DANTEMag - N.1

Issue 1 - August/September 2011 -

UK £ 7.50 - $ 12.50 - UE € 8.5 - Hong Kong $ 95 - China RMB 79

www.dantemag.com

UK £ 7.50 - $ 12.50 - UE € 8.5 - Hong Kong $ 95 - China RMB 79

www.dantemag.com

Issue 1 - August/September 2011 -

Issue 0 year 1 - february 2011 - UK £ 5.00 - $ 8.00 www.dantemag.com

FOR THE RENAISSANCE IN US

The only international magazine with an Italian soul

Bucky Fuller

Supporting Humanity: A True Pioneer of Design

Kabul

The Untold War: A British Soldier of Fortune in Iraq

Our Third Skin Healthy living

Airborne Rodeo:

150

Yhe Unnatural Urge to Fly

Overture q q q q Li\_lni <_hcahc Li\_lni <_hcahc

The Prince of Allegria teaches the Italians The the true meaning of their national anthem.

Prince of Allegria teaches the Italians the true meaning of their national anthem.

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Passion and Tradition in Our Wines DANTEmag n.1

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JORDAN

An Incredible Journey

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21/06/2011 15:56:59

index LETTER FROM THE EDITORS ON THE BIRTH OF DANTE. Dante and Beatrice pag 10

HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF

FILM

Each of us Dies on Screen pag 46

DESIGN AND ARCHITECTURE

MEAN SANA IN CORPORE SANO

EXTREME SPORTS Airborne Rodeo: the Unnatural Urge to Fly Paragliding pag 106

pag 14

Architect Bucky - Supporting Humanity: A True Pioneer of Design pag 54 An Interview with Nick Mongiardo pag 62 Our third skin; healthy living pag 68

TRAVEL Fly fishing in Patagonia pag 112 Mending the Silence: the Sanctuary of Treskavec pag 122 Yotel New York pag 126

ART.

COVER

LA DOLCE VITA Dining Underground pag 128 South Africa’s Life of Wine pag 132

pag 12 - Continues on page 142

DIVINA COMMEDIA AROUND THE WORLD.

Giorgio Tentolini: Vojage of an artist pag 18 No Escape The art of photography. Amina Nolan pag 24

LITERATURE

Judge Bearing HIV Witness Edwin Cameroon pag 32

MUSIC

Unsung Jazz Great: Lenny Breau pag 36 New York’s Alright, if you Like Rock and Roll pag 42

The Prince of Allegria Roberto Benigni pag 74

POLITICS

Kabul: State of Siege pag 82 Italia Quo Vadis pag 90

BUSINESS

Face Book, Chapter and Verse. pag 92 Idiot Arbitrage Profiting from Doom pag 96 The Booty Trail pag 100 Breathing Success - Geox pag 102

COLUMNS

Nonno Panda tales pag 136 Leviathan pag 140 History Repeats Itself Da Ponte answer.

Continues from page 12 - pag 142

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contributors DANTE MAG Editor in chief Massimo Gava Deputy editor.

Chris Kline.

Editor at large.

Alex Forman

Contributing Writers .

Devon Dikeou Arts Editor Steven Spieczny Web and New Technology Editor Esther Gafalvi Special Projects Editor

Editor at large US Caroline Udall.

International corrispondent.

Mike Jerovia

Executive Literay Editor Patrick JSummers

Associated reserch editor.

Louis Romero

Feature editor.

Keanu Kerr

Art Director.

Nicola Sasso

Photography Director.

Wiston Cole

Business editor Martin Shah

Picture Editor.

Luella Stock

New York Business Editor.

Jon Goodwin

Executive online editor.

Max Spagnol

Online design editor.

Lavinia Todd

Dean Rispler Music Editor

Online research editor.

Mary Shulze

Giorgio Tentolini, Tom Porter, Chrishanti Jayawardene, Steve Conger, Bee Van Zuylen, Lucia De Nardi, Christopher Thompson, Rupert Dodds, Barbara Lenisa, Jacqui Taylor, Phoenix Troll, Veena Kanda, Lawrence Kilshaw, Neil Geraghty, Dante and Beatriz, NonnoPanda.

Contributing Photographers.

Amina Nolan, Caroline Shulze, Santambrogio Milano, Rupert Dodds, Regina Manfeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, Johann Bell, Neil Geraghty, Phoenix Troll, Anastasija Hozyainova, Geox Photo Archive, Giorgio Tentolini.

Dantemag is published by.

EvolutionTree Publishing Company 12 Charing Cross mansion 26 Charing cross rd.

London WC2H 0DG. UK. info@dantemag.com.

Subscribe online at: www.dantemag.com/subscription

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Letter from the Editors on the Birth of Dante.

H

We are very pleased that you have in your hands the first issue of Dante.

Why did we choose Dante as our new magazineâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s title?

Very simple, we abide by the humanistic principles of the immortal Italian poet and though we bow before Alighieriâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s greatness with all due humility, we are inspired and moved to action by the hope of a Renaissance in our craft. Our uncompromising mission, to shape an original pathway in the domain of magazine journalism that sets new bounds of excellence, unreservedly.

The world stands at a crossroads that will define this young century. It is a time of momentous change, arduous challenge, and profound complexity for the whole of our small planet. It is our great privilege to document our reality. We will not be blinkered.

Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso.

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Business as usual is over and we dare not ignore the fact that an epic transformation is underway. The ailing natural world, war, political & social upheaval, rabid extremism, conflict of every stripe, diminishing resources, economic crisis, an expanding global population, demands for free-

dom and greater equality, they are issues at the very core of our new reality.

We know in the midst of chaos there is also progress.

There is a growing solidarity and empathy among us all, our human family transcends national, ethnic, religious and cultural barriers as never before through the miracle of modern communication. There is the hope and tangible evidence of our global tribe’s desire to build, to renew and reinvent, to harness the very genius of human creativity to ever-greater heights.

The human spirit continues to astonish us with its capacity for artistic expression, with its intrinsic need for joy, the gift of laughter, its continual questioning and exploration of our existence, its natural propensity to beauty. We don’t reject the pleasures of life and we wholeheartedly engage in showcasing the finer things, because civilization is also food, clothes, architecture, travel and sport. But, we shudder at easy clichés.

The Cantos

We reaffirm the humanistic commitment drawn from Dante’s masterful art that we are all sometimes at once in heaven, hell or purgatory. Not a lifestyle magazine, we are a cultural magazine. Our philosophy is inclusive and we strive to document and interpret the world we all share to the prejudice of none. We hide from nothing and we do not retreat. Current affairs, politics, debate, analysis, satire, narrative diaries, fiction and criticism will all figure in our pages. Ours is also a magazine devoted to the art of the photographic image, just as we revere the power of the written word. We pledge further that our magazine embraces all of you, men and women of every possible diversity.

Our view of life is not airbrushed. We seek nothing less than to witness a Renaissance in our world, in our pages, and in you, our readership, our community and reason for being.

Dante and Beatrice (Alias the editors) DANTEmag n.1

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History Repeats Itself by Massimo Gava Food for thought!

E

Extract from” The Queen’s case Stated”a letter written by Charles Phillips, a barrister from Sligo Ireland, to the King of England GEORGE IV against his 3rd attempt at divorce from Queen Caroline of Brunswick.

I

October 6th 1820

t is not be endured that two acquittals, should be followed by a third experiment: that when the English Testament has failed, an Italian missal’s kiss shall be resorted to; that when people of character here have been discredited, others should be recruited that have no character anywhere; but above all it is intolerable, that a defenceless woman should pass her life in defenceless persecutions, with a trial in swift succession following another, in the hope, perhaps, that the noble heart which has defied all proof, should perish in the torture of eternal accusation. Send back, then to Italy, those alien adventurers; the land of their birth and the habits of their lives, alike unfit them for an English court of justice.

There is no spark of freedom - no grace of religion – no sense of morals in their degenerated soil. Effeminate in manners – sensual from their cradles – crafty, venal, and officious – naturalised to crime – outcasts of credulity – they have seen from their infancy their court a bagnio - their very churches scenes of daily assassination! - their faith is form – their marriage ceremony a mere mask for the most incestuous intercourse – gold is the God before which they prostrate every impulse of their nature.

“O sacra auri fame! Quid non mortalia pectora cogis!” the one indignant exclamation of their antiquity, has become the maximum of their modern practice. No nice extreme the true Italian knows: But bid him go to hell – to hell he goes.

