War Zone

It all feels very close.  Here is the text of the United Nations resolution.  It seems to cover much more than a no-fly zone in Libya: overflying of adjacent states; stopping and searching of ships at sea and in ports; co-ordination of plans by various states and their notification to the UN; seizure of all Libyan resources considered to be those of the Libyan people, no matter in whose name they are held (as well as assets of the Central Bank of Libya, the Libyan Investment Authority, the Libyan Foreign Bank,  and the Libyan National Oil Company, according to Fatto Quotidiano) to mention just the most immediately noteworthy matters.

Close because Gadaffi has declared any  flight in the Mediterranean, civil or military, a legitimate target,  as well as the countries providing military action, or bases, or other facilities.  Italy has offered its bases and other facilities for the implementation of the Resolution.   No wonder the Italian government is in urgent, immediate and ongoing meetings with military leaders.  The Head of State met with the Minister of Defence and senior military last night - they were all at the gala performance of Nabucco in celebration of the 150th anniversary of the unification of Italy - which was both handy for an immediate get together the moment the resolution was passed, and somehow very appropriate.

Homes by Heroes

"I could buy this," excitedly.

"Why might you want it?"

"He's a Hero!  It's his own house!"

"And what would you do in Welwyn Garden City?  I don't want to live in Welwyn Garden City much as I admire it."

Long pause:

"I could grow up."

Precisely.

Sardinia for Italian Nuclear Power Stations

As any fule kno,  if the criminals governing Italy insist on their wages of sin, then all nuclear power stations should be on Sardinia.

 - low seismic threat.

 - high levels of unemployment.

 - high electricity consumption levels  -   all those showers and hair dryers creating extraordinary  demand peaks  at 7 in the evening.   The rest of us can surely manage on what's left over from the requirements for the presentation of self in summer.

And they can bury their stolen sheep underground and cook them whole with radioactive fall-out!

Drunk and Entitled and Weird

'Kathryn Emily Andrews, 26, the daughter of QC Bob Marshall-Andrews, was held by police early yesterday after a disturbance at the four-star Hotel Madison in Milan. ...   Police were put through to the Foreign Office in  London as the consulate was closed.  In the meantime, she phoned her father who called the Foreign Office. It confirmed that his daughter had been held but said there was nothing it could do and it was a matter for local police.  A police source said:

"She was in a pretty bad way and had certainly been drinking when we were called to the hotel because of a disturbance.  ...We took her to the police station as she was swearing and shouting and she was there for about three hours. While there she said that she was a British Cabinet minister's daughter and that we had no idea what we were doing.  She was processed and checked and then released without charge as she had a valid identity document. The matter is still under investigation and the prosecutor will decide if to press charges.'  (Evening Standard).

What comes over  people when they get to the Peninsula?   The best account, of course, is by Morgan Forster in Where Angels Fear to Tread, but story after story displays a sort of mental collapse by the English (indeed northern Europeans in general - the Germans tear off all their clothes and dig huge, defended pits and earthworks in every beach they set foot on)) in Italy.  It is as if there is a false image of Italians, generating an attitude contemptuous and patronising that runs, inevitably, into a reality of great wealth and imperturbable security of being.  And as the heirs of one of the greatest of Earthly empires, the collision is most marked with those heirs of other great empires who have more recently lost their standing and position. There is also the embodiment of the advice in my 1909 Baedeker which suggests  speaking loudly and slowly at Italians who do not understand  English in a northern accent.

Often have I been rousted from sleep by telephones with 'situations' on the other end.

"Pronto,"

"Signora, mi dispiace l'ora" (it's always the middle of the night) "I am the maresciallo of .....".

"Good Morning, Maresciallo" (never dis the Carabinieri)

"I have a black man here with wild hair who says he is a friend of your family and that his wife has been kidnapped."

"An Indian?"

"Quite possibly, Signora, he's not from Africa.  Will you speak to him?"  Pause,

"Hello..... where are you? Pisa.  Why aren't you in Florence, asleep in your hotel?  I see, ..... has probably been kidnapped  as you can't find her.  How did you lose her?  She was supposed to be at the station after going to see some place of miracles or something.  Which station?  There are two.  You didn't know that, mmmm. You are at Pisa Centrale now?  Look, take the next train to Florence and go to your hotel, she's probably there having missed you.  No, kidnap is very unlikely.  Why?  Well, forgive me but have you any money,  do you look as if you have any money?  In India you would look as if you have money.  I see.  Well, as beastly as it may seem, here you haven't and you don't.  And even if you did, you still would not be kidnapped in Pisa.

You called the hotel and they said she isn't there.  Perhaps she had gone out for her dinner?  What exactly did they say?  They said it in Italian but it meant she wasn't there.  Right.  No, I won't drive to Pisa, I have children to get to school in the -  actually this morning -  in clean pinafores, clean teeth, brushed hair, and with breakfast inside them and their correct textbooks and exercise books in their satchels, not to mention any gym kit, musical instruments, notes about missing bits of homework and begging letters to be allowed Saturday morning off. By 8.05, sharp.  You are at the station.  Get a train, any train, but for heavens' sake get out of the Maresciallo's office or he'll arrest you.  For reporting a kidnap in his city, that's why.  Can you imagine what level of paperwork that's able to produce?  At the very least you will share in his pain.  Nothing till 4 o'clock.  Well read a book, it's not cold, and stamp your ticket before you get on or you'll get fined.  Have you local currency?  Travellers' cheques, for a  taxi?  No, they won't.  Cash.  Don't get into a taxi without the money they tell you it will cost to Florence.  Just don't; they probably will want it before setting off but if not and it's not there when you arrive you'll be in the police station - again.  No, everyone is a professor here; yes, everyone is even  an LSE professor here.  Give me back the maresciallo and I'll persuade him to let you go and sit quietly at the station till the train comes.  Goodnight.

Never saw him again, not in person, thanks be.  What's with the sense of entitlement and all?

Perhaps the Cradle of Western Civilisation Should be Saved from Nuclear Power

Here is a map of Italian earthquake zones.  The Italian government, led by the Beast of Arcore, hand-kisser of Libyan tyrants and depraved sexual partner of minors (according to his wife and assorted Milanese prosecutors) has declared that nothing that has occurred after the Japanese earthquakes can be  regarded as indicative of anything that might happen in Italy when its nuclear-fuelled power option is fully up and running.

Somehow, as we're all going to be blown into outer space yet  looking good while it happens, when the earthquakes come, this seems so appropriate.

Standing Up to be Counted

The comments "were intended to highlight the broader, even strategic impact of discreet actions undertaken by national security agencies every day and their impact on our global standing and leadership. The exercise of power in today's challenging times and relentless media environment must be prudent and consistent with our laws and values."  P.J.Crowley after resigning, speaking of the 'no touch' torture being inflicted on Bradley Manning.

Once your formerly rock-solid staff start resigning in disgust, you're at the start of an unstoppable landslide.

Against Berlusconi and Criminal Governance

The second enormous demonstration in Italy against the corruption of the country's political system took place yesterday.  Over a million people descended into their beautiful streets and piazzas to declare their allegiance to their Constitution. No political banners, no trades union placards, no partisan declarations from any of the corrupt of 'left' and 'right': what was carried was the Tricolore and what was played was the Inno di Mameli (and bits of Nabucco, of course, complete with singing that would have put the Welsh to shame) accompanied by the orchestras of  regions, opera houses,  conservatori (except for the Maggio, who are caught in Japan).

The great advantage of a written constitution is that it can be carried (rather like the ten commandments though not carved on tablets of stone)  in its entirety, section by section, or by individual article, in the hands, on the person, and on the banners of the people as they demonstrate their support for what it says, and for the institutions of the state that give it life and force.

Article 3 -  “All citizens have equal social dignity and are equal before the law, without distinction of gender, race, language, belief, political opinion,  personal and social status.", was particularly popular, worn on tee shirts, and banners.  As was
Article 34  - "The school is open to all capable and those worthy even though they be without means may reach the  highest levels of study".   But everyone had their pet article, Angels were for the freedom of the press, but some were quite erudite and rarified.

