THE UNEDITED

Free space for free expression in english & italian

Hot. Say hot. 

Deadly hot weather.

Unforgiving sunshine, reminds me of Alcaeus’ fragment on Sirius.

 

Been spending quite some week in July.

Getting ready for the job, laying bases, becoming familiar with roads and places.

And faces.

Say I’ve been trained to this slow pace routine, to tame any anxiety for those frenzied days to be.

 

Up and down with my friend’s friends anytime they can, sometimes  driving around alone that sun bleached once red Polo GC courteously lent me.

Sometimes dragging my feet around town, a town scanty of trees, the only shadows by the walls. 

Nowhere to go in daytime, once the fridge is full of fresh vegetables and cheese I get on Saturday at the farmer’s market downtown.

Closed in the freshening shade of my friend’s service apt.

Reading. Sleeping. Watching tv. Some workout. Constantly rehearsing next moves to try. 

 

Hot weather, really hot even for local standards.

People keep hiding inside shadowy rooms, some of them enjoying air conditioning at work, some of them not. 

 

Becoming familiar with bookshops, time dragging on slow like my pace. 

 

My foreign look, my almost natural italian accent. Not too often in the same store. 

Don’t let them wonder too much about this dark skinned big guy of mine.

Don’t let them find out I’m somewhat close to those short local gypsies always wandering around looking for some easy pick - so to say. Clearly, locals mistrust gypsies, some even hates them.

 

Good bookstores. Nice and passionate bookstore keepers. 

Max 88 is the best. 

Azuni too is nice.

Good choice of volumes.

Cultured nice people of them.

Good bars too, where easy find is some special rum, or some cooling local IPA.

 

Then some freshening darkness welcomes us toward the night.

Time to walk out, past University Square, down along via Turritana where youths gather at tables out of nice bars.

Time to meet my new friends here.

Mostly my pal’s friends, all of them gathering at night in a few bars to share beers and talks.

 

Best place to meet is a small drinking hole where they play exceedingly good music and good looking part-time waitresses  attending the local university.

People there enjoy talking with foreigners- feature Sardinia as a small nation by itself. 

Feature even mainland Italians are foreigners here.

Still after a couple of years in Sassari, my friend still sort of a foreigner too.

 

Place is along a main street, street front in an old house closed in by tall apartment buildings, they even have live music on Friday nights, good music indeed.

Could be like not so far from my best music spot and watering hole, The Hub in Redwood City, where at night I drive to just for the pleasure of live R’n’B and sometimes a dark skinned nurse frolicking out of SUH.

 

Place in Sassari has an unusual name for an Italian bar, most of them featuring Irish pub insignias or standard english names by now.

It’s named Abetone, after a mountain place in central Italy where people went skiing in the old snowy winters decades ago.

 

Sure I told Brink about this bar, my daily routine is dropping by at eleven am (bar almost empty at that time), look around. 

If he’s at a small table deep inside, sipping coffee or guzzling an early whiskey, I get a “pasta”, as locals call croissants, and chew it while walking around the block, waiting for him to step out and meet at the newsstand.

We buy the same newspaper and then pace slowly through the trees of the small park nearby.

 

Meeting my friend’s friends highlighted my pal’s life there, somehow lonely when out of work, interesting guy they think he is.

I found some crevices, but this for next writings.

Everyone in this job has a past to deal with, everyone in this job keeps his own ghosts scaring him out at nights. 

While other people sleep.

 

At least I can bet on some sort of affair he runs with a couple of student-waitresses. 

S, sort of grey eyed, a bit too tall for him, nice psychologist to be she is.

And that jet black haired M, I find her too daring, too self sufficient, tiny gold ring at her nose, she’s late in her literature classes. 

Call M a bit of a bitch, but he likes them that way, I’m not here to correct him, just to read through him even if he’s my pal. 

Call this training.

Call this job.

