Monday, July 31, 2006

Will Qana Change Everything?

I'm not sure if the Qana massacre has so shocked the world that the U.S., in particular, will finally step in and bring an end to the carnage. I did see a visible shift at the Brookings Institution, this morning, where they had a briefing on "How the Fighting Stops." This briefing was scheduled, last week, I think, before the latest massacre, and Brookings has a quote on their website from Martin Indyk, the head of Brookings' Middle East Program, in which he declares "The idea that Syria or Iran should become the arbiters of Lebanon's fate is basically to reward the arsonists by giving them control of the place where the fire's burning," dated last Thursday. However, he displayed little of that arrogance, this morning, with the latest pictures from Lebanon on everybody’s minds. In fact, Indyk began his remarks by describing the Clinton Administration’s efforts, following the 1996 Qana massacre, to negotiate an agreement that was chiefly aimed at protecting civilians. While an agreement was reached on that issue, the broader diplomatic effort failed, leading to Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from southern Lebanon on 2000, leaving a vacuum that was filled by Hezbollah, rather than the Lebanese government. Indyk argued that we have to go for an agreement to protect the civilian population, then from there go for a longer term solution, which include measures which would strengthen the Lebanese government. What’s happening now, he said, is that “What the Lebanese government would have to do is being weakened every day” by the war.

Two of the other three speackers also made useful contributions. Hisham Milhem, the Washington representative of the Lebanese Al Nahar daily, suggested that Qana could force Israel to accept a ceasefire without achieving it's state dobjectives. He made it clear, as did Shibley Telhami, Anwar Sadat Professor at the University of Maryland, that the Israeli actions have actually had the opposite effect that Israel claims it is trying to achieve. In fact, Hezbollah has been strengthened, and the Lebanese government has been weakened (there have been many warnings that the government might not surivive) by the Israeli bombardment. Even if Hezbollah has been militarily weakened by the Israeli action, it has become much more powerful relative to all other parties in Lebanon, and, of course, is seen throughout much of the Arab world as the hero in this crisis, regardless of what many governents in the region might think, at least, officially.

Telhami also usefully brought up a point, one which I've long thought missing from the debate, that, until now, Israeli security strategy has depended on humiliating the Arabs, whether in Lebanon or the Palestinians. He argued the 1973 October war actually gave Anwar Sadat the strength and legitimacy to wage peace, because, he restored Egypt's honor by the way he waged the war. I don't see how Israel can ever have the peace and security it desires unless it restores to its Arab neighbors, some sense of dignity and honor, which it has always denied up until know. Israel needs to learn that there is no peace without justice.

In order for there to be justice, the economic component has to be included. In the MIddle East, that means no peace agreement will survive unless it is based on massive economic development, around developing new water resources, of the region as a whole. That was way the 1993 Oslo agreement failed. The economic protocols of the agreement were sabotaged by a numbr of outside parties, including the World Bank, who were helped by the fact that Benjamin Netanyahu, when he was prime minister in the late '90's, had no intention of ever implementing them.

Stop Being a Dupe: Know Your Actual Enemy!

By Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.

July 23, 2006

Some foolish people believe that Israel is behind the war against Lebanon. Some other people think that the U.S.A. is behind Israel's role in the war. Some point to the British government's plotting behind the war. Meanwhile, actually well-informed people know that it is the international financier circles of which Felix Rohatyn is a part, which are the actual forces steering the current plunge toward what is fairly described as "World War III."

Felix Rohatyn, who is currently a key agent of those foreign powers determined to destroy the U.S.A., has spoken plainly of his own role in this affair. He has stated, at a certain meeting last year, that he considers LaRouche a menace like President Franklin D. Roosevelt, a kind of menace which comes to the surface at times that the U.S. has a President who is a mental case as crudely incompetent as President George W. Bush, Jr. Rohatyn stated that he considers LaRouche the danger to be eliminated under these crisis-conditions.

What Rohatyn stated on that occasion, was that there are now financier conglomerations more powerful financially than any government. He insisted that these financier powers must run the world, and that governments must be reduced to the status of mere errand-boys for financial syndicates of that type. Rohatyn insisted that the world must be changed, such that those kinds of financier power actually run the world as a whole, permanently.

That was not only Rohatyn's stated opinion; that is his practice and that of his apparent rival, George Soros. The international financial circles which Rohatyn typifies, are currently destroying both the institutions of the sovereign nation-state itself, and also the large industrial and agricultural interests of national governments which are the greatest potential threat to the takeover of the entire world by a kind of world government created and run by gigantic blobs of Venetian-style financier-oligarchical usury.

In this situation, only a poor slobbering fool would actually believe that it is this or that nation-state which is behind the current drive toward global warfare of the type now spreading world-wide out of the strategic cockpit of Southwest Asia. It is the concert of financier-oligarchical power of which Rohatyn is merely a part, which is the actual entity behind the present spread of warfare throughout Southwest Asia and beyond. It is a consort of power which esteems itself, in its current practice, as in its opinion, the permanent imperial government of a globalized world. It is this consort of power, which is centered, not inside the U.S.A., but in the global octopus of imperial financier power centered on the interlocking interests of French Synarchism and Anglo-Dutch financier cartelization. It is this consort of power, brought together around the British East India Company at the February 1763 Treaty of Paris, which has been the dominant imperial power in the world ever since the defeat of the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte brought Napoleon's Banque de France into the status of an auxiliary of Anglo-Dutch Liberal financier-imperialism -- as the case of the British auxiliary policeman Napoleon III merely illustrates the fact, and as the "Napoleon III," and Margaret Thatcher flunky otherwise known as France's President Francois Mitterrand, typifies such traditions.

This is our enemy; this is the identity of our enemy's agents operating inside the U.S.A. and its institutions of government. This is the enemy which employs Rohatyn among its notable agents; this is the enemy who makes war for our destruction, here and abroad, today.

This is the enemy who is currently orchestrating the welling spread of nuclear-armed asymmetric warfare in Southwest Asia, the same enemy, operating from relevant centers in France, the United Kingdom, and Netherlands, who has launched Israel on a current, virtual national suicide-mission into Lebanon and its neighbors.

- 30-30-30 -

The following article provides crucial historical background to LaRouche's statement above:


Fact Sheet: The Enemy Is Oligarchism
by Jeffrey Steinberg

In November 1940, the Coordinator of Information (COI), the predecessor to the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS), prepared a classified report titled ``Synarchie and the policy of the Banque Worms group.'' The three-page confidential document began, ``In recent reports, there have been several references to the growing political power of the Banque Worms group in France, which includes amongst its members such ardent [Nazi] collaborationists as Pucheu, Benoist-Mechin, Leroy-Ladurie, Bouthillier, and representatives of the big French industrial organizations.'' The report continued, ``The reactionary movement known as `Synarchie' has been in existence in France for nearly a century. Its aim has always been to carry out a bloodless revolution, inspired by the upper classes, aimed at producing a form of government by `technicians' (the founder of the movement was a `polytechnician'), under which home and foreign policy would be subordinated to international economy. The aims of the Banque Worms group are the same as those of `Synarchie,' and the leaders of the two groups are, in most cases, identical.''

The COI report then went on to detail the political agenda of the international Synarchy, as of August 1940:
``(a) to check the `Revolution Nationale' insofar as its development might entail the creation of a new social order [at the time, France was under the ``social order'' of the Nazis, following the Spring 1940 invasion and occupation--ed.];
``(b) to check any new social schemes which might tend to weaken the power of the international financiers and industrialists;
``(c) to work for the ultimate complete control of all industry by international finance and industry;
``(d) to protect Jewish and Anglo-Saxon interests.''

The document went on to note that there is sympathy for this Synarchist scheme among some key Nazi circles in Germany including ``both Goering and Dr. Funk [Walther Funk, who was Nazi Minister of Economics, president of the Reichsbank, and Nazi Germany's representative on the Bank for International Settlements, following Hjalmar Schacht--ed.]... It is alleged that certain industrial circles in Great Britain are also in sympathy with the movement. Some headway is claimed to have been made in securing the adhesion of big U.S. industry to the movement.''

The document also identified Synarchist plans towards Great Britain: ``To bring about the fall of the Churchill government by creating the belief in the country that a more energetic government is needed to prosecute the war ... and to bring about the formation of a new Government including Sir Samuel Hoare, Lord Beaverbrook and Mr. Hore-Belisha. (Note. The source has added that in the Worms group it is believed that those circles in Great Britain who are favorably disposed to their plans, are most critical of Mr. Churchill, Lord Halifax and Captain Margesson.); and through the medium of Sir Samuel Hoare to bring about an agreement between British industry and the Franco-German `bloc;' and to protect Anglo-Saxon interests on the continent.''

The document concluded, ``In regard to Germany, it is hoped ultimately to eliminate Hitler, Goebbels, and Himmler with his Gestapo, from the political scene, thus facilitating the formation of an Anglo-Franco-German economic bloc.''

Another insightful snapshot of the trans-Atlantic Synarchist banking apparatus on the eve of World War II appeared, ironically, in {Time} magazine on July 3, 1939, under the headline ``Insider from Overseas.'' The article reported on the arrival in New York City of German banker Otto Jeidels, who was named a partner in the New York City branch of Lazard Freres & Co. According to {Time}: ``Lazard Brothers & Co. of London is Aryan and aristocratic, a member of the Bank of England coterie, helps back the appeasment movement in London, favors the theory that concessions to Hitler will bring Dr. Schacht and his orthodox economics back to Berlin. It has a highly lucrative and increasingly important sideline in helping frightened European capitalists put their money into good safe American dollars. On the receiving end of this flood of gold from Europe is Lazard Freres of Manhattan, not entirely Aryan, not a Wall Street insider, still correspondent (but no longer a partner) of the highly political London and Paris Lazard banks. Lazard's of Manhattan underwrites securities and above all, does a big business in foreign exchange. Invaluable to this clearing house of new bullion and foreign capital will be Jeidels, who is a friend of Montagu Norman, has access to choice continental pipelines into Hitlerland.... In Germany there is a cynical saying that Schacht has managed to doublecross all save two of his intimates: one of the two is Hitler, the other is Jeidels. Schacht gave Jeidels the high sign in time for him to leave Germany with his family before the great pogrom of 1938 began.... Schacht was able to protect Jeidels because his contact with British Bank Boss Montagu Norman was useful to Hitler.... Until the spring of 1938, Jeidels functioned perfectly, as much of an insider as Hitler could let any Jewish banker be. He satisfied the British by keeping the debts unrepudiated, the Nazis by keeping them frozen, served as middleman between the Nazis and the British.''

These two reports, one, a classified wartime U.S. intelligence dossier, and the other, a widely circulated news magazine story, represented two exemplary pieces from a voluminous archive of documents--public and classified--from the 1930-45 period, that detailed the role of the international banking and industrial cartel, known then--and still, today--as ``the Synarchist International.''

Wartime OSS Research and Analysis Branch Director William Langer detailed the role of the Synarchy in Vichy France in his 1947 book {Our Vichy Gamble}. Three years later, James Stewart Martin, a U.S. Justice Department Anti-Trust Division lawyer, who, from 1944-47, headed the de-cartelization unit of the U.S. occupation government in Germany, published his own stunning expose of the same international Synarchist cartel in his 1950 book, {All Honorable Men}.

These and other contemporaneous accounts, reflected a deep understanding, within the FDR-led U.S. governing institutions of the time, that a top-down international financial oligarchy had been the chief sponsors of the Nazi and Fascist regimes that brought war and devastation to the Eurasian continent, in a failed effort to create a post-Westphalian world without sovereign nation-states, run by an international bankers dictatorship. But for Franklin Roosevelt's mobilization of the moral and industrial might of the United States, these Synarchists may very well have succeeded in bringing the planet to the abyss of a new Dark Age.

- Then and Now -

These penetrating wartime intelligence assessments of global Synarchy are of the greatest relevance today. In effect, the COI/OSS and related evaluations of the situation on the European continent were that an Anglo-Saxon and Franco-German cartel of international financiers and industrialists, who comprised a powerful faction financing and controlling the Nazi/Fascist axis, was steering European governments, through agents with little or no loyalty to their nations, but the greatest loyalty to the international Synarchy. As Langer quoted U.S. Ambassador Nicholas Biddle from London, ``This group should be regarded not as Frenchmen, any more than their corresponding members in Germany should be regarded as Germans, for the interests of both groups are so intermingled as to be indistinguishable; their whole interest is focussed upon furtherance of their industrial and financial stakes.''

