Friday, June 06, 2003
In lieu the BBC's list of the 100 greatest books of the English language which is to be announced presently, the Independant has gathered fifty or so notables to list the worst books language. Some of the literary mud slinging includes...
Harry Potter
"JK Rowling is the sub-literary analogue of Tony Blair. "
Lord of the Rings
"I've never understood the point. It's strange, weird and frightening, and makes me feel like I'm on the sidelines of a joke I don't understand. "
Finnegans Wake
"Joyce's incomprehensible novel, which has provided a living for generations of English Literature professors, represents a lamentable tendency in 20th-century fiction: the quest for total obscurity. Finnegans Wake is the best example of modernism disappearing up its own fundament."
Tuesday, June 03, 2003
Yesterday, when I was driving on the 405, traffic started to mysterious slow down. An accident? No. Someone dumped a box full of doll heads onto the road, giving the highway a sort of surreal apocalypse-in-kiddyland sort of feel.
Though not widely reported in the US though widely documented by Amnesty, real life apocalypse is going on in Burma where death camp thugs are enslaving villagers and forcing then to build an oil pipeline on behalf of Unocal. When a few of the villagers managed to sue Unocal in US courts under the Alien Tort Claims Act, the Justice department not-surprisingly sides with the corporate as you can read
here. The crimes these corporate nazis are accused of are truly horrific:
"Jane Doe I, one of the plaintiffs in the case, testified that when her husband tried to escape the forced labor program, he was shot at by soldiers, and that, in retaliation for his attempted escape, she and her baby were thrown into a fire. Her child died and she was badly injured....Other villagers described the summary execution of people who refused to work, or who became too weak to work effectively."
In somewhat more hopeful news, the stink of Bush's lies (it's not "hype", it's not "over-exaggeration" as most US media outlets are describing it as, they are lies) is becoming to great to cover over with Ari Fleischer's usual misinformation or bald-faced stonewalling. World opinion and even Republican senators are starting to question the veracity of the Bush administrations cocksure statements that Saddam was an imminent threat. Paul Krugman, as usual, has a interesting taking on this whole thing which can be read here. If the accusations of falsehood, bare out to be true this means that justification for the war is almost nil. They wanted a war and they bullied the world into letting them have their war. The meaning of this is staggering and much as it is frightening. George W. Bush killed thousands of Iraqi and dozens of American and British troops to bolster his political standing. I sincerely hope that this gets exposed and reported as the war crime it is.
And in other news, a representive of the Nebraska state legislator theatened to declare war on Iowa for lost gambling revenue.
Though not widely reported in the US though widely documented by Amnesty, real life apocalypse is going on in Burma where death camp thugs are enslaving villagers and forcing then to build an oil pipeline on behalf of Unocal. When a few of the villagers managed to sue Unocal in US courts under the Alien Tort Claims Act, the Justice department not-surprisingly sides with the corporate as you can read
here. The crimes these corporate nazis are accused of are truly horrific:
"Jane Doe I, one of the plaintiffs in the case, testified that when her husband tried to escape the forced labor program, he was shot at by soldiers, and that, in retaliation for his attempted escape, she and her baby were thrown into a fire. Her child died and she was badly injured....Other villagers described the summary execution of people who refused to work, or who became too weak to work effectively."
In somewhat more hopeful news, the stink of Bush's lies (it's not "hype", it's not "over-exaggeration" as most US media outlets are describing it as, they are lies) is becoming to great to cover over with Ari Fleischer's usual misinformation or bald-faced stonewalling. World opinion and even Republican senators are starting to question the veracity of the Bush administrations cocksure statements that Saddam was an imminent threat. Paul Krugman, as usual, has a interesting taking on this whole thing which can be read here. If the accusations of falsehood, bare out to be true this means that justification for the war is almost nil. They wanted a war and they bullied the world into letting them have their war. The meaning of this is staggering and much as it is frightening. George W. Bush killed thousands of Iraqi and dozens of American and British troops to bolster his political standing. I sincerely hope that this gets exposed and reported as the war crime it is.
And in other news, a representive of the Nebraska state legislator theatened to declare war on Iowa for lost gambling revenue.
