Western European News Digest

Peterlini Asks Senate Debate on New Bretton Woods

Nov. 12 (EIRNS)—Sen. Oskar Peterlini intervened on the floor of the Italian Chamber of Deputies to "solicit" a debate on the four New Bretton Woods motions which have been introduced in that body. He said that they had been scheduled, then postponed because of new priorities, but that now a debate is urgent, given the hardship that the crisis is creating for Italian families. After Peterlini, Senators Elio Lannutti (IDV) and Giuliano Barbolini (PD) also called for a debate. The Senate was chaired by Deputy Chairman Rosa Angela Mauro, who said that she will bring it up for discussion to the conference of faction leaders next week.

Peterlini introduced the first such motion this year, on Sept. 24. His "Motion for the Reorganization of the International Monetary System: The New Bretton Woods" calls upon the Italian government to "act internationally to promote" a new system, "modeled on the New Bretton Woods as proposed by the American economist, Lyndon LaRouche."

German Economy Now Officially in Recession

Nov. 13 (EIRNS)—This morning, Germany's Federal Statistical Office announced that the German economy is now officially in recession, based on the fact that, "In the third quarter, Germany's gross domestic product shrank by 0.5% relative to the previous quarter." The third quarter results were even worse than the minus 0.2% that experts had been expecting.

One of the main reasons for this drop in output is that exporting branches of the industry, which for years kept the German economy buoyed with strong exports, are suffering a considerable drop in new orders from abroad. In September, 12% fewer contracts came in for exporting firms than in the same month a year ago.

Yesterday, the economic "wise men" panel of advisors to the German government predicted that growth in 2009 would be zero, which still appears like a rather rosy outlook, as the International Monetary Fund, for one, has a much more pessimistic view, forecasting a shrinkage of German growth by 0.8% in 2009. Somewhat remarkable is the wise men's denunciation of the government's conjunctural incentives program as an arbitrary collection of measures that will fail to have any impact. Instead, the advisors call for an annual, more targetted state intervention into infrastructure and education, in the range of up to Eu25 billion a year, which they say implies a partial lifting of the EU's Maastricht regulations for a couple of years, so that the state can borrow money to pay for the program. Some of the money could be repaid when the crisis is over, via increased taxes, the wiseguys recommended.

'New '68' Pattern in Europe?

Nov. 13 (EIRNS)—EIR is assembling a European picture of the possible deployment for "a new '68" terror wave. Elements of this are the anti-nuclear (Castor) mobilization in Germany, the punk assault against Humboldt University yesterday in Berlin, the anti-TGV terror actions in France, and the potential for violence in the student protests in Italy. The German media are pushing the scenario for a new 1968 terror wave, and a lot of money has been put into the production of a movie on the terrorist RAF (Red Army Faction), "The Baader Meinhof Complex," in the context of a campaign that portrays the RAF as a revolutionary legend.

Recent French arrests have uncovered the European-wide connections of French anarchists, who also participated in the Heiligendamm riots against the 2007 G-8 summit. In some cases, figures historically involved in the legal defense of the RAF are currently involved in the pro-RAF campaign. These networks also overlap with the British intelligence deployment against the LaRouche organization in Germany.

Baader-Meinhof Film: Psy-War vs. European Nations

PARIS, Nov. 13 (EIRNS)—The current wave of chaos, sabotage of infrastructure, and rioting in Europe is well supported by the new German film on the Baader-Meinhof (RAF) psychopaths.

The German weekly Der Spiegel devoted its cover story to the new film of Uli Ede and Bernd Eichinger, "The Baader-Meinhof Complex," the most expensive film ever produced in the history of German filmmaking (Eu20 million) which has already drawn a record audience of 2 million.

For scriptwriter Eichinger, the "communist" violence of the RAF was nothing but a response to the violence of Adolf Hitler. A critique of the film writes that, "while its members were both violent and criminal, they were also considered to be expressing an anger that many Germans born after the war felt towards their parents' generation, whom they commonly viewed as accomplices to the Nazi era." "Without Hitler, there never would have been a Baader-Meinhof gang," Eichinger told the Nov. 9 French weekly Journal du Dimanche.

Under the pretext of not wanting to create sympathy for terrorism, the film's authors decided to "show everything" in the finest detail. They reconstructed the assassinations as realistically as possible, and, down to the number of bullets fired, as closely as possible to historical fact.

The film is provoking protests from victims and surviving relatives. Bettina Röhl, the daughter of the former RAF "heroine" Ulrike Meinhof, and a journalist herself, accuses the filmmakers of glorifying psychopath Andreas Baader: "Finally, he got what he always wanted. He became in a posthumous manner the hero of an action film." Michael Buback, the son of federal prosecutor Martin Buback, shot by the RAF in April 1977, has joined the complaint of the widow of the CEO of Dresdner Bank, Jürgen Ponto, murdered in April 1977, who intends to sue to outlaw the film's distribution.

Groundbreaking Paper on EU Superstate

Nov. 12 (EIRNS)—Giuseppe Guarino, professor emeritus of the University of Rome, has written a paper demonstrating that the European Union is already a federal state. His findings are additional evidence in support of the constitutional challenge against the Lisbon Treaty filed by Prof. Karl Albrecht Schachtschneider in Germany.

Guarino has reviewed all the EU and non-EU originated legislation from 2000 to 2008 in the case of Italy, concluding that the EU legislation is predominant, and heavily so, in terms of number of bills and number of pages, compared to national legislation. "Since EU regulations and directives are applied to all EU member countries, it is believed that analogous results will be found for all EU member states," Guarino writes.