Western European News Digest
Italian Senator Demands Italy Back LaRouche's New Bretton Woods
On July 9, Italian Senator Oskar Peterlini intervened on the floor of the Italian Senate to demand that the Italian government adopt U.S. economist and Democratic Party Presidential pre-candidate Lyndon LaRouche's call for a New Bretton Woods financial economic reorganization of the world monetary system. During the afternoon session, Senator Peterlini, a member of the Senate "Autonomies Group," and the first signer of the motion demanding a New Bretton Woods initiative, intervened to ask the Senate presidency to speed up the procedure to discuss and vote the motion. The Senate was in full session to debate and vote on crucial and strongly controversial laws regarding the future structure of RAI, the national TV network.
Main Missionary Press in Rome Endorses LaRouche's New Bretton Woods
On July 10, the Rome, Italy-based Misna, the most important Roman Catholic press agency, providing news and analysis for all missions and missionaries worldwide, endorsed Lyndon LaRouche's call for a New Bretton Woods financial reorganization. Misna is associated particularly with the so-called "Missionaries of Monsignor Comboni," the combiniani, which produces daily bulletins in English, French, and Italian languages.
Monsignor Daniel Comboni, who founded this religious order in the 19th century, was a strong fighter against colonialism, slavery, and racism, particularly in Africa. Pope John Paul II has initiated the procedure for his canonization.
The endorsement of LaRouche's New Bretton Woods was written by the agency director, Father Giulio Albanese, and published in the Misna bulletin back on March 12, 2003, before the Iraq war. The note is titled "We need a new Bretton Woods, not a preventive war."
Clare Short Calls on Tony Blair To Step Down
In an interview for GMTV's Sunday Programme of July 12, former British International Development Secretary Clare Short renewed her calls for the resignation of the British Prime Minister Tony Blair for his role in using false information to win approval for the Iraq war. Short said Blair saw himself as "a kind of higher mortal than the rest of us" when he was taking decisions on Iraq.
"I'm sure he's convinced that what he did was right, but I'm also sure that he fooled the country in a series of ways, in a way that's intolerable when it's a matter of war and peace and human beings' lives and the future of a country." Short added, "There's two good years until the next election. We'll see how this plays out. I think the best solution for Tony would be if he planned to move on before it gets ever nastier."
Blair is under investigation by a government commission for his role in spreading false information.
German Social Democratic MPs Warn of Hedge Fund Threat
On July 8, Social Democratic Party (SPD) Parliamentarians in Germany warned that hedge funds could threaten the financial system. The statements came just before German Finance Minister Hans Eichel was to announce that hedge funds, so far illegal in Germany, should finally be allowed to operate freely in Germany beginning next year. This announcement is part of the "Investment Modernizing Legislature" that Eichel is presenting.
The German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung interviewed several SPD Parliamentarians on July 8, who vehemently attacked Eichel's plans. As the SZ summarizes, SPD representatives in the German Bundestag "warn that hedge funds could destabilize the entire financial system, as in the case of the multibillion-dollar bankruptcy of the American risk fund LTCM."
Most outspoken is SPD economics expert Sigrid Skarpelis-Sperk. She notes that in contrast to the views of the Finance Ministry, it will turn out to be impossible to effectively supervise the hedge funds: "They live from high-risk business and they just cannot be controlled by financial supervisors like a bank." The collapse of a hedge fund could have very severe implications for big German banks, including the Landesbanken. At that point, central bankers would be forced to provide billions of euros, and Finance Ministries worldwide would suffer billions of euros of income-tax revenue losses.
Italian Finance Minister on EU's Historic Economic Moment
Italian Finance Minister Tremonti addressed the European Union's Monetary and Finance Committee in Brussels on July 8, where he explained that today "there is something more and different," an "intensity of crisis" which demands not only reforms, but also public investments. In order not to violate the rules of the EU's Stability Pact, Tremonti said, Italy has proposed to enhance the role of the European Investment Bank.
"We are in a historical moment in which we have no state policies any more, and we do not yet have a European policy," he said, rejecting the idea of financing European infrastructure with a European bond. "European debt, European budget, European superstate, no thanks," Tremonti said.
Berlusconi's Party Divided Over Tremonti Plan
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia Party is split down the middle on the Tremonti Plan, a well-placed insider has told EIW's associates in Europe. On one side, there is Tremonti's "neo-Colbertist" faction, supported by Berlusconi himself. On the other side, the free-market faction led by Defense Minister Antonio Martino and Industry Minister Antonio Marzano, two economists. Since the Forza Italia was completely built on a liberal ideology, an open debate on Tremonti's neo-Colbertism would destroy the party. Therefore, they have decided to avoid any such discussion and, the source said, neo-Colbertism will be carried out, but they will say that it is "the most coherent demonstration of our liberal platform."
