Monday, July 27, 2009

When is it good to have a military coup?

Long time ago, on a continent far-far away, there was a beautiful, progressive (in a good sense of the word) and tolerant country.  It was a parliamentary democracy.  Its President played largely ceremonial role.  The leader of the party winning the most seats in parliament would usually become the country's Chief Executive and form a Government.  One day the country had elections, and a party favoring socialism (a popular idea at the time) and claiming to represent working class won the most seats in parliament.  This party did not win the majority of seats, but it did win the plurality.  And, thanks to clever parliamentary maneuvering and coalition building, the party's leader became the Chief Executive of the country's Government.  The economic situation was pretty bad, and so this Chief Executive persuaded the parliament to grant him the right to rule by decree.  After all, something had to be done quickly to rectify the economic situation.  The country's constitution provided for it, and it would be only temporary.  In 4 years these extraordinary powers would be reviewed.  In fact, they were, but by then the parliament simply extended those powers indefinitely.  But I am getting ahead of myself.  Shortly after this country acquired this new energetic Chief Executive the country's President died.  The new Chief Executive was pretty popular, so the country citizens overwhelmingly voted for him to assume the office of the President as well.  After that the Government decreed that the officers of the country's armed forces should swear allegiance not to the country and its people, but to the Chief Executive himself.  Now, let's stop and think.  Could that be going too far?  Perhaps the country's military had a good reason to rebel at this point and remove this Chief Executive from power?  But they did not, although there was an opposition within the military to this new regime.  By the time the military did make an overt attempt to remove this Chief Executive from power, it was already too late.


In case you haven't guessed it yet, the country in question is Germany.  Hitler became Chancellor after free democratic elections.  Shortly after that he was granted the power to rule by decree by so-called Enabling Act of 1933.  Finally, after the death of President Hindenburg, the German military was required to swear loyalty personally to Hitler.  If at that point the German military would have staged a coup and removed a very popular Chancellor from power, the world would have been spared the horrors of World War 2.  In fairness I have to say that some people in the German military did try, but not hard enough, and ultimately were not successful.  They would, however, have had a better chance early on.


Fast forward to 2009.  The country is Honduras.  Unlike Germany in 1933, it is a presidential democracy similar to the USA and seems to have separation of powers.  And, unlike Nazi Germany after 1938, it has a functioning parliament and a functioning supreme court.  The Honduran President was attempting to usurp too much power and was violating the Honduran Constitution.  Thus, the country's Supreme Court ruled that the President had to be removed from office and assigned Honduran Military to do the job.  The President was replaced by a member of his own party, thus the Opposition did not gain power.  Everything was done in accordance with the Honduran Constitution.  And yet it was called a coup by our President.  That pro-Chavez Organization of American States said that and the dictator-loving UN said that is not surprising.  But the United States should know better.  Furthermore, even if it were a coup, it still should have been supported.  Can anybody imagine condemning Klaus von Schtaufenberg and his co-conspirators for the assassination of Adolf Hitler and the coup if they were successful?


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Wednesday, July 8, 2009

[Fwd: Pallywood- deep background]

This e-mail is from Yaacov Ben Moshe of the Breast of the Beast:

Before There Was Pallywood...

There were the Blues Brothers of Moscow... This is not a Belushi and Akroyd spoof!



MERKEL (NO STIMULUS) PROVEN RIGHT, AGAIN!

I receive posts by Judith Apter Klinghoffer via e-mail.  Judith blogs at History News Network, a very interesting and informative site that analyzes today's events through historical perspective.  Below is the post I received today.  This will also serve as another test of posing via e-mail.

Judith Apter Klinghoffer  http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/97816.html

MERKEL (NO STIMULUS) PROVEN RIGHT, AGAIN!

Angering MSM and many economists Angela Merkel said no to stimulus. And, dire predictions aside, so far the numbers prove her right. Jim Cramer, sums it perfectly

The stocks that were thrown away yesterday are now set to have a good day because of a piece of information out of Germany that no one thought a thing about 24 hours ago. Or 24 days ago or months ago, or whatever.

