June 16, 2004
Moore's film faces "do not show" campaign
A conservative website is asking people to contact movie theatre chains and urge them not to show Michael Moore's latest, "Farenheit 9/11," the Washington Post reports.
The site lists contacts for 20 movie chains. "Since we are the customers of the American movie theatres it is important for us to speak up loudly and tell the industry executives that we don't want this misleading and grotesque movie being shown at our local cinema. We need these executives to be overwhelmed with letters, phone calls and FAXes [and] emails."
.....
In a story yesterday on the effort to squelch the movie, the Hollywood Reporter quoted John Fithian, president of the National Association of Theatre Owners: "Any time any organization protests against a movie, they ensure that the movie will do better at the box office than it would have done otherwise. If they have any doubt about this, just ask Mel Gibson."
Which raises the question of whether this whole effort is a clever marketing trick devised by Moore's people.
Nah.
Anyway I actually intend to see the film (at the risk of putting a few more bucks into Moore's pocket) before commenting on it.
Civil War veterans' widows update
In the name of accuracy, I want to note that the widow of the Confederate veteran who died last month turns out not to have been the last surviving spouse of a Civil War soldier.
Equatorial Guinea
A followup of sorts to my previous post about the State Department's report on human trafficking:
Some commenters expressed skepticism about the report's even-handedness. After all Cuba and Venezuela-- hardly favorites of the Bush administration-- made the list of "Tier 3" countries "whose governments do not fully comply with the minimum standards and are not making significant efforts to do so."
However it's worth noting the listing of another Tier 3 country: oil-rich Equatorial Guinea. In this instance, at least, the State Department may be operating at cross-purposes from the White House.
Equitorial Guinea has been ruled for 24 years by a brutal thief named Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo. Writing two years ago at Salon.com (free day pass required), Ken Silverstein reported:
The Bush administration, lobbied by the oil industry, has quietly authorized the reopening of the American Embassy in Equatorial Guinea, which had been shut down since 1996 when the Obiang regime threatened to kill then-U.S. Ambassador John Bennett for complaining about human rights conditions.
According to Peter Beinart of The New Republic (not available online):
Obiang, who has held power for 24 years, won his last election with 97 percent of the vote, while the country's main opposition leader languished in jail. In 1998, according to the IMF, his government received $130 million in oil revenue, and Obiang simply pocketed $96 million of it. Although three of every four Equatoguineans suffer malnutrition, between 1997 and 2002, Obiang spent just over 1 percent of his budget on health, by far the lowest of the nine African countries the IMF surveyed. According to a 2002 State Department report, there is "little evidence that the country's oil wealth is being devoted to the public good."
Silverstein reported that on a visit to Washington in 2002, Obiang was honored by the the Corporate Council on Africa, which promotes trade and investment on the continent.
The council put out an investment guide to Equatorial Guinea -- paid for by six oil companies with operations there -- that claims Obiang "has taken significant measures to encourage political diversity and address human and worker rights issues."
I hope the State Department's decison to flag Equatorial Guinea signals a new approach to the Obiang regime by the Bush administration. But the administration's record is not promising. In their own way the Bushies have been as inconsistent on human rights as those on the Left who excuse and minimize Cuba's abuses while holding less "revolutionary" countries to higher standards.
June 15, 2004
Human trafficking
The US State Department has accused 10 countries of failing to make even minimal efforts to control human trafficking.
Secretary of State Colin Powell estimated that 600,000 to 800,000 people, mostly women and children, are trafficked internationally each year and called this a "kind of evil."
"We're talking about women and girls as young as 6 years old trafficked into commercial sexual exploitation, men trafficked into forced labor, children trafficked as child soldiers," Powell said as he presented the State Department's annual "Trafficking in Persons Report."
.....
The ten nations -- Bangladesh, Burma, Cuba, Ecuador, Equatorial Guinea, Guyana, North Korea, Sierra Leone, Sudan and Venezuela -- may all be subject to sanctions, including the withholding of U.S. aid that is not for humanitarian or trade purposes. The president has the right to waive sanctions
The State Department said the 10 nations on its lowest, "Tier 3," list that may face sanctions "do not fully comply with the minimum standards (laid down by U.S. law) and are not making significant efforts to do so."
You can look at the State Department's report here.
