whitebeard

Don't curse the darkness, light a candle.

 Iraq has come to this: a human and social disaster of enormous scale, where unified central governmental authority is not only non-existent, but unachievable under current conditions.
In a recent article, former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter spoke about his testimony before the Bush Crimes Commission:
President Bush has tried to justify his embrace of hegemony and pre-emption as a tragic necessity in the aftermath of the attacks of September 11, 2001. But the facts do not add up. The triple-threat outlined by the Bush administration as the justification for this new policy -- Saddam Hussein's WMD, the Hussein-Osama Bin Laden alliance, and the transfer of WMD technology from Iraq to Al Qaeda for the purpose of attacking America -- could not be backed up either in the form of intelligence data or intelligence analysis. The fact that the Bush administration pushed so aggressively for pre-emptive war in the face of no viable threat speaks volumes about the nature and intent of the President and those who advise him.
In 1946, the Nuremburg Tribunal rejected the German defense of pre-emption when it came to the invasion of Denmark and Norway in 1940. The Germans had cited the imminent occupation of these two nations by the armed forces of France and Great Britain, which would have threatened the German northern front, as just cause. This defense was rebuked by the tribunal, led by US Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, who instead identified the German action as constituting a "war of aggression." Judge Jackson went on to say that "To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."
Judge Jackson's words, and my steadfast allegiance to the Constitution of the United States of America, motivated me to give testimony this past Saturday at the International Commission of Inquiry on Crimes Against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration, in particular in support of the first count put forward by the commission: that the Bush administration authorized a war of aggression against Iraq.
I'm not a big fan of un-mandated tribunals, but given the absolute lack of attention on the part of Congress regarding the decision to invade Iraq (a lethargy encouraged somewhat by Congress' own culpability in abrogating its responsibilities under the Constitution when it comes to war powers and holding the Executive Branch in check), I felt that my participation in the Commission's work would help create a record that might someday in the future motivate the representatives of the American people who occupy the Legislative Branch of government to carry work that not only serves the interests of their respective constituencies, but also defends both the letter and intent of the Constitution they are sworn to uphold and defend. America should not be looking to any international commission or tribunal to hold President Bush and his administration to account; that is the job of the American people.
When historians look back on the policies enacted by the Bush administration in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, starting off with the decision to invade Iraq in March 2003, they will be passing judgment on a United States that has violated international law as egregiously as any power in modern history. The final chapters have yet to be written on the Presidency of George W. Bush, but even if time stopped still at the present, the crimes of America and its leader are many, and terrible.
To read the full text of the article: http://www.alternet.org/blogs/themix/31200
For Scott Ritter’s testimony at the Bush Crimes Commission: http://www.bushcommission.org

posted by: Whitebeard at 08:55 | link | comments |
us, war, censored news

I like hearing Belafonte

It's here

We Go in the Final Hour,
to the Most Important Line of Battle:
The People Themselves
 

By HARRY BELAFONTE

Opening Remarks to the closing session of the International Commission of Inquiry On Crimes Against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration, Riverside Church, New York, January 20, 2006.

Thank you very much.  I would to first express my great sense of privilege, and opportunity to be part of this evening's tribunal and what we will be seeing and hearing.  I would like to also extend my respects to the panel and to the tasks you have before you, and what we will be hearing.

It is most gratuitous that this should be taking place at the end of a week of celebration of the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. This nation has never, ever produced a greater citizen, who stood and still stands for the principles for why we are all gathered here: the pursuit of justice, the pursuit of human rights, the pursuit of human dignity.

Theodore Roosevelt once said that when the powers of state, that having been mandated to reach out and to protect the interest of the people, begin to usurp the Constitution and undermine our laws, that it is the responsibility of the citizens to rise up and to speak against this process.  And, to in fact, insist upon the changing of the guard, the changing of regime. And those, (applause), those citizens who fail to hear that call, in fact should be charged with patriotic treason (Applause).  I think none gathered here this evening can be so charged.

It is important when all the instruments of government collapse, we go in the final hour, to the most important line of battle: the people themselves. The people of this nation, I think, and I know it, are awake, and are being more awakened every day. They are hearing and sensing the danger that sits on the horizon. Looking at the international oppressions that we are a part of, looking at how we have violated international humanity and law, one day this tribunal I hope, will reach out, and in it’s investigation look at the oppression and illegal experiences people in this nation are experiencing themselves.

On 9/11, we were all stunned by the tragic events that took place when the Twin Towers collapsed, and this terrorism was put upon our people. Two thousand lost their lives.  Two thousand who were innocent, two thousand who did not cause war.  And we said they were terrorists and we should hunt them down and bring them to justice.  Tell me, where for you does the line blur? 

When a nation as powerful as this, the most powerful in the history of human existence, and those who have dubiously come to power and who are reigning over the will of this nation, when they lie and mislead the citizens of this country, when they put before us fear and then govern by terrorism -- where does the line blur for you?  When our sons and daughters are sent to die in foreign battlefields, each day we claim the lives of tens and thousands of innocent men, women, and children, in other places -- where for you does terrorism end and where does it begin, and who are the terrorists? (Applause). 

Those who would choose to detract the real meaning of this tribunal, the real meaning of this people's moment, would suggest to you that we are somehow perhaps irrelevant. Well, I guess Paul Revere was considered at one point irrelevant, when he called for the alarm against the red coats. 

I know very well that at the beginning, Dr. Martin Luther King was considered irrelevant. I know that there are so many that have called for the awakening of our citizens to look at what is happening to us and to seize our rights to put us back into democratic governance. Always in the beginning, we are minimalized, marginalized and relegated to the dustbins of history.  We have prevailed before and we will prevail again. I am honored to be a part of this process, and anything I can do to help broaden it's base, to help broaden it's inquiry, and to help save the soul of our nation, I welcome the opportunity and I will so serve. Thank you.

posted by: Whitebeard at 18:34 | link | comments |
us, civil rights, war, censored news

Bush on Trial for Crimes against Humanity
By Marjorie Cohn
t r u t h o u t | Report

Tuesday 24 January 2006

The International Commission of Inquiry on Crimes against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration convened last weekend in New York City's Riverside Church. Martin Luther King Jr.'s portrait hangs in the foyer. Dr. King delivered his historic 1967 speech, "Beyond Vietnam: A Place to Break the Silence," opposing the war and calling for the removal of all foreign troops from Vietnam, in that same church.

Center for Constitutional Rights President Michael Ratner, who delivered a keynote address to the commission of inquiry, invoked Dr. King's words from 1967: "A time comes when silence is betrayal." The following year, the Bertrand Russell War Crimes Tribunal put the US government on trial for "crimes without precedent" it was committing in Vietnam. In the tradition of the Russell tribunal, the panel of judges at the commission of inquiry heard evidence of George W. Bush's war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay, and elsewhere.

Ratner said that Bush openly and notoriously "laid the plan for coup d'état in America" with a small paragraph in his "signing statement" attached to the McCain anti-torture amendment. Bush wrote that his commander in chief power allows him to do anything he thinks is necessary, including torture, notwithstanding the amendment passed by Congress. Ratner called that a "historic, unprecedented grab for power" that spells the end of checks and balances in our government. Bush, according to Ratner, has declared that George Bush is the law.

Harry Belafonte gave the other keynote address. "When a government fails to protect justice," Belafonte declared, "it is the responsibility of the people to rise up and change the guard, change the regime." In a hoarse voice, the legendary singer charged, "Those who fail to answer that call should be charged with patriotic treason."

T r u t h o u t writer Ray McGovern, a CIA analyst from 1961 to 1990, took the testimony of Scott Ritter, a senior United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998. The allegation that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction was the only justification on which George W. Bush's war in Iraq was based, McGovern said. He cited statements by Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice before September 11, 2001, that Saddam Hussein had no WMDs and was unable to pose even a conventional threat to his neighbors. After September 11, however, Donald Rumsfeld expressed "no doubt" that Hussein had WMDs. "A trained ape knows that," Rumsfeld said.

Ritter noted that Rumsfeld knew Iraq had disarmed and had no ongoing weapons program. By 1998, the weapons inspectors had accounted for 95 to 98 percent of Iraq's WMDs, Ritter said. "No nation had hard factual data that Iraq retained or was reconstituting WMDs," Ritter added. "No nation had those facts."

The Bush administration willfully misled the American people about Iraq's weapons programs, Ritter charged. When Dick Cheney said that Iraq was constituting its nuclear program, he "was lying," Ritter said.

