Western European News Digest
European Press Feature Battle Against Straussians
Germany's Die Zeit issued one of the strongest warnings yet in its June 26 edition against the ongoing conservative revolution in the United States, based on the ideas of Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss. Die Zeit warned: "If power talks law: A conservative revolution threatens the world historic heritage of America. Now, Europe has to come out in defense of Western values."
The author, Heinrich August Winkler, one of the most renowned historians of Germany, writes in the introductory passages of his essay:
"Is America presently living through the same thing that existed in Germany, more than seven decades ago: a conservative revolution? This is how people called and still call, that movement of the right-wing intellectuals who in the years after 1930, called for a storm against the liberal zeitgeist. One of its most influential representatives was the expert in state law, Carl Schmitt. In 1927, he presented one of his most famous essays, 'The Notion of the Political.' The specific political distinction, the one between friend and foe, was his core thesis, which soon was passionately discussed. The one reader who dealt with Schmitt in the profoundest way, was the German philosopher Leo Strauss. He had nothing against the friend-foe dogma. But he criticized Schmitt's critique of liberalism as not being radical enough, as it was still operating within the horizon of liberalism. That critique could be perfected only, if it succeeded in gaining a horizon beyond liberalism, he said.
"From 1937 to his death in the year 1973, Strauss was lecturing in the USA, spending his longest period at the University of Chicago. He became the center of a school that calls itself the neo-conservatives and which found, under Bush the Younger, what Carl Schmitt had looked for in vain: access to the one that had power. The most well-known Straussians of today include Assistant Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz; the founder of the neo-conservative central mouthpiece Weekly Standard, William Kristol; and Gary Schmitt, who is in the top echelon of the Project for the New American Centuryone of the neo-conservative thinktanks. They pursue the way shown to them by Strauss: the perfecting of Carl Schmitt's critique of liberalism.
"Naturally, American neo-conservatism is not just a copy of the German Conservative Revolution," Winkler writes, the difference being nominally, that the Germans at that time despised Western values, whereas today's neo-cons pay tribute to them. But they despise everyone who does not share their own distortion of the values of 1776. "In their own friend-foe thinking, they are dignified followers of Carl Schmitt."
Winkler adds that the neo-cons are the core group, but they would not have come to power without the Christian fundies, the radical puritans who have helped them in their rise. Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld are power politicians who don't think much of ideology, but with their geo-strategic agenda, all those currents collaborate with each other.
The Bush Doctrine of preemptive strikes, which has resulted from that, is a "revolutionary break with international law"; it is a real conservative revolution that has to be taken seriously, by the rest of the world. Winkler calls on the Europeans to no longer define themselves as simply "non-American," but to work out their own alternate policy design that honors the very values that have been sacrificed by the neo-cons in the States. That alternative design must be more than today's European Union, however.
Dutch Weekly on Strauss Fracas Skirts LaRouche Role
Holland's De Groene Amsterdammer joined the growing body of reports on the Leo Strauss connection to the neo-conservatives in the Bush Administration in its June 14 issue, but punted on the role of Democratic pre-Presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche's role in exposing this scandal.
The most important aspect of the article, is its headline, "An Open Conspiracy," which is meant as an oblique hint that the neo-cons might have been behind 9/11.
The article softpedals the neo-cons, but cannot cover up entirely. For example, the paper says the neo-cons did not "take over" the White House, as is often alleged ... and it is not really a "conspiracy" because it's all out in the open: Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Wolfowitz, the Big Three, make no secret of their foreign policy.
Admittedly, the stories about the neo-cons do have some basis since they have an unmistakable influencea network of mentors, protégés, friends, spiritual kin, and former colleagues who support one another and visit one another on their birthdays, and at their summer houses. They populate a density of advisory groups and thinktanks: Allan Bloom, Francis Fukuyama, William Kristol, Wolfowitz. Followers and sympathizers such as Clarence Thomas, John Ashcroft, and Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis Libby.
But the poor fellows are maligned. Strauss was half a mystic, who can be read in different ways. Is he really all that influential?
Admittedly, many neo-cons are Jewish and are often accused of serving Israeli interests. These accusations are fed by the fact that there are indeed close ties between the Christian right, the neo-cons, and the Likud. Regarding 9/11, the author points out that after the attacks, Cheney is supposed to have said, "This is the big turnaround," when he saw smoldering Manhattan. "After Sept. 11, the hawks were strengthened,... but that could not have been avoided probably in any country in the world. At most you can see for yourself that the neo-cons were the best prepared ideologically for the new phase."
Philosophy of Leo Strauss Determines Foreign Policy
Belgium's Financial Economic Times picked up on the growing scandal around followers of Leo Strauss in the Bush administration in its May 30 issue. A multi-part article by Birger van Wesenbeeck reported that politics in Washington has come under the spell of Leo Strauss, described as an obscure German-American political philosopher from the 1950s and '60s. Strauss's authoritarian and elitist political theories, according to those in the know, are the bible for the hawks in Washington, DC.
A number of key figures in and behind the Bush government confessed they were of the same thought as the political thinker Leo Strauss. This was Paul Wolfowitz, and a number of key figures of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), a neo-conservative group that represents so-called hawks in the Pentagon.
Interest in Strauss and his disciples was further fanned by an article of Seymour Hersh, the legendary investigative journalist of The New Yorker, disclosing that Abram Shulsky, head of the information service of the Pentagon, is a Straussian. His job is completely coherent with the philosophy of Strauss, deliberate disinformation to the public at large, for the purpose of reaching a goal of higher moral good.
