," is that, it appears as though that group plays power centers within power centers; within the Pentagon, there's a power group, that "answers" to Cheney. And, there is, I think in the State DepartmentI call them "power centers"and that they have effectively outmaneuvered the structure that has been in place, but that today, behind the headlines, it appears as though there is a struggle. That there's a struggle within the military, or the military against that group

LAROUCHE: Yeah, right.

Q: [followup] There is something going on.

LAROUCHE: Startlook at the way our Executive branch is structured. Under our Constitution, the Executive branch has an importance which does not exist in any other country in Europe. Doesn'’t exist. Those are parliamentary systems. Ours is a Presidential system. Under a Presidential system, under a Constitutional Presidential system, it is the Executive branch that acts. Now, the Presidential system doesn't act too well, if you have an idiot as President. We have an idiot who's on the wrong side as President. I don't know what side he's onI don't know if he knows what side he's on. But, anyway.

But, nonetheless, the people who are in the Executive branchor, like me, who are outside, but part of itwe representlike professors, who are no longer in, or that sort of thing. We represent a core of the Executive branch's Constitutional tradition in the United States. What I did, was I concentrated, while people were trying to play other gamesI said, "The only way you're going to stop this crap: You've got to mobilize and assemble a hard core of the professional Executive branch of government, to act with concerted influence and force, to induce the institutions of the country to react, to change this."

And that's what we've done. You see it all over the press. We've spilled the beans. We couldn't act immediately, because you can't raise a coup against your own government! But, we moved to influenceto expose, to expose, to expose, to make clear. And we have, so far, succeeded, and events have confirmed that. So therefore, we have, today, a force inside the United States, which is fighting, against this nonsense. And these are the people, if I were President tomorrow, these are exactly the people I could depend upon, as a President, to move things!

What I'm trying to do on this doctrine, on the Southwest Asia Doctrine, is: If people in this part of the world agree with what I propose, and many do, then the institutions of the United States know, that this is the way to go. We move in. We change things. We make an agreement with the people in this area, on a new policy for the entire Southwest Asia region. And we know it'll work; we can make it work. We just have to get Cheney and company out of the way. I think that, even with idiot Bush we can handle it. Because his daddy and company would recognize how dangerous the situation is, and they probably would support it.

So, we could probably get the Executiveeven with this idiot, the incumbent President of the United Statesto say, that this is policy. If the President of the United States instituted an Executive Order, stating it was this policy, this doctrine is policy of the United States, then, we have a deal. Then we can move. We can disengage the troops immediately. Put the country back in charge of the Iraqis. We can get out of this mess.

But, the problem we immediately faceonce you do that, then you got to say, "What are you going to do about Israeli-Palestinian conflict?" And, you've got to find waysand there are ways to deal with it. You've got to be flexible, somewhat, but you know what your objective is: Your objective is to bring a durable peace agreement, between the two forces.

Q: [followup] Two last questions on my part: One, relates to [audio break]...

...but it was, it appeared to me, it happened all of a sudden, but in the novels written by some top writers, you saw the Arabs begin, the Muslims begin, and how is that orchestrated, number one? And the other question is, the grooming of Cheney to represent those people whom he represents?

LAROUCHE: Well, Cheney ... We'll take the second one first. Cheney's easier. Cheney was groomed by his wife. Cheney has said that he owes his wife everything he has it's true. You know, her instructions to him was, "Don't speak in public until you take that rug out of your mouth." That's Cheney. He's a brute.

But, she got him through this position, that position. She did it personally. She's the one who's the power in the family. He is the stooge. He's a whipping boy.

Now, the way this thing worked, it worked certain powerful Synarchist institutions, which I've identified, these same financier groups, which were behind all the fascist operations in Europe, from 1922 to 1945; the same groups of bankers are behind this phenomenon now.

