For The Record

FTR #235 Trans-Atlantic Machinations by the Fourth Reich

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1. Begin­ning with dis­cus­sion of maneu­ver­ing by Ger­many and the German-dominated Euro­pean Union designed to max­i­mize Ger­man influ­ence within Europe while min­i­miz­ing that of the United King­dom, the broad­cast high­lights a warn­ing by EU trade com­mis­sioner Pas­cal Lamy. Attempt­ing to dis­suade Britain from enter­ing into NAFTA, Lamy pre­dicted iso­la­tion and fail­ure, if the UK did join the trade pact. (Finan­cial Times, 7/7/2000, p.7.) As noted in past broad­casts, the EMU con­sti­tutes the real­iza­tion of pan-German the­o­reti­cian Friedrich List’s plans for Ger­man world dom­i­na­tion through an eco­nom­i­cally uni­fied Europe con­trolled by Ger­many. List visu­al­ized this union in the 1840’s as a vehi­cle for dis­plac­ing Great Britain as the dom­i­nant power on earth.

2. Next, the pro­gram sets forth Ger­man for­eign min­is­ter Joschka Fischer’s pro­pos­als for a fed­eral Europe, out­lin­ing revi­sions which would increase Ger­man influ­ence. (Ibid., p.2.) Debate in Britain over whether to adopt the Euro con­tin­ues, with a high level of invest­ment lead­ing some ana­lysts to rec­om­mend against join­ing the EMU.

3. Other observers main­tain that the rel­a­tively strong pound makes the cost of doing busi­ness in the UK too high. (Both BMW and Ford have closed plants in Britain recently, due to the high cost of doing busi­ness there.) (The New York Times, 7/6/2000, p. C-4.)

4. Fre­quently over­looked is the EU’s capac­ity to block merg­ers by Amer­i­can com­pa­nies. Recently, Microsoft aban­doned its pur­chase of Telewest, a British telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions firm, as a result of a threat by the Euro­pean Union to block the acqui­si­tion. (Wall Street Jour­nal, 7/5/2000, p.A3; Wall Street Jour­nal, 7/8/2000, p. C1.) In addi­tion to rep­re­sent­ing a fun­da­men­tal incur­sion on Amer­i­can sov­er­eignty (the United States is not rep­re­sented in the Euro­pean Union), the EU’s influ­ence on Amer­i­can cor­po­rate prac­tice can serve as a vehi­cle for Ger­man eco­nomic hege­mony. (Mr. Emory’s obser­va­tions in this con­text should not be mis­in­ter­preted as an endorse­ment of eco­nomic glob­al­iza­tion or con­cen­tra­tion of eco­nomic power. Rather, they should be under­stood as analy­sis of the geo-political impli­ca­tions of under­cur­rents within these impor­tant, and on-going eco­nomic phenomena.)

5. In addi­tion to pres­sure from the U.S. Depart­ment of Jus­tice over poten­tial monop­o­lis­tic over­tones to the deal, the recent can­cel­la­tion of the WorldCom-Sprint merger stemmed in part from oppo­si­tion by the EU. This can­cel­la­tion may facil­i­tate the takeover of either World­Com or Sprint by Deutsche Telekom, the for­mer Ger­man tele­phone monop­oly. Deutsche Telekom is look­ing to enter the Amer­i­can telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions mar­ket. (The New York Times, 6/27/2000, p. C2.)

6. When con­sid­er­ing Ger­man cor­po­rate pol­icy, one should not lose sight of the fun­da­men­tal con­nec­tion between cor­po­rate Ger­many and the Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion, the eco­nomic com­po­nent of a Third Reich gone underground.

7. Another impor­tant exam­ple of Ger­man polit­i­cal inter­fer­ence in Amer­i­can cor­po­rate (and national secu­rity) mat­ters is the recent pres­sure by Ger­man busi­ness exec­u­tives, as well as Chan­cel­lor Ger­hard Schroder, to can­cel the sale of Span­ish muni­tions maker Santa Bar­bara Blinda­dos to Gen­eral Dynam­ics, a U.S. defense com­pany. (Finan­cial Times, 7/7/2000, p. 2.) The Ger­mans were con­cerned about the deal, because the acqui­si­tion would give the U.S. group details about Germany’s Leop­ard II bat­tle tank, which SBB is licensed to man­u­fac­ture. Mr. Emory spec­u­lates about grow­ing indi­ca­tions of diver­gence between German/European defense and intel­li­gence con­sid­er­a­tions and those of the United States.