Meanwhile the Beast of Arcore continues to rail against 'the dictatorship of the judiciary'  as he is slowly penned in and driven back towards the cage that will contain his attempt to use the powers of the people for his personal and private debauchery of democracy.

Australia Isn't Sweden

Turning to the Sydney Morning Herald to check the tsunami hadn't arrived I read there the most incorrect story since correctness became the vogue.  And surely size 12 jeans are vast.

Dates

Underage?  Easy - change the date of birth!  Who knows how inaccurate these underdeveloped countries' registry of births, marriages and deaths can be.  Pity the official refused to discuss the 'accuracy' of the records.

As the leader of the 'Clean Hands' group in Parliament remarked:

 "Changing the date of birth of 'Mubarak's grandaughter' is useful to only one Italian, quite well known and accused of exploitation of minors in prostitution."

Berlusconi's lawyers have filed a complaint against Italian media for bringing his name into disrepute in reporting stories of approaches to Moroccan officials by Italian-speaking negotiators.

Guns or Words?

William Hague and  Guido Westerwelle have written to Catherine Ashton calling for 'a series of EU responses tailor-made for the circumstances of each country currently going through popular uprisings.'

There, that trio and their action  should sort things out in Libya.

Or perhaps the Berlusconi method is more effective?

Sold to Tripoli at the end of 2009 after Berlusconi welcomed the man whose hands he publicly kissed (shades of Andreotti) to Rome: made by  Beretta, "7.500 pistole, 1.900 carabine e 1.800 fucili" (Fatto Quotidiano) all in the hands of the head of Public Security of the Comitato Popolare - ie., in the hands of Ghadaffi's   janissaries.  Of course they were exported under licences for 'arms not specifically for military use ' together with 11,000 other weapons including hundreds and hundreds of M4 Super 80 - a weapon designed for use in war, produced in Urbino by  Berretta.


Fatto Quotidiano  reports too that included in the arms consignment were 'le pistole PX4 calibro 9 semiautomatiche, con un peso ridotto di soli 800 grammi e un caricatore di 10 colpi che con un elemento supplementare può arrivare a 15. E poi le carabine CX4, anche queste calibro 9, su cui possono essere montati sistemi di puntamento ottico e laser .' [you can all read that for yourselves,  not what you'd call hunting rifles are they? ed.]
 

Hearing Secret Harmomies

Looking at this , the most remarkable statement*, made so serenely, is that were it possible for the composer to be  in an audience we must question whether he would  recognise his own work,  and   that this is a measure of how distant we are, in performance,  from the composer's intention.

Bruggen is not speaking only of early works - but of all music.  Most know: that scores are merely indicative; systems of notation imperfectly read, and read differently from time to time;  instrumentation often unspecified and certainly unfixed as instruments alter their technical characteristics;  pitch very up and down;   tempi  - I wouldn't dare go there.   Musical hierarchies used to settle these matters are a reflection of notions of hierarchy and importances within wider sociocultural constructs - not for nothing did the idea of the conductor as master, nay, hero of the technically perfect  but standardly-performing ensemble players, the welder of a single voice from disparate instrumental parts, establish itself in keeping with the idea of the hero leader in other facets of our culture and history.

Then there is us, the audience; not necessarily knowing much but knowing what we like; drawing on our responses, our feelings, on the effectiveness of the manipulation of our emotions to decide if a performance of a well-known work is 'true'.  As well as being alive - slow to change at times -  but shifting with styles and re-interpreted 'expositions' to impose new versions of 'true'.

Being alive, as the composer, conducting or performing oneself wouldn't  make 'true' easier to reach, or only very rarely, and only for the very few performer-masters: just think of those dreadful recordings of poets declaiming their own works, and the capacity to speak words springs to life as a wholly other art-form from the capacity to write them.   

Only the artists, it would seem, can enjoy their art to the full, as they experienced it - interpretation muffles our perception of what they do so that in attempting its reproduction we render it unrecognisable to its originator.

Perhaps it's for the best, for all of them are walking close to madness.  Except for Bach, of course.

Oh, and readers may like to listen here .

*[the translation is poor, 'righteous' should be translated as 'true']

By Their Friends Shall You Know Them

'David Held, a professor of political science at the LSE and Saif Gaddafi's tutor when he was taking a PhD at the university, [supervised by Held, examined by Desai, plagiarised from anything that came to hand, ed.]  was appointed to the Gaddafi International Charity and Development Foundation on 28 June 2009, almost a month [or, 'just a month', ed.] before the LSE announced that it would accept the donation.The foundation's minutes reveal that Held was appointed to its board along with luminaries including Giulio Andreotti, the former prime minister of Italy.'

You couldn't make it up.

David Held - ghost-writer and intellectual advisor to the Leader of the Labour party; and Giulio Andreotti - where do you start?

Desai - an Example to Us All

"It is now also claimed that the PhD was not only plagiarised but that some people at the LSE knew that it was so. As one of the two external examiners of the thesis, I can only say that we were never informed of this by his supervisors or anyone else. " Lord Desai

There is a line by line demonstration of plagiarism in this dissertation. Any sane academic has been looking, never mind the academic who accepted to be an external examiner for this 'work' when so closely associated with both the research centre and the university of its provenance.

All PhDs are examined by those who, at least apparently, are equipped. Academics working in a particular field exchange papers, published and unpublished, attend conferences together, comment on each others' work, are trusted partners in exchanges of ideas and exploratory work-in-progress. They meet socially, their conversations often turn on the work that absorbs them - otherwise they would not be colleagues; and nor would they ever become senior enough and distinguished enough to be invited to examine a thesis. It may be an unpaid burden, but it is a bounden duty and an honour, to review the best work of younger scholars.

Desai bares himself in this disgraceful attempt to deny culpability:  either he is a fake who knows nothing and is wholly unconnected to the ongoing work in his field, expecting the candidate's supervisor or unspecified 'others' to draw plagiarism to his attention; or he failed in his duty as an examiner and was unfit for such a position.  As for the candidate's supervisor, all of this applies to him too, except that he should have been the first in line to stop plagiarism and question the candidate's suitability for continuance.  At least the Director of the London School of Economics had the decency to resign.  Pity the Council didn't follow his example.  As for Desai - it's another yuk.

What is the Point of Barnsley?

'In 2002, Barnsley Council and partners launched a major consultation exercise called "Rethinking Barnsley". This led to a regeneration programme centred on Barnsley Town Centre called "Remaking Barnsley". Developments include a new transport interchange, a new cultural centre in the old Civic Hall, a Digital Media Centre (opened August 2007), and new offices and apartments throughout the Town Centre.' Wikipedia

Once the pits closed Barnsley should have been allowed to return to its 200-strong population and most of the rest bulldozed. Its population would have done so much better being re-sited to where there was modern industry and new housing on the model of the Garden Cities.

So many of the old, industrial settlements have been preserved and refused natural death and decay, just to maintain Labour 'strongholds'. The generations since the mining cultures that existed, necessarily, where workforces to dig coal were required, have been trapped with a completely nonsense narrative of their cultural importance and worth. Better was deserved, could have been provided and has been wilfully refused, with an immense waste of resources and destruction of life-chances and hopes.

Unreadable, Unspeakable

A list of books Angels would rather be shot than read:

To Kill a Mockingbird
1984
Wuthering Heights
Aesop's Fables
The Catcher in the Rye
If This Is a Man
Romeo and Juliet
Cranford
Paradise
Purgatory
Letters from Prison
The Plague

No wonder Very Hungry Caterpillar is preferable.

Oh Yuk, Yuk, Yuk

It's not just LSE either; nor is it just Libya.

This one has happened to spill its guts all over the media.  Academe is filled with people like this, after all, that is where they are bred.

UPDATE

Worse and worse

Absolution

Loyal Angelic supporters, of which there are a few, will know that coping with the building is an ever- pressing but constantly suppressed aspect of life here.  Now, in the WSJ no less, comes the word that it's such a  stylish way to live  people actually pay for the look.

Pictures propped against the walls as if the man hasn't yet come to hang them? Tick.

