Quote of the Day 18.1.2008

"The usual terminology of political language is stupid. What is 'left' and what is 'right'? Why should Hitler be 'right' and Stalin, his temporary friend, be 'left'? Who is 'reactionary' and who is 'progressive'? Reaction against an unwise policy is not to be condemned. And progress towards chaos is not to be commended. Nothing should find acceptance just because it is new, radical, and fashionable. 'Orthodoxy' is not an evil if the doctrine on which the 'orthodox' stand is sound. Who is anti-labor, those who want to lower labor to the Russian level, or those who want for labor the capitalistic standard of the United States? Who is 'nationalist,' those who want to bring their nation under the heel of the Nazis, or those who want to preserve its independence?" - Ludwig von Mises; Interventionism, An Economic Analysis (1940)

Quote of the Day 10.11.2007

"Sometimes I think Mrs Thatcher is a nice kind sort of woman. Then the next day I see her on television and she frightens me rigid. She has got eyes like a psychotic killer, but a voice like a gentle person. It is a bit confusing." - Adrian Mole (or was it Johann Hari or Paul Burgin?!?)

Sounds like my kind of politican; she is one of us! Bobby Lashley take note; this is how a soft-spoken person intimidates others.

Terry Kelly - The Early Years

Have you ever wanted to know what everyone's favourite socialist got up to before he became a local councillor? Well now you can!

BREAKING NEWS: C4' On BBC One's Question Time Tomorrow Night

Yours truly will have the opportunity to grill the Minister for Skills David Lammy MP, Edwina Currie, Leanne Wood AM and the former Metropolitan Police Commander Brian Paddick.

‘Just William jape’ lands boy, 12, in court for attack with sausage

A 12-year-old boy has appeared in court charged with assaulting a man with a sausage.

It was, the judge mused, like an episode from the Just William novels. Except that William was never hauled before a youth court at a cost to the taxpayer of £2,000 – and even he would have struggled to terrorise someone with a bite-sized snack.

The elderly victim was walking home from a pub in Wythenshawe, Manchester, when he became involved in an argument with the boy. Manchester Youth Court was told that the dispute got out of hand and the boy threw a cocktail sausage in anger, striking the man on the shoulder.

The court was not told whether the sausage was cooked, raw or frozen.

Adjourning the hearing, District Judge Tim Devas questioned why the case had been pursued and suggested that the Crown should reconsider. "I was brought up in the era of Just William," he said. "You may not remember it, but this incident sounds similar.

"Clearly there are certain things that should be done with a 12-year-old, and you shouldn’t be bringing them into the court system unless it’s absolutely necessary.

"If he has done what was suggested, it is very bad behaviour. But is it in the public interest to prosecute a 12-year-old boy who threw a sausage?"

Oliver Gardner, for the defence, said the move "beggars belief". He added: “It’s crazy; they are criminalising children. Where is the discretion or logic on the police’s behalf when they charge a 12-year-old with assault with a cocktail sausage?

"It beggars belief that they have put this boy through the trauma of the criminal justice system, locking him up at the police station and then hauling him before the court. Where is the sense of such an exercise?"

Dianne Oliver, for the prosecution, said that she would take the case to her superiors to review the charge.

The boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, denies assault. His mother, who sat next to him in court, said that he had been unable to sleep the night before his hearing. She added: "It’s an absolute joke, and I’m disgusted by it." She said that he had been "worried sick that he would be sent to prison".

Last November a judge criticised Alf Bridges, a retired 67-year-old labourer, for wasting court time by trying to retrieve the £1,200 he said he had spent wooing a woman who answered a lonely hearts advertisement. At the time, District Judge Ian Evans said: "I am not here to examine people’s private lives unless they raise any legal issues. This is one of the most misconceived cases I have ever had the misfortune of dealing with. It should never have got here."

In April a man charged with harassing his ex-wife after he sent her just two letters was cleared by a magistrate who criticised Crown lawyers for pursuing the case.

I cannot believe this. There are people getting stabbed, shot and kicked to death by gangs of feral children and the response of our public officials is this?!? What ever happened to common sense and good judgement? Yes, that's right, there were criminalised by the Left!