But they had a special trick they played. It's called the Israeli trick. What they did is, they got the idea they could use the right-wing in Israel, the radical right-wing in Israel, the real nuts, and they could use these nuts as a threat to get things going. They tied this to the religious nuts inside the United States. And this was accomplished by right-wing, extreme right-wing non-Christian Catholics, of the type we have in Scalia and the Supreme Court. Together with Protestant nuts of the type coming out of the Nashville Agrarians, the ones who trained Brzezinski and Huntington and Kissinger and so forth.

So, what they did is they had this idea of using the nuclear threat, the threat of nuclear weapons by Israel, as a leverage to combine with the nuts, the religious nuts in the country, as a leverage to try to control U.S. politics and to control U.S. policy.

So, what you're seeing on the surface, you're seeing the stage. You're seeing the actors on stage: the Israelis, these nuts, and so forth. But behind the scenes are the bankers who are orchestrating it.

Now you see, also, what will happen, is that they will dump these guys. The case of what's happening to Conrad Black, and his crowd, the Hudson Institute. They're being dumped now. Perle, being dumped. We did that, in a sense. We created the circumstance in which these are being dumped. But they're still going in the same direction. The bankers are still going in the same direction; that's why they're afraid of me. Because they know if I'm near the Presidency, when the crash comes, it's going to be the people, the general welfare, that I'll defend, not the bankers, as Roosevelt did.

So, the same crowd has tried to adjust, even some of them have turned over to getting rid of the Cheney crowd, because they've now become a liability. Somebody's been trying to dump Sharon, because Sharon is a liability now. Sharon is not an ideologue, he's a gangster. There are others there who are ideologues. So there actually are changes going on, but behind the scenes what is constant is this group, this ideological group. So-called liberals. The Venetian, Anglo-Dutch liberal tradition, in finance, is behind it. These are the Synarchists. They're called the Synarchists, and their methods are the same ones that were used by the Grand Inquisitor in Spain from 1480 on. Use of the Beast-Man terror, fear. Great fear is induced by great terror, to intimidate a population into control.

And that's the problem.

The only way you can defeat these guys, if you're not afraid to die; not seeking to die that's a bad idea. You don't seek to die. But if they threaten you with death, you don't give up because you're afraid. They're like a good sane soldier you don't go into flightforward and get yourself killed, because the battle frightens you.

But you are not afraid to risk death, if you have to, rather than giving up what you're dedicated to. And if people don't have that kind of courage, you can't beat these guys.

QUESTION: You have been campaigning since the last few years for election [unclear]. Then, this year, I came to know that you are now running for this election. So I would like to know how you are excluded, because it is known that you're excludedhow are you excluded?

LAROUCHE: The country is run by New York-centered banking institutions, and it has a Washington, D.C. branch. The Justice Department is run by New York bankers, and the law firms associated with them. ... Around the Washington Post, you'll find a group of law firms, and financial institutions, who pretty much run the U.S. government, through direct action on Washington, D.C.

The major press of the United States, the major magazine press, the broadcast press, the networks, are controlled by the same people. They're controlled by a limited oligarchy.

Now, to the extent the oligarchy is united, they have tremendous power. They own the parties. They control the parties from the top down, both parties. They control the so-called minority parties, from the top down too. The Communist Party in modern times was controlled by the FBI, and by the financial institutions that ran through it. That kind of thing.

So, what I've done is, I've taken on those powers, because the solution was to put on the table what the issues were. The cowards said, "Don't take these guys on, because they will crush you. Be smart. Go with little issues, with wedge issues, with little programs. Try to nag your way into a position of influence. Then" you might be able to do something."

No, I said: " My politics are the politics of crisis. My jobs is to put on the table what has to be put on the table, without fear or favor, and plant the ideas, and build a constituency for these ideas. Doesn't have to be a majority. It's the courageous people in society that you want. The Gideon's Army. If you get those people mobilized, then when the moment of crisis comes, you'll have your opportunity to act. And that's my politics.