It was this combination of international bankers, then, who had financed Mussolini and then Hitler, and had steered Eurasia on a path of war and near self-annihilation, in order to secure their own dominance over global economic and financial affairs, no matter what the outcome of the war.

This apparatus was aligned, in the United States, with the very J.P. Morgan and DuPont interests that had been foiled in their several coup d'etat attempts against President Roosevelt. The more extended network of FDR enemies included the Brown Brothers Harriman interests--including Prescott Bush, the grandfather of the current President of the United States--that had openly bankrolled the Nazi Party, and the Dillon Reed and Sullivan and Cromwell Wall Street axis that had structured the international steel, coal and petroleum cartels, which included such key Nazi institutions as IG Farben, the Keppler Circle, and the Cologne Stein Bank of Allgemeine SS financier Kurt von Schroeder. The head of Dillon Reed during the interwar period, William Draper, became chief of the economic division of the postwar U.S. occupation government in Germany, and crushed James Stewart Martin's effort, promoting Martin's resignation and his writing of {All Honorable Men}. As Martin discovered, the intention of the Synarchists was to assure the survival and prosperity of their cartel no matter what the outcome of the war.

Upon the death of Franklin Roosevelt in April 1945, the Synarchist vise-grip on the White House was soon, albeit temporarily, established, with the swearing in of Harry S Truman as President, and Truman's 1946 embrace of Winston Churchill's ``Iron Curtain'' declaration of war against FDR's wartime ally, the Soviet Union. By 1948, most of the French and German financiers at the heart of the wartime Synarchy were freed from jail, acquitted from charges of treason. The Banque Worms group emerged among the principal French financiers and stalwarts of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, the postwar cultural warfare front at the heart of the trans-Atlantic ``red scare.'' Hjalmar Schacht, himself, acquitted at Nuremberg, resumed his role as a leading financial ``wizard.'' Andre@aa Meyer, the Paris Lazard banker who relocated to Manhattan's Lazard Brothers a year after Jeidels' arrival in New York, perpetuated the London-Paris-New York Synarchy, and soon designated Felix Rohatyn as his hand-picked successor, whom he considered ``as my son.'' Thus, the Synarchy has maintained a continuity through to the present day. Through individuals like Felix Rohatyn and George Pratt Shultz, the Synarchy has penetrated both of the major U.S. political parties, and through this penetration, has planted Synarchist agents, witting and unwitting, into the pores of the Federal government, from the Oval Office to the Halls of Congress, to the courts and virtually every Cabinet agency.

The neo-conservative movement, with its roots in the philosophical tradition of Leo Strauss, Alexandre Kojeve, and Carl Schmitt, is one major spore of the present-day Synarchist International. But in some respects, the case of George Shultz provides the most clinical profile of the Synarchy in action today.

- The Economic Hit Men -

In 2004, a book was published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., which caused a significant stir. John Perkins' {Confessions of an Economic Hit Man} provided a first-hand account of the role of the present-day international cartel of banks and multinational corporations, which work in concert to loot the developing sector of its strategic raw materials wealth and other national patrimony. The principal strategy employed by the Economic Hit Men (EHM), according to Perkins' first-hand account, was to build up massive debt by developing-sector governments, to trap them in a straitjacket of World Bank and IMF diktats, while multinational corporations such as Bechtel and Halliburton loot them blind, under the guise of ``development.''

Perkins identified George Shultz, former Bechtel president, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, and Secretary of State, as the reigning Economic Hit Man--the {Capo di Tutti Capi} of the very Synarchist apparatus that earlier brought the world to the brink of self-annihilation from 1922-45.

Whether or not Perkins was 100% accurate about Shultz's formal title as the reigning boss of the EHM, Shultz definitely represents the embodiment of the Synarchy. Shultz's ultimate allegiances are suggested by his close relationship to Jacob Rothschild of Great Britain, to whom he, along with Berkshire Hathaway's Warren Buffett, delivered the California gubernatorial candidate Arnold Schwarzenegger, for inspection and approval. Shultz is also one of the leading proponents in the United States of the radical free-trade dogmas of the Synarchists' Mont Pelerin Society. His University of Chicago mentor, W. Allen Wallis, was the founding treasurer of Mont Pelerin. Shultz is still a director of the Bechtel Group, chairman of the JP Morgan Chase International Council, a director of the Fremont Group and Accenture Energy, a company involved in mega-mergers and acquisitions in the oil and gas sector, with close ties to Anglo-American Corp.

Today, Shultz is not only the ``godfather'' of the Bush-Cheney Administration, having hand-picked the Vulcans, the team of initial George W. Bush tutors and Executive Branch moles, responsible for the Iraq War disaster. He, along with R. James Woolsey, revived the Committee on the Present Danger, to promote a post-Westphalia world of preventive wars, suited to the fulfillment of the Synarchist agenda. In partnership with Felix Rohatyn, Shultz has promoted the privatization of war, through the proliferation of Private Military Corporations (PMCs), which, they openly boasted at an October 2004 Middlebury College conference, represented a return to the ``neo-feudal'' system, represented by the 18th- and 19th-Century British East India Company.

Shultz and Rohatyn typify the mid-level Synarchist operative, who works within and around government institutions, on behalf of a thoroughly alien agenda and ideology. Their allegiances are to the Anglo-Dutch/Venetian system of usury, globalization, population reduction, and slavery.

- December 1971 -

George Shultz was Labor Secretary, head of the Office of Management and Budget, and Treasury Secretary under President Richard Nixon. He personally pulled the plug on the Bretton Woods System of FDR. When Lyndon LaRouche labelled the dumping of Bretton Woods as the beginning of a descent into a fascist hell, he was branded a ``potential danger'' to the newly launched global tyranny. In a December 1971 debate at Queens College in New York City, the last such event which he would ever be invited to attend, LaRouche induced his opponent, Prof. Abba Lerner, to unmask himself as a proponent of Schachtian economics. Confronted by LaRouche with the evidence of the lawful consequences of ending the system of global fixed exchange rates, and opening the world's currencies to speculative manipulation, Lerner had blurted out, ``If they had listened to Schacht, we wouldn't have needed Hitler.''

If there is a phrase that best describes the current Synarchist agenda being promoted by the likes of Shultz and Rohatyn, it is: ``Schacht without Hitler.'' And if anyone thinks that this is an improvement on the earlier experience with Nazism and Fascism, they are about to experience a rude awakening, if Synarchy is not stopped.

Saturday, July 29, 2006

The Bush/Cheney Fiasco in Iraq


Here's something that's going to be getting an awful lot of press over the next few weeks.

Ricks appeared at the New America Foundation to talk about his new book, last Friday, and began by reading from the introduction:

"President George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003 ultimately may come to be seen as one of the most profligate actions in the history of American foreign policy. The consequences of his choice won’t be clear for decades but it is already abundantly apparent in mid-2006 that the U.S. government went to war in Iraq with scant international support, on the basis of incorrect information about weapons of mass destruction and the supposed nexus between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda terrorism, and then occupied the country negligently. Thousands of U.S. troops and untold numbers of Iraqis have died, hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent, many of them squandered. Democracy may yet come to Iraq and the region but so, too, may civil war or a regional conflagration which in turn could lead to spiraling oil prices and a global economic shock. This book’s subtitle terms the U.S. effort in Iraq an adventure in the critical sense of adventurism, that is, with the view that the U.S. invasion was launched recklessly, with a flawed plan for war and a worse approach to occupation. Spooked by its own false conclusions about the threat [...] its diplomacy, short-circuited its planning and assembled an agonizingly incompetent occupation.

"None of this was inevitable. It was made possible only through the intellectual acrobatics of simultaneously worse-casing the threat presented by Iraq, while best casing the costs and difficulties of occupation. How the U.S. government could launch a pre-emptive war based on false premises is the subject of the first part of this book. The blame must lie foremost with President Bush himself but his incompetence and arrogance are only one part of the story. It takes more than one person to make a mess as big as Iraq. Bush could only take such a careless action because of a series of failures in the American system. Major lapses occurred within the national security bureaucracy, from a week National Security Council to an overweening Pentagon and a confused intelligence apparatus. Larger failures of oversight also occurred in the political system, most notably in Congress, and the inability of the media to find and present alternate sources of information about Iraq and the threat that it did or did not present to the United States. It is a tragedy in which every major player contributed to the errors but in which the heros tend to be anonymous and relatively powerless, the front-line American soldier doing his best in a difficult situation, the Iraqi civilian caring for his family amid chaos and violence. They are the people who pay everyday with blood and tears for the failures of high officials and powerful institutions."

This is a damning indictment if I ever heard one, but that's not all there was. Ricks enumerated the failures, as he sees them, from the conduct of the war mongers inside the administration (he argues that they destroyed Colin Powell by forcing him to make that infamous speech at the U.N. just before the invasion), to the bad journalism which "intensified the failures" (think Judith Miller and the New York Times), to the Congress which does no oversight, which he characterized as "The Silence of the lambs," to the military establishment which was completely unprepared for the task they were handed.

I'm looking forward to doing a complete review of the book, but, from what Ricks presented, and the discussion that followed, there is one crucial principle missing, that is, the principle of intent. It's certainly arguable that the military establishment had no idea what it was doing, and many in the Congress were so cowed by the Bush Administration that even if they knew what questions to ask, they would've been too cowardly to ask them. The right quesitons would have gone to the principle of intent, because deep inside the sewers of minds like Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Doug Feith, Richard Perle, and the rest of the gang who worked the hardedst to lead us into this disaster, they intended for the results that we've seen. They were, and are, implenting two doctrines, here. One is Samual Huntington's Clash of Civilizations (that book isn't a thesis, it's a war plan against civilization) and the even more infamous "Clean Break" document written for Benjamin Netanyahu in 1996, which Perle and Feith were two of the co-authors of. Ricks did comment at one point, that, indeed "stability was the target" of this operation but I don't know if he realizes how close to the truth he really is.

Anyway, this criticism aside, it seems that Ricks has done a yeoman service of great value to the country in helping us face how we got here, and I'll have more to say as this dicussion progresses.

Friday, July 28, 2006

Another Bush/Cheney Crime in Iraq

One of the characteristics of this period in our history is the total, utter lack of oversight by the Congress of the Bush Administration. The Republicans in the Congress act as if we have a parliamentary system, where the majority party in the legislature forms the government. They, therefore, show absolutely no interest in carrying out their Constitutional responsibilities as the elected representatives of the American population. If not for a handful of Democrats, such as Henry Waxman in the House and Byron Dorgan in the Senate, who have fought like bulldogs to get even a minimal level of oversight, we’d know a lot less about the crimes of the Bush Administration than we do. If the Congress, including the Democrats as a whole, actually did its job, Bush and Cheney would have been impeached, by now, or at least, not been re-elected in 2004.

Today, Senator Dorgan provided another example of why the Congress needs to do its job. As chairman of the Senate Democratic Policy Committee, he held a hearing on U.S. contracting in Iraq and the Iraqi health care system. This is the 9th hearing he’s chaired on the subject of contracting in Iraq, and each one reveals another layer of the corruption which has been a characteristic of our adventure in Iraq. Halliburton has gotten the most attention, because it’s Dick Cheney’s company and has set the pattern, but the pattern extends beyond Halliburton, and not only are the American taxpayers paying the price for this, but so are American soldiers and Iraqi civilians, but in the latter two cases, they’re paying with their blood.

I won’t go into a lot of detail here, because the statements are available on the DPC website, and there should be a full transcript posted, next week, plus it is archived on the C-Span website here. But the gist of the hearing was this: The focus of the hearing was the contract under which the Parsons company was supposed to build 142 clinics all over Iraq, and only succeeded in getting 20 of them completed before the $243 million provided by the contract ran out. In short, the policy of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the colonial government run by Paul Bremer after the invasion, went in with an attitude that it was going to build a new health_care system for Iraq without consulting Iraqis as to their needs. The staff the CPA assembled had little or no experience in providing health care in such circumstances and simply proceeded to operate under the assumption that the system as it existed under Saddam Hussein was no good and should be ignored.

The result has been that fancy hospitals were built, such as the one in Basra, which make good political statements but didn't meet the needs of Iraqis, could not be sustained, and ignored the provision of more basic needs, such as clean water. The facilities that are in operation, are unsanitary because of water and sewage leaks and lack necessary medical equipment. The practice of medicine itself in Iraq, has declined, because many trained, experienced physicians have fled the country because of the security and working conditions, or have been assassinated, meaning that young doctors and medical students can't get the clinical training they need, meaning that where care is provided, it's of poor quality.

