Killed a Girl Called Reality: An interview with Nina Roth and Paolo Cirio from check-check.org

Last time I took a plane, I guess it was in August, I met someone. There was no immediate attraction, but we talked deeply, promptly. She told me not to take my drinks with me any further, she made me undress my shoes, my jacket and also my belt. That was very fast for the first meeting, but she told me to relax. Hearing strange noises, she told me, she needs to touch me. I was confused, but I accepted and it felt good. While body checking we were talking about regulatory power and questions I never dared to ask. It was so intense. When she stopped touching, I was left alone with an emptiness of not knowing why all this had happened. And then, I guess, it just occurred to me, that I had to kill a girl called reality.

G8 2009. From Rome, looking at L’Aquila and the World.

“Seven winds in the lower calendars and geographies:

first wind, a worthy and angry youth”.

Subcomandante Marcos, Ezln, Chiapas, Mexico.

Message to the greek rebels on december 2008.

On July 8^th, 9^th and 10^th the president-master of the italian government, Silvio Berlusconi, will host the summit of the “Big Eight” of the Planet. The summit will take place in the fortress of a State Police Corps, in Coppito, a town close to L’Aquila, a city where people and land are still devasted by the earthquake of the 6^th of April 2009. The president moved there the summit from its original destination: a luxury liner off the sardinian coast of La Maddalena.

Due by the action of this arrogant governor, leader of a speculation and war system responsible for the crisis, is taking shape an attempt to validate again the failed global political governance. The situationist of reaction, Silvio Berlusconi, gives to the “Big” of the Planet the opportunity to perform a show of “sobrity”, as he called it. A show he would like to be appropriate to face the growing ostilities and rebellions rising in every corner of the World against the G8’s decisions and dominance.

Behind the pitiful cabaret – set up to take for a walk the highest political offices of the world, along  the tent-camps of the earthquake’s victims – the summit will confirm those decisions and that dominance: to fund again the financial speculation; to save the banks; to make labour more precarious and instable; to reinforce the security architecture; to implement cooperation among Nations in the matter of repression; to keep on with the no-border exploitation of human beings and natural resources and to build up, at the same time, new frontiers of blood and shame, to appease universities through control and police.

The G8/G14/G21 is not just taking place on a scene devasted by an earthquake, whose consequences are worsened by speculation and social injustice, but it will be held in the middle of a global crisis, in a period of riots against oppressions bursting at different latitudes. From the Argentinazo to the revolt in El Alto, Bolivia; from the Appo, in Oaxaca, Mexico, to the resistance of  indigenous people in Peruvian Amazonia; from the rebellions in the french banlieues to those of migrant people against the lagers they live in, and against the deportation systems that work in the buttres of European Union – as in Ceuta, Melilla, Peloponnese and Lampedusa; from the recent riots in Greece after the murder of Alexandros Grigoropoulos – 16 years old, shot dead by the police – to the protests against the G20 in London – where Ian Thomlison was murdered by the police too – until the night of the riots in Berlin, on the first of May, and the Nato meeting in Strasbourg.

Sixteen Works. Richard Long

Empty Buildings – Night in New York. Arthur Coleman

Illuminated by plane-warning floodlights,
clouds wisp past the tops of tall buildings
whose insides are empty of life at this hour.

Walled-in halls and rooms sectioned into
squares leveled stories upon stories above
ground, fixed as firmly as centenarian
trees by their grappled root structures,

are dark and unseen, though lit ambiently
by light that has somehow crept like vine
up the walls and through the atmosphere,
compressed into substance by the flat rigidity
between walls, so windowed they are sheer

glass cliffs, shooting off the translucid
streets, blackened by recent rains; and
the red and green day-glo of exit signs
perennially pointing down cavernous
evacuation routes that are the conduits

whose night-long drafts whisper the
empty buildings’ seething potentiality.

A close examination of a broken eggshell. Arthur Coleman

The object that fell through a tear in the awning
and softly smacked hitting the ground is half of

a bluish green eggshell spotted with brown and black
smudged matter of the mother bird’s patient incubation.

