Diary of a Nerd King #3: Episode 3 - Brussell Sprouts, Ding Dongs, and Wheelchair Racing

The second I'll talk about a few graphs down the page. The third proves to be a compelling way to look at the entire project, the wisdom of taking a second shot at a great piece of comics making. Cooke loves an arresting image as much as any creator on the planet seems to. He has a good eye; his pictures are tasteful and sumptuous.

This is a big part of why he's been so successful I think in a part of the art form that in many other ways doesn't share his values. Mainstream comics has been reduced, mostly by Mark Waid and Grant Morrison, into a string of story moments. Cooke's skill and taste make him an extremely effective facilitator of story through a single image. In contrast, a lot of what Eisner did counted on setting a consistent tone and then riffing off of it, sometimes bringing in a set of artistic effects and seeing what would happen when he would throw one at the other, an ongoing study in medium cool.

Darwyn Cooke's run on The Spirit will likely end with a reputation as a quality work that's much more constrained than what Eisner accomplished. It's hard to work at the edge of your talent with someone else's characters, and I don't think these comics ever transcend the esteem with which Eisner's work is held in our collective memory. And yet I think it's worth noting that it may be seen in much the same way by people looking at it in the context of Cooke's career. Its contribution there may be in helping instill within Cooke a greater sense of discipline when it comes to creating a visual through-line scene to scene.

There are fewer confusing jumps from one part of a scene to another than in some earlier Cooke works, when an item switches hands in a scene between P'Gell and The Spirit between where you might think it would end up, it jars because Cooke has left behind the series of still shots from past works and moved into sustained scenes.

I think the comics are tighter and more entertaining as they move along, and reflect a more seamless integration of Eisner's basic methodology. It should be interesting to see what Cooke makes of some of these techniques in his promised, stand-alone graphic novels. Okay, as for the second point from the earlier graph: I really do think that The Spirit may be a better comic series than a collection. The mostly stand-alone stories here are dense, making the series one of the more satisfying purchases on an individual issue basis. Cooke integrates different, tried and true storytelling techniques like flashbacks or shifts in time, but he lets them breathe through limited use rather than pushing them by making that the central focus of any one story, a strategy that give the comics a greater texture than most books on the stand and in some cases an unexpected rhythm to the stories themselves.

There are even small shifts in presentational style that take the comic out of full film-comics mode and make for a richer reading experience. It's the kind of comic book where you can buy only that comic and have a little comics reading session at your house with your feet up rather than seeking satisfaction by devouring all those tiny snippets of story in pamphlet form.

If I were a habitual comics shop devotee, I would be a little bit happier every time this book looked out at me from the new funnybook wall. It seems perfect for that experience. The one improvement with the collection is that reading all the stories together one gets the sense that the creators may be poking a bit at their lead character. I can't tell if it's on purpose or not, but seen as a continuity, decisions upon coming back to life like pursuing a heightened, crazier version of one's professional life or putting one's greatly satisfying romantic life into a holding pattern, these may remind one of the kind of classic identity crisis a person might enter into in their late twenties, the panic and shuffle that comes upon a first severe setback, although perhaps one that doesn't involve briefly dying.

A series of romantic entanglements that don't go much deeper than assurances of mutual attraction, ramping up the elements you favor best at your place of employment to re-imagine it as more of a cause, an overall refusal to sit still: Cooke's The Spirit suggests an everyman who through fisticuffs and heroic action works his way through one of the great, universal questions: I'll be interested to see if the next set of issues suggest an answer. I'm already terrified that less gentle hands may take up the same exploration after Cooke's gone.

Since this year I've included comics-related facts in relation to every city featured, I thought it would be okay if I mentioned it here. Past winners include Adrian Tomine and Jason Lutes. The next deadline is March The sample was obtained from material used for analysis of fiber, the original garments having been destroy in the mids.

The Molseed murder is news for both the seriousness of the crime and its notoriety deriving from the fact that a previous suspected was convicted and served time for several years before being cleared of the crime, dying a few months later.

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Barbara George was shot in the head in the early evening on July 13 of that year. She was 32 years old. George's attorney Carl Marlinga also filed a motion to release George to his mother's house, which I think is something that had also previously been floated. This article has a nice run-down of the latest information, including the defense attorney's take on the case as circumstantial and dependent on a timeline, and the prosecutor's rebuttal regarding motive and the suspect's behavior.

This involves merging some of the sites from both companies under the ComicSpace name and re-energizing some of the more strongly branded Manley company initiatives. I think this is a smart move and fairly interesting one in terms of it providing both companies with access to skills and resources and a stabilizing influence that could be hugely beneficial; my initial hunch is that this falls short of making likely a revolutionary change in terms of things like growth and the passion held for these efforts. I'll try to find out more.

For one thing, this seems to be the only time "E-Line Ventures" has ever been mentioned on the Internet. That's DC Comics' web initiative, which basically seems like a lot of other webcomics efforts lots of fantasy features with enough sprinkles from other genres to portray itself as diverse; a vast range of skill involved, a crowd-pleasing element in a lot of what's on the docket except they're going to be driven by a wide call for creative contributions, they'll be paying people at a certain level of publication, they can offer the promise of eventually getting down on one knee and offering the cartoonist a ring that means a media property-gigundo corporation development marriage, and there are massive questions regarding the terms of that money and partnership in terms of how much control it gives DC over the creation -- with the consensus on that last point being "quite enough it should give someone pause.

It's also probably worth noting that while the history of comics right up through modern times demands we cut the analysis of such deals absolutely no slack when it comes to catch the tiniest whiff of exploitation, there are severe deals that have worked and do work to the satisfaction of many cartoonists. What I'm interested in is that if this deal works in terms of delivering readers and development resources to such projects in a fashion that justifies the expense of investment and the cost of playing ball.

Apparently, this took placed back in July. I'm not sure what you can say about either the development or how BF benefited from the partnership in any way -- I'm not casting aspersions; I really don't know. At issue is an element of anti-pornography law that not only goes after child pornography but goes after any and all depictions of the same, which I believe means any sort of representation of such an act, even for literary or satirical purpose, could be prosecuted on the same level as someone having a empty warehouse filled with cameras where they keep children in a cage and ritually abuse them, primarily through a gateway argument, the use of which in itself has troubling implications.

Here's an analysis being sent around by the American Constitution Society that appeared on their blog.

The Comics Reporter

I don't envy anyone having to safeguard First Amendment rights through such an unpleasant, but I think on balance it's an admirable and necessary task. Some of the comics analysis was pretty good, too, such as Jules Feiffer recalling how refreshing it was to see actual little kid behavior on the page, the notion that the strip captured the separate world that kids live in, and something I hadn't thought of before but that seems really obvious now in that the strip played as a quiet counterpoint to a lot of busier, more aggressively illustrated features on the same page.

I imagine there will be a lot of people that will point to this as another example of a treatment of Schulz that concentrates far too much on the melancholy aspects of Peanuts and his personal character at the expense of the sunnier qualities in the comic strip and in its creator. I sympathize, especially with the family, who must carry a level of insight, expectation and disappointment that the rest of us can never truly understand.

At the same time, I think that the sadness in Peanuts has been correctly identified as a lot of what made it great -- perhaps the single thing that most distinguished it from every strip before or since -- despite the elements of universal craft that Schulz showed as a gagmaker and an evocative cartoon artist. It might be one thing if this poignant element were somehow masked in the strip, or such a complete from what we know of the cartoonist's personal life, but it's right out there in the open for both and supported by statements from those who knew them best.

I hope that there is a deeper appreciation at some point that more closely looks at how the humor worked in relation to those elements, and I'm all for a continuing element of high regard for Schulz's chops, but I don't blame anyone for exploring a general subject that seems glaringly obvious in the strip and from the man's own testimony.

Dilem is better known for the legal battles he's faced in his country for his cartoons and the eloquence and passion with which he's spoken publicly about these struggles than he is for his cartoons as expression and commentary, although this is an imbalance that may be addressed through this new exposure.

At issue was a joke the editors of that paper believe trivialized rape, a joke others have described as playing into a myth that rape is solely about sexual attraction and therefore not a concern for older women. You can get an idea of how the cartoon played with comics fans by checking out Alan Gardner's comments threads. As for my view, I think it was a crappy joke. The Crankshaft character is bound to say stupid, hurtful things -- that's his modus operandi, along the line of an Archie Bunker or Gregory House. But this joke was presented in a way where it seems 99 percent likely the reader is supposed to find sympathy with Crankshaft's position in a way that we then afford him the virtue of puncturing the other women's vanity in that Dr.

General Category => Whatever => Topic started by: biggerbirdbrain on July 25, 2007, 08:44:17 PM

House way that's not very tactful. Without that, it's not really a joke at all, except in a very satirical way where we show a character saying something so asinine in a certain context the shock of it is humorous. However, until there's a pattern of these things, I don't see this is as grounds for a significant indictment of the cartoonists, and I hope this doesn't turn into one of those Internet gotchas followed in a few days by a vigorous defense of the strip and its creators as if they were discovered transporting a body.

It's just a joke that didn't work. You write gags a year, for as many years as Batiuk has in a very successful career, you're going to have one or two where you don't see the other side of how it's going to be read just as you're likely to subconsciously repeat someone else's joke a few times over the years, another classic gotcha-defense instigator.

This is doubly true of a strip where one of the characters is supposed to act in cantankerous fashion or otherwise pushes the boundaries of acceptable behavior. The only thing that's slightly baffling is that even broaching the outer gates of a joke touching in any way on the subject of rape didn't set off the alarms of one of the production people that usually catch these things so that every possible reading of the strip was ascertained and a phone call was made to the syndicate editor.

