We’re now in the year 1915, the war rages across Europe and quite everyone is involved in it. Italy had been a part of the Triple Alliance since 1882, but our nation had its own plans about the Austrian territories in Trentino, Istria and Dalmatia. To achieve its goals, Italy signed a secret pact with France in 1902, thus nullifying its alliance with the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires. These two countries wanted Italy to remain neutral, offering the french colony of Tunisia in return, but the Allies made a counter-offer in which Italy would receive the territories it set its eyes on, after the defeat of Austria-Hungary. Italy signed the Treaty of London and joined the Triple Entent declaring war to the Austro-Hungarians on May, the 23rd. The day after, the italian troops started heading east, and still now a popular song retains the memory of that day. The first verses are:

The Piave whispered calm and placid during the crossing
of the first infantrymen on 24 May;
the army marched on to reach the frontier
to make a wall against the enemy.
the silent infantrymen passed in the night
they had to be silent and go forward.
From the beloved river banks they heard
light and low the exultation of the waves.
It was a sweet and propitious omen.
The Piave whispered: the foreigner shall not pass!

Depiction of the Battle of Doberdò, 1916

It has been May, the 24th and it’s going to be May, the 24th.

On May, the 24th, Future Is Tomorrow is going to release its new single: “The Defeat”, for FREE DOWNLOAD!!!!

Along the mp3, there will also be a lyric video on youtube!

But the news are not over: in the next days you will know where you can download the song (ABSOLUTELY FOR FREE!) and, little by little, the things we have in store FOR YOU, our friends all over the world. Believe us, you’re about to get a bunch of FREE stuff!

Rock on and stay tuned! Share the news, join our Facebook page and invite your friends! The more, the merrier!

Gadjet

We cannot do anything to stop those acts but we go on, carrying a message with our words and our music: here, in the XXIst century, we want to believe that mankind can work to build a future where you can always find a way to talk things out, where violence is NEVER the right path to follow.

Thus, we jump again in our little time machine and we go back to the year 1914 to continue with our example of how things like that one can ignite something far more horrible.

Soon after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Austria-Hungary sent a letter to Serbia. Well, more than a simple letter, it was a full fledged ultimatum. Serbia accepted it just partially and started mobilizing its army. Austria-Hungary, then, declared war to Serbia.

During the last decades of the 19th century, all of the european countries had signed various treaties about mutual military support in case a conflict should occur, so this war declaration obliged everyone to set foot on the battlefield.

Austrian propaganda in 1914, after the assassination of Franz Ferdinand

While the Austro-Hungarians started the invasion of Serbia, the Germans invaded neutral Belgium and Luxembourg on their way to France. Due to this act, Britain declared war to Germany.In the meantime Russia was stopped in its invasion of East Prussia by the Germans and the Ottoman Empire joined the war opening up fronts in the Caucasus, Mesopotamia and the Sinai.

At that time, some countries were still on stand by. Among them, Italy…

Yes, this is another misleading post! Don’t get pissed off, on the next one we’re going to unveil the release date of our new single. If you successfully collected the clues in these posts and if you can guess the right date, drop us a line at band(@)futureistomorrow.it. You’ll receive the link to download “The Defeat” some hours before the rest of the world does!

Stay tuned for more…

Gadjet

As we anticipated here and here, we put the “Fit to Die” concept on hold to talk about a different thread: war! But why war? Mankind is struggling to achieve peace, but we need always to remember that millions and millions of people have payed with their own life for this goal already. Even so, we’re not even close to the end of many meaningless conflicts.

Let’s go back in time, nearly one century ago. We’re in Sarajevo, the date is June the 28th, 1914. Do you know the guy on the picture below?

Gavrillo Princip, irredentist of the “Black Hand”

Nowadays he would be called a terrorist. He’s Gavrillo Princip, a serbian irredentist of the group named “Black Hand“. On June the 28th, 1914 he shot two times the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne, right after he and his accomplices failed to kill him with a bomb.

Why did he kill the Archduke? What can lead a person to take another person’s life? If we could know the answer to this question, nothing would have happened in Boston and Damascus would be a quiet place to visit. Sad to say, the truth is different.

Let’s get back to Gavrillo Princip: what was he trying to achieve? At the end of the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th century, that area was a politically “hot” place. In 1878 Austria-Hungary received the mandate to occupy and administer the Ottoman Vilayet of Bosnia, while the Ottoman Empire retained official sovereignty.  The Great Powers (Austria-Hungary, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, the Ottoman Empire and Russian Empire) gave official recognition to the Principality of Serbia as a fully sovereign state, which four years later transformed into a kingdom.

