The Word from Qandil

Months ago, the Oracle of Jane's predicted Turkish air strikes against PKK positions in northern Iraq. And lo, they have come to pass, not for the first time this year.

A source in the mountains, a young man who has spent years with the PKK, wrote to me just before the attacks. He was weary of seeing time slip past, his youth drained away, and Kurdish statehood thwarted again and again. He predicted death, and even welcomed it (in what Anthony Burgess might have called an apothanein-theloish way):

Hi my dear friend
the situiation is very sensitive
now we are reading oureselve for defence because turkish army will come here.this war is very huge and vaittle for us and kurdish nathion. I wish to see you againe but it is possible to be killed .Iam not remorsfull for my martyre because I belive to my aspirathion and fredoom of kurdish nathion.we are right and justfull so we will be winner.death is better than thise knavish life of kurdish nathion. dont forget us and continue your holly jop for humanity and right off opressed people (including kurds).
best wishes

("Viattle" = "vital," I think.)

No word from him since then.

Sinclair Lewis quote

An update on the provenance of a quote supposedly from Sinclair Lewis.

The Sinclair Lewis Society traced the quote. They forwarded me this message:

In early February of 1948, Sinclair Lewis was quoted in the Gazette and Daily, a York, Pennsylvania, periodical, as saying, "When fascism comes to the United States it will be wrapped in the American flag and will claim the name of 100-percent Americanism ... "

Nothing about a cross.

A site called "Everything Shii Knows" provides a New York Times article from 1938, reproduced here, which credits the Huey Long version to Prof. Halford E. Luccock of Yale Divinity School.

Naples's Honored Society

Check out the Web site of The American for a review of Roberto Saviano's investigation of the Camorra.