When Hugo Chavez assumes plenary powers in Venezuela where are the cries of outrage from leftist heroes Michael Moore, Ken Livingstone, John Pilger and Sean Penn when you need them?
Apart from my friend Cubachi and Fausta Wertz the only chorus of disapproval being heard around the mean streets of the media both here and in the US comes from a crowd of crickets – I wonder why?
Venezuelan lawmakers granted President Hugo Chavez broad powers Friday to enact laws by decree, undermining the clout of a new congress that takes office next month with a bigger opposition bloc.
But it was this that gave me a vague feeling of déjà vu
Chavez has argued he needs decree powers to fast-track funds to help the victims of recent floods and landslides, and also to hasten Venezuela’s transition to a socialist state.
Where had I heard that before? And why did the Chavez regime’s Social Responsibility Law also start bells ringing in my head?
Another measure under discussion Friday was the revised “Social Responsibility Law,” which would impose broadcast-type regulations on the Internet and ban online messages “that could incite or promote hatred,” create “anxiety” in the population or “disrespect public authorities.”
Then it struck me….
Gesetz zur Behebung der Not von Volk und Reich = Law to Remedy the Distress of the People and the Nation
Adolf Hitler 1933
In February 1933, a few weeks after being appointed Chancellor of Germany, the NSDAP leader, Adolf Hitler, promulgated the Reichstag Fire Decree (Reichstagsbrandverordnung) as a response to the recent arson attack on the Reichstag building in Berlin. Simply stated it suspended all civil liberties in German. The actual text was brutally brief and wide ranging.
Articles 114, 115, 117, 118, 123, 124 and 153 of the Constitution of the German Reich are suspended until further notice. It is therefore permissible to restrict the rights of personal freedom [habeas corpus], freedom of opinion, including the freedom of the press, the freedom to organize and assemble, the privacy of postal, telegraphic and telephonic communications. Warrants for House searches, orders for confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed
Hitler claimed that the fire was merely the opening salvo of a Communist insurrection and and he needed these special powers to cope with the threat.
One month later, after a general election which gave NSDAP and it’s allies a slim majority in the Riechstag, Hitler introduced the Enabling Act (Ermächtigungsgesetz) which allowed his government to introduce laws without the permission of the German parliament. Between them these pieces of legislation provided a legal (if not moral) basis for the exercise of totalitarian power. To all intents and purposes Germany, within four weeks, had become a legal dictatorship.
It is interesting to observe that both decrees were ostensibly temporary in their nature yet were never rescinded.
So Chavez is going Hitler.
No doubt the United Nations, Hamas, Ahmadinejad and Sean Penn will soon be on the case……chirp chirp chirp…
