The New Republic

"Remember the Maine!" "12 Days Later: What We Know About a Taliban Link to Times Square" "...During raids Thursday in connection with its Shahzad investigation, the FBI arrested three Pakistani men in the U.S. Northeast on immigration charges. The agency says it was looking for "cash couriers" who bring in money from outside the country. But officials told CNN they had no evidence linking the arrested suspects to Shahzad's car bomb: The New York Times reports that investigators are unsure if any of the suspects, who have not been charged, actually gave Shahzad any money. Officials acknowledged that, even if they had, they may have simply been lending money to an acquaintance, ignorant of how it would be used. ... Pending evidence linking the arrested suspects to Shahzad, the alternative possibility is that the FBI hasn't actually uncovered cash couriers, but is rather fishing for them, ..." http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2010/05/12-days-later-what-we-know-about-a-taliban-link-to-times-square/56738

- K2K

May 14, 2010 at 4:44pm

Actual policy proposals, and they're generally reasonable and persuasive. More like this, please. And less snark at Napolitano would be in order. At the time she said there was "no evidence" the bomb was "anything other than a one-off," that was a true statement. And it remains a true statement: the bomb does not appear to have been part of a larger coordinated set of attacks. Some terrorist attacks are one-offs, such as the Oklahoma City bombing. Others are part of a coordinated suite of simultaneous or sequential attacks, such as the hijackings of Sept. 11, 2001. Contrary to Marty's obtuse reading, Napolitano did not suggest that the Times Square bomber was acting alone, only that there was no evidence that this particular attack was a component in a larger scheme of attacks. And that appears to have been true.

- rhubarbs

May 14, 2010 at 4:56pm

"No, I do not want to discriminate against Pakistanis. There are plenty of Pakistanis who would add luster to America. Many are already here at our hospitals and universities and high-tech start-ups. They are Muslims and probably not friendly to the Jewish state. So be it." Or to Jews in general. I have a number of conversations with Muslims from Pakistan and all they know about Jews is the antisemitic steretypes they picked up at home.

- jdyer

May 14, 2010 at 5:07pm

After we got lucky and the bomb on the Detroit-bound airplane failed to go off, Napolitano was heard to say on ABC's Sunday news program that "the system worked" when, of course, the very opposite was true. So sorry, rhubs, I think a little snark might well be in order. She was so busy defending against any remote suggestion that the Obama Administration might be in any way negligent for that particular threat to our national security, that she allowed her political role to trump the simple truth, which was that our system, far from working, had a great big gaping hole in it. Calling her a "Pollyana" was mild; "shill" might have been more appropriate.

- JackR

May 14, 2010 at 5:21pm

"Do we really need more immigrants who are gas station attendants or taxi drivers?" I've never understood the US immigration lottery system (Canada's is far more complex and costly, and tries at least to bring in skilled workers). It is entirely possible that the US system is geared to gas station attendants and taxi drivers in Pakistan and Bangladesh, and so they come and continue their evidently ghastly professions here. It is also entirely possible, as is demonstrably the case in all major urban centres in Canada, that highly skilled workers - engineers and doctors and so on - migrate for economic reasons and seek to continue their professions in their host country. Arriving in a new country without past work experience in that country, and given restrictive professional guild memberships, it means that the new immigrants will have to requalify or wait out specific periods and so on ... and, in the meantime, instead of going on the dole, they actually do jobs that residents of the host country refuse to do at the low salaries paid. It is said, for example, that Montreal and Toronto have the highest concentrate of PhDs and MDs and P. Eng.s acting as cab drivers than anywhere else in the world. And it is also possible that after a brief stint, they manage to get out of the rut and their position are filled by the flow of immigrants behind them. Fix US immigration, by all means, but please, when I read these kinds of cracks about immigrants toiling in unforgiving jobs, I want to puke.

- icarusr

May 14, 2010 at 5:54pm

Amen, icarusr. For that matter I've known plenty of American born Ph.D's, musicians and scholars who've driven cabs. Some were even Jewish.

