Angraeli Operative may take over Germany

[Moses]

....the BBC quoted CDU Lower Saxony prime minister Christian Wulff saying "Our leader, Angela Merkel, will carry out the kind of economic reforms that were implemented in Britain over the last 15 years".

www.euobserver.com/?sid=9&aid=19470

[Note-- she has had a strange career, starting w her role in East Germany, and immediate adoption as protoge of Kohl]

[Moses]

This from the New York Times-owned Herald Tribune:

Politicus: What a Merkel victory would mean to Europe

John Vinocur International Herald Tribune [is this another elite dynasty operating in terms of their hiring practices?]

TUESDAY, JULY 19, 2005

BERLIN How much, in terms of change, does it mean to Europe and its friends if Angela Merkel as expected beats Gerhard Schröder in September elections and becomes Germany's new chancellor?
 
Enough for her to tell Jacques Chirac in a visit to Paris on Tuesday that while she believes a strong French-German relationship is essential to Europe's success, the tandem won't re-emerge as a beacon unless it becomes more attractive and effective through economic reform - and abandons talk of turning the European Union into a counterweight to the United States. So say key Merkel advisers.
 
But the message does not stop there. Chirac will also hear that a Christian Democrat-led government in Germany has no intention of sending troops to Iraq.
 
Saying this in Paris tracks with what Merkel has been promising at home. And it uses Chirac's backyard as an authenticating prop for telling German voters that no German-boys-to-Baghdad plan lurks behind her nonadversarial approach to America (contrary to what Schröder suggested over the weekend).
 
No way will Merkel next go to Washington to see George W. Bush, a trip without a political upside for now. By contrast, in an election where Schröder, lumbering under record debt and the country's worst unemployment levels since 1949, casts himself as the "peace candidate," Chirac's value here to the conservatives as a photo-op symbol of a kind of status quo has become ironically exponential.
 
Whatever Merkel eventually does in terms of deregulating the rigid German economy and rebalancing German foreign policy between France and the United States, her task is plain over the eight weeks of a campaign where the Christian Democrats hold a wide lead in the polls (assuming a vote on Sept. 18 is approved by Germany's constitutional guardians). It consists of not jarring an electorate famously averse to risk or change, while offering up a couple of concrete examples of decisions to come.
 
In terms of fixing a dormant economy, that has been modest stuff so far. To look like the candidate who will not hide reality from voters, Merkel has promised to increase the value-added tax on many purchases and transactions. [regressive taxation that will slow consumer spending-- theres a thrilling "reform"]
 
But there is nothing specific about a great overhaul of Germany's locked box of a labor market. In the same scare-no-one-now approach, the platform pushes off to the end of a four-year term any promise that Germany will comply with the European Union's debt and deficit standards. That would be a voter-horrifying suggestion that a big reduction in German state expenditure is in sight.
 
The importance of the German-French relationship as a bellwether for what Merkel wants to do comes in here because alongside continuity, she wants to stress change.
 
I talked about this to Wolfgang Schäuble, who is widely recognized among Christian Democrats as the party's personification of wisdom, legitimacy and experience.
 
"A French-German motor for Europe?" Schäuble asked himself out loud. "In practical terms, no. But when a new government here achieves success, or just as important the impression that we're getting there, when we make a clear decision on deregulation then we can help France to get going in the right direction."
 
Friedbert Pflüger, the Christian Democrats' Bundestag foreign policy spokesman, who sat in with Merkel on her last visit to Chirac, said Merkel would make the point that the German-French relationship doesn't hold much appeal for anyone unless it becomes more "effective and attractive." That means economic and social reform, he said (skipping the not-for-voter-consumption details in Germany, or whether France during the remaining two years of Chirac's presidency could be led in a similar, although imprecise, direction).
 
Pflüger also stressed that Merkel would clearly lay down for Chirac where the French-German routine had gone stale and sour. Elsewhere in Europe, with Schröder in power, it had become perceived as dominating, exclusive, and secretive, Pflüger said.
 
He told me that Merkel was against all talk of European counterweights to the United States, and considered that the German-French-Russian axis "against America" during the war was responsible for the flight of the EU's new member countries to the side of the United States, and the resulting division of Europe and its fallout in the EU's uncertainties today.
 
