Us and
dissent

Our friends and associates and Carlo Felice Accame Oliva gave us two reviews of the same book, the 'disagreement' in Italian extra-parliamentary left from 1968 to 1977 of Paul Sensini (Rubbettino, Soveria Mannelli, 2010, pp. 223, € 18.00) .

Felice Accame
Not all were silent

Premise
Between the second half of the sixties and early seventies, the term "dissent" - beyond what the municipality could issue a dictionary of the Italian language - would designate certain socio-political realities rather different from each other. On the one hand, there was "dissent in the East"- see the cases of individuals or small groups that were opposed to the logic of the authoritarian Soviet Union. Second, there was the "Catholic dissent"- see the cases of individuals or small groups that were opposed from within the Catholic world, the authoritarian logic of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. And there was even - to force a baptism linguistic analogy - a "dissent" in the extra-parliamentary left against those of the left and was trying to remain dominant force. Marginally - very marginally, so much to be muffled in a sort of social subtlety - between 1968 and 1970, there were also two newspapers named the first, in "Il dissenso"(1968-'69) and the second - clearly subsidiary or specialization, the first - to "Il dissenso metodologico. " I directed them with Carlo Oliva.

1.
The Austrian writer Joseph Roth is sent from the "Frankfurter Zeitung" to the Soviet Union in 1926, for a report (Travel in Russia, Adelphi, Milano 1981). Before that he had even signed Roth "Roth red", but after this trip he would have said that he had arrived in the communist USSR and came back monarchic.
He will speak of Soviet communism as a "mockery of history" - a theory that "should free the proletariat, which has as its aim the creation of the state and humanity without classes", where it is applied for the first time "makes all men of petty bourgeois. "Roth dell'imborghesimento identifies the unmistakable signs of the revolution - the demonstration of the immortality of the bourgeoisie - and of social behavior opportunist.

2.
Il ‘dissenso’ nella sinistra extraparlamentare italiana dal 1968 al 1977 The 'disagreement' in Italian extra-parliamentary left from 1968 to 1977 of Paul Sensini (Rubbettino, Soveria Mannelli, 2010, pp. 223, € 18.00) addresses the issue of dissent in Italian extra-parliamentary left from 1968 to 1977 - a disagreement that has as Soviet communism and main contact at least to the extent that the Western communist parties - and between them the Italian Communist Party - can be "represented" by Soviet Communism (for membership, for obedience for ideological affinity). Sensini brings to light the reasons for this disagreement and the forms that this disagreement has acquired - at least in socially relevant terms.
However, as we can for the sake of completeness reportages Roth in 1926 - and many other books, including, cited by Sensini, the work of Bruno Rizzi, Victor Serge or diaries of Arthur Koestler - it was already possible before 1968 , to play a very critical attitude towards the Soviet communism and the Italian Communist Party while remaining within the logic of a thought of the left - of opposition to the capitalist world.

3.
In 1968, I had taken for some years a radically critical attitude and although I had many difficulties to place themselves in any political group to represent properly the reasons for my criticism. My antifilosofical ruling kept me far from dialectics and materialism - but this occurred only from 1964 onwards, that the encounter with Ceccato and the analysis of the function of ideological theories of knowledge ..
The basis of my attitude were also other reasons:

• awareness of counterfeiting made on the Hungarian Revolution of 1956
• the vote of Article. 7 of the Constitution by the PCI
• the neglect of the PCI towards a anti-militarist politics (and its support for a unilateral generic pacifism)
• PCI aversion to conscientious objection
• PCI aversion for a policy of civil rights - such as divorce
• the solution of democratic centralism to regulate the internal life of the party
• perhaps even the personality cult - the meaning that has essentially authoritarian, regardless of the cult due to Stalin
• a widespread and deep-rooted suspicion - by the PCI - with respect to the emerging youth (long-haired, Onda Verde, Provos, Beats, student protests, the ambition of this dispute in connection with the workers' struggle). .

Does not matter, then, this real process of forming at least a couple of facts released by the anarchist publications: repression of the free republic of Kronstadt, in 1921, and the sinking, more or less voluntary by Soviet forces in the Republican war of Spain. The same non-aggression pact signed with the Nazis just before the outbreak of World War II can be counted in the same process.

4.
That's why I found myself - for a brief but painfully futile undertaking - with Carlo Oliva in the Radical Party - the party which is discussed in the book of Sensini as we speak of the various groupings in the form of small parties, party, or magazine, or other forms of association, they added their own critical voice.
However, as noted by Sensini, it is not even possible to speak of this form of dissent as if it were a single well characterized entity. In fact, much of this dissent criticized the USSR and PCI, a sort of betrayal of the thought of anyone elected to the theoretical essential cornerstone: Marx, Lenin, Mao, the most betrayed. But Trotsky had its admirers. At the same time, this dissent was difficult to maintain balance - subject to the ruling that anti-bourgeois and anti-spontaneity (The Paris Commune, Sorel and the general strike in the political process, etc.. - all to burn, why not under the direct Control of intellectuals of various Central Committee).
Current well-springs of dissent - in addition to what came inexorably from the past - in 1968, was the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, then the number of cases of internal dissension - in the USSR - as the cases of Sakharov Solgenitzin, Evtuscenko, the verdict on Stalin after Khrushchev's de-Stalinization, the Solidarity movement in Poland.

5.
Sensini said that the issue of civil liberties was not taken and analyzed in its scope in post beyond the "Iron Curtain", the story was told in the same terms of bourgeois history (the embalming of Lenin, Mao, Stalin elected "Little Father ", etc..) knew not distinguish from the petty-bourgeois revolutionary movements in Europe, never to be heard to understand that this or that flaw in historic communism was not so much to be attributed to anyone in particular but to the political functions they were called upon to play in a fundamentally and inescapably authoritarian project.

Felice Accame

Carlo Oliva
But the critical thought, where was it?

