Western European News Digest

European Media Cover LaRouche Movement, There, and in U.S.A.

Aug. 26 (EIRNS)—Here are some samples from the press in Europe:

*Aug. 23—The lead article of the "News From the World" section in Sunday's Jyllandsposten, the liberal, widely read Danish newspaper, was accompanied by a photo of a LaRouche PAC organizer hoisting an Obama mustache poster at a U.S. town hall meeting. The article, headlined, "Obama's Leadership Ability Is Tried," illustrates the unrest in the U.S. with the (translated) exchange between LPAC's Rachel Brown and Rep. Barney Frank, in Dartmouth, Mass. The LPAC website is clearly visible on the bottom of the poster.

* Aug. 24—The BüSo (Civil Rights Solidarity Movement) website's own summarized report on the Aug. 21 webcast of Chancellor candidate Helga Zepp-LaRouche has been posted by the Pressemitteilungen website, which also announced both of Zepp-LaRouche's webcasts, and covered the July 21 webcast. This new report is accompanied by a picture of Obama with the mustache.

* Aug. 25—The number of daily visits to the website of Solidarité & Progrès (S&P) in France, the political party of the LaRouche movement, which usually gets about 3,500-4,000 hits per day, has been rising, since the beginning of the mass strike in the U.S. In the last week, daily visits to the site, which features LaRouche PAC's attacks on Obama's Nazi "health-care reform," shot up to over 5,000; yesterday, visits went above 5,700, the highest number this year.

Yesterday's posting of an item on the U.S. mass strike, along with the LPAC's Obamastache poster, got 1,400 visits in less than 24 hours, twice the usual number. On the Google News "health section," the Obamastache picture was placed among the nine top pictures of the day. A click on the picture brought the reader to the article on the French website.

The S&P website was attacked this morning by a world-famous hacker by the name of "iskorpitx." In 2006, this hacker simultaneously "defaced" 21,500 websites, while victimizing a total of 235,926.

Youth Suffer Most from Economic Collapse

Aug. 25 (EIRNS)—According to reports of Eurostat and the International Labor Organization (ILO) for the European Union, 5 million citizens under the age of 25 were unemployed during the first quarter of 2009—an increase of 1 million, compared to the first quarter of 2008. The increase in unemployment is twice that of citizens above the age of 25. The worst reported situation is in Spain, where a third of youth of working age are without a job. In the three Baltic states, the figure is 25%, and, in Italy and Sweden, it is 20%. In Germany, it is "only" 10%, but there, the rise in youth unemployment is many times that of the other age groups.

This has a lot to do with the fact that young people have been lured into the (disintegrating) working world with no real professional training, just to make some money as part-time or contract workers. They are being fired first, because usually they have no job protection, as some skilled workers still do, since they were hired on a just-in-time contract basis.

Patients Group: British Health Care 'Appalling'

Aug. 27 (EIRNS)—One million Natipatients have been the victims of "appalling care" in Britain's hospitals under Britain's National Health Service (NHS), the London Daily Telegraph reports today.

The exposé is based on a report by the Patients Association, a charity which has catalogued abuses over the past six years.

Claire Rayner, president of the Patients Association and a former nurse, told the Telegraph: "For far too long now, the Patients Association has been receiving calls on our helpline from people wanting to talk about the dreadful, neglectful, demeaning, painful, and sometimes downright cruel treatment their elderly relatives had experienced at the hands of NHS nurses." The Patients Association has published a selection of personal accounts from hundreds of relatives of patients, most of whom died following their care in NHS hospitals.

The NHS is one of the world's largest employers, employing 1 out of 23 people in the workforce in England and Wales.

Flu Cases Shock Sweden

STOCKHOLM, Aug. 28 (EIRNS)—Medical authorities report that already, this early in the Swedish flu season, there are now four young patients on ECMO (Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation) treatment because of lung failure. The fourth was a young man who had to be sent to Denmark for treatment. His doctor, a leading epidemiologist and leftist intellectual, Sven Britton, writes in Svenska Dagbladet Aug. 28, that he has changed his mind about vaccinations, after seeing this strong young man hit by the flu. Before, he had said that vaccination was not necessary, as most people would just have an episode, as in normal flu. Britton now supports general vaccination, writing that it is worth it to avoid even the very few cases of young persons losing their lung functions, so dramatically that a normal ventilator or respirator is not enough.

Two polls show that 70% of Swedes say they will take the vaccine, which will be offered for free.

British Government Cuts Public Pensions

Aug. 29 (EIRNS)—According to the London Times, the British government will cut pensions for public employees, given the collapse of the related pension funds. The pension level will be decided on the average of all wages paid during the employee's career, instead of the last wage, as it is currently.