This is a rough montage-in-progress of one of a series re Poetry and Torture, War, Genocide--
When President Obama was running for office, a great deal of hopefulenthusiasm was generated by his having written two poems in college. Many American poets saw this as promising a renaissance in Culture radiating from the White House, as in the Mythical "Camelot" times of the Kennedy Administration.
What was forgotten is that poetry is no guarantee of a Benevolent Ruler interested in Peace and the Arts. Despite President Obama's campaign platform containing the "Right War" to be waged in Afghanistan (as opposed to the "Wrong War" of Bush's in Iraq)--the President was seen as being a man of peace--and yes, Poetry.
American involvement in Cambodia was drastic and disastrous. p[resident Nixon launched a "Secret War" there with massive bombings and tons of dollars being pumped to figures such as general Lon Nol,who, like many American allies, was a bloodthirsty corrupt bastard, but--the important but--not a Communist.
Fighting for Lon Nol was an American-trained poet, U Sam Oeur, whose works later on after moving back to the USA received much attention.
Fighting against Lon Nol and U Sam Oeur were the Khmer and their for some years to come unknown leader, Pol Pot, a former teacher of French literature, especially poetry, whose favorite poet was no less than Verlaine--"It rains on the city/as tears rain in my heart"--
Ironically, the two opponents in poetry and politics each represented not a Cambodian Khmer Poetry, but the poetries of Colonialism (French) and Imperialism (American.)
In what follows are documents relating to the poets/poet inspired figures of Lon Nol/U Sam Ouer, Pol Pot and president Obama, whose rebranding of the language of the bush administration may be seen as a form of "poetry of the marketplace," not surprising in a President who has stead fastedly supported Wall Street and its, so to speak, "war criminals."
The soldier poet Archilocus thousands of years ago established the connection between war and poetry. Archilocus, however, did not pretend that the two negate each other, making an either/or instead of a both/and. Even the term avant-garde, now called "avant," demonstarted this militant-poetic function. "Avant" denotes simply a half-concept so to speak, in which the term "forward' is al that is required to demonstrate "Forwardness" and "Progress."
One of the great efforts of American poetry today seems to be to claim that there is a seperation between the poetic and political languages of a society, especially when both, despite their disclaimers, are involved in one way or another with war, torture, imperialism and the destruction of whole societies. yet, despite this, they wanted also to have a Poet President--
When language begins to be used as a denial of language's daily functions as well as a halving of its poetic ones, formalisms are used to obscure the fact of the hidden contents and meanings of the words. In this way, as seen below, the language used for 'Wreading Exercises" is not very different at al from that used in war, ethnic cleansing, tortures . . .
To deny the doubled meanings of words, is to create the one sided viewpoint with which one needs to operate in a society that is half blinding and deafening itself.This is the function of language in Orwell's Newspeak, where contradictions are no longer, and opposite terms are reconciled, made the same, by the "=" sign---
A form of "leveling" not unlike those methods used by leaders like Pol Pot, who wish to make all contradictions disappear.
At the heart of the language today in the USA is this same form of denial of contradictions--for example, a Black president supporting an Apartheid State causes not a blink of the eye. As contradictions vanish, so do questions, and the users of language become unquestioning supporters of anything they are told. Alanaguge of reactionary methods and ideas becomes the mainstay of a society that hides itself from itself, in order to believe in the images of themselves they are taught to believe are actually there-
Introduction:
Our men . . . have killed to exterminate men, women, children, prisoners and captives, active insurgents and suspected people from lads of 10 up.... Our soldiers have pumped salt water into men to "make them talk," and have taken prisoners people who held up their hands and peacefully surrendered, and an hour later. . . stood them on a bridge and shot them down one by one, to drop into the water below and float down, as examples to those who found their bullet-loaded corpses.": Philadelphia Ledger newspaper in 1901, from its Manila [Philippines] correspondent during the US war with Spain for the control of the Philippines
According to Amnesty International[9]:
"Detainees have reported being routinely subjected to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment during arrest and detention. Many have told Amnesty International that they were tortured and ill-treated by US and UK troops during interrogation. Methods often reported include prolonged sleep deprivation; beatings; prolonged restraint in painful positions, sometimes combined with exposure to loud music; prolonged hooding; and exposure to bright lights. Virtually none of the allegations of torture or ill-treatment has been adequately investigated by the authorities."
