Friday, March 25, 2016

big news March 2016

In what may be the biggest news this month, the EU came to a controversial agreement with Turkey over how to process or return huge numbers of people, hoping to curb the refugee crisis stemming from the war in Syria. The BBC and NPR report.

More stark details emerge from the Guardian.
This came in the midst of  a series of terrible bombings in the capital of Turkey, Ankara.

____________________________________________________
And then there was the bombings in Brussels, Belgium 22March16 that stopped the airport and the metro on a normal busy Tueday morning. Some warn of larger dangers closer to home.
______________________________________________________
In the US, the current House of Representatives wants to put additional curbs on letting refugees come here.
In further intransigence, the legislative branch of Congress won't see fit to 'advise and consent' the executive branch. President Obama's nominee to replace Supreme Court Justice Atonin Scalia, after his surprise death last month, can't get a simple hearing, let alone an 'up or down' vote in Congress. A month later those who follow the news and the interpretation of the US Constitution are still scratching their heads.

______________________________________________________
Some say there's an increasing pattern of renters and rentiers in the US.
Meanwhile, homes stay vacant.
______________________________________________________

For the first time since 1928, a US  President has gone to Cuba. Here's President Obama's official speech. He said, "I have come to bury the last remnants of the cold war in the Americas."
______________________________________________________

There was a fantastic total solar eclipse seen in the southern hemisphere of earth earlier this month.
Posted by at No comments:

Wednesday, March 23, 2016

before a 'United' Imperial Spain: notes from JH Elliot

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries Castile had 600% the population of Aragon, Catalonia and Valencia, the opposite of what it's been since the seventeenth century. This density in population was near 22/km² for Castile and 14/km² for the coast plus Aragon around 1600. p.25

Catalan and Aragon became known as a commercial empire for its expansion of wool and textile production thru the 13-1400's. They were ventures that continued to look outward to the seas, rivaling Genoa, Venice. p.27, 34
Castile later on would become the wool and textile power house as opportunities on the Catalonian coast declined.

the state as it was in Castile and Aragon were different from each other. A broad history of latter and its forms of gov. pp. 25-30

Developments to such forms from the Reconquista: p. 31-3

Differences summarized: Castile was denser in population but its nobility more disparate, disunited and less represented. Aragon and Catalonia had strong bodies of different forms of representation, but its royalty were relatively weak. Both these conditions caused continual problems within both areas. pp 34-5

Conditions of both economic and political life on the coast in the 1400's were a result of the economic depression in Catala-Aragon from 1350-1450. In the centuries before then the older commercial interests of Catalonia had reshaped economics and politics. After the plague and the following great purge of capital investment there, things dramatically slowed down. When things were generally stable but uncertain in Aragon, Catalonia suffered a series of disasters.
Catalan-Aragon was now becoming a western Mediterranean concern, with eventual footholds in Italy and its King moving to Naples after 1443.[p.36]
Populations of Catalonia dropped from a high in 1365 of 430,000 to a low in 1497 of 278,000. [p.37]

"... in essentially monarchical societies royal absenteeism created grave problems of adjustment. ... the glittering imperialism of Alfonso V, dynastic in inspiration and militaristic in character, differed sharply from the commercial imperialism of an earlier age, and, by encouraging lawlessness in the western Mediterranean, directly conflicted with the mercantile interests of the Barcelona oligarchy. The policies of dynasty and merchant no longer coincided, and this itself represented a tragic deviation from the traditions of the past." [p.36]

These policies were alligned thru the 13th and 14th centuries. But the end of the Catalan economic expansion caused 'political repercussions'. The cause of the depression was plague and famine that came in waves 1333, 1347-51, 1362-3, 1371, 1396-7, and so on. Huge losses of population resulted.
"Manpower was scarce, farmsteads were abandoned, and ... 1380, the pesantry began to clash violently with landlords who... were determined to exploit to the full their rights over their vassals at a time when fuedal dues were diminishing in value and the cost of labour was rising fast." [p.37]
Peasants tied to the land would gain the support of Alfonso and his son John II against the merchant and oligarch classes.