Away with them anywhere from us – they cannot live in England, they will die in the purity of its moral atmosphere.

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I should deem myself underserving of the advantages I possess in having drawn my earliest breath in that delightful country, which, from the supreme beneficence of nature, has obtained the name of the Garden of Europe, which has been universally considered as the nobles work both of Nature and Art, and which has in all ages attracted the observation of the enlightened and the curious of the nation, and never failed to excite envy and admiration in its beholders.

I should consider myself as failing in the task I have for so many years imposed upon myself, “Noctesque diesque laboures” of supporting the dignity of the language, the literature, and the name of Italy, if I could hear calmly, and in silence the scurrility, the calumny and the abuse which has been lavished on her by a false and arrogant writer.

But as a tender son smarting for the injures of a parent, I exclaim against the slander, the contumely, and the base falsehood which he has heaped upon my beloved country. “Dulcis amor patriae.”

Continues on page 142

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come

THE DIVINE Around the World Half along our life’s path. Lost in a dark wood. Unable to find the right way….

PARADISO O Beatrice Dear Beatrice… let’s hope the CANTO I

eventually reconstruct their country, avoiding the prediStrasbourg. The European Court of Human Rights over- cament faced by countries like Panama, Nigeria, and turned its own verdict and ruled against, a naturalized Italian Haiti. The dictators fled these citizen, originally from Finland. countries, and the assets got lost in a maze of tax havens The woman had contended that the crucifix hanging in her and bank accounts controlled by these regimes. It is a preceson’s classroom in Italy violated their human rights, preven- dent after all! ting non-Catholic parents and students liberty of conscience. CANTO III The Italian government repeKnut, the polar bear who aled the court’s earlier verdict brought so much joy to chilin the woman’s favor. The dren at the Berlin Zoo, has judges have now ruled, “while unexpectedly passed away at the crucifix was above all a age 4 (19th of March 2011). religious symbol, there was no Rejected at birth by his mother, evidence before the court that Knut was raised by hand by the display of such a symbol his keeper, Thomas Dorflein, on classroom walls might have who died of heart attack at age an influence on pupils.” Is she 44 in 2007. Knut was the first paying the bill now? polar bear to survive past infancy at the Berlin Zoo in over 30 years. He became an instant CANTO II attraction and made lots of About $120 billion in Libyan money for the Berlin Zoo. assets have been frozen under UN Security Council sanctions.

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two of them will be reunited in the highest sphere of heaven...

Purgatorio Virgil what can be said of The Marie Antoinettes of the West who...

CANTO I

Whilst claiming to spread democracy and protect civilians around the world, barely reducing the privileges given to the oil companies, banks, and multinational corporations in their own countries. But they forced average Joe to pick up the bill, through cuts in health and education services, claiming that their countries cannot afford these anymore.

In the meantime bank CEOs keep getting huge bonuses!

Let them eat cake!

CANTO II How the Italian people view the X “scazzo” (controversy) between the Italian magistrate and Mr. Berlusconi… In the theatre of Italian politics, Mr. B’s coalition has suffered a loss at some local elections. The opposition parties are rejoicing and claim it is the end of an era. Which one? The era of nobody’s guilty till proven innocent?

edy

E

To what other terraces of doom and pain, dear Virgil, will you accompany me… next time...

INFERNO In the meantime chants have been heard again in a “new” call for Mr. B’s resignation.

Here’s a suggestion to resolve the country’s national deficit.

Tax a Euro each time the word resignation is uttered. Since B’s election 6 months would be paid up. Whether they like him or not, Mr. B has put into Italians’ heads that a democratically elected government must stay in power for five years. Such a notion has not yet been grasped by the opposition parties, past coalitions have a record of two-ish years per government, and at present do not seem to agree on anything-not even on the person that could challenge Mr. B. Let’s hope they do not choose the maverick mayor of Florence because even the right-wingers might vote for him. C’mon Rienzi, make your own party, as it seems necessary in order to be noticed by the dinosaurs of the now cheerful “united” opposition.

CANTO III

Is it somehow fitting that the disgraced former IMF chief Dominique Strauss Kahn awaits trial on rape charges when the IMF and World Bank have for generations, via other means raped much of

the developing world through unsupportable external debt repayments, extortionate loans, and forced economic planning at the suffering, misery, hunger and death of untold millions in the name of Globalization’s reigning order?

And has temporary dementia struck the French media establishment when even leading intellectual lights like philosopher Bernard Henri Levi rally to DMK and viciously denigrate the testimony of a lowly chamber maid, whose testimony seems entirely legitimate?

What happened to Liberte, Fraternite, Egalite? But then France still is a neo-Colonial power in Africa. Do French imperial attitudes die hard and do they inform a Gallic chauvinism that upholds DSK’s assumed moral superiority and veracity as a rich white man over a poor black woman’s word? It smells like colonialism and it’ s not a pleasant fragrance, eau du racisme. Ah, but then the Neo Fascist Front Nationale’s Marine Le Pen may just beat President Sarkozy in the first round of the presidential election. Sign of the times.

Bowl of Vichy (soise) anyone?

CANTO I

Since the wind of freedom has put together a coalition to free 6 million Libyans from the dictatorship of a “nasty man,” it will keep blowing for those in the rest of the world oppressed by other “nasty men.”

Zimbabwe, 14 million, and Darfur in the Sudan, 38 million, could be the next to have a UN resolution to remove the dictators those countries.

What? The majors oil companies have no investment in that? Isn’t it amazing that the destiny of mankind depends basically only on their will and pleasure of these corporations?

CANTO II

The International Atomic Energy Agency said that they warned the Japanese government of the risk their nuclear reactors could face in the event of an earthquake. That did not help much. Somehow, when it comes to the energy issue and pollution, human beings cannot seem to grasp the concept of facing extinction because of it. How about starting a real debate on the future of green

and renewable energies now?

How about a discussion of how to conserve and reduce the waste of energy around the world? Oh, it is just another bubble. We don’t have to be emotional about it. Well ask the Japanese people and the people of the Gulf of Mexico how that worked out for them.

CANTO III

Did you know that we invest five times more in studies on penis enlargement and breast size enhancement than in Alzheimer’s research? So much for the good graces of the pharmaceutical companies. Do we need to find a link between the material used for your body enlargements and Alzheimer’s disease in order to balance this insane discrepancy? Scientific community, think globally. Did we lose the plot ?

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ART

Voyage of an artistic GiorgioTentolini

mind Aesthetic work can never be planned.

I leave the pattern to unfold spontaneously so it can reflect its own identity.

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ART

BLIND RUNNING. (selfportrait) 2010, 10 pieces - 20x30cm. (each) paper hand engraved *courteously Gift Gallery, London.

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ART

Genomi 2004, 9 pieces - 21X25X40cm. (each) aser print on vinyl acetate *courteously Gift Gallery, London.

The passing of time makes a man powerless.

Kairos becomes the image of a young dancer; the metal net that traps his movement is his alter ego Kronos.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Genomiâ&#x20AC;?was presented in 2005 at Exposition Now, Casalmaggiore (Cremona, Italy). Paul Malone took the whole show to the Tara Brian Gallery in London, and called it Primavera (Spring) 2006. The partnership with Paul Malone continues with three other collectives: Primavera 2007 in Amsterdam (Punt WG Gallery); Objectsroom in Parma, and Perpetuum Mobile in London, in 2008 (APT Gallery - Art in Perpetuity Trust).

In 2007 I met Julien Ashner, who works for the Tate Modern Gallery. He introduced my work to the Gift Gallery that currently represent me in London.

Kairos v. Kronos in 2008 has been selected for the Biennial Exhibition of Europe and Mediterranean of Bari.

Kairos v. kronos 2007 / 5 pieces - 45X80X12 cm. (each) wire nets, pin and wood *courteously Gift Gallery, London.

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ART Thanks to the Bari Biennale, I signed an exclusive agreement for the German market with S&G Gallery in Berlin. In 2008 and 2009, I participated at two collectives hosted by Adriana Gonzales. Amongst the works exhibited I’d like to remember Piccole anime ( the little souls) of Unknowns.

In this work I represent “strangers” seen like fragments of time, tiny moments that capture our attention, the spark of thought that can resolve an enigma.

In 2009, I brought Querce (Oak Trees) to Berlin. The work had been exhibited previously in London in 2008. I also brought

Supplications, made in 2004 and dedicated to Antonin Artaud’s writing on the clash of body and soul.

