Saturday, November 3, 2007
Miniature Lcd San Francisco
If you buy a ticket to travel to other countries, go to admire the monuments, palaces and squares, museums, historic sites and landscapes. If you're lucky, you might have the 'opportunity to exchange the four words with the locals. Then you return home, bringing back a handful of photographs and postcards. But if you read a novel, is like buying a ticket that takes you to the deepest recesses of a 'more land and another people. Reading a foreign novel is an invitation to visit the house of other people and places of a private 'other reality. If you're just a tourist, you might linger a long way to see an old house, in the old town and see perhaps a woman staring out the window. Then you turn around and you leave. If you are a player, you will also see that woman staring out the window, but you'll be next to her in that room, in her thoughts. If you read a foreign novel, you are actually invited into other people's living rooms in their offices and in their schools, since in their bedrooms. You will be invited to share their secret sorrows, moments of joy in the family, their dreams. That is why I believe that literature is a bridge between peoples. I believe that curiosity can be a virtue ethics. I am convinced that the imagined 'other can be an antidote to fanaticism. Imagine the 'other will make you not only the best men in work or in 'love, but you become better human beings. The tragedy is between Jews and Arabs in part in 'inability to so many of us, Jews and Arabs, to imagine the' other. Imagine the 'more real: In love, in terrible fear, anger, passion. Prevails among us' hostility, curiosity rather scarce. Jews and Arabs have something essential in common: in the past is one that others have been treated with contempt and brutality, the violent hand of Europe '. The Arabs through the 'imperialism, colonialism, exploitation and humiliation. The Jews through discrimination, persecution, expulsions, and finally mass extermination. It could think that the two victims, two victims of the same species oppressor, would develop among them a sense of solidarity. Alas, it does not work, either in fiction or in life. The worst conflicts in fact speak out often among the victims of the same oppressor: the children of a violent parent does not necessarily prove the sympathy 'for a' more. Indeed, often seen in 'more a reflection of their executioner. And it is well between Jews and Arabs in the Middle East. While Arab Israelis consider the Last Crusade, an 'extension of' white and colonial Europe, many Israelis, for their part, the Arabs see the new incarnation of their former oppressors, the instigation of pogroms and the Nazis. Questa situazione fa ricadere sull' Europa una speciale responsabilità per la soluzione del conflitto arabo-israeliano: anziché rimproverare e ammonire ora questi, ora quelli, gli europei dovrebbero estendere solidarietà, comprensione e aiuti agli uni e agli altri. Non occorre più scegliere se essere a favore di Israele o a favore della Palestina: è necessario essere a favore della Pace. Forse la donna alla finestra è una palestinese di Nablus. Forse un' ebrea israeliana di Tel Aviv. Se volete aiutare a ristabilire la pace tra queste due donne alle finestre, fareste meglio a informarvi su di loro. Leggete i romanzi, cari amici, vi insegneranno molte cose. È giunto il momento che persino ciascuna di queste due donne si informi meglio sull' other. To learn, finally, that cos 'is that it fills the' other woman in the window of fear, anger, hope. Certainly not to say that reading novels can change the world. But I suggest, and I am firmly convinced that reading novels is one of the best ways to understand that all women, all windows, with trepidation and anxiety, just waiting for peace.
Amos Oz
www.corriere.it
Sunday, October 28, 2007
How Much Free Weights Required For P90x
Who decides on the death
of Stefano Rodota
Who rules the living, those who decide to die? These ancient questions have returned with bullying in the public discussion after the ruling by which the Supreme Court has indicated the solution for the case of Eluana, the girl who is fifteen years in state permanent vegetative for years and for which parents seek the termination of the treatments that keep it alive. None an individual decision. Two recent measures of the courts of Cagliari and Roma have faced and solved problems related to preimplantation embryo diagnosis and treatment of rejection (notation: all three decisions have played a key role of the magistrate). The ruling of the Supreme Court, in particular, is exemplary: the ability to read the law for what it is, and not what you would like it or not, for the rigor of the argument, for taking personal responsibility the judge who, when faced with difficult issues, not escapes, refuge in artificial constructions and thus denying the justice that citizens demand.
born at this point, a doubt. How many of the improvised commentators have actually read that sentence? How many have the tools necessary to understand how a legal system today? The question is more than legitimate in the face of reactions as "unacceptable substitute judicial ',' urgent need to fill a legal vacuum," "violation of the prerogatives of Parliament," to the grotesque idea of \u200b\u200braising before the Constitutional Court a jurisdictional dispute between Parliament and the judiciary.
try to reason. If using the phrase "judicial substitution", which have very worn, it means that the judiciary is able to respond more rapidly than laws, they say one thing correct, but that now belongs to the physiology of the system and not only di quello italiano. Un caso assolutamente identico a quello di Eluana Englaro, la notissima vicenda di Terry Schiavo, venne risolto negli Stati Uniti proprio dai giudici che respinsero seccamente le intromissioni del Parlamento, ribadendo un orientamento assunto dalla Corte Suprema fin dal 1990. Nella stessa direzione si muovono da anni la Cassazione tedesca, l'House of Lords, la Corte europea dei diritti dell'uomo. Analizzando le decisioni di quest'ultima, anzi, si è più volte messo in evidenza che ormai i temi del vivere e del morire trovano sempre più spesso lì indicazioni di principio e soluzioni. Perché questo accada, ha molte spiegazioni. I tempi lenti di tutti i Parlamenti; la difficoltà rigid rules to close in the vicissitudes of life that, as Montaigne reminds us, is "a movement uneven, irregular, multiform; the proper task of the courts to adapt the broad principles to concrete situations.
is what is happening in Italy. But not because there is a legal vacuum. The judges, in fact, have anchored their arguments to a very large number of rules: Articles 2.13 and 32 of the Constitution, the Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine of the Council of Europe, the Charter of Fundamental Rights ; the National Health Service Act of 1978; gli articoli del Codice di deontologia medica. Hanno richiamato sentenze della Corte costituzionale e numerosi precedenti della stessa Cassazione. Un «pieno» di norme che smentisce la tesi del vuoto normativo e dell'indebita supplenza.
