Debra Freeman: Good afternoon to all of you. As you know as we are meeting here, the proceedings of today's conference are being broadcast over the internet. There are gatherings all over the United States, and all over the world, as we proceed, and, as has become our custom, I will take questions from the audience gathered here, but I will also be reading questions that have been submitted electronically, and I'll try to alternate back and forth, and we'll do it that way, and if you have any complaints, you can tell me later.

What I would like to do, actually, is start with a question from those gathered here. So the first questioner can come up to the microphone, and we will begin that way.

Difference between metaphor and symbolism

Question: Lyn, I was wondering about the difference between metaphor and symbolism, and was wondering if you can explain the difference?

LaRouche: Well, metaphor is actually an idea. A simile is not, first of all. Metaphor pertains to the gaps in description. All the Classical dialogues of Plato involve the principle of metaphor. For example, let's take the case of--we've often done this before, and it probably will come up again. It's a common example we have used ever since Bruce Director got at this some years ago.

In the case of the discovery of the principle of gravitation. That in decadent culture, which was Romantic culture up through the 16th Century, or most of it, it was generally believed in Romantics' culture that what we could know in the physical universe, was merely a description of some consistent pattern of behavior, as observed with the senses.

Now, what Kepler showed, and this was the character of the metaphor, was that the orbit of Mars, in the first instance, was not circular, which make it a fairly irregular motion, but worse than that, the motion within the ellipse was not uniform, even within the terms of the ellipse, but the motion was based on this principle of equal areas, equal time. So there was constant change in motion at all times. It was never uniform. It was always non-uniform.

Now, on the basis of the fact that the orbit was elliptical, and then carry that further to show how the Solar System essentially functions in these terms, and on the basis of non-uniform motion, define a principle of gravitation based on an anomaly, or set of anomalies--the elliptical anomaly, the non-uniform motion anomaly, and others--to show that something existed outside ordinary sense-perceptual interpretation, which actually caused the universe to function the way it did.

So, therefore, anything which shows truthfully that in what people ordinarily believe from sense perception, or mere description, is not true, is a metaphor. And, for example, you would say gravitation. Now some idiot would say gravitation is defined by Galileo. It is not. So the difference between gravitation as defined by Galileo and Kepler, is a metaphor.

You might use the same term as some people have--or Newton, the same thing. Newton's concept is absurd. Newton actually plagiarized Galileo's interpretation of the publication of Kepler's New Astronomy. So Newton discovered nothing.

Newton's system was based on a plagiarism of Kepler's New Astronomy, an English edition, published in the latter part of the 17th Century, is interpreted from the standpoint of the doctrine of Galileo. So, to use the term gravitation in the two cases is metaphorical, because it means two opposite things, completely different kinds of things under the circumstances.

All art means that. For example, the best case, of course, is simple Bachian counterpoint. You find, if you change a direction, you get an opposition and an apposition, which creates an irony, which creates a metaphor. The whole basis of Bach's composition is all metaphor. It is not simple mechanical rules. They're ironies, and the irony becomes an idea, which emerges from the composition, which stands outside and above the composition.

This is true in great poetry. For example, the most famous case is Keats' “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” A short poem by him, and everything is in there. Now the irony there, the metaphor, is very simple. Remember the Classic characteristic of Classical Greek sculpture is that instead of tombstone art, the figure is captured in mid-motion. So you are not looking at a fixed, standing body. You are looking at something captured in mid-motion, like a photograph in mid-motion.

Now, the principle for doing that is demonstrated by the catenary principle, otherwise known as the principle of least action; that is, Leibniz's principle of least action. So therefore, what Keats is doing in describing that “truth is beauty” and so forth, and all these things about these figures are captured in mid-motion, even though he is looking at a fixed object, a vase, an ancient vase, is a metaphor. And the metaphor is that, if you know what he is talking about, about Classical Greek sculpture, and so forth, that sort of thing, you see the way he uses the idea that truth is beauty, and beauty is truth.

How does he make that equation? What do you mean, “truth is beauty and beauty is truth?” How did he make that equation? He did it! He referenced a metaphor in terms of the composition of this business. So a metaphor essentially means, what lies between the gaps in sense-perception. The principles, which are not seen through sense-perception, not seen by statistical deduction, but an irony of meaning, a complication in meaning. Where two words don't mean the same thing in the same sentence, but in a different context. That's metaphor. The use of any of these devices.

There is a famous book, which I first acquired in 1946 or '47, about that time. I picked it up in a bookstore. It was recently published in Boston, it was William Empson on the Seven Types of Ambiguity. I've referred to it a number of times; it's a good introduction to the subject: the difference of irony, the seven types of irony. Irony, and metaphor as a form of irony, is a way to understand how the English language is used.

Let me give one final example: “Ya know, people in school today don't know how to talk.” They interpret words. They try to sound nice, while interpreting words, but they don't convey ideas. It is almost like you have ticker-tape talk.

A guy has a script in front of him, and he reads “tick, tick,” ticker-tape talk. There are no ideas in what he says. There are words in there, but no ideas. You see it in bad actors: They don't say anything. They make sounds. They make noises.

Whereas all great Classical art, great Classical drama, is based on this principle of metaphor and irony, just as scientific discovery is.

This is a subject in and of itself, and I've written a good deal on it, but that will do for the moment.

The question of religious war

Freeman: The next question has been submitted electronically by the lead of one of the Muslim organizations in the United States. His question follows:

Mr. LaRouche, as you know, as your convention is meeting today, there are demonstrations against the war going on in cities across the United States and across the world. Nevertheless, this Administration, along with the government of Britain, seems determined to go to war. More disturbing, however, is that behind that war, we seem to be moving into a matrix of religious war against Muslims, both in the United States and globally.

Our religion has been misrepresented as a violent one, and as one which supports terrorism. As I know you know, that is not true. But would you please address what you see as the potential for the outbreak of full-scale religious war in this period?

LaRouche: First of all, do not accept the proposition in the terms delivered. The idea that someone in the West, for example, by some terrible misunderstanding, misapprehends Islam as inherently a violent religion--don't even believe it.

Don't believe the accusation. The people who make it don't believe it. So, why argue against them, when what they're saying they don't believe themselves?

What do they believe?

What they believe is really very simple. They believe--and if you should read Gibbon on the rise and fall of the Roman Empire--Gibbon was a protégé of Lord Shelbourne, a famous enemy of the United States. The argument was the Anglo-Dutch liberals, who ruled 18th-Century England from the top--these fellows said the Roman Empire should never have fallen, and Gibbon says the reason it fell is because it had tolerated Christianity. And ever since then, these fellows in Britain have been trying to get rid of Christianity, and with some of these religious nuts running around in the name of Christianity, they've done a fairly good job.

I think the President of the United States has been a victim of that, currently.

Now, what they believe is this: They believe, as the Roman Empire did. They believe in getting rid of Christianity. There is no question about that, and they are doing a fairly good job in the churches and elsewhere.

What they believe is, as the Romans did, that in order to control the planet as a whole, you've got to divide the planet into two principal areas: One area is the area you intend to rule under your system of law. The other part is the part you don't think it is worthwhile trying to rule, and you contain it by what the Romans called the limes policy.

You turn the Roman Legions loose on the borders of the Empire to commit genocide, as is being done in Africa today.

Now what they have decided is that since the danger is, from their standpoint, that Asia, Eurasia, might unite, as it is tending to unite now, western Europe will not survive without developing its market relations with East and South Asia, so, therefore, Eurasia as a whole--East, South, and West, and so forth--is an interdependent set of emerging national economies. These are the great area of population, the great area of future growth of the planet. Therefore, Europe has a fundamental interest in relations with China, Russia, with India, with Southeast Asia, and so forth.

The Middle East is the crossroads between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. The issue is not oil, although oil is an issue. The issue is the crossroads. The issue is to prevent Eurasia from becoming united in a system of cooperation, which becomes a threat to the kind of power that certain people in the United States and the Anglo-Dutch circles desire.

The rise of the United States to success with Lincoln's victory and the 1876 Centennial celebration of the United States' founding, at which point the United States represented the most effective economy on the planet. We were the world's leading economy, as a national economy.