I'm also impressed that the editors in Oshkosh are that on top of their comics page. Important words and phrases from the announcement include hardcover, oversized, complete, "magazine and other illustrations" and Dale Crain. Heroes For Hire X-Men: On The Road of Knives Self-Published, Ongoing, dedicated web site , 33 panels, present Ordering Numbers: I think part of the charm with the on-line comic On the Road of Knives Reading it is sort of like sitting between the artists at some kind of diner and peering over their shoulders to take in their "exquisite corpse"-like game.

Monsters and things that fight monsters are introduced, killed, reborn and so on. The appeal here is the design work, the way that many of the monsters resemble blobs of flesh wrapped up in a cloth sheet or snake-like coils bearing teeth, and the herky-jerky humor of the combat, often seen through a very depiction of any one panel's attending menagerie. It's not a very deep story -- it's barely a story yet, and I'm not holding out for some great flowering here, if the artists ever return to it -- and both the shifts in tone and dominant style might be unpleasant to the eye before the intricacies sink in and start to communicate on their own.

If nothing else, it's a nice springboard for discussion on how single panels can build a narrative and how much style and flow can be altered without losing a narrative thrust. I want more loosely conceived projects on the Internet like this one, not fewer. Of course, if things don't get worked out to everyone's satisfaction you may end up with what sounds like a potentially difficult situation at Central Connecticut State University , where a cartoon is one of several factors leading to campus-wide calls for attention to issues of race.

The real action is in the comments thread of this posting at Cartoon Brew , with family members and friends piping in. Schulz received additional attention over the weekend in anticipation of his American Masters profile, which begins running on various PBS stations tonight.

I'll go into what I find interesting about such strips at a later date, it's not what's been suggested for me, but the tenor of such debates is so awful on both sides that I hesitate to do so while some people out there are still working over a specific example. I find the thought kind of interesting. Creators has a fine line-up of solid editorial cartoonists, including maybe the biggest figure in that field the last three years, Mike Luckovich.

The interview's good, just unexpected, in an unexpected place. From an examination of recent elections in Poland. Sterling Gates The Muppet Newsflash: Tim Beedle Northampton Chronicle: Frank Jeffs Your Mom's Basement: Blue Pills Richard Krauss: Shortcomings Powr Mastrs Vol. Comics Underground Japan Sock Monkey: Frankly, I'm at a loss as to what most people are talking about most of the time, although I'm impressed by the confidence with which they speak.

I don't know what this industry needs. I don't care where comics is trending in terms of story or craft or mark-making or autobiography. I don't have anything to say about comics industry journalism except that I'm trying my hardest with the resources I have to do it. I have ethical questions about a lot of industry practices but I'm not totally convinced one way or the other about the majority of them, certainly not enough to stop asking.

I don't know which comics are a dead end. I don't have a preference as to how comics are read, who's doing the reading, or where they are when they do it. I don't know why one kind of comics would ever cost another kind of comics their readers. I don't have a specific vision as to where comics should be. I can't tell you comics' future.

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What I do know is that this is an extraordinary time to be a comics reader. The most extraordinary time. And sometimes I think we forget about that. I spent much of my adult life in comics shops every Wednesday looking for something -- anything -- to purchase. Today I have a item wish list devoted solely to black and white reprints of Marvel and DC comic books. It's been ten years since I bought art from a cartoonist so they could eat, a dozen since I bought comics at a going out of business sale for a store I loved, and five since anyone's told me that the latest CBLDF beneficiary should go straight to the circle of hell where pornographers go.

To my face, anyway. While I appreciate a continuing skepticism and an always replenishing desire to make things as ethical and excellent as possible, I remain convinced that things are better than they used to be, and there's no reason to lose sight of that, either. Here are five stories that make me happy. Maybe they'll make you happy, too. As much as everyone in that publishing house wanted that comic to succeed, it sold poorly, barely enough for Joe to scrape by. Although the work itself was stunning in so many ways, Palestine failed to offer readers superheroes , indy-comics style fantasy , humorous satire , relationship drama or any of the grounds for sales through which the hit comic books at that time had planted their respective flags.

It was only through the publication of a volume in book form that Palestine began to find its audience. It went on to become a perennial solid seller as a trade publication. I imagine Joe Sacco will see a much larger check for this new edition than he did when it was a low-selling comic book. He has in one weekend seen more significant press attention. There are more readers who will know how to appreciate the book when they pick it up. There are more stores that will carry it for a longer period of time. All of that makes me happy. Joe Sacco is the kind of cartoonist that deserves Special Editions more than he deserves a low-selling series no one knows quite what to do with.

Joe Sacco now has a place in comics, and comics is better for it. Craft and Story Are Valued as Never Before I welcome all kinds of comics stories into the marketplace and into the consciousness of critics and editors. A diverse medium is a stronger, richer medium and every incremental broadening of expression is a chance for another kind of reader to engage with the world's greatest art form.

At the same time, I can detect no paucity of craft, and certainly no devaluation of story, and I'm confounded by anyone who would argue differently. The continued ghettoizing of the view that comics hold collectible value independent of content, the commercial rise of art comics, the aging of mainstream comics readers, the bounce-back effect from cross-media interest and the manga invasion all seem to me the kind of things that contribute to a higher baseline for craft considerations among much of the comics audience.

If widespread crabbiness is an indication of anything, it's that fans are more demanding than ever, not less. While in the American mainstream the top-selling titles may not always come from the best writers and artists all the time, there's a significant place for people who wear working hard on their chops on their sleeves like Sean Phillips , Stuart Immonen , Matt Fraction , Ed Brubaker , Gail Simone and Alex Maleev.

Further, the discussion of craft now includes a much wider swath of cartoonists. Twenty years ago a discussion of great craftspeople in comics would have centered around, say, Steve Rude , Dave Stevens and Mark Schultz. Now you are much more likely to hear craft arguments on the behalf of artists as disparate as Charles Schulz , Darwyn Cooke and Lynda Barry. The great vanguard of alternative cartoonists from Jim Woodring to John Porcellino are marvelous craftsmen. The land it rules is Story. Young people in every medium have always been fascinated with telling their own tales before most of them turn their voices elsewhere.

New playwrights so frequently chronicle what happened to their circle of friends while growing up that there are jokes about it. Screenwriters write screenplays about screenwriters writing screenplays. Songwriters put into song and verse every relationship they had between the ages of 19 and That was bound to happen in comics, too, as greater avenues for expression opened up that weren't bound up in a cape and tights or required to push it away.

While there are people that respond to that kind of raw expression, it's rarely the work that drives an art form. It certainly doesn't with comics. There are so many emerging cartoonists interested in making comics outside of the bounds of autobiography and reportage. The best thus far of his generation, Kevin Huizenga , makes amazing comics using a classic everyman, Glenn Ganges.

Zack Soto has introduced us to Dr. Galapagos , the astonishing Eleanor Davis seems equally comfortable with monsters and lonely people and Zak Sally has started his readers on a journey with Sammy the Mouse. Sammy Harkham came to our attention by looking at the world through the eyes of a sailor and continues to hold our interest by depicting its reflection in the eyes of a golem.

Ben Catmull gave us an entire town in the first issue of his Monster Parade. We continue to value the stories the more established cartoonists provide. I was in the grocery store the other day and while I was in line I read a part of a story about a boy possessed by a ghost that plays Go , which I pray to God isn't autobiographical. Comics has a million stories, some of which have only just begun. I honestly couldn't tell you if there's enough story, or if it's bad if some people don't value story as much as I do. Maybe I'm not looking close enough to see incremental differences of degree, maybe I'm not as taken with certain, classic modes of delivery, I don't know.

I do know comics remains stuffed with stories, stories that I'll be reading and telling people about until the day I die, stories that thrill the vast majority of readers who come to the medium, and take up a huge portion of the collective creative class's attention. Story has nothing to worry about. There's nothing like it in all of comics, in all the artistic world. On a technical level, Gray used white space and spare design in a way that equaled George Herriman when it came to showing the awesomeness of nature.

Gray could also use those same elements to suggest how empty a single room apartment could be, or the loneliness of a mansion's Great Hall when people weren't around to fill it. As much as it's been reduced in the public mind to an unctuous song or two squeaked out by one of Mommy's special darlings curling up her fists to look cute, Little Orphan Annie's moral character on its best, rightful stage is an astounding thing to behold.

My Mom and a million other little girls wanted to be like Annie when they were kids, and reading Gray's strip I soon found out that Mom had chosen far better than I had either Hardy Boy. Each child works through their problems, finding strength through that hard work. They're both empathic, look out for other people, and remain true to themselves. You might laugh, but if you take into account the era in which the best Annie adventures took place, there must have been something almost spiritual in its message.

I don't know where IDW is beginning its project , but hopefully they'll be committed until the best work begins, the late '20s and into the s and even the '40s. I never get sick of reading how Annie and her Daddy Warbucks find each other and their fortune, lost more times than I can count. I never get tired of looking at the way Harold Gray carved space from the abyss with only a few lines of ink. I never get tired of these comics. The Editorial Cartoonist Field Bleeding Has Subsided At Least For Now It seems to me that the tenor of talk about the notion of the editorial cartoonist profession going away has changed over the last several months.

I suspect that a lot of that change comes from outside events. The sudden passing of Doug Marlette made a lot of people realize just how loud a noise a successful cartoonist makes within the sound of his voice, whether it's a series of local stages or a national one. The emergence of new-generation stars like Mike Luckovich and Nick Anderson are noteworthy in that they both are solid craftspeople who excel within the regional culture in which they're placed, and have obvious value to their publishers.

Tom Toles has by now undeniably become the cartoonist at the Washington Post everyone hoped he'd be when he stepped in for Herblock. Giants of the field Paul Conrad and Pat Oliphant refuse to fade. The list goes on. One important development may have been convention-related. The push by several at this year's AAEC meeting to downplay news of the loss of cartoonists paper to paper and replace it by extolling the positive effects editorial cartoonists have on their publications is not only smart in itself but suggests considered opposition to decay and progressive remedies will come. That has to be an encouragement.

