- Appendix - - The LaRouche-Bevel Announcement - {What follows are the texts of the Reverend James L. Bevel's announcement for vice president on the ticket of independent presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche, in Washington, D.C. on August 4, 1992, and Lyndon LaRouche's comments on the Bevel announcement.} - LaRouche: The Nation Faces Depression and War - This is presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche speaking, on the occasion of the public announcement of the vice presidential candidacy for our campaign of the noted veteran of the civil rights fights of the 1960s and later, the Reverend James Bevel. What is the significance of this candidacy at this time, particularly in the aftermath of businessman Ross Perot's abrupt quitting of the race to secure an independent candidacy in the November elections? We in the United States and those around the world who are affected by what happens in the United States, face a devastating situation, a catastrophe. The Bush administration in and of itself, has shown itself to be the worst presidency in the history of the United States since that of the treasonous President James Buchanan. The alternative posed nominally by the Democratic Party, that of Clinton and Gore, is on the record as the program offered by the Democratic Leadership Council, an {outrightly fascist organization} which represents, if anything, possibly an administration which would be worse--far worse--than that of the Bush administration thus far. What will happen at the Republican Convention, I do not know; I know President George Bush is a very sick man. I know that from watching his televised press conferences, since the famous one in the middle of the invasion of Panama in December 1989. This man is very sick, and if he had anything but a Bush compulsion, he would have resigned from the candidacy for reelection before this time, as many of his fellow Republicans are clamoring for him to do. - The Problem Our Nation Faces - But the problem here that we have to address, is more than the disaster that either a Bush or Clinton election in November would represent. A Bush reelection or a Clinton election could represent the onslide of a process of disintegration of the United States itself over the coming next several years. But the problem we face goes much deeper. The problem which my vice presidential candidate and I and others must address in this campaign, goes much deeper. For more than 25 years, the United States has been on a slide toward disaster. We have turned away from the best features of the Kennedy administration economic recovery program, which was quite successful. We have turned since the second half of the 1960s in the United States, as the Wilson government in Great Britain did, into attempting to impose a post-industrial utopia upon the world in place of the kind of world that the Kennedy administration had bequeathed to us as a policy. We are now a wreck, a post-industrial society, a rotting, starving, decaying post-industrial society. We can only console ourselves with the fact that former prime minister Mrs. Thatcher's Britain is much worse than the condition of our own country. But that is poor consolation indeed. What this indicates is that the policies of Britain--especially since the beginning of the Harold Wilson administration back in the 1960s, through Thatcher and John Major today, and the policies of the United States since the later years of the Johnson administration through every presidency since the middle 1960s--have been {wrong}, and those directions in policy in Britain and in the United States, must be changed. It is an understatement to say that what is happening presently and what has been in process--since October 1987, to put a specific date to it--has been the worst economic depression worldwide in the twentieth century. People talk about recovery. There is no recovery. It is occurring {no place}. What there has been and is, is a resistance to this depression in western continental Europe and in Japan and a few other spots in Asia, such that these countries are collapsing at a much slower rate so far than have been the English-speaking countries which have been leading the collapse. - Kissinger and World War III - As concerns the Soviet empire, let's look at the world under George Bush and look at the kind of world--worse than Bush's world--which we would face under the leadership of Bill Clinton. We are actually in World War III. The Balkans crisis has been lying there waiting to be exploded. I spoke about this issue in a television broadcast in 1988, outlining the danger of Serbs very close to a faction in Moscow unleashing war against their neighbors. That precisely has happened. The potential was there. Who unleashed it? Well, the friends of Henry Kissinger unleashed it: Lord Carrington in Britain, for example, and Eagleburger in the State Department in the United States and those who supported their policies. They deliberately backed a Serbian faction which has shown itself on performance to be worse than the Nazis in its crimes against humanity. They backed it, telling Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia, Macedonia, and so forth, to submit to Serbian whims, the whims of the fascist gang behind Milosevic. Look in Romania and Ukraine, formerly of the Soviet Union: war there. Look at the Transcaucasus. Look at the eruptions in Central Asia. Look at the destabilizing condition in the Near East; look at the growing threat of a war involving China, Kashmir, and India--not up front yet, but it's cooking on the burner. Look at the instability which is growing in Southeast Asia; again fostered by the U.S. government to a large degree. The Philippines is no longer the proud nation that it was once. Southeast Asia, a prosperous region relatively speaking, in terms of rate of