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Tuesday, March 21, 2006
Italian PM's Friendly Greeting
Silvio Berlusconi makes Pierre Trudeau look like Stephen Harper.
Posted by CharLeBois on March 21, 2006 in Humour | Permalink
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Very classy. I bet the feminists will love him for that.
Posted by: MarkAlta | 2006-03-21 5:20:03 PM
Poor Italians. It's like they're trapped in a Fellini movie.
Posted by: Nbob | 2006-03-21 5:30:41 PM
Its called "fructation" and its in the criminal code. Sexual assault.
Posted by: PGP | 2006-03-21 5:48:43 PM
This is insulting the people of Italy, Quebec, and of Alberta by comparing anyone to Pierre The Terrible. His heartless reign of terror should be compared only to the regime of Augusto Pinochet.
Posted by: Scott | 2006-03-21 6:18:52 PM
Scott, apparently you missed the memo that Pinochet is the darling of dyed-in-the-wool conservatives everywhere!
Posted by: Jim in Toronto | 2006-03-21 6:46:49 PM
Tronna person, since your city is lost in the 1970s, you may not be aware that in 2006, conservatives support bringing down dictators. We did it in Afghanistan, we did it in Iraq, and will do it in other countries.
Canada's passive UN worshipping makes it the friend of dictators and other massive human rights violators. When will you people learn?
Posted by: Scott | 2006-03-21 7:05:19 PM
Bravo Scott!! My thoughts mirror yours ! I was amazed when I saw the post, then horrified when I realized that is was not a joke!
Posted by: jema54j | 2006-03-21 7:39:13 PM
Scott,
Last I looked Berlusconi was a)a conservative and b)a member of the "Coaliton of the Willing". However, I think we can safely say that the object of his affections (if that's the right word) doesn't fall into the latter group.
Posted by: truewest | 2006-03-21 7:51:27 PM
If conservatives are so opposed to dictators like Pinochet, then who put him in power in the first place? Who was it who protected him during his exile? Who is it in the media that defends him to this day? HINT: Not liberals.
Posted by: Jim in Toronto | 2006-03-21 8:06:50 PM
In the 1970s, conservatives (and others) did many nasty things, like put people like Pinochet in power, and shame on us. But that was then.
Today, democracy is flourishing because conservatives are insisting upon it. Communism fell in Eastern Europe and was replaced not with right-wing dictatorships, but with democratic governments. They're doing the same thing with Iraq and Afghanistan, and soon will with Iran, North Korea and Cuba when those dictatorships fall.
Where do liebrals come in? Well, they don't. They prefer to hide behind the UN and let the dictators set the agenda. Liebrals do not create or follow up on plans. Rather, they complain and criticize from the sidelines on why conservative plans aren't perfect (they never are and never could be, but as Patton said: a good plan now is better than a perfect one later.)
Pinochet only escaped arrest in the UK because of his illness. But that does not mean he has escaped altogether. He's facing mounting legal troubles right now in Chile. Sadly, he will die before he stands trial. Incidentally, Chile is now a democracy not because liberals wanted it that way, but because conservatives made it so. The same goes for Apartheid.
Posted by: Scott | 2006-03-21 8:24:47 PM
Scott: Don't bother, liberals like to live in the past (flower children ). They have no vision for the future, so can only try to find fault in the past.
Posted by: MarkAlta | 2006-03-21 8:33:19 PM
MarkAlta: oh darn, and I was having fun exposing liberalism for what it truly is: do-nothingism.
I love it when they point out the totally obvious, and then criticize any plan as inadequate (yet fail to come up with one of their own.)
They do have a vision for the future - but fantasy is perhaps a better word. Either way, they are not equipped to implement their hare-brained ideas.
Posted by: Scott | 2006-03-21 8:45:55 PM
I think it's funny that you ascribe any commentary that disagrees with you to a left-wing perspective. Funny, but typically unimaginative.
Posted by: Jim in Toronto | 2006-03-21 8:53:05 PM
Also, you typically failed to address my point that conservatives TODAY still defend Pinochet. How do you explain that?
Posted by: Jim in Toronto | 2006-03-21 8:54:08 PM
Jim,
You clearly don't understand the rules around here. A conservative president has invaded a couple of countries and, while he has made a complete botch of the job in both cases, the fact that he's allowed elections erases 100 years of conservatives cuddling up to dictator, fascists and terrorists (including Saddam) and transforms the entire movement into agents of change who are solely responsible for all good in the world.
No, it doesn't make sense and doesn't accord with reality. Unless of course you take into account the fact that conservatives(or at least conservatives like MarkAlta and Scott) rewrite the past, lie about the present and fantasize about the future. Then it makes perfect sense.