2007 Conservative Mind Blog Awards

To celebrate this blog's second anniversary in a couple of months time, I have decided to have my own blog awards to both honour (and in some cases shame) my fellow bloggers. The list of winners is enclosed below:

The Tom Baker Award For The Blogger Most Similar To Anthony Ainley: Iain Dale

The Edmund Blackadder Award For The Blogger Least Likely To Be A Real Historical Figure: Archbishop Cranmer

The Kerry Katonia Award For The Blogger Most Likely To Be Sectioned Under The 1983 Mental Health Act By A Bunny Boiler Who Is After Their Family: Guido Fawkes

The Michael Jackson/Private Eye Award For The Blogger Most Misunderstood & Libelled: Devil’s Kitchen

The Jabba The Hutt Award For Best Blogger [Non-Homo Sapiens Sapiens]: Councillor Terry Kelly

The Duke Of Edinburgh Award For The Blogger Most Likely To Inadvertently Cause An International Incident: Rachel North

The William Hague Award For The Master Debater Of The Blogosphere: C4’

The Richard Nixon/Tony Bliar Award For Blog Fiction: David Lambert

The Jack Nicholson Lifetime Achievement Award: Theo Spark

The Alistair Darling Rebate Award For The Most Boring Blogger: Paul Burgin

The Chuck Norris Award For The Blogger Most Able To Achieve World Peace Through Superior Firepower: Shotgun

A History Lesson On The Similarities Between Nazism In Germany & Stalinism In The Soviet Union

Were there any real similarities between Nazism in Germany and Stalinism in the Soviet Union?

The six-year long Second World War of 1939 to 1945 is the most devastating conflict to date in human history with the estimated loss of over 50 million lives. The most destructive theatre of the war was in Eastern Europe, mainly between two ruthless dictators who sought to assert their aims and ideology on not just each other, but on the wider world as a whole. Despite the mutual hostility between Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany and Iosif Koba Stalin’s Union of Soviet Socialist Republic, there appears to be much common ground between these two, both obvious and otherwise.

The most obvious similarity between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union is the concept of totalitarianism. Totalitarianism is highly centralised system of government that places the welfare and ideology of the state above all else. The state and the governing political party become one entity with one powerful individual figure symbolising this union, who is the focal point of that society. This leader has a huge cult following among his people as a result. A totalitarian regime also has ready access to a huge state apparatus to build and maintain its power and prestige such as a mass-media propaganda machine and a huge police force both visible and almost invisible that is given a free hand to operate above the law in the formal sense of the word. Totalitarian regimes are also highly militarised societies able to command massive armed forces. These armed forces are created through economic policies designed to put these states on a war footing. Based on this criterion, both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union are clearly totalitarian societies. Both Hitler and Stalin at the height of their social and political prowess enjoyed virtually unlimited power and adoration at home. Both political leaders virtually destroyed all social, political and military opposition that threatened their power and prestige from other political parties to even their own closet colleagues. Both the Nazis and Communists utilised then-modern forms of mass-media communications that they were able to control such as newspapers, radio, cinema and even television in their largely successful attempts to control and manipulate the hearts and minds of the public. These two governments also had far more in common in other areas than most people realise.

Both regimes totally disregarded the rights of the individual in the pursuit of their agenda. The Nazis were preoccupied with the purity and growth of the volk (the race). Individuals were considered merely cogs in a machine or bricks in a building. Only their obedience and fanatic loyalty mattered. In the Soviet Union under Stalin, individuals were not only seen as being both insignificant, but also as something to be feared. Stalin himself is said to have claimed that “the death of one person is a tragedy; the death of thousands is a statistic”. Anyone who did not comply or fit in with the needs of the race or of the state were either imprisoned and made to labour for the Cause, or just terminated.