- Sophia

May 14, 2010 at 6:24pm

JackR - I hold no brief for the expensive security theater we shell out for in the US, but since the underpants bomber was forced to employ rather exotic methods that did not work, it is fair to say that the system worked. The system also now includes passengers as the last, and probably best, line of defense. There will never be another 9/11 style heist unless you can kill all of the passengers, as they're going to fight you, knowing what is likely to occur. Heck, all evidence points to that having already occurred on 9/11. Unless we simply ground all the flights, or better, lock everyone away, we will never be able to defend against all threats at the security checkpoint. And we will never be 100% safe; terrorism is very, very, very rare, but it will continue to occur. Nothing will be gained by scaremongering, and we should be happy that the Obama administration is not attempting to use this to distract people from other issues, unlike a certain prior administration I could name. This is not to say that I couldn't reel off a long list of things that we could be doing better, but I'll take Napolitano's reassurance over "buy duct tape" any day. And I'm going to assume from Obama's "heads will roll" comment that internally, this was taken very seriously.

- Nari224

May 14, 2010 at 7:26pm

'Calling her a "Pollyana" was mild; "shill" might have been more appropriate.' BS, Jack. Sorry, but what any normal individual would have taken away from Napolitano's comment last December was that AFTER the attack had been nixed, the system went into play effectively, which is important. The attack itself, involving a passenger boarding a plane in Schipol airport in Amsterdam (note: not part of the United States) is not a component of the attack plan immediately accessible to American authorities, whether or not that would have made a difference if it had been. This ludicrous and disingenuous parsing of words that, in context, are perfectly comprehensible and accurate reminds me of the GOP soda-squirting party with John Kerry's comment about fighting "a smarter more sensitive war on terrorism" in 2004, where "sensitive" (completely correct in its meaning as he intended it) was deliberately misinterpreted by Fox and the rightwing commentariat to mean "soft on terrorists." In retrospect, Kerry was of course quite right on this issue. I think Napolitano is doing a good job getting DHS to concentrate on doing its stuff better and avoiding the Tom Ridge color-coding electoral assistance program, which we are well shut of (I don't accuse Chertoff of that).

- ironyroad

May 14, 2010 at 11:00pm

Anything other than a lottery for immigration spots would defeat the purpose of immigration....which is to give people the opportunity to become part of America and our great resources. People with special skills can get limited work permits, as they do now (even better would be to train our own citizens). I agree with Peretz that a prosperous Latin America is in the U.S.' national interests. As for Napolitano, as long as Obama doesn't re-open the torture chambers championed by Bush, Cheney and the yapping neo-cons, it doesn't matter what they do, they'll be criticized.....until the prescriptive period for torture expires.

- OscarPeck

May 14, 2010 at 11:10pm

Apropos of JDyer's comments above: In my encounters with Pakistanis, I have met a few genuine, admirable liberals, but all too many obsessively hate Israel, some little country thousands of miles from Pakistan. Other than a few traders in Karachi, there have never been any Jews settled there. When they meet Jews, they look visibly distressed. They get palpitations, etc. Many years ago, I met Mowahid Shah (www.mowahid.com), a Pakistani lawyer who blurted to me that Jesus was a Palestinian. We're just so satanically evil. Judging from his website, his obsession has not changed. Thank you, Islam.

- amidut

May 15, 2010 at 10:03am

In 2002, I was buying the NYT in Morris Park, Bronx, and commented on the front page tragedy in Kashmir. I had no idea the newstand operator was Pakistani until he replied "it's the Israelis!". To his credit, when I replied, "No, it was bad British mapmakers!", he agreed. I assume he thought I was Italian (and low level mafia) because of our location, so maybe he just thought it safer to agree. But, it shows how deep the "Zionist conspiracy" penetrates the world of Islam when the conflict in Kashmir is so automatically blamed on Israelis/Jews, and not the "Zionist puppets of Great Britain" There is still no direct link between over the arrests in Watertown, and Faisal Shahzad, who mysteriously remains 'NOT yet arraigned', Marty's hysteria notwithstanding. The WashPo went all the way to Shazad's hometown to further question the storyline of his 'radicalization', something the NYT and sister Boston Globe have no interest in (the Judith Miller effect lingers?): "... Friends, relations and air force colleagues of Haq's, interviewed in several northwestern communities and Islamabad this week, said they could make no sense of his son's alleged actions or possible conversion to radical Islam. ..." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/13/AR2010051302442.html?hpid=topnews

- K2K

May 15, 2010 at 12:10pm

In view of the terrorist pipeline between here and Pakistan, it may be best for our security to block incoming Pakistanis from entering here, at least without a thorough screening, until the authorities there shut down the terror camps once and for all. Enough is enough.

