From: "Brown, R Ken" <brownrk1@texaco.com>
Date: Thu, 29 Oct 1998 20:23:20 +0800
To: "Brown, R Ken" <frissell@panix.com>
Subject: RE: UK police chase crooks on CCTV (fwd)
Message-ID: <896C7C3540C3D111AB9F00805FA78CE2013F853E@MSX11002>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



> So when are they going to arrest Gorby and Fidel?  They killed more
people.

Castro I assume the moment he steps foot in the USA other than on a
diplomatic mission. I've no idea about   Gorbachev, I assume as a KGB
official he was party to the same sort of behaviour as Pinochet was, but
when he got to the top at least he didn't make things worse. Anyway,
what about Oliver North?  And since when did our inability to catch all
criminals stop us prosecuting the ones  we can catch?

It looks like Pinochet will probably get released in England because of
the vile, immoral, doctrine of "sovereign immunity", i.e. that people in
office don't get prosecuted for crimes committed as part of the job. But
it was still fun to see him caught. 

The real reason Pinochet ought to have the wind put up him is exactly
*because* what he did seemed to have worked and was taken to be worth
doing by some people who should know better.  Everybody knows that the
CPSU or the Nazis or Bokassa or Idi Amin or the Ba'athists are or were
tyrants who ruined their countries and  lot more besides.  The very fact
that some people who once had political credibility,  like Thatcher or
Bush, support Pinochet is exactly the reason why he should be tried. We
need to draw a line between tolerable and intolerable government and put
his lot on the other side of it.

You have to know what the threats to liberty are. Old Soviet-style
"Communism" is hardly on the menu in any European  or North American
country these days and out-and-out looney Naziism isn't either (but that
doesn't mean we shouldn't keep our eyes open)  Our direct problems are
interfering governments, bad measures taken for good ends, corporate
power over private individuals, business power over workers and
customers,  and "law and order" (or the "War against
Drugs/Paedophiles/Communists/Dangerous Dogs/Liberals/Scroungers" or
whatever). Thin end of the wedge, slippery slope, foot in the door and
all that.  And even if Pinochet's ends my have been good his means were
as bad as they come.

His sort of ultra-nationalist, militarist authoritarian government that
pays lip service to libertarianism whilst using brutal methods to
enforce conformity, obedience and uniformity is still a threat today. It
bubbles under the surface in the blue-rinse wing of the British Tory
Party, and is quite explicity the line of the French Front National (the
British National Front are genuine Nazis, and pretty marginalised, but
the FN get real votes in France)   And when they get the upper hand then
the cattle-prod wielders and the toe-nail-pullers and the death squads
come out of the woodwork.   Margaret Thatcher wasn't any kind of
fascist,  but the differences are quantitative, not qualitative.  She
wasn't so far from Pinochet, Pinochet wasn't so far from Franco and
Franco wasn't so far from hell.

Ken Brown (whose bosses not only have nothing to do with this note &
wouldn't approve of it if they did, but probably voted for some of the
people the first draft ranted against)