Posted by: truewest | 2006-03-21 9:07:01 PM
ATTENTION ALL POSTERS
As a sign of good faith in Democracy,
this site is also monitored by varies agencies
CISS, RCMP, News media, observers
Rednecks likely included.
You are free not to to post here.
Please contact your local MP
for any further details, questions.
Posted by: ATTENTION | 2006-03-21 10:02:13 PM
An clear insult to the Vatican!!!
Posted by: Petulia | 2006-03-21 10:06:09 PM
Is that 'Twilight Zone' music playing here ?
Posted by: MarkAlta | 2006-03-21 11:34:05 PM
PGP:
Not "fructation." "Frottage" maybe.
(I knows my perversions!)
Posted by: greenmamba | 2006-03-22 4:31:27 AM
Under Pinochet, chile became prosperous and still is today. Under the socials who were there, it was slipping down that communist shit hole.
At the time the Soviet Union was still powerful and agressive and looking to make another Cuba.
When the rodents are sneaking in under the cracks, you use whatever poison will work. pinochet was the strong man who could get it done.
Chile is also now free, but looking to the left again like many of those peasant countries in S.A.
Corruption is as the root of it. Like everwhere else that doesn't have rule of law and a tradition of fair play and trust. Canada's immigration policies IE who gets in ... is rapidly destroying those qualities here as well. you either got em or ya don't.
Most don't adhere to the qualities that make The US and Canada great places to live and that is why those places are not good places to live.
Posted by: Duke | 2006-03-22 9:53:01 AM
I love it when the only dictator those on the left can come up with is Pinochet. They all want him tried for his crimes (3000 dead.)
Funny how they're selective in their outrage.
There was the (now aborted) prosecution of Milosevic who fought a war against the KLA separatist army (it was the KLA who started that fiasco and it was the KLA who the west fought to protect.)
The left is trying to prosecute Pinochet.
Two right-wing leaders.
How about the crimes of the left?
Well here's a partial list:
No criminal proceedings against Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge (2 million dead.) They had ample opportunity to prosecute Pol Pot and the other commies of Cambodia but so far, the Hague has declined.
No Criminal proceedings against the Chinese communists (70 million dead.)
No criminal proceedings against the soviet communists (40 million dead.)
No criminal proceedings against any of the Afro-Marxist dictators (who knows how many millions dead?)
The same lefty idiots who whine about Pinochet were and are dead-set against the war to depose Saddam (at least 2 million dead.)
As a matter of fact, there have been exactly zero proceedings enacted against any of the left-wing murderers.
I guess 3000 dead commies killed by a right-wing dictator are more important than 120 million non-commies killed by the friends of the left.
This is why I have so little respect for lefties. They are hypocritical jackasses with zero credibility. They claim to give a shit about people but only their kind of people. Everyone else be damned.
The offensive thing about international courts (and every other international pseudo-legal body) is their political selectivity and bias. Justice unequally applied is not justice. It is the very reason Churchill objected to the Nuremburg trials. Victor's justice through show trials are not justice at all.
Posted by: Warwick | 2006-03-22 10:32:55 AM
Nice try Warwick, but it was Scott who brought up Pinochet and I don't think Scott's a leftist.
I'd be interested to see how you'd try the Chinese communists, since they're still running their country (albeit they're not really communists anymore). Likewise the Russian communists, although Putin doesn't abuse the title "communist" so he's one up on the Chinese.
I don't think you'll find too many voices on the left, and certainly none in the mainstream left, defending the Khmer Rouge at all.
But if we're going to talk about selectivity and bias, why are you stopping with Pinochet when you tally up the Right Wing Dictator body count? How about the Galtieri regime in Argentina? How about Francisco Franco? I'm not even going to bring up the obvious, Godwin's Law-inducing example...
Lastly, your defence of Milosevic is almost as grotesque as your implied denunciation of the Nuremburg trials. Do you similarly denounce the trial of Saddam?
Posted by: Jim in Toronto | 2006-03-22 11:32:26 AM
That wasn't a defence of Milosevic at all. It was a question of why the KLA isn't on trial beside him. It was pointing out the bias of these tribunals who only seem to see crimes when they're committed by people they don't agree with ideologically.
Both Milosevic and the KLA are guilty of murdering people. One was tried (or would have been had he not been croaked) while the KLA murderers are free. That's what I object to - especially given that the KLA started the war in the first place!
I don't object to prosecuting Pinochet IF the left would go after their own as well. The commies have killed a hell of a lot more people than the right did even including the Nazis (if you can even call the Nazis "right" given that Nazi stands for National SOCIALIST WORKERS Party.) People, including the Nazis, have been tried in asentia. You don't have to get your hands on them to try them (which would obviously be impossible in the Chinese case.)
