Barry Graham's Blog, page 118

Across the globe a billion people live on less than a dollar a day; another billion on less than two. This is dire, extreme poverty and it is unconscionable. It will take a global political revolution to end it.

Few Americans live under such terrible conditions. Of course, that does not mean that we have no poverty. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, 22% of American children live in poverty. That’s 15.7 million kids. In the City of Los Angeles alone, nearly 100,000 men, women, and children sl...

After making yesterday’s post in which I said there was no evidence that Julian Assange was guilty of the crimes he has been accused of, but not charged with, I was told by some people that my view smacked of “male privilege” and that by not supporting Assange’s extradition I was “supporting rape culture.”

I’m getting to used to these claims; I’ve been hearing them since I first wrote about Assange.

We undeniably live in a rape culture, which is a...

Owen Jones, author of the excellent book Chavs, has a piece in today’s Independent in which he argues that Ecuador should not offer asylum to Julian Assange.

Jones seems to miss the point that Assange has not been charged with anything. Not rape, not any sex crime. Two women he was having sex with got angry and made some accusations only after they found out about each other. I have seen not a shred of evidence to suggest that he might be guilty of such crimes, which is probably why - ag...

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I’m happy to hear that When It All Comes Down to Dust has been chosen as one of the best books of the year so far by Scott Montgomery at Mystery People. I’m in good company with Peter Farris, Joe R. Landsdale, Don Winslow, Megan Abbott and Ace Atkins.

You can order it from any bookseller except forThe Poisoned Pen in Scottsdale, AZ, where my books are banned because I don’t support racism.

In this post on boingboing, Xeni Jardin - who’s currently being treated for cancer - suggests that purveyors of fake cancer cures are murderers. I agree with her for the most part. I think the ones who’re not deliberate charlatans are fear-driven zealots.

I’m suspicious of most “alternative” medicines, because if a treatment works, it quickly becomes mainstream. If it’s been around for a while, and it’s “alternative,” that means it...

criminalwisdom:

Homeless men lined up for a place to sleep in New York during the dirty 30s. (Tywkiwdbi)

Last year I reviewed Richard Wehrman’s poetry collection Light Was Everywhere. Since then, I’ve regularly received new poems from him by email. He now has a website, to which he plans to add new poems each month.

Wehrman only began writing in 1999, but his best poems contain the kindness, craziness and wisdom of a lifetime.

I’ve been rereading William Hope Hodgson’s collection of stories Carnacki the Ghost-Finder.

The book was published in 1913. I first read it in paperback form in a rat-infested coldwater tenement in Maryhill, Glasgow. That building was demolished decades ago. Now I’m reading the book on a Kindle in an air-conditioned house in the Sonoran Desert, a place that would kill me but for the technology that keeps the heat at bay.

It occurs to me that the Kindle, and the air-conditionin...

Nick Hentoff comments:

So, Barack Obama didn’t prosecute any of the CIA agents who tortured suspects during interrogations. Barack Obama didn’t prosecute any of the CIA agents who destroyed the videos of the torture, in violation of a Federal court oder. But Barack Obama is prosecuting the CIA agent who told the press the violations of law Barack Obama refuses to prosecute. Par for the course.

To order, click here.