The Italian government, the source added, is also presenting the "positive importance" of the Tremonti Plan to the United States. If Berlusconi said what he said in Strasbourg, on the collapse of the financial markets and the destruction of financial values, this means that he thinks that the system has failed. But without the United States, a reorganization of the system is impossible. The source, who recently visited the U.S., stressed Berlusconi's personal relationship with Bush, adding that they support Powell and consider Rumsfeld an idiot who has created a disaster. However, they are confused on Cheney, whether he is a neo-con by ideology or by money.
On the current situation in Europe and the support for the Tremonti Plan, the source said that they see hostility from the German and French governments, which have been antagonistic toward Berlusconi in the past and remain so.
European Transport Ministers Agree on 18 Priority Projects
On July 10, European Transport Ministers meeting as part of the European Commission, announced agreement on 18 cross-border projects, focussed in particular on reconnecting Western Europe with the new European Union members in the East. On June 30, the "High-Level Group" on the trans-European transport network (TEN-T) released its report on new priorities for upgrading European transport infrastructure.
The "High-Level Group" is chaired by Karel van Miert, the former European Commissioner in charge of transport, and works under the umbrella of the Transport and Energy section of the European Commission, headed by Loyola de Palacio.
The just-released report, often referred to as the "Van Miert report," runs parallel to the efforts by the Italian government, offered by Finance Minister Tremonti. While the Tremonti Plan is much more ambitious in terms of total investment volumes and new financing schemes, the Van Miert report represents the minimum consensus of the European governments on re-starting the Trans-European infrastructure program.
Return of Stasi Informer Files a Troubling Gift
After years of negotiating, the United States has belatedly completed the return of copies of the so-called "Rosenholz File" with information on more than 50,000 agents and (mostly) informants of former East German intelligence (the Stasi). Forty thousand of these are former citizens of the East German state, who took part in one or another kind of operation, from disinformation to espionage, from information to courier operations.
The "Rosenholz" file, named after the CIA operation which stole these files during the turbulent weeks of the collapse of the East German regime at the end of 1989/early 1990, before West German agencies could get access, is of special value: It contains many hints of the real names of agents and informants, who are only known now under their cover names. It cannot be ruled out that one or another prominent person or persons in today's reunified Germany may be identified now, but also the mere prospect of such identification, is a threat and has been a threat for the past 12 years. There is also a question whether the returned files are complete, since, initially, the U.S. declined access to the files to German officials, claiming U.S. national security.
Historian Abhors Idea of a World Shaped by Carl Schmitt
Octogenarian English historian Eric Hobsbawm, in an interview in the July 10 issue of Die Zeit, speaks of a transformation process, over the past 25 years, "away from a Western-oriented world, towards one that is Asian-oriented. In the West, even in the USA, the economy has hardly grown, at least in comparison with the East. The gravitation center of the economy is shifting towards Asia." The Americans respond to this trend with brute force, he says.
"The USA show all signs of megalomania, throwing the experience of diplomacy into the waste bin," Hobsbawm says, warning against an "imperialism of human rights" promoted by the United States. He adds, later on in the interview, that he is puzzled by the fact "that the ideas of the law expert Carl Schmitt are a great intellectual platform for Rumsfeld's advisers. Imagine a world governed along the standards of Schmitt. Not a very tempting prospect."
Hobsbawm has been called the "leading theoretician" of the now-defunct British Communist Party. He is also respected in academic circles around the world as an historian.
Die Zeit Slanders LaRouche in Defense of Leo Strauss
Two weeks after an excellent essay against the Straussians by Heinrich-August Winkler, another Die Zeit author, Richard Herzinger, tries to repair the damage, with a rather incoherent attempt to defend the Straussians. The real Carl Schmitt epigones are not in the Bush Administration, but among those "national revolutionaries" like Alain de Benoist, who attack the USA from Europe, Herzinger claimsalso taking a swipe at William Pfaff, a regular columnist in the International Herald Tribune. Granted, Leo Strauss was an "il-liberal" mind, opposed to the modern era, Herzinger writes, but to claim that he motivated the neo-cons in their war designs is off the mark.
"Since also the polit-sect of the longtime American conspiracy theorist Lyndon LaRouchewhich in Germany runs a branch under the name Buergerrechtsbewegung Solidaritaethas jumped on the theme and mobilizes against an alleged master plan of the Straussians for world domination, the blossoming creation of legends around the neo-cons threatens to turn into obscurantism, anti-Semitic connotations included," Herzinger writes. Reporting on Pat Buchanan's charges against "Jewish lobby" impact on the White House, Die Zeit then tries to link LaRouche to that spectrum of U.S. right-wing politics, in a grotesque fallacy of composition.
Swiss Gnomes Defend Strauss, Slander LaRouche
The Swiss weekly Weltwoche, in its issue No. 28, slandered Lyndon LaRouche in a one-page article in defense of Leo Strauss, on foul (but revealing) grounds that the pros and cons of the ongoing international debate allegedly "distract" from the Straussian world, which the Weltwoche finds "fascinating."
"Even professional conspiracy theoreticians like Lyndon LaRouche," the weekly writes, "who has spent several years in jail for fraud and has run as a candidate for the U.S. Presidential elections innumerable times, smelled blood and have placed wild, anti-Semitic concoctions in the Internet."
|