BLOG

Oct. / Dec. 2009

THIS MONTH' s THEME:

Someone still speaks out

Today, the media dictatorship is becoming a substitute to military dictatorship.
The big economic groups are using the media and decide who can speak, who the good guy is and who the bad guy is.

Danny Glover


Some voices of courage

This month I feel the urge to mention a few women and men, and say «thank you» to them.
Women and men that stay true to their values and inner truths, and don't let the squalor and violence around, change and destroy them.

They may be offended, oppressed, mobbed, isolated, sued, imprisoned, beaten, tortured and still, there they are, standing out and speaking out.

Their strength is an inner force. The fire of knowledge, compassion, indignation and wiseness. It keeps burning inside, and will die out only when, one unforeseeable day, an angel will blow it out, they won't be here anymore and we will realize how much we miss them.

So the message is: do listen to them while they are here, now, and, most important, support them!

Nothing kills them more (symbolically and literally) than isolation. An isolated man or woman is a dead man or woman. No one dies in a civil society. In the end, the question is more about all of us, than about the single person or his oppressors.


Sooo many!

One of the photos I took at the huge demonstration for Press Freedom in Rome (see the calendar to the left here).

My goodness, never seen people so packed before.
It was impossible to move around even in the huge central square in Rome (Piazza del Popolo), and all the streets around were also packed with people.
A quality demonstration, with lots of interesting speakers, and, for once, many different people from an array of several associations, movements, parties, all together, in perfect harmony.

I am a very independent individual, who never looses himself in the masses, and I do love demonstrations at the very same time. Love to be together with other people manifesting similar opinions about fundamental rights and issues, and when it is done nonviolently, with a positive spirit, joy and critic sense, well, that's liberating, and the kind of freedom I love.

Demonstration in P.za del Popolo


Saints and sinners

See...today is Saint Luca's day, so what better day for resuming this highly irregular blog?
St. Luca was one of the Evangelists, as you all know, and protector of healers and artists, and last but not the least, he is also invoked to cure impotence.

Have no idea if it has ever worked or not (and don't worry about me at all), but the object of this month's blog is another kind of impotence, the one of so many citizens in the World feeling higher and higher discomfort about the (miserable) state of so many democracies. When they even exist, as, not to be forgotten, there are a few dictatorships left.

It is clear, I have been urged to write about this by the actual situation here in Italy, which is so serious, you wouldn't believe.

Today's Italy is not even the best example of a modern media-dictatorship, as in Danny Glover's words. Its condition is so peculiar, it is in fact unique in the World and in History even, as we have never seen something like this before: a mad man, sexually addicted, escaping from his criminal past, and from Justice, and doing this by mean of becoming a Prime Minister, taking control over most of the country, harassing anyone, individual or intellectual or institution, that tries to counterbalance him, and owning most of the media and a wide popular consent at the same time. I am sure if you put McLuhan, Chomsky, Adorno, Einstein and Freud together, they would still not being able to understand what is going on here.

And still, and still, even in the most barbarian situations, there are always a few people standing up and speaking out. No matter if in mediatic dictatorships or bloody dictatorships.

I will in the next days thank some of the brave men and women defying oppression or passive indifference, and, yes, speaking out.


When the problem is not the questions

There are lots of things Silvio Berlusconi hates: judges, communists, beards, garlic, sweating hands, tall people, women, the Constitution.

But most of all, he can't stand journalists. They have the bad habit of asking questions. Only those who keep silent and let he ramble for 30 minutes without interrupting are good guys. Funny enough they all work for him, in the newspapers and TV channels he owns. All others are "either prostitutes or leftists" as he once said.

He shouldn't worry that much, they all know they would be finished if they dared asking the wrong question. In fact, when Berlusconi is not satisfied with some of the uneducated interviewers, he just needs to take a trip to Bulgaria and make a rant about them.

Short time after, they will be fired, no mercy style.
It happened to Santoro, Biagi, Montanelli, just to mention some of the best Italian journalists, who got in troubles because of annoying him.

When some of his huge sex scandals arose, the newspaper laRepubblica asked him just ten innocent questions.
Simple questions about his supposed relationship to a younger than 18yrs old girl, Noemi Letizia, an actress wannabe. The one calling him "papi".

Berlusconi never answered those questions, or gave in stead a lot of contradictory, and frankly ridiculous, explanations of where on Earth he knew that girl from.

laRepubblica is not giving up. Here it is a page telling what this is all about, on the sex scandals side.