“The structure of the body and the imaginary world are the two different sides of the ego that better represent the instability of the human being.”

from the top unknowns, 2007. 7 pieces - 21X29,7 cm. (each), paper hand engraved Querce, 2007, 7 pieces - 42X120cm. (each), laser print on vinyl acetate suppliciations, 2004/2009, 1 piece - 15X30X15cm., laser print on plexiglass *courteously Gift Gallery, London DANTEmag n.1

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In Berlin, I also showed my work entitled Giuba esplorato, a tribute to the work of Italian explorer Vittorio Bottego. In the late 1800s, Bottego was the first to explore the Juba River in the Horn of Africa. This is another way to show the image of a soul, as the light that comes within; light as the vital element for the growth of three, from which I got the image projected on stripes of wood.

Vania Stukelj says: “While developing a technique on which he’s been working for a few years,Tentolini dissects and reassembles bodies that are printed out on transparent paper, playing with the effect that light creates on the background of wooden strips.

In 2010, Lorand Hegyi, the artistic director of Le Musée d’art moderne de Saint-Etienne, and the manager of Ludwig Foundation in Vienna included my work as part of a group of artists for Promenade, a travelling exhibition begun in Bratislava in 2008. So far the exhibit has traveled to Sarajevo, Budapest, Tel-Aviv, Palermo and Valencia.

In Promenade I present Pure Morning, where I rework the technique as well as the carving previously experimented with in the Unknowns project. But in Unknowns, the character has been secretly photographed. In Pure morning I’ll explore this intimacy, as the subject poses in front of a camera.

In July 2010 I presented Net (a work I made on a PVC net) at an initiative at the University of London for experimenting with new artistic languages, begun

by C4CC - Center For Creative Collaboration.

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… I see the human body in two different ways: one as a complex network of blood vessels and nerves and also as a“neutral” individual included in a social network. I blend these two concepts with a light that comes from the base of the main figure and goes through the entire body structure gradually fading away, leaving the face in shadow. It is as if the subject loses its identity, and doing so, gives way to a more neutral object.

My last work is called Il Muro dei Muri, a video projection exhibited at Erased Walls during Mediations Biennale, in Berlin and Bratislava in autumn 2010.

See below the interactive work.

muro dei muri 2009, video 7 min. in the other page, from the top: Il Giuba Esplorato 2006 / 2009, 15 pieces 30X100 (each) / wood, pigment and laser print on vinyl acetate Pure Morning 2010, 7 pieces, 20x30 (each) paper hand engraved NET 2010, 52 x 180 pvc net hand engraved *courteously Gift Gallery, London

The Japanese writer Yukio Mishima said“emotions don’t like fixed orders”.

I’m not able to concentrate on a single subject. Ideas come to me from people I cross paths with in everyday life. This is the fuel of my wandering mind and my artistic desire.

Travelling around the world with my art, I have met many people who believed in my work.

Besides those I previously mentioned, I’d like to thank Cristiano Boni, my travelling companion, assistant and co-maker and the member of my family that often takes my hand and walks along with me on my journey.

Italy is the country where my journey always begins and always ends. It is the essence of my being, the only place where I’ve ever been able to produce my works in peace and harmony.

Giorgio Tentolini www.giorgiotentolini.com DANTEmag n.1

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No Escape Amina Nolanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s photography shows a purity and truthfulness in the stories it tells. She shares her thinking with us.

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ART

E

Encapsulating glamour is mostly an illusion of art.

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ART

The naked body is still considered unnatural. Somehow, we believe nudity will affect our societyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s backbone. Yet nudity is the truth that defines our society.

The beautiful thing about photography is that it allows you to take a fraction of a second out of life and for that fraction of time to live on and become something else for someone else.

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ART

As the world evolves and opinions form we see a dramatic shift in what we call taboo.

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ART

The moment of the shoot is very exceptional because at that time it is just you that gets to see the subject in such trusting state, and you as the photographer make the decision how your subject will reveal its self to the world.

The nude gives what is lacking dramatically in contemporary art, a sense not just of vulnerability and trust, but also of hopefulness.

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78-08.com DANTEmag n.1

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LITERATURE

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Edwin Cameron is a senior judge in South Africa’s Supreme Court of Appeal and the only person in public office to acknowledge having HIV/AIDS. In his book Witness to AIDS he gives a frank account of his own experiences with the condition, the political denial surrounding HIV/AIDS, and the struggle that millions in South Africa and the rest of the continent face getting treatment. Cameron is the 2009-10 winner of Yale University’s Brudner Prize and lives in Johannesburg. He speaks to Massimo Gava.

MG: You’ve said that you’re the only official person who’s come clean about living with AIDS in South Africa. Since making that statement and the publication of your book, have you seen any changes in the perception that people have of the AIDS situation?

EC:

Eleven years since my public statement on AIDS, there has been immense progress in understanding the disease and in combating stigma. But, puzzlingly, very few or no public figures in Africa speak openly about their HIV status. In South Africa, this was partly due to President Mbeki’s flirtation with AIDS denialism – which put a profound chill on sensible and open discussion of DANTEmag n.1

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Judge Be HIV Witne

LITERATURE

earing ess

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LITERATURE

MG: You’ve said that you’re the only official person who’s come clean about living

with AIDS in South Africa. Since making that statement and the publication of your book, have you seen any changes in the perception that people have of the AIDS situation?

EC:

Eleven years since my public statement on AIDS, there has been immense progress in understanding the disease and in combating stigma.

But, puzzlingly, very few or no public figures in Africa speak openly about their HIV status. In South Africa, this was partly due to President Mbeki’s flirtation with AIDS denialism – which put a profound chill on sensible and open discussion of any sort. But outside South Africa there is also a telling absence of political leaders willing to speak about themselves as living with HIV, even though we know they do exist. That difficulty continues to be due, I think, to the fact that HIV is sexually transmitted.

MG: In your book you write ‘The primary reason

HIV/AIDS drugs were inaccessible to the developing world was because of the prices imposed by the manufacturers.’ To what extent have the political classes lost touch with reality, allowing companies to profit from the same people that elected them?

EC:

There may be profit in drugs, but there is still strength in activism. The history of the AIDS epidemic shows vividly what principled, well-focused activism can achieve angry, outspoken, well-informed activism. In 1997 when I started on anti-retrovirals, the drugs were unaffordable to all but the wealthiest one per cent of Africans. Now, nearly one million people in my own country are receiving ARV treatment free through the public health sector. That is a brilliant success. Drug costs have become only a relatively small component of saving lives in the AIDS epidemic. The most important problems are healthcare infrastructure and political leadership. But as to cost, that battle has largely been won.

MG: Is there a law in South Africa that prosecu-

tes people who knowingly infect others with HIV?

EC:

I have long fought against criminal laws that specifically target HIV sufferers. That’s because they increase the stigma, and although they’re supposed to be aimed at protecting women, they’re often applied against them.

In South Africa we successfully resisted an HIV-specific criminal law. One of our strongest arguments is that ordinary criminal law is effective enough to deal with a case where someone, who knows he has HIV, deliberately DANTEmag n.1

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passes it on to another.

MG: Were religious groups partly responsible for the AIDS epidemic in Africa?

EC:

Religious dogma has played an abject and negative role in the epidemic in Africa, especially when some groups opposed the use of condoms and persecuted gay men. Gay men are a particularly vulnerable group.

MG: You’ve said ‘A rank colonial legacy of racial thinking and bigotry has pla-

gued our understanding of AIDS in Africa.’ How would you describe the current situation?

EC:

Fortunately, since President Thabo Mbeki left office towards the end

LITERATURE of 2007, officially-sanctioned AIDS denialism has gone. The new health minister, Aaron Motsoaledi – a doctor with a hands-on experience of rural poverty – is forthright, committed and determined. And the man who toppled Mbeki, President Zuma, has been speaking with telling candour about the disease. The bogeys of the Mbeki era are gone.

And none too soon! Now we can talk frankly about HIV as something that’s sexually transmitted – a precondition to tackling stigma and discrimination, and getting people into treatment programmes.

MG: In your book you claim ‘Racial oppression and racial subordination are a

EC:

Under apartheid, South Africa’s extraordinary diversity – differences of colour, race, ethnicity, language, sexual orientation, culture – were a reason for oppression and injustice. Under the democratic constitution, our differences are a source of celebration and strength.