8. Next, Mr. Emory turns to dis­cus­sion of con­tin­u­ing German/European pres­sure on the Ech­e­lon elec­tronic intel­li­gence func­tion of the National Secu­rity Agency and the GCHQ (an ele­ment of British intel­li­gence) and the closely related Men­with Hill (UK) facil­ity. The Euro­pean Par­lia­ment has opened for­mal hear­ings into this mat­ter. (San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle, 7/6/2000, p. A16.)

9. In addi­tion, the Bun­destag (the upper house of the Ger­man leg­is­la­ture) has opened hear­ings into alleged NSA spy­ing on Ger­man cor­po­ra­tions. (Lon­don Inde­pen­dent, 7/2/2000, p.1)

10. Pres­sure on the NSA/GCHQ liai­son is being mounted in the United King­dom, where it is being said that this liai­son per­mits the United States to spy on British cor­po­ra­tions. (Idem.) As noted in past dis­cus­sions of the Men­with Hill facil­ity, it is essen­tial to Amer­i­can national secu­rity (its real or alleged trans­gres­sions aside.) Mr. Emory reit­er­ates his view that the German/EU pres­sure on Echelon/Menwith Hill con­sti­tutes a post Cold War strate­gic par­a­digm shift of sig­nif­i­cance equal to that of the Japan­ese attack on Pearl Harbor.

11. Next, the pro­gram sets forth the grant­ing of a pres­ti­gious lit­er­ary award to a pro-Holocaust revi­sion­ist. Ernst Nolte (the recip­i­ent of the Deutsch­land Foundation’s Kon­rad Ade­nauer Award) has con­tended that, since National Social­ism was allegedly the strongest force oppos­ing Bol­she­vism, and since many Jews were allegedly pro-communist, Hitler may have had “ratio­nal” rea­sons for his pol­icy toward the Jews. (The New York Times, 6/21/200, p.A3.) The award has cre­ated a jour­nal­is­tic firestorm in Ger­many (to the great credit of the Ger­man peo­ple and the Ger­man press). Sadly, it is indica­tive of the retrench­ment of fas­cism in Europe, which was never truly eliminated

12. A major ele­ment of dis­cus­sion in the sec­ond half of the pro­gram is an op-ed col­umn by Mar­tin A. Lee. (Los Ange­les Times, 6/25/2000.) In addi­tion to dis­cussing many of the Nazi ele­ments put back in power at the end of World War II in order to fight com­mu­nism, Lee notes the pro­found con­nec­tions between for­mer Chan­cel­lor Hel­mut Kohl and the Third Reich residua in the Fed­eral Repub­lic. In par­tic­u­lar, Lee notes con­nec­tions between Kohl and a Nazi indus­tri­al­ist named Fritz Ries, him­self con­nected in the post-war period to Eber­hard Taubert, a Goebbels pro­pa­ganda min­istry offi­cial who found work with the national secu­rity estab­lish­ment of the Fed­eral Republic.

13. The pro­gram con­cludes with a look at grow­ing fas­cism and his­tor­i­cal revi­sion­ism in the United States, and its con­nec­tions to the fas­cist milieu of the right-wing of Kohl’s CDU. The pro­gram high­lights con­nec­tions between Andreas Strass­meier (son of Kohl’s chief-of-staff Gun­ther Strass­meier), the Okla­homa City bomb­ing, and Amer­i­can attor­ney Kirk Lyons. (The Beast Reawak­ens, hard­cover, Lit­tle Brown & Co., pp. 352–3, ISBN 0–316-51959–6.) The pro­gram notes Lyons’ involve­ment in the neo-Confederate move­ment, as well as attempts by Lyons’ pro­fes­sional asso­ciates at por­tray­ing slav­ery as a rel­a­tively benev­o­lent institution.

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