Tuesday, May 31, 2011

GIZA Hidden no more

GIZA










Hidden no more: Pyramid findings rock the Web

Are the glory days of the archaeologist over? Has everything cool and ancient already been discovered? Nope. Thanks to ever-improving technology, several new findings have electrified the Web.
A robot explorer recently discovered ancient markings at the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt. The robotic device found the markings inside a secret chamber inaccessible to humans--and then proceeded to film the painted hieroglyphics and stone markings, which hadn't been seen by human eyes in 4,500 years, via a small robotic camera that was fit through a tiny hole in a stone wall.
It is too soon to tell what the markings mean, but experts are hoping they may shed some light on why the ancient Egyptians originally built the tunnels. An article from CNN explains that the tunnel is "one of several mysterious passages leading from the larger king's and queen's chambers."
This wasn't the first time a robot explored the passageways--but it was the first time a robot could focus on details on the walls. This breakthrough occurred thanks to a new kind of micro-camera that can be bent side-to-side instead of just focusing straight ahead.
News of the discovery quickly took the Web by storm. Over the past 24 hours, Web searches for "great pyramid of giza" and "egypt pyramids" both spiked into breakout status. Also seeing big bumps in lookups: "hieroglyphic dictionary" and "hieroglyphic meanings."
Meanwhile, other technologically enhanced discovery expeditions have turn up other fascinating new information about the pyramids in recent days. Archaeologists from the United States (with some help from the BBC) used satellite imagery to discover 17 pyramids beneath the sand and silt in Egypt. An article from Canada's CBC explains that 1,000 tombs and around 3,000 other buildings were also discovered thanks to the technology.
How does the satellite-mapping work? According to the CBC, "kiln-fired bricks used to build ancient cities can be distinguished from the earth covering it" on the infrared satellite images. This find may be just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. There may be many more buildings, tombs and pyramids buried further beneath the Earth's surface.
Their tools have changed, but archaeologists shouldn't fear for their jobs. Clearly, the Earth still holds many secrets--if you look hard enough.
(Egyptian archaeology workers ferrying sand in trolleys on rail tracks in front of the Great Pyramid, in Giza, Egypt. AP/Amr Nibil)



































London, England (CNN) -- A robot explorer has revealed ancient markings inside a secret chamber at Egypt's Great Pyramid of Giza.
The markings, which have lain unseen for 4,500 years, were filmed using a bendy camera small enough to fit through a hole in a stone door at the end of a narrow tunnel.
It is hoped they could shed light on why the tiny chamber and the tunnel -- one of several mysterious passages leading from the larger King's and Queen's chambers -- were originally built.
The markings take the form of hieroglyphic symbols in red paint as well as lines in the stone that may have been made by masons when the chamber was being built.
The big question is the purpose of these tunnels.--Peter Der Manuelian, Philip J. King Professor of Egyptology at Harvard University
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Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities
According to Peter Der Manuelian, Philip J. King Professor of Egyptology at Harvard University, similar lines have been found elsewhere in Giza. "Sometimes they identify the work gang (who built the room), sometimes they give a date and sometimes they give guidelines to mark cuttings or directional symbols about the beginning or end of a block," he said.
CNN Money video: How much would the Great Pyramid cost to build today?
"The big question is the purpose of these tunnels," he added. "There are architectural explanations, symbolic explanations, religious explanations -- even ones relating to the alignment of the stars -- but the final word on them is yet to be written. The challenge is that no human can fit inside these channels so the only way to do this exploration is with robots."
Pictures of the markings have been published in the Annales du Service Des Antiquities de l'Egypte, the official publication of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, following an international mission led by the Minister for Antiquities.
The robot explorer that took the images is named Djedi, after the magician whom Pharaoh Khufu consulted when planning the layout of the Great Pyramid. It was designed and built by engineers at the University of Leeds, in collaboration with Scoutek UK and Dassault Systemes, France.

A close-up view of the red marks on the floor in the pyramid
Although robots have previously sent back pictures from within the pyramid's tunnels, Djedi's creators say it is the first to be able to explore the walls and floors in detail, rather than just take pictures looking straight ahead, thanks to a "micro snake" camera.
The camera also scrutinized two copper pins embedded in the door to the chamber at the end of the tunnel. In a statement, Shaun Whitehead, of Scoutek UK, said: "People have been wondering about the purpose of these pins for over 20 years. It had been suggested that they were handles, keys or even parts of an electrical power plant, but our new pictures from behind the pins cast doubt on these theories.
"We now know that these pins end in small, beautifully made loops, indicating that they were more likely ornamental rather than electrical connections or structural features. Also, the back of the door is polished so it must have been important. It doesn't look like it was a rough piece of stone used to stop debris getting into the shaft."
The team's next task is to look at the chamber's far wall to check whether it is a solid block of stone or another door.
"We are keeping an open mind and will carry out whatever investigations are needed to work out what these shafts and doors are for," said Whitehead. "It is like a detective story, we are using the Djedi robot and its tools to piece the evidence together."

http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/story/2011/05/31/pyramids-found.html
http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/africa/05/28/pyramid.markings/index.html?eref=rss_mostpopular









Monday, May 30, 2011

Beneath Jerusalem, an underground city takes shape

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/ml_israel_underground_jerusalem
Beneath Jerusalem, an underground city takes shape

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AP – In this May 17, 2011 photo, a view of Zedekiah's Cave is seen in Jerusalem's Old City. Underneath the …
Slideshow:Underground Jerusalem
By MATTI FRIEDMAN, Associated Press Matti Friedman, Associated Press – Mon May 30, 12:09 pm ET
JERUSALEM – Underneath the crowded alleys and holy sites of old Jerusalem, hundreds of people are snaking at any given moment through tunnels, vaulted medieval chambers and Roman sewers in a rapidly expanding subterranean city invisible from the streets above.
At street level, the walled Old City is an energetic and fractious enclave with a physical landscape that is predominantly Islamic and a population that is mainly Arab.
Underground Jerusalem is different: Here the noise recedes, the fierce Middle Eastern sun disappears, and light comes from fluorescent bulbs. There is a smell of earth and mildew, and the geography recalls a Jewish city that existed 2,000 years ago.
Archaeological digs under the disputed Old City are a matter of immense sensitivity. For Israel, the tunnels are proof of the depth of Jewish roots here, and this has made the tunnels one of Jerusalem's main tourist draws: The number of visitors, mostly Jews and Christians, has risen dramatically in recent years to more than a million visitors in 2010.
But many Palestinians, who reject Israel's sovereignty in the city, see them as a threat to their own claims to Jerusalem. And some critics say they put an exaggerated focus on Jewish history.
A new underground link is opening within two months, and when it does, there will be more than a mile (two kilometers) of pathways beneath the city. Officials say at least one other major project is in the works. Soon, anyone so inclined will be able to spend much of their time in Jerusalem without seeing the sky.
On a recent morning, a man carrying surveying equipment walked across a two-millennia-old stone road, paused at the edge of a hole and disappeared underground.
In a multilevel maze of rooms and corridors beneath the Muslim Quarter, workers cleared rubble and installed steel safety braces to shore up crumbling 700-year-old Mamluk-era arches.
Above ground, a group of French tourists emerged from a dark passage they had entered an hour earlier in the Jewish Quarter and found themselves among Arab shops on the Via Dolorosa, the traditional route Jesus took to his crucifixion.
South of the Old City, visitors to Jerusalem can enter a tunnel chipped from the bedrock by a Judean king 2,500 years ago and walk through knee-deep water under the Arab neighborhood of Silwan. Beginning this summer, a new passage will be open nearby: a sewer Jewish rebels are thought to have used to flee the Roman legions who destroyed the Jerusalem temple in 70 A.D.
The sewer leads uphill, passing beneath the Old City walls before expelling visitors into sunlight next to the rectangular enclosure where the temple once stood, now home to the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the gold-capped Dome of the Rock.
From there, it's a short walk to a third passage, the Western Wall tunnel, which continues north from the Jewish holy site past stones cut by masons working for King Herod and an ancient water system. Visitors emerge near the entrance to an ancient quarry called Zedekiah's Cave that descends under the Muslim Quarter.
The next major project, according to the Israel Antiquities Authority, will follow the course of one of the city's main Roman-era streets underneath the prayer plaza at the Western Wall. This route, scheduled for completion in three years,

will link up with the Western Wall tunnel.
The excavations and flood of visitors exist against a backdrop of acute distrust between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Muslims, who are suspicious of any government moves in the Old City and particularly around the Al-Aqsa compound, Islam's third-holiest shrine. Jews know the compound as the Temple Mount, site of two destroyed temples and the center of the Jewish faith for three millennia.
Muslim fears have led to violence in the past: The 1996 opening of a new exit to the Western Wall tunnel sparked rumors among Palestinians that Israel meant to damage the mosques, and dozens were killed in the ensuing riots. In recent years, however, work has gone ahead without incident.
Mindful that the compound has the potential to trigger devastating conflict, Israel's policy is to allow no excavations there. Digging under Temple Mount, the Israeli historian Gershom Gorenberg has written, "would be like trying to figure out how a hand grenade works by pulling the pin and peering inside."
Despite the Israeli assurances, however, rumors persist that the excavations are undermining the physical stability of the Islamic holy sites.
"I believe the Israelis are tunneling under the mosques," said Najeh Bkerat, an official of the Waqf, the Muslim religious body that runs the compound under Israel's overall security control.
Samir Abu Leil, another Waqf official, said he had heard hammering that very morning underneath the Waqf's offices, in a Mamluk-era building that sits just outside the holy compound and directly over the route of the Western Wall tunnel, and had filed a complaint with police.
The closest thing to an excavation on the mount, Israeli archaeologists point out, was done by the Waqf itself: In the 1990s, the Waqf opened a new entrance to a subterranean prayer space and dumped truckloads of rubble outside the Old City, drawing outrage from scholars who said priceless artifacts were being destroyed.
This month, an Israeli government watchdog released a report saying Waqf construction work in the compound in recent years had been done without supervision and had damaged antiquities. The issue is deemed so sensitive that the details of the report were kept classified.
Some Israeli critics of the tunnels point to what they call an exaggerated emphasis on a Jewish narrative.
"The tunnels all say: We were here 2,000 years ago, and now we're back, and here's proof," said Yonathan Mizrachi, an Israeli archaeologist. "Living here means recognizing that other stories exist alongside ours."
Yuval Baruch, the Antiquities Authority archaeologist in charge of Jerusalem, said his diggers are careful to preserve worthy finds from all of the city's historical periods. "This city is of interest to at least half the people on Earth, and we will continue uncovering the past in the most professional way we can," he said.