'Spectacular bank failures in  Barcelona' led to Italian financiers working capital, gving loans to nobles and royalty instead of Barcelona. Genoa would finance Valencia with their form of investment and spread from there to manage markets in Castile as the wool trade fantastically expanded there through the 1400's. [p.38-9]

From about 1350 the great Catalan investors, bankers & merchants began pulling capital out of trade and commercial enterprises and put it into annuities and land to become pensioners and rentiers. The agrarian populace began to rise up. Catalan merchants demanded to the king that their contracts with him be maintained. The King, far away in Naples began siding with the peasants or remença. The Biga (the merchants and rentiers) and Busca (the artisans and guilders) in Barcelona struggled for local power. In 1453 the Busca took over the city and made laws of protectionism and coin devaluation. [p.40] War between the oligarchy in Catalonia and Valencia and the King broke out in 1462 and lasted for ten years.
Louis XI would gain  Cerdagne and Roussillon in 1463 from this turmoil.
Wars began again until the negotiated surrender of Granada in 1492.
Wars began again between Christian nobles and the Royal Houses of Castile and Aragon after that.
_____________________________________
J.H. Elliott: Imperial Spain 1469-1716 : Penguin, NY, 2002
Posted by at No comments:

Sunday, March 20, 2016

Rabelais: Pantagruel Out To Sea, Passes by the Island of Righteous Bigots

In the fourth book of Francois Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel, after a discursive introduction which itself followed a rather lengthy initial dedication, the said Pantagruel took leave of his father Gargantua. To sea he went with a crew in June fitted out with a wide-ranging smattering of esoteric characters. Panurge, Gymnast, Eusthenes, Jamet Brahier for pilot, Epistemon and Imported Goods, that 'great traveler down dangerous roads', all piled aboard and shove off in the flagship Thalemège with a fleet of their own. Of course it was a festive occasion, what other better reason could there be? After all, they went to sea in order to find the oracle of the Divine Bottle. Many absurd notions and practices, peoples, kings or shysters would be seen on the open water and other far off places. They all drank a lot of wine, Rabelais assures us, and made plenty of bad calls... "... seeking wise words from the Holy Bottle."
"An old lantern hung high from the stern of the second boat, painstakingly worked in alabaster and clear mica, indicating that they meant to sail by Lanternland.
The insignia of the third boat was a magnificent porcelian drinking mug.
The fourth boat bore a two-handled gold jug, shaped like an antique urn.
The fifth bore a remarkable pitcher, made of bright green emerald.
The sixth had a monk's drinking mug, fashioned of four metals.
The seventh had an ebony funnel, decorated all over in gold wire, interwoven with other metals.
The eighth was a fabulously precious ivy goblet, covered all over with hammered Damascene gold.
The ninth: a toasting glass of delicate pure gold.
The tenth: a cup of fragrant aloe wood (as we call it), with a fringe of Cyprus gold, worked in Damascene style.
The eleventh: a gold market basket, covered with mosaic trim.
The twelth was a small barrel of gold, in a dull finish, covered with an ornamental border of great fat Indian pearls, fashioned into animal shapes.
 And it was all done so that no one, no matter how depressed or angry, no matter how sullen, sour or sad he might be -- indeed, not even Heraclitus the Weeping Pessimist -- would not feel a surge of fresh happiness, whose good spleen would not fill and flood with laughter, seeing this noble fleet of ships and their insignia -- no one who would not say simply, that these were all good drinkers, good fellows, and who would not be absolutely convinced that their voyage, both sailing away and then sailing home again, would be conducted in high spirits and in perfect good health." [pp 393-4]
They were on a mission.

Pantagruel ended up, among many other things to 'buy some very nice things on the island of Nowhere', to get a good lesson on the usefulness of messenger pigeons, to meet Dingdong and quarrel with him, to find the Island of Peace, Proxyland, the Formless and Wordless Islands, and even to abandon ship during a terrific storm. Along the way it was Imported Goods that pointed out to Pantagruel, 'from a distance' the Island of Righteous Bigots where Lent-Observance was king.

