http://penamerican.tumblr.com/

A Visit From The Goon Squad | Interactive Character Map

Fri, 24 May 2013 14:00:36 -0400

A Visit From The Goon Squad | Interactive Character Map:

An interactive character map of Jennifer Egan’s 2011 Pulitzer Prize-winning Novel, A Visit From the Goon Squad

Ai Weiwei Rages Against State Abuses in Song Chinese artist and...

Fri, 24 May 2013 12:37:26 -0400

Ai Weiwei Rages Against State Abuses in Song

Chinese artist and dissident Ai Weiwei has released an expletive-ridden heavy metal music video criticising abuses of state power in China.

The track, given the English-language title Dumbass, reconstructs his 81-day detention in 2011, including what he says is an exact model of his cell.

The video shows impassive prison guards accompanying Ai as he eats, sleeps, showers and even sits on the toilet.

Ai himself sings the lyrics, few of which are fit to print.

They include: “Stand on the frontline like a dumbass, in a country that puts out like a hooker… tolerance be damned, to hell with manners, the low-life’s invincible.”

No Regrets: Giving Voice to the Voiceless in Russia

Fri, 24 May 2013 11:00:31 -0400

Last week, on the banks of the Vistula River in Krakow, Poland, where we gathered for the biennial convening of PEN International’s Writers in Prison Committee, I finally met Oksana Chelysheva—a brave Russian journalist whose peaceful work on behalf of Chechens has made her a target of Russian authorities in her homeland. Like so many others doing similar work, she faced a choice: stop bearing witness and telling the truth; face arrest, harassment, or death (as in the case of her friends Anna Politkovskaya and Natalia Estemirova); or exile.

Read the rest of the article on PEN’s blog.

Dignity of Lentil Soup

Fri, 24 May 2013 10:00:26 -0400

Michele Zackheim writes about Russian writer and activist Stanislav Dmitrievsky, whose book, International Tribunal for Chechnya, may soon be banned by authorities. If it is found to be “extremist” in nature, Dmitrievsky himself will be at risk of arrest.

Maxim Gorky stands nonchalantly on a tall marble plinth, dressed in a peasant’s tunic, baggy pants stuffed into high boots, his hands comfortably linked behind his back. He appears to be dreaming as he gazes over a vast lawn toward Gorky Square and the horizon. For many years, a quaint bookstore had sat at the end of the square in Nizhny Novgorod, 258 miles from Moscow.

The square is still blooming with lime, oak, and fir trees, all characteristic of the places where Gorky had lived in Italy during his exile. “Everybody, my friend,” Gorky said, “everybody lives for something better to come.”

But the bookstore was razed, and a McDonald’s, with its garish yellow arches, has taken its place.

Not what Gorky had in mind.

One day in 1989, in this same place, a lone man courageously planted himself in history’s way. This man, Stanislav Dmitrievsky, called Stas by his friends, decided to confront the government, which was planning to raze the entire area to construct a new metro station. His decision was made earlier in the year after he read a samizdat copy of Vladimir Bukovsky’s autobiography, To Build a Castle. Bukovsky, who had been convicted in 1963 for organizing poetry readings in the center of Moscow, was in and out of prison for many years. Then, in 1976, he was exchanged for the former Chilean Communist leader, Luis Corvalán, and eventually settled in Great Britain.

Reading about Bukovsky’s experiences inspired Stas to take his political position. In 1989, he was 23 years old, and five feet ten inches tall, with a full-cheeked baby face, determined brown eyes, and thick, wavy dark hair. In Gorky Square, he stood defiantly still, with his hands behind his back (just like Gorky), in front of the bulldozers that were roaring-ready to shove over the magnificent, historic trees.

Stas was warned, but he would not move.

The workers backed off.

Read the rest of the article on PEN’s blog.

Sam Truitt: An Excerpt from Dick

Thu, 23 May 2013 16:14:00 -0400

Today in the PEN Poetry Series, guest poetry editor C.D. Wright features an excerpt from Sam Truitt’s poem “Dick.” About Truitt’s work, Wright says: the thing that appeals most to be about Sam Truitt is that the work is conceptual in the richest sense of the word. Surprise is built in and so is meaning. Even he doesn’t know from whence the next stimulus or modus operandi, but it will be convulsive. “Dick” is about the Kennedy assassination and the machinations around that event. References to the latter are somewhat oblique: In fact, the whole work is, including most obdurately the integral deployment of Morse Code as text. More information on this elusive text (especially for those of us who don’t know Morse Code) can be found here. Welcome to Sam’s World.

Did they do it? At the pump, did Jill hit Jack? But each place is well and each well a hole encircled by hunters on their hams with spears listening between the broken and whole words into the darkness below for the sound of their breathing and the breathing of the hole in the dark for some fall that is after all cause for image projected staring back into them. With red eyes. With hard heavy shoulders. With terror.

Read the rest on PEN’s blog.

Four Digital Security Lessons for Writers 1. We leave behind a...

