democracy, activism and social networks

There!

It’s exactly what I wanted to elaborate yesterday in my post (but we had an invitation to dinner and had to rush ).

The economist Loretta Napoleoni tells it very clearly today on D di Repubblica. “Is internet shutting activism down?”. Check out the article here (and babel-fish it, it’s in italian), issue n.652, page 19.

Basically, what she says is that participation (to democracy) is not the same as being connected online. You do not discuss themes which impact society in the same way if you are at dinner with friends, online or in a public gathering (a political party meeting or an assembly). Some things need to be done by being physically there, in the street.

On the other hand, two important events this year.

The Obama election. He’s no Gandhi, ok. But maybe this time the grass-roots movement (especially for the financing of the campaign) really made the difference. And the fact that he was online. The web was not a sticker on this candidate product. It was part of him.

Second event, the Tehran events on Twitter. When I read an account of the precise events of Paris, May 1968, what struck me is the fact that demostrants had to resort to Ancient Greece methods to communicate, namely: run. Run between one barricade and the other, bringing messages and information on where the police was. Even in the WWI trenches the transmission of messages was more efficient. But hey, these boys and girls could just use telephone boots and tennis shoes. Now Twitter brought us the events unfolding in Tehran before CNN. If we want to talk things italian, since we are approaching another G8, it’s on YouTube that you can find the reportage of what really happened in Genoa that night at the Diaz school and in the barracks of Bolzaneto (english witnesses).

I guess that social networks should be an additional mean towards participation and information but not an objective per se. I blog, I twitter therefore I can act. But sometimes the illusion of “feeling in touch with others” can be predominant and annihilate participation. As Napoleoni says “in the end, you are in your pajamas, at home. Alone”. So get in those jeans and get out and meet those people.

Because the Divided Cities exist. The fact is that the wall is not a vertical one that you can stumble upon when walking. It’s horizontal, above our heads. And we move like little ants or busy bees under the slab of grey reinforced concrete that we call “democracy”.

PS
I just saw by browsing on bora.la that the foreign minister Frattini is Twittering from the G8 in Triest…beware…

intensive car

In the press they talk about The Great Deal (Fiat-Chrysler), talks are underway today in Berlin on the future of Opel.

But only on Beppe Grillo’s blog I can read today some news on the price increases applied by the italian motorway companies. Oil is cheap, and it won’t last long. So toll rentiers seize the opportunity today to levy more taxes on the italian public.

Alitalia and Air One are lame ducks, public transport does not get the necessary investments, people who need to be on the move are forced into using the car.

In the meantime our real unemployment and our real inflation are figures never published in the press…not only the politicians but also the journalists indulge in abundant Schadenfreude, about the 6% GDP fall estimate for Germany, the 20% unemployment rate in Spain but…what about us? No real figures on our own inflation and unemployment, Keine Weltanschauung for the way forward.

Listen to the Sage from Omaha. He says that the only certainty about our future is inflation…(or read “Weimar, utopia and tragedy”).

Anna in Stasiland

Stasiland, an incredible book by Anna Funder. The italian translation is very good, pity only for the title “C’era una volta la DDR”, which sounds a bit silly, actually.

Funder starts in a casual way to ask people how things were during the DDR years, and she ends up conducting a very intriguing reportage.

Beyond stereotypes and beyond Ostalgie, “between Kafka and Monty Python” Funder contacts victims of the regime and former Stasi officers, Mitarbeiters and talking heads. She visits the places were citizens were detained and subject to police interrogations. She smells the stale air of these rooms, where the odour of terrified people, dossiers, senile power and outright paranoia still lingers.

For 10 years the letters that my DDR penpals and I were writing each other were intercepted, opened with special W-shaped steam devices, read, copied and filed.

My friend Michael went up to the Archive and got the letters, just after the fall of the Wall. Just like those people you see in the film “The lives of others”. Just like the protagonists of Anna Funder’s reportage.

We were teenagers and loved Duran Duran. We were discovering Madonna. I worshipped Radio Caroline, we met over Radio Free Europe.

My friends in Brandenburg and Saxony were longing for freedom. They travelled a lot across the Socialist countries. We had freedom in Triest, but I had never travelled. Freedom meant different things for us.

I wonder if I can go there, and feel the blow, of seeing my letters in a file, imagine them through the eyes of a Stasi zealous Mitarbeiter, filed and numbered, in a box. I have the sinister impression that somewhere, someone knew a lot about me.

burnt after eating

“Sunday morning, the 5th, we meet at Necci for breakfast”. Well, we didn’t. The Necci was a victim of arson. Maybe some people were disturbed by the friendly traffic of pedestrians around the cafe’. The once cosy atmosphere is now covered in black dust. How sad. Only the portrait of Pasolini remained intact…We hope they will re-open soon…we can’t live without their fabulous croissants and witzig foto-montaggi…

stolpersteine and sanpietrini

Stolpersteine in Schoeneberg.

