Global Voices

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The world is talking, are you listening?

“Is Italy ready for an African-born government minister?,” Donata Columbro asks:

Two months after the recent elections, Italy has a new government. And Cécile Kyenge, 48 years old, an eye surgeon and Congo-born Italian citizen, is the new Minister for Integration in the cabinet of Prime Minister Enrico Letta.

Four years after the devastating earthquake that hit L’ Aquila, in Abruzzo, Italy, little or nothing has been rebuilt and the picturesque old town remains largely uninhabited, while many residents live in much debated [it] new towns. On May 5, 2013 almost a thousand art historians rallied together [it] in the historical center of L'Aquila to draw political attention. Despite some intervention made by the Monti government, a much bigger effort is needed to jump-start the reconstruction. The Italian comics activist Gianluca Costantini summarized the issue through the series of pictures “Yes we camp“.

“Yes we camp”, Gianluca Costantini's Political Comics project under CC 3.0 License

Tactical Tech's 2013 Info Activism Camp in northern Italy (23-30 June) will explore how digital technologies, data and visuals can be used to influence society. Only 80 spots available, apply before April 15.

Renewable energy, permaculture and green building, along with local traditions and eco-tourism: welcome to Tribewanted – an online community launched in 2006 based on the idea of “global citizenship” and harnessing the energy of social media to meaningfully connect and practice positive behavior change. Thanks to crowdfunding strategies, the project plans to build 10 eco-villages around the world: after Vorovoro (Fiji Islands) and John Obey (Sierra Leone), a new village just launched in Monestevole [it], in Umbria, the heart of Italy. Connect with Tribewanted people via web, Facebook or Vimeo.

On January 23, 2013, an excerpt from the annual report of l'ACAT-France, A World of Torture 2013, makes a fresh assessment of the state of torture in the world [fr]:

“A report called A World of Torture in 2013, assesses torture practices that continue to be alarming, from Pakistan to Italy, by way of South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Australia and Bolivia. From authoritarian regimes to democratic countries, none are exempt from criticism on the topic. In 2013, torture remains as endemic, omnipresent and multi-faceted as ever”.

Rick Falkvinge, the founder of Pirate Party, reinterprets the wars of religion that devastated Western Europe in the XVI and XVII centuries in terms of the current struggle to control information through overbearing legislation related to copyright and freedom of expression:

The religious wars were never about religion as such. They were about who held the power of interpretation, about who controlled the knowledge and culture available to the masses. It was a war of gatekeepers of information.

Olia and Claude Barrère, two French expatriates in Venice, Italy, write on their blog, “Olia i Klod” [fr]:

Today, as in the past, monasteries offer the possibility of accommodation. They are places of peace, places rich in culture, very well managed, and offer moments of serenity. In Venice, many of these timeless places offer lodging, of high historical and artistic value.

According to Stefano Femminis (popoli.info [it]), the current Monti government has shown more talk than actual action in regard to immigration, and the followings are emphasised [it]:

The situation remains the same as an year ago: expensive and unnecessary “human dumps” that in fact function as prisons for people that have committed no crime except for not having documents. The citizenship law persists on deeming as immigrants hundreds of thousands of people that have never immigrated from anywhere else: those are the 705 thousand children born and breed in Italy from foreign parents, companions in playing and learning to other children, not being any different from them if not for their rights.

Explaining why 35,6% out of the prison population is constituted of immigrants, according to  “Without Dignity” : The Observatory report [it] of the Antigone association, the website cronachediordinariorazzismo.org writes [it]:

The presence of foreigners in Italian prisons is mostly due to recent charges in immigration laws, that effected greater flows within the prison system; so much that one of the proposals for improving the inmates conditions in particular related to overcrowding as indicated by the monitoring report requires a need for ‘drastic intervention on three of the laws that produce -  without any benefits for collective security -  the largest influx in prison: the ex-Cirielli law, the Fini-Giovanardi law and the Bossi-Fini law.

I don’t know whether we will need gasoline, electric or hydrogen cars tomorrow. I don’t have to know, because I designed my car so that I can change the motor in about the same time that it takes to change a tire.

Joe Justice, founder and Team Lead of Wikispeed, explains on Ouishare how the Wikispeed team worked to build a 100 mile per gallon car in three months coordinating via free tools such as Skype, Dropbox or Google Docs. Wikispeed recently presented workshops in Rome, Barcelona and Paris.

Facebook page “Southeast Europe: People and Culture” notes that “Kosovo is one of this year's newcomers to the [Venice Biennale]“:

The pavilion allows visitors to share their views on Kosovo's future design landscape.

More on the Kosovo Pavilion – here.

A poster for the Balkans Beyond Borders Short Film Festival 2012.

The Balkans Beyond Borders Short Film Festival 2012 opens in Tirana today. This is the third time that the festival is being held; this year's theme is “TALK TO ME – multilingualism and communication”; the program of the three-day event is here.

A poster for the 8th Comic Book & Cartoon Fest in Prizren

Macedonian artist Vesna Nichevska-Saravinova blogged about her participation in the Prizren Comics Festival, organized by the Kosovo Comic Book Artist Association, Xhennet Comics [sq]. Four out of 15 featured artists at the festival were from Macedonia, Eddie Rebel reports [mk], alongside colleagues from Italy, Turkey, Cyprus, France, Kosovo, Bulgaria, and Bosnia.