Imported Goods discouraged stopping there due to their 'meager pleasures'. But Pantagruel wants to know about this king having heard of him before. Brother John as well wanted to know since he'd seen him mentioned "in his prayer book, right after movable feasts". Imported Goods goes on for quite some time listing his analysis of what he had found of the anatomy, both internal [p. 448] and external [p. 450], of their king, and also, what he looked like [p. 452].  You can tell, Imported Goods thought little of The Island of Righteous Bigots. This is how he describes them.
"All told," he said, "what you'll see there is a great guzzler of dried peas, a great imbiber of snails, a great monkish rat-catching dreamer, a great cheapskate, a hairless half-giant with a shaved head, born of Lanternish blood and empty-headed like all his relatives, a flag waving fish eater, a mustard tyrant, a child beater, an ash cooker, father and nurse of physicians, stuffed with pardons, indulgences and church tickets, but an honest man, a good Catholic, and terribly devout. He spends three-quarters of the day crying. He never goes to weddings. And he's the best roasting skewer and spit maker you'll see for forty kingdoms around.... He feeds on dry mail shirts and helmets (sometimes with plumes, sometimes well salted)".[p.447]
Lent always seemed terribly long and dry.
______________________________________
from Gargantua and Pantagruel : Burton Raffel, W.W, Norton & Company, 1990, USA
Posted by at No comments:

Bembo has Bollani Warn Against More War: spring 1496

There were several battles  in Italy through the winter and into the spring and summer of 1496. French troops had remained and were thrown out in several places as various locals and forces across Italy and beyond, rose up to assert themselves. The news, full of advances and setbacks as it came to Venice, including that of their own forces, of the delegates and captains in the field. This all incited much discussion throughout the city. One such matter, the war over Pisa, Pietro Bembo tells us, made it to the Council of Ten in the Doge's Palace in Venice.

Bembo used an ancient form of address, and in multiple ways here, to tell this part of his story. Both Herodotus and Thucydides used the form of the extended argument all throughout their famous histories. The form of the extended quotation that was based on what was 'probably said', is just as old. As a form, the extended address within a broader narrative of history was making a resurgence in the European Rennaissance. Guicciardini used it. Macchiavelli too. Perhaps tellingly, Pietro Bembo uses it, but does so very sparingly. He doesn't use it at all in the first book. Only once in this third book of his History of Venice is it used, and for this occasion. Only once again does he use the extended quote as a form of exposition in the second book. And that is only a paragraph or so long. Here the narrative, put in the mouth of Marco Bollani, is an argument for further discussion, and goes on for pages.

In this manner, Pietro Bembo has the Venetian ducal counsellor Marco Bollani explain the scene. War, he says, would be a natural consequence of Venice protecting Pisa (after their request for such protection and after the French left Italy). This act of protection, he thought, would become a renewal of war between Venice and Genoa. Previously these two had been at war for centuries. This their deepset and most personal antagonism, highlighted each of their respective histories as pivotal signposts all through the crusades and beyond.

Recently, with the promised help of the Duke of Milan, Genoa had supplied a naval force that destroyed the French fleet on the Ligurian coast. But with the French mostly gone, Pisa, this jewel of a trade hub for Venice, with its glorious harbour Livorno just down the road, had traditionally seemed a a passing fancy. Now Bembo, having Bollani tell it, this 'natural desire' would be dangerous if fulfilled, and augur darkly for Venice's future. Starting with an odd comparison found, he says, in nature, he expands the idea to compare Venice and Genoa with all the others in the region.
"All things naturally and instictively shun what most harms them and cleave to what has less power and ability to injure them. Sparrows do not flee from hens and geese, indeed they even nest with doves. But from hawks and other birds of prey, they always fly away or conceal themselves as far as they can."
Venice built on an island in a lagoon with sea stretching in all directions but one, naturally always attracted birds. The symbolic emblem of the city, the Lion of St Mark, where it was depicted, as on the flag, always had wings.
"We ought to think, then, that the Genoese likewise, if it were up to them, would under no circumstances permit us to become masters of Pisa: our histories bear witness to how hostile that people was to Venice in the past and all posterity at Genoa will remember what great defeats it suffered at our hands. They would share their armies, fleets and wealth with the Florentines to prevent us gaining control of Pisa. Though such are the temper of the times and so uncertain most people's loyalty that I fear even our allies, even those that profess that they owe their realms to us, will soon desert us when they learn that we mean to enlarge our borders as far as that; and not only desert us, but actually take up arms against us and make common cause with our enemies, in the belief that we can be routed and repelled by their collective military action and strategy." [ii, 13]
Bembo has Balloni fear for the desertion by allies, and war with all as they flocked together against the city. Bembo was writing some thirty years after, as it happened, the allies of Venice did band with its enemies, in order to limit the city's control in Italian affairs.

