The Boston bombers

Tamerlan Tsarnaev and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev
(Photos: Julia Malakie/The Lowell Sun via AP; FBI via AFP/Getty Images)

So they turned out to be Chechens. Or, more specifically, ethnic Chechens from Kyrgyzstan. Of all the ridiculous speculation since Monday as to the identity of the bomber(s)—if he/they were Arabs, Muslims, homegrown American extremists (à la Timothy McVeigh), whatever—I doubt anyone thought they’d be this (the only thing that was clear from the outset was that the perpetrators had to be from the Boston area). Okay, so they’re Muslims—which will warm the hearts of Pamela Geller, Steven Emerson, Daniel Pipes, and certain persons I know personally—but so what? If the alienated, angry Tamerlan hadn’t been a radicalized Muslim with access to jihadist websites, he would have likely committed his massacre the all-American way, by acquiring assault rifles and mowing people down à la Sandy Hook or Columbine.

In respect to the Columbine killers (today is the anniversary of that massacre, BTW), they were such outliers—so statistically insignificant in terms of what they did—that no lessons could be drawn from it (except in regard to the ease with which Americans can acquire an arsenal of weapons). Their motivations were psychological (and with one of the killers being the psychopath who hatched the plan). It looks to be likewise with the Boston bombers. One does learn that Tamerlan didn’t have American friends and that he felt alienated from America. This sometimes happens with immigrants who arrive in their mid teens. It’s a delicate age and fitting into the American teen life is not easy if one comes from a different culture, particularly one from Asia. But Tamerlan was doubly deracinated, as even back “home”—in Kyrgyzstan and Daghestan—he was, as an ethnic Chechen, an outsider. So he had some psychological issues and, unlike the Columbine killers—whose massacre was rendered possible by America’s gun culture—, not much could have been done to prevent him from making and planting his homemade bomb once he decided to do so.

I’ve read a few worthy articles on the subject today, one being the NYT’s reportage on the “Boy [Dzhokhar] at home in the U.S. [being] swayed by the one who wasn’t [Tamerlan].” And on the NYT opinion page is an op-ed by journalist Oliver Bullough, who has covered the Chechen conflict, “Beslan meets Columbine.”

In The New Yorker, Adam Gopnik has a comment, “Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, lost and found,” in which he makes this observation

And it was an American story, too, in what could only be called a hysterical and insular overreaction that allowed it to become the sole national narrative. I happened to be in London on 7/7—a far more deadly and frightening terrorist attack—and by 7 P.M. on that horrible day, with the terrorists still at large (they were dead already, but no one knew that) the red double-decker buses were rolling and the traffic was turning and life, though hardly normal, was determinedly going on. The decision to shut down Boston, though doubtless made in good faith and from honest anxiety, seemed like an undue surrender to the power of the terrorist act—as did, indeed, the readiness to turn over the entire attention of the nation to a violent, scary, tragic, lurid but, in the larger scheme of things, ultimately small threat to the public peace.

Yes, America’s wild, hysterical overreaction to terrorist attacks, however few people end up being killed. The lockdown in Boston was insane. No such lockdown is conceivable in any other country in the world—or even in the US if it were just an ordinary killer on the loose. Or even a serial killer.

À propos, I am reminded today by DC friend Dan Brumberg of the October 2002 sniper attacks that terrorized the Washington area. Quoting Dan on FB

The Boston story and the fate of the 19 year old arrested last night reminds me of Lee Boyd Malvo, 17 years old when he teamed up with his murderous “father figure” [John Allen Muhammad] to terrorize DC for weeks. I remember sitting at an outdoor cafe wondering if we would be shot…the entire thing was surreal more than scary…Places we normally passed through or shot at were scenes of death.

Yet there was no lockdown in DC at the time. Nor, needless to say, was there a stigmatizing of blacks or Caribbean immigrants on account of the killer’s race and racial motives in committing his crimes.

Also in The New Yorker are comments by Jeffrey Toobin, “Could we have foreseen the Boston attack?” (answer: no) and David Remnick, “The Brothers Tsarnaev,” in which he focuses on the Chechen angle.

Writer Alyssa Lindley Kilzer, who knew the Tsarnaev family, has an account on her blog, “I’ve met the Boston bombers,” and which has some interesting information.

