Amnesty International Group 22 Pasadena/Caltech News
Volume XXV Number 9, September 2017
UPCOMING EVENTS
Thursday, September 28, 7:30 PM. Monthly
Meeting. We meet at the Caltech Y, Tyson
House, 505 S. Wilson Ave., Pasadena. (This is
just south of the corner with San Pasqual.
Signs will be posted.) We will be planning our
activities for the coming months. Please join
us! Refreshments provided.
Tuesday, October 10, 7:30-9:00 PM. Letter
writing meeting at Caltech Athenaeum, corner
of Hill and California in Pasadena. This
informal gathering is a great way for
newcomers to get acquainted with Amnesty.
Sunday, October 15, 6:30 PM. Rights
Readers Human Rights Book Discussion
Group. This month we read a novel, "The
Noise of Time" by Julian Barnes.
COORDINATOR'S CORNER
Hi everyone
It is now officially fall, my favorite season!
Time to snuggle under the covers with the kitty
katters and take long walks in the (hopefully)
cooler weather to come....
Is anyone going to the Western Regional
Conference? It's being held in Tempe, Arizona,
November 4, at ASU (Arizona State University).
For more info:
https://www.amnestyusa.org/take-
action/events/regional-conferences/western/
Action for September: for the Rohingya people
of Myanmar (formerly Burma) who are being
forced out of their land by the Myanmar
military. I'm sure we've all seen the news about
the burning of villages, rape and murder of
civilians, etc. Take action here to ask Congress to
condemn the violence:
https://act.amnestyusa.org/page/14245/action/1
Con Carino,
Kathy
GROUP 22 SEPTEMBER LETTER COUNT
Urgent Actions 14
POC 2
Total 16
Next Rights Readers Meeting
Sunday, October 15
6:30 PM
Vroman's Bookstore
695 E Colorado Blvd.
Pasadena
The Noise of Time
by Julian Barnes
BOOK REVIEW
By Alex Preston, Jan. 17, 2016, The Guardian.
The Noise of Time review - Julian Barnes's
masterpiece -- Shostakovich's battle with his
conscience is explored in a magnificent
fictionalised retelling of the composer's life
under Stalin.
'The breadth of a whole life within the pages of a slim
book': Dmitri Shostakovich in 1950. Photograph:
Sovfoto/UIG via Getty Images
Julian Barnes's last novel, the Man Booker-winning
The Sense of an Ending (2011), engaged in subtle and
sustained dialogue with the book whose title it
pilfered, Frank Kermode's brilliant 1967 work of
narrative theory, also called The Sense of an Ending.
Barnes's latest, The Noise of Time, borrows its title
from Osip Mandelstam's memoirs, and again the
earlier work casts interesting light upon Barnes's
project. Mandlestam was one of Stalin's most
outspoken critics, his fate sealed with the words of
his 1933 Stalin Epigram. He was exiled in the Great
Terror and died in a Vladivostok transit camp in
1938. The subject of The Noise in Time is not the
brave, doomed Mandelstam, though, but a rarer
genius, one whose art continued to flourish despite
the oppressive attentions of the Soviet authorities:
Dmitri Shostakovich.
The Noise of Time initially appears to be the latest
addition to a hybrid literary form with which we are
increasingly familiar - the fictional biography. Recent
examples range from Colm T—ibin's The Master
(which presented a repressed and unhappy Henry
James) to Nuala O'Connor's excellent Miss Emily
(which gave us a wilful and tormented Emily
Dickinson). As with all great novels, though - and
make no mistake, this is a great novel, Barnes's
masterpiece - the particular and intimate details of
the life under consideration beget questions of
universal significance: the operation of power upon
art, the limits of courage and endurance, the
sometimes intolerable demands of personal integrity
and conscience.