 

To be continued 

America is cognitively fractured. It is in a moment of metaphysical chaos from which a new pro-human future can emerge. Or the anti-human forces that sow unholy sedition into the minds of men can bring about the end of the American experiment. 
There are two frequencies that resonate through this world at its most fundamental level. There is a pro-human frequency represented by Life: human reproduction, positive emotional feedback loops among loving relationships, and creative expression through the intelligent creation of human systems, technological or otherwise.
There is also a frequency that is calling for control of the human being and ultimately its destruction. This anti-human frequency operates as a psychological operation. It does not build but uses lies and manipulation to shift and transform human systems.
The anti-human frequency’s most recent institutional champions in western governments adopted its control mechanisms in the wake of nuclear weapons. In America, this was formalized in the National Security Act of 1947. Transnational threats like nuclear, manufactured or otherwise, are the greatest tool of the anti-human frequency. 

Some of its attributes:

• Its acolytes fear a of lack of control.

• Its acolytes fear competition.

• Its acolytes fear dying. 

• Its acolytes are obsessed with overpopulation.

• Its acolytes prefer to manage problems with Hegelian strategic tension, rather than solve problems.

• Its acolytes replace the cybernetic power of human love with artificial intelligence.

 

The anti-human frequency has a very natural wave to ride in on. With the end of divine right of kings, how do men agree to govern themselves? Democratic republics like America are an answer, but as human systems and networks become incomprehensibly complex, can democratic governance work? Can a democratic government really control nuclear proliferation for instance? There is necessarily the development of a permanent corporate state that gradually eclipses elections.

Can this permanent state resonate with the pro-human frequency? The internal logic of the anti-human frequency is persuasive and rational. But it will mean the end of humanity.
To resonate with the pro-human frequency requires courage and humility. It means that you do not know what will happen, you do not know if you will survive, but you know that your Soul is Alive. 
The way forward in an information apocalypse is to resonate with that pro-human frequency and in doing so, keep your Soul.

Lenin 

 

The circumstances that have brought me to Zurich are the most strange. There was a man, a magician, who accompanied my burial, or, better to say, the deposition of my mummy in the mausoleum of the Red Square. The wizard, who perhaps really possessed the gift of magic, had also the obsession for Johanna Spyri‘s book, Heidi. He should have applied some hocus pocus on one of his copies, predicting that, if read aloud under the full moon, the text would have resurrected my body and brought me back to Switzerland. The legend of Heidi‘s edition was kept secret for decades within the most inner members of the Politbüro, a sort of not verified gossip for the most boring evenings. Those when Stalin drew his well renowned proscription lists and the others had to silently consent, hoping not to see their names on the paper. The search for the enchanted text went further for years, commandeering any copy of the novel that transited on the holy soil of the Soviet Union. The justification was trivial, since the text is extremely reactionary and even gives a good portrait of the Frankfurt upper class of the time. Their descendants, the contemporary bourgeoisie of the Banking capital, have widely adopted a light version of my ideology and would agree with the socialist bureaucrats. In the end someone should have been able to track the artifact and summoned me here, back in the middle of the Alps, by the power of the spell.

 

---

 

The art dealer

 

Sometimes it is difficult to set the right priorities, because so many opportunities are coming out, all at the same time, that it gets really difficult to make the correct choice. This week I was browsing what was going on at the Armory Show in New York, just to find out that Taschen has published, and is going to release soon, a new book focused on Tadao Ando‘s works. Sometimes I wonder whether Architecture sketches should come into my collection, or catalog. The risk is to get misunderstood for someone without clear ideas or who buys and sells everything that is available on the market. However art has always been linked with sculpture and architecture. There are wonderful examples from the Italian Renaissance, at least for those who do not believe that the Art Market was born with Kaws or the French Impressionists. A huge architecture is also the structure of the Mae West monument in Munich. Rita Mc Bride, who is the genius behind that, has developed a series of seven unique pieces representing in small size the mastodonic Meisterwerk. I wish to have the budget to acquire it in my collection as well, that would be a great shot since the artist has not already achieved the market potential that she could deserve. Her records are impressive, as well as her footprint in main museums and international fairs. She is also a woman, that could make her more attractive in the politically correct exchange.

