Author Archives: Lila

Police State Chronicles: He’s making a list, He’s checking it twice…

Posted on by

He’s gonna find out
who’s naughty or nice….

“The federal government is trying to build a surveillance society,” said John Gilmore, a civil liberties activist in San Francisco whose records were requested by the Identity Project, an ad-hoc group of privacy advocates in California and Alaska. The government, he said, “may be doing it with the best or worst of intentions. . . . But the job of building a surveillance database and populating it with information about us is happening largely without our awareness and without our consent.

Gilmore’s file, which he provided to The Washington Post, included a note from a Customs and Border Patrol officer that he carried the marijuana-related book “Drugs and Your Rights.” “My first reaction was I kind of expected it,” Gilmore said. “My second reaction was, that’s illegal.”

And more:

“James P. Harrison, director of the Identity Project and Ann Harrison’s brother, obtained government records that contained another sister’s phone number in Tokyo as an emergency contact. “So my sister’s phone number ends up being in a government database,” he said. “This is a lot more than just saying who you are, your date of birth.”

And:

“The Automated Targeting System,” Hasbrouck alleged, “is the largest system of government dossiers of individual Americans’ personal activities that the government has ever created.

“He said that travel records are among the most potentially invasive of records because they can suggest links: They show who a traveler sat next to, where they stayed, when they left. “It’s that lifetime log of everywhere you go that can be correlated with other people’s movements that’s most dangerous,” he said. “If you sat next to someone once, that’s a coincidence. If you sat next to them twice, that’s a relationship…….

Zakariya Reed, a Toledo firefighter, said in an interview that he has been detained at least seven times at the Michigan border since fall 2006. Twice, he said, he was questioned by border officials about “politically charged” opinion pieces he had published in his local newspaper. The essays were critical of U.S. policy in the Middle East, he said. Once, during a secondary interview, he said, “they had them printed out on the table in front of me.”

That’s from a Washington Post piece on the scrutiny of travelers.
Also see this:

* A 40-year-old public defender surfing the Web on a library computer in Santa Fe, N.M., finds himself surrounded by four local police officers, then handcuffed and detained by Secret Service agents after someone apparently overhears a political debate in which he suggests that “Bush is out of control.” Andrew O’Connor’s experience in February, during which he was questioned about whether he was a threat to the president, led to legislative hearings in New Mexico over the Patriot Act and government secrecy.”

(From the Sacramento Bee).

So, there’s your big cuddly Santa Claus state at work, waiting to come down your chimney, any day now, with more goodies. Can’t wait…..
“He sees you when you’re sleeping,
He knows when you’re awake.
He knows when you’ve been bad or good,
So be good for goodness sake!

Tom Friedman does Iraq….

Posted on by

An old video of the columnist surfaced on Crooks And Liars

provoking this comment of appreciation:

“On the other side however, he was somewhat refreshingly honest in saying that we started a war in Iraq (as opposed to other MidEast countries) simply “Because we could”. He didn’t try to obscure the reasons with WMD/Democracy/AQI/OverThereNotOverHere/etc. He just kind of confirms the most cynical reasons for starting a war of choice: 1. to “carry a big stick”, 2. to break a bubble of mideastern perception of the US, 3. Becuase we could. I wish the other “pundits” were this honest….”

Zorba: Neither good nor bad….

Posted on by

“We must both have been hungry because we constantly led the conversation round to food. — “What is your favorite dish, grandad?” — “All of them, my son. It’s a great sin to say this is good and that is bad.” — “Why? Can’t we make a choice?” — “No, of course we can’t.” — “Why not?” — “Because there are people who are hungry.” I was silent, ashamed. My heart had never been able to reach that height of nobility and compassion.”

That’s from one of my favorite films, Zorba the Greek.

Here’s Anthony Quinn as Zorba and Alan Bates as his English visitor, on the island of Crete, comforting the ageing courtesan, Mme. Hortense (Leila Kedrova in a great performance). As she recalls to them her triumphs as a dancer in her youth, she’s ridiculous, pathetic, cringe-making and noble all in turn.

And then there’s Irene Pappas, whom someone once said was too ferociously beautiful for Hollywood stardom, as the widow who is stoned by the village, as punishment for her dalliance with the Englishman, his first adventure away from his books, no doubt…

He, of course, can go back to them afterward. She loses her life…..