Chirac cannot be anything but gracious in response. He reads the polls where his and Schröder's fortunes are paired in the same netherworld. Besides, Merkel was planning to talk with two of the president's potential successors, Nicolas Sarkozy, head of the Gaullist party and Chirac's bête noire, and Dominique de Villepin, the prime minister who now functions as a kind of political son-in-law to the weakened boss.
 
Merkel's planned hello to Villepin respects both form and her curiosity. Sarkozy, whom she has met and likes, would be the third link in a European Reform Group of new potential and vision that would involve a leadership triangle of Britain's Tony Blair or Gordon Brown, along with Merkel and Sarkozy.
 
When it comes to discussion of a re-do of the so-called European social model, Sarkozy actually talks a much tougher game than Merkel. And as much as he says he wants Europe to be a powerful political force, Sarkozy rejects as divisive and futile Chirac's operating concept of a multipolar world of counterweights to the United States.
 
Most significantly in real-time politics, unlike Chirac or Schröder, Sarkozy and Merkel are on the same vote-getting position that Turkey must not become a member of the EU, but rather a privileged associate. [It already has that status, virtually]
 
With the London bombings raising concern about the presence of radicals in Germany's Muslim population, Sarkozy's stance gives Merkel's approach both another bit of French legitimization and an independent allure contrasting with the support of Turkey's candidacy in Washington and London.
 
In the process, Merkel wants to project herself as a chancellor who naturally exercises her liberty to think and act on her own for Germany. [But she isn't-- she is a member of a fascist cabal, like Blair, like Sarkozy, none of whom are working on behalf of their countries]
 
Merkel may just try to emphasize that independence by telling Chirac how, as a chemist behind the Berlin Wall, she "always considered Ronald Reagan's position right" in facing down the Soviet Union.
 
As an East German deprived of the right to say so, Merkel, according to a new biography, supported Reagan and NATO's policy of installing missiles in alliance countries to counter the Soviet Union's rockets targeting the Allies.
 
If Chirac (or the Americans) should be wondering how much symbolic potential for change in Germany, or vision concerning the country's place in the world, is contained in this corner of Merkel's political curriculum vitae, her friends can note this: At the same time Merkel said she was silently praising Reagan, Gerhard Schröder was an active leader in mass demonstrations in West Germany to stop NATO from arming itself to respond, if necessary, to the Soviet nuclear threat. [Translation-- Under the new Axis, Europe will return to being a colony of US/Corporate interests and fascist ideology]
 

---

E-mail: [e-mail]
 
Tomorrow: Roger Cohen on why the British bombers decided to blow themselves up.
 
 

Copyright © 2005 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com

 

[Moses]

Oh, and the "anti-terrorism" laws and the sweeping away of constitutional protections will make it impossible for anyone to speak out.

[Moses]

Angraeli/fascist cabal calling for return of the SS in Germany:

London bombs push terror fight into German poll

01.08.2005 - 12:47
By Mark John

BERLIN (Reuters) - Anti-aircraft missiles trained on the skies above Munich's annual October beer festival? A flight ban over next year's Germany-hosted soccer World Cup?

These are some of the moves being urged by opposition German conservatives as the London bombings turn the fight against terror into an election issue ahead of Germany's September 18 poll.

The suicide bombings that killed 52 in London on July 7 and the failed attacks two weeks later have prompted soul-searching in Germany about how it would cope with similar attacks.

Sensing a chance to win votes on an issue that traditionally plays to its strengths, the German centre-right accuses Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and his coalition of underestimating the risk of an attack on German soil.

"We are in the same danger as America, England, Italy or Israel,"[/url] [/b]said Guenther Beckstein, interior minister of the conservative-ruled state of Bavaria who is leading the centre-right's campaign to tighten anti-terrorist rules. [naming the countries which form a fascist cabal that invaded the middle east for the sake of Israel-- clearly signalling that Merkel intends to bring Germany into this cabal]

"We cannot expect Germany to be spared for good," Beckstein said in a weekend newspaper interview, arguing that Germany was a potential target for attacks despite its opposition to the 2003 Iraq war, often cited by radical Islamists as a grievance.

Schroeder's centre-left government, already trailing badly in polls over high unemployment and the weak economy, is anxious not to lose further support by appearing soft on terrorists.

