The world press was reporting on the dark ages of inquisition in Italian courts and labs. But then, journalistic investigations discovered political scandals that implied a plot to downplay earthquake dangers in Aquila, involving Berlusconi and his cabinet. Silvio Berlusconi can't control earthquakes any more than seismologists can, but he's always been keen on controlling media.

It came as a huge relief to many Italians when, on Friday, a brave court of Milan managed to sentence Berlusconi for his tax frauds. He is condemned to 4 years of prison, but of course he will appeal, stall, and agitate demogogically. Nobody is expecting this potentate to serve time in an Italian prison. It is still a significant moral victory for the brave judges, fighting for years on end to legally prove what was already obvious to everybody.

Of course Berlusconi was enraged and immediately threatened to take over the Italian government and, if necessary, topple the European Union in his ageless feud with the Italian courts. His re-ignited ambitions -- he only feels safe at the top of the Italian state, and often not even there -- caused justified fear among the citizens. Italians are unhappy with Monti governmental solutions, an Austerity imposed by the Central European bank and the EU from Brussels. The Austerity is miserable, but it got there due the wild immoral corruption of Berlusconi, his party members and the court harems.

In Rome an anti-Monti demo blocked the downtown of the city with the usual leftist protests, so dear to the Italian alert activists. But in the outskirts of Rome, in Garbatella, a wise and sharp conference of small enterprises and craftsmen was held. Here political matters were handled in a different way; no more laments and protests, but a search for concrete solutions for getting Italy out of a dead end.

The CNA NeXT 2012 Motori festival was held in a rebuilt theater in Garbatella, the working class neighborhood once dominated by the vanished Italian auto business. Digital and other young Italian craftsmen, self employed artists/businessmen are facing a harsh reality of shocking number of small businesses bankrupting next year. Made in Italy crafts, the nation's most famous and prestigious products from food to clothes, are collapsing in the general economic crisis. There's no sign of plausible political and social solutions, just the black past of Berlusconi laissez faire right winged corruption, or the present European asphyxiating austerity.

The Italians have won the battle on national brands in the EU regulations: they can keep their much-prized "Made in Italy" branding, if any craftsmen financially survive to actually make things in Italy. It's been hard to forfeit control of local affairs to the distant European Union; when it came to deposing Berlusconi the Europeans were lifesavers, but Brussels isn't sentimental about local arts and crafts.

Garbatella has a certain working-class blue-collar romantic air, the part of town was portrayed by artists like Pasolini, the poet killed in 1975 and Nanni Moretti the prestigious Italian contemporary filmmaker. So "Motori" was a conference for "Collective Intelligence," where Italians, who might have once been in labor unions, scratched their heads and wondered if they could organize digitally on new platforms for design, creation, production and export. It may seem farfetched to look for rescue from the Internet and open-source, rather than from Rome, Brussels or panicky business investors. But what else is on the horizon for people who want to get real work done? Just anti-science superstition, financial corruption, and blatant fear of the future.

Besides the young boisterous voices of Italy's lost generation, who are seeking inventive ways to avert the disasters brought on by their nation's elderly "Caste", two Italian celebrities were also present. They were the Oscar winning Italian conductor Piovani and the famous national soccer coach Zeman, both accompanied by Roman paparazzi. How do they manage the "collectivity" of an successful Italian orchestra and a successful Italian soccer team? Did these star managers have any useful hints?

Piovani, the musical director, resplendent in a silk suit and burgundy socks, was entirely in favor of collective work imposing discipline, and, as he put it, the beauty of following the rules. Zeman, the leather-clad soccer coach, was in favor of individual talent -- the stars have to hone their gifts to pull the team to victory. So approaches differed, but everyone involved mourned the painfully obvious cultural and moral decline of such a beautiful and creative country.

It's hard to believe in national salvation by "collective intelligence." On the other hand, it's exhilarating to see proud Italians rallying against obvious stupidity.

Photos: Jasmina Tesanovic]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/10/30/collective-intelligence-scien.html/feed 4 http://boingboing.net/2011/11/12/bye-bye-bunga-bunga-addio.html http://boingboing.net/2011/11/12/bye-bye-bunga-bunga-addio.html#comments Sun, 13 Nov 2011 05:27:39 +0000 Jasmina Tesanovic http://boingboing.net/?p=128990

"I haven't been so inspired since 1994," an Italian friend of mine posted on her Facebook page.

Well, I too can remember the year 1994, when I was in Milan, giving a public speech among some so-called intellectuals, soon after Berlusconi was elected. I had come there directly from Serbia, struggling in the thick of the Milosevic reign of terror.

