A democracy cannot exist as a
permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that
they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment
on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits
from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over
loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the
world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years.
Great nations rise and fall. The
people go from bondage to spiritual truth, to great courage, from courage to
liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from
selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to
dependence, from dependence back again to bondage.
Attributed to Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee.
For
more on that famous/infamous quote, scroll down to the bottom. An interesting weekend
read.
This
weekend we cover the week’s less reported news, while MSM was busy covering
President Trump, North Korea, the Fed, the hurricanes and the recent global bout
of earthquakes.
Up
first, China seems to be gaining in south east Asia. First the Philippines,
then Cambodia, now Singapore. A new Asian order is unfolding in the 21st
century. And the loser is….
Could improved ties between Singapore and Beijing bring an end to city state’s military links with Taiwan?
Starlight training project has long been a thorn in China’s side, but it might soon fade into darkness, experts say
PUBLISHED : Thursday, 21 September, 2017, 9:33pm UPDATED
: Thursday, 21 September, 2017, 11:31pm
The visit of Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien
Loong to China could result in a decades-long military training programme
between the city state and Taiwan – long a thorn in Beijing’s side – being put
on hold, according to military observers and people familiar with the matter.
The
Starlight project was established in 1975 in a deal between Singapore’s late
Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew and Taiwan’s then Premier Chiang Ching-kuo. Given
the city state’s limited land and airspace, the pair reached an agreement to
allow its armed forces to train in Taiwan.
However,
according to a Beijing-based retired senior colonel, who asked not to be named,
the project might now be suspended, as relations between China and Singapore
get back on track after a difficult few months.
The
Starlight project is a thorn between Singapore and China that should be removed
as soon as possible,” he said.
He said
that with Singapore keen to boost its economic ties with China, and Beijing
hoping Singapore could help it to improve its ties with the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations resolving the Starlight issue would be of benefit to
both.
Lee
arrived in China on Tuesday for a three-day visit. In a meeting with Chinese
President Xi Jinping on Wednesday, he said Singapore opposed Taiwanese
independence and supported the one-China policy, Xinhua reported.
A source
close to the Chinese military said Beijing had been pressing Singapore to
terminate Starlight, but thought a full termination of the programme was
unlikely given the city state’s security and political considerations.
“A
suspension is likely,” the person said.
Taiwan’s
defence ministry spokesman Major General Chen Chung-chi refused to comment on
the matter, while the defence ministries in Beijing and Singapore did not
respond to calls.
Taiwan’s
former deputy defence minister Lin Chong-pin said that if Starlight were
suspended, it would be “another advancement by Beijing to limit Taiwan’s
international space”.
Lee’s
visit to China is a good sign that relations between the two countries are
returning to normal after several months of uncertainty.
In
November, Beijing demanded the city state respect its one-China policy and end
its military ties with Taiwan after nine armoured troop carriers were
intercepted in Hong Kong for not having an import licence. The vehicles were en
route to Singapore from the Taiwanese port of Kaohsiung after being used in a
military exercise under the Starlight project.
They were
released on January 27, after Hong Kong’s former customs chief Roy Tang
Yun-kwong said there was no evidence of the Singapore government being to blame
for breach of licensing requirements.
Relations
between China and Singapore were also damaged when Beijing criticised the city
state for siding with the United States on the subject of disputes in the South
China Sea.
More
Up
next, the dying, dysfunctional, wealth and young people’s jobs destroying EUSSR.
Unreformed, Europe is a powder keg awaiting
a spark, but there’s absolutely no sign of Europe reforming under the rule of
Berlin and Brussels. One day the continentals will awake to the reality that
they were conned. I suspect a great retribution will then set in. Brexit now!
Dodgy Dave Cameron:
"Juncker, I haven't tasted food for 3 days."
Juncker: "Well, I
wouldn't worry about it... it still tastes the same."
How the EU helped out.
With apologies to Curly, Moe, and Larry.
September 22, 2017 / 5:10 PM / Updated 2 hours ago
Germany's surging far-right promises to disrupt cosy parliament
MUNICH/POTSDAM,
Germany (Reuters) - More than 8,000 people -- including hecklers blowing
whistles -- showed up in Munich for one of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s
final speeches before Sunday’s national election that is expected to sweep her
into a fourth term.
Merkel,
whose conservatives have a solid double-digit lead over the Social Democrats,
largely ignored jeers from hundreds of left- and right-wing demonstrators to
deliver a stump speech focussed on stability, security and a promise to avoid
tax increases.