Sen. Mark Dayton (D-Minn.) declared that all of this is the result of wilful blindness on the part of the Republicans, and that "it’s beyond words, it’s immoral." The contractors should be prosecuted and forced to repay every dollar of taxpayer money that they got for these contracts because they haven’t produced anything. "They’re just ripping off the American taxpayer," he said. It’s probably not exactly true that they haven’t produced anything. They’ve produced huge profits for their shareholders, who turn around and finance the re-election campaigns of the Republicans who support this treason. How much longer can our country survive this kind of corruption?

Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) greets witnesses prior to the July 28 hearing of the Senate Democratic Policy Committee on "The Bush Administration's Plan to Rebuild Iraq's Hospitals, Clinics and Health Care System: What Went Wrong?"

















Leaning towards the microphone is Dr. Mary Paterson, of the Catholic University School of Nursing. Next to her is Hala Al Saraf of the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health. Not visible beyond them, are Dr. Ali Fadhil, an Iraqi physician and journalist, and Dr. Richard Garfield, of the Columbia University of School of Nursing. Together, they provided a devastating picture of how the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq has destroyed its health care system.









Your Responsibility to Save Civilization

Yesterday, Lyndon LaRouche had an extraordinary two-hour discussion on the Jack Stockwell radio show, out of Salt Lake City, on the American System, human creativity, and freedom in economics, and human immortality. Here is the conclusion of that interview, in which he characterized the strategic crisis that we face:

STOCKWELL: Lyn, just in a few minutes left, where are we, and what responsibilities incumbent upon us all to do something, even at this late date?

LAROUCHE: You referred to Gingrich, who is not really a nice person, who is not entirely ill-informed: That the fact is, that Israel did not invade southern Lebanon or conduct many other things it did, simply as something of Israeli interest. In point of fact, as we see now, as many have warned, that this could be the end of Israel. Israel was sent on a suicide mission, a suicide for Israel, into southern Lebanon; and everyone who is of military and related competence, who saw the facts, have agreed--and we've shared these facts--have agreed, that this is a suicide mission.

Now the fact that Israel is being expended when people have tried to use it as an instrument of policy in this way, indicates that we've come to the point, that the friends of Felix Rohatyn of the Synarchist International--the same people who created Adolf Hitler, and then dumped him, but they created him; and who also are responsible for launching the Hitler who they knew was going to conduct some kind of genocide against Jews--these people are trying to push us to a real chaos: because they know that the end of their financial system as it exists now, is doomed. That some time in the very near future, unless fundamental changes are made by the U.S. government in particular, this system is going to crash--not into a depression, but into a dark age kind of depression.

So they are rushing at this time, to get control of the planet, which is why they're pushing for a global world war! Now! Not a local war, not a regional war. The attack, the terrorist attack in Mumbai, which was largely a British creation, this attack shows you very clearly, and other things from the U.S. administration also show you, that they're headed for a new kind of world war, World War III in a new form, from which civilization might not emerge. And the issue now, is to find the leadership, especially in the United States, which will change the direction of behavior, of the U.S. Senate and the Congress, from what it has been doing in the recent months. And will also cause a change in the policy of the Presidency of the United States, a radical change, of the type which is consistent with the intention of the Founders of this nation.

That's where we stand: We, now, have the moral responsibility for changing ourselves, for changing the behavior of our Senate, our Congress, of our Presidency, to ensure not only that the United States survives, but survives because it plays a positive role in preventing civilization from going to Hell, under the impact of what is building up rapidly, now.

Thursday, July 27, 2006

Will the Democrats Filibuster John Bolton?

John Bolton appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, this morning, in a renewed attempt by the Bush Administration to get him permanently confirmed as U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Though most of the Democrats on the committee expressed continued opposition to Bolton’s confirmation, it is not clear from this morning’s proceedings whether or not the Democrats are going to filibuster the his nomination. Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) expressed his concern that documents he had asked for last year regarding Bolton’s requests for NSA intercepts, when he was in the State Department, still had not been turned over to the committee. Dodd’s attitude seemed to soften, however, when Bolton said he, personally, had no objection to those documents being provided to the committee. You'll recall that Bush made Bolton a recess appointment, after Democrats blocked a vote in the Senate over the administrations refusal to provide the documents at issue.

Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.), the ranking Democrat on the committee, asked a series of questions trying to get at Bolton’s effectiveness in the U.N., suggesting that Bolton had made statements contradicting other administration statements regarding the incentive package offered to Iran, and that Bolton had been ineffective in implementing parts of U.N. Security Council resolution 1559 prior to the current crisis in Lebanon. Biden argued that, while Syria withdrew its troops, as the resolution required, the resolution also required that Hezbollah be disarmed, and that the authority of the Lebanese army be extended into southern Lebanon, which are the supposed objectives of current US and Israeli policy.

With one exception, the Republican members of the committee, including chairman Dick Lugar (R-Ind.), were quite chummy with Bolton. Sen. George Voinovich (R-Oh.), who had been a key opposition vote against Bolton, last summer, asked Bolton about the chances of a strong UN resolution against Iran. Bolton said he was optimistic that the chances are good “because we contemplate giving Iran a brief grace period to suspend their enrichment activities, after which time, we’ll return to the issue of sanctions.” Voinovich responded that “I would suggest that this is a good example of the multi-lateral approach of this administration, and your participation in that...”

The only Republican who expressed skepticism was Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.) who kept asking Bolton to define the root causes of terrorism in the Middle East, which Bolton failed to do to his satisfaction. Chafee also quoted U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad telling the committee that “shaping” the Middle East is the “defining challenge of our time,” so he wanted to know what the administration means by “shaping,” and whether or not that shape included a viable, contiguous Palestinian state.” After Bolton described the administration’s supposed policy towards establishing a Palestinian state, Chafee commented that “I might disagree on the effort behind the rhetoric.” Chafee was clearly frustrated with the answers, or non-answers, he got from Bolton on what the administration has in mind for the Middle East.

The notion, which Bolton repeated a number of times during the hearing, that the U.S. is defending the sovereignty of Lebanon is absolutely ludricrous. Afterall, it's Israeli bombs, largely supplied by the U.S., that are pulverizing that country, and threatening the collapse of the government, not Hezbollah rockets. And, while the Bush Administration and members of Congress are complaining that Hezbollah is ignoring UN Security Council resolution1 1559, which not only demanded that Syria withdraw its troops from Lebanon, it also demanded that Hezbollah be disarmed. Brzezinski usefully pointed out, yesterday (see below) that Israel has been in violation of UN resolutions regarding Palestinian rights for decades. Bolton's contention that Hezbollah is nothing more than a proxy for Iran and Syria gets little support, in Washington, outside the right wing think tanks. Brzezinski argued with that notion, yesterday, and earlier this week, Ken Pollack at Brookings suggested that Hezbollah might, indeed, have acted on its own with Iran finding itself "blind sided."



Would you buy a used car from this man?

New in EIR this week


Articles featured this week on the website of Executive Intelligence Review:

July 20 Webcast:LaRouche Acts in a Crisis (PDF)(HTML)(Video Archive)

Not governments, but financial networks facing collapse, have demanded war, LaRouche said.







LPAC Senate Testimony: To Save Agriculture, Dump Globalization - This testimony, entitled, "Breakdown Phase of Globalization Now Grips Agriculture; Launch FDR-Style Emergency Measures for Economic Recovery," was prepared by EIR's Marcia Merry Baker, and submitted by the LaRouche Political Action Committee (LPAC) on July 20, 2006 to the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee, to become part of the record of the Northeast Region, Farm Bill Field Hearing, July 21, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The field hearings are being held in preparation for the drafting of the next five-year farm law.

Israel at the Gates of Moscow (PDF) by Jeffrey Steinberg - The Israeli assault on Lebanon, ordered by international Synarchist financier circles, does not serve the national interests of Israel, or any other nation-state. In fact, Israel is suicidally overextended, as Napoleon and Hitler were at the gates of Moscow.

Interview: Dr. Tim Guldimann:Iran Does Not Want Escalation of War - Dr. Guldimann is the former Swiss ambassador to Iran. He was interviewed by Muriel Mirak-Weissbach on July 21 in Germany.

Mexico: The Return of Operation Juárez by Dennis Small - Two crucial strategic questions were posed by the giant 1.5 million-person demonstration in Mexico City's central plaza, the Zócalo, on Sunday, July 16—beyond the immediate issue of vote fraud in the Mexican Presidential election of July 2, as charged by candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

Macquarie Bank Takes the Low Road by John Hoefle - The essence of the craft in magic, is to distract the audience with flashy movements and sounds, scantily clad females, and the like, to keep the audience occupied while the magician performs what are in reality rather mundane tricks. The magician is selling a fantasy, counting on the audience to believe the illusion rather than seeing through it to the trick behind. The scam called privatization is one of these magician's tricks, in which something bought and paid for by the public is transferred to private hands, for the purpose of making the public pay through the nose to use it. One of the best examples of this is the conversion of roads that have been built for public use, with public tax dollars, into privately held toll roads, which then charge the public for using their own roads.

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

The Perplexed Zbigniew Brzezinski

That great geopolitician, Zbigniew Brzezinski, infamous for viewing the world as a giant chess board (he wrote an entire book on that theory in the mid-90's) is perplexed by the actions of the Bush Administration and the current Israeli government towards Lebanon. He appeared at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, this afternoon, along with colleagues John Alterman, head of CSIS's Middle East program, and Daniel Benjamin, a senior fellow there, to express his perplexity. “It is not clear to me,” he said, what either the U.S. or Israel gains by delaying a ceasefire in Lebanon. Even if Israel succeeds in driving Hezbollah north of the Litani River, what happens next? “Will the removal of Hezbollah from southern Lebanon make them more inclined to negotiate?” Brzezinski asked, implying that the answer was no. He noted that the civilian deaths in Lebanon have a political cost for both the U.S. and Israel, and that the longer the conflict goes on the radicalization of the Arab population.

Brzezinski also argued that if this crisis is to be resolved, we have to talk to both Syria and Iran, because of their relationship with Hezbollah. He suggested that if Syria had not been forced to withdraw its troops from Lebanon, Hezbollah might not have had the freedom to strike at Israel as it did when it kidnapped the two Israeli soldiers (something they’ve apparently done numerous times before without triggering a war). So, the actual result of something that was proclaimed a “victory” is actually ambiguous at best.

I was surprised to come out of there agreeing with much of what he had to say, though he didn't go so far as to identify who the actual enemy is. Only Lyndon LaRouche, so far, has had the guts to do that. His point about the radicalization of the Arab population should be taken seriously, though. The more insane the U.S. and Israel act, the more radicalized the Arab populations will get, and the more difficult it will be to come to a peaceful and just political solution to that mess. Crucial to coming to any political solution is recognizing how we got into this mess in the first place. The reason why Israel got Hamas is because they expended so much effort destroying the PLO. So, because of their actions they replaced a nationalist secular resistance movement with a more radical religious resistance movement. Way to go! Similar thing with Hezbollah, I'm sure, with its origins being in Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon.

When are we going to stop allowing ourselves to be ruled by maniacs?

The perplexed Zbigbiew Brzezinski, with colleagues John Alterman and Daniel Benjamin at CSIS, this afternoon.

John Podhoretz proves he's a Nazi

Neo-con columnist John Podhoretz ranted, yesterday, in the New York Post (where else?) that the US and Israel may be "Too Nice To Win." He writes, in a series of questions: "Could WWII have been won by Britain and the US if the two countries did not have it in them to firebomb Dresden and nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki?" Was the mistake in Iraq that "we didn't kill enough Sunnis in the early going to intimidate them and make them so afraid of us they would go along with anything? Wasn't the survival of Sunni men between the ages of 15 and 35 the reason there was an insurgency and the basic cause of the insurgency?" Such weakness today "is endangering the future of our civilization."

Podhoretz wants to save civilization? How could someone who spews such Nazi filth be considered anything but a threat to civilization? Podhoretz is reflecting the world outlook of the Nazi bankers who employ him, who want to reduce the world’s population to about 1 billion people, and perpetual nuclear-armed asymmetric warfare is their tool. These bastards think they’re going to be safe from the genocide they’re unleashing around the world, but as in Edgar Allan Poe’s mask of the Red Death, they’ll be eaten by the disaster that they’re bringing on to the rest of us.

Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Hydrogen: The Fuel of the Future?