The British were somewhat more powerful because they had more subjects from whom they could steal, but we, as a nation-state, were the most powerful economy on the planet. Therefore, there was imitation of the United States and this policy, in France; in the struggle for national independence in Italy; in Germany, from 1877 on, under Bismarck; in Russia, under Tsar Alexander II, and under Mendeleyev's influence; in Japan, under the influence of Henry C. Carey in founding industrial Japan in the 1870s; and in the leadership for a new China, which was sponsored by the United States through the career and work of Sun Yat-sen.

So London saw this, then, and a crowd in New York as well--the banking crowd in New York--saw this as the greatest threat to their rule of the world, as an imperial maritime power. Therefore, they started World War I to prevent cooperation among these nations of Europe by putting them at each other's throats in Eurasia.

World War II was started for a very similar purpose called “geopolitics.” What we are seeing today is another case of geopolitics. The difference is that a bunch of nuts in the United States, closely associated with the extreme right-wing Israelis around Sharon, Netanyahu, and other degenerates of that type--real fascists, and they call themselves fascists; they are fascists--are allied to the idea of an American empire.

Now this empire concept has been developed by a head of British Intelligence Arab Bureau, Bernard Lewis, now officially a Princeton professor, who is the key advisor, and has been since 1973, of both Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski. Their policy has been genocide against Africa, and what they call the “arc of crisis” policy, under Brzezinski.

The policy is to cause the Islamic world to explode as a limes-targetted area to be destroyed. It has nothing to do with religion as such. It is a limes policy, of trying to maintain world rule, Roman-Empire style. And so they come up with all this garbage, which you'll get, like the question you asked. Go ask Bernard Lewis, who is head of the British Arab Bureau, which is a creation of the British India Office, which after World War I, split off the Arab Bureau from the British East India Company as a separate operation under Glub Pasha in Jordan, and Bernard Lewis became the key planner for that. And, when Kissinger came in as the acting President of the United States, with Nixon under him, then he was sent to Princeton to become a closer advisor and steerer of Henry Kissinger and Brzezinski.

The Kissinger-Brzezinski policy, which is related to the Bertrand Russell preventive-nuclear-war policy--this is pure evil. It is aimed at all of humanity, but it is aimed at Islam, both because of the crossroads between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, and because 1.3 billion Muslims--if you put that part of culture into chaos, then you cannot have peace in any part of Eurasia, and Eurasia is finished. And, therefore, you can rule the world. Rule the world under the Emperor Ariel Sharon, or something like that.

So, one should not be taken in by these words, and assume that the words are meant sincerely. These guys are worse than Hitler. They mean what they say they intend to do, but when they tell you their reasons and motives, they are lying. Do not give them the dignity of saying they are against Islam. They don't care what Islam is. It makes no difference to them. They are determined to kill, and they put a label “Islam” on the target, and that is all they care about. So, we should never give them the dignity of imagining that this crowd--.

Look, who are these guys? Think about who are they: What is Marc Rich? Marc Rich is the guy who was behind the penetration, directly, of the Clinton Presidency, through Al Gore. Marc Rich's lawyer is Lewis Libby, who is the key man for Dick Cheney. Who owns Joe Lieberman? Who owns McCain? What is the Hudson Institute? How many people in the United States, as politicians and others, are owned by names like Lauder, Bronfman, the Lansky mob, Max Fisher, and so forth and so on.

This is international organized crime, and these guys have become super-wealthy, at the time we have been destroying our agriculture and industry. So you have a bunch of people, who are second- and third-generation of straight criminals--mass criminals, and Marc Rich is a mass criminal in his own right. He is being hunted down in France for crimes he committed there.

These people--this is the constituency behind this, so don't dignify them by imagining they are some misguided religious fanatic. They are simply--their religion is crime. Their meeting reminds me of an infamous mock marriage ceremony performed publicly--homosexual marriage--performed publicly by the Emperor Nero.

Support the LaRouche campaign

Freeman: During the course of Mr. LaRouche's remarks, he referred to the growing youth movement that is gathering behind his candidacy and behind his political and intellectual leadership here in the United States.

That movement has transformed the shape of politics in the United States through their efforts both in the streets, on the campuses, and very significantly in state capitals and here in Washington, D.C.

At the close of the proceedings of this conference, several hundred members of that youth movement will descend on the Capitol, to bring members of Congress up to date as to what Mr. LaRouche has to say during the course of his presidential campaign, and I think that this could not come, really, at a more critical moment in the campaign or in this nation's history, but one of the things that I would like to do, and I will continue to make this appeal to you throughout the course of this weekend's activity, is that any army needs resources and materiel, and Mr. LaRouche's presidential campaign is, without question, an army which is composed almost entirely of light infantry that moves rapidly, that strikes unexpectedly, and that needs to be supplied. So for those of you who are here, if you have not yet contributed the maximum to Mr. LaRouche's presidential campaign, I would encourage you to do so very strongly, and I will continue to encourage you to do so during the course of the weekend's activity.

For those of you who are listening on the internet, you will find that among the many things that the campaign page offers you, you are also offered the opportunity similarly to contribute the maximum allowed by law to Mr. LaRouche's presidential campaign, and I would encourage you to do that.

Now, Lyn, we have another question that has been submitted electronically. This is a question from the Dominican Republic's Ambassador in Egypt, and he says: "Mr. LaRouche, would you please explain to me, and to those of us listening, why exactly did the Soviet Union fall?"

Why did the Soviet Union fall?

LaRouche: I did it. I've said this before, but it is of interest to people. It is one of those things that involves a metaphor.

I was concerned in 1974-75 that some of the things coming out of certain circles in the United States and elsewhere, including a desk operation called "Operation Hilex '75," and I knew what was going on around Brzezinski and some others in the United States.

I saw that, contrary to the generally accepted assumption that the SALT I, SALT II process had brought the danger of nuclear war implicitly under control, that, in reality, quite the contrary was true, and what these monkeys were fooling with was bringing us again to the threshold of a potential nuclear war.

Now, what I did is I intervened at that point, particularly in 1977, in the context of my having run against Carter, that is, Carter, who was owned by Brzezinski because of what Brzezinski represented, and in the process, I developed an alternative approach, proposing that, since the Soviet Union and United States were among the principal victims of this crazy SALT "mutually assured destruction" policy, that what if the United States and Soviet Union agree to do something they can do, and do it in a certain way?

And the point was, that both the United States and the Soviet Union, in particular, had the ability to launch the development of new types of systems, called "new physical systems" generically, which could defeat a ballistic missile launch, not immediately, but we would be able to develop that.

The idea was that, if we could develop such an agreement to do that, that agreement to develop such systems, together with other countries, would mean we would end the danger of the so-called "mutual assured destruction" policy. My objective was that, if we develop these technologies, looking at the situation in Asia, Africa, and so forth, we had many countries which desperately need a qualitative change in global technologies available. These technologies that I was proposing, in terms of interception of anti-ballistic missile systems, would be a material benefit for our space exploration, and for developing these so-called "Third World" countries, and, therefore, I proposed essentially that an agreement be reached between the Soviet government and the United States government, to promote cooperation to such end, to free the planet from the threat of thermonuclear war.

Now it happened that, because of a series of accidents, which weren't really accidents, one a New Hampshire meeting where I happened to be sitting next to Ronald Reagan, who was then running for President, and I was running for President. We were at the same end of the table, while all the other fellows were gabbing away there, and we had a little chat, not of much consequence, but just an acquaintanceship.

In the follow-on to that, I had played a key role in defeating George Bush's chances for the presidential nomination at that time, with the result was that Reagan became the President, and George Bush became the Vice President.

In the process, when the transition occurred, after the election of November 1979 into 1980, I went to Washington and met with various people in the Democratic and Republican parties, and the incoming Reagan Administration, and a process developed, which was ongoing at the time, that we had an approach from a Soviet representative in the United Nations, who said they were interested in opening up a new channel of discussion with the United States with the new Administration.

So I transmitted that information to some people in the U.S. Government, in the Executive branch, and got back in short order that I undertake to open a back-channel discussion with the Soviet Government, which, with hemming and hawing, we did.

Now the basis for the discussion was an agreement that I would put in as an exploratory point of discussion, my proposal for strategic ballistic missile defense of this type.

As you probably know, this started between February of 1982, and my last discussion with the Soviets in this connection, personally, was in February of 1983.