A picture so full of principles and rules has been used to arrive at a decision in which it is clear the distinction between the refusal of care at issue, and different assumptions of euthanasia, assisted suicide The starting point is represented by the now indisputable principle of informed consent, from which follows the "power of the person of their own body" (as the Constitutional Court in 1990) and then the illegality of any operation beyond his control. A principle that is not the result of an abandonment of values, of surrendering to the logic of individualism. Born, on the contrary, the desire to affirm the value of the person and his dignity, and finds its origins in the Nuremberg Charter of 1946, written after the trial of Nazi doctors who had violated human dignity and with their experiments.
The person ended thus to be the 'object' of the power of the therapist or anyone else, saw and recognized the full autonomy, so that it was said that it was born a new "moral subject." Hence the imperative indication art. 32 of the Constitution, which prohibits any treatment that violates "the observation of the human person." Here rests the right to refuse any care, that the Supreme Court had already recognized in the past, so that his final decision can be considered as conducting a guideline already established. And the doctor's duty to take care of converting to that "of rispettare la volontà del paziente contraria alla cura», escludendo quindi ogni sua responsabilità.
By adapting this principle to the condition of those in permanent vegetative state, the Supreme Court did not refer to the policy of aggressive therapy, but showed great balance with the two conditions that justify the interruption Treatment of survival: a rigorous investigation of the irreversibility of the permanent vegetative state, the possibility of determining the intention of the person on the basis of his explicit statements or "through their beliefs, their way of life and reference values." The criticisms of these two criteria are not convincing. There is no lack of objective scientific criteria for investigation of the actual condition of the dying. And establish the person's intention can be difficult process that requires great sensitivity, but can be based on a variety of factors capable of reaching unequivocal conclusions.
Two other points, equally important, were defined by the Supreme Court. The first concerns the characterization of nutrition and hydration as a forced 'treatment', which may be waived. Conclusion which is contradicted areas linked to the Catholic Church, but widely accepted by the scientific community and that is the basis of decisions of courts of other countries. The second is "the application of the measures suggested by science and medical practice in the interest of the patient", so the legality of sedation, thus solving a question born with the Welby case and removing any foundation to the subject of terrorism in agony which would have condemned the dying.
The framework defined by the Supreme Court, therefore, is rigorous, firmly founded on the principles and standards, shows that even in the absence of a specific law, the legal system provides all the tools needed to tackle the difficult issues of end of life. Thanks to this ruling, the case for a policy may be addressed in a more clear.
The Supreme Court and other courts have not "created" rules. Extracted from the system all the elements that require the recognition of personal autonomy, and this involves a series of consequences. The refusal of care is a principle that can not be challenged, and today should be respected the will of those who, in the event of a permanent vegetative state, said to refuse the continuation of any treatment. A law, therefore, must have as its objective the consolidation of this situation and also to avoid any controversial case brings with it the need to go to court. This is done by assigning importance to the formal living will, without turning it into a bureaucratic bottlenecks, and by clarifying the limits of responsibility of the physician.
would be unacceptable, however, an intervention the legislature turned nell'improponibile rematch of a policy that purports to restrict a freedom firmly founded on the Constitution. It is a real risk. Too many political exploitation for years accompanying the themes of life. Too many regressions cultural rape the public debate. But after the reasons given judges, there is to be hoped that Parliament does not become a place of restoration unconstitutional.
Article taken from the Republic of 25 October 2007
www.radicali.it
Friday, October 19, 2007
Poodle And Brussel Griffon Mix
A protocol for the factories of Ford
• by Corriere della Sera on 19 October 2007, p.. 1
of Maurizio Ferrera
Scholars call it "Lego model." It 'a new type of welfare in some countries is supplanting the old "Ford Model', made increasingly obsolete by changes in the economy and society.
The model is organized around the large Ford factory and focuses on the worker (male); its main goal is to not subsidize the work through grants and pensions. The Lego model is rather oriented towards society as a whole in the center and inept individuals, especially women and children.
Its objective is to support the needs of the entire life cycle, paying particular attention to the phase of early childhood. Inspired by the philosophy of the famous Danish toy (the building blocks for the 'creative'), the model assigns a key role Lego wings' learning, training, updating skills as tools for growth and security at the individual level and collectively. Per il modello Ford la giustizia sociale è essenzialmente una questione di «compensazioni» tra classi e categorie occupazionali e l'arena decisiva è il mercato del lavoro. Per il modello Lego la battaglia per l'equità e l'eguaglianza di opportunità deve cominciare molto prima: le arene decisive sono la famiglia, i servizi per l'infanzia, la scuola.
11 modello Lego non è solo un'idea astratta degli studiosi. E' un approccio che vari governi europei seguono già da tempo. I Paesi scandinavi investono per i servizi per l'infanzia, la scuola e la formazione più di quanto spendono per le pensioni. Nell'ultimo decennio la Gran Bretagna e l'Irlanda hanno significativamente recalibrated their welfare systems to women and children, and Zapatero in Spain now follows their example. The new approach is inspiring social reform also some central and eastern European countries such as Estonia or Slovenia. Italy, however, is lagging behind.