Did the department choose some of these countries for political reasons? Who knows? But those who think the people ruling Cuba and Venezuela are genuine leftists should at least read what the report has to say about them.
On Cuba:
Cuba is a country of internal trafficking for sexual exploitation and forced labor. Child sexual victims are generally teenage girls aged 14 to 17 who are abused in prostitution. The Cuban Government does not condone underage prostitution, but does not publicly address the problem, which largely takes place in the context of tourism that earns hard currency for the state. Cuba is a destination for sex tourists, including foreigners searching for underage prostitutes. Cuba’s tourist industry is heavily dominated by state companies, and government employees tolerate corrupt practices that facilitate this sexual exploitation, sometimes even making state-run facilities available for underage prostitution... Cuban forced labor victims include children coerced to work in commercial agriculture. Some opponents of the Cuban Government, often arrested under vague charges such as “dangerousness” and “contempt of authority,” are forced to carry out work that profits the state.
The Government of Cuba does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking and is not making significant efforts to do so. Cuban officials dismiss as politically motivated any criticisms of the government’s failure to address trafficking. They have avoided developing a strategy to address the problem. The government needs to publicly acknowledge that trafficking occurs, implement a national plan to prevent teenagers from entering the sex trade, and end its forced labor practices.
On Venezuela:
Venezuela is a source, transit, and destination country for women and children trafficked for the purposes of sexual exploitation. Brazilian and Colombian women and girls are trafficked to and through Venezuela. Venezuelans are trafficked internally for the domestic sex trade and to Western Europe, particularly Spain. Venezuelan sex tourism that encourages underage prostitution is a concern. There are reports that in border areas Venezuelans are trafficked to mining camps in Guyana for sexual exploitation and abducted by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) to be used as soldiers. Venezuela is a transit country for illegal migration; some of these migrants are believed to be trafficking victims.
The Government of Venezuela does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking and is not making significant efforts to do so. Due to Venezuela’s current political situation, the government is not devoting serious attention or resources to trafficking in persons, which is a growing regional problem. The government carries out no anti-trafficking law enforcement; it has no victim protection policy.
Of course many other countries have records that are only marginally better. But the report for North Korea is especially grim:
The Democratic People's Republic of North Korea (DPRK) is a source country for persons trafficked for the purposes of forced labor and sexual exploitation. The DPRK operates forced-labor prison camps to punish criminals and repatriated North Koreans. Thousands of North Korean men, women and children are forced to work and often perish under conditions of slavery. Many nations provide humanitarian assistance and food to the North Korean people, but deteriorating economic conditions continue to pressure thousands into fleeing to China, Russia and Mongolia. The North Koreans' illegal status in other nations increases their vulnerability to trafficking schemes and sexual and physical abuse.
The Government of North Korea does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking and is not making efforts to do so. The Government does not recognize trafficking as a problem and imposes slave-like labor conditions on its prisoners.
June 14, 2004
"I don't agree with this illegal war and I can no longer remain in the party"
I'm sorry to keep going on about Respect. It is getting a bit boring, I know. With any luck they won't be around to ridicule for much longer.
But this story - on the Respect website - really takes the biscuit:
"Seventy-two hours before the 'referendum on Tony Blair', a senior Labour councillor on Warwickshire County Council has resigned over the war to join Respect. He is now our fourth local councillor.
Ronnie McIntosh, who represents the Abbey Wood ward in Nuneaton, has been on the council for seven years and has one year left before the next council elections. "I don't intend to stand for Labour again," he said, minutes after posting his resignation letter to the party. "I don't agree with this illegal war and I can no longer remain in the party," he added.
The Councillor hardly made a snap decision. After all, the war started on 20 March 2003. David Kay's verdict on chemical and biological weapons was set out in January 2004. But the Councillor clearly wanted to afford Tony Blair every chance to come good. Indeed, he waited until the last possible moment "waiting, hoping and praying that Blair would have the heart to turn around and say he was wrong, but he will not do it".
Well, that was very fair and generous of Councillor McIntosh.
RESPECT "establishes itself as a serious national party"...
Well, that's what the website says. The claim is somewhat undermined, however, when they admit "across England and Wales our European vote was 1.7%." A serious political force indeed.
It couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of Taliban-and-Saddam-apologist Islamic fundamentalists and Trots.
No objections?