“Get
lost,” “Merkel must go,” shouted some demonstrators as curious foreign
tourists, in Munich for its famous Oktoberfest, snapped photographs of the
German leader first elected in 2005.
Merkel,
who has faced down similar heckling at many other rallies, especially in the
former Communist east, admonished the peaceful but boisterous crowd: “Whistling
and yelling certainly won’t ensure the future of our country.”
Merkel
defended her 2015 decision to allow in about one million migrants as a
humanitarian necessity but said she would prevent a repeat of the migrant
crisis by doing more to fund programmes in at-risk countries to keep people
from fleeing.
“What
happened in 2015 cannot and will not be repeated,” Merkel said, saying she
would protect Europe’s borders.
At
Berlin’s Gendarmenmarkt, Merkel’s main rival, SPD leader Martin Schulz urged
supporters to make their voices heard, saying that high voter turnout could
help offset growing support for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).
----Support for the AfD, which was founded in 2013 during the euro zone crisis but has won support since 2015 with its anti-immigrant rhetoric, is running around 11 percent. That means it will become the first far-right party in more than half a century to clear the 5 percent hurdle and enter parliament.
The AfD,
which has already won seats in 13 of 16 state legislatures, promised to
reenergize debate there after four years of “grand coalition” rule by the two
major parties.
More
September 22, 2017 / 10:53 AM / Updated 20 hours ago
Europe's youth unemployment poses risk to democracy: Draghi
DUBLIN
(Reuters) - Europe needs to tackle high youth unemployment to safeguard
democracy, public trust and growth, European Central Bank President Mario
Draghi said in Dublin on Friday.
With
almost a fifth of young people out of work, Europe’s ability to innovate may
suffer, its cohesion is put at risk and the trust in public institutions could
be undermined, Draghi said before a town hall-style meeting with university
students.
The EU
must foster competition and focus on protecting people rather than jobs if they
become obsolete. It must also take a bigger role in education that prepares
workers for the economic shifts that can displace entire industries, he said.
“We have
seen how in several countries the weight of the crisis has fallen
disproportionately on the young people, leaving a legacy of failed hopes, anger
and ultimately mistrust in the values of our society and in the identity of our
democracy,” Draghi.
“With a
large proportion of young people not having any defined role in society, there
is a high risk of social cohesion and of trust in public institutions being
undermined, with harm for medium-term growth prospects,” he said in a speech
that did not discuss current monetary policy.
While
youth unemployment has fallen steadily for years, it is more than twice as high
as the euro zone’s overall rate, taking the biggest toll on countries on the
bloc’s periphery.
Indeed, over 40 percent of people under 24 in Greece
and Spain are unemployed while the rate in Italy is well over 30 percent,
Eurostat data shows.
More
September 22, 2017 / 10:23 PM / Updated 4 hours ago
Moody's downgrades UK's rating on Brexit and growth fears
LONDON
(Reuters) - Ratings agency Moody’s downgraded Britain’s credit rating by a
further notch on Friday, saying the government’s plans to fix the public
finances had been knocked off course and Brexit would weigh on the economy.
A few
hours after Prime Minister Theresa May set out plans for a new relationship
with the European Union, Moody’s cut the rating to Aa2 from Aa1, underscoring
the economic risks that leaving the bloc poses for the world’s fifth-biggest
economy.
Britain
has worked down its budget deficit from about 10 percent of economic output in
2010, shortly after the global financial crisis hammered the country, to 2.3
percent in the most recent financial year which ended in March.
But
Moody’s said the outlook for public finances had weakened significantly as
May’s government increasingly put into question the austerity push pursued by
former prime minister David Cameron and his finance minister George Osborne.
More
Spain’s attempt to block Catalonia’s referendum is a violation of our basic rights
Thursday 21 September 2017 14.11 BST
emocracy has been under a lot of pressure in Catalonia for the past
few weeks. European values, civil rights, freedom of speech, freedom of
information and freedom of assembly are being violated by Spain’s central
government, which has sent the police to search
newspapers, printing companies and private mail services; ban political
meetings; seize referendum material; and threaten
to imprison democratically elected politicians.On Wednesday, this moved up a gear, when threats became reality and Spanish paramilitary police took Catalonia to a de facto state of emergency. Fourteen high-ranking government officials were arrested as part of the anti-referendum operation, as police raided government buildings, offices and private homes. Catalan home rule has effectively been suspended due to this anti-democratic attitude from the Spanish government. It’s a situation that harks back to the dark past of this country, when democracy was not a part of the Spanish dictionary. What is happening here in Catalonia would not happen anywhere else in the European Union.
