One of his smaller soap box rants...

 Of the several articles I read about this recent event, I'm struck immediately how the angle of viewpoint throughout the piece seems to focus on the economic disruption and not the direct societal impact that is shown to be possible in this.

But also, there's a few things in particular that I pondered more than a moment on:

 A federal official said it was not considered it a terrorist threat.

So it's the ideology and not the act that determines a terrorist threat?

Gabrielle Zecha and Taj Heniser, visiting from Seattle, had tickets to see “Next to Normal” at the Booth Theater on 45th Street but could not get into the 8 p.m. show because the area was blocked off. But they made the best of the spectacle. “It’s a whole different kind of show,” Ms. Heniser said, adding, “It’s almost the equivalent of a $150 show.”

For it to be worth the $150, there would, of course, have to be at least one dead body.

Onlookers crowded against the metal barricades encircling the area, taking pictures with cellphones and video cameras, although only a swarm of flashing fire trucks and police cars was visible.

If this were my story—I deal in fiction—I'd have the bad guy put a couple of other bombs at some distance from the first (which would, of course, be lamely designed so as to appear to be the work of a deranged lone wolf and not an organized criminal conspiracy) that would be more insidious, and messy.

But that's just the way I'd write it if it were a fictional story.


· • ·

Forbidden Boolean String

According to this article in the LA Times, the internet makes it easier to become a terrorist. Easier than what? I ask, but deduce from the open-ended question they mean easier than without. The logic in that is shoddy, but we'll ignore such a discrepancy in order to have the discussion move past the poor rhetoric it displays.

Another objective flaw in the article is its attention solely to Islamic radicals.

From charismatic clerics who spout hate online, to thousands of extremist websites, chat rooms and social networking pages that raise money and spread radical propaganda, the Internet has become a crucial front in the ever-shifting war on terrorism.

to

[F]iery Internet imans who use English to preach jihad and, in some cases, to help funnel recruits to Al Qaeda and other radical causes.

I've encountered plenty of radical hate-mongering from far more than Islamic voices. I think the easy way to rationally discuss this sort of thing is by just killing everyone who's viewpoint is different than . . . hmmm, that doesn't work because then . . . we'd all have to . . . end up shooting . . . each other.

Okay, to rationally discuss this topic, instead of pointing fingers at just one religious sect of wingnuts, how about point our fingers at all spectrum of wingnuts.

Hmmmm, that really doesn't work either, sing who defines who the wingnuts are?

"Decent society" I guess. Although I've seen damn little proof such a place exists.

And so I tried something. I used Google to help my terrorist indoctrination. But alas! Google failed me. I shan't be able to join my hoped for radical group since, apparently, they don't exist:

· • ·

Ink Blots and Answers

The final paper due for Terrorism in Literature class. A critical opinion paper. Pick a point of view about one of the books read and defend it with examples; must include sources outside the text.

This was really the only book of 9 for the class that I enjoyed reading. It was provocative, alluring, and seductively, like, perhaps, since in a foreign hookah bar and slowly getting stoned from the air you've been breathing for the past hour. And the story has been going on now for a while and is over before you know it.


~•~
(1st draft)


ENG 290
December 10, 2009

Ink Blots and Answers

What is it about some novels that lead a reader to forget they are reading a novel and take what is written to be an actual accounting of events? What sort of protagonist's identity confuses someone into believing the character is the author?

I sit with a cup of Sikkim tea and ponder my own considerations of Mohsin Hamid's short novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist. It is a curious book, combining several aged literary techniques and devices to tell the sort of a story that is genuinely modern. The two mercenary-archetypal main characters could certainly have met at almost any place—in almost any time in history—but the complexities of national identity and extenuating circumstance bred by the modern age of terrorism, is uniquely contemporary. The two blend in Hamid's novel, and we as readers, are given a brief and wonderfully rich tapestry to assess or formulate our own opinions about national identity and to consider what circumstances could drive an individual to the actions they take.

