Category: Feature

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‘Give Us Back the Death Penalty, Josef Vissarionovich!’

“Government is not reason, it is not eloquence – it is force.” – George Washington (attributed) “All grandeur, all power, all subordination to authority rests on the executioner: he is the horror and the bond of human association. Remove this incomprehensible agent from the world and at that very moment order gives way to chaos, thrones topple and society disappears.” – de Maistre “Who – Whom?” – Lenin My title refers to the chapter of that name in Solzhenitsyn’s “In the First Circle,” now “free” with Amazon Kindle Unlimited. Under the all-compassionate Josef Stalin, the Soviet Union abolished the death...

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Wednesday’s Child: Letter from Tuscany

If ever I had the temptation to shirk my duty as the gentle reader’s clarion and dulcimer, if ever I wanted to declare myself on holiday and beg off for just a single week, if ever nature triumphed over nurture to make a child’s chore of the fast approaching Wednesday, it is now. I am in Tuscany, where the other day it actually rained – that last word describing an atmospheric condition when condensed moisture falls from the sky in drops, see also snow. In July in Palermo, where it last snowed in 1956, leaving an air conditioned house to...

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A Generation of Peace?

In 1970, a year in office, President Nixon gave an address to the UN titled “A Generation of Peace.” With the Cold War hot in Vietnam and elsewhere, and American campuses and cities erupting in riots, it didn’t seem peace was at hand. Yet Nixon soon went to Moscow and Beijing in his still-famous trips. “Only Nixon can go to China” has become a saying meaning someone who is strong in one area using that to work out a compromise with an enemy.  In his 1972 campaign, Nixon’s slogan was “A Generation of Peace,” and he won 49 states in...

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Wednesday’s Child: Letter from the Algarve

Curious people, these expats.  I’ve met quite a number in my travels, mostly Brits, but also Americans and Germans, who aggregate in the south of Europe – Spain, Italy, Greece – drawn here by several very obvious lures.  The sun and the sea are not among them.  The main one is the cheapness of the alcohol, ranging from 96 proof spirit on offer in any supermarket to perfectly drinkable white wine for $1 a bottle.