WESTERN EUROPEAN NEWS DIGEST
German Newspaper Emphasizes Government Role in Economy
In its May 4 edition, in its retrospective of Ludwig Erhard, Germany's newspaper of record, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, insisted on the role of government in the economy.
Using the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the death of former German Chancellor Ludwig Erhard, who was Economics Minister under Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, during the post-World War II Wirtschaftswunder ("Economic Miracle") reconstruction of Germany (and hence, somewhat undeservedly dubbed the "Father of the Wirtschaftswunder"), the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung published a commentary by Nikolaus Piper, who squarely took the government to task for its failure to develop some conception of economic strategy. This is quite remarkable, inasmuch as FAZ is usually a mouthpiece of economic liberalismwhich, however, is increasingly exposed as a failed doctrine.
Piper says that much of the secret of Erhard's success was based on the fact that he developed the Economics Ministry into a supervisory institution over the other ministries, to direct the development of the economic order. Central to this were the "department for principal" and the "department for money and credit." In 1972, the Economics Ministry lost responsibility for money and credit, and in 1998, lost its division for principal. Without these functions, "the Ministry is just unnecessary," writes Piper. He continues: "We have more than a decade of experience with this conscious rejection of concepts for economic policies. And, as everyone can check the results, it may not be a bad idea to go back to the roots, to Ludwig Erhard. Concretely: The next Federal overnment should reassemble economic expertise within the Cabinet, and create a real Economics Ministry, with a department for principal and a department for credit policies.... The government needs an institution to competently comment on the consequences of the pension and health reforms for the whole economy.... To rebuild the responsible Ministry is probably just what Ludwig Erhard would do today."
Charge That Italy's Berlusconi Ignores Importance of Infrastructure-Building
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has forgotten that infrastructure investment should be his priority, critics are charging. Berlusconi's grand electors have issued a stiff warning that he should reset priorities and honor his promise to deliver infrastructure investments, instead of focussing on labor reform issues which promote social conflict. The warning came in the form of an editorial in the May 3 Corriere della Sera, by Corriere's former publishing director, Alberto Ronchey.
Ronchey complains that for decades, infrastructure such as "railway lines, airports, highways," have not been upgraded to keep up with a growing population and economic activity. It is true that large works need time, Ronchey writes, but "it cannot be repeated often enough that Cavour needed nine years to build the Frejus Tunnel" between France and Italy, beneath the Alps, 150 years ago.
The Berlusconi government "has announced a plan of 80 infrastructure projects to modernize Italian society. An investment of 120 billion euros is planned. However, the major national controversies at this moment are concentrated on two other questions," Ronchey continuesthe labor reform known as "Article 18" (against which the trade unions mobilized in a general strike), and Berlusconi's potential conflict of interest as being head of the government while being owner of 50% of the national TV networks. Ronchey accuses the opposition of being responsible for promoting the latter issue, which currently offers no apparent solution; however, Berlusconi is responsible for having promoted the phony and "highly explosive" issue of labor reform.
Ronchey has been a spokesman for the ownership of Corriere della Sera, which is also connected to large Italian building construction interests. These interests are representative of one component of the coalition that allowed Berlusconi to take power at the last elections. Thus, such an editorial represents a serious warning that Berlusconi should reset his priorities, or he will lose his mandate.
Top German Diplomat: East German Stasi Created Neo-Nazism
In an interview published in Moskovsky Komsomolets (and reported on by Reuters May 8) on the anniversary of the German surrender in World War II, Ernst-Joerg von Studnitz, German Ambassador to Russia, says "The former [East German] secret servicethe Stasilaid down the basis for neo-Nazism during the period when Germany was divided." Neo-Nazism was no sociological phenomenon, Studnitz insists; rather, the Stasi "formed and supported the first group of neo-Nazis in [West Germany]."
The Ambassador said the opening of the Stasi archives after German reunification, clearly established the artificial nature of the origin of the neo-Nazis in West Germany.
As long ago as 1993, EIR published, and widely circulated to European police and other investigators, a German-language special report on the Anglo-American and Soviet-Bloc secret services' participation in running the neo-Nazism plaguing Germany.
One section of the EIR report described the actions of a U.S. national, Dennis Mahon, who worked with the Stasi inside reunified Germany:
"Dennis Mahon described [in an interview with EIR] his training by USA military and intelligence authorities, and his anti-German cooperation with members of the East German Communist secret policethe Stasi.
"....Mahon claims that U.S. Secret Service and other Federal police agents have him under constant surveillance, always seeking pretexts for his arrest or blackmail. Given this constant monitoring, Mahon is asked, how did he manage to elude the German police?
"He replies that throughout the German phase of his career, he has worked closely with agents of the Stasi, the East German Communist secret police. He says this collaboration began at least three years before his 1991 visit to Germany, that is, before reunification. Since reunification, of course, the Communist police agents have all become 'former' Stasi agents. Mahon, with his Naval intelligence training in electronic countermeasures, works jointly with these sophisticated former Stasi men, monitoring all the German police radio frequencies. This way, he says, they are always a step ahead of the German police and always elude them....