Financial Follies: The irresponsible Fed…

Posted on by

“The decision by the US Fed to reduce its bank lending rate – ostensibly to counteract a reduction in the producer price index – was probably a seminal development in the history of the world’s economy. If the end result is that this rate reduction gives rise to a continuing fall of the US Dollar index, then inflation within the USA will likely rise strongly, and volumes of transactions will likely fall.

Paradoxically, the cut in interest rates seems likely to have the opposite effect of its stated intent. It seems more likely to give rise to an acceleration of the arrival of recessionary conditions – having bought sufficient time to allow maintenance of the status quo until after the US Presidential Elections….”

More by Brian Bloom.

Suhayl Saadi on fiction, silence, and smashing glass….

Posted on by

An essay on the politics of fiction:

“In the context of the publicity surrounding the forthcoming novel, Londonstani, which like my recent novel, Psychoraag (Black and White Publishing, 2004), appears to play with demotic, my best wishes go out to the author, good on him. I have only been able to read the first chapter, which appeared in Prospect magazine. The following critique is reserved for the transnational publishing industry and mainstream, England-based print media, neither of which entities would touch Psychoraag in terms of publication, reviews, interviews, invitations to literary festivals – so that in the two-and-a-half years since Psychoraag has been published, in these terms there has been almost zilch. In this piece, I’m not going to discuss the overtly political stuff (such as D-Notices, planted journalists, etc.) which applies more to news and political features reportage, investigative journalism and other areas of non-fiction. I am concerned here with fiction, and in particular, what is known as literary fiction.

I should say that I am very lucky to be based in Scotland – a country which has produced many wonderful writers of fiction, including, in recent years, Irvine Welsh, James Kelman, Alasdair Gray, Janice Galloway, J.K. Rowling, AL Kennedy, Ali Smith, Louise Welsh, Alexander McCall Smith, Iain Banks, Ian Rankin and many more (the list grows longer very year). This corpus of work represents some of the most exciting, commercially successful and ground-breaking writing of the past three decades in the Anglophone world. Coda: Scotland is not a literary backwater.

Psychoraag has just won a PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award in California, was shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize (the oldest literary prize in the UK) and has been nominated by librarians for this year’s (Dublin-based) IMPAC Prize. Psychoraag has received good reviews in Scotland, South Asia, various web-based magazines and in the British Asian media, is being translated by the Paris-based publisher, Editions Métailié into French and is being made into a Royal National Institute for the Blind ‘talking book’ – so it can’t be total rubbish. When my first novel, The Snake (Creation Books) came out in 1997, under the pseudonym, ‘Melanie Desmoulins’, to my knowledge it was the first ever novel written by a black Scottish person to have been published and Psychoraag was definitely the first published novel by an Asian Scot. Psychoraag was compared with the work of both Rushdie and Irvine Welsh [1].

One prominent and respected Scottish academic, himself a novelist, recently wrote that Psychoraag is “the most important and innovative Glasgow novel since [James Kelman’s seminal novel, published in 1984] The Busconductor Hines” [2]. In 2005, along with works by the likes of Robert Louis Stevenson, Walter Scott, Adam Smith and Jackie Kay, Psychoraag was listed as one of the ‘100 Best Ever Scottish Books’ as compiled by the Scottish Book Trust and the List magazine (the Scottish equivalent of Time Out). It is a primary text in the study of Scottish Literature at university undergraduate level and my work is also taught in Scottish secondary schools in conjunction with BBC Scottish TV Education. Another prominent contemporary Scottish writer described my work thus: “From his earliest writings, [Saadi] was an important and unique voice. Quite apart from being one of the breakthrough Scots-Asian (if that term means anything) voices, his work was always refined, sure, and deeply erudite. It speaks not just for one community – Scottish, Asian, Glaswegian – but, as all great writing should, for the human condition. What it is to be alive, now, in this complex world. All the various histories, mythologies and circumstances that shape us” [3]. And there’s much more of this….”

More at “Psychoraag: the Gods at the Door,” Spike Magazine.


