That is definitly true although maybe he is actually quite smart as his remark meant that people failed to ask why he has done absolutely nothing in 10 months in power.

While he is busy feeling chuffed with himself back in Ireland. Many irish business people and students are stranded in Hong Kong due to a new suspension on visas to the mainland.

although I’m guessing gormley isn’t quite aware of that as he is too busy trying to keep his face in the media and reinvent himself as some kind of maverick

At least if the EU carbo credits program ever gets serious we can replace our dependency on natural gas with the large quantities of pointless, self congratulatory hot air reverbating around the green party

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_asiapacific/view/341351/1/.html

Over to Bertie – or Brian …

In any case – just for the record – this historian “believes” that far from killing him the Chinese would have installed His Serene Holiness in a glass box strewn with silken pillows and fed him on sugared butter balls.

I suppose one us might be right.

Under the Chilean constitution if a candidate did not win a majority of votes (and Allende fell way, way short of that) then it was up to Congress to decide. They ratified his election provided he sign a guarantee that he would not undermine the constitution, he did so but then set about undermining the constitution.

He ruled by decree and interfered with the independence of the judiciary. He wrecked the economy (Marxist wrecks economy, what a surprise) with hyper-inflation, massive strikes and hopelessly incompetent nationalisation. He also suppressed free speech and attacked the freedoms of the universities.

So did Allende abide by ‘constitutional politics”? Well no need to rely on H Flashman’s opinion, just ask the Chilean Supreme Court and the guardian of the constitution the Comptroller-General both of whom declared that Allende was in violation of the constitution. Not enough for you? Well what about both houses of the Chilean legislature which condemned Allende’s abuses of the constitution and abuses of human rights (Marxists abusing human rights, my oh my, another shocker)? The president of the Senate called upon the army to “re-establish the rule of law”. Allende’s much vaunted naivety in sticking to constutional methods seems rather at odds with the actual facts.

Meanwhile Allende began arming private militias and attempting to provoke mutinies in the navy, Castro was sending in agents and the spectre of a full scale Marxist takeover of Chile followed by civil war seemed inevitable (no doubt you’d blame the victims of such a Marxist takeover for the violence inflicted on them). Chile was on the verge of a Marxist coup d’etat, the Army got in first.

What the army did was brutal and ugly but it is simply the mirror image of what the Marxists would have done if they could have. Like I say Pinochet was no different from Castro, both siezed power from an illegitimate and unpopular ruler (contrary to your assertion most Chileans welcomed the army’s intervention) who was ruining the nation, both Castro and Pinochet murdered their political opponents and took complete power of the state.

The difference is that Pinochet restored the economy of Chile and stepped down to peacefully allow the restoration of democracy. The Castrano clan still cling obdurately to power in their bankrupt police state.

I refer you to my comment “I don’t support what Pinochet did”

*Allende naively clung to constitutional politics*

Balderdash.

He was a Marxist, Marxists don’t do ‘constitutional politics’.

It’s late here, the missus is getting grumpy with me, I’ll be happy to expand on this theme in the morning.

Revolutionary governments do not invariably become repressive police states. However, regimes that face civil war, foreign invasion, encirclement and nuclear annhilation do have a tendency to put security first. Whatever their political complexion.

On Chile. So Pincohet was defending the constitution? Not even you can believe that Harry. Not in the slightest. Unless the constitution called for mass executions, kidnappings of children and disappearances, torture, and one man rule with the army repressing dissent.

On the advice from the Soviets. They could see the way this was going, but Allende naively clung to constitutional politics at a time when it was clear that his opponents were plotting to annihilate him and his supporters. And by the way, around the time this was going on Amnesty was issuing a report stating that there was no evidence of torture being used in the socialist states of Europe. Unlike Chile and various other regimes backed by western democracies. Torture does now take place in Cuba – but at the US base there.

Oh, and on NI. The people you define as revolutionaries here have much more in common with Franco, Pinochet and other religious nationalist fascists than they do with the republicans of Spain, or indeed the revolutionary tradition of the United Irishmen and Connolly.

www [dot] incinerator6 [dot] tk

http://galwaytent.blogspot.com/

Harry You are on form. How can the Red Chinese menace be stopped? They prey on our need for cheap shoddy goods.

Like I said earlier with the rape allusion, you appear to blame the victim.