Perhaps the most astonishing similarity between Nazism and Stalinism is their relationship with big business. Both Nazism and Stalinism have their roots in left-wing socialist ideology; the Stalinist system emerged from left-wing so-called social-democratic ideology, while Nazism emerged from the Italian Fascism of Benito Mussolini, himself a former Socialist. Both movements also claimed quite openly that they were ‘socialist’ organisations. Stalinism of course was an informal, artificial name given to describe Communist rule during Stalin’s era, while the word Nazi is an acronym of the Party group’s official name, the National Socialist German Worker’s Party. The early Nazi movement did have some strong left-wing policies that for a time co-existed with what is traditionally viewed as being policies of the extreme-right. The early Nazis were anti-big business and their original twenty-five-point programme clearly stated that they would act against capitalist business interests. Two of the most ardently left-wing members of the Nazi leadership throughout the 1920s through to just prior to the Nazi ‘revolution’ were the Strasser brothers, Otto and Gregor. The Strassers were violently opposed to the interests of big business and had many supporters within one of their many party professional organisations that the Nazis had set up to broaden their support and the SA. Hitler himself according to some obscure army documents had been a former Communist himself during the 1918 Spartacus Uprising as he had been elected to serve as a member on the local Bavarian army soldiers’ council during the brief tenure of the Retarepublik. Many of the left-wing elements and policies within Nazism gradually began to be deemphasised once Hitler was released from prison after his part in the Munich Beer Hall Putsch. With Hitler’s professed aim to achieve power through legal and democratic means, he decided to broaden the appeal of the Nazis by portraying them in a more respectable right-wing political light, by amending, reinterpreting and even ignoring parts of the party’s twenty-five point programme and wearing business suits. This was done to secure the support of right-wing captains of industry and acquire their finance and goodwill to achieve his aims of acquiring political power.

In the Soviet Union, the devastating effects of two wars and two revolutions had led to Lenin implementing the New Economic Policy (NEP) that allowed a limited capitalist economy to operate in order to help the country recover and rebuild its already poor infrastructure. Lenin in particular granted concessions to foreign business interests to improve the nation’s finances on such things as asbestos mining. Once Lenin died and Stalin won the initial leadership struggle with Leon Trotsky during the mid-twenties, he ended the NEP and implemented Five Year Plans for industry and agriculture. Although Stalin ended the NEP, he was still nevertheless eager to encourage greater levels of foreign capital investment into the Soviet Union. In addition, on the eve of the Great Depression in America, numerous American corporations from IBM to AT&T had business interests in the Soviet Union. There was even investment from the British company Metro-Vickers in Soviet power stations. The most notable company though to invest in the Soviet Union was the Ford Motor Company who Stalin cut a lucrative five-year deal with to build a production factory near the Ural Mountains. The alliance between the Soviet Union and foreign business interests were mutually beneficial for different reasons.

American corporations viewed the Soviet Union as an untapped economic market that they could exploit to enhance their profit margins, particularly during the time of economic depression back at home. This attitude is very similar to that most businesses have of Communist China today. Stalin however saw foreign investment in more pragmatic terms. Stalin encouraged foreign investment to help further industrialise the Soviet Union, which was entirely consistent with the aims of his Five Year Plans for industry. Stalin could also use the industrial facilities built by businesses such as Ford to build essentials such as tractors (which Stalin himself consider to be of greater use to him than ten ‘good’ foreign Communists) and more importantly, military vehicles that Stalin needed to improve the country’s defences. Labour was also cheap for the Americans investors as wages were either low or non-existent through the use of slave labour from the Gulags. Once Stalin had what he wanted, he terminated his agreements with these American businesses and used the facilities that they had built to serve the interests of the state. Much of the information about foreign investment in the Soviet Union before the Second World War was largely kept secret by Soviet authorities. Once the Nazis had come to power in Germany, national and foreign businesses also did business with the Nazis such as the Coca-Cola Company and again IBM. The majority of these businesses were encouraged to invest in Germany by the Nazis (as was the case with the Soviet Union) to improve Germany’s economic situation and build up its armed forces. In other words, foreign business investment in both Nazi Germany and the Stalinist USSR was virtually identical, with identical aims – to improve those nations’ economies and serve as another pillar of military armament in highly militarised societies.