From 1991 to 2003, the United States policy in Iraq was regime change, according to Ritter. The US and the United Kingdom sought to maintain the public perception that Iraq was not complying with its obligations to disarm, in order to justify regime change. The US never intended to disarm Iraq; it would have had to lift the sanctions, which were aimed at undermining Iraq's welfare, weakening the government, and facilitating regime change.

"Intelligence" in the George W. Bush administration "was being fixed around the policy of regime change," Ritter maintained. "What passes for intelligence is nothing more than politically motivated propaganda." He said, "There was no intelligence failure because the policy wasn't disarmament; it was regime change."

Another witness, David Swanson, from www.afterdowningstreet.org, detailed the Downing Street Minutes, which were prepared in March 2002 and July 2002, but were leaked to the public last spring. They disclosed that Bush was determined to go to war and was building a case to accomplish that goal. "Intelligence was being fixed around the policy," the minutes reveal. "Going to the UN was an attempt to legalize a war that had already been decided upon," Swanson testified.

Dahr Jamal, who spent 8 months in occupied Iraq as an independent journalist, also testified at the commission. He charged that the US military carried out collective punishment in Fallujah in violation of international law. Snipers engaged in targeted killings, and troops prevented ambulances from reaching the wounded and prevented the wounded from receiving medical attention, violations of the Geneva Conventions.

The United States decided that the entire city of Fallujah, with more than 350,000 civilians, was "a free-fire-zone," Jamal said. In the attack on Fallujah in November 2004, between 4,000 and 6,000 civilians were killed. The US military employed illegal weapons, including cluster bombs, depleted uranium, and white phosphorous.

Jamal accused the media, including CNN, Fox, Judith Miller, Thomas Friedman, Bill O'Reilly, and Rush Limbaugh, of aiding and abetting the Bush administration's war crimes and crimes against humanity in their coverage of the US assault on Fallujah.

Another eyewitness to the occupation, journalist Jeremy Scahill, testified about the targeted killing of independent journalists by the US military. He cited the killing of an Al Jazeera reporter and the bombing of the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad, both on April 8, 2004. More than 100 unembedded journalists were in that hotel, and the US knew it, Scahill contended. The attack killed two cameramen.

Scahill said the Pentagon warned unembedded journalists, "Baghdad is not a safe place. You should not be there."

The Bush administration has consistently attempted to link Iraq with the September 11 attacks. Scahill observed, "There is a connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. It's called Washington," he said.

Challenging the Democrats to end the war, Scahill alleged: "We can't be vegetarians between meals. A loyal opposition is not going to end this war."

Craig Murray, former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, testified before the commission. Murray charged that Uzbekistan practices torture on an industrial scale. He cited a UN investigation that concluded torture was widespread and systemic in that country. Thousands of people are tortured every year, Murray said. This includes rape with objects like broken bottles, smashing of limbs, pulling out of fingernails, and immersing people into boiling liquid.

Uzbekistan, Murray said, is a US ally in the war on terror, a member of the coalition of the willing. Murray displayed a letter on the big screen. It was from Ken Lay, former chairman of Enron, to then Texas Governor George W. Bush in April 1997. It began, "Dear George" ["Look who's boss," Murray noted], and continued, "You will be meeting with" the Uzbek ambassador to the United States to discuss Enron's $2 billion oil and gas contract.

The real reason underlying the war in Iraq, Murray testified, was oil and gas. So "they needed false intelligence from torture chambers," he said, in order to justify the war on terror. Sir Michael Wood informed Murray that the official position was that it's not illegal to get information from torture provided they do not themselves torture or direct that a specific individual be tortured.

"You can't build security on evil," Murray said. "I don't believe torture works," he concluded. "But even it if did work, I'd rather die than have anyone tortured to save my life."

I presented the testimony of Janis Karpinski, a brigadier general who was assigned to Iraq in July 2003 to oversee 17 prison facilities, including Abu Ghraib. Karpinski described how General Geoffrey Miller transferred the interrogation techniques he had instituted at the US prison at Guantánamo Bay to Abu Ghraib.

Miller was specially selected by Rumsfeld and sent to Iraq to run the interrogations operation, to work with the military intelligence personnel and teach them new and improved interrogation techniques to obtain more actionable intelligence from their interrogations.

When Miller arrived at Abu Ghraib, he said, "It's my opinion that you're treating the prisoners too well. At Guantánamo, the prisoners know that we are in charge, and they know that from the very beginning." He said, "You have to treat the prisoners like dogs, and if you think or feel differently, you've lost control."

Miller declared, "We're going to Gitmo-ize the operation" (referring to the techniques they used at Guantánamo Bay).

Karpinski thought Miller came with the authority of Rumsfeld because General Ricardo Sanchez, who was a 3-star, deferred to Miller, although he was only a 2-star. Even though Miller told Congress he was sent to Abu Ghraib merely in an assisting capacity, Colonel Thomas Pappas furnished Miller with a daily report detailing the results of interrogations at Abu Ghraib.

Sanchez himself signed an 8-page memorandum with a laundry list of harsher interrogation techniques, including the specific use of unmuzzled dogs, Karpinski said.

Control of cellblocks 1-A and 1-B, "the hard sites," was transferred to military intelligence. Karpinski didn't learn of the torture and abuse until January 12, 2004. In fact, she never attended any of the meetings in which the progress of interrogations was discussed. Sanchez said, "We scheduled them specifically when she would not be available to attend."

When Karpinski was told about the photographs and the abuse, she prepared to hold a press conference and tell the Iraqis in Arabic that there would be a full investigation. But Sanchez warned her off. "He looked me dead in the eye and said, 'absolutely not. You are not to discuss this with anyone. And that's an order.'"

Karpinski discovered that all personnel and documents relating to the scandal had been removed from Abu Ghraib. The only thing that remained was a memorandum signed by Rumsfeld. It was called, "Approval of Harsher Interrogation Techniques," and listed sleep deprivation, stress positions, playing loud music, insulting religious beliefs. In the margin, there was a note in Rumsfeld's handwriting. It said, "Make sure this happens."

Sanchez would not have implemented the techniques without the approval of Rumsfeld, and Rumsfeld would not have authorized them without the approval of the vice president, Karpinski testified. "And so it filtered down, and it never filtered down to me because I wasn't even responsible for interrogations."

Ultimately, however, Karpinski and 7 low-ranking soldiers were made the scapegoats. Karpinski was demoted to colonel. "I believe the Pentagon wanted to put this into a nice little package, 7 so-called bad apples, out of control on the night shift, and a female officer. They wanted to put that in a package, tie it up in a bow, and sink it forever, to make people believe we got it under control, we solved the problem."

Karpinski also testified that American female soldiers in Iraq were assaulted or raped by male soldiers in the women's latrines, and an alarming number committed suicide. "Because the women were in fear of getting up in the darkness [to go to the latrine], they were not drinking liquids after 3 or 4 in the afternoon," Karpinski said. "In the 100 degree heat, they were dying of dehydration in their sleep. Rather than making everyone aware - it was shocking - they told the surgeon not to brief on the details, and don't say specifically that they were women." Karpinski identified the commander who ordered that the cause of death of the women not be listed on the death certificates. It was General Sanchez, she said.

The commission heard testimony about the Bush administration's criminal responsibility for indefinite detention, rendition for torture, destruction of the global environment, attacks on global public health and reproductive rights, and actions and inactions leading up to and following Hurricane Katrina. The panel of judges will consider the testimony and release its findings.

(Read my exclusive t r u t h o u t interview with Janis Karpinski: Abu Ghraib General Lambastes Bush Administration.)

---

Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, President-elect of the National Lawyers Guild, and the US representative to the executive committee of the American Association of Jurists. She writes a weekly column for t r u t h o u t.

posted by: Whitebeard at 07:50 | link | comments |

Is US Military Dominance of the World a Good Idea?

By Peter Phillips

The leadership class in the US is now dominated by a neo-conservative group of some 200 people who have the shared goal of asserting US military power worldwide. This Global Dominance Group, in cooperation with major military contractors, has become a powerful force in military unilateralism and US political processes.

A long thread of sociological research documents the existence of a dominant ruling class in the US, which sets policy and determines national political priorities. C. Wright Mills, in his 1956 book on the power elite, documented how World War II solidified a trinity of power in the US that comprised corporate, military and government elites in a centralized power structure working in unison through "higher circles" of contact and agreement.

