Irresponsible Authority

[RascalPuff]

"Wretched human beings, whether you wear green robes, turbans, black robes or surplices, cloaks and neckbands, never seek to use authority where there is question only of reason, or consent to be scoffed at throughout the centuries as the most impertinent of all men, and to suffer public hatred as the most unjust.

A hundred times has one spoken to you of the insolent absurdity with which you condemned Galileo, and I speak to you for the hundred and first, and I hope you will keep the anniversary of it for ever; I desire that there be graved on the door of your Holy Office:

"Here seven cardinals, assisted by minor brethren, had the master of thought in Italy thrown into prison at the age of seventy; made him fast on bread and water because he instructed the human race, and because they were ignorant."

There was pronounced a sentence in favour of Aristotle's categories, and there was decreed learnedly and equitably the penalty of the galleys for whoever should be sufficiently daring as to have an opinion different from that of the Stagyrite, whose books were formerly burned by two councils.

Further on a faculty, which had not great faculties, issued a decree against innate ideas, and later a decree for innate ideas, without the said faculty being informed by its beadles what an idea is.

In the neighbouring schools judicial proceedings were instituted against the circulation of the blood.

An action was started against inoculation, and parties have been subpoenaed.

At the Customs of thought twenty-one folio volumes were seized, in which it was stated treacherously and wickedly that triangles always have three angles; that a father is older than his son; that Rhea Silvia lost her virginity before giving birth to her child, and that flour is not an oak leaf.

In another year was judged the action: Utrum chimera bombinans in vacuo possit comedere secundas intentiones, and was decided in the affirmative.

In consequence, everyone thought themselves far superior to Archimedes, Euclid, Cicero, Pliny, and strutted proudly about the University quarter." - Voltaire

[Meem]

Let parents bequeath to their children not riches, but the spirit of reverence.
Plato

Does he now weap, Plato .... Aristotle ... Galileo ... all three together?

[austintorn@aol.com]

GALILEO: REVELATIONS

If Galileo had noted that Mars
Increased and diminished in size during its orbit,
Then this could have been a good clue,
Although perhaps not a proof,
That the planets orbited the sun.

The Church wished him to just say
That he only had a hypothesis, not a truth.
(Parallax measurements were not yet known.)

The real concern of the Earth
Not being the center of all
Was that perhaps Hell was not to be found
Within the bowels of
The no longer so important Earth,
As well as the concentric crystalline spheres
Surrounding it not being so,
Although this notion was really
Only proposed by Dante.

And, too, for some reason,
The notion of the universe being infinite,
As perhaps then
There would have been no room for God.

It was also a time of challenge
From the Protestant reformation
And thus the necessary
Catholic counter-reformation;
Galileo was in the right mind
At the wrong time.

One could say that Galileo
Should probably have known about
The sensitivities of the Church,
And probably did,
But perhaps felt safe
In his association with Pope Urban;
However, it was also that
The Pope had to perform his job.

The last straw that broke this friendship
Was when Galileo portrayed the God argument
Through the mouth of ‘Simplicio’ (the simpleton),
Even presenting it much
As the Pope would have to present it
And actually did present it to Galileo
Once upon a time.

It was just that Galileo had come upon
A great secret of the universe
And so, like anyone,
Could hardly contain himself.

He performed quite a balancing act,
Even stating, perhaps as a deflection,
That his argument was with Ptolomy,
Not the Church.

[austintorn@aol.com]

UNCENTERED

The Earth was found not to be the center of all,
Nor the solar system or even the galaxy, and
Now it is even that it could be that our universe
Is not the center of the multiverse.

When people climbed Mt. Olympus
And saw no Gods there,
That mountain of myth crumbled, too.

That the connect-the-dots Gods of Astrology
Were not to be was another crack
In the foundation that violated the building code.

Then their are more indications
That the complex derives from the ever simpler,
The ultimate simplicity now
Being seen as the causeless,
For there are not infinite causes beneath causes
Of that ‘something’ that always was;
So, when there is no creation,
There can be no Creator.