At that point, I wasn't sure the Reagan Administration was interested -- the Reagan Presidency was adopting my policy, over the opposition of Danny Graham and many other people, who were on the opposite line.

So, I had this meeting in February, and the Soviet representative told me that the Soviet Government had turned down the idea. The idea was, I said if the President of the United States were to offer you this, with this implication, how would you react? How would your government react?

The answer was, we would reject it out of hand, even though your argument is correct, scientifically: we agree it would work. Our government would reject it.

So I related that information to the Reagan White House, and, then, President Reagan on March 23, later made that exact proposal that I had outlined to the Soviet Government in the back channel. In the meantime, I told the Soviet representative, "You've got to tell your government this is nuts, in effect, because if you try to do ... If you respond in the way you say you will respond, I can guarantee you that the Soviet economy will collapse within 5 years." Then, later in the spring of that year, I repeated without referring to the occasion, I repeated that statement publicly, and the Soviet Union collapsed in 6 years, not 5. And the reason the Soviet Union collapsed is because the Soviet government, in the person of Yuri Andropov, personally, who was tied to Armand Hammer and tied to all other kinds of funny people, and Gorbachov was his protégé. These guys went with that policy.

Interestingly, this is the same thing as the Marc Rich policy. Who is Marc Rich? Who is Lewis Libby's Marc Rich?

Marc Rich is the key figure in what is called the Russian Mafia. Not Marc himself, but his friends inside Russia, were members of the Andropov "kindergarten." These were bright and shining rising stars of the Soviet KGB, who were trained by Andropov to become a new generation of Soviet leaders, and what they did, beginning from about the middle of the 1980s on, up to the present day, is they looted the former Soviet Union, while it was still the Soviet Union otherwise.

The middle man on this was the Israeli right wing. This crowd of Israeli right-wing gangsters, working with people like Marc Rich in Zug, Switzerland, were the people who looted the former Soviet Union, both as the Soviet Union and as the ex-Soviet Union, massively. They became this powerful instrument called the Russian Mafia, of which Marc Rich was the center, and this is what controls in large degree the crowd, which is the war party around Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld, and so forth, and Ariel Sharon and company today.

So this crowd, in a sense, the Soviet Union collapsed, it collapsed itself, but when I put the thing on the table about the alternative, and Reagan accepted it, and made the offer on March 23, 1983, and the Soviet Government rejected it out of hand -- it was not a rejection unconsidered, it was rejected out of hand! Directly, immediately, no, nyet, nyet, nyet!

That condemned the Soviet Union to collapse, not in 5 years, but in 6.

Fighting racial divisiveness in the Democratic Party

Freeman: The next question has been submitted by a recently retired member of Congress from the Congressional Black Caucus, who is retired through no desire of his own.

He says, "Mr. LaRouche, as you know well, prior to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the Democratic Party was largely considered the party of the Confederacy. Of course, with the advent of President Roosevelt, all of that changed.

"Right now, we seem to be going backwards. Both the last presidential campaign, as well as the mid-term congressional campaign, was one in which the constituency that FDR represented so well was largely taken for granted, if not ignored altogether.

"During the congressional races, the party establishment, though a combination of organizations like AIPAC, as well as through the efforts of re-districting, effectively sabotaged the candidacies of several senior African-American members of Congress.

"Today, there are ongoing, systematic attempts by the Democratic Party leadership to dictate to us who our leadership is.

"What I am asking you may be obvious, but I still want it for the record. Will you work with us to reverse this trend before racial divisiveness becomes the platform of the Democratic Party?"

LaRouche: Well, of course, the answer is obviously "yes," but I think the questions warrants something a bit more than that.

We have now, as you probably know, a major fight inside the Democratic National Committee. The Marc Rich faction, otherwise known as the Al Gore faction, is determined that my candidacy shall be repelled by all means possible. Sharon may invade the United States in order to stop it, for all I know.

But in any case, it is not that simple, because there are many people in the Democratic Party, who would be not at all unhappy to have me speaking at the National Committee dinners and whatnot, just for the general good.

Now the issue is this: What is the divide? The divide is not just a personality issue. These guys do not like me -- the Marc Rich types, the Gore types, don't like me at all, and they shouldn't. They shouldn't like me.

I'm against everything they represent. I mean, that is understandable. They know it. In their dim-witted perception, that they understand, but they don't understand much else.

But the point is, what is the issue in the Democratic Party? The issue is, as I wrote to the Democratic National Committee in the recent statement I just issued: The problem is in 1981, approximately, the Democratic Party decided that it was going to have its own version of the Nixon "Southern Strategy." Now the Nixon Southern Strategy, of course, was a meeting with the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi in 1966, which started the serious stage of the Nixon campaign for President in 1966-68, and the Nixon campaign, and that part of the Republican Party, took over a lot of the old crawfish out of the Democratic Party, that is now the official racist party in the United States.

Unfortunately, it is not the only official racist party in the United States. The Democratic Party in 1981 became a racist party.

Michael Steinhardt, the son of Lansky's mobster, Red Steinhardt, organized the Democratic Leadership Council. This started a policy, which became known as the suburbanite, or "middle," policy. This meant, essentially, that anybody in the lower 80% of family income brackets was fair game for being chewed up and destroyed. So, therefore, you have a racist faction -- not the "Southern Strategy" faction of the Republican Party, but in the Democratic Party, it is called the "middle."

It's probably because of their waistlines, but it is the "middle." And this is the crowd that says that the "suburban" faction of the Democratic Party -- "We go for the suburban vote."

Well, that isn't too good these days, because the lower half of the suburbanites are losing about everything they own, and more, in terms of the housing bubble and the so-called information technology bubble. But, nonetheless, the point is this is a racist current. Not because it is racist as such, but it has the same philosophy under a different label -- you know, it's Heinz, or somebody else's, ketchup -- but it's the same stuff -- the vinegar is different, the spices are different, but it's the same ingredient, and my problem with the Democratic Party, is that the "suburban" policy, which many people, who are not racists, have subscribed to out of opportunism, is inherently a racist policy.

Because what have we got in this country? Look at the composition of the American voter. Don't just think in terms of the so-called "members of African descent." What part of the U.S. population is of Spanish origin? Or recent immigrants from Mexico and other parts of South and Central America? How many Arab-Americans do we have? How many other groups do we have in the United States, who are distinguished as part of this polyglot of cultural ancestries?

And they are being victimized under this kind of policy. Therefore, the only way that we are going to put the country back together, is by overturning the ability of any party, to control elections based on the "Southern Strategy" as an outright racist policy, or a "suburban" policy. We have to bring in the people as a whole into the party, not as voting fodder, but as participating parts of the Party organization.

Now, I would not miss the absence of some of these Democrats, who are of some incurable suburban propensities. I am not against the suburbs, although some of them look pretty ugly these days, and I wouldn't want to live in one. I don't mind the suburbanites, I just wouldn't want to live there, but that is the issue. Therefore, just as on the war question, we cannot win the question of war, if we don't eliminate the economic basis for a Hitler today.

The fact that we didn't deal with the Depression of 1928 when it hit Europe, to '29, in a timely fashion, brought Hitler to power in Germany, and created the circumstances for the Second World War.

If we do not deal with the economic crisis overtaking the planet today, we will have similar conditions. Therefore, the counter-position to the policies poor George Bush has adopted, is a solution to the economic issue, and you see in his case that he hasn't got a clue as to what an economy is, let alone how to cure it.

And, therefore, the lack of a policy to deal with the world economic crisis, the collapse of the financial, monetary system, becomes the course of the danger of war in various parts of the world. The same thing is true in the United States in our internal politics.

If we do not deal with the economic question primarily -- the economic question is threatening all of our people -- and bring unanimity as Roosevelt did around the idea of the "forgotten Man," and bring unanimity in common concern to solve this economic problem in the United States itself, in our relationship with other countries, we are going to go to hell, and, therefore, the issue is not just an issue of preference.

It's not an issue of fairness to the Black Congressional Caucus. How do you approach that? I say you don't approach it by doing it on a particularist basis. You say we're going in there like Martin did on the question of civil rights.

Martin didn't go for descendants of African descent, Martin went for everyone. Martin's power and appeal was to change the United States.