Not to mention of course all many others serious crimes he has been linked to in the course of time (guesting a mafia boss in his villa for two years, rumors of being involved in drug traffics, belonging to the secret and subversive masonry lodge P2, starting his empire with huge dubious capitals, paying kickbacks, creating off-shore companies with the goal of dodging taxes, corrupting judges, nepotism, saving himself by mean of ad personam laws, violating international laws and fundamental rights, blatant lies and finally his uncountable gaffes and sexist, racist and trivial boutades).


Saviano please do save us

There is a man in Italy that can't live like anyone else.
He has to be protected by the Police all day long, can rarely move around, and not without a complete protection by his shielder.

What has he done to deserve that?
Well, he has written and published a book: "Gomorra" telling the truth about the Casalesi camorra clan, one of the most powerful and brutal mafias in southern Italy, near Napoli.

His name is Roberto Saviano, a good picture of him following:

Roberto Saviano source

A philosopher, journalist and writer and one of the most limpid intellectuals in today's Italy, one of the few left actually. Most others seem to have vanished, or at least they keep silent.

He recently made a petition, asking the Prime Minister directly, not to push through some very questionable laws. The petition, in a very short time, got signed by 500,000 people!

To see this man of great value threatened of life and practically imprisoned in his home really saddens and outrages me.



NOVEMBER 2009


Persecuted words in the World

Last month I mentioned the south-Italian writer Roberto Saviano, a person I truly value. He writes about his local reality, but he is also fully conscious and committed about the rest of the world.

In that big, big World he is unfortunately not the only one to be persecuted. It is a very widespread issue, indeed.

Salman Rushdie is one of the most known persecuted writers.
You might also have heard of the detained Chinese writer Liu Xiaobo. [jailing people for their dissent is one of the most cruel form of repression, and totally unacceptable to me].
Or Orhan Pamuk, Irakli Kakabadze, Maziar Bahari, and so many others.

To get an idea of how wide the problem is, you are very welcome to visit the Writers in Prison Committee (WiPC)

On their site you will find the appalling statistics of the known cases of persecution, the World's writers are facing.

You will get familiar with a nearly unending list of writers who don't want to give up their Freedom of Speech, a universal fundamental right, and one of the most precious.

To round up, I would like to remind of Harold Pinter, who died last Christmas Eve and, together with his wife Antonia, known to be helping oppressed writers.

Finally, the meritorious work of ICORN (International Cities of Refuge Network), one of the most important initiatives to materially and morally support freedom of expression and its embodiments.


Singers get in troubles too

Yes, it seems like everyone who wants to truly express himself, be it writing or playing songs, is not welcome some places.

Emotional reality, as well as artistic creativity and freedom, are the most threatening to regimes that maintain their power by mean of control and mystification. They need citizens that behave and work like robots, marching in straight lines, and never being affected by deviated lateral thinking, or disturbing speculative thoughts.

Those needs are particularly evident in China. The combination of an oppressive, nearly total, control and the traditional respect and reliability Asian people have to their institutions, makes any form for critics and social activism very difficult and risky. Still, even there, some people manage to do it, with big doses of courage.

When thinking about music in particular, there is unexpected underground activity going on. For those who can read Chinese (I definitely can't), there is this resource site: yanjun.org , that is the name of a very active and knowledgeable musician colleague.
[update: can't find the resource page anymore on Yan Jun's site, but you can look at this interesting interview from 2011]

I would like to mention one of them here: the 38yrs old songwriter Zhou Yunpeng [this seems to be the somehow correct name, as you can also find Zhao Yun-Peng, or Zhou Funpeng, everybody seem to spell Chinese as they please].

He has been blind since he was 9, then learned to play guitar, and started writing poetry.

I must say that I don't know how much he is tolerated or controlled in China, it seems he is managing well, being an independent producer and a wandering artist.

I like his lyrics, he has the courage of being so real and direct, something rare these days when, as you know, most lyrics just don't say anything at all.

He does, he speaks out on all kinds of social problems and injustice. And his music is interesting too, mixing Chinese tones with kind of 70ties songs, especially folksongs. I never like comparing too much, and he's got a very personal style, which is what makes him interesting.

Here an example of a song I like [please, don't turn your volume too high, as there are some weird feedbacks and spikes, and mobile phones >:(, at the beginning]:
live ~ Zhou Yun-Peng

Another song with lyrics and an audio recording: "Jangle for the Jobless",
from China Digital Times.


Hunger

This is the scandal of all times and of our times in particular, so there are never words hard enough to describe and condemn it.