MG: South Africa went through one of the most peaceful revolutions in human

history, yet it’s a nation that has one of the highest crime records in the world. What should be done to keep it under control?

legacy the white settlement of Africa created and it is one that all South Africans are EC: A number of things will help us deal effectively with crime. One struggling to eradicate. Pretending it is not there is our least acceptable option.’ In would be a well-trained, efficient, uncorrupted and responsive police your opinion what should be done to change this situation? force, which we do not have. Another would be a national culture that EC: denounces criminals, particularly violent criminals, instead of giving The legacy of racism is slowly receding. Already more than half of them shelter and succour. That too, we do not yet have. Both of these South Africa’s middle class (52%) is black African. However, disparities conditions require leadership of integrity and determination. Until thedo remain. There is a residue of white racist practices and most impor- se conditions are met, the frightening wave of serious and petty, violent tantly wealth remains skewed: South Africa is one of the world’s most and non-violent crime will continue. unequal countries. My own view is that constitutionalism – that is the rule of law, separation of powers, and an enforceable bill of rights – MG: Do you think South Africa has fully dealt with the past and is now a offers the best road to prosperity and human dignity, particularly since mature nation? the South African Bill of Rights includes enforceable socio-economic rights. This means that government is under a progressive duty to pro- EC: vide everyone with the minimal means of survival, and that the courts We are on our way there. Having hosted the world cup has brought can oversee how government performs this duty. Countries in Africa out a pouring of positive interpersonal sentiment that transcends racial, where the rule of law has failed, including South Africa’s neighbours, class and geographical barriers.

Zimbabwe and Swaziland, offer dismal portents of what may happen over here if our constitutional project does not succeed.

MG: You’ve fought for the rights of the poor, shared many experiences with them, and overcome numerous personal obstacles to reach one of the highest positions MG: You write, ‘I am not a virologist, not a demographer, not a sociologist, in the country. What advice would you give to young South Africans who are looking not an epidemiologist, not even – except to the extent that legal practice and judicial for a chance in life? duties necessitate it – a student of human character. But I give my view.’ What is EC: your general view on the current state of South Africa?

I would recommend hard work and focus. But my own life has taught EC: me that this in itself is not enough. I was a hard working, ambitious I am worried, worried about the terrific levels of crime, worried about and extremely focused kid. What made it possible for me to escape faincreasingly brazen corruption, and worried about economic growth mily adversity were social opportunities, which as a white kid I was able and inequality. However, I remain cautiously optimistic. I think South to obtain. So I strongly believe in the role of government in creating a Africa has enough hardworking and skilled people, many of whom are more just and equal society for South Africa’s younger generation. extremely dedicated, to grow into a successfully functioning and economically flourishing democracy.

MG: In the past you’ve said, ‘I speak, I must speak. My life forces me to speak.’ How much more do you have to say?

MG: Do you think the gap between the rich and the poor has narrowed in the EC: 18 years since the end of apartheid?

There is a huge disparity and continuing injustice both in South Africa EC: and the African continent in areas like education, healthcare and the baThere are more black Africans than white members of the middsic amenities of life. I hope I have much more to say on all those three le class. But the gap between the rich and the poor has grown since issues. I love being a judge. The challenges are exhilarating. However democracy. To put it differently, the wealth disparity in South Africa I’m not only a judge. I am a man living with AIDS and I did not feel I has become more of a class than a racial issue. Poverty has been largely should remain silent. I have the energy and the voice to speak out and de-racialised. That removes one problem, but leaves the major problem Africa and South Africa offers me the opportunity to do that. for us to deal with now, namely poverty and inequality.

MG: How do you hold together a nation like South Africa with eleven official

languages and 52 ethnic groups?

‘Witness To AIDS’ is published in the UK by IB Taurus.

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Unsung Jazz Great:

Lenny Breau Regarded as one of the world’s master guitarists, international acclaim passed Breau by. Tom Porter asks why.

L

“Lenny Who?” I asked. I’d just moved to Maine and was being questioned over my tastes in music. Now I’ve been a jazz nut since the age of 5, and worked professionally as a jazz pianist back home in Britain, so I thought I knew a thing or two about the history of the music I love and the musicians who shaped it. Seminal jazz guitarists? Sure - I could reel off a list including Django Rheinhardt, Charlie Christian, Joe Pass, Herb Ellis, Grant Green, John McLaughlin, John Scofield, Pat Metheny and George Benson to name only a few. But Lenny Breau wasn’t even on my radar. I’m ashamed of that ignorance now. And I’ll bet he’s still not on the radar of a lot of jazz-lovers, especially those in Europe.

For outside of his native Maine, his adopted homeland of Canada and the tight world of professional jazz guitarists, he was never recognized for the genius he clearly was.

Breau’s star shone briefly in the late 1960s

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“Lenny Who?” I asked. to RCA Records. But he failed to leave a big mark and by the time of his murder in 1984, he had only mustered one regular weekly gig at a small club in North Hollywood. According to Ron Forbes-Roberts, author of the biography One Long Tune: The Life and Music of Lenny Breau, Lenny “had lived on the far margins of the jazz world for so long that many jazz fans were surprised to hear about his passing simply because they assumed he had died many years earlier.”

So who was this diminutive New Englander with French-Canadian roots that all my new jazz buddies were raving about?

Lenny Breau was born in Auburn, Maine in 1941 into a musical tradition: his parents, Hal ‘Lone Pine’ Breau, and Betty Cody, or Coté to use the original Quebecois spelling, were wellknown Country and Western artists, who had been performing since the ’30s. It may seem incongruous today, but Country and Western performers like Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family were hugely popular in those days amongst the sizeable French-speaking immigrants who had flooded across the Canadian border earlier in the century to work in the textile mills of Northern New England.

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It didn’t take Lenny long to master the family trade: by age the 8 of he was obsessed with the guitar and within a few years he was being billed as a boy wonder, performing under the moniker ‘Lone Pine Junior.’ Lenny’s obsession with the instrument left little time for other more traditional teenage pursuits, recalls his younger brother Denny Breau – himself an accomplished professional player.

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“What can you say, he was just born with it, you know?

pretty much any musical style, thanks to his flawless technique and to a perfect ‘ear’ (musician slang for someone’s ability to play exactly what they hear, without the need for sheet music).

While everyone else was at the drive-in watching movies, he was at the drive-in playing his guitar!”

“He mastered many different styles of music separately,”

Lenny Breau’s musical origins were very much steeped in the finger-picking traditions of great country music guitarists like Chet Atkins and Merle Travis, and tunes like The Cannonball

he told me, “it wasn’t just a question of taking influences from different styles – he mastered them.”

So it was with Country and Western, flamenco and classical guitar. Indeed one piano player recalls lending Breau a recording of Bach’s G Minor Keyboard Suite as a way of introducing him to classical music; he was completely gobsmacked when Lenny returned the record the following day having learned the entire Suite and adapted it for guitar.

Lenny “had lived on the far margins of the jazz world

Rag and Nine Pound Hammer remained part of Breau’s repertoire long after he had established himself as a jazz artist.

One of Breau’s most astonishing qualities, says the drummer Steve Grover, who worked with Lenny in the ’70s, was his ability to master

By the late ’50s the Breau family had moved to Winnipeg in Canada where they broadcast a popular half-hour daily country music show on CKY radio. Young Lenny, though, gradually began to drift towards the jazz scene, where he used his own ‘perfect ear’ to learn note-for-note the solos of some of his favorite jazz guitarists of the day, such as Tal Farlow and Barney Kessel. By the early 1960s he was well on way to developing his own unique style. Breau’s biggest single musical influence was probably not a guitarist but a piano player named Bill Evans who had risen to prominence as Miles Davis’s sideman on the now-legendary Kind of Blue album (1959).

Evans was known for his hallmark rich harmonic style and tasteful improvised melodic lines. Lenny Breau achieved what many, including Canadian jazz critic and guitarist Gene Lees, thought was “virtually impossible” by adapting Evans’s style for the guitar. This, said Lees, required

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n 1976 he returned to the US. At first he came to his home state of Maine where he hooked up with his soon-to-be-dead father. stretches of the left hand and enormous strength in the fingers.”

In 1962 Lenny Breau told a Toronto journalist that his ambition was “to make the guitar sound like a piano, like it’s being played with two hands.” Anyone listening to Lenny’s recording of There is No Greater Love from The Velvet Touch of Lenny Breau Live (recorded in 1969 and according to some, one of the classic jazz guitar albums of all time), would agree that Breau achieved this ambition.

