So TIME magazine came out with its moronic "you" cover. Everyone's running around saying how phenomenal and democratic it is. To me it's just incomprehensible. It's like a joke. Well, it's TIME magazine. The digest of all the propaganda, right? Ginsberg teaches.

First of all, what's with youTube? Because this cover is obviously an homage to youTube, right? The word "you" with that graphics, the player tool, even the font.
Are they taking youTube as a symbol of net democracy? A service already bought by CIA-Google and which is buried under an avalanche of lawsuits and which will probably soon die of natural death inside Google-Video's womb? And isn't it funny they decided to promote this brand as soon as Google bought it? I bet youTube could use some clamor before, when they were forced to sell because of all the lawsuits incoming.

The blurb says: "You control the information age".
"The age of information is the end of the age of knowledge." said someone else.
This supposedly free "information age" seems to me more like a playground where all the tools are bought and owned by the same two or three players, which are using them to control all the activity going on.

Meanwhile U.S. politicians such as McCain or Al Gore are actively working to dismantle Internet freedoms with the excuse of pedophiles and terrorists.
And TIME magazine, as usual, averting its eyes. Cooking propaganda.

I am a blogger and this cover is dedicated to me too, right? Well let me tell you, I'd rather have faced another pukesome Bono-Gates cover than having this chilling slap on the back.

"Information age", my ass.

About Abu Omar again. His story I already covered in this post, but there's another sickening part of it I wanted to go over.
It's the one told in this old article from corriere.it, and it is so incredibly insulting I don't know what to make of it.
Well, the article is one and a half years old, and the story is almost four years old already. So maybe it is just the stench all around it.
What you gonna do. I was busy with other shit back then so it's now or never.

The article considers the point of view of one of the CIA agents who directed and organized the unlawful kidnapping of Abu Omar on Italian soil and who is now investigated by the Italian justice.
What is more disturbing is the tone of this article. It is difficult to describe, but very common in the Italian media. It is a bit of childish, a bit of intimidating, and all superficial. A typical deceiving propaganda piece even unaware of being propaganda.

"Bob" is the CIA agent in question. He is described as "never arrogant, sincere, practical", he "comes from the streets, loves action". Guido Olimpio, the journalist writing this piece while standing on his knees, draws Bob's bio as he was the character in foreground of a novel. And not the criminal that he certainly is (keep reading).

...and what he learned on the streets he took with him inside the "Company", the CIA. Since he was born in Honduras... he speaks perfect Spanish, one more reason to send him over in Central America on a mission. A special theater of operations. He... moves among despotic regimes, corruption, guerrilla groups. He loves action... He infiltrates an opposition group managing to gain control of it: they yell 'death to gringos', but they don't know it is a real gringo who is assisting them.

And so the brown-nosing vomiting goes on. Then Mr. Olimpio comes to the actual Abu Omar case and Bob's role in it.

Many of the inquiries about radical terrorism succeed thanks to his technical help. Spying devices so small they can be hidden in a copy of the Koran... pictures, names, electronic traces left by satellites in Kurdistan, Afghanistan, Iran.
For the U.S. intelligence Milan is an outpost of Al-qaeda and Abu Omar is the emir. They follow him since his days in Albania, when he was involved in a plot to destroy the U.S. embassy in Tyrana [note: As a matter of fact, Abu Omar used to work for the CIA back then, as we explained, a detail Mr. Olimpio seems to ignore].
The CIA decided to get rid of Abu Omar on the eve of the Iraq war, worried he could organize a retaliation against U.S. targets [note: Abu Omar was under surveillance 24/7 from the Italian justice and the CIA. I firmly doubt he could organize an actual attack against sensitive targets without having himself and all the other supposed terrorists easily caught, with a lot more evidence of him being a terrorist than any form of torture could ever provide]. It is Bob who sets the trap up, with the help of the "cavemen", the removal-team sent by Langley...