This novel, like its predecessor, gives us the breadth
of a whole life within the pages of a slim book,
written in an intimately close third person. The
reader visits the composer during three critical
moments in his life, the decades between skipped
over with extraordinary panache, a bravura
performance of Italo Calvino's maxim that "time
takes no time in a story". We first meet Shostakovich
as "a man standing by a lift, at his feet a small case
containing cigarettes, underwear and tooth powder;
standing there and waiting to be taken away". A
damning Pravda editorial, probably penned by
Stalin, has denounced the composer's Lady Macbeth
of the Mtsensk District as "non-political and
confusing" because it "tickled the perverted taste of
the bourgeois with its fidgety, neurotic music".
Shostakovich waits for his first "Conversation with
Power" - interrogation by the NKVD - and,
presumably, exile or worse.
Our next encounter with Shostakovich is after the
war, on a propaganda tour of the US. His visit is
prompted by his second "Conversation with Power",
this time a telephone call from Stalin himself that
recalls a similar call in Vasily Grossman's Life and
Fate (a novel that echoes within The Noise of Time).
Restored to the party's good books by the success of
his patriotic "Leningrad" Symphony, Shostakovich is
delivering a series of speeches denouncing his own
work and, particularly, that of Stravinsky, whom he
likes and admires. He reads his speech in a
"muttered monotone", hoping the words will be
taken for what they are - dictations from the state. In
the audience, though, is Nicolas Nabokov (Vladimir's
cousin and in the pay of the CIA), who forces
Shostakovich to reiterate his endorsement of the
views of Zhdanov, the man "who had persecuted
him since 1936, who had banned him and derided
him and threatened him, who had compared his
music to that of a road drill and a mobile gas
chamber". It is a moment of abject, torturous
humiliation for the composer.
The third section of the novel gives us an elderly
Shostakovich, sitting in the back of a chauffeur-
driven car, made bitter by the inexhaustible demands
of the party, even now that Stalin's terror has given
way to the reign of "Nikita the Corncob".
Shostakovich describes himself as a hunchback,
"morally, spiritually", a man shattered in body and
spirit: "He could not live with himself. It was just a
phrase, but an exact one. Under the pressure of
Power, the self cracks and splits." We witness his
"final, most ruinous Conversation with Power",
when the oleaginous functionary Pospelov forces
him to join the party and take up a position entirely
within the fold, as chairman of the Russian
Federation Union of Composers. Shostakovich
succinctly diagnoses his own greatest fault: "He had
lived too long."
Around halfway through the novel there is a passage
that operates as a kind of appeal to the reader, and
also a statement about what kind of book this is:
"There were those who understood a little better,
who supported you, and yet at the same time were
disappointed in you. Who did not grasp the one
simple fact about the Soviet Union: that it was
impossible to tell the truth here and live. Who
imagined they knew how Power operated and
wanted you to fight it as they believed they would do
in your position. In other words, they wanted your
blood." Here we sense the ghost of Osip
Mandelstam, providing a heroic vision of what might
have been for Shostakovich - an early death, lauded
by some, forgotten by most. Instead, we get the old
man, churning out bombastic, grandiloquent public
music and composing his masterpieces - his late
string quartets - in private, all the while knowing
that "music is not like Chinese eggs: it does not
improve by being kept underground for years and
years".
Jhroughout The Noise of Time, I kept thinking of JM
Coetzee (not a writer I'd have associated Barnes with
before). Most obviously Coetzee's underrated
fictional biography of Dostoevsky, The Master of
Petersburg, but more often and more interestingly,
Disgrace. In that novel, the hero, David Lurie, is
offered an easy way out of a tawdry fix at the
beginning of the book; instead, driven by a stubborn
sense of personal integrity, he subjects himself to
untold privations until the novel's extraordinary,
quasi-religious ending.
Shostakovich, like Lurie, understands that his
torments have ancient roots: "He knew his Bible well.
So he was familiar with the notion of sin; also with its
public mechanism. The offence, the priest's judgment
on the matter, the act of contrition, the forgiveness.
Though there were occasions when the sin was too
great and not even a priest could forgive it." Every
morning, in lieu of a prayer, he recites to himself a
poem by Evtushenko - "But time has a way of
demonstrating / The most stubborn are the most
intelligent... I shall therefore pursue my career / By
trying not to pursue one."
