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From the Vol.1 No.8 issue of Electronic Intelligence Weekly

WESTERN EUROPEAN NEWS DIGEST

French Earthquake: Rightwing Extremist Le Pen Advances to Final Round in Presidential Vote

In the first round of the French Presidential elections on April 21, an earthquake hit the country, as French commentators put it.

French President Jacques Chirac and French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin were supposedly the front-runners; they were supposed to make it through the first round of voting (in which well over a dozen other candidates were running), to face off in the second and final round on May 5.

Instead, Jospin, a Socialist, was knocked out of the box by rightwing extremist Jean-Marie Le Pen, whose particular brand of anti-immigrant, racist poison has been on the French political market for more than 20 years, but never, until now, in the center of the stage.

Ultimately, President Chirac won about 20% of the vote, and Le Pen about 17.08%. Prime Minister Jospin got only around 16.04%.

Le Pen drew votes from rather disparate sources. According to Jim Hoagland, writing in the Washington Post April 23, Le Pen's "neo-fascist vocabulary and the notoriety he gained in dismissing the Holocaust as a 'detail' of history," have often meant that "he is seen outside France as a typical anti-Semite." But this time around—in an environment where, in the context of the Israeli invasion of Palestinian territories, anti-Semitic incidents have been on the rise in France, with synagogues burned, cemeteries desecrated, and Jews assaulted on the street—Le Pen apparently sought Jewish as well as non-Jewish votes when he pledged to crack down on areas with high crime and large populations of unemployed youths of African and Arab Muslim background.

Among factors contributing to Le Pen's victory over Jospin, was said to be the rate of voter abstentions: 28%, the highest in the history of France's Fifth Republic.

That rate was coupled with some other interesting statistics. Of those who did vote, at least one-third voted for extreme or freak candidates (and that's not counting the Le Pen voters).

The combination of voter frustration and cynicism which fuelled this apathy or craziness, can be charged to Chirac and Jospin, the kinds of campaigns they ran, and the outrageous exclusion from the Presidential ballot of well-known French political figure Jacques Cheminade, who ran for President six years ago and who, in putting forward Lyndon LaRouche's New Bretton Woods and Eurasian Land-Bridge programs, offered the only serious solutions to the real issues of the election, the economic and the global strategic crises.

In a circumstance where Cheminade was banned from the ballot, and where the two "front-runners" ran vacuous P.R. campaigns, it is not astonishing that many people, afraid of rising crime rates and terrified of the fast-growing instability in the world, voted in a number of insane ways.

The vote is also part of a phenomenon common to all the Western countries: the erosion of established political structures, the fragmentation, in a way unseen since the end of World War II, of the political parties and their influence on political and social life.

'Dialogue Of Cultures' Festival in Duesseldorf

On April 20, the Schiller Institute [link to Schiller Institute website] and the German-Iranian theatre forum held a joint event in Duesseldorf: "Living Dialogue Instead of War of Cultures—A Festival of Persian and German Poetry." Some 130 people came to participate in a symposium and discussion, and a cultural evening presented by the Dichterpflaenzchen, the sort of apprentice poets, or reciters, associated with the Schiller Institute, from Duesseldorf and Wiesbaden, and a small theatre group, led by Iradj Zohari.

The symposium began with a presentation by Schiller Institute founder and BueSo candidate Helga Zepp LaRouche on "Unity in the Manifold: The Culture of the Silk Road." She immediately went into the middle of the battlefield, so to speak, by taking on Samuel Huntington's concept of a coming clash of civilizations, and his thesis that there cannot be an understanding among different religions. This she contrasted to a very condensed synopsis of Cusa's concept of unity in manifold, and his De Pace Fidei ("On the Peace of Faith") dialogue. Even though the political circumstances today are different, the preconditions are the same as after the fall of Constantinople, when Cusa wrote the famous dialogue.

Mrs. Zepp LaRouche then added the fundamental concept, that renaissance periods in mankind's history have influenced each other, and helped each other to come to bloom. She discussed the historical role of Persia, in particular. In the end, she read four small poems by Saadi, which was a delight for the audience.

Other speakers included: Mrs. Vida Bahrami, from the German-Iranian theatre forum, on "the poet Muhammad Schams-ad-Din Hafis," in Persian; Dr. Assemi, publisher of a German-Persian magazine, Kaweh, who began by reciting the opening verses of Friederich Schiller's "Die Glocke" ("The Bell"), in German; Ahmed Rahimi-Nawardamouz, also from the German-Iranian theatre forum; and EIR editorial board member Muriel Mirak-Weissbach, on "World Poetry: Translation a Means for Understanding Among Peoples."

In the lively panel discussion, the actual crisis of the danger of global war based on the "clash of civilizations" after Sept. 11 was addressed.

Kissinger Again Sought for Questioning in London

"Kissinger begins to stoop under the weight of legal scrutiny," reads the headline of the April 25 London Independent report on Sir Henry's visit to the United Kingdom, which starts with the observation: "He looked older than he did when he was arguably the most powerful man in the world, and there was more of a shuffle in his gait than a swagger. But the most striking thing about Henry Kissinger yesterday was the way he has begun to stoop, as if there were a great weight on his shoulders."

Apparently, the fact that Sir Henry is under the constant threat of being interrogated or even arrested for what he did in his "incarnation" in the U.S. government, in respect to Chile, Vietnam, and Cambodia, and hence not able to move about unrestricted, is having an effect.

While the earlier request by Spanish Judge Garzon to the British government, to interrogate Kissinger on his role in the dirty dealings of Chile's Pinochet regime, had been already been rejected, Kissinger was greeted on arrival with another motion by "human rights campaigner" Peter Tatchell, to have Kissinger arrested under the Geneva Convention (this, of course, was rejected by the British courts, too). Nevertheless, the Times reports: "A mock trial of Dr. Kissinger was held outside the convention to coincide with his speech [at the Institute of Directors annual convention]. The 200 or so protesters accused him of prolonging the war in Vietnam, and of promoting carpet bombing in Cambodia."

Kissinger was again in London to spread the doctrine of U.S.-led imperial wars "against terrorism." With no originality, and no evidence, he beat the drums for attacks on Iraq to oust Saddam Hussein.

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