Last week, Rep. Bob Inglis (R-S.C.) and two representatives of the auto industry, Mark Chenoby, vice president for Advance Vehicle Engineering for the Chrysler Group Business Unit and Timothy D. Leuliette, chairman and CEO of Metaldyne, an auto industry supplier, appeared at the National Press Club to argue the case that the nation has no choice but to got a hydrogen-based economy. All three argued that the present reliance on fossil fuels cannot be sustained and, therefore, there must be collaboration between the Federal government and the auto industry to move hydrogen technology forward. “We need to be insistent and impatient on developing an alternative to the scenario that we’re in now.” The question, he said, is the commitment of American leadership. “Are we going to approach it with a Moon-shot kind of atmosphere and attitude or are we going to sort of wait for it to happen?”

Missing from Inglis's presentation, however, was an aknowledgement of the necessity of nuclear power. That gap, however, was quickly filled in by a retired Office of Naval Research engineer, as soon as Inglis opened up for questions. The engineer noted that without nuclear power, there really is no source for hydrogen fuel. Besides hydrocarbons, he noted, there is no real source of hydrogen for fuel except from water, and therefore, you can't avoid the question of reviving the development and expansion of nuclear power. Inglis weakly responded that it would be very wise to develop higher temperature reactors, in the future, that could be used to produce hydrogen, but such reactors would be preceded by intermediate steps where hydrocarbons would be the feedstock for producing the fuel.


Rep. Bob Inglis (R-S.C.) speaking at the National Press Cub, last week, on the subject of hydrogen fuel.


















The most consistent proponent of nuclear power and hydrogen fuel to meet the economic needs of the future has been Lyndon LaRouche, going back to the 1970's, at least. But rather than me trying to explain it, here's a number of articles on the subject:

Nuclear Power Is Crucial for Survival, by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr ...

The Urgency of the American System Today, by Lyndon H. LaRouche ...

How To Build 6000 Nuclear Plants by 2050

South Africa's PBMR: World's Most Versatile Nuclear System

A Renaissance in Nuclear Power Is Under Way Around the World

Biofuels: A Losing Proposition

The Auto Industry Can Help Build New Nuclear Plants

Monday, July 24, 2006

Is Israel's war run by Donald Rumsfeld?

I came across the following item from Pat Lang's website, Sic Semper Tyrannis 2006:

"Dan Halutz is the first IDF chief of staff who is not a soldier. He is a military aviator. I had missed that, but a statement attributed to a "senior officer" of the IDF in a New York Times story today caused me to look at IDF leadership. The "scales" have fallen from my eyes. "I believe in AIR POWER," the officer told the Times and Halutz is likely to be the officer who was interviewed.

He has no ground forces experience at all. He reminds me a bit of Rumsfeld, the one time naval aviator and opponent of the use of sizable ground forces. Like Rumsfeld he is a proponent of "modern" warfare, gee-whiz techno- equipment and disdainful of big, heavy armored forces. He has re-organized the armed forces so that the ground forces no longer report directly to him."

Lang expands on the utopian nature of air power theory (on most of which I think he's right), but the bottom line is:


"Air Power and artillery will not decisively defeat Hizballah or force it to withdraw from rocket range of Israel.

-The Lebanese government and army are not what the Israelis have once again dreamt of and they should have known that. The policy that Israel is following is truly a triumph of hope over experience.

-An international force that will fight Hizballah in the south to disarm it is a pipe dream. Who will do that? The only realistic candidate would be France in terms of military capacity. This would be a major irony of history.

Bottom Line Advice for Israel: Occupy the ground or expect to suffer the effects of failure."

I think Israel could occupy the ground, as they did for 18 years, and be worse off than when they started. It seems to me they still haven't read the book on what happened to the US in Iraq. When the US invaded, it wasn't the Iraqi army that caused the most trouble for the US ground forces. The army was in total disarray because of Saddam's own paranoia. However, this wasn't true for Arab militants that decided to stand and fight. They caused tremendous problems for US armored formations, even though they were armed only with AK47s, RPGs and their religious zeal. Hezbollah is far more capable than those Arab militants in Iraq were, and I'm betting it has far more surprises left. So far, it's traded punches with Israel one for one and has caught the Israelis flat footed on more than one occasion (such as the missle strike on the Israeli naval ship). It seems likely to me that if Israel gains something it calls a military victory, it's likely to Pyrrhic, indeed.

Sunday, July 23, 2006

What no dittohead, i.e. neocon, could ever understand


I came across the following item a week or so ago:

"...civil society is formed for the good of the whole body of which it is composed. Hence the welfare and prosperity of the society is the common good, and every individual is to seek and find his happiness in the welfare of the whole, and every thing transacted in society is to be regulated by this standard. In particular, all the laws and rules formed in such society must tend to promote the general welfare, this is the test by which they must be tried, and by which they must stand or fall; all regulations in the body, and all rewards and punishments to individuals, must be determined agreeable to this. Those who seek and promote the public interest, are to be esteemed and rewarded; and those who counteract and oppose it, must be punished in proportion to the injury aimed or committed against the public welfare.

"We may add, that as the good of the public is the end and design of all good laws and rules, established in a well regulated society, so they must be enacted by the public, i.e. by the wisest and best men in the society, appointed by the body for this purpose. Men who best understand the public good, and have a common interest with the body, and who are above the narrow pursuits of private interest. If laws and rules in society are established by man, or body of men, who have not a common interest with the whole body of the members, but the contrary, it is evident at first view, they will be exposed to act in opposition to the general good. None, therefore, but the representatives of the whole body, in whom as far as possible, the interest of all ranks is contained, are proper to make laws for the regulation of society. For the same reason, those who are to execute the laws, should be appointed in such manner, and by such authority, as in the best possible way secures their attachment to the general good: And, the members of civil community who are disobedient to such laws and oppose the administration of such authority agreeable to them, deserve punishment according to the degree of their opposition and their opportunity to promote, or counteract the general good. The crime of every member in opposing the interest of society is greater than that of opposition to the interest of an individual, as much (other things being equal) as the interest of the society is greater and of more worth than that of an individual."

This is from a pamphlet written in 1775 by one Levi Hart, a Congregationalist minister in Preston, Connecticut. Though the pamphlet was written against slavery, it nicely captures the essence of the core issue at the heart of the American Revolution and the establishment of our Republic. No private interest could ever be counted on to defend the public good. Indeed, the more powerful private interests become, the more dangerous they are to the liberty of a republic and the welfare of its people. Government only becomes dangerous when it is wrongfully appropriated by private interests to act only on their behalf. That is how we got fascism in Europe in the 20's and 30's. Both Hitler and Mussolini were the instruments of private interests whose intent was to destroy the nation-state principle of defense of the general welfare. And yes, there was a fascist movement in the United States at that time, and its descendants are running the Bush/Cheney regime, today, and are intent on blowing up the whole world.

So, the reason why you’re paying $3 a gallon for gasoline, why your grocery bill goes up every week, why you can’t get health care, why your pension has disappeared, why you can’t afford to send your kids to college (the education they’ll get is a fraud anyway), why your mortgage is going to kill you, is because of those parasites who "who counteract and oppose" the general welfare. The really tragic part is, that you, most likely, voted for candidates for public office who are controlled to one degree or another, by those private interests. That’s how we got into the mess we’re in, now.

Saturday, July 22, 2006

Congress fiddles while the world burns

Let’s see, while Israel turns Lebanon into rubble, and Bush does everything he can to fan the flames of war there, while Iraq slides closer to civil war, while the price of gasoline threatens to climb higher, factory jobs and the pension plans they support continue to disappear, and predatory speculators continue to eat what’s left of the productive U.S. economy, what does Congress do? The Senate begins to debate a bill to prohibit the taking of minors across state lines to avoid state abortion notification laws, the House passes a bill to "protect" the Pledge of Allegiance (no doubt some in the House would like to turn the Pledge into Nazi-like oath of fealty to George W. Bush), the Senate passes a bill to "protect" your right to display the flag on private property. Of course, these actions follow the usual insanity around burning the flag and gay marriage.

Come on, what planet are these guys on? Naturally, when Democrats are confronted on this stuff, they complain that they can’t do anything because they’re in the minority. With an attitude like that, how do they expect to ever be in the majority? They’ve already forgotten that they beat Bush’s Social Security theft plan, last year, while they were in the minority!

Then, of course, there’s the utter hypocrisy of Bush’s veto, this week, of the stem cell bill. It just proves what I’ve long thought of the entire anti-abortion movement. They’re for the sanctity of life from conception to birth. After that, your on your own.

To be fair, the Congress and the Democrats aren’t the only ones failing in the face of an oncoming dark age. The UAW is failing miserably to protect the jobs of auto workers, just as the USWA failed to protect the jobs of steel workers going back to the 1980's. The civil rights movement no longer exists. The NAACP proved that this week when it allowed George W. Bush to address its convention, perhaps hoping for a hand out from the predators who run the Bush-Cheney dictatorship. At least, that event was made more interesting by a couple of friends of mine who brought in a much needed dose of reality. You can watch it on C-SPAN, here.

In fact, none of the institutions that used to defend the welfare of the population in the lower 80 percent of income brackets work anymore.

Since no one else is fighting, there’s no one to turn to except Lyndon LaRouche. LaRouche is committed to defending the welfare of future generations and he knows the smell of the enemy, and he won’t quite fighting it as long as he breaths.

Friday, July 21, 2006

The danger we face

Below is the opening section of Lyndon LaRouche's webcast of yesterday.

An Israeli friend of mine, who is well-known in Israel and outside of Israel as a leading strategic thinker, had a discussion with my wife in the past 24 hours, on the situation in the Middle East. And he said, in his opinion, from the standpoint of Israeli interests, that what is going on now would not be continued much longer, in terms of Israeli aggression in the Middle East. Unless, he said, unless this is a strategic move, by other sources which are now pushing for an immediate response to an impending, general economic collapse of the world economic-monetary system.

In point of fact, the world economic-financial system, and much of the political system at the same time, is presently in the process of collapse. And for that reason, because there's a correlation between what's going on in Southwest Asia, what's going on in India, what was going on in the context of the G-8 summit in Petersburg, in Russia, we're on the verge of a condition tantamount to the Guns of August of 1914 and 1939. Now. We're not looking at a war of the type, we would class as World War I or World War II. We're talking about something worse, not less dangerous. We're talking about the danger of a general disintegration of global civilization. And it all is tied together with the present economic situation.

This being the case, and the facts to this effect having been presented to leading circles in the U.S. Congress and elsewhere, the U.S. Senate in particular: Why has the Congress behaved like a bunch of braying asses? And being a braying ass does not qualify you as a Democrat! But they seem to have thought they were.

It's because they're Baby-Boomers. Now, a Baby-Boomer is not exactly a generation. And I shall speak to you today as being nigh onto 84 years of age, and therefore have a corresponding experience of life which is probably richer than most people of my age-group, because I was active in certain ways as a youngster. I lived through the 1920s, through a generation of my parents and older people, who were better called de-generates: Because they were corrupt. This was the age of Coolidge, and the age of Wilson. Our society was immensely corrupt.

But when the time came, and when the Hoover Administration had led the U.S. economy down by one-half in physical condition, over the period from 1929, the end of '29 to the end of February of 1933, we had a President, who fortunately was not assassinated, though many in the Democratic Party leadership of that time wanted him assassinated! And even planned to do it. But didn't succeed, because an honest general and some other people, a Marine general, blew the whistle on it, and they couldn't pull off the coup d'etat, to do a Nazi-style coup inside the United States. We were fortunate to have a President Roosevelt, who led this nation, to save the world from what otherwise would have been inevitably a Hitler dictatorship, worldwide. A Hitler dictatorship {conceived} by leading banking interests, financial interests, which are the same interests behind Felix Rohatyn and similar forces in the world today.

So, we are facing today, exactly the same evil, that we faced in the form of Adolf Hitler, and Mussolini and so forth. And we are facing it at the hands of the descendants of exactly the same circles of financiers, and other circles, which were behind Hitler then, circles inside the United States, inside France, inside the Netherlands, inside Britain, as well as inside Spain, Italy, and inside Germany. The same thing, the same crowd: With the same ultimate objectives.

The entire webcast is archived here.


Lyndon LaRouche in dialogue with youth following yesterday's webcast.

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

LaRouche Webcast on Thursday


LaRouche to Address July 20 Webcast on 'Rohatyn as Satan'

On Thursday, July 20, 2006 at 1 pm, US East Coast time, leading American statesman Lyndon LaRouche will address an international webcast on the topic 'Rohatyn as Satan.' LaRouche is leading the international battle to politically destroy the Synarchist banker Felix Rohatyn, who has been documented to be both the immediate heir of the French Synarchist Nazi networks in France, and the direct orchestrator of the takedown of American industry, from steel to auto.