Distressed but once fine cloth upholstering the furniture?  Oh, see what Germans, cold, heat, and a Burman can do. Tick.

Walls scraped back to show how badly damaged are the once lovely, decorative affreschi?  It's 100 euros a square metre to get in the restorers so mostly it's me; anyway, I've grown to like the dappled look - and guests often pick at the edges of the over-painting to see what flower or bird is on the next bough, so it's a divertimento too. Tick.

Reading lights on the floor? Tick.

Cabinets and bookshelves dusty?  Tickety-boo.

Added to these signs of hidden wealth, the unwary here can enjoy the collapse of their chair  with the revelatory tunnelled-out-by-woodworm inner leg-workings and the pleasures of exculpation for confessing such a small sin - arrival of surprised person in big kitchen holding old  chair and pulverised leg(s):
 "Goodness, I'm sorry. What can I do?"
"Have a drink.  Are you alright?  Did you hurt yourself?  Perhaps you would take it down to the limonaia with you next time you're on the way to the garden - you'll find the others, waiting to go to the chair hospital."

The rich are missing a trick there - collapsing furniture.  But it's such a relief to know that every moment spent reading trashy novels,  looking out of the windows instead of washing them, or going out playing, has been contributing to status, not avoiding the housework.

Do Tanks Need Roads?

“The security presence now is all around the city which they have cordoned off to prevent any forces coming from outside.  They have stationed tanks and anti-aircraft guns on roads leading into the city. The other security cordon is around Bab al-Aziziah [Gaddafi residence] there of course he has a whole arsenal of weapons.  a Tripoli resident.

 

Road blocks?  Against Free Libya forces?  They've got tanks too.  I thought tanks just roared across the desert.  Perhaps it was all made to seem much too easy  long ago:

 

Rockobarocco

Donatella Versace said that the baroque aesthetic had been her inspiration for the collection.

"Baroque is a key element of the Versace history. And yet it is contemporary, and works for this moment in time. Baroque brings drama, but to make it modern I kept the line very clean, and used 'pop' colours,"

Apart from not quite grasping the thrust  of her arguments (and saluting the re-appearance of 'this moment in time' for 'now')  Angels hopes that,  as the world of cash-seeking fashion and  music continue to stain the 21st century cultural aesthetic perhaps, at last,  Bach, Couperin, Scarlatti (A. and D.), the great opera composers of the Florentine Camerata, even, dare it be said, Vivaldi - to name but a few of the detained -  can be released from the 'baroque' cultural prison into which they were thrust by vulgarian 20th century musicologists.

Buried Alive

One of the Italian civil engineers who built the Ghedaffi bunkers was on the television last night.  He wouldn't be drawn on any detail but said they are remarkable for the amounts of armour and defensive materials poured into their construction.  He thought it would be extraordinarily difficult to get the great socialist Leader out.

If he won't come out he can stay down there for good. As Mr HG remarked, what some think of as a bunker most will regard as a tomb.

Are They Nearly There Yet?

With Tripoli international airport in the hands of the anti-Gheddafi forces, the great socialist Leader is said to be only in control of his military bunker at Bab el Zizia.  Some 30,000 demonstrators are gathered at piazza Algeria from where they are heading towards the bunker 2 kilometres away. (Fatto Quotidiano)

Not a Good Idea

Few actions could be more provocative in Libya than a military intervention by Italy.  ANSA, the Italian news agency, is reporting  Minister of Defence La Russa as saying:

"We have news that in the south-east of Libya there are Italians who have finished their food supplies: we will retrieve them."  He continued on Sky News:

"We have already organised a military intervention to reach our nationals and are now only waiting for the go-ahead from the Foreign Office.  Actually, I don't want to decide this by myself. My first concern is the retrieval of all Italians in that area".

Let's hope the Italian Foreign Secretary has more sense than to invade Libya - particularly when a 'humanitarian aid corridor' has been opened to the Egyptian border by the  anti-Gedhaffi forces in control of the area.  
 

Plans Being Laid to Take Back Libya From the People

Barack Obama has been on the phone for hours with Cameron, Sarkozy and - wait for it - Berlusconi the Old Goat. According to reports in Il Fatto Quotidiano he's trying to work out how to intervene in Libya.

They've discussed no-fly zones (shades of Iraq), freezing of Gheddafi assets, (oooh Italy won't like that), and 'humanitarian assistance' with immediate access for such help assured (otherwise known as boots on the ground). Sanctions are also under discussion (those should create the conditions for the need for 'humanitarian assistance', shades of Iraq again). Strong concern has been expressed about the use of violence during the uprising (can't have the people intruding on the monopoly of violence-use now, can we?)

They're all agreed on the need to stop 'brutal repression, by the failing regime (they would be now the people have dealt with it, or almost), on the necessity of sending 'clear signals' to the Libyan leadership (and who might they be now, who are to receive these 'clear signals')? And the absolute necessity of co-ordinating 'eventual multilateral measures' (against whom?).

Come on the Revolution! You haven't much time left before your courage and its spoils will be placed under fresh imperial control.

University Behaviour Laid Bare

The intertwining relation of power and the university  doesn't need explaining. The setting up of Unileaks (Leiter) by some Australians (what is it about the Australian psyche that it wants to make everything plain?) should lead to fireworks, with any luck.

The Last Charge: from the Telegraph Obituary for Mario Traverso

The Savoy Cavalry, in June 1942, "was shielding the southern flank of the German summer offensive. The fighting intensified as, approaching the River Don approximately 125 miles north of Stalingrad, the 600 men of the Savoy Cavalry arrived at Isbuschenskij.

 

There, on the evening of August 23, an Italian patrol encountered a Soviet rearguard of 2,000 men supported by mortars and machine-guns. The regiment’s monocled commanding officer, Count Alessandro Bettoni, winner of two Olympic golds in equestrianism, ordered his men to take defensive positions before settling down to dine off the regimental silver.  The following morning, after breakfast, Bettoni gave the order to attack across a plain thick with sunflowers. Officers, wearing red neck ties, slipped on white gloves for the occasion. They wielded captured Cossack swords, which were heavier, and thus more destructive, than Italian sabres.  Such was the thirst to take part in what was – even then – recognised as an unusual event, that Traverso’s commander rode off to join the four cavalry squadrons, each of 150 men, which formed the main thrust of the attack.  Traverso was left in charge of the fifth (machine-gun) squadron, which was the first to advance, laying a thick field of fire from the front and centre of the Italian position directly into two lines of the 812th Siberian Infantry Regiment.

Around Traverso, the other Italian squadrons formed up at a walk, before breaking into a trot, canter and finally an all-out gallop. As they set off the battle cry went up: 

“Sabres. To hand. Charge!”

What followed proved to be a textbook mounted attack. The second squadron broke right, before turning sharply to hammer through the Siberians’ left flank, and then wheeling around again to press the advantage from behind, hurling hand grenades into the disintegrating enemy line. Bettoni then ordered the fourth squadron to attack head on, and the battle wore down into brutal hand-to-hand fighting, with many of the Savoy having dismounted.

At this crucial point the third squadron launched a second diagonal attack, similar to that which had opened the battle, and Soviet resolve crumbled. As the smoke cleared, their losses stood at 150, with a further 500 captured. The Savoy Cavalry had lost fewer than 40 men.

“You were magnificent,” a German officer remarked to the Italians afterwards. “We no longer know how to do these things.”

Envy: or, Had We but World Enough and Time

TOPICS IN MORAL, POLITICAL; LEGAL PHILOSOPHY: NIETZSCHE AND MORAL PSYCHOLOGY
draft syllabus

Spring 2011
Michael Forster, Brian Leiter
University of Chicago

Moral psychology is a broad area of philosophical and empirical inquiry encompassing a range of issues in ethics, meta-ethics, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of action. Its questions include:
(1) What is the nature of moral judgment and what are its (emotional? rational?) sources?
(2) What role does moral judgment and motivation play in action?
(3) What role does conscious reflection play in action?
(4)Are agents morally responsible for what they do? If so, what must be true of their agency? Obviously Nietzsche has views on all these questions, and it will be our aim to try to understand his views and to assess, as much as possible, their plausibility. We will focus on questions (1) through (3), in particular, trying to get clear about the sources of moral motivation (in both action and judgment) and the character of the “will” on Nietzsche’s view. (The Spring 2012 seminar will focus on issues connected to [4], in both Nietzsche and contemporary philosophers. We will spend the most time on Books I and II and parts of III and V of Daybreak, and the first six chapters of Twilight of the Idols, with briefer selections from Books IV and V of The Gay Science, and Chapters I and V of Beyond Good and Evil. Jesse Prinz’s The Emotional Construction of Morals (OUP, 2007), an empirically
informed account of morals and moral judgment inspired by Hume and Nietzsche, will serve as our main contemporary interlocutor.