___________________________________________
from Pietro Bembo: History of Venice; edited and translated by Robert W Ulery, Jr.; in english and latin, The I Tatti Renaissance Library; The President and Fellows of Harvard College, USA 2007

Posted by at No comments:

Tuesday, March 15, 2016

longer form news on econ and info, winter 2016

This winter Thomas Piketty talked about economics on the BBC.
__________________________________
And a month ago there was this story where a local municipality was shown to be exercising greater surveillance of groups, presumably despite constitutional rights and 'freedom to assemble':
Of course the NSA is deeply interested. The Washington Post admits as much.


People have begun looking at the idea of how corporate surveillance impacts populations and whether those populations have any recourse.

Over the last month discussion has spread over the FBI asking Apple Co. to write code to hack into its own phone products. Apple has resisted publicly and the FBI and the Obama Administration have gamely taken to the airwaves praising the merits of their plea. But that's not all.

Still, if the comedian John Oliver is any indication, perhaps the tide in public opinion has tipped in favor of Apple's position, if no one else's.
_______________________________________________
Henry Rollins was on the BBC World Service weekly show Hardtalk.
Posted by at No comments:

Thursday, March 10, 2016

Pisa In the Cross-hairs, Under Attack: spring 1496

It was in the late winter or early spring when a band of Florentine partisans tried to take Pisa. Pietro Bembo, years later, tells the tale of Ludovico Sforza offering his help to the Senate in the matter, by being an ally to Venice, in order to help them to achieve this request for protection. The Senate pressed by activities all over and the entreaties of the duke of Milan, agreed to send funds to pay for soldiers, found in and near Genoa, to help defend Pisa. They also agreed, he says, to a pact with Milan and the pope to defend Pisa from the French. Bembo then segues to the attack from Florence of '6000 foot soldiers' and the following effects. But this is only one of a series of additional attacks and seizures on a number of cities and palaces across Italy that year which Venice was involved in.

Il Moro was determined to make some profit from the entire enterprise having worked for years to entice the French to come to Italy to begin with. This time, the crafty Duke of Milan got Venice to pay him so that he could raise an army in Genoa. He also failed to make much use of that army later on, further tarnishing his reputation, as if it could be worse. But Bembo gives Milan's opinion without quoting him, in this case.
"He said that he thought it quite right that Pisa should be protected, since the Florentines had formed an alliance with Charles - he himself had intercepted in his own territory the legate who negotiated the treaty as he returned in secret to the king. After lengthy discussions among the senators, and with Ludovico pressing them harder each day, a law was finally passed in the Senate with the approval of the ambassadors of all the allies that Pisa should be defended with the combined arms and resources of the pope, Venice and Ludovico. Appended to the law was a provision that 2,000 soldiers should be raised in Liguria at the Republic's expense and sentto Pisa. Ludovico had earlier undertaken to see to it that the Genoese would permit this to happen." [iii,23]
But Bembo says that when Florence learned of this, and before other forces could assemble, they quickly acted to take Pisa back by force. The artillery arrived at the gates but the Pisans surprised them. Opening the gates they charged at them and 'fighting manfully' siezed the artillery. But then they were met with deception.
"Shortly afterwards Paolo Vitelli, one of the Roman Orsini party and faction, and a brave man whom the Pisans had put in command of their forces, went over to the Florentines when he had fulfilled his contract with Pisa. Taking on the captaincy which the Florentines conferred on him, he put together an army of 10,000 infantry and made a fierce attack on Pisa. Vitelli rushed into the outskirts of the town, but was driven back and forced out by the Pisans, who had themselves gathered as many troops as they could. The Florentines later retook and held on to those outskirts, but they then abandoned Pisa and turned to defending themsleves for fear of Piero de' Medici, who was reportedly on the point of bursting into their territory at the head of the Orsini relatives." [iii, 24]
Again, Piero was the son of Clarice Orsini of the Orsini family who were helping him to win back Florence. The new government in Florence also wanted Pisa back. The old Medici leaders wanted to regain Florence. Everyone else were looking toward their own advantage. The Florentines, Bembo tells us were trying to buy the fortress in Pisa from King Charles of France. The Pisans then destroyed the fortress. Venice lost forty pounds of gold in attempting to help pay for this. [iii,25]
This war over Pisa would continue for years.