There were of course stark contrasts between Nazism and Stalinism that historians have been quick to point out. These historians argue that although Nazism and Stalinism did share certain traits, any similarities were purely coincidental and brought about through differing means. In some regards, this is true. Although both were highly militarised societies, Nazi totalitarianism sought control through means of an offensive war, whereas Stalinism’s greater concern was defending the Soviet Union from foreign aggression and the Soviet Union’s military machinery served a greater defensive purpose than that of Hitler’s war machine. In addition, whereas the Nazis increased their hegemony over Germany and the territories, they occupied or held sway over; Stalinism displayed a less pervasive control over its subjects. The early catastrophes, the fight for survival and expulsion of the Nazi menace from Soviet territory did lead to greater freedom of action between 1941 and 1945. People were given greater leeway to show initiative and Stalin did not interfere as much in military matters as he had done during the early months of the so-call Great Patriotic War, whereas in complete contrast Hitler sought to micromanage every last detail and his orders were to be carried out without question. Once the war ended though, Stalin then began to reassert the control and fear he used over his people during the 1930s.

The single biggest difference though between Nazism and Stalinism was the way in which they treated minority elements within their societies that rejected or did not fit in with their ideologies. Without wanting to go into the intentionalist or functionalist arguments about Nazi policy towards the Jews, Nazism did lead to the most infamous and horrific acts of genocide in human history, because of the prejudice openly displayed and encouraged by the Nazi leadership. Stalin on the other hand did not devise a policy of industrialised genocide against a minority group that we yet know about. Stalin’s preferred method with dealing with minorities and scapegoats was deportation to Siberia, as occurred for both the Tartars and Chechens. While there were still widespread deaths caused by starvation and mass murder, these atrocities never approached genocide in the same sense as that which occurred under Hitler despite the fact that more people did die under Stalin than with the more understandable reviled Hitler. In spite of the apparent differences between the two, the facts show that both regimes legalised criminality and inhumanity on the same mass scale.

Nazism and Stalinism are, as both Hannah Arendt and the author and Daily Express columnist, Frederick Forsyth described, as both being “offspring of socialism” with the same “unfailing characteristics” by which the two “have identified themselves”. Both ideologies had their roots in left-wing political thought and both developed along similar lines of evolution almost exactly simultaneously. Although both might have acted for differing reasons, the methods they employed were almost identical to one another and the result itself was virtually the same. Tens of millions died during a short period under the ideological leaders of these two sibling ideologies. Both exploited right-wing capitalist elements to improve their internal infrastructure and military capabilities. Both ruled through the fear generated by a massive and often secretive police force and the adulation of a single ideal and identity personified by a single individual or icon, apart from possibly some differing motives and methods in dealing with large groups of undesirable elements that did not fit in with what was sanctioned to be the community. Stalinism was National Socialism and Nazism was merely a German equivalent of Stalinism.

Childline prepare for upset Harry Potter fans

Childline are preparing to be inundated with calls from distraught [Harry] Potter fans as the final book goes on sale at midnight tonight.

The phone counselling service has predicted that many young readers will be left feeling distraught if one or more of the key characters in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is killed off.

The 24-hour hotline service has even drafted in extra volunteers to cope with the expected demand.

Senior ChildLine supervisor Kate Trench warned the long anticipated death of a key character could upset young readers.

"Death and loss of any kind can make children feel upset, angry and afraid. The story could bring back unhappy memories for children who have lost friends, relatives or pets," she said.

At the stroke of midnight Potter readers will be able to get their hands on the seventh and final instalment of JK Rowling's magical series.

Stores will stay open into the early hours to cope with the Potter frenzy.

Fans from all over Europe have been camping outside Waterstone's in London's Piccadilly for three days to be certain of getting their hands on a copy.

Potter followers will also be keen to pick up a bargain copy at Asda after the supermarket announced it would be selling the book for just £5 in what it describes as "the biggest book launch we've ever seen".

For pity's sake, IT'S ONLY A FICTIONAL BOOK, not a life-and-death struggle against fascism!

Recommended Reading: Saddam's Secrets by Georges Sada

For anyone who still has doubt about whether George W. Bush was right to liberate Iraq from the evil Saddam Hussein should read the former Iraqi Air Force General Georges Sada's 2006 book Saddam's Secrets. It is an essential read on Saddam, his son, his regime, his plan to wipe out Israel Nazi-style and his efforts to conceal WMDs.