The framing device of a dramatic monologue is no longer common in modern written literature—although in film, the benefit-from-hindsight voice-over is not uncommon—and the story-within-story technique (placing the characters in a tavern to weather a storm, even if that storm exists only symbolically within themselves) predates The Decameron. Both are used to great effect by Hamid, and, along with a curiously successful second-person narrative voice where the protagonist speaks directly to the reader through a narratively silent stranger he meets in a café in Lahore, Pakistan. We are pulled in to become intimately involved with the story this man reveals—even as he obscures his own motives. Yet in using such literary devices, Hamid never goes long without reminding us we are reading a novel.

Early on, Changez (our Pakistani story-teller), sits in a café and courteously offers assistance to a stranger. Changez quickly shares his assessment of this stranger with us—basing his assumptions on what is presented to him, "Your hair, short-cropped, and your expansive chest ... are typical of a certain type of American; but then again, sportsmen and soldiers of all nationalities tend to look alike" (Hamid 2). Even as Changez strikes directly at some particulars to this individual, we are shown that even with such astute observations, generalities still exist. The framing technique of the novel is set firmly in place a paragraph later when Changez asks this nameless stranger, "Come, tell me, what are you look for? Surely, at this time of day, only one thing could have brought you to the district of Old Anarkali ... that is the quest for the perfect cup of tea."

We are invited to civil discourse over a cup of tea, but the civility of conversation belies the depth of fervor and animosity within these stories revealed, for this is a modern tale of extremist beliefs in action and worldwide repercussions of the September 11 terrorist attacks It is these attacks that lead our protagonist—long before he sits in civil discourse with an American stranger in the Lahore café—to alter his own life and desires to become a radical terrorist himself. Which leaves us, the readers of his tale—to wonder about any sympathy we might offer him. Why do we feel for him and his situation? Or, contrarily, why don't we? Just as the story he tells us is left deliberately ambiguous, our emotional involvement with Changez is left in this vague state.

Mid-way through his tale, Changez shares with us his personal feelings about the attacks of September 11: "My thoughts were not with the victims of the attack—death on television moves me most when it is fictitious and happens to characters with whom I have built up relationships over multiple episodes—no, I was caught up in the symbolism of it all, the fact that someone had so visibly brought America to her knees. Ah, I see I am only compounding your displeasure" (73). Again, Hamid reminds us of our place as readers—as an audience to his tale. This literary self-awareness does break the theatrical "fourth-wall" in addressing us as readers, but this is a device in the story which leads some readers—if they haven't already—to mistake the real and the fictional.

In a popular review of the novel, Amazon.com user Freefall comments, "The book is a semi-autobiographical sketch of a fundamentalist who is only too willing for the cause ... There is nothing in the novel or in the realpolitik that would make a Western audience appreciate his world view. Why should a westerner feel any warmth for the protagonist being a Pakistani...?" This assessment begins with a misunderstanding and concludes with a thinly-veiled prejudice. To have a protagonist share certain traits with an author is nothing new in fiction. Just as assuming some events in a novel might stem from an author's real life is common in some readers. But to make the statement that a novel is semi-autobiographical, is, in this case, akin to hoping that belief is true so that the bigoted opinion already held can be rationalized and given some validity. It is also common in human nature to believe much of what one hears or reads, especially if it sounds like something we already believe.

In the New York Review of Books, Sarah Kerr strikes to the heart of this matter. "Maybe we the readers are the ones who jump to conclusions," she offers, "Maybe the book is intended as a Rorschach to reflect back our unconscious assumptions." This Rorschach analogy allows us to make sense of the confusion this novel breeds in readers. S. Mitra ("A reader from India/USA"), illustrates this confusion: "The authors [sic] initial reaction to September 11th was to be 'remarkably pleased' because somebody had so visibly brought America to her knees.(Pg 72)." Finding the poetic irony about a superpower Goliath struck by a tiny David is not necessarily reflective of sympathetic feelings for that David. Especially when that irony is discovered in the context of a character created for a fictional story. To confuse the creator with their work is myopic of a reader and shows—like a Rorschach ink blot—more about that reader than the novel they opine.