:War crimes suspect Ratko Mladic

















































http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110529/ap_on_re_eu/eu_serbia_mladic

AP – Bosnian Serb people holding photos of former Gen. Ratko Mladic during a protest in Kalinovik, Bosnia, …
Slideshow:War crimes suspect Ratko Mladic
By JOVANA GEC, Associated Press Jovana Gec, Associated Press – Sun May 29, 7:56 pm ET
BELGRADE, Serbia – Protesters throwing stones and bottles clashed with baton-wielding riot police Sunday in Belgrade after several thousand Serbian nationalist supporters of jailed war-crimes suspect Ratko Mladic rallied outside the parliament building to demand his release.
By the time the crowds broke up by late evening, about 100 people were arrested and 16 minor injuries were reported. That amounted to a victory for the pro-Western government, which arrested Mladic on Thursday, risking the wrath of the nationalist old guard in a country with a history of much larger and more virulent protests.
Rioters overturned garbage containers, broke traffic lights and set off firecrackers as they rampaged through downtown. Cordons of riot police blocked their advances, and skirmishes took place in several locations in the center of the capital.
Doctors said six police officers were among the 16 people brought to a hospital with minor injuries. Police remained on the streets as the crowds broke up.
The clashes began after a rally that drew at least 7,000 demonstrators, many singing nationalist songs and carrying banners honoring Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb military commander. Some chanted right-wing slogans and a few gave Nazi salutes.
Supporters of the extreme nationalist Serbian Radical Party were bused in to attend the rally. Right-wing extremists and hooligan groups also urged followers to appear in large numbers, creating the biggest test of Serbian sentiment and the government's resolve since Mladic's arrest.
The demonstrators, who consider Mladic a hero, said Serbia should not hand him over to the U.N. war crimes court in The Hague, Netherlands.
"Cooperation with The Hague tribunal represents treason," Radical Party official Lidija Vukicevic told the crowd. "This is a protest against the shameful arrest of the Serbian hero."
Demonstrators demanded the ouster of Serbian President Boris Tadic, who ordered Mladic's arrest. A sign on the stage read, "Tadic is not Serbia."
More than 3,000 riot police were deployed around government buildings and Western embassies, fearing that the demonstration could turn violent. Riot police tried to block small groups of extremists from reaching the rally.
Nationalists are furious that the Serbian government apprehended Mladic after nearly 16 years on the run. The 69-year-old former general was caught at a relative's home in a northern Serbian village.
The U.N. tribunal charged Mladic with genocide in 1995, accusing him of orchestrating the massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica and other war crimes of Bosnia's 1992-95 war. Mladic's arrest is considered critical to Serbia's efforts to join the European Union, and to reconciliation in the region after a series of ethnic wars of the 1990s.
Mladic's son, Darko Mladic, said Sunday that despite the indictment, his father insists he was not responsible for the mass executions committed by his troops after they overran the eastern Bosnian enclave of Srebrenica in July 1995.

"Whatever was done behind his back, he has nothing to do with that," Darko Mladic said.
The massacre in Srebrenica is considered to be Europe's worst atrocity since World War II. Bosnian Serb troops under Mladic's command rounded up boys and men and executed them over several days, burying the remains in mass graves in the area.
Prosecutors say they have compelling evidence that Mladic personally ordered and oversaw the executions in and around Srebrenica.
But Serb nationalists in Serbia and parts of Bosnia still consider Mladic a hero — the general who against all odds tried to defend Serbs in the Bosnian conflict. Among his men, Mladic commanded fierce devotion — many Bosnian Serb soldiers pledged to follow him to the death.

Some 3,000 supporters arrived Sunday by bus from other parts of Bosnia to a rally at Kalinovik, the area where Mladic grew up. Many wore black T-shirts with Mladic's picture and the words "Serbia in my heart."
The crowd called Tadic a "betrayer" for ordering the arrest of "the Serb hero" and urged him to "kill himself." Many said they would fight under Mladic again.
Many of the Kalinovik protesters headed afterward to the shack Mladic was born in at the end of a steep, muddy road in the village of Bozanici, turning the shabby house into a pilgrimage site. Mladic's aunt and cousins spoke to them, telling stories about Mladic's childhood.
Mladic's family and lawyers have been fighting his extradition, arguing that the former general is too ill to face charges. The family plans to appeal the extradition on Monday and to demand an independent medical checkup — moves described by the authorities as a delaying tactics.
"He's a man who has not taken care of his health for a while, but not to the point that he cannot stand trial," Serbia's deputy war crimes prosecutor Bruno Vekaric told The Associated Press. "According to doctors, he doesn't need hospitalization."
Mladic has suffered at least two, and possibly three, strokes, the latest in 2008, his son said. The suspect's right arm is only semi-functional, and his family says he is not lucid — but Vekaric said that assessment was not true.
Lawyer Milos Saljic says that Mladic above all keeps demanding that he be allowed to visit the grave of his daughter, who committed suicide in 1994.
"He says if he can't go there, he wants his daughter's coffin brought in here," the lawyer added. "His condition is alarming."
Saljic said the family does not believe that Mladic would receive proper medical attention in The Hague. He noted that several high-profile Serbs had died there, including former President Slobodan Milosevic, who suffered a heart attack.
___
Dusan Stojanovic and Danica Kirka contributed.
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SYNCHRONICITIES UNEARTHED WORLDWIDE

http://noosphere.princeton.edu/
This statement comes from a blog newly discovered that has unearthed synchronicities conforming to the below statement from the SAID blog and the post on Jose Arguelles and the philosophical and mystic underpinnings of the noosphere.
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Subtle interactions link us with each other and the Earth
When human consciousness becomes coherent and synchronized, the behavior of random systems may change. Quantum event based random number generators (RNGs) produce completely unpredictable sequences of zeroes and ones. But when a great event synchronizes the feelings of millions of people, our network of RNGs becomes subtly structured. The probability is less than one in a billion that the effect is due to chance. The evidence suggests an emerging noosphere, or the unifying field of consciousness described by sages in all cultures.
__________________________________________________________________
It is multidisciplinary multidisciplinary as it must be to engraft the full picture of synchronicity on a global society whose time has come in the next step of spiritual evolving on this planet, another coming not "the coming" (?). Has this project quantified what as previously a near impossible task?

The pathcwork of interconnectedness . Quantum events. Are we tuned in correctly?

Aesthetics update page
-->the GCP dotdaily moviesthe egg storypoetic historyyoutube spotsplanetary smile realtime display
-->globalbrainpaintmusical interludeproduction credithow to contributerandom tapestryspeculations
-->our allies videoslinks
Evolve! You can do it!

The Clay idols of this present time

http://majorityoftwo.blogspot.com/2011/05/cult-of-celebrity.html
The Cult Of Celebrity
The cult of celebrity is something that has always been a mystery to me. I don't understand it. When someone becomes famous, it's almost the same as when someone passes away; they become imbued with qualities that they perhaps really did not possess. It must be a psychological thing, a part of the human psyche, to admire people and put them onto an unrealistic pedestal. It was said that Princess Diana became so overwhelmed with her own celebrity that she developed a "God complex" and felt she had the power to heal people. She believed the touch of her hand, or her very presence, was enough to cure serious illnesses, to the annoyance of more than one doctor in the hospitals and clinics she visited.I have never been a huge fan of Oprah Winfrey. I don't understand her cult following; it puzzles me. Oprah first began her career as a journalist and a talk show host. She interviewed people -- interesting people. But somewhere along the way the show started to be about her. Oprah almost became a religion. When she signed off the other day, folks were posting to her website:"Your shows cleaned my soul and opened my heart every time. Thank you so much for wonderful TV-hours.""I have seen a spot of light around you for all these years you were shining every sunset replacing sun's ray with your hopeful smile, spreading love and understanding all over the world, with your simplicity and humility.""It is my opinion that Oprah, without children of her own, adopted the world as her children.""I am so PROUD to be an Oprah believer. I have been watching, following, agreeing, and loving your agenda for years!""I remember when I was a child I would get angry with my mother because she had to watch "Oprah" and all I wanted to do was watch cartoons. Then as I got older, I realized that mother truly did know best and then "Oprah" turned into my little piece of heaven every day.""Cleaned my soul"? ... "Ray of light"? ... "Adopted the world as her children?" ..."Little piece of heaven?" ..."Agenda?"There are over 2,300 comments exactly like these, and they are downright frightening. She's a talk show host and a businesswoman, folks, not the Messiah.The key to success seems to be to affect a persona and stick to it. Get that persona out there until it permeates every corner of the media. If you're famous, sheeple people will be devoted.Oprah now has her own television network, and interestingly the acronym for her initials is OWN. That frightens me even more. I have watched a couple of the programs on her network, and it is more of the same "This is what Oprah believes, so you should believe it too". Unfortunately, there are too many people who can't - or chose not to - think for themselves. So, they are very easily influenced by someone who does their thinking for them.In 1998 there was a movie called "The Truman Show" starring Jim Carrey. It was a movie about a long-running television program following a man's fictional life. The whole thing was set up in an elaborate TV studio, but Truman believed it was his real life. People all over the world had watched the show from Truman's infancy. When Truman finally learned the truth and made his escape from the studio, the final scene put everything into perspective. Two security guards were eating pizza and watching television:First Guard: "You want another slice?"Second Guard: "No, I'm OK." First Guard: "What else is on?" Second Guard: "Yeah, let's see what else is on." First Guard: "Where's the TV guide?"It's all up to you. Don't give these personalities more power than they deserve. To you, they are like members of your family; they are in your homes every day. But to them ~~ well, they have never even heard of you. They're business people, and the only thing they really want from you is your business."Let's see what else is on..."