Catalan citizens are peaceful, European and
open-minded
We have arrived at this unacceptable situation after asking Madrid for political dialogue dozens of times, and each time being rejected by the Spanish executive, which has consistently refused to discuss Catalonia’s future. But a healthy democracy needs dialogue in order to evolve. Instead of engaging in discourse, the Spanish government has opted for police and judges, taking us beyond the limits of a respectable democracy.
With the arrests of high-ranking officials and threats
to detain democratically elected politicians, I believe the Spanish government
has violated the European charter of fundamental rights. The EU itself is built
on these values and is committed to guaranteeing the rights proclaimed in the
charter and in the EU treaties. As an EU member state, Spain should respect
that. If not, it is the European
commission’s duty to intervene. The rule of law is accepted
across Europe as the guarantee of our rights, but the Spanish president, Mariano Rajoy,
is twisting our law to suit his own political ends in blocking the referendum.
Spain’s constitution was introduced to cement democracy after Franco’s
dictatorship, but this government is exploiting its wording as a means to deny
us our right to vote.
More
In
technology news, the next decade will be the decade electric vehicles really start
to take over.
Giant Mining Trucks and Buses Are Smashing Electric Vehicle Records
September 19th, 2017 12:41PMSize now appears to be no barrier to building competent vehicles without internal combustion engines. Big battery-powered electric vehicles like trucks once seemed fanciful, because their large masses need a lot of energy to shift and diesel fuel is much more energy-dense than a lithium-ion cell. But that’s not holding people back from seeing just what kind of performance they can eke out of electrified working vehicles.
Today, electric bus maker Proterra has announced that one of its Catalyst E2 Max electric buses, pictured above, has set a new world record for the longest distance traveled by an electric vehicle on a single charge. Its 660 kilowatt-hours of battery capacity—almost nine times the capacity of the largest batteries in Tesla’s new Model 3 sedan—allowed it to cruise 1,101 miles, albeit at 15 mph, around the Navistar Proving Grounds in Indiana.
Elsewhere, Swiss firms Lithium Storage GmbH and Kuhn Schweiz AG have converted a monstrous Komatsu dumper mining truck with a giant 700 kilowatt-hour battery pack to create the world’s largest electric vehicle, Electrek reports. Weighing 110 tons—4.5 tons of which are battery pack—it’s not yet in use, so there are no performance stats. But its makers do expect its descents back into the quarry to allow it to top its batteries up with as much as 40 kilowatt-hours of charge via regenerative braking.
Meantime, plenty of folks are also busy building electric trucks. Last week we reported that Daimler’s new eCanter electric load haulers are to be put to use in America by UPS. Today, Bosch announced that it’s partnering with startup Nikola Motor Co. to launch a pair of heavy-duty trucks with hydrogen-electric powertrains and ranges of at least 800 miles by 2021. And, of course, Tesla is expected to unveil its own electric semi in October.
In other words, diesel’s days may be numbered, even in heavy duty vehicles.
Finally, back to that quote. In the age of the internet, quotes can be a double-edged
sword. Below, an interesting read.
The Truth
About Tytler
by Loren Collins
Who penned the above words? If one were to put one's faith in the
reliability of the internet, the obvious answer would be Alexander Tytler. Or
Alexander Tyler. Or Arnold Toynbee. Or Lord Thomas Macaulay. Or... by Loren Collins
The truth is that despite their frequent use, the above text actually has its origins in two separate and independent quotes, and the author of the first half is, to date, unknown. With regard to the first quoted paragraph, the Library of Congress' Respectfully Quoted writes, "Attributed to ALEXANDER FRASER TYTLER, LORD WOODHOUSELEE. Unverified." The quote, however, appears in no published work of Tytler's. And with regard to the second, the same book says "Author unknown. Attributed to Benjamin Disraeli. Unverified."
Yet despite this factual uncertainty, these quotes are not only frequently attributed to Tytler, but just as frequently employ his antiquity as a means of enhancing their reliability. I myself was misled for years before being informed of their "unverified" status.
