Western European News Digest
Blair Gov't Planned Iraq War Long Before Parliament Approval
A report in Britain's Evening Standard of Sept. 29, based on a document leaked from the U.S. Pentagon, reveals that the U.K. joined the U.S. in planning the Iraq war nine months prior to receiving Parliamentary approval. The article in question was written by Andrew Gilligan, the BBC reporter who had interviewed the late weapons inspector Dr. David Kelly about the "sexing up" of Tony Blair's Iraq dossier. The Commons voted to join the Iraq war on March 18, 2003.
British military commanders took part in a war-planning conference with U.S. commanders in June 2002, according to details from the Pentagon document reported in the Standard. Blair was claiming at the time that there had been no decisions to take military action against Iraq.
Speculation in Britain is that Blair had "agreed" to help attack Iraq already in April 2002, when he visited Bush at his Crawford, Texas ranch, which Blair denies.
The Pentagon document is titled "Operation Iraqi Freedom: Strategic Lessons Learned," and was prepared for Rumsfeld to make a presentation on events from Sept. 11, 2001 through the following year.
British Defense Expert: 'Things Are Closing In on Bush and Blair'
A senior British defense expert said in discussion with EIR Sept. 29 that "things are closing in," both Britain and the U.S., on the Blair and Bush governments, especially because of the disastrous situation in Iraq. He added that, so far, the neo-cons "are getting away with murder," but the situation in Iraq "is a prescription for long-running terrorism."
He said Iraq is the "focal point," but domestic politics are weighing in on the Labour government in education, health, and the pension crisis.
He pointed to how things in Europe are "stacking up" against Bush. The "overwhelming majority" of people oppose Bush, both in Germany and France, and even right-wingers in Germany, which puts pressure on Blair.
In the British Labour Party, there had always been a 20% anti-American faction, but now it is much more. Despite the pressure, he thinks it unlikely Blair would lose next year's British election, but would get a much reduced majority and then quit, in, at most, 18 months.
Blair Announces Third Term; Labour Submits on Iraq
Prime Minister Tony Blair has undergone a procedure to correct his heart flutters, reported the London press on Sept. 30, a condition for which he had been hospitalized last year. Nonetheless, Blair announced at the end of the Labour Party conference in Brighton, Sept. 30, that he was determined to serve a full third term if Labour wins the national elections set for next spring, but would not serve any further term.
Such announcements are not "done" in British politics. As one newspaper article noted, either a Prime Minister acts as if he (or she) is going to be there forever, or he or she resigns, effective immediately. Blair's "long-term" plans mark a confused situation.
Blair, who faces substantial opposition in his own party over the Iraq war, is clearly determined to block the efforts of Chancellor [of Her Majesty's Treasury] Gordon Brown to become Prime Minister, by announcing his third-term intentions. But at the same time, Downing Street announced not only Blair's heart treatment, but that Tony and his wife Cherie have bought a 3.6-million-pound "retirement" home in London.
The broader situation remains equally turbid, with the demonstration in the by-election in Hartlepool yesterday, that there is no effective electoral opposition to Blair. The election was due to New Labour guru Peter Mandelson's moving to Brussels as British European Commissioner. This was a long-term Labour Party safe seat. Labour managed to retain the district, but with a reduced majority. The main opposition party, the Tories, did disastrously, coming in a distant fourth place. The third party, the Liberal Democrats, came in second, and the U.K. Independence Party third, receiving 149 more votes than the Tory candidate.
Meanwhile, at the Labour Party convention on Sept. 30, a deal with leaders of the main unions undercut an expected debate on whether Britain should set a faster timetable to pull out of Iraq. The party voted to endorse the current UN mandate, which keeps British forces there until the end of 2005.
The motion calling the "continuing occupation" of Iraq as "unjustifiably destructive of both lives and resources," and calling for troops to come home at an "early date" was defeated, 86%:14%. Behind-the-scenes negotiations with the union leaders got them to drop confrontation with Blair on Iraq.
Germany Heading for Era of Blackouts
Massive investments in power production and power grids are required, as well as a return to nuclear technologies; this was the principal conclusion of a press conference by the Federal Association of Electrical Engineering (ZVEI), which took place on Sept. 27 in Mannheim.
ZVEI board member Joachim Schneider noted, that since the liberalization of the German energy sector in 1998, investments in power plants have crashed by 45% and investments in power grids by 30%. The mounting investment backlog is all the more dangerous because rising numbers of intrinsically unreliable windmills require ever more traditional power capacities to be held in reserve.
