That old dictator-defending magic

The Cuba Solidarity Campaign’s FAQ asks “is Cuba democratic?” Realising that the simple answer might be a little discouraging to their supporters in western democracies, they then take 1,187 words to say “no”.

Samantha Smith & Rachel Corrie

An interesting and poignant post on Metafilter concerns Samantha Smith, a 10-year-old girl who wrote to Yuri Andropov asking him whether the USSR was going to declare war on the US. She died young, in a plane crash. Matteo makes an interesting comment comparing the treatment of her death in

Repeal a law you don't understand

The Today Prorgramme is once again running its public vote on ‘a law we’d want to repeal’, and like so much of the programme these days, it’s completely uninformed pub politics. They’ve had people on the programme making more or less (usually less) cogent arguments about various

They'll always have Paris

Bizarrely fascinating story on the BBC about the Japanese tourists (a dozen or so each year) whose romantic visions of Paris are so crushed by the realities and petty rudenesses of Parisian life that they just flip out, and have to be taken home under psychiatric supervision. I wonder whether

Tony Blair still most evil man who ever lived

In case you had feared that Tony Blair had in some way ceased to be the most evil man who ever lived, a scourge on humanity and a ‘quisling’ as well, you’ll be pleased to hear from Comment is free that he hasn’t changed. Still evil, corrupt, etc.

Blog styles

Tom Roper found a passage of Virginia Woolf (talking about her diaries) that nicely sums up his ambitions for his blog (and mine for mine).

Jacky Harding RIP

A sad news story from close to home. Jacky Harding, a resident of Islingword Street and former city councillor, has died at the tragically young age of 45.

The law and politics of the Pinochet case

Link: Michael Byers, The Law and Politics of the Pinochet Case, 10 Duke J. of Comp. & Int’l L. 415 (2000).

On past 3000

Helen Cammack joins the call to the Democratic Society’s question calibration test. We are almost at 3,000 answers: let’s drive that data on down! Take the test.

No great loss

Old torturer and dictator Pinochet dies. Margaret Thatcher is ‘saddened’.