"There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in"
(Leonard Cohen)
"Ignore all proffered rules and create your own, suitable for what you want to say"
(Michael Moorcock)
"Look for your own. Do not do what someone else could do as well as you. Do not say, do not write what someone else could say, could write as well as you. Care for nothing in yourself but what you feel exists nowhere else. And, out of yourself create, impatiently or patiently, the most irreplaceable of beings."
(Andre Gide)

"I want my place, my own place, my true place in the world, my proper sphere, my thing which Nature intended me to perform when she fashioned me thus awry, and which I have vainly sought all my life-time."
(Nathaniel Hawthorne)
“A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.”
(Franz Kafka)
"All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated"
(John Donne)
“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”
(Robert J. Hanlon)
"Life is beautiful, but the world is hell"
(Harold Pinter)

Saturday, December 12, 2009

Defend & Support Peter Watts!



The outstanding science fiction author and scientist, Peter Watts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_watts), has recently been the victim of an unprovoked and vicious assault by members of the US Border Patrol. Now, Watts - the victim - faces a felony charge of "assaulting a federal officer" and a possible two-year prison sentence. Of course, defending this charge will cost a fortune, and an inadequate defence could cost Peter his home, his livelihood and his liberty. Peter's friends and supporters are now busily raising money for his legal defence and fees - unfortunately, and grotesquely, justice does not come cheap. Give him your support!
To find out more, go here: http://www.boingboing.net/2009/12/11/dr-peter-watts-canad.html; and also here: http://tinyurl.com/ybbojlb

And in Peter's own words:
"If you buy into the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum physics, there must be a parallel universe in which I crossed the US/Canada border without incident last Tuesday. In some other dimension, I was not waved over by a cluster of border guards who swarmed my car like army ants for no apparent reason; or perhaps they did, and I simply kept my eyes downcast and refrained from asking questions.
Along some other timeline, I did not get out of the car to ask what was going on. I did not repeat that question when refused an answer and told to get back into the vehicle. In that other timeline I was not punched in the face, pepper-sprayed, shit-kicked, handcuffed, thrown wet and half-naked into a holding cell for three fucking hours, thrown into an even colder jail cell overnight, arraigned, and charged with assaulting a federal officer, all without access to legal representation (although they did try to get me to waive my Miranda rights. Twice.). Nor was I finally dumped across the border in shirtsleeves: computer seized, flash drive confiscated, even my fucking paper notepad withheld until they could find someone among their number literate enough to distinguish between handwritten notes on story ideas and, I suppose, nefarious terrorist plots. I was not left without my jacket in the face of Ontario’s first winter storm, after all buses and intercity shuttles had shut down for the night.
In some other universe I am warm and content and not looking at spending two years in jail for the crime of having been punched in the face.
But that is not this universe.
Stay tuned."

(http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=932 )
For general updates, see: http://www.rifters.com/crawl/ ("Squidgate")
For what it's worth, I know how it feels - albeit on a smaller scale, of course - to be the victim of a vicious assault, only to find yourself become the target of victimisation & lies: while your assailants not only get off scot-free, but are actually 'rewarded'. It can really rankle, if you let it!

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