In the program there were several tracks of the Union Lego model, especially in the chapter on the rights of the person and the family and what about the school. During the election campaign of 2006, many politicians now in government had often repeated the slogan "first the women and children," making it almost a flag. There was talk about baby bond, a hundred thousand new jobs in the nurseries, supports universal alle famiglie con figli. Nel maggio scorso, al convegno di Firenze organizzato da Rosy Bindi, vari ministri avevano annunciato misure per sostenere il lavoro delle madri, per contrastare la povertà dei minori, per realizzare condizioni di maggiore eguaglianza «ai nastri di partenza». Persino Rifondazione comunista si era data una mossa, presentando in Parlamento un disegno di legge per l'istituzione di un «reddito minimo di cittadinanza per i bambini e le bambine», pari a 250 euro mensili. Nessuno si aspettava certo una piena conversione del governo Prodi al nuovo approccio. Ma qualche mattoncino Lego, questo sì, eravamo stati così ingenui da aspettarcelo.
But no. Under the Protocol on welfare, we have witnessed a real comeback in full regalia of the old Ford model: the centerpiece of the bill just passed by the government of new pensions, the overall logic is still that of compensation for women and is reserved for children only a few words distracted, some vague promise. Rifondazione is back to claim "compensation" and "refunds." The Budget has added a nice icing on the other hand compensates for her relief, there will be less money for child-care facilities.
Really there was no room to do otherwise? The political resistance and trade unions were very strong, no one denies. Negotiation was difficult, the chapter on social safety nets is however a positive result. But some concrete measure towards the Lego model could (and still can) launch. To give a signal of change, to start some virtuous circle. But most of all to help that about one million of Italian children under ten years living in poverty and social exclusion and economic model that Ford insists, blatantly and shamefully, to ignore.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Sunday, October 7, 2007
24 Weeks Pregnant And Pain Around Navel
Lisbon
goodbye But the new strategy is uncertain
Security + Flexibility: is the new watchword European Union. But we are sure that works? A comparison of two economists (Marcello Messori and Bruno Amoroso) and a trade unionist (Walter Cerf)
Martina Toti
In a book published recently, the American sociologist Richard Sennett claimed that "the practice of flexibility is mainly concentrated on the forces that bend the people." And speaking of "men flexible": those "bent", in fact, the changes in the world of contemporary work, where the expression "Indefinitely" was replaced by the slogans of the new capitalism - "mobility", "risk", "uncertainty". For several years in Europe we speak of "flexicurity", a neologism that combines, in almost an oxymoron, the concepts of flexibility and security. But a union is really possible? And at what cost? We discussed with Walter Cerf, confederal secretary of the ETUC, and economists Bruno Amoroso and Marcello Messori.
After the publication of the Green Paper on Labour Law in November last year and the Commission Communication on flexicurity in June, the European Union is preparing to define the arguments in favor of this new formula and a set of common principles for Member States. So "flexicurity - as confirmed by Walter Cerf, confederal secretary of the ETUC - is an idea that is becoming central in the work of the European Commission. In a sense, is gradually replacing the Lisbon Strategy that, since 2000, had intended to make Europe 'the knowledge economy more competitive and dynamic world'. " An alternative that is not convincing at all Bruno Amoroso, a professor of economics at the University of Roskilde, Denmark, according to which the introduction of flexicurity in Europe stems from the "recognition che la strategia di Lisbona si è rivelata inutile e impotente rispetto agli obiettivi di crescita e occupazione che si era prefissata”. Secondo Amoroso, insomma, “la flexicurity è un tentativo di rianimazione di quella strategia fatto con scarsa convinzione”.
La mondializzazione, la flessibilità della domanda e dell’offerta, le nuove forme di produzione del lavoro e le stesse tecnologie della comunicazione hanno cambiato radicalmente lo scenario lavorativo. Per questo, secondo Marcello Messori, la formula ibrida della flexicurity potrebbe essere “un tentativo interessante di combinare mobilità e sicurezza, se interpretata in senso proprio come accade in Danimarca; per farlo però non si può use short cuts to be invested many resources, with very extensive social safety nets, if not universalistic, and a permanent training system that allows the adjustment of human resources. " But the model proposed by Denmark is not a panacea. Cerf is to point out: "It would be unfair leaning against the community, as in the Danish model, all costs and consequences of flexibility. Here is one of the theoretical foundations of flexicurity, should respond in some way: it is true that companies today have to deal with the global market but, in any case, should not be exempted from the consequences that implies flexibility. "
Flexicurity does not work for all
Based on his experience in Denmark, Amoroso illustrates results of the Danish case: "For years, a million people (20% of the population) are not considered unemployed and the working age live income transfer. The flexicurity works to allow rotation in the use among the professional groups most active, but turns out to be largely ineffective in ensuring the return to productive professional groups marginalized by age group over 45 years. " Messori explains, the contrast is to be created between the mobility of human resources, on the other hand, their development, "because the real competition to play on the human factor, or what economists call human capital theory. " In other words, if flexibility is understood as a way to contain labor costs in the short term, it is not a factor in competitiveness. Neither is required because of the unification of global markets, because it contradicts and undermines the strength of human resources, their training, their enormous potential. " Well one thing is the uncertainty, one thing is an innovative mobility related to a process of great significance. For this we need - adds Cerf - "support for mobility through a training process that allows the conversion of quality and ensuring a level of welfare as high as possible. "
difficult to apply in Italy
According to the analysis of Messori for a country like Italy, it would completely redefine the institutions of the labor market, which today are among the weakest in Europe regarding the protection unemployment and worker training. "It's a myth to debunk - Messori explains - the principle which, if we improve a little 'our system and a bit' our social safety net, we run the flexicurity. On the other hand, thoroughly restructure our system would cost very large and difficult to predict. "flexicurity But it is difficult to apply in Italy for other reasons:" The system - and love to speak - calls for a tax transparent, a government with a culture of 'service' and the common good, and cultural cohesion social and that is possible in countries with strong ethnic and national homogeneity, such as Denmark. This is a 'system' and not 'means' - says Amoroso -. What sense does it speak of "flexicurity" in a country in pursuit of the 'treasure' hidden and used as a weapon of blackmail and bargaining party? "
The risks of insecurity Insecurity
and job insecurity are key elements involved in the flexicurity debate. In this regard, Walter Cerf warns that strengthen the flexible component to the detriment of security and guarantees, not to mention more work but easy to use standard "would be a mistake, a gift to liberalism, as in the Europe of 27 elements of insecurity labor market is already exploding exponentially. "
In fact, the latest figures released by Eurostat for 2005 - when the EU had 25 member states - speak to an employment rate of 63.8% with one worker in seven temporary employment: in 2005, 14.5% of the population in Europe working age - or between 15 and 64 years - had a temporary contract, a figure rose from the previous year by almost a percentage point. The lack of a unified labor law and, conversely, the presence of 27 labor markets with asymmetric rights also encourages businesses to practice a kind of social dumping within the EU itself. In this regard, the Congress of Seville , ETUC has proposed, as Cerf says, "to set a minimum set of rights valid for all member states, on the basis of the Charter of Fundamental Rights", another important factor then the definition of self-employment and one employee: "In many states, in fact - explains Cerf - the individual employment contracts are becoming even risked calling into question even undermine collective agreements and union rights."
