"Sir Max Hastings HAS NEVER worked for the Daily Mail bum-fodder as a JOURNALIST"
So what - he describes himself as a journalis and is present writing for the Daily Mail - semantic juggling.
His historical qualifications do not meet those that Keith demand for the rest of us, therefore he does not qualify as a historian, though Keith based most of his case on his being so.
Shucks to you too.
"On WW1 there are no living historians who did disagree with me."
Arrogant nonsense - you haven't read any of those you quoted, so how on earth could you possibly know?
You based your entire case on a tiny handful of out-of-contest cut-'n-pastes, as you always do.
Throughout the discussion - and the one on the famine, you hid behind the reputations of "real qualified historians" without ever having read a single one of their books, which you admitted when challenged "I am no expert"
You don't read - you seek qualification for your jingoistic rubbish after you have propounded it.
"He is not himself a contributor to this foolish introspective forum and probably blissfully unaware of its very existence."
Sorry - I responded to the holier-than-thou stance of the posting, which I read in passing, because I believe it represents much of the trouble in the Middle East and elsewhere - "my religion is more important than yours".
No religion can claim clean hands when it comes to interference in medical matters - the Christian church least of all.
Every year thousands of families are forced to ship their daughters to the UK for pregnancy terminations they cannot obtain legally in Ireland due to primitive, religion-based laws.
Last year the government to re-think an age-old religious-based law forbidding life saving operations - this following the death of a young woman due to an unviable pregnancy
Politicians who voted for the changes in the law were threatened with excommunication.
Such operations are still illegal in cases involving rape.
The height of "barbarism" was reached some time ago when the staff of a Christian-run South American hospital hid the pregnancy of an 11-year-old daughter of a family of itinerant agricultural labourers who had been raped by a local farmer, made pregnant and given two sexually transmitted diseases.
The staff admitted that the girls age and her condition would inevitably lead to her death had the pregnancy been allowed to go through, but they deliberately suppressed the fact that the girl was pregnant until it was too late for her to obtain a termination legally.
On appealing to the local bishop, they were told that that "the girl should embrace her martyrdom with pride".
Religion and medicine is just as toxic a mix as with politics.
Damn them all.
By the way - I am not in a rush to be a "reliable commentator" on anything - I am as anxious as I always have been that this forum is not used by racists, sectarians and other examples of the detritus of society as a platform for hate - nothing more.
There is nothing introspective about any of this - holy wars, whichever product-brand of superstition they are fought for, concern us all and are a threat to all our futures.
Taking sides only heightens that threat.
Jim Carroll