Edward Yablonsky said...
Hero worship is an ancient phenomenon and exhibits a world craving apropos to a certain a certain set of individuals and psyches that find the reality sandwich doesd out daily and insensitively and out of context by the media to be unbearable. They desire to the core of their being the ideal world enshrined, yes in their idol whether it be Emperor worhsip which was formalized or medis hype with the clay idols of the present. Most of us grow out of this idol fantasy we subliminally foist on our psyches. Others do not want to ever "grow" spiritually and are encased in this idolatry and love it that way. I liked the below quote and find it quite apropos :(The unsung heroes that deserve our passing notice receive the least notice, and that exhibits the modern patholo0gy in all of its unbalanced madness.) PhilipH said... Hero worship. Never entered that temple. Never seen the Oprah show and I doubt I've missed anything.Soaps, such as Coronation Street, EastEnders and Emmerdale have huge followings in the UK. People (mainly the ladies I have to say) become addicted. Easier to come off heroin than to miss an episode of 'Corrie' - but don't let my OH see this comment - she'd kill me.My only hero was TARZAN. I longed to go and live in his tree house with Jane, Boy and Cheeta. It was so real; so exciting. Then I began to wear long trousers and realised it was just all fantasy. Nonsense. I admire the unsung heroes of this life and world, such as people who take care of ailing relatives and that includes children who look after a parent who is stricken with illness. We seldom hear of life's REAL 'celebrities'.

Sunday, May 29, 2011

Jesuit Father Raffaele de Ghantuz Cubbe

http://www.raoulwallenberg.net/news/jesuit-honored-for-saving-3-jewish-children/
Jesuit Honored for Saving 3 Jewish Children
Source:
Pair of Brothers, Cousin hid among Catholic School studentsROME, DEC. 15, 2010 (Zenit.org).- Graziano Sonnino and Marco Pavoncello remember Jesuit Father Raffaele de Ghantuz Cubbe for his courage and goodness. It was that courage and goodness that saved their lives, along with the life of Sonnino’s brother Mario.
The Sonninos and Pavoncello, as young Italian Jews, were saved from the Holocaust when Father Cubbe hid the children at his Jesuit school. Their surname was changed to Sbardella, a southern name of the region of Cassino, which had been bombed by the Allies, meaning their identity was impossible to verify.
Father Cubbe (1904-1983) was recognized Tuesday in Rome with the honor of Righteous Among the Nations, the title bestowed by the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial.
Mordechay Lewy, Israel’s ambassador to the Holy See, presented the honor to Father Cubbe’s nephew, Francesco de Ghantuz Cubbe.
Pavoncello and Graziano Sonnino took part in Tuesday morning’s ceremony; Mario Sonnino died last July, as did his sister Virginia.
Their children and grandchildren were present, as were their nieces and nephews.
Doing their duty
After the War, the brothers and cousin had gone on to finish their education at Father Cubbe’s Jesuit school. Only two or three people knew of their true identity during the occupation; they revealed it to their friends after the liberation.
It was Celeste Pavoncello, Marco’s daughter, who in 2004 initiated the process to have Father Cubbe recognized as a member of the Righteous Among the Nations.
This came after she discovered a photograph of her father in a document of Berlin private archives at an exhibition at the Victor Emmanuel monument of Rome on the anti-Jewish laws and the Shoa.
When Celeste Pavoncello announced this year to Giovanna de Ghantuz Cubbe that her uncle was going to receive the medal of the Righteous Among the Nations, she discovered a story that was little known.
The “saviors” thought they had done nothing other than their duty, Giovanna de Ghantuz Cubbe said, or they believed that their “right hand should not know what the left hand was doing.”
Traces of heroes
The award was given by Lewy in the presence of the president of the Jewish community of Rome, Riccardo Pacifici.
Pacifici recalled that his father and his uncle were also saved thanks to Catholic priests. He also pointed out that the Yad Vashem Memorial has recognized some 28,000 “Righteous,” 487 in Italy.
The community president spoke of a veritable “hunt for the righteous” to find traces of these “heroes” and honor their memory. He also suggested the creation of an Association of “Children of the Righteous.”
Rooted in holiness
Raffaele de Ghantuz Cubbe was born in Orciano Pisano, Italy, in 1904. He died in Rome in 1983.
He was the fourth child of a profoundly Christian family. His father, the marquis Riccardo, was secret chamberlain of Popes Benedict XV to Pius XII.
The family was friendly with Salesian Father Michele Rua (now a blessed), who had a premonition of Raffaele’s religious vocation. In fact, Raffaele entered the Society of Jesus when he was very young.
He was rector of the prestigious School of Mondragon, near Frascati, south of Rome, from 1942-1947. It was there that Pavoncello and the Sonninos were hidden.
Father Cubbe also served as vice-president of Pius XII’s association to support victims of World War II.
By Anita S. Bourdin

Saturday, May 28, 2011

JOSE ARGUELLES REINTRODUCING TIME AS THE ANCIENTS AND INDIGENOUS PEOPLES EXPERIENCED DREAMSPELL NECESSITATING QUANTUM SHIFT IN 2012-2013



As the new century unrolled, the 2012 date began to take shape on the cultural horizon and many writers and cultural channelers took a stab at its significance. The movies, books, documentaries and television specials, not to mention the jokes and the derision and the religious fervor, have put those numbers into most people's consciousness. Many present-day Mayans are speaking their truths and parallel prophecies are all receiving attention. A plunge into the Internet will take you from one extreme to another, a wild ride that leads, essentially, nowhere. In most cases, you will believe what you are conditioned to believe, because in this kind of time, there are no indisputable facts and nothing external resolves the internal turmoil. Meanwhile, the Earth herself is speaking with event after event breaking through our modern world and proving that we are as vulnerable as we have ever been to nature, if not more.
http://www.realitysandwich.com/arguelles_everything_perfect





A Vision from the top of the Pyramid of the Sun
Arguelles started something of a comeback toward public presence a couple of years ago. He spoke at two Prophet's Conferences in 2011 and he and Stephanie South made appearances to promote her biography of him, a work that documents his evolution to the mystic and shaman that he ultimately became.
He was born on January 24, 1939, in Rochester, Minnesota, elder of two identical twins. His father was Mexican and his mother was of German parentage, born in Minnesota. His early years were spent in Mexico and then the family lived in Los Angeles and returned to Rochester when his mother was diagnosed with tuberculosis. When he was 14, his father brought his two boys back to Mexico for a visit, and it was on this trip that Jose had his first life-changing experience, a visionary altered state from the top of the Pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacan. In the autobiography-biography co-created with Stephanie South (2012: Biography of a Time Traveler) he provides this description of the experience:





Teotihuacan: place where the seekers of the One Creator God listen in silence to the songs of creation





There it was! The magnificent Pyramid of the Sun! So grand, so monumental, the pyramid shimmered in full sunlight like a fantastic dream. Joe suddenly bolted ahead, racing at top speed toward the pyramid, where he eagerly climbed the steps of the immense earthen structure. He wanted to be the first to reach the top. Breathless, he found himself virtually alone on the great platform atop the Pyramid of the Sun. Something inside of him shifted. Everything took on a crystalline clarity, unusually sharp in focus; the fine details of faces and clothes on the people all the way down to the end of the Avenue of the Dead were suddenly clear. A deep knowing stirred within him. He fell silent. Teotihuacan: place where the seekers of the One Creator God listen in silence to the songs of creation. Joe looked around. Sky-brilliant and blue. Mountains everywhere echoed the forms of the pyramids. Teotihuacan: place where the Toltec warriors receive the light of a distant star. He saw the great stretch of the Avenue of the Dead and the Pyramid of the Moon up to the right and, down below, the humans of the present era. Teotihuacan: place where the people receive their godly powers. A few college students in white-sleeved shirts and a sprinkling of tourists talked to each other as if oblivious to where they were. Teotihuacan: place of the teachers of the geometry of time. Where were the great masters who had designed and built this city with such profound perfection and geometry? As Joe gazed around, this question penetrated his being. A shining white light, emanating from within things, bathed everything in a soft glow. And then the earthly world disappeared.





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Counter cultures and academia










As a young man he was swept into various artistic, bohemian and counter-culture subcultures. He changed his name from Joe to Jose, experimented with peyote and marijuana, made a pilgrimage to San Francisco in homage to the Beat culture, fell in and out of love, and began carving a career path in academia that had art and art history as the center of it. In 1965 a fellowship gave him the opportunity to study in Paris where he first sampled LSD and delved into a variety of mystic explorations. These years were full of youthful excesses, strange accidents and agonizing relationships. He began his academic career as an assistant art history professor at Princeton and returned to his own art that was now taking a cosmic direction, reflecting influences he was soaking up all around him. He met and married Miriam, the first woman he established a deep collaborative creative relationship with and began family life as an art history professor. Together they wrote and illustrated Mandala [1972] and The Feminine: spacious as the sky [1977], published by Shambhala Publications.





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LUMINARIES OF THE PSYCHEDELIC ERA Chogyam Trungpa





In 1968, the needle on Jose's compass pointed west, and Arguelles and his wife left Princeton for the freewheeling climate of California and a position at UC Davis teaching art history. These fertile years were characterized by initiations of all types, Arguelles meeting virtually all the luminaries of the psychedelic era: Laura Huxley, Charles Tart, Ralph Metzner, Ram Dass, Gary Snyder and Allen Ginsberg. He caught the attention of some of the most important figures of the transformational times: Buckminster Fuller, Dane Rudhyar, Chippewa medicine chief Sun Bear and the yogi Baba Hari Dass, all of whom wanted him to be their protégé. It was Chogyam Trungpa, the first Tibetan teacher who came to America who eventually was his major mentor, and Jose completed cycles of intense meditation practices with Trungpa at his center in Boulder, Colorado. The roots of his subsequent creations, like Dreamspell, can be seen in these practices and he once referred to the Dreamspell teachings as "advanced Shambhala transmissions."





