Incidenti a Roma

Vari incidenti sono stati registrati duarnte la manifestazione di domenica. Tra i vari problemi è da notare anche quello trascorso ad un impresario di pompe funebri il quale, celebrando un funerale, si è ritrovato a passare attraverso il corteo alla guida del carro funebre. Un piccolo gruppo di black bloc hanno cominciato a tirargli sassi, bottigliette, ed un paio gli sono persino saliti sopra l'automobile e hanno cominciato a urlargli contro attraverso i finestrini. Intervistato dopo l'incidente il becchino, sudato e impaurito, ha commentato: avevo paura che ci scappasse il morto.

A tale of two festivals

By Harry Eyres

Art cannot be taken as seriously, or made to bear as much weight, as it used to

From left: Christopher Maltman, András Schiff and Bruno Ganz
performing at this year's Salzburg Festival

At the end of summer I visited two very different festivals in quick succession. One has been a cultural beacon (intermittently dimmed) for nearly a century; having arisen from the wreckage of one war and the collapse of an empire, it was resurrected, phoenix-like, from the ashes of another. Held in a setting whose matchless beauty even The Sound of Music could not make twee, it is Europe’s, perhaps the world’s, grandest festival. The other was being held for the first time, in the Cotswold hills near Oxford – but, as it is nomadic, it could take place pretty much anywhere. One is attended by serious-looking people in dark suits, dinner jackets and Dior dresses, the other by people costumed as harlequins or sheep or in some cases wearing not very much at all.
If I say that I found the Wilderness Festival in some respects more lively and more hopeful than the Salzburg Festival, I don’t speak frivolously. The Salzburg Festival was founded in 1920, by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Richard Strauss, Max Reinhardt, Franz Schalk and Alfred Roller, with a magnificent, practical idealism. The idea behind it, that culture and art can bring peace and can be fundamental in shaping a person’s, a country’s, and a continent’s identity and destiny, still seems noble.

This idea, turned into the double-headed question “can culture and arts create identity and peace or is economic prosperity more decisive?”, was the subject of a discussion I attended which stirred something close to insurrection in the audience. The fundamental problem, I reflected afterwards, was that hardly anyone in the ironic, decadent west really believes any more in the moral and spiritual power of art to change lives. That was the belief that inspired Hofmannstahl, Strauss and Reinhardt, conductors who graced Salzburg in the 1930s such as Bruno Walter and Arturo Toscanini, and even Wilhelm Furtwängler, who continued to conduct under the Nazis because he believed he must not desert the temple of high art. It also inspired José Antonio Abreu when he came to found El Sistema in Venezuela, and still seems to be alive and well among the young musicians who perform in Venezuela’s youth orchestras, but that is perhaps another story.
Nowadays we expect art to be playful, amusing, provocative, sensationalist – but rarely to challenge us at the deepest intellectual and spiritual levels: the levels at which, say, Goethe’s Faust challenges us; or, as the violinist Christian Tetzlaff reminded us in a magnificent performance at this year’s BBC Proms, Brahms’s Faustian violin concerto, with its all-encompassing view of the human condition, can challenge us.
This is no one’s fault – certainly not that of the Salzburg Festival’s engaging president, Helga Rabl-Stadler, or of the outgoing artistic director Markus Hinterhäuser, who has done so much to bring contemporary music to Salzburg and indeed to restore Hofmannsthal’s intention of “reviving ancient living traditions in a new way”.
As Nietzsche prophesied in the 1880s, we have been visited by “this uncanniest of all guests”: by what he called nihilism, the situation in which “the higher values devalue themselves”. We might prefer to call this guest postmodern irony, and to look kindly on it, but it means that art cannot be taken as seriously, or made to bear as much weight, as it used to. This is something on which the captains of industry – Peter Brabeck-Letmathe of Nestlé and Franz Humer of Roche – were in agreement with the curators and artistic directors.
But does that not leave a vacuum? If Hofmannsthal, Strauss and Reinhardt looked to high art to heal the identity crisis and the crisis of values precipitated by the first world war, where are we to look to to heal our own crises of identity and values? I waded into the debate and pointed out to the captains of industry and the artistic bigwigs that I had just come from a city where the streets were burning, where we were confronted quite starkly with Matthew Arnold’s no longer fuddy-duddy choice of culture or anarchy.
The Wilderness Festival takes a lighter view of these things. The music from the stage doesn’t come from the western high art tradition. It is based on folk idioms, on blues, on reggae. This is music that more directly stirs the senses and the limbs. Whether it can reach into the soul, or fuse emotional and intellectual complexity, as deeply as Beethoven and Brahms, is another matter.
Reinhardt hoped the Salzburg Festival would rediscover the carnival spirit of art, its “festive, holiday-like ... features”. There’s no denying that Wilderness feels more festive and holiday-like than Salzburg. And it achieves its carnivalesque spirit not without thoughtfulness; there are talks and debates – I was appearing in one curated by Intelligence Squared on the dangers of new technologies. I think it could do with even more, plus a concert or two by some young Venezuelans, to show that high art and youthful high spirits are not incompatible.