By 1967 Lenny really looked like he was going places. After a meeting in Nashville with his childhood hero Chet Atkins, Lenny was persuaded to sign with RCA, and he recorded an album the following year. So why did commercial success prove elusive? For one thing jazz – Lenny’s first love – was on the wane as a popular art form by the late ’60s. A second reason was Lenny’s personal problems, including an increasing reliance on alcohol and drugs

(although Forbes-Roberts points this was no bar to many other jazz musicians achieving success and recognition). But another factor, according to those who knew him, was Breau’s own attitude toward success.

“Success to him was a measure of his musicianship and how much his peers appreciated what he did,” says his younger brother Denny. “He really didn’t care about money, he really didn’t.”

It was all part of Lenny Breau’s easygoing and friendly nature, according to Grover: “if Lenny could have made a living just sitting around on the couch in someone’s living room, playing for people after a good home-cooked meal for fifty bucks, he would never have wanted to do anything else.”

It was this attitude that helps explain Breau’s decision in 1962 to turn down an offer to go on tour with

By 1967 Lenny really looked like he was going places.

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popular jazz crooner Tony Bennett – a gig most musicians would have killed for. Lenny at that time was involved in a Toronto-based experimental jazz trio and didn’t want to be distracted from that.

Despite Breau’s apparent indifference to the business side of things, the failure of his first two RCA albums to achieve big sales numbers did take its toll on him and he became increasingly disillusioned with the music industry. The early ’70s saw no significant recordings out of Breau, who eked out a living doing sporadic gigs and session work mostly in Toronto and Winnipeg. Addicted to heroin and with his marriage failing, he developed a reputation among fellow musicians for unreliability.

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Lenny Breau died penniless a week after his 43rd birthday.

In 1976 he returned to the US. At first he came to his home state of Maine where he hooked up with his soon-to-be-dead father. It was not to play music like in the old days, but to indulge in a series of monumental drinking binges.

When he wasn’t blowing his mind with substances, Lenny was still able to produce beautiful music and I’ve met several people here in Maine who have fond memories of listening to, and playing with Breau. Despite his personal demons, they remember him as a good-hearted and sweet person.

“I considered him a close friend and a genius level musician and such a kind, gentle and lovable guy,” says renowned jazz clarinetist Brad Terry, whose collaboration with Lenny Breau, The Living

Room Tapes, was released after the guitarist’s death. Breau was more than just a virtuoso, Terry recalls, he was a fantastic accompanist:

“He could have buried me at any time with all sorts of technical stuff, but he was always there, holding me up and making me sound better than I knew how.”

The rest of Lenny’s life was spent drifting across the states: Nashville, Stockton, New York, and finally Los Angeles. He spent these last years performing – much

of the time in small clubs and bars – teaching, and writing columns for Guitar Player Magazine.

On August 12th 1984 Lenny Breau’s body was found floating in the rooftop swimming pool of a downtown LA apartment building. He had lived there with his wife of 4 years, Jewel Breau – a country singer previously known as Joanne Glassock.

The coroner ruled that Lenny had been strangled. His wife, with whom Breau had reportedly had a tempestuous and often violent relationship, was the chief suspect, but she was never charged. The case is still unsolved to this day.

Lenny Breau died penniless a week after his 43rd birthday. His remains lie buried in an unmarked grave.

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Let’s face it. New York City is not the great city it once was. Anyone who has lived there longer than 10 years can tell you that.

And they will. Dean Rispler shows us how it’s done.

New York’s Alright

if you Like Rock and Roll

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I

It’s sort of a pastime amongst New Yorkers to complain about how cool things once were and how everyone new in town ruined it. Of course it is still an awesome place. But, being a native New Yorker, I must rattle off why things started to suck and how the deliciously seedy rock and roll

scene has faded.

Let me present my short rockcentric history of NYC. In the ’70s, New York was a shit hole. A glorious one, but a shit hole nonetheless. There were abandoned buildings everywhere. The now highly desired neighborhoods of the East Village, Alphabet City and the Lower East Side were surrounded by crumbling, decaying buildings and streets covered with bums, broken bottles, beer cans and canine excrement. There were dealers on every corner. Every now and then it wasn’t unusual for the cops to find a dead body mistaken for a sleeping drunk on the Bowery.

People had left New York in droves. It was dangerous, dirty and unlivable. But, because of this, artists and musicians started to move in. The rent was unbelievably cheap and, as far as I can see, highly artistic young people like danger. It excites and stimulates them. Plus, if they were into drugs, they could find those quite easily. So in essence the Lower East Side of Manhattan was full of indigent creative types cohabiting with junkies, drunks and homosexuals and, in the best instances, combinations of those four.

Naturally such wondrously fertile conditions fostered creative genius. Now if you happen not so much to listen to rock as live under one, and have heard neared of The Ramones, Television, The Talking Heads, Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers, Richard Hell and the Voidoids, Blondie, The Dictators, The Dead Boys, etc., I order you to buy all their records right now. But for the moment I’m prepared to assume that you, highly cultured reader that you are, know about this prodigiously significant explosion of music that burst out of my fine city between 1974 and 1982.

Fast forward to the 1990s. New York has a new fiesty mayor, Rudolph Guiliani, and a plethora of wealthy people from out of

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MUSIC town who would just love for the city to become more family oriented and safe. The real estate moguls realize this and rents shoot sky high. Within a few years a roach infested studio on 1st Ave. and 2nd St. that once cost $650 per month was now $1200.

Plus the areas previously known as Alphabet City and the Lower East Side were now referred to (due to real estate marketing) as the East Village. Musicians, artists and junkies are pretty allergic to rent hikes, so they left the area. It almost meant the end of rock history.

Still, during the ’90s, there were some rock clubs still around.

CBGB’s was still open. Coney Island High, Continental and Brownie’s all had bands playing every night. And some of the East Village was alright. But the combination of the new influx of yuppie douche bags and Guiliani’s new Quality Of Life initiative started to harsh our vibes. Smoking bans and then a clampdown on dancing grated badly and our new respectable neighbors started to complain about the noise. Why did the tedious oiks choose to live above a noisy bar? Bastards. Many venues closed. Or, in the case of Brownie’s and Continental, gave up on live music and just became a bar.

Fast forward again - this time to the present day. Amongst the masses of the congenitally uncool stockbrokers, daytraders, lawyers, Bob and Vicky from Accounting and Heather and Tim from Human Resources, there is only a handful of venues in Manhattan that are alright. I would find myself at Cake Shop on Ludlow, Mercury Lounge on Houston St. and possibly Lit on 2nd Ave. And that maybe 6 or 8 times per year. But that’s it for the smaller rock spots in Manhattan. Most shows are now over the river in Brooklyn and they mainly centre in the now infamous Williamsburg area.

Not that I love everything about Williamsburg. It’s become a sort of university town without a university. It’s overrun by nerdy hipsters who take all their fashion advice from Vice Magazine and American Apparel advertisements. Most of the live venues cater to the tastes of the hipsters whose ‘here today, gone later that evening’ choice of what’s hot is almost as unappealing as their ironic and one-size-too-small ‘World’s Best Grandma’ iron-on t-shirts. My complaints aside, I am grateful for clubs such as Trash Bar on Grand Street, which is the only club in the whole city that still feels like it’s the late ’80s. Take that anyway you wish, but it’s a real rock and roll club. The kind where you can find patrons doing the illegal or even the unspeakable in the bathroom. And a stage where you can hear bands play loud. The Cameo Gallery hidden inside the back of the very cute Lovin’ Cup Cafe on North 6th Street is also a welcoming presence in DANTEmag n.1

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Williamsburg. It has a nice loose vibe not unlike the better seedy clubs of America’s midwest – it feels as if you’re in your high school buddy’s basement drinking beer and watching friends play their three best chords. Even as I get older, I still like that vibe.

The rawest club in Williamsburg by far a dilapidated former social club for Central Americans. Called Don Pedro’s, it sits on the border of Williamsburg and the grittier neighbouring area of Bushwick. This club has become one of the coolest places to see new bands. It’s pretty spacious and it has a downstairs area where you can escape the music and partake in some illegal activities, but consider yourself lucky if the bathrooms aren’t out of order. is strangely quaint. Walk inside and it feels like a library. Admittedly a rather loud one. As you reach the back you’ll find ball

courts for bocce, an Italian game that resembles bowling-meetscroquet. Kind of weird to find it in a bar, but it seems to be a hit amongst the patrons. Past the courts are stairs leading down to a cozy little venue that fits maybe about 150 people. But enough about the venues, let’s get to the bands.

