Screen Violence

Both Fabian and James have posted articles over the last few days about screen violence. I was meaning to respond immediatly but have been busy applying for jobs so left it. Both of them make interesting points. Both of them are worried about what violence does to the watcher. I learn some responses to others off the screen and so am more likely to repeat them. Casual violence breeds a culture in which casual violence is accepted- and possibly there is a truth to that. However I do think its worth in this context putting in two comments- the first is a historical one and the second a partial defence of violence.

Firstly it is worth recognising that as violence on screen has risen, society has got less violent. That might seem odd to many who see levels of crime which are higher than they were fifty years ago. But going back a hundred or two hundred years, violence is definitely diminished. Partly that is a result of urbanisation- anyone living on a farm is much closer to death than your modern day urban horror fan, they see a lot more of it a lot more realistically. Furthermore domestic violence was more common, though less commonly a crime all those years ago. Partly violence on screen may have replaced violence off screen. Don't forget that violent films began wiht the breakdown of Hollywood censorship in the sixties and seventies, a generation split by the experience of Vietnam came back to watch these films and partly that was an act of attempted remembrance and an act of communication- people wanted to communicate what went on out in the field to those that had not fought.

Secondly, as someone who has written about some of the most violent films ever made, violence can be indispensible to art of a movie. In all three of the cases I have just linked to (Casino, Bonnie and Clyde and Scarface) the violence is neccessary to convey the vision. Its neccessary for very different reasons. Scorsese wants to convey the results of corruption, Bonnie and Clyde is about the narcissm of its leading characters and their callousness and Scarface is about madness and its callousness. In all three cases the violence adds something- without it you wouldn't understand the point as well. One of the most violent films I have ever seen is Downfall- but its also a film for which violence is absolutely neccessary- because without it you don't understand the horror of the Third Reich. Ultimately I think films tell us something, often something important. They can corrupt of course. But the test of that I think is whether the violence is essential to the vision, there are very violent films where it is essential. There are others where it isn't essential and where violence seems to be the only point- the Hills have Eyes 2 would be a great example, a film which should never have been made.

I share some of Fabian and James's concerns but I think they are wrong to aim at all violence. Violence can do good things on screen, reminding us of reality or illustrating an idea. But it can be purposeless and a kind of masturbatory pleasure and then it deserves every denounciation. In truth it is the purpose behind the violence which matters, and whether the violence has a point to it, a context which explains it and something we can learn by it.

New thoughts on Curveball

I've posted a more analytical treatment of the Curveball case at the Liberal Conspiracy. Basically I suggest that what this case shows is that the defects in prewar Iraq intelligence were all to do with a lack of international cooperation and a lack of non-politically influenced discussion at the centre of government. Essentially Curveball demonstrates that we need more cooperation in international affairs, particularly intelligence upon which anything in modern warfare depends and we need to be more thoughtful about the politicisation of our civil service.

Bob Drogin, Curveball

In 2003 Colin Powell laid out to the Security Council a series of facts about the Iraqi program to build weapons of mass destruction that he claimed the United States and its allies had discovered. Powell's statement was at its most convincing when he referred to the construction of numerous trucks by Saddam to carry biological agent around Iraq. All of that depended Powell said upon three sources, but the three sources swiftly became one when it was found that two of them were frauds. Indeed as Bob Drogin proves in a recent book, almost everything Powell said about Biological weapons depended on things that the CIA had inferred from one source. Everything he said about chemical weapons depended on that evidence being so strong and the chemical analysts presuming that if Saddam had a biological program he must have a chemical one. Ultimately the conviction of the CIA and of Colin Powell himself in the case depended upon one source- one solitary man who was held not by the Americans but by the Germans in Munich. The man's name is still a secret and noone knows it- his codename was Curveball. Bob Drogin has just written a fascinating book about the case.

Curveball arrived in Germany in 1999 and claimed asylum. Once there as an Iraqi he naturally gravitated towards the German intelligence service, the BND, who interviewed him intensively about his past in Saddam's Iraq. They had noticed that he claimed on entry to Germany to having been a chemical engineer and when they interviewed him, he told them he had been part of Saddam's biological weapons program and gave them details of it. The Germans were persuaded and told other intelligence agencies about Curveball, though they refused to let anyone else interview him- particularly the CIA. The BND and the CIA had historically had awful relations with each other- since the second world war the CIA beleived that the Germans were filled with communist spies and the Germans resented the Americans' obvious lack of trust in them. Personal matters such as CIA privileges after 1990 in Germany and their efforts to force out a German attache in Washington didn't make things better either.

Bad relations between the intelligence services of the two countries meant that Curveball was interviewed by the Germans on their own- only one American came into contact with him until 2004. The Germans interviewed him over a two year period running from 1999 until 2001, by 2001 Curveball was going through a mental breakdown and his story was unravelling. He was inconsistant and seemed to be confusing things. The Germans told other intelligence agencies about him, they told them that he was unreliable and then let it lie. Things had gone cold- Curveball settled in Germany and everything went quiet.

Until that is CIA officers after September 11th and particularly in 2002 began digging up their own files about Saddam's WMD and came across Curveball. They found his evidence interesting and contacted the BND who were non committal, telling the CIA not to trust Curveball. The CIA analysts pressed ahead, what they saw from Curveball they asserted could work, the idea of biological weapons trucks had been referred to once before in 1995 by an Iraqi, there were other sources (later found to be fraudulent) even if they contradicted Curveball and it could be done. There were battles in Langley between the analysts and the operations people. The analysts asserted it could be done, the operations team wanted to know more about the source. Those battles went right up into the heart of the bureacracy and ultimately George Tenet's immediate staff decided that the analysts won, they needed to produce WMD for a White House which was readying for war and this was the peice of evidence they needed.

Collin Powell arrived in the beggining of 2003 to work over his speech with Tenet and his staff. Powell dismissed almost all the intelligence that he had received from the White House, he and the CIA thought it was laughable relying on evidence from the discredited Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress. Powell needed evidence and he wanted it to be rock solid, so he turned to Tenet and Tenet gave him Curveball. Tenet told Powell that Curveball had been checked out, that he had been passed as a good source despite the fact that Tenet's Director of European Operations, Tyler Drumheller, had phoned him that morning to tell him that the source was unreliable. Tenet assured Powell that it could go in the speech and Powell made the famous speech, using artist's impressions to convey the scale of one of these bio warfare trucks.

In the German intelligence agency the reaction was one of stunned fury. They sat there in absolute astonishment as Powell produced evidence that they knew was wrong and furthermore had told the Americans was wrong. The top German spy in Washington had gone as far as to phone his American contact- Tyler Drumheller- to tell him this. But Drumheller had lost the bureacratic battles inside the CIA, lost them because Tenet and his juniors knew that the message that Curveball was a fake would be unacceptable to a White House that was geared up for war. If the Germans couldn't beleive it then neither could the weapons inspectors- especially when they started looking at the sites Curveball had named. Curveball named seven sites and Blix's team went to everyone and found nothing. At the central site he named, they found a wall that prohibited the movement of any large vehicle- a wall that they knew had been there since 1997 because they had satallite photographs.

After the war was over, the US eventually organised a team to start inspecting the sites that they had identified as possible stores for WMD. Some of those sites had been identified from satallite evidence- often the satallite images were just of circular chicken coops- so much so that weapons searchers had t shirts engraved with 'Ballistic Chicken Farm Inspection Team' on the front. At other times steel drums for drying corn had been identified as silos filled with missiles. The Vice President's Chief of Staff Scooter Libby woke David Kay, the chief US weapons inspector, up at 2 in the morning demanding that he search a place in Iraq for WMD- Kay looked at a map and the coordinates Libby had given him were in Libya. Everything kept coming back to Curveball and his evidence but no evidence for his point appeared (save for two trucks originally labelled by none other than George Bush as trucks for the transport of biological agent, and later found to be trucks used for the transport of seeds).

So David Kay and his team started to investigate Curveball himself and what they found stunned them. He hadn't been a chemical weapons engineer, he had been a chemical engineer working in agriculture. He had described meticulously the Iraqi method of distributing seed not anthrax and everything he said about trucks was true only they were never used for WMD, just for agriculture. He had been sacked in the mid nineties and had become a taxi driver. He had a reputation for lying, had spent time in jail for robbery and was an untrustworthy individual. He had made his way to Germany to claim asylum, and wanted to be there to get a mercedes and a nice lifestyle. Everything that they had presumed about him was absolutely and completely wrong. At least one CIA agent almost had a nervous breakdown over the story.

The fact that Drogin has got all this evidence and there is more is stunning. His work is truly impressive as is his skill in telling the tale. Commentators from George Will to Judy Miller have been impressed with what he says. The problem as ever is what it means. Largely Drogin is right in my view to draw attention to the fact that this was a crisis created by an institutional framework. The CIA's heirarchical bureacractic battlefighting meant that people were working towards the will of those at the top. They wanted to impress- finding WMD would impress in the Washington battle. Furthermore the CIA was in constant conflict within itself- operations and analysis despised each other and worked against each other. The Pentagon was seen as the enemy and quite frequently through this the Pentagon and CIA could have seen that Curveball was a fake had they only worked together. Furthermore the CIA was suspicious of the Germans- were they working against the CIA to embarrass it throughout was a question recurring through the minds of various CIA operatives.