growth, is threatened by destabilization, largely because of U.S. policy. Look at Africa. The South Africa policy of the U.S. government has disintegrated, is blowing apart. All of Africa is a region of desolation. Look at Central and South America. The greatest failure in U.S. policy in the Western Hemisphere, is exploding in our face in Mexico, but more so in Peru, in Colombia, in Brazil, Argentina, and so forth. The entire region is going to blow up. The policies of George Bush, of course, have been the worst of any administration to date in respect to these areas. Bush's policy toward the former states of eastern Europe once they were liberated, Bush's policy toward the former Soviet Union once it was liberated from communism, have been a disaster. The stubborn insistence of the United States on imposing what it calls ``shock therapies'' on eastern Europe or upon Poland, have ruined Poland; and threatened to blow up the former Soviet Union. Russia is on the verge of some form of change of government which would use its military and other power to free itself of the succubus of International Monetary Fund and Jeffrey Sachs shock policies, which are unworkable in any case. The whole world is blowing up in the face of Washington and London as a result of 25 years of failure. - Disaster in Domestic Policy - Now, look immediately at the American voter. What is the American offered? We have masses of homeless, a phenomenon we never had in this way in our life before until recent years: Nothing is done about it. The proposal for health care from both the Bush and Clinton camps is to kill people, in effect, by denying medical care they need, in order to create a fund to appear to carry the health insurance of the survivors. These are Nazi-like methods, and if you read the program and policies of the Democratic Leadership Council, the force behind Clinton, you see where these ideas come from. This is pure, murderous fascism. The Rust Belt is the rust belt. Under Clinton or under Bush, there's no hope for people who live in the states which were formerly the northeastern industrial region. Look at what's happening in California, a state that can no longer even issue IOU's to pay its employees. Look at the United States as a whole. People talk about balancing the budget. But the budget cuts at the federal and state levels are already {sinking} the tax revenue base of the United States by a greater margin than the budget cuts represent as putative savings. There is no solution for these problems, unless one speaks of a high-tech industrial recovery based on large-scale investment in infrastructure. We're talking about $600 billion to $1 trillion a year, not of debt, but of credit, issued through the mechanisms of Section 8, Article I of the U.S. federal Constitution to state and federal authorities, and to vendors to those state and federal authorities, for large-scale water projects, for large-scale transportation projects, for large-scale energy projects, for improvements of our medical system and facilities, for improvements of our school facilities, and in addition to that, large-scale credit for vital sections of industry to push ahead with new technologies and to diversify their industry, such as the auto and aerospace complex, in order to save what the United States is losing, most essentially in the tool-making industry. We no longer have the ability or are rapidly losing the last vestige of the ability to produce new technology. We will be importing technology if we can get it, if we can afford it, from Europe and from Japan, and even from some Third World countries at the present rate. This problem has to be addressed. There is no hope that this problem or the problem of any other great social evil will be addressed under a Bush or a Clinton administration. - The LaRouche-Bevel Alternative - If the American people think that they have to choose between Bush or his Republican replacement or Clinton, they have to realize this is no choice. It's not a matter of lesser evil, it's a matter of which is the worst evil. There is no alternative, except what now the Reverend Bevel and I represent with our independent campaign. You have a choice of voting for us or voting for either nothing at all, or something which is worse than nothing at all. The so-called credible or likely winners are a disaster. You must hope that neither win--otherwise the world will become, from your present standpoint, pretty much an unthinkable place over the remainder of this decade. Let us bring you a message which of course the very person of the Reverend Bevel signifies. Let us bring you the biblical message: ``Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.'' If you know Reverend Bevel, he's not meek in some respects, but in terms of the people he represents, he represents the meek; and together, we represent all of the meek. We say, that the meek shall inherit this earth. We say, beginning with the United States itself, we say, that while Clinton takes the Democratic Party away from its constituencies and into the suburbanite delusions of the Yuppie constituency, {we} speak for and will defend the constituencies: labor, ethnic groups, the racial minorities, and so forth, which Clinton and his crew have abandoned. Join us. We shall attempt to do in politics, what Perot promised to do and then quit. We shall not quit. Without a new independent voice in politics, there is no hope for the United States. As to what we might be able to do practically, that's difficult to say. Obviously, we start at a fantastic disadvantage. {But} we have the means to jam up this election process. We have that potential. And our potential to jam the process up, is a potential to force some institutional changes upon the policy-making processes of this country, changes without which this country might not make it. We are in fact