United States News Digest

LaRouche: 'GM Must Be Taught a Brutal Lesson'

Lyndon LaRouche said Nov. 6 that General Motors must be taught a brutal lesson, in response to the fact the GM's board of directors acted without the knowledge of President Barack Obama to pull the plug on the deal which had been agreed upon for a consortium led by Canadian supplier Magna and Russia's Sberbank to take over GM's Opel unit in Germany and other European countries.

LaRouche, asked: What action is going to be taken against General Motors, which has been bailed out by the U.S. government, and now they have turned around and double-crossed the President of the United States on a business deal? The President was screwed. This is not personal. It is more than personal. No matter how bad the President may be, you don't screw the President of the United States. No matter what mistakes the President may make, you don't screw the institution of the Presidency, especially when, in the case of GM, it has received so much from the U.S. They have no right to do this. When the President has bailed out your company, you should at least consult with the President before taking such an action.

LaRouche continued: Maybe they should be made to pay some penalty. Maybe they should be taught a lesson. Maybe GM has not been civilized yet.

GM has to be taught a brutal lesson. The Attorney General should look into this, to see if there is fraud involved, to see if there is a fast-buck operation of some kind involved.

This affects U.S. relations with Germany, a nation which is an important ally of the U.S. You don't let a private interest screw an ally of the U.S. in this fashion. They have to be taught a lesson. They don't represent the American people. They haven't done anything for the U.S. people. Rather, they have been living on the generosity of the U.S. government. Without the U.S. government, they wouldn't be in business. They need to learn a lesson. We owe it to the American people to take decisive action.

Blood on the Floor: Pelosi's Health Bill Squeaks Through House

Nov. 9 (EIRNS)—Over the next few days, we anticipate that the stories will begin to surface, concerning the brutal threats and blackmail by which House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), backed by the Obama White House, managed to ram her Nazi health-care bill through the House of Representatives by a 220-215 vote late last night (Saturday night).

Thirty-nine Democrats, including 24 members of the Blue Dog group of fiscal conservatives, voted against the bill; only one no-voter—Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio)—is a single-payer (universal health care) advocate. In a statement issued after the vote, Kucinich blasted the Pelosi bill for perpetuating the existing system of "a predatory, for-profit insurance system which makes money not providing health care," and he charged that the bill accelerates the privatization of health care. He particularly pointed to the extraordinarily high administrative costs of the present system.

The sole GOP vote for the bill came from Joseph Cao (La.) who was promised all sorts of goodies by the Obama White House, including aid for hospitals in his New Orleans district and disaster-loan forgiveness.

Many observers expect that the deal that Pelosi made—to allow the anti-abortion language of the Stupak amendment into the final bill—will be a hollow victory for abortion opponents, backed by the Catholic bishops, among others. The language prohibiting Federal funding of abortions, as with other Pelosi compromises, is likely to be stripped out of the final bill in the House-Senate conference; Obama's team wants the final bill to conform to the vicious cost-cutting Baucus bill in the Senate, more than to anything passed by the House—especially as the House bill does not include cost-cutting measures the Administration considers crucial such as the Independent Medicare Advisory Council (IMAC) rationing board—otherwise known as the "death panel."

With the fight now shifting to the Senate, Politico reports that Senate Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) will hold Saturday sessions during December, to attempt to get health reform done by Christmas. But Politico also notes that the Senate debate has stopped dead, and that the Senate may not even begin floor debate until after Thanksgiving. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said today on CBS that the House bill "is dead on arrival" in the Senate, and GOP consultant Ed Rollins stated that the House bill "wouldn't get 50 votes in the Senate today."

Arendt Exposed as a Nazi Once Again

Nov. 4 (EIRNS)—Bernard Wasserstein, a prominent historian, and Ron Rosenbaum, a columnist for Salon magazine, have shed new light on the Nazi affinities of the late Hannah Arendt, who promulgated the "Authoritarian Personality" doctrine, along with Theodor Adorno and others.