The composer's decline into ill health, the withering
of his spirit, his hope that "death would liberate his
music... from his life" - Barnes presents
Shostakovich's final downward spiral with a kind of
ruthless inevitability (and inevitability is, as Susan
Snyder says, the signal note of tragedy). Alexei
Tolstoy wrote in Pravda of Shostakovich's Fifth
Symphony: "Here the personality submerges itself in
the great epoch that surrounds it, and begins to
resonate with the epoch." Barnes has achieved a
similar feat with a period of history, and a place, that
despite their remoteness, are rendered in exquisite,
intimate detail. He has given us a novel that is
powerfully affecting, a condensed masterpiece that
traces the lifelong battle of one man's conscience, one
man's art, with the insupportable exigencies of
totalitarianism.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jan/17/the-
noise-of-time-julian-barnes-review-dmitri-shostakovich
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Julian Barnes was born in Leicester, England on
January 19, 1946. He was educated at the City of
London School from 1957 to 1964 and at Magdalen
College, Oxford, from which he graduated in modern
languages (with honours) in 1968.
After graduation, he worked as a lexicographer for
the Oxford English Dictionary supplement for three
years. In 1977, Barnes began working as a reviewer
and literary editor for the New Statesman and the New
Review. From 1979 to 1986 he worked as a television
critic, first for the New Statesman and then for the
Observer.
Barnes has received several awards and honours for
his writing, including the 2011 Man Booker Prize for
The Sense of an Ending. Three additional novels were
shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize (Flaubert's Parrot
1984, England, England 1998, and Arthur & George
2005). Barnes's other awards include the Somerset
Maugham Award (Metroland 1981), Geoffrey Faber
Memorial Prize (FP 1985); Prix Mˇdicis (FP 1986); E.
M. Forster Award (American Academy and Institute
of Arts and Letters, 1986); Gutenberg Prize (1987);
Grinzane Cavour Prize (Italy, 1988); and the Prix
Femina (Talking It Over 1992). Barnes was made a
Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1988,
Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1995 and
Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in
2004. In 1993 he was awarded the Shakespeare Prize
by the FVS Foundation and in 2004 won the Austrian
State Prize for European Literature. In 2011 he was
awarded the David Cohen Prize for Literature.
Awarded biennially, the prize honours a lifetime's
achievement in literature for a writer in the English
language who is a citizen of the United Kingdom or
the Republic of Ireland. He received the Sunday
Times Award for Literary Excellence in 2013 and the
2015 Zinklar Award at the first annual Blixen
Ceremony in Copenhagen. In 2016, the American
Academy of Arts & Letters elected Barnes as an
honorary foreign member. Also in 2016, Barnes was
selected as the second recipient of the Siegfried Lenz
Prize for his outstanding contributions as a European
narrator and essayist. On 25 January 2017, the French
President appointed Julian Barnes to the rank of
Officier in the Ordre National de la Lˇgion
d'Honneur. The citation from the French
Ambassador in London, Sylvie Bermann, reads:
'Through this award, France wants to recognize your
immense talent and your contribution to raising the
profile of French culture abroad, as well as your love
of France.'
Julian Barnes has written numerous novels, short
stories, and essays. He has also translated a book by
French author Alphonse Daudet and a collection of
German cartoons by Volker Kriegel. His writing has
earned him considerable respect as an author who
deals with the themes of history, reality, truth and
love.
Barnes lives in London.
SECURITY WITH HUMAN
RIGHTS
By Robert Adams
Yemen: US-made bomb kills and maims
children in deadly strike on residential homes
AIUSA press release issued September 21, 2017
The bomb that destroyed a residential building in
Yemen's capital last month, killing 16 civilians and
injuring 17 more - including five-year-old Buthaina
whose photograph went viral in the aftermath of the
strike - was made in the USA, Amnesty International
reveals today.
Amnesty International's arms expert analyzed
remnants of the weapon found it bore clear markings
that matched US-made components commonly used
in laser-guided air-dropped bombs.