The tide changed in 1903, when the Serbian Royal Palace was stormed by some serbian military officers, which brutally killed the royal family, thus installing a new king. This one was more nationalistic, friendlier to Russia and less friendly to Austria-Hungary.  Over the next decade, disputes between Serbia and its neighbors erupted as Serbia moved to build its power and gradually reclaim its 14th-century empire.

Many other things happened shortly after, but we think you are starting to get the picture. This brings us again to the assassination of Franz Ferdinand.

What Princip wanted was, in the end, freedom. What he didn’t know is that his actions have been the stepping stone for the beginning of World War I.

Did he do something wrong? Of course he did! Taking a human life is ALWAYS the worst thing to do! Was there another way to show his patriotic feelings? We will never know…

“The defeat” is not a song about Gavrillo Princip and what he did back then, but it’s a song about the loss of freedom in a twisted culture, where the value of feedom itself is lost in the drift of a decadent society. And it’s a blast!

Do you want to learn more? Subscribe to our Facebook page and you will receive an official invitation for the FREE download of Future Is Tomorrow’s newest single: The Defeat!

Do you think the release date is going to be on June the 28th? Well, you’re absolutely WRONG! Don’t worry, you won’t have to wait that much!

More news to come in the next days, so stay tuned!

Gadjet

Giacomo Leopardi was indeed a real genius but he also possessed an incredible culture. Personally, I think that there cannot be creativity without culture. Every artist should know what the others made before him, how they made it and why. This sets the starting point for creating new art. No one can really come out of the blue claiming he invented something new. It just doesn’t work like this. Read about all the biggest musicians, writers, painters and so on, and you’ll discover how much they studied before creating something able to cross the time and to be valuable even after centuries.

Ok, let’s head back to the main topic.

Leopardi made a deep analysis of the “Batrachomyomachia” and he translated it from ancient greek to italian three times during his life. This happened for various reasons: first of all there’s no way to know who is the author of the poem. For centuries many eggheads thought it was Homer, because the style is the same as the one of his better known epics, the Iliad and the Odissey.

But Giacomo Leopardi disagreed with this attribution for various stylistic and historical reasons. For exemple there are words in the “Batrachomyomachia” that Homer never used in both the Iliad and the Odissey, and no one seems to talk about this epic-comic poem before the III century B.C..

However, it’s still impossible to determine who the author is, and Leopardi thought that this is a shame because he really wanted to tribute all the honors to the genius who wrote that poem!

Then there are the reasons why someone would ever write about a war between frogs and mice. Various critics of the past found out quite a bunch of them:

- to teach the kids about the danger of riots;

- to teach the kids about the virtues of a frugal life;

- as a stylistic introduction to the Iliad and the Odissey.

But above all, the “Batrachomyomachia” is a big parody of the Iliad.The story, the characters, the gods, the weapons, the art of war, Homer’s writing style. Everything. And this makes it beautiful.

Jean Leclerc said that the reason for this parody to be written was that the war between frogs and mice was worth the gods’ intervention just like the Trojan War described by Homer. Giacomo Leopardi fully agreed with this vision of things.

But why three italian translations? Because Leopardi read the existing ones and found out they all sucked. Indeed. He was a perfectionist!

Uhm… this post is turning to be quite long and boring, so you’ll have to wait until the next one to know the story described in the “Batrachomyomachia”. Believe me, it’s really cool!

Stay tuned for more…

Gadjet

As I stated here and here, we’re currently working on our new album, and we’re really thrilled about it so far! Since the concept starts from a work of Giacomo Leopardi, I think it could be useful to know better this poet, what he did and why we find him so interesting.

I don’t know if school teahcers around the world make you study italian poetry. Here in Italy we get to know only the principal artists from abroad, but you know: we’re the cradle of culture!

I’m sure you all know Dante Alighieri and his metaphisic journey known as the “Divine Comedy”. Metal fans use to like epic poems! Well, this work appeared in so many movies, books, comics and videogames it’s impossible that someone didn’t notice it.

Giacomo Leopardi didn’t write epic poems, but is known as the biggest italian poet after Dante Alighieri. Why? Because of his deep vision of nature, society, politics. His way of thinking about the meaning of life itself made him create the concept of “solid nothing”. It would be way too long to explain its meaning here, so I suggest you to read some of his works.

Born in 1798, Giacomo Leopardi suffered for his entire life of various phisical deseases. His continuous study undermined his already fragile physical constitution, and his illness denied him youth’s simplest pleasures. This draw a huge mark on his poems and on his vision of life.

He read a lot the classics from ancient Greece, so much that his first poems were in greek language! This deep knowledge led him to translate many of these classics. Among them, I’d like to point my finger to the “Batrachomyomachia”, which is the starting point to our musical concept. Therefore, on the next post I’ll write a brief description of this epic so you can get to know better what we’re working at!