- NR114746

May 15, 2010 at 1:08pm

Late to say it, but good post IcarusR.

- basman

May 15, 2010 at 2:26pm

"...that Montreal and Toronto have the highest concentrate of PhDs and MDs and P. Eng.s acting as cab drivers than anywhere else" I have yet to meet a cabbie who can even remotely pass for a PhD and I have been relying on cabs for years since I do not drive.

- noga1

May 15, 2010 at 2:38pm

The guy who has the UPS franchise near me in Toronto and who does all my legal printing and binding has a PhD. I have met over the years quite a few of the under employed for their all their education that icarusr decribes, though whether cab drivers I don't know, since I do drive.

- basman

May 15, 2010 at 4:03pm

Oh I have known poets who have to work as carpenters and highly qualified musicians who have to work as house painters and brilliant artists with PhD in the arts who have to work as baristas but never have I met a PhD'ed cab driver, nor have any of these people been immigrants. I mean if we are going to rely on any argument based on rumour, myth or anecdote why isn't my personal experience as valid as anyone's?

- noga1

May 15, 2010 at 4:14pm

I agree with you on the frailty of many arguments based on rumour, myth or anecdote even as I was conveying my anecdotal sense of icarusr's point, how it resonated with my own experience. But icarusr did say, "*It is said*, for example, that Montreal and Toronto have the highest concentrate of PhDs and MDs and P. Eng.s acting as cab drivers than anywhere else in the world." So I guess it would be good for him to say where it's said, who said it, based on what.

- basman

May 15, 2010 at 4:20pm

But Noga, the personal anecdote in which cab drivers are sometimes PhDs is much more entertaining (comic juxtaposition) and illuminating (the vagaries of fate) than the personal anecdote in which cab drivers are never PhDs. Personal anedotes aren't really "personal" but rather a mythic form in which humanity resolves contradictory experiences for itself.

- ironyroad

May 15, 2010 at 4:52pm

...Personal anedotes aren't really "personal" but rather a mythic form in which humanity resolves contradictory experiences for itself... Naah, they're just stuff that happens to the person whose anecdote it is.

- basman

May 15, 2010 at 5:10pm

"personal": 1. a mythic form in which humanity resolves contradictory experiences for itself 2. stuff that happens to a person 3. a useful word to avoid having to substantiate barely credible facts "Kathleen Kelly [to Joe Fox]: Whatever else anything is, it ought to begin by being personal. " "Michael Corleone: [to Sonny] It's not personal, Sonny. It's strictly business. "

- noga1

May 15, 2010 at 5:31pm

"they're just stuff that happens to the person whose anecdote it is." No. "Just stuff that happens" does not an anecdote make, I'm afraid. Narrative structure, metaphoric clarity, realistic dialogue, timing -- at least some of those are required, otherwise it's her husband (ok ok honey, I know we have to invite both of them!) rambling on and on about meaningless crap that happened at work.

- ironyroad

May 15, 2010 at 5:40pm

re-reading Peretz's immigration policy: "...For whom should the qualifications be different (and, let's admit it, much less exacting)? We have an intrinsic relationship with the people of Latin America. ..." So, I guess that means America should welcome immigrants from Latin America, and I assume he includes the Caribbean islands, who are "... at-best shiftless people...who are gas station attendants or taxi drivers?..." No more Europeans, Africans, or Asians, or Canadians or Australians, unless they have advanced degrees, qualified for specific jobs that can not otherwise be filled? Hmmm. THAT immigration reform should glide through Congress, right? Just dust off the 1924 reform legislation and change the favored countries from protestant Europe to Latin America and the West Indies. Got to keep that nanny and lawn care pipeline filled! [insert anecdote: for two years I owned a home built in 1916 for a wealthy New Yorker. I researched the neighborhood to find out the name of the architect. The ads from 1916 offered the lots for sale:, as the former Whitman Chocolate family estate was being divided up. The restrictions? NO Swedes or Norwegians were allowed. At that moment in history, you had to be white AND the right kind of Protestant. No hungry Lutherans escaping a famine allowed to buy a lot. Quite ironic because the first African-American, the brother of the Delaney Sisters of "Having Our Say" fame, had bought a lot in 1959. By 1998, the neighborhood was professional-upper-income black, and realtors refused to show it to white people. I squeaked in because it was a FSBO, and the sellers were delighted to accept my offer, so they could retire to family ties in Alabama. The Whitman mansion next door had just been sold by an Ethiopian rabbi to a Jamaican. The only man who was qualified to fix my slate roof was from Poland. When my life fell apart two years later, I sold to a wonderful family from Antigua. For those two years, I was the only person on my street who mowed my own lawn. Everyone else hired Latinos. Anecdote ends] This post is so perverse. Faisal Shazad's father sent him to the U.S. to protect him from the rise of fundamentalism in Pakistan that the U.S. co-sponsored with Saudi Arabia to fight the Soviets out of Afghanistan after 1979. Whatever went wrong probably has as much to do with Shahzad getting his MBA and spending his days working on the financials associated with frequent flyer miles, and coming home to his overpriced Connecticut house without a driveway, only to find his wife had shopped til she dropped at Macy's instead of shovelling the snow.

