The Emperor by Ryszard Kapuscinski
“Borges had inherited from his father the disease that gradually, implacably weakened his sight, and the doctor had forbidden him to read in dim light. One day, on a train journey, he became so engrossed by a detective novel that he carried on reading, page after page, in the fading dusk. Shortly before his destination, the train entered a tunnel. When it emerged Borges could no longer see anything except a coloured haze, the “darkness visible” that Milton thought was hell. In that darkness Borges lived for the rest of his life, remembering or imagining stories, rebuilding in his mind the National Library of Buenos Aires or his own restricted library at home. In the light of the first half of his life, he wrote and read silently; in the gloom of the second, he dictated and had others read to him.” — Alberto Manguel, The Library At Night. (via batarde)
The Ember: Kamikaze Kapuscinski -
- Lucas Smith
Ryszard Kapuscinski — daredevil journalist, glutton for hazard, border-crosser, road-block runner, world-record holder for revolutions witnessed (twenty-six), shirker of official and unofficial death sentences, from 1964-1974 Communist Poland’s only foreign correspondent;…
The 1987 Constitution introduced three innovations when it comes to impeachment:
1. They made it easier to impeach: only 1/3 of House required to impeach, only 2/3 of the Senate required to convict. The 1935 Constitution had required 2/3 of House to impeach, 3/4 of Senate to convict; 1973 Constitution had required 1/5 of Batasan to impeach, 2/3 of Committee on Impeachment to convict. The ConCom said the provisions would make it not so easy, but not so difficult, either, to have impeachment proceedings.
2. They introduced “betrayal of public trust” as an impeachable offense. They deliberately made it a “catch-all phrase” to include offenses not listed as crimes in the penal code. This was a reaction to Ferdinand Marcos’ defense in the 1985 Batasan impeachment effort, where he argued being accused of misgovernance, etc. did not constitute impeachable offenses as not listed as crimes in the criminal code.
3. They made it (theoretically possible) for private citizens to submit impeachment complaints (upon endorsement by a House member, it can be considered).
In her valedictory address, ConCom President Cecilia Munoz-Palma considered all these a major improvement:
“Equally important is the provision on the accountability of public officers. Public office is a public trust and all officials in government from the highest to the lowest are accountable for their actions in office. [Applause] The immunity from suit found in the 1973 Constitution has been discarded and the procedure of impeachment for the impeachable public officials has been liberalized. [Applause]”
For more information, please see this Storify story on Impeachment.
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“If all men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.” — James Madison, Federalist No. 51
(Source: philphys, via margoism)
State of the Net: The Genius Of Robert Caro -
No less a luminary than Bill Clinton reviews The Passage Of Power in today’s NYTimes.
I got my copy on Monday. It’s a book I’ve been waiting for as eagerly (and about as long) as I await the next George RR Martin book.
The Times was right when they said that Caro is a dinosaur, the last of…
“I think Arthur was fond of quoting Pieter Geyl, the Dutch historian who said ‘history is an argument without end,’” said the historian Richard Norton Smith. “Few things better illustrate that than this: 50 years later we’re still arguing about who said what to whom.” — Politico goes into the clash of historians in Caro’s rethinking the Kennedy-Johnson relationship established by Schlesinger. (via labohrertorium)
(Source: politico.com, via labohrertorium)
“To blame are the government that allows it through weakness, the people through ignorance, and the good who fold their arms through selfishness and warp themselves in desperate silence. The demoralization cannot be corrected by sealing the lips of the accusers such as La Voz de España desires, but by the government inquiring into the cause, persecuting criminals, and may he fall who should fall! Give liberties, so that no one may have a right to conspire, and deputies, so that the complaints and the grudges are not condensed in the bosom of the families and from there become the cause of future tempests. Treat the people well, teach them the sweetness of peace so that they may adore and maintain it.” —
Jose Rizal, “Truth for All” published in La Solidaridad Vol. II pp. 72-73. May 31, 1889. Translated in Jose Rizal Political and Historical Writings, Published by NHCP, 2011.
How the Chicken Conquered the World | History & Archaeology -
By Jerry Adler and Andrew Lawler, smithsonianmag.com
The chickens that saved Western civilization were discovered, according to legend, by the side of a road in Greece in the first decade of the fifth century B.C. The Athenian general Themistocles, on his way to confront the invadi…
(Source: lauranahmias)
The 10 best historical novels (As chosen by William Skidelsky, The Guardian/Observer books editor)…
Property by Valerie Martin: “Martin’s 2003 novel is a devastatingly honest, sometimes brutal portrait of life on a slave plantation in the 1830s. The narrator is Manon, a young woman trapped in a loveless marriage to her boorish, plantation-owner husband. Manon rebels against her matrimonial subjugation, and acts with bravery in her efforts to improve her lot. In some ways, she’s a feminist pioneer. Yet she’s incapable of applying the same logic to the greater injustice of slavery, whose propriety she never questions. Martin’s novel, shot through with irony, remains somewhat underrated, despite winning the Orange prize.”More here.
“If you stuff yourself full of poems, essays, plays, stories, novels, films, comic strips, magazines, music, you automatically explode every morning like Old Faithful. I have never had a dry spell in my life, mainly because I feed myself well, to the point of bursting. I wake early and hear my morning voices leaping around in my head like jumping beans. I get out of bed to trap them before they escape.” — RAY BRADBURY (via writersof)
(Source: advicetowriters.com, via arsenical)