This is a fascinating book and story, I reckon there is much more to say about it than we can probe here but it is something that needs talking about. Curveball was a disaster for the CIA, a disaster for the United States because he encouraged a false confidence that WMD were somewhere in the sands of Mesopotamia. The failure of American intelligence in this case not to follow the pictures that they wanted to see, to not fall in love with a story, is something that is very true about the Iraq war.

We are in an uncertain world- and this book reinforces how hard it is to gather good intelligence about that world, and furthermore how much the CIA and Western Intelligence agencies have failed up till now in doing so.

The Dickens Football Team

James Hamilton has just offered up his Wodehouse team, I think though they are good, they would come unstuck against this team that I offer up from the novels of Charles Dickens- it would be a good game, but for creativity and thuggery I think this team would have the beating of anything that the effete cricket playing toff Wodehouse could produce!

The team I have set out plays a 3-5-2 formation.

Goal: Always a difficult position but Joe Gargery seems an automatic choice. Dependable and thoroughly individual, Joe can be relied upon not to make any mistakes and to always take the simple option. A thoroughly modest man, Joe is not one for hissy fits or attempting fantastic saves at the wrong moment.

Left centre half- A problematic position but Ebenezer Scrooge is a natural in it. Miserly in the beggining of the game when he never misplaces a pass in possession, his game becomes more expansive as the game advances. He is always though keen to stop the other side scoring and his grim determination to win means that he is a ferocious competitor and absolutely merciless in the tackle.

Centre-half- Betsy Trotwood fits right in here- she is strong and stubborn and has an innate positional sense. She is also a great captain for the team- a leader of men and women who has the ability both to comfort those in distress and to be ferocious with fraudulent divers. She is tough but fair.

Right centre half- Bill Sikes the thug in this lineup. Sikes is the Norman Hunter of the team- he will bite your legs and leave you on the floor afterwards. He isn't adverse to aerial challenges either and has an ability to intimidate even the most seasoned striker.

Left Midfield- Jack Dawkins, the Artful Dodger, so known because he picks the pockets of opposition fullbacks when they aren't looking, is a skilfull young player, he nips through the midfield and is very creative and cunning. Can send the ball through the smallest gap and is very good at getting away from trouble.

Right midfield- Sam Weller- on the right because of his attitudes to his master Mr Pickwick, this chirpy Cockney can run all day, he is athletic and good at saving situations. But he also poses an attacking threat, he has good vision, he can see the play develop.

Centre midfield- Fagin- the master tactician, Fagin controls the passing of the team, controls the tempo of play and receives the ball. He can pass long ambitious attempts right out into the country, but is happiest with the ball at his feet masterminding intricate moves with the artful dodger on the streets of London. The only player who can control Sikes's temprament, he is vital to the unit.

Centre midfield- Sir Leicester Dedlock stern veteran in the centre of the midfield. Very concerned with the team's shape and maintains tactical discipline. Not the quickest but a very good recycler of the ball from the defence. A traditional style defensive midfielder who minds his estate in front of the defence with the utmost skill. He also serves as Vice Captain.

Centre midfield- Mr Micawber whereas Fagin and Dedlock are masters of the pass and the intelligent positioning, Micawber is the Gerard or Lampard of this midfield. He bustles everywhere always with the same hopeful optimism. Sometimes he can be ineffective- but at his best he can destroy any heep of opposition possession and furthermore surrounded by a supportive team can set moves going towards the Antipodean side of the pitch.

Centre-Forward Ghost of Jacob Marley- a ghostly presence on the field, often people don't notice he is even there but when he arrives he can be absolutely devestating and change the storyline of a game. Has a habit of rising out of fireplaces right onto the pitch into great offensive positions- he is a vital player for the team, motivated purely by a duty to recover his career.

Centre Forward- Mr Tulkinghorn- operates again secretly but a real team player, sometimes too cunning for his own good, he ticks along in the centre of this team with his great authority causing opposition centre backs shock and awe when he arrives on the field. Deceptively fast, deceptively deceitful and always with enough knowledge of the law to bend it using his vast authority to deceive the referees and the courts. Tulkinghorn is absolutely vicious in sending the ball away into goal- he is an imposing centre forward.

Substitutes:

Sub Goalkeeper- John Jarndyce- cheerful and thoughtful Jarndyce is another who is totally reliable even when things are going badly. He always puts in 110% and he has mysterious resources of self knowledge to turn to when things are going badly. Not so good with a high east wind but apart from that curious liability he is a safe pair of hands.

Sub Defender- Ham Peggoty- Dogged and determined, Ham never gives up and is willing to toil against the most skilfull of strikers. He is courageous, rushing into flood and storm in order to get to the ball, he is also a team player, affectionate and friendly in a quiet way.

Sub Defender- Thomas Gradgrind- harsh and dogmatic in his ways, Gragrind is a useful defender. He doesn't regard fancy play as anything other than extravagance and is always able to detect the ball moving and tackle it. Perhaps not the greatest passer of the ball- though towards the ends of games he often improves, he is definitely a traditional stopper and as such can be relied upon.

Sub Midfielder- Nicholas Nickleby always willing to try, always willing to pick himself up after disaster and run towards trouble, Nickleby is a vital substitute who can come on in almost any position from wealthy inheritor to struggling actor in order to help the side. His versatility, knowledge of the game throughout the country and youthful enthusiasm make him the perfect substitute midfielder.

Sub Midfielder- Miss Havisham- one of the most thoughtful plotters of the downfall of men ever to grace the game. She is the mistress of the psychologicla arts, enticing opposition forwards into her imposing lair and then playing balls through to her pupil Estella Drummle. Miss Havisham is one of the great players of her day, if perhaps now a little traditional.

Sub Forward- Estella Drummle- beautiful and skilfull player of the game- if occasionally forgets strategy for tactics, Estella has all the skills you would want a fine player of the game to have. She fascinates centre halves with her intricate footwork before leaving them gaping in astonishment at the beauty of her play, she scores often and a lot and is absolutely heartless in her attacks. She is also supremely confident.

Sub Forward- Amy Dorrit- perhaps too shy and ascetic sometimes but her single minded devotion to the cause demonstrates that she has a talent worth developing. Is a hard worker and a team player and she contributes fully when brought on.

Manager- Jaggers. The formidable lawyer has the personality to intimidate even the strong personailities on this team. By nature he is cautious allowing players to play their natural game but his strong psychological insights into human frailty and his powers of perception are real weapons in the tactical game that modern football is today. Jaggers is quite simply the best in the world at what he does and he knows it.

Team: Gargery; Sikes, Trotwood, Scrooge; Weller, Dawkins, Fagin, Dedlock, Micawber; Marley, Tulkinghorn. Subs Jarndyce, Peggotty, Gradgrind, Nickleby, Havisham, Drummle, Dorrit.

Electability

Reflecting on my earlier post on Ron Paul, made me move to consider something else. Based on this rather interesting article on Powerline concerning how Republican voters should vote in a possible primary made me consider what it is that we actually request from our politicians. For example Paul Mirengoff on Powerline suggests that there are two Conservative candidates running for the Republican nomination (Thompson and Romney) and two Electable candidates (McCain and Giuliani), irrespective of whether you agree with the precise division of the candidates, his point boils down to how a Republican conservative primary voter should choose in such a case. The point could be transposed to the Democratic party too- and furthermore is universal to any political system. Conservatives in the UK in 2005 struggled with whether to vote for the electable David Cameron or the more ideologically hardline Liam Fox and David Davis, the question has bedevilled Labour party politics as well.

Some politicians seem to set a course which leads them to become perfect governors. Bill Richardson on the Democratic side would be a good example of someone whose career has been perfect for attaining high office- a cabinet member, foreign policy experience, a successful executive career and nothing to frighten the voters- Mitt Romney has also spent most of his career proving his competence in a variety of contexts. One thinks of previous Presidents of the United States- Richard Nixon for example or Dwight Eisenhower who brought formidable CVs to their roles. But others don't. The leading example in the UK would be the Labour MP for Birkenhead Frank Field. Field has only once served as a minister, he was number 2 at social security for a year just after Blair came in- but he has always been one of the more incisive and intelligent thinkers about social policy and in some ways has had more effect on UK policy than some of the ministers in that department have had. Field is respected and highly thought of and his contributions are intelligent enough to make ministers stop and think. Field's brand of politician seems to be a diminishing species, but in recent Parliaments investigative thinkers like Tam Dallyel or ideological animals like John Redwood also come to mind as people whose ministerial careers were limited by their influence.