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CLEANSING OF THE WORLD AND THE GREAT CYCLE





He also met Tony Shearer, a Native America poet, scholar and storyteller who planted the seed of the work that would finally capture Arguelles' whole being: the Thirteen Heavens and Nine Hells prophecy of Quetzalcoatl. Jose's account, dictated to Stephanie South, puts it cryptically:
Tony explained that each of the thirteen heavens and nine hells refers to a 52-year cycle. Thirteen 52-year "Heaven" cycles lasted from AD 843 to 1519, the beginning of the conquest of Mexico. Eight 52-year "Hell" cycles occurred between 1519 and 1935. The ninth hell, Tony told Jose, began in 1935 and ends August 16, 1987. "Thirteen heavens of decreasing choice, nine hells of increasing doom."
"But then what?" Jose asked.
"We must get ready for the cleansing of the world and for the end of the Great Cycle."





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Founding the Whole Earth Festival at UC Davis
UC Davis was the site of the infamous Whole Earth Festival in 1970, a project of Jose's art history students who were instructed to create their own final exam. By then, his reputation as being the radical teacher on campus was firmly set. The environment was right. Human be-ins were happening, the first Earth Day was brewing and the administration had no idea what was about to explode on their campus. Just this very spring, at the 42nd annual Whole Earth Festival, a former student, Sunny Shine, penned her commemoration of that event in the Festival program:
Our assignment for the year? Create a Festival to celebrate the very first ever Earth Day. We had no idea. Then he's showing us slides of sacred sites from ancient cultures around the world, talking astrology, Hinduism, Buddhism, Mayan calendar, physics, traditional initiations from indigenous peoples -- on and on and on with long interludes of silence, seated in the lotus position on his grey Formica institution-sized teacher's desk, bare feet, Native American flute resting gently in his lap. Not like any teacher we had ever seen or imagined. "This world is magic, is sacred, is precious, you must care for her, love her." What was he talking about?! The more we did not know, the more we knew he was giving us the Truth. He was passing on something sacred and ancient, something that connected us to every being who had ever taken the journey before us. We wanted to learn this dance, it had been resting in our bones forever, and he was the Pied Piper to start us out on our own heart path.





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All hippiedom also descended on the Whole Earth Festival and, in terms of career path, after the outrageousness of the event, 31-year old Arguelles quickly realized that he and conventional academia were heading toward irreconcilable differences. Over the next 10 years he had a series of interesting teaching gigs (Evergreen State College, San Francisco State University, the University of Colorado and the Union Graduate School), but finally in the late 70s his next big move took him to the feet of his formative teacher, the Tibetan crazy wisdom teacher Chogyam Trungpa. The years at Naropa were the stage for intense meditation trainings and the battle for his soul as years of increasing alcoholism finally caught up with him, unraveled his marriage and forced him to face his darkest demons.
When he emerged from his descent with a clear head at 42, he met the next formative feminine partner, Lloydine Burris, a fellow student at Naropa. Lloydine was by his side for the years leading up to the Harmonic Convergence and shared the great push to spread his insights and discoveries all over the world, co-shepherding the flock of "kin" who were forming the 13 Moon Calendar Movement. Their meditation experience gave them a common frame of reference as they collaborated in the creation of Dreamspell, which bears both their names.
They had settled in Hawaii after Jose's son's death and it was amid the beauty and power of that island that the pieces of a new creative surge were formed. Together they had also explored the Museum of Time in Switzerland where Jose had the revelation that our notions of time connected with the clock were about mechanical time and had little to do with time as a dimension of its own, a dimension of the mind. Jose formed his theories then about the mechanization of time being the root of the industrial age. Clock time forever speeding up leads us to the present day when all the ailments of modern society converge into total alienation from natural rhythms and harmonics.





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The absurdity of the present-day calendar with its irregular and meaningless months is another theft of the soul, he also cited, where we are ruled by the economic clock of time is money and holidays are shopping days, not holy days. Nothing, in fact, is holy in the world we have manifested in the cycle of history, which began when Babylonian priests imposed a 12-month calendar over the natural timing led by the moon and kept by all indigenous people. The link between our estrangement from the natural world, celestial and terrestrial, and the imposition of an authoritarian calendar is the radical idea that Jose Arguelles and his wife Lloydine discovered in their explorations. This was the message that they brought to light in 1992 when they introduced Dreamspell: The Journey of Timeship Earth 2013 into the world.





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DREAMSPELL KITS





Dreamspell Kits Arrive
The giveaway of 500 Dreamspell kits in San Francisco in the spring of 1992 was a chaotic and exciting affair, most people completely unprepared for what they took to be something of a game to share with their consciousness-expanding friends, like the Transformation Game that was popular at the time. It turned out to be more like the opening day of cosmic science school -- a learning paradigm that took concentration, patience and dedication to understand and probably a lifetime to truly master. People needed to work on this together to get it and keep at it. Dreamspell kits had a way of finding their true owners, being passed on until they reached hands and minds that were ripe for the exploration. There was a book, several boards with graphics on every panel, a galactic compass for converting dates from the Gregorian to the Dreamspell and various other visual aids. All were crafted impeccably and boxed in a study box with brilliant primary colors.





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REINTRODUCING TIME AS THE ANCIENTS AND INDIGENOUS PEOPLES EXPERIENCED DREAMSPELL NECESSITATING QUANTUM SHIFT IN 2012-2013





That such a brilliant piece of craftsmanship and intricate teaching would suddenly drop into the world from the sky, so to speak, was one of the many magical acts that Jose Arguelles created in his lifetime. I have my original Dreamspell kit, one of the first 13 that were flown to the continental US (Turtle Island) from Hong Kong where it was produced, and it is still intact, not worn out, and, other than being well-used, still as vibrant as it was the day it was put in my hands 20 years ago. These days, people compute the date conversions on the Internet sites with clicks of the mouse, but I still compute them with the Galactic Compass, a circular slide-rule-like device, and in the process I see how the patterns work and continually discover little internal rhythms. One of the themes of the tools that Jose produced was remembering that we learn through all our senses not just our eyes glued to a computer screen. Folding and unfolding the boards, laying out the little tiles with the glyphs, putting together the chromatic time atom...all these exercises return us to an embodied intelligence that we were designed to use until the modern mechanized era. We'll see when the time comes which tools are still in our hands when the predicted technology/cyber era yields to a quantum shift in 2012-2013.





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COSMIC HISTORY CHRONICLES PSYCHOZOIC ERA SPIRITUAL EVOLUTION HARMONIC CONVERGENCE





In a matter of years, Dreamspell kits were translated and produced and distributed along with many variations of the 13 Moon Calendar, large and small, in many languages. The Japanese were the first to produce color calendars and beautiful little daybooks with sturdy covers. As production costs lowered and digital processing from the personal computer got more sophisticated, the calendars flourished. One year I was with Jose when he returned from a trip at the turning of the year (which is celebrated on Gregorian July 26, the heliacal rising of Sirius) and found all the 13 Moon Calendars of the world waiting for him -- a tribute from all the calendar makers. He put them up all over the walls and looked at the whole display. The 13 Moon Calendar movement had truly gone round the world. The next phase of Jose's creative work was looming and it required another agonizing split and realignment with a new feminine partner. Stephanie South, the person who had emerged from the ranks of his students as his true apprentice, gradually assumed that role.





In 2002 Jose and Stephanie, also known by the spiritual title Red Queen in reference to a Mayan temple discovered in 1994, commenced their collaborative creative work. The Cosmic History Chronicles project began: seven volumes to be published in the seven-year count down to 2012. These books are like none other on the planet, elaborate elucidations of a radical new science and a radical new history. "The philosophy of Cosmic History is that the universe exists as the vehicle for the involution and evolution of the soul as a single unifying circuit of all evolving divine consciousness regulated by the Law of Time." (Vol. 1; Book of the Throne). Valum Votan and The Red Queen identify themselves as transmitters and receivers -- "We are but the secretaries. The authors are in eternity." The Cosmic History Chronicles are a wild and compelling read, to put it mildly.





In these volumes -- all now completed -- and in the last major communications given by Jose Arguelles, it is clear that his whole being was firmly grounded in a deeply spiritual perspective. He saw our human journey as a journey of spiritual evolution and was convinced that the end of the cycle of history, December 21, 2012, (which he called Harmonic Convergence 2012: the Convergence of All Prophecy), would be an awakening from a dream -- if not nightmare -- of a profane history and a re-entrainment of humanity into cosmic consciousness. He brought forth the term "noosphere" from key thinkers of the past and defined it as the collective state of mind that will launch a new age in 2013, the Psychozoic Era, in which we will share the awareness of the connectedness of all beings. He proposed a global meditation as an experiment in bringing a mental visualization into a physical reality, converting the energies coming into the planet into a rainbow visible night and day around the planet. The Rainbow Bridge Meditation is being shared via Internet and is the cornerstone of the commitment to carry on his work and inspiration among those who value what they learned from Arguelles over the last two decades.