Thu, 23 May 2013 10:21:38 -0400

Four Digital Security Lessons for Writers

1. We leave behind a terrifying amount of digital information that makes us easier to track.

We all know that we’re being traced when we use our devices. Heck, sometimes we even ask our cell phones to tell us where we are by using their GPS devices. But the amount of information that we leave by simply entering our credit card information or buying a SIM card for a mobile phone makes us much easier to track and surveil. Tactical Tech’s online tool Myshadow.org allows you to input which digital devices you use and tells you how many “traces” of information you are leaving behind. You will be shocked. (I consider myself a moderate user of technology, and I left behind 66 traces.) But the important thing is that Myshadow.org also tells you what you can do to operate more securely.

image by Vicious Speed

saharareporters: Prof. Chinua Achebe’s Body Arrives In...

Tue, 21 May 2013 16:40:54 -0400

saharareporters:

Prof. Chinua Achebe’s Body Arrives In Nigeria

The body of late Nigerian author, Chinua Achebe arrived in Nigeria earlier today in Abuja. Prof. Achebe’s body arrived in a Nigerian flag-draped casket which was received at the airport by Nigerian officials

led by the Secretary to the federal government.

READ MORE…

Acclaimed Nigerian writer Igoni Barrett reads from his work at...

Tue, 21 May 2013 15:20:28 -0400

Acclaimed Nigerian writer Igoni Barrett reads from his work at the PEN World Voices Festival 2013 Opening Night

Check out his 2005 short story collection, From Caves of Rotten Teeth, here

"Would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that I write..."

Tue, 21 May 2013 14:00:31 -0400

“Would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that I write in a sort of broken-down patois which is something like the way a Swiss waiter talks, and that when I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will stay split, and when I interrupt the velvety smoothness of my more or less literate syntax with a few sudden words of barroom vernacular, this is done with the eyes wide open and the mind relaxed but attentive.”

- Raymond Chandler vs. Atlantic proofreader (via explore-blog)

Come join freeDimensional on Friday for a fantastic event with...

Tue, 21 May 2013 12:53:23 -0400

Come join freeDimensional on Friday for a fantastic event with Cameroonian artist Issa Nyaphaga.

Afghanistan: Surge in Women Jailed for ‘Moral Crimes’

Tue, 21 May 2013 12:41:32 -0400

Statistics from Afghanistan’s Interior Ministry indicate that the number of women and girls imprisoned for “moral crimes” in Afghanistan had risen to about 600 in May 2013 from 400 in October 2011 – a 50 percent increase in a year and a half. Since October 2011, there has been an almost 30 percent increase overall in the number of women and girls imprisoned in Afghanistan’s prisons and juvenile detention facilities.

“Four years after the adoption of a law on violence against women and twelve years after Taliban rule, women are still imprisoned for being victims of forced marriage, domestic violence, and rape,” said Brad Adams, Asia director. “The Afghan government needs to get tough on abusers of women, and stop blaming women who are crime victims.”

Day 100: Abandoned by the rule of law, hunger strikers see death as the only way out of Gitmo

Tue, 21 May 2013 12:05:56 -0400

Day 100: Abandoned by the rule of law, hunger strikers see death as the only way out of Gitmo:

hipsterlibertarian:

There are about 100 strikers, 30 of whom are being force-fed.

Reports continue to emerge of detainees collapsing from hunger in solitary confinement, while others remain shackled to hospital beds.

And remember, 86 of the 166 prisoners in Gitmo — a significant portion of the strike — have already been absolved of any terrorism charges and cleared for release. Not surprisingly, they make up a significant portion of the strike:

The hunger strike is being carried out not only by “suspects” being held at the facility, but many detainees who have long since been cleared for release, and who the administration simply never seems to get around to releasing. After years of waiting, many see death as the only way out, and the force-feedings as just one more arbitrary punishment.

"A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been..."

Tue, 21 May 2013 11:20:17 -0400

“A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it”

- Dylan Thomas (via booksandpublishing)

Timbuktu’s literary gems face Islamists and decay in fight...

Tue, 21 May 2013 10:32:48 -0400

Timbuktu’s literary gems face Islamists and decay in fight for survival

During the last days of the Islamist occupation of northern Mali, the al-Qaida-linked groups who seized control of the territory for almost nine months turned on the Ahmed Baba Institute. In what many people believe was a final act of revenge, and a senseless crime against some of Islam’s greatest treasures, they set the manuscripts alight.

These ancient manuscripts, which could number up to 400,000 across the region, are a source of pride in Mali – and across sub-Saharan Africa. As Africa gained independence from European colonial powers, the texts – the oldest of which date from the ninth century – became a means for the pan-African movement to refute racist notions of a primitive, unlettered continent with no written history.

Gatsby and Stringer Bell: Reaching for the Green Light [WARNING:...

Mon, 20 May 2013 16:40:35 -0400

Gatsby and Stringer Bell: Reaching for the Green Light [WARNING: Spoilers]

Gatsby, like Bell, makes too obvious the fact that he likes money, needs it, because as anyone who has ever been broke knows, money never looks so good as when you have done without it, and the only people who can drop out of capitalism are the ones already rich.

"I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I’ll go to it laughing."

Mon, 20 May 2013 15:20:13 -0400

“I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I’ll go to it laughing.”