Looking at Ron Paul in the US, what is interesting to me about it is that he looks like this second type of politician. Its probably a reason why he is so popular and it is the reason why inevitably he will fail to get either the nomination or the Presidency. He seems to me to be the kind of candidate who makes other people think. He has ploughed a lonely furrow in Congress- whether you agree or disagree with him. He has also argued with considerable skill for positions which I suspect very few people hold- if so he has perhaps forced people to evaluate why they beleive in the conventional wisdom, even if they still hold to it afterwards. That function is crucial to any political process- and just like Field, Redwood and Dallyel, he is a neccessary part of the political system. It also explains though why I think he could never become party leader- because ultimately following those arguments rigourously to their ends means abandoning the neccessary blindness that goes along with comforting a vast coalition and becoming electable. Paul's virtue is his uncompromising stand for libertarianism as an ideal and that is his ultimate vice as a candidate as well.

Turning back to the Powerline column for a second, it is interesting to think about what this implies for politics. I think what is going on here is a tension between the ideal of what political engagement is and the reality of what a political party is. Everyone involved in politics wants to do what they think is right for their country. That's why people get into politics and don't use their often impressive talents in other ways. But in order to do that people have to form coalitions, and the reality of politics is that none of us precisely agree with anyone else. Consequently most politicians and most people involved in politics look up to the principled evangelists but also look down on them- using words like irresponsible and luxury to describe the way that they express their ardently held opinions. To be consistant is seen as an indulgence because it doesn't reflect the fact that politics is about coalition building as well as being about describing the best way forwards. That tension I reckon will always be with us, so long as we don't slip into dictatorship and the dilemma that Powerline evokes is therefore one that will endure long after Messrs McCain, Romney, Giuliani and Thompson have become obscure footnotes in history.

Internet Fraud

is nothing if not imaginative. Here is a great example of a 419 scam (so called after the point in the Nigerian legal code which outlaws it) about the British National lottery- any British tv watcher will see its a scam, but its worth seeing just to how all these things work, are too good to be true and evaporate with any knowledge of what actually happens, in this case in the National Lottery.

Ron Paul's odd followers

Apologies for sparce posting this week has been in a lot of ways very stressful for me.

Right on to the main agenda of this post, which is Ron Paul. A controversy has blown up in the States about Paul's odder supporters- from white seccessionists to anti-semites to a whole bag of idiots and fools- Paul has attracted his share of weird and sometimes mad supporters. David Bernstein from the Volokh conspiracy and Mona Charen from the National Review certainly think that this support and the fact that Paul hasn't disavowed it create enough of a reason to vote for someone with saner supporters.

Its an interesting objection. To some extent they are wrong- all political movements are coalitions and contain vile and often seriously mistaken people. There are degrees though- and it is worth remembering that one of the best ways to know someone is by their friends. That's why for example the UK Conservative Party was so keen to jettison its former candidate Nigel Hastilow for racist comments and why Ken Livingstone should jettison Miranda Grell. Paul though is in the position of having supporters who he might wish to disavow, a slightly different category- should for instance John McCain or any of the other pro-life candidates explicitly stand up and say that they don't want any violent pro-life enthusiasts to vote for them, should Barack Obama say that he doesn't want the black power movement to vote for him.

To an extent I think Paul is suffering from this partly because he is seen as being an extremist himself. He has positions which he has never explained properly and not been questioned fully on- for instance withdrawing US troops from everywhere around the world that they are stationed at the moment, withdrawing the US from international free trade agreements, abolishing the IRS. Paul has made a career from being an iconoclast- and that's a good career but the point is that then in some cases you need to prove your orthodoxy. Paul hasn't shown himself to be very savvy either in avoiding odd and sometimes racist radio shows and films- as Charen comments- he has allowed himself to appear on them- furthermore he hasn't returned cheques from people operating in the Klu Klux Khan. Partly this is just mischief making from the Republicans as well- Paul is popular because of Iraq- somebody like Charen would scorn any Democratic tactic to use this argument against her 'guy' in November but in this context is quite happy to use the same argument to suppress a Republican insurgency.

I'd be interested to know more about this- whether there are links between Paul and the madmen- I suspect there aren't- how serious Paul is as a candidate- given what he's said I suspect his effect is more of a useful corrective on the Republican party than a serious Presidential prospect.

Werner Herzog eating his Shoe

A while ago, there was a young film maker called Erroll Morris who was struggling to make his first ever film. At that time he came across an older director, Werner Herzog, who encouraged him to make a film and pushed him into doing it. Herzog said to our young hero that should he make the film, he Herzog would eat the shoe he was wearing. Well Erroll Morris made his film, and therefore Werner had to eat his shoes at the first public American screening- this is a video of Herzog eating his shoes and thinking about film, art and politics. Incidentally Herzog is still with us, recently he made the great film, Grizzly Man about a man who goes off to live with bears in the jungle, and Erroll Morris has become one of the great documentary film makers. And despite that nobody else has eaten a shoe on live television since...

American Economic Mobility

Some fascinating data has been issued by the Pew Charitable Trust over the last couple of days. In particular I think its worth thinking about two reports that they have compiled, concentrating on black and white earnings in the United States and on male and female earnings.

The report on Black and White earnings and social mobility is fascinating, it is based on income but the conclusions are rather interesting. The report suggests that there is still an income gap between Blacks and Whites, in the United States at the moment the median family income of a black family is 58% that of a white family. Furthermore social mobility is very differently structured for Blacks than for Whites, you see much more downward social mobility from the middle Class. A majority of Black kids whose parents have middle class income drift downwards, only 31% end up with higher incomes than their middle class parents, whereas for Whites 68% of them end up with higher incomes than their parents. Almost 45% of kids born to black middle class parents will end up in the lowest tenth of the earning population, that compares to only 16% of white kids from middle class backgrounds. I'd be interested to read some work on why this is still true but there is definitely still a disadvantage to being born with black skin in the US, and it seems to be a disadvantage independent of class.

The report on male and female income is even more interesting- because it points out that since the 1970s male income has fallen from 40000 dollars a year to 35 dollars as the average, whereas women's income has risen fast. I wonder in part whether that is to do with the erosion of industrial jobs in the United States and the creation of service jobs- and whether therefore you would see a similar phenomenon in the UK. Social mobility is different as well. Girls from less well off families find it difficult to rise to the upper quartiles and more difficult than their brothers. The authors suspect that this is because of teenage pregnancy which takes a girl out of the educational system at a crucial time, a time which can make the difference between attaining qualifications which aid advancement and not attaining those qualifications.

Its interesting to note though that equality between the sexes in terms of income, is not that far away. But equality between the races is a long way away from being acheived and indeed that situation is not even getting better. It will be interesting to see how these figures change in the years to come as well.

Disarmament

A very interesting Bloggingheads episode involving Jackie Shire and Jeffrey Lewis about weapons of mass destruction and Iraq and Iran. Both Shire and Lewis know what they are talking about- there are some really interesting titbits for example that intelligence that the US gave the IAEA specific leads to investigate, and none of them turned out to be true, and noone ever went back and questioned the intelligence even if it rested on one source. Intelligence that was disputed within the CIA with agents in the field and analysts fighting over what the intelligence about WMD meant and the fact that the German BND knew that the intelligence was wrong and had repeatedly warned the CIA that the intelligence they were using about biological weapons was unreliable. Furthermore the BND's German scepticism was softened by translators in the CIA. They also discuss events in Iran and Syria- I'm going to try and write a piece on Iranian nuclear armament later- but their views are very interesting and worth listening to.

Outbreak of Ego

Its my birthday, I'm 27 and therefore ancient!

Also worth noting that today is World Philosophy Day- so everyone get those thinking caps on!

American Gangster

Iago is one of Shakespeare's most interesting characters, a motiveless malignity according to Coleridge. We should be interested in Iago and his motivation because it brings up the question of what evil is, why men do evil and why they seek the fruits of evil. Ridley Scott's new film, American Gangster brings that question to the fore as well. Based on the life of the first generation of black drug barons in Harlem, Scott focuses on Frank Lucas, a key player in the late sixties and early seventies. Scott though presents us with not one but two characters, much in the mould of Scorsese's Departed, we have the cop and the criminal. And here, again as with Scorsese, they are presented as two sides of the same coin, but what we come back to again and again is their motivation.

Lucas is played with charismatic elan by Denzel Washington and the cop, Richie Roberts by longtime Scott colaborator Russel Crowe. The film concentrates on their stories- particularly that of Lucas and explicitly contrasts the two men. It shows how Lucas arose from the backstreets of Harlem, using South Asian heroine to finance his rise. He sold it cheaper and purer than the competition, effectively breaking the mob's control on it. He used his family to courrier it around and sell it themselves as he trusted noone else. Lucas was not taken in by the glamour of the criminal lifestyle, he sought to hide. He enjoyed his wealth to a limited and covert extent, finding a beauty queen Puerto Rican wife and houses for his mother and brothers to match his new riches. Ultimately Lucas is always in control in every shot of the film that he bestrides.

