WESTERN EUROPEAN NEWS DIGEST
The Euro Is Indeed a 'Teuro'
The euro is indeed a "Teuro," wrote the German daily Die Welt this week, in a biting exposé of the official German government Statistical Office cover-up of the huge wave of inflation, triggered by the introduction of the European Union-wide currency the euro (the expression "Teuro" is a play on the German words "teuer" and "Teuerung," meaning "expensive" and "price rise," respectively).
Die Welt noted that "the German population is boiling with anger" at the realization that, with the introduction of the euro, "Everything has become more expensive." Indeed, anyone living in Germany knows from painful experience, that the present prices of goods, following the transition to the euro at the beginning of the year, are routinely 10%, frequently 30%, and often even 100% higher, in deutschemark-equivalent, than prices for the same goods at the end of last year. Die Welt listed a series of examples, especially food prices; often today the euro price for a head of lettuce, or any number of other foodstuffs, has the same numerical value as the deutschemark pricetag had six months agoalthough the euro-to-DM ratio is about 2:1!
Die Welt quotes Heinz-Peter Hannappel, responsible for price and inflation statistics at the German Statistical Office, admitting that his friends and neighbors have been "cursing me out" for the failure of official statistics to acknowledge the monstrous price inflation of recent months. In fact, the latest official statement on consumer prices from the Statistical Office, outrageously asserts that "the transition to the euro for cash payments has had no significant influence on the overall consumer price index." This result was obtained by processing the inflation data to remove so-called "special effects." Faced with German citizens' "foaming at the mouth in rage" at the effective 30-50% increases in parking fees, food and restaurant prices, and many commercial products, Hannappel now admits that the Statistical Office has to make a "closer study" of the situation. Here is something to think about, for any fool who believes in the authority of "official figures."
The euro-triggered burst of inflation, confirms EIR and Lyndon LaRouche's published analysis that enormous inflationary pressures have built up in the European and world economy, waiting to burst out whenever a suitable opening is provided.
'NATO Expands into Irrelevance,' Says Indian Newspaper
"NATO expands into irrelevance," commented C. Raja Mohan, the foreign affairs editor for the Indian newspaper The Hindu, based on recent discussions in Berlin and Geneva.
Just as NATO prepares to expand its membership and build ties to its former enemy, Russia, Mohan wrote, "It has become increasingly marginal in the management of international security. For NATO, what should have been a moment of greatest triumph, the creation of a Europe that is united and peaceful for the first time in centuries, is also an occasion to reflect on a bleak future that beckons it."
"After September 11, the U.S. made it clear that it has the military capabilities and the political will to act alone in handling the new security threats. The long-standing allies of the United States in Europe were welcome to join the American war on terrorism; but it did not really matter if they did not."
On top of this, the debate of expansion of NATO, which Russia had opposed, "has ended in a whimper as NATO loses political coherence....
"As the American strategic attention moves from Europe to Asia," Mohan continued, "Russia is likely to become a more valuable political partner to the United States in dealing with the conflicts in the southern and eastern parts of the Eurasian landmass. A distinguished scholar recently summed up the changing American perceptions of Europe as follows: 'What is Europe? There is Britain in the West, Russia in the East, and Turkey in the South. The rest is a marshland!'"
French Conglomerate Vivendi Barely Escaped Default
According to the May 15 issue of the French daily Le Monde, the French conglomerate Vivendi narrowly escaped default last December, is faced with acute problems to this day. At the end of last year, the conglomerate was already vastly overextended and financially exhausted through various over-ambitious takeoversfor example, that of Universal from Seagram's (Bronfman). An imminent default was prevented at that time.
Today, however, Vivendi is in even worse shape: It cannot pay its shareholders the promised dividend, and it cannot pay off Bronfman, whose lawyers press for accelerated payments of sveral hundred million dollars.
What the Vivendi management might do, in this precarious situation, is to sell off the privatized, formerly state-owned water supply grids it owns in France, which would affect the supply of 4,600 municipal and local entities. This, it is feared, would imply drastic price increases for fresh water for millions of French private consumers.