harry.eyres@ft.com

Il bello della differenza

Bank of America using Private Intel Firms to Attack Wikileaks

In a document titled "The WikiLeaks Threat" three data intelligence companies, Plantir Technologies, HBGary Federal and Berico Technologies, outline a plan to attack Wikileaks. They are acting upon request from Hunton and Williams, a law firm working for Bank of America. The Department of Justice recommended the law firm to Bank of America according to an article in The Tech Herald. The proposed attacks on WikiLeaks according to the slides include these actions:

• Feed the fuel between the feuding groups. Disinformation. Create messages around actions of sabotage or discredit the opposing organizations. Submit fake documents and then call out the error.
• Create concern over the security of the infrastructure. Create exposure stories. If the process is believed not to be secure they are done.
• Cyber attacks against the infrastructure to get data on document submitters. This would kill the project. Since the servers are now in Sweden and France putting a team together to get access is more straightforward.
• Media campaign to push the radial and reckless nature of WikiLeaks activities. Sustain pressure. Does nothing for the fanatics, but creates concern and doubt among moderates.
• Search for leaks. Use social media to profile and identify risky behavior of employees.

http://213.251.145.96/IMG/pdf/WikiLeaks_Response_v6.pdf

Barilla

Il sale ed il calore

W Billy

L'angolo della cucina

Carciofi fritti Ingredienti 12 carciofi 4 uova sale q.b. farina bianca q.b. il succo di 1/2 limone olio di oliva per friggere Procedimento Mondate i carciofi togliendo le foglie più dure e la peluria interna. Tagliateli a spicchi, 6 per carciofo, ed immergeteli subito in una ciotola con dell'acqua e limone per evitare che si ossidino. Asciugate ora gli spicchi, infarinateli e passateli nelle uova precedentemente sbattute con un pizzico di sale. Tuffateli in una padella riempita di olio caldo e friggeteli, rigirandoli spesso, per circa 10 minuti fino a quando sono diventati belli dorati. Scolateli su della carta assorbente, salateli e serviteli subito.

Obama rifiuta di mostrare le foto di bin Laden per paura di infiammare gli animi fondamentalisti.

È allarme rosso negli Stati Uniti. Il presidente statunitense Barack Obama è estremamente preoccupato dagli effetti possibili del mostrare le foto di Osama bin Laden, ucciso dalle forze speciali statunitensi. E il panico per le foto di bin Laden si sta spandendo per il paese. A Little Rock, in Arkansas, una banda di rapinatori ha compiuto una rapina paralizzando i clienti presenti e lo staff. Hanno minacciato di avere una foto di bin Laden e che la avrebbero mostrata se non fosse stato dato loro tutto il denaro. Intanto alla Casa Bianca e al Pentagono, i visitatori vengono ora perquisiti per cercare se hanno foto nascoste di bin Laden. "L'allarme è reale", pare abbia detto il segretario di Stato Hillary Clinton. Anche negli areoporti  la tensione è cresciuta e dopo lamette da barba e liquidi, pare che album fotografici saranno presto aggiunti agli oggetti che non si potranno portare in aereo. Infatti si ha notizia di un tentato dirottamento di un aereo diretto a New York. Un individuo si è alzato dal suo posto e ha minacciato le hostess e gli steward a bordo, nonché tutti i passeggeri, minacciando di mostrare a tutti una foto di Osama bin Laden. Fortunatamente era solo una foto di La Russa. I passeggeri, ad una domanda di un giornalista italiano "ma come mai non vi siete spaventati a vedere La Russa?"hanno risposto: "E chi è?".

Intanto anche in Israele la tensione è alta. In centro a Gerusalemme un kamikaze è salito su un autobus minacciando di avere con lui una foto di bin Laden. Una guardia israeliana ha buttato una bomba e fatto saltare l'autobus e tutti i passeggeri, kamikaze compreso, per evitare il pericolo.

L'angolo della Musica

Osama Bin Laden

Just a couple of days ago Barack Obama released his birth certificate after numerous requests. People would not believe he was born a US citizen, and, to be honest, many still don't believe it even after he released his birth certificate showing he was, indeed, born on US territory.

Many people will not believe Osama Bin Laden died, or that it died killed by the US operation on May 1st. Maybe they should release a death certificate, but I am not sure that would convince the doubters either. What is clear and known though is that the announcement of his death came at a moment when the US President was very low on polls, had shown his weakness in being forced to release his birth certificate, and the announcement of the killing of Osama Bin Laden has now strongly reinforced his standings among the US electorate. After all, until the announcement, nobody knew what was brewing since no ally could be trusted enough to be informed. And Osama Bin Laden body was quickly "buried" at sea, to avoid becoming a shrine. And it happened while half of the Arab world (Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria) was involved in a civil fight, a very convenient time. Mr. Barack is either very smart or very lucky.

Yes, they are ugly

L' angolo della musica

Lux aeterna: Clint Mansell