Saturday, January 8, 2022
Friday, January 7, 2022
Message in a Bottle
Here is the statement with which the Studenti Contro il Green Pass Torino collective accompanied their video: |
Italy is turning into a sanitary regime. We make our plea to all of you to stand up for democracy and freedom of choice, against vaccine coercion and discriminations based upon individual decisions about personal health. We decided to make this video, hoping for international support and solidarity, we are constricted both physically and mentally and we are not the only ones in the world. We want you to know that you are not alone and that we are willing to fight side by side with you, with all the other countries that are willing to change the current situation in order to create a better world. We are no longer the happy and democratic land that our politicians and media are trying to depict with their false narrative. Italy is now a country where any kind of freedom and human rights are ceasing to exist. Day by day, Italy is becoming a truly authoritarian and apartheid-based sanitary regime, led by a powerful and self-assertive Prime minister, who can act without any real scrutiny, limitation or accountability. The system of check and balances among the three powers has been sabotaged by Mario Draghi, who nullified the primacy of the Parliament, by overthrowing its established role as the lawmaker entity of this country. Such a coup happened with the acquiescence, if not the complicity, of the totality of the Italian institutions, judicial authorities and political parties, including the so-called “opposition block”. Most of all, our President Sergio Mattarella, the Head of State, whom we Italians entrust as the impartial “Keeper of the Constitution”, has decided to quietly approve any kind of decision made by Draghi’s cabinet, nullifying his role as impartial figurehead. Indeed, the President of the Republic is now openly supporting the climate of reproach and stigmatisation against unvaccinated people in his public speeches. Something that the government has been encouraging for the past two years. As far as we are concerned, we can’t study, work, and live with serenity, but, despite all the odds, we will keep on fighting for our constitutional rights, freedom of choice and our right to study. We are standing up for democracy. |
When Call The People
The internationally acclaimed Serbian film-maker Emir Kusturica took position with regard to the scandalous arrest of Novak Đoković, guilty of being tennis world No. 1 without a COVID vaccine: “Hasn’t the world already become a prison of which barbed wire is not its most expressive symbol?”, he asked rhetorically. “Aren’t the punishments for those who refuse to be vaccinated just another step by the World Government towards the realisation of planetary domination and digital imprisonment?”. |
Grandfather Gandhi
At the end of over a week of hunger strike, and after an arrest for civil disobedience, Professor Davide Tutino succeeded in obtaining a vaccination exemption certificate on the ground of his physical status. Such is the price of freedom! However, Tutino said that he will cease his hunger strike only when COVID rapid antigen tests will be free of charge for everyone and compulsory vaccination for workers in the law enforcement and school systems will be abolished. Photo courtesy of Il Corriere della Città. |
Moon Lob
Right after Novak Đoković’s visa cancellation, Australian PM Scott Morrison boasted, with doubtful good taste, that when it comes to immigration policy “no one is above the rules”, apparently oblivious to the sacrifice the Serbian star had just made for the sake of a longrolling moon lob. In fact, as Tumaini Carayol writes in an article for The Guardian of January 6, 2022, “Ironically, one positive aspect of the incident is the increased attention on Morrison’s cruel border policies. Even if he is banished from the country, Đoković will ultimately be fine. He has the resources and profile to seek out representatives when most would have been on the first flight home”. And so kudos to Đoković for celebrating the eve of Orthodox Christmas together with the people of a lesser god, as Carayol incidentally observes: “There are 36 refugees at Đoković’s Park hotel. Some have been stuck in the hotel for eight years and have been treated abhorrently by the state ever since. They deserve the attention and compassion that Đoković’s brief stay among them is generating”. Photo: Sports Illustrated/AP. |
Thursday, January 6, 2022
Stargate
20-time Grand Slam Champion and world No. 1 Novak Đoković has appealed against his expulsion from Australia, with the court’s verdict expected for Monday. Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić has also formally accused Australia of harassment toward Đoković, who was held in immigration detention over a dogmatic issue with his visa related to his vaccination exemption status. Photo: Bernat Armangue/AP. |
Wednesday, January 5, 2022
Deadlock
- Helen Davidson, Desperation as China’s locked down cities pay price of zero-Covid strategy, The Guardian, January 5, 2022
Strict lockdowns in the Chinese cities of 西安 (Xī’ān) and 禹州 (Yǔzhōu) are taking their toll on the population and healthcare systems, according to residents, with complaints of food shortages and dangerous delays in accessing medical care. [Read more]. |
Tuesday, January 4, 2022
To be, or not to be
The intervention of endocrinologist Giovanni Frajese on the occasion of the scientific conference “Pandemic — An Invitation to Confrontation” held January 3, 2021 at the Hotel Nazionale in Piazza di Monte Citorio in Rome, Italy under the auspices of the no green pass associations ContiamoCI! and Coordinamento 15 Ottobre. |
Transforming Harry
People do 太极拳 (Tàijíquán) in the morning at the 外滩 (Bund) in 上海 (Shànghǎi), China. Photo: VCG/Getty Images. |
Monday, January 3, 2022
On the Bottom
As of 2020 and 2021, Italy ranked 41st in the World Press Freedom Index, compiled and published annually by the French non-governmental organisation Reporters Sans Frontières (Reporters Without Borders), among the lowest in Europe.