We will spend the first two weeks on the first four chapters (Part I) of Prinz’s book; Prinz will participate in the seminar on April 5 to discuss his views. We will then proceed largely, though not wholly, chronologically through the material from Daybreak, The Gay Science, Beyond Good and Evil and Twilight. In conjunction with the primary texts, there will also be secondary literature on Nietzsche and/or relevant psychological or philosophical literature by some or all of the following: M. Clark, J. Deigh, J. Haidt, P. Katsafanas, B. Leiter, P. Poellner, D. Rosenthal, D. Wegner, and B. Williams, among others.
Required texts:
Nietzsche, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality, trans. Hollingdale, ed. Clark Leiter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
The Portable Nietzsche, edited by Walter Kaufmann (Viking/Penguin, 1954).
Jesse Prinz, The Emotional Construction of Morals (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2007)
Translations of Nietzsche by Hollingdale, Kaufmann, or any of the CUP translators (e.g., Judith Norman) are quite acceptable.

Recommended texts:
Brian Leiter, Nietzsche on Morality (London: Routledge, 2002), esp. Chapters 1-4. This will be useful as background to the instructor’s views on a range of interpretive issues, and will allow us not to spend too much classtime on this.
Christopher Janaway, Beyond Selflessness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), esp. Chapters 1, 3, 6-7. Purports to contest the “naturalist” reading of Nietzsche in Leiter and makes a number of interesting points about the role of “affective engagement” for Nietzsche.

Brian Leiter, “Nietzsche’s Naturalism Reconsidered,” in The Oxford Handbook of Nietzsche, ed. K. Gemes J. Richardson (Oxford, forthcoming 2011 or 2012). Available for free download at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1171285
Responds to some of Janaway’s concerns, and refines the account of Nietzsche’s naturalism about morality. At a minimum, please read this paper before the start of the term.

Stealing Thoughts

Plagiarism (h/t Leiter Reports) is all the go these days.  The practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own (new Oxford Dictionary definition) is rife; but is it wrong?  Citing sources doesn't really get round the nub of what upsets some about drawing on the intellectual resources and property of others.  Whether there is accession to prestige or accession to wealth, and usually there is both resulting from unchallenged plagiarism,  we still have an  emotional response of offence unassuaged by  fuller citation or by payment.

Insofar as there are  patents to cover intellectual property of great commercial value, plagiarism would seem to be more about prestige and the conferring of statuses.  The world and his wife are writing dissertations these days -  a post-graduate degree is de rigueur  for academia, higher bureaucratic posts, access to research funds, and the accolades of networking  institutes.  Is the felt emotion jealousy? Or possessiveness?  Why should we care if our ideas are lifted wholesale and appositely reproduced?

Thank Goodness for the Take-or-Pay Contracts

Libya has shut down the flow of gas to Italy.  Fortunately the contracts with Russian suppliers are there and very much more attractive than they seemed when signed.  Take is the order of the day and dinner is being cooked, showers taken and the lights are on.  And cheap too.

Denial of Any Italian Involvement Against Libyan Uprising

Palazzo Chigi,  Italy's Downing Street, has at last issued a statement that,  "Italy supports the Libyan people who are going through a tragic moment in their history." 
 
Palazzo Chigi sources also declared at 12.51:

"Rumours of supposed Italian military  assistance or any other form of action against demonstrators and damaging to civilians are wholly false, provocative, and without foundation."

Depraved Democracy

Berlusconi's  "We would not want to disturb Ghadaffi.",  is no one-off remark of a thug and criminal and dirty old man. Indeed the reach of criminal governance in the Mediterranean that is centred in Italy is displayed by  the stance of both the Italian Foreign Secretary Frattini and by permanent government officials.  It is not, they state,  for Italy, or for Europe, to press for a particular kind of democracy in north Africa. 

At least not for the kind of democracy that involves free elections, the separation of powers, and individual freedom under the rule of law.   As Berlusconi corrupts the legislature, assaults the constitution, bribes the judiciary and attempts to assert that he is above the law it begins to look as if the kind of democracy specific to north Africa is being cultivated and proposed for Italy too.

Higher Fees for Undergraduate Degrees Will Lessen the Waste of Resources in Front Rank Universities

Some prestigious tertiary education sector institutions have long wished to be freed of undergraduate teaching.  The London School of Economics comes at once to mind.  These universities' prestige rests upon their research output, and their training of post-graduate researchers.  Their international profile comes from their draw of First Class Honours graduate students from the whole world, not from just English school-leavers with predicted A-level grades.  To look at the great universities as undergraduate institutions is a mistake.  Even Cambridge and Oxford, with their idiosyncratic undergraduate teaching provision and long traditions of  networking opportunities, are  distinguished  intellectually by the research statuses of their staff and departments.

Now that many jobs require an undergraduate degree rather than school-level education we should not be surprised that our great universities are even less interested in providing these qualifications than they were in educating the intake from which they draw their potential researchers  and teachers.  Most in need of a minimal qualification will go to less expensive and local providers.  Those who are brilliant but poor will still enter the great institutions  (whose  capacity to identify the clever rather than the merely qualified must be acknowledged.)  Certainly some who are well-to-do and socially demanding will  continue to form their  groupings in particular institutions in the more desirable parts of the country.

But if higher fees relieve pressure on universities whose resources are more in keeping with learning and research than with issuing certificates, that  will only be of benefit to us all.  And those with their hearts set on Oxbridge will find entry much less difficult at post-graduate level, the field thinned by real academic achievement and  real academic enthusiasm for their subject.

Gott mit Uns

"We cannot claim that God is on our side:"  What a thing to say.  What a muddled, pompous, arrogant thing to say.  It is possible to say "I cannot claim that God is  on my side:" after all that would be a simple statement of the obvious for Gordon Brown to make - no-one from God downwards was on his side.

For those of us of robust and cheerful thought, God is  always on the side of  Angels.

Benigni's Lectio Magistralis Receives Standing Ovation

Here is Benigni on the state we are in. And watch the later sections too,   particularly when he sings the national anthem after analysing every line.  An extraordinary affirmation of italianita'.

[you'll need your Italian and your ears brushed-up, ed.]

Hurrah

"I hold that there are no reasonable grounds in domestic law for bringing a claim for damages or a declaration for being disenfranchised whilst a prisoner. Statute precludes it. Case law is against it. European authority is against the payment of compensatory damages in respect of it..."

So now you know.

Fire Exits Should Always Open

Checked-in, past security, latte in hand and chatting pleasantly with the lovely Japanese lady sitting eating raw carrot and celery at 8.45 in the morning, our London City idyll of air transport (they say 'good morning' and 'certainly madam you may carry your passport, boarding papers, purse,  and Kindle in that flat leather bag - no need to crush it into your carry-on Prada) suddenly collapsed.

I got up to look if the Florence flight  (thank you City Unslicker for highlighting the service) was going to the gate yet , caught a whiff of plastic-laden fumes, and the civilised airport erupted into sirens, orders (in English, French and German I noticed even as I tried to get my eye on the nearest exit - the rest of the EU knows its place now when it gets down to the bottom line of evacuating an airport) and stampeded.

