Soros? Una farsa ben ingegnata!

E' notizia di ieri l'addio di George Soros al tavolo della trattativa per l'acquisto dell'AS Roma.
Molti quesiti vengono ora alla mente, e si fa piu' viva nella mia mente l'impressione che questa trattativa sia stata montata ad arte in un disegno strategico di distruzione dell'immagine della famiglia Sensi.
Qual e' infatti ora l'unico risultato di questa farsa? Non certo che il titolo in borsa ne abbia guadagnato, dal momento che gia' adesso si sta sgonfiando pericolosamente, bensi' che il rapporto tra proprieta' e tifoseria adesso sta vacillando. Tutti i sogni di gloria, miliardi dalla Nike, stadio di proprieta', campioni a vagonate, tutto rovinato dall'avarizia della famiglia Sensi, attaccata a qualche milione in piu'. Tutto cio' ovviamente non e' vero, ma andatelo a dire al tifoso medio.
L'interrogativo ora e': chi c'e' dietro questa operazione? Moggi non c'e' piu', quindi spazio all'immaginazione!

Lucignolo e Nazionale, cervelli a confronto

Leggo su vari siti internet del siparietto avvenuto a Coverciano un paio di giorni fa dove due signorine in bikini si sono cimentate in una pacifica invasione di campo (di allenamento) durante il ritiro della nazionale in preparazione di Euro 2008.
Lo scopo? Pubblicizzare 'Lucignolo', una monnezza di programma che va in onda su Italia 1 e con l'etichetta "programma di intrattenimento culturale" mostra tette e culi a go go, e offre le luci della ribalta al vero peggio che l'Italietta sappia offrire. Fa rabbia pensare che molti bambini spesso sono tenuti fuori dai cancelli e che invece due donzelle di facili costumi siano accolte "a braccia aperte". Viene anche un dubbio: dal momento che si tratta di uno spot per una tv commerciale, che la Federazione abbia preso qualche soldino da Mediaset per questa buffonata?

Un'altra ottima pubblicita' per il turismo nel Bel Paese

Questo episodio e' l'ennesimo atto di violenza nei confronti di un turista in Italia. Dopo i fatti di Perugia con l'assassinio di Meredith, dopo la studentessa violentata a Roma un anno fa, diminuisce la voglia di visitare l'Italia da parte dei turisti stranieri. Speriamo almeno che in questo caso la giustizia usi il pugno duro.

Drugged US tourist killed by train after robbery

Police said that 74-year-old Frank Phel from California died at Tiburtina station, in Rome.
Mr Phel and his wife drank drugged cappuccinos offered by a man who later robbed them and left them wandering around the station in a confused state. The robbery was filmed by security cameras at a nearby café.
"This man approached these two tourists and earned their trust, and then offered them two cappuccinos with drugs," the spokesman said, adding that the suspected robber, a 54-year-old Italian man, chatted with the two tourists before fetching the coffee at a local cafe and adding a mix of drugs, including sleeping pills.

Leggi l'articolo completo al link
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/2036852/Drugged-US-tourist-killed-by-train-after-robbery.html

Colao, l'Italia che vince

C'e' comunque un'Italia che ancora si distingue nel mondo per le sue capacita': rappresentante a Londra ne e' ora Vittorio Colao, nuovo CEO di Vodafone.


Vittorio Colao, named today as the new chief executive of Vodafone, has been earmarked for the top job since rejoining the company two years ago.
The son of an officer in the Carabinieri, Italy's military police, he was born in 1961 in Brescia, the area of Lombardy between Verona and Milan.

Leggi l'articolo completo al link
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/may/27/vodafonegroup.mobilephones

Jim Morrison seen by Marilyn Manson

Ho trovato nel web quest'articolo su Jim Morrison scritto nientepopodimenoche' da Marilyn Manson. E' incredibile, odio la musica di Manson almeno quanto adoro la sua intelligenza.

Jim Morrison said it best: "All the children are insane," and he meant it like I mean it. We are children revolted by the banality of what people think is sane. When Jim rambled, quite profoundly, "Rock & roll is dead," and "Hitler is alive. . . . I slept with her last night," he knew then what we are choking on now. You can't change the world, and if you try, you just end up destroying it. We love all things to death. We leave the lights on, turn everything up to ten and fuck everything we fear.