I remember warning my Italian friends, feeling frightened, extremely emotional. I described a 'soft dictatorship,' how a small caste of oppressors gets into power legally, because WE vote them in, and then they steal and fake everything that WE, the people, never delegated them to do. And how, finally after waging wars against all the OTHERS in our own name, they finally turn on their ultimate victims and wage their war against US.

How they destroy every aspect of reality that stands in the way of a total exploitation: meaning the destruction, the ruin, of the people, ideas, customs, habits, prosperity, morality, of a nation and its history, of a time and a space. Afterwards, after the dreadful crash, who feels empty and responsible? We, the citizens who voted, we whose states were surrendered to the exploiters and profiteers, we, the participants, we are the ones humiliated in front of our children and the whole world.

Tonight, while Italians danced in front of the parliament, impatiently waiting for Berlusconi to officially resign, I remembered, once again among many times, how Milosevic was finally toppled after his miserable endless reign. Milosevic stumbled in the elections. He took Serbian support for granted, since he controlled all the Serbian mass media, and all the local means of patronage and favors.

Milosevic admitted his electoral defeat, promising to regroup and return to power soon. He faked a compliance with democracy, but we believed in his defeat. We didn't allow him to return to the statehouse. Instead we paralyzed Belgrade by occupying the streets in a crowd of a million, surrounding the parliament until the police and army deserted the criminal and agreed with the population.

Italian change came more smoothly: but the exasperated crowds in Rome were harshly insulting their premiere. "Mafioso," "buffoon," "go to jail now," "up your ass, Silvio," between sentimental fits of patriotic singing, huge crowds of people in the nation's capital called their elected leader awful names that haven't been heard since the fall of Mussolini.

Italian state TV channels were very prudish about reporting the rude scenes in the streets and squares of Rome. Only one Italian TV channel, plus online video streaming from Italian newspapers, recorded the historic moments. Italian journalists had to rely on Al Jazeera, BBC, Sky and other foreigners to tell the Italian people about the public scenes and public events within their own capital city.

As usual, Twitter was raving and reporting live. These 140-character messages from widely-scattered cellphones are hard to repress. However, bandwidth on the net got very patchy as Italians poured online massively: their government was collapsing headlong while their leader's pet TV machine offered them nothing but game shows, vapid repeats and busty dancing girls. So much for their national media and their role as informed citizens.

Silenced and humiliated.

Anonious people are courageously shouting in the public streets: the buffoon is gone! We lived for this day! Prison for Berlusconi, out with all the cowards!

People around me are more than happy. They are extremely frightened. They don't need the somber warnings of Italy's President, Napolitano, an old man in a figurehead post whom many now credit with saving the country -- for the time being. It is as if, only now, the Italians can realize the obvious truth of their dramatic situation, the grave national crisis they have somehow survived.

The future carries a worrisome burden of long-denied truth. After so many blatant and revolting personal scandals, people somehow imagined that they knew the truth about their Big Boss. They knew how to maneuver and how to protect their own interests in the minefield of official illusions. But that is not what real life is like, after the Fall.

The aftermath is like a mudslide after a torrential rain: it carries away the innocent as readily as the guilty. Since every citizen is entirely implicated in a nation's official fantasies, you cannot tell the clean from the polluted. Berlusconi brought out the worst instincts in every Italian, Eugenio Scalfari said.

Tomorrow is a big day for Italy: the first day of reconstruction. A new government, a new prime minister. Emergency stability law has been passed, as required by EU in a terrible haste, as Prime Minister Berlusconi crept from the President's house through the side door after resigning.

He finally departed his TV stage-set in a cloud of angry Twitter #hashtags: #byebyebungabunga, #finecorsa (end of the road), #maipiu (never more) #rimontiamo (Italy rides again)!

[Video Link] ]]> http://boingboing.net/2011/11/12/bye-bye-bunga-bunga-addio.html/feed 29 http://boingboing.net/2011/11/09/berlusconi-bye-bye.html http://boingboing.net/2011/11/09/berlusconi-bye-bye.html#comments Wed, 09 Nov 2011 16:01:05 +0000 Jasmina Tesanovic http://boingboing.net/?p=128343

Is this really the final end of the Berlusconi era, or just another pause for the Cavaliere to catch his breath?

Will he return on a fresh horse as the savior of an ever-crumbling Italy, as he has done repeatedly for the past 20 years? Will my Italian friends finally be able to travel abroad without a miasma of shame, and not be forced to explain to all what a bunga bunga orgy means? Will the numerous foreigners living and working in Italy, legal, clandestine, and semiclandestine, be able to face their children and say: we did the right thing to come here? Will they say: a new day dawns on the peninsula, the specter of crisis, gloom and crime has finally lifted! Work hard for your future!