And if anyone hasn’t seen it by now, here’s the must watch interview with Ruslan Tsarni, uncle of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar.

More to follow.

A Senate in the gun lobby’s grip

From The New York Times op-ed page

By GABRIELLE GIFFORDS
WASHINGTON

SENATORS say they fear the N.R.A. and the gun lobby. But I think that fear must be nothing compared to the fear the first graders in Sandy Hook Elementary School felt as their lives ended in a hail of bullets. The fear that those children who survived the massacre must feel every time they remember their teachers stacking them into closets and bathrooms, whispering that they loved them, so that love would be the last thing the students heard if the gunman found them.

On Wednesday, a minority of senators gave into fear and blocked common-sense legislation that would have made it harder for criminals and people with dangerous mental illnesses to get hold of deadly firearms — a bill that could prevent future tragedies like those in Newtown, Conn., Aurora, Colo., Blacksburg, Va., and too many communities to count.

Some of the senators who voted against the background-check amendments have met with grieving parents whose children were murdered at Sandy Hook, in Newtown. Some of the senators who voted no have also looked into my eyes as I talked about my experience being shot in the head at point-blank range in suburban Tucson two years ago, and expressed sympathy for the 18 other people shot besides me, 6 of whom died. These senators have heard from their constituents — who polls show overwhelmingly favored expanding background checks. And still these senators decided to do nothing. Shame on them.

I watch TV and read the papers like everyone else. We know what we’re going to hear: vague platitudes like “tough vote” and “complicated issue.” I was elected six times to represent southern Arizona, in the State Legislature and then in Congress. I know what a complicated issue is; I know what it feels like to take a tough vote. This was neither. These senators made their decision based on political fear and on cold calculations about the money of special interests like the National Rifle Association, which in the last election cycle spent around $25 million on contributions, lobbying and outside spending.

Speaking is physically difficult for me. But my feelings are clear: I’m furious. I will not rest until we have righted the wrong these senators have done, and until we have changed our laws so we can look parents in the face and say: We are trying to keep your children safe. We cannot allow the status quo — desperately protected by the gun lobby so that they can make more money by spreading fear and misinformation — to go on.

I am asking every reasonable American to help me tell the truth about the cowardice these senators demonstrated. I am asking for mothers to stop these lawmakers at the grocery store and tell them: You’ve lost my vote. I am asking activists to unsubscribe from these senators’ e-mail lists and to stop giving them money. I’m asking citizens to go to their offices and say: You’ve disappointed me, and there will be consequences.

People have told me that I’m courageous, but I have seen greater courage. Gabe Zimmerman, my friend and staff member in whose honor we dedicated a room in the United States Capitol this week, saw me shot in the head and saw the shooter turn his gunfire on others. Gabe ran toward me as I lay bleeding. Toward gunfire. And then the gunman shot him, and then Gabe died. His body lay on the pavement in front of the Safeway for hours.

I have thought a lot about why Gabe ran toward me when he could have run away. Service was part of his life, but it was also his job. The senators who voted against background checks for online and gun-show sales, and those who voted against checks to screen out would-be gun buyers with mental illness, failed to do their job.

They looked at these most benign and practical of solutions, offered by moderates from each party, and then they looked over their shoulder at the powerful, shadowy gun lobby — and brought shame on themselves and our government itself by choosing to do nothing.

They will try to hide their decision behind grand talk, behind willfully false accounts of what the bill might have done — trust me, I know how politicians talk when they want to distract you — but their decision was based on a misplaced sense of self-interest. I say misplaced, because to preserve their dignity and their legacy, they should have heeded the voices of their constituents. They should have honored the legacy of the thousands of victims of gun violence and their families, who have begged for action, not because it would bring their loved ones back, but so that others might be spared their agony.

This defeat is only the latest chapter of what I’ve always known would be a long, hard haul. Our democracy’s history is littered with names we neither remember nor celebrate — people who stood in the way of progress while protecting the powerful. On Wednesday, a number of senators voted to join that list.

Mark my words: if we cannot make our communities safer with the Congress we have now, we will use every means available to make sure we have a different Congress, one that puts communities’ interests ahead of the gun lobby’s. To do nothing while others are in danger is not the American way.