Tell the truth, without fear or favor. Take on what you have to take on. Don't propose anything that is not sound. Don't compromise. Don't propitiate. Don't act like an underling. And keep working, because it's the only way you'll succeed.

If you want to succeed on a lesser scale, if you want to become a prostitute, yes, you can succeed as a prostitute, even a high-paid prostitute, very quickly. If you want to be successful in defeating the people who staged the prostitutes, don't become a prostitute. And that's what's wrong with our politicians. They've become prostitutes, because they say, "Let's be realistic, you need money, you need backing, you need acceptance by the media, you need acceptance by the financial interests. You need acceptance by the political party." If you get that acceptance, you are no good! You're useless at least for a time of crisis. And therefore, I refuse to be useless. I will fight to the end. I may lose, so what? My job is to stage the fight. If I don't stage the fight, we're going to lose.

QUESTION: Do you think they will resort to taking your life?

LAROUCHE: They tried to. They went after me a number of times, right from the government itself. Other people in the government intervened to prevent that from happening. They came to kill me. They sent me to prison: they said, "Either he goes to prison, or we kill him." That's the way it was done. And they got my friends in the government circles to back off. If you help him get off, we'll kill him! And they were afraid to kill me, under those conditions. They're afraid of me.

But that's the way history goes. And many people have gone through that kind of thing in history. But that's what I have to do. If I don't do that, there's no one in this country that's going to save this country. We're doomed.

People have no idea, in general, of what we're up against. We're not up against an improvement, or a reform; we're at the point, are we going to survive? If we continue the course that this war in Iraq suggests, within less than a half a decade, the United States will no longer exist.

QUESTION: Mr. LaRouche, in terms of their coming after you, what happened when Perot ran? What was going on there?

LAROUCHE: Look, Perot was actually running as a mockery of me. I was in prison, and he was essentially picking up on an aspect of what I did. You saw the imitation. I invented the so-called infomercial, the half-hour television broadcast. He tried to copy it. He ran a campaign which was very successful. He sank George Bush's re-election chances, just by his campaign. That's what sank him. It was not the Israeli issue, it was not anything else, it was Ross Perot. He raised enough protest, and took a marginal vote which sank George Bush's re-election campaign.

Then, Perot was told certain things. And Perot vanished. He retreated from the scene. These guys play dirty.

I didn't have much respect for him, but Perot is Perot.

QUESTION: What was the concept of the half-hour TV... what's it called?

ANOTHER: Infomercial.

LAROUCHE: No, the point is, I said, if you go on the air with bite-sized commercials, if that's your idea, you're trying to hit the audience with slogans, you're not educating anybody. You have to present concepts, that people can think about, think through. They have to realize they have to change the way they're thinking. You have to give them a paradox. You can't say, "Blrrrp, vote for this good attractive slogan." You've got to tell the truth. You can't tell the truth in one minute. You can't tell the truth in 30 seconds. You can make a point which is true, as long as you have a context for it. You can identify what you're talking about, which I've tried to do with what I've done this time. But you cannot educate people in five minute slugs, or 4 minute slugs.

QUESTIONER: The point is, they don't give you the time, you have to buy the time. They do the end run.

LAROUCHE: That's right. You have to buy it. So what Perot did is use that. He took a very simple issue, the issue of NAFTA, and the fact that the jobs were going to be exported out of the country. We're using slave labor in foreign countries to produce our goods; therefore we're shutting down our employment in farms and factories in the United States, and you see, you travel around the United States, you find whole areas which used to be industrial areas no more! Agricultural areas, dead. No more! Mass poverty. Inflation. Homelessness.