Will be made clear immediately that the "dissent" at issue in the fine book by Paul Sensini be understood in a very particular, and indeed emphasized, in the same way, the presence of quotation marks. The author focuses exclusively on opinions that the various new left groups made about the Soviet bloc countries and the various opposition movements that cultural policy were laid painfully developed. Other forms of dissent is not a ex-professed.
Some form of restriction, however, was inevitable (and we'll see how this does not exclude a general discourse on politics and ideology of those groups, nor invalidate the value of research and the importance of Sensini and of his work). The dissent in general, without quotation marks, was an essential component of Italian extra-parliamentary left, which was born from the desire (or need) to disagree with the political and cultural climate of conformism that weighed on the country and deal completely would require an effort research and organize sources almost desperate. The extra-parliamentary left was born as a young diffused and disorganized galaxy and its early stages (those of the so-called "challenge" of the late 60s), ran out almost entirely in the will always disagree with the proposals of what was called, holding a bit 'vague, "the system". Moreover, the movement was mainly a cultural and existential dimension (often on the basis of generations), and showed so much in terms of actions organized and documented, on the behavior and improvisation: the political dimension was not absent, but not it could be considered dominant, while the theoretical work was the preserve of a few individuals, sometimes isolated. You could not say that an abundance of constructive proposals and, overall, to use a technical term, ruled quite a mess, but they were very vital years, of which some day will need to decide to recognize its importance. That certainly does not make it easier to make easy the story, if not for individual themes and episodes.
Only later (after the "hot autumn" of '69), the birth of organized groups of the New Left - featuring all, more, some less, by a marked tendency to pass on the paper their views - would have reported to center the political dimension. This would entail the re-proposal of the classic tools of analysis of the Marxist-Leninist tradition, which is not perhaps, as suggested by our author, a form of esoteric initiatory knowledge (p.14), but it still represents a rather rigid way of thinking. In this sense, the politicization of the movement can be considered an attempt (quite successful) to standardize. The emphasis now no longer fell on dissent, but on the types of construction, real or fake, political activity. You do not speak any more to wipe out parties as authority structures and other-directed, but insisted the point of obsession on the need to "build " the party picking up, with rare exceptions, forms of organization and ideological already widely known to the left. The only obvious exceptions, those anarchists, radicals and the Situationists had, alas, a marginal character.
It involved an obvious change of attitude from antagonistic to competitive towards the left, in essence, the PCI, which is attributed, by now, no longer itself, because he had lost the revolutionary features of primitive, with the implicit claims of various groups to act as the "real " Communist Party of incarnations, although in one dimension at the moment and temporarily reduced its original shape. Claim, it must be said, also shared by other organizations that were less than qualified, as Lotta Continua and Potere Operaio, in which there were strong ideological DNA components of anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist and tradition, not at all alien to the PCI , the worker-centered in the style of "Quaderni Rossi".
The essay by Paul Sensini is closely related to this issue.
The reality of PCI was substantial and essential part of the complicated relationship with the Soviet Union, no longer seen as the driving power and myth of mass, but always essential point of reference, ideological and organizational. Activists and leaders of that party, lived, with apparent ease, but not without intimate troubles, the contradiction between commitment to the values and practices of Western democracy (as already stated by Togliatti in 1943 and subsequently reaffirmed on time) and rather wretched condition in which those values to behind the Iron Curtain. In the face of growing attempts to demonstrate and organize some form of opposition in the USSR and the "people's democracies" (this is, of course, the "disagreement" with the quotes referred to in the title of Sensini) were no longer possible, in PCI, convictions and schizophrenic autocontradittorie as pronounced in 1956 about the events of Hungary, but continued to condemn it, however, if only for administrative reasons.
Grew, if anything, the number of distinctions and nuances that you tended to use and abuse. During the Czechoslovak crisis of '68, so, you could witness the remarkable attempt to support the "new course " without putting yourself in opposition to Prague and Moscow when the military occupation would have made it inevitable that the dissociation is formulated in terms of both cautious be almost incomprehensible. The subsequent radiation of the group's "Manifesto", which had called into question precisely this caution was typical panic move, taken by those who feared to fall apart to see the difficult compromise reached between the two contradictory requirements.
The New Left, however, had no relations with the Soviet Union organized and paraded in front of his own originality to the practice of traditional communist parties. At least in theory, could not avoid to comment on the subject. In practice, things were quite different. That issue, as I recall, was particularly felt in the various organizations (group of the "Manifesto" apart). After all, leaders and activists, just like PCI and for very different reasons, would rather not deal at all. When they did, they were, in a sense, forced, the theme was one of those groups in the definition of identity of the party (each possible Leninist party) and considering it meant to address the unavoidable problem of the relationship of the various groups, as well as PCI among them. Even from their point of view, in short, it was a matter of identity. This explains, is said in passing, the strange contradictions of the texts collected by Sensini, which appear on the one hand clearly participated, as befits treatises that speak for themselves and their own survival, while the other is deeply revealing tedious, as often happens when we deal with problems that, in fact we do not really care.
Sensini doesn’t talk about "groups", but, generally, of "extra-parliamentary left. " Forty years after the simplification is legitimate and necessary. At that time, however, it was necessary to distinguish between the positions taken by organized groups, especially higher (AO, LC, etc.) and those more influenced by intellectual figures in the entire area was referring: the editors of the "Manifesto"and of “Quaderni Piacentini”, as well as personalities such as Rossana Rossanda, Franco Fortini, Edoarda Masi, Lisa Foa, Lelio Basso and others. Obviously, in this area there was greater freedom of analysis and discussed the thesis that groups, in full Realpolitik syndrome, could not even dare, at the cost of provoking violent reactions within itself, as happened to Lotta Continua about the Solzhenitsyn case) . Even groups which drew ideological various fragments of the Fourth International which showed a certain reluctance to embrace the thesis of anti-Soviet "dissent". It is quite interesting, however, to prove that the arguments put forward in the end, are very similar.
Why, indeed, there was (is) dissent and dissent. What little interest to Solzhenitsyn, was indeed a subject of deep distrust. In addition to Lotta Continua (which will be forced to back down from the reaction of the base), only the "Manifesto"will make an attempt to contextualize and give a quite articulate reading. (p. 30 ff.). The others did not make compliments. The Bulletin of Student Movement of Milan Statale the Russian novelist is among the 'Spiritualists para-fascist "(p.61), according to " Servire il Popolo" the intellectuals like him" represent a contradiction of caste privilege "(p.69) ; in a document of Avanguardia Operaia (p. 104) his views represent those of the "petty bourgeois Soviet intelligentsia. " And so on.
The dissent, in effect, is a form of contradiction, but not all contradictions are equally important. The one that really counts, in simplified Marxist vulgate used on these papers is that between employers and labor force, a contradiction that, at the price of forcing a little historical and socialogical data, tends to also apply to reality of "real socialism", likened to that of the antagonist through the category field, a little dismissive of "state capitalism".
Hence the value of all forms of dissent in any way attributable to a working size (and deleting others). Thus, the "Manifesto" will give a reading of the working man's Czechoslovakian crisis (p. 21); Potere Operaio interpret (p. 40) the student protests of Yugoslavia as a battle against the "red bourgeoisie" (p. 45) and see it as a fact also eminently of workers the Polish crisis (p. 41). By accentuating a little different (Maoist, at least in words) the Student Movement of Milan (p. 58) will read the various facts of dissent as evidence of the fact that "countries linked to the Soviet Union have embarked on various forms via the of capitalism and bourgeois restoration" to Lotta Continua (page 73) "Poles are exploited proletarians who are fighting for the same things we are fighting for us and for the Avanguardia Operaia (pag.103), struggles in Poland" are the explosion of a new phase of the Polish revisionist "against the " anti-worker measures put up by the state monopoly bourgeoisie ", so the only way" to fight against the East bureaucratic bourgeois rule "is to" refer to the working class, to his historical interests, its ideology "(p. 105) . One could go on, but would find little difference. Also the analysis of intellectuals agree, after all, the theory of the foundations of dissent workers in the East, maybe with some more caution (Lucio Magri, P.. 33; Rossana Rossanda p. 32). but, in essence, with confidence.
Today we can see how all this was futile, how it was deeply imbued with wishful thinking. The collapse of the regimes of Eastern Europe did not leave room for any form of workers' management of the company and work, but a ruthless capitalist restoration. Beyond what had been the Iron Curtain would find allies only those who then called themselves the class enemies.
The question remains why, in an environment where critical thinking was to take root, this kind of discourse not only found space, but it seemed the most reasonable (and I must confess to a certain point it seemed to me). Perhaps there are two possible explanations: that we can read in the demonstration of a strong illusion of insuperable ideological limit (as suggested in the afterword of Aldo Giannuli) or find confirmation of what, after all, was a strong component in a utopian movement that utopias believed he had finally closed. At the bottom there is a historical destiny of the left to turn in utopia their defeats. But this is of course another matter.

