The Blog of Record

Osama’s first wife, Najwa, who separated from her husband a few days before 9/11 but remains married to him, tells the story of her life with the man in her memoir – “Growing Up bin Laden”. The book was co-written with one of Osama’s sons, Omar:

One night in Khartoum, Sudan, Osama bin Laden decides to take his family — four wives, 14 children — on a camping trip.

He drives into the desert, finds an isolated spot, then has his oldest sons dig ditches in the sand, long enough to fit each person. It’s the early 1990s, and bin Laden believes there’s a war coming between Muslims and the Western infidels. This is training.

“You must be gallant. Do not think about foxes or snakes,” he says. “Challenging trials are coming to us.”

Each child, including a few 1- and 2-year-olds, lies in a hollow. There is no water or food.

As night falls, a child’s voice whispers in the darkness, “I’m cold.”

“Cover yourself with dirt or grass,” bin Laden snaps. “You will be warm under what nature provides.”

Bin Laden’s first wife, Najwa, doesn’t like that idea, but, “I reminded myself that my husband knew much more about the big world than any of us. We were all pearls to my husband, and he wanted to protect us.”

That’s what it was like “Growing Up bin Laden,” the title of a forthcoming memoir (St. Martin’s Press) co-written by Najwa, who remains married to the monster, though she now lives apart from him in an undisclosed Middle Eastern location, with her fourth son — of 11 children — Omar.

It’s a world where women are never allowed outside the house, 12-year-old daughters are married off to 30-year-old al Qaeda fighters, pet dogs are used for target practice and the biggest household fight is over whether Islam allows refrigerators. “Jon & Kate Plus 8″ it ain’t. . . .

Najwa was almost perpetually pregnant, as Osama said it was important to make many warriors for Islam.

An interesting insight from bin Laden about the U.S. and Israel:

As for why bin Laden focused on America, he said: “Remember this: America and Israel are one bicycle with two wheels. The wooden wheel represents the United States. The steel wheel represents Israel. Omar, Israel is the stronger power of the two. Does a general attack the strongest line in battle? No, he concentrates on the weakest part of the line.”

He got that right.

The book will be released on October 27.

Bill Ayers, the Marxist domestic bomber from Chicago who launched Barack Obama’s political career, has admitted what has long been suspected – that he is the real author of Obama’s autobiographic “Dreams From My Father”. He says Michelle asked him to write it for Barack.

Now Ayers wants someone to help him prove it and split the royalties, because Obama, it seems, hasn’t paid him a dime from the millions the book has brought him. Someone needs to take him up on his offer.

Or to do what a commenter to the breaking story suggests:

Buy the book – Dreams, then file a class action lawsuit on your and every other purchaser’s behalf that the book was fraudulently advertised as being written by Obama when, in fact, it was not. (You wanted a book by Obama, not something by Ayers). An attorney who claimed he was involved in the Milli Vanilli debacle said that claim would appear to have merit. The discovery process would be a Blast! (no pun intended)

Notice that this story is not coming to you from a newspaper, whether of record or not. A blogger talked to Ayres and got the admission from him. Were Obama a Republican, of course, the media that will soon be as dead as the trees it kills to print its agitprop would have started investigating every comma in the book the day his face first appeared on national TV.

Brave New World vs. 1984: This cartoon shows why the former was right in its predictions. The totalitarianism scenario of 1984 stayed within the communist block, where it was already in full swing when Orwell wrote his book, with the West choosing the soft, gentle smiley-face tyranny of the Nanny State instead.

(Via Jason Kottke.)

J.K. Rowling is accused of copying a little-known 1980s’ British children’s book to write Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire:

AN author who allegedly invented a Harry Potter-style character years before JK Rowling but died penniless has launched a billion-dollar law suit against the boy wizard from beyond the grave.

It’s alleged that in trying to publish his book Willy the Wizard in 1987, English writer Adrian Jacobs approached the same agent who went on to become Rowlings agent.

Jacobs estate last night issued proceedings in the High Court of England against Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, the publishers of the multi-billion dollar Harry Potter series, claiming copyright infringement.

Sydney celebrity publicist Max Markson, who is promoting the action, said the damages could be up to $AU1 billion.

Jacobs created a character called Willy the Wizard in a 1987 book called The Adventures of Willy the Wizard-No 1 Livid Land.

His estate claims that Rowlings 2000 book Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire copies it substantially and the publisher Bloomsbury has infringed the copyright. . . .

The estate says both books describe the adventures of a main character who is a wizard and both compete in a wizard contest which they ultimately win.

“Both Willy and Harry are required to work out the exact nature of the main task of the contest which they both achieve in a bathroom assisted by clues from helpers, in order to discover how to rescue human hostages imprisoned by a community of half-human, half-animal fantasy creatures, the merpeople in Harry Potter, Mr Markson said in a statement to The Daily Telegraph.

“Many other similarities are described in the Claim filed by the Estate, which include the idea of wizards travelling on trains, famously referred to in Harry Potter as the Hogwarts Express.

“It is alleged that all of these are concepts first created by Adrian Jacobs in Willy the Wizard, some 10 years before JK Rowling first published any of the Harry Potter novels and 13 years before Goblet of Fire was published.

“It is also alleged that, at the time in trying to get his work published, Mr Jacobs sought the services of a literary agent, Christopher Little, who also later became Ms Rowlings literary agent in the Harry Potter series.

The Willy the Wizard book was ultimately published by Bachman and Turner in 1987, however following the stock market crash, Jacobs became bankrupt and died penniless in a London hospice in 1997, Mr Markson said.

Rowling’s publisher says she had never heard of Willy the Wizard.

Interesting that it’s only the fourth Harry Potter book, Goblet of Fire, that is attracting plagiarism accusations.

This is how it looks:

The photo is from this story about Alexander Selkirk, Robinson Crusoe’s real-life prototype.

At 76, of lung cancer. He kept writing until the end, with his last novel coming out in 2008 and a collection of stories due out later this year.

Update: A tribute with links to more.

No, really.

Hitler was far from the only twentieth century Big Man who claimed to be a Big Thinker and a Big Reader.

The New Republic reviews Hitler’s Private Library: The Books That Shaped His Life by Timothy W. Ryback.

Demand for simple explanations of people’s troubles – someone is exploiting you – grows in harsh economic times:

The economic turmoil [in Japan] has provided fertile ground for critics of free-market capitalism. A manga rendering of Kanikosen, a 1929 proletarian classic about the exploitation of fishing boat workers, sold more than half a million copies this year; introductions to Das Kapital and other Marxist tomes were rushed out in its wake. A book by a former broker berating Wall Street bankers is one of the year’s bestsellers.

(Via Norman Geras.)

Some of the opinions are interesting and even funny, such as Daniel Handler’s:

Obama’s list says that he’d like to convey a willingness to face heartbreak and irony, that he’s open to the new and to the experimental, but that he’s serious of purpose and true of heart.

McCain’s list says that sure, he reads books, but he’s not a pansy boy.

Most of them, though, are just what you’d expect from a bunch of Bay Area intellectuals: Obama a profound thinker, McCain an old warmonger, American empire, Bush’s oedipal complex killed thousands of people, etc., etc.

And subtle things like this (emphasis added):

Sen. McCain’s list is designed to make us think he’s a deep reader and historical thinker with a taste for good writing.

Senator Obama’s list is designed to help us see that he is a man of feeling, imagination and breadth, and that his reading is not limited to books that will improve his politics (except maybe for the Emerson).

 (Via Bookslut.)