Europe: Harmony remote
Yet it seems that Europe has difficulties to adopt a common platform. For example, the opt-out of Britain on the Charter of Fundamental Rights calls for a bitter debate at Bruno Amoroso: "Britain has a negative weight on the European Union because it pushes Europe towards economic and cultural horizons Atlantic, enemies of the European social model and an economic policy and rights of coexistence with Asia and Africa. " To ask Europe to intervene in this matter with a uniform policy would require further resources that currently do not seem to be available. "With the current resources and without their resettlement, perhaps providing the funding cuts to agricultural policies - Messori explains - it seems very unlikely that the EU can not only encourage but also to coordinate a complex project such as the flexicurity ". What
economic means is, in fact, a major weakness in the construction of flexicurity. "All the ingredients need of public resources so high as to ensure the community to manage not only flexibility but also security - said Cerf -. Think of the Danish model, which combines the flexicurity to a high welfare and taxation among the highest in Europe. Yet the European trend today is towards a reduction in taxes. At present, the flexicurity as an element capable of combining flexibility and security is virtually impossible to implement. " An inability to judge Bruno Amoroso in light of the cultural attitudes of workers, employers and the public: "On one hand, it must be a predisposition entrepreneurial innovation and business risk that is not within the shores of the Italian culture. On the other workers, both absorbed and those who remain unemployed, they have to pay the personal costs - from stress to family instability. "
is short, that, while talking about the European flexicurity, we returned to the Flexibility of Richard Sennett, the concept that once was used to indicate the capacity of the branches of a tree bending in the wind without breaking, and then went on to indicate the ability human to adapt to change. Yet everything has a price if the original title that Sennett had chosen for his book The Corrosion of Character is - corrosion of personality - charitably translated into Italian expression Man flexible. What will become of man hours flessicuro?
( www.rassegna.it, September 4, 2007 )
Friday, September 28, 2007
Balloon Powered Car Tips
| The strength of the monks |
| ENZO BIANCHI |
| Endless streams of monks walking silent and resolute in the middle of two rows of the crowd with their shaved heads and orange and crimson clothes, unarmed monks squatting in front of soldiers in riot gear. Ports used to the silence antilacrimogeni covered with masks, old and young monks injured, killed, imprisoned, beaten ... The world seems tragically out only at this time an entire country and, at the heart of it, its monks. And, surprise, wonder what inner strength to face them and move them a lever which relies for his ransom a people oppressed by a dictatorial regime. People we hastily judge "out of the world, detached from the ambitions and worries that inhabit their contemporaries, they reveal more able to grasp the roots of a dislocation and the unsustainability of a life, those most able to voice - paradoxically through silence - the stifled cry of the oppressed, taking on the suffering and dignity of a nation. We see them only in extreme situations, like at the time of the monks who set fire in Vietnam, the former Burma in revolt or resistance and exile of the Tibetan lamas, an icon of a people battered, or confine them in a fascinating world poetic, like the protagonists from the Burmese Harp or the most recent Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter ... and Spring. Yet they know very concrete grasp what eludes the most: the ultimate root of things. This certainly depends on some characteristics of Buddhism and its monks, via a "monastic" in its essence and structure, which inside every young person is invited to spend time as Monaco in their own learning human society where ordinary people encounter every day on their way the monks who, in silence, trust and abandonment to the generosity of others, ask the street a bowl of rice, food for them, yes, but especially at the donor to pursue righteousness in their lives. Not by chance we saw pictures of monks in recent days that kept ostentatiously reversed its bowl as a sign of extreme protest, as if to say we are willing to deprive ourselves of food, but at the same time deprive the company of unfair road to make a 'meritorious action. But this epiphany in the capacity of Burmese monks to catalyze the feelings of ordinary people especially find some common traits of monasticism as an anthropological phenomenon, even before that as an element internal to a particular religious way. The monastic life, in fact, is a human phenomenon, and therefore universal, which has the same characters at all latitudes, this not only in the history of various religions, but also of some current and philosophical schools. It is a form of life that always affects both men and women that is characterized by the celibacy and some separation from the social environment and often also religious affiliation: elements that alone will explain the nature of minority presence always. As part marginal, emerges from the Monaco area exogenous but, being part of the endogenous system of religion and society, is an external agent that works and is effective inside. Monasticism never stays completely exogenous, "other" - the pain became sectarian and heretical - but neither is it ever entirely endogenous, as if it were a force that was created and developed within the institutional system. This dual membership of Monaco is that, as a minority effective inoculants within the religious and social system which is always a diastasis and jointly building and protest. To some extent the Monaco maintains contact with the culture dominant, but is also a protest, and a collision with this research, conflicting with the "middle way." "Peculiar task of Monaco - Merton wrote, a Monaco of the West so familiar to Buddhist monasticism - to keep alive in the modern world is the contemplative experience and keep it open to technological man of our time the possibility of recovering the integrity of its deeper interiority. " Yes, monasticism is counterculture, that other culture, minority, but for this very reason, able to play a crucial role and effective in the long term. So, why not ask for those who exhibit the Burmese monks: they show for us, wrapped in the richness of our short-sighted person with no sense of the West. Article from www.lastampa.it (09/28/2007) |
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Babi Italia Carlisle Convertible Crib
Il Corriere della Sera, September 23, 2007
Market and welfare, Italy and the Fiat economic scene The intervention of World Sergio Marchionne at the conference of "industry"
The history of Fiat needs to be placed and understood within the social context in which the turnaround has been achieved. Managing a business in Europe means first of all have to do with a model of capitalism that have characteristics very specific. Some economists are convinced that the European system - to improve productivity, efficiency and profits - should converge towards the American model. I do not think that this type of convergence is possible in the medium term, but I do not believe it would be desirable. European organizations are born and raised in a cultural soil fertilized by two historical conditions: a tradition of openness to the relatively new market and a strong sense of social responsibility. There is no single model of capitalism. United States, Asia, Europe are all in competition with each other but no one converges to anyone else. The only common denominator is the market. These organizations give their best when they are made bath and open competition in the global economy.