Oh, there were lots of emergency exits - but they wouldn't open, not towards the aircraft side.  The only routes out were back: back to the non-checked-in, non security-guaranteed-by-all-manner-of-airport-measures, London bus stops, and taxi ranks, and DLR, and ordinary life.   What's the point of all that palaver - chaps holding up their beltless trousers over stockinged-feet,  carefully packed bags roughly pulled apart so that the Waitrose ginger cake arrives all squashed, 'wands' being poked at parts of  the plumper ladies, silk scarves arriving through the supposed x-ray machine with threads pulled by whatever vicious scanning creatures they keep in those tunnels for precious possessions dumped in plastic trays?  We were herded back and forth across the airport concourse from one locked 'security' exit 'door' to another, which is not funny in the company of a majority of alpha males determined to save themselves and whatever business deal they were travelling for.

Then the whole lot of us - alpha males included -  had to go through  security again to a background of furious muttering from the staff that they'd done us once and why couldn't we have been herded outside airside?   The one saving grace of all this is that there were no young children, and buggies, and mothers who eat alpha-males alive when it comes to a building evacuation.  When will the lessons be learned that when it comes to evacuating a building in a fire all exits must be open?  This time it was only  a small fire quickly dealt with.  It isn't always like that, and we   didn't panic under the smoke and the confusion.  But now I wonder that I took it all so meekly.  Why couldn't we open those doors?

A Look in the Attic

This is possibly too kind to the subject (h/t Fattoquotidiano)

Ladies Go-Fast

 "The thing is, I'm generous, if someone tells me they can't buy a car I give them one. Usually I give them a Mini Cooper...."  lots and lots of Mini Coopers are reported to have been given by Berlusconi to his party guests.

Such a pretty car. Though you'd have to be getting on a bit to avoid the quizzical glance from passers-by (or the wave over by  Carabinieri on cocaine patrol).

Phone Tap

'The prime ministers of Russia and Italy Vladimir Putin and Silvio Berlusconi had a telephone conversation on Friday to discuss current moments in the two countries’ trade and economic cooperation, the press secretary of the Russian prime minister Dmitry Peskov said.'   

A passing flight of Angels overheard:

"Pronto, pronto? Vlad?"

"Silvio!  Good to hear from you.  What can I do for  you this time?"

"Senti.  Remember April?  25 April? You had dinner, private dinner with me at Arcore, a casa mia?"

"Do I remember April!   Now I know why so many streets in your fine country are named for XXV Aprile. "

"No, Vlad, that's for the Liberation."

"It felt pretty liberated  - perhaps Russia should have a bunga bunga day, remember the liberation of Germany from Nazi oppression by our glorious army.  Silvio I invite you!"

"Discreet though, Vlad, discreet.  Terrible trouble here over who the other guests were and how old."

"We no longer have NKVD and Smersh my dear Silvio, but when I say we  talk of South Stream and denial of Russian gas to Italy by North Stream Germans, that is what will be in media."

"Va be', Vladi.  A presto." 

Friendly Printers Again

This was on Guido, it made me laugh so much I want it here too.

President Napolitano Takes Up His Role

The President of Italy (cf Angelic Heroes) didn't hesitate.  The failure by Berlusconi's remnant coalition to win the vote on federalism and taxes -  15-15 - was met by a presumptuous decision to send an administrative decree for signature to the President regardless: who declared the Decree 'not acceptable'.  (Oh the joys of a Constitution and a Constitutional Court: 'shan't' reinforced by  'can't').

That Decree was the price of the support of the Northern Leagues in the face of forthcoming indictments for  abuse of minors, and abuse of office in connection with the abuse of minors by the Italian Prime Minister (74).  Perhaps the Northern Leagues will recover now some semblance of decency (after all trial for the abuse of young girls by a 74 year old man is not the sort of thing any normal 74 year old man  faces) and put Berlusconi aside.

Who will be the new prime minister of Italy?

Certainly there can be no goings-on with Papi.

Divide and Rule: the Battles for Germany

Among the books I was reading at Christmas ( and thinking about while I prepared and cooked some very jolly meals -  Mr Quango, I wasn't making mince pies and reading at the same time) was Antony Beevor's  Berlin: the Downfall 1945, which was a great deal less funny than the skits.  It was difficult for someone wholly unprepared for reading battle plans, maps, responses and outcomes to keep going through the horrors, but one outstanding question, at the end of it all, was:  why did the Americans stop at the Elbe? And why did they prevent any of the rest of  the Allies from going forward and taking Berlin?  Germany was Berlin.

Just as the Russians sat on the Vistula and allowed the destruction of Warsaw and the despair of the putting down of the Uprising, so the United States facilitated the destruction of Berlin and the division of Germany.

Or perhaps my map-reading skills are iffier than I know.

Should Welfare Be Expressed as a Personal Debt?

The welfare state in the United Kingdom now rests upon the enormous borrowing of the Brown regime - either as chancellor  or as prime minister.  It is a debt. It is a debt so enormous and never-ending that it  cannot continue to be treated as if it were basic rights in a modern democracy that have somehow come to be expressed as a debt.

The allocation to individuals of social resources, rather than the provision of social resources to all, makes it fair to tie each welfare-consumer, as an individual, to what they take out of social provision.

The process of attributing  parts of the public debt to individual consumers has begun with the university students; this attribution has been associated with notions of privilege and of advantage to justify the practice of treating use of tax-payer resources for private consumption as private debt.   By the reasoning applied to the funding of university education any allocation of a non-universal welfare benefit should be treated as a debt of the welfare beneficiary.   Who can argue that welfare-funded housing in central London is a lesser privilege than  a degree?  That paying no council tax is worth less than the wage differential between graduate and non-graduate employment?

Tax-payer funded housing - debt. Council tax and local service provision tax-payer funded - debt.  Temporary worklessness alleviated by tax-payer support - debt.  The same conditions can be set in place: don't use the provision and you don't get into debt; use the provision but once you are on your feet again you must begin to return what you were given when you needed it.

No-one is worse off, as the university-fees-must-be-paid-by-the-undergraduates lobby endlessly asserts, except that  for long stretches of life there is an obligation to return what was taken in time of  need -  as has been required of so many of those young adults who are  allocated resources not on their own position in life  but on that of their parents.

Is it time to extend the practice of welfare as not social and universal - i.e., welfare that benefits society, not building a client voter-base -but as something that should be regarded as  a loan and carries private and real future obligations and present restrictions?  There has been a great deal of 'privatizing the profit, socializing the debt' argument  about the banks and their rescue.  Perhaps it is time to think in the same terms about the beneficiaries of the non-universal welfare state.

Pay Back When You Can but the Debt Must be Fairly Attributed

Post -18 year-olds' claims upon the tax-payer are diverging rapidly and unequally.  Those who gain a university place must find £27,000 in fees and just under 3 years' maintenance: shall we say a round £60,000?  Those seeking work (at 18 or, for the moment, 16) but failing to find it, or finding it at minimum wage levels, are entitled to subvention by the tax-payer. 

Angels do not argue that young people should not have claims upon the tax-payer; or that all claims to support should first be met by family.  Until adulthood every young person has a claim for support on the family, but families should perhaps have more recognition from government of the financial burden they carry in supporting their young people. 

What is patently unacceptable is that those who are undertaking a university education, having achieved a place against the current odds, pay for it for long stretches of their working lives when other young people are being supported in their idleness.  Public debt is public debt: if we must all be ready to pay off what brownian economics left us then the debt must be shouldered by all, including those on welfare.

What Was Shouted At Aaron Porter?

Aaron Porter, president  of the National Union of Students, is a Jew.  The Financial Times reports:

'Mr Porter told NUS members in an e-mail: “Just before the march started, I was surrounded by a particularly vicious minority of protesters more intent on shouting threatening and racist abuse at me rather than focusing on the issues. Instead of standing together and fighting the cuts, they instead chose to pursue me along Manchester’s Oxford Road and drive me away from the start of the march. As a result, under the strong advice of the police, I had to withdraw myself from the rally.”

What  'racist' abuse could be offered to Mr Porter other than 'Jew'?   The efforts of various blogs and media to assert that the words used were '... Tory too...' fail in the face of Mr Porter's clear statement of  being subjected to racist, as well as threatening abuse.  To call someone a Tory  is not  racist.  And this is not the first time that Jews qua Jews have been attacked by representatives of the Left.  Ken Livingstone's appalling assault upon Oliver Finegold has not been forgotten nor Livingstone's refusal to apologise.