Neo-conservatives promoting the US Military control of the world are now in dominant policy positions within these higher circles of the US. Adbusters magazine summed up neo-conservatism as: "The belief that Democracy, however flawed, was best defended by an ignorant public pumped on nationalism and religion. Only a militantly nationalist state could deter human aggression ŠSuch nationalism requires an external threat and if one cannot be found it must be manufactured."

In 1992, during Bush the First's administration, Dick Cheney supported Lewis Libby and Paul Wolfowitz in producing the "Defense Planning Guidance" report, which advocated US military dominance around the globe in a "new order." The report called for the United States to grow in military superiority and to prevent new rivals from rising up to challenge us on the world stage.

At the end of Clinton's administration, global dominance advocates founded the Project for a New American Century (PNAC). Among the PNAC founders were eight people affiliated with the number-one defense contractor Lockheed-Martin, and seven others associated with the number-three defense contractor Northrop Grumman. Of the twenty-five founders of PNAC twelve were later appointed to high level positions in the George W. Bush administration.

In September 2000, PNAC produced a 76-page report entitled Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century. The report, similar to the 1992 Defense Policy Guidance report, called for the protection of the American Homeland, the ability to wage simultaneous theater wars, perform global constabulary roles, and the control of space and cyberspace. It claimed that the 1990s were a decade of defense neglect and that the US must increase military spending to preserve American geopolitical leadership as the world's superpower. The report also recognized that: "the process of transformation Š is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event such as a new Pearl Harbor." The events of September 11, 2001 presented exactly the catastrophe that the authors of Rebuilding America' Defenses theorized were needed to accelerate a global dominance agenda. The resulting permanent war on terror has led to massive government defense spending, the invasions of two countries, and the threatening of three others, and the rapid acceleration of the neo-conservative plans for military control of the world.

The US now spends as much for defense as the rest of the world combined. The Pentagon's budget for buying new weapons rose from $61 billion in 2001 to over $80 billion in 2004. Lockheed Martin's sales rose by over 30% at the same time, with tens of billions of dollars on the books for future purchases. From 2000 to 2004, Lockheed Martins stock value rose 300%. Northrup-Grumann saw similar growth with DoD contracts rising from $3.2 billion in 2001 to $11.1 billion in 2004. Halliburton, with Dick Cheney as former CEO, had defense contracts totaling $427 million in 2001. By 2003, they had $4.3 billion in defense contracts, of which approximately a third were sole source agreements.

At the beginning of 2006 the Global Dominance Group's agenda is well established within higher circle policy councils and cunningly operationalized inside the US Government. They work hand in hand with defense contractors promoting deployment of US forces in over 700 bases worldwide.
There is an important difference between self-defense from external threats, and the belief in the total military control of the world. When asked, most working people in the US have serious doubts about the moral and practical acceptability of financing world domination.

Peter Phillips is a Professor of Sociology at Sonoma State University and director of Project Censored, a media research organization. A more in-depth review of the global dominance group's agenda and a list of the 200 advocates see: http://www.projectcensored.org/downloads/Global_Dominance_Group.pdf

--

Peter Phillips Ph.D.
Sociology Department/Project Censored
Sonoma State University
1801 East Cotati Ave.
Rohnert Park, CA 94928
707-664-2588
http://www.projectcensored.org/

posted by: Whitebeard at 09:07 | link | comments |
us, civil rights, censored news

A Berlusconi victory would be as damaging as was Bush's

The Italian leader is not fit to hold high office, and activists worldwide should join to ensure his election defeat Tristram Hunt
Monday February 6, 2006
The Guardian
In typically vulgar style, Silvio Berlusconi committed himself last week to sexual abstinence until the Italian general election on April 9. Unfortunately, Mrs Berlusconi's well-earned break promises to come at the expense of European politics. For a determined Berlusconi could well win himself another term in office.
Some 15 months ago the global progressive community headed to America in a forlorn attempt to unseat President Bush. From Europe, Canada and Asia thousands of angry activists joined the Democrat campaign. Even the Guardian got in on the act by targeting the voters of Clark County, Ohio. Now, with greater effort, the same campaigning enthusiasm needs to be directed towards Italy - as with the US elections, as much for our sakes as for theirs.

In the run-up to the 2001 Italian poll, the Economist listed a litany of charges Berlusconi was under investigation for. Famously, the normally reserved magazine concluded he was "not fit to lead the government of any country, least of all one of the world's richest democracies". Although Berlusconi responded with a libel claim, which is so far unresolved, his record in office has only served to confirm their verdict.
Above all there has been the systematic abuse of the legislature for his own ends. Deploying his substantial majority in parliament, in 2003 he altered the law to give high-ranking state officials (such as the prime minister) legal exemptions. More recently, he has further attempted to cow prosecuting authorities with an attack on judicial independence. The usually pliant President Ciampi called the legislation "blatantly unconstitutional".

Berlusconi's serial misuse of the political system ranges from the parochial to the constitutional. He overhauled the planning system to cover up the environmental damage his gargantuan villa had inflicted on the Sardinian coastline. And six months before the April poll he introduced a wide-ranging series of electoral reforms. These would have the effect of denying the opposition an outright victory as well as returning Italy to the worst years of PR instability.

Yet he has always been more than just prime minister. In addition to holding executive power, he is a publisher, newspaper proprietor, football magnate, property developer, advertiser and, above all, television mogul.

Despite all the sweet talk before 2001 of divesting himself of conflicting interests, Berlusconi has tightened his control over the Italian media. Satirists have been driven off the airwaves, while his 90% control of television channels eliminates any pretence of political balance. In one 15-day period last month, Berlusconi enjoyed three hours and 16 minutes of airtime compared with his rival Romano Prodi's eight minutes.

Continue here

posted by: Whitebeard at 15:19 | link | comments |
italy

The Casentino and its story

Enlarge the photo clicking over.

Follows the entire Chapter VIII

This letter, if genuine, would throw much light on the poet's state of mind immediately before and during the course of this sudden passion. Many Dante students, however, regard it as a forgery. It seems indeed to repeat too closely and insistently the beautiful thoughts and images of the song, and to give a circum­stantiality to the episode which steals away some of its poetic  grace. 
This "mountain song" is usually considered to stand by itself and to be the one expression, if the letter is left out, of this love aberration of the poet's later and graver days. There is, however, a series of lyrics which have much likeness to it in tone and expression; the rime pietrose or "stony rhymes," so called because _hey harp constantly on the word pietra, so that some have supposed them to be addressed to a certain lady named Pietra. This is apparently a quite baseless conjecture. But that the passion, fierce, earthly and elemental in its nature, which they disclose, was felt for a real woman seems impossible to doubt, though some commentators have attempted to give them an allegorical significance, classing them with the odes which are undoubtedly written in celebration of Philosophy. 
They are almost certainly some of those which the poet himself meant to treat of and interpret allegorically in the unwritten books of the Convivio; but that would only have been another instance of Dante's habit of conceiving a mystical and symbolic personification in the image of, some earthly fair one whom he had known. Beatrice, the Lady of his noblest self, changes from the human maiden of the Vita Nuova into the vessel of the Divine Wisdom in the Divina Commedia. The Lad y of the Window at the end of the narrative of the Vita Nuova, whose consoling eyes make him forget Beatrice, reappears in the Convivio, transmuted by some mental alchemy into the "daughter of God, queen of all, most noble and beauteous Philosophy." The Convivio was indeed in some sort an apology: he tells us himself that he was parity moved to write it by the. fear of infamy; “the infamy of having pursued so great a passion as he who reads the above named odes conceives to have had dominion over me," and there is little doubt that if he had carried out his plan, the Stony Lady would have appeared in the later books in some lofty moral guise. But the work was never finished, and in the Purgatorio in his after days the poet, instead of attempting to explain away his frailties, took the nobler part of confessing them with shame and repentance.
The rime pietrose are now general1y supposed to belong to a period of moral aberration in the poet following on the death of Beatrice, and to have been written before I300, the  date of his conversion, as represented in the Divina Commedia. The passion which they celebrate would then be one of the “false visions of good " for which he forsook Beatrice and the "right goal," and the pargoletta, whom his monitress in the earthly paradise includes among the vanities which hindered him from rising to her, might be the same as the maiden with the. heart of marble in the last ode of the series. But may not Dante have intended to include his later errors in Beatrice's indictment and in his' general repentance at the imaginary date of his vision? Such an anachronism in dealing with his own moral history would surely have been permissible. There can be little, doubt that long after I300 he was still astray from the ideal path which Beatrice had pointed out to him, and that she did not regain the empire of his mind till much later. The ode in cele­bration of the lady of the Casentino belongs in any case to a later period, and its whole tone is a contradic­tion to those who would deny the reality of its object and read it in an allegorical sense. It would be deeply interesting if we might believe that this same lady was also the heroine of the rime pietrose, and that they too belonged to the poet's exile and to the Casentino. There is much in the poems themselves which lends itself to this interpretation. Three of them are full of images of rocks and streams and hills in winter. You feel that the poet must have been in the midst of these wintry scenes as he wrote. A fourth, Così nel mio parlar voglio esser aspro, in which he hisses out all the consuming rage and vindictiveness of savage desire, has in its fierce grating sound the very scrunch and . scrape of furious feet grinding over the stones of the denuded hillsides. But it is the exquisite sestina of the group, Al poco giorno, a form of the canzone borrowed from the Provencal Arnaut Daniel, which by its landscape details, if one may so call, them, brings to mind especially thoughts of the Valley Enclosed. It presents a picture so incomparably lovely of the enchantress who has wounded the poet in such grievous fashion that I can not resist giving it here, the more so as I would fain take her to be the mysterious lady of the Casentino, the Alpigiana herself.  

