whitebeard

Don't curse the darkness, light a candle.

Maria Montessori 
 
(August 31, 1870 - May 6, 1952)
The first woman in Italy to graduate in medicine from the University of Rome, Montessori worked with mentally retarded children, then served in a variety of university teaching positions. In 1907, based on her research in philosophy, child development and education, she opened the Casa dei Bambini, teaching children of normal intelligence using her methods. She spent most of her remaining life writing, lecturing and teaching about her methods.

The Montessori method assumes that children learn best by interacting with concrete materials and by being respected as individuals. The teacher's role is primarily in organizing materials and establishing a general classroom culture. Most activities are individual, though the children interact in groups in some activities.

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posted by: Whitebeard at 17:42 | link | comments |
civil rights, italy

John Locke
was born today

Letters on Religious Toleration
Locke's plea for toleration in matters of belief has become classical. His Common-Place Book shows that his mind was clear on the subject more than twenty years before the publication of his first Letter. The topic, indeed, was in the air all through his life, and affected him nearly. When he was a scholar at Westminster, the powers of the civil magistrate in religious matters were the subject of heated discussion between Presbyterians and independents in the assembly of divines that held its sessions within a stone's throw of his dormitory; and, when he entered Christ Church, John Owen, a leader of the independents, had been recently appointed to the deanery. There had been many arguments for toleration before this time, but they had come from the weaker party in the state. Thus Jeremy Taylor's Liberty of Prophesying appeared in 1646, when the fortunes of his side had suffered a decline. For Owen the credit has been claimed that he was the first who argued for toleration "when his party was uppermost." He was called upon to preach before the House of Commons on January 31, 1649, and performed the task without making any reference to the tragic event of the previous day; but to the published sermon he appended a remarkable discussion on toleration. Owen did not take such high ground as Milton did, ten years later, in his Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes -- affirming that "it is not lawful for any power on earth to compel in matters of religion." He abounds in distinctions, and indeed his position calls for some subtlety. He holds that the civil magistrate has duties to the church, and that he ought to give facilities and protection to its ministers, not merely as citizens but as preachers of "the truth"; on the other hand he argues that civil or corporeal penalties are inappropriate as punishments for offences which are purely spiritual.

The position ultimately adopted by Locke is not altogether the same as this. He was...

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posted by: Whitebeard at 10:48 | link | comments |
civil rights

Dear friends and signers of the NION statements,

We are very excited to announce that we will be sponsoring an International Commission of Inquiry on Crimes Against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration.

As the charter for the commission states, "When the possibility of far-reaching war crimes and crimes against humanity exists, people of conscience have a solemn responsibility to inquire into the nature and scope of these acts and to determine if they do in fact rise to the level of war crimes and crimes against humanity." (see http://www.nion.us/Commission/call-charter.htm)

We intend to fulfill that responsibility with your help.

The commission will meet in New York in October and will consider evidence on four specific issues:
    1) Wars of Aggression, with particular reference to the invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.
    2) Torture and Indefinite Detention, with particular reference to the abandonment of international standards concerning the treatment of prisoners of war and the use of torture.
    3) Destruction of the Global Environment, with particular reference to systematic policies contributing to the catastrophic effects of global warming.
    4) Attacks on Global Public Health and Reproductive Rights, with particular reference to the genocidal effects of forcing international agencies to promote "abstinence only" in the midst of a global AIDS epidemic.

The commission's impact will flow from its rigor in the presentation of evidence, and the stature of its participants. Our goal is to continue to build the impact of the Not In Our Name statements and the World Tribunal on Iraq by holding a court of inquiry that will both frame and fuel a discussion that is urgently needed in this country: Is the administration of George W. Bush guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity?

With your help we intend to prove it before a panel of distinguished legal experts and voices of conscience. We are currently pulling together attorneys and well-known experts in the various fields to draw up indictments. The proceedings will be streamed live on the internet and will be available to the entire world.

We need to make a down payment on a major venue this week if this is to happen on the scale that is demanded. We urge you to go to our web site an make a generous contribution to make this happen (http://www.nion.us/NSOC/sign.htm). We are suggesting a minimum contribution of $100 because the costs are enormous, but all contributions are welcome and deeply appreciated.

As we say in the second Not In Our Name statement: "No election, whether fair or fraudulent, can legitimize criminal wars on foreign countries, torture, the wholesale violation of human rights, and the end of science and reason." Let us now act to make good on our commitment.