 

---

 

The consultant

 

A new team, a new project. My life has changed along the perspectives linked to the missions I am involved with. Sometimes I see myself as a member of the board of a main organization, sometimes as a solitary business analyst secluded to an obsolescent unknown application. In that case, that kind of role can be covered until retirement because nobody else wants to take over and there is no expertise left on the market, not anymore. With my mind I look at the new hires. Among these, there is someone older, someone younger than me. All of them with their parallel stories that I can hardly imagine. There is the drummer of a rock band, the former priest, who is also a dangerous mate because so skilled at playing with others‘ souls, there is also the former teacher, who is usually the most difficult one to convince about a good business solution. It is a microcosm that magically disappears once the project is over and whose dynamics could develop in the most inexperienced way. Sometimes the team is made by a huge number of freelancers, who survive only for a short time and suddenly disappear, without even greeting. Some get internalized and feel like they are the owner of a company, others are counting the days till the end of the eproject. Forgetting that there is always another one, unless you do not definitely quit.

Ho lasciato una casa e una funzione: per chi non abbia ancora vissuto abbastanza, ciò equivale a una perdita di identità.
Pertanto: non pensiero sistematico, ma aforistico.
Dato il mio zeligare intrinseco, se mi guardo allo specchio oggi assomiglio a Karl Kraus.

TRACCE E SIGNIFICATI
In un relativo recente intervento del Presidente del Consiglio ho notato una citazione letterale che evocava direttamente Lord Palmerston senza citarlo.
Appena reduce, se non ricordo male, dal viaggio a Washington e la querelle sulla Road and Belt.
La citazione (più o meno, vago sempre nelle stanze della memoria) recitava che le alleanze non sono amicizie, ma interessi comuni e ogni Stato deve conoscere e conseguire i propri interessi.
Quasi alla lettera il titolo di un capoverso dell'articolo del prof. M.N: Katz su National Interest , "America Needs A Palmerstonian Foreign Policy", 24 Agosto 2023.
Buona cosa: Meloni e i suoi aiuti leggono e imparano.

CAPITANI
Un po' meno vari altri.
Fate tacere Salvini.
Chiudete l'educato Taiani in un palazzo vuoto a discettare del nulla.
Zeligando ancora, la famiglia di mia bisnonna ha lasciato nella progenie alcuni tratti antropometrici distintivi, che mi fanno ancor più apprezzare la prozia tedesca (di Riga) definendomi "il suo piccolo nipote tedesco".
Dopotutto era stata amica di Horkheimer, benché lavorasse da sempre all'Istituto di Genetica dell'Università di Francoforte.
L'identità è culturale, non biologica.
Il Capitano: so che le tracce yekel nel mio genoma sono scarse, tuttavia l'eponimo Il Capitano mi agita, mi ricorda troppo Corneliu Codreanu.
Mi sono bastate due pagine per smettere di leggerlo.

MESCOLARE LE CARTE
Tra Capitani, speechwriters aggiornati e leader potenziali purtroppo senza carattere (Giorgetti), butto lì una invocazione per il bene nazionale:
che i conservatori di governo (che hanno pochi ufficiali come i bolscevichi nel '17-'21)
e i progressisti di governo (troppi ufficiali senza esercito, come la Wehrmacht di von Seeckt)
si impegnino così come si fece a Berlino per la ricostruzione dopo l'unificazione.
Decisioni condivise vincolanti.
Possibile via di uscita dal default di cui non si può parlare.
(Basta che non ne escano anche i cani da sangue di Noske).

