The axis of anti

The Observer reports that a wave of books critical of the US stance on the war have become bestsellers in that country, with Greg Palast‘s The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, Michael Moore’s Stupid White Men and Noam Chomsky’s 9/11 forming the “axis of anti”.

The same issue of the paper also prints a version of an excellent speech by actor and director Tim Robbins in which he says “Basic inalienable rights, due process, the sanctity of the home [in the US] have been compromised in a climate of fear.” He goes on to relate a great story of how his 11-year-old nephew stood up to his schoolteacher who was ranting about Robbins’ wife Susan Sarandon‘s anti-war stance.

The Independent today features a savage article from John Pilger about the aftermath of the war, warning against the “unthinkable” of what was done and both that and our reactions to it becoming “normalised”. (The Independent however has since started to charge for archived articles at the rate of £1 a time; I have my doubts about how long that’s going to last.)

While we’re on the subject of the war, I must put in a belated plug for playwright David Hare’s beautifully written piece from the Guardian on 12th April, “Don’t look for a reason”, sub-headlined “All the explanations for this war are bogus – Bush only invaded Iraq to prove that he could.” Hare also points out what I mentioned a while back about the lack of a leader in the anti-war movement. I have to wonder if Tim Robbins, who played a nastily ambitious US politician in his brilliant political satire Bob Roberts a few years ago, would consider running for office…?

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Meanwhile, poet Christopher Logue writes a nice piece about his friendship with the late Leonard Cohen-inspirer, Sir Paul Getty. He writes that when they first met, Getty was surrounded by books, many of which were poetry, among them “a selected edition of Robert Herrick, the loveliest book I had ever seen, and an example of wonderful English bookbinding. From, I think, the Doves Press, it had a soft green leather cover studded with a hundred primroses tooled in gold. ‘You see,’ he [Getty] said, ‘when you open it,’ opening it, laying it on the side table, ‘it stays open. And when you close it,’ closing it, ‘there is an almost silent gasp.'” Which will probably end up in next week’s Pseud’s Corner, but you have to admit that books just don’t do that anymore, do they?