You are correct in that no one (aside from Chomsky) makes excuses for the Khmer Rouge today. But no one is in a hurry to prosecute them either. Why the rush to try the others? Bias. The left don't prosecute their own.
As for Franco, you can't try the dead. Not all of the Khmer Rouge are dead and they had the opportunity to try Pol Pot long before he died.
I didn't really go into South and Central America (I didn't even mention Castro and the fact that a good portion of the wars in Africa in the 60's and 70's were started by Castro - including the Angolan war still being fought today. Trudeau even let Castro's thugs refuel here in Canada.) So I didn't go into the mostly small-time thugs on either side. I stuck to the big-ticket murderers. An exhaustive list would take forever.
Posted by: Warwick | 2006-03-22 11:57:15 AM
Oh, and Scott isn't left or right. He's a paranoid lunatic. I mostly ignore him.
Posted by: Warwick | 2006-03-22 11:58:10 AM
Doh! forgot to make the most important point.
I do think the show-trials of the Nazis were wrong. Churchill had the right idea. Find a Nazi, put a bullet in his head and bury him. End of story. Emulating Stalin's kangaroo courts legitimized what Stalin was doing in the CCCP (i.e. killing a few million people.)
As for Saddam, it would have been better had they shot him outright. What's the point of a trial when we know the outcome and there is no question whatsoever of his guilt?
In other words, if you can't apply the law in an impartial manner, you should not pretend to be applying the law. That's not what is happening. What is happening is victor's justice. Show trials were wrong when done by dictators like Stalin and they're wrong when done by the EU leftists.
Posted by: Warwick | 2006-03-22 12:05:35 PM
I think describing the Nuremberg trials as "kangaroo courts" demonstrates a stunning ignorance on your part as to the actual conduct of those trials. But then, claiming that the Nazis were leftist based on the use of the term "socialist" shows a similar ignorance of history and political reality. It's like claiming that North Korea is really a democracy because it calls itself a "Democratic People's Republic."
And are you seriously suggesting that, when guilt is known, there is no point to holding a trial? Because that is what you said, but I'd like to offer you the opportunity to retract what I hope is merely a miswording.
Posted by: Jim in Toronto | 2006-03-22 12:20:30 PM
In cases like Saddam and the Nazis, are you suggesting even the remote possibility of a fair trial? Their situations are not even remotely comparable to a regular murder trial. They are being held responsible for the very public things they did as head of state. In extreme cases like these, what's the point of a trial? There can be no fair jurisprudence. None. And the fact that in cases of prosecution for war crimes, the enforcement is unequal, partisan and violates even the basic tenants of justice. These are not trials, they are theatre designed to appease the populace. It isn't justice.
In the case of Milosevic, are you even pretending that the KLA are not as if not more responsible? Then why are they not on trial too? Politics. When "justice" is more politics than law, you have injustice. Better to skip the trial and not bastardize the law.
One of the reasons many people are against the death penalty is because of the unfairness of who gets gassed (poor black people) and who gets off (rich, white and/or famous.) If justice is not blind, it isn't justice. The same goes for war crimes prosecutions. When you have EU leftists doing the prosecuting, all the trials are of people on the other side. That's a form of victor's justice. If you don't apply the "law" equally, you violate justice, fairness and the legitimacy of the courts. I don't see a lot of legitimacy left quite frankly.
Nazis were socialists. Big, statist, oppressive, socialists. They nationalized business, and did all the things that socialists do. Stalin also persecuted the Jews. He just didn't go as far as the Nazis. I don't see any Adam Smith, small-government conservative stuff in the Nazi platform. The Nazis were elected by the blue-collar workers and union-types by promising big, strong, central government. They were despised by the upper classes and they returned that derision in kind. They were no more right than Stalin was.
There is one reason and one reason only why people refer to the Nazis as "right." The media and the academy do the defining. The media and the academy are left. Therefore they define whatever we are meant to hate as right.
Posted by: Warwick | 2006-03-22 12:38:17 PM
That's pretty funny stuff. The Italian PM has a sense of humour. Good for him.
Posted by: Howard Roark | 2006-03-22 1:01:23 PM
Yes, the Nazis were so pro-union that they... well, they abolished unions actually. They were so anti-business that they... well, they actually worked with large corporations like IG Farben, allowing their directors to get very very rich off things like slave labour. The Nazis were hated by the upper classes... right up to the point where Hitler promised to purge the socialist rabble from his party, at which point the aristocrats, corporates and military leadership threw their support behind the Nazis.
I think you need to start getting your history from somewhere other than comic books or the magazines in the checkout line at Loblaws. It's woefully inaccurate and inadequate.