is the concept of social responsibility that distinguishes Europe from the United States. According to OECD analysis, public social spending is about 27% of GDP in France, Germany and Italy - in Sweden even 38% - while it is around 16% in the U.S.. The difference between the levels of public spending - European and American - is manifested clearly in 1975. Since that time there is a significant increase in spending in Europe while in the U.S. remains constant over time. Investigate what are the reasons is the job of politicians. Whatever the reason, these differences exist, and anyone working in Europe should consider this particular social and political context. I am convinced, not only on the basis of my experience in Fiat, but also in other European industries, which can and must seek constructive dialogue. And the solutions can be found. In
Fiat have obtained important results on the path of dialogue. After ten years-and without an hour strike, which is a quite unique event for Italy was re-signed-business integration. After ten years were recruited in the first young factory in exchange for working overtime shifts. We have signed an agreement with local institutions for the rehabilitation of Mirafiori, the largest Italian industrial complex, involving also launching a new line of production and absorption of short-term layoffs. The results achieved by Fiat show that similar transformations are possible, even in a country with a strong consciousness and union with what the majority of Anglo-Saxon commentators would call "inflexible structure of the work." If I had to choose between trying to resolve the report of General Motors and its union (UAW) to treat or employment levels in Europe, I would prefer the latter.
There is no doubt that the productivity and flexibility are key elements of our industrial development. In this context, Italy is far behind the rest of Europe, but I remain convinced that the path of constructive dialogue that the problems can be solved. If a liberal society must stand the test of time, is in its interest to support those affected by the change.
Europe can and must be distinguished in the creation and operation of free markets, recognizing and dealing effectively with the consequences of their activities on their members. It must do so in an honest and fair, without falling prey to some too protective mechanisms that are already in use in some countries and especially in Italy, can seriously threaten the country's industrial recovery. But the commitment exists and can not be ignored. The development of an enterprise is not just a question di tecnologia o di risorse finanziarie. È prima di tutto una questione di cultura. Le nostre imprese hanno bisogno di abbracciare la sfida del nuovo e pensare al futuro come a una grande opportunità. Hanno bisogno di un contesto trasparente e altamente competitivo. Hanno bisogno di vivere la cultura del cambiamento come una necessità. Di misurarsi ogni giorno sul merito, di fondare le proprie radici sui valori della concorrenza e del mercato. Quello che ogni Paese può fare è garantire che questa partita si giochi alla pari, che le opportunità siano le stesse offerte ad altre imprese in altri Paesi. In Italia non sempre queste condizioni sono così facili da trovare.
Qualche ragione c'è se gli investimenti esteri sono ancora così low. And these reasons are called bureaucracy, services, infrastructure, taxes and operating costs. From my personal experience, I saw that the red tape at the end protect inefficient companies, companies that have no prospects of development and in most cases downloaded costs on to customers. The bureaucracy does nothing but food itself. Because it brings the company to close like a clam, to protect what already exists, without ever addressing the challenges of change. Similarly, there are other important elements to build an economic system that can show "attractive" not only for those who already work in Italy but also for foreign companies. I think the improvement of public services, the creation a network of efficient and modern infrastructure, starting with the road network and transport in general. But I think also to reduce the tax burden and the cost of energy as an issue in Italy is quite disproportionate to the rest of the industrialized countries.
All these arguments apply even more so for southern Italy, where priority is to bridge the gap with the rest of the country. But the perspective from which we must move can not be that charitable. The culture of welfarism produces dependence and off the spirit of initiative and sense of responsibility. The work is created only if the economic mechanisms are efficient and if the market demands are high. In this way the culture of change and competition can find fertile ground. I believe that the case of Fiat is just one example of the restructuring of Europe and force positive change. Our change was made by a group of international managers, many of them Italians, who have embraced the idea of \u200b\u200bglobal competition and are willing to get involved and to involve other stakeholders in the economic system to achieve the necessary levels of competitiveness . Large organizations are the result of the leadership of men and women who understand the concept of service, community, respect for other fundamental and inspiring. There
una storia che oggi non vi ho raccontato. In un certo senso è troppo presto per raccontarla, è la storia della trasformazione personale dei leader che sono stati coinvolti nel rilancio della Fiat e delle persone che gestivano. Ci sono dozzine di esempi simili e indubbiamente più validi e significativi: General Electric negli ultimi 25 anni, prima con Jack Welch ed adesso con Jeff Immelt; la resurrezione di Ibm operata da Lou Gerstner, le esperienze di Robert Oppenheimer nel Manhattan project con il team che ha costruito la bomba atomica, l'incredibile vittoria di Bili Clinton nelle elezioni presidenziali del 1992. Ma l'elemento comune a tutti questi casi è che tutti hanno lasciato un segno indelebile sulla formazione e sulla crescita dei leader. Sono cambiati forever.
