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Bush and Hitler - How Quickly We Forget
After the Reichstag was conveniently destroyed in a terrorist attack, Adolf Hitler acted quickly to "protect Germany from the terrorists", as he described it.
Hitler blamed the attack on the foreign ethnic and political groups who opposed him. He launched a series of attacks on weaker countries in strategic locations. He stealthily changed the German constitution, giving the authorities greater powers and undermining civil liberties. He put his opponents in prison camps. The majority of the German people supported what they were led to believe was a war on terrorism, while the rest of the world disapproved.
Hitler was Time Magazine's Man Of The Year in 1938. Stalin was Time Magazine's Man Of The Year for 1939 and 1942. Both of these men, and many others also celebrated by the media, followed a sinister hidden agenda. The lesson from these facts is that it is difficult to see the tyranny of your own homeland, especially when the mass-media supports and promotes it.
This time the tyranny is bigger than any single elected leader, and the deception is more subtle and sophisticated than ever before.
QUOTES:
"An evil exists that threatens every man, woman,
and child of this great nation. We must take steps
to insure our domestic security and protect our
homeland."
- Adolph Hitler, 1933
"To protect our country, we reorganized our
government and created the Department of
Homeland Security, which is mobilizing against
the threats of a new era. ...
"This government is taking unprecedented
measures to protect our people and defend our
homeland."
- George Bush, 2003.
"What I am proposing tonight is the most
extensive reorganization of the federal government
since the 1940s."
- George Bush, 2002.
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of
evil is for good men to do nothing."
- Edmund Burke (1729-1797).
"Those who do not remember the past are
condemned to repeat it."
- George Santayana
FURTHER READING:
The Times, "Top judge fears legal reform will open door to Nazis", 7 November 2003.
[ http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,174-883782,00.html ]
A SENIOR judge raised the spectre of Nazi Germany yesterday as he gave warning that constitutional reforms proposed by the Prime Minister could expose judges to political interference.
Lord Justice Judge, the deputy Lord Chief Justice, said that any weakening of judicial independence could be exploited by extremists.
“You can’t say, ‘This is Great Britain — everything is perfect here, things like this don’t happen here’.
“Hitler came to power by getting a significant popular vote, then subverting the Constitution.”
...
The comments by Lord Justice Judge came at a press conference held by Lord Woolf, the Lord Chief Justice, to outline the judges’ concerns about the legal reforms announced in June.
Lord Woolf, the most senior serving judge, said the plans to scrap the post of Lord Chancellor posed the biggest threat to judicial independence for hundreds of years.
Plans to abolish the ancient post, without creating new constitutional safeguards, could threaten the independence of judges, he said.
Unless the Government made radical changes, it was opening the door to future political interference with the judiciary. The full and “dramatic” impact of the proposed constitutional shake-up announced by Tony Blair was not fully understood by the public or ministers, he added.
And he gave warning that abolishing the post of Lord Chancellor would leave a “constitutional deficit” the Government had failed to appreciate — and that would need legislative safeguards.
The judges were outlining the response of the Judges’ Council, which represents the 3,000-strong judiciary in England and Wales as well as 28,000 magistrates, to the proposed constitutional shake-up.
Ministers want to abolish the 1,400-year-old post of Lord Chancellor, who is both a Cabinet Minister and the head of the judiciary, a proposal on which Lord Woolf said he was given just a “few minutes’ notice”.
As a result, the confidence of judges in ministers’ wishes to preserve judicial independence had been damaged, he said.
...
The Government’s plans to retain policy over judicial appointments when setting up a judicial appointments commission was also “inappropriate”.
“This cannot be right. It will amount to the Government of the day having the ability to dictate to the new (judicial appointments) commission how it performs its role.”
It would enable a future government to “create a judiciary that was committed to its own political agenda”, judges say in their response.
Lord Woolf said the Lord Chancellor was “absolutely the central core” on which the justice system in England and Wales was suspended.
When the post was abolished, the Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs would then be like any other minister; would hold an office that was “purely political” and would certainly be in the Commons.
He would no longer be a voice for the judiciary, and the relationship between the executive and judges would fundamentally change, Lord Woolf said. “We do have not a written constitution; our system works by checks and balances, part of which was the Lord Chancellor.”
...
Daily Telegraph, "Judges warn of Labour's 'Nazi' threat to justice", 7 November 2003.
[ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/11/07/nlaw07.xml ]
Judicial independence is at risk from the Government's constitutional reforms, England's most senior judges said yesterday.
Calling for a new constitutional settlement to protect the public, one said that abolishing the Lord Chancellor as the central core of the legal system would open the door to the sort of political interference last seen in Nazi Germany.
Asked when there was last a threat to the judiciary of this magnitude in England and Wales, Lord Woolf, the Lord Chief Justice, referred to the 17th century, when "a lot of judges lost their heads".
His deputy, Lord Justice Judge, drew comparisons from abroad, recalling that Jean-Marie Le Pen, the leader of the far-Right National Front, had come second in the French presidential elections last year.
"We do have to remember that Hitler came to power in a democratic country by getting a significant popular vote and then subverting the constitution," he added.
...
The two senior judges were launching the judiciary's response to the Constitution Secretary's consultation papers on judicial reform.
...
The Government "could not be more mistaken" in saying that ministers should define the criteria for judicial appointments, the Judges' Council said.
That would "enable a future Government to create a judiciary that was committed to its own political agenda by selecting criteria that would result in the appointment of judges sympathetic to its policies".
The Government had suggested that the planned Judicial Appointments Commission should have a role in disciplining judges. However, said Lord Woolf, appointing judges independently was of limited value if, once appointed, they could be subjected to "improper pressure through a disciplinary process".
The judges' third concern was that the Government should not be able to decide which judges heard which cases, and in what order.
Otherwise, Lord Woolf said, ministers might be able to move a judge who had frequently held against the Government in judicial review cases, or in criminal cases involving national security.
...
The way the reforms had been announced as part of a Cabinet reshuffle in June had "damaged the confidence of judiciary in the executive's commitment to preserving the independence of the judiciary", the Judges' Council said. [Britains most senior judges were concerned because they only heard about these plans from Sky News, Rupert Murdoch's news channel (according to Yesterday's Evening Standard newspaper, West End Final edition).]
BBC News, "Judge fires human rights warning", 16 October 2002.
[ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/2332639.stm ]
The courts must be ready to stop the government taking away people's human rights in the name of tackling terrorism, the most senior judge in England and Wales has warned.
Lord Woolf said it was "almost inevitable" that ministers would fail to protect the rights of minorities as they confronted what he said could be an even greater threat than Hitler.
...
What Really Happened
[ http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/reich.html ]
"The Insider" mailing list article, 12 October 2003.
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