- K2K

May 15, 2010 at 8:44pm

Mr. Peck, Maybe you believe that the purpose of immigration is to randomly help the world. I believe it is to strengthen the country by bringing in educated or skilled people who can benefit the country with their work ethic. The country does not need unskilled peasants coming here. Rather than holding a lottery we should be vetting potential immigrants to see who can benefit the country and to keep out those who cannot.

- tmitch57

May 15, 2010 at 9:10pm

Well. for an anecdote to be an anecdote it has to have the structure of a story, I'll grant you that. So let me fine refine my grand thesis incorporating your well taken qualifier: "...Naah, they're just stuff that happens to the person whose anecdote it is that takes the shape of a coherent experience."

- basman

May 15, 2010 at 9:36pm

Yeah. Well. So let me just pour us both another glass of Calvados and enjoy the silence for a minute. As we're sure not getting any-f*****-where here.

- ironyroad

May 15, 2010 at 9:54pm

p.s. Now that I have consulted the best minds of my generation, "anecdote" suggests to me some dependence on context. If I tell you of an incident that just happened to me, it doesn’t sound to me like I'm telling an anecdote. So for an anecdote to be one, it has to have some to some relative pastness. Also, even with that relative pastness in place, if I'm telling someone extremely close to me about an incident relevant to our closeness and of some intensely direct effect on me, it doesn't sound to me like I 'm telling an anecdote. In that circumstance it's not the right word. So it strikes me that there has to be some relative distancing and detachment in the recounted incident. More, it's my provisional thesis-cuz I'm not yet sure--that there seems to need to be a polemical thrust or at least the making of a point to bring “anecdote” around all four bases to precise meaning. As to the strength of anecdote in support of an argument, I wouldn’t ,on reflection, categorically kick it out of bed: it would depend on the issue and the relevance of the anecdote to the issue. Finally, "anecdotal" is to be distinguished from "apocrypha"l. The latter by definition is of dubious authenticity. An anecdote is not. To the extent that it is apocryphal, the anecdote stops being anecdotal, which also goes to why it may be reasonable support for some arguments. So I still say to “…Personal anecdotes aren't really "personal" but rather a mythic form in which humanity resolves contradictory experiences for itself…”: “Naah”.

- basman

May 15, 2010 at 10:09pm

I'll drink to most anything, most anywhere most anytime. Now Calvados sounds like to me like le mot juste. Later.

- basman

May 15, 2010 at 10:12pm

Ok. I've got a lot of grading to take care of, so I'll have to get back also. I think we're somehow missing each other's point here. but basman, this: le mot juste = a Dublin guy's pretty neat girlfriend. I'll leave you to figure that one out.

- ironyroad

May 15, 2010 at 10:44pm

"So let me just pour us both another glass of Calvados" Have you brought a half loaf of rye-bread and a jar of gherkins?

- noga1

May 15, 2010 at 10:57pm

I doubt they go with Calvados. More with a clear schnapps, vodka, or the like. Rather in the manner of the two Norwegian farmers who meet in the house of one of them. First Norwegian farmer: Hi Second Norwegian farmer: Hi NF1 brings out the schnapps, pours two shots. They sit there. Look out at the valley. NF2 takes the bottle, refills them both. They sit there. Look out at the valley. NF1 refills both again. They sit there. Look out at the valley NF2 takes the bottle and starts to pour. He looks out at the valley and says, weather's been ok. NF1: Did you come here to drink, or so we could gossip like a couple of old women?