Gabrielle Giffords, a Democratic representative from Arizona from 2007 to 2012, is a founder of Americans for Responsible Solutions, which focuses on gun violence.

Aristide Zolberg R.I.P.

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It is with sadness that I learned of the death yesterday of Aristide Zolberg, emeritus professor of political science at the New School. He was my professor and mentor during my first two years of graduate school at the University of Chicago, until he took up his appointment at the New School in 1983. He was a brilliant social scientist and whose presence at Chicago was one of the reasons I chose to pursue my graduate studies there. I was greatly influenced by his macrohistorical approach to comparative politics and shared his main academic interests, in European—and particularly French—politics and history, in ethnicity and ethnic conflict, and in the field of immigration (history, sociology, politics, and policy) and international migration, of which he was one of the leading social science authorities from the 1970s on. We stayed in touch over the years and saw one another off and on, in New York and during his many visits to Paris. We were very much on the same wavelength intellectually and politically. And I liked him personally. Here’s the announcement of his passing on the New School’s website

New School professor Aristide R. Zolberg, one of the world’s leading voices on the politics, history, and ethics of immigration, has died at the age of 81. Zolberg served as Walter A. Eberstadt Professor of Politics and University in Exile Professor Emeritus at The New School for Social Research. A distinguished political scientist and a preeminent scholar of comparative politics, the history of international migration, nationalism and ethnicity, and immigration policy in North America and Western Europe, he served for many years as the founding director of the International Center for Migration, Ethnicity and Citizenship at The New School.

Early in life, Zolberg experienced first-hand the perils of war, ethnic hatred, displacement, and exile. A Polish Jew, Ary was born shortly before the Nazis rose to power, and survived World War II under an assumed Catholic identity in Belgium. After the war he became a refugee in the United States, and earned his doctorate in political science at the University of Chicago.

Zolberg mentored and inspired several generations of colleagues and students at The New School, where he was first appointed as Distinguished Professor of Political Science in 1983, as well as at the University of Chicago and many other institutions where he held academic appointments. Zolberg’s book, A Nation by Design, remains one of the most authoritative accounts of immigration history in the United States and a compelling story of how immigration shaped this country. His humanity and erudition will be missed by countless colleagues, students, and readers.

Yes, he will be missed. There are few political scientists like Ari Zolberg left (in America at least), who have his erudition and intellectual and academic interests and range. Nowadays if one is not a mathematician, or prepared to become one, there’s no point pursing a doctorate in political science.

UPDATE: The website Deliberately Considered has tributes to Ari Zolberg by Jeffrey Goldfarb, Kenneth Prewitt, Michael Cohen, and Riva Kastoryano. (April 26)

Chutzpah Watch

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The JTA reports that the effort by the US Congress to have Israel added to the Visa Waiver Program—which would allow Israeli passport holders visa-free entry into the US for up to 90 days—has run into problems over the issue of reciprocity, i.e. of the requirement that countries in the VWP also allow Americans visa-free entry. Israel has long done this, of course, except that Americans—and particularly those of Palestinian/Arab origin and/or with Muslim surnames—are often arbitrarily denied entry by Israeli security at Ben Gurion airport or the Allenby bridge—invariably after a lengthy and humiliating interrogation process—and with no explanation. The Israelis do not seek to justify such refusals of entry—pour mémoire, to citizens of a state with which it has exceptionally close relations—and have never, not once, demonstrated that the American deportee constituted a manifest security threat (on a recent instance, see this Haaretz piece on the denial of entry to American citizen Nour Joudah, an English teacher in Ramallah). I’ve written on this several times (e.g. see this post from a year ago, and which spawned a lively debate in the comments thread). So unless the Israelis clean up their act and stop behaving arbitrarily at their ports of entry—and cease discriminating against Americans on account of their ethnicity or putative political views—they should clearly not be admitted into the VWP.