The Religious Policeman links to an article in the Arab News reporting that Britain's chief rabbi Jonathan Sachs attended the mosque opening at which Sheikh al-Sudais preached. Normally I'd have no problem with that, but surely he knew what al-Sudais had said about Jews. Did he decide that maintaining good relations with the Muslim community was more important than speaking out? Outside of this weblog, did anyone (in the Jewish community or elsewhere) raise an objection to al-Sudais?
Clarification: ChrisB writes, "it wasn't a mosque opening - it was the opening of a community and cultural centre attached to the East London Mosque."
What if...
Following up on david t's recent post about the Jew-hating Sheikh al-Sudais who preached at the opening of the new East London mosque:
The Saudi guy who blogs at Religious Policeman imagines what would have happened if the UK had religious laws like those in Saudi Arabia. Funny and scary stuff.
Chapter Two
Norm has a game and it's fun. Here's my chapter two to his chapter one of Brought Low:
1 - Crime and Punishment - Dostoyevsky
2 - Cry Freedom - John Briley
3 - On the Road - Jack Kerouac
4 - Strange Meeting - Susan Hill
5 - Death in Venice - Thomas Mann
Big Brother Update
Those of you who were fans of Kat Pinder (aka "Kitten") from Big Brother, the now-evicted supposed former prostitute (steady, Benji!) who described herself alternatively as an anarchist and a socialist, will be delighted to hear that she is a guest speaker at this year's Socialist Organiser/Alliance for Workers' Liberty socialist summer school, Ideas for Freedom.
I've heard it rumoured that she was a member of AWL in Hull. There certainly is something about her which reminds me of Janine Booth.
You can read her thoughts on Big Brother in full and from a revolutionary socialist perspective here, but for me the money quote is this:
"[W]hat they hated most was me trying to organise the housemates. On the first day, we were each supposed to visit the 'Diary room' to say who we wanted to have their suitcase confiscated. I refused and tried to persuade the others that if none of us did it there'd be nothing they could do.
Unfortunately, everyone else did it, so they took my suitcase!"
Compare and contrast with Spanish Big Brother a couple of years ago, in which the more communitarian participants made it through the programme by conspiring to ensure that all housemates received the same number of nomination votes, so that all were up for eviction each week. And they had proper sex, not just fumbling under duvets.
What is wrong with the British?
June 13, 2004
June 12, 2004
Blackshirts
Before the Al-Sadr gang decided to declare a truce last week they often accused US troops of disrespect for Islamic religious sites. This had the dual purpose of whipping up support for them in Iraq amongst the religiously minded and added to concern about the conduct of coalition troops among liberal Western journalists.
So how do you think the Mahdi army treat their co-religionists ? If youd guessed with cynical contempt you'd be right:
On the same day that last Friday's truce was announced, al-Sadr supporters stormed the Imam Ali Shrine in Najaf - one of the holiest sites in all of Shiite Islam - during Friday prayers and heckled the prayer leader, al-Sadr al din Kubanchi. They also made thinly veiled insults toward Sistani.
One man in the crowd, to the approval of those around him, yelled that "Kubanchi is an agent of Israel," an incendiary accusation in Iraq.
A pro-Sistani cleric in the crowd looked at the jeering Mahdi Army members and supporters.
"You know the Nazis," he said, "this is exactly how they acted."
That unamed cleric realised something most muddle-headed Western cheerleaders for the 'resistance' have so far failed to grasp.
Maybe government isn't always the problem
Here's a story about Ronald Reagan which probably hasn't got as much attention as some others this past week.
At his first Inauguration in January 1981, the new president declared:
"Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem."
A little more than two months later, when Reagan was shot, he was taken to George Washington University Hospital, where his life was saved by a team of surgeons led by Dr. Joseph Giordano.
As James Carville wrote in his book We're Right, They're Wrong:
...Dr. Giordano was Reagan's perfect human interest story. He was the son of a milkman and the grandson of poor immigrants from Italy. Thanks to his own hard work and the hard work of his parents, Giordano got himself through college and medical school and then went on to become a prominent surgeon at a great hospital and then to save a President's life. The American Dream in spades.