Abu Omar ends up in an Egyptian prison and Bob goes with him because he has to take part to the first terrible interrogations, accompanied by torments and tortures [the italic is mine].

So, this adventurous agent, this noble figure is actually one who not only helped to kidnap but also to torture Abu Omar.
It is all admitted, all natural. Everything is fine under the sky. "Bob" and the other thugs. Funny how all the evil is admitted but they won't give you the names.

What those tortures are about you can read it in the other article I already linked twice. It's all material for one of the many hypocritical tribunals, if they weren't just the lousy show-tribunals they are. I don't feel like commenting with anything else.

Just let me do a pretty obvious consideration here, and to pose a quick question, after yet another attack against Italian military forces in Iraq in a few weeks, and another Italian soldier dead.

The new left-wing government promised a retirement of the troops from Iraq since before the elections. Even though former Prime Minister Berlusconi himself promised it, swearing he didn't want to go to Iraq in the first place, it is clear that it will be this new government to actually do it. Thus, as the mainstream interpretation goes, comes the terrorist attacks against Italian troops, to "accelerate" the process.

Now for the obvious consideration, from what I see: 'accelerate the process'? this is nonsense. It is obvious to me that the attacks are not possibly meant to "accelerate" the retirement of our troops, but to slow it down, and make it awkward. In fact, it is much harder now for the new government of this very middle-class country to hurry a getaway from Iraq while our troops are under attack. Although our military forces have a tradition of chickening out, this is going to inevitably look like too much of a chickening out.
Now, they promised to retire from Iraq, and they have to do it: but then, with the attacks, they are going to pay a price in popularity if they do it. Whatever the government decides in this situation, to stay a little more or to go away sooner, comes out bad.

So, the quick question: who calls for this attacks? What forces want to undermine the newly formed left-wing European governments just when they're about to unthread themselves from the bloody coalition of the willing? Are those the same forces that, after having realized how Zapatero was about to win in Spain and to retire the Spanish troops right after, tried to make it hard to him at the last moment with the attacks in Madrid? is this all a psy-op to transform decent retirements into humiliating retirements? And, finally: who stands to gain from this?

Not a so quick question, after all. But I think it's worthed a thought or two.

-- in picture: Italian soldiers on a road in Iraq. Some say all Italian professional soldiers are fascists, but I don't believe it. Yet I would like to know what's with all those roman salutes they exchange when they're far from the cameras.

"There is an indifference that is more helpful than your blabbering about being humane, as the right hand pets some of us like Mother Teresa, and the left hand swings the sword of the tribunal against others. Little devils of goodness. Humanity hyenas. There is no one less open to suffering than you official humanitarians. Marsbodies that appear as the protectors of human rights... The people here have become as evil as they are not. And the war has made you tourists as evil as you are."

-- Peter Handke, Dugout Canoe, The Play About The Film About The War

You may be taught to believe that it is great how wealthy people donate amounts of their money and time to some "humanitarian" cause. But it's not. It's disgusting, instead. First of all, it is useless: the world is more and more divided among the lucky ones and the unlucky ones, so the system obviously doesn't work. But also, it is a race for hypocrisy so disgusting and shameful it can't even be called evil: it must be called shameful, so that we don't waste time with exceptions, like those who do it not because they're "evil" but because they're "good", those who didn't mean it that way, those who went there in person, those who just wanted to do good, those who "wanted to see", those who couldn't find a place for them at home, those who made so much money they "felt it was right to...", etc.
For example, on the past week's issue of TIME.