Carlo Oliva

In mine
and the world

"Talk of anarchy , which is better . "
"Here at the table? It's not stuff you eat. "
"Then what you need to drink castor oil?"
[...] "The anarchy would say the consciousness of the vanity of everything, except the pleasure of living with others and be helpful. "
So the toscanaccio Ferriero Dondi answer to Luisu but he think up and replies, "but also the priest says this. "
Counter-reply: "People like your pastor to turn a blind eye to the evils of the world [...] and say that justice and freedom are not of this world. But anarchy, after all, is to perform a service, do so for others, be useful, perhaps indispensable, and take pleasure. "
Perhaps essential, as will the young Luisu the meeting with at times very serious and at time joker man: Ferriero "draft dodgers" but sent to Carbonia (to sweat and risk in the mine) dall'Ovra, the political police of fascism.
The dialogue quoted above is almost the end of the beautiful “Doppio Cielo” novel (178 pages for 16 euros) by Giulio Angioni, published in September by Il Maestrale. At that point in the book, Louis Melas - called Luisu, from Fraus, class of 1922, only male child of his widowed mother, embodied miner militarized "- has already chosen which side you should be and so it proved with facts. But glad to hear the re-telling by Ferrero that "anarchy frees everyone, rich and poor, whites and blacks, men and women, all citizens of the world republic of equals, of the free and fair. "
Three years after La Pelle Intera, Giulio Angioni (a life as an anthropologist and then another as writer) takes us back in the Italian ravaged by fascism and war, there was a 17 year old Piedmont Efis Brau that no longer knows who is friend and who the enemy while we are here in Carbonia, "40 thousand people in a few years " because the Duce, "Mascellone" said he, after the penalties, "Italy needs to take care of herself, in peace and war. "
There, in a TB1, "Traverso Tour One" - 176 meters below ground - have found themselves serve farmers and sicilian fishermen, Abruzzi mountain people and Po laborers. But "Doppio Cielo" is above all an encounter between Ferriero and Luisu in terrible 1943, ie at a time when, more than usual, "work is the continuation of war by other means. "
There "is in two skies [...] the poor sky of the mine on the head, twice sky, sky in black and low, so that you can always touch the sky with a finger, our little good, the sky that may fall. The sky here, we must ensure it, keep it up. "And there is a double time, the 'short' in the earth and long when you exit.
Ferriero is a friend and teacher to Luisu. He teaches him how to have "a body of a miner, " the tricks of the trade, the anarchy, but mostly why in tunnels you must be united. The greatest danger lies in the french word (therefore prohibited dall'autarchia of the scheme), the grisou (firedamp ) for the miners is "the devil's fart." You say it in French or Italian ... galleries erupt if you do not find in time the pockets of gas. Hunting firedamp be a "repentant" as Uncle Mace (back from Russia), "St. Anthony's of the fire. " Explains why the telling of the nickname - "to educate the young" - as was the discovery of fire thanks to a child and the saint, accompanied by a sow, I stole from the devils, memorable story, worthy of the biggest myths or, if you like, the irony of Eduardo Galeano.
The toscanaccio even introduces Luisu to sex, leading him to the brothel. As the boy wonders whether it is a great experience discovers Ferriero "blessed among women [...] to read and talk about anarchy [...] with the necessary arrangements because the casino is the place of spies. " First, a bit 'of Pittigrilli, "then maybe Madame Bovary' and through 'Germinal' by Zola and Tolstoy appear here Pietro Gori, Errico Malatesta, Michele Schirru, Sacco and Vanzetti.
He understands a lot and speaks very little Luisu but also teach him something else. And not just of Sardinia.
Luisu is also used to everything even "to having a mountain on his head. " Hard work and risk, political, solidarity and small dreams (a bike, an almond tree), but also the silent love "Marialuisa, a beautiful name of grass. " The boy discovers that women know more than what they say and that men are afraid to say what is important. While he looks for the right words to Marialuisa, around the sardinian cities are "carpet-bombed by the Flying Fortresses" and the fire damp in mines kill. "God curse" Ferriero gets angry: "I would like to see that proto-crypto-anarchist Francesco D'Assisi singing" Praise be missignore, for brother fire damp "; meanwhile recommends Luisu to learn at least one more of the devil and brings to light a page of Jules Verne, better than a manual of a miner.
A memorable final, but also "lu carusu di la citalena, " the funeral which becomes procession, "the ancient prayer to St. Barbara and St. James', the jokes, the many definitions of anarchy, the comparison between Mithridates and a goldfinch, Baieddu the horse, "the eyes of the ass," the Sicilian lunch at the table with the “herb of fear” will remain long in the memory of the reader. Who knows little of history will reveal the tragedies of Monongah or Courrières or that in the Sardinian mines ended as punishment, even a pope. The many that remember of what happened July 25, 1943 will learn, through Angioni, to live it among the miners, in the midst of a tragedy, "the day of things upside down" it matters most is that the fallen dictator or that body disappeared in the mine of which will find only the shoes?