But, you see, Dr. Giordano wasn't too enamored of the way Reagan was telling his life story. He thought Reagan had left a few things out of the picture-- like school loans and federal funding for his medical research. Here's what Dr. Giordano said about the matter in the Los Angeles Times under the headline "Facts for the President's Fable" :
"The government social programs enacted over the last 50 years-- and so frequently criticized by this President and his Administration-- have played a vital role in making this success possible... In contrast to the President, who feels that government programs make people so dependent that they lose initiative, I feel that these programs have enabled people with little resources to reach their full potential."
Hunger? What hunger?
Despite the highly-touted US economic recovery, it appears that not everyone is benefiting.
According to the Associated Press (quoting the Columbus Dispatch):
The Ohio Association of Second Harvest Foodbanks, which serves much of Ohio through 3,000 agencies, reported a 44 percent increase in people seeking assistance during the first three months of this year compared with the last three months of 2003. At the same time, the food available at pantries rose just 4 percent.
George Zeller, senior researcher at the nonprofit, nonpartisan Council for Economic Opportunities in Greater Cleveland, said as Ohio’s large manufacturing base has shrunk, it has become more difficult for people to work their way out of poverty.
Vince Chase of Catholic Social Services of Clark, Champaign and Logan Counties, calls Ohio’s economic climate Depression-like, the worst he’s experienced in 30 years of helping people in need.
Millions of American familes worry about how to put enough food on the table, the US Department of Agriculture reports:
In 2002, 34.9 million people lived in food-insecure households, including 13.1 million children. Of these individuals, 6.3 million adults and 3.1 million children lived in households where someone experienced hunger during the year.
Despite the USDA's own data, Eric Bost-- undersecretary for food and nutrition service-- managed to sound (if I may use the expression so soon after the funeral) downright Reaganesque.
“There’s a bump, but how much of that is due to people taking the easy way out? I don’t know,” he said.
Food-stamp enrollment is up largely due to government outreach to eligible people, he said. Pantries typically don’t require documentation of income, so not everyone receiving provisions is truly in need, Bost said.
Now I'm sure there are cases of people who don't need help taking advantage of food banks. But does Mr. Bost really believe large numbers of people are suddenly "taking the easy way out"?
And is lining up, perhaps for hours, and publicly declaring yourself in need (a humiliating experience for most people) really taking the easy way out?
Sheila Miller was laid off as a $36,000-a-year supervisor of an assisted-living company. Her husband works at a sawmill in the small southeast Ohio town of Haydenville, but the couple with two young children is struggling. She came to a Logan County pantry for the first time recently.
“It’s embarrassing to come here,” said Miller, 30. “It makes me feel ignorant, like I’m trash, and I’m not.”
By spouting such clueless nonsense, however, Mr. Bost was only carrying on in the tradition of President Reagan's adviser Ed Meese, who famously proclaimed in 1983:
"I don't know of any authoritative figures that there are hungry children. I've heard a lot of anecdotal stuff, but I haven't heard any authoritative figures...I think some people are going to soup kitchens voluntarily. I know we've had considerable information that people go to soup kitchens because the food is free and that that's easier than paying for it...I think that they have money."
Perhaps it was insights like this which led Reagan to promote Meese to attorney general two years later.
(Via Center for American Progress.)
Give me a hand
I was planning to profile some of Respect's newly elected councillors and London assembly members, given that the party had promised it was going to "change British politics forever".
The problem is I've been searching through the local council election results and I haven't been able to find any Respect successes.
Can anyone help me out? I must be missing something.
Or is it all the fault of the Independent?
June 11, 2004
Banning preachers
I have to say, at the outset, that I'm not in favour of banning people from entering this country on the basis of what they have said or might say.
Nevertheless, if this country is going to ban the clownish UFO abductee Louis Farrahkhan from the United Kingdom, on the ground that he is a threat to public order, it seems inconsistent that we should not also be banning Sheikh Abdur-Rahman al-Sudays, Imam of the Ka'ba, as Canada reportedly did last month.
I am assuming that Sheikh Abdur-Rahman al-Sudays, Imam of the Ka'ba who is in London today to preach at the East London Mosque is the same person as Sheikh Abd Al-Rahman Al-Sudayyis, Imam of the Al-Haraam mosque in Mecca who has delivered himself of the following gems:
In one of his sermons ... Abd Al-Rahman Al-Sudayyis... beseeched Allah to annihilate the Jews. He also urged the Arabs to give up peace initiatives with them because they are "the scum of the human race, the rats of the world, the violators of pacts and agreements, the murderers of the prophets, and the offspring of apes and pigs."
