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PRESS RELEASE


LaRouche Committee Denounces
Polish Press Lies

Dec. 28, 2001 (EIRNS)—The following statement was issued today by the LaRouche in 2004 political committee.

Beginning in December, leading Polish media have run an unprecedented slander campaign, directed against U.S. Presidential pre-candidate for 2004 Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. and the Schiller Institute. The slanders, which were published in, among other places: Trybuna online, Gazeta Polska, Zycie Warszawy, and Rzeczpospolita, referred to statements which had been made by Konstanty Miodowicz, former head of the UOP counterintelligence; Kzystztof Janik, Minister of Internal Affairs; and Bronislaw Komorowski, former head of the Ministry of National Defense. Using as a pretext the so-called Lepper issue (which falsely claimed that Andrzej Lepper, the leader of Samoobrona party, had been politically built up and financed by the Schiller Institute), the slanders made wild claims against LaRouche personally, and against his wife Helga Zepp-LaRouche, the founder of the international Schiller Institutes.

The LaRouche in 2004 committee denounces these lies and slanders directed against LaRouche as false. We stress that anyone telling such lies—against all public record—is acting with reckless disregard for the truth.

The eruption of slanders against LaRouche in Poland coincides with the outbreak of major turbulence in the global financial system, which is totally bankrupt, and is collapsing under a gigantic mountain of unpayable debt worldwide. The rapidly unfolding developments in Argentina—which has just declared a moratorium on its $132 billion debt, in order to protect the welfare of the nation, and in defiance to the neo-liberal policy of international financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), may set a precedent for similar developments that may soon occur in Poland, which is likewise facing a major financial crisis, as result of the systematic policy of deregulation pushed by the IMF.

In May 2001, LaRouche addressed a seminar in the Sejm (Poland's parliament) on the principle of the General Welfare. He became known both in Poland and internationally for his precise economic forecasts and his alternative program: a "New Bretton Woods monetary reorganization," as well as the "Eurasian development plan." Those who spread slanders and lies against LaRouche in Poland are playing into the hands of "foreign interests," which are centered around political figures such as Zbigniew Brzezinski, and are being used as a tool by Wall Street interests. The fanatical American geopolitician Brzezinski would rather plunge the world into a New Dark Age—a new "Clash of Civilization/Thirty Years War," than lose power over a dying financial system. As LaRouche stated in his presentation in the Polish Sejm in May, should Poland choose his New Bretton Woods and Eurasian Land-Bridge policy, it could function as a crossroads in the greatest economic, infrastructure, and social development program in history. By contrast, Brzezinski and his puppet-masters on Wall Street and in London would like to see Poland, once again, become just one more battleground in their "Clash of Civilizations" scenario.

One wonders what the connection is between these slanders, and the growing concerns over the collapse of Poland's currency, the zloty.

Brawl Over Central Bank Independence in Poland
Two parties in the ruling Polish government coalition, the Socialist Workers Union (UP) and the Peasant's Party (PSL)—which had invited Lyndon LaRouche to hold a seminar at the Sejm last summer—have introduced a bill into the Sejm, intended to limit the independence of the Polish Central Bank, currently led by ultra-monetarist former Finance Minister Leszek Balcerowicz. The biggest party in the Polish government, the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) of President Alexander Kwasniewski and Prime Minister Jerzy Miller, has not yet made up their minds on whether they will support the bill.

According to the Poland's constitution and the current law governing the Central Bank, the bank is responsible for the stability of the currency, and for fighting inflation. The proposed bill wants to include responsibility for the fight against unemployment and for economic growth among the Central Banks tasks, with a higher priority than monetary stability. It also aims at enlarging the number of Central Bank Councillors, which would allow the government to effectively put a leash on Balcerowicz, who has been strangling Poland's economy with an insane high-interest rate policy. This attempt, to legally oblige the Central Bank to abide by the common good, was rejected by President Kwasniewski, as a breach of the constitution and a undue infringement on the Central Bank's independence; but, apparently, parts of the SLD, including Prime Minister Jerzy Miller, would rather support the bill.

Obviously, the limit at which monetarist policies are no longer tolerable, has been reached, which may explain some of the vicious slanders circulated against LaRouche and the Schiller Institute in Poland.

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