the only choice, but I don't suppose our fellow Americans will awaken to that in sufficient numbers fast enough; but we may expect that enough are angry enough and concerned enough to cast a protest vote--not just a negative protest vote, but a positive protest vote. To cast a vote for the kinds of policies which we represent; to demand that the next government of the United States and other relevant institutions consider and adapt to the policy proposals which are associated with this campaign. If we can jam up the election in a few states, change the result in a few states, we can, we hope, change the way things are going. It is the best shot in sight for anyone in the United States. We urge you to take it. - Vote for the Good - - Text of the Reverend James Bevel's Announcement for - - Vice President on the LaRouche for President Independent Ticket - {WASHINGTON, D.C., Aug. 4--What follows is the text of the Reverend James L. Bevel's announcement of his candidacy for vice president on the LaRouche for President independent ticket here today.} Before I get into the text, I want to share with you some realities. I would be amiss not to mention the phenomenon of the illusion by the media Establishment that they can dictate, through unscrupulous conduct, the outcome of this campaign. I was not aware that plantationism (slavery tactics) was so effective in the nation. This press conference reminds me of the press conference we had in Mississippi back in 1961, when we were jailed as Freedom Riders--of course you know the state of Mississippi was against the Freedom Riders--so all the press was bound to come to the press conference. We thought at the time that the press would tell the people the truth about what we were doing; they somehow had the power to keep us from transmitting to the people. So I just want to make note of that, because I don't see the media here. This is interesting, because what we'll be doing in the next four months, is to teach people the science of how government really works, because that's what most people don't know. So I want everybody to keep up with us from now until Nov. 3, and in particular, till the next election in 1996--so we'll show you how scientifically the American government system works--because it's so scientific, it's beautiful! It doesn't have to do with what the opposition does, it's what you do, and the science bears its fruit. Let me just give you an example of what I'm talking about. Did you know that ABC, CBS, NBC, UPI, and AP, none of those guys were around when Moses came across the Red Sea? [Laughter] They didn't make it happen! And they couldn't stop it. And yet they know all about it? So, they came out after King died and tricked black people into believing that if we're with you, we can make a movement. And if we ain't with you, we can kill the movement. So they got all the black guys--which meant that all the black leaders started compromising to get the approval of the press--assuming that if the press approved in print the foolishness you were talking about, that that approval makes you a leader. But leadership has nothing to do with the American slavery system. It has to do with scientific decisions made by people. My situation is a difficult situation. I was in pursuit of doing education and evangelism work, because I recognized that the situation is so crucial in this country, that you can hardly find a person capable of thinking about it all the way through, because everybody is caught up in rituals, habits, and routines. So I said to Mel [Klenetsky--campaign manager] and these guys, look, I can go and do educational work and evangelism work. And they said, yeah, but the election is coming up. We've got to have the American Revolution defined and defended. We've got to have a context--a political campaign--we can't settle for the doctrine of the lesser of two evils in America. And I can live with that. However, I had prepared to play the snare drums; I did not want to blow the trumpet. But I am a trumpeter. So I agreed to blow the trumpet; and we are going to wake up the people. And we're going to get the American people in 1992 to vote on the real issue. In a constitutional, cooperative republic, do you vote for the lesser of two evils, or do you vote for what you know is right? And that's the issue in this election. There's no other issue in this election. That is the issue in this election. And we have to give the American people the opportunity, whether we like it or not--that's hard work--to make a decision about that. - The Death Penalty Issue - Now let me explain to you how I got to this point. I went to the Democratic Convention, because under our church law, under our Constitution, it is against the law for the elected officials to kill the citizens. That's our law. I don't know about Cuba, China, or Russia, or places like that; but under our system of law, that is our law. So I went to the Democratic Convention to pass this out. It's called the ``Theological and Constitutional Alternative to the Death Penalty,'' to capital punishment. And I wanted to share with you the scientific phenomenon that all of us have got to deal with, because I want all of us to become active assistants, full-time workers in the campaign. I want you to listen to this. Now we move into science: ``We hold these truths to be self-evident.'' If you notice, it doesn't say this is an opinion, this is not a belief; this is not a rumor, this is not hearsay. ``We hold.'' Some individuals, each of them unto themselves, and collectively as a group, have come to understand a {self-evident truth}, that all men are equal, and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. And that among these rights, are {life}--now let me hold right there--that is the first{ right }to these guys which is self-evident God gave to man was the {right of life.