THE LAW OF TIME WEBSITE AND JOSE ARGUELLES' PASSING





Jose's death on Red Spectral Moon (March 23, 2011) in Australia was another unifying event, a compression of mind and heart energy as hundreds of thousands of people who were affected by his teaching and his radical insights stopped and remembered their experiences with him. We were part of a movement that never had any money, that eschewed the conventional New Age marketing, that produced books that were challenging and unorthodox, books that never got any publicity ("too new for the New Age" was my report to Jose after yet another magazine rejection) so the news of a new book was an underground event. We keep a calendar together that most of our friends and relatives don't keep so we either have it as our own secret passageway into a vast new land of relationship and synchronicity or we seek out other kin as best we can wherever we are. The Law of Time website is our connection point and, with the news of his passing, a tribute page formed and honored his 49-day bardo cycle. There were postings from people who lives crossed at an exotic gathering somewhere on the planet where Jose was teaching and who use images from Dreamspell for their Facebook profile. The voices came in from far and wide, sharing love and respect and gratitude for the life-saving teachings that made living in a crazy, out-of-control, time-is-money world less of an ordeal.










This spring, a handful of kin gathered at the 42nd Whole Earth Festival to once again introduce people to the work and the calendar and to speak words in memory of Jose Arguelles at an intimate ceremony in the midst of the cacophony of the festival and its music. Ceremonies have been taking place all over the world among other groups of followers, honoring the teacher, honoring the teaching and rededicating the kin to the path articulated in so many mind-expanding creative works. He was a pathfinder of epic proportion, an intellect that had few peers, and a shamanic presence on the world stage -- whether the world knew it or not. As the days roll on toward the prophetic end date of history, those who have studied his writing and listened to his lectures are tuned in to the extraordinary and expecting nothing but the extraordinary. As Uncle Joe Zuvuya would say, "Surf's Up!"















Definitions of a sovereign national state

The elements defining national sovereign states according to international law are four fold:
Defined territories
Permanent stable populations
A government with permanent apparatus in place to govern
International standing inthe global community
I think International law has developed in a fluid and ad hoc manner according to situationally determined scenarios on these issues. The most contentious isue is territory, or territorial disputes for the most part. The border dispute has been seminal in the Israeli-arab fiasco since the time of the Carter diplomacy and this is an ongoing haggle in U.S. peacemaking efforts.Notwithstanding populations by numbers, populations if they are stable without the occurence of civil war seems to be the concern of the global community.Government apparati with a central government in force is lacking in Somalia. In the past, instability has often been temporarily remedied by mandateships and trusteeships pending global diplomatic recognition of the failed state involved. A failed state is subjected to such action if they are decimated or unstable as to the foregoing elements.Although this did not occur in Japan after she was vanquished by war, as she was kept afloat by U.S.economic efforts as was Europe through Lend Lease and other aid after the War (II).
The Arab Israeli peace talks and diplomacy during the Carter Presidency, were complicated diplomatic overtures by the U.S. as the situation involving the issues of a general peace involved diplomatic recognition , and the general nature of peace, Israeli withdrawal, and the Palestinian "question" and the bearing and opinions even among the Arabs on how to configure the Palestinians at Geneva. There were at the outset irresolvable issues even with dissidence amongthe Arab actors. Often these dissident scenarios fester for years ,as has this one, and does not always involve the primacy of territory.
Territorial disputes are often the cosmetics and pretextual of unerlying sectarian hatreds and disuniions within a contiguous territory.
http://angel04.gcu.edu/section/default.asp?id=554405

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

North Korea-desperate acts of a starving nation?

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2010-11-23-korea-reaction_N.htm
I have read the article above referenced and find this international incident of the North Korean attack more than just puffing with many subtle sides and implications and has multiple complications not likely to be solved by a non proliferation treaty. Bruce Bennett's comments in the article are revealing and his analysis is compelling, I believe. I do believe the North is a potent threat as described for more than just the succession issue of Kim Jong II as a proof of his mettle in dealing wth the West. Obama has vowed support of the South Koreans. China's silence and apparent non intervention is possibly deceptive and she needs to be more vocal along with other "nuclear nations", to be certain.It seems the North is in the despeation of poverty and paranoia , and they would fear massive retaliation should they use nuclear weapons on the South. They could not win a war, but retaliation ,I deem would be Pyrrhic but a necessary response if an overt action by the North on the South should occur.China's silence should not be construed as turning a blind eye, and Obama shelving the problem as non prioritized is a misake also.Antecedent actions tell us worlds of meaning such as the act boldened in red in the quote below from the article below. Growing desperation in the North might be the motive of paranoia from the South,and Kim Jong's begging for aid from China twice, without response,and fleeings from the North to the South paints a picture of a desperate North indeed using its Nuclear capabiliy as a blackmail/bargaining technique gone awry.


Quote from http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2010-11-23-korea-reaction_N.htm
Bennett agreed that the attacks indicate growing desperation in North Korea and the potentially turbulent transfer of power to Kim's son.
Kim Jong Il has been to China twice this year, "begging for aid" and has not received much in return, Bennett said. Millions of North Koreans have starved to death in the past 10 years, according to the United Nations, and the South says the 10,000 North Koreans who have fled over to its side of the border since 2007 matches the number that made it over from the end of the 1950-53 Korean War to 2007.
"The attacks appear to be an attempt to force South Korea and the United States to negotiate with him and provide assistance," Bennett said.
Bennett said Kim's son lacks military credentials and wants to prove that he can provide "great victories" for North Korea. Footage of smoking ruins in South Korea aid that perception, he said.
Bruce Klinger of the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank said the Obama administration has committed itself to Mideast peace talks that are "going nowhere" and a new START arms reduction treaty with Russia that "has no advantages for the United States." In doing so, he said, the administration has sent "messages to the Iranians and the North Koreans that they're not at the top of his radar."
"One could argue that that's why they're becoming so aggressive," he said.
Klinger said the Obama administration believed that "because Bush was gone, North Korea would no longer feel threatened and would abandon provocations."
"The world is a much more difficult and dangerous place that the campaign thought it would be."
Cha recommended Obama put a lot of pressure on China to rein in North Korea, which relies on China for aid, food and energy.
Cha agreed that the North has not been a "top-tier" issue for the administration. "But events like this need to make it a much higher priority. This is close to conventional war in Asia."

Sunday, May 22, 2011

Pirkei Avos ch6 mishna 6

The simple behaviorof the Patriarchs and the scholar

The 48 Ways: 32
Back to NatureChapter 6, Mishna 6
"Torah is greater than priesthood and kingship, for kingship is acquired with 30 qualities, priesthood is acquired with 24, whereas the Torah is acquired with 48 ways. These are: ... (32) loving uprightness..." This trait, "ohaiv es ha'maisharim", relates to the word "yashar" -- straight, referring to straight or upright behavior. A scholar is "straight". This does not simply mean he does not lie. There is something very straight and level, almost simplistic about his behavior. He is sincere and honest, he says what he means and means what he says, and he does not cover himself with layers of complexity or false airs. He is who he is. He does not attempt to project a false image -- or even to expend great efforts projecting a semi-accurate one. His concern is for truth and intellectual honesty alone, not image and popularity. People know just who he is and what he stands for -- and they usually admire him for it too. There is something very pure and wholesome -- almost childlike -- about the scholar's behavior. In spite of probably a keen, penetrating and deep-thinking mind, the scholar comes across as a very "plain", unsophisticated person. And as I heard R. Berel Wein once put it, "childish" we should attempt to outgrow (though few of us do); "childlike": we should only live our entire lives with such a clear and unsophisticated self-image and world view. We often find people who attempt to be -- or at least project themselves as -- complex and difficult-to-figure-out individuals. They possess all sorts of intrigue, moods, counter-moods, shades, and colors, and it would take a frustrated suitor a lifetime to figure them out. Such people seem to want to create an impression of depth and sophistication where it probably does not exist -- and likely where it is not even appropriate. The Torah does not really go for such behavior. Our forefather Jacob is described by the Torah as a "plain man" ("ish tahm") (Genesis 25:27) -- one who lacked entirely layers of deceit and deception. As the Sages put it, he was not adept at dishonesty and false imagery as his brother Esau -- who feigned a false righteous appearance before his father. Rather, his mouth and heart were one and the same. He said what he meant and meant what he said. He was who he was -- and he was content with that. He saw no need to embellish himself with false airs and images. As the Book of Genesis progresses, Jacob learns to contend with the wiles and wickedness of Laban, Esau and others -- and to return in kind. The Jew has long learned to be coy and cautious before his enemies, who -- as with the PA and UN of today -- claim peace and fairness when they mean anything but. Through such healthy skepticism Israel has survived until today. Ultimately, however, this was not the essence of Jacob, whom the Talmud refers to as the quintessential man of truth (Makkos 24a). If anything, we must view the Book of Genesis as Jacob's ultimate challenge: to maintain his own personal integrity when confronted with the guiles and cynicism of the outside world. And in this he would set the precedent for Jews in all generations, who would exist in a hostile and inhospitable exile, yet maintain their inner sanctuary within -- in their hearts, homes and synagogues. Jacob showed us the way with the honesty and simplicity he never veered from in all of his wanderings and tribulations, as he himself attested: "I have dwelt with Laban, yet I have fulfilled all the commandments" (Rashi to Genesis 32:5). We find likewise throughout Scripture that some of Israel's greatest individuals were equally simple and straightforward. Abraham and Isaac were known primarily for a single quality each: Abraham was the man of kindness and generosity while Isaac was the person of inner strength. They did not attempt to be a little bit of everything -- something different to everyone they met. They were pure and straightforward, clear on what they meant to accomplish in life and unwavering in their efforts. Similarly, many of Israel's greatest leaders, such as Moses and David, spent the earlier parts of their lives as shepherds. There are those who suggest that only one who proves himself caring of every errant lamb can lead a nation as well. This is no doubt true, but there is also something about the simplicity, the almost back-to-nature living of being a shepherd. Being alone on the land, becoming familiar with the terrain and geography as well as the behavior of the animals of one's care, spending time with oneself, all of these bring a certain self-awareness and inner harmony which cannot be easily achieved otherwise -- which our forefathers could have hardly achieved in the confusion and modernity of ancient Mesopotamia. In such rustic tranquility, these individuals became in touch with themselves; they saw who they were in simple, natural clarity. Likewise, many of the great Chassidic masters as well as other great Jews were unknowns (at least for the earlier part of their lives), posing as simple laborers while reaching out to and developing their inner selves in solitude. Perhaps today we are much more "complex" not because we are more advanced and sophisticated than our predecessors but because we are less. We are so bombarded with noise, confusion and external stimuli that we develop all sorts of interests and appetites -- some more worthwhile than others -- but they come from without, rather than within. What our forefathers and so many other great Jews taught us is that true self-awareness and fulfillment comes from within. If we from time to time withdraw to be with ourselves and to find out who we truly are, we will find the simplicity and uprightness which are the hallmark of the true Torah Jew. And in the process, we will find true contentment.

