Western European News Digest
World Political Class Not Up to Today's Challenge
In a conversation with EIR on Oct. 27, a senior British defense establishment figure said the main problem the world is facing today, is that the international political class is "just not up to the challenges posed by Iraq, Afghanistan," and the terrible problems of unemployment and "no future" that the entire world's youth face.
He continued: "I see few answers in the current political process." Just a year ago this source supported the Bush-Cheney government and, as he admitted Oct. 27, had really thought that Saddam Hussein did have WMD, but is now totally anti-Bush-Cheney. "I will be immensely disappointed, should Bush and Cheney win," he said.
The situation reminds him of Harold MacMillan's comment when asked what was the most difficult crisis of his premiership. "Events," he said, "Events." Now, the source said, "the U.S. attempt to control events is an abysmal failure. This crisis in Iraq need not have happened.
"The statement of Russian President Putin on terrorism and the Bush re-election: This is an example of what the neo-cons have done to international politics." Leaders are reacting to every critical situation as a "war on terrorism," but they "are not winning" these wars, he said.
The enormous problems faced by today's youth are universal, he said: drug use, unemployment, no future. Politicians are recognizing this, but, as the Blair government is an example, really doing nothing to help. The "idealism which drove political affairs after World War II is gone," he said, and nothing has yet replaced it.
British Military Historian Hopes for Bush-Cheney Defeat
In an Oct. 27 discussion, a leading British military historian told EIR: "I can assure you that, across the spectrum in Britain, there will be a great feeling of relief if Bush and company were defeated on Nov. 2." He said that even in Downing Street and Whitehall, there is a split over Prime Minister Tony Blair's support for George Bush, and many have a sense of how dangerous a second Bush-Cheney government would be. His view from Britain, is that Kerry has a real chance of winning now.
He found it interesting that the Blair government had finally admitted that the PM had met John Kerry in the U.S., which previously had been denied. "For a British government to totally exclude contact with a candidate for the U.S. Presidency, especially when the race is so close, is ludicrous," the source said. Blair has to prepare for a possible Kerry win.
The Black Watch was deployed into northern Iraq as of Oct 27, and this is "very controversial in Britain," he said. They are being exposed to great danger, and "I have little doubt that the demand for the deployment came directly from the Pentagon," he said. The numbers are small, but this would "show" that the U.S. has at least one ally at its side in Fallujah, he said.
On the overall U.S. deployment in Iraq: The costs are enormous. This historian has made the point, very coherently in his writings, that the British Empire was in reality an enormous burden on Britain, and an enormous cost to its real security, especially going into World War II, where the costs of defending the huge empire, were bringing Britain to total economic ruin. The U.S. is facing this same cost of empire, in trying to occupy and hold Iraq today, he said.
'Opel City' Mayors Coordinate Against Closures
Mayors of German cities where Opel plants are located have said they will coordinate steps to prevent shutdowns of production sites. At a meeting Oct. 28 in Ruesselsheim, Mayor Stefan Gieltowski, and his three mayoral colleagues from Bochum (Ottilie Scholz), Kaiserslautern (Bernhard Deubich), and Eisenach (Gerhard Schneider), resolved to cooperate closely, in order to prevent any city being played against another, in the ongoing fight for jobs at Opel.
Especially the shutdown of an entire production site is to be prevented, announced the four Mayors, who are also in close contact with their respective Opel factory councils. Although not said openly, the Mayors' agreement is important also for the organization of coming mass protests and other actions by the populations of the these cities, in defense of jobs, of the kind seen in the protests on Oct. 19.
Former German Labor Minister: The Problem Is No Jobs
In an interview with the current issue of the Catholic weekly Die Tagespost, Norbert Bluem, who is a Christian Democrat, and was Labor Minister from 1982 to 1998, said the call by neo-cons that firing of workers should be made easier, is wrong: "If every single job has 20 people applying for it, 19 of these will be rejectedwith, or without layoff protection. The main problem is: We don't have the jobs."
Bluem says the principles of Christian social ethics are not at all outdated: "If private property is linked again to jobs, we can liberate ourselves from the global players. Ninety-five percent of the billions of dollars that are daily changing their owners on the global data highway, have nothing to do with the exchange of goods or with production. This house of cards will collapse, one day."
"Three years ago, people were told, 'Buy stocks and become rich!' 700 billion euros (of assets) have been wiped out in Germany, during the past 18 months!" Bluem added that there is a lot of wisdom in the old principles, like "protecting the dignity of man, preserving the Creation, creating justice."
