Wednesday, September 17, 2003

ELSEWHERE

Nicholas Farrell in the UK Spectator tells us more about the way Mussolini differed from Hitler and Stalin and also reflects on the recent controversial interview with Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi. He thinks that one reason why Berlusconi is so much attacked is this: “Berlusconi’s ...opponents on the Left are desperate to deflect attention from a scandal of immense proportions which threatens to engulf them. The scandal is this: in 1997, when the EU commissioner, Romano Prodi, was Italian prime minister, the state-owned Italian telecommunications company — Stet — bought 29 per cent of Telekom Serbia from Slobodan Milosevic for roughly £300 million; then, in 2002, Telecom Italia (by then Stet had been privatised) sold back the share for about £100 million. The scandal involves all the usual allegations of massive bribes, not to mention the chucking of so much public money down the drain. Worse, Milosevic used the money, according to a CIA report, to finance his ethnic cleansing in Kosovo."

Paddy McGuinness compares the treatment dished out to conservative Australian historians Geoffrey Blainey and Keith Windschuttle with the treatment received by 'the skeptical environmentalist' Bjorn Lomberg. “Letters to the Editor” in The Australian of 16th (See here) show that some people seem amazed at the personal attacks on Windschuttle but since Windschuttle has shown what liars the Leftist historians are I am not surprised at all. It is in the nature of Leftists to be vicious rather than repentant. What did Stalin ever repent of? Millions of deaths seemed to sit easily on HIS conscience. And note that at the end of the letters page Windschuttle himself catches the Leftists out in even more lies.

Now that the voters of Sweden have given the Eurocrats a black eye, it is worth looking at this classic FEE paper -- in which UK economist Norman Barry examines the case against euro-centralism and urges a return to the liberal free trading principles of the original "Treaty Of Rome" -- which differs considerably from the bureaucracy of Brussels today.

"There is a serious irony to left wing schemes like Fair Trade: The Fair Trade scheme is capitalist at heart. These lefties and hippies, the tree huggers who want change the planet and pay burros a living wage are using the free market to do it. Fair Trade is just an advertising scheme to convince people to buy a certain brand of coffee.”

Gerald Henderson points out that "mandatory detention for unlawful entrants was introduced by the Labor government in 1992" so blaming Australia’s tough illegal immigrant policy on “uncaring” conservatives is a bit rich.

You’ve heard of optical illusions? Well, The Wicked one has a verbal illusion.

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