Physical man and G-dly Love

Today's Tanya Lesson
Iyar 18, 5771 · May 22, 2011
Likutei Amarim, middle of Chapter 49
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ואיך יבא האדם החומרי למדה זו
But how can physical man attain this level? — of G‑dly love that nothing can obstruct.
לכך סידרו תחלה ברכת יוצר אור, ושם נאמר ונשנה באריכות ענין וסדר המלאכים העומדים ברום עולם
It is to this end, therefore, that the blessing of Yotzer Or was introduced to be recited first, for in this blessing there is stated and repeated at length — and this meditation must indeed be a lengthy one, taking into account all the specific details — the account and order of the angels “standing at the world’s summit,”
להודיע גדולתו של הקב״ה, איך שכולם בטלים לאורו יתברך, ומשמיעים ביראה כו׳ ומקדישים כו׳ ואומרים ביראה: קדוש כו׳, כלומר שהוא מובדל מהם ואינו מתלבש בהם בבחינת גילוי
in order to proclaim the greatness of the Holy One, blessed be He — how they are all nullified in His blessed light and “pronounce in fear...” “and sanctify...” G‑d’s Name, and “declare in fear, ‘Holy’,”... meaning1 by saying “Holy...” that He is apart from them, and does not clothe Himself in them in a revealed state,
אלא מלא כל הארץ כבודו, היא כנסת ישראל למעלה, וישראל למטה, כנ״ל
but where is G‑d revealed? — “The whole earth is full of His glory,” namely, the Community of Israel above i.e., Malchut of Atzilut, the source of Jewish souls, which is called “earth”, and Israel on this earth below, wherein Jews perform Torah and mitzvot, for which reason specifically is this world filled with His glory: it is here that G‑d clothes and reveals Himself, as has been explained earlier.
All the above refers to the comprehension of the supernal angels, the serafim, who are able to comprehend how G‑d is apart from them and that only the earth is charged with His glory.
וכן האופנים וחיות הקודש ברעש גדול וכו׳: ברוך כבוד ה׳ ממקומו, לפי שאין יודעים ומשיגים מקומו
So, too, we find related in the2 blessing of Yotzer Or, regarding other categories of angels, whose place is in a lower world than the serafim, and who are therefore unable to comprehend how G‑dliness is separate and apart, that “the ofanim and the holy chayyot with a mighty sound” declare:3 ‘Blessed be the glory of the L‑rd and may it be drawn down from its place,’" for they neither know, nor do they apprehend His place — the place from which G‑dliness is revealed, for which reason they say ”from its place,“ wherever that place may be,
וכמו שכתוב: כי הוא לבדו מרום וקדוש
as we say a few lines later, “For He alone is exalted and holy.”
The various degrees of nullification of these angels are thus spoken of in the first of the two blessings preceding the Shema. When a person meditates on this matter he will begin to understand G‑d’s greatness, for all the lofty angels are nullified to Him.
FOOTNOTES
1.
The Rebbe comments: The Alter Rebbe adds the word ”meaning“ in order to tell us that the declaration ”Holy“ does not mean here, as it does in other places, that notice is being given that the one spoken of is holy, or the like. For to make it known that someone is holy implies that the speaker is aware of and grasps the other’s holiness. (Likewise, regarding the Shunamite woman who called Elisha holy, the Gemara asks: ”How did she know?“)
Here, however, when the angels proclaim ”Holy“ the intent is the very opposite: they do not know Him, for He is Holy — i.e., separate, and apart from them.
(This incidentally deflects another possible question: Since the angels are in a state of self-nullification, how is it conceivable that they ”proclaim and announce“? According to the above, however, this may be understood: They ”proclaim and announce“ that they are nullified to G‑d, that He is separate and apart from them, and that they have no conception of Him.)
2.
In the passages preceding the Shema.
3.
Yechezkel 3:12.

THE NORTH KOREAN ATTACK

Tirone's coverage of the North Korean attack on South Korea in March 2010.





All relevant nation members of the UN reacted to condemn the attack and urge a diplomatic or non military solution to this threat to regional and world stability, and this is a standard commenable reaction. Is it feasible ? . Yes, and practical. Tensions have been growing since North Korea sunk the South Korea warship Cheonan . This incident is underexplained and probably involves the Noth Korean perception of danger of attack from the South engendering a preemptive act on their part. Diplomacy is probably perceived by the global community as a deterant necessary to the escalation of the conflict.North Korea has revealed plans for uranium enrichment to escalate their nuclear capbility and to initiate a nuclear ams race, so is my conclusion. A diplomatic solution is ideal,but nuclear disarmament by diplomatic means such as the non proliferation treaty of the past might be untenable. Many nations such as China,the US and Russia having nuclear capability might view a new nonproliferation treaty as a reluctant measure in that they would be concerned to be armed in the event of nuclear retaliation, and in the event of nuclear blackmail by North Korea as a necessary self defense measure. They would with justification be concerned with how to monitor compliance with such a treaty. These are ever present tensions of nuclear bearing nations preventng entry into a nuclear nonproliferation treaty.Also the role of the Security Council would be hampered by the nuclear black mail issue that emerges onto the world scene as stated in Techau's comment in the article. China's diplomatic role would be non essential, in my view, in that extracting concessions by blackmail by the North Koreans acknowledge the full advent of China into the equation despite their stance of blackmail which they are acting out in any event.The crux of the matter is the ever present tensions which might prevent and could conceivably prevent etry into a non proliferation treaty.



REFERENCE
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-11-23/north-korea-s-belligerent-bombing-of-south-rebuked.html

Thursday, May 19, 2011

Don Morosini, Priest and hero of the Resistance

The Christlike Communist Manfredi (Marcello Pagliero)being tortured by the Nazis in Open City .






http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft709nb48d&chunk.id=d0e1349&toc.id=d0e1343&toc.depth=1&brand=ucpress&anchor.id=bkd0e1869#X








The plot that the team of screenwriters came up with is relatively simple in outline, but at the same time delicately interwoven with many diverse strands. Giorgio Manfredi (Pagliero), one of the heads of the Italian Resistance, enlists the aid of the anti-Fascist priest Don Pietro (Fabrizi) and a partisan printer named Francesco (Francesco Grandjacquet) in keeping him hidden from the Germans. The next morning, Francesco's wedding day, he is captured by the Nazis and his pregnant fiancée, Pina (Magnani), is shot down by the Germans when she attempts to interfere. Manfredi is betrayed by his girlfriend Marina (Michi), a dancer and prostitute who has been corrupted by drugs by the Nazi lesbian, Ingrid, and he, Don Pietro, and an Australian deserter the priest has been sheltering, are arrested. The deserter hangs himself, and when Manfredi refuses to talk, he is tortured to death in the presence of Don Pietro; the next morning the priest himself is executed while the young boys of his parish, who have been waging their own war against the Germans, look on.[5]





Similarly, the script also manages to stay on the easy level of heroism and cowardice, and these simple notions, the staple of Hollwood Westerns, are never for a moment seriously interrogated. Thus, near the end of the film, when Manfredi the partisan, Don Pietro the priest, and the Austrian deserter find themselves in the same cell, the deserter acts cowardly, later even killing himself, and his cowardice is seen as a moral failure on his part. Manfredi claims that "we're not heroes," but every other element of this film conspires to contradict his assertion. (Though Rossellini does perhaps display a bit of self-awareness when he has the Nazi Bergmann say a bit later, "You Italians, whatever party you belong to, are all addicted to rhetoric."[7]





But however we might want to chastise Rossellini for his embrace of conventional narrative in this film—if we do—it is clear that he does it very well indeed. There is no slack, no narrative fat. All of the characters are tightly intertwined for maximum efficiency, and the result is a complex and thickly populated fresco. Exposition is accomplished instantly, in bold, swift strokes, and we are plunged into the narrative at a gallop from the first minute of the film. As many critics have noticed, comic and tragic moods alternate throughout the film in an invigorating and emotionally involving way, each providing a counterpoint to the other. Individual scenes are also exquisitely accomplished. Thus,
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the sequence in which Pina is shot down as she runs after the truck carrying her fiancé Francesco is one of the most brilliantly affecting moments in all film. Pushed up against the wall with the other women, she seems out of harm's way, so her suicidal outburst is even more shocking when it comes. On one hand, the power of this moment seems to come from the placement of the camera inside the truck as it moves away. Pina runs after it, and when she is cut down, her movement forward in tandem with the camera's movement forward is abruptly halted and the distance between the camera in the truck and her dead body, lying in the middle of the street in a lump, multiplies at a dizzying rate. But the effect of this sequence is also achieved by an awareness of dramatic balance, for it immediately follows one of the most humorous moments in the film, mentioned earlier by Amidei, when the priest has to knock the grandfather over the head with a frying pan in order to keep him from attracting the attention of the Fascists. We instantly move, then, to Pina's death sequence, all of which lasts no more than a few seconds, and the emotional and dramatic buildup of which is astounding to watch.[8] Leo Braudy, in the introduction to his anthology Focus on Shoot the Piano Player , insightfully links this purposeful alternation of tone with later examples in Truffaut's film and Joseph Heller's tragicomic novel Catch 22 . An early French reviewer, Jean Desternes, likened the use of comic counterpoint to enhance the film's horror to earlier uses in Shakespeare.[9]