The most rockin’ group in NYC has just two members. The husband and wife known as The Naked Heroes have been shaking this godforsaken city for only a couple of years now and they are way ahead of the pack of jerk offs who call themselves bands.

Under the bombast of smashing drums and screaming guitars made by this duo, there are some great songs. And that’s what sets them apart from hundreds of other outfits. The first time you hear the tracks 99 Diamond, Manager On Duty or Take A Knee you’ll be singing along with them. Guitarist and lead vocalist, George Michael Jackson, never lets the audience forget that they are present for a real concert experience. He is not afraid to jump into the crowd and force them to dance and sing along.

He’s like some sort of southern US preacher whose only purpose is to save your soul and make you believe in the redeeming powers of rock and roll. Combine this with a very healthy dose of ZZ Top-meets-Black Sabbath inspired boogie rock and you

really can’t lose. Plus, if you’re lucky, drummer Merica Lee will heckle any infidels and play half the set with her shirt off.

At the other end of the spectrum, though just as exciting, are the five individuals that make up the band called MiniBoone.

Sure – they have glasses and beards and at first glance can easily be mistaken for the thousands of other try-hards who make noise in Williamsburg. What’s the difference? Amazing songs and incendiary live performances. MiniBoone absolutely takes over when they play. No doubt about it. With three singers who switch instruments throughout their set and a non-stop pounding rhythm section, it’s one of the best examples I’ve ever witnessed of controlled chaos. Someone described them as if the Talking Heads and Queen got together to make a band. They recently seem to be winning the hearts of the local press and

blogs in New York, and justly so.

Electro rock is strong in New York. So many people seem to believe that owning both a laptop and also a guitar makes you a band. Maybe it does. Mostly, however, it sucks. Some, thou-

MUSIC gh, are outstanding. Brooklyn’s Sleighbells make a very healthy mix of raw guitars, heavy crunched-out beats and pitch perfect vocals from chanteuse Alexis Krauss. The electro inspired group Sensual Harassment makes what’s referred to in some circles as ‘cold wave.’ That’s just another term for saying they sound like Depeche Mode. Which they do. Fortunately they do it quite well.

It’s synthesizers galore. Also up-and-coming is a duo known as MKNG FRNDZ. Imagine a lo-fi Laurie Anderson and Le Tigre meet Missy Elliot and Lene Lovich in a lesbian bar. Great image?

I’m sure they have a lot more in store for us in the future.

Down in the dark world of metal, there lurk a few interesting curiosities. Brooklyn based trio Tombs sound like a metal version of Unsane – noisy and relentless with touches of Godflesh-like vocals thrown in for good measure. Black Anvil play their own

version of American Black Metal meets New York Hardcore.

This makes sense because the members were all once in NYHC bands. They’re certainly more listenable to than most of their contemporaries. It must be their punk rock upbringing.

Too extreme for your tastes? Fair enough. Straight up rock and roll, believe it or not, is something of a rare commodity nowadays. But there are some bands here that fit the bill perfectly.

The Bamboo Kids grew up together in some poxy little suburb in central New Jersey. After finding themselves in New York, they also found their sound. Think the Clash and the Damned filtered through their hometown hero, Bruce Springsteen. Believe it or not, this works quite well. Especially since the songs are filled with hooks. Need more hooks? Look no further than The Walk Ons. Their new CDEP, We Did This On Purpose, combines the melodiousness of, say, Weezer and Pixes with a healthy dose of Bloc Party, too. You like that? Of course.

In the end you can’t help but dig this scene. New York may not be what it was, the good ol’ venues are gone, high rise condos have colonized the Lower East Side, but you can still count on some select basements to stay dammed loud.

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Each of us Dies on Screen Crishanti Jayawardene traces the demise of the individual through some of the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most important films.

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In the single most stylised scene in Sydney Lumet’s 1976 masterpiece, Network, the President of the Communication Corporation of America, Arthur Jensen, hovers in an ether of dim, votive light and pseudo-religious proximity to the UBS news anchorman Howard Beale and gives him a piece of his mind. ‘You are an old man,’ he says, ‘who thinks in terms of nations, and peoples. There are no nations, there are no peoples, there are no Russians, there are no Arabs, there are no Third Worlds; there is no West.

There is only one holistic system of systems.

One vast and interwoven, interacting, multi-variant, multi-national dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multidollars, reichmarks, rubles, pounds and shekels. There is no America, there is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T. And Dupont, Dow, Union Carbide and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today.’ To which Beale replies without implied irony ‘I have heard the voice of God.’ The conflict between the individual and the Corporate world is a relatively recent phenomenon. Ever since Raymond Aron and Daniel Bell announced in the 1950s that the end of ideology would attenuate the traditional role nation states played in the political and economic arena, the individual found himself at the mercy of a power he could not circumscribe.

Hitherto, the faces of power were easily located and iconic – Lenin, Churchill, Mussolini.

The face of power today is featureless, bland, and complicatedly dispersed.

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If there have been culprits in the corporate halls of power – the boys from Enron come to mind – these seem merely representational of a power that is much more elusive and greater than they. Their demise may dent the corporate image but it cannot destroy it. Stalin’s death marked the end of Stalinism, the Nazi era died with Hitler, but professional ruin for the likes of Kennet Lay and Jeffrey Skilling does not correspond to the downfall of capitalism.

In the wake of this elusive corporate power, a volte-face in the way the individual was traditionally represented came into effect in virtually all cultural, linguistic, social and psychoanalytical disciplines in the West.

Accordingly, the individual, as an active, free, dynamic agent within society, with real and commanding ethical choices that allow him to fashion society in turn, was dead. Frederic Jameson traces two perspectives – one

cites the extinction of the bourgeois individual in an age of corporate capitalism, and a second, more radical view of the post-structuralist, belies the whole concept of the individual altogether by claiming it had always been a mere social and cultural construct. Either way, the bulk of critical western theories have taken this in their stride –

the notion of the death of the individual is a mainstay that cannot be easily brushed aside without falling prey to self-deception or illusions about how much freedom the individual does have in the world we inhabit.

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After straightening the facts for him, Arthur Jensen commands Howard Beale to go back on his show, pick up the mantle of ‘latter-day prophet’ vested in him by the network, and spread the word. ‘Why me?’

Beale enquires with trepidation. To which Jensen replies ‘because you’re on television dummy.’

Beale acquiesces and gives his last great jeremiad, ‘what is finished is the idea that this country is dedicated to the freedom and flourishing of every individual in it.

It is the single solitary individual that is finished. For this is no longer a nation of independent individuals, it’s a nation of some 200-odd million transistorised, deodorised, whiter-than-white, steel-belted bodies, totally necessary as human beings.’

The audience, which in previous episodes had been roused by Beale to anger and theatrical action against the powers that be

(he first goads them to go to their windows and shout out ‘I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it any more!’ and then later to send millions of telegrams to the White House in order to sabotage the purchase of his own network by another)

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is not pleased to be told they are ‘massproduced, programmed, numbered’… in short ‘humanoid.’ As the ratings take a plunge, the network bosses finally dispatch an ultra left sect, the Ecumenical Liberation Army to deliver the speedy, televised assassination of Howard Beale.

Ever since socio-cultural and linguistic disciplines have advanced their theories on the emaciation, if not downright illusion of the individual, Hollywood has been prolific in the production of films, of which Network is only one, that capitalise precisely on the conflict between the individual and the corporate entity.

But unlike Network, in others such as the The Insider, Erin Brockovich, The Firm, The Constant Gardener, and most recently Michael Clayton, the individual, as a pivot of willpower and action in these films, beleaguered or dwarfed as he or she may be by the greater power, has not diminished.

Network was nominated for 10 Academy Awards and while it may come as no surprise to cynics that it lost out to

Rocky for Best Picture, it has continued to attract attention from both critics and academics alike.

The film is regarded as a satire and what is most often stressed is its prescience and relevance today, ‘predicting,’ in the words of Greg Ng, ‘the rise of reality television and the subsequent decline of both production and social values.’

There is a strong sense that this critique itself has become trite, much like Howard Beale’s diatribes which

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failed to restore authentic autonomy and apostatic power to the audience.

(When he incites them to switch off that most formidable of propaganda machines, namely their own TV sets, his ratings are not compromised).

What is odd about this critique, which by becoming familiar has become jaded, is the fact that it has not lost its relevance.