Another Amazon.com reviewer of Hamid, "David" Wordsworth, complains at length and summarizes numerous points which are repeatedly mistaken in popular reviews, "As a Pakistani, you have come to know the best that America has to offer. Were you not admitted to the Ivy League at Princeton ... receive a high-paying job at a prestigious New York financial firm...? Did you not fall in love with a ... woman from New York? Did you not enjoy prime business assignments and bonuses at the expense of your American counterparts...? And yet you sympathize with the 911 attackers. Isn't this odd attitude of yours quite curious? It makes me think. You then become an anti-American advocate in your native land."

Again, the mirror of art has been misunderstood to be a window. It is the prerogative of fiction to create characters who express viewpoints which might otherwise not be heard in any kind of rational forum. It is in the author's realm of creativity to present a character that may be similar in many way to themselves, but should not be taken as ciphers for their own identities. If we examine Lolita, are we to jump to the conclusion that since Humbert Humbert is a literary scholar just as Nabokov was, that the novel is auto-biographical?

The Reluctant Fundamentalist is certainly not a work of complete fabrication; it is a fictional story deliberately designed to be a complex metaphor for this very real and confusing world in which we live. This is why the soil is fertile to grow such ripened misunderstandings. Hamid himself seems to have foreseen this in the final equivocal scene: "I know you have found some of my views offensive; I hope you will not resist my attempt to shake you by the hand. But why are you reaching into your jacket, sir? I detect a glint of metal ... I trust it is from the holder of your business cards" (184).

Even as Changez gives us every reason to expect bloodshed after we turn this last page, he remains civil and courteous to both us, his audience, and to his unnamed American companion, who may well be dead a moment after the book concludes.

A literary critic once stated that good fiction should ask more questions than it answers; if an author has answers, they should write religious tracts. When we as readers close this book, having finished Changez's story, when might pour ourselves another cup of tea and consider the motives, meanings, and intentions demonstrated in this novel. What we are likely to find—from an objective viewpoint, in any case—is that Mohsin Hamid has given us more ink blots than answers.

•

Works Cited

Freefall. "Willing Fundamentalist." Amazon.com.

17 Jul. 2008. Web. 1 Dec. 2009.

Hamid, Mohsin. The Reluctant Fundamentalist.

London: Harcourt, 2008. Print.

Kerr, Sarah. "In the Terror House of Mirrors."

New York Review of Books.
11 Oct. 2007. Print.

Mitra, S. "A not (entirely) amusing piece of

hate mail from Pakistan." Amazon.com.
11 Aug. 2007. Web. 1 Dec. 2009.

"Mohsin Hamid." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.

28 Nov 2009, 21:43 UTC. 10 Dec 2009.

Wordsworth "David" "A Reluctant Counterpoint

for Changez." Amazon.com.
29 July 2009. Web. 1 Dec. 2009.

· • ·

Fun and Laughing in an Iranian Prison

Jon Stewart saved the day on this one. I had a couple of sketches I'd written as responses to other articles but didn't care for either one. Then I watched the Daily Show and saw this piece.

The response is always easy to write when I find the source of the article exasperating.


~•~


ENG 290
December 1, 2009
Portfolio 5: Fun and Laughing in an Iranian Prison


Maziar Bahari was arrested following the 2009 Iranian elections and jailed for 118 days. While in prison, Bahari was repeatedly beaten and tortured. One of the principle pieces of evidence for the prosecution was an interview Bahari gave to the Daily Show as part of a comedy news story. The Iranian government didn't seem to comprehend sarcasm.

