October 2009 News
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David Swanson interviewed at Rain Taxi Review of Books
October 30, 2009
The Rain Taxi Review of Books has just put up a fantastic interview with David Swanson, author of Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union. See more within.
Tags: articles, current issues, david swanson, daybreak, interviews, politics/government, rain taxi review
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Report on Ralph Nader’s West Hartford book signing
October 30, 2009
From the Hartford Courant:
Ralph Nader, the first-time novelist, sounds just like Ralph Nader, lawyer, father of the national consumer activist movement and four-time presidential candidate. Here’s some of what a crowd of three dozen heard Thursday afternoon at the Bookworm bookstore when Nader — 75 and a Winsted native — stopped in for an hour on a book tour to talk about his utopian novel, “Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us.”
Tags: bookworm, connecticut, fiction, only the super-rich can save us, politics/government, q&a, ralph nader
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Long discussion of Hwang Sok-yong’s The Guest at Gypsy Scholar
October 30, 2009
Since early October, Horace Jeffrey Hodges—the “Gypsy Scholar”—has been putting out a series of posts about the characterization of smallpox as a “western” (or “Western”) disease in Hwang Sok-yong’s The Guest. The most recent of his articles on Hwang’s wordplay and his sense of what it means to be “traditionally, exclusively, and authentically Korean” is here, and his article about some potential translation issues in The Guest can be found here. Read more about the series—and Mr. Hwang’s books—within.
Tags: articles, fiction, gypsy scholar, hwang sok-yong, old garden, the guest
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Obama signs first-ever American pro-transgender legislation
October 29, 2009
From the National Center for Transgender Equality (and, at one remove, from Kate Bornstein’s Twitter:
President Obama has just signed into law the very first protections for transgender people in US history: The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act.
Tags: current events, gender, obama
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The Old Garden: One Shot of Sake and One Cigarette (Part 27/28)
October 29, 2009
After dinner I walked down to Todam, the Traditional Tea Salon, run by the youngest son of the Soonchun lady. I became reacquainted with the Bunny Boy, who was now in his thirties. Yoon Hee and I had adored the youngest boy at the main house. We frequently sent him on errands to the village in order to give him pocket money. Yoon Hee nicknamed him the Bunny Boy because his two front teeth protruded and his eyes were so round. It is inevitably disappointing to see someone you knew as a child all grown up. A child has a future full of possibilities, yet there is no shadow of greed. All too soon, however, the childish ingenuity and innocence are gone without a trace. As the face matures, layers of tired guile are added. The Bunny Boy was not shy at all. Instead, he seemed to be guarded or sneering at me, this old man who had returned.
Tags: fiction, hwang sok-yong, old garden, Old Garden Serial
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The Others reviewed at AfterEllen.com
October 28, 2009
From the excellent review of The Others at AfterEllen.com:
Seba Al-Herz’s gripping novel, The Others, is a multi-layered story about a young Shi’a woman growing up in the Sunni province of Saudi Arabia. The title applies to nearly every aspect of the unnamed narrator’s life, from her gender, to her epilepsy, to her same-sex relationships with other women.
Al-Herz writes about desire in beautiful prose that ranges from the poetic and surreal to startling moments of clarity: “We awoke. When I say we awoke I mean it literally. We woke up from the bewitching trance of words, from the honey sweetness of dreams, to an electric shock that flew from her bare forearm to mine … Staring through the window at some distant point, she whispered, I want to kiss you. I did not say a word.” . . . It is an eye-opening reading experience. Highly recommended.
Tags: afterellen.com, fiction, reviews, seba al-herz, the others
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Single Payer Action offers signed first editions of “Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!” for donors
October 28, 2009
Russell at Single Payer Action posted today offering a signed first edition copy of “Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!” for anyone willing to donate $100 or more to help support Single Payer Action in its quest to pass HR 676 and to oppose President Obama’s health care plan. Find out more within, or at Single Payer Action.
Tags: fiction, healthcare, only the super-rich can save us, politics/government, ralph nader, single player action
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The Old Garden: The Fuel Hole (Part 26/28)
October 28, 2009
I closed Yoon Hee’s sketchbook and finished cleaning the room. I kept thinking I should warm up the room more, so I went out and walked toward the fuel hole. First, I stacked a handful of thin branches and ignited them with a lighter. Like a wriggling little animal, the flame spread to the top. I picked a few thicker branches and broke them. They were stacked over the flame, crossing each other to support a couple of logs on top. They were so dry that they caught easily without emitting too much smoke. I put a couple more logs in. The fuel hole was soon filled with warm yellow light, and the warmth spread to my lower body. I stared blankly at the flame. It looked like the tongue of a live creature, licking the fuel hole and spreading toward the kitchen.
Tags: fiction, hwang sok-yong, old garden, Old Garden Serial
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David Swanson: The Militarization of America’s Youth
October 27, 2009
From Daybreak author David Swanson’s article, The Militarization of America’s Youth:
“This is so cool! This is so cool!” a thirteen-year-old boy repeated as he squeezed rounds from a real M-16, picking off “enemy combatants” in a video game while perched atop a real Army Humvee. “I just came to the mall to skateboard but everyone said this was pretty cool. I just had to try it and it’s great!”
The person reporting on this youthful enthusiasm was Pat Elder, who serves on the Steering Committee of the National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth. Elder also described young teenagers congratulating each other for “killing ragheads” and “wiping out hajis.”
All of this fun went on at the Army Experience Center (AEC), a 14,500-square-foot “virtual educational facility” in the Franklin Mills Mall in a suburb of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The U.S. Army opened the center in August 2008 and planned to run it for two years as a pilot program. If the center proved able to recruit as many new soldiers as five ordinary recruiting stations, the Army planned to build them nationally. The AEC cost more than $12 million to design and construct, but of course the Army spends several billion dollars a year on recruitment.
Tags: articles, current events, david swanson, daybreak, global research, military, politics/government
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The Old Garden: What Was Written in Yoon Hee’s Sketchbook (Part 25/28)
October 27, 2009
There they put you in a regular cage consisting of two layers of wire mesh; or rather, a small cage stands freely inside a larger one, and the prisoner only sees the visitor through this double trelliswork. It was just at the end of a six-day hunger strike, and I was so weak that the Commanding Officer of the fortress had almost to carry me into the visitors’ room. I had to hold on with both hands to the wires of the cage, and this must certainly have strengthened my resemblance to a wild beast in the zoo. The cage was standing in a rather dark corner of the room, and my brother pressed his face against the wires. “Where are you?” he kept on asking, continually wiping away the tears that clouded his glasses. —Rosa Luxemburg
Tags: fiction, hwang sok-yong, old garden, Old Garden Serial