Monthly Archives: February 2003

Applying dynamite

to feet of clay: John Leonard (Andrew’s dad) takes down Norman Mailer in the New York Review of Books: But his footwork is fanciest when he gets to style. Why Are We in Vietnam? does not seem to have been … Continue reading Continue reading

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overheard

On a train to Manchester well, the chief executive thinks were being a bit too generous with this chap, so I thought, why not ignore the first fifty million? Nothing odd about that, you may think: but the middle-aged stockbroker … Continue reading Continue reading

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Random

This morning I dreamed that Neal Ascherson and I were hunting a childhood neighbour of mine through some woods with submachineguns; I got bored and confident left Neal to kill him. The bursts of fire moved further off into the … Continue reading Continue reading

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Pax Americana

Barlow makes the best case for a strategy behind the war that I have ever read. I hear you laughing already. But it’s time that someone put the serious argument in favour of imperialism explicitly. Continue reading

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A modest proposal

Ben Hammersley cuts through an enormous amount of the crap that has been written even by sensible people like John Naughton about how blogging democratises journalism: Want to be a journalist? Write something good. Continue reading

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unpatriotic

I’ve always thought this was a myth; but apparently it really happened. I don’t doubt he believes it. Just odd to find he would say it. Update. It turns out it was his father. Still, a pretty remarkable thing to … Continue reading Continue reading

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Alden Pyle comes clean

Thomas Friedman is one of the rare American journalists who understands that foreign affairs involves dealing with foreigners. He walked with Robert Fisk thorugh the steaming remains of Sabra and Chatila after the massacre. He doesn’t believe most of the … Continue reading Continue reading

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smug

The Conquest profile just got linked from Arts & Letters. Continue reading

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Two documents

Douglas Feith is now a very senior Pentagon official: the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. Here is what he had to say in favour of invading Iraq in 1996. Note all the weird mystical stuff about “national exhaustion”; the … Continue reading Continue reading

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An interesting explanation

for the triumph of American conservatism comes from this interview with Eric Alterman There are some good liberal funders, but it’s a very complicated question. The genius of what Scaife and Coors and those people did is, they just threw … Continue reading Continue reading

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