Furthermore, liberalization has led to a sharp rise in the power trade, which means an additional burden put on power grids. Much of the infrastructure grid is now more than 50 years old and has to be replaced soon. Should the "assault on investments" continue, Schneider warned, it will not only mean more jobs lost in the electrical engineering sector, but would threaten overall German power security.
According to the ZVEI, 40 gigawatts in installed power production, which is 40% of total capacity, will reach the end of their lifespans by the year 2020. An additional 22 gigawatts of nuclear power will be shut down by the year 2025, due to the political decision to "exit from nuclear power."
All of this means investments in the range of 40 billion euros just to maintain power production at its current level. In the European Union (EU), about 250 billion euros will be required between now and 2030, to replace 330 gigawatts now in power production. These figures do not include the investment needed to cover rising power demand; they do not include investments for power grids; nor do they include investments required for the new EU members in the East.
Professor Harald Weber of the Rostock-based Institute for Electrical Engineering emphasized at the same conference that the long-term energy supply can only be guaranteed by nuclear technologies. This includes nuclear fission as well as nuclear fusion. Of course, achieving nuclear fusion will require "giant research efforts." He said it may take more time until these issues can be publicly discussed in Europe. But due to rising power, gas and oil prices, as well as last year's series of "blackouts," people are starting to realize that they have been blinded by the promises of the "Internet age" and that "dirty" technologies, like power production, do still count.
Anti-Hartz IV Monday Rallies Continue in Germany
Turnout for the Monday rallies throughout Germany, against the economic austerity policy known as Hartz IV, were somewhat smaller Sept. 27, in the large cities, while attendance remained high in many smaller cities.
Rallies took place in more than 220 cities, and the combined turnout in Berlin, Leipzig, and Magdeburg, where leftist organizations and Attac have diminished the ferment through fruitless faction fights, was between 5,000 and 8,000.
However, in Halle and Zwickau, about 1,000-1,200 citizens took part; in many other medium-sized cities, turnout was between 300 and 700. In Zwickau, LaRouche Youth Movement member Bernd Kozok was able address the rally.
In a number of smaller cities, protesters feel sold out, after speakers from the party political organizations and labor unions refused to speak. Citizens are now looking for speakers to continue Monday protests.
Those who want rallies to end after the big Berlin rally on Oct. 2, are fully aware of the difficulty of attracting people with their impotent redistributionist slogans, and, as the Berlin coordinating office for the Oct. 2 event told this news service Sept. 28, only "several ten thousands" were out on Saturday (!).
In Magdeburg, citizens have forced the organizing committee there to become political, and discuss economic alternatives to Hartz IV. At the Monday rally, the committee presented a hastily cooked-up catalogue of demands, which mostly look populist, but there is something more constructive among them, calling for no-interest loans to Mittelstand (small- and medium-size) firms, calling for the entire Hartz IV to be postponed until after the next national elections, in 2006, so that the German electorate can vote it down.
Ex-French Prime Minister Signals Break with EU Constitution
Echoes of Rimbaud: Calling Europe a "drunken ship" (un bateau ivre), Pervenche Beres, the European Parliament Chairman of the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee, has called for dumping the nascent European Constitution.
Former French Prime Minister Laurent Fabius, who is also a potential Presidential candidate, was supported Sept. 29 in his rejection of the European Constitution by Beres, the influential Socialist parliamentarian, and one of the officials who wrote the Constitutional treaty!
In her article in the Sept. 29 Le Monde, titled "Saying 'No' To Save Europe," Beres wrote: "Being a staunch European and member of the Conventions that wrote up the project for a Constitutional Treaty and the Chart of Fundamental Rights, I would not have dared to say NO to the Constitutional Treaty. The political choice of Laurent Fabius allows me to do so. For the left, for France, for Europe."
She then listed all the reasons to say "no." "Because Europe has become a drunken ship to which this text will restore neither direction nor compass. One cannot complain that it doesn't work and not seize the opportunity which is given to us to act.... Because there is urgency and because it is in this way that we lose the least time. The French have the right to say, 'This time, it is no, because we want another Europe.'"
Beres quotes German economist Wolfgang Munchau, who had told the Financial Times (Sept. 6), "The problem of the Constitution, is that it leaves intact the present economic system which is failing. It simply cannot be the basis for a framework of a political union capable of supporting a monetary union in the long term. Valery Giscard d'Estaing, the former French President who chaired the Convention, predicted that the Constitution would last 50 years. Let's hope he's wrong. If he's right, the Constitution could very well survive the euro," i.e., the euro will have crashed first.
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