} It's an inalienable right, never to be transgressed by anybody. Can't nobody claim that they're doing something so important, or have so much wisdom, that they have the right to take another human being's life. But they go a step further; and this is where science comes in: ``To secure these rights governments are instituted among men.'' An international legend is about to take place, all over the world--chaos. The Founding Fathers saved us. So now when your life is threatened, as an individual, or as a group; you don't go around and begin to threaten other folks' lives in retaliation to the threat upon your life, but {governments }are instituted among men. That's our option. Which means, then, that when life is threatened, governments are not instituted sufficiently; and that's why you got into the whole doctrine of ``Let us form a more perfect union.'' So we have to not look for who is evil, but what is being practiced. Because if life is threatened, and the founders have given us an option, and that option is that we can perfect the union, and that governments are established to secure that right, then we're calling on the American people to establish that kind of government that is necessary to secure the rights for themselves and their fellow-citizens--but not settle for this assumption, that your only choices are the lesser of two evils; that you've got to have a Texas killer, or a Tennessee killer; and that there are no more sane, intelligent men in the nation, that everybody has bowed and been bought out, and nobody had the courage to define and defend the American Revolution, or to help defend the rights of the American people. And I join with Lyndon LaRouche in saying to you, to the media establishment, to the military-industrial establishment, to the murderous racist and homosexual establishment, that they're a bunch of liars; and the American people will not buy into that; and we will offer an alternative. - I Join the Struggle - Now, I want to read from this statement, because I learned something. Everything teaches me something. Sometimes you don't know the problems you're having, until certain questions are raised. I just want to share this, because this is not a public relations ploy, this is a piece of paper that came out of a problem. And if I wasn't prepared to die about this, I wouldn't be doing this: Today, as I contemplate the appropriate response to my young colleagues' question [`in that we as Americans have only the lesser of two evils for which to vote in the 1992 general election, will you give us the opportunity to vote for the good?'], I am painfully made aware of the effectiveness of terror and intimidation upon and within the American people as I am brought to the consciousness of the fear and terror I experience within myself. Listen: you know, sometimes you really don't know how courageous other people are. You see a guy walking around, big burly guys, taking a lot of abuse; just keep right on trucking; and I really had never thought about how courageous LaRouche was, until I was asked to be on the ticket with him. Because he was stoned and kicked, and spat on, and lied about and vilified and scorned--crazy stuff. Simply because he basically opposed prostitution and usury, and ignorance and the murder of people. And I oppose all these things, too, but I was skillful enough not to get attacked, while being against them. But there's a question of, will you sit on the platform with him, while these crazies attack him? And let me tell you something. I'm from Mississippi. And in Mississippi, the thing that's hated most, is a thing called a ``crazy nigger.'' Then there's another guy hated worse than a ``crazy nigger,'' which is a guy called a ``nigger-lover.'' In America today, Lyndon LaRouche is a ``nigger-lover''; because he proposes an economy that {ends} prostitution--in which most white men are not interested--and that {ends }economic exploitation--in which most industrial thugs are not interested. He proposes this. So this disturbs the vulgarity and the sickness and the diseased state in most American males. Because he proposes an economy where you relate to sisters based on the principle of our Father and you relate to other people the same, and that you have one system of law on which you relate it; that's a principled system of law that does not violate the definition, nature, and purpose of man, whether it's male or female--and most males are not prepared to push themselves to that level of competency and responsibility. So instead of admitting who he is, everybody hides that fact and insists on their vulgarity and throws stones and rocks at this guy. So I didn't want to sit on the podium with this guy. But I knew who he was; and when I was challenged to be on the ticket with him, I then came to understand how the fear suddenly controls you. Because I was getting mad with these Negroes and kept asking them, ``Why don't you support LaRouche? He's against the death penalty.'' ``No! Hide! Pull the curtains!'' And then I finally understood, that in the South, in Mississippi, when the mob and the Ku Klux Klan is beating up on a ``nigger-lover,'' if you go and help the ``nigger-lover,'' you're called a traitor to the Negro, because you know you're going to get killed. So then I had to experience all this terror in myself; but then I had to dig it out, and to overcome that fear, and you've got to dig that fear out of the American people. The American people are not afraid of LaRouche, because if you ask anybody, has he ever killed anybody, has he stolen anything, has he raped a daughter of yours, has he molested one of your sons, has he proposed anything be carried out to hurt you? They're not afraid of LaRouche. They're afraid of Bush and Clinton; they're afraid of the Ku Klux Klan; and the White House is afraid of who is trying to get into the White House. The