Alfred Freddy Krūppa, Censorship (Reductivism revisited), 2013. Courtesy of WikiArt. |
Sunday, January 2, 2022
A Note
The Steering Committee of the “Commissione Du.Pre (Dubbio e Precauzione)” (“Doubt and Precaution Commission”) has issued a note against the “containment measures” adopted by Italian Government on December 29, 2021: |
The Commission for Doubt and Precaution thinks that the measures adopted by the government are absolutely unacceptable in a democratic system, and calls on citizens to put a stop to the daily discrimination and violation of fundamental rights, specifically addressing to the President of the Republic, who is the guarantor of the Constitution. Finally, the Commission reminds to Italian citizens about the Articles 52 and 54 of the Constitution, which prescribe that they have the duty to defend the constitutional state, inviting them to react in constitutional forms to what is happening with the support of part of the media, which denigrate any critical thought and doubt — doubt and critical acumen that are instead the necessary basis of any democratic debate and even of any real scientific approach. [Read more]. |
The clock from the High Nest villa near Amsterdam, the hideout for Janny Brandes-Brilleslijper, her family and other Jewish people, during the Holocaust. Photo: Dutch Resistance Museum. |
The Path of Knowledge
侯逸凡 (Hóu Yìfán): From “Chess Queen” to “Workplace Newbie” CRI/CIBN, October 15, 2021 Society & Culture Listen on Apple Podcast  侯逸凡 (Hóu Yìfán) learned to play chess at 5. At 14, she was the youngest woman to ever be awarded the title of Grandmaster. At 16, she won the Women’s World Chess Championship for the first time, thus becoming the youngest Chess Queen ever. Subsequently she won the world title three more times: in 2011, 2013 and 2016, to become the youngest woman in chess history to be crowned four times. In July 2020 she found a new identity as she was appointed as the youngest full Professor ever at the School of Physical Education, Normal College (Faculty of Education), 深圳大学 (Shēnzhèn University). At present she is still world’s woman No. 1. |
Saturday, January 1, 2022
The Last September
A community in society
Giorgio Agamben, Quodlibet, September 17, 2021
Italy, as a political laboratory for the West, in which the strategies of the dominant powers are worked out in advance in its extreme form, is today a country — humanly and politically — in disrepair, where an unethical and unscrupulous tyranny has allied itself with a mass in the grip of a pseudo-religious terror, ready to renounce not only what were once called constitutional freedoms, but even any warmth in human relations. Indeed believing that the greenpass means the return to normality is really naïve. Just as a third vaccine shot is already being imposed, so new ones will be imposed, and new situations of emergency and new red zones will be declared as long as the government and the powers it expresses will judge it useful. And those who have been recklessly obedient will be the first to pay the price.
In these conditions, without putting down any possibile instrument of immediate resistance, dissidents have to think about creating something like a society in the society, a community of friends and neighbours inside the society of enmity and distance. The forms of this new clandestinity, that will have to make itself as autonomous as possible from the institutions, ought to be each time pondered and experimented, but only they can guarantee human survival in a world which has devoted itself to a more or less conscious self-destruction.
Giorgio Agamben, Quodlibet, September 17, 2021
Italy, as a political laboratory for the West, in which the strategies of the dominant powers are worked out in advance in its extreme form, is today a country — humanly and politically — in disrepair, where an unethical and unscrupulous tyranny has allied itself with a mass in the grip of a pseudo-religious terror, ready to renounce not only what were once called constitutional freedoms, but even any warmth in human relations. Indeed believing that the greenpass means the return to normality is really naïve. Just as a third vaccine shot is already being imposed, so new ones will be imposed, and new situations of emergency and new red zones will be declared as long as the government and the powers it expresses will judge it useful. And those who have been recklessly obedient will be the first to pay the price.
In these conditions, without putting down any possibile instrument of immediate resistance, dissidents have to think about creating something like a society in the society, a community of friends and neighbours inside the society of enmity and distance. The forms of this new clandestinity, that will have to make itself as autonomous as possible from the institutions, ought to be each time pondered and experimented, but only they can guarantee human survival in a world which has devoted itself to a more or less conscious self-destruction.
M. C. Escher, Bond of Union, 1956. Courtesy of WikiArt.
The Long March Back
- Emma Graham-Harrison, How much longer can China keep up its zero-Covid strategy?, The Guardian, January 1, 2022
As 北京 (Běijīng) pursues its solitary path, observers are asking whether the policy is about protecting public health — or social order. [Read more]. |
People queueing for COVID-19 testing in 西安 (Xī’ān), which is under lockdown. Photo: VCG/Getty Images. |
The Day After
This is my reply to all who sent me their very best wishes for a better New Year: “Let’s hope it will be better for everyone, or else it cannot be better for anyone”. Photos: Mado Flynn. |
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)