- ironyroad

May 15, 2010 at 11:32pm

Calvados, gherkins and half a loaf of bread. I thought you would have recognized the allusion. I heard the joke in a Swedish version in a translators' conference a few years ago from one of the organizers who was 5 eighths Swedish, one eighth Jewish and the rest I don't remember, or she never said. She was very funny and had a few drinking jokes about Swedes and beer.

- noga1

May 16, 2010 at 12:37am

Nope. Sorry.

- ironyroad

May 16, 2010 at 3:13am

But a little clue perhaps . . . ?

- ironyroad

May 16, 2010 at 3:17am

I thought you were a fan of John le Carré. We once had a talk about whether he was antisemitic and all that.

- noga1

May 16, 2010 at 6:55am

I thought the Finns were the only ones with jokes about drunk-on-anything Swedes. Good Norwegian joke, irony, but I thought that one was set in North Dakota...

- K2K

May 16, 2010 at 7:24am

K2K: No, Danes have 'em too, because the Swedes swarm across to Denmark for the cheaper booze. Noga: Le Carré. Ok, I know we talked about the antisemitism and possibly even "all that" too. But maybe the required synapse has gone with age in the intervening years, 'coz I'm drawing an absolute complete blank on Calvados, gherkins, and bread. If you are kind enough to clue me in, imagine me slapping my forehead and going "Oh!!! OK! Of course, sorry . . . Oh. Just a moment. Is there a character who likes that combination of drinks and food, maybe? Fiedler in TSWCIFTC or someone like that?

- ironyroad

May 16, 2010 at 12:22pm

"Is there a character who likes that combination of drinks and food, maybe?" Yes. There is a scene in the novel where we know he is close by from the assortment of food on the rough table. I'm not even sure the narrator tells us he is a Jew but we are encouraged to come to that conclusion. You sound somewhat irate. Too many papers to mark, too few hours of sleep, a stiflingly hot room and that goddamn woman on TNR with her ill-timed insistence on challenging you with riddles, eh? Here is the answer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wR75ILBnWNU

- noga1

May 16, 2010 at 6:22pm

Ah ok -- so it's Axel in "A Perfect Spy." I have to say, though, that you have rather ambitious, not to say wildly unrealistc, notions of what the human mind can do. I read APS several years ago (maybe 17) and saw the TV serial too (about 14-15 years ago) but some time has elapsed since then -- and I haven't read it again, unlike "The Little Drummer Girl," TSWCIFTC, and TTSP. Going from "Calvados" via "rye bread and gherkins" to "Axel in le Carré's novel" is a feat of associative dynamism that I'm not sure anyone would be capable of without priming of some kind (e.g. an exchange about spy novels, or something that would have moved my mind in the right direction). I remember us talking about Fiedler and Liz in TSWCIFTC, where the Jewish identity is thematically quite substantial, and about TLDG, but not about APS. Now that I think about it, though . . . no, I don't remember enough. I was irritated rather than irate -- small-scale version. But I'm still stuck in papers, although at home. Aiming at finishing tomorrow afternoon.

- ironyroad

May 16, 2010 at 7:37pm

irony, it would seem that no one has yet forgiven the Swedes for their brutal 17th century empire. I say, let the drunken Swede jokes reign. Sorry I missed your LeCarre and antisemitism exchange. I've been reading the father of the British spy/conspiracy thriller, John Buchan's "The Four Adventures of Richard Hannay". The foreward to this 1988 edition is by Robin Winks, who explores the charges of antisemitism, and racism in the Hannay stories, which started in 1915 with "The Thirty-Nine Steps". It has been years since I read LeCarre, and I do not remember any out-of-context antisemitism. well, back to the Three Cousins who brought us World War 2 until the last episode of "Foyle's War" in an hour. btw, Czar Nicholas thought all the Brits were "Zhids", except for his cousins. Kind of ironic that both King Edward VII and Kaiser Wilhelm actually associated with prominent Jews, a real breakthrough for both monarchies. Czar Nicholas had his secret service publish the Protocols after the 1905 Decembrist revolt. gherkins and rye? ok, but with Calvados? no. a pint of Guinness please.

- K2K

May 16, 2010 at 7:59pm

Well, I read the novel and watched the series about the same time as you did and that particular detail must have stuck in my mind. As soon as you mentioned the calvados, I immediately thought about gherkins and half a loaf of bread and after a bit, Axel materialized. Almost like Proust with the tea and the madeleines but without the physical trigger of the taste. I can see you are still irritated but can't quite understand why. You once were a bit surprised that I couldn't identify your allusions to The Third man and I don't recall being too exercised about this failure.

