BERNIA SANDERS AND A LESSON IN DEMOCRACY.

I take grave offence at the American political commentator Bernie Sanders' contention that America is the world's oldest democracy.

Great Britain has had a parliamentary democracy since at least 1660, some 116 years before America, who did not attain true democracy until 1964, 300 years after Great Britain.

Great Britain was amongst the first countries in the world to hold secret ballots for elections, the first such occurring at Pontefract on 15 August 1872.

America did not convert to nationwide secret ballots until 1950!

So come of it Mr Sanders, America has nothing to teach the United Kingdom about democracy.

 THE LESSON OF HISTORY

Those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat its mistakes

On the 7 March 1936 German troops re-occupied the Rhineland, a de-militarised zone set up, and in direct contravention of,  the Treaty of Versailles which had ended the First World War.

The victorious powers, France and Great Britain, made only a token protest at this gross violation of the treaty.

On the 30 September 1938, after threats from Germany to invade Czechoslovakia, Britain, France, Italy and Germany reached an agreement generally called the Munich Agreement, hailed by the then British Prime minister Neville Chamberlin as 'peace in our time' to allow Germany to annex the Sudetenland, the border areas with Germany of Czechoslovakia.

Emboldened by this easy victory  in March 1939, Germany occupied the remainder of Czechoslovakia in direct contravention of the Munich Agreement.

 The seeds were now sown in Germany's mind that they could get away with invading and taking over another sovereign state and the great powers, Great Britain and France, would stand idly by and let it happen.

German invaded Poland on 1 September 1939 and Great Britain, at last, issued Germany with an ultimatum, "withdraw your troops from Poland or a State of War will exist between us".

No such undertaking was given,  the Second World War began, and 40 million died.

Had the Great Powers resisted Germany's 'pushing of the boundaries' it is possible that the Second World War might never have occurred.

In February and March 2014, Russia invaded the Crimean Peninsula, part of Ukraine, and then annexed it, in a mirror image of Germany's actions towards Czechoslovakia in 1938, some 76 years before.

Whilst various countries, and the United Nations, condemned the Russian invasion as a violation of international law nothing was done and Russia got away with this annexation of part of the sovereign state of Ukraine.

Just as Hitler in 1939 so Putin in February 2022 thought the Great Powers would not interfere so Russia invaded the Ukrainian mainland.

President Trump of the USA is now prepared to compel the Ukraine, under threat of removing its military assistance, to reach a settlement which would include the Ukraine ceding some 20% of its territory to Russia.

Peace in our time? Perhaps not.

How long before Putin's Russia, sensing the west's, especially America's reluctance to stand in its way, moves to occupy all of Ukraine as German did with Czechoslovakia in 1939?

 And what then? Which country will next fall to Russian expansionism? Estonia, Lithuania, and will the world and Trump's America, stand by and let it happen?

Those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat its mistakes

 

                                                            MURDERED by HAMAS

for the Lord shall be thine

everlasting light, and the days

of thy mourning shall be ended.

Isaiah 60:20

WOKE MADNESS

A man, a doctor no less, applies make up and wears a skirt and thus declares himself to be a woman.

A female nurse of some 30 years standing objects to this man using the female changing room at Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy (I suppose it had to be in Scotland, the country that put a male rapist in a female prison because he said he was a woman).

The nurse was promptly suspended by the hospital for alleged bullying and harassment of this man in a skirt.

Yes I know, sounds implausible,  but it's all true, you couldn't make something like this up.

The nurse has now taken NHS Fife to a tribunal claiming that being made to get changed beside a man amounted to unlawful harassment under the Equality Act.

Unbelievably, the NHS guidance states that 'trans' men and women are allowed to use the changing rooms that align with their gender identity, so call yourself a woman, put on a skirt and go into female changing rooms to watch real women undressing!

THIS IS WOKE MADNESS.

There is much I decry about President Trump but he, at least, is meeting this 'trans' rubbish head on by 

signing an executive order that prevents so-called transgender women from competing in female categories of sports, which is a start.

I hope he goes further and puts an end to this woke ideology, at least in America.

 TRUMP AND CANADA

Trump continues to denigrate Canada at every opportunity from imposing tariffs on Canadian imports to (falsely) claiming that the USA subsidises Canada to the tune of 200 billion dollars!

He continues to claim that Canada should become the 51st State of the Union, that it doesn't pay its fair share towards NATO and that it shelters under American protection.