" Al poco giorno, ed al gran cerchio d'ombra
 san giunto, lasso! ed al bianchir de' colli,

 quando si perde lo colar nell' erba.

E'l mio disio però non cangia il verde,

 si è barbato nella dura pietra,

che parla e sen te come fosse donna.

Similemente questa nuova donna

si sta gelata, come neve all' ombra,

 che non la muove, se non come pietra,

 il dolce tempo, che riscalda i colli,

e che gli fa tornar di bianco in verde,

perchè gli copre di fioretti e d'erba.

Quand' ella ha in testa una ghirlanda d'erba

 trae della mente nostra ogni altra donna;

perchè si mischia il crespo giallo e 'l verde

sì bel, ch' Amar vi viene a stare all' ombra;

 che m' ha serrato tra piccoli colli

più forte assai che la calcina pietra.
Le sue bellezze han più virtù che pietra
e'l colpo suo non può sanar per erba;
 ch' io san fuggito per piani e per colli,
 per potere scampar da cotal donna;
ed al suo viso non mi può far ombra poggio,
 nè muro mai, nè fronda verde.

Io l'ho veduta già vestita a verde
sì fatta, ch' ella avrebbe messo in pietra l'amar,
 ch' io porto pure alla sua ombra;
 ond' io l'ho chiesta in un bel prato

d'erba innamorata, com' anca fu donna,

e chiuso intorno d'altissimi colli.

Ma ben ritorneranno i fiumi a' colli

prima che questo legno molle e verde s'infiammi,

 come suoI far bella donna, di me, che mi torrei

 dormir su pietra tutto il mio tempo,

e gir pascendo l'erba, Sol per vedere

de' suoi panni l'ombra.

Quantunque i colli fanno più nera ombra

                sotto il bel verde la giovene donna

                gli fa sparir, come pietra sott' erba." 
 To the short day and to the great circle of shadow am I come, alas! and to the blanching of the hills, when the colour goes from the grass. And my desire for that changes not its green  so rooted is it in the hard stone, which speaks and hears as though 'twere woman. And in like manner this new woman remains frozen, like snow within the shadow, for she is not moved any more than stone by the sweet season which warms the hills and which makes them turn from white to green because it covers them with flowers and grass. When she has on her head a garland of grass she draws from our mind every other woman, for the cur1ing yellow mingles with the green so sweetly, that love comes there to dwell in the shadow; who has locked me between the little hills more fast by far than the calcined stone. Her beauty has more virtue than stone and her stroke may  not be healed by grass ; and I have fled by plain and hills that I might 'scape from such a woman ; and from her face might not give me shadow hillside nor e'er a walI or frond of green. Ere now I have seen her vestured in green, so bedight she would have implanted in stone the love which I bear even to her shadow. Wherefore I have wooed her in a fair meadow of grass enamoured,r as was ever woman, and c1osed around with loftiest hills.  But well may the rivers return to the hills, sooner than this wood, humid and green, shall inflame, as is the wont of fair woman, for me, who would consent to sleep on stone all my time        and wander feeding on grass only to see of her garments the shadow. Whensoever the hills make blackest shadow beneath the fair green the youthful woman makes it vanish, like stone beneath grass. This new woman, green-garbed, with a garland of grass upon her golden head, pure and cold as the primal season of the year, swift and elusive as the flight of some shadow over the claimed rocks, is the very genius of that high snow-cooled valley, with its newly springing river and its green and flowery lawns cc closed about with loftiest hills." What place could answer so well to those very words, chiuso intorno d'altissimi colli, as the Clusentinum, the Valley Enclosed. The form of the poem, with the continually recurring fall of the same words at the ends of the verses, has something in it suggestive of the monotonous sound of the "ruscel­letti" of the mountains. This effect is still more pronounced in the companion ode, "Amor, tu vedi ben," a sort of double sestina, with only five rhymes, and the same word repeated twice or three times in the sequence of the lines. In this the cruelty of this lady, this semblance of a woman made of beauteous stoI1e, is compared to the freezing cold of the wintry world, and the chill moisture of the air to his own tears. And in the final ode of the series, "lo son venuto al punto della rota," he shows himself still consumed" by the fierce heat of passion, in the midst of the mournful snows and rains and deadened waters of the season when the birds are silent or fled, the flowers are slain upon the slopes, and all animas that are wanton in their nature are unloosed from love. 

" Canzone, or che sarà di me nell'altro
      dolce tempo novello, quando piove
 Amore in terra da tutti li cieli?

quando per questi geli

Amore è solo in me, e non altrove?

 Saranne quello, ch' è d'un uom di marmo,

se in pargoletta fia per cuore un marmo."

"   Ode, what will now become of me, in the next sweet 
new season, when rains love upon the earth from all the 
heavens ;      if throughout these frosts love is in me alone 
and not elsewhere? That will come to me which comes to 
a man of marble  if in the maiden, for a heart, be marble.  