Oh, and Stalin persecuted Jews, so if Hitler persecuted Jews then Hitler must be exactly the same as Stalin! That's brilliant logic. You better watch out, I hear Stalin had a big moustache and I see a few moustaches in the Conservative caucus... it might be a conspiracy!
Do I think the Nazis got a fair trial? Yes. Do I think Saddam will get a fair trial? Yes. Do I think all war crimes tribunals are necessarily fair? No. Do I think fewer people are tried for war crimes and other crimes against humanity than should be the case? Yes. Do I think bias influences the choice of who does or doesn't get a trial? Yes. Do I think that makes the guilt of those who are tried and convicted any less real or relevant? No.
As an example, Kurt Meyer was tried and convicted in the execution of Canadian POWs during WW2. Do I think that no German POWs were similarly murdered? No, quite the opposite. Do I think it fair that Meyer was indicted, but no Allied officers similarly indicted? No. Does that change the fact that Meyer was guilty and deserved to be punished. It does not.
As for Milosevic, he was guilty of a lot more than fighting over Kosovo. If you're wondering about that, try talking to some Canadian servicemen about what they saw over in the former Yugoslavia. And yes, Milosevic was involved in the support of Serb milita in Bosnia and Croatia. Does that mean I deny the guilt of the KLA? No, I happen to think the KLA have been vastly misrepresented in the Western media as noble freedom fighters instead of as the thuggish bandits they are.
Your argument that you shouldn't try any war criminals unless you're going to try them all, sounds suspiciously like the anti-Iraq War argument that, unless you're going to topple all dictators, you shouldn't topple any. If you reject that argument, how can you make a similar argument in this case?
As for your implication that conservative = small-government by definition, I think it necessary only to look at the Bush Administration's record to demonstrate that this is not the case.
Posted by: Jim in Toronto | 2006-03-22 1:25:49 PM
Bush is not a conservative. He only pays lip service to it. True, he has moved on a few social conservative issues (very few) and his foreign policy is neo-con but to say that Bush is a conservative would be a mistake. Bush is very comfortable with big government and big spending. Yes, he cut taxes but cutting taxes without cutting spending is a half-measure.
Posted by: Howard Roark | 2006-03-22 1:37:44 PM
That's outrageous.
Posted by: Dante | 2006-03-22 2:29:59 PM
Jim in Toronto
You should brush up on PRE WWII history. If you would listin to what Warwick says you would not sound so ignorant. Hitler was a left wing socialist, he and Stalin had so much in common that they signed a non agression pact prior to WWII. Hitler, that insipid little rodent, did not CAUSE WWII. Greed and injustice CAUSED WWII. The war reparations from WWI - demanded in full from the Germanic nations by specifically the French; (the Americans and the Brits were willing to let payments to them slide when the Germanic countries went for such an economic slide after the war; BTW the Soviet Union signed a separate agreement with Germany in WWI and were not entitled to reparations) - CAUSED WWII. The people of the Germanic countries were robbed of their pride, independance and the ability to feed their families, that FACT, Jim was the UNDERLYING (or REAL reason for the rise of Hitler). Please read about WWI and let us know if you think that the Germanic counties should have been saddled with the responsibility for paying for all the devistation resulting from WWI.
Left wing Totalitarian states arise from catastophies - that is the reason Left wing outfits try to steal independance, pride, decency, property (especially guns and ammo) and money from the people of a nation before they make their big move to CONTROL the people. Your partial, superficial arguments highlight superficial knowledge.
Posted by: jema54j | 2006-03-22 2:32:42 PM
There's nothing funnier than being lectured about history by Jema. Why don't you tell us more stories about the Liberal statesman Neville Chamberlain, Jema? And how his eeevul Liberals conspired to appease the Nazis, because a right-wing party like the Conservatives would never do such a thing. Yes, you're a real expert on political history Jema.
Posted by: Jim in Toronto | 2006-03-23 9:30:01 AM
>>Bush is not a conservative. He only pays lip service to it. True, he has moved on a few social conservative issues (very few) and his foreign policy is neo-con but to say that Bush is a conservative would be a mistake.
Bush is very comfortable with big government and big spending. Yes, he cut taxes but cutting taxes without cutting spending is a half-measure.
SO BY THIS A CONSERVATIVE NOW REALY IS A TIGHT WAD, A CHEAP MISER, A MISTER SCROOGE, ONES WHO HATES ALL OTHERS AND HOARDS ALL THE MONEY FOR HIMSELF. IN THAT CASE ALBERTA IS TRULY CONSERVATIVE.
Bush truly is not a Conservative but a Republican.
THE LIBERAL/NDP ARE MORE COMPASSIONATE OF OTHERS PERSONS?
FEW LIBERALS IN ALBERTA FOR SURE.
Posted by: Pierre | 2006-03-23 9:40:26 AM
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