We are learning how to live from survivors and we are developing the ability to think ahead in an aggressive and positive. And we're doing in a country that has often been labeled by the Economist structurally and chronically loser with titles such as "Goodbye. sweet life "and" Do not cry for me, Italy. But this is proof that there is hope for us all, not even the British have the ability to go beyond the limits of credulity and imagination. After all, the history of Fiat is the story of the power of leadership and lack of fear of an intact group of leaders committed to achieving the goals. In the words of Mel Gibson in Braveheart: "Men do not follow men. The men follow courage. " And maybe we have to agree with a political theorist much misunderstood - Niccolo Machiavelli - that about 600 years ago, said: "The return to the principle is often determined by simple virtue of a man. His example has such an influence for good men want to imitate the bad ones and they are ashamed to lead a life contrary to his example. " In
Fiat we are building a team led by men and women of virtue. It is thanks to their courage and their virtues if I can now conclude by quoting the end of the book''A History of Two Cities''by Charles Dickens and paraphrasing the last words: "It is a Far, Far Better Thing Fiat does, Than it has ever done. It Is A Far, Far Better Place is going to it Than it has ever gone. " Translated: "Fiat is doing much, much better than it ever did. It's going to a better place, much better than it has ever been. "
Source: www.corriere.it
Saturday, September 15, 2007
Lime Green Tea Towels
Article from The Republic of September 5, 2007, p.. 1
David Grossman
publish here almost exactly the speech with which David Grossman dellaLetteratura Festival opened yesterday in Berlin: an analysis of the language of individuals and the language of the masses against the backdrop of the Holocaust and the relationship that the new generations with the tragedy: the subject of Grossman's most famous novel, "See Under: Love."
Being an Israeli writer who opens literature festival in Berlin is a great honor for me. This sentence would have been unthinkable and unpronounceable until a few years ago and still can not be indifferent to its import. Although between Germany and Israel - and between Israelis, Jews and Germans - are maintained close relationships, a phrase like this is neither neutral nor obvious. Is there a place in consciousness, in the heart, in which certain phrases have to go through the sharp blades of time and memoria, come un raggio di luce, per scomporsi in una miriade di suoni e di colori.
E qui, a Berlino, non posso che cominciare il mio discorso con queste parole, che si scompongono dentro di me attraverso le lame affilate del tempo e della memoria. Sono nato e cresciuto a Gerusalemme, in un quartiere, in una famiglia, dove la gente non era nemmeno in grado di pronunciare la parola «Germania». Faticava persino a dire «Shoah». Parlava di «ciò che è successo laggiù». È interessante notare che in ebraico, in yiddish, o in qualsiasi altra lingua parlata da ebrei, la Shoah è per lo più «qualcosa che è successo laggiù», Unlike "what happened then," for non-Jews. There is a vast difference between there and then. Then is an adverb of time that indicates a past that no longer exists. There is an adverb of place, alluding to the fact that somewhere, at some place, what happened is still smoldering, sirafforza, and could return to explode. It is not a finished thing.
Certainly not for us Jews. As a child I felt very often speak of "the Nazi beast," but when asked who it was adults, they refused to explain.
Dicevano che ci sono cose che un bambino non deve sapere. Più tardi scrissi in Vedi alla voce: amore di Momik, figlio di sopravvissuti all'Olocausto al quale i genitori non rivelano ciò che è avvenuto laggiù. Momik, pieno di paura, immagina la belva nazista come un mostro che domina un paese chiamato laggiù, maltratta le persone a cui vuole bene, fa cose che lasciano ferite indelebili e nega loro la possibilità di avere una vita normale, serena.
La mia generazione, quella dei nati nei primi anni Cinquanta in Israele, viveva in un silenzio carico di presenze, densamente affollato. Nel quartiere in cui abitavo there were people who had nightmares every night, screaming. More than once, when we walked into a room where adults tell stories of the war, the conversation was interrupted. But every now and then we could pick up fragments of phrases: "The last time I saw him in Himmlerstrasse at Treblinka ',' She lost two sons during the first raid." (...)
When I was seven years was held in the Jerusalem trial of Adolf Eichmann and then we began to hear descriptions of the atrocities during the dinner. My generation has lost its appetite, and not just for food. He has lost something deeper than our children, then of course we did not understand and that it became clear later. Maybe it was the loss of the illusion that our parents could protect us from what made us afraid, or the belief that we Jews could one day live safe and peaceful as the other people.
But perhaps most of all, we felt the loss of our natural trust of children in the other, in the goodness of others, in his compassion. About twenty years ago when my eldest son was three years old, in kindergarten that he attended was celebrated, as every year, the day of remembrance for the victims of the Holocaust. He did not understand much of what he was told. He returned home confused and scared. "Dad, what are the Nazis? What they did and why. " I did not want to tell her. I, who was raised in a silence that I had caused fears and nightmares, I had written a book about a boy who was almost mad because of the silence of the parents, suddenly I understood why my parents and those of my friends had been silent.
I felt that if I told my son what had happened there, if I had mentioned, but with great delicacy, something of its purity of three year old child would be contaminated. I felt that when those possibilities had made cruel innocent in his conscience, he would never have been the same child. It was no longer a child.
After it was published in See Under: Love in Israel, some critics wrote that I belonged to the "second generation of the Holocaust," which was the son of "Holocaust survivors." They are not. My father arrived in the land of Israel from Poland in 1936. My mother was born in Palestine before the founding of the state.