It was Arendt's and Adorno's theory, which took the privileged, morally weakened offspring of the FBI security-cleared white-collar elite of the 1945-57 period, and enabled them to hatch into the fascist Baby Boomers of the Mark Rudd stripe during 1964-68. Lyndon LaRouche has pointed out the critical role of Arendt's and Adorno's teaching that there is no truth—there is only opinion, only "spin." Indeed, it is the man or woman who adheres to the criterion of truthfulness, who is the hated and feared "authoritarian personality."

LaRouche has exposed that Arendt and Adorno were, themselves, ideologically committed Nazis, but that their friends had had to explain to them that their Jewish origin made Nazi Party careers impossible for them, and that they had to flee to Britain and the United States.

Arendt began an affair with Prof. Martin Heidegger when she was 18 and he was twice her age. She continued her close friendship and support of him through the time he joined the Nazi Party, and even through his purging of the Jewish professors from Freiburg University as Rector there under the Hitler regime. After the war, when Heidegger refused to renounce his Nazi activities, and was therefore prohibited from teaching, Arendt's promotion of him helped maintain his status as an international celebrity.

Wasserstein, in London's Times Literary Supplement of Oct. 9, and Rosenbaum, in Salon on Oct. 30, call attention to Arendt's reliance on actually Nazi anti-Semitic writings, as authoritative on Jews and Judaism, in her book The Origins of Totalitarianism.

"One of her authorities on South African Jews," Wasserstein reports, is an article by Ernst Schultze, "a longstanding Nazi propagandist, that appeared in ... a German publication founded and directed by the prominent Nazi ideologist Alfred Rosenberg." And then, "in a new preface [to The Origins of Totalitarianism] written in 1967, Arendt commends the work of the leading Nazi historian Walter Frank, ... whose 'contributions,' " Wasserstein quotes Arendt, " 'can still be consulted with profit.'

In Reply to EIR, Fauci Defends Vaccine Cartel

Nov. 2 (EIRNS)—The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci, defended the corporate H1N1 vaccine cartel which, the Federal government has said, "overpromised" on the delivery of the vaccine, leaving millions of Americans vulnerable to the pandemic. At a Health and Human Services Department press conference today, Dr. Fauci said that "experience tells us that a partnership with industry with what they do very well" is best. In saying so, Fauci ignored the experience of 1950s America, for example, when the U.S. government directed the successful vaccine campaign against polio.

Fauci made his defense of the cartel in response to a question from EIR: "The Strategic National Stockpile has now released the last of its supply of Tamiflu—some 234,000 doses. The CDC has said that the stockpiles won't be replenished until next year by the manufacturers. And the government has said that the manufacturers 'overpromised' on the vaccine itself. How have these two things been allowed to happen, when the lives of Americans at stake? And why doesn't the government itself produce the vaccine?"

Fauci contended that the problem is not whether it is government or industry that directs the production of the vaccine. He said the problem is with the technology. Despite years of investment to be able to produce vaccines in cells, he said, production is still dependent on the "fragile" procedure of producing vaccines in eggs. Since that was the technology available in April, when the decision was made to produce the vaccine, he said that is the technology that had to be used.

Fauci and his colleagues also said that the Tamiflu supply that was released by the Strategic National Stockpile was oral liquid Tamiflu for children, and that ample supplies of adult Tamiflu exist.

In Washington State, 'These Cuts Can Kill'

Nov. 2 (EIRNS)—A new report jointly released by the Washington State Budget & Policy Center, the Washington State Public Health Association, and the Washington State Nurses Association shows that programs and services have been reduced or eliminated in 24 of 31 local health jurisdictions in the state. In addition, 23 of 31 local health jurisdictions cut back on staff, and 24 of 31 have been hit with sizable funding cuts. Cuts have also been made to staff, including public health nurses. Says RN Sofia Aragon, senior governmental affairs advisor for the Washington State Nurses Association, "We cannot cut public health budgets that focus on prevention, and expect to have a healthy public. These cuts can kill."

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than 150 of what the BLS calls "mass layoff events," disposing of 50 or more health-care and social service workers at a stroke, took place in the third quarter this year across the country. And more than 10,000 laid-off health-care workers made initial filings for unemployment benefits in the same period.