something uglier and more worrying beneath the surface

a few months ago i was discussing with my friend giulia about the trials related to the violent facts that happened in Genoa during the 2001 G8 summit, which were taking place at that time in italy. several of the people who went there to demonstrate against the summit witnessed and experienced, during and after the summit, extremely strong abuses, then long, slow trials started. but now, after seven years, the trials are going towards a blind alley: of all the people who will possibly turn out guilty, none of them will have to serve prison terms, because of the long trial times and a statute of limitations we call "prescrizione". furthermore, in italy the accuse of torture still cannot be charged: it does simply not exist.

besides the forecast outcome of the trials, one of the things that pissed my friend off most was that there was no single word in the international press about that. she told me you should write something on your blog (as if it was a well known spotlight for information!). we even thought we ought to write letters to the main international newspapers. so many words had been spent against US off-border torture policy, but when something as scary as that happens (and is successfully hidden afterwards) within the good old gates of europe, it is largely ignored...

i am more and more scared we are becoming more and more like those people i described in the Guantanamo post a few days ago: are we really going to be insensitive to torture, even when it is performed in our own country? i hope not.

then a couple of days ago the final verdict of the trial came out. exactly as expected, the sentence is purely representative: none of the convicted ones will actually go to jail, no political investigation will be carried out to probe responsibilities.
and, not so ironically, one of the most interesting comments i read this time was not on the italian newspapers, but on The Guardian. at least this time the european press has not stayed silent.

so i am posting here a couple of passages from the article by Nick Davies, 17.07.2008:

(.....)
On Monday, 15 police, prison guards and prison medics finally were convicted for their part in the violence - although it emerged yesterday that none of them would actually serve prison terms. In Italy, defendants don't go to jail until they have exhausted the appeals process; and in this case, the convictions and sentences will be wiped out by a statute of limitations next year. Meanwhile, the politicians who were responsible for the police, prison guards and prison medics have never had to explain themselves. Fundamental questions about why this happened remain unanswered - and they hint at the third and most important reason for remembering Genoa. This is not simply the story of law officers running riot, but of something uglier and more worrying beneath the surface.
(.....)
No Italian politician has been brought to book, in spite of the strong suggestion that the police acted as though somebody had promised them impunity. One minister visited Bolzaneto while the detainees were being mistreated and apparently saw nothing or, at least, saw nothing he thought he should stop.
(.....)
Most of the several hundred law officers involved in Diaz and Bolzaneto have escaped without any discipline or criminal charge. None has been suspended; some have been promoted. None of the officers who were tried over Bolzaneto has been charged with torture - Italian law does not recognise the offence.
(.....)
Fifty-two days after the attack on the Diaz school, 19 men used planes full of passengers as flying bombs and shifted the bedrock of assumptions on which western democracies had based their business. Since then, politicians who would never describe themselves as fascists have allowed the mass tapping of telephones and monitoring of emails, detention without trial, systematic torture, the calibrated drowning of detainees, unlimited house arrest and the targeted killing of suspects, while the procedure of extradition has been replaced by "extraordinary rendition". This isn't fascism with jack-booted dictators with foam on their lips. It's the pragmatism of nicely turned-out politicians. But the result looks very similar. Genoa tells us that when the state feels threatened, the rule of law can be suspended. Anywhere.


the full article can be found here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/17/italy.g8

blue & joy (me definitely joy)

there's this hilarious though discouraging italian comic where the characters are called blue & joy. clearly, blue is always happy, although he looks like sad, and the other way around for the ever smiling joy. and clearly i feel like joy, because (even though?!) i'm feeling blue :)
after all, mondays always give me the blues...

tom waits. she sleeps.

waiting for tom

innocent when you dream

and it's such a sad old feeling
the fields are soft and green
it's memories that I'm stealing
but you're innocent when you dream

all that glitters is gold

you might have been driving for ten hours and you’re tired and sweaty, but it doesn’t matter.
you might have been waiting outside in the line, and now you’re sitting in the theatre and still waiting, and still it doesn’t matter.
and those 40 minutes could have even been longer but it wouldn’t have mattered anyway, because when the lights go off and smoke starts filling the stage, you know it’s going to be exactly as you’ve always imagined.

grumpy old man sang and shone for more than two hours in a raw, even though time was not a factor inside that room.
and it's time time time…

and again i’m not a writer, so i’m sure i’m not easily going to find words to describe his stroboscopic hat rotating and shining all over the place, and his sweet and kind of clumsy way of clapping hands, always trying to trick the audience out of rhythm, and his voice on the megaphone...
nor the fact that throughout the concert i had the feeling his voice was somehow large, bigger than anything i've ever heard. huge. if a voice can possibly be large, or big, or huge.
everything could fit in that sound…

at some point he starts telling some stories about the lost luggage storage in milan, and his trips around europe, where he recommends always to take an attorney along - wasn’t it in the US that you could get sued for anything? anyway...
so he’s sitting at the piano telling stories and you’re trying to catch his irony about drinking fishes and smoking monkeys and you don’t realise it, you couldn’t possibly realise it until you hear the words “wasted and wounded” and you would have never ever thought he would sit there at the piano and be singing tom traubert’s blues, for real, with the bass playing along, just a few meters away…

and it's nothing but shivers running down the spine and skin curling, this one is really the part i’ve always imagined. and it’s true. and i’m also dying to go downstairs and approach the stage and shoot a great photo, but anyway i don’t have a huge lens able to catch those few light rays reflecting from his face, and i’m not that good anyway, so i’d better just sit here and enjoy this trembling feeling in my arms.

and you might be a little sad when he’s singing make it rain and shiny glitter is actually raining on him, because you know it’s going to be over in a few minutes, but still you’re not sad, because that shivering sensation feels like it's gone now, but it’s not. it’s all over, but it’s not. some of the glitter's still there.
even when you go out and look at the weird combination of humans coming out of the theatre, even when you stare at the full moon shining, even when you think there’s a whole switzerland to cross tomorrow, five hours (or hopefully less!) where all the world is green...
even then, the glitter’s not gone.


tom waits - glitter and doom tour
teatro degli arcimboldi, milano, 19th July 2008

gotta go painting today... again...

here's a story which is extremely old-fashion romantic and somehow freaks me out at the same time....
on the 5 freeway, north of seattle, there is a rock. when i passed by on the bus it was painted with flowers. fair enough, people paint walls and rocks all around the world.
but the bus driver, who btw was a super lovely lady (besides being "a hell of a driver" as another traveller pointed out) and chatted with me throughout the whole trip (for a change!), told me that every time she passes by, that rock is covered with a different painting. like hearts, or abstract patterns, or with something written. and she's been driving along that way for 4 years now, 3 or 4 times per week.
ok, this can mean very many things...

but i can't take away from my mind this idea of someone who every morning wakes up, takes his/her brushes & colours, drives all the way there and paints a different rock every day.
like if it were a duty, a gift to the commuters driving along the same road every freaking day. at least they see something different. or maybe it could be a message to a special one of them, may it be a way to make someone fall in love every day more, to say hello to an old friend you got no time to speak with anymore, whatever. after all, everybody's gotta have a goal to wake up in the morning...