None of the above gave pause
To the religious who attacked the truth,
Such as with Galileo,
But, the Church could not burn the truth away,
For the proof remained.

‘God’ is just a theory;
However, the Church’s deception
Is, as in fact, to speak of it as the truth.

[RascalPuff]

"It may seem as though I had been at once gloomy and frivolous in some of my prognostications. I will end, however, with the serious lesson which seems to me to result. Men sometimes speak as though the progress of science must necessarily be a boon to mankind, but that, I fear, is one of the comfortable nineteenth-century delusions which our more disillusioned age must discard. Science enables the holders of power to realize their purposes more fully than they could otherwise do. If their purposes are good, this is a gain; if they are evil, it is a loss. In the present age, it seems that the purposes of the holders of power are in the main evil, in the sense that they involve a diminution, in the world at large, of the things men are agreed in thinking good. Therefore, at present, science does harm by increasing the power of rulers. Science is no substitute for virtue; the heart is as necessary for a good life as the head.

"If men were rational in their conduct, that is to say, if they acted in the way most likely to bring about the ends that they deliberately desire, intelligence would be enough to make the world almost a paradise. In the main, what is in the long run advantageous to one man is also advantageous to another. But men are actuated by passions which distort their view; feeling an impulse to injure others, they persuade themselves that it is to their interest to do so. They will not, therefore, act in the way that is in fact to their own interest unless they are actuated by generous impulses which make them indifferent to their own interest. This is why the heart is as important as the head. By the ``heart'' I mean, for the moment, the sum-total of kindly impulses. Where they exist, science helps them to be effective; where they are absent, science only makes men more cleverly diabolic.

I am compelled to fear that science will be used to promote the power of dominant groups, rather than to make men happy. Icarus, having been taught to fly by his father Daedalus, was destroyed by his rashness. I fear that the same fate may overtake the populations whom modern men of science have taught to fly. Some of the dangers inherent in the progress of science while we retain our present political and economic institutions are set forth in the following pages." - Bertrand Russell, The Future of Science (Introduction)

[RascalPuff]

"The author, when very young, engaged in journalistic work, until the drum of the recruiting officer called him to join the ranks of his country's defenders. As the reader is told, he was made a prisoner. He took with him into the terrible prison enclosure not only a brave, vigorous, youthful spirit, but invaluable habits of mind and thought for storing up the incidents and experiences of his prison life. As a journalist he had acquired the habit of noticing and memorizing every striking or thrilling incident, and the experiences of his prison life were adapted to enstamp themselves indelibly on both feeling and memory. He speaks from personal experience and from the stand-paint of tender and complete sympathy with those of his comrades who suffered more than he did himself. Of his qualifications, the writer of these introductory words need not speak. The sketches themselves testify to his ability with such force that no commendation is required.

This work is needed. A generation is arising who do not know what the preservation of our free government cost in blood and suffering. Even the men of the passing generation begin to be forgetful, if we may judge from the recklessness or carelessness of their political action. The soldier is not always remembered nor honored as he should be. But, what to the future of the great Republic is more important, there is great danger of our people under-estimating the bitter animus and terrible malignity to the Union and its defenders cherished by those who made war upon it. This is a point we can not afford to be mistaken about. And yet, right at this point this volume will meet its severest criticism, and at this point its testimony is most vital and necessary. Many will be slow to believe all that is here told most truthfully of the tyranny and cruelty of the captors of our brave boys in blue. There are no parallels to the cruelties and malignities here described in Northern society. The system of slavery, maintained for over two hundred years at the South, had performed a most perverting, morally desolating, and we might say, demonizing work on the dominant race, which people bred under our free civilization can not at once understand, nor scarcely believe when it is declared unto them. This reluctance to believe unwelcome truths has been the snare of our national life. We have not been willing to believe how hardened, despotic, and cruel the wielders of irresponsible power may become.