Daniele Barbieri

Dialogue (and monologue)
by Simone Cristicchi

The conversations with Simon Webbe, collected by Massimo Bocca (The wickedness of creativity. Dialogues uncivilized, Simon Webbe, with Massimo Bocchi, Eleuthera, Milano 2010, pp. 144, € 16.00, with CD "Monologues uncivilized ', 30' ) in a long journey assembled stalking summer tour dates of the singer, are like a puzzle with multiple conceptual possibilities of reading. Dialogues uncivilized, in fact, is a text-map not intended to exhaust the "Cristicchi thought ", or a biographical sketch of the most original Italian singer of his generation. Bocchia is fully aware of the difference between text-speech and text-written, and played with intelligence, with almost Dadaist approach and metalinguistic chasing his friend Simone literally, as well as in the appointments in the transfer of its pre and post concert, both laterally with a "lateral thinking" that never suggests ready-made answers, but calls for the opening, the unexpected, the change of perspective. Bocchia and Cristicchi grown significantly, in this rich book / route and in life, anti-dogmatic thinking.
What does it mean for a singer, an artist, a writer, a poet, an author, a growing anti-dogmatic thinking, if not "doing his job" as an artist? Upon entering the main circuit of communication, that is, a complex system of production (major label international media attention and national networks, events of mass television, but also niche 'biodiversity Music”), Simon has adapted rules, gear mechanisms of that circuit to the idea of art, music, poetry, civil commitment, tying all these elements together in a proposal that appeared immediately, and all original. To persevere in this attitude, the change of direction away from routes more jokes in music of the "manufacturers of songs, " they gave him, thereafter, a rare element of great value: credibility.
Because Simon is credible in Sanremo, as on the stage of concertone May Day, as in a Sunday-popular TV show or a musical-youth language, as on a stage in front of three thousand or three hundred or thirty people to recite a monologue in Roman eighth rhyme, as in a documentary reality reconstruction in mental hospitals or in recovering Italian folk songs with a choir? Dialogues uncivilized returns more than one answer to this question, it makes, namely, the sense of the credibility gained by Simone through the ideas that form the basis of his choices and his artistic path. Ideas (musical, poetic, political, historical, documentary, drama, comedy, drama) of the "bush thinker" who is Simone Cristicchi is what makes " Simone Cristicchi " an artist.
While at the origin of the 'cogito' there is a co-shake between their thoughts together, there is no more false image of the thinker, Rodin, who weighs placed in the laying of the sense, the sense and the weight they just is reflected in his thoughtful pondering. Who thinks agitated and restless, agitated by thoughts that stirs together. Simon, as Max, is a 'rough' quiet, and his artistic research is, etymologically, a "rave", namely a continuous "out of the sown” show-biz, the politically correct conformism of respectability, the commitment of the facade. I think Simone redefines the way in new and modern idea of the 'committed' singer / songwriter. Since there is a rhetorical artist committed (engagé) and, now, even a parody of the 'committed ' artist, Simon is involved in the sense that he has many commitments (many dates, many different shows on tour simultaneously) and, above all, in the sense that it is committed to always read up on the bottom because the reasons, the motives that call to witness a commitment to civil, humanitarian and political.
These conversations make this into consideration, "secular" (and aesthetically strong) commitment. It is no coincidence that the couple own Cristicchi-Bocchia in 2007, has signed one of the most beautiful in my way of feeling, 'political' songs written in recent years, Legato a te (bound to you). The song, dedicated to Piergiorgio Welby, is - at first reading - a poignant declaration of love / hate relationship to a machine needed to stay alive. A song, an artistic, aesthetically successful fact because it makes us react, moves us, changes us, but also becomes a strong political gesture, net, in the debate, so thorny in our country, the "end of life." Engagement is not surrender their poetry, their own appearance on behalf of a civilian witness, however, and can live only where that is indistinguishable from the art community. That 'evil' is one of the anagrams of "creativity" says something of the relationship between the various souls who live in the music of Simon, of all that Rufus (irascible alter ego and hidden Cristicchi).

Matteo Pellitti

elèuthera editrice società cooperativa – via rovetta 27 – 20127 milano – tel. 02 26 14 39 50 fax 02 28 04 03 40 – eleuthera@eleuthera.it.

It's up to us
to choose

Paolo Pasi (1963, Milan) is a Rai journalist and a writer. He won the first edition of the Ilaria Alpi and journalism award and in 2005, the prize Giallomilanese. In November 2000 he made his debut with the collection of short stories Latest posts from the city (Excogita Luciana Bianciardi, foreword by Dan Fante). Other collections of short stories are without news stories (always Excogita) and The brigades Carosello (Excogita, preface by Fernanda Pivano). In 2007 he released his novel The Summer of Bob Marley (Tullio Pironti Editor). Memoirs of a abusive dreamer (Spartacus Publishing, 2009) is his second novel. Paolo Pasi is also a guitarist and songwriter.
We are in 2035 and the new government of dictatorial (called Comunita) makes law also of dreams, like imposing a tax on the dream activity of the poor to relieve the insomnia of the rich. Fortunately, the protagonist rebels VAT (Value Onirico Tax) and decides to tell his adventures to revolt and awareness in a psicodiary. Bob, this is his name, puts on paper dreams, feelings and sensations that are followed until the final rebellion to the horrid totalitarian system.
In the book, Paolo Pasi has worked on the analysis of a hypothetical political system that winks at a low alloy totalitarianism. Thread of the story is the satirical element that marks the pages of history and that is used throughout the story. While reading we think about how important it is to dream in a world that takes away something every day and how necessary it is that our dreams will remain free, wild and rebellious. Pasi in this novel reminds us that freedom of thought, expression and dream is the fundamental principle of human dignity. Above all, he reminds us of the right to rebel against the rules decided by the few who dominate the lives of many.
Memoirs of a abusive dreamer is a book that praises the dissent but also tells the desire to be free from any condition or system that can suppress the human being.
Among intelligent screens, cameras and multivisors of all kinds, (a fiction not so long ago when compared with our modern metropolis of control) guides us in a singular world where the voices and thoughts are to replace those metal romantic and real of real people .
The main character, Bob, never tires of fighting for what he believes, to regain the freedom to dream, he does not intend to yield to the present and looks for the reasons of a necessary rebellion.