36,000 VW Workers Stage Two-Hour Strike Oct. 27
Not only has the Volkswagen management refused to make any concessions on its plan to cut expenses by 2 billion euros, but personnel director Peter Hartz, who gave the German government's "Hartz IV" austerity plan its name, provoked labor even more in an interview in the Oct. 27 Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Hartz said that if the cost-cutting plan were not carried through, with 1 billion of the 2 billion euros to be cut already set for the end of 2004, then massive layoffs were unavoidable.
Labor responded with a two-hour walkout of 30,000 auto workers in Wolfsburg Oct. 27, and another 6,000 in Baunatal (Kassel). On Oct. 28, protests were planned also in Hanover, where management-labor talks are taking place. The walkouts follow the Opel Bochum example, based on the right of workers to be informed by their factory council: They can interrupt work, this way, without staging a traditional warning strike.
If, on Oct. 29, which is the deadline, the talks fail, the auto workers can, and will, begin warning strikes and prepare a regular strike vote. It would be the first-ever real strike at Volkswagen in 55 years, and involve 103,000 production workers.
Psywar Against German VW Workers
Volkswagen's Peter Hartz insinuated, in a leak published in the Oct. 28 Bildzeitung, that without drastic cost-cutting, massive layoffs would become unavoidable. The report intimated that 15,000 jobs would be axed10,000 of these in production.
Bildzeitung added an "assessment" by Prof. Ferdinand Dudenhoeffer, head of the Gelsenkirchen-based CAR (Center for Automotive Research), which warned that 25,000, or even 30,000 jobs, would be lost. A few days earlier, Dudenhoeffer warned that, in addition to the 12,000 jobs that GM would axe in Europe, 10,000 of them in Germany alone, another 2,000 were on the list for the next round of layoffs, mostly in Italy.
German Government Issues Bad News on Pensions
The German government has announced that again in 2005, there will be no increase in pensions. The freeze of pension increases for 2004, which was decided a year ago, was explained at the time to the 20 million retired citizens of Germany, as an alleged "one-time" cut, which would "most likely" not be repeated in 2005, as the economic situation would "improve."
Now the financial situation of pension insurance in particular, is said to be insufficient to allow a pension increase in 2005. The share of the special-care insurance, which retired citizens have had to pay from April 2004 on, will stay in effect, as well.
Call for Action vs. U.S. Funders of German Neo-Nazis
Former Assistant German Defense Minister Willy Wimmer, a member of the Christian Democratic Party, said in an interview with the Oct. 27 Leipziger Volkszeitung daily, "These metastasic parties (DVU, NPD et al.) receive financial support, especially from the U.S.A.
"With reference to the principles of the U.S. Constitution [especially the freedom of speech clauseed.], worldwide, and also in our country, anti-Semitic, fascist, and generally radical ambitions are being instigated in a way that makes you feel sick."
Wimmer appealed to Wolfgang Thierse, the chief speaker of the German Parliament, to become active against this plague. It is most urgent, Wimmer stressed to Thierse, that U.S. funds that "are pouring into the right-wing-radical swamp in Germany, are dried out and blocked, as is done against financial sources of international terrorism."
The news daily added that "every year, big sums of money" for German right-wing radicals also come "from Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, France, and Spain."
European Union Commission Vote Hits a Brick Wall
Jose M. Barroso, the new President of the European Commission, who has been approved by the European Parliament (EP), has had to call off the vote on the members of the Commission, scheduled for Oct. 27. At least five members of the commission are not expected to be approved, and Barroso has so far refused to replace any of these.
The EU, therefore, has an outgoing Commission President, Romano Prodi, who cannot leave, and an approved new President who cannot come in. For the time being, Prodi will stay, with a rump commission, most members of which have already departed for new posts in the private sector. This means the Commission is largely defunct, and therefore cannot present a budget for the next fiscal year. In this unprecedented situation, the Commission may try to improvise a budget which is a simple continuation of the FY 2004, but this only further compounds an emergency situation.
In addition, France and Germany are certain to miss the Maastricht budget target also next year, a crisis which could lead to scrapping the entire budget-cutting system. As French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhardt Schroeder indicated at their Berlin meetings, Oct 27-28, they are not willing to dump the Maastricht system, and would, for the time being, only go so far as to modify it, getting some easing of budget rules.
The ongoing paralysis of the EU Commission may even be seen as working to the benefit of France and Germany, as Barroso never was the candidate of both (actually, Angela Merkel and Tony Blair chose and imposed him), and neither of the two has done anything in the past days for Barroso to help him out of the mess.
But all the intrigues and tactics pull the EU even more into the chaos. Therefore, the election of John Kerry as U.S. President, and a New Deal intervention from there into Europe, is the only thing that could reorganize European affairs in a positive way.
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