Simon Wiesenthal, who waged an untiring campaign to track down Nazi war criminals and keep alive the memory of six million Jews killed in the Holocaust, died on Tuesday at the age of 96. Full obit here.
Zecher tzaddik livracha.
(The memory of the righteous is a blessing)
Busy week ahead. Luckily for me, Maha has done an excellent piece about how Iraq is coming to resemble Vietnam more and more every day — this time, by reintroducing a focus on body counts.
Isn’t there ANYONE in the US armed forces who remembers ANY of the lessons we learned so painfully in Vietnam? It’s not exactly ancient history, you know.
*sigh*
Back to class readings & prep for our upcoming weekend trip to Miami.
Here’s another item I’ve been meaning to link to but didn’t get around to; this time from the Washington Note: Osama bin Laden’s public FBI file needs a serious updating.
The ensuing comments are also worth a read.
It’s a measure of how normal kitten fostering has become for us that I realized I’d forgotten to mention our most recent foster. Mabel (the black kitty on top of the box) has only been with us for about a week. After Aaron went back to the SPCA, Marcus was crying pretty much non-stop. We asked for another kitty to give him a companion, and picked up Mabel.
They’ve been romping and playing like crazy, are gaining weight rapidly, and should both be ready to go back to the SPCA in the next few days.
per Brad Plumer, Bill Clinton says that Area 51 has no aliens and who know what happened at Roswell….
CLINTON: (Laughing and blushing) Well I don’t know if you all heard this, but, there was actually, when I was president in my second term, there was an anniversary observance of Roswell. Remember that? People came to Roswell, New Mexico from all over the world. And there was also a site in Nevada where people were convinced that the government had buried a UFO and perhaps an alien deep underground because we wouldn’t allow anybody to go there. And uhm
I’ve been meaning to link to this Digby gem for a few days now. Here’s a snitppet:
For those who think that we are in a post racist world because George W. Bush appointed blacks to his cabinet, think again. The modern Republican Party was built on the back of an enduring national divide on the issue of race. George Bush may not personally be racist (or more likely not know he’s racist) but the party he leads has depended on it for many years. The coded language that signals tribal ID has obscured it, but don’t kid yourselves. It is a party that became dominant by exploiting the deep cultural fault of the mason dixon line.
Better late than never. It’s long but well worth the read.