Just a couple of points:

Regarding the British Foreign Office archives, I heard that the FO did not itself come to the conclusion that the Israelis planned the hijacking leading to the Entebbe rescue. All that was released was a memo by a British diplomat in Paris simply reporting that this is what an informant told him. Apparently, they were obligated to reports all such contacts, but it doesn't mean that they always took such informants seriously.

 Another thing: In the introduction to the Chavez interview, the speaker lumped the terms "socialist" and "communist" together as if there were no difference between them. The term "socialist" is a very broad one, ranging from the Soviet bloc countries, which did refer to themselves as socialist, to the Labour Party of Britain, the Socialists of France and the Social Democrats of Sweden and Germany. Democratic socialists or social democrats in Western Europe and elsewhere have nothing in common with totalitarianism, unless you want to hold that James Callaghan, Harold Wilson and Tony Blair or Mitterrand, Schmidt and Brandt were all oppressive dictators.

I regard myself as an old-fashioned social democrat,  yet I detest Castro, Che and Chavez. And there's no contradiction in that.

Remember, you're a center-right outfit, not far-right, so this kind of intellectual crudeness need not exist here.

I think this comment is good enough that I'll address it properly in the next show so look out for that. There is a very good post about the Foreign office memo on the Biased BBC Blog. That does sum things up rather well and their angle: what are the BBC doing reporting this as news is actually the real one.

I'll think of something to say about the whole left right thing in the show. Personally I can't stand any of these designations.

Brian of London

I'm the speaker in question, and I accept that criticism.  For starters, I'll plead a bit of Americo-centricism (is that a word?)  We don't have parties with "social"-whatever in the name, and so when I think of socialists, I think of the Chavez variety.

At the same time, both the Chavez type of socialist, and the Soviet / Chinese type of communist do have repression of opposition in common.  There may be differences in governmental philosophy between the two, but this much they share.

To Doug Payton,

Your points are well taken, but don't forget that I wasn't distinguishing between the Chavez variety--which imitates Castro--and the Chinese or Soviet varieties. They all belong in the same category, although Chavez is still a Castro wannabe.

Rather, I was distinguishing between totalitarian and democratic forms of socialism. Or perhaps, you could say, between the types of socialism that are directly derived from Marx and those that are not. Note that the names I referred to positively were those like Callaghan or Brandt; I didn't include Chavez among them.

A lot of people get caught up in the semantics, because "socialism" is a word that's been so over-used. But "socialism" is a very broad tent; in fact, it's barely one tent at all. And I think that sometimes the word "socialism" isn't just over-used, it's misused. Don't forget that the Communists officially split off from the socialist movements after World War One, when they founded their own Third International. That the Soviet bloc countries described themselves "Socialist" is true. But, remember, they also described themselves as "Democratic."

I learned something today - I had not known until a few minutes ago there was a conflict between Australia and etc and Indonesia.  The bit about the Vulcan, the open ba doors and the nuke . that's great stuff.