This is also the reason why the "outing" of the neoconservatives has caused such a shakeup in Washington. Author Shadia Drury puts the political philosophy in a nutshell: "The continuous misleading of the citizens by those in power is central to Strauss' vision. Citizens must be led and they need strong leaders who know what is good for them. Just like Plato, Strauss finds that 'some people are made to lead and others to be led.' But contrary to the Greek philosopher, for Strauss there is no question of a universal morality of the leaders."
U.S., European Relations Still in a Stew
William Pfaff, a regular columnist for the International Herald Tribune based in Paris, warned in his June 26 column that the trans-Atlantic tiff still simmers. Pfaff wrote that the dispute started by the Bush Administration runs even deeper than people think. He first points to a meeting of European and U.S. policymakers who recently took place in Como, Italy, where the U.S. representative stated the Administration's position: "We are the most powerful. We are also the most virtuous. And even if we were not, might makes right. Everyone else is either with us or against us."
Pfaff then points to a recent appeal to Europe released by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which was signed by Madeleine Albright and Zbigniew Brzezinski, among others, cautioning Europe on being too independent and calling for U.S. officials to have a role in the European Council meetings. Pfaff writes that the fact that it calls for European unification only in the context of a transatlantic structure, seeking to turn the EU into a political NATO, means that forces, both Democratic and Republican, in the U.S. establishment share the same hegemonic policies as the Bush Administration.
He concludes that Europe will no longer accept such a policy, pointing to Germany as an example: "What happened as a result of the Iraq affair has proven to be a crucial change. There has been a quiet, unaggressive German assertion of independent European identity.... The trans-Atlantic political conflict has only begun. It will dominate the decade to come."
Danish Official in Iraq Critical of U.S. Administration
Ole Woehlers Olsen, who was chosen to take over from British forces in running the coalition administration in the city of Basra, Iraq in April 2003, has criticized the U.S.-led administration in Iraq, and announced he will not renew his six-month contract, as reported in DR online, June 23. Olsen was chosen for the Basra assignment because of his special qualifications. Olsen, a senior Danish diplomat, was Copenhagen's ambassador to Syria, and is a Muslim convert, who is fluent in Arabic.
Olsen said the work in Basra is more complex than previously thought, and that he is getting too little help from headquarters in Baghdad. He also complained that the people who work in the administration office, get no security when they travel. Denmark was the only European nation, besides Great Britain, to send military forces to Iraq during the war.
Europe Raises Objections at Iraq Reconstruction Conference
Germany, France, and other Europeans raised objections at the Iraq reconstruction donors' conference. The June 26 U.S.-UN-sponsored donors conference for Iraq did not go smoothly, the Washington Post reported. European donors, in particular Germany and France, as well as other Security Council members, indicated there are a few obstacles to their willingness to agree to pony up funds for Iraqi reconstructionsomething they agree with in principle, but cannot agree to in the way it is being dictated by the United States.
The U.S. failure to set up an Iraqi-controlled government, leads the list of complaints, as many won't pledge aid until one is set up. The refusal by the U.S. to assign sufficient authority to the International Advisory and Monitoring Board, which was set up as a result of the UN resolution which ended the oil-for-food program, is another key objection. Some countries are demanding that the U.S. provide better accountability and give assurances that billions of dollars of contracts, financed with Iraqi oil revenues, be put out for competitive bidding, i.e., not just to U.S. companies such as Bechtel and Halliburton. These obstacles have caused hesitation to donate.
An French source said, "they [the U.S.] Give the impression that everything is precooked in a system in which ..." the rest of us "have no say"; this provides "no incentive to participate."
British MPs Recommend Sanctions, Freezing Arms Sales to Israel
Two British Members of Parliament recommended economic sanctions and suspending arms deals to Israel, if it continues to buck the "Road Map" for Middle East peace. Jenny Tonge, MP for Richmond Park, and the Liberal Democrat spokeswoman for international development, MP Oona King, made the proposal after returning from a fact-finding mission organized by Christian Aid, the Guardian reported June 23.
CEO of Germany's Biggest State-Owned Bank Forced To Resign
Juergen Sengera, Chief Executive officer of Germany's biggest state-owned bank, West Landesbank, was forced to resign, immediately after the German financial supervision agency BaFin published its investigation into WestLB's 1.7 billion euro loss last year. WestLB, run by the North Rhine-Westphalia Landesbank, had been a key provider of credits for productive investments, ranging from infrastructure to machine building.
But in the late 1990s, WestLB opened up its own investment banking unit, WestLB Panmure in London, which recently ran into big trouble. In every one of the last two years' mega-bankruptcies, including Enron and WorldCom, WestLB credits were involved and had to be written off, earning it the nickname "Wild WestLB." In April 2003, the project finance department of WestLB Panmure, "Principal Finance," suddenly announced a EU430 million write-down of investments in BoxClever, a British TV rental company. "Principal Finance" was run by the American star investment banker Robin Saunders, formerly working for Deutsche Bank in London and famous for making big profits in highly speculative deals, such as investing in the bankrupt British Railtrack Plc. Her resignation is expected to follow soon.
The president of the Rhineland S&L Association (RSGV), Karlheinz Bentele, also member of the WestLB supervisory board, is now calling for immediately putting an end to the global adventures of WestLB and demanding that the bank focusses again on its traditional domestic businesses.
Italy Pays the Price for Not Going Nuclear
The Italian government has enforced electricity blackouts throughout the country due to supply shortages under conditions of unusual heat, as of June 26. Blackouts in all Italian cities of 1.5-2 hours long have been imposed. Additionally, France has reduced by 800 megawatts its delivery of electricity to Italy.
Italy renounced the use of nuclear energy following a referendum in 1986, and since then, has imported nuclear-produced electricity from France, Switzerland, and Slovenia. The Italian government has said the blackouts will continue.
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