On January 12, 1998 the Supreme Court of Israel declined to ban the use of loud music as an interrogation technique.[10]
Today’s documents reveal charges that Special Forces beat, burned, and doused eight prisoners with cold water before sending them into freezing weather conditions. One of the eight prisoners, Jamal Naseer, died in U.S. custody in March 2003. In late 2004, the military opened a criminal investigation into charges of torture at Gardez. Despite numerous witness statements describing the evidence of torture, the military’s investigation concluded that the charges of torture were unsupported. It also concluded that Naseer’s death was the result of a “stomach ailment,” even though no autopsy had been conducted in his case. Documents uncovered today also refer to sodomy committed by prison guards; the victims’ identities are redacted.
(Suddh Pulin, Jeremy Colvin, and Lavonne C. E. (Lavonne Cynthia Evelyn) Leong -
The Diabolic Sweetness of Pol Pot - Manoa 16:1 Manoa 16.1 (2004) 21-25)
The Diabolic Sweetness of Pol Pot Soth Polin Translation by Jeremy Colvin and Lavonne Leong
In the beginning was the Word/and the Word was with God/and the Word was God./All things were made by Him/and without Him nothing was made. The Prologue of St. John
At the time that Pol Pot was teaching me Verlaine, I had not yet learned to distrust sweet things. In 1957 , he was my French teacher, though later he claimed to have been a history teacher, in order not to appear to have been an advocate of the colonialists' culture. We knew him by the name of Saloth Sar, and nothing he said to us betrayed his engagement in politics -- until the day in 1962 when he left for the resistance.
I need to revise my memory of that school year: Pol Pot was not just the disciple of Verlaine who, as a good philologue, knew how to win over his students with his explications de texte: "It rains in my heart as it rains on the city. From whence comes this languor that pierces my heart..." The consequences of the phantasmagoric catastrophe of human judgment that was the Khmer Rouge regime are now widely known, and it is time to take a closer look at the means by which they established themselves. Clearly, there were political and economic causes, but a cultural factor also played an important role, and until now it has been rather...
The woman returned followed by a tall gaunt man, dressed in a faded sarong. He did not look as much like Pol Pot as the brother I had met briefly in Phnom Penh, but the resemblance was still unmistakeable.
His name was Loth Sieri, he said, seating himself beside us, and he was the second-oldest of the brothers. Saloth Sar had gone away to Phnom Penh while he was still quite young, and after that they had not seen very much of him. He had gone from school to college in Phnom Penh, and then finally, to Paris. He smiled ruefully. "It was the knowledge he got in Paris that made him what he is," he said.
He had visited them a few times after returning to Cambodia but then he had disappeared and they had never seen him again: it was more than twenty years now since he, Loth Sieri, had set eyes on him. They had been treated no differently from anyone else during the Pol-Pot-time; they had not had the remotest idea that `Pol Pot' was their brother Sar, born in their house. They only found out afterwards.
Was Saloth Sar born in that very house? I asked. Yes, they said, in the room beside us, right next to veranda.
When he came back from France, I asked, had he ever talked about his life in Paris? What he'd done, who his friends were, what the city was like?
At that moment, with cows lowing in the gathering darkness, the journey to Paris, from that village on the Sen river, seemed an extraordinary odyssey. I found myself very curious to know how he and his brothers had imagined Paris, and their own brother in it. But no. The old man shook his head: Saloth Sar had never talked about France after he came back. Maybe he had shown them some pictures - he couldn't recall.
Newly Released Government Documents Show Special Forces Used Illegal Interrogation Techniques In Afghanistan
By ACLU
17/04/08 "ACLU" -- -NEW YORK – The American Civil Liberties Union obtained documents today from the Department of Defense confirming the military’s use of unlawful interrogation methods on detainees held in U.S. custody in Afghanistan. The documents from the military’s Criminal Investigation Division (CID), obtained as a result of the ACLU’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, include the first on-the-ground reports of torture in Gardez, Afghanistan to be publicly released.
“These documents make it clear that the military was using unlawful interrogation techniques in Afghanistan,” said Amrit Singh, an attorney with the ACLU. “Rather than putting a stop to these systemic abuses, senior officials appear to have turned a blind eye to them.”
Special Operations officers in Gardez admitted to using what are known as Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) techniques, which for decades American service members experienced as training to prepare for the brutal treatment they might face if captured.
Today’s documents reveal charges that Special Forces beat, burned, and doused eight prisoners with cold water before sending them into freezing weather conditions. One of the eight prisoners, Jamal Naseer, died in U.S. custody in March 2003. In late 2004, the military opened a criminal investigation into charges of torture at Gardez. Despite numerous witness statements describing the evidence of torture, the military’s investigation concluded that the charges of torture were unsupported. It also concluded that Naseer’s death was the result of a “stomach ailment,” even though no autopsy had been conducted in his case. Documents uncovered today also refer to sodomy committed by prison guards; the victims’ identities are redacted.
