Carlo,

    There's no doubt that we can find noteworthy individuals in our time
who would make even Machiavelli blush, and I would agree with you that it
is  naive to think that they could ever be touched by the sensibilities of
the likes of Kung who observed how to cook a small fish or Pound who would
have wished to pull down their vanity a peg or two. Still I think the
subject here concerns looking at oneself first to see why we may have
missed the bull's eye, and that's not far from the always personal coming
face to face with poems. Temporally, this means that we are capable of the
same emotional reaction a reader may have had very long ago in a very
distant land or not so long ago in a very near one. Kung said, "Without
character you will not be able to play on that instrument." Ask Alex if
this is not true.
    Rene Guenon wrote, "It cannot be denied that moralism is a truly
remarkable thing, at least unless one prefers to conclude, as we do, that,
save for exceptions as honourable as they are rare, there remain in the
West really only two kinds of people, neither of them very interesting: the
gullible, who take these big words ('Right, Liberty, Justice, and
Civilization') at their face value and believe in their 'civilizing
mission,' completely unaware of the materialist barbarism in which they are
sunk, and the guileful, who exploit this state of mind to gratify their
instincts of violence and cupidity."
    The question is where does one fit Pound, among the honorable, the
gullible, or the guileful? Perhaps at times with any of the above? But
certainly he wouldn't be among today's Bible-thumpers who are wont now to
rush on the Rapture by taking sides in the perennial war between the
Tweedledees and the Tweedledums. Yeah, and oil too.
    So repeat Pound, "The principle of evil consists in messing into other
peoples' affairs". It may have been naive for him to say so, but it was
probably this idea above all that lead to the circumstances of his
imprisonment and discrediting.

Charlie

"'And as for liberty. I don't know what it means. Ask them.' I called
across the floor in French to them. 'La liberte - qu'est-ce que c'est la
liberte?' They sucked in the rice and stared back and said nothing."
 -THE QUIET AMERICAN (since 9/11 Miramax has pulled the recently made
movie) see http://www.counterpunch.org/landau1224.html


----------
>From: "R.Gancie/C.Parcelli" <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: Roma locuta, causa finite.
>Date: Sat, Dec 28, 2002, 11:08 AM
>

> Charlie,
>
> I've been away tending a sick relative where there is no computer and I
must return
> soon. But before I go I'll attempt a response.
>
> The Pound quote is naive. Its naive because it presupposes somewhere within
the
> U.S. kleptocratic system even the remotest possibility for integrity and
honest
> appraisal. Ironically, it is the same sort of naivete that En Lin Wei brought
to
> this argument while CONDEMNING Kung.
>
> In reference to U.S. foreign policy, it is wholly pro-active and aggressive.
Even
> when it is not openly aggressive its inevitable underlying ulterior motives
run
> counter to the purist ethic posited by Pound. I was going to give you one
example
> but 50 immediately sprang to mind. So I'll quickly give three.
>
> The recent uproar about the CIA use of torture!!!?? as though SAVAK,
Salvadoran and
> Guatemalan death squads, assault on AIM, Phoenix, MKULTRA, the KCIA and the
other
> thousands of indigenous U.S. and trained for export torturers never existed.
As
> though the School of the Americas (name now changed to something less
memorabe)
> never existed solely to train people in the use of torture. And its naive
to think
> otherwise noy by fiat but by history. Pound's prescription? Doesn't even
register
> with these guys. He was held for the radio broadcasts, not the Cantos.
They didn't
> give a rat's ass about the Cantos. Too beautiful. Not pragmatic.
>
> Ted Shackley died last week. In our studies, Joe Brennan and I have been
bumping
> into Shackley since Vietnam, the Phoenix program and protecting Vang Pao's raw
> opium trade out of the Golden Triangle. Shackley once justified his actions as
> fighting communism. Running coke with the Medillin did help fight communiism
in
> that it provided black funding for the self-defense forces and "secret" U.S.
> commando units operating in Colombia in there actions against the FMLN and
ELN.
> Kung through Pound would have been at best laughable under these
circumstances.
> Now, think of another world class murderer recently dead---Richard Helms.
>
> Then there is the advertisement here for the new privatized Virginia
Electric Power
> Company, NVEPC(sic?). They got themselves an add. The add shows a rather large
> house, in Albertian persepective, two floors, perhaps 10 or 12 windows across
on
> each floor and all of the windows show lights burning behind them in a not so
> subtle orgy of oil consumption. The narrative over this obscene scene
talks of how
> the company has every intention of protecting the right of the American
consumer to
> have 30 lights and appliances burning at once. The narrative can best be
described
> as militaristic and in another age might have made sense to a middle class
German
> or a Brit at the height of Empyre. Yet, we have to endure career liars like
Don
> Rumsfeld, in high positions, telling us and convincing most that an
attack on Iraq
> is not about oil. That the U.S. sponsored attempts at a coup in Venezuela are
not
> about oil, not that it even gets to this most obvious of conclusions in
the stooge
> press, we have here. Forgotten (or simply not known) are the histories of
> Indonesia/ Eats Timor and Somalia vis a vis the black gold. Christ, the power
> company in their add is attempting to link the two, war and oil,  in the
viewers
> mind using techniques from Edward Bernays classic 1928 work, Propaganda. And
> succeeding in creating that Chimera of Divine Right in an asinine
American public.
> The Vietnamese poet Phan Van Tri wrote in his poem the Mosquito vis a vis the
> French colonialists: "When a convenient swatter comes my way, I'll swat
you without
> a blink." 9-11. No?
>
> And then there's the naive tone of isolation in Pound's Kung. But I've
got to run.
> I won't be near a computer for 2 days. Carlo Parcelli
>
> Apologies for the single draft.
>
>
>