I am working on a new story, Chat Perdu.

In other news,

Find out more about what the USA got up to in the “War on Terror”.  Still 10 months after his election, Obama has not ordered the criminal investigation of any senior member of the administration responsible. And for all we know, the same atrocities are still happening — albeit more discretely — under Obama.

Glenn Greenwald breaks down the issue surrounding the release of the CIA report concisely:

“To those blithely dismissing all of this as things that don’t seem particularly bothersome, I’d say two things:

(1) The fact that we are not really bothered any more by taking helpless detainees in our custody and (a) threatening to blow their brains out, torture them with drills, rape their mothers, and murder their children; (b) choking them until they pass out; (c) pouring water down their throats to drown them; (d) hanging them by their arms until their shoulders are dislocated; (e) blowing smoke in their face until they vomit; (f) putting them in diapers, dousing them with cold water, and leaving them on a concrete floor to induce hypothermia; and (g) beating them with the butt of a rifle — all things that we have always condemend as “torture” and which our laws explicitly criminalize as felonies (“torture means. . . the threat of imminent death; or the threat that another person will imminently be subjected to death, severe physical pain or suffering . . .”) — reveals better than all the words in the world could how degraded, barbaric and depraved a society becomes when it lifts the taboo on torturing captives.”

Whole article is worth a read.

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I have not seen Inglourious Basterds, but I’ve read so much about it to have become disconcerted — yet again — by Quentin Tarantino’s propensity to turn violence into sheer entertainment. I’m beyond thinking it’s harmless fun. Brad Pitt’s monologue on the film trailers, where he smirkingly barks to his men that he wants to terrorize the Nazis and take their scalps pretty much encapsulates the spirit with which Tarantino approaches every project: utter irresponsibility. He doesn’t have anything to say about anything. He simply wants people to enjoy gratuitous bloodshed and laugh at brutal violence. It might have been excusable in some crime caper like Pulp Fiction, but when applied to a world war, it makes one question the seriousness of the audiences and critics everywhere that heap praise on him.