But now AIPAC is pushing Congress to exempt Israel from the reciprocity requirements of the VWP and Barbara Boxer is leading the effort in the Senate. If the Senate bill is enacted Israel would be uniquely excused from the rule applied to the 37 other VWP countries and with Congress formally acquiescing in its discrimination against categories of Americans. Boxer’s Senate bill, as Lara Friedman of Americans for Peace Now explains, “takes the extraordinary step of seeking to change the current U.S. law to create a special and unique exception for Israel in U.S. immigration law.” What chutzpah on the part of AIPAC and Boxer et al to try to do this. A number of Congresspersons, otherwise pro-Israel, are indeed balking at the Boxer bill. AIPAC normally gets what it wants on Capitol Hill but not always. I don’t think it will this time—American politicians usually don’t like it when American citizens are discriminated against abroad—but Arab-American and civil liberties groups need to lobby hard to make sure the Boxer bill doesn’t pass.

Even if Israel doesn’t enter the VWP, the US could and should request that the Israelis explicitly explain the reason for each and every arbitrary refusal of entry of an American citizen. And demand that the Israelis stop discriminating against Palestinian-Americans. The European Schengen area, which does allow Israelis visa-free entry, should also start making an issue of discrimination against EU passport holders at Israeli ports of entry.

UPDATE: California law professor George Bisharat, who is Palestinian-American, has an LAT op-ed (April 28) on “Israel’s free pass from Boxer,” in which he describes his experiences with the Ben Gurion Airport security gauntlet. How can anyone possibly justify this?

God’s Neighbors

My previous post being on a recently seen film on Islamist extremist fanatics in Morocco, I should mention this film seen even more recently on Jewish religious extremist fanatics in Israel (titre en français: ‘Les Voisins de Dieu’; in Hebrew: ‘The Supervisors’). Meni Yaesh’s directorial debut is set in Bat Yam, a southern banlieue populaire of Tel Aviv on the sea—just below Jaffa—, and with a focus on three twentysomething, cannabis smoking layabout tough guys who like to brawl—only one of whom, the protag Avi (actor Roy Assaf), is clearly gainfully employed, albeit in a petit boulot—, who follow Breslov Hasidism but take its teachings much more literally and fundamentally than does their rabbi. So they become self-appointed enforcers of a Jewish fundamentalist order in their housing project—Jewish salafaists, as it were—and with particular attention to women who, in their estimation, are too immodestly dressed. They also take action against local men who don’t respect the Sabbath—e.g. who close their shops a half hour after sundown on Friday—and get particularly worked up over Arabs from Jaffa who cruise through their ‘hood with Arab music blaring from their cars. But Avi gets a crush on the young woman, Miri (actress Rotem Ziesman-Cohen, who is rather attractive IMHO), whom he and his buddies have been harassing to dress more modestly, i.e. not to wear shorts, which causes him to waver in his religiously extremist convictions and undermines the cohesion of his small group solidarity.

I thought it was an engaging film, nuanced, and well done. The Hollywood Reporter and Variety liked it, as did the website Israel 21c. French reviews are also good.

Horses of God

I’ve been intending to write about this very good Moroccan film I saw last month, which has as its subject jihadist terrorism and the socio-political terrain that spawns it. It’s set in the sprawling Sidi Moumen shantytown on the periphery of Casablanca—the pic wasn’t shot there but sure looks like it was—and follows a gang of boys from mid childhood to their early 20s, in particular two brothers, Yacine and Hamid, who are the film’s protags. The early scenes, set precisely in 1994, are straight out of ‘Los Olvidados’ or ‘Pixote’, of the world of slum boys and its destitution and violence, and with Hamid the exceptionally wild, violent one. Jump to 1999 and Hamid, now in his teens, has become a drugged-out, alcohol-drinking voyou, who turns over the proceeds of his thievery and thuggishness to his mother, who doesn’t ask questions as to where the money comes from (the father is a catatonic invalid, sitting in front of the television all day). Morocco’s bas-fonds. This is not Anfa (Casa’s Beverly Hills) or the social stratum of ‘Marock‘. Hamid eventually gets arrested and is sentenced to two years in prison, during which time Yacine, who is more sage, gets an honest job in a shantytown repair shop. When Hamid returns to Sidi Moumen he is inevitably sporting a beard and has become calm and soft-spoken, as he found religion in prison, i.e. became a salafist. Of course. He then sets about converting older brother Yacine—initially reluctant—and boyhood friends into takfirist salafism, of which there is a cell in Sidi Moumen.