You think of Martin more as potential presidential candidate, than as a leader of a particularlist kind of civil rights' movement, you really understand his power.

We need to claim that kind of power today for the Democratic Party, in particular, and Republicans who will accept that, we are very happy to have them around, but our job is to deal with this economic crisis, which is crushing our people -- all of our people -- and to bring into the Democratic Party, where they are really heard and represented, the people like the Hispanic, the poor layer of the Americans of African descent, and so forth, to bring them in, as policy-shapers and makers, and implementers of a policy of economic recovery for this nation, and, around that, yes, we won't have any problem in trying to sort it out because the wrong people will take the wrong side, and the right people will take the right side, and we can cure the problem.

Freeman: You're listening to a live broadcast of an address by Democratic Presidential Pre-Candidate Lyndon LaRouche from the nation's capital.

For those of you who are listening over the internet, you can submit question by e-mail, and we will ask them as time permits.

The next question I would like to take is actually from the audience gathered here. I am going to take a question from one of the delegates of the LaRouche Youth Movement in Munich, Germany.

The imitation of Christ

Question: Hello, Lyn, I am from Munich, from the Youth Movement, and I have a question since the last East Coast cadre school, where you said something about the personality of God, where you said there is nothing before the universe, nothing after the universe, and there is also nothing outside the universe. And, I know the famous painting of Dürer, his self-portrait, and I am thinking about the question: Where is the difference between Jesus Christ, as a human personality, and a personality like Dr. Martin Luther King, and if there is a difference, because I can't figure that out.

LaRouche: There shouldn't be much of a difference because, particularly in Christianity, especially since the Brotherhood of the Common Life, the doctrine of the imitation of Christ has been the notion of the sense of immortality of someone who is playing that kind of role in society. So, therefore, the difference is one of a conception of God, and one who is in the image of God, and thus in the image of God, the argument of the Christian is that he  should act in the imitation of Christ, and that is sufficient for us.

The issue of God, of course, is, in terms of the universe, is partly a theological question, a theological question, which is implicitly posed by Plato and those who follow him, that what we mean by "universal principle" is something, which is beyond the control of sense perception, but which man can have access to with aid of the senses, and can control, once they know it. So these principles, by their nature -- and this, of course, is a subject in itself -- but in nature, these principles are universal, which means that they operate throughout the universe, and the universe is never in contradiction with them.

Therefore, from what man knows, man knows nothing beyond universal physical principles. There is nothing outside that universe, because it is not efficient. If it were outside, it would not exist efficiently.

There is nothing before that universe. It couldn't exist efficiently. You could not make a formula for it. There is no way you can conceptualize the idea of something existing outside the universe, before and after it, from the standpoint of science, so, therefore, when we mean a universal physical principle as proof of being one, we mean that.

In terms of the other aspect of this, is the question of the notion, which in Aquinas and others, is the notion of the simultaneity of eternity.

If, as I said today, in the principal remarks, that if we locate ourselves as in our true human nature, as, essentially, spiritual beings who have a mortal existence, and in that mortal existence, we express a useful role in terms of principles toward previous generations, to other societies, and toward future generations, then we shall, as spiritual beings, we shall always live. We are eternal in that sense, as Aquinas and others define "simultaneity of eternity." And, once we have that conception about ourselves, we find we have a source of strength that we cannot be bought or sold, and, thus, we find ourselves in the imitation of Christ.

Also, we find another thing: That we are the agents of God in the universe, and we imitate God in respect to changing the universe, and thus, our likeness to the Creator, this is like the first chapter of Genesis. We are created, man and woman equal -- I don't believe this Adam and Eve stuff -- that's a Babylonian story, and I know where that came from.

I mean where he [] his wife -- don't get involved in that, you know, what kind of monkey business is that?

The idea that we are that, that we have that likeness to God, as implied by the Mosaic text of the first chapter of Genesis, it's very real, and our aspiration is to be that, to be that, to know we are that, and then we have a sense of our responsibility, because with power goes responsibility.

If we have all this power, we have to do all those things that power requires of us for good. Obviously, the case of Christ is unique, but, otherwise, I would say the question of the imitation of Christ is a Christian idea, and this is not restricted to Christianity. This exists, obviously, when you go to the argument of Plato, and look at theology in general from a Platonic standpoint, and this turns up in Judaism, for example. It turns up in Philo Judeas, for example, on this question. It comes up in some discussions on Islam, the same notion, as in Ibn Sina's theology, the same thing turns up.

But the idea, that the idea of God is clear, and the idea of Man as made in the image of God is clear, and the idea that this incurs power, and power incurs responsibility. Therefore, if we find somebody in the ditch by the side of the road, that is our responsibility.

The question of leadership

Freeman: As we gather here in Washington, there is a meeting of the French youth movement going on in Paris, and they have submitted a question: "Lyn, we cannot deny that public opinion is responsible and truly irresponsible for the situation in the recent decades, and surely, we must agree that great art must give people, both aesthetically and politically, the chance to make public opinion into a real intellectual viewpoint, but my question is, hasn't public opinion just been used as an excuse for evil leaders and thinkers, like Wells, Huxley, and Bertrand Russell?"

LaRouche: It's man is a beast. If you accept the idea that Man is a beast, that there is no difference between man and a beast, as Thomas Huxley, for example, insisted upon it. So did Wells. So did Bertrand Russell. So do all of similar ilk.

The problem here is, again, the problem of leadership. The phenomenon that reflects the disease, which is implied, and, of course, in France they have a very special perception of this because of the French version of the existentialist movement, in which this kind of bestiality is promoted.

Jean-Paul Sartre, I used to call him Jean-Paul Masochismus. This sort of thing. The way we have to approach this is a practical way. For example, we have President Chirac, Chancellor Schroeder, President Putin, and others, who, with others and much support from people in their own countries and parties, have come forth rallying around this issue of no war in Iraq. In a sense, you would say you are witnessing people in leading positions, who are morally plain over their heads. There is very little in their background, which would suggest they are rallying to the quality of leadership they have shown, for example, in the recent United Nations Security Council sessions. They have come to that.

Now, you have to take that as a blessing, so to speak, and you have to say, ah!, we have come into a time, a time of crisis, in which you can no longer fool all of the people all of the time. A time of awakening to danger. A sense of the danger of this war -- what this war would mean. [tape break]  ... wanted to be a war spread throughout all parts of the world, and this fear of danger. The sense of an economic collapse has resulted, happily, in a good manifestation. Not one we can take to the bank because there is no bank you can take it to these days, but it is a good sign. It means that the situation, the social process, has entered, at least briefly, a period in which it is possible to make what would have been considered previously miracles.

Now the way to deal with this bestiality business is, if you can inspire people to believe in mankind once again, to believe that people generally are capable of good, like opposing this evil war is good, and people show the courage to oppose this, is good, even though we may not be able to trust these fellows entirely.

So, therefore, you must seize the moment and mood for good, and you can transform people by doing it. What we have to do is find among ourselves, we must find those with the quality of leadership, who will bring forth and lead that good, which is tending to erupt from people in various parts of the world, likely and unlikely at this time. Then you will find that the evil thing falls away.

I am not recommending a revival meeting because I've seen what they revive sometimes, but I would say that the possibility of a revival of humanity, a revival of a better mood in humanity, a better sense of mankind, is feasible.

It is our job to take the responsibility for seizing the moment and inspiring people to find that quality within themselves. I suspect they'll find this is the time to do it. [applause]

Foreign policy toward the Arab world

Freeman: For those of you who have signed up to ask questions from the audience, you may have noticed that I am not taking the questions in order. What I am trying to do is to take questions from people in a way that actually represents some kind of geographic representation of the gathered participants.

The next question is from a gentleman from Anaheim, California.

Question: Thank you for having me here, and I am a proud Arab-American. I would like to emphasize on a couple of things, and please let us know what you think.

The question is I find it extremely dangerous that the American foreign policy for the last 55 years, especially in the Arab world, unfair, extremely unfair.

Meaning, we find American military bases in Morocco, in the Sinai in Egypt, in Jordan, in Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, and so on. I know the Arabs would love to deal with the Americans as far as the economy. We know that the balance of trade between the Arabs and the U.S. is surplus to the U.S.