You see, the country is being destroyed. And Perot was simply saying that about the great sucking sound, and the great sucking sound turned out to be Al Gore, with his NAFTA perspective. No, he took a proper issue, but he didn't leave a permanent mark, because he didn't have a positive principled commitment, he had a negative policy. At that point, it had a great impact, because people were still willing to fight. They still had jobs to fight for. They don't have the jobs to fight for anymore. They're taken away. Wherever you see Wal-Mart, you see destruction. Wal-Mart moves into an area, and you find whole counties will collapse! Because Wal-Mart goes to its suppliers that used to sell to the stores in that community, and says, "You produce at Chinese slave labor wages, or we shut you off." You see the boards go up on the factories, in the area. And Wal-Mart comes in, like the great succubus, or the great sucking sound, sucking away the jobs and the income of the people. And producing shoddy products, that you're ashamed to carry home. You have to get big dark bags so people don't see [laughter]

QUESTION: I'm going back to Cheney. Cheney represents a group, or he is their representative, he's a chess piece.

LAROUCHE: Yeah. Oh actually, he's sort of a marionette. His wife Lynne holds him on marionette strings. He has a dummy sitting on his lap, which is George Bush. Now, he doesn't use the ventriloquist to get the dummy to talk, he uses a teleprompter. You want to know what George Bush intends, ask his teleprompter.

No, he's a figure, that's all.

QUESTION: The principle in this country, if not the world, is that the people you see in leadership positions are not the leaders; they're not the power.

LAROUCHE: Rarely. There are a few cases in which they're real. I mean, de Gaulle was real, for example. [ ] was real. Kennedy in his own way was real.

QUESTION: Okay.

LAROUCHE: Even Johnson's real. Johnson had the guts on the civil rights bills, but he was scared stiff on everything else. He thought they were going to shoot him ... he thought those four rifles that shot down Kennedy were going to get him. And he was frightened, so he did as he was told. He knew the issue was the Vietnam war. That's why they killed Kennedy, to get it. And he thought they'd get him too, if he didn't go along with it.

QUESTION: As you say, they play dirty.

LAROUCHE: But Cheney is typical of ... What is Cheney? Cheney is like a mafia hit man, as Vice-President. He's a thug. You know, I say, "Hey, Cheney, get that rug out of your mouth, before you talk, all right, so we can hear what you're saying! Not what you're thinking, because you don't think, you just talk." So, Cheney is a hit-man. He's sent to you, by somebody who owns him, and that someone is probably George Shultz, the former Secretary of State under Reagan, who is a friend of Kissinger's, who comes out of the Bohemian Grove, or sometimes called the Bohemian Grope, because of what goes on there.

So, he is a show-piece. He's a real factor. He's a hit-man. A hit-man's got a gun, he's going to shoot you. But he doesn't run the show; there's somebody behind him, who will shoot him, after he does the job.

QUESTION: You said that the opposition bankers, well, if they destroy this country, wouldn't they destroy some of their own money?

LAROUCHE: Sure. But their idea is that if they have power over the world, if they, as a concert, have power, they can control the world. If you control the world, you can make money, that is, you can manufacture it. You can decree it. Their point is not to lose the power. What they want is the power of money. If money's going to be destroyed, they want the power, the control of power, they will create a new currency. Brand new. They'll award it to themselves.

Look what happened in Russia. They moved into Russia, they grabbed, they created fictitious assets, to replace the ruble. They looted the country. You had billionaires coming out of idiots, who'd been low-level flunkies under the Soviet system; suddenly, they're super-billionaires. How'd they get that money? It was created for them, by foreigners. They moved in and bargained for a Soviet industry. They'd be awarded control of the Soviet industry, or a fraction of it. They would then market that industry they had a fraction of on the world market. They would turn that, by credit, they would turn that into an asset worth billions of dollars.

Suddenly, from nothing, they're a billionaire, because somebody made them a billionaire, by giving them that concession. They give them that territory, as they say in organized crime.

So, the point is here, is not that money has any inherent power. Money has the power of what's behind it. And money can be destroyed, and those behind it can create new money. You can wipe out currencies it's happened before. You can take a whole currency, it was done in Germany, in 1923. Wipe it out, wipe it off the books. They create a new currency. So the Dawes Plan came in with the gold backing; you had a new reichsmark created, to replace the old reichsmark, and the people who had been invested pin the old reichsmark go bankrupt, they're poor.

Those who now have the new money, backed by the Dawes Plan, were now rich.

This is the game they play. Money is not real. Money is an idiot. It can't think. It's who controls it that's important, and who uses that control of the money to control people. So whenever money becomes questionable, wipe it off the books. Make everybody bankrupt. You have the power? You create new money. You own the new money. Don't worry about the old money.

QUESTION: So, that's what we're seeing in Iraq with the change of the money. What are we seeing here, with the change of the $20 bills, and the ...

LAROUCHE: Ah, that typifies the process. The problem is, the rate of issuance of monetary aggregate is beyond all belief. Don't look at the printing of these bills; look at the emission by the internet, and similar means, the generation of synthetic money as monetary aggregate, through the internet system.

QUESTION: What is this "aggregate?"

LAROUCHE: That is, you know, you create a promissory, the equivalent of a promissory note against a currency. What happens is that the Japanese loan money overnight, at about, nearing 0 percent. When this money is loaned, it's converted into dollars. The yen are used to buy dollars. The dollars are then moved into the New York stock market, or similar markets. Suddenly that jacks up, the next morning, that jacks up the stock market prices, because there's a flood of money coming in. Highly leveraged money through derivatives contracts. And suddenly the stock market's improved. Hey! The economy's doing just fine. Yadda, yadda!

It's foolishness, huh. But people are so afraid of money, they're so desperate, that they beg for it, they beg for it. People are enslaved by the idea of money, not money, but the idea of money.

Look at all the people who thought they were billionaires in the IT revolution. Then they suddenly found out they were bankrupt. Look at all these thieves, like the Enron thieves. Look what they stole. Look at what happens to their victims. It was all legalized theft, it was just a swindle.

QUESTION: How real was the crash of the market on that Friday, when the Silicon Valley companies went, you know?

LAROUCHE: It was dangerous at that point. What happened is that you had a series of crises, from 1996 on. Clinton backed off. He threatened to go with a monetary reform in September, in a speech he gave in New York, for the New York Council on Foreign Relations, then backed off. And then the Washington monetary conferences of October, they realized that the thing was about to blow. So George Soros, the drugpusher, came in, and said, "Let's try a wall of money." And what the policy was at that point, was printing a wall of money. A vast wall of money. An avalanche of money. Monetary aggregate. And flood the world market with it, with monetary aggregate. Truly fictitious, but flood it.

And that was done immediately to try to prevent the Brazil crisis, which was coming up in February/March of the next year, 1999.

2000 was crucial because in January of 2000, the banking system did not shut down, because of the double zero. All this money was plugged in by the Federal Reserve System, to try to deal with threat. All the banking, accounting systems were going to collapse on January 1, 2000, because of the double 0 was that 1900, or 2000? Well, when that didn't happen, everything was fixed by then, they put so much into the IT revolution on that business, and in the spring, the whole thing went under. You had a wipeout of much of the IT revolution. It didn't wipe it out entirely, but it wiped out a lot of it. The losses were tremendous.

QUESTION: My thought, I'm not an economist, but my consumer analysis was that that was set, that that was put in play to wipe out the new money that had, not the new money there was a whole group of people who had generated dollars, who were now millionaires. That was new millionaires.

LAROUCHE: But what happened is, they couldn't sustain it any longer.

See, if you have to sustain a high rate of profit, on something that's fiction, yeah, it's fiction. So you have people who are, you had a firm in this area, this area outside of Virginia, Winstar. And Winstar was a Lucent operation, completely fake, it never made a nickle in its life. But you had it being boosted, and people were being told that they were millionaires. They didn't own anything.

Now, in order to stay millionaires, there had to be a yield on those phony millions, and they couldn't afford to maintain that yield. So, Winstar collapsed. Wiped it out. It accomplished its purpose.

QUESTION: It was a game.

LAROUCHE: A game.

QUESTION: Does this fascist group have anything to do with the drug influxation into the United States, and also the decline of the cities because of the drugs?

LAROUCHE: The drugs? Sure. The drugs are part of what I call the Sexual Congress of Cultural Fascism, which was introduced under people like Allen Dulles, Margaret Mead, and so forth and so on. And the idea was to destroy industrial society, agro-industrial society, by telling people that blue collars were no good. That white collars were good, or no collars, no shirts, no underwear, were good. Be like children, put on some rags...

So, the idea was post-industrial society: technology is bad! It's unnatural! It's bad for nature!

So then the idea was, it's what Aldous Huxley proposed in Brave New World. You don't buck the mass of population; you kill their cognitive powers. You give them a different sense of pleasure and entertainment. What the Romans did under the Roman Empire, you shut down the production. You gave the people a dole, a pass-out, some bread. You sit them in the Colisseum to watch lions eating Christians, as entertainment, pretty much like television today. And therefore you destroy, you destroy and control the population by these kinds of tricks.

What does this drug habit do? It destroys the mind of the victim, of the consumer. It's also a way of getting people rich, who are thugs. It's destroyed whole countries in South America. Colombia's destroyed by it. Peru is being destroyed by it. Bolivia is being destroyed by it. It's destroying people.

But that's the intention. Read Brave New World. Read Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, it's all there. That's the kind of society we're going into. If you make people stupid, you drug them, get them to drug themselves, they'll accept it. If they get tired of it, they'll kill themselves. They hate the society. You have to understand the mentality of the people behind this. I understand them. I've been up against them so long. I know these guys. Sometimes it's harder for people fresh on the case to understand them. I understand them. That's what they are.

QUESTION: Do you have a scenario of how you would be able to, at that crisis point that you were talking about, when it's advantagous for you...

LAROUCHE: Well, they've got a problem. They've got Kerry as a candidate, a presumptive candidate. Now, this is like having a clock without works inside it. It won't get you there on time. No mechanism. The man is incapable of being President except under highly favorable circumstances, where the President doesn't have to do much.

He's a good President when the government's only a complaint department, when people call up and say, "I've got a problem in my neighborhood. My sister's kid, who's just born, has no father. What are we going to do? I need help from a government agency." You take down the name, Okay. "Where is she? Oh, my secretary comes over, we'll look into it. We'll do something about it." That's the kind of Presidency he's qualified for.

But crisis, war, etc., etc., these kinds of things are not in his script. So, the Democratic Party is on its way into the worst crisis mankind has known, in the history of United States, and you've got this bozo, who's not a bad-meaning bozo, but he's a bozo! You want this bozo to run the country? You want this bozo to campaign against the meanest, dirtiest bunch behind the Cheney re-election campaign? This bunch of fascist thugs? This guy is going to sit there without his pants or anything else, while they take everything away from him.

No, the country is in danger. And Kerry, for what he is not, represents a danger for the country. Whereas Cheney represents a danger because of what he is.

And again, as in 2000, the people are going toward an election, and neither of the leading candidates is fit to shoot. We have nothing to vote for! We have two nothings to vote for! That's a crisis.

So, under these conditions, well, we'll see how the Americn people respond.

QUESTION: The problem that I'm seeing is that your popularity doesn't seem to be that great, that you could get the masses. I think if the masses knew what you were trying to do, it would help a lot, because right at this point in time, where it's so close to the election, the masses really don't seem...

LAROUCHE: They do know, and they do see, but they're cowards. That's it. If they thought they could get by with it, ... they're cowards. That's why some people who wanted to come here today, aren't here. They have good excuses. They're afraid.