In tenth grade I was told to read No One Here Gets Out Alive, the biography of Jim Morrison. Everything I'm interested in now got started with that book. It made me want to be a writer, and I started with poetry and short stories. We don't know what was really going on in Morrison's head, but I liked trying to piece it together. The immortality of his words, the mystery of his existence appealed to my sense of fantasy. I found "Moonlight Drive" -- particularly when accompanied by "Horse Latitudes" -- scary and sexually mystifying, like Happy Days told by Ted Bundy. I read the poem in front of my tenth-grade English class, and it was as awe-inspiring then as it is now. Words like mute nostril agony and carefully refined and sealed over always stung in the corners of my eyes.

I think the Doors still fit in because they never fit in in the first place. They didn't have a bass player. The music often had nothing to do with Morrison's words. The keyboard held everything together. Most bands can get through a show if the keyboardist breaks a finger. Not the Doors. Robbie Krieger played very odd guitar parts if you compare him to Jimmy Page or Keith Richards. Yet all this combined into something unique that grabbed people's attention.

Morrison's voice was a beautiful pond for anything to drown in. Whatever he sang became as deep as he was. He had the unnameable thing that people will always be drawn to. I've always thought of the Doors as the first punk band, even more than the Stooges or the Ramones. They didn't sound anything like punk rock, but Morrison outshined everyone else when it came to rebellion and not playing by anyone's rules. There are a lot of bands that seem to want to sound like the Doors filtered through grunge or neogrunge -- whatever it is. But it's all just ideas pasted on ideas, faded copies of copies. If you want to be like Jim Morrison, you can't be anything like Jim Morrison. It's about finding your own place in the world.

Soros-Roma, ci siamo!

Un articolo dell'agenzia Reuter sulla vendita della AS Roma. La mia prima impressione leggendo e' stata che l'ostacolo maggiore sia Rosella Sensi, che con la vendita della societa' dovrebbe inevitabilmente dire addio alle luci dei riflettori.

Roma's Cup triumph leaves owners pondering sale

ROME (Reuters) - AS Roma's Italian Cup final victory may be the Sensi family's last triumph as owners amid renewed speculation that billionaire financier George Soros is close to buying the Italian club.
A 2-1 win over Inter Milan on Saturday brought a modicum of revenge for Roma, who were beaten to the Serie A title by Inter on the final day of the season last weekend.
Roma, who have played some of the most attractive soccer in Europe this term, also went further than other Italian clubs in the Champions League when they reached the quarter-finals.

leggi l'articolo completo al link
http://uk.reuters.com/article/worldFootballNews/idUKL2560755120080525?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0

A Strasburgo spunta un Fiore

Malcolm Moore del Telegraph ci ricorda chi abbiamo mandato a Strasburgo.

Euro seat for Italian neo-fascist Fiore

Roberto Fiore, 49, came to Britain in the wake of the bombing, which left 85 people dead and over 200 wounded. The attack was carried out by the Nucleus of Armed Revolutionaries, a far-Right terrorist group.
Although Mr Fiore, a member of the Third Position cell, was not directly involved in the execution of the bombing, he was convicted for conspiring to carry out an armed attack. He lived in the UK for several years.
"He is absolutely the most extreme person who has ever served in the European Parliament," said Glyn Ford, a Labour MEP. "There are other MEPs who feel strongly about this. We usually put up a cordon sanitaire around the far-Right politicians."

leggi l'articolo completo al link
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/2017509/Euro-seat-for-Italian-neo-fascist-Fiore.html

La rivolta di Chiaiano

Cosi' la BBC commenta le rivolte a Chiaiano: governo incapace o cittadini nimbys (not in my backyard!) che appena si tocca il loro giardino scattano in rivolta?

Clashes over Naples rubbish site

Most injuries occurred overnight but two police were hurt in the morning, trying to remove a bus being used as a barricade near the site in Chiaiano.
The site is one of 10 approved by the new government in a bid to end a crisis over uncollected rubbish in Naples.
Some fear the proximity of the dump could affect local people's health.

leggi l'articolo completo al link
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7418558.stm

Follieri, giu' le mani dalla Roma

Si dice che tale Raffaello Follieri tramite George Soros voglia acquistare le azioni della AS Roma. Leggete qui (articolo ormai di un mesetto fa) e solo pensate se tale figuro sia degno di succedere all'amato Franco Sensi.

Raffaello Follieri: Arrested!

Raffaello Follieri, who was possibly caught receiving a blow job from girlfriend Anne Hathaway a few months ago (vi prego sorvoliamo su questo, ndr), was arrested today for allegedly bouncing a check.