What happens in the film is fairly predictable and I’d pretty much seen it all before, notably in Philippe Faucon’s first-rate ‘La Désintégration‘, which is set in a cité in France and among the offspring of mainly Moroccan immigrants. ‘Les Chevaux de Dieu’ is essentially ‘La Désintégration’ set in the bidonvilles of Morocco’s cities (though the mother in the former pic is a rather less sympathetic character than in the latter). But this is not to diminish or denigrate the film. Director Nabil Ayouch did a very good job across the board, in the casting (all amateurs) and depicting the world of Morocco’s shantytowns, whose inhabitants are entirely excluded from society—the boys had never ventured into the center of Casablanca until their recruitment into the jihadist cell—and where the state is almost entirely absent, save for the occasional police raid (and carried out with the usual brutality). There are no public services, no schools in sight, no anything that comes from the state except for repression. Above all, Ayouch nailed it in portraying the mechanisms by which young men from the slums are indoctrinated into radical Islamism, through material incentives, peer pressure, offers one can’t refuse, and doses of brainwashing, and where the jihadist cell ringleaders are violent criminals for whom the young recruits are nothing more than cannon fodder for their suicide terror attacks and other acts of iniquity. Once inside a jihadist cell—which is a religious cult cum criminal enterprise—there is no exit, and one does not decline invitations to participate in a “martyrdom” operation. The film climaxes with the May 16 2003 terrorist bombings in Casablanca (and with the Sidi Moumen boys sent to the Casa de España restaurant in the city center). Hamid has états d’âme and tries to find a way out (and to persuade brother Yacine) but there’s no way. One way or the other, it’s near certain death.

This is one of those films with which I was increasingly impressed as it moved along, and particularly in thinking about it afterward. French reviews are good (with spectators on Allociné rating it even higher than the critics). Variety’s Jay Weissberg and The Hollywood Reporter also gave it the thumbs up. It is recommended to anyone interested in the question of jihadist terrorism and particularly for courses taught on the general subject. Pedagogically it’s very good, indeed one of the best on the subject. And on the subject—on reading to accompany the film—, I recommend academic specialist Selma Belaala’s pertinent 2004 article “Morocco: slums breed jihad.”

For the record, I will briefly mention another film, ‘Goodbye Morocco’, that I saw just after ‘Les Chevaux de Dieu’. As the title suggests it’s set in Morocco (Tangier), though the director, Nadir Moknèche, is Algerian. I’ll let Hollywood Reporter‘s critic introduce it

Writer-director Nadir Moknèche’s superior multicultural drama weaves together a dark tangle of subplots about art theft, infidelity, kidnapping, murder and immigration. Inspired by real events, this multi-layered suspense thriller is part murder mystery, part film noir and part dysfunctional love triangle.

Screen Daily‘s critic is on the same page

An impressively steamy and complex mystery thriller, apparently inspired by real events, writer/director Nadir Moknèche’s nicely shot film, which had its world premiere at the Doha Tribeca International Film Festival is a classily made film…

Variety’s critic, who also gave it thumbs up, aptly called it “[a]n eminently watchable curiosity.” Yes, definitely watchable. French reviews, though a notch below the aforediscussed pic, are good. It may not be worth venturing across town to see but one may definitely do so chez soi on DVD or streaming.

Margaret Thatcher R.I.P.

[update below] [2nd update below] [3rd update below] [4th update below] [5th update below] [6th update below] [7th update below] [8th update below] [9th update below]

I was initially not going to write anything about her passing but seeing that my FB timeline is inundated with posts on her—90% of it vitriol and hate from my numerous gauchiste FB friends—I suppose I should add my 2¢ as well (and no more than that). I was not a Thatcherite, loin s’en faut, disliking her out of gauchiste ideological reflex. But I couldn’t get too worked up over her, as I’m not a Brit, spent all of two weeks in England during her years in power, and was too consumed by my detestation of the Reagan administration to get overly emotional on what was happening across the pond. And I did support her sending the Royal Navy to the Falklands in ’82 (and made no secret of it). Rising to the top of a male-dominated political world when she did and imposing her authority also aroused a certain admiration. I liked Shirley Williams but don’t know if she would have had a chance at the time, even if the UK had had a different electoral system. In this respect, Thatcher was blessed by the first-past-the-post system—the Tories did not receive more than 43% of the vote in any of the elections she won—, the divided opposition, and lack of checks-and-balances in the British system, meaning she had free rein to impose her legislation. And she was especially blessed by the calamitous state of the Trotskyist-infiltrated Labour party and the trade unions, and notably Arthur Scargill’s mine workers. Between Thatcher and Scargill, one had little choice but to tilt toward the former. À propos, Libération has an interview with left-wing French economist Denis Clerc, who, in an otherwise negative assessment of Thatcher’s record, said that Thatcher’s victory in the miners conflict was necessary, as British unions had become a conservative force clinging to an economic model that Britain could no longer sustain.