AI: BENEFICI POSSIBILI
I costi strutturali per implementare l'AI negli svariati settori della economia reale cresceranno esponenzialmente con l'approfondirsi delle divisioni e delle rivalità.
Costo e disponibilità di risorse, competenze tecnologiche nazionali.
Incurante delle polemiche su X, Netanyahu incontra Musk per le tecnologie.
Se ci fosse penuria energetica, noi europei alimenteremmo i monopattini e le Tesla, anziché i computer .
Non è una esagerazione, se ci si ricorda le ripetute crisi energetiche nel 2021 in Iran - produttore di petrolio - causa il mining intensivo di valuta digitale.

MEDIOEVO BIZANTINO
Fozio, Costantino (poi Cirillo) e Metodio vissero negli anni delle lotte iconoclaste.
Cirillo e Metodio mi sono cari da Milorad Pavic, la Biblioteca di Fozio è per la vita.
A volte l'uva cresciuta sui terreni difficili consente i vini migliori.
Ma il vincolarsi ideologico a un conglomerato di assunti (tra l'altro ricco di aporie e ubertoso di asserti non dimostrabili) come l'Occidente di oggi, e la contestuale rinuncia al pragmatismo (filosofia alta e non una casalinga di Voghera) ci mette nelle condizioni del medioevo bizantino.
L'Impero si sgretola, noi ci accaniamo sulle eresie.
Mille anni a Ron Paul.

A PROPOSITO
Che leggere certi libri faccia male, è come lavorare con le mani in locali infestati dai ratti - prima o poi ci si ammala.
Avviluppato in Costantinopoli fino a portarmi a casa un tomo di romanzi cavallereschi bizantini nel pieno di un trasloco, assumo per certi flussi divergenti l'ulteriore nome d'arte di Leontios Tsimiskes.
Nobile, di bassa statura, eretico.

Il concetto di «geostoria», coniato nel 1942 da Fernand Braudel (1902-1985), non ha avuto origine solo dalla sua passione per le scienze sociali e la geografia e dalla profonda padronanza delle «scuole» geografiche francese e tedesca 1 , ma anche da un più diretto confronto con la «Geopolitik» tedesca, avvenuto durante la prima fase della sua prigionia di guerra a Magonza, dove poté svolgere conferenze ai commilitoni e leggere libri prestati dalla biblioteca locale; esperienza poi rielaborata in un libro iniziato due anni dopo al campo di Lubecca, ma di cui è rimasto un solo quaderno contenente la prefazione e i primi tre dei sei capitoli previsti. Opera poi trascurata dall’autore, e pubblicata postuma dalla vedova solo nel 1997

E’ tempo per il capitale di valutare investimenti sulla biocibernetica o non ancora, in particolare su endo-protesi di potenziamento del cervello? L’avvento di un’Età della “biocibernazione” – nome creato da chi scrive negli anni ’80 - è stato profetizzato già da tempo. Nel 2000 Bill Joe, direttore scientifico di Sun Microsystems, scrisse: nel 2030 le tecnologie dell’informazione, bio e nano si fonderanno generando una speciazione post-umana. Ancor prima Kurzweil lanciò programmi di potenziamento tecnologico delle facoltà umane e di discontinuità evoluzionistica: la “singolarità”. Ma le aziende pronte a mettere sul mercato biochip cerebrali rinunciarono per timore di dissensi che avrebbero compromesso la capitalizzazione iniziale in Borsa. Così come Google interruppe, per problemi di vulnerabilità legale in materia di privacy, la vendita di occhiali costruiti come protesi di potenziamento delle funzioni visive-informative del cervello. L’intento dichiarato da Musk di costruire chip da impiantare nel cervello segnala che ora i tempi sono maturi?
Il potenziale tecnologico c’è. Nei sistemi autoritari la ricerca è più avanzata per l’assenza di problemi di consenso, ma è scarsa la vera libertà di impresa. L’innovazione, infatti, richiede o la guerra o una relazione amplificante tra libertà, tecnologia e capitale e in questi la prima non c’è. Nelle democrazie c’è, ma manca il consenso a causa del conflitto tra tecnica e morale. Chi scrive invocò un gizmo nella testa quando quattordicenne nel 1965 giocava a scacchi ad occhi bendati nel Caffè San Marco di Trieste, all’ombra della più grande sinagoga d’Europa. I limiti del cervello umano, forzati, erano evidenti e frustranti. Nell’evoluzione, infatti, ha avuto successo, finora, la cooperazione tra individui e non il supercervello illimitato. Tuttavia, la complessità crescente dei compiti cognitivi ha bisogno di un secondo cervello ausiliario, un “metagolem”. Ma ciò genera orrore nei più. A meno che non sia capace di salvare, disse allo scrivente un vecchio rabbi di passaggio. Tale battuta mostra la via: trasformazioni della configurazione umana naturale sono accettabili solo se chiaramente salvatrici. Per esempio, controllo di Alzheimer e Parkinson, ripristino di vista e udito, autoriparazioni in generale. In sintesi, si può ipotizzare che i biochip cerebrali possano ottenere consenso solo se chiaramente finalizzati a salvazioni mediche. A tale condizione l’investimento è valutabile in un orizzonte di 10-15 anni. Aperta questa porta poi, come accade da secoli, la morale si adeguerà alla tecnica.