__________________________________
Quotes from Bembo, Pietro: History of Venice; edited and translated by Robert W Ulery, Jr.; in english and latin, The I Tatti Renaissance Library; The President and Fellows of Harvard College, USA 2007
Posted by at No comments:

Thursday, March 3, 2016

Savonarola Preaches Lenten Sermons: February 1496

The Friar in Florence was preaching again. In a strong act of defiance against Pope Alexander VI, on 11 February, the Signory of Florence sent word to command Friar Savonarola to provide the Lenten sermons that year. This was a great honor offered to him, one that he had performed before. The novelty was that he would deliver them while under a restriction from the pope to refrain from preaching or giving sermons.

Despite not preaching for some four months the 'little friar' had been busy that winter of 1495-6. He had continued writing. He oversaw, it seems, the development of various texts, translations, and letters for eventual publication in this time as well. Then there was the spectacular march of thousands of Florentine youths in the city meant to cap the recent Carnevale celebration before Lent that he had organized. When city leaders voted to grant him the position of delivering that year's Lenten sermons in the weeks running up to Easter, the friar took this approbation as confirmation and vindication of his success.

Savonarola bent to the task centering the frame of his sermons around the Old Testament prophet Amos. Soon he was expounding against tyrants in his familiar way. As Amos did, Savonarola railed against greed and bribery, corruption in the church and how the mighty took advantage of the weak. Savonarola, and Amos as well, had warned that there would be justice from God to punish iniquity and it would come in the form of an invading foreigner. By the second week of sermons (26 February) Savonarola had turned to the vices that plagued the powerful.

Even legitimate princes became illegitimate, Martines shows Savonarola saying, through their devotion to their vices. [p.109] A tyrant thinks of himself first, then his family, then his hangers-on. Driven by 'pride, sensuality and greed' the tyrant seizes on public monies and assets in order to enrich himself, his house, and his brash way of life. Expensive in habit, a tyrant spends money to keep him on top and others in check. Exile, levies, and protection orders are used, and quickly, to oppress any who may disagree. Suspicious of people and brutal in practice, he also becomes consumed with misleading distractions and even expensive medicines to alleviate personal afflictions. A tyrant buys soldiers to protect himself and he knocks down the houses of the poor in order to build lavish palaces. Critical of everything that he doesn't produce the tyrant throws out competing citizens, undercuts their business and sends hired spies to report on anything new. The consequence of so much single-minded control placed in the hands of a tyrant, is a population that is 'pusillanimous and servile'. [p. 110]

Martines sums up Savonarola's view of a tyrant here, as combining elements of Lorenzo de Medici, Giovanni Bentivoglio of Bologna, the Baglioni of Perugia and 'a couple rulers of Ferrara' from the early fifteenth century. [p.109]
"In Savonarola's view of the public world, tyrants and lecherous money-loving churchmen represented all that was evil in the modern world, because, although charged with the gravest responsibilities, they were hopelessly turned away from Christ, from the meaning of the Cross, and dedicated to the physical world at its most vile levels." [p. 110]
Alexander VI would hear of Savonarola's return to the pulpit. It was reported that this pope would loudly complain to the Florentine ambassador Ricciardo Becchi who, at the behest of the Signory in Florence had been since November petitioning the Friar's return. [p. 134]
___________________________________________

notes and pagination from Martines, Lauro: Fire In The City: Savonarola and the struggle for the soul of Renaissance Florence ; Oxford University Press, New York, 2006

Posted by at No comments:

Wednesday, March 2, 2016

Bembo Shows Venice Considered Protecting Pisa: early 1496

Pisa knew, fresh from the promised and eventual retreat of French King Charles VIII over the Alps, there would be a power vacuum. Small as she was, Pisa knew as a consequence she had become a ripe target for attack early in 1496. The city had asked a number of the powers in Italy to defend it from the various Florentine players and extended requests for an audience to other partisans who prized her assets. Ambassadors to Venice, Rome and Milan were sent. Discussions and plans were being hatched.