- noga1

May 16, 2010 at 8:02pm

"...a pint of Guinness please." Alas, no more Guinness for us. Obi Wan is now entertaining the one at very centre of the Force. :)

- noga1

May 16, 2010 at 8:06pm

Noga -- I don't think my reference was quite as gnomic as yours, but that's neither here nor there. Now I realize what you meant, so that's all good. Moment of irritation long since gone. Move along now folks please, nothing to see here. K2K -- This was a discussion we had on a different board a while ago. It's a complicated thing with le Carré, as there is a clear thread of romantic philosemitism in a couple of novels (very strikingly so in "The Spy Who Came In From the Cold") rather than anything more hostile. But there are other moments in his stories, and while I can't recall how the discussion went with Noga, something about the character of Axel in "A Perfect Spy" may be one of them. She'll have to elaborate, if you're interested, as I don't remember enough of it right this minute. "The Little Drummer Girl" is something else again, as it has a substantial Israeli cast and clearly channels a kind of sixties liberal pro-Israel perspective, in which the battle is against a PLO that uses terror tactics, certainly, but one that hasn't really a whisper of Islamic fundamentalism to it.

- ironyroad

May 16, 2010 at 9:08pm

"Moment of irritation long since gone. " What puzzles is that there should have been any call for any irritation.

- noga1

May 16, 2010 at 10:37pm

"Irritation" is what briefly happens when, for example, someone introduces a reference that one doesn't get, but that looks like something one should perhaps have gotten. NOTE: I should explain, perhaps, that on our planet irritation is not necessarily directed at the other person but at one's own failure to connect immediately with the universe of the reference. And -- if this helps -- despite your protestations, Noga, you sounded irritated that time I mentioned the Third Man. Honest. So, if the problem is ascribing states of mind to the other that may have no basis in reality, why don't we proceed on the principle that neither of us is irritated beyond any normal dimension that emerges from communication? Would that be acceptable?

- ironyroad

May 16, 2010 at 11:04pm

no thank you, irony, about re-starting a dialog on LeCarre. I came back after enjoying the last of "Foyle's War". "The Hide" This script was 100% Anthony Horowitz. I hope noga was able to watch if only to savor the emphatic "disproportionate sentence" line that Foyle socks to the judge who sentenced the 'ungrateful' Jewish immigrant piano teacher to five years hard labor for a first offense of theft. Even though it remains a puzzle how the young man died while serving the disproportionate sentence, we later discover the charge was totally false to begin with. An echo of Nathan Englander's short story "Free Fruit for Young Widows" message that Jews could never really escape death during WW2. "Obi Wan is now entertaining the one at very centre of the Force." congratulations? or something else, because, as you may not know, it is rumoured that, because of the high mineral content, Guinness is prescribed to pregnant women. (Probably helps to be Irish to reap the full nutritional benefit?)

- K2K

May 16, 2010 at 11:13pm

I watched Foyle's War tonight and enjoyed it much better than last week's episode. However, I'm still in a state of shock from finding out that WWII was fought in order to put a stop to real-estate profiteers (Nazis in pinstriped suits) who wish to destroy the green in that green pleasant land. And that lachrymose reference to Jews in the usual British condescending manner: first they are accused of petty thievery and than some noble Englishman steps in to reveal the truth of their innocence. In the meantime, they die as a result of the miscarriage of justice but all are grateful and awe struck by the goodness of the British justice system. Well, what do you know. Talk about good Jews being good when they are victims and dead.

- noga1

May 17, 2010 at 12:11am

"Probably helps to be Irish to reap the full nutritional benefit?" Ssshhh! Guinness is apparently the most popular drink in West Africa, esp. Nigeria.

- ironyroad

May 17, 2010 at 12:42am

am about to watch the repeat of "Foyle's War". noga is too droll on this one. the whole world would be a much saner and healthier place if EVERYONE drank a pint of Guinness every day, preferably for breakfast. Yeah, the only great legacy of the British Empire in Africa is that Guinness distribution. I am vaguely aware that one of the Guinness heiresses is an extreme fashionista; small price to pay :)

- K2K

May 17, 2010 at 1:02am