This is my brief report of the book. I take advantage of its availability, to ask him three questions.

Memoirs of an abusive dreamer, interesting title is the author .... Tell us something about yourself in your experience of television journalist ....

Memoirs of a abusive dreamer combines a term deliberately echoes nineteenth-century memoirs, with an adjective, abusive, very inflated in the news today. There are abusive vendors, illegal residents, illegal citizens .... From this contrast between past and present takes shape the imagination of a future in which dreams are taxed. The novel is a chronicle written in direct haunted by a man who does not fit the times. An abusive dreamer, in fact, scared but not yet resigned.
So, taking it to far, I come to my experience of a television journalist. In Rai I arrived 14 years ago after having passed a competition for trainee journalists. Much has happened since then. I had important meetings, first of all one with Fernanda Pivano, I acquired a style of writing closer to the pictures, I worked on precious documents of the Rai archive.
Today I live a more turbulent phase with the job. I consider the TV a privileged absurd daily life, just being spectators to understand. Dealing with the news more often means handling fears, as demonstrated by certain overused words: emergency, alert, storm, and so on.
For me it is still important in a service to keep abreast of the story, without altered tones, with a simple and precise style. But the prevalent trend favors, in my opinion, other logics. In this regard the television work is indirectly a unique source of inspiration. In the novel, the dreamer, for example, imagines a reality show information that is titled Everybody Tg. The so-called ordinary people is called to read the news in the studio on a chair that goes up or down depending on the audience satisfaction. Obviously winning is the reading of the facts anxiety and agitated. As another example, the cousin of the protagonist, Ettore, works as a tour guide from disaster, that is he carries around the curious to places made infamous in the crime. This is an exaggeration into the future, unfortunately, not so far from reality.

How was born the idea for this book?

The theme of dreams has always attracted me. It is a part of our existence that are beyond the control even of ourselves, and regenerating valuable asset that puts us in contact with the most intimate part of us. But power does not like the excesses of fantasy and the unexpected. He prefers direct lifestyles and consumption patterns. So I thought the subtle strategy of a state in 2035 that offers citizens an exchange: the abolition of the traditional fee-for-one sets, the one on dreams, that I called in the novel Ivo, Imposta Value Onirico. Hence the idea of the novel, which arises from an assumption not too optimistic, because the majority accepts with a referendum the exchange and chooses to being controlled during sleep.

Andrea Staid

How did start
the descent into hell

Within the Shoah are shadow cones largely unknown to the public, one of which is the genocide of the mentally ill and disabled perpetrated by the Nazi dictatorship. (Robert Jay Lifton.: The Nazi doctors, Rizzoli, Milan, 2006 and Michael Tregenza: Purify and destroy, Shadow Court, Verona, 2006)
I think that in a society that is more and more toward the "cult of the body and the image" of perfection, relegating, paradoxically, the body against oblivion of time, the theme of "disabled" and their relationship with this society is deeply relevant.
Franco and Franca Basaglia the late 60's reported on a television show: "Many of the respondents replied that the problem of psychiatric asylums could be solved by killing them all. Nazi Germany had done, to protect the purity of the race, our society does not think of being Nazi, nevertheless it continues to embrace ethnocentrism as a method of resolving their own conflicts and contradictions ".1
Disabled people are living a continually unjust state, that we all live, have lived or live in conditions of disease, old age, or proximity to death: the isolation, which translates into a highly visible, closely followed by the maximum invisibility.
The Nazis brought to the extreme a Weltanschauung that was present in many other countries: the forced sterilization of disabled people in the United States were started in 1907 in Indiana and had quickly spread to 24 other states of the Union in 1925; are followed by Norway, Weimar Germany, Iceland and Sweden, where sterilization continued until 1976! 2
Plans and programs for the Nazi euthanasia and the killing of Untermenschen (subhumans) started from disabled people and then spread to the Jews, Gypsies, Slavs, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, Catholic priests, Protestant pastors, the political, moral and religious opponents, common criminals, and were also provided to German citizens terminally ill with cancer, heart disease and lung. The cult of the body and its purity had made such a level in the minds of the Nazis, to make it "immaterial", as if they themselves, their loved ones had not been ill and never grow old.
This descent into hell began precisely with the weakest among the weak children, worthy beginning of a regime that had declared himself above the good and evil and of all morality. Starting with the children means having fewer problems at all levels, were first removed the children already admitted to health facilities or public charities, were later taken those living in the family. The German doctors, which were incorporated into a new order strictly controlled by the Nazis, actively collaborated and were directly in charge of the project, the only people who were strongly opposed were Professor HG Creutzfeld, prof. Karl Bonhoeffer father of Theologian Dietrich,  and Dr. Edward Frank, director of a nursing home for sick psychiatrics.3 For children were used increasingly massive doses of phenobarbital, sometimes associated with scopolamine and morphine, and when it came to adults, genocide served as training ground for that not many months after that will be reserved for Jews, and were used several gases.
The link between the Final Solution to the Aktion T4, both within that aberrant pattern that included the Nazis for the world, some men through violence and the organization could achieve anything and go beyond all understanding, can be described only, as Hannah Arendt said, in words coming from beyond the grave.

Alessandro Fiori

Notes

1. Franco e Franca Basaglia: Postfazione a Erving Goffmann: Asylums, Edizioni di Comunità, Torino, 2001
2. Piero Colla: Per la nazione e per la razza, Carocci, Roma, 2004
3. Robert Jay Lifton.: I medici nazisti, Rizzoli, Milano, 2006 e Michael Tregenza: Purificare e distruggere, Ombre corte, Verona, 2006.