Yet they are the son of "Holocaust survivors" because even in my home, as in so many Israeli homes, had stretched a wire load of anguish that we could tap at any time. And even though we were very careful and did not quickly, she felt a constant tremor of insecurity in the possibility of existence of jealousy towards others and what these others might get you when you least expect it. (...)
Anyone who was born in Israel after the Holocaust is brought inside the feeling - that we were forbidden to speak and then maybe we were not able to express in words - that we Jews in dialogue directly with death. That life, even when it is full of energy and hope and fertility of a young nation, under renovation, is more of a huge effort, constant, to escape the threat of death.
In Israel of the fifties and sixties, not only in moments of despair but also those in which the exaltation for the "creation of a nation 'faded only slightly, when we felt a bit 'tired of our terrific revival, in those moments of melancholy, private and national, we could feel the grip of frost that gripped the heart and whispered softly but peremptory: the life fades so fast, everything is so fragile. The body, the family. Death is real, everything else is an illusion.
When I realized that I would become a writer, I also realized that I wrote about the Holocaust. I think these two consciousnesses are born in me simultaneously. Perhaps because from an early age I had the feeling that all the books I had read about the Holocaust not answer simple questions, vital, and I had to ask myself to which I respond da solo.
E più il tempo passava più sentivo crescere in mela sensazione che non sarei stato in grado di comprendere la mia esistenza in Israele come uomo, padre, scrittore, israeliano, ebreo, fintanto che non avessi scritto della vita che non avevo vissuto laggiù, durante la Shoah, e cosa mi sarebbe successo se fossi stato una vittima, o uno degli assassini.
Perché volevo sapere entrambe le cose. Non mi accontentavo di una.(...) Volevo sapere cosa avrei fatto per contrastare questo tentativo di annientamento. Quale scintilla di umanità mi sarebbe rimasta into a reality whose only goal was to turn it off.
to a question like this everyone must answer for themselves. But perhaps I can give you a hint. In Jewish tradition there is a legend, or a belief, namely that in every man there is a bone called the "luz" - "heart" in Hebrew - placed on top of the spine. This small bone contains the essence of the soul and is indestructible. Even if the whole body should disintegrate or burn, our "core" remains intact, preserve the peculiarity that in every one of us, the root of our be. And it is from this little bone that man will recreate the day of resurrection of the dead.! (...)
The second question I asked myself while writing See Under: Love is related to the first and in a sense comes from it. I wondered how a normal person - as were many Nazis and their supporters - will become part of a mechanism of mass destruction. In other words, what do I suppress, obscure, remove, kill me in order to collaborate on a planned genocide, to be able to kill another human being for wanting the extermination of an entire people, or accept it in silence.
Perhaps I should refine the question: am I working right now - consciously or unconsciously, actively or passively - in a process whose aim is to harm another person or group of people?
"The death of a man is a tragedy," said Stalin, "but that of millions is statistics." We talk for a moment as a tragedy turns into statistics. I'm not saying of course that we are all murderers. And 'course not. Yet most of us seem almost indifferent to the suffering of whole nations, near and far, or that of hundreds of millions of people poor, hungry, sick, in both our nations and in other parts of the world. We learn not to cure us of the pain of strangers who work for us, the suffering of peoples living under occupation - our own or others - or in a dictatorship or in conditions of slavery.
With astonishing ease we create mechanisms that are responsible for us to distance ourselves from the suffering of others. Can we, in our consciousness and emotional level, to ignore the causal link that exists between the economic prosperity of nazioni occidentali e la povertà altrui; tra il nostro benessere e le vergognose condizioni di lavoro di altra gente; tra la qualità della nostra vita, i nostri condizionatori d’aria e le nostre automobili, e le sciagure ecologiche che si abbattono su altri.
Questi «altri» vivono in condizioni talmente terribili che per lo più non hanno nemmeno la possibilità di porre domande come quelle che pongo io ora. Non è solo il genocidio ad annientare il «nocciolo» di un essere umano. Anche la fame, la povertà, le malattie, l’esilio spengono e uccidono gradualmente l’anima del singolo, e talvolta di an entire people.
We will not accept any personal responsibility for the terrible things that happen at a short distance from us. Either through direct actions or to merely express solidarity. We are comfortable when it comes to personal responsibility - part of an indistinct mass, faceless, identity, and apparently free from burdens and sins. And probably this is the big question that modern man has to ask: in what circumstances, at what time, I become "mass"?
There are different definitions for the process by which an individual is confused in the mass or agrees to hand over parts of themselves. And because we are men of literature, I will choose one in accordance with our interests. My impression is that we become "mass" when he stops thinking, to develop things according to our own vocabulary, and automatically accept and uncritical expressions of terminology and language dettatoci by others.
I turn into "mass" when they cease to make compromises with my words and moral choices that are willing to make. (...)
resorts to the figure of the Polish writer Bruno Schultz jew to illustrate the match between an individual who had a very peculiar language and the language of mass "- the meeting between the tragedy and statistics. I refer to the story of his assassination during the Second World War in the ghetto of his town, Drohobycz. The story is well known, and perhaps not even true, is a legend, a story in which over the years has built "the myth of Schulz 'among his admirers around the world.
But even if it was an anecdote, tocca un punto profondo, vero. «Gli aneddoti sono sostanzialmente fedeli alla verità» scrive Ernesto Sabato, «proprio perché sono finzioni, inventati in dettaglio per adeguarsi con grande precisione a una certa persona». E infatti, anche se questa particolare storia sulla morte di Shulz non è vera, ciò che essa esprime è sostanzialmente fedele alla verità ironica e tragica di quest’uomo, all’orrore del possibile incontro tra il «singolo» e la «massa», e quindi la racconterò così come l’ho sentita la prima volta.