In mid-June, in the aftermath of the Iranian Elections, Bahari met Jason Jones of the Daily Show at a café in Tehran. In the comedy piece as aired, Jones interviews three people who had been detained in the few days since they had filmed. One of them, as Jones tells it, is "Iranian-born Newsweek contributer Maziar Bahari," who shares with Jones "his message of radical reasonableness" (sic).

On the morning of June 21, Bahari was arrested without charge and held in the Evin Prison until October 20. The story of his detention is detailed in several "mainstream" news outlets, a segment on CBS's 60 Minutes and an article in Newsweek. But Bahari also paid a visit to The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

Opening the interview, Stewart says, "You were imprisoned in Iran—" and Bahari interrupts, "—because of you."

Bahari speaks of seeing the absurdity in his situation—being under arrest primarily for a seemingly innocuous interview with a comedy report—even as he was being interrogated about the election protests and questioned about accused dissidents. This situation, a clash of staunch theocratic minds of official Iranian government and sarcastic satire of an American comedy show interview, speaks loudly in microcosmic tones about the larger situation.

Terrorism no longer is seen in association with blown up city pubs or civilian bodies in a bread market, but is thrown in among political protests, public gatherings, and, it seems, comedy skits.
Satire and sarcasm have long be held forth as primary evidences of guaranteed freedom in the United States—the Western World. Which makes the clash of culture and understanding that much more sorrowful—more tragic—when it becomes the reason for someone's imprisonment and torture.

But in such a misunderstanding, it seems as well that there is something poetically ironic that humor has such power. For, in facing great tragedy, being able to laugh afterwards is one sure sign that compassion and humanity have survived.

Works Cited

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

"Jason Jones: Behind the Veil - Persians of Interest."
22 Jun. 2009. Online video clip.
Thedailyshow.com. Accessed on 1 Dec. 2009.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

"Maziar Bahari." 30 Nov. 2009. Online video clip.
Thedailyshow.com. Accessed on 1 Dec. 2009.

"Maziar Bahari." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.

1 Dec 2009, 05:47 UTC. 1 Dec 2009.

· • ·

Munich: Passion, Justice, and Vengeance

Speilberg is really his own worst enemy. Individual scenes he shots are sometimes marvelous, but the entirity of his films get burdened with his moralizing and Being Very Important.

Munich is, to my way of thinking, exactly that. I tried watching it a few years ago for enjoyment, found it awful, and turned it off less than an hour into it. Watching it for class I deconstructed what about it I found so inept.

This was the subject of an in-class presentation, so this paper is kind of a second draft of that, taking the considerations of what came up in the Q&A after my presentation.


~•~
(2nd draft


ENG 290
October 1, 2009
Essay 1

Munich: Passion, Justice, and Vengeance


"Revenge is an act of passion; vengeance of justice.
Injuries are revenged; crimes are avenged."
―Samuel Johnson

In Steven Speilberg's film Munich (2005), we are presented with a situation that "seeks not to exonerate, but to complicate" (Dr. Lisa Pollard) the seething relationship between Israel and, via Black September, Palestine. By drawing comparison to, and deliberately blurring the ethical lines between, a terrorist conspiracy that murders Olympic athletes and the State of Israel bypassing their own laws in order to perpetrate assassination, Speilberg constructs a complicated scenario.

The initial part of the film displays for us intimate views of state-sanctioned killings—including the collateral damage of a dead child as well as injury to several uninvolved parties who happen to have had the misfortune of staying in a hotel room next to the intended target of the Israeli hit squad. Avner conducts these first killings out of duty to his country and homeland, but during one mission, Avner and his team come face-to-face with some PLO members. Avner passes himself off as a Palestini and during a conversation between him and the PLO leader, Ali, the first seeds are planted in Avner's mind that perhaps there is something more to be considered about his mission than protecting his homeland and his duty to his country. Blindly following orders can take him only so far, and that what is truly important in life is his own family.