Bruno Segre
awkward

Unpalatable to anti-Semitic (because jew and always committed to tolerance and dialogue), disliked by traditionalist Jews (because he does not observe the rites and advocates cremation), his portrait - biographical and autobiographical (Nico Ivaldi, I never surrendered. Interviewing lawyer Bruno Segre, preface by Alberto Sinigaglia, Torino, Lupieri, 2009, in-8 °, 212 pp. 12 euro) - a man of thought and consistent action in no way reflected the prejudices aroused by him.
We find it always at the forefront of all civil wars that have greatly helped shape democratic Italy: religious tolerance (though he professed atheist), a conscientious objector (he was the first lawyer to defend the guilty disobedience continued to compulsory military service leading a systematic campaign leading up later in the first law of 1975, followed by a number of corrective). Campaign divorce (he was freed from the yoke of a first wrong marriage), the right to cremation (in spite of priests and rabbis, allied to the occasion), the spread of rationalism (the cult, rather than to the saints, is dedicated to the martyr Giordano Bruno's thought), the fight against the death penalty (fortunately included in the Civil Code) the complaint of bribery (even when they are of socialist origin) and the list does not cease here.
The book is presented as a long interview with Nico Ivaldi, noted journalist and writer, whose merit is to be able to ask appropriate questions, generally respecting the chronological order, disclosing all facets of the personality of the interviewee and sometimes inserting anecdotes aspects that often bring us into the intimacy of Segre (for example, with juicy episode interview with Josephine Baker).
Used to seeing him in a toga in the courts we had forgotten that the first vocation of Segre was literature (thesis on Benjamin Constant) manifested through journalism away from the sensationalism of crime and ambitiously cultural character: interviews with stars of the show, as Anna Magnani, Isa Miranda, Toto, Mistinguette, Louis Armstrong or political figures (such as Umberto of Savoy at the time of the referendum). His journalistic career was short but intense: at the Opinione his colleagues carry famous names (some already famous others have become soon) as Vittorio Gorresio, Ruggero Orlando, Arturo Carlo Jemolo, Paolo Monelli, Camilla Cederna, Vitaliano Brancati, John Commisso and at Mondo Nuovo he corrects the writings of Saragat. Often signed with the pseudonym of SICOR, who had been his nom de guerre in the resistance, from the name of a Spanish river.
We are presented with the figure jew father, he is not practicing and socialist (who had contact in Switzerland with Lenin and Mussolini) and he also married a Catholic, showing to the child the absence of prejudice.
Even when he throws himself in the legal profession Segre does not abandon journalism, in fact he founded the magazine L'Incontro alive and well for over sixty years. It looks like organ for Christian-Jewish friendship, of anti-militarism and the values of the strength of world government. He directs Ara (per cremation), Libero Pensiero (Free Thought – of the Rationalist Association "Giordano Bruno"), Fraternita (fraternity - anti-racist), but for daily newspapers (La Stampa and L’Avanti, among others), magazines (Il Ponte, Comunita, Etc ...) and also to our Umanita Nova.
He never declared himself an anarchist, but he always played in the libertarian area: first joining the Giustizia e Liberta and then the Action Party (both heirs of the liberal socialism of the Rosselli brothers), then the Socialist Party (for which he was an five-year municipal representative, representing worthily the left wing). His professed ideal model of society is that of Republican Spain's 1936-'39 or that of the kibbutz.
L’Incontro was conceived as an arena of friendly comparison of the secular and nonviolent left and has hosted many collaborators from anarchy, while as a lawyer Segre has defended in court several anarchists (Angelo Nurra and myself, for example) and worked closely with our movement in the antiwar field (with Garinei, Ceronetti, Fedeli and others). Our comrades, in turn, have joined many of its initiatives in the rationalist and cremation.
Like most Italian Jews, Bruno Segre has spoken in favor of the abandonment of the territories occupied by Israel and the creation of an independent Palestinian state. In his Incontro ("sheet" format, printed on top quality paper and the most perfect graphic of Italian newspapers like that) it is not uncommon to read vehement criticism of the state of Israel's expansionist policy. Segre's position in this regard, does not stray at all from that of the "Anarchists Against the Wall" (small but very active group of Israeli and Palestinian nonviolent activists who fight together against the bully state that prosecuted them). When more than half a century ago, I asked if Segre could help me reach the kibbutzim, he dissuaded me, assuring me that the state of Israel condemned even more conscientious objectors through fine to military service that the Italian state, which was all say.
Consistency of principles, Bruno Segre has always combined a great political and intellectual clarity, rarely blurred. We wish him the longevity of the Hebrew prophets: his presence and pertinacity give incentive to those who, like him, never gave up.

Pietro Ferrua

Fair
Game

Every so often there comes a film that changes the way you look at your current life, the way you look at the politics and makes you reflect on all the information you are thrown by the media. The director Doug Liman brings us probably the most important film of the year, Fair Game, starring Naomi Watts and Sean Penn. The film is not only based, but is a faithful reconstruction of the events that in 2003 led to the "scandal" Valerie Plame - Joseph Wilson, and is based on the book "The Politics of Truth by Joseph Wilson and" Fair Game "by Valerie Plame.

A frame from the movie Fair game

Cast:

• Director: Doug Liman
• Writers: Jez Butterworth and John-Henry Butterworth.
• Actors: Naomi Watts (Valerie Plame), Sean Penn (Joseph Wilson), Ty Burrell, Sam Shepard, Bruce McGill, Noah Emmerich
• Original music by John Powell
• Cinematography by: Doug Liman

The Plot:

CIA agent Valerie Plame has done everything she can to support her government, in fact showed that there was a 97% probability that there would be no WMD (Weapons of Mass Distruction) if the Member United had gone to war in Iraq. Unfortunately, the government of Bush and Cheney is only interested in promoting the 3% that wants war and he gets it on the basis of lies and misrepresentations in the media. The condition of Valerie as a CIA agent was revealed by White House officials to discredit her husband Joseph after he wrote a piece for The New York Times contradicting the "official" truth used in full voice by Bush to justify the intervention against Saddam Hussein. After being torn apart by the media, Plame and her husband finally now have the ability to react.

• The acting: this applies to everyone in the cast from Watts and Penn to the supporting cast that was on screen for two minutes. Great performances by all.
• The exchange of the parties: It was interesting to see that Watts took the initiative and Penn fall back to the role of a co-star. In many ways, Watts played the male role, she is out at all hours, takes home the money and is apparently unaware of the emotions of her husband. Penn is the emotional character, the one that unconditionally supports the initiative, what the other side expects a move, and brings out the heart of the story. Both have great benefits, Watts shows that she is more able to open the road and when you see Penn burst into tears you understand why he won all those Oscars.