To the early and less enduring snow of late autumn, that year followed abundant precipitations that soon covered with a white mantle the mountains around Munich. It could have been the landscape printed on a Christmas card or the atmosphere depicted by Thomas Mann in many of his novels. Perhaps even Hitler would have taken inspiration for a watercolour. It could have for sure promoted the sale of the frame, although soon to be replaced with some work of better quality. I was getting stressed on the workplace, because of the requests I received by the far too many stakeholders I had interaction with. By the tone and the feasibility of the targets, they also reminded me of Hitler, while shouting unintelligible orders to his generals. They also had the tune of a DDR hymn, so deeply impregnated by optimistic propaganda. We will complete the plan within the next five days, employing a team of four people, two of which on vacation and the other two new hires who have not already received their laptops. Of course I had to be stressed, but I had also to consider that I was paid because of my well renown soft skills, i.e. negotiation and stress management. I actually felt quite unprepared with both of them, but that was not what I wrote on my resumée under the direct supervision of my career advisor. On a wednesday night, after having got home at 1 a.m. because of an extenuating meeting with the whole management of my area, I decided to break the piggy bank and take part to a guided tour on the snowshoes. The local section of the DAV, the German Alpine Club, organized many excursions during the week ends. Unfortunately most of trips were often cancelled due to the most disparate reasons. It was so frustrating that I had already abandoned the idea to become a proficient mountaineer. I had however to try. My good friend Cristoph was away for a long mission related to his job and I also had enough to spend most of my time reading on the web edition of the local newspapers alarming reports about the presence of radical Islam in Bavaria. If I had been a young Pioneer in the DDR times, my supervisors would have for sure approved
such a proof of bravery defying the decadent entertainment of the Western countries. Actually, without a good income, I would have ever hardly been available to buy the necessary equipment and the efficiency of the Warsaw Pact would have made the roads to the mountains quite impracticable if not for an highly sophisticated military vehicle. Perhaps available only to the NATO. I did not want to take care of the opinion of high paid professionals, but just to stay away from the town for a short while. I prepared my backpack carefully, not to be stuck in an unknown place without the essential equipment. Relying on technology, it was not necessary to carry a voluminous luggage. The iPad is good enough to contain all the entertainment I need for several years. While selecting the food and handling a pocket of dried fruit, I realised how such a tendency to condense all the necessary resources for survival has started centuries ago. A long road to innovation, should add the commentary of a boring video on the human evolution. I also felt that my thought lack of ingenuousness. Perhaps I was not reading intensively enough and I was looking for new ideas. Like those you easily pick up from the best renowned magazines and, by quoting, you can easily assert to belong to a restricted elite of intellectuals. I also doubted whether I should acquire my information from alternative resources. The only conclusion was to adhere to any plot theory available on the web. I then realized how honest intellectuals should have felt under the DDR. The choice to believe to the carefully manipulated scientific publications of the University of Lipsia or the option to nourish your brain with not verified notions, partially developed by the mind of an uneducated political prisoner. For the following two days, in the comfort of a wooden building, immersed in a white world, I made a truce with my troubles.

