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Today I am happy: Draquila, the movie, was presented at Cannes festival: http://bit.ly/bKBTIg looking forward to seeing it.
Why do Italians vote Berlusconi? The violence of propaganda, the impotence of citizens, questions of the economy, illicit power relationships…
And a catastrophe: the city of L’Aquila devastated by an earthquake… all these combine to show how the young Italian democracy has been subdued. The caricature of Berlusconi – one of the director’s most celebrated impersonations – strolls through Aquila’s refugee camp and wanders the deserted town like an emperor at the end of his reign. A town devastated by an earthquake – the perfect location from which to recount Italy’s drift into authoritarianism, the mess of blackmail, scandal, swindles and inertia of the political classes, the media and the citizens, that have paralysed the country. Why do the Italians vote for Berlusconi? Why do they consider democracy an unsuitable system of government? Aquila – this magnificent city laid low by an earthquake – will give us the answers. Why did the proud people of Aquila exchange their most precious commodity – their community, a dynamic town full of students and works of art – for a little apartment in a dormitory town, furnished by Berlusconi? Why did they believe TV propaganda rather than the evidence of their own eyes? And how did it happen to others too, as quickly and as deceitfully? Who was leaning on them? The days of Berlusconi’s reign seem numbered: it’s time to search through the rubble and draw what conclusions we can. —Cannes Film Festival, 2010
When I was a child I really enjoyed playing with this interactive books. I recently bumped into this web site that analyzes the interaction design of those artifacts and explains eloquently how they works.
As a child of the 80s, the Choose Your Own Adventure books were a fixture of my rainy afternoons. My elementary school library kept a low, fairly unmaintained-looking shelf of them hidden in one of its back corners. Whether this non-marquee placement was an attempt by the librarians to deemphasize the books in favor of ‘serious’ (children’s) literature or was simply my good luck I still haven’t worked out. But it meant there was a place that I could retreat to and dive into unfamiliar worlds without distraction.
A lot of what I read in those days served a similar purpose. A narrative was all well and good, but more interesting to me were the books that laid out a set of places and situations that could outlive their attendant plots — stories that provided scaffolding for my own imagining.
Mafalda, la hija pródiga del dibujante argentino Quino, volvió de su exilio para defender a las mujeres de Silvio Berlusconi, primer ministro de Italia. La niña bonaerense repite lo que le replicaron ayer: “No soy una mujer a su disposición”. El diario italiano La Repubblica publica el cartón de Quino en toda su extensión.
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Antonio Scarponi sent me this very interesting link on conceptual devices: Conceptual Devices consider design as a social engagement. Its projects operate through a shift of symbolic values due to the social utility and social responsibility of arts and design in contemporary society. Conceptual Devices is currently a network based structure of collaborations set up on specific projects.
RIKEA (a manual about how to make a free market set with Ikea re-assembled furniture) received an honorable mention at the International Architecture Biennale, within the exhibition Squat City.
This week I am pretty happy because in Italy we made some progress for the freedom of press: a new journal is born, namely “Il Fatto Quotidiano“. This journal has some peculiar characteristics:
- it does not have an owner. It was founded by a bunch of journalists of “L’Unità” that left that journal and took equal shares of the new journal.
- it does not take public money. It works with subscriptions and selling copies through news-agents.
- it does not take a particular point of view. It criticize equally the government and the opposition, although it bends a bit for the opposition.
- it publishes news that nobody else usually want/can publish.
On Saturday, I participated in a public protest against the law which was voted on July this year which gives our prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, immunity against justice prosecution (here an article on the issue, in Spanish).
Italian political situation is in immense crisis. Opposition is inexistent and Berlusconi controls the majority of journals and broadcast channels. As a citizen I feel really depressed as I am not represented by this current government. Additionally, my options to protest are minimal.
Luckily, there are still Italians like Beppe Grillo, Marco Travaglio, and Antonio DiPietro to cheer me up. DiPietro organized a referendum against this horrible law. On Saturday I signed. Actually, many people signed: 250000 signatures in one day. This gives me hope that there are many Italians like me who do not like to be manipulated and who are able to circumvent the mainstream propaganda.