Let me give you an example. If all you ever learned about the situation in Northern Ireland was from the perspective of Sinn Fein, you could reasonably say that there was no alternative to violent revolution and thuggery because the actions of the state drove the revolutionaries to do what they did. However this would be to totally ignore the vast majority of people who sought a peaceful, moderate, democratic reformist agenda.

Likewise in France, in Russia in Iran in 1979 there was a huge desire for change and reform, perfectly legitimate, but this was hijacked by militant revolutionaries who set out to overthrow the government, not reform it and to sieze power for themselves and to destroy any hopes of peaceful democratic change.

You seem to retain a charmingly naive notion that revolutionaries are stout-hearted, fair minded, decent humanitarians who genuinely seek the betterment and welfare of the masses. The merest glance at our own squalid revolutionaries should surely have diabused you of any such romatic undergraduate notions.

As for Chile, I state it again quite unambiguously; Allende had no democratic mandate to attempt to overthrow the legitimate constitution of Chile and impose a Marxist regime, none whatsoever, his ‘reforms’ were not legitimate as was proven by the parliament and supreme court of Chile. The Chilean army’s duty was to defend the Chilean constitution, your approving ciatation of advice from the red fascists of the Soviet Union rather shows that they had a point.

I don’t support what Pinochet did, but he was no worse than Castro, murdered fewer political opponents and unlike Castro actually brought peace and prosperity to his nation and ultimately ceded power to a democratically elected government.

We wait the democratisation of Cuba without baited breath.

Allende was elected and had popular support. He was introducing reforms. The way to combat him was through the ballot box. I’m amazed that you would regard a coup as as legimitate as political reforms introduced by a democratically-elected government. Then again the Soviets warned him to clear out the army and he didn’t. Again, that is a demonstration of the necessity sometimes to usual extreme measures against reactionary opponents. Who in that case had (and still have it seems) the support of reasonable moderates such as yourself.

To cite your own examples, the French Revolution was opposed by very many people for perfectly legitimate reasons, opponents of the Revolution were not all languid aristos you know, no more than opponents of the Russian Revolution were all Czarist thugs nor indeed opponents of our own nasty little revolution in norn iron were all Orange bigots. You seem to be blinded by the notion that opposition to red revolution cannot be expressed by anyone other than reactionary throwbacks frequently it comes from moderate democrats.

The Catholics of the Vendee did not fancy being ruled by authoritarian, atheistic demagogues because they saw the sheer evil of such rule, the dreadful slaughter imposed upon them rather proved they were justified in their opposition.

It is a convenient tool of revolutionaries to always paint their opponents as reactionary backwoodsmen, this is codswallop and well you know it. It might surprise you but it is perfectly reasonable to object to Communism without being some sort of fascist.

As for the oft cited Chile, Allende did not have a democratic mandate to impose Marxism on the country. You may disapprove of Pinochet’s coup d’etat but it was no less legitimate than the overthrow of the Chilean constitution that Allende was attempting to carry out himself. Try reading a bit more on the topic Garibaldy, the Allende situation was a lot more complex than the simplistic good guy/bad guy nonsense that usually passes for discussion on the topic.

Don’t always swallow the Marxist propaganda hook, line and sinker.

As regards the Nepalese communists’ promise to create a multi-party democracy well if they do that then they will cease to be Marxists. As a long term advocate of multi-party democracy I’d be very happy with that but to put it simply you cannot have Marxism and multi-party democracy, they are mutually exclusive.

That’s a ridiculous thing to say, and frankly beneath you. Let’s take the French Revolution – practically death free until the counter-revolutionaries began to plot against the revolution, and tried to get an invasion from other monarchies. Or let’s take the 1989 events – no resistance, so no violence, apart of course from some executions by the new regime in Romania. Or let’s take Chile – an elected government pursuing a revolutionary programme – gets stomped on by the military, when it should have stomped on them first. Or Venezuela – revolutionary change in progress, but via elected means. The only hint of violence from Chavez et al being during the US-backed coup attempt. And in Nepal. A legitimate struggle against tyranny, now replaced by peaceful political activity – in fact I read this very day the leader of the Maoists expressing his commitment to peaceful and multi-party democracy. They could have taken power violently had they wished. And haven’t.

So in short, Harry, perhaps you might relate your comments on Nepal to the facts.

Oh I get it, so when communists seek to impose their will on others by force then people should simply accept it, and if they resist then they are to blame for the resulting violence.

Let me restructure the above sentence;

“The violence of a rape depends on the nature of the resistance offered by a woman opposed to being violated”.

See, it’s that simple.