cross posted from The Dream Antilles

Hurricanes aren’t the only things that spiral out of control.  Rethuglican politics spiral too.  They go round and round and round, reprising their greatest hits, trying to revise and rewrite and edit out their greatest failures.  Trying to help you forget.

Who doesn’t remember this as Katrina was destroying New Orleans:

cross posted from The Dream Antilles

It looks like Hurricane Gustav (it’s now a hurricane and not a tropical storm) is headed directly for New Orleans.  Weatherunderground gives us computer modeling that is not at all comforting:

Notice the uniformity of all of the computer models.  Notice that the computers bring Gustav extremely close to New Orleans as a category 3 hurricane.

Join me in the City that Care Forgot.

Cross posted from The Dream Antilles

Its name is Gustav.  And nobody is entirely sure where it’s going.  But the 5 day forecast map from Weatherunderground.com makes an alarming prediction:

And that prediction is that this storm could grow in intensity and travel to New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

Join me in the City that Care Forgot.

cross posted from The Dream Antilles

On Sunday morning I went into town to gas up my car.  While I was pondering the blue sky and the ridiculous price of gasoline, a man I know, a one-time client of mine, approached me and asked me if I had heard the bad news.  I hadn’t.  He told me that on Saturday, a friend of mine, another lawyer, a colleague in the public defender’s office, had died of a brain aneurism.  I was shocked.  My friend is about 25 years younger than I.  I told my former client that I hadn’t read about this in the paper or heard about it.  He said he was sure it was true, that he was sorry, and he called his sister on his cell phone.  Yes, she said, it was true.  Four people had called her to tell her the news.

I went home and called our mutual, public defender boss.  I think I woke her up.  She said my friend was as alive as alive could be, that nothing was the matter, but that she, too, had received several calls about his having died.  To put it mildly, reports of his demise were greatly exaggerated.  They were, in fact, false. I called him up.  He answered the phone.

It seems that on Friday he was playing in a golf tournament.  Through a bureaucratic error, no lawyer showed up to cover his cases in City Court, where he was supposed to be.  The judge said in words or substance that my friend wouldn’t be representing his clients, and he sent various people back to the jail or to home.  Apparently, the rumor started after that.

This morning I spoke again to the dead man on the phone.  He was fine.  He’d received phone calls for two days about what had happened to him.  He had visits from the police, the troopers and the deputies. His office had received numerous calls from his clients and friends.  The funeral home next door to his office had received more than a dozen inquiries about what the arrangements were.  A few people pulled into his driveway, some with tears streaming down their faces, to express their condolences.  A few friends of his had called the house from as far away as Florida.  A neighbor spoke to his father– his father was leaving a child’s birthday party at his home on Saturday– to express his condolences.

Today is Monday.  The rumor goes on, undeterred by the fact that the supposed dead guy is at his office, doing what he always does, and that the story is completely false.

Today I heard the story that his family was forced to pull the plug on him yesterday.

Meanwhile, he’s agreed to call a few reporters he knows to see if he can stop this before somebody on a playground tells his young boys how sorry they are that their dad died.

cross posted from The Dream Antilles

Evidently, it’s not a really good idea to assert free speech rights in China or to protest the policies of the Chinese government.  If you’re Chinese, as I previously wrote, you can be sent to “re-education through labor” if you apply five times to get a permit to protest legally. And what if you’re a US Citizen and you protest?  You are summarily punished without trial.  Or deported.  After all, protests about freedom for Tibet, or anything else that might offend you about the Chinese Government’s policies, might tarnish the luster of the perfect, mechanistic Olympics.

The New York Times reports:

Six Americans who were taken into custody on Tuesday as they tried to protest against China’s rule in Tibet have been given 10-day detentions, the Chinese police said Friday.

But members of their organization, the New York-based Students for a Free Tibet, said that they had no information about four other protesters – two Americans, a German and a British citizen – who were detained early Thursday during a protest near the National Stadium. Extrajudicial detentions are a common form of punishment for Chinese dissidents, but are rarely handed out to foreigners, who are often deported almost immediately after being taken into custody. Members of Students for a Free Tibet have staged eight protests involving 55 people since the Olympics began on Aug. 8, and human rights advocates said the government might be seeking to deter those contemplating similar activities in the Games’ final days.

/snip

Reached by telephone, Public Security Bureau officials declined to comment, but faxed a two-sentence statement explaining that the six Americans had been “apprehended for upsetting public order.” The statement, which did not include the detainees’ names, said the men were being held at the Dongcheng police station.

You read that right.  Extrajudicial detentions means punishment without trial.  And the offense is “upsetting public order.”

What exactly did these protesters do that so grievously “upset public order”?