The good political:

• Penn: apart from what he earned, it is quite obvious why Penn had the lead role, this is probably one of the most important roles he has ever done. This is more of a film, it is a commentary on the current political situation in the United States, a situation that involves, as we know the rest of the world, including the Italians. In addition to nailing the complexity of the benefit which makes it alive throughout the film, this is a film with a purpose. Although the Watts character was attacked by the media, his response is that the "Ordinary" person may look and it is his story that makes the film so real.
• Role of the Media: We all know (or should know) that the media spin the facts and you can never believe what you are told on TV, but it is fascinating to observe exactly how and why this happens. In this film you get to be inside the twisted history and look at the reality around you. And as an added bonus, they threw in a great scene that shows us why the press should be affected at times when attacking those who are in the spotlight. Very well done is the inclusion of original scenes of television with Bush and who is for him to finish in beauty with a magical transformation of the actress Watts supplanted seamlessly in the closing scenes of the film by the recording of the original Valerie Penn real recovery from the television network C-SPAN during her testimony to Congress.
• Policies of success: it is difficult to make a political film that deals with current affairs which is also interesting, moving, funny and not completely self-indulgent - this film achieves these results. From the way it shows us why and how the media manipulates stories, how they are used as equipment from Bush and various acolytes, how the government uses people to get what he wants, to get involved in the personal relationship between the two characters, to make a statement of principle about what is right and wrong, and why it is important to fight - this movie has it all wrapped into one. Penn's final speech to a classroom full of students, when he quotes Benjamin Franklin who said that democracy is guaranteed by the democratic system of government that the United States has only until everybody will stay on guard to protect it looks like an invitation a contribution from the base to manage the society, almost an invitation to go to a more anarchic society.
• Speed: When I think back to past political cover-ups or past wars, it took decades to put together all the facts on any situation. Now we have a film with major actors that is issued to a mass audience, which documents the events that take place during the period 2001-2002. The world is not perfect, but the speed with which people are now able to see situations and know their truth is impressive and this film sets a new standard to show the truth as it is happening and does it well.

The Bad:
* Nothing to say!

Overall:
It is rare that you get a funny movie that also makes an important point - and this so quickly. Bush is not President for less than two years and already we have a film that documents what happened inside and outside the CIA and the White House after 9 / 11 and before the military intervention in Iraq. It is a great movie definitely worth seeing!

Enrico Massetti

We believed
and we still believe

In many ways the process of unifying the country, despite the temporal distance that separates us, is still of topical pungent actuality, also highlighted by the recent controversy and often instrumental sorties in several political forces. It's not bad, then, that "A" deals with it in one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Unity of Italy. There is an opportunity we thought of the great Naples film director Mario Martone.
The film in fact offers interesting insights into a historical process, the epic Risorgimento, we have always been accustomed to read as a glorious history without light and shade - how can we forget the textbooks or the Liebig cards? - which has seen happily made the most noble intention expressed by the most modern and forward-looking forces of Italian society. A historical process in which the aspirations of the country to independence from foreign domination and a commitment to build a great nation no longer stifled by being fragmented into small states and reactionary lordships (especially pontifical) would have free rein, painlessly overcome the inevitable contradictions that were to be born. A reading of history, this, that now has less and less reason for being. In fact - even ignoring that much of the recent acrimonious humours of the northern leaguers, who complain about the unit as Italy's own goal with which the rich North has lost its most important game - it becomes increasingly necessary to reflect on the fact that this unit is a process still largely unfinished, and that this incompleteness is not the bitter joke of a cynical cheat fate, but the consequence of a set of contradictions too long ignored. If not, even, deliberately concealed. And the Martone film does everything except ignore, or conceal, such contradictions.

Mario Martone

The Neapolitan director concedes nothing to the usual rhetorical representations of a process seen as the outcome of a common and collective feeling, with the Italians out, always and everywhere, in the process of unification, regardless of the prospects and future projects, but on the contrary, tackling the subject in a "politically incorrect" and not at all hagiographic - of hagiography, moreover, by treating the "political" Risorgimento, it is better not to talk about - trying to highlight the numerous contradictions and hardly curable. The description of the Bourbon repression in the early decades of the nineteenth century, juxtaposed with the equally barbaric in which a few decades later, the army of Savoy drowned in blood the onset of southern Italy, not only wants to show how the monarchy was one of the Savoy or of Bourbon, was the most wretched populace, and as history repeat itself, but above all as the Power always found, beyond the forms, its essential identity.
And if the repression of the southern populace, by all treated as vulgar assemblages of primitive brigands, took place with the same dull ferocity, were the Savoia troops or Frankie's troops to crack down, what was missing was inevitably to the formation of a common identity heard and accepted, without which unification would come about more on paper than in practice. The effective metaphor for the manufacture of reinforced concrete, insistently taken by the camera, a modern artifact that today he met everywhere in the lands of the south, but totally anachronistic in the second half of the nineteenth century, is a process of maturation and inevitably interrupted still unfinished.
It will be through the personal lives of the protagonists of the film, three young Mazziniani of Cilento, two of bourgeois extraction, and the third son of farmers, the director shows the tragic conflicts that have marked the history of the Risorgimento, and that will be the causes of this fracture hardly curable that has made Italy, despite its institutional unit, a confused social mosaic. The contradiction in terms between their progressive and Republican istances and the will to create a great monarchy and conservative state of Savoy, the incompatibility of the aspirations of the Master Mazzini with large institutional design of Cavour, ready to sell his soul to the devil just to make it , are certainly not part of the vulgate nationalist who sees the triumvirate, Garibaldi, Mazzini and Cavour, agreed, ultimately, on methods and objectives.
And it is precisely in its ability to illustrate, without indulgences, the drama of that historical process, which Martone fully expresses his thesis: The size of the project which will engage the Mazzini followers leads to a generous boost to the paranoid madness, making a figure of the revolutionary drama which reminds us of the great characters of Dostoevsky. These are, in fact, the Demons who kill and are killed, the latest trends that are thrown, with the enthusiasm of the crowds and the prophet, in the social fray, challenging and denying, with their passion and their actions, the very foundations inspiration for their humanitarian aid.
And the epilogue of their dish - after the last desperate repressed Garibaldi quest, now wants to logical, from newborn army unit - the empty ritual is to assist a Member in a deserted emicycle in which speaks, alone, the "traitor" Crispi , which like all true traitors will become, after swearing blind allegiance to the House of Savoy, the repressor of the fierce old fellow ideals. The Republicans "believed" and, given the results, many have stopped believing. But those who have not done so - like the character played by the excellent Luigi Lo Cascio, extraordinary in this film as Valerio Binasco, Toni Servillo and all the other players - become aware that it will not be coming from that room that this has been for you fought, they will pass the baton to the internationalists and the anarchists.
It will be inevitable, in fact, the transition from the national issue, which resolved simply in creating a stronger monarchy and legitimacy, to the social question, from the spirit of our country to the international one, unified and democratic aspirations to those of the emancipation of the proletariat without a homeland or master. It will be especially Mazzini’s followers, in fact, once they leave the mystic reformism of Exile, to transform their dedication to the cause and willingness to direct action - pushed up to individual action - in the revolutionary potential that will not dry up in the delegation and parliamentary action. The parable of the various Malatesta and Cafiero will witness it. Their transition from the institutional logic of Mazzini to that of the struggle against the state and the principle of delegation, facilitated by blunt condemnation Mazzini with which pronounces fire words on the Paris Commune, the change that will bring Italy into modernity, opening the doors to the great process of emancipation of the proletariat. And as companies will no longer be small bands of insurgents, they still do not see the continuity with the spirit of Garibaldi and Pisacane, to engage the energies of the new revolutionary, but the construction of a major project of liberation from exploitation and from 'authorities. "We thought, " then, but still "we believe ". Because the story is not over, and that sad reinforced concrete can not continue to give until the end of time the desolation of an unfinished stage but sooner or later, it will become a building for the construction of which so much energy, and lives hope you are spending.