As reported by TMZ, Follieri was popped for one misdemeanor count of issuing a check for $250,000 that sources say he wasn’t even close to being able to cover.

Moreover, A DC court just ordered Follieri to pay almost the same amount to a PR firm that he still owes for work it did. Yeah. We don’t think he can afford that.

leggi l'articolo completo al link
http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2008/04/raffaello-follieri-arrested/

Napoli, tra camorra e immigrazione

Un bell'articolo del Guardian sugli intrecci mafia, stato, immigrazione e xenofobia.

This xenophobia reveals the power of organised crime

As film critics at Cannes get their first look at Gomorrah, about the Naples organised crime syndicate the Camorra, the malign influence of this group has set fire to the city, literally and metaphorically. For years, it has been dumping rubbish and toxic waste brought in from northern Italy on lucrative contracts in and around residential areas. Now Neapolitans, fed up with the stench and filth, are setting fire to this garbage indiscriminately, provoking a crisis of public health for the ambulance and firefighting services.
If this inferno were not enough, mob violence has erupted against the Gypsy, or Roma, population huddled in squatter camps on the outskirts of Naples. Ministers have accompanied these appalling attacks by demanding the deportation of some Roma and the re-establishment of border controls in violation of the EU's Schengen agreement. Naples is Italy's disgrace and Europe's shame. And in a rare recognition of a real emergency, the prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, is convening a cabinet meeting in Naples this morning to address the problems that decades of political neglect and criminal activity have wrought there and in the wider Campania region.

leggi l'articolo completo al link
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/may/21/italy.race

Ponte di Messina: si o no?

Il Times riassume i punti di vista sulla costruzione del Ponte di Messina, tornato d'attualita' ora che Berlusconi e' di nuovo al governo. Ambiente e Mafia: questi i dubbi.

Italy to build two mile bridge to Sicily

It has been dreamt of since Roman times, and plans have repeatedly sketched out on the drawing board only to be torn up because of cost, bureaucratic obstacles and fears of earthquakes and Mafia involvement.
But today the new centre Right goverment of Silvio Berlusconi declared that an historic two-mile bridge from the mainland to Sicily over the Straits of Messina - the longest single span suspension bridge in the world - was an “urgent priority” and that work on it would start “soon”.
Altero Matteoli, the Infrastructure Minister, said he had asked Pietro Ciucci, head of the company in charge of the long-delayed project, “to create conditions for the resumption of the construction of the project as soon as possible”. During the election campaign last month Mr Berlusconi remarked that “building this bridge entirely with Italian hands is a matter of national pride”.

Leggi l'articolo completo al link
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article3992950.ece

Da Londra: povere carte inglesi, clonate dagli italiani

Vi posto un articolo di Metro Londra, che spiega come nel 2007 il valore delle frodi in Italia ai danni delle carte di credito inglesi ammonti a quasi 10 milioni di sterline. Che dire, complimenti!

£535m swiped as card fraud soars

Card fraud soared by 25 per cent last year, with £535million stolen from bank accounts and credit cards.
The increase was largely the result of a 77 per cent rise in fraud carried out while Britons were abroad.
There was a growth of just six per cent in fraudulent transactions at home following the launch of chip and Pin.
The bulk of overseas fraudulent transactions took place in the US, where ­Britons were fleeced of £24.6million.
This was followed by Italy (£9.6million), Australia (£8.2million), France (£7.3million) and Spain (£5.7million).

leggi l'articolo completo al link
http://www.metro.co.uk/money/article.html?in_article_id=148671&in_page_id=36

Dirty Dog, questions.

The aim of this short documentary is to critically analyze the situation of Punk subculture in 2007, on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the issue of the Sex Pistols album “Never Mind The Bollocks”, considered by far the progenitor of Punk music in United Kingdom.

The main question of “Dirty Dog” is the following: “Is Punk culture alive in 2007?”. To give an answer to it we chose as a background the city of London, where the movement has spread after being imported from the Usa in 1976 and 1977.

For what concerns a technical advice on the use of the medium we used as indicative readings the Julia Knight’s “Diverse Practices: A Critical Reader On British Video” (1996), A. L. Rees’ “A History of Experimental Film And Video” (1999) and Elsey and Kelly’s “In Short: A Guide To Short Film-making In The Digital Age” (2002).

