Western European News Digest

Italy: It's Berlusconi Versus Tremonti

May 10 (EIRNS)—"Giulio Tremonti wants a [Franklin] Roosevelt policy, but his main enemy is Berlusconi," was the statement of an economic expert, familiar with Lyndon LaRouche, to EIR today. Silvio Berlusconi is Italy's new prime minister, and Tremonti is Treasury Minister.

"I thought about LaRouche when I heard Tremonti speak about a New Bretton Woods," the source said. Tremonti "has a problem with Berlusconi, who tolerates him but does not love him. Tremonti enjoys absolute support from the Lega Nord. [Lega head Umberto] Bossi has a veneration for Tremonti."

At the same time, Tremonti has a dialogue with part of the U.S. Democratic Party, through the Aspen Institute, the source said. The expert was interviewed on an Italian national television channel today, and explained that Tremonti's vision is "Rooseveltian." "He thinks that we need a New Deal kind of approach to lead the world out of the crisis, similar to what Roosevelt did in 1933. The question is that Tremonti is a minister in a Berlusconi government, and it will be interesting to see whether he will be able to implement his ideas."

Neoconservatism in Britain

May 13 (EIRNS)— In the last few years, "neoconservatism" has become more prominent inside Britain—its actual mother country. It had generally been billed as an "American" political phenomenon.

The old mass-murderous British colonial apparatus, lightly veiled under liberal propaganda since World War II, never died, and has begun to show up unadorned since the British installed their Cheney-Bush Administration.

This gang and its worldview recently created two neocon think-tanks in England: the Policy Exchange, founded in 2001 (officially 2002), and the Centre for Social Cohesion, created in 2007, as a project of Civitas—the Institute for the Study of Civil Society, which had been founded in 2000.

Historian Maurice Cowling, an unrepentant advocate of the original British project to create European fascism, and to unleash Hitler on Russia, set up the Salisbury Group in 1976. He named the group in honor of Robert Gacoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, the furiously anti-American 19th-Century British prime minister. The group was formed, and continues today, as a Cecil (Salibury) family affair, with the participation of the 6th Marquess of Salisbury, a supporter of white supremacy in Africa.

Lettieri Rips 'British Ideology' of Italian Democratic Party

May 9 (EIRNS)—Mario Lettieri, a supporter of Lyndon LaRouche's New Bretton Woods proposal, has circulated a letter against the leadership of his own Italian Democratic Party (PD). The letter was published on May 2 by the conservative daily Il Foglio, and is co-signed by Mario Barbi, a man reputed to be very close to former Prime Minister Romano Prodi. In it, Lettieri says the PD "looks like it is being trailed by ... a few families, and by the 'British ideology' exported to Brussels, of liberalization, privatization."

Lettieri (who was dumped from his party's candidates' list, and is no longer in the parliament), introduced a parliamentary resolution for a New Bretton Woods in 2005, and recently gave an interview to EIR in which he welcomed Giulio Tremonti's campaign for a NBW and against "marketism." He also endorsed LaRouche's Homeowners and Bank Protection Act (HBPA).

Bloomberg and Berlusconi To Push Mussolini in Italy?

May 12 (EIRNS)—Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi dined with New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg today in Rome, and got a "360 degree tour d'horizon," as Berlusconi's staff put it. The two discussed "the U.S. and Italian political and economic situation." Berlusconi and Bloomberg, who made similar careers in the media business, have neighboring vacation estates in Bermuda.

It is not known whether Bloomberg will meet the new mayor of Rome, Gianni Alemanno, who stated in an interview with the London Times, that Mussolini built great public works. (Alemanno was greeted with shouts of "Duce! Duce!" by crowds outside the Rome City Hall, on the night of his election victory.)

Irish Agriculture Minister Joins French WTO Concern

May 10 (EIRNS)—Ireland's new Agriculture, Fisheries and Food Minister, Brendan Smith, and his French counterpart, Michel Barnier, yesterday expressed concern at the direction of world trade negotiations and the impact these would have on European agriculture. The ministers met in Dublin to discuss a range of policy areas, including the global trade talks.

Smith, speaking at a lunch in honor of Barnier, said France and Ireland have always stood shoulder to shoulder in asserting the importance of farming and the food industry to the economy, society, and physical environment of Europe, during the many debates about the Common Agricultural Policy of the EU (CAP) in the past, and current negotiations in Brussels and Geneva.

'New Poor' Raid Supermarket Garbage Cans in France

PARIS, May 13 (EIRNS)—Shortly before the French Revolution, the hungry would wait impatiently for the end of aristocratic banquets and grab free food left at the tables of the wealthy.

At the very moment when Perfidious Albion calls for ending Europe's successful Common Agricultural Policy, a feature article in yesterday's Le Parisien reports that thousands of "new poor," among them, retirees, people on welfare, single mothers, marginal workers, and students, make nightly food raids on garbage cans of grocery stores shortly after the closing hours.

In France, the official poverty level starts below a monthly income of 817 euros: Currently, 7.1 million people in France (12%!) are at that level—2 million of them children. Food raids on garbage cans have increased markedly since this year's rise of the price of heating gas (9.5%) and food; milk, 11.70%; butter, 8.88%; and pasta, 11.44%.

On the 30th Anniversary of Aldo Moro's murder

May 9 (EIRNS)—Thirty years ago, on May 9, 1978, former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro was killed by the terrorist Red Brigades, in an operation steered by British intelligence. Moro was kidnapped, held prisoner for 55 days, and killed, on orders of the British Empire, with a special role played by Henry Kissinger, because of Moro's insistence upon Italian sovereignty over its political affairs.

Moro's daughter, Maria Fida, said today in an interview with Il Giorno that if one wants to know who killed Moro and why, it is more useful to look at Moro's policy and actions throughout his life, than to focus on the 55 days of Moro's imprisonment. Moro was aware that his life was at stake, she said, and he did not flinch, even after Kissinger warned him, in 1974, to abandon his policy a dialogue between Christian Democratic Party with the Italian Communist Party. "At the end of 1974, he had promised Mother that he would leave politics. In 1975, before the cradle of [his grandchild] Luca, he told Mother that he could not maintain that promise, because he had to ward off the threats hanging over the future of those small innocents."

Car Bomb Kills Policeman in Northern Spain

May 14 (EIRNS)—A powerful car bomb exploded outside a barracks housing police and their families, in northern Spain today, killing one officer and injuring four. The Basque terrorist group ETA is believed to be responsible. The last fatal attack by ETA was the shooting of a former town councillor in the Basque town of Mondragon on March 7, two days before Spain's general election. There were three bombings on May 1, but there were no casualties.

The group has staged more than 20 attacks since ending a ceasefire in December 2006, after peace talks with the government failed to yield concessions for the separatist group. The death toll since then stands at six, including today's fatality. ETA has killed more than 820 people since launching its campaign of bombings and shootings in the late 1960s.