Saving private Saviano

Just landed back in Rome, the Rai3 special with Roberto Saviano, David Grossman and Paul Auster. One of those rare evenings in which it was worth turning the tv on.

2009-03-26 10:02 SAVIANO: CAMORRA UCCIDE CON SILENZIO E DIFFAMAZIONE (di Bianca Maria Manfredi) MILANO – Il silenzio e la diffamazione sono armi terribili in mano alla camorra e l’ordigno adatto per combatterli è quello della parola. Anche la parola, o meglio le parole, dette questa sera da Roberto Saviano allo speciale di ‘Che tempo che fa’.

1969’s normalization

Yesterday MeinMann and I went to the Prague Spring exhibition at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni. Photos, novels, videos, poems and printed media about the 1968 events and the subsequent “normalization”. 20 years later the Velvet Revolution would sweep normalization away…

I was reading the book about the exhibition during the holidays in early January of this year. I found this poem by Zbynek Havlicek – which I could not find in english version so far – in the days in which Gaza was being bombed.

That overly zealous wiper blade closing the poem conveys the feeling of blind obsession of war and its mechanic, grinding advance.

Nelle mandibole politiche dei giorni

Otturate dai cingoli dei carri

Dorme

La coscienza del mondo

Con la sua unica morale

Dei condannati a morte

Pone sotto di se’ ragioni come mine

Mentre la grande schizofrenia della storia

Come una lancetta che si agita febbrile sui vetri delle auto

Si asciuga dalla fronte il  sudore invece della pioggia.

Photo and poem from the book “Praga da una primavera all’altra 1968-1969″ Forum Editrice

against the wall

The first time MeinMann and I learned more about the Berlin Wall, we were at Bernauer Strasse with a Dutch journalist explaining us the unfolding of the events in 1989. It was the first time we heard about the story of Peter Fechter, who was shot and left to bleed at the wall. Today, on Der Spiegel Online:

Berlin paid tribute Thursday to the last person shot trying to cross the Berlin Wall. Chris Gueffroy died in a hail of bullets as he tried to flee East Germany on the night of Feb. 5-6, 1989. He was the last person to fall victim to the East German policy of shooting people trying to flee across the Berlin Wall — although more were to die trying to escape from East Germany before the borders were opened on Nov. 9, 1989.

East Germany’s ex-leaders always denied they had ordered soldiers to shoot people trying to flee across the Berlin Wall. However, documents which surfaced in 2007 proved without doubt that such an order did exist. “Don’t hesitate to use your weapon even when border breaches happen with women and children, which traitors have often exploited in the past,” reads an order dated Oct. 1, 1973.

italian surrealpolitik

A few posts ago I referred to the clash between Italy and Slovenia on the never ending story of “war reparations”. The Adriatic is definitely a solid frontier.

On Deutsche Welle I was impressed by the reportage on the – not so easy – delivery of the new high speed trains to Russia by Siemens…across the Baltic.

My bewilderment did not came by the fact per se, but by the contrast between the Balticpolitik and the absence of whatsoever Adriaticpolitik. The petty controversy stirred with Slovenia once again by the italian foreign minister. I thought that after all the terrible events between Russia and Germany between the two armies during WWII but more importantly, all the respective massacres suffered by both civilian populations, both government and countries were indeed able to turn a very dramatic page and work constructively. That should not be a surprise, after decades of Ostpolitik and 1989, but Italy is still unable to recognize its wrongdoings and continues with its stubborn victimism and arrogance.

Now, Italy can only lose from this attitude, and the same applies to Slovenia and Croatia. But that’s exactly the difference between constructive pragmatism and arrogant navel-gazing. Decades of Ostpolitik do matter. Frattini is too busy issuing press releases about his flirts, his role model isn’t obviously Willy Brandt…

A bit less than a year ago Bora.la published an article by the italian and triestine journalist Paolo Rumiz. A year later, it is even more relevant, in the current political climate.

Rumiz demonstrates how Italy was not able to link up with the Balcans and not even join corridor five to Kiev and how this comes from the fact that nazism had Nurenberg, whereas fascism is a karst river, running under cover but bubbling vigorously.

we were neighbors

Tuesday 27th January: “Holocaust Remembrance Day”  or “Tag des Gedenkens an die Opfer des Nationalsozialismus” or, with typically italian “understatement”, “Giornata della Memoria”.

I was in Berlin on Jan 27th and I visited the exhibition in the Rathaus Schoeneberg Town Hall: “Wir waren Nachbarn” – we were neighbors.

At the townhall all the victims of our Kiez  were listed, by name, occupation. A map highlighted were they lived. Gruenewaldstrasse. Close. Eisenacherstrasse. Pallasstrrasse. Really close.

No “masses” of human beings. But neighbors. Real people. With names, jobs, addresses, families.