With the Foundation's project stated, the event's moderator and New York President of Tameer-e-Millat, Shafqat Chaudhary, told the crowd, "I know that you all want to hear our honorable guest. When I was looking to introduce Mr. LaRouche and I found that everybody in the Pakistani community knew him, I was happy and impressed; and Mr. LaRouche is a very known economist, and we all know him for his views and ideas, and he is a real American. He wants America to live with peace, and he wants the other world to also flourish and live with peace in this universe.”

A July 4 article in Muslims magazine featured a photo of the Presidential candidate and "chief guest of the Society of International Help's annual fundraiser” with Mr. Chaudhary, and reported that $100,000 had been raised "to educate Pakistan”--to support 280 non-formal community schools and 22 formal schools. Faiq Siddiqui, a well-known Pakistani-American television anchorman, had visited Pakistan to produce an "Educate Pakistan” documentary on the "sorrowful state of affairs of education” in the country.

LaRouche, reported Muslims, "said we are living in a pessimistic world. The pessimism leads to corruption in politics. He said we have to educate our youth to make them optimistic, and to come out from the state of hopelessness. He said the United States is a melting pot of different nationalities and this is the richness of this country. `What we (the United States) are doing is wrong, but the U.S. can be changed. We can change and we can succeed,' LaRouche said confidently.” (Click here to read the complete article.)

Mr. Chaudhary thanked LaRouche for having "especially done a lot to make this gathering a success.” His introduction of the candidate included the following remarks:

Shafqat Chaudhary: Mr. LaRouche, as you are an economist, I am sure you know that an economy--that Pakistan is suffering--and you also know who is responsible for that.... There are Pakistanis and other individuals who care about Pakistan; who care about education; who care about what is going on in the world today; about the "new world order”; about the deceit and deception which is going on in the world in the name of "democracy.” Poor countries, weak nations are being plundered, their resources are being plundered in the name of "democracy.” When the United Nations does not toe an official line, they are called "irrelevant”; when countries that do not follow the line of the powerful nations, are labelled as "terrorist.” I would like to thank you for coming here today, that you are becoming part of our team to do something about it. Because if you see, education, or lack of education is, really--the cause of all the problems in the Third World and Pakistan and all poor countries.

Lyndon LaRouche: Thank you. Peace be with you, friends.

As you look around the world today you have two pictures. One, a fearful one: the spread of war, the threat of war, terror. On the other hand, in Asia in particular--Eurasia in general--there is a new movement, new cooperation among the nations of Asia, steps toward cooperation. Pakistan, India, China, Southeast Asia, Iran, nations of Central Asia, Russia, are moving toward Europe.

The world is in a great economic crisis. The financial system is in danger of collapsing and will collapse--but we can fix that. Governments have the power to fix those kinds of problems. Life will go on.

The problem is, above all, the minds of the people of the world; and in the case of Pakistan--as you have emphasized with your program--the support of education. The problem is: Look at the faces of the poor of the world; not only Pakistan, but the poor of India; the poor of Southeast Asia; and look in the eyes of poverty; the poverty in Africa. What do you see? You see a mind, that is a human mind, that is capable of doing what every other human mind can do, in general. But you see that the lack of education, the lack of hope, the lack of connection, is like a prison; it is not only a prison in denying them the knowledge they need to have the skills to produce; it is a psychological prison, a spiritual prison. They don't know the world in which they live. The world in which they live, in the large, is a stranger; it is a frightening stranger; and so, therefore, when it comes to the kind of project in which you are concerned here tonight, the project of education for the poor especially in Pakistan, who would otherwise not have the education which you are working to provide for them, the spiritual goal is almost as important, or may be more important, than the economic goal.

A Just New World Economic Order

How are we going to save Pakistan from the things that frighten it? It is largely poverty. Since the spin-off of Bangladesh, Pakistan has been a poor country. Lacking independent resources of the type it had before, the people became poor, they become poorer; I recall the case--I was involved in the case of Prime Minister [Zulfikar Ali] Bhutto. Prime Minister Bhutto was involved in the affair that I was pushing in Colombo, Sri Lanka, in 1975. We had a meeting of the Non-Aligned nations group to resolve on a just New World Economic Order. And every one of the leaders who participated, in a leading role in Asia, were either killed, like Mr. Bhutto was killed, or they were put out of office--with Mrs. [Sirimavo] Bandaranaike of Sri Lanka, and Mrs. [Indira] Gandhi of India, and so forth. The project failed, but the desire for a just New World Economic Order persists. It persists today, and is more alive in a sense than ever before, with the new spirit of cooperation in Asia.