For the first time in a while, the last few months paint a picture of editorial cartooning as a field in an adjustment period rather than simply a profession in decline. At some point it was inevitable that the bleeding would stop, that the talent remaining would be so considerable as a group that things would settle into place and would be of such obvious value to their newspapers that no matter how they transform themselves in the next several years it would be clear that cartoonists must be a part of it. I didn't expect the bounce so soon, but if the rally takes place now, that's great news.

Cromartie High School is Two-Thirds of the Way To Full English Publication Sometimes I find myself wishing I got to experience the last ten years of translated manga at an age and with a taste for material where more of it might be closer to my heart, the way it must have been great to be an year-old with a sizable allowance in and the way it was an additionally fun experience to be 14 and ready for indy comics right when indy comics was ready to entertain me.

I'm old like that. There's still a ton of manga of which I'm fond, both out of my natural age range and interests Dr. If I occasionally wish for a certain set of eyes that used to be mine, it's out of greed. Unlike some of the other books I find myself more easily enjoying, Cromartie High School with its large band of satirical idiots I get to experience because of its pop effectiveness more than its literary value. It's funny, it's weird, and I find its press against the normative standards of where funny comes from endlessly entertaining and fairly admirable.

It's a minor miracle that it's being published here. I have no idea who's joined me in reading the 12 volumes to date, out of a potential 16 or 17 depending who you talk to , but I'm grateful for whatever demented publishing strategy that has kept it coming out. All of this translated manga is in a way a wonderful bonus in terms of what I ever imagined would be the comics landscape in America, even ten years ago.

I can't help but smile a bit at the good fortune. I know it's kind of ridiculous to bemoan the state of on-line windbaggery with a post as long as that one. There's just so much to be positive about, and I'm not sure any of it is being emphasized as much as it should be. Heck, it would be easy to do five more. I'm heartened by the fact that web cartoonists like Scott Kurtz , Chris Onstad , R Stevens and Nicholas Gurewitch have reached the audiences they have in the way that they have, the true inheritors of the comics self-publishing crown.

I'm amazed by the relationship that Garry Trudeau has managed to forge with military personnel while remaining critical of the current war. I root for Sophie Crumb and Frank Thorne and Mark Tonra to continue making comics despite reasons that might make other people stop. I want to live in a town that has one of these new breed comic stores, and its own editorial cartoonist. I've had at least one dream about White River Junction, Vermont.

I no longer care as much as I used to if you agree with me about all that's wrong with comics. The greater hope is that you have some interaction with everything that's right. Maggots , Brian Chippendale 3. Only Skin 2, Sean Ford 1. Devil Kids 51 Harvey, Sept. Bart Simpson Comics 38 Bongo, 1. Dennis the Menace Fawcett, Jan. Tom Lechner Tales of Inertia 1 4. Jaime Hernandez Penny Century 7 3. Adrian Tomine Shortcomings 1. Wander 1, Rich Tingley 1.

Gasoline Alley Complete Dailies Vol. Walking Dead 43 4. Where Creatures Roam 8 3. Skyscrapers of the Midwest 4 2. Machine Man 9 1. Cyborg by Shotaro Ishinomori 4. Maggots by Brian Chippendale 3. Storeyville by Frank Santoro 1. Raising an Autistic Child , by Keiko Tobe 1. Kabuki 1 -- David Mack 4. Cutey Bunny 2 -- Joshua Quagmire 3. Doc Savage 1 -- Gold Key 2. Green Lantern 24 1. Eagle -- manga about a mythical run for the President by an Asian-American Vietnam war vet 3.

Lone Wolf and Cub though, technically, I'm on book 16 of 28 -- but 16 books count, right? For Better or For Worse 4. Ronald Castree goes to trial. ComicsPro announces a deal changing semi-insane trade practices on certain books coming from Wizard 3. Fires in southern California makes local industry members keep one eye out this week. To play, send a response while it's still Friday. Responses up Sunday morning. Find-A-Grave Search using the keyword cartoonist and enjoy the photos. Hello, while the fact that galleries refused to exhibit Lars Vilks drawings of Muhammed as a dog, it is rarely said what kind of galleries they were.

Being a swede, that information is readily available through swedish media. The first gallery was the Tallerud Art appreciation society. Tallerud being the name of the community house of Alster parish and can be seen on the second picture on this web site. Alster Parish consists of a village surrounded by farmland and is located some kilometers north of the city Karlstad. The only figure I could find of the number of inhabitants in the parish is from and claims a population of It was the society that asked Vilks to contribute to an exhibition with the theme dogs in art and to which he sent the ink drawings of Muhammed as a dog.

The second gallery was an exhibit at a small Art college in Bohuslan named Gerleborgsskolan. It has, according to its webpage, students. The third gallery did not receive a submission from Vilks before the news of the drawings had reached the media but before the editorial at Narikes Allehanda was published. Vilks has been criticized in Sweden for what some say were the calculating way that he submitted the drawings to the first two exhibitions, that were almost certain to reject them, and then use this to build publicity. Especially as he is the author of the book Hur man blir en samtidskonstnar pa tre dagar translated loosely as "How to become a contemporary artist in three days" , which was written in and is a book about art and how to market it.

Also, I hadn't seen the photo that's available through the link, nor had I actually read that Castree denied having committed the murder until today's articles -- although that certainly would have been understood given the trial, one supposes. I'm sure they'll send me a "it's working now" or "you're an idiot" note after I've shut down the computer for the day. Anyway, if I had a bigger image to spotlight new work from a significant creator who's been in troubled circumstances for years now, I would make this its own post, but since I don't, I'm putting it over in the hopes that you'll try the link until it works.

Even if the alt-companies can be portrayed as too rigid in their preferred aesthetics to qualify as allowing creators to go their own way, Fantagraphics has one that at least encompasses Castle Waiting and Barry Windsor-Smith all the way to Kim Deitch and a forthcoming anthology of abstract comics. I guess you could say that still doesn't qualify, but I think the differences are way more important than the similarities. And what about Image? I can't imagine that Steven Grant's anonymous creator with superheroes in their heart couldn't find an amenable avenue towards doing superheroes there.

It's all very confusing. Apparently, he was one of the cartoonists contacted and encouraged to pitch when DC's webcomics initiative was still in development. He also got gigs out of it. I hope that he continues to get better. Astor's one of the more astute reporters and editors out there paying attention, so he might bring a perspective into the affair we haven't heard yet. I will slide new links into this post or its archived equivalent available in the links to the right for as long as they're.

I'd love more actual comics from the event, if you've done one and have it posted somewhere. Steve Mumford Daily Cross Hatch: John Porcellino Broken Frontier: Adam Hughes 01 Broken Frontier: Adam Hughes 02 Broken Frontier: The Death of the New Gods 1 Creators: There's a certain pleasure to reading The Death of the New Gods 1 for those of us who grew up as kids during the s when creator Jim Starlin was operating at the height of his commercial and creative powers.

The comic eases into its story in assured fashion, with a lot of narrative grind to its pages that the Image Revolution taught most of comics to race past, and Starlin's always been pretty adept at portraying old-school hammy superhero acting with enough of a sophisticated core that any modern ugliness they act upon seems as natural as the pages they stand around speechifying or playing cute.

After reading a lot of today's breathless junk, reading this comic is sort of like watching an old hand play a part on a television show where all the younger actors kind of defer to that actor's charm and skill. Starlin also brings with him a lot of his narrative and artistic peccadilloes.

Starlin's speeches always seem to get stuck on a pieces of modern vernacular that jar the readers right out of the story, and I'm not certain how he does this but his scene work feel less like moments taking place amid in a reality teeming with individuals than something acted in a studio, or people playing with toys against the backdrop of a diorama this was the singular difference from his superhero work to his Metamorphosis Odyssey serial in Epic a quarter century ago; a lot of those felt like worlds and not stage sets and I'm not sure why.

The various Star Trek television shows had the same problem, but they rarely strove for epic, galactic consequence based on 18 dudes in a room somewhere. Jack Kirby's characters were so grand and powerful that you had no problem believing they'd fill up a world; here not so much. Starlin additionally shares with same-generation artistic star Paul Gulacy a difficulty in keeping track of the length of limbs, which extend about a foot too far in some scenes and in others make a character look suddenly far shorter in a close-up than he was when seen from far away.

In fact, I never noticed this before but almost everyone is over-lean and sinewy-muscled: It's almost comforting to see these tics, but that doesn't make them any less distracting. It's my understanding this extends a plot from one of those DC mini-series between the maxi-series, I'm not sure which one or ones.

The fact that an action scene is a throw-in of the kind you might get in a filler issue of a superhero book circa indicates that book's driving force, like many of those recent mini-series, will be a changing status quo through character positioning rather than hammering out something new through a thrilling story. Does that make sense? Having the deaths take place off panel as they do here reinforces this feeling that all of these characters are being forced to deal with editorial edict more than having to suffer the results of a story whose conflicts are played out on the page.

Nothing in The Death of the New Gods 1 feels bigger than the title or suggests a world greater than its role in DC world-positioning; in some scenes it feels like the characters are contracted players showing up to play their best-known roles before retreating back to a show on ABC Family. Even a story about gods should have some sense that the ending hasn't already been decided upon, and I don't get any of that feeling here.

In the end, the art here is almost in how one processes comic book maxi-events than in how the story takes over. The plot lines are introduced in this issues with a certain amount of classic superhero seriousness, and there's even a reference to the Forever People's involvement that might pique the interest of those who know their Fourth World comics.

Still my gut feeling was to not take the whole affair seriously. The fact that the New Gods at 35 years of age feel like relatively fresh creative turf compared to all of the heroes that have in some form or another punched a Nazi makes me suspect that they won't die because there's still stuff to do with them, even if it's in New New Gods form or Post New Gods form or whatever. On the other side of it, the impression I get that this is merely one of a dozen company mandated status quo shake-ups makes it feel less serious than it should -- they wouldn't really kill off a bunch of Jack Kirby creations in service to the sixth- or seventh-place event of this half-decade, would they?

It's an event comic both too big and too small to do what it promises. Bacardi's site is one of the last remaining new voice sites that sprung up in with the explosion of popularity in easy-to-use interfaces for web publishing, a year or two ahead of the assumption of the same kinds of platforms by more established comic industry folks and vehicles. I liked his comics reviews and never linked to them as much as I should have. I hope he finds a future home for his writing about comics and a thirst for returning to that work, because I'm selfish, but mostly I hope he enjoys himself in future endeavors and feels appreciated by the many people who enjoyed reading his work.

The opening statement by the prosecution included the cause of death, the description of a similar incident said to have been instigated by the now year-old against a then nine-year-old, the mother's testimony about her child, some sketching out of supporting facts like where Castree lived at the time of the murder and where his wife was, and an explanation of why the trial is taking place now: Coverage can be found in most major publications across the pond. Kenny Penman of Forbidden Planet notes that unlike the Times article, television coverage he's seen has thus far not played up Castree's comics past.

The case gained much of its notoriety because another man named Stefan Kiszko was found guilty for the murder in , and was in jail serving the terms of a life sentence until the early s before DNA evidence freed him. He died just over one year later from a massive heart attack, and his devoted mother died soon after. Speculation about the identity of the real murderer had been rampant until Castree's arrest, and for some that arrest wasn't enough to divert them from other theories. Mark Evanier mentions in passing that he understand someone involved with Comic-Con International lost their home, but none of the blogging professionals in the area seem to have updated yesterday, which when combined with more benevolent contextual news usually ends up being a sign of relief after more intense reasons to update rather than a dire turn.

Chris Marshall wrote in to say that IDW's Chris Ryall canceled an interview yesterday because he was going to leave the offices after a short time, although the regional event has "done wonders for freeway driving". While the press release boasts that the strips offer a wide array of genres, I'm basically seeing nine fantasy comics some with cross-genre chaser and one diary comic which based on the work available by the creator on the web may have fantasy elements.

Like most great artistic enterprises in our modern age, the ten strips will be nurtured by immediately becoming subject to a vote upon by Zuda readers, with the winning strip will receive a year-long contract. We wish all the participants good luck, in all phases of their participation. It's been on a couple of my best of lists. Still, I have to admit, the language that keeps showing up in announcements that suggests the blog and book are being created from whole cloth rather than being translated from the French-language version kind of bugs the crap out of me.

It's so parochial, as if a comics work doesn't exist until we can read it. Translating work and re-presenting it for a new audience is a great achievement all in itself, or I hope it can be seen that way; it shouldn't need finessing. When I worked for The Comics Journal a hundred years ago, I always wanted to do a section of paper masks with various comics figure caricatures, like Bill Willingham's killer Jim Shooter portrait. Crankshaft Strip is "Heinous" A Wednesday afternoon post at the blog Feministing notes a joke in that day's Crankshaft it terms "pretty fucking heinous.

Unless Crankshaft has an untypical creation path, the above gag has to have been funny to the creators in question and to at least one person at the editorial service bureau that pushed the strip into production, or at least not raised any red flags. Barely related, but this comment from Shaenon Garrity on Funky Winkerbean made me laugh. Shojo Beat November Palestine: Brian Chippendale Publishing Information: I've been taking it to the gym and reading it on the machines and I sneak furtive glances at a page or two when I'm stuck at a traffic light.

It's a book that's been collected from material that was done in and and promised to us through mini-comic snippets or by prospective publishers almost since that time, but I don't think it's merely factor of satisfying that great, simmering sense of anticipation that's been built. I like reading Maggots as much as I do in the way that I have been because it reminds me of my own early- and mids and that's not a state of mind with which I'm comfortable spending more than a few minutes at a time. Much has been made about the origin of Chippendale's project, the way that Maggots is drawn on top of -- or into, if you prefer -- a Japanese book catalog, elements of which can be seen softly impressing themselves into white space or even incorporated into the narrative at certain points.

The critic Jog looks at some of those elements and decides they make Maggots "perhaps the perfect embodiment of a major aspect of the Fort Thunder aesthetic if you will: Most people agree that with its looping panel arrangements, chaotic plot-lines and reduction of movement into beats, Maggots can be seen as a book about movement and motion. This printing, however, makes me reconsider its power as a textured work, something that blends a variety of layers and visual clues that work in cohesion and opposition depending on Chippendale's intent. The suggested looped reading, a kind of snakes and ladders movement back and forth down one page that's opened and then snaking back up the opposite, does keep the eye bouncing frenetically.

But some of the choices made in terms of inserting entire tiers thwart that easy flow Chippendale even apologizes for this while the layered nature of the artwork over other graphic elements provides each page with a resistant force against which the motion works.

It's not that the figures move as much as they push through their heavily inked surroundings; it's not just about movement and the energy that builds as it the figure whips from one place to another as much as the teeming energy that keeps the figures active, the sense of pullulative effort that puts things into motion. I don't know about you, but a conception of life as a series of adventures and experiences from which I moved one after the other after the other, covering someone else's tracks with my own, certain I was a part of something shared, encountering elements of violence and sex both implied and real, leading to the occasional epiphany that assaults the senses and impresses forever, that wasn't just an experience that these artists had in Fort Thunder, let alone only something little Hot Potato goes through by himself.

That was at its essence a way of moving through the world with which a lot of us were stuck, a way of reducing the world to what's in front of you that I never thought I'd see on the page in quite this way. It has undeniable power. Finally more than scattered glimpses united by promise, Maggots rewards a full reading or, if you prefer, a series of occasional dip-intos, even if its way of looking at the world remains forever foreign.

It's funny on almost every page, the marks are frequently beautiful to the eye particularly when the action expands to cover one or two pages and in clever hands it might act as a resource for some storytelling approaches in the way that Master Race provided clues as to how one might depict time visually and compress information. You should buy one, or if you see me, ask to borrow mine. The first is part of Checker's ongoing exploration of the strange nooks and crannies of comic strips past, the second looks more or less like an official treatment of the late Johnny Hart's contributions to the form, and the third is more Mutts and I like Mutts.

You know what would be cool? It would be a cool if a publisher devoted itself to making small paperbacks of the kind that used to be made from comic strips. So I have a Werner Roth fixation: Bone Spirit material might be just a tiny bit better served by reading it in comics form, but they're all potentially transporting reads in a big, comfy chair on a Saturday afternoon. If things go well. Unless maybe it's a John Banner biography because surely no one in the business of comics at a place like Diamond would misspell the name of one of the greatest cartoonists ever.

I also don't know anyone close enough to Cunningham to personally vouch for the desperateness of his situation the way that local media played this role with the Tom Artis family. But when someone's down enough on his luck to ask for assistance, I'm inclined to give them a soapbox, and send along a little help myself. I'm afraid it will be a much more common thing over than the next years. Darryl Cunningham is asking for help. Go here to read more and follow the links to a proper pay pal account. Go here to read Cunningham's post on the matter , here to see various images up on his flickr account and here to see his illustration blog.

The cartoonist has promised art when he gets back up on his feet, but that's not something I'd feel comfortable taking -- on principle, but also because of how much I'm able to give would probably be swallowed whole by the postage. Additionally, I just sort of found his art to be appealing. Maybe some of the editors out there could use one of those cityscapes as a one-pager in their anthology or something like that, or might be otherwise interested in contacting Mr.

Maybe someone out there could arrange to purchase an original. Whatever you can do, whatever you choose to do, thanks, even if it's just for reading this post. Status of Mid-Day Case From Media Source, Irfaan Khan's Web Site The top half of this article provides a fairly concise rundown on how the Mid-Day case, where four journalists including the cartoonist Irfaan Khan are facing legal turmoil based on articles and cartooning about the actions of a former Indian court justice.

The four were allowed by another court to post bail, and the cases should proceed in early At issue I think is the lingering specter in many countries that officials should not be subject to criticism, even accurate criticism, based on their position, of which this case is a particularly egregious example because at its heart is a former rather than sitting justice. It's also heartening to read about such vociferous support by the journalistic community and others, to the point where simply running the same stories and cartoons in as many papers as possible has been considered.

Irfaan Khan wrote into CR this morning to note that his own web site has been updated to reflect the impending case. There are a lot of cartoons to look over, too, if you have no interest in freedom of speech issues. Comic Book Resources had a really nice write-up on what businesses and cartoonists in the area are up to, with several affected the CCI offices are closed for the time being; some IDW employees have been displaced but no one as yet directly endangered; and I'd direct anyone in that area to keep them updated.

I would also suggest blogs from industry or industry-related people in the area like Chris Allen , Mike Sterling rather far away; but his orange sky pictures are creepy , Scott Dunbier , Mark Evanier miles away, but extremely well-connected to folks in the region and Larry Marder. Shop Assets Sold at Auction I was completely and totally unaware of this story blogged and linked out with fury at Blog Newsarama regarding what looks like the final fate of the Winston-Salem retailer Silver Bullet Comics. The store had physically closed down after an announcement July 30 , and had apparently made a brief go of it as an on-line retailer, to the also now apparent dissatisfaction of some of those customers.

The end game came with either a seizure or a settlement or some sort of agreement between the store and the state's department of revenue regarding unpaid taxes and either stock or no-longer-needed store material, which was used as the basis of an October 8 auction. I want to dig into this a bit before I comment -- I don't really understand why the site is being updated, for one -- but the first thing that pops into mind is that this was a fairly aggressive retailer in terms of at least its on-line presence and plans to expand, which makes it a bit different than the whinny and sneeze kind of deaths we've become accustomed to seeing with retailers in recent years.

I'd never heard the story in this one that he was once paid for art in tickets to Shaw Brothers movie. The more newsworthy element is that more European-language editions of his books are in the works. Looks like they found more money, and David heard from enough fans who had bought non-refundable tickets that were looking forward to meeting him that he'll attend. See, Florida points out that a Creative Class-based economy leaves non-Creative-Classers in the dust, in service jobs that pay a wretched benefits-less pittance.

Not revaluing service jobs as vital parts of tolerable living. Not valuing human time and energy enough to pay a decent minimum wage, to ensure a minimum standard of health care. The answer is to move everyone into the Creative Class! Clueless, elitist moron --I really wanted to fire that book into a wall, hard. Maybe I am a drudge; maybe I do deserve no more than the pittance I'm paid. Move me out of my drudgery into the lighthearted, self- absorbed Creative Class, though, and David's in immediate trouble.

I may be a drudge, but I am a necessary drudge. It's an old, old idea, that "creative" work or at least intellectual work is far superior to mere physical labour. The Ancient Greeks had more then a touch of it: One of the factors I'm convinced led to the global dominance of Europe was that a great part of European culture s managed to escape this attitude. I've done hard, physical labour, in exactly the sort of service job Florida talks about: Hard work, dirty work, certainly not creative work, but not unpleasant work either.

Because these were part time summer jobs, in a province dependent on tourism, these jobs paid well and the bosses treated their workers as human beings, instead of interchangable cogs. Which is the essence of what makes a job bearable or even fun to do. There's nothing wrong with drudge work, with a service job, as long as you're treated right. If you get paid enough to live on and a bit more, not worked to death trying to keep impossible schedules, not cheated out of your dignity a hundred different ways each day then even a job as cleaner is not a bad job at all.

To insist that everybody instead should do something creative is just silly. If only because all of us in our oh so creative jobs are very much dependent on all those people consigned to socalled drudge work. Kevin Batcho hasn't updated his blog, Beyond the Wasteland for more then a month, for good reasons: This thursday it finally happened and they are now the proud parents of two bouncing I hope not Congratulations on having achieved prefect nuclear family status in one go, you two!

Hope everything goes well and your wife plus children will be home soon. Incidently, it has always amused me that my English teacher in secondary school had never heard of the expression nuclear family. Amsterdam, 25 february, It had been almost a year since the Nazis had invaded and occupied The Netherlands. It would be almost a year before the USA entered the war.

On the other side of the North sea was the only free fighting country in Europe, still fighting for survival. Just two days before, the first large scale razzias had been held in the traditionally Jewish neighbourhoods of Amsterdam. Already there had been sporadic resistance against the Jewbaiting practised by the occupier and their Dutch collaborators.

The razzias had been revenge for this. But Amsterdam was never a city to cower in the face of brutality. Nor did it this time. On 25 februari, exactly 62 years ago, a general strike broke out in the city, to support its Jewish inhabitants. All trams stopped; those who did attempt to ride were pelted with stones and chased back to their garages.

Other council services also striked and Amsterdam workers took to the streets, chasing the German ordnungspolizie out of the city. The strike went beyond the Amsterdam borders, to other parts of the province of Noord-Holland. For a moment it seemed it would be succesful and then the Nazis struck back, mercilessly. Several of the organisers and participants were arrested, tortured and killed.

It was the Dutch Communist Party who started the strike, who were amongst the first to go into resistance against the occupiers and many of whom paid the ultimate price for it. Today we remember them and all those others who fought beside them against the Nazi oppression during those late february days in I'm sick and tired of socalled "decent" leftists, those sellouts who supported the war for Halliburton because it appealed to their patronising imperialist dreams of spreading democracy by the sword.

I'm sick and tired of those useful idiots who supposed the war on Iraq was fought to liberate the Iraqi people while wilfully blinding themselves to the obvious truth about George Bush, who never had been a friend of democracy. I'm sick and tired of those who gave Bush and his cronies another chance to screw up a country, after it had already become clear what he had wrecked in Afghanistan. I'm sick and tired of everybody who wrapped themselves in the flag of righteousness while supporting the killing of innocent. If you supported the war on Afghanistan, you were wrong.

If you supported the war on Iraq you were doubly wrong. If you still support the war on Iraq, you're a fool. We said nothing good would come from this and indeed, nothing good has come from it. The reasons Bush gave why this war was necessary were lies from start to finish, as any fool could see: Saddam Hussein's Iraq was boxed in, did not even control its own airspace, had long ago lost any weapons of mass destruction it still had and the idea that Iraq had any connections with Al Quaida or any involvement with the September 11 attacks is too absurd for words.

Yet these were the reasons given both by the Bush and the Blair administrations. If you supported the war because of those reasons, you were duped. You're in good company: US congress and UK parliament were also duped. If you supported this war knowing those reasons were fake, but for reasons of your own, you were an useful idiot, unless you are an oil executive, own stock in Halliburton or wanted to avenge your daddy.

If you supported this war because ou saw this as a chance to spread democracy to Iraq and liberate the country from Saddam Hussein's dictatorship, what were you thinking? Didn't you see what had happened in Afghanistan, another war you probably also supported? When all the cool bombardments had stoppedand the tv cameras were switched off, all the fancy talk about building a better future for the country turned out to be so much hot air.

There wasn't even any money put aside in this year's budget for it, until Congress made Bush! And you thought you could trust Bush not to fuck up the far harder task of liberating Iraq? Didn't you ever question whether someone who resorted to such obvious lies to get the war he wanted had the same motives as you? Why were you so gullible? Just to underscore my last post comes this case study:. It's not as much the nascent fascism of the Bush regime which frightens me, as it's the complacency of the US media and people about it.

There isn't any real opposition to the Bush powergrab and the only "realistic" opposition, the Democratic Party still seems to treat politics as a fucking game, in which it's more important to play by the rules and be nice than it is to win. It shows how the police and the Italian secret service s knew of the coming of the violent hooligans of the socalled black blocs. It again shows how the hooligans could roam freely, on a rampage of violence and destruction, while at the same time the real, non-violent protestors as well as several inconvenient journalist were brutally attacked and arrrested.

It became clear very early during the Genova demonstration that the Italian police had infiltrated the black blocks and used them to discredit the alterglobalist movement. It was only afterward that it became clear that the violence of both the black blocs and the police was orchestrated from the beginning, was not the result of the protest getting out of hand but planned from the beginning.

For most people this is of course hard to believe. Surely things like this don't happen there? But as this documentary shows, it did. And it's hard to discredit the ARD as leftist scaremongers Below the discription of the documentary in the online tv-guide of the ARD. Normally I would give a link instead, but since I'm afraid this will disappear quickly, I'll quote it below:. Noch nie hatten sich so viele Menschen zu einem Protest gegen die herrschende Weltordnung versammelt, und noch nie war die Reaktion der Polizei so scharf wie in Genua.

Die Regierung Berlusconi, seit wenigen Wochen im Amt, hatte Die Autoren sprechen mit Politikern und Betroffenen vor Ort. Auch hochrangige Polizeibeamte nehmen dazu kritisch Stellung. That's on top of other fees already paid to other music industry groups. What it means is that almost every US internet radio broadcaster not supported by a big commercial organisation will shut down soon or has done so already, simply because they cannot affort those fees.

In a country where big companies like Clear Channel own most of the radio stations and use it to play the same bland commercial pop music, internet radio was often the only way you could actually discover new bands. Now that's no longer possible. One of the victims is Perkigoth which I just had discovered thanks to Charlie. As they put it:. To say we are disapointed is an understatement. How much are those fees? Seven dollar cent per listener, backdated to november ! In other words, any moderately popular net radio has to put a huge chunk of money on the table at the start to be able to continue their broadcasts, plus continuing fees for every performance, ie any time somebody starts up their broadcast.

Not only that, they also have to pay ephemeral licence fees worth 8. Ephemeral fees are charged for the "priviledge" of storing the music for broadcast. And the decision was taken by the Librarian of Congress, a nonelected bureaucrat. As the Library of Congress website says itself:. No special qualifications are prescribed by law for the job of Librarian of Congress. Nor is a term of office specified, even though in the twentieth century the precedent seems to have been established that a Librarian of Congress is appointed for life. How and why this person has the power to make this sort of far reaching, unilateral, undemocratic decisions is unclear to me.

What doesn't surprise me is that the current librarian, one James H. Billington was nominated by president Reagan in In the long run, this closing down of channels through which people can discover new music and bands --which they'll then buy records off-- will be to the disadvantage of the music industry, as it means revenue for them will drop. But it's short term profit that controls the industry's actions: Not all is lost. There is a still a campaign going on to appeal to this decision. SomaFM has more information on this, including a call to action for both Us and international listeners.

One of the great promises has been kept, the greatest project in American comics ever has come to an end --but unfortunately I can't celebrate much, since its creator, Dave Sim went crazy a long time ago So hail and farewell then Cerebus: This was quoted at Avedon Carol's weblog , which is required reading for anybody wanting a liberal perspective on US politics. The three paragraphs below I've taken from this article because they express eloquently how I feel about being a Socialist.

The first thing we stand for is freedom, not just the freedom to speak our minds, but the freedom to act on our beliefs. The freedom to worship as we see fit, or not to worship anything at all. The freedom to have any kind of relationship we want with other consenting adults, be it political, financial, or sexual. The freedom to serve our country, whether it be in the military or as a public servant, or not to serve it at all.

These freedoms are not exclusive to a particular race, religion, or group of people, they belong to everyone. The second thing we stand for is responsibility, not just for ourselves and our well-being, but for the well-being of the community at large: We must recognize that we are more than just entities unto ourselves, but a part of a vast and complex world, and that everything we do affects the world we live in in some way, and to use the freedoms we so greatly value to ensure that future generations will be able to have that freedom. And finally, but most importantly, we stand for the truth, the truth above all; the truth of our vision and our desire to make a better world not just for ourselves, but for our enemies, even when they can't or won't see it.

Our enemies are blinded to the truth by their ignorance, and by their arrogance, viewing the battle itself as the truth, seeking one enemy after another for no other reason than to justify their existence and manipulate others into supporting them. What we stand for is something greater, and we should never forget that no matter how hard we fight. The above is not complete by a longshot, but it does express two core beliefs of mine, the belief that we have both rights and responsibilities as individuals and the belief that the truth matters.

If "my side" wins by deceit, by foul means, we won't have won, we'd just become our enemies. Related to this, earlier this evening I posted the following to Usenet, about what I think is the core of true socialism:. The whole point of socialism is that power is not in the hands of a small clique or a single dictaror, but in the hands of the people, i. You can follow the teachings of Marx and Engels and all the other great socialist thinkers all you like, but without that one crucial point, you're not socialist.

The liutmus test for any country that calls itself socialist is whether people are free to disagree with socialism without fear for their life. Any party that talks about the Vanguard of the Revolution leading the Poor Oppressed Masses who cannot possibly free themselves, the poor sods is not a socialist party. The revolution can not be directed top down, it will come bottom up. I came back yesterday from a week spent in the UK with Sandra, which partially explains why I haven't been blogging Just too busy doing other stuff --and then Bush's War finally started, so we became busier still with anti-war protests.

Not to mention that I've just became depressed with the whole situation and wasn't really in the mood to blog about it or anything else. See also my rant over at Prog Gold This post is sort of intended to be a catch-all catch-up on the war and all that surrounds us.

Don't expect too much coherence.

So yeah, we spent most of the week helping prepare various anti-war protests in Plymouth, as well as take part in them. For those of you who don't know Plymouth, it's a medium sized city pop: There's a huge navy base and several of the ships and units participating in the war are Plymouth based, e. HMS Ocean and 3 Commando. As you may suspect, support for the war is fairly high in Plymouth, though certainly not universal. If anything, people are more apathic than anything else. Something which seems to be true of Plymouth in general anyway.

It's a very inward looking and provincial town, mainly because it's so isolated from the rest of Britain. It's six hours away from London, two hours even from Bristol. Since we were both on leave and hence available, it fell to us to do all the really glamourous work needed, like photocopying a zillion different leaflets advertising the national demo last Saturday, calling for union members to strike against the war, etc, etc as well as be warm bodies for the lunchtime protests held in the city centre.

A sort of working holiday, so to speak The lunchtime protests were fun, and the second, on Thursday, drew some people, as well as plenty of media attention, including a spot on the local ITV news as well as various radio stations. I even got to speak to one of them. There were also evening protests starting from Tuesday, taking place at the Charles Cross roundabout.

After the war, the city council finished what the Germans started, the result being one those soulless ties brutalist city centres. The only remainder of the German bombardments are the ruins of Charles Church, which is now in the middle of Charles Cross, turned into a sort of monument. An appropriate place to protest against war, in other words. Doing all this, even if largely futile at least gives a sense of accomplishment. In between, when watching the ever worsening news on BBC or ITV or reading the newspaper was just depressing and angering me.

What sickened me the most was not the news of massive bombardments going on in Bagdhad, it was that the reporter bringing it sounded so proud about it What also infuriated me was the "support our boys; stop protesting" drivel in every other editorial. It's such a blatant ploy to stifle dissent. As if getting them killed is so supportive! Especially now criticism is important, as anybody with half a brain knows and if that undermines the moral of "our brave boys" in Iraq, why should we care when we believe they're fighting an unjust war anyway?

The best thing to support the troops is to bring them back home, not to keep them as target practise for bored Americans. Cheap shot, I know. Then there was the stupidity of blaming France for causing this war, which is like blaming me for getting the Cheeky Girls to number one because I didn't buy their record. Also getting on my tits: Sure, I don't particularly want to see a quagmire either, but I don't think the semblance of a speedy victory semblance, because I don't think a speedy victory is actually possible would be a good thing.

It would only encourage Bush into more disastrous adventures. So I am conflicted, neither wanting to see more death and destruction, but also wanting to see Bush getting a bloody nose. In any case I feel sorry for any coalition troops being killed or wounded, but I feel more sorry for any Iraqi civilians or conscripts getting killed; the latter had no choice in this war. You can see for yourself when you stop working for free and start getting paid through their unpaid overtime calculator.

Last Saturday it was exactly one year since Carlo Guliani was murdered by the Italian police during the G8 conference in Genoa. He was shot once in the head a second shot barely missing him, then a landrover drove over his head for good measure. Afterwards he was accused of attacking the police with a fire extinguisher, though pictures and video shot at the time clearly show him empty handed when he was killed [ 1 ]. He wasn't the only victim of police brutality in Genoa, though he did earn the distinction of being the only one killed bny them. After days of provocation by the socalled black blocks , supposedly anarchist protestors but believed by many to have been agent provocateurs the police responded by attacking peaceful protestors.

In the Genoa Libera documentary, a video compilation of amateur footage shot at the protest with commentary there's one sequence that's a particularly sickening example of police violence. Shot in black and white, you see a fifteen-odd people on a parkinglot somewhere in the city, holding their hands up when riot police arrive; they're clearly peaceful and not a threat to anyone. This does not matter to the police, who systematically batter each and everyone of them, before noticing the person videoing them and bahsing him as well, while you hear him scream Press!

There was also the brutal invasion of a school building where some 90 or so activists where beaten out of the building, arrested and tortured, as well as dozens if not hundreds of lesser incidents. Yet despite all the violence hundreds of thousands people would show up in the next days all over Italy and Europe to protest the police brutality and the summit itself. Genoa showed that violence could not destroy the alterglobalisation movevent. Last Saturday, to commemorate the protests but especially to honour Carlo Guliani's memory, there were again protesters in Genoa and other places, including right here in Amsterdam.

Though it had only been announced the day before there were still about 35 people taking part in a small peaceful demonstration, of which I was one. We walked under police "protection" there being almost as many police officers as demonstrators to the Italian consulate to deliver some flowers and hold a two minute silent wake in memory of Carlo. At first the police didn't want us to approach the consulate too closely, but they relented and let us hang up a banner. Moving towards the consulate.

The banner reads "Against state terrorism. Anna also corrected me as to how many bullets hit Carlo. Thanks Anna, now would you please write another of your brilliant essays in your weblog? I'm probably not alone then in pointing out that I become extremely jacked-off when any of the above individuals or groups sanctimoniously pontificate that we are only able to make our protests against whatever and whoever because we're "lucky" to have "the right" to do so. It's bugger all to do with either "luck" or "good fortune" so can we please get that straight once and for all?

We only have the means of expressing grievances publicly thanks to men and women who, during our long history, have risked punishments, imprisonment, deportation and execution. All subject 'rights' have been earned by others, for us. None, not a single one, has ever been freely and willingly 'given. These 'rights' survive best by being exercised. Governments, such as our own under Bliar, and the long-suffering Americans under Bush would like nothing better than to use their new and ever-changing catch-all anti-terrorist and home security laws to suppress dissent.

The security of the state has been used as the excuse for perpetrating some of the greatest crimes against humanity in history. We need look back no further than the 20th century to see ample evidence of that. When Governments and sections of the media seem to work in harmony by jointly insinuating that demonstrations about certain political issues are "regrettable" it's a very short step before "regrettable" becomes "unacceptable" and "unacceptable" becomes "banned.

Just give them the excuse and they'll then proceed so crush them to a pulp. We need to remind these fuckwits that we didn't get our rights from them, we took them. As Ken MacLeod said in another context:. I don't want to make a habit of this, of announcing which weblog I added to my blogroll this time, but sometimes I have to. Simply because Max Speak is such a brilliant weblog, well reasoned, cutting yet polite all of which were on display during his recent series of entries on Instapundit.

He takes subjects I too feel strongly about and explains his reasonings far better then I ever could and it's not fair! A few years ago, Nancy Kress wrote a science fiction novella, followed by a series of novels about what happens when a "cure" for sleeping is discovered. The novels were uninspired though the novella was excellent but the basic idea of never needing to sleep appealed quite strongly to me. I've always considered sleep as a bit of a waste, a regretable biological necessity, when there are so much more interesting things you can do in those six or eight hours a day.

Now it seems the first step on the road to eradicating the need for sleep. This article in the Washington Post tells of a new drug called Modafinil , which helps you stay awake for long periods of time, while still staying alert and functioning normally. You still need to catch up on sleep later however, so it's not quite there yet. The writer makes the obvious point that for now you don't want to use it, unless you have to, as not much is yet known about possible side effects of long, regular periods without sleep, but still If there's ever going to be a drug that will free me from the need to sleep, without sacrificing my health, I won't be the first to take it, but I will keep it in mind.

September 11, , a few minutes before two o'clock in the afternoon. I was idly channel surfing, having become bored with the deadly dull Kingsley Amis interview I was watching, when my eye was caught by an image on one of the local newschannels. Some sort of skyscraper, one tower of which was on fire, a big hole in its side. I recognised the New York WTC and heard the newsreader say it some sort of airplane had crashed into the tower.

Not conciously knowing the scale iof the towers, I thought it had been some light sportsplane or so which had gotten too close to the building and kept watching, switching between Dutch channels and CNN. Not that long after I started watching, while some reporter or other was talking I saw a second plane crash into the towers.

Then I knew it was some sort of terrorist attack and started calling people, yelling to my brother, who was also watching upstairs in his room. As it turned out, those would not be the only planes crashing that day: It's because of that fourth airplane that I tell you this by now overly familiar story all of us experienced that day. Because today, just minutes ago in fact, one of the dutch networks showed a reconstruction of what happened on that flight, flight And once again it grabbed me by the throat, hit me deep inside.

It was the only one of the four hijacked flights not to hit its target, because of the heroism of several of its passengers and crew, because thanks to a delay of 41 minutes taking off they knew that three other planes had hit the WTC in New York and the pentagon in Washington and they knew they were going to be the fourth plane to hit an unsuspecting target, killing more innocent people.

And they knew they had to stop the terrorists from doing so. They failed in winning back control of the plane and landing safely, but they succeeded in stopping the terrorists -at the costs of their lives. In life, they had little in common other then that they were American, shared the same flight and were not afraid to do what was the right thing to do, even if it would cost them their lives. So in death they shared one more thing: The US can be proud of them. Right now, for instance. A pity then that the blog's design is somewhat of a triumph of style over substance:. These problems are easily fixed of course and I hope they will be, as it's a shame to let style ruin a blog whose substance doesn't deserve that.

Like all welfare provision, pensions represent in the final analysis a deduction from the surplus value extracted from the working class and realised for the capitalist corporations and their owners in the form of profit.

During the post-war period when profit rates were rising or at least not falling, governments of all political persuasions were able to increase welfare provision --including a reduction in the retirement age and improved pensions. But as the absolute amount of capital employed in modern industries has risen astronomically, there has been a tendency for the rate of profit measured against investment to fall.

This venal layer is determined not only to pay no tax itself, but to place the full burden of social provision onto individual workers. Pensions and other forms of social insurance, healthcare, education and transport must be turned into commodities produced for profit and purchased by workers.

Hence, politicians, corporate bosses and economists in every country endlessly repeat the mantra that the present level of pension provision is unsustainable and call for the extension of the working life and a reduction in the state pension. Anything else, they say, constitutes an unfair burden on young workers. This is the classic technique of divide and rule, with the aim of pitting one generation against another. All economic and social life is run in the interests of this tiny financial elite.

It is this that lies behind the universal turn to "reform" and privatised pensions. The attacks on pensions throughout Europe can only be understood as part of an ongoing international offensive of the ruling elites all over the world to make working people pay for the growing economic breakdown of the profit system. But of course, pension reform cannot be discussed in these terms. Hence, the resort to obfuscation, deceit and the oft-repeated invocations of demographic pressures without presenting a shred of credible evidence to support these assertions or permit an informed public debate.

Found via Ethel the Blog. James Lileks is one of those heroic warbloggers, commenting on The War Against Terror from the frontlines in Minneapolis. In a typical rambling entry, after the obligatory mentions of his daughter's cuteness, he saw fit to comment on the ingratitude Salam Pax showed for his "liberation":.

Harsh words and their impact is all the harsher coming from someone who has undoubtedly earned his spurs fighting against the menace of terrorism, coolly writing post after post denouncing the enemies of america, with no thought to personal cost. Certainly Salam Pax had never to face the dangers Lileks had to, the fear that terrorists might actually strike at any moment, if he showed any weakness in criticising the soft liberal left, who undoubtedly would deliver America to the islamoterrorists if he would've given them an inch.

As much as he liked to volunteer to liberate Iraq, he could not leave his post. For Daniel "don't bother me with facts " Pipes anyway:. I learned that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center when a television producer urgently called and invited me right over to the station. It's been a near-blur since then, busier than any other period of my life. Statistics give the story in brief: My one-year mark tally stands at 1 book, 8 long articles, 80 short articles, television appearances, in-person lectures, mentions in the media that I know of , and radio interviews. The recipients of my articles by e-mail increased from 2, before to 14, Thoughtfully published on the anniversary of the attacks.

At least the warbloggers started their blogs out of real outrage, not to further their careers. A guest editorial by Sandriana, sort of responding to recent posts in the Blogosphere trying to pin the blame for the now in process firefighters strike on the FBU, the firefighters union. Nor does Mick Hume. They both, O'Neill in his weblog and Hume in a Times article complain about how "the left" has responded to the new revelations about the September 11 attacks. The last week or so evidence has come out that the Bush administration may have known about the upcoming attacks, or at least had enough information to know some sort of attack was imminent -why else would Ashcroft have started traveling on chartered jets?

Was September 11 preventable? The answer, of course, is yes. All the Bush administration had to do to prevent those terrorist attacks was to close down the entire civil airline industry and evacuate all skyscrapers and government buildings or, better still, empty the cities of New York and Washington. Then it could have rounded up and interned all Muslims and everybody of 'Middle Eastern appearance' including several million US citizens and launched nuclear missile strikes against Afghanistan, Sudan and anywhere else that might be accused of harbouring Osama bin Laden and his agents.

Does anybody see the flaw in this? That's right, it excludes the middle! It's a common tactic. Juxtapose your own, entirely sensible position with something ridiculous and over the top for bonus points imply this is what your critics think , make sure everybody knows how ridiculous it is, then declare victory.

In this case Mick Hume, ignoring practical measures that could've been taken to prevent the attacks, instead pretends that the only choice was between doing nothing or unleashing World War III to stop the terrorists. However, the prevention of the Millennium bombplot , because one of the bombers was stopped during a routine US border patrol suggests otherwise. Then Brendan O'Neill jumped on hume's bandwagon, in an article called the shame of the left:.

The shame of the left. Some left- wing websites turned their entire content over to mocking Bush and revelling in the revelations that the administration knew something prior to 11 September. It was annoying because it suggested that the left has become incapable of developing a decent political alternative, instead jumping on the politics of chance, rumour and conspiracy. Then it became more than annoying. Here O'Neill takes Hume's portrayal of "the left's criticism" as fact, using it to castigate them. Again, the middle ground between doing nothing and turning the US into a police state and the rest of the world into a bomb crater is ignored:.

How will the left respond when Bush and Blair and their friends in the West decide to bomb Iraq, on the dubious grounds that Saddam Hussein is building weapons of mass destruction with which to threaten the West? This is specious arguing at its worst. Hume and O'Neill have taken sensible criticism of the Bush administration, twisted it beyond all recognition and then used this strawman to beat up "the left" with.

I cannot help but think they have an agenda in this. O'Neill and Hume aren't strangers to each other. Spiked Online itself is the reincarnation of the old LM Magazine , previously known as Living Marxism, which disappeared after it lost a libel trial. Spiked touts itself as a champion of "unorthodox, enlightened thinking" but I've always had the nagging feeling they were just another group of establishment pundits. They often seemed to be more interested in slagging of "the left" then in doing much to shake up the established order.

In this context, this latest attack on the antiwar left makes sense. It establishes once again their independence, their "freethinking" spirit, without running much risks. It impresses the punters and I bet those two articles will be quoted all over the blogosphere in the next few weeks or so. More about Living Marxism can be found in this Weekly Worker article. There are reasons why even a health club would have escalators: And of course, it isn't just Americans who can be lazy I got this picture when it was forwarded to me in one of those "cow-orker thinks it's funny" e-mails and thought it would make anice throwaway post.

Figures it would be this that gets heavily linked, instead of any of the dozens of thoughtful intelligent posts I've made over the last year. Should've known people go for the cheap shot. The railway station in my hometown, Middelburg has two platforms, which are separated by the railway tracks. To reach the other side you have to walk through a pedestrian tunnel. Some time ago, whoever was responsible for the station decided to make it more accesible for disabled people.

Therefore an elevator was installed at the near side of the station, but not at the far side, across the tracks. To get on the second platform when you cannot handle the stairs, you have to walk out of the station proper, walk down all the way until the end of the platform and walk back onto it by way of the gently sloping ramp there I hope y'all have checked out the link to my booklog to the left of this post?

Poul Anderson's The Corridors of Time , a science fiction time travel novel and Dutch author Nescio's classic collection of three novellas. Martin sez, check it out. Courtesy of the Guardian comes another book review, of China Mieville's latest fantasy novel, The Scar. Apart from being a fantasy and sf writer, China is also active in politics, having been a candidate in the UK parliamentary elections last year for the Socialist Alliance.

For the Guardian he also put together his top ten of weird fiction. You see the above? That is Godwin's law. Nothing more, nothing less. It does not mean that you can never bring up nazis or Hitler, can never compare someone or something to them or that you automatically lose a discussion if you do so. Case in point, those objecting to Nathan Newman's post comparing Israel's treatment of the Palestines to Nazi Germany in As I've argued myself , comparisons of Israel with Nazi Germany are usually counterproductive and offensive, but not in this case.

Yes, it is inflammary, but largely correct as well. To then scream "Godwin! Guess which of the books listed on the Del Rey website won't be written by the author they give here? If you're involved in political campaigns, you know there are always a few people on your side whose heart is in the right place, whose dedication is absolute, but who are absolutely the last persons you should trust to argue your point of views, because they will fuck it up.

Gretta Duisenberg is one of them. For those who don't know her, she campaigns for Israel to withdraw from the Occupied Territories and for the right of the Palestinian population to self determination. A cause which has my sympathy as well. Unfortunately, she has an incredible tin ear, lacks tact and has a tendency to speak before she thinks. She first came in the news when she flew a Palestinian flag from her Amsterdam home , something which her Jewish neighbours took umbrage with.

In her attempts to resolve the situation, she showed herself to be less than tactful. Recently, she canalised her unease with the situation into real action and went on a mission to Israel and the Occupied Teritories with the Dutch Stop the Occupation action group and again became the centre of a row.

In an interview with a Dutch newspaper, she stated that " with the exception of the Holocaust, the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian areas is worse than the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands ", which may not be the stupidest thing you can say on the subject, but certainly comes close. It's not that Gretta Duisenberg is an anti-semite --at least not as far as I know-- it's just that she has a poor impulse control and doesn't think before she says something.

