and then there were five...

BBC reports on five remaining British veterans of WWI. Includes video interviews with Harry Patch, Claude Choules, William Stone, Syd Lucas, and Henry Allingham -- the last one 111 years old!! Tough old bastards, all of em.

BBC One will air a special program this Sunday (Remembrance Sunday, the 11th).

"I have helped to create a truly fascist organization"

Came across this old gem of antigay literature -- a supposed quote from an Eric Pollard, claiming to have helped found ACT UP /DC and that it was all motivated by their reading of Mein Kampf and Nazi propaganda/brownshirt tactics.

This quote has always bothered me. Would be worth looking into its accuracy... in the service of that here are some links to save for future use:

ACT UP wikipedia page
(general info on history of the group)

ACT UP Oral History Project
(currently no mention of Pollard; would be good source for those involved in DC chapter)

Traditional Values Coalition pamphlet using the quote at issue:

Eric M. Pollard, a founder of ACT UP/D.C., says that ACT UP's philosophy was built upon the writings of Hitler in Mein Kampf. Pollard admitted this in an unusually candid article in the Washington Blade on January 31, 1991.

The Annotated Pink Swastika
(PS is the source cited when antigay pamphleteers use the quote. no comment from the annotator on the passage itself, which is in "The Cauldron Begins to Boil", p169 of the original book.)

Otherwise, it's a circular firing squad of attribution, which usually ends up at Lively/Abrams.

Goals for future research:

• contact Blade, get copy of paper for Jan 31, 1991 and 1992
• contact reporter of that story, or if "First Person" the editor who ran it
  
• contact ACT UP Oral History project for information about DC chapter - is Pollard real? any independent confirmation of his story, or aspects of it? Possible that the site is New York only... if so, any equivalent for DC?