“These documents raise serious questions about the adequacy of the military’s investigations into prisoner abuse,” added Singh.
The ACLU also obtained today a file today related to the death of Muhammad Al Kanan, a prisoner held at Camp Bucca in Iraq. The file reveals that British doctors refused to issue a death certificate for fear of being sued for malpractice:
www.aclu.org/pdfs/safefree/20080416/CID_ROI_Bucca.pdf
“Flight from Misery”
On April 13, 1975, U Sam Oeur, a captain in the army of the American-backed Government of Gen. Lon Nol in Cambodia who wrote poetry on the side, was celebrating the Buddhist New Year at his home near Phnom Penh.
Suddenly, ''there were soldiers with heavy guns around my house, coming like flies from every direction,'' Mr. U Sam Oeur said in an interview in Washington last week. As shells fell from the sky, Khmer Rouge soldiers under the command of Pol Pot ordered people to evacuate the city. Mr. U Sam Oeur, his 4-year-old son, his wife, pregnant with twins, and mother-in-law wrapped themselves in mats and prepared to die. ''We decided to stay and be burned alive,'' he said.
Instead, they were sent to the countryside, where they endured four years in the labor camps of the Khmer Rouge, part of a drastic reorganization of society in which as many as two million Cambodians died through execution, disease and starvation. Mr. U Sam Oeur's wife, son and mother-in-law survived; the twins did not.
Mr. U Sam Oeur, 62, who now lives in Edina, Minn., has written of his time under the Khmer Rouge in a new book, ''Sacred Vows,'' translated by the poet Ken McCullough and published by Coffee House Press last month. Composed of 53 poems, the collection is a retelling of the story of the Cambodian killing fields in poetic form. It is one of the first English translations of a contemporary Cambodian poet's work. Today at 2 P.M., Mr. U Sam Oeur is to read a selection at the bookstore of the Asia Society at 725 Park Avenue, at 70th Street.
The poems, written in Cambodian with the English translations on the facing pages, evoke the lush, rural culture of Cambodia:
Where water glitters, palm trees dance.
Where egrets and herons flap after fish,
water buffalo charge each other, grunting like giants.
But Cambodia in the 1960's was caught in the middle of the Vietnam War, which fueled the civil war pitting Lon Nol's Army against the Khmer Rouge. Mr. U Sam Oeur records the transformation of Cambodia into a Dantesque hell:
No places to hide,
no skies under which to rest;
and the moaning of children
and the cries of mothers
out of blazing fire across the land.
Divigations
These nine poèmes critiques brought together under the heading ‘Grands faits divers’. As in Divagations as a whole, the implied movement from the generically orthodox to the radical is again accompanied by a movement outwards from the parish of poetry to the wider province of the ‘fait divers.’
The notion of linguistic guardianship thus frames the ‘Grands faits divers’, and the homophonic resonance of this title (‘grands faits, dits vers’) suggests that the salient issues of human social experience are here stated in the form of ‘le vers’, which is to be understood in the broad Mallarméan sense – of heightened, ‘knowing’ linguistic usage – that encompasses both verse and prose and in this case the poème critique. What the papers say (the ‘fait divers’) has been transformed into the ‘great fashionings’ (‘grands faits’) that are the product of ‘Poésie’ or what, on the basis of the word’s etymology, Mallarmé also calls ‘fiction’. The common currency of social and political debate will be pegged to the gold standard of Poetry.
(my emphasis)
At the time that Pol Pot was teaching me Verlaine, I had not yet learned to distrust sweet things. In 1957 , he was my French teacher, though later he claimed to have been a history teacher, in order not to appear to have been an advocate of the colonialists' culture. We knew him by the name of Saloth Sar, and nothing he said to us betrayed his engagement in politics -- until the day in 1962 when he left for the resistance.
I need to revise my memory of that school year: Pol Pot was not just the disciple of Verlaine who, as a good philologue, knew how to win over his students with his explications de texte: "It rains in my heart as it rains on the city. From whence comes this languor that pierces my heart..." The consequences of the phantasmagoric catastrophe of human judgment that was the Khmer Rouge regime are now widely known, and it is time to take a closer look at the means by which they established themselves. Clearly, there were political and economic causes, but a cultural factor also played an important role, and until now it has been rather...
I remembered, from David Chandler's biography, that Pol Pot was very well read as . a young man, and knew large tracts of Rimbaud and Verlaine by heart. But I was not surprised somehow, to discover that he had never allowed his family the privilege of imagining.
