Tuesday, August 30, 2011

I was going to blog about being at Nathan Phillips Square on Saturday, and give anecdotes and impressions regarding the passing of Jack Layton, but it somehow feels crass.

So instead, a week's silence in memory.

I'll be back again next weekend with a cheerier post.

Saturday, August 20, 2011

Nothing Could Be Further

This handsome edition of short fiction by Tim Conley arrived yesterday from Emmerson Street Press.


Most will know I'm a fan of Tim's fiction, and edited his first collection from Insomniac Press in 2006. I blogged about his short story "Eye of the Hawk" here, which is included in Nothing Could Be Further.

Ordering info here.

Saturday, August 13, 2011

If the Lettrist International was Still Around

If I was Guy Debord, editing this week's issue of Potlatch, putting the London (and Birmingham, and Manchester, and ...) riots under "The Best News of the Week" would be an obvious decision. Sadly, I'm not Debord, and the year isn't 1954, so we'll have to wait and see what else will result from David Cameron's austerity measures and continued capitulation to neo-liberal mandates.

The Lettrist International might also ask us to the consider the lyrics of The Clash's "London's Burning" (1977):

All across the town, all across the night
Everybody's driving with full headlights
Black or white turn it on, face the new religion
Everybody's sitting 'round watching television!


But they'd also collage and sample sections from today's ruling by Justice Melvyn Green regarding police behaviour during last summer's G20 in Toronto:

“The only organized or collective physical aggression at that location that evening was perpetrated by police each time they advanced on demonstrators...”

Saturday, August 06, 2011

Icelandic Economics

A great article about how one country is resisting the neo-liberal imperatives of the IMF here. Worth reading in light of this week's American meltdown.

Thanks to Sharon Harris for the link.