Hope you enjoyed The Big Country. I once interviewed Burl Ives for The Guardian. Very charming man he was too; but had one of those never-out-of-hearing wives sitting in on the interview. An interesting thing, in retro, was that Colin Irwin & I met him in his suite at the Grand Hotel, Brighton, during the 1st Brighton Folk Festival of 1977; we all know what happened there 7 years later...

I am sure we both regard deaths as a result of ideological/political differences as a misfortune. Seems to me that both trying to find solutions to the differences sufficient at least to avoid future deaths resulting, and considering what the effect on the survivors might be, are different aspects of the topic worth exploring; neither in any way that I can see preventing proper consideration of the other. I don't see why you think favouring one above the other to be mounting any sort of unworthy 'platform', which I now take to be your point?

~M~