- Herman Melville, Moby Dick (via likeafieldmouse)

Closing Argument at Guantanamo II: The Torture of Mohammad Jawad, Continued

Mon, 20 May 2013 14:21:39 -0400

Introduction
by David Frakt

The best thing that I ever wrote was an oral argument in support of a motion to dismiss charges against a Guantanamo detainee, Mohammed Jawad, whom I represented before the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba in 2008 and 2009.

Mohammed was an Afghani teenager, detained in Kabul on December 17, 2002, when he was approximately 15 years old. He was imprisoned at Guantanamo from February 2003 to August 2009. He was the fourth person to be charged under the Military Commissions Act of 2006; I was appointed as his military defense counsel in late April 2008, made my first court appearance at his arraignment on May 7, 2008, and filed the motion to dismiss later that month.

The basis of the motion to dismiss was “outrageous government conduct,” specifically a sleep deprivation program, known colloquially as the “frequent flyer” program to which Mohammed had been subjected by the U.S. government in May 2004, and which I asserted constituted torture. I delivered the argument at the end of a marathon fourteen-hour pretrial motion hearing on June 19, 2008. A human rights observer from the ACLU was in attendance at the hearing and he asked me for a copy of the argument. He posted it to the internet and it received wide circulation; the New York Review of Books called it an “example of legal and moral courage.” I was encouraged to prepare an annotated version of it, which was published in the Harvard Human Rights Journal under the title “Closing Argument at Guantanamo: The Torture of Mohammed Jawad.”

At the time I gave the argument, I actually had some hope that it would be the closing argument in the case because it would persuade the judge to dismiss the charges. But, alas, it did not. In fact, “Closing Argument at Guantanamo” was not even the final word on this particular motion to dismiss.

After the June hearing, with the help of my opposing counsel, prosecutor Lieutenant Colonel Darrel Vandeveld, I discovered additional evidence that the U.S. government had abused Mohammed. I submitted multiple supplements to my original motion to dismiss, detailing the new evidence, and requested another opportunity to present witness testimony on the matter. The judge scheduled another pretrial hearing for August 13 and 14, 2008. On August 13, I presented additional evidence related to the frequent flyer program, including testimony from one of the officers who ran the program, and other instances of maltreatment of Mohammed both at Guantanamo and at Bagram Air Base where Mohammed was held initially in late 2002.

That night after the hearing I had trouble sleeping. I couldn’t stop thinking about the case. At around 3 in the morning, I gave up trying to sleep and got up and wrote out another argument the old-fashioned way on a legal pad. I wasn’t sure if the judge would give me another opportunity for oral argument on the motion, but I wanted to be ready if he did. We continued to present evidence on the motion on August 14^th, and when we concluded, I asked the judge if I could make an additional argument on the motion and he assented. I then delivered, with some extemporaneous additions to take into account the evidence presented that day, the argument that I had prepared early that morning. Although perhaps not quite as eloquent as the first argument I had given on the motion, I still consider it some of my best work.

Today, in an effort at greater transparency, all military commission hearings are immediately transcribed and released on the official military commissions website. But the practice in 2008 was to wait until the conclusion of a case before releasing the trial transcripts. Because the charges against Mohammed were ultimately dismissed, no official transcript of the pretrial hearings was ever publicly released, and the argument I gave on August 14^th has not previously been published. So, other than the small group of spectators who were present in the courtroom that day, and a handful of people with access to the unofficial transcript, no one has ever read this second argument.

When I was invited to present at the PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature on the topic “Going on the Record, Resistance and Writing” focusing on Guantanamo and human rights abuses, and asked to contribute a piece of writing, I realized this would be the perfect opportunity to share the argument with a wider audience.

As I did with the first “Closing Argument”, I have prepared this annotated version of the argument to provide additional background and context. You can read the annotated version here.

Read the rest of this piece on PEN’s website.

theparisreview: From Robert Dawson and Josh Wallaert’s Public...

Mon, 20 May 2013 14:09:07 -0400

theparisreview:

From Robert Dawson and Josh Wallaert’s Public Library: An American Commons.

Joshua Edwards stopped by the PEN America offices to record an...

Mon, 20 May 2013 11:46:00 -0400

Joshua Edwards stopped by the PEN America offices to record an excerpt, entitled “Red Storm Days,” from his poem “Agonistes.” Complete with hustling, bustling PEN America offices noises!

Read the poem here: http://www.pen.org/poetry/red-storm-days

‘Forced Confessions’: Censorship and Power in Iran-...

Fri, 17 May 2013 16:58:00 -0400

‘Forced Confessions’: Censorship and Power in Iran- Screening

Last week, PEN American Center joined with the Committee to Protect Journalists and the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran to host a screening of journalist and filmmaker Maziar Bahari’s powerful documentary film “Forced Confessions,” an exposé of the now-routine practice of extracting staged public “confessions” from political prisoners in Iran.

After the film, Maziar joined Jon Stewart and CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon for a lively discussion on press freedom in Iran in the run-up to the crucial June presidential election.

Read the rest of the article on PEN’s website.