Now This

This blog is now read by more machines than humans: RSS robots, spam-laying insectopoids, echoes of blog-gathering .edu projects. This essentially is the state of affairs that all human activities w

Cleaning Up the Nation

Austin Bay:

If Air America were a conservative radio network its corrupt funding trail and cynical abuse of a poverty program would be front page news at the NY Times and full-time mega-scandal at

Rank Materialism

Freedom. I am now the proud new owner of a Gateway 6020GZ laptop, perfect for students and others with limited means. I can now go into a Starbucks or a Barnes & Noble and look like I'm doing some

Fallujah Fonda

Uh-oh. From the Telegraph comes this exciting news:

Jane Fonda is returning to anti-war activism and embarking on a cross-country tour to call for an end to US military operations in Iraq.

Acros

John Pilger: Partner in Terrorism

In an outrageous piece of terrorist propaganda appearing on the cover of today's New Statesman, John Pilger puts the blame for the 7/7 London attacks not on the terrorists, but rather on Tony Blair:

Ironic, Ain't It?

Good political-strategic analysis (link via LGF) by SF/Fantasy writer Orson Scott Card of how the upcoming Iraqi war is affected by the current Israeli-Palestinian war. He thinks we've got to topple Saddam even if a coalition, soured by Israeli actions, proves impossible.

But the one plan that will lead most surely to disaster is to wait and wait and wait for our coalition partners to feel politically secure again. Because that may never happen. But Iraqi nuclear attacks against somebody -- those will certainly happen, if we don't topple the madman first.

Absolutley right.

The great and delicious irony is that anti-war, Mr. "International System", Demosthenes is against this sort of thing, what with disrespecting another nation's sovereignty and all. (Demosthenes took both his name and his blog's name, Shadow of the Hegemon, from Orson Scott Card's Ender series of SF novels.)

It's like Woody Allen and Marshall McLuhan all over again.

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Comments

Well, it would be, if it weren't for the simple and commonly accepted distinction between a work and its author, especially considering that authors can change with time, and the meaning of works can change due to changes of readership, of popular culture...

well, I'm sure you get the idea.

I can and do respect Mr. Card's works without having to share his political views, just as I believe that "Stranger in a Strange Land" is a good book without agreeing with Heinlein's rather odd concepts of sexuality.

D: Yeah, I get all that. I like some of LeGuin's stuff, but god help us all if she ever held office! I'm just saying that considering the theme of your blog, Card's opinion is ironic, not that it damns your position. There's other things to do that. :-)

Card obviously admires the idealist Valentine/Demosthenes, but in the story political power is held by Peter/Hegemon, never Demosthenes. Demsthenes is always in the 'shadow of the Hegemon'.

After all, Card is a Mormon. He's smart enough to know that Brigham Young wasn't a nice man. But without Young, probably Mormonism wouldn't have survived.

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