What piece of information?

This one-  German industrial output leaps higher

Roaring auto output pushed German industrial production higher in May by the biggest margin since August 1993, official data showed Wednesday, signaling the country's deep recession might be near an end.

The economy ministry said overall output in Europe's biggest economy jumped by 3.7 percent in May from the previous month and added: "Industrial production may have passed the trough."

This is at a time, the US is celebrating the fact that The U.S. manufacturing sector shrank in June but at a slower pace than during the prior month

Yes, prejudice blinds. German unemployment declines in June from 8.2% to 8.1% after having dropped from 8.4% a month earlier. In contrast, American unemployment rose from 9.4% to 9.5% in June after having risen from 8.9% a month earlier. As I have previously noted, both country had 7.2% unemployment rate in December 2008.

None of this means that Germany is out of the woods. It merely means that she is bound come out of them in a much better shape than had she wasted money in ineffective "make work" projects. I wish I could say the same about the US. And the "usual suspects" are talking about a second stimulus!

How ironic

The other day I stumbled upon this article in the FrontPage Magazine:

Who won the Cold War? That’s a no-brainer. The United States prevailed while the Soviet Union collapsed, and the People’s Republic of China dumped Marxism; capitalism (free markets and private property) triumphed over socialism (centrally planned markets and state-owned property); an ethos of individual rights proved to be more resilient and healthy than collectivist ideology; relatively small, democratic government clearly was demonstrated to help a society prosper far more effectively than elitist Big Government.

How ironic, then, that voices in Russia and China are mocking our current Big Government policies. Those whose countries took the tragic, impoverishing detour through Big Government hell now react with scorn and derision as we Americans charge headlong down that same path. What an amazing spectacle it must be for them to see the victor of the Cold War borrow many pages from the losers’ playbook.

Read it all.  And then read the article from Pravda that the FrontPage article refers to:

...The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America's short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.

These past two weeks have been the most breath taking of all. First came the announcement of a planned redesign of the American Byzantine tax system, by the very thieves who used it to bankroll their thefts, loses and swindles of hundreds of billions of dollars. These make our Russian oligarchs look little more then ordinary street thugs, in comparison. Yes, the Americans have beat our own thieves in the shear volumes. Should we congratulate them?

These men, of course, are not an elected panel but made up of appointees picked from the very financial oligarchs and their henchmen who are now gorging themselves on trillions of American dollars, in one bailout after another. They are also usurping the rights, duties and powers of the American congress (parliament). Again, congress has put up little more then a whimper to their masters.

Then came Barack Obama's command that GM's (General Motor) president step down from leadership of his company. That is correct, dear reader, in the land of "pure" free markets, the American president now has the power, the self given power, to fire CEOs and we can assume other employees of private companies, at will. Come hither, go dither, the centurion commands his minions.

So it should be no surprise, that the American president has followed this up with a "bold" move of declaring that he and another group of unelected, chosen stooges will now redesign the entire automotive industry and will even be the guarantee of automobile policies. I am sure that if given the chance, they would happily try and redesign it for the whole of the world, too. Prime Minister Putin, less then two months ago, warned Obama and UK's Blair, not to follow the path to Marxism, it only leads to disaster. Apparently, even though we suffered 70 years of this Western sponsored horror show, we know nothing, as foolish, drunken Russians, so let our "wise" Anglo-Saxon fools find out the folly of their own pride.


Read this one in full as well.  Granted, the article has a bit of anti-Western bent, blaming the West for Marxism.  But other than that, the article is right on the money.  And surely the irony of an article in Pravda, the former Soviet Communist Party newspaper, warning about dangers of Marxism must be appreciated.

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Test to all the blogs from laptop

This is the test post to all my blogs from my laptop.
While I am at it, let's test the link to a good Bookworm post.