"c256," posted Thursday, December 20, 2007 - 5:07 am:
Just read the Computron-related memos. THAT brought up a lot from the past. I was at WorldComp during that time and was one of the "Gus dupes," from LHL's standpoint. Some of the memos I had read because Alice Roth worked in the same sector as my husband, so he brought her memos home (they were otherwise confiscated, I believe). The ones from Computron members proper I never saw. But that doesn't mean that I didn't realize that LHL was lying. I wasn't on the "inside" of the Computron group, but I had seen and heard enough to know that things were not as the Fearless Leader portrayed them. I had also had the opportunity of speaking with him personally and talking about the WorldComp situation, so I KNEW he knew about some things he was denying knowledge of. Why didn't I say anything? Fear. I can't say that it was fear of seeing the organization blow apart as Dave Phillips wrote about. It was a more personal fear of seeing my own life blow apart, of upsetting that delicate equilibrium between reality/non-reality that one builds up when in the organization to survive. Am I proud of it? Nope. But at least I got out, and [since then] have done what I could to help others understand the situation.
Re-reading all of this, what seems to me crystal-clear is that the real issue was a question of financial turfs: one in the U.S. based around Computron and the other in Europe around Helga and Uwe Friesecke. In essence, what Gus was saying was that he did not want to see the U.S. organization looted to keep the German lords and ladies in Rheingau. At the time, compared with U.S. street organizers and national office personnel, the European organization lived well. They had decent housing, ate regularly, days off, etc. and looked down on the U.S. organization for the fact that [the U.S. members] were uncultured and "lumpen." Gus and Andy reiterated more than once, and I believed (and still tend to believe) them when they said that the entire organization had to get off the streets and live decent lives WHILE ALSO pursuing political ends. Just not on the street corner. Of course LHL couldn't go along with this. His empire, on both sides of the Atlantic, was and is based on slavery. When Gus tried to shut down the European end of this in order to keep U.S.-generated funds in the U.S., LaRouche took a hard look at the two turfs, totalled up the sums, and realized that he would make more keeping the European org going (which included a number of business operations of its own, such as Friesecke's vineyard and other operations) and keeping the slave-labor brigade in the U.S. So Computron was expendable. But he had to get back PMR and WorldComp because they had to be controlled to keep the printing presses going to create the print ammunition for his slaves. Thus the beginning of the looting operation which would end in the tragedy of Ken's suicide.
Now, after the European split, LHL doesn't even have the
Friesecke machine (or does he still, vicariously, through Uwe's ex,
Helga?). Only the lumpen storm troops. A sad, sad, business.