The 25 August air strike hit a cluster of houses in
Sana'a, severely damaging three of them, and killing
seven children including all five of Buthaina's
brothers and sisters. Eight other children were
injured, amongst them was two-year-old Sam Bassim
al-Hamdani, who lost both his parents.
"We can now conclusively say that the bomb that
killed Buthaina's parents and siblings, and other
civilians, was made in the USA," said Lynn Maalouf,
Research director for the Middle East at Amnesty
International.
"There simply is no explanation the USA or other
countries such as the UK and France can give to
justify the continued flow of weapons to the Saudi
Arabia-led coalition for use in the conflict in Yemen.
It has time and time again committed serious
violations of international law, including war crimes,
over the past 30 months, with devastating
consequences for the civilian population."
After examining photographic evidence provided by
a local journalist who dug out the remaining
fragments of the weapon at the site, Amnesty
International's arms expert was able to positively
identify the data plate from a US-made MAU-169L/B
computer control group. It is a part used in several
types of laser-guided air-dropped bombs.
According to the Defense Security Cooperation
Agency, in 2015 the US government authorized the
sale of 2,800 guided bombs to Saudi Arabia that were
equipped with the MAU-169L/B computer control
group, including GBU-48, GBU-54, and GBU-56
guided bombs.
Amnesty International is calling for the immediate
implementation of a comprehensive embargo to
ensure that no party to the conflict in Yemen is
supplied with weapons, munitions, military
equipment and technology that can be used in the
conflict. An independent, impartial inquiry into
reported violations is urgently needed and all those
responsible for crimes under international law must
be brought to justice in fair trials.
Lives devastated forever
"She had five siblings to play with. Now she has none,"
Ali al-Raymi
The Saudi Arabia-led coalition launched the
devastating attacks at around 2AM in Faj Attan, a
residential area in Yemen's capital Sana'a.
Ali al-Raymi, 32, lost his brother Mohamed al-Raymi
along with his sister-in-law and his five nieces and
nephews aged between two and 10 years. His niece,
five-year-old Buthaina, was the sole survivor.
He told Amnesty International:
"When you ask her 'what do you want?', she says 'I
want to go home'... She thinks that if she goes home,
she will find them [her family] there... She had five
siblings to play with. Now she has none... What kind
of sorrow and pain could she be feeling in her
heart?"
The Saudi Arabia-led coalition has admitted to
carrying out the devastating attack, but maintains
that the civilian casualties were the result of a
"technical error". The coalition claims it targeted a
"legitimate military objective," which belonged to the
Huthi-Saleh forces.
According to local residents, one of the buildings in
the area was frequented by a Huthi-aligned
individual. Amnesty International was not able to
confirm his identity, role or whether he was present
at the time of the attack.
However, even if there were military objectives in the
vicinity, international humanitarian law prohibits
disproportionate attacks, including those expected to
kill or injure civilians.
The Saudi Arabia-led coalition spokesperson also
said that the incident had been referred to the
coalition's Joint Incidents Assessment Team (JIAT)
for further investigations. To date, Amnesty
International is not aware of any members of the
coalition taking concrete steps to investigate, take
disciplinary measures against or prosecute officers
suspected of criminal responsibility for war crimes.
"The coalition's complete disregard for civilian lives,
as well as their lack of commitment to effective
investigations, highlights the need for an
independent international inquiry to look into
alleged violations of international law," said Lynn
Maalouf.
"It is shameful that instead of holding the coalition
accountable for their actions in Yemen, key allies
including the USA and the UK have continued to
supply it with huge quantities of arms."
DEATH PENALTY NEWS
By Stevi Carroll
Ohio Executes
Governor John Kasich resumed Ohio's
executions in July of this year. September 13th
Gary Otte was executed for the murders he
committed 25 years ago.