LaRouche's address, given from Washington, D.C., will be available live on the web, at www.larouchepac.com and www.larouchepub.com.

In a recent editorial written for EIR magazine on June 22, LaRouche identified the urgency of taking down Rohatyn as follows:

Time Is Running Out for the U.S.A.

The seemingly incredible anarchy and reckless disregard for reality within the Democratic Party's Senate contingent, will cause knowledgeable U.S. citizens, and foreign observers, to wonder if the U.S.A. will still be a functioning nation at the close of this calendar year. Since mid-February of this year, there is very little within the Democratic caucus in the Senate which resembles the lovely quality of leadership which that same caucus showed on—many, but not all—crucial issues of the time, during 2005.

At the center of this breakdown-crisis in the Democratic Party's national leadership, is the complicity of many leading members in accepting the pressure of the Synarchist international's Felix Rohatyn et al. Since mid-February of this year, many among those members have evaded, stubbornly, repeatedly, my warnings, now fully confirmed, that negligence in the matter of immediate rescue of the machine-tool-design capacity lodged within our auto industry, would create an existential threat to the continued existence of the U.S.A. as a first-rank nation of the world. Now, with recent developments within the auto industry itself, the global monetary-financial system has been careening, obviously into an onrushing, global breakdown crisis of the world economy.

Obviously, as any qualified sociologist would assess the patterns of behavior in the Senate itself, the problem with the Senate is a reflection, at least in very large part, of some very rotten backroom deals. To the Classical historian, the vividly visible deals in view have the smell of the Sophistry of Pericles' Athens, when it elected to perpetrate that genocide against its ally, the island of Melos, which turned out to be the beginning of that self-destruction of Classical Greece called the Peloponnesian War.

A leading, crucial part in this has been the continuing refusal of leading elements of the Senate to resist what Felix Rohatyn and his Synarchist international cronies have plainly stated, repeatedly, as their intention to destroy the sovereignty of our republic. A destruction of our republic, which the Rohatyn representing the Nazi legacy of World War II veteran Lazard Frères and Lazard's Bilderberger-style cronies, promotes to the declared advantage of a medieval-like system of so-called "globalized" empire, is like that which collapsed into Europe's Fourteenth-Century New Dark Age: a folly worse than treason against the very existence of our republic.

From many leading quarters of our present political establishment, the reply to me often seems to be: "You may be right in what you say, but, for that very reason, I am jumping ship now!" It is as if the members of an army which sees itself as already defeated, simply ran in an act of random mass-desertion, leaving no leader behind to negotiate the terms of surrender. The high-ranking leaders, the political generals, regimental commanders, and the like, have, mostly, deserted the field of battle, leaving their abandoned legions to deal, anarchically, with the thus-created chaos as they might.

So, we have the disgusting spectacle in the circles of the Democratic Leadership Council and its fellow-travellers.

The recent meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Council is to be viewed against that historical backdrop. The majority of the human race, as now represented by that Council and its friends represented at that meeting, has written off the continued existence of the U.S.A. as a lost cause. They are convinced by the behavior of the President and the majority of the elected opposition in the U.S. government, that the U.S.A. will not, and therefore can not save itself from self-inflicted destruction. The other nations, the intended survivors of this hecatomb, are trying to stay out of the way of the onrushing general breakdown crisis, while making plans for a new future for the surviving majority of mankind. The assumption that Eurasia, for example, might outlive the presently accelerating, physical collapse of the U.S. economy, is a poorly founded assumption. If the United States goes down, as the present U.S. leadership seems dead set on doing, it is doubtful that the rest of the planet would escape an ensuing, planetary new dark age.

To whose advantage are we being, thus, so awfully betrayed? We are betrayed by those, such as Rohatyn's Synarchist financier cronies, who hate the United States, and especially its Constitutional tradition so much, that they would rather destroy the planet than live on a planet governed by the tradition of 1776. There is a realm, like that of Adolf Hitler, so evil that it lies in a domain far, far beyond mere treason. That is where the international cronies of Rohatyn and the Synarchists' Bilderberger cronies of radical Anglo-Dutch Liberalism lie today.

The Bankers' Operation Doomsday in the MIddle East

Lyndon LaRouche emphasized, yesterday, that the authors of the present conflict are not nations, but Synarchy's bankers, who are not pushing the interests of any nation, but rather just chaos. (One could say that their commander in this war is General Chaos). Over the course of yesterday, EIR recieved from qualified American, Arab andIsraeli sources, all pointing towards an Israeli ground invasion of Lebanon over the next days, bearing out LaRouche's warning.

One experienced U.S. military source posed the question: Have the Israelis called up their reserves? Israel has only one active-duty division, which is dispersed around the country, but there are 10-11 reserve divisions, with their military equipment in storage. It would take at least four days to bring these reserves into deployment mode. This American source emphasized that the pattern of Israeli carpet bombing of southern Lebanon only makes sense if it is preparatory to a full-scale ground invasion, which would be aimed at depopulating the southern region of Lebanon, to eliminate Hezbollah's ability to launch rockets into Israel. This source added that in Washington, the Bush Administration is operating on the delusion that Hezbollah does not have a genuine popular base of support in Lebanon and around the region.

An Arab source warned that the Israelis may be seriously underestimating the asymmetric warfare capabilities of Hezbollah. He pointed out that Hezbollah head Hassan Nasrallah has made a series of statements, promising that Hezbollah rockets would hit major urban centers in Israel, and would take out Israeli naval targets. Both of these things have, in fact, occurred in the past few days. The attack on the modern Israeli frigate over the weekend, was a very sophisticated attack, either by rocket or drones firing rockets. Nasrallah, the source observed, does not boast. He has said on Sunday that he anticipates an Israeli ground invasion and "waits eagerly."

Late Monday afternoon, a U.S.-based Israeli military source told EIR that, indeed, units of the IDF reserves had been called up, as of Friday morning, July 15, and that there are definitely Israeli plans to conduct a massive ground invasion within a week. The plan involves an option to "turn right" and extend the invasion into Syria. As of Monday morning, leaflets were being dropped by Israeli planes all over southern Lebanon, urging residents to flee the area, prior to the invasion. This source said that Israel would wait to launch the ground invasion until after the 25,000 Americans now inside Lebanon were evacuated, either by sea or air. This, in itself, is a messy proposition, because Hezbollah has capabilities in the Beirut area, including areas adjacent to the Beirut International Airport. Such an airlift or sealift would necessarily involve the deployment of American Marines to secure the evacuation, adding another element of unpredictability to the whole situation.

The Israeli source concurred with LaRouche's assessment that the bankers behind this fiasco are out to create maximum chaos. They have no concern for the national interests of Israel any more than they care about the future of Lebanon. The source warned that the same chaos could spread to the United States and the United Kingdom, in the form of asymmetric attacks, "in retaliation" for the U.S.-Israeli attacks on Hezbollah. The source also reported that one reason for the people behind Cheney wanting to extend the Israeli military actions into Syria, is that there are hidden caches of "weapons of mass destruction" which have been held in warehouses in the Negev Desert in Israel, which would be planted inside Syria near the Iraqi border, in an "October Surprise" hoax, aimed at salvaging the November elections for the Republicans.

Like Hitler in the 1930's, Israel is an instrument of the Synarchist bankers who want to blow up the world and return human civilization to a condition like that which prevailed in Europe in the MIddle Ages, and they don't care of Israel gets destroyed in the process.

Monday, July 17, 2006

A Sane Voice on the Middle East

The response of the Congress to the spreading war in the Middle east has been pretty pathetic, so far. So, it was refreshing to come across the following item from Nick Rahall, Democrat from West Virginia as posted on www.huntingnews.com.

July 14, 2006

'Enough is Enough': Rahall Urges Bush To Include Israeli PM In Calls To Arab Leaders

Press Release Washington, DC - U.S. Rep. Nick J. Rahall (D-WV) called on President Bush, who today is making calls to Arab leaders, to also contact Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and tell him that it is time for the disproportionate use of violence to end and for negotiations to begin.

Full text of Rahall's letter to the President follows:

Dear Mr. President:

In the past few days the Middle East has been rocked with violence in ways that we have not seen in years. As the United States is a close ally of Israel, I am calling on you, as you are making your calls to Arab leaders, to tell Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that enough is enough. It is time for the disproportionate use of violence to end and for negotiations to begin.

The United Nations is sending a special envoy to the region, Egypt is acting as a regional liaison and is prepared to negotiate the release of the Israeli soldiers, and the United States is in a unique position to approach the Israeli government and appeal for cooler heads to prevail. Many of our allies are already calling for negotiations. Prime Minister Blair has said that the only way to resolve this is through talks, and not fighting and expressed his concerns about how this not only destabilizes the Middle East, but the rest of the entire world. Both Presidents Putin and Chirac have also called for an end to Israel's military solution, as has Secretary General Annan.

Not only are innocent civilians losing their lives as we speak, but also vital support systems, services and infrastructure needed for day-to-day living are being bombed hourly. Also in severe jeopardy of losing its life is the new pro-American, pro-democracy government of the land of my grandfathers, Lebanon. Only a year and a half ago, as we all will recall, the Cedar Revolution brought such new life and new hope for this country. The United States is sorely in need of democratic states in the Middle East with which we can work, and the U.S. and Lebanon have long shared the values of life and liberty that we all hold dear.

Additionally, the Lebanese Government has little knowledge nor collusion with, nor agreement with what the military wing of Hezbollah does. They have condemned these recent actions, as I have done. Every actor in the region knows this, yet some try to convince the world otherwise for their own motives, whether it is for land, for reoccupation or to send signals to other countries.

If these reasons are not sufficient, I would call on you to discuss an end to Israel's military action for the sake of our own people and institutions in Lebanon. The large number of American interests and Americans in country make the ongoing violence a danger to our citizens as well. It is unconscionable to think that our tax dollars have helped to pay for weaponry that may in turn harm our own citizens.

Mr. President, I was in Beirut 24 years ago almost to the day when Israel was bombing that country to rid it of the PLO when President Ronald Reagan had the courage and sense to personally call then Prime Minister Menachem Begin and say enough is enough, stop the bombing and, Mr. President, I personally call on you today to include Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in your calls and say enough is enough.

With warm regard, I am

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House renews Voting Rights Act

It has been only on exceptionally rare occasions, since 1995, that the House of Representatives has actually done soemthing good, but it did, last week, when it passed the re-authorization of the 1965 Voting Rights Act by a vote of 390 to 33. This didn't happen without attempted sabotage by the right-wing nut jobs in the House, led by the ones from certain Southern states.

The final vote was preceded by a contentious debate on four amendments proposed by southern Republicans, three of them from Georgia, that would have watered down provisions of the bill. Two of the amendments, by Rep. Charles Norwood (R-Ga.) and Lynn Westmoreland (R-Ga.) would have weakened the section of the bill requiring Justice Department review of changes to election laws in states with a history of voter discrimination. Another amendment by Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) would have struck a section of the bill requiring that states aid voters whose first language is not English, and a forth amendment by Rep. Louis Gohmert (R-Tex.) would have brought reauthorization period to ten years from the twenty five agreed on by the bipartisan leadership of both Houses.

Norwood and Westmoreland both essentially argued that the Voting Rights Act is no longer needed. Westmoreland complained that “The House is voting today to keep my state in the penalty box for 25 years based on the actions of the people who are now dead.”

House Judiciary Committee chairman James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisc.), who fought members of his own party to see the bill through the debate without amendments, challenged that claim with data presented at hearings of his own committee. He said that the hearing record showed that “Racial discrimination in the electoral process continues to exist and threatens to undermine the progress that has been made over the last 40 years.” Sensenbrenner told the House that there have been 91 objections to election law changes in Georgia, alone, by the Justice Department since 1982, 7 of them since 2002. “So, the arguments that Georgia isn’t doing all this bad stuff anymore are not borne out by the statistics of what has been submitted to the Justice Department and where preclearance has been rejected.”

Sensenbrenner needed all the help he could get to defeat the four amendments, however, as they went down by votes of 96 to 318 (Norwood), 118 to 302 (Westmoreland), 185 to 238 (King) and 134 to 288 (Gohmert). The entire GOP leadership, including Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-MO), voted for the King amendment. Sensenbrenner may have been helped by a threate from Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) that entire Democratic caucus would vote against the bill if any of the four amendments passed.