These continual images of winter, contrasted so in­sistently with the ever-greenness of his desire, seem to have an' inner significance relating to the poet's age. "To the short day and the great circle of shadow am I come, ah me!" and still he suffers for this lady of a ‘picciol tempo “— of the few years —the sweet torment which belongs to an earlier season. If this inference were justified, it would show that these poems were written later than the period usually assigned to them, when Dante was in the ascending half of the “arch” of life, according to his own division of human age. But his entrance upon old age, which he reckons to begin at forty-five, would have come to pass in 1310, and coincides very closely with the time when he was cer­tainly in the Casentino. 
It is difficult to conceive, however, that the exiled enthusiast, watching from the mountain top the progress of his embodied hope and aspiration in the world below and sending forth his own voice of thunder into the confusion of political counsels, could have been at the same time the lover of the “stony” poems. Yet, apart from this, nothing could be more natural than that having arrived at the point fixed by himself in earlier life as the limit of manhood and beginning of old age, he should have been surprised by the youthful­ness of his own feelings and should have registered the sensation in enduring verse. One may reflect perhaps that the period of Henry VII’s enterprise was extended over a period of some length, and that even psalmists and prophets have their changing moods. 
This love episode of the Casentino, whether we read it in the mountain ode alone, or amplify that with the rime pietrose, gives a deeply interesting glimpse of I)ante at one period of his exile. This was the time in his life when he was apparently least occupied with the thought of Beatrice and least under the influence of spiritual sentiment. The pure and beautiful flame of his New Life was long spent and had not yet rekindled stronger and more glorious in its transcendental form of the Divine Comedy. Earthly desire has him in thrall and rewards his pain by informing his art with new power and beauty. The rime pietrose show him at the fulness of his artistic development: “they reveal a power of art, a movement, a plasticity by which they surpass the rime which we already know, if in nothing else than in virile sentiment.”   (Zingarelli. Dante). 
It is impossible to say who the Lady of the Casentino was, or whether she was one of the Guidi family, as local gossips declare. Yet her personality is very real to us to-day. As one wanders in the woods and beside the little streams” which from the green hills of Casentino descend into Arno” the silence and solitude become strangely alive with the shades of the poet and the lady, the one fleeing after the other in never­ending chase. Beneath Romena, by the side of the Arno, there is a grassy place where the poplars grow slim and sparse and blossoms are thick upon the banks in spring. In such a “bel prato d’erba,” closed around with loftiest hills, it was that he wooed her amid the love-laden flowers and herbs, and she remained cold and unmelting as the snow that lingered in the shadows of. the hills, relentless as the young stream racing on its downward course and telling its eternal story of ever—renewed, ever—unsatisfied desire. I fancy him descending some spring morning, lightened awhile of his thoughts, forgetful of sin and judgment, ‘a votary for once of the old god Pan; and she fleeting lightly in her alluring pride of dispiteous youth, grassy robed, gold-tressed, between the white poplar stems. 
And here, may be, standing on the bank of the river beside which Love had ever been strong upon him, and watching the waters 1kw he bethought him in the midst of his torment of that other Lady of his deepest desire, more cruel to him than any, and breathed upon the stream a message to her of this new love, whose chain was so strong that even if her grace were granted to him it would be in vain. 
 “O montanina mia canzon, tu vai;
forse vedrai Fiorenza la mia terra .
And now after all these centuries one seems still to hear in that deep murmur beneath the ripple of the water the voices of Poet and Lady, grown grave and sweet with time, mingled for ever in a questioning that expects no answer and a rebuke that knows no unkindness. All is as it was then. The stony bed of the river makes a wide white strand through which the narrow current hurries, and again spreads out in broad tranquil pools in which the poplars mirror themselves. Everything here is delicate, pale and fine—herbage, water, stems of trees, and trembling leaves. But now the place is solitary. A little girl herding a few sheep wanders alone. Falterona rises up behind, clothed in storm-clouds, which shroud the cradle of the river of memories. There, to the left, stand up the towers of Romena. But they are shrunk to a bare anatomy. The poplars too are yellow this autumn evening;  low clouds cover the sky “and no bird sings.” 
But other thoughts deeper than. those of love, graver than those of worldly politics, possessed the poet’s mind also in the Casentino. Though the Divina Commedia  was probably not yet begun, the intention of it had been in him ever since he closed the story of his young life and its love for Beatrice with the promise to write concerning her that which had not before been written of any woman. As he trod the Valley in the idleness which is big with the deeds of the morrow, the great work to be was doubtless taking form and substance in his brain, and a thousand impressions from the world in which he moved must have mingled in the process. The images of the mountains form the framework and architecture of the scenes of Hell and Purgatory, and the poet’s painful progress up the cliffs and steeps has in it the re­membered anguish of many an arduous climb in the Apennines.  “Dante,” says Ampère, “actually walks with Virgil. He toils upward, he stops to take breath, he helps himself with his hand when his foot is not enough. Re loses himself and asks his way. He observes the altitude of the sun and of the stars. In a word, one finds the habits and the souvenirs of the traveller in every verse or rather in every step of his poetic peregrination.”  (Voyage Dantesque). 
He recalls the mists in which he has been caught in the Alps, and the sun feebly appearing through them as they begin to thin, when he is emerging out of the fog of the third circle of Purgatory into the sunlight again. And that dawn, when in the rose of the eastern sky the newly risen sun appeared tempered by the mists, so that the eye long endured it, of which he is reminded by the vision of the veiled Beatrice within a cloud of flowers, was surely a morning in the mountains. Again, one can hardly doubt that some thought of the yawning rocks of La Verna and of the Franciscan legend that they were shattered at the moment of the Crucifixion is in the description of the fallen cliff in the Inferno  (C. xxi., vv. 106-114), where the way had been broken a thousand two hundred and sixty-six years before that Good Friday, 1300, of the poet’s journey.
And those images drawn from the sweet pastoral scenes of earth, with which he refreshes himself now and again as he descends through the gloom of the godless region or climbs the painful hill of Purgatory, might well be memories of the Casentino; the sheep issuing from the fold and standing all timid, casting eye and nose to earth and huddling behind their leader, guileless and quick; the shepherd silently beside his flock, watching that no beast may scatter it; the goats wanton and agile on the hills or grown tame as they ruminate silent in the shade when the sun is hot, while the herd minds them, leaning on his staff (Purgatorio, C. xxvii.). There is a passage in the Inferno (C. xxiv., vv. 1-15) where the horror of the devilish depths of Malebolge is relieved by an enchanting glimpse of the life ofthe fields: - 
 “In that part of the youthful year wherein 
the Sun his locks beneath Aquarius tempers, 
 and now the nights draw near to half the day, 
what time the hoar-frost copies on the ground 
the outward semblance of her sister white, 
but little lasts the temper of her pen, 
the husbandman, whose forage faileth him,
rises and looks, and seeth the champaign 
all gleaming white, whereat he beats his flank, 
 returns in doors, and up and down laments, 
like a poor wretch, who knows not what to do. 
Then he returns, and hope revives again, 
seeing the world has changed its countenance 
 in little time, and takes his shepherd’s crook, 
 and forth the little lambs to pasture drives.”’
(Longfellow’s translation)
These things may be seen to-day as then. Long familiarity with the ways of the weather still fails to teach the Italian peasant patience, and the customs of field and hill have not changed. At every turn almost one is reminded of some word of the divine poet's. I remember last autumn being shut out from an accustomed path through a vineyard because l'uom della villa had hedged up the opening with a little forkful of his thorns exactly as his ancestor in Dante's day was wont to do when the grape was darkening (Purgatorio, C. IV, vv. 19-21). 
He for whom all things were doubled one against the other, and who looked upon the face of Nature as but the semblance of the unseen reality, saw, we cannot doubt, in every aspect of sky and earth, some similitude of the deeper existences of the moral and spiritual worlds, some adumbration of his visionary kingdoms of sin and sorrow and beatitude. Did not the pointed hill of Romena, that stands out in the midst of the Valley, circ1ed seven times and more with calcined terraces, seem at times when immaginativa rapt him from the outer world the figure of the toil­some Mount of Repentance, up which it behoved him to struggle. And on clear nights, as he stood on its summit, whence the heavens unrolled themselves before him, did not the eternal circling of the spheres become visible in the order of the degrees of the blessed, within the all-comprehending Heaven of infinite Love, where motion and rest are one ?
Often looking down at sunset into the western valley which opens behind Romena, where the stream's sanguine streak pierces its way into the gloom of the mountains, beneath the awful gold. of the sky, he thought perhaps of the river of sin, whereon the deathly boatman conducts the lost souls to their eternal prison.
And lifting his eyes, borne upwards in spirit on the thought of the glorious lady of his mind, did he not see, painted in the thrilling of crimsoned cloudlets around the intolerable brightness of the sky when the sun was just withdrawn, the mystic Garden of the Rose, the hosts of the seraphim, the throng of splendours still contemplating the radiance which his weak sight might not endure; and surely as he gazed he knew the time to come, when by painful steps and circling ways, casting off the burden of pride which bowed him to the earth, his soul too shou1d rise thither at last where it should abide the vision of the ineffable Light, and in unceasing contemplation know eternal peace.
End of Chapter VIII

posted by: Whitebeard at 19:07 | link | comments |
dante, noyes

My Dante Alighieri

 What follows is the introduction to a booklet I wrote about “Dante in Casentino valley”, that is my native country ( between Firenze and Arezzo ). I hope that very soon the two BB (Berlusconi & Bush) will disappear from our political horizon, so that we can appreciate poetry again.
(Many thanks  to Giuliana Bernardi  for the translation).

‘Ivi è Romena’

 There Romena lies

 Introduction 
 The aim of this booklet is to describe the links between Dante and Casentino.
Dante lived in the Casentino between 1304 and 1311, even if irregularly. Most of the 13 letters we still have were written from the Casentino and we must thank an unknown local archivist for their preservation. Five of them mention dates and places - from the Arno springs, from Poppi Castle -. The time he spends in the Casentino is fundamental in Dante’s life: the poet is at the full height of his strength but at the hardest and most uncertain moment of his political circumstances. While in the Casentino, Dante is under the delusion of going back to Florence quite soon – at first he hopes to make peace with the Neri faction, later he is almost certain that the Italian Operation organised by the young and waited-for king Henry VII will be successful. He will leave the Casentino only when he gives up all hope of returning to Florence.

 Dante had left Florence for Rome in 1301 together with other two Florentine ambassadors. Theirs was to be one of the most important legacies ever arranged by Florentine government. That government had developed from the ‘Ordinamenti di Giustizia’ (Court System) by Giano della Bella, after the bitter struggles and resulting agreements between rich Ghibelline families and Guelf common people. The mission had to meet Pope Bonifacio 8th but its end brought serious consequences to Dante.

