I had the good luck to meet Col­onel Richard Iron a couple of months ago. He was the kind of typ­ic­ally self-effacing Brit­ish Army officer who one under­es­tim­ates at ones peril.

Iron cur­rently com­mands the UK Army’s Doc­trine Branch in the Dir­ect­or­ate of Land War­fare. His philo­sophy is summed in some­thing he told the Tele­graph in sum­mer, 2008 about Iraq: “We have made some ter­rible mis­takes … and it is only by talk­ing about them that we will learn from them.” Con­tinue read­ing →

A reader writes:

Tonight, 26 Feb­ru­ary 2009, Brian Wil­li­ams repor­ted on NBC Nightly News that GM had lost $30.9 bil­lion for the year of 2008, and that to give view­ers an idea of what that means, it works out to burn­ing “$1,000 a minute.” Con­tinue read­ing →

A very long time ago, when I had just moved to Lon­don and was still rather excited by the fact that I was worldly, hip and lib­eral, I asked a gay friend (who was ori­gin­ally from North­ern Ire­land) what the “scene” was like in Bel­fast.

He gave me the with­er­ing look my ques­tion deserved, and shook his head.

“What do you f@*$ing think?”

Indeed. I had come to Lon­don to escape the nar­row life oppor­tun­it­ies of the “com­munity” into which I was born. He had come to Lon­don to escape his family’s denial and dis­ap­proval, and the con­tempt and thug­gery of his “com­munity.” Con­tinue read­ing →

Remem­ber Peter Osnos? He was gunned down for sug­gest­ing that Google be asked to pay for news con­tent. (To me a least, an argu­ment roughly akin to beat­ing on Ida Tar­bell for sug­gest­ing that Stand­ard Oil be broken up.) Con­tinue read­ing →