Stay tuned

Gadjet

On June the 1st, 2011 the italian Supreme Court of Cassation accepted the abrogative referendum that is going to be held on the next 12th and 13th of June. The questions are the following: the construction of nuclear plants inside the italian territory, the privatisation of water services and the immunity of the PM from prosecution. These are very important topics for the future of our country.

Anyway, this post is not about how do you have to vote. If you decide for the YES or for the NO is only a matter of your personal choice! This is about the vote in itself and its power as a democratic instrument. Italians, get up and vote!

Well, since we’re a heavy metal band, here is a music suggestion about this topic: it’s one of my favourite bands’ album, back from 1998. “One Hour by the Concrete Lake” by Pain of Salvation. It seems this is Mr. Gildenlöw less favourite album, but I’m very fond with it because it’s the first PoS cd I’ve ever listened to. Just like all their works, it’s a concept album, and inside it you can find themes like water inequality between the world’s north and south, firearm industry, nuclear power and pollution. The title is referred to Lake Karachay, in western Russia. There, so much nuclear waste had been dumped over the past fifty years that if one stood by the shore for one hour, the exposure to radiation would be such that death from physical injuries would inevitably occur within two weeks.

Lend an ear to it and don’t forget to vote!

Pablic

…and now, let’s switch to italian to repeat the message!

Il primo Giugno 2011, la Corte di Cassazione si è pronunciata a favore dello svolgimento del referendum sul nucleare il 12 e 13 Giugno. Gli altri quesiti si cui il popolo italiano sarà chiamato ad esprimersi negli stessi giorni saranno il legittimo impedimento e la privatizzazione dell’acqua (maggiori informazioni in proposito si possono trovare qui), temi molto importanti per il futuro del nostro paese. Non è obiettivo del presente post dare indicazioni voto (votare per il si o per il no è una scelta vostra e solo vostra), quanto quello di sottolineare l’importanza del voto in sè (strumento democratico per eccellenza) e spronare l’elettorato a partecipare ai referendum: andate a votare! Ma visto che dovremmo essere una band heavy metal, ecco un consiglio di ascolto attinente all’argomento: si tratta di un disco del 1998 di uno dei miei gruppi preferiti, “One Hour By The Concrete Lake” dei Pain Of Salvation; a quanto pare l’album in questione è il meno favorito dal signor Gildenlow stesso, ma io invece gli sono molto legato perché è stato quello che mi ha fatto scoprire la band. E’, come tutti i loro lavori, un concept album e all’interno potrete trovarvi tematiche come la sperequazione tra nord e sud del mondo per quanto riguarda l’acqua, la fabbricazione di armamenti, il nucleare e l’inquinamento (il titolo del disco si riferisce al lago Karachay in Russia, riempito da blocchi di cemento perché troppo inquinato dalle sostanze radioattive che ci avevano scaricato; nel periodo di massima contaminazione bastava passare un’ora sulle sue sponde per avere due settimane di vita!). Buon ascolto e buon voto!

Pablic

Just war /1

Just war /2

Just war /3

And now, let’s go deeper in the thread…

One of the most controversial and difficult example of “just war” is the Yugoslavian’s one in 1999.

The common opinion is that this war has been done to stop mass murder, ethnic cleansing in progress; first by negotiation and then, after that any attempt had been futile, with a necessary attack.

The data on cost-benefit of this war are now available.

The advantages in terms of deaths caused by civil war in Kosovo before NATO’s operations were evaluated by the United Nations as a result of surveys conducted in 2001. It is about 2000 deaths, more or less, evenly divided between Albanian, Kosovars and Serbs, perished in clashes between armed factions and gangs.

We all know more or less strictly no more than a few hundred people: think what a tragedy it would be if all those who are in some ways close are killed before our eyes. But every day, 24,000 people die of thirst, hunger, diseases: worldwide, die, for the reasons we have mentioned before, about seven times the people who died during the 11 September.

This is the confirmation that the current policy can not speak of justice and truth due to the informations that they have delivered.

The total amount of the Yugoslavian war fot NATO had been extimated in $1,690,000,000 from the mobilization costs to the uses of the “smart bombs”.

The losses, materials and humans, for Yugoslavia have been $146,000,000,000

The relationship between the costs of Yugoslavia and NATO is therefore about 1 to 86: in other words, the damage to Yugoslavia were about 86 times greater than the costs for NATO.

Moreover, in the long term, there are effects on humans and the environment of a chemical war, which was the bombing of chemical plants and refineries, at the level of major outbreaks of cancer and other diseases, destruction of ecosystems and biodiversity.

From one point of view some might say it was a “just war”, but the real reasons that moved those who fought this war had nothing to do with what was said by politicians in 1999.

