August 10, 2008 archive

Breathing Easy At The Olympics

If You’re An

Exhaust Pipe

Russia widens attacks as world pleads for peace in South Ossetia

· Moscow targets Georgian towns

· UN heads frantic bid to contain war in Caucasus

Peter Beaumont, Matthew Collin in Tbilisi and Helen Womack in Moscow

The Observer,

Sunday August 10 2008

Russian bombers and artillery yesterday widened their attack against Georgian forces with strikes against towns and military bases across the country in a dangerous escalation of the two-day-old war. Moscow appeared determined to dismantle Georgia’s military capability in punishment for its rival’s brutal attempt to regain control of the breakaway enclave of South Ossetia.

Russia’s Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, last night insisted that its actions were ‘legitimate’ and called on Georgia to end its ‘aggression’ against the separatist province.

As the civilian casualties escalated on both sides, Georgia’s military adventure seemed to be unravelling. President Mikheil Saakashvili demanded a ceasefire from Russia and implored the West to intervene to help him. Georgia’s difficulties deepened further as separatists in a second pro-Russian breakaway Georgian republic – Abkhazia – joined the conflict, attacking Georgian forces in the contested upper Kodori Gorge.

Beijing Curbs Religious Rights

Christian Activists Detail Harassment

By Maureen Fan

Washington Post Foreign Service

Sunday, August 10, 2008; Page A01

BEIJING — China describes itself as a religiously tolerant society, one that allows its citizens to worship freely. This week, per Olympic tradition, it is extending that same freedom to athletes in the form of worship rooms in the Olympic Village, each dedicated for the world’s major religions.

Worshipers also have at their disposal dozens of foreign clerics; 10,000 English-Chinese Bibles emblazoned with the Olympics logo; and an electric organ, for Catholics.

But religious freedom does not extend beyond the heavily secured perimeter fence of the Olympic Green.

USA

Democrats derail effort by Clinton backers to ban caucuses



By Steven Thomma | McClatchy Newspapers

PITTSBURGH – Devoted Hillary Clinton supporters urged the Democratic party Saturday to get rid of caucuses, the town hall meetings in states such as Iowa where Clinton’s presidential campaign stumbled and Barack Obama launched his march to the nomination.

“We need to get rid of caucuses,” said Melissa Whitener, a waitress from Conneaut, Pa., who traveled to lobby the Democratic National Committee as it prepared its party platform.

“Caucuses are inherently unfair,” she said. “I work in a restaurant. I can’t take off a whole shift to go sit in a caucus. We need to all be on the same primary system. Why should 2,000 people in Iowa have the same say as 2 million in Pennsylvania?”

cross posted from The Dream Antilles

Cesar Aira

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

Wiki tells the basics about Cesar Aira:

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

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

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