Why is it? Who is benefiting from the slaughter of the Palestinian people nowadays? The home destruction every day? Over 60 percent of unemployment in Palestine. People eat garbage every day. No water running. Till when will the Arabs be patient? I thank you for listening.

LaRouche: You have to go back to the beginning of the 19th century to get an aspect -- this has two aspects to it. The period of the Napoleonic wars in which Napoleon went through two phases. One phase was his operation in Egypt and the Middle East, in which he was defeated by the British. He then changed his marriage to the Hapsburgs, and he went with a somewhat different policy, marrying into the Hapsburg scheme of things, to create a continental power, which he would rule jointly with the Hapsburgs as a Caesarian model.

The British in this period, before the discovery of oil, which is very important. The development of oil started in what we now call Kuwait, where the British discovered a particularly rich lode there, and decided to base their policy for World War II, naval policy, on taking over this place, which later on was called Kuwait, or otherwise known as British Petroleum.

The oil basis of Middle East policy is a secondary phase, and relatively minor, compared to the major role. The major role is a long-term role, which is based on the British study along the lines of Gibbons' Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Their conception has always been -- that group -- has been a limes policy, that you control the world by such means, as controlling the Middle East as a crossroads between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. That has always been the policy, the crossroads policy.

Now in the process, what they did in this process of splitting up the Ottoman Empire, which was the great project of the 19th century -- split up the Ottoman Empire.

In this process, they colonized the area of Palestine with Jewish settlers. First these were Jews of professed Christian or Jewish extraction, or similar types. They developed a colony, and they developed a long-term policy of, first, using the Jewish element to colonize in the Middle East as part of the Ottoman policy in relationship to the Ottoman Empire. Then they moved toward what later became the idea of moving to an Israeli state, and using the conflict among Arabs and Israelis as a way of orchestrating the entire region, and this coincided with the development oil policies since World War II.

The essential thing here, as I said earlier, is simply, this is the most dastardly kind of policy. Many people in the Arab world and the Islamic world, in general, but Arab world in particular, think of this in terms of Arab-Israeli, and so forth, terms. They don't see it in terms of what is the actual source of the policy.

These people don't give a damn! For example, what is the role of Israel under Sharon? Under Likudnik operations? What is it? It is a hand grenade being thrown into the Islamic world, and what does a hand grenade do? It explodes.

What happens to a hand grenade after it explodes? It disappears as fragments. So Israel is a suicide state being used for what purpose? Well, look at our dear friend Bernard Lewis.

Bernard Lewis, who is the actual intellectual head, still, of Britain's Arab Bureau, the controller of Kissinger, Brzezinski, Huntington, and others; the author of the Arc of Crisis policy; the author of all these recent policies toward the Arab world from the United States. What's his policy?

His policy -- he's of Jewish extraction, British-Jewish extraction -- Is his policy an Israeli policy? No. It's to use Israel as a hand grenade to destroy itself in the process of destroying the Arab world and the Islamic world. That is his policy.

You have to see this thing in its true cynicism. The point is, as I said before, people ask on this question, "Why aren't they reasonable? Why do they says these silly things about Arabs? Why do they say these terrible things about Islam? Why do they say these things? How do we convince them not to say these things?"

It's a waste of time to convince them not to say these things. They don't believe them themselves. What they believe is they have an interested policy, an imperial type of policy, a cynical policy, in which they find it convenient to use these propaganda terms. These are terms of propaganda to justify a policy.

For example, Afghanistan. Now why did the United States bomb Afghanistan? What was the purpose? What did they accomplish? What is going to happen to Afghanistan as a result of what the United States did with its war in Afghanistan? The Taliban are going to take over, fully, openly, again! And the country is going to be in worse condition than it was ever before. What did they accomplish? Nothing. They destroyed the country some more. They're using it as a drug vehicle.

You have a section in Pakistan, a section of the so-called "north frontier states." These oligarchs who run that territory. They run the operation. Pakistan has become, not a nation; it is controlled by a bunch of oligarchs, who are using as a drug empire, one of the leading factors in the destabilization of the region. What did we accomplish? Nothing.

What are we going to do in Iraq? Destroy the place? What's that going to accomplish? Nothing. Nothing in terms of anything real.

It's going to uncork a war, which would probably destroy the United States and civilization as well. Nothing accomplished.

These are ideologues motivated by a conception of imperial power with a certain history, a certain fanaticism about it, and what they do in every part of the world, is simply done as a rationalization of their ideological commitment to a certain kind of global power.

They are afraid of what is emerging in Asia now. Look at Asia: 1998. I had proposed policies in this direction earlier, but in 1998, I made a specific proposal, in the summer, August, September of that year, proposing that a strategic triangle be developed among Russia, China and India, not as a monopoly, but as a basis for a new organization of security and cooperation in Eurasia, with the idea that Western Europe would be a partner of this cooperation in central and south Asia.

This was proposed later, officially, by the new Prime Minister of Russia, Primakov, in a speech in New Delhi, in November of that year. After that, it sort of died out. It was crushed, but then it came back. It came back in the form of increasing cooperation on precisely those lines among Russia, South Korea, China, Southeast Asia, and now more recently, India. So the drive toward this kind of Strategic Triangle economic and security cooperation in Asia is emerging.

Europe, which is now bankrupt because of the bankrupt world system, depends upon technology-sharing with China, India, and so forth, as a way of Europe surviving. Therefore, Europe has a fundamental interest in good relations with this force in Asia, and this force in Asia has very good reasons for good relations with Europe.

This is in the interests of the United States that this prosper. It is in our interests that it prosper. We should shoot anyone who would want to stop it. But this represents reality. Look to the South. Look at what we are doing to Mexico. Look at what we are doing to Argentina. Look at what we are doing to Brazil. Look at what we have done to Venezuela, to Colombia, to Peru, to Central America. We are destroying the nations to our south, which were once viable, growing nations. We've destroyed them.

Why? Why? It's a crazy ideological conception of power, and that is what our problem is. They want to destroy this. I want the opposite thing. My concern, long concern, is that the implicit aim of the United States from the beginning was to end empires, end colonialism, and establish a system of sovereign nation-states united by common principle of cooperation, on the assumption that a nation can rule itself only through its culture. That is, the people of the nation can participate only through their culture in forming government, representative government. Therefore, we desire independent, sovereign governments, based on that. We desire cooperation in mutual interests among such governments. That was what sanity demands. Other people have an ideological belief in something different, and that is what our problem is, and all these problems are to be seen as nothing but reflections of this bestiality. And, when they say this and they say that, they're lying, as I think you know. They are lying. There is no truth to the whole issue. They have no such issue.

Now, when I go to the Middle East, I meet Arabs. What's the difference? Like Africa, what's the difference? There's no conflict. There's no inherent conflict. There may a difference of opinion, but there is no conflict because of a difference in culture.

Homophobia

Freeman: Once again, for those of you who are listening over the internet, you are listening to the keynote presentation, entitled "In the aftermath of January 28th," delivered by Lyndon H. LaRouche. Mr. LaRouche is the Chairman of the International Caucus of Labor Committees. He is the founder and Contributing Editor of Executive Intelligence Review, and, of course, he is currently seeking the Democratic nomination for President of the United States.

Lyn, we've gotten several questions that have been transmitted electronically on this topic, and, therefore, I am going to summarize the question for you since we have gotten it from several people.

Mr. LaRouche, in Christianity, Islam and Judaism, there is an element of homophobia. It is something that gay men and lesbians consider a form of racism, and it makes it very difficult for us to participate in organized religion.

Today, you are seeking the Democratic nomination for President of the United States. How do you view the issue of discrimination and rights of gay men and lesbians in America?

LaRouche: Well, I ain't much for it, but ...  On the one hand, I think these are operations; but, on the other hand, these are human beings. Now in former times, before it became more fashionable, shall we say, in the late 1960s, there was an organization called, "WITCH," in New York City: "Women's International Terrorist Committee from Hell." [laughter] And they were out to kill all men in vengeance of something or other.

But, no, the point is, you have to approach these things very simply. These people have problems I regret they have. They may not think it is a problem. I do. I think they suffer for that, but the point is they are human beings, and, therefore, you cannot deny them anything that is human, that any other human being has a right to. You cannot have them persecuted.