Here is the structure for a tale that promises biting sharp commentary upon a knotted political issue—that of terrorism and assassination, revenge and vengeance; where the lines are drawn between these ephemeral and ever-changing ideologies. Yet, at the climax of the film, comes a questionable scene that threatens to unravel the tangled skein on which Speilberg weaves his mortality tale.

Having established at the beginning of the film that, like millions of others around the world, Avner watched the news of the massacre on television, it becomes a source of concern and question when Speilberg inserts a flashback to the murder of the Israeli athletes interpolated with Avner having sex with his wife.

There are two major possibilities concerning this scene and its placement in the film. If the flashback is meant to be a narrative perspective—that is, from the omniscient point-of-view of the narrator of the film—then it its placement at this juncture of the story seems less-than-ideal. Authorial intrusion of such a violent and powerful flashback in the midst of such a crucial and intimate scene is crass and invasive. It threatens to undermine one of the key elements Speilberg wishes to address in this story, that of ethical responsibility. The authorial theme here is one which raises the questions of does a nation or state have the right to exact eye-for-an-eye revenge?; who pays the cost of accountability—the people who sit in seats of power within a governmental body or the people who are being governed?; and what is the value of trading compassion for blood knowing it will only extract a response in kind, and continuing the vicious spiral of murder and terror? The character of Golda Mier herself calls these questions to the fore during an early scene when she rhetorically asks of her advisors, "Every civilization finds it necessary to negotiate compromises with its own principles." She has considered these questions and draws her own answers to them. We wonder if Speilberg, in crafting his film to raise these questions, has concerned himself with what sort of answer his audience might conclude from his narrative. Seeking ethical answers isn't as crucial as drawing up the proper situation in which to even ask the questions. By inserting an authorial intrusion into the film at this point begs the question of why now and why frame it with this intimate scene of Avner and his wife?

The other possibility here is that the flashback is meant to be some sort of personal rumination on Avner's part. But if this is so, similar questions must be addressed, as well as the simple discordant fact that if the flashback is meant to be from Avner's viewpoint, it can only be seen to be a false memory. And by having Avner remember an event as his own that he took no direct part in is a misrepresentation that denies us as an audience the chance to be directly confronted with Avner's own person atrocity exhibit. His own killing of state-assigned targets—and especially the people who were collateral damage of his assassinations—has led him, and us, to a point of ethical turmoil and moral uncertainty. Instead of coming to this dire convoluted and intrinsically important point, we fall back upon a saccharin cliché of cinematic sorrow, the standard homogenized we-should-all-feel-bad-about-this, moment of pre-fabricated emotion where the Israeli athletes are murdered by Arabic terrorist in slow motion with heightened sound effects and a lingering shot of bound hands folded in prayer. This unnecessarily simplifies the entangled issue at the heart of, not only the narrative of the film Munich, but also of the actual tragedy that unfolds in the world around us each day.

Just as Avner’s wife covers his eyes to metaphorically hide his traumatic visions—regardless of whether or not they were his to remember—by placing this flashback scene in a spot which leaves its meaning and source ambiguous at best, Speilberg covers our eyes to the fertile complexities he has entreated us to consider. In the end, we are left with neither complication, nor exoneration, merely shallow platitudes in an ever-deepening dilemma of misery, contempt, and futile animosity.

If we accept as reasonable truth, as the epigram from lexicographer and moralist Samuel Johnson states at the beginning of this essay, that "injuries are revenged; crimes are avenged," then we can see that the killings depicted in Munich are examples of both vengeance and revenge. Given that, no matter which perspective was intended with the flashback scene placed where it is in the film, the question posed to us is who has acted with vengeance and who has sought to extract revenge? Any answer we conclude must certainly complicate the issue and never should those involved be exonerated.

•

Works Cited

Munich. Dir. Steven Speilberg.

Perf. Eric Bana and Ayelet Zurer.

Universal, DreamWorks SKG, 2005. DVD.

Pollard, Dr. Lisa S.

"ENG 290—Terrorism in Literature."

UNCW, Wilmington. 27 Aug. 2009. Lecture.

· • ·

A Right-Wing Terrorist is A "Good American"

This was the first of five papers (I have three of them in this archive) we had to write as part of a media portfolio for Terrorism in Literature. The idea was to find sources in the media that featured stories about, or including references to, terrorism.


~•~
(1st draft)


ENG 290
September 17, 2009
Portfolio 1: A Right-Wing Terrorist is A "Good American"


When Bert Stead stepped up to the microphone at a town hall meeting in Redding, California, he probably didn't think much about what he was going to say and what impact his potentially careless words were going to cause. Yet when he opened his mouth, the words that came out were careless, and carry such impact as to call into question the relative meaning the culture of America for most of the past decade.

"I'm a proud right-wing terrorist," he said. And nearly 200 people attending the meeting cheered.

The California Congressman present, Wally Herger, replied, "Amen, God bless you. There is a real American."

In an examination of the meaning of words, it would be easy to lose focus on "terrorist" in the 15 words spoken by these two men. To keep focus on it, we must overlook the long-ignored meaning of "bless" being "to dowse with blood," or the fact that, at one time, "real Americans" were in fact active terrorists against their ruling government when they set out to form a country independent of the Crown of England. But these days, "real Americans" aren't often equated with "terrorists"—terrorists are the enemy, aren't they? That's what popular culture and almost all spectrums of the media have continually stated since mid-September, 2001. Terrorists are the ones who attacked America. They must be hunted down and killed.

But suddenly the term "terrorist" is being used in a manner that it should be something to be proud of. Patriotic, even.

"A proud right-wing terrorist."

In the mid-1990s, a proud right-wing terrorist and real American, disgruntled at what his country's government had down to its own private citizens in Ruby Ridge, Idaho and Waco, Texas, took matters into his own hands and blew up a federal building in Oklahoma City. Timothy McVeigh was a former Army soldier who had been decorated with a Bronze Star for his service and injury in the first Persian Gulf War. This latter fact marks him as a "real American," his philosophical beliefs would place him in the "right-wing" portion of most political cross-sections, and his actions in Oklahoma brand him as a "terrorist."

Is this the standard Bert Stead of Redding, California held himself up to when he declared himself a proud right-wing terrorist? Are McVeigh's actions sanctioned by Rep. Wally Herger when he replied with a beaming smile and a "God bless you"?

Mr. Stead later commented that what he meant to say was that he was a proud right-wing extremist. Not a terrorist. As if that correction alters what we are to infer from his comments.

It also demonstrates just how meaningless the very words terrorist and extremist have become in our eight-plus years of inundating ourselves with these monikers of fear. When words, however frightening and powerful they are meant to be, get used casually and as carelessly as Mr Stead and Rep. Herger have done, they lose not only their potency to be the signifiers they are meant to, but the words themselves become trite and flaccid. They lose their value to inflict their strength upon our vocabulary, our context, our culture, and ultimately, our mental images of what it is to be filled with terror.

Fear is the most powerful human emotion. And it serves an important role in our lives. Without fear, we wouldn't know to avoid certain things; we as a collective people and individuals would never know when it was time to exercise our courage. When the words used to convey the importance of understanding are abused, we have a lot more to fear than fear itself.

Works Cited

Boerger, Paul. "Right wing 'terrorist' says he misspoke."

Mount Shasta News. Mount Shasta Herald,
28 Aug. 2009. Web. 15 Sept. 2009.

Michel, Lou, and Dan Herbeck. American Terrorist:

Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing.
New York: Harper, 2001. Print.

Skordelis, William.

"Since when does a right-wing terrorist
equal a great American?"
Examiner.com. Clarity Digital Group,
30 Aug. 2009. Web. 15 Sept. 2009.

· • ·