Roberts, the cop, is not so much in control of his private life. His most important moment there is an admission that he can't cope, not a declaration that he can. He sleeps with anything he can find- the audience of film critics visibly tittered at one unintentionally funny moment when his lawyer begged him to 'fuck me like a cop' and child support officers are always likely to turn up just as he has finished screwing an air hostess! But like Lucas he has rules to which he adheres. Whilst on the job he is a cop, nothing more, nothing less and is defined by his job. So he will hand in his partner if his partner commits a crime. He will give a million pounds back to the police department even if there would be no consequences to taking it. Everything he does in searching for Lucas is methodical, is cautious and thoughtful. Like a master spider, you know throughout the movie he will catch his fly simply because of his policing ethics.

The two men though share something else- and its a question asked of both of them- why? For Lucas the moment comes just after a boxing fight. He realises that he has become a target, because he yielded to his affectionate wife and wore a fur coat to the fight, he became conspicuous. He tosses the fur coat into the fire and watches the flames lick around it. His wife stares at him, uncomprehendingly, asking in her eyes the question why have you done that? For Crowe it comes towards the end of the film and this time its Lucas asking the question. Lucas points out that the million pounds that Crowe handed in would have ended up in the hands of corrupt police officials anyway, he points out to Crowe that whatever he does to Lucas the world will continue to operate and heroine will continue to be sold, why, Lucas asks, bother with this methodical investigation? Why not just take the money and head into the distance, taking back your wife, and living the high life?

Does the film give us an answer? It does through the words of an old mafia boss that Lucas arranges his distribution through. That boss turns to Lucas and says you have a choice, you can be successful and find enemies or you can be unsuccessful and have friends, but you can't be successful and have friends. What he points out is what for Lucas is quite clear, being a successful gangster has a price, the price is the ability to enjoy the fruits of success. The price of victory is eternal vigilance. Ultimately both for Lucas and Roberts ambition has conquered their souls. Lucas could of course run to enjoy the fruits of his success, but he doesn't because he wants to make the final deal. Roberts could leave with his wife and child, but that isn't even in question. He'll stay to catch the villain.

This is a well acted film. Washington commands the screen with a presence unlike most other actors of this age. In one scene, a confrontation between Lucas and Roberts outside a church, Washington stands with all the command and poise of a Spanish aristocrat, a sneer of cold command twisting his lips looking down on this wreck of a man below. Crowe gives a much less overstated performance, but he captures the private shambles and public purity of the cop he plays. It is worth noting that neither man was quite like this in real life- Lucas liked the high life more than Washington did, and Roberts didn't sleep with anything in a skirt. But dramatically the contrast- the tension between desire and ambition makes more sense- its something that Scott and his actors can explore.

That tension is explored less often than it deserves. More films explore the tensions say between family and relationships and ambition- take A Devil wears Prada, superficially a very different film but actually about a similar subject. Scott though is more realistic in the way that he explores family ties and ambition and their confluence. On the one hand, both Lucas and Roberts risk losing their families because of their ambition, but on the other their ambition, we can see, is what allows them families in the first place. In Lucas's case the Puerto Rican beauty that he marries is someone who he never would meet without his nefarious success. There is something of the American Dream here. Both Characters aspire to bring the money home for doing a good job. However in neither case does the model work. Lucas seeks to employ everyone else in his family in his business but ultimately is deserted by them when he falls. Roberts works all hours for his job, only to lose his wife and kids partly because his dedication to being a good man means that he won't take bribes to establish them in life. Again what we see is this contrast- ambition creates a situation where you can help your family, but letting it let rip means that in the end you neglect them or lose them.

There are some problems here too. Ridley Scott loses his complexity when he puts in a corrupt police officer, whose only role in the film seems to be to act with his buddies as a bully and provide a focus of villainy. In that sense Scott offers understanding to the real villain, Lucas, and not to those corrupt enough to be seduced by Lucas- he focuses on Eve and Adam not the snake. Russell Crowe does do his performance rather well- but he is becoming a caricature as well- this performance drunken, manly, tough is becoming the signature tune of an actor who has more interesting work within him. The women characters aren't sketched out well either- neither Lucas's wife nor Roberts's wife are really given any character.

Turning back to the central dilemma, what is interesting about it is the way that American Gangster reflects a society in which doing your job has become the substitute for an ethic. We all know why that is- in the longterm it is sensible not to be pettily corrupt- but that doesn't work obviously with all levels of potential income and the truth is that if you discount public service, there is no reason not to aim for what you can collect. The ethos of ego clashes in this film with the ethos of the job and it isn't obvious that the job wins- its clear that in the long run letting your ego rip leads to disaster, in the long run we are all dead, but it is also clear that not doing so leaves us with the question we would like to ask Iago:

What is the motive of a motiveless malignity?

Poor Novels, Great Films

A fairly interesting article in the Guardian today about the writer behind Rosemary's Baby, Ira Levin. Xan Brooks notes that it is often the worst books that produce the best films- with the exception of Rebecca Hitchcock adapted mainly material which was not classic. The same goes for many of the film noir films, one of the great and productive American genres, which were adapted sometimes from the highly literate work of Raymond Chandler but often from lesser known authors whose reputation today has vanished. We could go on- the same is true perhaps of Truffaut and the French new Wave.

There must be a reason that bad novels make great films- I think it partly rests in what Xan says. That great films expand on the novels- directors get a good story and then expand on its complexity and psychological impact after they get it. In that way they are the authors of the complexity and the interest, but they have a plot provided to them for their use. It simplifies that bit of the work that involves subtle research into plotting, whereas it allows them to concentrate on developing plausible characters on screen. A good novel doesn't allow you to do as much as a director to interpret the book in the same way- because the author has already done that bit- so either you react to the author and show a different motivation, or you follow the author, but you aren't being handed a blank slate.

I do think that that blank slate argument is important though and it accounts for the fact that great novels tend not to produce great films!

The Bungling of Bunglawala

Free speech is a value often abused and misunderstood. A curious case came up earlier this week which made me question some of the statements of that much maligned organisation the MCB.

You see yesterday, Inayat Bunglawala, a spokesman for the MCB, condemned the imprisonment of the lyrical terrorist (so called because she is a girl who likes writing poems about killing people like me on the net) because of what she had said and because she had downloaded manuals to make bombs from the internet, because it was a violation of free speech. Fair enough I thought, there is an absolutist argument about free speech that might suggest that conclusion.

Then I got rather confused. Because I was browsing, as you do, the socialist worker website and I came across a familiar name. That's right twas young Inayat and he was writing about that bill on religious hatred that everyone got up in arms about. Now I'd presumed that Inayat would be taking the same absolutist stance, but oh no. Look over here at the bottom section of the article and you'll find our friend's views about freedom of speech, it is important apparently to balance that against the potential harm and public good of the speech in question.

An interestingly contradictory set of statements one might think! Inayat believes and does not believe in absolute freedom of expression depending on the moment- it is my fundamental right to say that I want to bomb you, my fundamental right to download materials from the internet about bombing and to write poems about how nice your brains would look if only they were blown from your skull, but if I criticise a hegemonic religion and religious establishment that should be banned. Somehow I get the impression that Inayat is more worried about the power of priests than the sensibilities of people, somehow I get the impression that Inayat doesn't really care about Muslims, he cares about Islam as an institutional and ideological reality.

Somehow I think he is opposed to the very set of ideas which promote freedom of speech in the first place- to liberalism itself. Or perhaps its because Inayat just doesn't think blowing up people (Muslim, Christian, Jewish and atheist) is as important as the dignity of his particular Church.

The Salon

Jesse Browner has written a fascinating article in Bookforum tracing the social origins of the salon in early seventeenth century France. A Salon was the indispensible forum for the French Enlightenment- authors like Rousseau owed their importance in part to the charm they exercised in a salon. Browner shows that the earliest salon was that linked to Catharine de Vivonne, a leading aristocrat in early seventeenth century France and patron of arts. Catharine de Vivonne withdrew from the court early on in her life, setting up an aesthetical court nearby to which she attracted writers, artists, noblemen and wits. Her influence grew and even notables like the Prince de Conde, a plausible contender for the French throne in the mid century, went to her to pay her court. In doing so they entered a realm in which wit was the only passport, commoners and women found themselves treated equally at the table so long as they were entertaining conversationalists.

Browner links this phenomena to the rise of the epistolary novel- something that he is surely right to do. He should though link it to a greater extent to the rise of French philosophy- from Pascal to Voltaire, French philosophers relied on the salon for finding patrons and evaluating rivals. Furthermore Browner is too literary in his dating of the Salon's ending. He finds its end in a satire written by Moliere in 1658 which mocks the pretensions of the aristocratic patrons and their literary clients. Moliere's satire may well be devestating but the salon outlasted it- surviving right into the eighteenth century and becoming like the English coffee house a model which spread across Europe. Tolstoy mocks the artificiality of the salon in War and Peace, where Pierre is seduced by the beautiful Helene in the superficial surroundings of the Salon. The Salon like Helene is we are allowed to infer superficial and rests upon the pretence of civilisation and not its reality.