Look, we used to have in cities in the United States what used to be called "fag bashers." You would have predators prowling the streets, say, Boston, in an area later known as the "combat zone." Near Washington Street and Fairmount, in a section of that area, and you would have these areas that were the more rundown sections of Washington and Fairmount Streets, and these would be the marginal areas of theaters and so forth, in which the pick-ups were made by homosexuals.

Now what you would have, you would then have a couple of drunken bums would get out there, prowl the streets, and get one of these poor guys up an alley and just kick the devil out of him, and sometimes kill one.

You had that kind of persecution, which you get from anyone who is different, so this kind of thing, of course, we always regretted, and then it went over to the other side with "Witch," which wanted to kill all men; you know, I thought it was a bad idea. I don't know how you are going to produce more women, if you kill all men.

Anyway, I think the answer has to be very simply that there are certain standards of human rights. People can be homosexual or self-styled as homosexual, and they do not lose their rights as human beings. It is that simple, and I think the law should stop right there; just exactly that.

We have problems such as pederasty, and it becomes very upsetting when we find it in churches, practiced by clergy in churches. That is very upsetting, and it should be banned. These are minors. They have to be protected. That is very simple. I don't think it should be an issue. I think that our normal standards should apply to everyone, and any persecution of anyone, even if it is because of aberration, is persecution, and should not occur. It is that simple, and we have enough work to do, enough good things to do that will keep everybody busy, so that we don't have to worry about this other kind of stuff.

Question from Peru youth movement

Freeman: Okay, the next question is from a member of the LaRouche Youth Movement in Peru.

Question: Good afternoon. I don't speak English very well, just some words. [Dennis Small translating] My question is the following -- I'm going to speak in Spanish. I hope you'll understand that I will speak to you in Spanish.

The first thing I would like to say to you, Mr. LaRouche, is to communicate what a proud moment and how honored we feel as part of the LaRouche movement in Peru, and to be able to participate in this tremendous meeting here today, and I would like first to make a contribution. First of all, with regard to the battle we are waging in Peru on the cultural front, as you may know Peru is perhaps metaphorically comparable to an archipelago, where you have a few large urban centers, where you may have the intellectual centers and the centers of production, but in the middle of a sea of agricultural production and economic backwardness, but which also has perhaps a pantheist view of the relationship between man and nature. So in Peru we are waging this battle, and it is certainly a difficult one to get to the mind of the population in this regard, and my question is the following:

What's going on in Peru is that many of the newly recruited members are engaged in research activities with people headed up by Luis Vasquez Medina, looking into the enormous historical significance of the work done by Moses Mendelssohn and Friedrich Schiller in the Prussian reforms. So the question is, if you could give us some ideas to inspire us with regard to the work that these great historical figures carried out, and so, therefore, to be able to apply this and to be able to carry forward in this very, perhaps sometimes difficult struggle that you have headed up for so many years? And thank you for also providing us with a hope and a mission, and a hope to be able to transform this current reality, this current situation, and the mission to be able to carry this out through the kind of cultural renaissance you have talked about. Thank you so much, Mr. LaRouche.

Developing the youth movement

Freeman: Okay, the next question. I am going to take another question from the audience and then we do have a couple of questions that have been transmitted electronically.

I would like to take a question now moving over to the East Coast.

Question: Thank you for the opportunity to ask this question. I am particularly bringing greetings to this conference in a scientific, spiritual wish from John Basar, who could not be here from the Buffalo office, but he is there in Buffalo now, in spirit with us, and he is representing at this point, having just survived a heart attack, and as he pointed out to me, he has survived in his life several such events, like the end of dairy farming for him, and he represents an area in this nation that was once a key industrial area, and my question is, how would we be addressing from the infrastructure that John has been recently addressing there, the development of the youth movement in that area?

LaRouche: Well, I don't think it is a problem of the area as such. If you have a sense in this nation that there is such a youth movement, then people in all parts of the nation would want to participate. It is just a matter of doing it.

What we are doing -- you know the way I approach this process of the youth movement may be peculiar to some people, but not to me, maybe that's because I'm the one that's doing the criticizing.

My general view is to try to supply a sense of direction and possibility, and to have the youth make up their own process. You see, I am not quite that young, as you may have guessed, and these young people have undergone an experience, which is not like that which I underwent. I didn't have a Baby-Boomer parentage. I had other problems, so, therefore, when they ask questions, for example, which is typical in organizing a youth movement -- when you are talking about people 18 to 25 years of age, you are talking in the United States, even today, of university-age youth.

You are talking about youth who come from -- I wouldn't say broken families -- but really patchwork families. A mother borrowed from here, a father borrowed from there, an uncle borrowed from here, a sibling borrowed from there, you know, it's all this sort of thing, and from terrible circumstances of parents who wanted to have this children as possessions, and then regretted that they did, and then they went on to find new identities, new careers, possible sex changes, and whatever. [laughter]

No, this is part of the reality. Then you've got the experience of the secondary schools, the neighborhoods, the false ideals -- all of these things, when you have a representative group of people who are like the ones we have with us now, 18 to 25, you are running into a real patchwork family. So that when someone asks you a question from that group, you have to, in a sense, answer it with the inner ear. Why? Because we don't have in the United States today a healthy standard family background structure. You don't have neighborhood community structures that are stable and sound, so you cannot ask a question without stumbling over all kinds of considerations, which are going on inside the head of the person, who is asking the question.

You are discussing one subject, and they'll ask a question, which seems from left field. It may be from left field. It may be something else, and they are responding to something they thought about two days earlier, or something, and it just pops out.

What is happening in all these processes is they are trying to put their lives back together again. They are trying to make sense of the world they have come from, to make sense of their own sense of identity, and they have to -- suddenly, you pose questions, and all kinds of things come popping into their minds -- What does that mean about this? What does that have to say about this?

All you do, take a list of the questions I get, say, an accumulation at a typical youth meeting that I have spoken to, and listen to the questions, and listen to the response to my answers to the questions, which is sometimes kind of wild, and you realize what you have to do.

What we are trying to do, essentially, is we are trying to put a generation back together, one that was fragmented and reduced to a patchwork of people accidentally of the same generation, but who have similar kinds of problems and similar kinds of experiences. They have within them a hunger to develop something meaningful, with their own lives. They tend to develop fast -- faster, I think, than youths of comparable ages in earlier generations, certainly the Baby Boomers. The Baby Boomers were much slower learners than of this generation that I have experienced. There is almost a sense of desperation or urgency. We must put our lives back together again.

So, the key thing in this is. do not try to impose an arbitrary formula on how a youth movement should be organized. Be flexible. We have a mission. We have a common mission. We have an objective. We are trying to sort out the way we are going to get there. We are trying at the same time to sort out the kind of lives we are going to live in the future. We are trying to put our lives back together again; therefore, you have to have a certain kind of openness. That means for a person of an older generation, you have to be exposed to 12 to 14 to 16-hour days because they will start doing one thing. They'll do this; they'll do that. At two o'clock in the morning, they'll decide what they are going to do at 6 or 8 o'clock the next morning, and it will be kind of wild in many cases, but actually, we find -- I find -- that it is quite coherent. It makes sense. I hear about it. I think about it. It makes sense. I wouldn't have thought of that, but it's right. It makes sense. They did it.

So, the key thing is we need a youth movement for reasons I identified in my principal remarks today with that kind of mission. We have to make up the youth movement from a lot of young people, who have been ground up in the process of reaching the age they have reached with parents, who sort of change their identities, species, and so forth several times in the process, and they are trying to put their lives back together at the same time they are on a mission, because you are always acting on your own identity, your personal sense of mission. Who are you? Who am I to be doing this? What does it mean about my life? What does it mean about me? And you have to be open. It is a very interesting, clinical experience. And I find a very satisfying one after the boredom which the Baby Boomer generation has dumped upon me.

Focus on the Presidency

Freeman: I am going to take a questions that was submitted via the internet. The question from the internet, Lyn, is as follows:  "Mr. LaRouche, I am very puzzled by the apparent contradiction between the argument being advanced by President Bush and some members of his Administration to justify the war on Iraq, namely, they say, to bring freedom to the inhabitants of that country and the actions being undertaken by some of the same members of the President's cabinet -- and this is where the contradiction comes in -- seems to be directed at diminishing the freedom of people here in the United States. Among these actions, we might mention the systematic obstruction of the Freedom of Information Act and the conduct of the activities of government under intense secrecy, including the development of bills, virtually without opportunity for the public to be informed, or for its representatives to deliberate. Obviously, I am referring to everything that is going on under the rubric of Homeland Security, perhaps the latest example of this is the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2023.