Most of the organization’s demonstrations have involved unfurling “Free Tibet” banners or displaying Tibetan flags, which are illegal in China. In the latest action, four protesters raised their fists and shouted slogans while waving a Tibetan flag near the National Stadium. As at the other protests, the participants were quickly bundled off by plainclothes police officers.

So. The protesters are summarily detained and punished without trial.  But it gets more interesting:

Two photographers for The Associated Press were also roughed and taken into custody, according to news agency reports and press freedom advocates. The police questioned them for 30 to 40 minutes and took the memory cards from their cameras.

The Foreign Correspondents Club of China has received dozens of complaints from foreign journalists who have been detained, trailed or had equipment damaged by the police.

How dare anyone so grievously upset public order during the Olympics!  How dare newspeople and photographers actually do their jobs and record the protests!  Didn’t Chairman Mao write, “Let a hundred flowers bloom; let a hundred schools of thought contend?”  Well maybe.  But he must not have meant during the Olympics.

cross posted from The Dream Antilles



The Chinese Government is very afraid of these two women.

Seventy-nine-year-old Wu Dianyuan, on the right, and her neighbor Wang Xiuying, 77, followed the law.  They applied for a protest permit.  They wanted to protest inadequate compensation for the taking of their homes in preparation of the Olympics.  They asked for the permit five times.  They didn’t get it.  They ended up instead being sentenced to a year of “re-education through labor.”

According to NY Times:

Two elderly Chinese women have been sentenced to a year of “re-education through labor” after they repeatedly sought a permit to demonstrate in one of the official Olympic protest areas, according to family members and human rights advocates.

The women, Wu Dianyuan, 79, and Wang Xiuying, 77, had made five visits to the police this month in an effort to get permission to protest what they contended was inadequate compensation for the demolition of their homes in Beijing.

During their final visit on Monday, public security officials informed them that they had been given administrative sentences for “disturbing the public order,” according to Li Xuehui, Ms. Wu’s son.

Mr. Li said his mother and Ms. Wang, who used to be neighbors before their homes were demolished to make way for a redevelopment project, were allowed to return home but were told they could be sent to a detention center at any moment. “Can you imagine two old ladies in their 70s being re-educated through labor?” he asked. He said Ms. Wang was nearly blind.

Join me in Beijing.

cross posted from The Dream Antilles

Pardon me.  I’m not a Christian.  Never was, never will be.  I don’t believe that Jesus was the messiah, that he died for my sins.  I don’t have a personal relationship with him.  I haven’t been saved.  Or redeemed.  I haven’t been re-born.  I don’t believe the Bible is the literal word of God.  And I was simply and utterly infuriated that both the presumptive presidential nominees decided to attend Rev. Rick Warren’s forum so they could show him and his many co-religionists that they were, well, just like them.  That they were all good, moral Christians, and they all believed very much in a particular kind of Christianity, and that they were willing to prove it.  I was outraged that they decided to make a spectacle of their “faith.”  But I was even more outraged that they would seek to prove they had the right kind of faith to this particular audience.

That’s right, prove it.  They weren’t going to refuse the invitation.  They weren’t going to say, “I’m sorry, but what I believe is private.  It’s between me and my God.  I am not willing publicly to discuss theology.”  They weren’t going to say, “I’m sorry, I believe in the separation of church and state, and, therefore, I consider this mega church to be an inappropriate setting for a political discussion about secular, political matters.”  They weren’t going to say, “I’m sorry, I’m a very good person, but I don’t believe the same things you say I should believe.  I’m nevertheless scrupulously honest and moral.”  They weren’t going to say, “You’re free to think about these issues any way you wish, but I don’t want to discuss how my religious beliefs might be related to my policy positions.  My policy positions stand on their own merit.”  No.  No chance.  The candidates decided to show up, and they blatantly pandered to these right wing evangelicals.  To gain their approval, to gain their votes.

Join me below.

cross-posted from The Dream Antilles

Just in case you thought that exercising your Constitutional Right to assemble in Denver,  engage in non-violent protest and perhaps participate in civil disobedience at the Democratic National Convention was going to be easy and humane, the NY Times informs in an article entitled, “Grim Warehouse Set To Process Convention Arrests,” that is not to be the case.  The Government has set up a mini-Gitmo to handle pesky protesters who get arrested in Denver.  And they’re telling you about it now, so you’ll reconsider your plans.  And maybe stay home.

Individuals arrested at the Democratic National Convention will be processed at an industrial warehouse with chain-link cells topped by razor wire, a facility some have compared to the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay. /snip

The Denver sheriff’s office, which operates city and county jails, insists anyone taken to the center will be there only a few hours while they’re fingerprinted, issued a court date and released after posting bail. Others will be transferred to facilities designed for longer detentions.