Many years later and with much hindsight, Pietro Bembo and Francesco Guicciardini would write the chapter on this history from only slightly different perspectives. Bembo, charged to write a history of Venice by the Venetian Senate, and made librarian to St Mark's Basilica in the process, he had unparalelled access to the affairs of state there.

Though the French had said in October of 1494 that they were liberating Pisa from recent rule by Florence (ii,19*), what happened after they left was more of a free for all. A year's worth of attacks by partisans and factions was wearing the city out. By the end of 1495 they were ready for relief from any strong character in the neighborhood of Italy. Florence, with its old ties of Medici supporters and antagonists, was found unfit. It could not be depended on to allow for Pisan independence. The conflicts were too large and too many. The same was seen for the crucial, League to oust the French.

For Pisa on the other hand, the pope in Rome could be painted as a Spanish interloper in Italian affairs, or, if that weren't enough, old Ghibelline notions could be stirred up against the papacy. The Duke, il Moro in Milan, had shown his loyalties for and then against the French, and could not even be trusted to send soldiers or supplies on time.[p. 103]

Some of these same criticisms could be levelled at Venice as well. Pietro Bembo spends some time (iii,11) relating the reception of the plea from Pisa for protection in the Venetian Senate at this crucial juncture. The notion of Venice holding sway in Pisa seemed 'at first unprecedented to the senators' but not something 'to flatly reject or accept without much thought'. The very idea seemed quite an honor to merely be asked of them. [p. 177]

At first, Bembo tells us, the plea for protection sprang quite like a gift from God rewarding the city leaders. At least the singularly wise reasoning and prudent character of those wielding the many affairs of state, in this Most Serene City of Venice. The Senate at large, Bembo wrote, was poised to grant such a request to such a city as Pisa, but the matter was then transferred for further consideration to the much smaller Council of Ten.

There, Bembo in a form used since the beginning of the western tradition of history, gives us a speech (iii,12-15) of one Marco Bollani, a 'ducal councillor'. It was better, he opined, 'to propose whatever was good for the Republic', rather than just what they might personally want. That it would be inevitable to regret decisions that came from merely following their desires. He reassures them, he wants the same things and in the same ways as the rest of them. Bembo has him start with a negative, 'don't you think' to prove his point.
"Do you not think that I not only want Pisa under our sway, the present subject of debate, but all the other states and towns and peoples of Italy as well, and for the Venetian empire to embrace the Adriatic and the Tyrrhenian? I want those things very much indeed, and I would stake my life with Fortune if she would look with such favor on the Republic." [p. 179]
The Adriatic was the sea upon which Venice lay, sitting atop, to the north. And the sea to the south was considered for centuries to be very much the property of Venice. The Tyrrhenian Sea lay on the other side of Italy, between Pisa, Rome, Naples and Genoa, and the islands of Corsica and Sardinia. Pisa was an object of desire for the many centuries that Venice had warred with Genoa for control. But in the next moment, Balloni cautions his audience that if they were to begin as protectors of this coveted object they would soon lose it. And with it, the honor of holding it.

The route overland between Venice and Pisa, Bollani explained, would have to be secured. All the neighbors, historically friendly to Florence, would have to be persuaded as well that this action was in their best interest, and then, not just for this first time. For ever therafter as well. Then troops and hardware would be moved. The Florentines would take the war to the sea. The neighbors being more comfortable with each other would very much see an action like this by Venice as frightful and to be avoided. They would band together to ward us off.  Bembo has him state positively, the Pisans must realize, "... they should be more afraid of us than of them." [p. 181]

But he didn't stop there.

________________________________________
* this refers to the book and paragraph number in Bembo's original: book ii, para 19;
Quotes and pagination from Bembo, Pietro: History of Venice; edited and translated by Robert W Ulery, Jr.; in english and latin, The I Tatti Renaissance Library; The President and Fellows of Harvard College, USA 2007
Posted by at No comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)