recent tracks:

Clover

Why clover? I like it.

I can't think straight enough to provide that thoughtful commentary on torture I'd intended to write. Maybe over break I'll manage. In the meantime, I've been obsessing over my lack of knowledge of 20th century history, and realizing that to gain any practical understanding I'll also need to read up on the history of Islam and the Middle East. Take a look over at my Amazon wishlist (under J. Maxwell W. Greene) to see the fruits of my growing interest in history and politics--well, fruits that still need to be planted (i.e. read). Some of the pieces that have inspired some of my curiosity:

What We've Lost, by William Pfaff (Harper's Magazine).

According to the Washington Post of March 17, 2005, more than 100 people have been "rendered" to foreign countries without legal proceedings or access to the International Committee of the Red Cross, as nominally guaranteed to all prisoners held by the U.S. military. The Post quotes a diplomat from an Arab country that cooperates with the United States: "It would be stupid to keep track of them because then you would know what's going on." An Australian citizen named Mamdouh Habib, sent to Egypt for interrogation, said after release that during his six months in Egypt he had been hung from hooks, repeatedly shocked, beaten, and nearly drowned. When he eventually arrived at Guantánamo, most of his fingernails were missing. Prisoners have also been rendered to the peculiarly brutal regime in Uzbekistan, an American "ally" in the war on terror that recently closed American access to an airfield being used in Afghan operations because the State Department had made a formal protest against the ferocity of official Uzbek repression of political protest in that country.

...
If one seeks a plausible utilitarian explanation for all this, the most reasonable is that the Bush Administration tortures prisoners because of its symbolism. Torture is intended to produce what, in the military assault on Iraq, was called "shock and awe." It is meant as intimidation. We will do these terrible things to demonstrate that nothing will stop us from conquering our enemies. We are indifferent to world opinion. We will stop at nothing.

Harold Pinter's Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech:

Political language, as used by politicians, does not venture into any of this territory since the majority of politicians, on the evidence available to us, are interested not in truth but in power and in the maintenance of that power. To maintain that power it is essential that people remain in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lives. What surrounds us therefore is a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed.

As every single person here knows, the justification for the invasion of Iraq was that Saddam Hussein possessed a highly dangerous body of weapons of mass destruction, some of which could be fired in 45 minutes, bringing about appalling devastation. We were assured that was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq had a relationship with Al Quaeda and shared responsibility for the atrocity in New York of September 11th 2001. We were assured that this was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq threatened the security of the world. We were assured it was true. It was not true.

The truth is something entirely different. The truth is to do with how the United States understands its role in the world and how it chooses to embody it.

The problem is that to truly understand modern history, I believe one needs a thorough briefing in literary theory and semantics--at least enough to have paused at the phrase "thorough briefing." One must consider that we in the US are not immune to the whims of textbook editors (the recent hullaballoo in Japan should lead us to further reconsider our own glossy "history"), and must also be able to read past the words of politicians--but this requires an understanding of social history, as every word of every politician is directed at some constituency.

Reflections on Tolkien and C. S. Lewis brought about a realization of how pervasive certain cultural biases can be, and how stealthily and even unintentionally they can be passed on. Read The Return of the King and The Boy and His Horse and focus on the descriptions of the "dark men" in the former and the Calormenes in the latter.

Anyway, if my current mood continues for the next few years, and I successfully absorb all the material I want to (impossible, but I'll shoot for some at least), I may end up pursuing a grad degree in history or political science either in addition to, or after, or before, or (I hope not) instead of practicing law. I suppose that's assuming I pass the finals of which I am currently in the midst, though.

Ok I'm not going to bother going back and reading over all that but I trust it was full of typos and nonsense with enough seeds of what I meant to say that the meaning might just sprout like dandelions through pavement cracks.

Next up: movies!

Rent **
Better than I expected. The music's good, but maybe I'm too cold and rational (ha!) to understand why none of the characters was willing to hold down any sort of job to pay the rent but somehow found the money for heroin and such. That and Roger is among the worst characters in anything ever.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire ***½
Why couldn't you have made it 3 hours and included a bit more of the meat? Otherwise, basically a perfect adaptation of my favorite of the books. Hopefully, having finally forced Summer to see the first movie, I'll get her to watch the next ones and score another trip to the theater for this one.

Seeing Other People ***
Cleverer than I would have thought given the pretext (which is somewhat obvious from the title), though the climax is significantly less so. One of those painful sorts of comedies.

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe ***
I enjoy the Narnia books, and though C. S. Lewis objected to the idea of their being adapted to film, I think he would probably approve of this particular adaptation. Aslan was quite well-rendered, the acting was terrific, the animation wasn't quite as finished as I'd've expected, but despite Lewis' objections, his books are basically prepackaged movies given their length and emphasis on narrative rather than character depth and motivation.

As for things here, it is late and I ought to sleep, but all is well and peaceful and nice.

Oh man I didn't even get into what was meant to be my main rant, which is something I've ranted on before, I think: how the market ruins information. Now, granted, I know nothing about economics, save some of the most basic basics: to make a profit there must be a demand for a product. The product ought to be tailored to the demand, so as to best competing products. Consider mass media: purveyors of news and information must market to The General Public, not to more specific markets, if they really want to rake in the dough. Thus news is tailored to meet the demand of The General Public, as filtered through the expert opinions of folks in marketing departments. Somewhere in this process, the purpose of which is to maximize sales, the nuance of reality gives way to sensationalistic screams punctuated with exclamation points: "UNITED STATES VULNERABLE!" "NICK AND JESSICA SPLIT!" "BUSH LIED!" "CALIFORNIA COURT BANS PRAYER!" and the truth becomes a secondary or even nonexistent consideration. Yikes. Anyway this is something I'd enjoy studying more, too, along with the benefits and dangers of internet news and *yawn* it's 2:30. Goodnight.