So the problem we face is giving the poor--who are many in Asia--giving them a sense of economic opportunity; a sense of peace because they have something to fight for; peace to have the opportunity to lead different lives; not to waste their lives in war, in conflicts of that nature. Without this, without education, they can't do it. They can not participate. You would leave the poor of the world still poor.

For example, in the history of mankind until modern times, the fate of man went very badly. A few people who ruled, hunted some people down as wild animals. And killed them or captured them. Other men they herded, as we herd cattle. And they were not allowed to rise much above the status of cattle. Their humanity was denied them. We still, around the world today, have poor who are being denied humanity; they are being denied the knowledge to elevate themselves above the level of virtual human cattle. Sometimes cared for well, sometimes not. But in the sense they go into the fields, they go into the stall, they are milked, they work as animals do.

And the function of education is both to provide the individual the ability to participate officially in society, but also to realize their potential as a human being.

The other aspect of it, as I see it around the world today, is pessimism. In the United States, there is great pessimism. There is an affliction of pessimism in politics. We sometimes call corruption in politics--and it is a corruption--a fruit of pessimism. People say you can't "put the toothpaste back in the tube.” You can't change the way things are going. You can't improve the political system. You can't solve the problems, you've got to learn to live with the problems. Pessimism. Pessimism leads to corruption, and around the world the same problem, pessimism. Pessimism in Africa, especially in black Africa, pessimism in Europe, pessimism in Eastern Europe. Less so in China--China is more confident. But fear. In Korea, fear of what might happen; fear in Japan.

Education and Optimism

So the most important thing in my view, in my experience in leadership, is optimism. Not arbitrary optimism, not false optimism, but knowledgeable optimism. The knowledge that we can, that we will, do the things that have to be done. And optimism sometimes comes as the result of education. When the child relives some of the great inventions and discoveries of the past, or learns more about the world, the child becomes optimistic, in the sense that, people who came before him or her were able to do something. They get a sense, that "I know that I can do something.”

I remember when I was a child and growing up later, when young children would be brought into a family circle, what would the older people ask the child? "What are you going to do when you grow up?” And the child, in my time, would often have a very clear image. "I am going to do this”; "Why are you going to do that, what's your purpose?” The child would have a sense of what they were going to do. They were optimistic.

I know that in the period of World War II, when the United States had gone through a great period of pessimism, in the 1920s and the 1930s, we began to come out of that pessimism during the period of the 1930s and the war. We were able to meet the challenge of war, and the challenge and the hope of peace which Roosevelt represented, because there was optimism in the people. I saw things happen in wartime, in the wartime conditions, which expressed optimism, optimism. People would do what they thought was impossible, because they were optimistic. And the function, I think, of education--especially education of poor countries--is to give the child the basis for belief in optimism, or the belief we can do things, the belief that by cooperating we can make things different, we can change things for the better. And that's what I look for.

I am privileged now because of my work internationally in dealing with countries, in South Asia, Southeast Asia, East Asia, Europe, elsewhere. I see that there is a great possibility of optimism. But then I see when I look at the poor countries, such as Pakistan and India, which have many poor--even though many are not poor--but many poor. I think, "What will happen to the effort to build peace in these parts of the world, if we leave the majority of the population ignorant and poor, and a sense of hopelessness that will become a disease, and it will destroy all our wonderful aspirations?”

So I must say as briefly as possible--I could say much more about many things, maybe you might ask me about some of these things later tonight--that this is a very worthy cause. It's a small part of what is needed. Sometimes you set an example by a small effort, and hope that others will become inspired by what is accomplished by this small effort. And hope therefore that that example will inspire others....

I will tell you what I am going to do about this situation. I am confident that the United States can change. It can change from what it is now. It can change quickly. What we are doing now is wrong. But it can change. It doesn't have to go on like this. I am determined to bring that change about. Being an older man, I have nothing to fear. And therefore, I can do it. Go ahead and do it, or try to do it.