Thus, I attempted to trace the origins of these quotes, as best I could. For the first quote, ending in "dictatorship," I have chosen to adopt the title "Why Democracies Fail," or WDF for short, which is perhaps the most common title given the quote. The last sentence of the first paragraph does not appear alongside the earliest instances of the quote. For the second quote, I have chosen to use the title "Fatal Sequence," or FS, which was the name given to it in a 1989 newspaper.
The earliest usage of "Why Democracies Fail" that has been located was printed on page 12A of the Daily Oklahoman on December 9, 1951.
Two centuries ago, a somewhat obscure Scotsman named
Tytler made this profound observation: “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent
form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote
itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always
votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the
democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be
followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy." - Elmer T. Peterson
If you read the original version of this article, you'll note that this letter to the editor not only is 8 years earlier than the previously-known first usage of WDF, but it includes an attribution to Tytler that predates the next-known attribution by over a decade. This next known usage was on May 3, 1959, WDF appeared on page 35 of The New York Times Book Review, in the "Queries and Answers" column. The relevant portion of the column, which was first among that day's queries, read as follows:
F.R.K. wants to know where the following paragraph was
taken from: "A Democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government.
It can only last until the citizens discover they can vote themselves largesse
out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the
candidate promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that
the Democracy always collapses over a loose fiscal policy, to be followed by a
dictatorship, and then a monarchy."
However, no answer to this query was provided in the columns of the following weeks, although New York Times readers appeared quite able in citing sources for obscure poems and quotes. Professor Tytler's name was nowhere to be found.
Tytler's name is again absent when the quote was used in a Sep. 27, 1961 speech by John E. Swearingen. Rather, Swearingen attributed the quote to a much more famous historian:
In a quotation attributed to the French author, Alexis de
Tocqueville, the dangers of loose fiscal policy were stated as follows: "A
democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist
until the voters discover they can vote themselves largess out of the public
treasury."
Tytler's name resurfaces almost 3 years later, from a much more notable speaker. On March 5, 1964, a taped speech of Ronald Reagan was played for the crowd at a Barry Goldwater rally in Manchester, New Hampshire. The quote was printed on the first page of the next day's Manchester Union Leader, under the article title "Roar Approval of Barry." The article states that Reagan attributed the quote to "Fraser Tydler." Reagan used the quote again on June 8, 1965, at a testimonial dinner for Rep. John M. Ashbrook in Granville, Ohio:
"Perhaps what he had in mind was what Prof.
Alexander Frazer Tytler has written, that a democracy cannot exist as a
permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover they
can vote themselves largesse out of the public treasury. From that moment on
the majority, he said, always vote for the candidate promising the most
benefits from the treasury with the result that democracy always collpases over
a loose fiscal policy, always to be followed by a dictatorship. Unfortunately,
we can't argue with the professor because when he wrote that we were still
colonials of Great Britain and he was explaining what had destroyed the
Athenian Republic more than 2000 years before."
In addition to reviving Tytler's name, Reagan does two more things. First, he drops any reference to the "monarchy" that previous usages stated follow the dictatorship stage. This omission has become standard in quotations of WDF, which now almost invariably end with the word "dictatorship." Second, Reagan offers the earliest reference to a particular written source for the quote, namely the "Athenian Republic" allegory which today is almost always attached to the quote. In a letter to the editor in the April 10, 1987 Seattle Times, where the writer said the quote was from Alexander Fraser Tytler's book "The Decline and Fall of the Athenian Republic," the earliest mention I have discovered of a source material for the quote. Today this book is the most common cited source for the quote, the title producing some 250 results in Google.
Unfortunately, according to both WorldCat and the Library of Congress' catalog, Tytler never wrote a book by that title. The only book with a similar title is The Decline and Fall of Athenian Democracy, printing a lecture given by E.M. Blaiklock on Sep. 21, 1948.
Among the quote's appearances over the next few decades, one of note was in American Notes & Queries in Nov. 1964. "Confirmation and exact wording of the following quotation wanted," wrote S.B. Jeffreys, following the quote with "Am I correct in thinking that this was said in 1790 by Prof. Alexander Tytler, Professor of General History, University of Edinburgh?" No confirmation or exact wording was ever provided.
More
Comrade Corbyn’s New
Communist Labour Party: “Are you a student, moslem, policeman, fireman,
immigrant, NHS worker, remainiac, or a person on benefits? Have we got an
aspirational con for you!
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