The trades unions and the students might choose to look more carefully at those with whom they have made a common front against the 'cuts'.

G'Day!

Watching the Past Make the Present

John Maynard Keynes portrayed.  If you have an hour or so this is remarkable even for the pictures alone.

What Should the United Kingdom Contribute to the Defence of the West?

The French companies DCNS and STX and Russia’s United Shipbuilding Corporation are to build two Mistral helicopter carriers costing 400-450 million euros each. The agreement was signed yesterday and the construction contract is expected to be signed later this year.

Today the Telegraph publishes a letter from Air Vice Marshal Tony Mason, Major-General Patrick Cordingley, Marshal of the RAF Lord Craig, Air Commodore Andrew Lambert, Major-Gen Julian Thompson, and Admiral Sir John Woodward, which protests that:

"Without any explanation, the Security and Defence Review announced that the Nimrod MR4 maritime patrol aircraft would not be brought into service. The decision was fiercely debated within the MoD, but the need for immediate savings and priority for current operations prevailed.
Destruction of the nine airframes has now begun. Machine tools have been destroyed; several million pounds have been saved, but a massive gap in British security has opened.
Britain is committed to the support of the UN, Nato and the EU. The vulnerability of sea lanes, unpredictable overseas crises and traditional surface and submarine opposition will continue to demand versatile, responsive aircraft.
Nimrod would have provided long-range maritime and overland reconnaissance, anti-submarine surveillance, air-sea rescue co-ordination and reconnaissance support to the Navy’s Trident submarines.
Some of Nimrod’s roles in home waters can be covered by frigates, short-range Merlin anti-submarine helicopters or even the C130 Hercules. They fall short, however, of replacing the strategic multi-role contribution of Nimrod. Other countries are actually seeking to reinforce their maritime patrol capacity, with the new Boeing 737 P8A a strong contender.
In a week when reports suggest that the Government is seeking to impose even more severe cuts on the defence budget, it is not perverse to suggest that the gap left by broken Nimrods should be readdressed."

There is something completely out of kilter here.  France is signing profitable contracts with Russia for useful-sounding helicopter carriers, meanwhile we are aborting the building of aircraft with a role of 'long-range maritime and overland reconnaissance, anti-submarine surveillance,'... even though '... Britain is committed to the support of the UN, NATO  and the EU...' and '... The vulnerability of sea lanes, unpredictable overseas crises and traditional surface and submarine opposition will continue to demand versatile, responsive aircraft.' 

But why are our Forces committed to such a role which clearly belongs to these alliances in common, not just to us?  Why are we landed with a defence role that is too big for our resources and, worse,  militates against our direction of what resources we have to profitable undertakings and the maintenance of our industries?

Is there some terrible, still-destructive hang-over from the vainglorious  Labour  mindset that led us into war repeatedly and so immorally, as a new global role for a 'progressive'-led 'Britain' was conceived and pursued? 

Berlusconi Sorting Things Out

An offer you can't refuse  to giggle at just once more.

More Than Ten Are the Best Ever

Best Composers

These are the all time top ten composers according to the survey in the New York Times (cited in today's Guardian)

Bach
Beethoven
Mozart
Schubert
Debussy
Stravinsky
Brahms
Verdi
Wagner
Bartók

Clearly there has been some mistake.  The best composers are:

J.S. Bach
Francois Couperin
Mozart
Schubert
Domenico Scarlatti
Richard Strauss
Handel
Beethoven
Britten
Rameau

Making Travelling Safer

 Domodedovo airport made me so uneasy when I went through a couple of years ago that last year I had only carry-on luggage.  On the previous occasion the arrivals hall was strewn with suitcases and packages of all shapes and sizes that had been man-handled off the luggage carousels and cast aside to be kicked all over the floors as people searched for their cases.  I found mine because it was dropped with particular annoyance by another passenger and I picked the case up to put it out of harms' way from where it lay in the middle of the concourse.  It was looking just like my luggage but then so was everybody else's.  All luggage looks alike, even the cases with a red ribbon tied on, or a special strap, look like other beribboned and strapped cases.   Mr HG had gone off efficiently to make enquiries and had located his case with a frightened-looking official he had rustled up.  (Goodness knows what had been said, I don't think there's a Book of Complaints in these countries any more.)

So the last time we were both  holding our respective, capacious handbags tightly as we nipped hastily through to the car.  Anything could be dumped in that arrivals hall and be there for days.  Anyone could behave oddly in the midst of that confusion, indeed everybody was behaving like people who have lost their luggage in a strange country.  

Perhaps it would be best if travellers  carry only a single bag and keep it with them at all times.  Those who have stuff they want elsewhere must send it freight. 

For Pig and Poppy (and Lilith)

Banks and Whose Army?

Banks are trying to sue, in London, Italian towns and regions  as the comune  stop making payments on contracts, and others seek to recover hidden fees,  in allegedly fraudulent selling practices on swaps.

The region of Tuscany and the Comune di Firenze are among the targets.  Even if the banks win they would only be able to seize property outside of Italy.  Let's see now, what about the National Gallery? That's outside Italy -  conveniently situated in London.  They could have:

this one

or this one

or this one

or this one

or this one

We could go on for absolutely ages but perhaps the best thing would be for all of these,  even just these, to go back where they came from and then any claims the banks have can be settled in the right place.   Of course then they would need the Italian courts to empower them.  Imagine the bankers trying to remove them from their Tuscan home, once returned.  The people of Monterchi faced the German army with pitchforks for this one:

Berlusconi's Political Life Now in the Hands of a Bambola

Tu mi fai girar
tu mi fai girar
come fossi una bambola
poi mi butti giu' poi mi butti giu'
come fossi una bambola
Non ti accorgi quando piango
quando sono triste e stanca tu
pensi solo per te


No ragazzo no
No ragazzo no
del mio amore non ridere
non ci gioco piu' quando giochi tu
sai far male da piangere
Da stasera la mia vita
nelle mani di un ragazzo no,
non la mettero piu'

No ragazzo no
tu non mi metterai
tra le dieci bambole
che non ti piacciono piu'
oh no, oh no


Tu mi fai girar,
tu mi fai girar...
poi mi butti giu',
poi mi butti giu'...

The Irrelevance of the United Nations

The United Nations is not an organisation that deserves respect.  It is a left-over of another century's politics, power-relations, wars.  Whether, or whether not, the then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom did or did not have the go-ahead of the United Nations to attack Iraq is irrelevant.   The United Nations is part of a Potemkin structure of international rights and wrongs, laws and courts, treaties and agreements, resolutions and condemnations that yield an undesirable obfuscation of responsibility for the use of force.

What Prime Minister Blair needed was our consent.  And he obtained it -  by telling lies: to Parliament, to the Opposition in government briefings, to his own Party,  to the people via the media.   And with that consent, obtained through falsehood, he attacked another country that presented no threat to us whatsoever.

And destroyed Iraq.

There is no World Order, no international justice that can be asked, or expected, or even justifiably bring him to answer, for what he has done.  There are our own laws, our own courts and it is under these laws and in these courts that justice must be done - or left.  Other countries may have offences for which to try him, Iraq certainly, but he is ours to own up to and to judge,  first and always.

Queueing. Pity it Came Too Late for Christmas

A new  board game inspired by  Monopoly is being launched, developed by the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), a Warsaw-based research institute that commemorates the suffering of the Polish people during the Nazi and Communist eras. (Der Spiegel reports).  In  'Queueing' the idea is to obtain the  basics - food, clothing and furniture - under realised socialism.

"... you send your family out to get items on a shopping list and they find that the five shops are sold out or that there hasn't been a delivery that day,"  said the IPN's Karol Madaj.   Some rules allow  players to jump the queue and get the last whatever it is,   others force players to give up their place in the queue.

The game was tested on 100 people during  development  and approved as an authentic  experience  of undertaking mundane chores in Communist times.  The oldest tester  (84) said that,  just as in the game, the longest queues were always at the furniture stores. There is a "colleague in the government" card, the equivalent of   "get out of jail free", enabling players to secretly find out when the next deliveries will arrive in the shops. 