Comment:

It’s an interesting and wide-ranging essay and its topic is one any writer, whether first world, third world (or underworld) will take something from.

It’s not a comfortable topic though..

Although I’ve had similar thoughts myself, I’m not sure whether there is any use in pursuing them or even drawing large conclusions from them. Yes, the book world is overwhelmingly biased — in many ways, class, race, language. Think about the enormous advantage an English speaking writer enjoys. Vernacular writers can’t reach that kind of audience.  But what should we do about it? Start writing in the vernacular in sympathy? Or just not take the pecking order so seriously? I am for the latter.
Play the game — if you want to — but realize it is a game.

Of course, that happens to suit my temperament. I realize that many writers thrive on the literary circuit.

To me, the quiet life seems the one to envy.

Pat Buchanan – shows himself a statesman

Posted on by

Pat Buchanan just showed why he’s head and shoulders above the establishment right in foreign policy. He said, Ahmadinejad should be allowed to place a wreath at the WTC .

There speaks the voice of reason, instead of another pandering politician. Ahmadinejad’s alleged remark about wiping out Israel was, in the first place, misrepresented in the US press. He said something rather different. Now he’s making friendlier moves – such as, showing sympathy to the Holocaust, and now, showing that he considered 9-11 a terrible act.

Buchanan pointed out, rightly, that Reagan would have accepted the rapprochement. He recalled Nixon sitting down with Chairman Mao, who surely was a monster. He pointed out that even President Bush accepted Libya’s overture.

Here is another earlier piece on the same subject by Buchanan.

A V Tech victim’s sister writes in…..

Posted on by

Well – I was just feeling that maybe it’s not worth informing people — better just tell them what they want to hear, however wrong, but then I got this note, which made me feel that maybe the trashing you get for taking on controversial issues is sometimes worth it…

KS

Hi Lila,

I have been reading articles and analysis given by you on VTech. Its very detailed.

Well, about myself, I am Minal Panchal’s elder sister. She was one of 32 in the VTech incident. It gets difficult to cope with such a loss. I am very disappointed with the college admin, with police, with the governer kaine, with the panel report and mainly president steger. I dont know what to do or what can be done about the sheer injustice.

I dont even know whom to talk to or write to. I am writing to you since you are very just and I felt you may understand what I am writing.

Something about Minal, She was 26 yr old. She came here to study architechture. And Prof Libruscue was her fav. prof. She was in his class – 204 when the incident took place. And iroicaly, she was one of the last victims. She was the only person apart from prof killed in that room. All this makes me so angry and sad. Only if the response was even 2 min faster, she wouldve been alive. This is what a value of a minute is for me with respect to this case.

One gets used to the absence and move on with life but the void is still there and shows up at most unlikely time leaves to shaken.

Instinct has asked me to write to you. I dont know the reason.

Thanks for listening at the least,
KS

Theocracies and a-theocracies….

Posted on by

“My own first awareness of – and personal contact with – the Anti-Religious Left occurred when I, as a libertarian, spoke at a meeting of Long Island Secular Humanists (LISH) in February of 2000. My talk was entitled “Theocracy in America: The Second Coming of the Christian Right,” and it dealt with the details of the truly abominable Christian Reconstructionists, who openly preach death by stoning for a multitude of Old Testament sins. It was very well received, and afterwards I enjoyed speaking with many of the attendees. They put me on the list to receive their newsletter/journal, which I often found engaging. I liked its definition of secular humanism (“the philosophy of life guided by reason and science, freed from religious and secular dogmas”) and especially its commitment to First Amendment principles.

But then I got the March 2004 issue. The French government had just prohibited public-school students from wearing anything “religious,” so the Question of the Month was: “Do you agree with France’s ban on religious garb or symbols in their Public Schools?” This was the first time I encountered something that I thought was beyond debate for this publication. I considered it as far-out as Amnesty International asking its American members whether they “agree” with torture in Pakistan. Even its language is Orwellian: Talk of banning “religious symbols” in the public schools of the West has always referred to symbols placed by the school – not worn by students, which had never before been an issue. The whole point of not having those symbols is that they, like a teacher-led prayer, might violate the religious convictions of students, who are themselves free to express those convictions. What was going on here?”

More at Lew Rockwell.