The edges where it broke open are jagged and the surface
that sustained the impact is cracked yet still intact.

Inside, chinks in the white are stained with watery
blood and albumen goo, smelling overbearingly of birth.

Barking mad

A group led by an Italian lawyer has begun collecting signatures for a petition to nominate Mr Berlusconi for the Nobel Peace Prize on the ground that because of his close links to Vladimir Putin, the Russian Prime Minister, he helped to resolve the conflict over Georgia last summer.

Giammario Battaglia said that no Italian had won the Nobel Peace Prize since Ernesto Teodoro Moneta in 1907. He added that in view of Mr Berlusconi’s achievement, “we think it’s a good moment”.

Source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6433541.ece

Mister B. Zgia

was that?
Berluschitler
Berlustalin
Francusconi
Berluşescu
right hand in lapel
Berluscoleon
or some very Roman heritage
builder + imperium
the citizen a little more equal
a larger than life
Berluscolini

but then
is it not the little Silvio
in each of us
the fairy-tale “selva”
a forest
a jungle all to ourselves
where anything’s possible
where the whim of
the fortune-maker
rules every little world
Berlusconismo
that seeps
creeps
and corners
the last crevice
of every single day

was that
cuckoo in the nest
liar
shammer
card-sharper
fiddler
rigger
Berluscon man

(the word bears
no longer importance)

Silvio Berlusconi attacks press for defamation over unanswered questions. Richard Owen

Silvio Berlusconi has launched a fierce attack on La Repubblica, accusing the newspaper of defamation and denigration after it challenged him to explain his relationship with Noemi Letizia, the teenager who calls him Papi.

A statement issued by the Prime Minister’s office said that there was a media campaign against Mr Berlusconi, 72, fuelled by “envy and hatred of a Prime Minister who has achieved historic levels of public trust”.

Berlusconi’s Frighteningly Successful Racism. Adetola Lawal

Two days after the United States Presidential Election, Prime Minister of Italy, Silvio Berlusconi, said to the President of Russia President-elect Barack Obama “has all the qualities to get along well with you: he’s young, handsome and suntanned, so I think you can develop a good working relationship.” This statement was harshly rebuked by Italian politicians as being racist. Berlusconi’s opponent in the last Italian election, Walter Veltroni, went far enough to say that his comments “seriously damage the image and dignity of our country on the international scene.” Unfortunately for Italy, this statement is insignificant compared to the racism rampant in the Italian government and population at large. The Roma (Gypsy) are an ethnic group that emigrated from South Asia to many countries primarily in Southern and Eastern Europe almost a millennium ago. For many centuries, Europeans have been at odds with the Roma community due to their cultural differences and physical appearances. The Roma have experienced injustices for centuries including losing their children, suffering discrimination, and even being forced into labor.

The Trapeze Artist

The Trapeze Artist is a new play by Paul Bilic opening at Tara arts Theatre Studio on April 22 and running on April 22, 24, 28, 30, May 2, 4, 6, 8 at 7.30. It tells the story of how Kafka’s manuscripts ended up in Oxford, which is where they are housed to this day. At Kafka’s death in 1924 his close friend Max Brod was supposed to burn all his remaining manuscripts, but Brod disobeyed Kafka’s request and published them. Brod took the manucripts with him when he fled Prague on the final train before the Nazis moved in. He kept them in Palestine until 1956 when Marianna Steiner, Kafka’s niece, returned them to Europe where she had them housed in a bank vault in Zurich. A chance encounter between Michael Steiner, Marianna’s son and a student at Oxford, and Malcolm Pasley, an Oxford German don, in 1961 meant that Pasley contacted Marianna Steiner and was given permission to drive the manuscripts across the alps and house them at the Bodleian library Oxford.

‘The Trapeze artist’ , directed by Hannah Pantin, takes this story and splices it in with ‘ First Suffering’ one of Kafka’s shorter fictions, to produce an original and physical piece of theatre. On April 28 Michael Steiner, Kafka’s nephew now in his late 60s, will be attending the performance. For more information visit www.tara-arts.co.uk