One billion people, many of them children, are starving and dying right here on this Earth, and right now. Every few seconds a child dies of hunger, somewhere.

How can we accept that? There is no justification even possible for this situation. And not many are doing something about it. Not even mention the world leaders, who will not take the time to visit the FAO summit. The result is, all promises have been unattended, and the number of hungry people is growing, not decreasing.

Before you ask: "Right, but what can we do, what is the solution?", the solution does exist:

  1. We ought to acknowledge the absolute priority of this issue.
  2. Nations should be set aside (too many dictators, inept leaders, and puppet-democracies around), and a very proficient collaboration among the World's institutions and the local farmers should be enforced.
  3. Drop or limit the giant projects, and concentrate on infinite small projects right on the local fields. With the simplest technologies possible, natural and organic methods for growing food, renewable energies. Sustainability as the main frame for all what is done.
  4. Plant fruit trees everywhere. Fruit can provide both the calories and the vitamins and minerals needed for at least the basic health of the hungry populations. And at the same time provide shade, geological stability, protection against floods, soil fertility, beauty. All what the populations need. Then, starting from that, all the rest can be built upon.

Of course this is not what will be discussed at the upcoming FAO's
"World Summit on Food Security" [see News / Calendar] , if they just would hear it! Small farmers are for example not invited to the summit.

But at least, the FAO's Director-General Jacques Diouf, is trying what he can to create some attention on the summit, he is going to hunger-strike for one day before the summit, and sleep on a mattress on the floor in Rome's FAO headquarter.

Please, you can, at the very least, sign the 1billionhungry petition, introduced by Jacques Diouf.


Aung San Suu Kyi

AUNG SAN SUU KYI
It is saddening the simple realizing that when I dedicated my monthly blog to her ["What is going on"], it was in October 2007. It seemed something was finally happening regarding that shaming and brutal repression, but it didn't.

I definitely haven't forgotten her in the meanwhile, and the whole Burma population as well.

Was just waiting for Barak Obama to remember his position on this matter, the one he had before being elected, and to step out of his quietness after the election.

Finally it came, a clear statement to Burma's junta, urging them to release Aung San Suu Kyi.

Of course, we all know one thing is official statements, and the other, what really counts, the diplomatic work that goes on behind the scenes.

For decades Americans and Burmese leaders didn't even share the same room once, they refused to meet. Now it has happened, a significant news then, in the line of Obama's politic of dialog with everyone, still maintaining sanctions though.

You can read the whole story at the BBC news site.

This time, I don't want to delve into the reasons why this so important issue continues to be widely neglected, just wanted to, once more, urge the World's leaders to finally resolve it.



DECEMBER 2009


Another huge march

Last Saturday I was at the announced NoBDay, the demonstration asking for Berlusconi's resignation.

Of course we are not going to obtain what we wish, Mr. B. can't quit, as he needs to stay in power to stop the judges from jailing him.

That is the reason why he popped up in the political scene in 1993, to save his butt and his enterprises, that were on the verge of going bankrupt. There were even more compelling reasons, regarding the Mafia and its need to find a new reference, after the collapse of the whole Italian political system, following the 'mani pulite' operation ('clean hands'), when an uncountable number of politicians and entrepreneurs were arrested, jailed and condemned for corruption. But this is still a partly obscure story, still under investigation, so I will leave it for a while.

Even if the media can 'annihilate' a demonstration simply ignoring it or spreading false data about its participants (the Police stated the ridiculous number of 90,000 people), the demonstration was an incredible success, for various reasons.

First.
It was a completely new phenomenon, as for the first time it wasn't arranged by political parties but by common people communicating on the net. I must say they have been amazing in arranging all this. Kudos to everyone involved.

Second.
I walked through a good part of the long, long, nearly unending stream of people marching, and I talked also with a lot of them, and there were so many different people, from all social classes and ages and political standpoints. Again, like in the previous big demonstration, for Press Freedom, all united. While the parties in the center-left side of the parliament can't ever unite, the people voting them can, and has been asking for unity for ages. Will they ever listen?
Besides, there were loads of young people in particular, and it was long ago I saw so many in a political demonstration, a sign they trust more some people on Internet's Social Networks than the traditional parties (and I must add that the Democratic Party didn't officially promote this demo, the usual lack of courage and not knowing the score).

Third.
Despite the clear expression of frustration and rage for having such a lousy political situation in Italy, it all went perfectly pacific, and with a burst of colors, creativity, humor, choruses, dances and music. It was really a pleasure to be there. The speeches were also very interesting, finally a bit of truth was told.

