On the same day Frenchmen queued to vote in the first-round of that nation’s presidential elections, in the Netherlands, the People’s-Freedom coalition government collapsed. In both events the “far-right” played a pivotal role.
In France, poll watchers observed that the National Front of Marine Le Pen posted their best showing in that party’s history while, in the Netherlands, it was the abandonment of a fragile coalition by Party for Freedom (PVV) chief Geert Wilders that caused the government’s downfall. In this short chart we compare several of Europe’s “far-right” political parties by their positions on key issues, ranging from a fairly mainstream conservative manifesto (spiced with a dash of xenophobia) of the PVV to the more radical third-positionist worldview of Germany’s National Democratic Party, whose former leader Adolf von Thadden was an alleged agent of British intelligence.
In observance of Thursday’s 2,056th anniversary of the assassination of Caesar by the diabolical Marcus Brutus, we present our list of The World’s Top Nine Most Diabolical Looking Politicians (nine instead of ten because nine is the opposite of six … as in 666!).In no particular order, they are (scroll through the gallery for photos of each of their diabolical visages):
1. Winfried Kretschmann - Minister-President of Baden-Württemberg - Germany | Shouting and waving a clenched fist in the air is a little gauche for a German politician.
2. Elio di Rupo - Prime Minister - Belgium | Di Rupo has his hands full running the Belgian government but still finds time to reanimate corpses in the basement of his castle.
3. Nicholas Sarkozy - President - France | “Croyez moi!”
4. Frank Lautenberg - Senator - United States | The social event of 1988 was Sentor Lautenberg’s 175th birthday party.
5. Janet Napolitano - Secretary of Homeland Security - United States | Don’t let the mom jeans fool you.
6. Geert Wilders - Member of Parliament - Netherlands | What came first, Geert Wilders or Max Zorin?
7. Eric Pickles - Secretary of State for Communities - United Kingdom | What came first, Eric Pickles or Auric Goldfinger?
8. Louise Hand - High Commissioner to Canada - Australia | The Australian High Commission in Ottawa is reportedly overrun by Hand’s 32 cats.
9. Javier Lozano Alarcón - Secretary of Labor - Mexico | His slicked-back hair and pin striped suits make Minister Alarcón look like a character out of “The Godfather”, instead of a character out of the romantic comedy “Mexico.”
New Evidence Supports Claims of Hitler's "Secret Son"
Until his death in 1985, Jean-Marie Loret believed that he was the only son of Adolf Hitler. There is now renewed attention to evidence from France and Germany that apparently lends some credence to his claim.
Loret collected information from two studies; one conducted by the University of Heidelberg in 1981 and another conducted by a handwriting analyst that showed Loret’s blood type and handwriting, respectively, were similar to the Nazi Germany dictator who died childless in 1945 at age 56.
18th Century Masonic Cipher Decoded
A team of University of Southern California scientists finished decoding the Copiale Cipher this month, it was announced. The 18th century Masonic ritual manuscript had befuddled researchers since it was discovered in Berlin after the end of the Cold War.
October is a busy month in the world elections calendar with balloting taking place, or scheduled, in Tunisia, Liberia, Mauritania, Cameroon, Bulgaria, Kyrgyzstan and the Seychelles. We visit the “Parliamentary Powers Index”, a comparative ranking conducted in M. Steven Fish and Matthew Kroenig’s 2009 text The Handbook of National Legislatures: A Global Survey.
According to the Handbook, the world’s most powerful legislature is Germany’s Bundestag, while the world’s least powerful is Somalia’s Transitional Federal Council. The index assigns each legislative body a score of 0.0 to 1.0 based on the percent of powers constitutionally granted to it from a list of 32 common powers, including: immunity from dissolution, necessity for legislative ratification of treaties, the absence of decree-making power by the executive, etc.
Higher scores are not considered inherently “good”, they serve only as measures of parliamentary power relative to other agencies of governance and the body politic. For instance, a legislature will score higher if statutes enacted by it are immune from judicial review, even though such a restraint is widely considered positive. Further, the index only assesses the constitutionally prescribed parliamentary powers and does not attempt a subjective evaluation of political realities.
Germany Arrests Suspected Russian Agents
The Bundeskriminalamt have arrested two persons in Hesse as they were recording transmissions from a Russian numbers station. The husband and wife team - reportedly both German nationals - had allegedly been gathering information in Germany for more than twenty years, having been activated during the Cold War by the KGB and continuing their service to its successor agency, the SVR. According to German media, the arrest came from a tip to German authorities by the U.S. FBI based off information gleaned by that agency during the breakup of the 2010 Russian information retrieval operation in the U.S.
Did Hitler Escape Germany in 1945?
New Book Presents Stunning Account of the Last Days of the Reich
Grey Wolf: The Escape of Adolf Hitler by Simon Dunstan and Gerrard Williams | Hardcover, 384 pages, US$24.95 Publication Date: October 4, 2011
On April 27, 1945, Adolf Hitler spoke briefly with one of the SS soldiers standing guard outside the Führerbunker, the last refuge of the inner circle of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. “Germany,” he said, “can hope for the future only if the whole world thinks I am dead.”
It seems impossible to believe that Adolf Hitler could not only have escaped Germany but, in fact, survived in relative comfort in Argentina until his death of natural causes in 1962. Simon Dunstan and Gerrard Williams’ new book Grey Wolf: The Escape of Adolf Hitler, which released earlier this month, presents a remarkable, linear account of a sequence of shadowy events occurring in the final days of World War II that is neatly timelined and meticulously sourced.
