What exactly are you advocating Mr Rudd?

Kevin Rudd (also known as Kevin Krudd) is about to have an essay released in which he calls for a New World Order. Without a doubt what Krudd is actually advocating is a lot more than socialism - he is advocating Communism. In his essay, Krudd denounces what he terms the "unfettered capitalism of the past three decades" whilst he calls for a new era in which government intervention and regulation feature heavily.

The problem here is that this form of heavy government intervention has failed in the past. The New Deal experiment by Roosevelt is a prime example of how this kind of intervention fails in its task to bring an economy out of the morass of high unemployment, and other ills.

Also, Krudd has a bit of a problem if he describes the way in which the economy has worked for the past 30 years as a "great neo-liberal experiment", rather, it is what he wants that will be the the "neo-liberal experiment", and if it is allowed to proceed then we will find ourselves falling further and further into an economic depression.

Krudd has decreed:

"Neo-liberalism and the free-market fundamentalism it has produced has been revealed as little more than personal greed dressed up as an economic philosophy. And, ironically, it now falls to social democracy to prevent liberal capitalism from cannibalising itself."

Mr Rudd writes in The Monthly that just as Franklin Roosevelt rebuilt US capitalism after the Great Depression, modern-day "social democrats" such as himself and the US President, Barack Obama, must do the same again. But he argues that "minor tweakings of long-established orthodoxies will not do" and advocates a new system that reaches beyond the 70-year-old interventionist principles of John Maynard Keynes.

The problem with the Krudd analysis is that Franklin Roosevelt did not rebuild US capitalism. The reality happens to be that the USA took longer than necessary to come out of the Great Depression because of the failure of the Government intervention. What Krudd fails to appreciate is that unemployment actually got worse during the Great Depression, not better. What saved the USA was not the policies of Rossevelt, but the Second World War.

The neo-liberal socialists like Kevin Rudd seem to think that they understand Keynsian economics. They cling to the fact that Keynes advocated that there should be government intervention during times of high unemployment. What they fail to understand is that J.M. Keynes actually understood that what is also needed is private investment to help keep the economy working or well-oiled.

Like his rather incompetent counter-part in the USA, the new POTUS, Barack Obama (Sotero perhaps is more correct), Kevin Krudd believes that it is necessary to bash the CEOs of businesses and banks and to grandstand about what has gone wrong. The Kevin Krudd "fix" has been a stimulus package that will cost the tax-payer dearly, but it will not help to bring the economy out of the present recession.

When Kevin Krudd blasts CEOs for awarding themselves bonuses, he should think about how this is hypocrisy in its worst form because members of Parliament do not exercise any restraint at all. The essay by Krudd seems to be indicating that he wants to plunge Australia into a government that is based upon communism. He is talking the double talk, attacking the straw-man that he refers to as neo-liberals, when in fact it is his policies that are those of the neo-liberals.

Also, he is attacking the trade and economic policies of the Hawke-Keating years (when Keating was Treasurer) which has led to Keating's own attack upon Kevin Krudd (and a well deserved attack by Keating). Paul Keating was responsible for most of the changes in the Australian economy that have been very painful. The fall-out from those changes has seen an end to Australian manufacturing industry. At this moment we are seeing that one of the few remaining companies has made a decision to lay off employees and head to China - the company owns the brands of Bonds and Dunlop. In some ways it is inevitatble because these brands simply cannot compete against the Chinese imports. The costs of manufacturing are just too high, and with all of the Green nonsense that we suffer these costs will continue to rise in the future.

I happen to agree that we need to have some kind of justification for some of the CEO bonuses that are handed out, especially when they are given at the expense of employee jobs (QANTAS) but it is not right for the Prime Minister to bash these compnanies by implying things that are not necessarily true.

There is little chance that the Krudd stimulus package will work. The reason? There is too much pork in the package, and that pork is not going to help job creation. If Krudd had been following true Keynesian economics, then the solution would have been to lower taxes first. Those companies that are struggling need to start looking at ways of reducing their waste and bloat. They should not be relying upon a government handout. The government handouts to companies such as General Motors Holden are in reality quite wasteful. That money is not going to fix the underlying problems within the motor industry. We are a small nation, and if we were to continue to have a viable motor industry then we need to be able to sell the cars in the overseas markets. Is this happening? In other words why is the product not being sold on the world market? Why is the product so uncompetitive? Throwing money at these car manufacturers is jut not the way to resolve these questions.

I do not believe in the level of government intervention advocated by Kevin Krudd. Perhaps it could be said that I am a libertarian because I believe in less intervention, not more, but I do not see myself in that light because I have certain differences of opinion with the Libertarians. There are many areas where Government intervention is somewhat necessary, but I think that the intervention should be short-term and not long-term as Krudd seems to be advocating.

I suspect that few Australians have any knowledge of the real Kevin Krudd agenda. I just hope that more Australian voters will become aware of his very dangerous policies, especially when they begin to realise that he wants to drive us towards communism, which is the real name for what he is advocating.

UN launches Tribunal to prosecute the assassins of Harari

U.N. opens prosecution over Hariri assassination - CNN.com

A tribunal has been convened at the The Hague more than 4 years after Hariri was killed in a massive car bombing in Beirut on February 14, 2005.  The bomb had detonated as Hariri's motorcade passed through the seaside district of Corniche. The bomb itself contained hundreds of pounds of explosives and it left buildings shattered and streets littered with the mangled wreckage of the vehicles. The blast killed 22 other people.

The Tribunal will have 11 judges, 4 of whom will be Lebanese. Four senior generals have been held over the killing, but the United States and the U.N. investigators believe that Syria ordered the assassination, even though this is denied by Syria.

The killing sparked widespread protests that led to the eventual withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon (followed by the build up of Hezbollah the Syrian puppet organization) and the election of the anti-Syrian bloc in parliament.

The U.N. investigators who were tasked to find the killers of Hariri found links between the Syrian government and Hariri's asassination.

The U.N. says that the case is expected to be ready for trial by 2010.