Obama will be assassinated if he wins: Nobel winner Lessing

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/afp/us_vote_nobel_literature_britain_sweden_lessing

Most of us suspect this will happen, even if we will not openly admit it. The U.S. is the most violent country on this planet and second place isn't even close at this point (our "colony" of Iraq is more violent, I suppose, because this is naturally what occurs when Americans try to take something over--violence begets more violence).

Once you go, as I have, to Scandinavian countries as a tourist, you come back here and realize you are living in a "Rollerball"-style anarchic scenario compared to the placid, tranquil (although it might become very boring to an American over time because there's no opportunity for "adrenaline rushes" in a setting that close to paradise) lifestyles of the Danes, Swedes, Norwegians and Finns.

BTW, I have never seen "Rollerball" but here is a synopsis of it from Wikipedia. It's a little too close for my comfort to the reality of what has played out since 1975:


The game

In the film, the world of 2018 is a global corporate state, containing entities such as the Energy Corporation, a global energy monopoly based in Houston which deals with nominally-peer corporations controlling access to all Transport, Luxury, Housing and Food on a global basis.

The film's title is the name of a violent, internationally popular sport around which the events of the film take place. It is similar to Roller Derby in that two teams clad in body armor skate on roller skates around a banked, circular track. There, however, the similarity ends. The object of the game is to score points by the offensive team (the team in possession of the ball) throwing a softball-sized steel ball into the goal, which is a cone-shaped area inset into the wall of the arena. The team without possession of the ball is defensive and acts to prevent scoring. It is a full-contact sport in which players have considerable leeway to attack opposing players in order to take or maintain possession of the ball and to score points; in fact, in this overpopulated future, the object of the game in the original short story is to kill off the players. In addition, each team has three players who ride motorcycles to which teammates can latch on and be towed. The player in possession of the ball must hold it in plain view at all times.

Rollerball teams, named after the cities in which they are based, are owned by the various global corporations. Energy Corporation sponsors the Houston team. The game is a substitute for all current team sports and for war. While its ostensible purpose is entertainment, it also serves to demonstrate a valuable lesson: the individual athletes pale in importance to the team itself (evident in the fact that only their numbers appear on their uniforms, and not their names), just as the individual is meaningless compared with the corporation-centered society, which is paramount. Or, as Mr. Bartholomew puts it, it is a sport designed to show the futility of individual effort.