These are open questions, and frightening questions today in Italy after yesterday's dramatic countdown, and Berlusconi's declaration that he will step down only after passing an emergency law on the Italian economic crisis. United Europe and its presses have closely followed the saga of the decadent emperor. They know that it was global economics and not his domestic scandals that pried the scepter from his hands.

Italians are wondering : whatever next? How badly off is the Italian political culture, which after all is to be blamed for many times that Berlusconi has managed to take and hold power? Where was the legitimate opposition, why were the counter-forces so weak? After the fall of Milosevic in Serbia, the deeply corrupted and dysfunctional state system was hard put to maintain any pretense of a normal government. Can Italy recover, and behave like a major G-7 power again? How is that possible?

Berlusconi was not a genocidal warmonger like Milosevic, but he inflicted years of steady ruination on Italian culture, health, education, research and reputation, not to mention state finance. Whoever comes in power after him will have to either clean cut with the past, or slowly purge the present. Either that, or just accelerate the collapse and scramble for the spoils, as Milosevic did.

What new, fresh faces may emerge from an Italy in moral and financial crisis? Young people without jobs, homes and children, a nation without funds or diplomatic credibility, a health care system without doctors and technology, brilliant students without no prospective but to flee elsewhere for careers, foreigners fighting for their basic human rights, women claiming back their long-fought victories of freedom and dignity.

Berlusconi was refused power by his own majority in the parliament. He loses little by resigning from a state so dysfunctional. Fear is in the air that he will create new elections, pose once again as the last-hope knight on horseback, and win over voters much as he did before. The Dignity people in Italy, together with Se non ora quando women's movement, anticipate a lot of activism and square action.

Berlusconi and the Italian power-structure seem to have an addictive relationship. Even mutual ruin cannot free them from one another. Sometimes I think that professional parties and politicians should be banned, to give anonymous alternative networks some chance to grow from scratch.

Italian stock markets are crumbling. Twitter messengers are raving. The daily press updates their websites by the hour. Italian TV comedians and stars are improvising political buffoonery like commedia dell'arte. Floods and rains are still drenching Italy, and even Pompeii, that victim of an ancient volcano, is a scene of the modern deluge.

]]> http://boingboing.net/2011/11/09/berlusconi-bye-bye.html/feed 13 http://boingboing.net/2011/10/05/italys-insane-internet-law-prompts-removal-of-italian-wikipedia.html http://boingboing.net/2011/10/05/italys-insane-internet-law-prompts-removal-of-italian-wikipedia.html#comments Wed, 05 Oct 2011 11:21:14 +0000 Cory Doctorow http://boingboing.net/?p=121797 Prompted by Italy's punitive (batshit) wiretapping law proposal, Wikipedia has removed its Italian version and now directs anyone trying to find Italian Wikipedia to a page explaining that Italy's Internet law will make it impossible to have an Italian Wikipedia:

This proposal, which the Italian Parliament is currently debating, provides, among other things, a requirement to all websites to publish, within 48 hours of the request and without any comment, a correction of any content that the applicant deems detrimental to his/her image.

Unfortunately, the law does not require an evaluation of the claim by an impartial third judge - the opinion of the person allegedly injured is all that is required, in order to impose such correction to any website.

Hence, anyone who feels offended by any content published on a blog, an online newspaper and, most likely, even on Wikipedia can directly request to publish a "corrected" version, aimed to contradict and disprove the allegedly harmful contents, regardless of the truthfulness of the information deemed as offensive, and its sources...

The obligation to publish on our site the correction as is, provided by the named paragraph 29, without even the right to discuss and verify the claim, is an unacceptable restriction of the freedom and independence of Wikipedia, to the point of distorting the principles on which the Free Encyclopedia is based and this would bring to a paralysis of the "horizontal" method of access and editing, putting - in fact - an end to its existence as we have known until today.

Wikipedia:Comunicato 4 ottobre 2011/en - Wikipedia [secure.wikimedia.org]]]> http://boingboing.net/2011/10/05/italys-insane-internet-law-prompts-removal-of-italian-wikipedia.html/feed 46 http://boingboing.net/2010/01/16/italy-proposes-manda.html http://boingboing.net/2010/01/16/italy-proposes-manda.html#comments Sat, 16 Jan 2010 16:22:50 +0000 Cory Doctorow "The decree subjects the transmission of images on the Web to rules typical of television and requires prior ministerial authorization, with an incredible limitation on the way the Internet currently functions," opposition Democratic Party lawmaker Paolo Gentiloni told the press conference.

Article 4 of the decree specifies that the dissemination over the Internet "of moving pictures, whether or not accompanied by sound," requires ministerial authorization. Critics say it will therefore apply to the Web sites of newspapers, to IPTV and to mobile TV, obliging them to take on the same status as television broadcasters.