black folk down South weren't afraid of Martin Luther King; {they were afraid of the establishment. }And so people are not afraid of LaRouche; they're afraid of what the establishment will do to them if they were seen with LaRouche. That's terror. So we've got to break that up. And so I join the struggle to help break up that level of fear and intimidation and terror in the American people. - Bush and Clinton - Now, let me say this, that I'm not particularly disturbed about Bush and Clinton. They are like the men who were caught making stagecoaches and ox-carts when Fulton invented the steam engine. They're usually associated with marginal technology that is obsolete and outdated, and has never been effective anyway. They believe that when there is a difficulty in the social system, you should kill folks and get folks scared, and make folks toe the line. No! We proved beyond reasonable doubt in the 1960s, that if you go in to solving the problem, rather than hurting the people, that you try and enlighten, and encourage and strengthen inside, and that people are capable of solving the most difficult problems, if you use love and truth as a method of operation; and if the American citizens who use and learn the truth, can change the nation, how much more powerful our nation will be if the elected officials use love and truth? And what this says to Mr. Bush and Mr. Clinton, to America, is if you insist that the citizens use principles and truth to solve our social problems, then the officials must use it also; and that we're not going to agree with being non-violent and peaceful and loving and solve problems according to law, and then let these guys come along and claim that they have to skin us. No! That's an obsolete sociological technology. If these guys will agree to come and learn physical economy, and the science of bringing about change without violence--I certainly would not run for vice president and will try to convince Lyndon LaRouche of your support. But we have to run when we have men running who refuse to use updated technologies, and who insist on their right to kill people. And who, themselves, advance no economic education, economic development, or constitutional development policies, that address any of the problems of this nation. And so you have no choice, but to be in this election, until we {win} the election. Do you all hear me? We have no choice. A lot of the press might be like--I don't know--it's like most preachers, they work for chicken dinners and cocaine and cadillacs, but not for principles. But we have to be in this revolution until we win it, because I don't know whether you ever really sat down and read ``The Star-Spangled Banner,'' ``O say can you see/By the dawn's early light.'' As the story goes, this guy Francis Scott Key was searching for the flag, and when the cannons were shooting and the artillery were exploding, what happened is that, through all the smoke they could see the flag still flying. And so a lot of you people may have some idea that there's no hope. Let's rob the battlefield. Let me give you some information. I just found my hope on the battlefield, and the flag is still flying. And as long as I live, the flag will still be flying. And we will not surrender, not one inch, of the American Revolution; we will not bow and buckle; the American government belongs to the American people, and we're going to uphold it for the American people, and we're going to teach the American people how to effectively use it; and we're going to knock the terror out and not be intimidated or defeated, by Bush and Clinton, and all of the Ku Klux Klansmen who hide behind their black robes. And I say to American judges: You're dangerous to the American people. If you're going to sit on the bench and kill the boys, I would advise you to go back and get your white robes; because I'm not going to abide Klansmen wearing black robes killing and pretending they're judges. Like in the 1960s, it's true. So I'm going to tell the judges: You're not going to be Ku Klux Klansmen wearing black robes killing children in America. So if they're going to kill, they'd better go back and get the white robes. But they hide: ``Be honorable about it.'' So don't think they're going to hide behind black robes and kill Jim Bevel's children in America. Those children are not going to die. - Vote for the Good - So we have a war on our hands. And like I said, the conspicuous absence of the press is the evidence of that war. And we've come to fight it and we've come to win it. And we're going to leave this press conference and we will be working and organizing, and teaching, and we will be looking for 51% of the American people to make just one answer: Will you vote for the good, rather than the lesser of two evils? And would you join a party which is committed to the revolution, which will live the revolution, which will manifest the revolution; and which will go out and get others to come and join the party? Because now, we have to stay in the race until we've won. And I'm going to be counting you, just to see how powerful these cats are. I haven't tested our fast ball and our screwball and our curve ball for a long time; but they said they could play ball. And so we will see, and we will be in this to get the White House, for the American people, and we ask all of you to join us in that pursuit. It's necessary for the good of the whole world. If this is not a free nation, there is no light in the world; and so we have to have a free nation. And our Constitution, and our Declaration of Independence, give us the authority to do that. And that's not true in Japan, China, England--there's nowhere else that's true, but America. So the responsibility falls on us as American citizens to take our responsibility. Let me just stop here and take questions. ---- John Covici covici@ccs.covici.com