December 24, 2002
Heya, life ain't so bad.
Most people mean well, do all right, get along. Happy Christmas everyone. Meanwhile....5 June 1944Dear Gen. Eisenhower,
I know your schedule for tomorrow is carefully planned and all, but would you mind awfully pausing your invasion for an hour or two? I want to find time to have a little chat with my penfriend in St Mère Eglise. Thanking you in advance,
Bill Snooks (Pte)
And that's how much chance I have of doing any more blogging for the next twenty four hours.
Horrifying.
Every implication of the story cited here by Amygdala left me sick at heart. A black American victim of terrorism in Africa was left to die because he was mistaken for an African. (NB free registration for Washington Post required to read Amygdala's link.) Part of the horror is that one can see why it happened. Ach, I don't want to go into it.CORRECTION: Gary, it was very charitable of you in your e-mail not to put forward the obvious explanation for my confusion; namely that I was drunk. I might well have been, you know. Just 2cc of dry sherry and I'm murmuring 1980s pop songs from a corner of the sofa. My New Year's resolution is going to be if you want to blog it, blog it immediately. With this story I posted the url then went away and did Christmas stuff. Later I came back, wrote the commentary, and published it. Somewhere in the intervening period I imagined or picked up from another story a terrorism connection which isn't there. Mea culpa.
In a spirit of Christmas thoughtfulness
, it seems David Trimble is reviewing the sometimes surprising history of Northern Irish unionism. Letter to Slugger points out a review by Mr Trimble of 'The Secret History of the IRA.'
David Irving & Mona Baker. The relationship* that dare not speak its name?
Diane E of the newly reborn Gotham2003 has been tracking the story, which, like everything to do with Mr Irving, is more twisty than a piece of fusili trying to impress the teacher at pasta school. Scroll up from the link above for more updates as they come.*Note to Mr Irving's ever-busy lawyers. Don't bother. Relationship can mean many things.
December 23, 2002
No, you haven't had one sherry too many.
You keep seeing Iain Murray's name over at the Volokh Conspiracy because it is really there. He's acting as a sort of locum conspirator. In this post he reports on figures suggesting the UK is less anti-semitic than either the US or Europe.I read somewhere that the UK also has one of the highest rates of mixed-race marriages in the world. So perhaps we don't all hate each other as much as we keep hearing we do.
Someone has not forgotten the Korean kidnap victims.
John Costello writes:Today's New York Times has a full page ad on page A11. It starts with "This is a Fact," below which is a photo of Megumi Yokota, it then provides more information on the situation than I have read in the Times news sections. For example, the North Koreans claim the remains of the dead Japanese were "washed away by a flood," also: the one set of remains they did provide belonged to someone else.(I can't make that link work, but it may just be busy - NS.)It ends with an open letter to Kim Jong Il, stating that the issue is not closed.
The website is: http://www.trycomp.swee.to