frank viviano — giornale di barganews

Post Tagged with: "frank viviano"

10/14/2011 10:03 pm

The unfinished legacy of 2010

Take a close and objective look at the angry demonstrators now gathered on Wall Street, and at similar protest encampments from San Francisco to Madrid. What you see is not simply a vast expression of rage at the crisis enveloping the world of democracy. The demonstrations also frame a fundamental contradiction...

10/07/2011 4:07 pm

The Walls of Barga – exhibition by Keane

Barga, its fondest promoters love to say, is a “classic example of a Tuscan hilltown.” But what exactly defines the classic appearance of Barga – or for that matter, Tuscany? The answer, says an exhibition in the entrance hall of Palazzo Pancrazi, home of Barga’s municipal government, is not...

09/27/2011 10:28 pm

In Saudi Arabia, a new era for women

When King Abdullah’s speech was released by the Saudi Press Service on Sunday, my first reaction was stunned amazement. The second was to think of Dr. Aisha, a physician I’d met in Riyadh eight years ago. “Women will be allowed to participate in the Shoura Council as members from the...

09/27/2011 12:43 pm

Fifteen Lire’s worth of mystery in Piazza Salvi

Vestiges of a turbulent passage in Italian history may have come to light on Monday (September 26), in the form of three silver coins unearthed beneath the venerable pavimenti of Piazza Salvo Salvi. How they made their way to Barga, and were eventually covered by paving stones, is unknown. The coins...

09/23/2011 9:49 am

The Model for Palestine 2011 – Israel in 1949

Global stability is held hostage to years of savage terrorism and de facto war in a small corner of the Middle East. The crisis leads to a tense vote before the United Nations, over whether a new member-state should be recognized in the region, with a formal mandate to defend its interests and negotiate...

09/19/2011 3:36 pm

The Invasion of Paris, Then and Now

PARIS — Viewed from the airless heights where statisticians crunch numbers, the story of the woman I’ll call Lilly Tan is simple. She is an immigrant in France, a single digit among millions for the statisticians, a warning flag to wave at rallies for the xenophobic political parties that grow...

09/09/2011 10:48 pm

A Decade After 9/11: Turkey Redefines Political Islam

In 1995, the city of Gaziantep, on the southeastern edge of Turkey’s Anatolian plain, was under siege. Its crumbling medieval centre was swamped with refugees from a civil war between insurgent Kurds and the Turkish Army that eventually left 40,000 dead and 3,000,000 people homeless. Along the borderlands...

08/11/2011 12:12 pm

In the ruins of Western Democracy

Is Western democracy coming apart at the seams? A decade ago, only paranoid alarmists would have posed that question. Today, it may be an expression of cold, brutal realism. On both sides of the Atlantic – from the fires raging in large stretches of London, to the political chicanery that brought the...

07/25/2011 2:10 am

Norway sounds alarm bells in Europe

Barga, Italy – The news from Oslo and Utoya Island shocked Italians. The horrifying carnage was all that anyone talked about this weekend at Caffe Aristo, Barga’s de facto social center, where calcio – soccer – and the latest sexual capers of prime minister Silvio Berlusconi usually...

07/06/2011 11:35 am

It’s time to leave Afghanistan – or is it?

BARGA, Italy–My head tells me it’s time to leave. But my heart, for reasons grounded in personal experience, is profoundly wary. Like almost everyone who has watched, in growing dismay, (article from August last year here) as the war in Afghanistan has dragged mercilessly on, I agree with President...

06/19/2011 12:53 am

Presentation -the story of the Duomo in English and Italian

Under somewhat trying conditions, with high winds and occasional gusts of rain making life a little difficult, never the less, an interested audience stuck it out and listened to the presentation of the book – The Cathedral of Barga – English edition outside the Hotel Villa Moorings in Barga...

06/18/2011 1:24 am

Ground Zero in Guatemala’s drug nightmare

“Nothing focuses the mind like a hanging,” the saying goes. In my case, focus came with the sharp edge of a machete held to my throat and a pistol aimed at my head. Early this spring, the van I was travelling in while on assignment in Guatemala was forced into the jungle by four hooded men. My fellow...

06/17/2011 12:55 pm

Presentation of book on the story of the Duomo

“Il Duomo di Barga – Storia, arte e spiritualità nei primi tre secoli dopo il Mille” – “The cathedral of Barga – History, Art and Spirituality in the three centuries after the year 1000” Presentazione edizione in italiano a cura del prof. Stefano Borsi –...

05/24/2011 8:00 pm

Europe, Arizona and my plumber

The State of Arizona, for many Americans, has come to symbolize anti-immigrant hysteria codified into full-fledged statutory law. Under its highly controversial terms, anyone who simply “appears” to be foreign can be stopped by police and ordered to prove that they are U.S. citizens or legal residents. In...

09/07/2010 4:33 pm

Some reflections on Invisible Cities

andrea guzzoletti outside his studio in Barga this morning pointing to his new QR code ceramic tile linking him to the new iBarga information system Andrea Guzzoletti’s tour of “Invisible Cities” borrows its title and its thematic structure from the brilliant prose-poem of the late Italo Calvino,...

08/23/2010 4:32 pm

Inconvenient Truths in Afghanistan

The Taliban control much of the countryside and dozens of key towns. Casualties among U.S. troops and civilians are soaring. The commanding general of NATO and American forces has been forced to resign. Government corruption is rife. There is little doubt that the situation in Afghanistan is unravelling....

08/05/2010 1:45 am

The Shattered Fact Machine

One way to view the new Internet universe opening around us today is an immense cornucopia, pouring out a endless stream of facts and findings. A revolutionary democratization of knowledge is underway, the cyber pundits proclaim, making more information accessible to more people than at any moment in...

07/02/2010 4:10 pm

OK Corral justice at the US Supreme Court

They were the kind of people you learn to avoid on the streets, two young men with long dirty hair, heavy-metal tattoos, sleeveless t-shirts and saggy denims. They had the jerky movements and staccato speech of barely contained rage or methamphetamine overload. Think of them as context for Monday’s...

01/05/2010 2:22 am

In 2010, hope for the future of news

The funeral dirge for news has been rising, in direct proportion to the spread of the Internet, for much of this millennium’s first decade. In 2009, it reached a crescendo, with newspapers cutting deeply into their staffs or shutting down entirely all over the United States and Europe, as budgets vanished...

11/17/2009 4:19 pm

Good news from an unlikely source: The Middle East

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan While the Obama Administration confronts military setbacks in Afghanistan, and Congress struggles through an acrimonious healthcare debate, there is unprecedented good news from a part of the world that is usually synonymous with crisis. For the first time in three...