 During the Campaldino expedition in 1289 Dante had probably met Francesca da Rimini’s brother, the woman who had tragically died four years before. In Campaldino, among the Guelf allies, there was Guido del Duca, author of the diatribe against the ‘maledetta e sventurata fossa’ (cursed and wretched hollow) formed by the Arno and including the Casentino, Arezzo, Valdarno, Firenze, Pisa, from Mount Falterona to the mouth of the river (Purg. XIV). In Campaldino Dante had to face Buonconte da Montefeltro, as young as he was and more ill-fated than the poet himself (Purg.V). Later he would meet Gherardesca, Guido Novello’s wife and Conte Ugolino’s daughter (Hell XXIV) in Poppi. On her behalf he would write three letters to Marguerite, Emperor Henry VII’s wife, letters that have come down to us. In Pratovecchio Dante would meet Manentessa, Buonconte’s daughter and Guido da Battifolle’s wife. In the Casentino he wrote four very significant letters that reveal the depth of his political and civil commitment as well as his exceptional ability to use different language styles. The letters were addressed to the Emperor Henry VII, to the cardinal Niccolò da Prato, to the Italian kings and senators and to the wicked Florentine people. He also wrote two more letters that show the human side of the man – a letter to the dukes of Romena (I am penniless and could not find a horse to get to the funeral in time – see page 17) and a letter to Marcello Malaspina (I have fallen in love with a woman so deeply that I would find it difficult to go back to Florence, should they call me back there now – see page 22). In the Casentino Dante writes or develops parts of Hell and certainly most of Purgatory (first 24 cantos). In 1312 Henry VII died and his death brought about the Guidi family’s agreement with the winning Neri faction in Florence. These events made Dante leave the Casentino and Tuscany for ever: he would die in Ravenna. His leaving the Casentino may be poetically represented by the episode of Matelda in Purgatory. In fact Matelda plunges the poet in the river that removes hopeless expectations and lost hopes. Farewell to the Casentino and the Arno. From now on his river will be the Adige.

 The above short hints clearly suggest how significant the Casentino was for Dante, both for its history and its scenery. The landscape descriptions found in Purgatory are images of country life, beautiful landscapes, steep mountains, demanding and often difficult paths. Dante calls the Apennines ‘the Alps ’ and points out that only in very few places along the whole ridge, from Liguria to the Peloritani mountains in Sicily , do the Apennines reach the same height as in the Casentino. He also remarks how easily one may get lost in the fog and how nice it is to be back in the sunshine. All those who have gone mushrooming in the Oia valley - on Mount Falco (Falterona) towards Stia - or in the chestnut woods above Reggiolo, perfectly know that it is not at all unusual to get lost there when it is foggy.

 Ricorditi, lettor, se mai ne l'alpe
ti colse nebbia per la qual vedessi
non altrimenti che per pelle talpe,  3 
  come, quando i vapori umidi e spessi
a diradar cominciansi, la spera
del sol debilemente entra per essi;  6 
  e fia la tua imagine leggera
in giugnere a veder com'io rividi
lo sole in pria, che già nel corcar era.  9 
  Sì, pareggiando i miei co' passi fidi
del mio maestro, usci' fuor di tal nube
ai raggi morti già ne' bassi lidi. 
Remember, reader, if you've ever been
caught in the mountains by a mist through which
you only saw as moles see through their skin,  3 
  how, when the thick, damp vapors once begin
to thin, the sun's sphere passes feebly through them,
then your imagination will be quick  6 
  to reach the point where it can see how I
first came to see the sun again-when it
was almost at the point at which it sets.  9 
  So, my steps matched my master's trusty steps;
out of that cloud I came, reaching the rays
that, on the shores below, by now were spent.
In addition to the Casentino, we must not forget Arezzo , where Dante first found shelter in those difficult times after the sentence of his exile. In Arezzo he met Ser Petracco again, who was a Florentine exile too and who had just become the father of the future genius Francesco Petrarca. Dante mentions the Giostra del Saracino (the Saracen’s Tournament) that takes place in Arezzo . He does that with the same bantering mischievousness as he personally had experienced after the battle of Campaldino, when the Florentines, and lui con essi (he with them) during their raids spent some days under the walls of Arezzo , mocking and teasing each other, ( the Florentines and the Aretines).  The tournament trumpets accompany and amplify the most famous raspberry ever heard from the underworld. All the students know the last verse of the 21^st canto of Hell, when Barbariccia gives the starting signal to the devilish tournament. The event is solemnly compared to the Arezzo tournament in the shrill beginning of the following Canto:

 Io vidi già cavalier muover campo,
e cominciare stormo e far lor mostra,
e talvolta partir per loro scampo;  3 
  corridor vidi per la terra vostra,
o Aretini, e vidi gir gualdane,
fedir torneamenti e correr giostra;  6 
  quando con trombe, e quando con campane,
con tamburi e con cenni di castella,
e con cose nostrali e con istrane;  9 
  né già con sì diversa cennamella
cavalier vidi muover né pedoni,
né nave a segno di terra o di stella.  12 
  Noi andavam con li diece demoni.
Ahi fiera compagnia! ma ne la chiesa
coi santi, e in taverna coi ghiottoni. 

Before this I've seen horsemen start to march
and open the assault and muster ranks
and seen them, too, at times beat their retreat;  3 
  and on your land, o Aretines, I've seen
rangers and raiding parties galloping,
the clash of tournaments, the rush of jousts,  6 
  now done with trumpets, now with bells, and now
with drums, and now with signs from castle walls,
with native things and with imported ware;  9 
  but never yet have I seen horsemen or
seen infantry or ship that sails by signal
of land or star move to so strange a bugle!  12 
  We made our way together with ten demons:
ah, what ferocious company! And yet
"in church with saints, with rotters in the tavern." 