Its piquancy has been compromised by overstatement, but anyone who makes a survey of the cultural industry today could hardly fail to draw broadly the same conclusions. Critical theories from the Frankfurt School in the aftermath of the Bolshevik revolution to Jean Baudrillard

have not altered the status quo one iota by mobilising any insurgencies or student movements. Critical theories remain stuck in a strange state of inertia.

manages to atone for his ethical failing and ultimately outwit what his colleague Michael Clayton calls ‘one of the largest, most respected law firms in the world.’

On the opposite spectrum is the cultural industry where this critique –

‘You are a legend,’ he adds, and the viewer is reassured that Edens does in fact die a legend, not because he honoured his position as a senior litigating partner, but because he acted against the interests of the firm in favour of what the audience regards as the right thing to do.

of corporate capitalism, of the vulnerability of the individual, of media saturation – has been subsumed by the industry itself.

Tony Gilroy’s 2007 film, Michael Clayton opens with a voiceover of Arthur Edens, a repentant corporate lawyer who, in a way similar to Howard Beale, comes close to insanity the moment he faces up to his own guilt.

Beale declares he is going to commit suicide because he ‘just ran out of bullshit.’

Edens confesses he has been ‘coated in this patina of shit for the best part of my life.

The stench of it and the sting of it would in all likelihood take the rest of my life to undo.’ And undo it he does, for he

As if one act of martyrdom were not sufficient to quell the viewer’s moral outrage over U-North, the evil agri-giant, whose pesticide has led to the death of countless people, Clayton himself, a ‘fixer,’ cleaning up the messes of his wealthy clients, must also exit with his moral autonomy intact.

‘You’re fucked,’ he exclaims with relish to U-North’s ambitious and unscrupulous Karen Crowder, brandishing the evidence that will incriminate them.

In Michael Mann’s Insider, Jeffrey Wigand is a whistle-blower who, while eschewing madness, loses his family, his job, and risks incarceration in order to tell the truth about Big Tobacco.

He ultimately wins the lawsuit and obtains monetary compensation with the help of Lowell Bergman, from ‘60 Minutes.’

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FILM Bergman is a staunch investigative journalist working under the ethical auspices of Edward Murrow. At a board meeting with a lawyer from CBS corporate, Bergman expresses outrage when he discovers CBS corporate is going to cut the interview with Jeffrey Wigand for fear of legal action.

On closer inspection such incredulity seems suspect given Bergman’s long experience within CBS. Mann also gives a foretaste of Bergman’s stalwart nature at the beginning of the film for instance, when we see him brokering a deal for an interview with Hezbollah.

The naivety Mann projects on Bergman is not Bergman’s but rather Mann’s estimation of what is required for the viewer to feel disconcerted.

For a man of Bergman’s calibre and position would be more seasoned with regards to the ways of the world.

But this naivety lends greater weight to the drama and tension of course. Bergman’s resignation from CBS is on the grounds that he would not be able to win the trust of a source again knowing that

he almost failed Jeffrey Wigand. Once again, Bergman wields his independence from the system in large, clear strokes, without even the smallest hint of weakness, doubt or uncertainty. At the slightest detection of foul play by the network, Bergman pulls out – and only after clearing the mess.

All this makes for a satisfying denouement. Yes, the corporate world is evil, but the individual can fathom what is wrong and can act decisively against it. He can make concrete ethical choices which will allow him to atone for his complicity within the system. Moreover, these choices will force the hand of the very society

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FILM that ostracised him in the first place to ultimately recognize or reward him. Hollywood is averse to dumping its heroes into obscurity.

Compare this to the way Sydney Lumet ‘mishandles’ the so-called heroes in Network. Max Schumacher actually worked alongside Edward Murrow in the 50s. Twice fired, he embarks on a doomed affair with the VP of Programming, Diana Christensen, and begins to write his memoirs. ‘I’m tired of pretending to write this dumb book about my maverick days in the great early years of television!’ he says to Diana shortly before he leaves her, finally realizing that any attempt to resurrect the past or inject the present with love, pleasure or joy are equally doomed. ‘You’re one of Howard’s humanoids,’ he tells her. ‘If I stay with you, I’ll be destroyed, like Howard, like everything you and the institution of television touch is destroyed. You’re television incarnate Diana, indifferent to suffering, insensible to joy. All life is reduced to the common rubble of banality.’

In Michael Clayton, insanity is a liberation, a deep and radical cleansing. Edens acquires a rare lucidity that allows him to see where he stands in relation to his environment, and most importantly understands how to translate his deepfelt insight into concrete action. Beale’s madness confers a similar if not greater lucidity - to the extent that it allows him to see through the fabric of society.

But unlike Eden’s, Beale’s madness is exploited by the very network Beale’s invectives are directed against.

In turning Beale’s presumed madness into spectacle, into kitsch, we have come a long way from a traditional perception of insanity. In considering Antonin Artaud, Susan Sontag remarks, ‘What is called

insane denotes that which in the determination of a particular society must not be thought. Madness is a concept that fixes limits; the frontiers of madness define what is “other”.

A mad person is someone whose society doesn’t want to listen to, whose behaviour is intolerable, who ought to be suppressed.’ Beale on the other hand, is embraced by the network precisely because he is deemed mad. As a poised news anchorman, his ratings had dipped, resulting in a 33 million deficit, and the network had resolved to get rid of him.

Network is a satire in numerous ways, not least in its portraying how a society reincorporates what it regards as insanity – the one thing which has stood at the furthest remove from the law, even more so than crime, because insanity, unlike crime, always contains within it the element of incomprehensibility - and turns it into a commodity like any other.

A society that does this, and whose profits are boosted as a result, has effectively reduced reality in all its original complexity and as a primary source for engagement or disengagement, acceptance or insurrection to a coterie of interchangeable spectacles. Reality TV is a close approximation of just such a reductionism. Many of the figures selected for Jerry Springer or Big Brother are paraded for public consumption specifically because they are grotesque and carnivalesque.

They fill a vacuum in the human psyche in which the drama of difference or contrariness can be lived and exhausted from a safe distance.

The run-of-the-mill Hollywood film may vilify the corporate capitalist world, it may portray the extent to which the

solitary individual is threatened by it or is at odds with it, but its survey is insincere and perhaps even manipulative. Like the audience in Network, the film consumer does not like to be reminded that resignation and homogeneity are part and parcel of everyday existence.

It does not like to be told that it cannot be heroic. It does not like to be told that its choices are merely pseudo-choices or its small victories inconsequential. Jeffrey Wigand may have been financially compensated and had his reputation restored, but such a victory is a minor glitch for Big Tobacco – the social, cultural and economic reverberations of corporate power remain intact.

According to the critical theorist, Terry Eagleton, ‘Changing the world involves a curious kind of doublethink. For us to act effectively the mind must buckle itself austerely to the actual in the belief that knowing the situation for what it is is the source of all moral and political wisdom.’

Hollywood offers the mirage of individualistic deliberation and action in order for the viewer to experience the victory or vindication of the individual by proxy.

The viewer is falsely assuaged in his faith in the extent of his personal freedom – for the Hollywood film gives the impression that personal freedom exists in absolute terms and can ultimately vanquish anything, no matter how severely tried it may be from the outset.

The implicit sense of frustration and doom a film like Network produces on the other hand evinces more radically Eagleton’s injunction for the mind to ‘buckle itself austerely to the actual’ - for it forces the individual to face up to, with much greater honesty, his own dissolving realm of habitation – that of individuality itself.

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Supporting Humanity: A True Pioneer of Design

Bucky Fuller lived ahead of his time. Decades ago, the architect and thinker was laying the groundwork for sustainable life. Steve Conger pays tribute to his late mentor.

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12th July 1980 and I am driving my aging VW convertible around the final hill before the Windstar Foundation where I serve as Design Director. Riding with me is in the car is Buckminister Fuller, my coinstructor for a environmental design course that we teach. I say ‘we’ but in truth my part of teaching consists largely in learning from Bucky.

A sunny Colorado day, the convertible’s top down, we make the last turn and see several hundred people gathered for a surprise 85th birthday party for Bucky.

Windstar has gotten hold of a dymaxion car from Harrah’s Auto Museum. There’s a flyseye dome, the Windstar biodome, and other Bucky artifacts. John Denver, Bucky’s wife, and his grandson are also there.

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ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN The first person to reach us as we pull into the party is Colorado Governor Richard Lamm, camera crew in tow.

