In this issue:

Schroeder Emphasizes Strategic Partnership with Russia

French Truckers March Against High Diesel Fuel Prices

Dock Workers Across Europe Stage Strikes vs. Deregulation

Queen Promotes New Labour's 'Politics of Fear'

'Foiled Terrorist Attack' in London 'Too Good To Be True'

Italian Monthly Quotes LaRouche on Synarchist-Fascist Threat

Ledeen: Netherlands Events Herald Clash of Civilizations

Nazi Schacht Praised for Post-War Economic Miracle

From Volume 3, Issue Number 48 of EIR Online, Published Nov. 30, 2004

Western European News Digest

Schroeder Emphasizes Strategic Partnership with Russia

In a Nov. 23 interview with German ARD TV, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder was very clear about his priorities concerning foreign policy, when he was asked about his relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Schroeder referred to Putin as a "very close friend of mine." Putin, together with members of his Cabinet, participated last week in the EU/Russia summit in The Hague, and will, in December, meet Schroeder and French President Jacques Chirac for a tripartite summit in Luebeck.

Schroeder stated that the German-Russian relationship is not only based on mutual strategic interests, but that there is also a close human dimension to it. Schroeder spoke of Russia-Germany relations as a "core" element of his policy, saying that he will concentrate on deepening the strategic partnership with Russia—a policy outlook which also is essential for Europe as a whole. He adamantly rejected the media hype against Putin, as having nothing to do with reality. If one wishes to understand Russia, he said, one has to understand the history and culture of the country, which also includes the bitter history of the wars of the 20th century, and particularly the last 75 years of Soviet history. Even if there is sometimes a difference of opinion, Schroeder said, the mutual interest to work and cooperate together in various fields remains predominant.

French Truckers March Against High Diesel Fuel Prices

Drawing the consequences from government inaction against the rising prices of diesel fuel, truckers from various regions of France launched a "March on Paris" Nov. 22, approaching the city from all sides.

In so doing, traffic was blocked to a great extent on crucial highways and interstate roads, because the protesting drivers are driving slowly. The government has threatened police intervention.

Dock Workers Across Europe Stage Strikes vs. Deregulation

Dock workers in several European countries are protesting against European Commission plans for deregulation. On Nov. 19 dock workers in Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, Britain, France, and Greece staged coordinated warning strikes for several hours, in protest against the Bolkestein Guidelines. The guidelines, named after past Competition Commissioner Frits Bolkestein, call for abandoning the existing guidelines for loading/unloading at ports, which include strict rules as to what is acceptable to dock workers and what isn't.

The Guidelines seek to authorize crews of ships to do the unloading and loading on their own. But crews on many, if not most, freight ships, are not trained to operate cranes which unload containers at a port. On Nov. 22, representatives of dock workers from all of Europe met in Brussels, to map out more protest and strike actions.

Bolkestein, who is from the Netherlands, is also a Samuel Huntington-type racist: Speaking about the recent instances of "clash of religions" in the Netherlands, he called all Moroccans "killers."

Queen Promotes New Labour's 'Politics of Fear'

Queen Elizabeth II of England presented New Labour's program for national elections in Britain at the formal opening of Parliament Nov. 22. Her speech focussed on "security" and "opportunity," according to British press reports.

A well-informed British observer said that the whole New Labour project is focussed on "the politics of fear" for the elections, scheduled for May 2005. There will be many terror "threats," real or orchestrated, as occurred Nov. 23 when it was claimed that an al-Qaeda plot to attack Canary Wharf in London had been foiled.

In her speech the Queen said: "My government recognizes that we live in a time of global uncertainty with an increased threat from international terrorism and organized crime. Measures to extend opportunity will be accompanied by legislation to increase security for all."

The Queen promised "economic stability," and to "reform the public services"—meaning eliminating the welfare state, a key Blair policy. Among controversial "security" measures will be introduction of "identity cards" for British citizens by 2007. These would be compulsory national "biometric" ID cards, which Home Secretary David Blunkett claims will help "fight terrorism."

She also announced that legislation will be introduced to set up the Serious Organized Crime Agency, an FBI-style agency, which will take officers from existing police agencies and concentrate them in a "super" national force. SOCA chairman Sir Stephen Lander favors permitting phone taps to be allowed as evidence in British courts. It will also include a "radical overhaul" of police officers' powers. Among other things under consideration, are measures making every offense "arrestable."

"My government will continue to work with partners around the world to prevent terrorism and the proliferation of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and the problems of drug smuggling and international crime," the Queen said. A proposed counter-terrorism bill could include no-jury trials for terrorism suspects.

'Foiled Terrorist Attack' in London 'Too Good To Be True'

News of a "foiled terrorist attack" on Canary Wharf in London added spice to Queen Elizabeth II's speech at the opening of Parliament.

Noted commentator Iain MacWhirrter, writing in the Nov. 23 Glasgow Herald, recalled the "tanks that appeared at Heathrow [airport] a couple of years back just as the government was trying to persuade Parliament about the dangers posed by Iraq. It was just too good to be true....