Nel ghetto di Drohobycz, durante la guerra, un SS officer had forced Shulz to paint a fresco in his house. An opponent of that officer, who had quarreled with him because of a gambling debt, Shulz came upon the street, drew his revolver and shot him in revenge for the man for whom he was working. According to the rumor the murderess, he then went to his rival and said: "I killed your jew." And he said, "Very well, and now I will kill you."
I learned of this story right after having finished reading the first book of Bruno Schulz. I remember that I closed the book and left the house. I walked for hours immersed in such a fog. I was in a state where, to put it simply, I did not want to live anymore. I did not want to continue to exist in a world where things could happen like this, where there are people like those Nazi officers who thought things like that. Where there is a language that allows monsters like to say phrases like "I killed your jew" and "All right, now I will kill you."
wrote See Under: Love to return to myself, among other things, the will to live, love for life. And perhaps also to heal from offense that I felt on behalf of Bruno Shulz, for the way in which his murder was described and "explained". One explanation inhuman, 'mass'. As if human beings were bargaining chips, or wheels of a system or accessories that you can replace with others, or only part of a statistic.
In the writings of Bruno Schulz, every piece of reality has its own personality. Every passing cloud, every mobile, every tailor's dummy, every bowl of fruit, every dog, every ray of sunshine, every object, even the most trivial, has its own individuality, its own essence, its own character.
And every page in every song, bursting into life, rich in content and meaning. Suddenly a life that deserves the name. Enormous work that takes place simultaneously in all the substrates of conscious and unconscious, illusion, dream, nightmare, senses, feelings, a language rich in nuance.
Each row has a rebellion against what Schulz calls "the fortified wall that rests on the meaning of 'is a protest against the desolation, the banality, routine, the stupidity, the stereotypes, the tyranny of the simple, mass. (...)
When I finished reading the book, Schulz knew that he gave me, with his writing, a key for me to write about the Holocaust. Not death and destruction but of life, of what the Nazis had destroyed mechanically, in an industrialized, mass.
I also remember that, with the arrogance of the young writer, I said to myself that I wanted to write a book that tremble on the shelf. That was vital as a blink in the life of a man. Not a "life" in quotes that spends weak, but as one that teaches us Shulz. A real life, the square in which we must be content not to kill the next but we must make it alive, as time has passed, the visions seen, the words spoken thousands of times, and you and me.
The reality we live in today is perhaps not as cruel as the one created by the Nazis, but some of its underlying mechanisms have laws very similar to that obscure the individuality of man and led him to reject obligations and responsibilities towards the fate of others. And the increasingly dominated aggression, dall'estraneità, incitement to hatred and fear, where fanaticism and fundamentalism seem to get stronger every day while other forces lose hope for change.
values \u200b\u200band horizons of our world, the atmosphere you breathe and the language that dominates it are dictated largely by what we call mass media, expression coined in the thirties of last century when sociologists began to speak of 'mass society'. But are we really aware the meaning of this phrase? Of which process the media have suffered? We realize that most of them not only convey a type of communication to the masses but turn their users in bulk?
And they do it with arrogance and cynicism, using a poor and vulgar language, dealing with complex political and moral simplicity and false virtue, all around us creating an atmosphere of spiritual and prostitution emotional ensnares us, making everything they touch kitsch: war, death, love and intimacy.
At first glance it seems that this type of communication focuses on the individual, the individual, not the masses. But it is a dangerous suggestion. The means of mass communication place the individual in the foreground, even the consecrated, channeling more and more towards himself. Indeed, in the end, only to himself, to his needs, his interests, his aspirations, his passions. In many ways, overt and hidden, they release the individual from what he is nevertheless anxious to break free: the responsibility to other pearls consequences of his actions. And when they do obscure his political consciousness, social and morality, and turn it into a docile material for manipulation by those who control the media and others. In other words, turn it into mass. (...) And 'This is the message of the media: a rapid turnover, so that it sometimes seems that the information not to be significant and important, but the pace of one another, the cadence neurotic, greedy, commercial, seductress who create. In the spirit of the time the message is zapping.
The literature has no influential representatives in the centers of global power that I just described, and it's hard to believe in his power to make some change. Può però proporre un diverso modo di vivere: secondo un ritmo interno, una coerenza personale più adatta ai nostri bisogni spirituali e naturali di quanto ci venga prepotentemente imposto da apparati esterni.
Io so che quando leggo un buon libro qualcosa dentro di me si chiarisce. La mia percezione di essere una creatura particolare si fa più netta. La voce precisa, distinta, che mi giunge dall’esterno risveglia in me altre voci, alcune delle quali erano mute in precedenza. E anche se migliaia di altre persone leggono lo stesso libro nel momento in cui lo sto leggendo io, ognuna lo vive in modo diverso. Per ognuno quel libro è una cartina particular type of litmus.
A good book - and there are not many because the literature, of course, is susceptible to the lures and pitfalls of mass communication - makes the player stand out from the crowd. (...)
When I finished writing See Under: Love knew that she wrote to say that he who destroys a man, any man, in the end destroys a work of genius, unique, specific and infinitely more that we can never recreate, nor there ever will be similar.
Over the past four years I have written a novel that mean the same thing, but set elsewhere, in a different reality. The protagonist is an Israeli woman of about 50 years, mother of a soldier leaving for war. His concern for her son leads her to foresee the tragedy lurking, and she tries with all his strength by fighting to avert the fate that awaits the boy. He makes a long march, covering almost half of Israel and constantly telling the child. It 's so in fact trying to protect him, doing the only thing in his power to make the existence of child more vivid and concrete to tell the story of his life. And one day, the small notebook that brings with it, writes: "Thousands of moments and hours and days, millions of shares, a multitude of gestures, attempts, mistakes, words and thoughts. Everything to create a unique human being. " He added: "A human being that is so easy to destroy."