"Italy joins the club of the censors, together with China, Iran and North Korea," said Gentiloni's party colleague Vincenzo Vita...

"It's the Berlusconi method: Kill your potential enemies while they are small. That's why anyone doing Web TV -- even from their attic at home -- must get ministerial approval and fulfill a host of other bureaucratic obligations," Gilioli wrote. He said the government was also keen to restrict the uncontrollable circulation of information over the Internet to preserve its monopoly over television news. Proposed Web video restrictions cause outrage in Italy (Thanks, Sal!)

(Image: Manifestazione No Berlusconi Day Cartello in piazza a Creative Commons Attribution photo from Il Foro Giornale's photostream)

(Guest-essay by Jasmina Tešanović, photos by protest participants.)

Italian people are at their best in a piazza. Yesterday, the international "No B day" was held all over the world, in public squares. The largest event happened in Rome in Piazza San Giovanni. For those few who don't understand, "No B" means No Berlusconi, the right-wing Italian prime minister who has been ruling Italy for the past two decades, undermining its brightest democratic traditions with his private and public scandals.

Only a couple of days ago, a protected mafia witness testified that Berlusconi was involved in mafia crimes. This latest allegation among many triggered many protestors to carry the banners: "no mafia in the state." However, the real hero of this manifestation was Berlusconi's ex wife, who a year or so ago denounced him as womanizer and a corruptor.

The organizers claim that they were one million participants in the Rome march, which ended in a big piazza where non politicians addressed the crowds. This country has too many parties without people and too many people without a party, said one of the participants.

"No Berlusconi" day was organized via internet, without political parties or partisan movements. The people on the streets were dressed in purple as a sign of protest, with many masks and disguises. The king of commedia dell arte, Dario Fo (with his partner Franca Rame), the Nobel prize winner for literature, spoke from the stage to the people: witty and poignant as usual. This author won the Nobel for his political improvised tragic comedies on the mafia state, which has a long bloody history in democratic Italy.

In the meantime Berlusconi, living in denial as usual, was on a fast track train between Milan and Turin, triumphantly opening the route that will join the two power centers in northern Italy.

Riot police were all over the streets in Torino because of the soccer derby between Milan and Turin team and the voyage of its problematic president.

In many other cities of the world, like Berlin or Sydney, people gathered to protest against Berlusconi. These days, as in the days of Borgia or Caligula, Italy generates news for its mafia and sex scandals, not from a squalid underclass but from the very top. The people have to stand up in the piazza risking their lives for democracy, so dear to their hearts and temper.

But yesterday, nobody dead, nobody hurt, just a great carnival of political alternative: a good start.

Jasmina Tešanović is an author, filmmaker, and wandering thinker who shares her thoughts with BoingBoing from time to time. Email: politicalidiot at yahoo dot com. Her blog is here.

Previous essays by Jasmina Tešanović on BoingBoing:

• On Marina Abramovic, a "grandmother of performance art"
• The Murder of Natalya Estemirova.
• Less Than Human
• Earthquake in Italy
• 10 years after NATO bombings of Serbia
• Made in Catalunya / Lou and Laurie
• Dragan Dabic Defeats Radovan Karadzic
• Who was Dragan David Dabic?
• My neighbor Radovan Karadzic
• The Day After / Kosovo
• State of Emergency
• Kosovo
• Christmas in Serbia
• Neonazism in Serbia
• Korea - South, not North.
• "I heard they are making a movie on her life."
• Serbia and the Flames
• Return to Srebenica
• Sagmeister in Belgrade
• What About the Russians?
• Milan Martic sentenced in Hague
• Mothers of Mass Graves
• Hope for Serbia
• Stelarc in Ritopek
• Sarajevo Mon Amour
• MBOs
• Killing Journalists
• Where Did Our History Go?
• Serbia Not Guilty of Genocide
• Carnival of Ruritania
• "Good Morning, Fascist Serbia!"
• Faking Bombings
• Dispatch from Amsterdam
• Where are your Americans now?
• Anna Politkovskaya Silenced
• Slaughter in the Monastery
• Mermaid's Trail
• A Burial in Srebenica
• Report from a concert by a Serbian war criminal
• To Hague, to Hague
• Preachers and Fascists, Out of My Panties
• Floods and Bombs
• Scorpions Trial, April 13
• The Muslim Women
• Belgrade: New Normality
• Serbia: An Underworld Journey
• Scorpions Trial, Day Three: March 15, 2006
• Scorpions Trial, Day Two: March 14, 2006
• Scorpions Trial, Day One: March 13, 2006
• The Long Goodbye
• Milosevic Arrives in Belgrade
• Slobodan Milosevic Died
• Milosevic Funeral