"Read history," called Al-Sudayyis in another sermon, "and you will understand that the Jews of yesterday are the evil fathers of the Jews of today, who are evil offspring, infidels, distorters of [others'] words, calf-worshippers, prophet-murderers, prophecy-deniers... the scum of the human race 'whom Allah cursed and turned into apes and pigs...' These are the Jews, an ongoing continuum of deceit, obstinacy, licentiousness, evil, and corruption
Further information on this delightful fellow here.
Time was that people would at least demonstrate against people with these sorts of views.
Incidentally, I wonder what the Dalai Lama would say about him?
June 10, 2004
Where's the Beef ?
The three day siege at Scotland's secret bunker has ended today with an arrest.
The linked BBC report fails to tell us the name of the troublemaker though. Grampian TV have no such qualms:
The departure of a police van with Ronald MacDonald inside marked the end of a bizarre siege.
Was this the scary looking clown's 'cry for help' over Salads Plus ?
Life imitates trashy art?
Reservoir Dogs
Reservoir Running Dogs of Capitalism
(Total credit-- or blame-- to Wonkette.)
Who knew that Buddhists could be so aggressive?
Buddhists: peace-loving, sweet, filled with Universal Compassion, right? Not if you interview the Dalai Lama and - while damning the rape of Tibet by the Chinese tyranny - also ask him some questions as if he was, you know, a human being and all.
I have been wading through hate mail all week. Here's one of the nicer e-mails, from somebody called Anna Churchill:
Just in case you are the type who gets off on raising
ire by deliberately writing twisted and irrepsonsible
portraits of those you interview-- remember that this
time you have stepped over the line and have shown
yourself to be an incredibly small minded (and as the
Dalai Lama noted--greedy and fat) ugly and stupid
person. When the world is being hacked to bits by just
such a sensibility as what you have now demonstrated
to be yours--you had to swing your dull little blade
with the rest rather than take advantage of your
position and the privilege to communicate to a mass
audience to say something intelligent and sustainable
you chose instead to smear the page with the usual
excrement of commercial, cheap, mean and stupid
sentiments.
How utterly contemptable that the Independent has
caved to political pressure [Eh? Does she think the
Chinese embassy has been on the phone, or what?] to present a deliberately
viscious and ignorant feature on the Dalai Lama. If
speciousness could be thought to have a nadir (and
this would be tautological) it would be exemplified in
Hari's bizarre accusations that the Dalai Lama
INHERITED the sensibility of a one or two thousand
year old system and then had the unmitigated gall to
not only REFORM IT but has refused to resort to
violence to defend it against its wanton destruction
by the Chinese--(where is the ever whinging Mr. Fisk
when you need him) which by so doing would violate
the most fundamental philosophical tenets of that
state's raison d'etre.
Those who choose to be subjected to such scum
suckingjournalism usually read the Sun or the Mail. I
don'texpect to have to pay 55 pence to be offended by
such rabid garbage...
If Mr. Hari or the managing editor had the
balls to face me as a member of the Independent's
reading public--I would beat the crap out of the both
of you. As one who has inherited the Western mantle of
feeling outrage at injustice I sure as hell would not
demonstrate any of the compassion for your venality
and ignorance that would be accorded to you by someone
such as the Dalia Lama. And THAT is why we need more
humans like the Dalai Lama and a regard for the
contribution being made to the world's collective
conscience and consciousness by Tibetan Buddhism...so
that we can all learn to resist wanting to beat the
crap out of arrogant, irresponsible shits such as Mr.
Hari and the editor who commissioned the article--
thereby making one more gesture towards helping to
elevate the human condition.
But the Dalai Lama hardly needs me to defend him when
he can turn on his heel at the end of such a rude
encounter and out quip the best of them with his hint
to Mr. Hari that Mr. Hari is no more than a smug and
inlfated glutton. And of course Mr. Hari's smug and
inflated sense of himself is proven by his inclusion
of the Dalai Lama's remark into his article.
Oh, and here's another Buddhist charmer, called Dom from Oxford:
You're encounter with the Dali Lama confirmed everything that I have come to expect of your one dimensional drivle I find stained on my copy of the independent. Regardless of whether you though yourself to have a greater relationship with 'truth' than the Dali Lama or not, the very least you could have done is at least attempt to disguise it! I talked to various people about your article, as I was shocked by the cringe inducing potency of self righteousness, and found them all to be in agreement that you had suceeded in making a fool of yourself.