Last Friday it announced a flight ban over Berlin's government quarter days after a man crashed his light aircraft near Schroeder's office -- an incident not linked to terrorism but which still triggered a security alarm.

RED SHERIFF

But Beckstein and other allies of conservative chancellor candidate Angela Merkel are not satisfied.

They want flight bans to be enforced by ground-to-air missiles and attack helicopters, and to be extended to cover major events such as the World Cup and the Munich beer festival.

They have also called for Germany's army to be deployed domestically [They're ba-ack!! How wonderful a reuse to bring back the SS and in so many countries, world wide!] in anti-terror operations or in the aftermath of a terror attack, something currently banned by the constitution. Reluctantly, the government now says it partly agrees with them.

Klaus-Peter Schoeppner of pollster Emnid said the conservatives' campaign could have the dual aim of showing they were fit to govern and causing bickering within Schroeder's coalition of Social Democrats and ecologist Greens.

But others say they could be barking up the wrong tree in a country which, because of its experience with both Nazis and Communists, still regards authoritarian measures with mistrust. [But they are getting their talking points from the cabal, talking points used by members of this fascist alliance world-wide, and simulataneously]

While German media coverage of events in London has included admiration at the swift arrest of suspects, there has been wide condemnation of the "shoot-to-kill" policy that resulted in the police killing of a Brazilian man mistaken for a terrorist.

Others note that Schroeder's Interior Minister Otto Schily -- dubbed the "Red Sheriff" because of his tough reputation on law and order -- enjoys consistently high credibility ratings.

"Schily has virtually robbed the right of this issue," said Manfred Guellner of polling institute Forsa. "If they go after him now, they will fail."

Few analysts expect security to be a major vote-winner in September's vote. Andrea Wolf at pollsters Electoral Research said it would only emerge as such if there were an attack.

"And then, if the government was seen to be responding, acting, it would be the one to draw the benefit," she said.

[Moses]

Former ECB head Duisenberg found dead in swimming pool

www.money.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2005/08/01/cnduis01.xml&menuId=242&sSheet=/money/2005/08/01/ixfrontcity.html


By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard and Peter Allen in Paris (Filed: 01/08/2005)

Wim Duisenberg, the first president of the European Central Bank, was found lifeless in a swimming pool yesterday at his country house near Avignon, in the South of France. Rescuers were unable to revive him. French police said it was too early to know the cause of death.

The craggy, chain-smoking Dutchman, 70, oversaw the near flawless introduction of the euro in January 1999, followed by notes and coins three years later - the first stateless currency ever launched from scratch by a club of equal nations.

A bon viveur with a love for fast cars, good whisky, antique maps and golf - he once missed a key meeting to play a tournament in Spain - he was nevertheless a stickler for monetary orthodoxy. His anti-inflation rigour dated from traumatic years as Holland's finance minister during the oil crisis in the 1970s.

Viewed as a proxy for the German Bundesbank when first chosen to head the ECB in 1998, he held his nerve during the dramatic ups and downs of the fledgling currency.

He was plagued by criticisms that the euro was either too strong or too weak, and faced calls from politicians for interest rate cuts as the eurozone slumped after the dotcom collapse. But Mr Duisenberg always insisted that it was beyond the power of central banks to generate lasting growth, and never broke faith with Frankfurt's credo of price stability.

"I thought I did pretty well," he said at his farewell dinner in 2003.

Mr Duisenberg should have received an eight-year term but agreed to step down half way under a gentleman's agreement - brokered by Tony Blair - to make way for a "Frenchman". President Jacques Chirac had otherwise threatened to block the appointment, an early warning sign that the euro would also be a highly political undertaking.

In the end, France's Jean-Claude Trichet was under investigation for his role in the CrÈdit Lyonnais affair when the day came, so Mr Duisenberg went into extra time to keep the seat warm.

His tenure at the ECB was clouded by the militant anti-Israeli views of his wife Gretta. She caused outrage by describing Israel's occupation of the West Bank as worse than Nazi rule in Holland, the ultimate taboo in a country where 100,000 Jews were killed during the Holocaust.

Mr Duisenberg once joked that he would always be remembered because "people will be able to see my signature on the banknotes".