In the conceptualization of the project we employed as theoretical models the essays of Jon Savage (1991), Greil Marcus (1999), Roger Sabin (1999), Dave Marsh (1994) and Nick Johnstone (1999) about Punk culture and Punk music, that best explained the social and cultural reasons of the spread of what the Entertainment Weekly described as “the most brutally simple form of pop music ever created” (1992).

Thanks to these essays we could discover the origins of Punk subculture and its proliferation in London, starting from the meaning of the word “Punk”. The first known use of the term appeared in the Chicago Tribune on March 22, 1970, attributed to Ed Sanders, cofounder of New York’s anarcho-prankster band The Fugs. Sanders was quoted describing a solo album of his as “Punk rock—redneck sentimentality”. (Marsh, 1994)

Punk culture “has its primary manifestation in music – and specifically in the disaffected rock and roll of bands like the Sex Pistols and The Clash. Philosophically, it had no ‘set agenda’ like the hippy movement that preceded it, but nevertheless stood for identifiable attitudes, among them: an emphasis on negationism (rather than nihilism); a consciousness of class-based politics (with a stress on ‘working-class credibility’): and a belief in spontaneity and ‘doing it yourself’” (Sabin, 1999, p. 2).

However, the most remarkable book about Punk subculture is beyond doubt Jon Savage “England’s Dreaming – Sex Pistols And Punk Rock”. Savage’s work is not only an account of the Punk explosion, but it’s at the same time a monumental cultural history of a pivotal era. Savage, at the end of the book tries to give an answer to the same question of our documentary: “Punk was over. Humpty Dumpty had fallen off the wall and there was no way of piecing him together (…) Punk was beaten, but it also has won (…) When Punk entered the music and media industries, its vision of freedom was eventually swamped by New-Right power politics and the accompanying value systems, but its original, gleeful negotiation remains a beacon. History is made by those who say ‘No’ and Punk’s utopian heresies remain its gift to the world” (1991, p.543).

Even more romantic the point of view of Michael Elliott, editor of TIME Asia: for him, “by unleashing a teeming generation of artists and street-bred entrepreneurs, Punk did more to resurrect the British economy in the eighties than did Margaret Thatcher. Not only that: It had a better beat” (Washington Monthly, 1992).

The practice of this documentary has been influenced by the work of media practitioners as Julien Temple (1980 and 2000), Jack Hazan and David Mingay (1980) Alan Parker (2007) and Todd Phillips (1999).

In particular, we took as a model the Parker’s interviewing style. The English biographer showed in “Never Mind The Sex Pistols” (2007) how is possible to produce an exhaustive and weighty project only with the employment of this instrument.

From Phillips’ work “Hated – GG Allin And The Murder Junkies” (1999) we took as a case in point the use of gaunt and essential screenshots, very useful to project the viewer in the raw and “DIY” atmosphere of the Punk scene.

From Hazan and Mingay’s work we took as a model the importance given to images. “Rude boy” (1980) is a semi-documentary where dialogues are on a second level respect to the strong impact of images describing the political demonstrations of the late 70s and The Clash concerts.

However, the documentaries that most influenced us in the making of “Dirty Dog” are the Julien Temple’s “The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle” (1980) and “The Filth And The Fury” (2000). The Guardian describes the first as “a flawed, brilliant fiction; a scripted gothic musical built around Malcolm McLaren’s Fagin-esque impresario, with Steve Cook as a cockney Damon Runyon detective trailing him. Threaded through is cut-up documentary footage of the band which Temple, then a film student, shot obsessively throughout 1977 and ‘78” (2005). Maybe the real protagonist of this film is Helen Wallington-Lloyd, who accompanies the viewer with her ‘burlesque’ attitude for all the duration of the movie. This earlier effort was criticised for being too skewed towards the Pistols’ manager Malcolm McLaren’s version of events about the band. “The Filth and the Fury” tells the story from the viewpoint of the band members themselves. The most interesting point of the movie is Temple’s ability to put the band into historical context with Britain’s situation in the 1970s through archival footage from the period.

Regarding the methodologies, in order to analyze the diverging views about the question “Is Punk culture alive in 2007?,” we resorted to interviews from all the possible categories of people involved in Punk subculture: musicians, common Punks, record labels and record shops employees, writers and academics involved in Social Studies.

In the final project we will give voice to the positive contribution of (in order of appearance) Dr. Andrew Calcutt, Programme leader M.A. Journalism and Society, University of East London, Jon @ctive, author of the leaflet “Anarcho-Punk is dead”, Isato and Paul, two punks met in Camden Town, and finally Nick, of All Ages Records. We also thank the Punk band “The Grit” that allowed us to film their gig in the “Underworld” in November 2007.