NAZI CORRUPTION IN ITS PHLOSOPHY





Nor is the teacher the only Nazi influence on Edmund, for these pernicious ideas have penetrated the entire society. Thus, the landlord Rademaker early in the film calls Edmund's father a "useless old man" and an "old mummy," who he threatens to "put . . . away if he doesn't kick the bucket soon" (pp. 361, 360). Later he asks Edmund "When's [your father] going to drop dead and give us a little peace?" (p. 415). Similarly Edmund's cowardly brother Karlheinz keeps insisting that life is hopeless and that he should commit suicide. Nazi philosophy has also been responsible for the corruption of the natural bonds found within the family as we learn in a passing comment of Enning's: "Remember, Edmund, your father once handed in a forged certificate so you wouldn't have to join the Hitler Jugend, but you told me right away it was forged, because you knew what your duty was. (He touches Edmund's cheek .) And I ought to have reported him to the Party . . . and the reason I didn't was because I'm fond of you" (p. 386). This contrast between natural affection and artificial Nazi values, already supercharged in the context of sexual perversion, is reinforced gesturally when Edmund visits his father in the hospital after seeing Enning. There, the father caresses Edmund's arms in the same way that Enning has, and kisses him, as if to stress that the greatest evil is the warping of that which is most natural and innocent. We are also meant to see Edmund's situation universalized. Thus, at one point while they are waiting in line, one woman tells another of a boy who is "only ten, and he makes more money on the black market than the whole family put together" (p. 377).In the deprivation caused by the war, Rossellini implies, humankind's natural inclination toward coralità is threatened. When the situation is further complicated by the infection of nazism, it becomes even less likely, and in this
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[Full Size] see above picture
Nazism as corruption, again: Edmund (Edmund Moeschke) watches as his father(Ernst Pittschau) drinks the poisoned milk he has preparedfor him in Germany, Year Zero (1947).
film any possibility of group solidarity is utterly destroyed. Eva at one point tries to convince her depressed brother Karlheinz to have hope—as we have seen, a key commodity for Rossellini—but later, and more convincingly, she asserts, "I don't believe in being helped by other people. Everybody has to help themselves these days" (p. 370). Edmund is continually rebuffed, for no apparent reason, by the other children he comes in contact with, and when he turns for community to a roving band of young thieves, their leader tricks him by selling him a fake bar of soap made from a block of wood. What surfaces is an existentialist vision of individual alienation, an emphasis Rossellini will maintain through the desolate period of the Bergman films, with the exception of the luminous coralità of the microcosmic society of Francesco .
COLLABORATORS HAVE OUR SYMPATHY
The Nazis' obvious hatred of the Italians is itself thematized, and conveniently serves as one more example of Nazi evil. The occupation of Rome by the Germans has given Rossellini, the quintessential outraged Roman, a clear-cut, one-to-one replacement for the Communist villains of L'uomo dalla croce , and Italian guilt never has to be addressed. At the end of Open City , when Don Pietro is to be executed, the Italian firing squad, respecting the cloth—unlike the barbarian Nazis—wavers and ends up shooting harmlessly into the ground. By a curious reversal, cowardice and bumbling inefficiency become moral values, and it is the Nazi officer who finally has to kill the priest. Throughout the film the Italian collaborators, portrayed as having managed to retain their deepest human values in spite of everything, themselves come to be seen as much the Nazis' victims as any other group, and therefore have our sympathy.



COMMUNISTS UNITED IN PARTNERSHIP WITH THE CATHOLIC CHURCH



Clearly, the most important—and most complicated—theme of Open City concerns the nature of the partnership formed (if not in historical actuality, at least in Rossellini's mind) to combat Nazi corruption, that between the communists and the Catholic church. This was no mean trick for Rossellini, considering that his previous picture had posed them as natural, bitter enemies. But he does manage, in a remarkable balancing act, to portray them both favorably, primarily because of the handy presence of a common enemy whose horribleness everyone could agree on. For one thing, the director is acknowledging the historical fact that no matter what one personally felt concerning its politics, in effect, the Communist party was the Resistance. The flavor of Rossellini's accommodation can be gathered in the initial meeting between atheist Manfredi and believer Pina:
MANFREDI: So you're having a church wedding. . . .
PINA: Yes. Actually, Francesco didn't want to, but I told him: better for Don Pietro to marry us, at least he's on the right side, rather than go to City Hall and be married by a Fascist. Don't you think so?
MANFREDI: In a way, you're right.






PINA: Yes; the truth is that I . . . really believe in God (p. 32).



NEW RATIONALE FOR ACCEPTING THE COMMUNISTS



Bergmann's obsessive questioning of the priest at the end of the film provides the chance to offer a new rationale for accepting the Communists. Bergmann shouts that Manfredi is "a subversive, an atheist, an enemy of yours!" and Don Pietro calmly, if rather vaguely, replies: "I am a Catholic priest and I believe that a man who fights for justice and liberty walks in the pathways of the Lord—and the pathways of the Lord are infinite" (p. 130). Hardly a ringing endorsement, as not a few Marxist critics have pointed out, but in terms of the emotion projected at that moment on the screen, certainly convincing.
CATHOLIC/ CHRISTIAN TERMS STANDARDS OF THE FILM
Nevertheless, while the Catholic and Communist are, ostensibly, on the same footing, at least in terms of their moral rectitude, the entire film is seen in Catholic, or Christian, terms. Don Pietro is the moral lens through which we are meant to regard the various forms of iniquity on display. Manfredi, in other words, is not really given any thematically important dialogue, and the heavily dramatic form of the story insists that his encounter with the Nazi, Bergmann, take place not on the level of ideas, but rather on the level of action-film machismo—not is he right, but can he withstand torture? The only character who does get to express the presumably Communist version of things is Francesco, in his wistful and captivating talk about the future as he sits with Pina on the
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stairs in front of his apartment. Here again, however, his desire for freedom and hope in the future are expressed in lovely, but vague and utterly unrealizable terms.

NAZI OCCUPATION SEEN IN CHRISTIAN AHISTORICAL TERMS
Early Marxist views, like that of the important film theoretician Umberto Barbaro, held that the film had "such a wise and balanced political evaluation that it undoubtedly merits the applause of all honest men."[11] Most early critics, both leftists and nonleftists, agreed primarily in seeing the film as above all "historical" in a way that no other Italian film had ever been. But more recent Marxist critics like Pio Baldelli have complained, with some justice, that Rossellini's film actually forgets history. For one thing, the blame for Nazi occupation is seen clearly in Christian—that is, ahistorical—terms. This is evident in the scene between Pina and Don Pietro, when, overloaded by misery, she plaintively asks him, "Doesn't Christ see us?" The priest replies:
A lot of people ask me that, Pina. . . . Doesn't Christ see us? But are we sure we didn't deserve this plague? Are we sure we've always lived according to the Lord's laws? And nobody thinks of changing their lives, of examining their lives. Then, when the piper has to be paid . . . everybody despairs, everybody asks: Doesn't the Lord see us? Doesn't the Lord pity us? . . . Yes, the Lord will take pity on us. But we have so much to be forgiven, and so we must pray, and forgive much (p. 53).
Similarly, Armando Borrelli complains that in this film Rossellini is only interested in stressing the tragic destiny of his characters, and makes no attempt to see the Resistance as a critique of the past. Nor do we ever learn what they are fighting for , beyond getting rid of the Nazis.[12] Yet, as Mario Cannella has pointed out in an important essay translated some years ago in Screen , it is now clear that the Italian Communist party had itself given up all class analysis during this period in favor of a Stalin-inspired anti-fascist "unity" that was thoroughly uncritical and un-Marxist. Interest, in other words, had shifted imperceptibly from protecting the workers to protecting the "fatherland," and any party member who disagreed was disciplined. In Cannella's view, it was this that led to the reestablishment of bourgeois democracy and the defeat of the party.[13] Thus it seems beside the point to blame Rossellini for not portraying the revolutionary potential of the Resistance. But the Marxists are right when they say that despite appearances, Rossellini is not really interested in history in Open City . As the non-Marxist Mino Argentieri has pointed out, the "historic conjunction" of the Church and the Communist party leads, in Rossellini, to an "ahistorical meaning, a spiritual propensity, the nth degree of the tragedy of existence and life together."[14] Rossellini is not, strictly speaking, historical precisely because he is looking for what, in human beings, transcends history.
CORALITA
The positive side of the film's depiction of the masses concerns Rossellini's much-praised (by Marxist and non-Marxist alike) sense of coralità , that concern for the group above the individual, which we saw in operation in the earlier films. Thus, the warm-hearted working-class jokes and the good-natured kidding begin almost immediately. Pina gives some of the bread she has obtained by staging a riot on the baker's to the policeman whose family is just as hungry as everyone else's. A delightful Renoirean forgiveness pervades the film; human error and petty wrongdoing, seen in the context of the massive brutality of the Nazis, is treated indulgently and largely regarded as an unavoidable product of the times. Thus, the sexton crosses himself before he, too, plunges into the crowd assaulting the bakery, and the embarrassing fact of Pina's prewedding pregnancy is tacitly forgiven by all, including the priest. Again, however, despite Marxist approval, it is clear that this coralità is not motivated in Rossellini's mind by any class solidarity; instead, he sees it in terms of Christian love for one's neighbor.
Most conflicting interpretations of the film's basic theme center visually around its final images. As Don Pietro is about to be executed, he hears the young boys whistling as a signal of their support. He is shot, and the last image of the film shows the boys, weary, but supporting each other, trudging down a hill back toward the center of town. The Roman skyline, dominated by the dome of Saint Peter's, forms the background of the shot as the film ends. The sequence is clearly symbolic, but of what? Some have chosen to emphasize the dome, insisting that only in the Church is there hope for the future of Italy. But the dome is seen firmly in its context of the entire city of Rome, just as the Church is an important part of Italian society, but hardly everything. Some have
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chosen to see the ending as utterly pessimistic, full of death and destruction,
[17] while others have emphasized the fact that the boys, symbols of Italy's future even though crippled and depressed, are at least supporting one another down the hill.