To cheer up a game about queueing for scarce goods  it comes with a book of jokes from the Communist era,  archive photographs of real people queueing, and a booklet providing a historical overview! 

Who's a Naughty Boy Then?

Time for Italy's European Friends to Intervene

Silvio Berlusconi's impunity rests with the Northern Leagues, whose price is the re-conforming of Italian unity.  Yet in the 150th anniversary year of the foundation of the state of Italy the President is not going to sit quietly by while the country is dismembered.  There is dissent and determined opposition from above.

Nor is there quiet below.  The demands of the Northern Leagues are fiercely resisted by the local authorities who embody the European Union ideal of subsidiarity - power to the lowest possible local level at which it can be exercised.  The parliamentary commission on federalism is facing fierce criticism of the confusion and lack of clarity in terms of proposals and outcomes in the projected changes to the state it is considering.

As if that might not be enough, Berlusconi proposes that in return for delivering an obscure, confused and uncertain federalism opposed by regions and communities alike, he may launch a criminal assault upon the judiciary in order to prevent any further opposition to his personal, populist mandate which has been earned from removing inheritance taxes and various other property imposts and the purchase of client votes (to name the  above-the-surface activities; goodness knows what moves elsewhere).

At the meeting last night of Berlusconi and his henchmen and the Northern Leagues' Bossi and his, this outrageous programme seems to have been furthered.  Both Berlusconi and Bossi are old and sick and Berlusconi at least is deeply compromised, surrounded by placemen, courtiers, office-seekers at any cost, pimps, and prostitutes. 

So far the normal face of Italian political, economic, constitutional and community life has held.  But this tearing at the fabric of the state itself, powered by the impossibility of Berlusconi's position, will soon spill over into Italy's debt relations and into any hope of investment in a country already desperately behind much of the rest of Europe in productivity and innovation.  The collapse not just of the economy but of the state itself by the third biggest  member of the eurozone is in no-one's interest.

Revulsion

The parliamentary body that oversees state security and the state security services COPASIR  has called upon Silvio Berlusconi to appear before it.   Presided over by Massimo d'Alema, it can lift state secrecy measures, require sight of all and any judicial or banking papers, and require the presence of those it wishes to question.  It will come as no surprise that Berlusconi is refusing to do so despite the draconian powers the Committee enjoys and his duty as the prime minister to respond to concerns for the  security of the state.  Taken together with his refusal to appear before the Milan magistrates  his performance on tonight's video was a virtuoso performance in denial.

'Shan't'  'Didn't' 'Can't make me' 'Don't care' 'Haven't done anything.',  just about sums it up.

The entire nearly 400pp of the Milan magistrates' case has now been published.  The abuse alleged is horrific, sustained, indefensible.  It is impossible to believe that such a catalogue of offensiveness and offences could possibly have been concocted by the Milan magistracy as a media assault upon the Prime Minister for political ends, as Berlusconi sustains.

The irrelevance of his accusations of subversion of the Constitution, followed by assertions that the magistrates do not have jurisdiction, escape him.  To watch the Prime Minister arguing like a barrack-room lawyer about by whom and where his behaviour can be  judged is to be in a modern Inferno.

Dining Out. Pass the Oil

The class will take out its Devoto-Oli.   In our computers we will enter various addresses but begin here .

The angelic President Napolitano has called upon the Italian prime minister to consider the bouleversement caused by his behaviour.  Which particular behaviour you might ask?  All of it always, but particularly the last decade? Couple of decades?

In the meantime, those of you who have been guests at dinners thrown by Silvio Berlusconi might consider your position.  And where were you, Prime Minister Putin, on 25 April last year?  Ruby Rubacuori was at villa San Martino dining with the President of the Council of Ministers.

The Vipers Strike or Il Contrappasso

If you were denied the opportunity to study for a GCSE modern language then you have a real grievance against Labour levellers.   Not even your French and a bit of Latin, that many are convinced will get them by in Italian.

Mr Berlusconi is now facing a motion in the House to permit the searching of his residences, including the office of the residence  where access had been barred under the claim that it is part of the the offices of the President of the Council of Ministers.  So much for privacy claims, which have now quietened - after all fourteen women in a gated community in Milan seems to be pretty public. 

The media are headlining that 5 million (no, not liras)  was asked for her silence by the minor (no, not miner , do keep up at the back).  Well, this silence is deadly.

"Be ready for anything, or you might as well get a taxi and leave now"  is quite a noisy remark.

The papers associated with the case have been placed under severe restriction; only 21 people have had access to them in the presence of officials and without means to copy them.  So they are all over the media.  But in Italian.

Bet you wish Labour hadn't deleted modern foreign languages from the curriculum.

Lordy, lordy

Peter Tatchell said:

"It's quite outrageous that the supreme court judges have a title system that discriminates against both women and gay people. The highest court in the land should reflect the principle of universal equality.
"Complicity with this discrimination sends out entirely the wrong message. When inequality is enshrined at the heart of the supreme court, it does not inspire confidence that this institution is committed to non-discrimination."

And why are we supposed to address and refer to high court judges as 'Lord'?  Let alone their wives and significant others as 'Lady'.  

The Vipers of Milan

Dinner has been delayed from eight o'clock to nine.  The news (the news on Italian television!) is too absorbing to be diluted by passing the parmigiano, salt, potatoes, bread or anything else.

Last night Silvio Berlusconi had his video moment -

I wouldn't do this kind of thing. Me? Pay for sex with a woman?  Anyway I've got a steady.  It's all a political attack enabled by the  unbalanced  powers of the judiciary (and an unbalanced judiciary).

We munch on through an unhealthy pile of crisps and an unbalanced consumption of aperitivi.  The Milan prosecutors are declared to have no jurisdiction by Berlusconi's lawyers - Arcore  (where the relevant bunga-bunga was said to be going on in one of B's villas) is in the judicial thrall of Monza, not Milan.  But the major charge, the abuse of office, took place in Milan and lesser charges are subordinated to this.

The Speaker of the Lower House and leader of the break-away faction from Berlusconi's majority party calls upon him to face the magistrates.

"Shan't!" cries Berlusconi who has been given 3 dates next week to turn up; after that he has 5 days from the last date to give himself up.  It is unclear to me though probaly not to Italian lawyers, what happens then.  Bounty hunters?  Shooting on sight? Carabinieri in their spooky leather gloves and impeccable turn out helping him towards enquiries?

Meanwhile, the girl in question has declared she has never had sex with that man.  Which man we chorus, turning our attention to the guest lists at the villa in April when she was know to be a guest there herself.  If not him then who were you there for?  And what exactly is the status of the 14 young women lodged in Berlusconi's Milano 2 gated property development just outside Milan?

Such a novelty after UK political scandal - all this hetero-sexuality.  Some of us were beginning to wonder if we would ever again be able to empathise with current political history and its goings-on.

 

Better Than Mauve

The Labour Party should stop calling itself the Labour Party.  Labour is a horrid word.  The dull among us 'labour the point'; the criminal is sentenced with 'hard labour' as well as loss of liberty (or used to be, perhaps should be even now); no-one wants their breathing to be laboured, or yet their argument; or their work to be laborious - even less their patterns of thought.  Doubtless many other unattractive associations can be added, not least 'camp'.

Ed Miliband is in the owning up stage of getting us to forgive the attack on Iraq, and to forgive Gordon Brown in his entirety.  But he's starting from the wrong place.  We won't forgive, or forget, either of those two monstrosities.  It is their association with much that is attractive in the history and thinking of a radical movement of the centre left that must be severed and, in line with  turning a disaster to advantage, at last the very name they disgrace could be abandoned.

There are other words to lose as well while he's at it: struggle, fight; scum; as well as journey, message (we'll have to keep send, it's too useful a verb in other contexts) and even big.  Perhaps it would be best to have a thesaurus drawn up, or something like the pretty book of rhymes for hopeful poets I found here among the severe religious texts (though the forebear who signed his name inside, Ansano, also added Pazzo over and over again which suggests self doubt of his poetic gifts; but I digress).