To give the impression of a “DIY” (‘do it yourself’) production, we used a SONY Digital Handycam for the shootings, without the support of a tripod, in order to give a “Dogme 95” look, inspired from the Vinterberg’s movie “Festen” (1998), and Von Trier’s movie “Dancer in the Dark” (2000).

The sound is recorded from the internal microphone of the hand-held camera, to give the impression to the viewer of being in the same environment of the camera operator.

The video editing has been made with the software “Final Cut Studio 2” on the Macintosh platform, on the computers available in the Media Production Centre of the University of East London.

Our project is designed to operate in relationship to the British cultural context, where the filming took place and where the Punk phenomenon occurred, but is intended to an international audience, specifically among Western Countries. The intended target audience of “Dirty Dog” is largely a mirror image of the punk musicians themselves, consisting of young, teenage boys and girls and people in their 20s and 30s who shared feelings of disillusionment, anger and the sense of being unwanted outcasts. We can consider moreover among the audience people that dovetailed in 1977 the profile cited above.

For what concerns the physical placement and the distributive network, our project would ideally be projected on television, especially music channels and cable or satellite channels intended to specific audiences.

John Wyver, in Julia Knight’s book “Diverse Practices” states that “even if “video became to be defined against television (…) that has certainly not been the case in Britain, in this television tradition, and it most certainly is not the case today, when especially with elements of Channel 4 and BBC2, television offers a remarkable range of challenging visions and understandings of the world” (1996, p.317).

Considering the new frontiers of Information Technologies and the short length of the project we can consider placement also as a Video Podcast or Mobile Video.
Wikipedia defines the “Video podcast” as a “term used for the online delivery of video on demand video clip content via Atom or RSS enclosures. The term is an evolution specialized for video, coming from the generally audio-based podcast and referring to the distribution of video where the RSS feed is used as a non-linear TV channel to which consumers can subscribe using a PC, TV, set-top box, media center or mobile multimedia device”.
On the other side Mobile video is a type of media used or viewed on mobile phones. It comes in several forms including 3GPP, MPEG-4, RTSP and Flash Lite. In this category we prefer to include also more powerful and versatile devices like BlackBerries, WiFi-equipped Playstations, iPhones and iPods.

For what concerns the relationship between the parameters outlined above in this essay and the actual realisation of the project, we can state that, considering the short length of the documentary, some aspects have been excluded for a better representation of the opinions of the interviewees.
Instead of spectacular intervals as Temple used in his documentaries, like Helen Wallington-Lloyd in “The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle” (1980), or Lawrence Olivier playing “Richard III” in “The Filth And The Fury” (2000), we preferred to give voice to the main characters, giving place to contents and meanings, in spite of Ludwig Wittgenstein, that said “Don’t think of the meaning, think of the use” (1922).

REFERENCES:

- Elsey, E. & Kelly, A. 2002. In Short – A Guide To Short Film-making In The Digital Age. London: British Film Institute.
- Heilemann, J. 1992. England’s Dreaming: Anarchy, the Sex Pistols, Punk Rock, and Beyond. January 4 1992. Pag. 28. Washington.
- Hazan, J. & Mingay, D. 1980. The Clash – Rude Boy.
- Johnston, N. 1999. Melody Maker: History Of 20th Century Popular Music. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.
- Knight, J. 1996. Diverse Practices – A Critical Reader On British Video Art. London: University of Luton Press.
- Marcus, G. 1999. In The Fascist Bathroom – Punk In Pop Music 1977-92. New York: Harvard University Press.
- Marsh, D. 1994. The New Book of Rock Lists. New York: Fireside.
- Phillips T. 1999. Hated - GG Allin and The Murder Junkies.
- Parker A. 2007. Never Mind The Sex Pistols.
- Rees, A.L. 1999. A History of Experimental Film And Video. London: British Film Institute.
- Sabin, R. 1999. Punk Rock, So What? The Cultural Legacy Of Punk. London: Routledge.
- Savage, J. 1991. England’s Dreaming – Sex Pistols And Punk Rock. London: St Martin’s Griffin.
- Temple, J. 2000. The Filth And The Fury.
- Temple, J. 1980. The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle.
- Vinterberg, T. 1998. Festen.
- Von Trier, L. 2000. Dancer In The Dark.
- Wittgenstein, L. 1922. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.