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AE on Telly News (NEW CONCEPTS)
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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Beethoven: The Complete Symphonies (Sky Arts)

I thought I'd better check the dude out though ordinarily I don't allow music in the house. And what do I find? Symphony No 1, second movement, minuet and trio: the bloke's only recapitulated the tune at least twice too often and it wasn't that great to start with. Come on, Herr Beethoven, we're not actually doing the gavotte round the dance hall, are we? We're just sitting here. Get a move on.
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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I was determined to hate "Extraordinary Attorney Woo" as it is sickly, super sweet, twee, woke bollox, but then I was entranced and started crying llike a girl. I really need help, if not, I am going to end up binge watching it all and become a metrosexual.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxeXECe2t-c
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Hatty
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I thought I'd be irritated by 'Denial', a film about David Irving's defamation trial against Deborah Lipstadt, but it turned out to be rather absorbing and even-handed. Lipstadt was portrayed as tiresomely brash and self-righteous though she improved a bit. It was a pity that only one of Iriving's errors was discussed, perhaps it was the only important one.
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Mick Harper
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What was the error? I tried watching it a few years ago but, being on Irving's side, I felt the gorge rising too quickly. I shall give it another go on your recommendation after I've checked out Woo. I haven't had a good blub since the fishermen all started singing the Norwegian national anthem on Atlantic Crossing. A straight riff on Casablanca but it always works.
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Hatty
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The 1977 edition of Irving's 'Hitler's War' was changed (in 1991 I think) as a response to the Leuchter report that concluded Zyklon B had been used in the disinfection chamber to kill typhus-bearing lice and wasn't therefore for killing people. Irving at first declared there were no gas chambers because the aerial photos were misleading but later argued only corpses not living people were gassed though he couldn't explain why they needed to be gassed as they were then burnt in the crematoria.

It wasn't really as grim as it sounds, being more about how bias, whether unconscious or deliberate, distorts a historian's judgement when reviewing evidence.
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Mick Harper
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That's interesting. I was a big fan of Irving's in his younger days -- when everyone was, he was regarded as the leading English-language authority on all-things-Nazi. Nobody thought of him as having a political position at that time, you certainly couldn't tell from his books. This all changed when his biography of Hitler came out in which he pointed out there was no documentary evidence linking Hitler with the Holocaust. This is, I believe, still the case but most of us parted company with him since we all said, "So what?" And, in truth, he rather agreed with us. He was not denying the Holocaust or that Hitler was right in there, just making a kind of technical historian's point.

But the furore somewhat unhinged him -- or, if you prefer, revealed him in his true light -- and, as far as I know, none of his subsequent work has been worth reading. Certainly I haven't. But even if he's a thoroughgoing Nazi, he's still a historian and shouldn't have been put in prison for it. Though he brought the civil action on himself. Truly daft. Oscar Wilde daft.
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Mick Harper
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Deep Fake Neighbour Wars (ITV-X)

I couldn't wait to leave Catford but I made a mistake there. Idris Elba and Kim Kardashian live there now and they can surely live anywhere in the world they want. You could see their quarrels were being played up for the camera, I get that, but their reconciliation at the end was, in my judgement, sincere if treacly.
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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I haven't read Irving, but do remember that he correctly, on the basis of his previous research, realised that the "Hitler diaries" were fake. The problem was that, after having crashed a press conference to make his case, he then switched sides to state they were genuine. After they were proven fake, he then claimed this vindicated his initial assessment, which of course it did, but as by then he had done the equivalent of betting on both horses in a two horse race, and then claimed he had successfully backed the winner, his reputation was dented.

It only goes to show that historians should not be allowed near artifacts.
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Mick Harper
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I'd forgotten that particular besmirchment of his escutcheon. Makes my point about him losing it. After the world descended on him he seems to have lost all judgement.

It only goes to show that historians should not be allowed near artifacts.

This is so-o-o important. Although historians are trained in the use of documents -- they have to be, they are their prime raw material -- what this really means is modern documents in modern archives. Where they are not, in any important sense, 'artefacts'. So when trained historians venture into the murky world of maybe-dox, they think themselves to be experts but in reality get turned over by any passing forger.

I don't blame them for this -- it's the forgers that are the professionals -- but I do blame them for not knowing they are out of their depth. And I get royally pissed when they patronise people like me and Hatty who at least know a little about what we are doing.
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Mick Harper
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The Stasi: Secrets, Lies and British Spies (ITV-1)

What was the most interesting aspect of this? Not, for sure, its content -- a real scissors and paste job. No, it was the fact that this expensively made, ITV-made, doc didn't have a single piece of advertising in it save for some puffs about other ITV programmes. You're gonna go bust if you go down this route, ITV.

One good negative points was made. After the fall of the Wall and after the Stasi files were open to all, Jack Straw, in his capacity as Home Secretary and hence the titular head of MI5, announced that 'over a hundred' Britons were under investigation for having Stasi-links. Since then, not a single one has ever been prosecuted -- or even named!

This has some small resonance for me personally since I was taught German politics at university by someone who I thought, even at the time, seemed to have a peculiarly enthusiastic attitude to East Germany. As he was far and away the best lecturer I came across in my university career, perhaps we should have recruited more Stasi-trained academics.
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Mick Harper
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Why oh why does Newsnight go in for these periodic studio discussions about some important, but not exactly pressing, matter. Last night it was something or other about whether Brexit has worked. As If anyone knows. OK, if politics is in the doldrums I suppose a 'special' might be on the cards, but that is not exactly the case at the moment, is it? Why the country is in the doldrums might be a suitable topic though.

But it's not this I object to. It's the idea of aggregating in the studio (and setting off into the countryside to interview) a whole bunch of people saying things I can just as easily hear in the pub. Are they representative? Who the hell knows? Even if they were, so is the average pub. I hate people. I hate paying my licence fee so they can sound off in my ear. Not that I was listening, I fast-forwarded through the lot. Not that I pay the licence fee.
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Mick Harper
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Don't forget it's the Balkan Trilogy tonight. They don't write 'em like that any more. Why not? Because nowadays créatifs are all left-wing and being left wing means being obsessed with poor people and poor people aren't interesting. If they were interesting, they wouldn't be poor. Mind you, no decent créatif would be left-wing. Too busy being créatif.
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Mick Harper
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I trust you all spotted references to the Russians moving into northern Romania at the start of The Balkan Trilogy. That is the origin of today's Moldova/Transnistria imbroglio. The story goes like this:

1. Stalin demanded 'Bessarabia' (i.e. Moldova) back since it had been part of Russia during Tsarist times but removed following the Versailles and other conferences.
2. And got it by occupying it.
3. Unknown to the Romanians this had been agreed (sort of) as part of the Molotov/Ribbentrop Pact so they went all pro-German and anti-Russian.
4. They gave up on Britain and France for not being able to do anything about it. [Cue: Guy's discomfort.]
5. The Russians were driven out of Moldova in the early days of Barbarossa. (The Romanians joined in with an army of their own to get back Bessarabia and maybe a nibble more, like Odessa, but all perished during the Stalingrad campaign or afterwards in the gulags. They were totally useless soldiers.)
6. The Russians occupied the whole of Romania in 1944 following the failure of Barbarossa.
7. Romania proper was turned into a Soviet puppet state (until Ceausescu) and 'agreed' to the return of Bessarabia to the Russian motherland
8. Whereupon Stalin turned it into the Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic.
9. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Moldova like all the SSR's except the Russian SSR, opted for independence.
10. Since Moldova was half Romanian-speaking and half Russian/Ukrainian-speaking, it split into Moldova and Transnistria.
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Mick Harper
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Of course the central question posed in the Balkan Trilogy is why Harriet puts up with Guy. It matters because of the wider question of why women put up with men -- women seem to sink so much into this relationship when men don't really give a monkeys. Guy also exhibits the political dimension of the same thing: left wing people care hugely for other people but not other people when it's a person.

Not knowing any right wing people I can't say what the syndrome is with them.
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Boreades


In: finity and beyond
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Mick Harper wrote:
Not knowing any right wing people I can't say what the syndrome is with them.


It's been a while, so I can forgive the amnesia, but (nudge) you have met M'Lady Boreades. Or maybe you needed to forget.
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