So what name will gather together all the good and worthwhile values and history and achievements of the Movement?   Mutual, co-operative, people, sharing, community - all these are applicable to some part of what is wanted but unfortunately have had quite a drubbing in the mouths of socialists and communists.   And trying for future, hope, forward, together, serve has decidedly fascistic echoes. Perhaps that's why the newly re-formed Italian parties went for trees and flowers.

I like The Red Party.   It's got everything: complex associations with every shade of leftishness encompassed in a simple word,  sets up wonderful sets of oppositions; declarative; assertive; and a glorious colour.   
  

Ciao Bella

The Mirafiori FIAT workers voted almost in their entirety - and split 54% Yes to Marchionne's plans, 46% No.

Which won't do at all.

What industrialist would invest in a 20 billion euro renewal plan, an integral part of an international restructuring project, with almost half the workforce in the main plant refusing the terms and conditions of their engagement?  It was not always so.

FIAT Chrysler is not in business to reform the industrial relations and sociopolitical mindset of the Italian blue collar workforce.   The offer was 'Join us", not 'Assist us in installing correct power relations between capital and labour'.

Perhaps a works outing to Longbridge might have been worthwhile.

UPDATE

It was almost noon before any reaction from Sergio Marchionne to the narrow win for the Yes group of trades unions.  And his response was very low key.  The Mirafiori workers:

'have shown faith in themselves and in their future.' ['hanno dimostrato di avere fiducia in se stessi e nel loro futuro' ].  The word courage also crossed his lips (there has been considerable pressure on the Mirafiori workers to vote No, the last act on the declaration of the results of the ballot was the burning of the flags and banners of the Yes Trades Unions on a pyre before the gates of the Mirafiori works).  It is  others who have been talking up a great victory, a vote for modernity, a vote for investment and jobs. 

With the exception, of course, of the FIOM leaders and the CGIL who have declared a great victory (even if a few votes short of a majority) and a defeat of  authoritarian  industrial relations and the factory as barracks (this last gem from the leader of the CGIL - the confederation of Italian workers).

Marchionne reacted very poorly to an above 60% Yes vote in factories in the South.  This majority is even less adequate. 

Defending Rotten Boroughs are a Rotten Group of Life Peers

Michael Martin, the first Speaker of the House of Commons to be forced out of office for three centuries, was elevated to the House of Lords by Gordon Brown. (How the fingertips cringe at typing those two names in the same sentence).  Few were surprised at such rewards  for the allegiances Martin had displayed.  A seat in the Lords has been a Scottish weakness for  many centuries; lots of Scots let down their countrymen for just that (although they didn't have the opportunity to let down the whole United Kingdom).

Noblesse oblige in downfalls; no need to rub it in.  Or is there?

Martin is creating mischief in that refuge from political defeat or political shame - a life 'peerage'  in the House of Lords.  As Blue Eyes so succinctly puts it "The Labour party is desperately trying to retain its gerrymandered stranglehold on Parliament. It is disgusting."  And a central figures in this cluster of 'Lords' maintaining a fillibuster  is Martin.

Lord Strathclyde (who is the real thing) is threatening a guillotine and has now been accused of Mugabe behaviour by a Labour life 'peer'.  Frankly the Lords has been rendered ridiculous by these temporary adjuncts helicoptered in to save governments of the day or remove bed-blockers from the Commons.  They even wear a version of the uniforms of the various 'pensioners'

It's time to leave them in their picturesque outfits and idiosyncratic behaviour and elect a second chamber.  Then we could keep Lord Strathclyde and kick Martin -  even though he's down, he's asked for it.

Not Old and Sad

Hardly has the Italian Constitutional court struck down yesterday the special pleading of the 'legitimate impediment' law (Berlusconi's government had pushed through a law that prime ministers, among others, are too busy to attend court to answer criminal charges, of which Berlusconi has a few) when the Prosecutor of Milan serves notice on Mr Berlusconi that there is trouble over this

The Prime Minister of Italy is being investigated for the crimes of extortion and the prostitution of minors  [concussione e prostituzione minorile].  His invitation to appear in Milan is furnished with detailed information on the crimes ascribed.   

Labour Hold Depressed Northern Former Textile-Manufacturing Seat

Two thousand Manchester  workers at all grades and in all departments from street cleaners and social workers to administrators, managers and accountants were sacrificed to encourage the Oldham and Saddleworth voters to return a Labour candidate who didn't tell lies about the Liberal Democrat candidate.

The bog standard vote turned in by  Ms Abrahams, who told us that messages have been sent (from Oldham?)  and that journeys have been begun (well who wouldn't leave there, given the chance?) hardly seems to merit the blood-letting at Manchester Town Hall.

The Party discipline displayed by Conservatives in support of the Conservative/Liberal coalition was impressive though.

The Social Market Wobbles

With the intervention of Silvio Berlusconi in the FIAT labour conditions stand-off Dr Marchionne's position as industrial rather than political is called into question.  Undoubtedly the opportunism and insouciance of Berlusconi speak for the former; furthermore Berlusconi's statement that FIAT's relocation of its car production (to Serbia or Canada or Poland or Brazil or wherever) outside Italy would be wholly understandable and greeted with no intervention by his governmen, makes the removal of his government urgent.

Equally, if Berlusconi's intervention is welcomed or, worse, programmed, then the view that the promised investment is and always was nugatory, and that Marchionne has constructed an exit strategy from what he considers  to be an undesirable production area riven with leftist confrontational mindsets and bolshie workers, and inappropriate institutions from trades unions right up to the articles of the constitution of the Republic, stands.

The FIAT workers represented by the FIOM, essentially the metal bashers, must vote on accepting a new company as their employer - a new company which is a joint venture between FIAT and Chrysler, outside the collective national contract for metal workers; and like all multi-national companies, the distribution of profits among its component parts can be manipulated at will by arbitrarily fixing transfer prices.  They must accept worsening conditions although they are being offered small pay increases for accepting productivity improvements.  (It doesn't help their cries of pain that the FIOM called a one day strike on the day Italy was playing in the last World Cup.  Not clever at all).

Unlike Germany, trades unions are not represented on the boards of companies in Italy; unlike the Chrysler workers in the United States there is no ownership in the company (even if that ownership came from compensation for pension funds lost, it has since served other purposes).  The Italian FIAT workers stand to lose everything unless the government takes up its constitutional responsibility to come to their aid and, preferably, defence.  Not to mention the defence of a major sector of Italian manufacturing industry.  And the aid of fellow workers from other Unions who have already accepted the new terms and new company.

FIOM is now threatening to call out all metal workers and 'all social movements':  the students,  the anti-privatisation groups, the anti transport- and fuel supply-networks groups, the anti nuclear and environmentalist greenies, the dissident street protest groups.  Their policy seems to be street riots and social disruption as a substitute for years of proper negotiation on the wages and conditions and industry status of those they represent in the car factories.  (Quite a familiar story there).

The dead hand of realised socialism is still reaching out from the 20th century to mar the lives of working people in advanced capitalist societies. Some Union leaderships are as much renegades as was the renegade leadership of the security services  in the anni di piombo; the scenes outside the factories in Turin are distressing in the extreme as workers refuse the demands from FIOM stewards and union officials that they should vote No.

The Democratic Left party has split along the socialist/liberal stress lines.  Did Marchionne mean to do all this?  Not, perhaps.  But never should the social democratic movement have allowed such a scenario to become real because it will not confront and recast the trades unions from which it draws so much of its membership and political validity (and financial resources) into modern institutions representing labour through all the changes globlisation is bringing.

A Denial of Basic Schooling

Five A* to C grades - it's not much to ask after 11 years of full time education; it's still not much to ask that they be in English, mathematics, a foreign language, history or geography, and a science.  It's certainly not enough to deserve to be called the English Baccalaureate.

Yet only one in six achieved at least this standard last year.  Cries of 'we weren't ready' are pathetic; what should have been a baseline already being achieved by most, even when the measure is introduced retrospectively,  has been shown to be a target beyond the range of the majority.  What has been going on for a generation and a half of school students during the Labour years?