Russian collective “Chto Delat? // What is to be done?” published an essay by Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek, who considers Pussy Riot “conceptual artists in the noblest sense of the word: artists who embody an Idea,” and fight against the cynicism of power-mongers who strive to return Russia to the tsarist level characterized by Leon Trotsky (1905) as “a vicious combination of the Asian knout [whip] and the European stock market.” The text has been translated into various languages [en, ru - middle of page, it, sr, sr, mk, gr] and reprinted by bloggers and progressive portals throughout Europe.

Macedonian portal Press24 published [mk] a photo posted by a Facebook user who discovered that instead of Macedonia, a display with telephone country codes at Milan airport featured the words “Fruit Salad” – which is synonymous with “Macedonia” in Italian, Spanish and some other languages. According to Google Translate, the only Italian-to-English translation of the word “Macedonia” is “fruit salad.”

‘We Are The Pigs‘ - in reference to the derogatory PIGS acronym - is a crowdfunded photojournalism ‘road trip’ venture, to collect people's stories from European countries affected by the debt crisis. The project, started by two young Central European women journalists frustrated with the stereotypical hyperbole and abuse levelled in the media against Greece and other crisis-ridden countries, will hit the road in early August, starting in Thessaloniki, Greece.

Le café pédagogique links [pdf, fr] to the results of a survey launched in 15 cities from 7 U.E. countries, among immigrants in possession of their legal documents and with or without citizenship of their host countries. The questions were aimed at integration, which appears to be highly wished for.

On the blog Presse-citron, Jean-Marie Le Ray wites about”Volunia” [fr], the new search engine in 12 languages ​​invented by Professor Massimo Marchiori of the University of Padua (Italy) : “this is a new concept of navigation of our times I think a test, a laboratory of ideas , also with a prospective vision of the Semantic Web, which relies heavily on “voluntary and spontaneous”  interaction with the user. In a sense, it is a participatory search engine trying to put the future in perspective in order to  adapt the current search process better [fr]. “

Following the murder of two Senegalese men in Florence, Italy, migrant African workers released an open letter on the web [it] to renew their call for dialogue with citizens of Rosarno, where in January 2010 violent riots took place. ‘Those that in the past few days have spread fear when talking about us will be held accountable.’ they write. ‘We’re here to work and contribute to the development of this town and region.’

Two young “faith-trotters” Anne-Laure and Frederic launched  ”faithbook” [fr],  a project that will take them across the world to meet  similar pro-peace initiatives. They look to start a dialogue between people of faith who believe in peaceful coexistence through initiatives in various domains such as sports, education, culture and environment. They will shortly travel  to Algeria after a trip in Tunisia.

Millions of Italians (worldwide) are celebrating an historic moment: the official resignation of PM Silvio Berlusconi, now on his way to the Presidential Palace. Huge celebrations are also being planned online, with live video streaming from downtown Rome, Facebook pages, YouTube videos, on-going tweets and so on.

The Italian Parliament is about to vote on a very stringent “wiretapping Bill” [it] aimed at drastically limiting judicial investigations and journalism inquiries, thus blocking free speech about new scandals exposing top-level politicians, as many of such cases keep emerging. After a recent “strike” by Wikipedia Italy [it] and a pouring of protests, a provision requesting all websites and blogs to immediately rectify any content that anybody deems “detrimental to his/her own image”, has been removed.

The homepage of Wikipedia Italia is on strike from the evening of October 4th. Its content is blocked in protest against an Italian bill on telephone interceptions that will mean that all sites and blogs must amend their contents within 48 hours of a request by any applicant who judges it detrimental to their personal image. The details and a petition can be found here. The latest news indicates, however, that the obligation to make amendments will only apply to online publications which are registered in court. The issue is, however, not fully resolved  as demonstrates a new intervention by Wikipedia Italia [Italian - all links].

Jana writes [sr] about Instant Light, a collection of 60 Polaroid photographs by film director Andrei Tarkovsky, and posts some sample photos from the book.

The EUCLID network is inviting social innovators from any country to submit entries to a competition about how to solve one of six social challenges in Naples, Italy. The winning idea will be implemented by the winners together with local partners using a €10,000 prize.

At The Daily Beast, Julia Ioffe comments on WikiLeaks’ revelations about the relationship between the Russian PM Vladimir Putin and his Italian counterpart, Silvio Berlusconi.

Fausto Salvadori, from blog Boteco Sujo [Dirty Bar, pt], writes about the famous Italian artist Milo Manara‘s visit to Brazil. Manara, a master of erotic comics, was in São Paulo and gave an interview to journalists and fans.

The Bienvenue chez les Rroms blog (“rroms” is the spelling of Roma in Romani language) imagines [Fr] a satirical conversation in which French President Nicolas Sarkozy seeks comfort and advice with his friend Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi, after being  unexpectedly victimized of his own suggestion that  some categories of offenders should be stripped of their French nationality.

LJ user bobasta discusses [RUS] ongoing speculations if it really was the governor of Saratov, Pavel Ipatov, who was caught by Italian police on a yacht in the Mediterranean last week on suspicion of smuggling.

Leonardo Sakamoto criticizes [pt] Vatican's position on the death of portuguese Nobel Prize winner José Saramago. He says that “there are people celebrating the death of Saramago”, referring to an article which was published in Italy's main Roman Catholic  newspaper “L’Osservatore Romano”.