Ten Humble Thoughts

 1.  Related to Poland: Sometimes you need a coup, or revolution, or radical overthrow situation....to keep your prospective of democracy still existing.

2.  Riot action: Running into a riot-control water cannon on a plus-2 degree C day....probably improves your odds of getting pneumonia.  

3.  Across America....if you came up with three or four new species of aliens existing....at least 10-million Americans would be hyped-up to sexually get it on, with the aliens.

4.  Once you start identifying everything of 'value' as a cartel.....suddenly....things seem to fit and make sense.

5.  If people were challenged to define a 'shit-hole'.....after an hour or two of thinking....they'd probably list forty cities, and at least five countries.

6.  After 20-plus years of living in a Oligarch-type landscape.....you don't even think of it in a negative way anymore.

7.  Somehow....social-democrats and democratic-socialists....are the same thing.

8.  It's possible that we wake up in ten years....to find that one-third of the voting public are willing to elect a AI-bot as city mayor....even if you tell the voter it's not a actual living human being.

9. If you make a 10-minute speech (recorded) and the finished product shows twenty-one 'edits' (cuts)....pretty good odds that it's a crappy unbelievable speech (probably requiring two hours of speaking)

10.  A SUCCESSFUL coup......opens many doors.  A UNSUCCESSFUL coup...usually leads to voters to asking some rather stilly questions.  

My Favorite Coup Story

Mid-1960s....Algeria....Houari Boumédiène ousted Ahmed Ben Bella from power.

So....at the time in Algeria....some movie production crew was filming 'The Battle of Algiers'.

Movie theme?  Actual 1950s independence movement...fairly historical.

19 June 1965 comes up....army units under Defense Minister Colonel Houari Boumédiène arrested President Ahmed Ben Bella in a limited action (no deaths).

Tanks and troops moved through the capital with ease....with the public used to the movie being shot.

Most residents assumed the activity was just more movie production. 

They all wake up on the 20th....rather shocked....coup completed, and the movie production continued on.

I always thought this was a great movie idea....having a actual coup built around a movie coup.

Riot-Demonstrations, and Poland

 Watched a fair amount of coverage over demonstrations (and later riot-action)....mostly over Frankfurt, Koln and Hamburg.

Most in Frankfurt?  Police say 8,000 range in mid-day....probably around 1,000 as darkness fell.  Violence/fires....mostly after dark.  Police detained a number of folks in the shopping district.  Report suggested around 1,000 police were on the scene there. 

Water cannon use noted....with temps down near 5C....awful cold if you got a full dose of the cannon.

I'd say there were two 'players'....students with complaints in the afternoon, who headed home as it got dark.  The rowdy folks stayed and caused the looting/damage. 

As for Poland?

I watched the PM (Tusk) give his 8 PM 'talk'.  Three things from that...he proposed at some point, resolutions and laws to rebuild the rule of law, but it's a odd statement from a guy who had a coup-card in the mix.

Then he said the police were there protecting the Constitutional Tribunal from the attackers....but as they arrived....they were mostly there to confine the folks inside the Tribunal building, who were gov't workers.

Then he said brawls are a bad thing....but never saying that coups are pretty bad as well.

I went and watched the 'talk'...with the sound muted.  What I can say....Tusk had a bad case of 'worry'/panic.  Hands shaking at times.  If you asked me over worries....he's maxing out on the scale. 

What does not make sense....polls show the KO-Party (Tusk's folks) leading (around 31/32 percent) with the fall 2027 election looking positive for a 'win'.  So why screw up the outlook with a banana-republic coup?  It does not make much logical sense.

Number of suggestions that the coup-planning was mostly a small group (maybe less than ten)....mostly folks around Tusk.  They seemed focused....at the end of the coup, there would be no President or VP....that the public would accept the coup as legitimate, and the whole landscape was we-are-protecting-democracy-by-cranking-up-a-coup.  

Early election BS?  There's simply talk....no substance.  There are various triggers to cause a Tusk coalition to collapse.  

Four parties make up the Tusk coalition....Poland 2050, Polish People's Party, the New Left, and finally KO (Tusk's own party).  Social commentary?  You get the impression that a lot of folks from the four parties probably were NOT expecting a coup occurring, and rather shocked how things have played out. If there was a vote of confidence over Tusk (the PM)  in the next week....I'd only give him a 50-50 chance of surviving the vote.