- Spitfire List - https://spitfirelist.com -

FTR #235 Trans-Atlantic Machinations by the Fourth Reich

Lis­ten:
MP3 Side 1 [1] | Side 2 [2]

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 [3]’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 [4], 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, 6/21/2000, 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 [5]. (The Beast Reawak­ens [6], 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.