Mrs. Thatcher may have been hated by British (and US) leftists but French Socialists—who were in power during most of the time she was—had a certain admiration for her (as a leader and interlocutor, if not politically). And François Mitterrand definitely did (saying that she had the eyes of Stalin and the smile of Marilyn Monroe). As for Thatcher’s economic policies, the main thing she did was privatize. So did the French right during the first cohabitation (1986-88). And the Socialists did even more from 1997 onward. But she didn’t privatize the NHS, and the disastrous privatization of British Rail was the doing of John Major. Thatcher also kept the Bank of England under political control. As for her Euroscepticism and opposition to EMU, she had good company in France (Jean-Pierre Chevènement, Charles Pasqua, Philippe Séguin…). On Thatcher’s privatizations, here’s a 1994 academic article by political scientist (and personal friend) Stathis Kalyvas, “Hegemony Breakdown: The Collapse of Nationalization in Britain and France.” And here’s a piece by historian Harold James on “Margaret Thatcher’s Lessons for Europe.” I’ll link to more good stuff I come across.

One thing. All sorts of lefties on FB are quoting Thatcher as having called Nelson Mandela a “terrorist” in the 1980s. I’ve been trying to find a precise quote and but haven’t been able to, which leads me to think that maybe she never said such a thing about Mandela (as opposed to the ANC, which she did label “terrorist” in the ’80s). She did oppose imposing sanctions on South Africa, which is known, but it seems that she lobbied the apartheid regime to release Mandela. If anyone has specific information on this, do let me know.

UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan, who was a teenage Thatcherite, assesses her legacy here (he calls her a “liberator”).

2nd UPDATE: Paul Krugman asks—with graphs and data—”Did Thatcher turn Britain around?” Answer: insofar as she did, it didn’t happen while she was in office. Bruce Bartlett, in discussing “The legend of Margaret Thatcher,” reminds us that taxes as a share of GDP sharply increased under Thatcher, spending was not reduced, and she left office with the welfare state intact. And like all Brits, she strongly supported the National Health Service. US Republicans take note. The New Yorker’s John Cassidy reminisces on “Maggie and me: how Thatcher changed Britain.” Martin Wolf has a column in the FT on “Thatcher: the great reformer,” in which he observes, entre autres, that Thatcher was a pragmatic politician who showed little interest in embarking on politically suicidal attempts to dismantle the welfare state, and certainly not the NHS, and that public spending never fell below 39% of GDP under her watch. Again, US Republicans take note.

3rd UPDATE: The Guardian has published an epitaph for Mrs. Thatcher written by Hugo Young, a Thatcher biographer (not sympathetic) and longtime Guardian political columnist, days before he died in 2003, “Margaret Thatcher left a dark legacy that has still not disappeared.” Among other things, he has this to say

Thatcherism failed to destroy the welfare state. The lady was too shrewd to try that, and barely succeeded in reducing the share of the national income taken by the public sector. But the sense of community evaporated. There turned out to be no such thing as society, at least in the sense we used to understand it. Whether pushing each other off the road, barging past social rivals, beating up rival soccer fans, or idolising wealth as the only measure of virtue, Brits became more unpleasant to be with. This regrettable transformation was blessed by a leader who probably did not know it was happening because she didn’t care if it happened or not. But it did, and the consequences seem impossible to reverse.

And this

on the subject of Europe, Thatcher became a contradictory figure. She led Britain further into Europe, while talking us further out. Endeavouring to persuade the British into an attitude of hostility to the group with which she spent 11 years deepening their connection must take a high place in any catalogue of anti-statesmanship. This, too, we still live with.