This short passage can be read as a play, it can be considered as a draft for a script. Theatre people should make a play of this description, with the necessary adjustments, since only a stage performance could convey the emotional force found in the events and the character evoked here. Three actors, some music and a few pictures on a screen could be sufficient.
I would like to see it played in one at least of the following places: Poppi Castle, Dante cinema in Ponte a Poppi, Dovizi Theatre in Bibbiena.
I owe my renewed interest for Dante and the Casentino to the sisters Ella and Dora Noyes (1).
(1) It happened some years ago, here at the Lame of Ortignano where lately I have revised these notes. At the time Stefano Dei showed me an old book bought from a bookstall in an out-of-the-way Italian village. The title on its green cardboard cover was: The Casentino and its Story. Four oval pictures on each side showed Dante, Virgil and the coats-of- arms of the Camaldoli and Guidi families. Inside, as a dedication, ran the verses: ‘where the Etrurian shades high overarched imbower.’ (Milton, Paradise Lost) 
The verses are followed by the words: ‘Mi meraviglio che tu non abbia mai messo piede in Casentino e lungo i suoi confini: qui c’è La Verna, il Santo Eremo di Camaldoli, il sacro Cernobio diVallombrosa. Qui c’è la sorgente dell’Arno.  ( From Count Roberto di Batifolle’s letter to Francesco Petrarca). The foreword starts like this: ‘A region so beautiful and so interesting as the Casentino needs no recommendation’. Then there are the watercolours, among which there is the picture of Poppi just as I had seen it as a child, with the tabernacle of the Madonna, the dwarf’s house, the climbing road, the Abbey and the Castle.
Printed in London and New York in 1905! 
They loved Italy and Mr Dent, a publisher and a lover of our country as well, asked them to write a ‘tourist guide’ first of Ferrara, then of the Casentino. Ella’ tools were a pen and a notebook, Dora’s pencils and brushes. They toured the area in the years 1903 -1904.
They must have been in very good physical shape, as they toured all the ‘Valle chiusa’ (closed Valley) on foot more thoroughly than the coalmen, woodcutters and hunters living in the area at the time. They knew the inner road between Raggiolo and Carda, they also walked along the longer road between Rassina and Carda – which today is travelled by car. They speak of Prato in Strada, Rifiglio and Pagliericcio, Cetica and Caiano providing information about lanes, brooks and springs with more accuracy than the Military Geographic Institute could do. They describe their running down from Mount Falco (Falterona), to avoid an impending storm, at a deer’s speed. They were in their thirties, the same age as Dante six centuries before, when he was in the same places - places that they visited again as if they could see him.  
They had a long, well-deserved life.
Ella, the writer, lived 86 years (1863-1949).
Dora, the painter, lived 96 years (1864-1960). She did 25 watercolours and 24 ink drawings in the text. 
In England there was the eldest sister, Minna, who lived 98 years (1851-1949). Today the three of them rest together in the graveyard of St. John Evangelist’s in Sutton Verry. Ella and Dora Noyes were born in Middlesex, north-west of London, but they spent their long life in the southern county of Wiltshire, near Salisbury, not far from Stonehenge, the famous ancient archaeological site of light and mystery. For Ella and Dora, however, the ancient site of light and mystery was the Casentino. If you read their book, you will realise that.   
 Why Romena  
Two of the 25 watercolours in the Noyes sisters’ book represent Romena. Though Ella Noyes did not know that Purgatory had been written in the Casentino, she states that Dante imagined the sloping mountain with its cliffs and circles after he saw Romena. In fact Romena had three circles of walls under which the terraced land sloped down to the Arno and the Fiumicello below. Ella also says that Dante filled his heart and eyes with the sky studded with stars, which he could gaze at all around during his sleepless nights. In conclusion, Dante’s first immersion in the sky of the fixed stars took place when he was watching the sky from Romena. He will see them again in the XXIII canto of Paradise, as a prelude to the Fiumana di Luce (‘River of Light’) and to the Candida Rosa (‘White Rose’) in the XXX Canto up to the Empyrean Heaven. Going back to Romena in the XXX Canto of Hell, when Master Adamo recalls its ruscelletti che de’ verdi colli del Casentino discendon giuso in Arno (‘the brooks going down to the Arno from the green hills of the Casentino’) we can certainly say that Romena encompasses a large part of Dante’s life  and much of the Divine Comedy. The watercolour of Poppi as seen from the bridge fascinates me as a person and allows me to show the tight and deep connection between Ella’s text and Dora’s drawings, the former a great screenplay, the latter great photography. That is why Paola and I have sent the book to the Taviani brothers to invite them to make a film from it, since they love Tuscany and the Arno. We did not get an answer to the letter we sent them (2), but perhaps a director may sometimes decide to make a film from the life of the two romantic sisters. Let’s go back to the picture of ‘Poppi from the river’. Dora painted the arches, the little chapel over them, the climbing road  winding up, appearing and disappearing, like a big ‘S’; next, high up, Poppi with its walls, the convent of the cloistered nuns, the Castle, the trees of the Pratello, the Abbey. More or less the same as we see it nowadays – or more as I saw it as an eight–year-old boy, when I would cross the bridge and go along the road passing by Nano’s and Corinto’s houses on the left. After passing Fochi’s house and the ruins of the old mills on the right, I would cut across the space where the war memorial now stands – memorial to remember those who at the time were not yet casualties of the first, foolish and most dreadful of the world wars. I would go inside the walls through the Ancherona door, giving onto the Misericordia, I would go up along the narrow lane and I would get to the kindergarten, where the nuns were waiting for me to commit my 3-year-old- brother and 5-year-old sister to my care. With them I would walk down along the same route. At that time my mother was taking care of Carlo, the newly born child, who later was to become mayor of Poppi. But let’s leave aside personal matters. Let’s go back to Dora and Ella, in particular to Ella. She is looking at Dora’s picture, like I did, fading it in as she always does with Dora’s paintings. Before, however, she watches what life is like about them – life that Dora cannot draw for lack of space: on the shore of the river the women are rinsing the washing that before was kept in a perforated  basin, where water and ashes have made the lye. It’s a pity Ella cannot see us children throwing pebbles or catching roaches and barbels in the grottoes. Ella however always emphasizes how peaceful the atmosphere is and how kind and good the common people are. She considered them happy, unlike those British women and children who at the time worked buried from dawn to sunset in Manchester spinning-mills or degraded in Welsh mines and workhouses. After Ella explains all the things that at the moment are not inside her sister’s picture, she presents two fading-in pictures. They are historically distant, but they both are linked to the Guidis, the ‘sword of the Casentino’. 
In the first scene, two elegant countesses, surrounded by pages, ride on the bridge towards the Castle speaking to each other. They both were‘made orphan’ by the war: Gherardesca, Ugolino’s daughter and Manentessa, Buonconte’s daughter. Ella will find them again in one of Sacchetti’s ‘Three Hundred Short Stories’. In the story, not in the best of taste, the Guelph Gherardesca says to the Ghibelline Manentessa: “What wonderful wheat, watered by the blood of your dead, is growing in the plain of Campaldino”. Buonconte’s daughter answers. “If you are waiting to quench your hunger with it, you will sooner die.”
It is an unpleasant story, though its moral is not perhaps so unpleasant, but the point is the same. 
The second scene takes place two centuries later. The bridge is full of soldiers and armed horsemen. They too speak Florentine. They have come to drive out Francesco, the last of the Guidis, who was not quick enough to turn the way the wind was blowing: “The Signory says that time is over; a pass for Germany is ready” (homeland of every Count Palatine – note of the editor).
Here again there is a witticism and the scene shows Francesco Guidi, with 30 mules loaded with household goods, saying farewell to the Castle forever. The bridge becomes a symbol of the journey and of the change, a distinguishing feature, the end of something and a new beginning.  
2) To the Taviani brothers 
Dear Sirs, While we were getting on reading the book which we have taken the liberty to send you, we were watching images of landscapes and people as if on a screen. In fact the cinema has indeed become the ideal medium to which we would like to trust the images we love and the emotions they excite in us. Consequently we have thought of you, both because you are from Tuscany and because your films have shown past stories largely set in our region. Besides we have recently read a short interview in which you talked about the Arno as, ‘a collection of memories, a journey between past and present’ (La Repubblica, July 6^th 2003).
The book ‘Il Casentino e la sua storia’ is the translation of the original ‘The Casentino and its Story’, published in London and New York in 1905. The text is a rarity, perhaps a copy may be found at a rare book dealer’s; however Poppi’s public library has one. The Italian translation we are sending you was privately published in 2001 with a limited number of copies. The authors of the story are two English sisters, Ella and Dora Noyes, the former a writer, the latter an illustrator (watercolours and ink drawings). We have only some information about them, as you can read in the enclosed note. We can however assume they were intelligent, they were receptive and unconventional, somebody says they were feminist, certainly they were interesting women. Likewise interesting we have found their book, full of realistic remarks but also of poetic comments concerning that period of time. In particular they describe the village dwellers and their daily work, the landscape with its castles and parish churches wonderfully lit at dawn or at sunset. They relate about the monasteries of La Verna and Camaldoli, about the spirit that inspired them and which followed the Franciscan view of Christian poverty. The sword, the cross and poetry are, in the authors’ opinion, the symbols that sum up the history of this valley. The reasons above have encouraged us to write to you, hoping that you too will read this book and, why not, transform it into as poetic images as you can always do. 
 Paola Galli and Urbano Cipriani, Poppi, 4th August 2003 

Dante Biographical data
Dante’s family.
Father:             Alighiero II degli Alighieri (died about 1281-82)
Mother:            Bella (died about 1270-75) 
Sister:              Tana (Gaetana) married to Leone Poggi 
Step-mother:    Lapa, Chiarissimo Cialuffi’s daughter, married to Alighiero about 1275/1278. Lapa gave birth to Francesco.  

 Estate and Properties 
Father’s job:    he ran the family’s estates and lands found in Florence and its outskirts (two small areas in Sant’Ambrogio and the estates in Camerata and San Miniato a Pagnolle); he was a money-lender as well.
Dante as a boy
Dante was the eldest child. He lost his mother when he was 5-10 years old and his father when he was about 15. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted by: Whitebeard at 23:32 | link | comments |
italy, dante, noyes

2/3/06

Friends,

How would you like to be in my next movie? I know you've probably heard I'm making a documentary about the health care industry (but the HMOs don't know this, so don't tell them -- they think I'm making a romantic comedy).

If you've followed my work over the years, you know that I keep a pretty low profile while I'm making my movies. I don't give interviews, I don't go on TV and I don't defrost my refrigerator. I do keep my website updated on a daily basis (there's been something like 4,000,000 visitors just this week alone) and the rest of the time I'm... well, I can't tell you what I'm doing, but you can pretty much guess. It gets harder and harder sneaking into corporate headquarters, but I've found that just dying my hair black and wearing a skort really helps.

Back to my invitation to be in my movie. Have you ever found yourself getting ready to file for bankruptcy because you can't pay your kid's hospital bill, and then you say to yourself, "Boy, I sure would like to be in Michael Moore's health care movie!"?

Or, after being turned down for the third time by your HMO for an operation they should be paying for, do you ever think to yourself, "Now THIS travesty should be in that 'Sicko' movie!"?

Or maybe you've just been told that your father is going to have to just, well, die because he can't afford the drugs he needs to get better -- and it's then that you say, "Damn, what did I do with Michael Moore's home number?!"