As a man who is such a 'warrior of tollerance', I find it quite amazing that you consider Buddhism to be something that appeals to 'trendy westerners'. Buddhism is of course a wonderful religion that spans back about 2500 years. The fact that it doesn't match your tastes of course means that it is of course a moral tyranny, a means of mass conformity and control, or a route to self hatred and sexual repression. Or not perhaps?
Even when you tried your hardest to focus in on the 'bad' aspects of the Dali Lama you failed. Are you really that narcissistic to believe yourself to be in the same intellectual league as such a tallented being as he is? Do you really have such confidence in your wisdom to take on a genius of our time? For just in case you hadn't realised I will admit you have intellectual abilities, but you are so far of a genius! His replies although obviously bastardised for your trying to make yourself sound clever, still came up on top of yours.
I am nineteen and utterly aware of my ignorace, and although I can't remember your age I believe it to be in the late twenties. Please grow up, your not a man of the people, your not a genius, you are Oxford graduate from a comfortable background trying to tell everyone how the world works (and failing, everything to do with the Iraq war you go wrong, and on some level you know it (I'm sure Bush is glad for people like you though)).
As for the disabled children, you might find it hard to concieve of things outside of your politically correct conditioning that I am sure you think yourself to be elevated from. But, that is another persons culture and just because it contrasts with your own does not mean it is false. I happen to believe in karma although I do not expect anyone else to, I try to respect other peoples beliefs and never aim to alter them. Look at people like Nietzsche's lives and then you may perhaps get an understand of this concept. Eminem will suffer greatly in the years to come, suicide from his part would not suprise me in the least.
Lastly if the Dali Lama did actually say that thing about you having two bellies he was right. You like 99% of all other fat people should stop whinging and lose that wieght, and you can lose your depression you are so proud of also. Self pity and self love go hand in hand, and you could do with getting rid of both of them.
Dom
I guess these guys did something really bad in a past life to deserve me...
Reagan and Communism: the myths
Reagan's record on Communism is being misrepresented this week. Yes, Reagan played a small role in precipitating the collpase of that hideous tyranny. His hard - and just - line against the Soviet Union seems to have pressed the Politburo into selecting the reformist Mikhail Gorbachev rather than another conservative like Andropov. This set in train the reforms that finally killed Lenin's deformed baby. He deserves credit for his limited role in this achievement.
However, it should be pointed out that the idea he had a concerted plan for the collapse of the Soviet Union is absurd. No serious historian accepts this right-wing fantasy. And there are other, greater problems with Reagan's anti-Communist record. The President lumped all independent third world liberation movements into his war on Soviet tyranny. Thanks to his disconnection from the grey hues of reality, everybody who opposed US policy became in his – and Middle America’s – mind somehow a Soviet stooge. This led the President to illegally back – to name just one – the fascist Contras in Nicaragua who murdered over 30,000 people in their attempt to overthrow the democratically elected Sandinista government. Reagan’s toughness on the Soviets warped into the liquidation of democratic development in Central America. Those societies have still not recovered from Reagan-funded butchery. He also counted pro-American tyrannies as "on the side of ‘freedom" – including Apartheid South Africa and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Ah, the beauties of freedom for Iraqi Kurds and South African blacks.
It also needs to be remembered that, having helped bring down Soviet tyranny, the crusaders in the Reagan Revolution then destroyed Russia over again. It was Reaganite government-haters who inspired and designed the IMF ‘shock therapy’ program imposed upon the rubble of the Soviet Union. The result is now beyond dispute. Robber barons seized the nation, bought up the ‘free’ press, starved the state of money to pay for health and education, and life expectancy for the average Russian actually fell below[ital] the dire levels of the late Soviet Union. Russia is now - as a result of this imposed bout of Thatcho-Reaganism – turning back to a tyrannical and authoritarian leadership. No, it's not as bad as the Stalinist Soviet Union (although the genocidal war on Chechnya is worthy of Uncle Joe), but that's hardly much of a comfort. So yes, Reagan played a significant role in winning the Cold War – but it was his philosophy that made us disastrously lose the peace.