( Parenthesis: I made the mistake months ago to subscribe for $5 to TIME magazine in order to access their archive on line. I wanted to read some stuff happened on the year I was born. The stuff wasn't interesting at all, but I have been receiving their crappy magazine every week since then, although I have canceled my subscription as soon as the trial period expired. And every time I read it, I know there is something in it that gives me the creeps. )

So, on the past week's issue of TIME there was a list of the supposed 100 "most influential" people of the world. Well, typical TIME's crap, I guess. "Influential" according to their lousy point of view of course.
I browsed the article terrorized to find Berlusconi's face in it. Luckily there wasn't.
Among them though, looking upward so that his double chin doesn't show, with his "I'm so committed" smile, was obviously Bill Gates (and wife). They were on the cover of another disgusting issue of TIME with Bono few weeks ago already, and it was all about how much good they were all making to Africa. The caption about Bill Gates went: "Giving money and Hope to the world". See, he "gives money to the world". He's not part of the band of brothers who drain money from everywhere wishing for a crowded unhappy world where everybody uses his cheap products. He actually gives hope.

Not surprisingly, more than a half of the names in the TIME's list are of American fellows whose supposed merit is to give away part of their money to some "association". The fact is always citied among the great things they did in life for which they turned out to be influential.

It's interesting to learn why affluent men of rich societies tip around more than women. Even if they do it with all the discretion in the world, the reason is always public. Psychologist Geoffrey Miller explained why in his impressive and fascinating book "The Mating Mind" (a must read, first book I ever read to give a reasonable explanation to why creativity exists): tips and donations are part of a sort of "peacock tale" extended behavior. It is all about the show of fitness we use to extend our right of choice in our circles under many forms. Everybody does it, in a way or another, you know, just to be "influential" in his own way, just as we all do creative things or test jokes around to allure the other sex, or friends.
The way I see it, though, to donate to Humanitarian Associations is particularly hateful in the picture, even though is almost a must now, especially in the US. Because the unhappiness of the world is transformed into your personal triumph, and everybody would be disgusted and ashamed by the deal if it wasn't for the physical distance between the tragedies you throw money at, and the living rooms where you can announce how you threw the money.
After all, all you gave is just your money, but nothing permanently good can come from the money itself.

I always thought that most of humanitarian associations devoted to the developing of "peacock tales" of affluent or middle-class men around the world should be banished and neglected, so that the evidence of the problems our richness create around wouldn't have any excuse.

Now, when I read that this is a world where in survivors camps peacekeepers in Liberia exchange beer food and cigarettes -- and trips to town on large SUVs -- with sex with boys and girls and kids recluse into the camps, I am not really surprised. I can perfectly imagine how and why this happens. What strikes me though, is that nobody seem to notice how this is obviously in the nature of "Humanitarian" help. It is bound to happen in this context.

In the "Humanitarian" world, in fact, everything is supposed to relay on the "Humanity" of the people involved, because nothing else in the order of things is ever discussed: not the unjust world, not the wars, not the price some pays for our Oil or Gas or goods and all that sort of stuff. It all relays on the fact that someone is "Human" enough to go there and do something without changing anything in the long term. "Human" enough to go there and face all the problems knowing there's nothing effective to do about them, grinding his teeth for the moment he will be cheered getting back home -- that "human".
But "Human" is also sex desires, greed, perversions, deceit, the fascination of one self's power, the unbearable sight of others' pain, the long hot days idling far from everything you know, the routine of misery, the temptations of corruption etc. It's all so human, just like craving to be influential is. Because being human never meant being good, how come we always forget it.

-- in picture above: another engraving by Bruegel

I didn't follow the movie really, but I looked at the faces and took the pictures, not only because I was just left there, while the many dogs were running in and out of the house, and my mother was industriously preparing their meals. It was also to capture another connected moment, so to speak.

The first night I ever checked in a US motel, it was upstate New York on the interstate through the Adirondacks. I had left NY with this rented car and was driving up there just to avoid freeways and traffic, as I would have always done for the following two months driving across the states.
I drove trought the night until I finally picked this motel because it was old-looking, and it was named as the NY hotel in the novel by Peter Handke I was reading then.