Thanking you for your continuing support,

Tony Alessandrini
Brian Drolet
Larry Everest
Clark Kissinger
Barbara Olshansky
Emna Zghal

The commission working group
(you may contact us at commission@nion.us)

posted by: Whitebeard at 09:27 | link | comments |

Dino Risi busca un productor para su parodia de Berlusconi

Dino Risi, el gran patriarca de la comedia italiana, sigue trabajando a los 89 años. El autor de La escapada ha terminado un guión sobre un vendedor ambulante de cacerolas que, tras una serie de circunstancias rocambolescas, se convierte en presidente de la República de San Marino y hace del minúsculo país un imperio mundial del juego y el cotilleo.
La historia, que lleva como título provisional La escalada, cuenta las peripecias de un vendedor ambulante que un día salva a un tipo que está a punto de ahogarse. El rescatado es el presidente de San Marino y, agradecido a su salvador, se lo lleva a su diminuto país. En poco tiempo el vendedor se convierte en amante de la esposa del presidente y cuando éste fallece maniobra con habilidad y se queda con la viuda y con la presidencia.

La habilidad del protagonista para el engaño es tan refinada, que cuando al fin le asesinan resulta que el muerto es un doble: el vendedor de cacerolas ya ha huido al Caribe con el dinero.

The article

posted by: Whitebeard at 17:15 | link | comments |
italy

The Tragedy of Haiti
1. "The First Free Nation of Free Men"
"Haiti was more than the New World's second oldest republic," anthropologist Ira Lowenthal observed, "more than even the first black republic of the modern world. Haiti was the first free nation of free men to arise within, and in resistance to, the emerging constellation of Western European empire." The interaction of the New World's two oldest republics for 200 years again illustrates the persistence of basic themes of policy, their institutional roots and cultural concomitants.
The Republic of Haiti was established on January 1, 1804, after a slave revolt expelled the French colonial rulers and their allies. The revolutionary chiefs discarded the French "Saint-Domingue" in favor of the name used by the people who had greeted Columbus in 1492, as he arrived to establish his first settlement in Europe's New World. The descendants of the original inhabitants could not celebrate the liberation. They had been reduced to a few hundred within 50 years from a pre-Colombian population estimated variously from hundreds of thousands to 8 million, with none remaining at all, according to contemporary French scholars, when France took the western third of Hispaniola, now Haiti, from Spain in 1697. The leader of the revolt, Toussaint L'Ouverture, could not celebrate the victory either. He had been captured by deceit and sent to a French prison to die a "slow death from cold and misery," in the words of a 19th century French historian. Medical anthropologist Paul Farmer observes that Haitian schoolchildren to this day know by heart his final words as he was led to prison: "In overthrowing me, you have cut down in Saint-Domingue only the tree of liberty. It will spring up again by the roots for they are numerous and deep."1

The article

posted by: Whitebeard at 16:50 | link | comments |

"What Have We Done?"

August 05, 2005
As the blood of US soldiers continues to drain into the hot sands of Iraq over the last several days with at least 27 US soldiers killed and the approval rating for his handling of the debacle in Iraq dropping to an all-time low of 38%, Mr. Bush commented from the comforts of his ranch in Crawford, Texas today, “We will stay the course, we will complete the job in Iraq.”

Just a two hour drive away in Dallas, at the Veterans for Peace National Convention in Dallas, I’m sitting with a roomful of veterans from the current quagmire.

When asked what he would say to Mr. Bush if he had the chance to speak to him, Abdul Henderson, a corporal in the Marines who served in Iraq from March until May, 2003, took a deep breath and said, “It would be two hits-me hitting him and him hitting the floor. I see this guy in the most prestigious office in the world, and this guy says ‘bring it on.’ A guy who ain’t never been shot at, never seen anyone suffering, saying ‘bring it on?’ He gets to act like a cowboy in a western movie…it’s sickening to me.”

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Big Star-Spangled Lies for War
by Norman Solomon 
 August 08, 2005 
 
  A lot of people want to believe that the current war on Iraq is some kind of aberration -- a radical departure from the previous baseline of U.S. foreign policy. That’s a comforting illusion.

Yes, the current administration in Washington is notable for the extreme mendacity and calculated idiocy of its claims. But -- decade after decade -- the propaganda fuel for one U.S. war after another has flowed from a standard set of lies.

Some of the boilerplate lies are implicit assumptions about Uncle Sam’s benign and even noble intent. Other deceptions rely on more specific whoppers, endlessly whirling through the news media’s spin cycle. From one war to the next, certain themes are played up more than others -- but the process always involves building an agenda to start a war, trying to justify the war while it’s underway, and then claiming that the war must continue as long as the man in the Oval Office says so.

Sometimes a war begins suddenly, filling the national horizon with a huge insistent flash. At other times, over a period of months or years, a low distant rumble gradually turns into a roar. But in any event, the democratic role of citizens is not simply to observe and obey. In the United States, what we think is supposed to matter. And for practical reasons, top officials in Washington don’t want to seem too far out of step with voters.

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posted by: Whitebeard at 06:52 | link | comments (2) |
war