I'm sorry, but it seems to me that when Attorney General John Ashcroft speaks of freedom, he is not referring to the same concept that Abraham Lincoln might have referred to. Will you please comment on this, and how you assess the danger?"

LaRouche: [laughing] The first thing you are going to say is the year 2000 national election was a bummer, and you are seeing the fruits of that tree. It is dropping on us all over the place.

The question -- pose it another way: Obviously, obviously, I mean, this guy Ashcroft is a racist of the most simple-minded, foolish type. He is really a mess. All these acts are a mess. There is no rationale to it. It is insane. The President is a poor fellow, who needs a protector. I mean that seriously. You have a sitting President, in my conception of this fellow, he needs protection, especially, from Cheney, from Rumsfeld, from Ashcroft, and so forth. I mean, I am sure that in President George W. Bush, Jr., there must be somewhere this spark of humanity, which will respond to the idea that he would like to become a President if he has to put up with kind of job, which he probably doesn't like anyway -- they talked him into it. I don't think he really wanted the job in the first place, that if he could be a good President, and get out of that place alive and feel that he had actually become -- heh, I was a good President -- the first two years were not too good, but the second two years, we did a little better, huh? Not bad, huh.

You know you can take Mortimer Snerd off the farm -- that ventriloquist's dummy -- remember Mortimer Snerd? Edgar Bergen's other dummy? And you can sort of put him in the President, and make him a good President, by making sure he wasn't advised to do anything bad, and didn't expect to much of anything good, but somehow the ship of state got to port, and with a captain of that quality, that is quite an achievement, you can be proud of. So the problem here lies not merely in the President's own problems, which, I think, are severe enough by themselves, but this bunch of clowns around him.

Just to give an insight: the poor guy -- I think George H.W. -- 41 -- is obsessed, probably by the fact that when he sat hard on the settlements question in Israel, in Palestine, that he feels that he lost the election to the Zionist lobby, which sank his re-election. I get -- I haven't talked to George H.W., personally, so I don't know this personally, but I get the reverberations from around him, that is what is on their minds They obviously are very much concerned about 2023. It's like the guy who wants to get across the chasm desperately enough that he doesn't consider the fact there is no bridge there. They want to get to 2023. So, they are in this fit.

Now, in point of fact, look at his Administration. What controls the Administration? The international mafia, the Russian mafia. Richard Perle, sex Perle-diver -- this whole crowd -- Wolfowitz, Wurmser, the Wohlstetter crowd, these are the most notorious clowns in America. This is like Satanic nightmare, or something out of some Satanic novel, a flock of vampires, Dracula vampires -- and they are sitting on the Administration, actually controlling the policy. Look at what Jeff Steinberg reported on the question about how this 11 pages or the 19 or 16 pages got into the Blair report, which was then recited ritually by Secretary Powell before the Security Council, which was not written by some student -- that was not a student's paper -- it was written by these clowns as a part of Israeli intelligence! Right-wing Israeli intelligence! The worst clowns imaginable there -- wrote this thing, as an extension of the same crowd that wrote the paper, which is called the "Clean Break" paper, calling for the war on Iraq, which Cheney is pushing for, which Cheney issued back over 10 years ago, at the end of the first Bush Administration.

This guy is controlled right now -- the Secretary of State is controlled by, the Defense Department from the top is controlled by, the Justice Department is controlled by this bunch of organized crime people of this particular persuasion from the top down, and this guy is sitting there in the Presidency controlled by fear -- his father's fears, the fear that he will lose the next election, if he doesn't do exactly what they want. That is what the problem is, so, therefore, how do you approach this problem?

I said, as I said on the 28th of January, and I have said before, you have to focus on the Presidency of the United States, which is the institution, which should control the President, which should be the eyes and ears, and advice of the President is chiefly the institutions of the Presidency, primarily, and secondly, the Congress. That's how it should work. You have got to bring that force in there, and get these bums out of there. You have got to have a surgical operation to remove the cancer, as Perle, Wolfowitz, Wurmser, Bolton, so forth, the whole kit and kaboodle, and put the people who should be advisors in there, and I think you could probably get out of this mess, and you could probably deliver George W. Bush leaving office in January of 2023, saying, "Big fellow, I did a pretty good job. They don't have to dump us out." And that is the most you can expect from the guy, and that is all I would want from him, is that. I won't expect anything more. So, therefore, the problem likes with us, with us. Are we going to act, through parties and other instruments, to effect, especially, the institutions around the Presidency, the institutions of the political parties in the Congress in such a way as to create an environment, which will control this situation, and fast.

I believe, seeing what happened this past week in the Security Council proceedings, where the world ganged up against George Bush -- not against him personally, but against his policy -- and where you have a situation in which Tony Blair, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, may be dumped at any moment by the British institutions, and then George Bush would be sitting out there with nobody to talk to because the Blair will have gone out of the United Kingdom. So, therefore, the problem is rather say how can we address this problem, given the way it is, how can we change the problem by creating a different environment, which defines the problem and its solution. We should recognize that the world has seen clearly, despite the Washington Post editorials -- the world has seen, and has shown itself that it doesn't want this policy. The world has seen that it wants a different policy. It itself wants a different policy. The world will see -- will recognize -- that what it wants is an economic solution to the present world crisis, and to calm things down while we solve these economic problem and stop these monkey shines.

Therefore, we have to realize that the people of the world are waiting for someone to push them into acting out the implications of that recognition. The world has changed! The world is now open to hear fresh ideas. The inevitability of war -- the dangers of war is there, but the inevitability has been removed, as a myth. This is our opportunity. Get out there and provide leadership. The pressure of leadership on the institutions of the Presidency, the Congress and so forth, on other parts of the world. Let's get some action on the economic issue, and let's recognize this war is a bummer. Let's not do it. Let's focus our energy instead on the economic crisis. Then, I think -- many problems are solved by not focussing too much on what appears to be the apparent problem.

I used in a consulting capacity years ago, I learned this lesson. When I was brought into a firm as a consultant, I would listen to what was said, and I would listen very carefully for one thing: what the manager of the firm would tell me their problem wasn't, and I always knew immediately what that problem was because the reason I was there was because they couldn't solve their own problem. The reason they couldn't solve their own problem was because they refused to recognize what it was, and that is our problem in the United States.

Freeman:  Washington. It's not generally quite as well known around the country, but I should probably let people know this especially since so many members of the youth movement are going to be spending time in Washington next week.

You know during the course of the last Administration, people were alarmed, when they learned that Ken Starr, who had the chief responsibility for persecuting former President Bill Clinton, was an avid runner, who, after his run every morning, regardless of the weather, would thrust himself into the Potomac River to re-enact the act of baptism. He was very religious. But, you know, it was just a special prosecutor. Your Attorney General holds a staff meeting every morning, where, as part of his general practice, he leads his staff in prayer and anoints himself with Crisco oil. [laughter]

You will also find, if you have reason to visit the Department of Justice, that the statue that is in the lobby of the Department of Justice, which is Lady Justice, whom you all know as the chick with the scales, is draped in velvet because our Attorney General has deemed that she is not appropriately attired. Just so you know what we are dealing with.

To refer back to something that Lyn said about what the world has seen, I think that the world is waiting for certain action from the United States, and I think increasingly what people all over the world are seeing, and certainly what an increasing number of Americans are seeing, is that in this time of great crisis that nothing less than Lyndon LaRouche's leadership in America is sufficient to address that crisis, and I hope that you will join me in asserting that point by supporting his candidacy for the Democratic Presidential nomination. What that means concretely is that we have a lot of work to do.

The banner and the theme of this conference is not that is simply Mr. LaRouche's time, but that it is our time, and that means that you have a co-responsibility as citizens to carry out the actions that are necessary to see us clear of this current crisis, and I would like to encourage you to do that, and to apprise yourselves of what is made available to you this weekend to ensure that when you go back to your districts that you actually can do that.

The next question as I said is going to come from the audience, a youth member from Berlin.

Are Human Beings Necessary For The Universe?

Question: Two questions, and I hope they inspire the people who listen to us today. Why is it necessary for humanity to build a colony on Mars? Why should we go there and leave Earth? And do Earth and Mars need us, humanity, and are we necessary for the universe or are we just there?

LaRouche: Let's take the second part first. We are necessary for the universe. That's a long question, which calls for a long answer. We are needed. We are needed. We are here to fix the universe, and I enjoy it. I enjoy the work.

On Mars, specifically, there are several things we need to know for humanity to progress. Apart from the problems we have, we can say that progress in physical science, in particular, depends upon going in three directions: astrophysics, microphysics, and living processes. Now these are essentially different categories of universal principles. They are interrelated, as Riemann would say, multiply connected, but, therefore, science progresses, physical science, in particular, where real progress is made by saying, where did we do so far? And when you look at how far we have gone, you'll find a number of problems and questions, which remain unanswered, and the way science works normally is that people don't go out to make money in science. That's not how you make money. That's not how science progresses.

Science progresses because you want to do something, like good entrepreneurship. A good entrepreneur does go into business to make money. He may need money. He may need to make a profit to survive, but he does it because he likes to do it. He does it because he wants to do something useful with his life. He wants to survive and prosper. He wants to pass the benefits along to others so that when he dies the benefits will continue.

The scientist is the same thing. You go into science. You specialize in any area. It make take decades before you actually make a significant breakthrough of your own in a scientific field. Why do you do it then? Because it is your purpose in life to do something like that. To do something useful for humanity, and you've chosen that area to pursue it in. So, naturally, in these areas, you go to the obvious places. You go to what we call the frontiers. Now we have, actually, four frontiers of human knowledge. Some are the easy, obvious ones -- astrophysics. What's out there? Go find out. Microphysics -- What's down there? Go find out.

Now, we know already that living processes are different than abiotic processes. You will never get a man out of a collection of spare computer parts. You might get an Al Gore, but not a real candidate. Therefore, life is a universal principle, which existed before the first thing we can call a living process. It always existed in the universe -- life, as a principle. We may not call it life in that form, but it existed as a principle distinct from abiotic processes, and was always multiply-connected as an efficient force with that universe. Fine.

So now we have three simple areas of physical science: life, astrophysics, microphysics. They are all multiply connected. We also have a fourth area, mankind. There is no process in this universe, we know, which is capable, except man, of discovering a universal physical principle.

This is a power, a power, which is typified by Plato's dialogues. This power is a unique power in the universe, which defines human nature as distinct from puppy dogs and worms, and the Democratic Leadership Council. Therefore, this principle is a physically efficient principle in the universe, which we can demonstrate. The fact that there are 6 billion people, rather than several million is sufficient to demonstrate this principle is physically very damned efficient.

Alright, so that is another area of investigation. Thus, what should be our policy?

Well, the United States should have several policies, and the world, as a whole, should have several policies.

Number one: Basic economic infrastructure. We have to manage this planet. We have to manage the totality of area. We have to manage the deserts, the forests and other things. We have to create transportation systems. We have to create urban life. We have to generate power and distribute it. We have to manage water. We have to do all the things that are necessary to make this habitable by mankind, and to maintain it in that condition.

You know, we have a problem, a real problem. Do you know where you get your minerals from? As opposed to your Wheaties? Where do you get your minerals from?

Well, these minerals are coming up from the inner part of the planet, going to the surface area, which is part of what Vernadsky calls the biosphere. Now there is a certain rate of transmission of some of these minerals into the area of the biosphere. In certain areas, mankind is presently consuming these mineral resources more rapidly than they are being transmitted from the interior of the planet to the biosphere.

Therefore, we have to fix that problem. We have to manage it. The atmosphere was created by living processes. It did not come with the Earth. It was manufactured by the action of living processes, which created the atmosphere, which created water, and so forth, the soils also, all created by living processes. We have to manage that. That is the biosphere. That is the basic economic infrastructure. The preconditions of life, economy and so forth.

No, that is not the limit of things. We have to explore the universe because we don't live on the planet Earth, we live in the universe, and some day the Sun is going to blow up unless we intervene in the meantime because that is what's happening, and that is going to be terrible for your future. So, therefore, we are going to have to manage that. We are going to have to get out there, in space. We are going to have to find out what is there. We are going to have to explore areas we have not touched yet with wide-open eyes to see whatever there is to be seen and to solve whatever comes under our noses as something worth investigating.

If you do that, one of the things we will have to do is you will have to go to Mars. Now Mars is very important to us because the solar system, as you may know, is divided into two large areas outside the Sun. One area of the so-called inner planets have certain characteristics. The other are the outer planets. Both were generated at a time, a long time ago, when the Sun was a fast rotating star and spun off a plasma around it, which is polarized and heavily irradiated from the Sun itself, and it produced the material of our Periodic Table. It spun this stuff into a distilling machine and gave us the planets because the material would distribute around the planetary orbit and, then, because of the characteristics of the Keplerian orbit, this material condensed into planets and moons.

That's our system. It is divided into two areas, two great areas, defined by Kepler. Okay, what's the division? Gauss was the first one to solve the problem. Kepler said there is a missing planet; it has exploded in this area between Mars and Jupiter. We call it the asteroids today. Gauss proved that Kepler was right and had the right calculations for the characteristics of this orbit.

Well! What's going on out there? What happens when we cross the asteroid belt area, when we go out toward Jupiter? How is the universe going to look to us from out there? What principles? Was there life on Mars? Well, there's pretty strong evidence there was life on Mars because if there's water on Mars, there was life on Mars.

Other things: What happened to Mars? And then we put up some big radio telescopes and things like that out further. We begin to investigate the universe at great distances. We discover things we didn't even think -- we didn't even know the questions, and we're going to find the answers to some of them. So, what do we do? We say we want to have a science-driver program for human progress. Well, let's take our space program, and let's do the kind of thing that Kennedy was aiming at with his manned Moon landing program. Let's build a program, a science program. We'll concentrate science on this because every area of scientific investigation will be expressed in a space program.

Everything you would want to know about the universe or about Earth itself, or everything you think you might be able to do as man, will be expressed in due course as a process of a space program. So don't think of a space program as a get-rich scheme for some industrialists. Think of a space program as a university laboratory in the highest degree. A laboratory of all university laboratories in which all kinds of research are going to be concentrated in a coordinated way to solve every kind of problem that just comes under out noses. What are we going to do? Well, we are going to build a nice orbiting station out there. We are going to get rid of this Shuttle business. We are going to do the proper thing, which we should have done a long time ago.

We are going to build a station out there. We are going to go to the Moon. We are going to mine the Moon for materials, including fuel, including helium-3, which is abundant on the Moon, which is a very good fusion power source. We are going to build large-weight devices on the Moon, where it is easier to get them up, lift it up. We are going to move them from the Moon into a geo-stationary position around Earth. We are going to assemble the parts coming from the Moon and from Earth together. We are not going to send a spaceship over, only an idiot would do that. Von Braun warned against that years ago. You always send at least 3 or 4, like Columbus did at that distance. Don't send someone out by their lonesome, send them company! Give them support! How are you going to rescue them if they get into trouble? How are you going to rescue the people? So send a whole bunch of them out there! You want to get them to Mars? You're not going to get them by gravity or velocity, you're going to be put a power unit in there, probably a fusion energy power generator, possibly. You are going to accelerate that craft all the way from Earth orbit to Mars orbit, and you are going to get there in a short time. Not a weekend visit, it would be a little longer than that, but we can get there.

And we'll go down with service from Mars. We wouldn't want to live on the surface. It's a rather nasty place to live on the surface, but we'd go underneath the surface, and build ourselves a habitat. We'd put a bunch of scientists in there. We would use it as an advance basing station for exploration beyond Mars into further parts of the solar system.

So we are looking at the totality of human experience in the universe, approaching it as the concept of a university, a super-university, which is going to produce all kinds of things. It is the place you would go, directly or indirectly, if you've got a question, to get the answers. Much better than the internet. [laughter] And we develop that.

So, therefore, we do need man on Mars, not as some kind of gimmick, but in the normal process of the progress of humanity in facing the challenge of the universe and meeting the challenge that faces generations yet to come. It is a matter of ensuring your immortality.

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