All the doors of the motel were green except a red one, and the old man gave me the red one, which was sort of scary and kind of cool, say. There were the so called Adirondack decorations on the walls and a lot of other crap inside, and this very old TV set, with no remote control but the rotating button to switch channels.
As I turned it on, Streetcar named desire, the first TV I was happening to see in a long time, and it really hypnotized and fascinated me. First time in the States ever, old Motel with old creepy man, in the middle of the forests with lake, Marlon Brando. It was enough. I didn't have a camera with me, just a notebook. I wrote "young Brando on Tv says, don't worry about it, everybody is alone as you are. He also says you should work out a little".

So as Brando and Magnani's faces appeared on my mother's TV, in that different ramblin' of mine two years later, different TV channel and TV set, different director, and language too, I just sunk in the coincidence, for meaningless as it was. Plus Brando was a little softer now and I felt better.
I said to my mother there was Brando. She stepped out of the kitchen and said, again? The guy's on TV all the time.

One of the most florid business in Italy is the production and the import-export of guns. Beretta (see intimidating picture below) is one of the world leaders in Guns manufacturing. We export luxury pistols even to China. All the economy is recessive but guns industry.
Still, not like the U.S., and like most of Europe, in Italy guns are not very much widespread. Well, of course they are an everyday tool among Camorra 'Ndranghet Mafia boys, but aside of that only few fanatics, paranoids, jewelers, hunters have guns.

Now I find this blog where a blogger Fabio refers to one article of the italian constitution I didn't know of, that ensures to anyone the right to use guns (and only guns, "armi da fuoco") for self-defense. He then uses as an excuse for his pro-guns argument the recent violence we all heard of on the media, perpetrated on a student of the University in Bologna, to argue that, since the American constitution always worked well, it's pretty logical the italian constitution imitated it both in gun possessing and freedom of speech; he argues that in such situations of violence a stronger application of that article of the constitution is very much desirable.
In other words he would greet a larger circulation of guns in Italy, as in the U.S.

All right. Let's demolish this argument once and for good. And without even touching the whole Columbine routine.

Coming to the pretext, violence on women and the recent example happened in Bologna: it's still to see where and how guns would have helped. Aside of the fact that there are other means for self-defense, as all those anti-rape sprays and stuff, I bet in the US the rate of violence against women is just the same as in Italy if not worse: guns do not help.

Why? Simple: because men hold guns, not women. And with a gun violence and rape are quite easier.

Let's review the scene together. Here's how the things went in Bologna: She climbs down the bus, he follows her to a darker corner, grabs her from behind, drag her across the street to a solitary spot, she cry for help, cars pass sounding the horn without even slowing, in a matter of minutes she is being beaten and raped.
Now, let's say guns are widespread among the population in Italy and replay the scene: who do you think has a gun of the two?
She climbs down the bus, he follows her, points the gun at her threatening to kill her, and, as we said, the rape is even easier.

I think my confutation could easily end here, no need to add more carne al fuoco. But I'll be generous.

Guns may help this or that innocent man to win his self-defense battle, but will always work against women. Particularly in Italy. Here, everything that gives more strength and self-reliance to women is seen as a sly demolition to men's virility.
Paranoid men see as a menace "painless" childbirth, "painless" abortion, self-defense items or trainings, challenging women, women who have opinions, women that make it alone. Old story. They keep the guns for themselves.

Sometimes women too use weapons: more than guns, non-ordinary weapons. At home, where most of the violence against them is perpetrated, by their husbands and boyfriends, without witnesses, one uses what is at hand.
But there is no way one can react to violence at home as any robbed shopkeeper, shooting at the first intimidating act: first it has to be knocked over an entire world of habits, solidifcated fears, chained relationships, traditions, money, affections, etc.
And when the exasperation really reaches a peak, there's no need for a legal gun (plus that would be "his" gun): but a blade would do, a kitchen knife, a cutter, a screwdriver, an axe, the car, scissors, poison, a rope, fire.

All those are good self-defense weapons, but, strangely enough, no guns supporter, no constitutionalist considers them. And no one makes Associations in Support of the Domestic Poison for Self-Defense.