The years 1864-5 were a season of desperate battles, but in that time many more Union soldiers were slain behind the Rebel armies, by starvation and exposure, than were killed in front of them by cannon and rifle. The country has heard much of the heroism and sacrifices of those loyal youths who fell on the field of battle; but it has heard little of the still greater number who died in prison pen. It knows full well how grandly her sons met death in front of the serried ranks of treason, and but little of the sublime firmness with which they endured unto the death, all that the ingenious cruelty of their foes could inflict upon them while in captivity.
It is to help supply this deficiency that this book is written. It is a mite contributed to the better remembrance by their countrymen of those who in this way endured and died that the Nation might live. It is an offering of testimony to future generations of the measureless cost of the expiation of a national sin, and of the preservation of our national unity. This is all. I know I speak for all those still living comrades who went with me through the scenes that I have attempted to describe, when I say that we have no revenges to satisfy, no hatreds to appease. We do not ask that anyone shall be punished. We only desire that the Nation shall recognize and remember the grand fidelity of our dead comrades, and take abundant care that they shall not have died in vain. "

- MacKinlay Kantor (Pulitzer Prize), Andersonville (Introduction)

[RascalPuff]

"Fifteen months ago—and one month before it was begun—I had no more idea of writing this book than I have now of taking up my residence in China.
While I have always been deeply impressed with the idea that the public should know much more of the history of Andersonville and other Southern prisons than it does, it had never occurred to me that I was in any way charged with the duty of increasing that enlightenment.
No affected deprecation of my own abilities had any part is this. I certainly knew enough of the matter, as did every other boy who had even a month's experience in those terrible places, but the very magnitude of that knowledge overpowered me, by showing me the vast requirements of the subject-requirements that seemed to make it presumption for any but the greatest pens in our literature to attempt the work. One day at Andersonville or Florence would be task enough for the genius of Carlyle or Hugo; lesser than they would fail preposterously to rise to the level of the theme. No writer ever described such a deluge of woes as swept over the unfortunates confined in Rebel prisons in the last year-and-a-half of the Confederacy's life. No man was ever called upon to describe the spectacle and the process of seventy thousand young, strong, able-bodied men, starving and rotting to death. Such a gigantic tragedy as this stuns the mind and benumbs the imagination.

I no more felt myself competent to the task than to accomplish one of Michael Angelo's grand creations in sculpture or painting.
Study of the subject since confirms me in this view, and my only claim for this book is that it is a contribution—a record of individual observation and experience—which will add something to the material which the historian of the future will find available for his work.
The work was begun at the suggestion of Mr. D. R. Locke, (Petroleum V. Nasby), the eminent political satirist. At first it was only intended to write a few short serial sketches of prison life for the columns of the TOLEDO BLADE. The exceeding favor with which the first of the series was received induced a great widening of their scope, until finally they took the range they now have. I know that what is contained herein will be bitterly denied. I am prepared for this. In my boyhood I witnessed the savagery of the Slavery agitation—in my youth I felt the fierceness of the hatred directed against all those who stood by the Nation. I know that hell hath no fury like the vindictiveness of those who are hurt by the truth being told of them. I apprehend being assailed by a sirocco of contradiction and calumny.

But I solemnly affirm in advance the entire and absolute truth of every material fact, statement and description. I assert that, so far from there being any exaggeration in any particular, that in no instance has the half of the truth been told, nor could it be, save by an inspired pen. I am ready to demonstrate this by any test that the deniers of this may require, and I am fortified in my position by unsolicited letters from over 3,000 surviving prisoners, warmly indorsing the account as thoroughly accurate in every respect."
- Makinlay Kantor, Andersonville (Introduction)

[Bogie]

You know what RascalPuff, this is actually the first I have heard of such atrocities. That just goes to show how we hide the past that we don't want to be there.