"With his skinheads and his Stasi protection, Mahon asserts, he made a 1992 German visit through the eastern section of the country and to Nuremberg, Mainz, and Karlsruhe. 'We travelled 1,100 kilometers in four days, stopping and talking to people every 100 kilometers or so.'...."
Netherlands Reeling After Assassination of Anti-Immigrant Populist Politician
On the eve of national elections to be held May 15 in the Netherlands, a gunman on May 6 assassinated Pim Fortuyn, an anti-immigrant populist politician who was expected to win as much as 20% of the vote. His assassination came in the wake of a wave of assassinations in the last months, part of a "strategy of tension" targetting Western Europe.
Fortuyn was a 54-year-old homosexual university sociologist professor and columnist, who entered politics in the very recent period, running on an anti-immigration, anti-Islamic, and anti-European Union platform. A few months ago in the Rotterdam Council elections, his party got 35% of the vote. His new party, called Lijst Pim Fortuyn, was expected to win at least as much as Le Pen did in France. In fact, his party could still win big, since the election has not been called off.
The police seized ammunition, a computer and documents from the alleged killer's house. Although they say he has no criminal record, they would not say whether he had licences for his weapons or where he was trained. The killer was obviously skilled, since he shot Fortuyn five times in the chest, neck, and head. He was also able to penetrate the security of the parking lot of the government broadcasting center in Hilversum, outside of Amsterdam. The police claim he acted alone.
Besides the immediate shock (no Dutch politician has been assassinated in at least 200 years), the political shock will destabilize Dutch politics for a long time to come. Lijst Pim Fortuyn was a one-man show, already greatly factionalized because of all the relatively crazy types it has attracted. Nonetheless, it could win a lot of seats, which could eventually create another political crisis and the possible fall of the government.
The Fortuyn assassination was the ninth incident in the "strategy of tension" which has hit Europe since Sept. 11. Since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the following incidents have occurred in Europe:
*Sept. 27: A gunman killed 14 people and himself at the Canton assembly in Zug, Switzerland.
*March 18: Former Belgian politician Alain Van Der Biest committed suicide amid new revelations surfacing of his alleged role in the 1991 murder of senior Belgian politician Andre Van Cools, a case that was linked to massive international arms trade and operations of the NATO-linked "Gladio" network.
*March 19: Marco Biagi, a top consultant to the Italian government, was gunned down in an attack attributed to the Red Brigades.
*March 21: Basque ETA separatists assassinated a Spanish socialist councilman. On the same day, a suspicious fire burned down the offices of the Spanish representative in Brussels, killing two.
*March 26: in the French town of Nanterre, a City Council meeting turned into a bloodbath when a 33-year-old man said to be suffering from "furious dementia" pulled out two pistols and killed eight people, seriously wounding 30 more in the process. Within 24 hours, the killer died after falling from a window at the Paris police headquarters while being interrogated.
*April 11: Fourteen German tourists were killed in a terror attack on a synagogue in Tunisia.
*April 18: In a "mini twin towers attack," an Italian pilot flew his small airplane into Milan's Pirelli tower, killing himself and two others.
*April 26: In Erfurt, Germany, 19-year-old Robert Steinhauser marched into his high school, shot 16 teachers and students, and then took his own life.
*May 6: Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn was assassinated.
Say Assassin Was an Eco-Terrorist
The man alleged to have killed Fortuyn was apparently an ecological-terrorist. His name is Volkert Van der Graaf, and he was a member of an extremist animal rights group called Milieu Offensief (Environmental Offensive)a take-off from a more moderate group with the name Milieu Defensief. The 32-year-old Van der Graaf is married and the father of one. He had been in the animal rights movement since his student days, and was involved in legal proceedings against farmers for violations of animal rights laws in factory-farming.
One source who is a lawyer and involved in many environmental cases, said that various Dutch press reports indicate that Van der Graaf was known to the Dutch intelligence services, who follow these groups closely, but never really arrest or repress them. Thus, some sort of intelligence link is not out of the question.
This same source pointed out that the political effect of this assassination should not be underestimated. He said the Netherlands' leading constitutional law expert, Prof. Ales Koekoek, was interviewed on Dutch TV suggesting that after the national elections this week, a national unity government of all the parties should be formed. This source commented, "Why hold elections then?"
He said that with such a national unity government you have, in effect, a dictatorship, or paralysis, a circumstance which, in the context of European policy, could have strategic significance.
Chirac Wins Second Round of French Election in Landslide
In the second and final round of voting May 5 in the French Presidential election, incumbent President Jacques Chirac beat xenophobic rightwinger Jean-Marie LePen in a landslide, with about 82% of the vote to LePen's 18%. A few weeks ago, in the first round of the elections, LePen horrifed France, and the world, by coming in second in the voting, defeating incumbent Prime Minister Lionel Jospin (and about a dozen other candidates). Jospin had been projected to win the second spot in the runoff.
Some voters went to the polls May 5 wearing latex gloves and clothes-pins over their nose, to demonstrate how distasteful they found it to have to vote for Chirac (who is, among other things, mired in a series of corruption scandals), in order to defeat LePen. A 27-year-old medical student seemed to sum up the attitude of many, when he told AP, "I obviously voted for Chirac, but against all my values. He is a crook, but better him than a fascist."
|