”Of course if the numbers are overwhelming, that’s all going to be out the door,” said Capt. Frank Gale, a sheriff’s spokesman. ”If we’re inundated with a bunch of civil unrest, it doesn’t matter how well we prepare. If we get severe numbers it’s going to take us forever” to process those in custody. /snip  A sign [at the facility] read: ”Electric stun devices used here.”

Gale said each cell will be about 20-by-20 feet. He refused to say how many people could be processed there.  /snip

ACLU-Colorado legal director Mark Silverstein said city officials told him detained protesters will be taken by bus to the facility, about 2 miles northeast of downtown. Those who are unable or refuse to post bail will be taken to a downtown city jail to await a court date.

Silverstein said warehouse cells won’t have running water, bathrooms or telephones. Gale said deputies will escort anyone needing those services.

Great.  A mini-Gitmo on the Platte.  20 x 20 cells with an unknown number of people in them, for an unknown period of time, without food, water or toilets.  And the idea that if there are too many people, whatever planning there was would be overwhelmed.  And then those incarcerated would be stuck.

As promised, my next WWYMNHHO essay (in about 2 weeks or so mas y menos) will be about Adolfo Bioy Casares’ novel The Invention of Morel, a short, intense, brilliant novel.  Both Borges and Octavio Paz described the novel as “perfect.”  It is a small gem (100 pages +/-).

This little notice is here at kj’s suggestion.  Folks may want to read the book before the essay, and discuss it in the comments to the essay.  Maybe WWYMNHHO can be our version of the Algonquin Round Table. Or Gertrude Stein’s living room.

I’m stoked.

A Perseid Shower

This will be incredibly quick.  Read this, back away from the keyboard, turn off all the lights (this works best in rural America), go outside and look up.  Look up at the night sky.  Be patient.  Tonight, dharmaniacs, is the annual Perseid Meteor shower.

cross posted from The Dream Antilles

Cesar Aira

Maybe this should be an occasional series.  I don’t really know how many wonderful, creative Latin American writers’ works I have come to admire, but which have received completely insufficient notice in the US. These would include works by writers with too few English translations, and works revered in their writers’ own countries, but virtually unknown to US readers.  The authors of these works, like the one in this essay, are the writers you might not have heard of.

Wiki tells the basics about Cesar Aira:

César Aira (born on February 23, 1949 in Coronel Pringles, Buenos Aires Province) is an Argentine writer and translator, considered by many as one of the leading exponents of Argentine contemporary literature, in spite of his limited public recognition.

He has published over fifty books of stories, novels and essays. Indeed, at least since 1993 a hallmark of his work is an almost frenetic level of writing and publication, two to four novella-length books each year.

Aira has often spoken in interviews of elaborating an avant-garde aesthetic in which, rather than editing what he has written, he engages in a “flight forward” (fuga hacia adelante) to improvise a way out of the corners he writes himself into. Aira also seeks in his own work, and praises in the work of others (such as the Argentine-Parisian cartoonist and comic novelist Copi), the “continuum” (el continuo) of a constant movement forward in the fictional narrative. As a result his fictions can jump radically from one genre to another, and often deploy narrative strategies from popular culture and “subliterary” genres like pulp science fiction and television soap operas; on the other hand, he frequently deliberately refuses to conform to generic expectations for how a novel ought to end, leaving many of his fictions quite open-ended.

There is no joy in this.  There is only distraction.  And perhaps sadness or disappointment.  ABC reports:

John Edwards repeatedly lied during his Presidential campaign about an extramarital affair with a novice filmmaker, the former Senator admitted to ABC News today.

In an interview for broadcast tonight on Nightline, Edwards told ABC News correspondent Bob Woodruff he did have an affair with 44-year old Rielle Hunter, but said that he did not love her.

Edwards also denied he was the father of Hunter’s baby girl, Frances Quinn, although the one-time Democratic Presidential candidate said he has not taken a paternity test.

Edwards said he knew he was not the father based on timing of the baby’s birth on February 27, 2008. He said his affair ended too soon for him to have been the father.

Welcome to Lala Land.  This is this week’s Major Distraction ^TM.  The responses will all be entirely predictable.  And it’s anybody’s guess how long this will last as a story.  And you thought that the Olympics would be this week’s Major Distraction ^TM.  How very wrong.

(Updated: 08/08/08 11:05 p ET): I would be remiss if I didn’t provide a link to the diary put up by  Elizabeth Edwards at dKos which now has over 1,000 comments.  She concludes:

I ask that the public, who expressed concern about the harm John’s conduct has done to us, think also about the real harm that the present voyeurism does and give me and my family the privacy we need at this time.

Evidently, the Edwards family doesn’t enjoy what happens when public figures become this week’s Major Distraction ^TM. Is it voyeurism if you put up a Diary on dKos rather than going on vacation or just saying, “No comment?”  Let the games begin.