The Washington Post has republished on its website a piece dated December 22 2011 by Thatcher biographer Claire Berlinski (sympathetic), “Five myths about Margaret Thatcher,” in which she says this about Mrs. Thatcher’s European convictions

Yes, she is known as the great Euroskeptic. But the peculiar truth is that for most of her career, she was a passionate advocate of European unification. In 1975, she led the Tory faction of the “Vote Yes” campaign in referendum to determine whether Britain should stay in the Common Market, the precursor to the modern European Union. The Single European Act of 1986, which revised the Treaty of Rome to expand the power of the European Economic Community, as the Common Market was then known, was her initiative.

On the subject of Thatcher and Europe, a friend who worked with the EC/EU for much of his career wrote to me in an email today (April 9) that

One aspect that seems to be missed is the great irony of her career. She was a main driver of the expansion if the EU and turned it into a thoroughly “British” affair (by which I mean driven by free market ideology. She pushed the Single European Act which has done for Europe what the Interstate commerce act did for the US. The SEA created the internal market and caused the number of regulations (loose use of the word) to increase by orders of magnitude.

My friend also added this Anglo-French pun, that apparently never caught on: Thatch = chaume. Thatcher = chaumeur = chômeur.

Re Hugo Young above, the LRB has a lengthy 1989 review by R.W. Johnson of Young’s biography of Thatcher. Also on the LRB website is this 1994 piece by Christopher Hitchens in which he describes being spanked (literally) by Mrs. T.

4th UPDATE: Political scientist Stephen Benedict Dyson has interesting essay, “Margaret Thatcher, her personality and politics,” on the academic website The Monkey Cage. And Anthony Barnett of OpenDemocracy has a piece on “Thatcher and the words no one mentions: North Sea Oil.”

5th UPDATE: Paul Krugman has a blog post on Thatcher’s penchant for regressive taxation, in which he informs us who is “Margaret Thatcher’s true heir“: Bobby Jindal. John Palmer, think tank wonk and former Guardian editor, informs us in the fine website Social Europe Journal that “Margaret Thatcher’s social and economic ‘revolution’ has proved a failure.” Nicolas Gros-Verheyde on the Bruxelles2 blog has a good post on Thatcher’s European convictions. And on NRO, a website I look at as little as possible, Claire Berlinski (supra) is interviewed on why “Thatcher matters.” Claire may be a Thatcherite but is no hack. Her views are nuanced and complex, even if I’m not on the same political page as she. At some point I’ll read her biography of Mrs. T.

6th UPDATE: The leftist Greek economist Yanis Varoufakis has a very good, balanced assessment, “Farewell Mrs Thatcher: In spite of everything, you are being missed already.” In TNR, Geoffrey Wheatcroft writes on “The importance of being prickly: How Margaret Thatcher ruled,” in which he discusses, entre autres, the dim view Mrs. T had of much of the Reagan administration’s foreign policy. And Stylist magazine, in assessing the legacy of the Iron Lady, asks “Was Thatcher a feminist?“

7th UPDATE: Theodore Dalrymple of the conservative Manhattan Institute has an interesting assessment of Mrs. T’s legacy on the Liberty Law Blog, in which he asks “What hath Thatcher wrought?” For his part, Ali Gharib on the Open Zion blog asks “What kind of friend to Israel was Thatcher?” (Answer: she was a friend but not uncritically). Historian David Cannadine, writing in the NYT, poses his question, “How should we rank Margaret Thatcher?” And IFRI’s Politique Étrangère blog reprints a 1989 portrait (en français) of la Dame de fer—which is not too tender—by the late defense analyst and Tory party member, Hugh Hanning.

8th UPDATE: Economist John Van Reenen has analysis at VoxEU on “Mrs Thatcher’s economic legacy.” And the trendy Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek, in “a leftist tribute to Thatcher,” says that

What we need today, in this situation, is a Thatcher of the left: a leader who would repeat Thatcher’s gesture in the opposite direction, transforming the entire field of presuppositions shared by today’s political elite of all main orientations.

To which a lefty friend—who may or may not have been joking—responded: yes, Chairman Mao! Well, if that’s the leftist answer to Mrs. T, I’ll take Mrs. T any old day…

9th UPDATE: Martin Sieff of the Globalist Research Center, in an interesting take, says that “Thatcher lives! In Moscow.” (April 19)