Meanwhile, the crisis at Vivendi also has a German angle: Vivendi has succeeded in blackmailing the Berlin municipal administration into giving a state guarantee of over 158 million euros, for the continuation of Vivendi's 24.5% share in the BerlinWasser Holdingan operation which has run a deficit both before and after partial privatization three years ago. Had Vivendi pulled out, the Berlin holding would definitely have collapsed in the near term, with a deficit of 300 million euros, and the Berlin Senate would have had to pay back 800 million that Vivendi paid for its 24.5% share in the city water works.
Also in Berlin, rumor has it that a 20% price increase for fresh water is in the offing for private households, to compensate for the expenses of the deal between the administration and Vivendi.
Ruling Party Loses in Dutch Elections
In the May 15 elections in the Netherlands, the three parites that made up the country's ruling coalition all lost: the Labor Party (PvdA), the leader of the governing coalition, and the liberal VVD and centrist D66.
The conservative Christian Democrats came in first, reportedly with 41 seats. The anti-immigrant Pym Fortuyn List (LPF) got 24 seats, more or less tied with Labor, VVD, and DGG. As a result, it may get a place in a potentially unstable new coalition government.
The leader of that party, Pym Fortuyn, was assassinated only a few days before the election. The election results, with the left-liberals losing ground, call to mind the results in other recent European elections, including the stunning loss by the French Socialists in the first round of the Presidential elections April 21, in which Socialist Prime Minister Jospin was, against all expectations, knocked out of the running in favor of extreme rightwinger Jean-Marie LePen, and elections the same day in the eastern German state of Saxe-Anhalt, in which the Social Democratic Party vote totals went down about 50% from the previous election.
Slain Banker Alfred Herrhausen Cited for Solutions to Economic Crises
German President Johannes Rau, in delivering the annual Berlin Address on May 14, broke a 12-year taboo by making mention of former Deutsche Bank chairman Alfred Herrhausen, who was assassinated in November 1989, just weeks after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Rau was speaking on globalization and its flaws and injustices, urging controls of financial speculation, though without going into details of how this should come about. In this context, Rau mentioned Herrhausen's commitment to Third World debt relief: "Alfred Herrhausen, by the way, already at the end of the 1980s recommended choosing this way. He told the creditor banks: Bringing a solution to the solvency crisis, also requires a debt relief." And, he added: "More is at stake here, than just capital and interest."
Writing in 1995 about disasters in U.S. strategic policy towards Europe, Lyndon LaRouche described Herrhausen as follows: "During the same time-frame (November 1989) [LaRouche] was working out the presentation of the 'Productive Triangle' policy with Helga Zepp LaRouche, the leading banker of Germany, Deutsche Bank's Alfred Herrhausen, was preparing to present a proposed policy of a kindred spirit to a U.S. blue-ribbon audience. He did not deliver that address; a professional assassination eliminated this German threat to British geopolitical interest. A few months later, another leading German official, Treuhand official Detlev Rohwedder, was assassinated; Rohwedder represented the same tradition in economic policy as Herrhausen. The rumor fed to the ever-credulous popular news media, was, that Herrhausen and Rohwedder had been killed by the so-called 'Baader-Meinhof' terrorist gang; the trouble with that explanation was, that the 'Baader-Meinhof gang' had long since ceased to exist. In some of the highest-level U.S.A. and European intelligence circles, it was agreed that these assassinations had been done in London's interest.
"After these two assassinations, Germany capitulated to the demands of the Thatcher and Bush Administration(s). East Germany was given the 'Third World' treatment, and Germany did not interfere in the 'Burke and Hare' 'shock therapy' treatment London and New York were administering to Poland, Hungary, Russia, Ukraine, et al."
Chirac Warns Israel: Stop Charges of 'Anti-Semitism'
French President Jacques Chirac raised the possibility on May 11 that there might be "consequences," if Israelis continue their campaign to depict France as "anti-Semitic" for, as Chirac said, wanting a peace settlement in the Middle East. Chirac's spokesman Catherine Colonna said, as reported in the May 12 Jerusalem Post and Associated Press, that in a telephone conversation with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Chirac spoke out "with force against the campaign," and said that, "At a time when the French massively demonstrated their refusal of racism, of xenophobism, and of anti-Semitism, this campaign is not acceptable"presumably referring to the landslide defeat, in the second round of the French Presidential election, of extreme rightwinger and racist Jean-Marie LePen. Chirac threatened that the campaign "cannot continue without consequences."