[RascalPuff]

You know what RascalPuff, this is actually the first I have heard of such atrocities. That just goes to show how we hide the past that we don't want to be there.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


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The Russell Tribunal, also known as the International War Crimes Tribunal or Russell-Sartre Tribunal, was a public body organized by British philosopher Bertrand Russell and hosted by French philosopher and playwright Jean-Paul Sartre. Along with Ken Coates, Ralph Schoenman, and several others, the tribunal investigated and evaluated American foreign policy and military intervention in Vietnam, following the 1954 defeat of French forces at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu and the establishment of North and South Vietnam.
Bertrand Russell justified the establishment of this body as follows:



“If certain acts and violations of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them. We are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us.”

—Justice Robert H. Jackson, Chief Prosecutor, Nuremberg War Crimes Trials[1]

The formation of this investigative body immediately followed the 1966 publication of Russell's book, War Crimes in Vietnam. The tribunal was constituted in November 1966, and was conducted in two sessions in 1967, in Stockholm, Sweden and Copenhagen, Denmark. It gained significant international attention[citation needed], but was largely ignored in the United States, where many considered it an ineffectual, biased show trial.

Representatives of 18 countries participated in the two sessions of this tribunal, formally calling itself the International War Crimes Tribunal. The tribunal committee consisted of 25 notable personages, predominantly from leftist peace organizations. Many of these individuals were winners of the Nobel Prize, Medals of Valor and awards of recognition in humanitarian and social fields. There was no direct representation of Vietnam or the United States on this 25 member panel, although a couple of members were American citizens.
Of considerable interest during the tribunal hearings was the North Vietnamese response to allegations of atrocity contained in the best-selling book Deliver Us From Evil. Published in 1956, this book presented the experience of U.S. Navy physician Thomas Anthony Dooley during Operation Passage to Freedom, in which approximately 90,000 Vietnamese Christians were relocated from North to South Vietnam. The small book contained many allegations of gross atrocity by the communists against these refugees. One of the more dramatic claims was that the communists drove nails into the heads of Vietnamese Catholic priests, to simulate a "crown of thorns".
More than 30 individuals testified or provided information to this tribunal. Among them were military personnel from the United States, as well as from each of the warring factions in Vietnam. Financing for the Tribunal came from many sources, including a large contribution from the North Vietnamese government after a request made by Russell to Ho Chi Minh.[2]
It was followed by another Tribunal, know as Russell Tribunal II on Latin America, that held three meetings in Rome (1974), Brussels (1975) and Rome (1976), dealing predominately with Brazil and Chile.
At the closing session of the Russell Tribunal II the creation of three new institutions was announced: the International Foundation for the Rights and Liberations of Peoples, and the International League for the Rights and Liberations of Peoples, and the Permanent Peoples' Tribunal.
The Permanents People’s Tribunal was established in Bologna on 23 June 1979. Between its founding and April 1984, the tribunal pronounced two advisory opinions on Western Sahara and Eritrea and held eight sessions (Argentina, Philippines, El Salvador, Afghanistan I and II, East Timor, Zaire and Guatemala). The latter was concluded in January 1983 in Madrid.
A special hearing was conducted in Paris on April 13-16, 1984 to investigate the Armenian Genocide. The Tribunal’s thirty-five member panel included three Nobel Prize winners—Sean MacBride, Adolfo Perez Esquivel and Professor George Wald— and ten eminent jurist, theologians, academics and political figures. The jury delivered a verdict of guilty to the state of Turkey for the crime of genocide against the Armenian people.
More than three decades later, the Russell Tribunal model was followed by the World Tribunal on Iraq, which was held to make a similar analysis of the Project for the New American Century, the 2003 Invasion of Iraq and subsequent occupation of Iraq, and the links between these.

http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Tribunal

[labelwench]

The atrocities that our species commits against one another, individually, collectively, and nationally, defies any attempt at logic.

I do not fear to travel in the wilderness alone and unarmed, for I know the nature of the beasts that live there, and at what provocation they will hold me accountable.

Sadly, I cannot say the same for my own kind.

Many there are that I would trust and hold dear.

Many more there are, that I fear. I cannot know them, for they know not themselves, and so they are more to be feared than the most depraved of the beasts. LW