Massimo Ortalli

Everyone must know
(that Facebook is a trap)

“Tutti devono sapere”"Everyone needs to know"is the name of a Facebook page that informs (informed) on issues of so-called reform Gelmini, the final attack waged against the Italian public schools, the attempt - which unfortunately is moving forward - to destroy the basis for any intelligent life, every democracy in this country.
Ten thousand people were linked to this page: teachers, parents and students.
This page has been deleted without reason, without explanation. For breach of some provision of a regulation that no one knows.
Facebook is like that. I'm getting more and more messages (often comically desperate) from people who have been banned from social networking and are reeling because their sociality diet is the exchange of messages, and continue browsing the site in which only those who are alone (almost all are these days) can be found cuddled confirmation of its existence, and the feeling of having friends, even if more time you spend in front of the screen, you will have fewer friends in the flesh and in his eyes.
I protest along with many others against the authoritarian removal of the page "Everyone needs to know. " But I would like to take this opportunity to tell everyone (even the ten thousand members of the banned page) that this is a lesson on what Facebook is, and what the network is becoming, the stage of Web 2.0: a totalitarian bomb, a mental time bomb intended to destroy any empathy between human beings.
In the '80s I translated an article entitled “Communication without symbols” written by a young electrical engineer named Jaron Lanier. Lanier was then working in California to a laboratory for research on new technologies, and was the first to develop the interfaces of the data glove and other devices to virtual reality that preceded and prepared the launch of the world wide web.
Jaron Lanier has now published a book entitled “You are not a gadget”, which is as far as I know the best critique of Web 2. 0 and particularly of the social network that has attracted more than half a billion users, and that is transforming the daily lives of a considerable part of the new generation.
The first part of the book is devoted to the analysis identifying the California philosophies of Info-Cloud as the highest form of intelligent life associated, and tends to see in the data communication network the most advanced form of intelligent life to the point that, as Kevin Kelly said in his book of 1993 (Out of Control), the global mind can not be understood or controlled by the individual human mind, which means that it is of a higher order than the human mind, like a hive intelligence was higher than that of bees that they built.
"The function of this model is not" - Lanier writes - "to make life easier for people. But promoting a new philosophy, that the computer evolves into a form of life that can understand humans better than humans understand themselves ... "(You are not a gadget, p.. 28)
Lanier starts from the premise (philosophically important) that "information is alienated experience. " He adds: "If the bits can mean something to someone, it’s just because they are the subject of experience. When this happens, it creates a common culture between those bits and who goes fishing them in memory stores. Experience is the only process that can disalienate information. "(p. 29) Techno-Theology of the hive mind has elements very similar to the Neoliberal Theology, that there is an invisible hand that automatically regulates all economic exchanges, in designed to achieve the best possible world in a perfect condition of deregulation.
Lanier still read: "In the past, an investor should be able to understand at least something about what their investment would actually produce. Today it is no longer the case. There are too many layers of abstraction between the new type of productive investment and the event. I believe in the philosophy of the hive mind seem to think that for many levels of abstraction are in a financial system that does not reduce its effectiveness. According to this ideology, which mixes cyber-cloud and economy Friedmanites (neoliberal), the market will do what is best for everyone, and not only do so much better because less people are able to understand it. I do not agree. The financial crisis produced by the collapse of the mortgage was evidence of the fact that too many people had believed in the theology. "(pag.97)
Before the collapse, in fact, bankers assured us that their intelligent algorithms could calculate the risk and avoid dangerous loans. We know how that turned out, millions of people have lost their homes, the financial system collapsed, the population was forced to bail out banks, due to the disaster, and the world economy today is mired in a recession that appears irreversible, and European governments are asking the population to give up his rights to his wages, his recreation, his pension because the financial system - that caused all this - must be saved.
What does all this Facebook? Got to do and how, because Facebook is the most complete form of a totalitarian form of algorithmic in Lanier speaks thus: "With the formation of Web 2.0 there has been a form of reductionism. The singularity is eliminated by this process will be reduced thinking to mush. The individual pages that appeared in the first phase of the Internet in the 90s had the taste of the person who made them. MySpace preserves something of that flavor, although it had begun the process of formatting. Facebook has gone further by organizing people into identities of multiple choice, while Wikipedia tries to cancel the entire point of view. If a church or a government did something like that would be denounced as authoritarian, but if the culprits are the technologists, then it seems that everything is stylish and inventive. "(p. 48)
And finally, Lanier asks: "Am I accusing hundreds of millions of users of social networking sites to accept a reduction of themselves to use the services? Yes, I accuse them. I know a lot of people, especially young people, but not just, that are proud to say to have accumulated thousands of friends on Facebook. Of course this statement can only be done if you accept a reduction of the idea of friendship. "(p. 52)
The problem is how far this reduction will come. If these are people who have been psychic and existential experience, Facebook probably will end up being just a huge waste of time and a trap, as has happened to the ten thousand people who have entrusted to Facebook their political action and communication. But if you have eight years or twelve, then I think the issue is far more dangerous. "I worry about the next generation" - Lanier writes - "growing up with a network technology that enhances formatted aggregation. There will be perhaps more prone to succumb to the dynamics of swarm? "
These words does not write a nostalgic humanist nor a rabid Luddite subversive, but a computer engineer who has designed the network long before the Internet existed. So we should listen, and think that our social life, through the network, leave the network and invades our lives, which otherwise has no friendship, nor pleasure, nor sense.

Franco Berardi “Bifo”