Speaking in the Oval Office on Thursday, Trump reiterated that Canada would be better off as the 51st state, repeating the false claim that his country is paying “subsidies” to its northern neighbour, and called Prime Minister Justin Trudeau “Governor Trudeau.”

I don't recall Americans deriding Canada on D day when the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division landed on Juno Beach; when Canadian troops fought their way inland advancing more than 11 kilometers by the end of the day, while the Americans were bogged down on Omaha beach.

When the Royal Canadian Navy cleared a safe path across the English Channel for the American forces while its destroyers silenced the enemy shore batteries

More than one million Canadians and Newfoundlanders served in the war and over  45,000 gave their lives in the cause of freedom, with another 55,000 wounded.

The Canadian contribution to D-Day helped turn the tide of the war but Trump is not one to show gratitude, or even acknowledge the fact that Canada is one of America's longest and most staunch ally - no in his eyes it is little more than a parasite, a nation that would not exist if it wasn't for American largesse.

 THE NEW AMERICAN VALUES

In another bizarre Trump news conference the man who has previously denounced empire building now says he wants to own Gaza and turn it into  a Rivera of the east, removing all the inhabitants and forcibly resettling them in  Egypt, Syria and the Lebanon, which sounds very much like what Adolf Hitler proposed for the Jewish people of Europe in the 1930s.

Trump's intention was made quite clear by his White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt  when she said that the USA  wants to take over Gaza, in other words conquer and occupy another state, presumably by force as it's unlikely the Palestinians will just go quietly.

To put this into perspective, the territorial boundaries of what is now Gaza was originally part of the Ottoman Empire until at the conclusion of WWI and the dismantling of the Turkish Empire it was controlled by Great Britain under a League of Nations Mandate.

The relinquishing by Great Britain of its mandate in 1948 precipitated the Arab-Israeli war during which tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees fled to the Gaza Strip.

Subsequent conflicts led to the area being occupied at different times by both Israel and Egypt  until the Oslo Accords established the Palestinian Authority as a limited governing authority, initially led by the secular party Fatah until that party's electoral defeat in 2006 with Hamas then taking over the governance of Gaza, which ultimately  led to further conflict with Israel.

No stretch of the imagination can possible give America any rights whatsoever over Gaza and Trump's expressed intent to take over the territory is conquest, nothing less.

Taken with his expressed intent to re-occupy the Panama Canal Zone, annex Canada and occupy Greenland by armed force it ill beholds him to criticise Russia for it's illegal occupation of the Crimea and its war with the Ukraine.

Is this to be the new expression of  'American values' where any smaller, less powerful nation, which means most of the rest of the world, can be seized and occupied by America, just because it can?

 

 ELON MUSK and the UNITED STATES TREASURY

I've just been hearing on that excellent podcast The Meidas Touch of a law suit filed against the US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, the US Dept of the Treasury and the Bureau of the Fiscal Service.

Scott Bessent, a major donor, fundraiser, and economic advisor for Trump' Presidential campaign was appointed Treasury Secretary by Trump following his election as President.

The law suit, filed on behalf of the Alliance for Retired Americans, the American Federation of Government  Employees and the Service Employees International Union alleges a breach, by Secretary Bessent of the 1974 Privacy Act.

While I am conversant with the UK Data Protection Act I am not well versed in the US Privacy Act but what it appears to do is to  prohibit the disclosure of an individual's information held by the government to any person or agency without the  written consent of the individual concerned.

There are some exceptions to this prohibition but they mainly deal with the use of the person's data for census purposes, for law enforcement, Congressional investigations and such like.

The complaint contained within the law suit is that Elon Musk requested the personal and fiscal data held by the US Treasury and that his request was refused by the responsible employee on the grounds that it would have been a violation of the 1974 Act. The suit further alleges that Trump appointee and new Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, dismissed that employee and authorised the release of the data to Elon Musk without first gaining the consent of the relevant persons.

These are, of course, just allegations not facts, and my reading of the 1974 Act may not be  accurate, but for such a law suit to be filed in the first place is a damning indictment of the Trump administration where Trump fundraisers and acolytes are placed in unelected positions of  almost limitless authority and are thus able to use that authority for personal gain or advantage.

There are many things wrong with the system of UK Government but the  Chancellor of the Exchequer, a post equivalent to the US Treasury Secretary, is appointed by the Prime Minister from amongst the elected Members of Parliament and is answerable to Parliament and ultimately to the electorate, as are all Cabinet and senior members of the Government.

Being a donator to the Prime Minister' election or dancing about on the campaign stages does not get you in charge of the country's finances, nor is a special government department created just for you to run.