ROME THWE CHIEF PROTAGONIST
In any case, the film appropriately ends with this evocative long shot of Rome, for in many ways, Rome is its chief protagonist, standing synecdochically for the rest of Italy. It is the first word of the film's Italian title, and is before us at all times throughout the film, either directly, as visual background, or indirectly suggested through its particular social relations reenacted in the interiors. The film opens, as well, with vibrant location shots that set us firmly in the midst of the ancient city, and we recognize the antlike Germans we see running about from our bird's-eye perspective as the interlopers they are. We first meet the German officer Bergmann after the camera pulls back from a map of Rome in his office, suggesting that his contact with the city, and by extension that of the other Germans as well, can only be of an abstract, second-order level. The point is further underlined when we learn that all of Bergmann's dealings with the city are through photographs of its inhabitants. When the Italian police commissioner asks how Manfredi was tracked down, Bergmann replies: "I met him right here, on this desk. Every afternoon I take a long walk through the streets of Rome, but without stepping out of my office" (p. 13). Again, the Germans are associated with all that is artificial, second-hand, cut off from the organic life of the people. Rome is eternal, the Nazis are temporary.

The
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condemnation of Open City was far from universal, however. For example, Carlo Lizzani, writing in Film d'oggi in November 1945, shortly after the film's first appearance, exclaimed in the opening line of his review: "Finally I've seen an Italian film! By this I mean a film which tells a story about us, about the experiences of our country, about facts that concern us." Lizzani also grasped the immense historical importance of the film as well:
An Italian director can offer our cinema those gifts of communication and a wide and popular persuasiveness which it has been lacking up to this time, even in the works of the best directors, and which alone can guarantee it a national and especially international success. The people today don't want an empty and sloppy cinema, but neither do they want a cinema for aesthetes. Rossellini's essential merit is to have found the rhythm and the movement best suited to make accessible to the vast public the new contents of which the film is messenger, to relate them to the most diverse sensibilities. . . . I would say that this film could be just the thing to start off our new rebirth.[18]18. Carlo Lizzani, Film d'oggi (November 3, 1945). It is certainly true that Lizzani expressed reservations about what he regarded as the amateurishness of the scenes in the gestapo headquarters, but it is a serious distortion to try to make out his review as negative, as some have
ALBERTO MORAVIA THE NOVELIST
The novelist Alberto Moravia, writing his film column in the September 30, 1945, issue of the anti-Fascist journal La nuova Europa , praised the film's intense realism.[19] Alessandro Blasetti, by that time a kind of elder statesman of Italian cinema and one of its most respected practitioners, says that after the first press screening of Open City , "I felt the need to go meet Rossellini who was waiting outside with 'indifferent' trepidation and I hugged him for all of us; the gesture was really emotional and grateful."[20] Rossellini later complained that the film was barely noticed when it came out, but Mario Gromo, the veteran reviewer for the powerful Turin newspaper La Stampa , wrote of it very favorably and suggested later that it was little mentioned (and thus little seen) because of a simple lack of space in the newspapers, pointing out that in 1945, newspapers came out in only two pages. In the introduction to his collected reviews written some years later, Gromo remembers with frustration "the breath I had to spend one evening in November 1945 to be able to devote thirty-six lines to Open City instead of just twenty."[21]
JAMES AGEE AND TRHE REALISM OF THE FILM
The most dramatic American reaction to the film was surely that of James Agee, at that time the film critic for the Nation . His March 23, 1946, review opened with this remarkable statement: "Recently I saw a moving picture so much worth talking about that I am still unable to review it. . . . I will probably be unable to report on the film in detail for the next three or four weeks."[26] When Agee did finally feel up to writing about the film for the April 13 issue, he praised its immediacy and its avoidance of the phony populist sentimentality of Works Progress Administration murals. But what struck Agee above all, and critics of all nationalities ever since, was the film's startling realism. This is a notoriously difficult concept to deal with, of course, but our thinking about Rossellini, especially during this period, is so tied up with it that we must now consider it more abstractly and in some depth.
ACTUAL EXTERIORS ANTI HOLLYWOOD
Because most of the filming was done in the midst of actual exteriors, and not those recreated in a studio or on the back lot, the film quite naturally has a look that makes it utterly different from the conventional film of the time; in this sense, then, "realistic" means "different from Hollywood." The anti-Hollywood bias is also evident in the choice of individual actors for their similarity to the mix of people one finds on the street, rather than for their good looks. Thus, makeup, favorable lighting and soft focus are eschewed in favor of something closer to the way we encounter people in real life. But something happens to "real life" when it is translated to the screen, and what we call realism actually consists of a set of expectations that is related to reality, of course, but in conventional rather than natural ways. Thus, for example, it would obviously be more "real," more like real life, for people being photographed to look at the camera, but then, paradoxically, the film would no longer seem realistic to us at all.
28. Lotman, p. 69. Georges Sadoul said something similar, using a different frame of reference, many years ago in connection with Paisan: "Rossellini's method excluded neither research nor elaboration. Paisan was the most expensive Italian film made in 1946. Its poverty was only apparent, and it would be ridiculous to explain the birth of neorealism by the hardships that reigned in the country at that time. The distrust of beautiful 'photography' was in fact a supreme refinement, the creation of a new style, soon to be imitated everywhere" ( Histoire du cinéma mondial , p. 330). "Things are there. Why manipulate them?"[29] The underlying assumption, of course, is that when these "things" have been transferred to the screen, they will somehow still be "there." At one point, Bazin even makes the translation process almost quantifiable: "We shall call realist any system of expression, any narrative procedure which tends to make more reality appear on the screen."[30] His most gnomic statement specifically concerning Rossellini is that he "directs facts"[31] —not, of course, cinematic facts, but the facts that are seen as inhering in external reality (and available to us), rather than as constituted in a system of signification.

29. Interview with Fereydoun Hoveyda and Jacques Rivette, Cahiers du cinéma , no. 94 (April 1959), 6. [BACK]
30. André Bazin, What Is Cinema? (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), vol. 2, p. 27. [BACK]
31. Ibid., p. 100.
AETHETIC ILLUSION FILTERING PROCESS MORE REAL MIMETIC THEORY OF ART
Bazin was, of course, always aware that screen reality was only an "aesthetic illusion." What else could it be? Furthermore, the most epistemologically sophisticated of these directors and critics knew and freely admitted that this raw reality must be "filtered" through the consciousness of the director, because otherwise what one ended up with was an arbitrary surface depiction that barely pierced the skin of the real. But the purpose and result of this authorial intervention, this mediation, in effect, was always to get to a cinematic representation of reality that was somehow more "real" than reality itself. The appeal is made to a truth that exists beyond, though not so far beyond as to be uncapturable, of course. Associated with this cinematic pursuit of truth is a concomitant theory of essences, of a "truer," "higher" reality, that has always been linked with the notion of aesthetic realism since the advent of the mimetic theory of art
35. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, "What Is Phenomenology?" in European Literary Theory and Practice , ed. Vernon W. Gras (New York: Dell Publishing, 1973), p. 80.






Reality, in other words, is not constituted by an uncomplicated "out there" to which we can have direct, unmediated access. We cannot help but process everything through our own particular culture, which exists beyond our individual control and not only filters what we experience, but actually produces it. Harold Brown, a philosopher of science, has argued in his book Perception, Theory, and Commitment that, far from perception providing us with pure facts, "the knowledge, beliefs and theories we already hold play a fundamental role in determining what we perceive." In his felicitous, and disarmingly simple phrase, we actually "perceive meanings."[36] We continuously make representations to ourselves, mostly as metaphors, as Nietzsche saw, that mediate reality for us.



Jean-Paul Fargier has suggested some of the ideological implications of this fact:
People used to say about statues and portraits, "He looks as though he might open his mouth any minute and say something." or "He looks as though he might burst into movement." But the "as though" gives the game away; despite the appearance, something was lacking , and everybody knew it. Whereas in the cinema, there is no "as though." People say "The leaves are moving." But there are no leaves. The first thing people do is deny the existence of the screen: it opens like a window , it is "transparent." This illusion is the very substance of the specific ideology secreted by the cinema.[
37] 37. Quoted in Realism and the Cinema , ed. Christopher Williams (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980), p. 177


Seeing a film, then, presupposes first an ongoing, unconscious daily operation that consists of systematizing an inchoate reality and "reading" it in terms of the codes that we both put and find there. This already represented reality is then represented again in film by means of a certain labor on the part of the filmmaker. It does not simply happen "naturally." Much avant-garde cinema in fact deliberately foregrounds the notion of production, thus helping us to see that the reality depicted, as well as the film, is a made, constructed, and thus historical reality


This very sense of wholeness I have been outlining above, which seems to be produced by most films, is seen by Bazin as the distinguishing characteristic of neorealism. In his remarkable essay entitled "In Defense of Rossellini," he approvingly maintains that neorealism's main feature is "its claim that there is a certain 'wholeness' to reality. . . . To put it still another way, neorealism by definition rejects analysis, whether political, moral, psychological, logical, or social, of the characters and their actions. It looks on reality as a whole, not incomprehensible, certainly, but inseparably one."[39] Bazin praises Rossellini's Europa '51 because in it he "strips the appearances of all that is not essential, in order to get at the totality in its simplicity."[40]
39. Bazin, What Is Cinema? , vol. 2, p. 97.


40. Ibid., p. 101.



One immediate effect of this privileging of the essence of reality over mere appearance and the accompanying insistence on film's ability to re-present this essence on the screen is to place the practice of neorealist filmmaking firmly within the Western metaphysical tradition of presence , most recently and powerfully critiqued by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida.


For Bazin and the other phenomenological critics, the project is at base a religious one, and the finding of fullness in a cinema that embodies the fullness of reality itself is a way to find (or to constitute) what Derrida has called the transcendental signified, or, in a more familiar formulation, God.