What about the masses of people? Only when their terror exceeds their fear, will they show some guts.

What they do generally, is the voters don't vote, they stay away from the election. See, if they don't think they have a candidate, and they don't want to run for a candidate who they think will be... in other words, they think their neighborhood might be victimized if they vote for me, they don't vote. They don't go to the polls.

"Oh, I was sick that day. I had to go to church that day."

"You haven't been to church in 30 years!"

"I had to go that day."

Cowardice. And one way of cowardice is fleeing from what you know you don't want to know. "I don't want to know about it."

That's it. I don't have a problem. The American people have a problem. Their problem is cowardice. And later, when they decide they're more afraid of what's going to happen to them, than they are afraid of what's been threatened against them now, that's when they'll get very active. That's the only way they ever changed.

The problem is, as Shakespeare put in the mouth of Cassius, most people, most of our people, are underlings. They think and behave as underlings. They vote the way they think they will be approved for voting. If they don't want to vote for somebody, if they're afraid, they won't vote at all. They just stay away from the polls. They walk the other way.

"I don't see you! I'm walking the other way! I didn't see you today."

That's our people. That's what we have to work with. These are our people.

QUESTION: So, how do we get to change their minds, to get a little courage? How do you do that?

LAROUCHE: What I do, is I just do it. I do my part. I don't use their cowardice for not doing my part, as an excusing for not doing my part. I do what I know must be done.

I can live with that. I couldn't live with myself otherwise.

If you think like an underling, however, you don'tthat doesn't bother you. You let your fear control you. We'll win. Somehow. Sometime. We'll win. You just have to keep the fire stoked.

I have limited powers. I do what I can.

QUESTION: I think we should probably bring this to a close, but I think I'll do it by asking Lyn a question myself, partially on behalf of some people who are here. And I think you'll come to see what I mean.

May 19 is the anniversary of the birth of Malcolm X, and in the area here, they were playing some of the different tapes and so forth. And, what you just said, called to mind something I've heard, you've heard, over the years many times. "Well, Malcolm did this, but he died, he got killed. King did this, but he got killed. This proves, you can't succeed this way."

LAROUCHE: That's the problem, that's the underling mentality.

QUESTION: Exactly. That's what I wanted to address.

LAROUCHE: That's the loser mentality. Those who say if you fear losing, "Well, I'll just go along with the enemy, and I'll lose right away. They won't have to kill me." That's the way it works. That's called the underling mentality.

Two things. You either go into a foxhole, and you sit inside there, waiting for the enemy to drop a handgrenade in on you. Or you charge, get out and charge to get it over with, you charge into a machine-gun nest, until they shoot you down. Two kinds of fear: flightforward, and flight into the hole. And most people say, "Well, I'll just get it over with. If they're going to kill me if I win, I'm not going to win. I won't even try. I'll confess right now, surrender immediately." Pre-emptive surrender.

QUESTION: Flight forward?

LAROUCHE: Yes, charge the machine-gun nest, get it over with.

QUESTION: That's suicide. That's seeking to die.

LAROUCHE: Yeah.

QUESTION: Staying the foxhole is an underling.

LAROUCHE: Yeah, both are underlings. One says, "I have no purpose in living now. I just want to get the pain over. So, I'll charge, on the assumption that either I'll win, by charging, or I'll be killed. I won't have to worry now. I'll be out of it. I will not sit, and sweat, and worry. Get it over with. Even right now!" You've seen guys like that. There are street fighters like that, who will get themselves killed to prove a point. They're thinking like an underling. They're not thinking like a person on a mission. They're thinking like a person with an ego, whose ego requires that they win, or be killed. And they're sometimes quite dangerous, for that reason.

QUESTION: We saw a lot of that with the Panther Party, for example, back in the old days. That exact phenomenon.

LAROUCHE: Yeah, yeah. We've seen that.

QUESTION: So, we'll bring this to a close.

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