But I think one should not be pessimistic. I know what goes on in the United States. I know the persecution of so-called minority groups, I know the persecution of Islamic populations, from Islamic families. This is a melting-pot country. We have everybody in this country. This is not a country of Anglo-Saxons, this is a melting-pot nation. All parts of the world--Chinese, Koreans, Mexican-Americans, Spanish-speaking Americans of all kinds, all branches of Europe, Turkey, the Middle East, Egypt--they're all here. This is a melting-pot country; in which the richness of the country is the fact that we are a melting-pot country, we live together, and by living together, cultures and different backgrounds, we have an understanding of what peace means. It means we are united by a common purpose to create a society and a world that works in a certain way.

And this we can do. And I am convinced that you should be optimistic, too. I think we can change this, I am determined to change it. I think we can succeed. What you are doing in this cause for youth, young people in Pakistan, is just one more of those things, those good things that is done, which makes the world a better place to live. Thank you.

The LaRouche Youth Movement

Later in the evening, the moderator asked LaRouche to make further remarks to the gathering, and the Presidential candidate responded to this conference on education, by describing the youth movement which he is organizing internationally.

LaRouche: In former times, we thought in terms of our ancestors, our grandparents especially, our grandparents' generation; we thought in terms of our children, our grandchildren's generation. Our lives were dedicated to the sense that we were important, and our lives were important because we honored the gifts that had been given to us by our predecessors. And if we died, our life, unlike an animal's, meant something, because we have left something better for our children and grandchildren, and our children and grandchildren's generation.

In the United States, with the developments of 1964--the Indochina war, the rock-drug-sex counterculture--the generation which is now between 50 and 60 years of age, among most Americans, and which is running most of the institutions of private life and public life, became immoral. They became the "Now Generation,” not concerned with their ancestors, not concerned with their grandchildren, but concerned with their pleasure, their satisfaction. They became bored, and they changed their life-style; then they changed their life-style again; then they said, "We need a new life-style.” And today they are not concerned about the world; they are not concerned about the future of this nation, or other nations; they are not. They do not believe in dedicating their life to some purpose which will be realized in one generation or two generations ahead; they don't think of the future--a generation or two generations ahead; they don't think of the future.

You who have come into the United States and have become part of it, are oriented, as you have demonstrated tonight, toward the future. You are concerned about the future of the people of Pakistan, you are concerned about the poor Pakistanis who have no chance whatsoever; and to give some of them a chance, in the hope that what you can accomplish by modest means, will be replicated by larger means from others whose conscience is touched, by what you've done here tonight again.

Now, I am presently engaged in organizing a youth movement in the United States. I am concentrating on the generation between 18, and 24 or 25 years of age, the so-called university age. These are people who think of themselves as adults, not as children, not as adolescents.... They are university age, where they are preparing for their future life; to develop their future; I am trying to mobilize them, because they represent a generation who know they have no future if things in the United States continue in the way people now in their 50s and 60s have been running the United States. And therefore, I am building an education movement around them.

This education movement is effective, because they can perform a certain miracle; they are capable of inspiring people who have gone culturally dead--people now between the age of 50 and 60, the Baby Boomers--to discover the fact that their children and the grandchildren that they may have mean something, and may give meaning to their life.

`I Am Optimistic of What I Can Do'

What we are fighting for essentially is our own right to immortality; when we devote our lives to some useful purpose for humanity. When we further what has been given to us before by previous generations, we have realized the principle of immortality which no animal can realize, but only a human being. Only we can consciously change the universe for man; it is our sacred duty, and we can fulfill that duty. Whenever we die--whether we are in war, or whatever thing--we die with a sense of immortality, and it is justified.

So the thing you are doing tonight is a question of realizing one's own immortality in deeds which live within you ... to affirm to yourself the optimism of being immortal, and that your life means something so when you give to one of these poor children in Pakistan, who probably, as was indicated, 35-40% have no education.

And therefore, the issue here, as I have with the youth movement: We don't know how much we can do. I know I am optimistic of what I can do, in the nation and the world; not because I am that good, but because my competitors are that poor, and therefore I am confident. I have to do it; and therefore I shall. But all of us should take joy in sharing a sense that we have immortality; what we are trying to do for the people in Asia, for the abandoned children in Pakistan, is to give ourselves the blessing that we too have immortality. Now, act accordingly.

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