Israel is cutting its own throat

Last Saturday's guest on the LaRouche Show was Dr. Cliff Kiracofe, professor of history at Virginia Military Institute who recently delivered a paper on the history of fascism in America. When the wide ranging discussion turned to the current crisis in the Middle East, he had the following to say:

SCHLANGER: Lyndon LaRouche has identified, and EIR has reported on this, that Dick Cheney three weeks ago had a meeting under the auspices of the American Enterprise Institute in Colorado, with Bibi Netanyahu. And at this point, there was likely a signal given to Israel, given that the attempt to get a war with Iran was being thwarted by networks within the intelligence community and the military, that the way to get the war going would be to unleash Israel. What can you tell us about such ideas as the "breakaway ally" scenario, the use of Israel as a surrogate, and--?

KIRACOFE: Sure, sure. Well, you've raised a very good point, and let's take a look at the big picture: We already have 135,000 men and women under arms in Iraq. There's only one way we can extract them in an orderly way, and that's through a {regional} understanding. We have to go to the neighbors of Iraq--Syria, Iran, Jordan, Saudi Arabia--we have to go to those {neighbors} of Iraq, and say, "Now look, we're going to extract our 135,000 men and women from Iraq. Don't cause us any problems. We'll move out. We can all work together to the reconstruction of Iraq in the future." And on top of that, you've got another level of diplomacy: You've got to work with Russia, with China, with Europe, with the UN, in order to get this regional solution, this regional development going.

Now, what happens when Israel goes off and does what it just did? That just shatters the entire stability of the region. Now, I think we need to be honest with ourselves: Neither Israel nor any other state in the region can have any long-term security without stability! So, if Israel engages {destabilizing} the region, Israel is cutting its own throat in the long run, not to mention the throats of everybody else, including us in the United States.

So: The short answer to your question is, that this destabilization of the region unleashed by Israel is {very} dangerous. It could escalate--let's pray that it does not, but it could escalate--and it certainly undermines the American ability to organize, through diplomacy, a regional understanding that would allow us to extricate in an orderly manner our 135,000 troops that are, basically right now, sitting ducks out there.

The entire interview is archived here.

Sunday, July 16, 2006

Harry Truman: the Democratic Party's Wrong (to the Right) Turn

When you think of today's neo-con's you probably think of the Republican Party, but you wouldn't entirely be on the mark. The Democratic party is infested with neo-cons. Look at Joe Lieberman, for example. He supports George W. Bush so strongly he ought to switch parties. If he did that, he'd no longer be in a position to sabotage the Democrats on what they ought to be doing. Lieberman's hardly the only one. Many of the more famous neo-con icons, such as Richard Perle, came out of the office of another so-called Democrat, Henry "Scoop" Jackson, in the 1970's. Jackson wasn't the first, though. The current right-wing turn of the Democratic Party goes back to Harry Truman, under who's reign the anti-communist whitch hunts started, including that of the infamous Joe McCarthy.

Most people ran scared from this reign of terror, and, as a result. raised an entire generation of cowards, known as the Baby Boomers. At least one man recognized the danger, at the time, though, and tried to warn his fellow citizens. That man was Elliott Roosevelt, the son and close confidant of Franklin Roosevelt, who, in 1946, less than a year after his father's death, published a stirring account of the late President, with a Foreward by his mother, Eleanor Roosevelt. In his own introduction to {As He Saw It} (Duell, Sloan and Pearce, New York), Elliott Roosevelt explained why he was compelled--indeed, driven--to write the book.

``The decision to write this book,'' he began, ``was taken more recently, and impelled by urgent events. Winston Churchill's speech at Fulton, Missouri, had a hand in this decision; the meetings of the Security Council at Hunter College in New York City and the ideas expressed at those meetings were influential; the growing stockpile of American atom bombs is a compelling factor; all the signs of growing disunity among the leading nations of the world, all the broken promises, all the renascent power politics of greedy and desperate imperialism were my spurs in this undertaking.''

Directly taking on Churchill and U.S. President Harry Truman's rightwing anti-Communist scare campaign, Roosevelt continued, ``The tempo of our times is such that our opinions are not keyed to history but to headlines. Whether we trust or distrust Russia is not conditioned by that nation's mighty contribution to our victory in the war, still the greatest single fact of our lifetime; rather it is molded by scare-print on the front pages of three or four days' newspapers--newspapers often irresponsible in the past, and therefore surely doubly to be doubted in the tremulous present.... The unity that won the war should be, must be, a fact today, if we are to win the peace... But more and more since V-E Day, and since the atom bomb first fell, this unity has disappeared.''

He escalated: ``It is because I doubt that we have only {drifted} away from this unity, it is because I am convinced that we are being {shoved} away from it, by men who should know better or--in Walter Lippmann's phrase--`little boys playing with matches,' that I felt it important for me to write this book.''

After briefly recounting his own eyewitness role as FDR's aide and personal confidant at the wartime conferences with Churchill, Stalin and the other Allied leaders, Roosevelt explained, ``My opportunities to witness these conferences, then, were on two levels: one as an official Presidential aide, the other as a most intimate friend to the man who was primarily responsible for the unity of the United Nations. It was on this second level that I shared his most intimate thoughts and listened to his most cherished aspirations for the world of peace to follow our military victory. I knew what conditions he predicated for the structure of world peace; I knew what conversations led to them; I knew of the bargains and the promises.

``And I have seen the promises violated, and the conditions summarily and cynically disregarded, and the structure of peace disavowed... I am writing this, then,'' he concluded, ``to you who agree with me that Franklin Roosevelt was the wartime architect of the unity of the United Nations, who agree with me that Franklin Roosevelt's ideals and statesmanship would have been sufficient to keep that unity a vital entity during the postwar period, and who agree with me that the path he charted has been most grievously--and deliberate--forsaken.''

Saturday, July 15, 2006

THE PRESENTLY ONCOMING STRATEGIC CRISIS

***DRAFT***

The Strategic Significance of the Hit on India

by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.
Friday, July 14, 2006

I bring no "good news." Only fools march to battle because the news is good; wise men march with grim and resolute determination, because they know the news is very bad.

Lately, while most of the U.S. Congress has been virtually sleeping through a months-long, lulling delusion, like that which Neville Chamberlain carried back to London from Munich, the world has been lurching toward the brink of a crisis which must be compared, at the very least, to the brink of outbreak of each of two so-called "world wars" of the last century. Actually, what is presently threatened for the immediate future, unless we act now to prevent it, would soon be something much worse than either of those wars. Do not look for the image of troops marching to battle; what is coming down the road now, is something most nearly comparable, in known history, to a nuclear-age version of the Hellish nightmare-scenes of the so-called "New Dark Age" which erupted in the Fourteenth Century, when the King of England repudiated his debts to the Lombard League's House of Bardi.

While the gathering for the G-8 summit brings the world into a great global crisis which has been already over-ripe for eruption, certain events of the past week to date, in Southwest Asia and in the Asian subcontinent, respectively, taken together with escalating issues of the immediate G-8 meeting, have lit the fuse of a simmering force of global strategic explosion like nothing which has happened in history before this time.

So, during Tuesday's late afternoon drive, back from Zürich, Switzerland, to Germany, the car's radio broke the news of terrorist bombing attacks on the commuter trains leaving Mumbai (Bombay), India. By Thursday, reports on the strategic implications of this event received from high-level circles inside India, gave a fuller picture. This attack was comparable, in its strategic implications, if not the size of the death toll, to what struck New York City on September 11, 2001. The principal targets of the coordinated attacks were the first-class coaches of trains leaving Mumbai. The number of reported dead, so fare, is significantly less than those who died in the attacks on New York's World Trade Center, but the effect was clearly intended to be comparable, and, given other developments around the world ongoing now, the strategic effects would be much worse than those of "9/11," unless action to prevent such an outcome were taken now.

This was no ordinary sort of "terrorist incident"; the characteristics of the attack themselves bespeak the hand of a leading strategic power.

The admirers of Vice-President Cheney's strategic impulses might be pleased by the intention expressed in these events in India, since what is being served is the same warfare policy expressed by Cheney's wicked partnership with Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu. Worse, although Cheney's conspiring with Netanyahu has been the obvious motive for the presently escalating state of warfare launched, in several directions, by Israel, Cheney himself is merely a disposable pawn in an imperial game played by forces operating from a much higher level than the current U.S. Presidency, levels higher than Cheney's immediate master, George P. Shultz.

With the combination of this strategic attack on India, and the continuing actions of Dick Cheney and his accomplice, Netanyahu, in Southwest Asia, a signaled, actually global threat was delivered, in effect, to those assembling for the "G-8" summit in Russia now. Like the June 28, 1914 assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife at Sarajevo, the Bombay incident of this past Tuesday has been recognized, in relevant circles in India and elsewhere, as the intended detonator of a global strategic crisis. This is, in fact, a crisis which must be compared with the situation on the verge of the two so-called "world wars" of the Twentieth Century; unless the present threat is promptly reversed, the outcome will be vastly worse than anything experienced in the two "world wars" of the preceding century, but of an essentially different type than either of those two great wars.

These are, once again, times "which try men's souls." The world as a whole is gripped by what threatens to be the world's greatest crisis since the U.S. was founded, in 1776, a worse crisis of European civilization as a whole than anything since the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia. For the U.S.A. itself, it is everything our republic has accomplished since the developments of 1776-1789 which is under attack, and in grave jeopardy from both forces within and without our republic.

This entire draft article can be read at THE PRESENTLY ONCOMING STRATEGIC CRISIS:The Strategic Significance of the Hit on India .

This war is not a "response" to anything

There was no provocation for this war, despite the constant lies in the press and governments, said Lyndon LaRouche, yesterday. The war was premeditated and unprovoked, whatever incident the Israelis choose to point at. Bibi Netanyahu met with Cheney and others mid-June in Colorado, who preceded to present their policy to the various Israeli leaders, who carried it out. Even Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, in criticizing the Israeli action, called it "disproportionate response," which is a fallacy, said LaRouche, as it is not a "response" to anything. LaRouche asked: Are the Katyusha rockets coming from the airports? Why destroy the Lebanese airports? Israel is hated across the region, so there is no problem getting the rockets and finding a place to launch them. The Israeli assault is not related to the rockets, but is the unleashing of the Israeli fanatics by the Synarchy.

As if to prove the accuracy of LaRouche’s warnings, Bibi was all over US television on Friday, where he staked out his claim as the supreme hardliner in Israel. In these interviews, Netanyahu said that Lebanon has to {prove} it has a right to be sovereign, because it has allowed a ``state within a state,'' and does not control its own territory. Netanyahu also demanded that the ``international community'' pressure Lebanon, Iran and Syria--not Israel, and he urged that these three countries are the same as Afghanistan was when it ``dispatched'' Al Qaida terrorists to bomb the U.S.

Dick Cheney hasn’t been able to get his regional war going by a U.S. attack on Iran, so he’s getting the fanatics in Israel to do it for him.

Friday, July 14, 2006

You Have to Call a Nazi, a Nazi

Evidence abounds, including in the blogosphere, that people still don't understand what Hitler and the Nazis were. They compare the outward manifestations of the Nazis, the concentration camps and all, don't see any of that and conclude, "Nope, no Nazis, here." The real dangers wasn't, and isn't, the particulars of how such a movement manaifests itself, but rather the mother of that movement.

As Lyndon laRouche noted in a recent discussion, "The problem is, people make the Hitler Nazi movment as the problem of that period, rather than seeing the Hitler Nazi movement as an instrument of the forces, an expendable instrument of the forces who caused the problem and were directing it. Hitler is dead. The Nazis are generally dead. But! The people who created them as an instrument are still alive, and are on the verge of taking world power today.

"I would add to that," he continued. "People exaggerate the significance of the Hitler Nazi movement, which was a terrible thing in its time, but it was a creation, a puppet of a much larger force, which was temporarily embarrassed at the end of the war, when Hitler was defeated, but came back in the name of being our 'necessary anti-Communist allies.'

"That's the truth of the matter. There's no difference between the people, of the financial group, which are Anglo-Dutch Liberal and French Synarchist, who created Hitler, and created that intention, and the crowd behind Rohatyn today. That's the concept. That's the truth of the matter."

People complain about LaRouche calling people Nazis. Is it because they are potential Nazi collaborators themselves, if not be intent, then by cowardice?

**

Felix Rohatyn: Like Hitler, the enemy of Franklin Roosevelt, and your children's future.

Thursday, July 13, 2006

The Army's Mental Health Problem

The Army has made much of its claim that it is doing all it can to help soldiers who need or want psychiatric counseling, especially in light of the Department of Veterans Affairs’ calculation that 50,000 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan are suffering from mental health problems, nearly half of those from post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). However, some soldiers at Fort Carson, Colorado are telling a different story. They say the Army is only paying lip service to PTSD. The 2nd brigade Combat team is preparing to return to Iraq in January, after having been there last year, and suffering a loss rate twice that of other Army units. Soldiers who came back from Iraq suffering symptoms of PTSD often turned to drugs and alcohol as a way to cope, because they haven’t been getting the help they need. The Army responds processing such soldiers for discharge. Others have sought help off-base because they couldn’t get help on base. Two months ago, a Government Accountability Office investigation found that 77 percent of soldiers suffering from combat stress never received a referral for mental help. The report states that the military "cannot reasonably assure that service members who need referrals receive them." One indication of the seriousness of the situation is the suicide rate. Last year, 83 active duty soldiers committed suicide, a 24 percent increase over the year before.

One retired Army Ranger involved in veterans’ issues told me, this afternoon, that another unit stationed at Fort Carson, which returned from Iraq earlier this year, has suffered has lost 60 percent of its soldiers since it returned home, about half of them forced out by the Army, because of these problems. “It’s straining our ability to respond to national security crises around the world,” he said. Even three and a half years after the invasion of Iraq, the Army still isn’t prepared to deal with soldiers suffering from combat stress and the different ways it can manifest itself after a soldier returns home from a tour of combat duty, such as drug and alcohol abuse, violent behavior and so forth.

For more on this story see Stressed-Out Soldiers on the CBS News website and Pattern of misconduct in the Colorado Springs Independent.

**


Has Cheney's war ruined this man's life?

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

Israel's Conundrum

I haven't had much chance, yet, to take a close look at the latest developments in the Middle East, although it does seem that the current Israeli government has been taken over by some sort of collective madness. Certainly, the present situation cannot be understood without confronting the actual history of the region, at least, since the founding of Israel in 1948, something that, to my knowledge (admittedly limited), has only rarely been done in Israeli politics.

The late Israeli statesman Abba Eban gave a sense of this in his 1977 autobiography. Most Zionist activists of the 1920's and 1930's also ignored, or failed to confront, the underlying problem that was facing the future of the state they intended to establish in Palestine. There was one who did not, however. Eban says of Achad Ha'am, a Hebrew philosopher of the late 19th/early 20th Century, that "He had an irritating habit of knowing what was wrong and saying so with relentless candor. He was the first leading Zionist writer to point out that the Land of Israel was not empty and that despite a transient serenity, relations with the Arabs would ultimately loom, large and defiant, as the central predicament of Zionism."

How is Israel ever going to find the peace and security it so desires without confronting this basic fact?

**

Lyndon LaRouche once met Abba Eban, in the early 1980's, I think, when LaRouche was organizing for his Oasis peace plan for the Middle East, He got a piece of advice from Eban which he has carried with him ever since. Eban said, when dealing with world leaders, never begin with the assumption that your interlocutor is rational. In other words, don't discount insanity as a factor in world politics. Some advice the leaders of many nations around the world would do well to keep in mind as they deal with the Bush Administration!

Wrong Again, Ralph

Ralph Peters has a rather brutal suggestion for dealing with people the Bush Administration captures in this so-called war on terrorism:

Violent Islamist extremists must be killed on the battlefield. Only in the rarest cases should they be taken prisoner. Few have serious intelligence value. And, once captured, there’s no way to dispose of them.Killing terrorists during a conflict isn’t barbaric or immoral - or even illegal. We’ve imposed rules upon ourselves that have no historical or judicial precedent. We haven’t been stymied by others, but by ourselves.

The oft-cited, seldom-read Geneva and Hague Conventions define legal combatants as those who visibly identify themselves by wearing uniforms or distinguishing insignia (the latter provision covers honorable partisans - but no badges or armbands, no protection). Those who wear civilian clothes to ambush soldiers or collect intelligence are assassins and spies - beyond the pale of law.

So, if we follow Peters’ advice, we’re going to have to kill an awful lot of people. Because, according to Brig. Gen. David Fastabend, the deputy director of the Army Training and Doctrine Command’s Futures Center, speaking at last year’s conference of the Association of the U.S. Army, a significant percentage of the Muslim world is “violently opposed to our ideas,” and that there could be 30 to 50 million potential combatants, out there, all guaranteeing that the present U.S. war against terrorism, or against Islamic extremism, or whatever the label du jour is for this war, is going to last decades.

We have to kill 30 to 50 million Muslims? Why don’t we just nuke’em, and get it over with all at once? No, wait a minute, that’s Dick Cheney’s fantasy, and the surest way of guaranteeing that, in fact, it will last 50 years. Budget hawks in the Congress complain that we’re bequeathing trillions of dollars in debt to our children by our spendthrift ways. How about bequeathing them a dark age so severe, it would make the 14th Century look like a mild recession? Because following the axiomatic basis underlying the thinking of Ralph Peters, David Fastabend and Dick Cheney means exactly that: no future for your children.

Before we follow such insane advice, we’d better make an effort to understand the generating principle behind this so-called Muslim fundamentalism, minimally starting with Zbigniew Brzezinski’s policy of fostering the growth of Muslim fundamentalism to use as a weapon against the Soviet Union (we could go back, further, if we wish, to the British-sponsored founding of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1922 or other radical movements even earlier if we really wish to be on top of the history of this stuff), which he elaborated six months before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. All the Reagan Administration did, with a little help from its friends, was carry through on that policy, and we’re still paying the price for it, today.

Maybe Ralph should go back to his Civil War fantasy novels where he can’t do as much damage.

A Falling Out Among Thieves

It turns out that Augusto Pinochet, the Nazi-like former dictator of Chile, and friend of George Schultz, Henry Kissinger and Felix Rohatyn, was not only squeezing the Chilean people like grapes in a wine vat, he was also in the cocaine business, according to Pinochet's former right-hand man Gen. (ret) Manuel Contreras. A hard-core Nazi who ran Pinochet's secret police agency DINA, and coordinated the activities of the Operation Condor killing machine with other Southern Cone dictatorships, Contreras has now decided to spill the beans. Sentenced to a long jail term for human rights violations, he made these charges in a report last week to prosecutor Claudio Pavez, who is investigating the murder of Col. Gerardo Huber. Huber, a former Army intelligence operative who was close to Contreras, was killed on Pinochet's orders in 1992 when he threatened to reveal what he knew about the regime's illegal drug and weapons trafficking.

Although many Chilean and foreign investigators have documented Pinochet's role in drug and weapons trafficking in the past, the current report comes straight from the horse's mouth. Contreras was intimately involved with every aspect of the Pinochet regime's fascist operations, and states that the dictator himself personally authorized the "cooking" of cocaine that DINA chemist Eugenio Berrios carried out at the Army's Chemical Complex in Talagante, south of Santiago. He identifies Pinochet's younger son, Marco Antonio, as a participant in the drug-trafficking scheme, together with his business partner Yamal Edgardo Bathich, the Chilean-born cousin of Syrian drug-trafficker Monzer Al Kassar. Having once been in charge of monitoring the illicit activities of both of Pinochet's sons, Contreras knows whereof he speaks.

According to Contreras' report, the "black cocaine" that Berrios produced was shipped to the U.S. and Europe, where Al Kassar took care of distribution. The proceeds from sales were then deposited in the tens of bank accounts that the Pinochet clan maintained in European and U.S. banks. Nor was cooking cocaine Berrios' only line of work. A true Nazi doctor, he used DINA prisoners as guinea pigs to test the lethal substances he concocted, usually killing them. He also created bacteriological substances that the regime intended to use against Argentina, were the two nations to go to war. Berrios worked with Michael Townley, who murdered former Chilean Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier in 1976, in Washington, D.C. Chilean investigative reporter Rodrigo de Castro documented in his 2002 book "The Thin White Line," that Marco Antonio and Bathich also had "business dealings" with Jesus Ochoa Galvis, a relative of the Medellin Cartel's Ochoa Vasquez clan who resided in Santiago at the time.

Chilean president Michelle Bachelet, traveling in Antofagasta, told said that it is best to let the judicial system handle the Contreras revelations, just as it has dealt with other charges against Pinochet, without any interference from the government. That is the only appropriate course of action, she said, speaking from Antofagasta.

Travelling with her, Army Commander-in-Chief Gen. Oscar Izurieta made the same point in response to media questions, underscoring that "the only truth is what the courts determine." Asked whether the Contreras report could damage the Army's image, Izurieta replied that "nothing will damage the image of the Army that is functioning as it is today." That is, this is not Pinochet's Army, but "the Army of {all} Chileans, the Army that all Chileans want, and that their Commander-in-Chief wants."

There is s till a considerable faction in Chilean politics supporting Pinochet (lackies of the bankers who stole Chile's Social Security funds in the 1980's, no doubt) and they are in complete hysteria over Contreras' revelations. Son Marco Antonio is about to file suit against Contreras for slander. Sen. Jorge Arancibia, of the Pinochetista UDI party, raved that such charges against Pinochet "go beyond all imagination. Next thing you know, they'll accuse him of being a pedophile!" (Why should this be excluded as a possibility?) Meanwhile, Contreras' lawyer Fidel Reyes called a press conference July 10 and read the entire report out loud to gathered reporters.
[Sources: La Nacion, July 9, 11, Executive Intelligence Review, "La Delgada Linea lanca" (The Thin White Line) by Rodrigo de Castro and JuanGasparini, 2002. Santiago]

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

Iran: This is the nuclear threat?

I've always had suspicions about the claims made by the Bush Administration about the Iranian nucler program. Not that I necessarily trust the regime in Iran, but its actions have to be evaluated from the standpoint of the history of, at least, the last more than 50 years, since the U.S. participated in overthrowing the democratically-elected Mossadegh government in 1953.

The Russian view of the matter is, not suprisingly, very different from that of the Bush Administration, as was expressed by Dr. Val Spector, the president of the International Academy of Sciences on Problems of National Security in Moscow. During a talk at the Woodrow Wilson Center, in Washington, yesterday, Spector reported that the estimation of Russian military authorities is that we can't expect Iran coming into possession of nuclear arms in less than 25-30 years, even of they do want them.

The reason is really quite simple. Their enrichment process is not very good, even if they can get to 5 percent, because they have a problem of purification of materials. When uranium is converted into uranium hexaflouride gas, impurities, including other flouride compounds, get into the mixture. "Their production is contaminated with a lot of other flourides, which could block passages in the centrifuges," he said. In other words, their production line of 164 centrifuges didn't work very well. They have to come up with a solution to this purification problem before they can make weapons grade material, because there's a danger of side reactions from the impurities which can spoil the final product.

It's probably no accident that Spector is bringing this news to Washington only a few days before the G-8 summit meeting in Moscow.

Now, I'm no chemist, but, under present circumstances, I would trust the Russians over Dick Cheney and his preventive war policy any day.

Monday, July 10, 2006

A Way Out of the Iraq Quagmire

Lyndon LaRouche took special note, this weekend, of a just-concluded weekend meeting in Tehran of the foreign ministers of Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Kuwait, Bahrain, and the Arab League. At the meeting, the ninth such meeting of the regional foreign ministers since the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, the situation inside Iraq was discussed, and agreements were reached on cooperation to stabilize the increasingly violent and chaotic circumstances on the ground, and back the Maliki government.

LaRouche said that this gathering meets the requirements that he first spelled out in his April 17, 2004, "Southwest Asia: The LaRouche Doctrine" and specifically in the detailed section of that report called ``U.S. Interest in Southwest Asia.'' LaRouche said that this combination of governments can function as the preliminary committee, to organize larger support to create the circumstances for a full U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, under conditions of improved security and stability, not under conditions of perpetual warfare and chaos, which the Synarchists want to trigger. Such a timely U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq, under conditions of improved regional security, spanning Southwest Asia and Central Asia, fits with the initiative by Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), and also with the statements and calls by Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.).

In his ``LaRouche Doctrine,'' LaRouche emphasized the importance of a fair settlement of the Israel-Palestine conflict as another precondition of any chance for true regional stability and development. Over the weekend, the new Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority called for a truce with Israel, to be part of a larger framework agreement between Israel and the PA, involving, among other issues, the freeing of prisoners by both sides, including the captured Israeli soldier. While Israel's initial response was to demand that the IDF soldier be freed before any truce can be implemented, LaRouche seized upon the opening presented by the Palestinian PM's call.

LaRouche emphasized that it is vital that the de facto state of warfare between Israel and the Palestnians be ended. It is in the U.S. interest to promote the kind of truce between the Israeli and the Palestinian governments that Prime Minister Haniya called for. The state of war must be taken down, and a prisoner exchange represents an important step. Free the prisoners on both sides. No matter if the Palestinians simply free the captured IDF soldier, in return for the release of a much larger number of Palestinian political prisoners now being held by the Israelis.