"What could be better guaranteed to frighten the life out of us than the thought of a 9/11 happening in central London? As G.W. Bush demonstrated, fear works."

There is a lot of "theater" in the whole New Labour propaganda operation, including leaks about all kinds of extreme anti-terror measures such as suspending jury trials, allowing phone-tap evidence in court, and extending imprisonment without trial. These did not materialize in the Queen's speech, but the atmosphere for these measures is being created.

Italian Monthly Quotes LaRouche on Synarchist-Fascist Threat

La Voce della Campania (The Voice of Campania), a left-wing investigative monthly published in Naples, published a lengthy article in its November issue, which combined material taken from EIR and a telephone interview with EIR correspondent Claudio Celani, together with their own research on the synarchist networks protecting right-wing fascist organizations such as the political party of Alessandra Mussolini (granddaughter of "Il Duce") and Roberto Fiore. The article is likely to provoke shockwaves, as it is published in Mussolini's home town—where her party got 9% in the recent by-elections—by a magazine well known for its articles and dossiers against the establishment.

"A new neo-con soul," writes author Andrea Cinquegrani, "is getting ready to conquer the country, in perfect harmony with the analogous political movement and movement of thought already solidly rooted in the United States, referring to old and new supporters of Bush's party, and emerging in various parts of Europe. Underlying the neo-con network—many neo-cons 'converted' after 9/11, the alliance is growing among extreme right-wing forces in Europe, unified under the common Euronat flag, whose members are, besides the Italian Forza Nuova group, the Nationalist Slovakian Party, the Belgian Vlaas Block, the Hellenic Front, and the Spanish Democracia Nacional."

Cinquegrani reports on the election results of the right-wing DVU and NPD in Saxony, Germany, and then quotes EIR's Celani: "This is the signal that there is a major danger on the Old Continent: in Germany, for instance ... the former giants SPD and CDU risk being slowly eroded by this mounting brown tide. The last electoral round, under this profile, has been extremely indicative. I smell the stench of Strategy of Tension, which takes me back to those dark Italian days." Cinquegrani then writes: "Let us reconstruct, together with Celani, the brown map that "threatens to pollute the source of democratic roots."

The article reviews the timetable of the international Falangist meetings, starting November 2002 in Madrid, listing all participants, including the Argentinian delegation, and Franco protégé Blas Pinar. Then, in December 2003, the unification of three neofascist groups in Italy, with the "marriage" between Fiore and Mussolini. Again, Celani is quoted, saying: "The implications of such a regrouping, at the international and national level, are greatly worrisome, especially regarding the aspect of the terrorist threat. As Lyndon LaRouche warned before the March 11 bombs [in Madrid], here we are dealing with professionals, veterans of the Strategy of Tension, currently controlled by 'synarchist' factions which are connected to military and intelligence circles. Moreover, what happened in the United States in March 2003 is significant, as a neo-Nazi, Samuel Huntington, in an article, advocated a real civil war for the Americas between the Anglo-Protestant culture and the Hispanics."

Ledeen: Netherlands Events Herald Clash of Civilizations

If anyone had doubts about the threat to world civilization stemming from such recent scenarios as in the Netherlands involving the circulation of the provocative anti-Islam film Submission, and the murder of trash film-maker Theo van Gogh, one glance at a column on the subject by Michael Ledeen should put such doubts to rest.

In a Nov. 10 article in the National Review, Ledeen, a self-professed "universal fascist" with long ties to terrorists in Europe, and an Iran-Contra past, proclaims with Bush-like sanctimoniousness, a clash of civilizations, à la Samuel Huntington, and, in particular, reads the riot act to Europeans for being too tolerant, and for failing to recognize their "natural friends—like the United States and Israel, and ... embracing enemies such as the radical Islamist regimes and elevating Yasser Arafat to near beatific stature."

The Europeans, he says, have "opted for a soulless materialism ... [and] Now they deride us because of our presumed archaic faith. They even equate American religion with the fundamentalism that now menaces them inside their model cities and threatens their enormously self-satisfied secular utopia."

Nazi Schacht Praised for Post-War Economic Miracle

Berlin Humboldt University Professor of Economic History Albrecht Ritschl, holds forth on his website, that contrary to the myth that the German postwar economic and monetary order was created by social market economists (Ritschl leaves out any mention of the Bretton Woods system and Marshall Plan), it was Reichsbank governor Hjalmar Schacht, the man who designed the Nazis' economic policies in 1934-37, who shaped the economic thinking of post-war Germany. By introducing a series of regulations, the "Third Reich shaped the economic order of the German Federal Republic and dominated it," wrote Ritschl. "It was not Ludwig Erhard and the fathers of the social market economy who overcame the legacy of National Socialism, but the liberalization policy debate which began in the '80s, which has shaped today's reform debate.... Beginning with the reform debate today, Germany finally steps out from behind the long shadow of the Third Reich."

Ritschl is a sophist, who consciously turns history upside down, distorting the true origins of Germany's postwar economic development, by equating a successful, dirigist Roosevelt-type of state participation in the economic process, with Nazi economics.

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