Quite apart from the inherent tackiness of Nazi comperisions especially in this context! Taking the Holocaust out of the equation is as silly as saying that with the exception of the WTC attacks, Al Quaida has not managed to kill many Americans. Furthermore, the best way to get neutral people to stop listening to you and think of you as either a kook or an anti-semite is comparing Israel to the Nazies.

It is borderline anti-semitic, it denigrates the Holocaust and it makes you look like an ahistorical dork. Israel's occupation is awful and the suffering it causes innocent Palestinians is wrong, wrong, wrong, but it's not genocidal. But it won't happen because of Gretta Duisenberg, if she continues this way.

Ever since the feeble excuses used to justify the invasion of Iraq have been exposed for the lies they are, the war boosters have been mainly reduced to one argument: Saddam Hussein is gone, but the Iraqi people are not free. Their country is ruled by foreign invaders and the only representation they have was appointed by the occupiers, not elected by Iraqies. Meanwhile the country lies in ruins and there is a bitter guerilla war being fought against the US led coalition. And don't be fooled by the insistent claims of the Us government that the resistance is made up only of old Ba-ath loyalists and foreign jihadists with little or no support from the population.

If that was the case, would the US army needed to destroy houses of suspected guerillas? Also, read what Baghad Burning is writing about the situation:. The troops were pushing women and children shivering with fear out the door in the middle of the night. What do you think these children think to themselves- being dragged out of their homes, having their possessions and houses damaged and burned?! Who do you think is creating the 'terrorists'?!!

Do you think these kids think to themselves, "Oh well- we learned our lesson. People seem to think that Iraq is broken into zones and areas- ethnically and religiously divided. That's just not true- the majority of people have relatives all over Iraq. My relatives extend from Mosul, all the way down to Basrah- we all feel for each other and it makes decent people crazy to see this happening. There have also been a string of raids all over Baghdad, but especially in Al-A'adhamiya. They've detained dozens of people with the excuse that they own more than one weapon.

Who owns less than two weapons? Everyone has at least one Klashnikov and a couple of guns. Every male in the house is usually armed and sometimes the females are too. It's not because we love turning our homes into arsenals, but because the situation was so dangerous and in some areas still is that no one wants to take any risks.

I hate having weapons in the house. For all you Harry Potter fans: By famous for all the wrong reasons, Cassie Claire. Mitch Wagner has a post up about mothers being indicted for "neglecting" their children when they come to harm. He mentions two cases. In the first , a mother was arrested and now faces 16 years in prison because when she left her children aged 1 and 9 at home to go to work at McDonalds, an arsonist burned her appartement down and killed them. Both children suffered from sickle cell anemia, which is only mentioned in the context of why the mother is supposedly guilty of neglect.

Me, I wonder why there was no support to help her cope with two handicapped children. In the second case , the mother of a 12 year old bully victim who committed suicide was actually convicted on one felony count of having put her child at risk by creating a home environment that was unhealthy and unsafe. It seems their home was filthy and disgusting: The kid frequently soiled himself to have an excuse to not go to school and escape the bullying and slept in a closet surrounded by knives to create a sense of safeness.

Nobody but his mother was there for him, nobody cared else cared if he lived or died and yet, after the mother sued the school over the death of her son, she was the one arrested. It's a fucking disgrace. Mitch wonders why it's only the mother who is blamed for these incidents, when in both cases the primary guilt for the childrens death lies with others. Where for example was the father of the first two children? Why did the school in the second case not stop the bullying?

What is going on here? Something that goes beyond just lousy luck, goes beyond being in a singular bad situation. Both these cases are just symptoms, logical outcomes of a rotten system. Dad's away or in jail, mother has to work two jobs to make a living and has not support whatsoever to help her raise her children, because there are no support systems for her in place. She must work to feed her children but we also expect her to be "a good mother". In the meantime, the socalled professionals in the school and social services systems neglect their duty, to the point of not just allowing but actually encouraging bullying in the case of the boy who committed suicide.

These women, like millions of other working class mothers in America actually have no choice. They do not have the luxury of childcare available to them and they certainly cannot afford to put their children above their jobs: What you got here is an interlocking tangle of class, race and gender issues, all excaberating the situation these women got themselves in.

First, despite several decades of emancipation, there's still the default assumption that a mother is solely responsible for her children and the only one to blame if something goes wrong with them, a convenient scapegoat that lets others of the hook. Whatever choice these women made, it would've been wrong. If they don't work they and their children don't eat, if they do work they're not taking care of their children.

Second, there is the class issue. If they'd been nice middle class women they would've had so many more options, so much more support systems to fall back upon and more importantly, they'd also had had the education to make use of them. This is not the case. Quite often to claim even the minimum support you're entitled to you have to make a nuisance of yourself, be persistent and know who to speak to. It helps if you also have a nice middle class accent, as I found out in my partner's who does have a nice middle class accent dealings with the English social security system.

Finally, at least in the arson case there's race. In spite of the happy "coulour blindness" of those who never have to worry about racism themselves, this does still play a role in how you are treated. Like your class, your race is either an automatic handicap or a unearned advantage. Especially when dealing with state bureaucracy. All of which isn't helped by cynical politicians making hay of family values, while refusing to actual help those families and in fact punish those single mothers who put their children above work. Welfare mothers being the lowest of the low, after all.

What also doesn't help is not educating people, especially not educating people about birth control. This is not an easy problem to solve, partially so because there are large vested interests who don't want an answer to this problem. The US economy and increasingly every other western economy needs a large, docile working class of disposable workers. Keeping single mothers working long weeks just to survive fits in nicely with this.

After all, paying them enough to survive on just a regular job would cut too much into shareholders' profits Worse, an educated working class with some job security may turn out awfully militant. It's easy for me to say what needs to be doing. There needs to be money and resources available for single mothers so that they don't have to make the choice between taking care of their children and working.

Everybody should be able to earn a living wage for themselves and their children and not have to work eighty hours a week just to pay the rent. Everybody should be taught the skills to be able to deal with government bureaucracy, to survive in a modern society. Birth control should be freely available. Easy to say, less easy to put into practise. But it can be done. There is no western society that doesn't have the resources to put this into practise, if it wants to, But first it needs to want it.

If you feel about this the same way as I do, get involved. Fight for a living wage, a decent social safety net and education. F viruses recieved in my old e-mail account. At least it's keeping the ordinairy spam out. Worst virus attack I've ever seen though. So far, I've recieved over e-mails with the virus and I only started recieving them today! Also keep getting e-mail rejections for virus e-mails that think they come from my domain.

It's a wonder my provider hasn't melted down yet To take everybody who mistakes common politeness for "political correctness", everybody who actually uses "political correctness" without any trace of irony and especially anybody who is proud to call themselves "politically incorrect" and thinks this is a brave thing to do outside to the nearest wall and shoot them.

Today in the United States white people have no political representation. Whites have to struggle in the courts against government opposition to claim any resemblance to equal rights. Explicit government policies have made whites second class citizens. Whites are a dispossessed majority in their own country.

Why did the white majority allow themselves to be stripped of the equal protection clause of the Constitution? Why do whites remain loyal to the political parties that took away their rights? What is the future for whites in a political system where both political parties pander to third world immigrants and support racial privileges for minorities? Having lost equal protection of law, what will whites lose next? This is the real attitude behind conservative resistance against affirmative action.

The only real progress this guy has made in the 38 years since the Civil Rights Act was signed into law is that he now has to drape his racist thoughts into slightly less transparent language. Yes, progress has been made between and now, but as long as Driving While Black is still a crime, a lot still has to happen.

In the meantime it may be a nice hobby to check your favourite warmonger site, the ones which usually link approvingly to Townhall columnists and see if they distance themselves enough from Paul Craig Roberts' sordid comments. After all, if they expect us lefties from denouncing every loony on "our" side, they should do the same. An interesting story in the Denver Post about the growing number of pop musicians who move over from the mayor record labels to the independents or self-publishing. Since the major labels aren't interested anymore in anybody who sells less then a million records int he US market, a lot of artists feel they're better off elsewhere:.

What intrigues me is the way the big labels chase after the million sellers while neglecting what could be the bread and butter artists: What if your carefully groomed million seller turns out not to be? It seems so short sighted. But then, it is short sighted. It's an artifact of the way the stock market rewards hyper succesful companies and is satisfied only by growth, growth, growth.

The only way to fulfill the stock market's expectations is to chase after the big money: So you get a climate in which a record company depends on a handfull of carefully groomed and promoted superstars and doesn't want anything to do with those who may be still profitable, but not profitable enough. Trouble is, if your big superstar fails, you're in far more danger as a company, because it takes so much money to create million sellers, that you have to sell that many more records to recoup costs and make the profits you need. Hence, if you fail, you fail big --and there are only so many chances you get.

All of which creates the record industry's version of the Red Queen's Race: Losing the elections is not without consequences, as the three parties of Paars purple: Heads were gonna roll. The first to draw their conclusions were the three leaders of the ex-government parties. Thom de Graaf of D66 was reelected by his party's Tweede Kamer faction as their leader after he had given up his position. But the three faction leaders were not the only ones who decided to quit their jobs.

Ex-minister Jan Pronk was reelected but decided he would give up his seat. He felt his the PvdA needed new blood and decided to set an example. He is trading places with Boris van der Ham, the only new person on D66's election list. For Van Boxtel the main reason for leaving was that he felt he was the "embodiment of Paars-2" [ 2 ] and that the heart of his ministerial responsibility, minority policies, had become the "playfield" [ 3 ] for the rise of the LPF. Apparantely, he said, agitating about problems is valued more then working towards solutions.

Not that these solutions have had much visibility or success. As a minister he had a newly created portfolio concerning the big city areas in the Netherlands and integration of minorities, covering terrain already under the responsibility of other departements. This however still leaves all three of the ex-govermental parties with an abundance of older, longserving MPs, since most of the newcomers wer on as it turned out to be unelectionable places in their respective parties election lists.