This is a crucial matter of principle. LaRouche elaborated that, if either the Israelis or the Palestinians have prisoners who genuinely committed crimes under the law of the other state, these prisoners could be turned over for appropriate handling. He suggested that the United Nations could be the sponsoring agency ``to assist the two governments'' in dealing with these case-by-case evaluations and actions. The crucial matter is a de facto acceptance that we are dealing here with two governments of neighboring territories.

LaRouche said that, while at a certain point in the past, he had hoped for the establishment of an integrated state on the entirety of the territory of what was known as Palestine, he now recognizes that the reality on the ground is that a two-state solution is required, at least for the forseeable future. Therefore, the vital course of action now is a peace agreement between the two governments. A prisoner exchange would be a useful first, precedent-setting step, bearing in mind the special circumstances of individuals in both the Palestinian Authority and Israeli territory who commit crimes that are not acts of irregular war, reflecting the conflict.

Lopez Obrador Identifies the Snake in the Grass

Contrary to the declarations of some of the major American media, such as the Washington Post, the Mexican presidental election is anything but resolved. The PRD candidate, Manual Lopez Obrador held a rally in Mexico City's Zocalo, on Saturday at which reportedly drew about 500,000 people. In his speech, Lopez Obrador assailed the forces behind PAN Presidential candidate Felipe Calderon for their looting of Mexico, and for their schemes to steal the country's national oil and electricity patrimony, while driving millions of desperately poor, starving Mexicans across the border into the U.S.A., seeking jobs to save their families. Here is an excerpy from his speech:

"We are conscious that we are facing an economic and political power group that is accustomed to win at all costs, without moral scruples of any kind. They really don't care about the country, much less the suffering of the majority of the Mexican people. Their only goal is to maintain and increase their privileges. "It has been precisely the domination by this group, of this rapacious minority, which has brought the country to ruin, and has converted it into an ocean of inequalities, with more economic and social differences than when Morelos [one of Mexico's founding fathers] proclaimed that indigence and opulence had to be restrained.

"It is they who truly conspire against democracy, because they oppose real change. It is they who defend the prevailing anti-popular and submissive economic policy, which has only brought the country economic stagnation, unemployment, and the emigration of millions of Mexicans who, out of necessity, have had to abandon the country and their families to go look for work on the other side of the border.

"It is they who have taken the companies and the goods of the nation. It is they who covet the privatization of the oil and the electrical industry. It is they who have turned the government into a committee at the service of the few. It is they who now want to impose in the Presidency an unquestioning employee, a lackey who will guarantee them the perpetuation of corruption, influence-peddling, and impunity.

"As is natural, this group sees its interests threatened when we propose and defend an alternative national project, capable of creating a new legality which is needed, which is urgent in our country; a new economy, a new and more honorable way of engaging in politics, a social coexistence, with less inequality and with more justice.

"That is our project, which we will defend come what may. This people needs a real change. And it is not just the issue of the Presidency; as I said throughout the campaign, the Presidency is important, but what is fundamental is that we be able to transform our country, and that is why we are here and we are going to continue to be here, for as long as necessary."

Commenting on the Lopez Obrador speech, and his call for a peaceful nationwide march, to culminate on Sunday, July 16, in an even larger Zocalo rally, Lyndon LaRouche said: ``To use plain English, Lopez Obrador said that the Calderon gang intends to rape Mexico and its people. People throughout the hemisphere must take Lopez Obrador's warnings seriously. The very fate of the hemisphere hangs in the balance.'' LaRouche concluded, ``Join with me and with the New York Times to crush this atrocity.''

And that is the real issue behind America's immigration crisis, not the nonsense that is being peddled by both sides in the Congressional debate.

Sunday, July 09, 2006

Dick Cheney and Fascism in America

Finally! Someone is starting to get it! Columnist Andrew Greeley , writing last Friday in the Chicago Sun-Times, notes something that Lyndon LaRouche and his associates have been pointing out for quite some time.

"In the winter of 1933, before Franklin Roosevelt's first inauguration on March 4, there was a clamor in the United States for a military dictatorship. The banks were closing, a quarter of Americans were unemployed, rebellion threatened on the farms. Only drastic reforms, mandated by the president's power as commander in chief, would save the country. Something like the fascism of Mussolini's Italy -- viewed benignly by many Americans in those days because it worked (or so everyone said) -- would save the country from communist revolution."

Greeley goes on to argue that Dick Cheney shares the same outlook as those who were calling for dictatorship in America in 1933. Interestingly, he names some names, including William Randolph Hearst, Bernard Baruch, Walter Lippman and others. Greeley calls Cheney a "vile" and "evil" influence on American political life who thinks that a strong executive should replace legislative and judicial processes. "He uses the fear of terrorists as a pretext to advance his agenda of an all powerful president, a military dictator," Greeley writes.

Not more than ten days before Greeley's piece was published, Executive Intelligence Review held a seminar in Berlin, Germany, which featured, among other speeches, an address by Dr. Clifford Kiracofe, on FDR's fight against fascism in the U.S. in the 1930's. You have to understand that fascism was an international movement, backed by the French-Anglo-American financial establishment. Hitler was a project of this group, which included the Lazard Freres banking house, home of today's Nazi Felix Rohatyn, the French Bank Worms et Cie, the Bank of England, the House of Morgan, Sullivan and Cromwell and other organs of the Harriman interests. Dr. Kiracofe reports that FDR's Ambassador to Germany in 1937 noted that:

"A clique of U.S. industrialists is hell-bent to bring a fascist state to supplant our democratic government and is working closely with the fascist regime in Germany and Italy. I have had plenty of opportunity in my post in Berlin to witness how close some of our American ruling families are to the Nazi regime. They extended aid to help Fascism occupy the seat of power, and they are helping to keep it there."

This same clique ran a coup attempt against FDR which failed only because the military man they hired to lead it, Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler exposed the plot to the Congress. Unfortunately, when FDR died, these guys went back to doing what the had been doing before the war, with Bolshevism serving as a more than convenient foil for their fascist measures, and terrorism serving the same purpose today.
Cheney is working for those same interests, today, represented by Rohatyn and George Schultz. As Greeley writes, Cheney "is a very dangerous person who would if he could destroy American freedom about which he and his mentor prate hypocritically."

Friday, July 07, 2006

Joe Lieberman and the Armpit Revolution

Joe Lieberman has announced that if he should lose the Connecticut Democratic primary eleciton next month to the anti-war Ned Lamont, he'll run for the Senate in Novemerb as an independent. If he loses thr primary, of course, it'll be because Connecticut Democrats don't want to be represented by a Bush-supporting closet-Republican anymore.

Lyndon LaRouche had the following to say about Lieberman, yesterday:

"Is that piece of shit still around? I thought he went over to the Republicans already. But they didn't want him. He stunk too much of the far right wing. His armpits are intolerable. He is the leader of the armpit revolution. Or is it the armpit revulsion? He is a smart whore, but all whore." Lieberman threatened to ensure a Republican victory by running as an independent candidate should he lose the primary. The Democrats fail to understand the way to deal with Lieberman. LaRouche said: "Push the lever that flushes the toilet and he will go away." Don't worry about him. He is trying to blackmail the Democratic Party. But the American public would despise him for what he is threatening. He is exposing himself as a piece of shit. No honest voter would vote for Lieberman or for a Republican who would try to exploit him. Lyn also pointed out that Lieberman only got into office in the first place with the help of William F. Buckley, Jr. That makes Lieberman a "silly suckly Democrat." Buckley used to play with himself on TV.

What Enron really means

Ken Lay is dead. I guess his fall from grace was more than his ol' heart could take. Lay, once a friend and big financial contributor to both Bush 41 and Bush 43, who had been hailed by Wall Street and America's financial press as a bold businessman, the CEO of "America's most innovative company," passed away near Aspen, Colorado, while awaiting sentencing. His old friend, George W. Bush, who was the leading beneficiary of Lay's largesse, and used to refer to him as "Kenny Boy," could only say of his passing, through spokesman Tony Snow, that he was "an acquaintance" of the President, and that "[M]any of the president's acquaintances have passed during his time in office."
Lay's death will be the cause of much pious posturing, as in the lead editorial of today's {Houston Chronicle}, which describes his "untimely" death as "a sad end to a tragic story." Should he be remembered for his charity work, his "civic leadership" in Houston, or for his drive "to gain personal wealth," to which the Chronicle, and other press, attribute the fall of Enron, and Ken Lay? The editors of his hometown paper seem unsure as to whether they are more upset about the damage done to "Houston's image" by the Enron saga, or that his death before being sentenced "has cheated the court of final judgment and society of its debt, both financial and penal." (!)
Once again, those who claim to chronicle the events of current history are doing a disservice to their readers, with this kind of sincere, romantic, typical Baby Boomer cover-up of the actual events which led to the demise of Enron and, ultimately, of Ken Lay. Enron, as we have covered it uniquely, was used to dramatically advance the cause of deregulation of the banking and financial system of the U.S. Enron had ceased, long ago, to be an "energy" company, but was transformed by Lay and Skilling -- with ample aid from the likes of the Lazard/Rothschild, Chase and Citibank financial swindlers -- into a "hedge fund with pipelines."
Perhaps the defining moment for Enron was the California energy crisis in 2001. While Enron's traders were bragging about "f---ing Grandma Millie," by illegally withholding electricity to jack up the rates, Lay was "advising" Vice-President Cheney on the virtues of deregulated electricity and energy markets. The subsequent economic collapse of the state of California led to the recall of Gov. Gray Davis and the rise to power of Arnold Schwarzenegger who, just like the Bush-Cheney regime, was a puppet of Synarchist George Shultz. Of course, Shultz played a leading role, going back to President Nixon and the 1971 breaking of the Bretton Woods system, which allowed him to impose the deadly policy of deregulation on the U.S. economy.
Were the media to treat Ken Lay honorably, his death could be used as a late warning, that the policies he championed in his life, must be reversed, if the U.S. and world economy are to avoid the fate of his corrupt corporation. The business model of Enron could be presented to future economists, not as "greed-gone-wild," but as the inevitable result of allowing Synarchist financiers a free hand. To those Boomer romantics who would whine that the tribulations of the fall of Enron and the subsequent trial broke Ken Lay's heart, we can assert, ironically, that Lay, a self-proclaimed apostle of free markets, might still be alive today, if the post-Depression regulatory policies of Franklin Roosevelt would have remained in place.

Saturday, July 01, 2006

Another name for lying: Public Opinion!

I once heard George Soros say in a lecture that there’s no such thing as truth. I guess if you believe in the legalization of dope, and the power of money over human life, you can’t let anyone believe in an objective, competent notion of truth.

George Bush is proof of what happens to a country when it picks its leaders based on sophistry rather than truth. As Ancient Athens did, a country that bases its actions on lies will soon destroy itself. That’s the threat we face today, our own lies.

Plato deals with this question of sophistry and the state at length in Book V of the Republic.

Socrates: All those individuals who make their living by teaching, and on whom the public call `sophists’ and envy for their skill, in fact, teach nothing but the conventional views held by the mass of the people; and this they call science. What I mean is this. Suppose a man was in charge of a large and powerful animal, and made a study of its moods and wants; he would learn when to approach and handle it, when and why it was especially savage or gentle, what the different noises it made meant, and what tone of voice to use to soothe or annoy it. All this he might learn by long experience and familiarity, and then call it a science, and reduce it to a system and set up to teach it. But he would not really know which of the creature’s tastes and desires was fair or unfair, good or bad, right or wrong; he would simply use the terms on the basis of its reactions, calling what pleased it good, what annoyed it bad. He would have no other standard of judgement, but would call the necessities of the animal’s nature right and fair, remaining quite blind to the real difference between necessity and goodness, and quite unable to tell anyone else what it was. He would make a queer sort of teacher, wouldn’t he?

Adeimantus: Very queer.

Socrates: But is there really any difference between him and the man who thinks that the knowledge of the passions and pleasures of the mass of the common people is a science, whether he be painter, musician, or politician? If he keeps such company and submits his poems or other productions, or his public services, to its judgement, he is going out of his way to make the public his master and to subject himself to the fatal necessity of producing only what it approves.

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In both cases, what Socrates is describing are called today... Baby Boomers!

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I will be traveling the next few days, and so my next update will not be until July 6.

About me

  • I'm Carl Osgood
  • I work in Washington, DC,
  • I am the military and congressional affairs correspondant for the EIR in Washington, D.C. I've been in Washington for the past 15 years, but unlike some people in this town, I admit that I have a lot more to learn.
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