For Khieu Samphan and Pol Pot, the deaths of Hou Yuon, Hu Nim and the thousands of others who were executed in torture chambers and execution grounds, were not a contradiction but rather a proof of their own idealism and ideological purity. Terror was essential to their exercise of power. It was an integral part not merely of their coercive machinery, but of the moral order on which they built their regime; a part whose best description still lies in the line that Brückner, most prescient of playwrights, gave to Robespierre (a particular hero of Pol Pot's) - "Virtue is terror, and terror virtue" - words that might well serve as an epitaph for the 20th century . . .
Mr. U Sam Oeur was the son of a prosperous farmer in Svey Rieng Province, which borders on Vietnam. He studied at the School of Arts and Trades in Phnom Penh. He won a scholarship from the Agency for International Development and attended California State University in Los Angeles, graduating in 1965. It was in California that he began writing poetry and caught the eye of a program officer for the Asia Foundation who secured for him a scholarship to the Iowa Writers' Workshop.
At Iowa in 1966 he met Mr. McCullough, a fellow student who had been a minor-league pitcher in the Pittsburgh Pirates organization. ''I was as naive as Sam about poetry,'' Mr. McCullough said. They became friends and spoke of translating Khmer legends into English together. Mr. U Sam Oeur received his master of fine arts degree from Iowa in 1968 and returned to Cambodia, teaching English in a trade school in Phnom Penh and managing a cannery.
''In 1970, I got a letter from him,'' said Mr. McCullough. That year, Lon Nol overthrew Prince Norodom Sihanouk, the country's ruler, and Cambodian factions were fighting a raging civil war.
''He was a captain in the army,'' Mr. McCullough said. ''He said there was no point in writing any more because everything was being censored.'' Prince Sihanouk had aligned himself with the Communist Khmer Rouge, who were gaining control of the countryside.
In 1972 Mr. U Sam Oeur served in the National Assembly, and in 1974 in the Cambodian delegation to the United Nations. When the Khmer Rouge took control the next year they began their brutal reorganization, focusing on soldiers, intellectuals and minority groups. Mr. U Sam Oeur burned his poems and his master's thesis from Iowa out of fear that if they were discovered he would be killed. He headed toward the mountains with his family. But he was drafted into a forced labor camp in Prey Veng Province, where he plowed rice fields and survived by pretending to be illiterate.
THE WORDS CHANGE BUT THE MEANING REMAINS THE SAME
THE PRESIDENT’S POETRY OF REBRANDING:
The President has asked that his spokesmen no longer use the term "global war on terror," but instead "oversees contingency operation," and Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano recently referred to terrorist attacks as "man-caused disasters."
Poetry Exercises that “double” as the Commands of Propaganda & "Elimination"
From “WREADING EXERCISES” by Charles Bernstein
26. Erasure (2): eliminate all object references in the poem.
27. Eliminate all personal pronouns or self-reference in a poem.
28. Backwards: Reverse or alter the line sequence of the poem.� Next, reverse the word order.� Rather than reverse, scramble.
29. Defacement: Alter a "good" poem so as to make it as bad as possible.
30. Negation/Opposites: Negate every phrase or sentence in the poem or in some way substitute opposite words for selected words in the source text: "I went to the beach" becomes "I went to the office"; "I got up" becomes "She sat down"; "I will" become "I will not"; etc. As an alternative, take a poem and change what it says line for line or phrase for phrase; not opposite, just different.
31. Erasure (3):Cross out most of the words of the poem, retype what remains. Now, analyze.
32. Create a set images to accompany the poem, either stanza for stanza or line for line.
33. Typography: Set the poem in several different fonts. Alter the visual layout. Try color. Create a hypertext version, using color, font, background, and image.
34. Elimination: Cut out the second half of sentences or lines.
Obama’s remarkable success offers a clear and prescient 10-point playbook for marketers who want to beat the odds in 2009 . . .
By appealing to both the rational desire for change and the emotional need for hope, Obama presented his brand as a movement and embraced the notion that former P&G CMO Jim Stengel calls “purpose-based marketing.” As the game gets rougher in 2009 and resources tighter, clarifying your purpose as a brand will be that much more significant. It will help you keep communications on point, your internal team inspired and your target more inclined to cast their vote for your brand.
"I went down on my knees and prayed to Almighty God for light and guidance and one night late it came to me this way. We could not leave (the Philippines) to themselves--they were unfit for self-government--and they would soon have anarchy and misrule over there worse than Spain's was. There was nothing left for us to do but take them all and educate the Filipinos, and uplift and Christianize them.": President William McKinley
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment