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)