Cliff Kincaid
Exclusive for NewsMax.com
Tuesday, April 9, 2002

European disagreements with the U.S. on matters such as the environment and the Middle East are nothing new. But Heinrich Boll Foundation, an arm of the German Green Party, is taking the offensive to Washington today, when it will sponsor a conference at the Ronald Reagan Building to put pressure on the Bush administration to accede to demands for a global tax to finance "sustainable development” around the world.

The foundation is named after the German author who won the 1972 Nobel Prize for Literature. In the past, it has published reports such as "Global Taxes for Global Priorities.” It was a major funder of the global forum of non-governmental organizations that preceded the U.N.'s mid-March "Financing for Development” conference in Mexico. This forum, which featured several officials from communist Cuba, urged adoption of a global tax on currency transactions. Fidel Castro endorsed the measure at the U.N. summit.

"The Johannesburg Memo,” a document to be discussed at the Washington event, is described as a "Memorandum for the World Summit on Sustainable Development,” another U.N. conference scheduled Sept. 2-11 in South Africa. The memo calls for "Fairness in a Fragile World” through higher taxes and limits on economic growth.

A Tax on God's Air

It says capitalism has gone "astray” and "a new generation of instruments are needed such as user fees for the use of common goods” to help restructure the international system. It urges global "user fees” on the atmosphere, the oceans, and airspace to fund a World Environment Organization, an International Renewable Energy Agency and a World Commission on Mining, Gas and Oil Extraction.

Contending that "the well-off on this globe occupy an excessive part of the environmental space,” it says the "global North,” including the United States, "will need to bring down its overall use of the environmental space by 80-90% during the coming fifty years ….”

The document targets "consumer classes” in the U.S. and other countries for a "drastically reduced level of resource demand,” adding, "Such a transformation of wealth is the central challenge of sustainability.” To bring this about, the document urges such measures as low-speed cars, low-meat diets, and a switch to energy sources such as wind power. It says people should learn "forms of wealth which cannot be bought with a credit card” such as friendship.

The memo’s authors include Hilary French, who runs Global Governance Project at Worldwatch Institute in Washington. It says the proposed global tax to affect "hot money flows” in capital markets could generate between $50 billion and $300 billion annually.

Other authors include Wolfgang Sachs, a fellow at German Wuppertal Institute who has achieved notoriety for arguing for a "virtue of enoughness” rather than more economic growth, and Richard Loske, a member of the German Green Party and the German Parliament who has served as an adviser to the European Union and the United Nations.

A Business to Avoid

Another author is Anita Roddick, the British left-wing activist who founded The Body Shop, a cosmetics company with 1,500 stories in 47 countries. Rather than a war against terrorism, Roddick has urged "positive, peaceful alternatives” and the publication of "dissenting views.” After the terror attacks Sept. 11, she urged greater "understanding of Islam” and a "reinvigorated internationalism.”

Liane Schalatek, associate director of Heinrich Boll Foundation in Washington, told NewsMax.com that the group was a "political party foundation” associated with the German Green Party, which rules Germany in collaboration with the Social Democratic Party of Gerhard Schroeder. The SPD is an affiliate of the Socialist International.

Terrorist Ties

Foreign Minister Fischer, a Green Party member, has come under criminal investigation for his association with members of terrorist organizations such as Hans-Joachim Klein, an accomplice of the pro-Palestinian terrorist known as Carlos the Jackal. Fischer himself was reported to have participated in Palestine Liberation Organization camps in Jordan and to have attended a 1969 PLO meeting that called for "final victory” over Israel.

Another German government office, the Ministry for Development, which dispenses foreign aid, has commissioned a study, "On the Feasibility of a Currency Transaction Tax,” published Feb. 20. It urges Europe to impose a currency transaction tax as a first step toward global implementation of the measure.

Fischer’s party is officially on record in support of the currency tax.

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