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Monday, October 6, 2008

Redacted

October 22 at 7pm Hoff Theater, STAMP - FREE Admission

Premiered at the 2007 Venice Film Festival, where it earned a Silver Lion "best director" award. Based on the Mahmudiyah killings, the gang-rape, murder, and burning of Abeer Qasim Hamza al-Janabi, a 14-year-old Iraqi girl in March 2006 by U.S. soldiers who also killed her parents and her younger sister, the film is a montage of stories about U.S. soldiers fighting in the Iraq conflict, focusing on the modern forms of media covering the war.

Selected readings:
  • From Hedges' War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning - Introduction and Chapter 4: The Seduction of Battle and Perversion of War.
  • From The New Yorker - "Annals of War: exposure: Behind the Camera at Abu Ghraib," 3.24.2008.
Questions to think about:
  • Once we know the truth, what is the value of war and the worth of all its tragedies?
  • Why does one document the war?

  • What does the lens of media filter out?

  • Why is the spiritual damage to those who experience war generally downplayed?

  • What is heroism?
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Diamondback Dialogue
  • Journalist calls war a 'powerful narcotic' by James B. Hale (October 30, 2008).
    War is a terrible drug that can break you down and leave you begging for more. That was the lesson Chris Hedges imparted to a crowd of hundreds at a lecture about his book, War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, on Tuesday in the Colony Ballroom of the Stamp Student Union.
  • Not so radical after all by Kyle Garton (September 24, 2008).
    "... does Hedges really claim that war is always wrong? In his introduction, Hedges writes, "despite all this, I am not a pacifist. I respect and admire the qualities of professional soldiers. ... There are times when we must take this poison [of war]." Certainly Hedges spends the bulk of his book explicating war's insidious cultural effects, but Harris misses Hedges' crucial introductory qualification."

  • Defending free speech by Matthew Parrilla (September 17, 2008).

  • In defense of ROTC by Richard Garcia (September 16, 2008).

  • Book: A force that gives the campus meaning by Malcolm Harris (September 11, 2008.)