One photo I took of the infinite mass of people marching. By the way, they were certainly not 90,000, rather at least 300,000. Do consider this is S.Giovanni, the biggest church in Rome, and the biggest square too, and this is only a tiny slice of it:

NO B DAY


Copenfiasco

I didn't blog in the last days, because too busy, but also because I wanted to follow and cover the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit (see calendar)

Well... forget about it, simply. It was a lead balloon from start to finish. What a delusion. Had actually not so many expectations to be honest, but I didn't expect such a total flop either.

I said to myself: "Right, the Danes can have so many defects, but they are still outstanding when organizing, and managing meetings, and facing environmental challenges in particular!".

How wrong I was. I forgot there is a hopeless right-wing government in charge, and their failure is really complete, beyond any negative expectation.

Right, they can't be held responsible for how the irresponsible national states behave, or don't behave. For a failed industrial revolution, devouring materials and energy, and producing wastes and polluting gases, for wrong lifestyles, and for the need of emerging countries and economies, China and India in particular, to follow and expand the same unsustainable path we followed, as industrialized countries.
On the other side, these countries are making big efforts to adopt better and more sustainable technologies, and African countries for ex. have all rights not to accept agreements that are only blaming them, without demanding the same for the rich countries. We should also remember that a rise of 2 Celsius degrees in the West, can mean 3-4 degrees in Africa, so their life is much more at risk.

Still, it is evident the preparation of the summit and the strategies adopted were completely wrong. Shame on the arrangers that wasted such an historic chance for themselves and for the whole world.

And Obama? He certainly hasn't lived up to his potentials in the last months. He is still a miracle in the international politics, but he needs to acknowledge the failures as soon as possible. His popularity is precipitating already, and that can be catastrophic. Time for a pitiless self-analysis, and for rolling his sleeves up, and pulling his socks up too, and do something about it.

Anyway, some still try to see the glass a bit full, rather than completely empty, so I will also report different evaluation of the results of the summit.

There was a wide coverage in the Guardian. Here in particular, "Spectacular failure - or a few important steps?" , you'll find a lot of very qualified opinions about the results of the summit.


Welcome back to the blog

Right, I did blog already during the last months, but I had not officially re-opened my site and blog, as I wasn't really ready for that, and all my site needed a thorough revision.

I have been working very hard, and very close now to be finished with all this revamping of the site.

I will send my "LucaNews" to all of you I know with my invitation to this site. Greetings also to all the new readers that happened to find this site, and hopefully will like it and faithfully stay with us.

That's all for now, I leave you to your Christmas life.
I will probably not further write before the beginning of January, as you have already so much to do and to celebrate, there is already so much to read here, and you will hopefully sign up at my forum down here, with your own nice name and picture of yourself.
I will use my spare time to finish polishing this site, and opening the last sections that are still missing. Be prepared to lots of new content, and, finally, you will be able to listen to all my music!

So, as I use to say:

“Happy Christmas and a Merry New Year!”

to everybody.
My best wishes for a wonderful new Year and a new Decade too!

See you soon.... :)


An important update

The Chinese former professor Liu Xiaobo , I mentioned on November the 2nd, has been sentenced to 11 years in jail . Just to stress how serious my appeal for the safety of persecuted international intellectuals was. He has not done anything criminal at all, just claiming universal rights for the Chinese people, especially via a Charter 08 document , inspired by the 1977 Czechoslovakian charter 77. This is called 'subversion' in Chinese, it seems.

I am not blaming China only of course, it is a very widespread habit, and trick, to call all what is intellectual dissent for "subversive", even in our democracies.

Another event that is important to mention, is what is going on in Iran . In the good coverage by the Guardian, another of the dissidents I mentioned the same day as Liu Xiaobo, is the filmmaker Maziar Bahari , tortured and jailed for more than 100 days just for reporting on the unrest, that is the same I am doing here...

It's too early to cultivate even the slightest hopes, but from what I can sense, it will be very difficult to stop the protests in Iran this time. I am afraid there could be a horrible bloodshed (there are already 15 dead so far), but the fact is, civilization in Iran is too strong and rooted, you can't enslave such a human potential for too long. This might well be the beginning of the end for the fundamentalist regime, let's hope it.

Any case, my strongest support to any individual or collective in the World, that still speak out.

I will write again in the next year, on Thursday the 14th of January, so that you have some time to party, read this month's blog, sign up at the Forum, and look around the new site.

Happy New Year to everybody!