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Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Books Three Exceptional Men, One Exceptional Novel

Posted by Paul Constant on Tue, Apr 17, 2012 at 3:46 PM

1. Seng Kok Ung signs and discusses his memoir, I Survived the Killing Fields, in the Phnom Penh Noodle House, which is a very delicious restaurant. It's a harrowing story about a terrible time.

2. Robert V. Taylor reads and signs at Town Hall tonight. Taylor battled apartheid—let's take a moment to note, by the way, that Mitt Romney advisor Ted Nugent supports apartheid—and now Taylor is "one of the nation’s highest-ranking, openly gay Episcopal priests." That makes this local author absolutely worth your time. His new book is titled A New Way to Be Human.

3. A mother tells the protagonist of Glaciers "everything is temporary. Everything. There's not a thing in this world that will not change, including you." That young daughter, Isabel, grew up in Alaska and then moved to Oregon at age eleven, only to learn that trends arrive late in Alaska, leaving her "anachronistic—a remnant of two or three years past." Glaciers is a novel about thrift shopping and feeling out of place and living in Portland. Not much happens in terms of action, but it's a lovely small portrait of someone's inner life. It's Alexis M. Smith's debut novel. She reads at Third Place Books tonight, and if you like delicate, meditative fiction, this is the reading for you.

4. Anthony Shadid was one of the special ones: A brave journalist who loved telling the truth about the conflicts that shape the Middle East in beautiful language. When the news of his death broke in February, many who knew him—including some of us here at The Stranger—were crushed by the loss. We are fortunate, at least, that Shadid left a memoir behind. House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East isn’t some kind of rush-job, or piecemeal document assembled from notes and fragments. The book, which documents the reconstruction of Shadid’s home and the story of his Lebanese-American family, was already scheduled to be published this spring. It’s one last gorgeous firework of a book from a writer who died way too young. Town Hall is hosting a remembrance of Shadid tonight. You should go.

5. The readings calendar is ready and waiting for you.

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Robert Taylor was dismissed/bought-out from St. Mark's Cathedral.

Posted by sarah70 on April 17, 2012 at 11:44 PM

Appropriate comments given the content of several of the people cited.

One Giant Leap For Mankind

This week, official papers were served on Jack Straw, former British foreign secretary, who is being sued by a Libyan couple who were extreme renditioned to Libya for torture by Ghaddafi.

With the downfall of the brutal and criminal Ghaddafi regime, documents were uncovered which implicated MI6 and the CIA in the kidnapping of this husband and wife to Libya.

Similar documents were supposed to have been uncovered in Afghanistan also implicating these intelligence agencies.

Truly, special reservations in Hell exist for those guilty in this completely amoral abomination by British and American intelligence organizations --- the utter act of official depravity!
(One moment the USA is trying to kill Ghaddafi, and correctly vilifying him as a terrorist, the next they are willfully aiding him in the atrocious torture of innocents.)

We’ve witnessed the collusion, the wholesale aiding and abetting of the Chinese totalitarian state’s attacks on the pro-democracy advocates and activists in that country by American corporations, and the corrupt governmental and congressional whore scum in thrall to Wall Street and the bankster class, along with the unabated criminal corruption of the US Supreme Court!

The economic warfare so consistently perpetrated by the multinationals against workers and the citizenry, both in America and China, is beyond debate; the facts have been shouting out for many decades now.

No wonder Wikileaks’ Julian Assange is so wary of the senseless action by the schizoid Swedish government in their attempt to extradite him; especially given the abysmal record of Sweden’s past guilt with aiding in American extreme rendition.

Swedish courts have found in favor of several Arab-Swedes who were erroneously extreme renditioned – or kidnapped -- for torture.

The Justice Minister at that time, Thomas Bodström, recently went on a tour in America, and lied his butt off, falsely claiming that Assange “fled Sweden” to avoid a trial, when clearly the facts prove otherwise!

Assange stayed in Sweden for questioning, after the case against him was dropped for lack of evidence, then restarted due to political pressure brought to bear on the Swedish Prosecution Authority.

Assange’s attorney asked for permission for Assange to leave Sweden, since they refused to question him during the month he remained available for questioning!

Yet Thomas Bodström lies and lies about this, just as he colluded with America in their illegal kidnapping when he was justice minister.

During this same time, the United Kingdom is being sued in European court for the forced criminal removal of the indigenous population of Diego Garcia --- the wholesale theft of their country!

Abominations abound, and the guilty should be damned and not allowed to hide and cower behind their corrupt governmental positions.

Sweden has enjoyed the existence of freedom-of-information laws since the 1700s; they should actively use their own laws to uncover governmental guilt and corruption!

[Official disclaimer: I am all for the extreme rendition of Cheney, Bush, both Clintons, Obama, Biden, Carl Bildt, Thomas Bodström, Beatrice Ask, and the ruling party of China to the torture chambers of Syria.]

More...

Posted by sgt_doom on April 18, 2012 at 10:18 AM