Part of the background to the issue, has been a series of attacks on synagogues and Jewish cemeteries, and even Jews, in various parts of Europe, including France.
Last week, the American Jewish Committee published a series of scurrilous ads, linking current French actions to those of the Nazi-controlled Vichy regime in France.
Presumably in response, the Tages-Anzeiger newspaper of Zurich, Switzerland asked what Europeans would do if "a fanatic blew up a railway station, a bus, or a restaurant?" It answered, "Well, what we wouldn't do is occupy Lombardy and Alsace, set up encampments and then prefabricated homes, build security roads and eventually confiscate the best land and cut the locals' water supply" (the reference, of course, being to Israel's reactions to Palestinian attacks).
Pope Praises Reconsecration of Church of the Nativity
At Sunday services at Vatican City May 12, Pope John Paul II praised the lifting of the siege at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, and its reconsecration. "We all learned with great relief that the Basilica of the Nativity in Bethelehem was given back to God and the faithful.... From my heart I thank all those who contributed to restoring to the holy place its true religious identity. A special mention goes to the communities of the Franciscans, Greek and Armenian Orthodox who, with notable sacrifice, remained faithful to the sanctuary.... To the population of Bethlehem and surrounding areas, I give my strongest encouragement to go on with faith and hope in God.... Bethlehem's universal message is love, justice, reconciliation and peace.... And it is on these bases that one can construct a future respectful of the rights of the Israeli and Palestinian peoples, in mutual trust."
The Pope noted that the French Cardinal whom he had dispatched to the Holy Land to try to end the standoff, Roger Etchegaray, had been in Bethlehem as "my special envoy" to relay his sentiments over the ending of the standoff. The Cardinal took part in the reconsecration ceremony on Sunday, May 12, at the Basilica. At that ceremony, Latin Patriarch of the Holy Land Monsignor Michel Sabbah said: "My message today is to the Israelis; You are pushing the Palestinians to the suicide. You are committing suicide against yourselves."
Film Recalls Past British Double-Crosses on Mideast
A British-produced documentary about the World War I-era British geopolitical double-crosses that underlie modernity's Middle East crises, was shown on the widely seen weekly Danish world events program Horisont May 13. The program, produced by Content Productions, documented how British imperial policy resulted in geopolitical schemes which promoted both Arab and Jewish nationalism, in order to destabilize the southern flank of the German-Austrian-Ottoman alliance leading up to and during World War I. Both groups, Jews and Arabs, were promised control over Palestine after the fall of the Ottoman Empire.
The Arabs, in return for carrying out an armed revolt against the Ottoman Empire, were promised an independent, unified Arab nation. The documentary also asserted that the Balfour Declaration in support of a Jewish homeland in the area, was based on an incorrect intelligence evaluation, that such a declaration would cause the Jewish leaders among the Bolsheviks, to keep Russiathe newly formed post-revolutionary Soviet Unionin the war on the side of the British and the French. (In fact, the Soviet Union withdrew from participation in World War I, striking a separate peace with Germany at Brest-Litovsk.)
The program opened by explaining that, while many think that the conflict between the Jews and Arabs in the Mideast started with the post-World War II, post-Holocaust Jewish immigration to Palestine, and the establishment of Israel, the roots lie much further back. Intrigues among empires, misunderstood strategies, and condradictory promises to Jews and Arabs created an inherited and bloody conflict that has been decisive for the destiny of the Middle East.
Highlighted quotes from historians at the beginning of the program involved "secret plans for the break-up of the Ottoman Empire," "British duplicity and double-crossing," "When fighting a war, one is liberal with postwar settlement promises. Afterwards, one has to decide where one's interests lie. For the British, the Middle East was the west flank of British India and all of Asia."
The program described in detail the Sykes/Picot division of the Middle East between the British and the French, giving the British oil-rich Iraq and the port of Haifa at the end of the oil pipeline; and control of the Suez Canal, needed for the route to India.
The program can be found at: www.dr.dk/nsapi.dr/media/playmedia.asp?name=Horisont&day=man
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