There is one thing to say, though. The public opinion had not the information available to judge and oppose the war. This information has been hidden and replaced by other, more acceptable, by the rulers, once again liars and betrayers of public trust in the people, pledged themselves to achieve their goals and the small minority that supports them.

Peace

Grave

]]> https://www.futureistomorrow.it/italian-heavy-metal-band/2011/05/05/just-war-4/feed/ 0 https://www.futureistomorrow.it/italian-heavy-metal-band/2011/05/02/just-war-3/ https://www.futureistomorrow.it/italian-heavy-metal-band/2011/05/02/just-war-3/#comments Mon, 02 May 2011 10:41:56 +0000 http://www.futureistomorrow.it/?p=347 The political question of the just war

(If you missed the previous posts, you can find here part 1 and part 2)

All of us, or at least most of us, tend to argue that the world is based on a strong inequality, the preservation of the privileges of a few “elected” to the detriment of many others. Perhaps we should not discuss the case of “just war”or “unjust war”, but “convenient” or “not convenient” war.

This depends on the cost-benefit calculation that is done, on what is included in the account and how the political and decision-makers use this simple indicator (should, should not), with a complex system of values, to decide whether to wage war. Then we can talk again about political justice.

To improve the overall condition of the world and humanity, to eliminate a tyrant, to stop a massacre, to remedy an injustice, to save the persecuted, these are concepts that we usually hear in the speeches of politicians when they talk about just war. Humanitarian and democratic, these are other two adjectives used very often.

Having passed and somehow accepted these adjectives led to a step in one direction: preventive war. If there are those who, today, are foreign policy based on this word, it is also thanks to those who have passed the acceptance of other adjectives apparently harmless and reassuring.

Petroleum, power, dominion, career, money, these are the motives of who makes politic and who controls the corporations.

In the next session I’m going to bring a good example of “Convenient War”. Or if you want “Just War”.

Bye

Grave

But in the end, all this seems to have been only temporary: with the disappearance of the generation that endured World War II, the grandchildren of those men and women are about to hear again of war, but this time with any adjective that softens, “just war” or “humanitarian”, or “democratic”.

Many voices are being raised in these directions, from different backgrounds, not only war mongers, dictators or extremists, but also political moderate or liberal, and influential men of thought and heard; debates and so on which focus on legal questions of method and properties to justify a reason for a just war!

Surely it has an effect at lower levels of the society: the chance to use the media contributes the apparent controversy of the subject, thus justifying a certain freedom of action.

What has been said so far, suggests that it is therefore necessary to consider the issue “just war” not as a philosophical anachronism, a relic of the problem now buried under layers of thought and feeling civil, but a current issue and which still need to discuss.

If we try to deal with the problem of existence a “just war” is useful to try to distinguish two aspects :the ethical and political approach. This distinction is difficult, because the two questions overlap and even the political analysis approach will also rely on ethical judgments.

See ya tomorrow for part 3!

Grave

Let’s talk about war!

Yes, Future is Tomorrow are making a new Album and the main theme will properly be war.

We knowit , it’s a concept used and abused so many times by any kind of band or artist, expecially in heavy metal. A good example is the album “Dead Winter Dead” from Savatage. I mentioned it because it’s one of my favourite in the genre.

Our starting point has been a literary work by Giacomo Leopardi named “Paralipomeni della batracomiomachia”.

The main thing was to talk about the right to make a war: when it can be justified and how affects who is involved.

Well, the just war theory (Bellum Justum) is a doctrine of military ethics of Roman philosophical and Catholic origin.  Yes, Catholic!

The concept of justification for war under certain conditions goes back at least to Cicero, but its importance is connected to Christian medieval theory beginning from Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas.

So the Just War theory is an authoritative Catholic Church teaching confirmed by the United States Catholic Bishops in their pastoral letter, The Challenge of Peace: God’s Promise and Our Response, issued in 1983. More recently, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, in paragraph 2309, lists four strict conditions for “legitimate defense by military force”:

• the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;
• all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;
• there must be serious prospects of success;
• the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power as well as the precision of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.

The international events of recent years, with the widespread use of seemingly inevitable war as a means for resolving conflicts between nations, also make it inevitable to consider whether there might be a just war and in what capacity, citing among the reasons for war.

The Leopardi’s work discusses the political events of 1820-21 and the failure of revolutionary movements, satirizing Austrians (represented by crabs, frogs’ allies), Bourbon (frogs), and the insurgent Neapolitan liberals (mice). Although it was wrtitten from 1831 the historical and political events are fully attributable to the current ones, the players change but the motives and acts are the same.

In the next part I’ll talk about this with some interesting examples of just war.

Meanwhile, peace&love!!

Grave