This is the democracy we have left. It is real democracy because it comes directly from people.
This is one of those interesting links I could expect to find in P&V. Office collar is the answer if you work in an open space:
Office Collar has been designed in response to the open plan, working environment. The collars act as spatial isolators, narrowing the field of vision, therefore enabling their wearer to focus on the tasks in front of them. The 15 individual hand made, white leather masks are to be worn on the head; the variation between each model explores the different actions undertaken whilst working and thinking.
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Antonio Scarponi sent me this nice picture as a form of graphical protest against a poster published by the Swiss UDC party that was judged racist by the public opinion. I like this form of non-violent protest. Thanks Antonio!
Il Sole 24 ore ha pubblicato un articolo che riassume gli effetti di una simulazione nella quale la legge di iniziativa popolare promossa da Beppe Grillo viene applicata all’attuale parlamento. I risultati sono devastanti: a perdere il seggio sarebbero 300 eletti, tra cui i ‘big’ della politica.
Tutti i partiti verrebbero sostanzialmente purificati delle ‘cariatidi’ che affossano la democrazia del nostro paese. Sarebbe una vera liberazione. E’ per questo che l’attuale parlamento non voterà mai una tale legge. Sarebbe puro suicidio politico.
Io ho firmato per l’iniziativa e trovo offensive le parole del dipendente Pier Ferdinando Casini (Udc): «Solo una classe politica senza ideali e priva di serie motivazioni può scodinzolare dietro Beppe Grillo». Caro dipendente Casini, le comunico che io ho più ideali di lei ed ho serie motivazioni che mi portano a ritenere che tutti i politici come lei dovrebbero fare altro invece di legiferare. Mi rendo conto, per contro, del perché lei reagisca così vigorosamente all’iniziativa, essendo la sua poltrona e molte del suo partito a rischio. La verità è che non abbiamo bisogno di lei e di quelli come lei.
W la democrazia diretta!!!
L’8 settembre sarà il giorno del Vaffanculo day, o V-Day. Una via di mezzo tra il D-Day dello sbarco in Normandia e V come Vendetta. Si terrà sabato otto settembre nelle piazze d’Italia, per ricordare che dal 1943 non è cambiato niente. Ieri il re in fuga e la Nazione allo sbando, oggi politici blindati nei palazzi immersi in problemi “culturali”. Il V-Day sarà un giorno di informazione e di partecipazione popolare.
Beppe Grillo
I really enjoyed this discussion as I think we really need to talk about these issues. I personally consider myself as a pro-life person although I do not really like labels. Labels are made by politicians and always make extreme cases and opinions and help making statistics …
I subscribe to what many commenters said about what is to be considered as a central issue, that is when life begins! Depending on this we might talk about an object (a group of cells) or a human being.
I personally think that life begins when the egg is fertilized and from that point on we can consider that group of cells as a human being. Then everything else follows, like: who has the right to decide on that life?
I also agree to other opinions expressed in the comments like that of the ‘unwanted child’ but for which I think there are viable solutions (like giving the child to a couple that cannot have children).
Also I think that things are not always black and white as depicted in the original post. Although I am pro-life I also think that sex is a good thing and should be explored freely with “the courtesy” of not implying someone else’s life into play. I am in favor of anti-conception systems like condoms or women pills to avoid the union of the egg and the sperm (sorry for my poor language here but I lack some vocabulary).
As we do not want to be played in our own life, we should not do that with others’ lives. Conception should be a responsible choice. People should not be forced to be parents if they do not want to, but in the same way, fetus should not be killed because somebody said: “Oops!”.
Then all the corollary of extreme cases like: “the mother was risking her life to give birth to a sick child”, I think are just rhetorical cases taken by politicians to justify their point. If we really want to look at statistics then we should consider the fact that the majority of abortions are those of healthy fetus that are simply not wanted.
My two cents.
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