Recent Stories with tag paul constant

WikiLeaks' Twitter stream

Already someone with a lively sense of irony has visited Amazon's listing for the book The Pentagon Papers, writing:

Amazon pulled Wikileaks from their site because it represented classified government documents. So what is the Pentagon Papers still doing on this site? Oh right, Amazon wasn't around in 1971 to cave in to pressure from right wing politicians to betray the First Amendment right to publish classified materials that have been leaked by others.

TechFlash reports that Pentagon Papers-leaker Daniel Ellsberg himself is calling upon Amazonians to get into the transparency habit:

This would be a good time for Amazon insiders who know and perhaps can document the political pressures that were brought to bear—and the details of the hasty kowtowing by their bosses—to leak that information.

At issue is Amazon's claim that because WikiLeaks violated their terms of service hosting agreement by posting material they didn't own, Amazon was forced to terminate their hosting services--that is, it wasn't in response to governmental suasion.  The Stranger's Paul Constant isn't buying it: "They need to issue a brief, clear statement on their information policies so consumers know where they stand with Amazon. If they're not going to fight for their customers' rights, their customers need to know that."

Amazon's hosting of the material aside, Salon's Glenn Greenwald can't understand why Tableau, a Seattle interactive graphics software company, also agreed to pull WikiLeaks charts in response to a request by Senator Joe Lieberman, chair of the Senate Homeland Security Committee. "These charts contained no classified information whatsoever, and disclosed nothing about the content of the cables," writes Greenwald. (See an example here.)

Kirkus Reviews calls Matthew Flaming's debut novel, The Kingdom of Ohio, "impossible to resist," praising its "marrying poetic prose with hints of steampunk aesthetics." Closer to home, the Stranger's Paul Constant labels it "just deadly dull," adding that "There's nothing in the central mystery to entice the reader on."

So clearly it sparks differences of opinion. For me, this Booklicious review nails down the general outlines, and discontinuities, of the work: "Part historical fiction, part alternate reality, and wholly romantic, Flaming’s novel is a conglomerate of popular publishing trends and timeless storytelling elements."

The daily life of a turn-of-the-century New York subway construction worker is vividly evoked; the Kingdom of Toledo's founding by French pilgrims is carefully footnoted; the unlikely romance between young engineer Peter Force and math genius Cheri-Anne Toledo springs up amid their opposition to a powerful cabal starring J.P. Morgan and Thomas Edison.

All is recounted by a peculiar old historian, closing up shop in Los Angeles, who is less convincingly elderly than reminiscent of that stodgy younger man you know who annoyingly litters his speech with literary archaisms. (Not that there's anything wrong with that, young men fond of archaisms, it's just not as significant of advanced age as it is of advanced bookwormery.)

There's an ambition to this agglomeration that isn't actually to write the ultra-selling novel, but to powerfully reimagine a splintering world as worlds of possibility colliding--this, sadly, is a task that exceeds Flaming's abilities, as yet, as a novelist. Fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy ride.... (more)