One concern Mr. Otte and his attorney had
about his execution was the drugs that would be
used. According to an article on the Death
Penalty Information website, one of Mr. Otte's
lawyers, Carol Wright, said he "exhibited
'abnormal' chest and stomach movements when
he was injected with the execution drug,
midazolam, showing signs of struggling for air
and what she described as 'air hunger'." When
she tried to leave the witness room to call to
alert a federal judge about this possible problem,
her exit from the room was delayed for several
minutes and by the time she was able to contact
a judge, Mr. Otte was dead. A spokesperson for
the prison said that they were following "proper
security protocol, and once [Wright's] identity
and intention was verified she was given
permission to exit the room." Journalists who
witnessed the execution said they did not see
any apparent breathing problems and the death
was not prolonged.
Another concern for this execution was Mr.
Otte's age at the time he committed these
murders. He was 20 years old. In August of this
year, a Kentucky trial court found that the brain
development and maturation of people aged
from 18-20 is similar to those of people under 18
and, therefore, the death penalty for people
under the age of 21 when they commit their
crimes is unconstitutionally cruel and unusual.
Prior to his execution, Mr. Otte apologized to
the relatives of Robert Wasikowski and Sharon
Kostura, his victims, and sang the hymn "The
Greatest Thing." His lawyer, Vickie Werneke,
said he was at peace.
Mr. Otte's final words were "Father, forgive
them for they know not what they're doing."
The state of Ohio has 24 executions scheduled
between now and 2020.
"Capital punishment is the most premeditated of
murders." Albert Camus
Recent Exonerations
Victor Rosario
State: MA Date of Exoneration: 9/8/2017
In 1983, Victor Rosario falsely confessed to
setting a fire that killed eight people in Lowell,
Massachusetts and was sentenced to life in
prison. He was exonerated in 2017 based on
evidence that the critical parts of the confession
were fabricated by police and that the fire was
an accident.
Krystal Voss
State: CO Date of Exoneration: 9/8/2017
In 2004, Krystal Voss was sentenced to 20 years
in prison for the death of her 17-month-old
toddler in Alamosa County, Colorado. She was
exonerated in 2017 by medical testimony
showing that the boy was not a victim of Shaken
Baby Syndrome, but likely died from injuries he
suffered in a fall.
Stays of Execution
September
7 Juan Castillo TX
The request was made due to the state of
disaster declared by Governor Abbott for 30
Texas counties due to Hurricane Harvey. A
concurrent order to set a new execution date of
December 14, 2017, was issued as well.
13 Jeffrey A Wogenstahl OH
Stay granted by Ohio Supreme Court May 4,
2016 on motion to vacate execution date and to
reopen direct appeal. Rescheduled for April 17,
2019 by Gov. John Kasich on February 10, 2017.
13 Alva Campbell, Jr. OH
Rescheduled for November 15, 2017, by Gov.
John Kasich on May 1, 2017.
Execution
September
13 Gary Otte OH
Lethal Injection 3-drug (midazolam)
PRISONER OF CONSCIENCE
Narges Mohammadi
By Joyce Wolf and Alexi Daher
Many thanks to group members Laura and Ted,
who staffed an Amnesty table at yesterday's
(Sep. 25) Tom Petty concert and obtained 31
signatures on a petition to free Narges.
Our September book selection was Until We Are
Free: My Fight for Human Rights in Iran by Nobel
Peace laureate Shirin Ebadi. Narges was
mentioned several times in the book. Stevi
moderated our book discussion and messaged a
photo to the author's Facebook page, writing,
"We just wanted to let you know about how
much we appreciate your book and the work
you do. Also Narges Mohammadi is our
Prisoner of Conscience. We've been writing on
her behalf since 2015.."
Narges is one of the focus cases in the major
new campaign for human rights defenders in
Iran that Amnesty is launching on September 26.
We'll look forward to Alexi's updates on this
campaign and on other work for Narges by
Amnesty groups in Europe.
Amnesty International Group 22
The Caltech Y
Mail Code C1-128
Pasadena, CA 91125
www.its.caltech.edu/~aigp22/
http://rightsreaders.blogspot.com
Amnesty International's mission is to undertake research and action focused on
preventing and ending grave abuses of the rights to physical and mental integrity,
freedom of conscience and expression, and freedom from discrimination, within the
context of its work to promote all human rights.