The Salon therefore survived, despite attacks on it right up until the nineteenth century. It survived as a locus of aristocratic female patronage of the arts, particularly in France and those places which emulated the French model of enlightenment. Consequently it gave birth to an ideal of female intellectual engagement and conversation that was one of the motors behind the enlightenment and the emancipation of women. Madame de Stael, the formidable patroness and thinker, would have been impossible without the Salon's creation. It was accused of fostering a society that had left behind martial virtue for female wiles, but its historical consequences were much less obvious than its opponents suspected. Martial virtue, for all the jeremaids of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, has not evaporated and indeed coping with its excesses seems to be one of the major tasks of our own time. The Salon though aided the cultivation of an intellectual revival which is one of our main tools to resist chaos and disorder, it also strengthened the position of women within aristocratic society, something that may have contributed to the great acheivement in the West of this century, the emancipation of half the human population.

The article, with which we started is worth reading, there are further implications to be drawn as I suggest about the Salon form, but its interesting to discuss the seed from which so much art and thought grew.

Terrorists and Gangs

I'm linking to an article I've written for the liberal conspiracy on Terrorism and its relationship to Gang Violence- I think there is something interesting lurking there about the nature of the terrorist threat that we face. Increasingly I have to say I'm coming to a very pessimistic conclusion. Not that we won't defeat Al Qaeda, I think that eventually Bin Laden and his cronies will be caught. But that we will increasingly see this kind of violence repeated all over the world by different groups from different cultures. There is a huge mixture of things going on with terrorism- but I think investigating the nature of violent so called third generational gangs is the way to go. Can I make a plea incidentally that people don't comment here but go and look at the broader article on the Liberal conspiracy site- I think the point is made with more evidence over there and its probably easier to argue if everyone has seen the evidence.

Lions for Lambs

Lions for Lambs is one of many films to recently come out and explore the meaning behind events in the War on Terror over the last couple of years. It has a three foci, three meetings between two people each time that it profiles and seeks to use to explain the disaster that the war on terror has become over the past couple of years. In Washington we see the experienced and canny reporter Janine Roth coming to interview the young rightwing senator Jasper Irvine, in a West Coast University, the academic Professor Stephen Malley has invited along a good but cynical student for a pep talk and out in Afghanistan two friends who studied under Malley get ready to fly out on a doomed mission. All three of these meetings interweave with each other. Irvine is the man whose plan is sending those two soldiers out into the rugged mountainous terrain of Afghanistan. The reason that those two are there though is that Malley encouraged them to think of a life of public service, something he is now encouraging Todd Hayes to think about as well. The contrasts and the connections are supposed to make us think- but they don't and the film fails because they don't.

One of the problems is that dramatically only one of these encounters actually works. The encounter between Meryl Streep playing the journalist and Tom Cruise playing the Senator is wonderfully handled- Cruise has never in his career been this affective or frightening, Streep is at her typically perfect level of performance and the meeting is a real battle of wits and personalities. The two actors throw themselves at the roles- interepreting them with a wonderful degree of subtlety and of course neither of them are ever completely innocent. Were that degree of balance true of the other two meetings then the film would work, but it isn't there. Robert Redford is just too good an actor for his counterpart, playing the student, Andrew Garfield to cope with. Redford dominates their discussion. Furthermore the two soldiers who are swiftly shot down and left alone on the field don't really have much to say to each other, they just suffer and shoot in the darkness, their scenes become purposelessly monotonous (not even obviously monotonous because the director intercuts them with the other scenes) and the audience swiftly gets tired of the lack of action.

The pity is that there is a really interesting film struggling to get out of this not so good film. The encounter between the journalist and the senator is about as good as political film making gets. One could imagine something with the psychological depth of Interview coming out of the dialogue between Streep and Cruise and there is something most definitely there. Their encounter is filled with passion- anyone who has seen the more polished supporters of the war in America will recognise Cruise's character. He blasts Streep off the stage at times with his prenouncement that America cannot lose, cannot lose the war on terror, that there are only two choices and one of them is defeat. You feel the sophistry but find it difficult to resist as does Streep. The point of the dialogue though is that often it is subtle, it requires thought to follow what is happening and were it to be abstracted from the film it might be the most intelligent thing yet filmed about the war on terror, with nuances on both sides.

But the problem is that the director, Redford, doesn't want us to think. He wants to hammer home his points. So we have the other two segments which are meant to remind us of the Senator's indifference to human life. We see young soldiers sent to war and dying in that war, in their countries' service. We see their ex-Professor discuss with a student the injustice of a country which sends the poorest off to fight and die for their oppressors, we see him argue with that student's modish cynicism. And somehow those two lecturing stories seem not to work. The deaths of the soldiers are sad and terribly sad. The lecture of the Professor is impressive to some extent. It is true that I think as I'm sure many others think of the bravery of those off in the wars of our world. But ultimately all those questions are dealt with without nuance. Ultimately the most affecting moment about the public interest is in observing not the virtuous cardboard characters of the soldiers, nor the sophistical sparring of student and teacher, but in the conversation between journalist and senator when the senator reminds her of her responsibilities as a journalist and how she has failed the nation. That is the moment at which it bit home to me that there was a public interest- not in the sermons but in the revelation that she too was a sinner.

We can see it as well in the argument about the war on terror too. One of the major issues about Cruise's character lies in the way that he uses emotion to make his arguments- the emotion of September 11th 2001, the emotional appeals against the evildoers and terrorists. The point that is being made is that we should use our reason- but then that point is lost through an emotional battering ram as crude as Cruise's. Soldiers are dying in Afghanistan, but people were dying before we got there and would definitely die if we left, their deaths are as legitimate. Emotion gets us nowhere- we need to work out the wisdom of courses of action using reason. We might get to the same conclusions as the film makers- indeed I think we would but the emotional appeal cheapens the argument and makes the film a counterpart to the appeals from the right that it seeks to satire.

Ultimately films don't stand or fall by faulty politics- great films were made in the service of hideous regimes, one thinks of Eisenstein's masterpieces in the 1920s. They stand or fall by their cinematic quality- the problem with Lions for Lambs is that the cinematic quality of the film falls short. Ultimately the stories don't mesh well together- the film is too obviously didactic, too emotional in its appeals. The pity is that there is a really good film embedded into this- if only Redford had let Streep and Cruise do their bit we could have had something fascinating, examining both politician and journalist and all the other themes he wanted to bring out. Instead we have a mess, in which the good and the bad coexist and you are left shaking your head at the end, knowing that so much talent went into this, seeing at least three good performances but emerging from the cinema dissatisfied.

This film tries to be great, but it fails. Its a worthy effort but it isn't a successful one.

CORRECTION Both Matt Sinclair and Lord N thought that I really enjoyed the film. I should highlight I didn't. Maybe this review doesn't convey enough what I thought but I thought that the film was preachy and over emotional, not reasoned. The thing is I thought there could have been an interesting film made of the conversation between Streep and Cruise- but that was not the film that came out in the cinemas. I hope that makes sense of the above- and apologise for not being clear.

Crossposted at Bits of News.

Henry's Cat

This was one of my favourite cartoons as a kid- and this is its theme tune- it is the Casablanca of Kid's cartoons.

Greek Homosexuality

An interesting article about ancient Greek homosexuality. Its interesting- I can't vouch for its accuracy as this is a subject on which I'm woefully ignorant but have always been partly intrigued by given the many references in Plato to the practise. It turns out as you would expect that homosexuality in Greece evolved over the years- particularly by the end of the Athenian democracy you had people who were as the author suggests what we would recognise as homosexuals. Homosexuality for some men was a stage in development between asexual youth and the marriage bed- but others seemed to delight more in the company of men than of women. Its an interesting subject and if anyone knows more please enlighten me as to whether the assessment in the article is right or not.

The Tomb of an Emperor

The first Emperor of China is a historical character and his legacy defines in many ways what China is today. He originally was not Emperor of China, but the Prince of a powerful western Kingdom Qin. During his reign as King of Qin, he conquered the other kingdoms which constituted ancient China. The King of Qin became an emperor in 221BC over a vast landmass, stretching perhaps over a third of what is modern China today. His power was extensive- Chinese histories credit him with an almost totalitarian ideology, an aim of unification which stretched to the elimination of any possible rival, including the massacre of 460 scholars and the destruction of older feudal patterns of service and government. He brought in a single currency and connected together the walls that previous Chinese governments had constructed to the north, to build the first defensive Great Wall. The Emperor's dynasty lasted a very short time- within years of his death in 210BC, his son the second Emperor was killed and chaos descended before the rise of the Han Emperors beggining in 202BC.

The Emperor though left much behind him. The Han reigned to some extent in conformity with his principles especially of unity- and the shape of the currency that he had originally drafted remained the same right up until the early 20th Century. Much of our account of his acheivement comes from the Han historian, Sima Qian, who was born in 145BC and whose histories cover the whole of Chinese history from its mythical origins to his own lifetime. Sima Qian was hostile to the Qin Emperor partly because his dynasty replaced that of the Qin, and his history is not a history as we would recognise it in modern terms. Sima Qian writes fables and chronicles and treatises on subjects, the past for him is a set of exempla and a set of dates. He doesn't dwell as we might like him to on subjects relevant to us, but rather has the preoccupations of a Han civil servant: so his book tells us of stories about assassins, stories about how to govern and how not to govern, chronicles of dates and all from a perspective that denegrates the Qin. Despite that Sima Qian is one of the great historians of the ancient world- his name deserves to be up there with the great classical historians.

However we are incredibly lucky when it comes to the Qin Emperor, for in the mid-1970s a peasant in China came across a stupendous find. In the soil his spade hit a terracotta head, and archaeologists coming across to work on the site found not one but thousands of terracotta bodies and artefacts scattered in the soil. Having reconstructed what the site must have been, they worked out that these terracotta bodies constituted a seperate state that the Qin Emperor hoped to rule in his afterlife. At the British Museum in London at the moment, some of those finds are being exhibited. You see all sorts of people that the Emperor required in his afterlife: he has strong men, acrobats, musicians, civil servants, soldiers of all types and even a royal charioteer. Some of these artefacts bring to life stories from Sima Qian's accounts. For example on the Emperor's death, his senior civil servant Li Si kept the Imperial demise secret. He did so by maintaining the illusion that the Emperor was still alive giving orders from his Imperial chariot- and to some extent when one sees the chariot, one can imagine how that worked. The Emperor closeted and secretive and Li Si and a couple of others conspicuously running in and out to receive orders.

The terracotta army itself is shown in all its glory. It is incredible what the craftsmen (probably conscripted) could do. The skill with which the faces in particular are rendered is stunning- the visual impressiveness of what you see makes you reel back, considering that these are faces looking straight at you from thousands of years ago. The picture in particular of a fiery Turkish looking light infantryman stayed in my mind all of last night. The Museum have organised the exhibition in a very proffessional way- first they show you some Qin artefacts and describe the role of the Qin Emperor in Chinese history, avoiding much of the detail but trying to give a non-sinologist a good understanding of what this man was and what he represents. Then you proceed to see the terracotta army and court itself- which is a stunning experience and having it put in context before you see it, it becomes more impressive. The Emperor constructed this army to protect him in his afterlife- it appears they were stationed on the only open access route to his tomb in order to guard it. His tomb itself has never been opened and apart from Sima Qian's fantastic descriptions and some scientific work above the site on concentrations of metals found underneath, noone knows what is there. What we have though is these soldiers- we know they were painted and so their rather mundane colours today aren't as impressive as the gaudy way they were decorated- we know that irises for instance were painted in the eyes and we can tell all this thanks to chemical analysis of the surface of the statues. They are beautifully vibrant and vital. Each has its own character and facial expression, beard and overall look.

China is one of the hardest societies I have ever tried to understand. I have only been there once- but that's once more than most Westerners. Reading its literature and looking at its art is a very foreign experience in the way that reading Islamic literature or even Indian literature is not. Through accidents of history, China seems like another region of the earth from Europe. But its an increasingly powerful and important place- from films by great directors like Zhang Yimou to its economic importance, China is not merely an object of curious interest for the West, it is a place we have to understand. This exhibition therefore is a wonderful opportunity to learn something about China and the way that it was created and its history. The terracotta warriors are so impressive that they are a reminder of the grandeur of Chinese civilisation. They are also an incentive because of their beauty to try and understand more about the culture from which they sprang, seeing their beauty inspired me to buy translated fragments from Sima Qian's history. An exhibition like this is precisely the thing that the world's museums should increasingly engage in- if there is to be dialogue between our cultures then this is a wonderful way of expressing it and I hope some British treasures make their way temporarily to Beijing.

The Museum's exhibition reminds one of the importance of Chinese civilisation and the importance of cultivating an understanding of it. It also reminded me very visibly of the difficulties of historical research. There is so much that we do not know and will never know about the first Emperor. The history that we have is fragmented and written long after the Emperor's death. We have these artefacts but with many of them we are not sure of their use- and we have not yet seen inside the tomb of the Emperor to see what clues lie there.

One thing I do regret about the museum's exhibition is that there was not more outside or inside from historians of the era, Chinese and Western, discussing the Emperor. There wasn't even a good academic biography for sale- an unpardonable lapse! Another gap was that the First Emperor's attitude to religion was left untouched. We were invited to see the army as a simplistic guard for the afterlife or as a manifestation of the Emperor's meglamania: but I would have liked to see something more about what Chinese people of that time beleived about the afterlife and how that connected to what the Emperor did. One interesting question that wasn't touched upon was why none of his successors made this kind of tomb- it could be that they did and the tombs are lost waiting a farmer to discover them, it could be that his example discredited the practice, it could be that beliefs had shifted, it could be that this is one of many such tombs, leaving the exhibition I was none the wiser. One felt like screaming for more information. But having said that, that is possibly the churlish attitude to take. The exhibition is wonderful- the fact that these statues have left China must have been a great diplomatic acheivement and the museum has arranged them suitably well.

The First Emperor is one of those figures whose actions had momentous consequences spreading out through time, doubling and redoubling until his creation, a unified China, became one of the great powers of a globalised world in the 20th Century. Seeing the terracotta warriors, seeing the artefacts he collected around himself in his afterlife, one gets a sense of the immense power that he wielded, the creative wills that bent to his commanding will and the strength of his shortlived imperium.

Government minister resigns...

to race cars. Lord Drayson has fallen on his sword in order to join the Le Mans race. I have to say that I have no idea about Drayson's record as a minister but as soon as I saw this, I rejoiced, long live the politicians for whom the hinterland matters more than the greasy pole!

Mark Steyn and Culture

Mark Steyn has a way of shocking me by producing some really good articles at times- I think he does this out of spite, he knows that I don't like some of his work and he wants me to be spinning in confusion unsure whether to like or dislike him. Sorry my sense of humour got the better of me tonight!

Anyway today Steyn has produced I think an excellent article about popular music and the need for a canon. It is really a wonderful defence of learning for the sake of appreciation. Basically Steyn's point is that you can't understand why the Beatles are great unless you understand why Bach is great. The two go together- to understand the one is to understand the other. He makes a point about the way that in order to understand something's greatness, you have to be able to see it in its context, to see what developed around it, why that move was important. Its crucial that Picasso could paint landscapes and had been trained because then his other paintings developed a meaning, its vital that Duke Ellington could play the classic solos because then he could use them in his own work. I agree completely with him: one of the wonders of artistic knowledge is the way that it supports itself. Every time I watch a new film, or read a new book (those being the two art forms I know) they tell me something about all those previous artworks I've seen and watched. And there is a strict heirarchy of knowledge in art- I would listen to Martin Scorsese for hours on film if I could because he has watched everything, and has interesting ideas about all of what he has seen.

Music is something sadly on which I'm not able to comment. One of the most illuminating moments of my life was sitting with a friend who understood music in a jazz bar in Prague. He described to me the way that what I saw as a cool sound, was actually the product of a complex interweaving of notes, a lattice of harmonies. Suddenly I saw music for a moment as this beautiful structure, which people played with, understood and manipulated- suddenly it became more than a simple nice tune, it became art, something I cared for and might grow to love. I think that appreciation is to be valued. It isn't easy to get to- appreciation of the arts is a real cost. Its something that takes time and effort, its something that you have to struggle to get to and it is something that relies on context. To take writing, its because I understand the history of English poetry that I can appreciate the opening line of the Wasteland, that April is the cruellest month- in that opening line Elliot tells us that everything that has gone before resting on Chaucer is wrong. That April is not the month of gentle showers but the month of cruelty. Poetry and novels are echoing always with previous works- the anxiety of influence was a disease that Harold Bloom diagnosed flowing through each and every author.

The great writers though manage to combine that with accessibility. I learnt to read novels- and I have to say watch films (the great twentieth century entertainment) because I began through enjoying them, I ended appreciating the same books. Most of the early readers started the same way, Jonathan Rose writes illuminatingly about the way that the first Labour MPs for example read Dickens, Carlyle, Ruskin and others and thought about them in their own way. There is a wonderful novel which really describes this process which unfortunately I can't lay my hands on right now- as soon as I find my copy I'll review it- but what shines through that book is the importance of embibing cultural classics to discovering the world of culture. The route to Austen is the route through Austen, the same goes for all the great writers and indeed for filmmakers from Orson Welles and Michael Curtiz to David Cronenberg. Its when you are bitten with the bug that you know that you have fallen in love and through falling in love you learn to appreciate and to link everything together and understand this lattice of things which all have been created partly for your pleasure.

Steyn is entirely right- you can enjoy the arts (I enjoy Music in this sense) without knowing much, but you enjoy them a hell of a lot more when you have exposed yourself to even more. Part of life is a continual adventure in self improvement- I definitely think that there are 'miles to go before I sleep' and probably will be when I'm dead- and I think that goes for art as well as anything else. There is always something 'further up and further in' to look at, there is always something which can prompt you to understand more or to reevaluate what was once familiar and now is strange. Sometimes I think in modern life we are too comfortable, the truth is that life is an adventure of understanding. For us who lag, it is worth looking up to those who are scaling the heights, but if they are worth looking up to then they are looking in admiration at the next climber. Nobody arrives at the summit, but the effort is what makes everything worth while- because by mastering that interesting novel you suddenly have another angle on human experience. Sitting down and saying no further is surrendering that knowledge and beauty that you might acquire by going up another notch- the world is limitless and its beauties are vast.

Steyn is right. To step back is folly, to stop is folly, and in this quest the canon (the works judged before by others as good) is a useful if not flawless guide. Relaxing in a comfort zone of the works written in your own culture or your own time is a waste- there is more to see and life is too short not to read that Egyptian novelist, see that Iranian film, find out about that twelfth century monk's poetry and listen to some Beethoven before going to watch Belle and Sebastien.

The End of Greek Asia Minor

At the end of the First World War, the great empires of Eastern Europe, the Russian, Austrian, Prussian and Ottoman all collapsed and were replaced with a variety of successor states. Some of those states were carved out by the treaties like Lausanne and Versailles after the war, others were essentially created by military facts on the ground- and in most cases the treaty recognised what had already happened. Its worth remembering that most of the territorial changes in Europe occurred far away from the areas in which the dominant powers at Versailles- the US, UK and France- had their troops- ie the North East corner of France. Look at a map of Western Europe in 1914 and the frontiers haven't changed really that much up to today, look at a map of Eastern Europe and the world is completely different.

What happened in 1918 in order to accomplish that, and happened in 1945 as well, was the massive transfer of populations across frontiers. We often think of that as a fairly harmless process- it wasn't. To take one example, for centuries, for millennia, numerous Greeks had lived in Asia Minor. Thales one of the first philosophers, if not the first, lived for example in Miletus on the coast of modern day Turkey. By the time of the Ottoman Empire, those people calling themselves Greeks still lived there- still constituted a large minority in cities like Istanbul, Smyrna and other places. In the period after World War One the Greeks and Turks battled over the frontier between their states, in 1922 the Greeks finally lost and withdrew from Asia Minor and as they did, the Greeks living there were forced out as well. I thought of this when I first heard of it, doing my history GCSE, as a fact of history, a bloodless fact- in fact of course it wasn't- there was great brutality.

Just to appreciate how horrible that process of ethnic movement was, its worth looking at some of the accounts from Greeks at the time. Thalia Pandiri has collected some and published translations in the International Literary Quarterly- I suggest you go and have a read, but what she describes is truly horrifying. Women with sticks driven through their bodies till they emerge coming out of their mouths. Some of the stories are equally horrifying for the poverty they display- women feeding children flour in water for example or walking for miles with a bag gripped between their teeth and a child in each hand. When they arrived in Greece, many of them found a less than hospitable reception awaiting them as well. Many of them afterall looked not to the new Greece but to the Russian Tsar, traditional protector of orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire, as their prince.

Bringing up old atrocities has more purpose to just wallowing in misfortune. The experience of Greeks moving from Asia Minor to European Greece was horrific, but it is relatively unknown. It highlights something though of worth to consider- that moving populations is always difficult. You encounter the fact that people don't want to leave their homes, you encounter the fact that newcomers aren't always welcome when they arrive. That is even true, when unlike say in Palestine, the moving population are in the end absorbed by another population- as in the Greek case where most of the immigrants report that they did eventually become successful Greeks. Ultimately though the experience of the Greeks moving across from Asia to Europe reminds us of two things: firstly that we should not be blase about moving populations around the globe- should for example climate change result in the destruction of Bangladesh we would see the events of Asia Minor on an even greater scale even if we found somewhere for those people to go. Secondly and perhaps more importantly, it reminds us of our own powerlessness. By the end of World War One, there was barely an army around apart from those of the Western Allies and even then in Eastern Europe, it was the facts on the ground that mattered, not the pious declarations from Paris, London and Washington. International politics requires modesty as well as ambition.

Al Qaeda targets 15 year olds

An interesting piece in the Guardian reports comments from the MI5 head, Jonathan Evans, that increasingly Al Qaeda is targetting its recruitment efforts at younger and younger Muslims. In particular the organisation is looking to young British Muslims in their teens. Obviously the teenage years are amongst the prime years for people to form adult identities. One of the issues surrounding that is that people in their teenage years are often uncomfortable or unsure about where they are and what they are. They are thus prime for recruitment by groups like Al Qaeda which offer a strong identity and a purpose to life at a time when most people are going through confused emotional tempests.

Part of the problem of course is what we do about this- ultimately it comes down in part to a working education system which isn't segregated (segregation is a wonderful way to manufacture resentment from afar). No doubt, youth workers, youth organisations, parents and mosques (as well as a host of others that I've forgotten) can help as well but the spectacle of the teenage suicide bomber may grow depressingly familiar as we go into the future.

Conspiring with them Liberal Lefties

Well the Liberal Left Conspiracy came to the internet today- obviously as a group it has existed for a long time- liberals and lefties, the gay mafia, the illuminati and the free masons not to mention commies and various others have been conspiring for years which is why they have been quite so successful on both sides of the Atlantic in maintaining their control over the world. I am one of the conspirators as anyone looking at the roster will know- and I have to say I'm proud to be. The right has organised brilliantly on the internet- and Conservative Home is a really good clearing house for rightwing ideas- I know some of the best rightwing bloggers like say Matt Sinclair have written there. There isn't really any equivalent place to meet leftwing people and discuss politics on the net- Labour home is not as good as Conservative Home, its often too insular and focused in on Labour party internal affairs, other places are dominated by different sectional interests- its time the left came together in the UK on the net- and this is one option, lets hope it succeeds for doing that.

Ok lets turn to the whole idea of the liberal left- what does it mean to be on the liberal left and why do those words fit together. Lets define them first: broadly speaking I think that to be on the left is to be concerned about equality, and that to be liberal is to be concerned about freedom. The point about equality is that it produces freedom. Wealth is power- money would be nothing unless it had a value and that value is the goods and services it commands. The more wealth that someone has and the more independent that wealth from the interference of others, the freer they are to gain what they want in life. Rightwingers believe that the only obstacle to a free will is a state: they are right that the state can be a significant obstacle to the exercise of a free will, noone with any knowledge of this century could deny that and many on the left stood against the state as it limited the freedom of will (Orwell is a great example) but rightwingers are wrong to say that it is only the state which obstructs freedom. Corporations do too- and even the wealthy can obstruct liberty- both can use the state as well in their own interests- you could argue that that is what the British libel laws do.

Equality is married to freedom thus at a fundamental level- because without equality I cannot be free. Its encapsulated in that old piece of wisdom that beggars can't be choosers- something that the right tend to forget. This isn't an argument for state socialism, it could be but it isn't. It isn't an argument for any particular vision of society. But it is an argument that you cannot have real freedom without having equality, that you cannot be concerned about liberal things, without being concerned about leftwing things. And that goes as well for many of the other battles that the left are involved in, freeing women from the dominion of their husbands, freeing homosexual people from the legal restrictions of those that don't share their morality, freeing the innocent from the tyranny of a despot who would rather hold us all in jail than listen to any of us. All these things are both leftwing and liberal- how they are achieved is a totally separate issue but they can only be acheived if we think about equality and freedom together and try to acheive both through our policies.

That's why I'm conspiring for the liberal left (though I have to say this blog will remain basically what it has always been)!

Cultural Amnesia

Clive James is a figure unlike most others in our world- James has made a career of being an omnivore. From the chatshow couch to the comic circuit to the learned essay, James has succeeded everywhere he has gone. Writing and broadcasting, he has turned his natural wit to good account and provided a series of sparkling memoirs to furnish the bookshelves of the learned with. Cultural Amnesia, his latest book, is a fine effort to capture the unique folds of James's own mental landscape- he provides a short essay on over 100 cultural characters mainly from the last century. All the essays come out of a single quote- and often James doesn't even pause to ponder the life, instead pondering the importance of that quote.

The quoted range from Duke Ellington to Hegel, Federico Fellini to Margerate Thatcher, from Tacitus and Edward Gibbon to Coco Chanel and Adolf Hitler. The range is astonishing- though the absense of any scientists is equally astonishing. James mentions an Albert Einstein but its the musician not his more famous namesake and relative the physicist. Indeed science is one of the leading absenses from the collection which is biassed very much towards the arts. Analytical philosophy is also underepresented- we have an essay on Wittgenstein but characteristically in it philosophy students are dismissed for giving him the 'credit for everything that would have struck them if they had ever been left along with the merest metaphysical lyric from the early seventeenth century.' The Wittgenstein that matters to philosophers is the one that 'they can prove only to each other' and what James is interested in is the Wittgenstein that matters to the writer- to the humanist.

For that is what this book really is, a monument to what we might call humanism. A humanism that sees the limits of the human as surely as it does the extent of his range. James is limited- but to stress that is to undermine really his acheivement here- which is to gather and express particles of knowledge and understanding across many fields and many languages. He gets some judgements wrong- he dismisses Edward Gibbon as a poor stylist. James tells us that 'what he [Gibbon] wrote rarely lets you forget that it has been written'- possibly that's true but its also Gibbon's virtue and not to see that is to miss what Gibbon was trying to do and therefore to criticise him by a standerd he wasn't attempting to reach. James doesn't get Gibbon's historical breadth or depth either- doesn't see that the styllistic tics are made up for by the fact that Gibbon was another such as James who spanned centuries in a massive project that will probably never be attempted let alone completed again.Quotation has this feature that it inspires you to seek out the epigram- the fragment that illuminates rather than the rolling cadence of prose. Martial the great Latin poet is perhaps the most eminently quotable of Latin poets in that what he wrote was bitchy and short, James in these essays has the same quality. Like the greatest essayists he can skewer wonderfully. He can also at his best capture real nuance- his description of Edward Said in this sentence is perfect, 'As a critic and man of letters he has an enviable scope but it is continually invaded by his political strictness'. It captures the many sidedness of Said- the political lack of nuance which led him to some cartoonish descriptions of orientalists and of the orient but also the greatness- for Said who always recognised Israel and wanted Palestinians to recognise the sorrows of the Jews was a great man. James is able to capture that and through a quotation of Said's about the Battle of Algiers, bring to life the double sidedness of Said.

But this book is not all nuance. James is more often than not on the good side and vows war against those who cravenly boosted tyranny. He writes eloquently about the Manns- Heinrich, Thomas and Golo- all of whom resisted Hitler from outside the boundaries of exile. Of all the praise though it is that devoted to Sophie Scholl which most resonated with me. Scholl, James tells us, 'was probably a saint' and died in complete silence. What James wants to do with praise is make us think- he points to the fact that in his judgement despite the fact that there is a perfect actress for the role alive today (Natalie Portman) Scholl should never be portrayed by Hollywood. The finality of her end is her tragedy- far better for it to be a more obscure German film starring the unknown Julia Jenstch to portray her for the public so that they too understand the finality of the fall of the ax upon her neck shut out one of the true heroines of the twentieth century and sent her to darkness.

If Scholl volunteered to die, despite the fact she did not have to, to make a point against an odious regime, then James rightly eviscerates those who have supported those odious regimes. Though Sartre is his betenoir- he hates Sartre's evading of responsibility, hates the fact that 'Sartre was called profound because it sounded if he was either that or nothing' but ultimately his essay on Sartre is not the most interesting. Rather I think it is the essay on a much slighter figure- Peirre Drieu La Rochelle- a leading intellectual of Vichy that really made me think. For what he captures in that essay is the moment of victory in 1945, when the Germans were driven out and La Rochelle committed suicide. The key fact for James though is to evaluate the hysteria- a hysteria he informs us drily that Sartre backed and that Camus (who actually had a resistance record) disdained (though Camus thought there ought to be a reckoning). He leaves us in no doubt of the guilt of Pierre Drieu La Rochelle- but also paints a picture of France in those years which is terrifyingly accurate.

Totalitarianism is one of the foci of this book- James argues long and hard against it. Whether it is Communist or Fascist, he suggests it is deeply repugnant and you get the sense that he thinks that clear writing, thinking and reading are its enemies. As he said recently to Stephen Colbert, intellectuals get things wrong all the time- but they get them wrong less than those who don't open themselves to intellectual pursuits. In reality this book is a book about heroes- but it is not a book about heroism. The essay structure enables there to be a convincing absense of structure- in the sense that James is not interested in archetypes but in individuals- his essays are at their most effective when they describe either of two things- the impact of writing upon him as an individual or the way that this individual's career worked. An essay on Nadezhda Mandelstam is incredibly effective at making you realise the pain that she must have felt as the Stalinist machinery of death whirled past her windows. It drives you to the reality of the statistics.

Though James is reassuringly committed to the dry substance of the real world, he is most acute when he focuses on individual experiences, exploring them and rendering them to his reader. His selection is driven, as he argues in his essay on Chris Marker, by the solidity of the facts that he sees and understands but his talent is for explaining experience. This is a book which is unashamedly focused on reality- James gives postmodernism and its creeds of unreality very short shrift indeed. He is openly contemptuous of philosophical relativism and disdain for truth- openly praises the empirical and solidly researched. He bases his love for art upon a respect for reality.

James's range of understanding in this book is incredible. James is a great evoker of what other authors do and write and film and play. He can convey the meaning of others' statements in such a way as to make you want to read and listen to and watch their books, music and films. He makes you want to stroll down the streets of Vienna in particular and pop into the cafes to hear the arguments and consume the culture. He makes you want to open the books, to understand what Contini means when he says that you need to learn poetry. He creates a desire in you to leap from cultural tree to tree- as James himself in these essays does- referring for instance in an essay on Marc Bloch to the seductions and disappointments of Pound's poetry. He made me want to learn languages- to read these authors in their original tongues and capture the calligraphy of sound that they all employed.

Ultimately there isn't a greater compliment for a book like this than to say that- to say that this book is like the trunk of a great tree, along whose branches if you pursue them are fruit much more gaudy than anything found in the original bark. This is a book that leads to other books. Its a book that can be read at one sitting or dipped into- yes there are mistakes and there are manifold errors. But to forgive someone for misunderstanding that Gibbon is amongst the greatest English historians requires a great acheivement and this book is a great and interesting acheivement.

Scorsese interview

Martin Scorsese being interviewed in the late nineties- always a treat.

Analytical Blogging again

The other day I wrote an article on analytical blogging, which got some negative attention from Dizzy, who makes a fairly amusing point against it though personally I'm not as convinced as he is that intelligence is only reserved for the elite. Its interesting as well that modern conservatives often have tended towards being unabashedly in favour of populism- that reinforces one of my feelings that modern conservatism and other historical forms of conservatism are not the same- I can't imagine Edmund Burke or Hayek even giving three cheers for the Sun in the way that Dizzy does!

However that isn't the main point of this post. Matt Sinclair asks a much more interesting question about smart people and blogging, and I think he is right to ask it and the answer in the case of this blog demonstrates something which I think is interesting. Matt asks "Why should someone with interesting and novel things to say use the blogosphere as a medium?", he goes on to deliver some interesting answers, all of which depend mostly on the community as a whole providing a forum. Matt imagines that blogging is a bit like an intellectual salon on the net, in which we can throw around ideas, as he rightly points out that presumes a membership, there is no point talking to onesself.

Somebody asked me on my thread about this, why I don't do more analytical work on politics. I do a bit, but nowhere near what Chris Dillow does on Stumbling and Mumbling- and I think this ties into another reason to maintain a blog, which is one of the basic reasons that Westminster Wisdom (the title is partly ironic) exists. This blog really isn't an analytical policy blog- though I do occasionally rummage through politics and policy, its really a purely egoistic exercise. For me a blog is the equivalent of an 18th Century common place book, ie its where I put down my impressions of the world so I can go back to them. An interesting quote, a fun video, a film review, even a review of a novel, anything which makes me remember how I reacted to something for the first time.

I think that is a valid reason to keep a blog- partly because experience flows past me at such a rate that I can never really grab hold of it. Throughout my life, amongst my major vices is forgetfulness, and that means that I often lose hold of what I should know or should remember. Here I have a resource to which I can turn, when I want to, to find out about say Rousseau's walks or Bresson's Joan of Arc. Part of that is it forces me to think about what I see and read more acutely than ever before: because I know I'm going to have to write an article up here on it. That makes me look deeper and try and understand more. Its also a good resource to remember what an idiot I am occasionally- there are moments on this blog where I know I've been a complete fool- reminding onesself of that is a good thing and doing it on a blog is fairly harmless. (Which in a way brings me back to Dizzy, acute mockery of your own pretensions is always a good thing to read!)

In answer to Matt's question therefore- I think there is another reason- in addition to the good ones he has given- for a person to keep a blog and that is as an online diary. Afterall that is what blogs started off being- and I wonder whether in the end that will be their principle use.

LATER Incidentally Dizzy should probably go and watch this.

Glamour Politics

Chris suggests on his blog that all those that report on politics are interested in is glamour not policy. I was quite stunned to read that, having just seen the perfect example, a BBC reporter reporting on the latest report to call into question the efficacy of the government's education spending on literacy didn't bother to analyse whether the report was right or not- oh no she dived straight into what the political consequences of the report might be. No words about how we might evaluate it, what the basis of it was, what teachers thought, why this spending hadn't worked, no real indication about how to judge it for the viewing public, just the kind of reporting that would suffice for a playground- oh there's been a supernova, that means Gordon's down and Dave's up and its all good. That report and the general gossipy tone of BBC news is a great argument for ditching the entire organisation- and sacking all those involved for doltish stupidity!