mbf tod@y

my singstar hero(es)

The SingStar Experience from manybits on Vimeo.

Miles Fisher - This Must Be The Place

Asterios Polyp

revolutionary road: the horror... the horror...

don delillo's new novel, point omega (Feb 2010)

brief synopsis 

Booyah Society: your life as a videogame

Booyah has launched a free iPhone app  that lets users create an “achievement system for your life.” The company described as "The First Social Game based on Your Real Life Achivements". Built by former game developers, the app lets you categorize and share your achievements in life with you friends. Pure genius (Thank you, Frederic!)

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why italy is not a democracy and why italians don't care (a must read)

"[T]he majority of Italians know nothing about the scrapes their leader has got himself into in the past few days. I think the English know more about his troubles than the Italians, for example, and come to mention it the Spanish and Germans too. In Italy, the television channels have done nothing to cover this affair, despite the fact that it revolves around sex, money and power, all ingredients that would interest their viewers.

You have to remember of course, that Berlusconi – as well as being the head of the government and the biggest party in the country – controls the entire universe of Italian television. He owns three private television channels, because he never felt duty-bound to get rid of them on entering politics; and the three public stations over which the party in power, whether left or right, has always exerted control. But the current monopoly of mainstream television is without precedent. It has led to the elimination of the modern agora, that public space for information and debate in which the delicate free market of consensus develops in the West.

Just consider the fact that 73 per cent of Italians (according to data from Censis research institute) made up their minds about who to vote for in the last elections through the television, and you have a concrete idea of what conflict of interest means. [...]

The country no longer has a public opinion, capable of reacting autonomously or making spontaneous judgements. On the contrary, Italians are immersed in a "common understanding", which is something else altogether. It is Berlusconi who is the great architect of this "common understanding" and at the same time the interpreter of its success.

[...]

There is, in short, a fundamental problem: Berlusconi has kept Italy in a state of high tension for 15 years. Using emotions is the most effective way of introducing a modern populism. This is a populism that asks citizens to mobilise, not so they can get involved in public debate, but so they can anoint the leader with their vote." (Ezio Mauro, The Independent)

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The comments - located below the main article - are truly fascinating. As the sample illustrates, Italians are not even shocked or appalled by the behavior of their leader, which to me is emblematic of a crisis that cannot be solved by simply removing Berlusconi. Collusion with the mafia, media monopoly, sex scandals: Mauro is right, most Italians don't even care or don't want to care or are unable to distinguish between the public and the private sphere any more - the recurrent theme "Berlusconi is rich and powerful thus he can do whatever he wants"; "If he can get away with bribing people, why should he have to quit for what he does in his private life?" -explains why Italy will never recover from Fascism: dictatorship, not democracy, is part of the DNA of the country. Italy is a videocracy built on decades of mediated brainwashing. 

Milano senza sogni, una città amara

"Che cosa è accaduto a Milano in questi decenni? Il degrado non riguarda soltanto i marciapiedi rappezzati, naturalmente, e neppure i tram che funzionano male, il traffico paralizzante, l'aria avvelenata. Riguarda l'intera comunità, indifferente, passiva. Si è smarrito lo spirito solidale, simbolo della città, persino nelle sue canzoni. A Milano venivano a lavorare tutti, senza alcuna discriminazione. Non comparvero mai sui portoni, come a Torino negli anni Sessanta, quei cartelli oltraggiosi, «Non si affitta ai meridionali». Non è più così, il razzismo è diventato roba di casa, vengono proposte le carrozze separate sulla metropolitana — i bianchi e i neri, i locali e gli oriundi — mentre uomini politici della Lega intonano indecenti ritornelli che sbeffeggiano i napoletani. (In nome dell'idea di nazione). Sembra, e va detto con accoramento, con pena, che sia affiorato il peggio nascosto nelle viscere." (Corrado Stajano, Il Corriere della Sera)

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Lissy Trullie - "Ready for the Floor" (Hot Chip cover)

Truth is, Italians deeply love Berlusconi (file under: run, run for your life)

(Photo credit: AP)

"Does this mean Italy is politically primitive? In a way, yes – but Mr Berlusconi's appeal is more complex than that. He is the most shameless male chauvinist on the European political scene, but he is also fully committed to the idea that the women he fancies – who, typically, are clever as well as beautiful – want and deserve careers of their own, desires which, in the typical spirit of the padrone, he does his best to gratify, by getting them into parliament, into his cabinet, on to television and so on.

But in his own peculiar way, Mr Berlusconi is both a modernist and a feminist. Italy will continue to lap up the revelations from Ms D'Addario's tapes. But on the basis of the ones released so far, they are unlikely to shake the convictions of millions of Italians that he is exactly the sort of leader they like." (Peter Popham, The Independent)

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