Italy remains the least governable and most unstable member of Nato, not to mention the UE. Despite being one of the original six Founding Members and one of the principal financial supporters of the UE, Italy does not carry the political weight one would expect of the EU’s second major manufacturing Power. A question of leaders and leadership?

 

Fourteen months ago, despite an electoral law hastily redesigned to encourage multi-party politics as opposed to the bi-party politics of the Berlusconi “era," Italian voters, clearly sending a message to their leaders side-stepped the traditional parties and voted resoundingly for two up-starts known as the M5S and Lega parties. These two parties subsequently formed the first two-party coalition government in the history of the Republic. Known as the “Government for Change," that government was put into sudden-death overtime by Matteo Salvini, leader of the Lega on August 8, 2019. 

 

After a little more than one year, Italians stand aghast as Italy’s leaders once again seem intent on playing “craps” with the lives of their fellow citizens. Naturally, for the good of all Italians, but most of all for the good of the Country’s numerous and highly paid bureaucrats and, of course, for the thousands of MPs and politicians required to represent a shrinking Italian electorate now down to about 50 million people.

 

No one on the right or left of the political spectrum can deny Italy needs “a better mouse trap”. In the age of real-time communications, smart phones, computers and broad-band internet connections, Italy needs a political machinery that    is democratic, quick to decide and cost effective.

 

The present Constitution and Institutions do not seem to guarantee any of the above. What to do?

 

1. Reduce the number of MPs. It makes little sense for Italians to pay for 1000 legislators when half would be more than enough to adequately represent Italy’s decreasing eligible voter population of some 50 million. An example? Italian Representatives represent 80,000 people each compared with 733,000 people each by their American counterparts. Italian Senators, which are less than half in number, represent 200,000 people each. However, in the US Senators represent the individual States and no comparisons are possible.
2. Cut the outrageously high cost of Italian politics. Italian MPs earn more than € 190,000.00 per year. They are the highest paid politicians in Europe or the Americas. The cost of running Italy’s Quirinal Palace (where Pres. Mattarella and retinue live and work) is five times that of Buckingham Palace and twice that of the White House! For most Italians, politicians are not worth the money they get, especially in these times of diminishing returns. Something must be done to stop the gouging of taxpayers.
3. Encourage the formation of a manageable two / three party system by rethinking voter districts, raising thresholds for winning seats in parliament and adopting a first-past the-post majority electoral system. The error is believing that more parties in Parliament equals more democracy. In the Italian case the proliferation of parties has brought nothing but confusion and hegemony often by parties representing but a majority only marginally superior to their own.
4. Neutralize the Italian Magistrature’s bid for political power by constitutional amendment where possible and/or by making the Magistratura accessible to lawyers and Notaries in private practice; the present closed system does nobody any good; civil servants and bureaucrats become more responsive to the needs of society when challenged by competition from the private sector.  

 

All systems are self-preserving and naturally Italian politicians believe the answer lies not in the above suggestions but in going even more proportional (in efforts to stop the “populist right” from spoiling their well-remunerated fun). For the good of Italy and to make sure it is “never again” for the likes of Salvini.

 

Come Tuesday, August 27, should Mattarella not send everybody to the polls sometime this fall, Italians risk falling back into the hands of the old cold-war leadership that nearly bankrupted the Country. If that were allowed to happen, self-determination could become the North’s only option. Caveat emptor!