OK, here's your chance. As you can imagine, we've got the goods on these crooks. All we need now is to put a few of you in the movie and let the world see what the greatest country ever in the history of the universe does to its own people, simply because they have the misfortune of getting sick. Because getting sick, unless you are rich, is a crime -- a crime for which you must pay, sometimes with your own life.

About four hundred years from now, historians will look back at us like we were some sort of barbarians, but for now we're just the laughing stock of the Western world.

So, if you'd like me to know what you've been through with your insurance company, or what it's been like to have no insurance at all, or how the hospitals and doctors wouldn't treat you (or if they did, how they sent you into poverty trying to pay their crazy bills) ...if you have been abused in any way by this sick, greedy, grubby system and it has caused you or your loved ones great sorrow and pain, let me know.

Send me a short, factual account of what has happened to you -- and what IS happening to you right now if you have been unable to get the health care you need. Send it to michael@michaelmoore.com. I will read every single one of them (even if I can't respond to or help everyone, I will be able to bring to light a few of your stories).

Thank you in advance for sharing them with me and trusting me to try and do something about a very corrupt system that simply has to go.

Oh, and if you happen to work for an HMO or a pharmaceutical company or a profit-making hospital and you have simply seen too much abuse of your fellow human beings and can't take it any longer -- and you would like the truth to be told -- please write me at michael@michaelmoore.com. I will protect your privacy and I will tell the world what you are unable to tell. I am looking for a few heroes with a conscience. I know you are out there.

Thank you, all of you, for your help and your continued support through the years. I promise you that with "Sicko" we will do our best to give you not only a great movie, but a chance to bring down this evil empire, once and for all.

In the meantime, stay well. I hear fruits and vegetables help.

Yours,
Michael Moore
michael@michaelmoore.com
www.michaelmoore.com

posted by: Whitebeard at 12:14 | link | comments |
us, civil rights

George W Bush’s nemesis
 Tom Burgis
31 - 1 - 2006

He’s got power, rich friends, and God on his side. But not Tom Burgis, who explains the selection of the United States president as January winner of the "bad democracy" award.

The woman who answers the phones at the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) was taken aback to be asked whether her organisation – known for its "cloak and ballot" techniques for fostering democracy overseas – had an opinion on President George Walker Bush's victory in the third Bad Democracy poll. Surely the NED has a specialist on North American democracy? "Well, no," came the riposte. "We don’t really need one."
 
 Click here to view this month's list of bad democrat's, and cast your vote today

Confusion was similarly rife at the National Security Council. "The worst democrat of the month? But he’s a Republican." Even the Democrats themselves were retrospect about mouthing off against the forty-third president in print. The office of the party's rising star, Barack Obama, decided to "take a pass on that one", as did the national committee.

By contrast, Larry Birns, director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, was more forthright:

"Bush trashed traditional American values. He is basically just a device to read a teleprompter. He appeals to the Caliban instincts in American public life, not those of Ariel. He's a surprisingly unsophisticated guy; he's a consumer of instructions, one of the first examples of a committee president, invented on a daily basis to deliver a rightwing credo."
 
...Here

posted by: Whitebeard at 10:51 | link | comments |
us, censored news

 
 Italy's election: no laughing matter
 Geoff Andrews
1 - 2 - 2006
Silvio Berlusconi hopes that an intense media blitz will help sustain him in power, but Geoff Andrews finds that Italy's comedians and artists have other ideas.
The Italian general election, now set for 9 April 2006, will be one of the most important of the last sixty years. It will also be one of the dirtiest. Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's richest man and prime minister, is currently trailing by an average 6% in opinion polls – but he is not going to vacate Palazzo Chigi without a fight. Many believe that if Il Cavaliere were to lose the election he would face a surge of legal cases brought on grounds of alleged corruption and attempts to bribe judges. In power, Berlusconi has created his own architecture of parliamentary privilege and immunity; once defeated, this protection would slip away.

This is why he has been so belligerent in his attacks on the opposition. For the last five years he has sustained a consistent tirade against Jacobin judges, subversive intellectuals and communist conspirators. The television stations he controls have removed comedians from the airwaves, and his legal teams have dished out frequent writs to authors and critics on grounds of "defamation". In December, his Casa delle Libertà (House of Liberties) coalition even rushed through changes to the electoral system, in a bid to keep his unpopular government in power. Meanwhile, with massive media resources at his disposal, he has been able to taunt the opposition, while benefiting from meticulous coverage of his own achievements.   
 Geoff Andrews is the author of Not a Normal Country: Italy After Berlusconi (Pluto, 2005) Also by Geoff Andrews on openDemocracy:
"Days of hope, rage and tragedy: from the summit foothills" (August 2001) "Bossi's – and Berlusconi's – last shout? "(August 2003) "Bologna's lesson for London" (August 2005) "The life and death of Pier Paolo Pasolini" (November 2005)
If you find this material enjoyable or provoking, please consider responding in our forums – and supporting openDemocracy by sending us a donation so that we can continue our work for democratic dialogue
A fragile opposition
Berlusconi's latest attack, launched by one of his own newspapers, both questions the capabilities of the opposition and sets a rancorous tone for the campaign weeks ahead. Il Giornale published transcripts of a telephone conversation between Piero Fassino, the leader of the Democratici di Sinistra (Left Democrats / DS), Italy's biggest opposition party, and Giovanni Consorte, chairman of Unipol, an insurance company in the control of Italy's co-operative movement. Unipol had recently been involved in a takeover controversy that had led to the resignation of Antonio Fazio, the governor of Italy's central bank, after allegations of insider trading and abuse of office. In the recorded phone conversation Fassino tells Consorte (who is currently under investigation): "So then. We're the bosses of a bank".
 
 ...Here.

posted by: Whitebeard at 10:39 | link | comments |
italy

Crimes Against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration  International Commission of Inquiry

305 West Broadway, #199, New York, NY 10013

PRESS CONTACT: Larry Everest 510-472-8484
COMMISSION OFFICE: 212-941-8086
commission@nion.us
www.bushcommission.org

PRESS ADVISORY

February 2, 2006

BUSH ADMINISTRATION GUILTY OF CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY SAYS COMMISSION OF INQUIRY; ACTIVIST CONFRONTS RUMSFELD WITH VERDICT, SAYS "STEP DOWN!"

Today the Bush Administration was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity for invading Iraq, instituting torture and indefinite detention, attacking efforts to control global warming and for deliberately failing to prevent devastation and loss of life during Hurricane Katrina.

These findings were released at the National Press Club by the International Commission of Inquiry on Crimes Against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration. The full text of can be found at www.bushcommission.org.

Shortly after the findings were released, activist Heather Hurwitz confronted Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld with the Commission's verdict during his press luncheon. Hurwitz, of World Can't Wait--Drive Out the Bush Regime, declared Rumsfeld and The Bush Administration were guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity and that thousands were gathering Saturday, February 4th in Washington to demand that they step down. (www.worldcantwait.net)

Ms. Hurwitz was quickly removed by security personnel. After she was led away, Rumsfeld joked, "We'll count her as undecided." When informed of Rumsfeld's comment, Hurwitz said, "war crimes and crimes against humanity are not joking matters. Rumsfeld's attitude typifies this administration's brazen immorality and lawlessness, and this is why it must step down."

Earlier, at the Commission's press conference, Ajamu Sankofa, Executive Director of Physicians for Social Responsibility-NY and one of the panel of jurists, stated "The historical significance of this tribunal is that American citizens, civil society, is demonstrating courage to stand up and speak its definition of the truth against a wholly orchestrated system of deliberate deceptions."

"This commission is attempting to change the level of discourse," said Abdeen Jabara, another panelist and former President of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. "We want people to understand Iraq is not simply a war of choice but an actual war of aggression from which flow certain legal consequences. Torture is often reported as 'abuse' rather than torture. So we need to change the way these items are talked about for people to face the fact of what this government is doing."

"The Commission is incredibly important for the future of the United States and really the world, because it's the people of America that are speaking to these very serious indictments," said panel member Ann Wright, a former US diplomat and retired US Army Reserve Colonel. Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern added, "Our German fore-bearers in the 1930s sat around, blamed their rulers, said 'maybe everything's going to be alright.' That is something we cannot do. I do not want my grandchildren asking me years from now, 'why didn't you do something to stop all this?'"

Brig. General Janis Karpinski, former UK Ambassador Craig Murray, and former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter, were among the 44 witnesses presenting testimony at the Commission's two sessions. The Commission will later issue detailed findings, accompanied by full documentation.

 

posted by: Whitebeard at 10:05 | link | comments |
us, civil rights, war, censored news