“Happy birthday,” he says, and launches into “Population is the root of all the environmental and survival problems…”

Bucky stops in his tracks, and turns to Lamm, his focus fixed on him alone. The crowds seem to recede, and, with full concentration, Bucky interrupts “Governor, we do not have a population problem, we have an intelligence problem.”

Bucky with dymaxion car and flyseye dome, Windstar 12 July 1980

Nearing the end of his life, he had summoned up some of his intense insight into that pithy remark. We understood what he meant. Bucky had taught us that humanity needed a consciously designed operating manual for spaceship earth, one that co-operatively supports all humans and is sustainable. He thought of this as more of a design process than a political one:

“I was convinced in 1927 that humanity’s most fundamental survival problems could never be solved by politics.”

Richard Buckminster Fuller, to give you his full name, regarded ignorance almost as a moral question: “All of humanity is in peril of extinction if each one of us does not dare, now and henceforth, always to tell only the truth, and all the truth, and to do so promptly-right now. Lack of knowledge concerning all the factors and the failure to include them in our integral imposes false conclusions. It is essential to release humanity from false fixations of yesterday, which now seem to bind it to a rationale of action only leading to extinction.”

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Though seemingly intolerant, his rounding on the Governor that day in 1980 was in no way mean-spirited. He had spent a lifetime standing against factionalism.

“Take the initiative,” he once said.

“Go to work, and above all co-operate and don’t hold back on one another or try to gain at the expense of another.

Any success in such lopsidedness will be increasingly short lived. There are synergetic rules that evolution is employing and trying to make clear to us.”

Bucky was on the Board of Advisors at the Windstar Foundation, John Denver’s vehicle for grappling with the environmental and humanitarian issues of the time.

I designed a building for the land there guided by our principles.

The aim was, “to blend with the surrounding terrain, and to be in balance with local eco-systems by using only renewable energy.”

Photo page from the Windstar brochure. I am top right.

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Rendering of the design for the Windstar education, research, and demonstration facility.

Rocky Mountain Institute, Snowmass, Colorado.

ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN Were we ahead of our time? The Windsor brochure, brought out in 1980 cited

“a succession of worldwide crises in the environment, in energy use, and in the economic crises which have challenged our very ability to survive.”

It was prescient stuff.

At night, after class, Bucky and I would sometimes go to Arthur’s restaurant in downtown Aspen. He would drill me on drawing complex geometric shapes. I drew them on the back of Arthur’s paper placemats.

Bucky set my task: “Draw a three-frequency two-thirds dodecahedron.”

I would draw, turn in my work, and he would grade me.

What he was teaching me were light-weight efficient structures, the heart of this design philosophy. After dinner one night, he stopped and looked at me. He peered through his thick black glasses: “Go out and build artifacts that support humanity,” he ordered.

With Bucky as my mentor, and Windstar in my background, I spent several decades as an architect and planner, working to make contributions according to the principles that I had learned. In 1980, I designed and build the Rocky Mountain Institute for Amory and Hunter Lovins. Amory was one of Bucky’s colleagues on the Board of Advisors at Windstar.

The Institute saw itself presenting a vision of a world

“thriving, verdant, and secure, for all, for ever.”

Interior garden, Rocky Mountain Institute.

Powered by renewable energy, it had a banana tree in the central garden.

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The same principles held me in good stead for years to come. In 1993, my partner Michael Fuller and I developed and designed the Inn of the Anasazi.

We replaced a white metal panel office building with a respectful, green hotel. The materials were non-toxic,

the food organic, the hotel employee team multicultural.

Equally exciting was the facility we designed for the Snowmass Monastery.

This time we turned Buckyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s philosophy to constructing an environmental-cum-inspirational retreat center for the monks. It won a national AIA Award for Religious architecture.

Chapel Structure, Snowman Monastery Retreat Centre.

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Inn of the Anasazi, Santa Fe, New Mexico.

ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN Over in Mexico, I had the opportunity to work on a site of historical importance.

I designed and participated in the development of a great hotel and residential project on the only large parcel of land near the Centro in San Miguel de Allende.

It is completely pedestrian at ground level with access from the circulation below like the tunnels of Guanajuato.

Project site plan, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

The challenge was to benefit the community and to blend with the scale and complexity of a 400-yearold architectural treasure.

The project was expected to create up to 600 permanent jobs.

P4P Valley System

Things took a turn for me 7 years ago. I began concentrating on solar energy systems with panels supported by cables. This, I realized,

would be the most efficient, cost effective, and environmental way to quickly and efficiently deploy the massive amount of solar necessary for a clean, secure, cost/resource-efficient energy infrastructure.

Design for street and courtyard PV cable systems for a carbon neutral new town in Abu Dhabi

Such light weight, structurally efficient systems can be easily elevated. This allows for the use of the land under the panels. What excites me about the system we launched, under the brand name P4P, is that it ticks so many boxes: energy, agriculture, building integrated PV (photovoltaic panels), environmental protection and restoration, even uses and methods yet to be thought of.

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Solar PV over car park

Buildingintegrated PV systems Panels over water creating solar energy and saving water As time rolls on, Bucky’s words ring ever louder in my ears. In one of his profoundest pronouncements he once declared “humanity is now experiencing history’s most difficult evolutionary transformation.”

It’s certainly been proving painful. Last year Ban Ki-moon warned of the geo-political threats posed by desertification and land degradation. “One third of the earth’s surface is affected by desertification endangering the livelihoods and development of up to 1 billion people,” said the UN Secretary General, addressing the World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought. “Faced with long periods of drought famine, and deepening poverty, many have only one option: flight from the land.”

A whole matrix of ecological threats has worsened. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has warned of rising risks on several fronts: unique and threatened systems, extreme weather events, distribution of impacts (net positive/negative to all), and large scale discontinuities. The panel’s 2007 update of its DANTEmag n.1

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Third Assessment Report showed a deterioration on all of those fronts compared to 2001.

All those years ago Bucky had warned that we would be challenged to the core. He acknowledged that failure was possible: “I think it’s absolutely touch and go whether we are going to make it. But the point is, for me to tell you that you have an option is not to be optimistic…

Time and again of course, I am running into millions who don’t know we have the option, because it’s invisible, and I feel that I have tremendous responsibility… Of course they are pessimistic not knowing that.”

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An Interview with Nick

Mongiardo

By Bee Van Zuylen Photos: Caroline Shulze

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Tucked away in the hills of Western Massachusetts is the tiny hamlet of Great Barrington. This is home to Nicholas Mongiardo, Inc, a decorative Arts Studio that restores and reproduces extraordinary French furniture from 1914 -1935. For more than thirty years Mongiardo has been restoring, designing, and handcrafting museumquality pieces for an elite list of clients. Here in Berkshires, I sit down with Nick to discuss his work.

So tell me about the inception of your furniture restoration business.

I started out in the automobile business and was trained in lacquer and metal straightening. I had my own business collecting antiques and importing furniture from Europe, and eventually found myself drawn to the clean lines and smooth surfaces of Art Deco.

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Tell me about how you became involved with this very particular period of French furniture. It’s an unusual choice, no?

Originally I was trained at Porsche. I was really drawn to smooth sleek surfaces. I didn’t want any decoration, intricacy, carving. I wanted a surface to which I could apply the Porsche finish. So, I chose Art Deco, specifically American Deco, because it was all I knew. What happened next was that the restoration process started to surpass the value of the furniture, so I had to find a way for the furniture to absorb the cost of restoration. At that time, in 1975, French furniture was probably about time five times the cost of American furniture. One thing led to another, and I became seduced by French furniture. It’s way better than American furniture.

What period are we talking about?

The 20th century. Growing up in Brooklyn, I lived right near the Brooklyn Museum. They had a collection of French furniture, and I studied it and eventually chose to focus on the period from 1914 to 1934. I selected the twelve masters of that period and studied them exclusively.

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So who are the great masters that inspired you?

[Emile-Jacques] Ruhlmann, Eileen Grey, Pierre Chareau, Edgar Brandt, [Armand Albert] Rateau, [Paul] DupréLafon. Jean Michel Frank is a giant; Jean Dunant is huge and instrumental in Normandy. But they’re all in different mediums more or less. I had to learn the processes from hammered steel to lacquer to leaf to inlay, not in an ornate way but a minimal way. It’s very diversified, and I realised that if they could learn, so could I. Also, you have to realize that these great masters made everything from hinges to locks by hand, and it was the resulting imperfections that gave the piece its unique individual character.

Tell me about the exhibits and shows that propelled you to the forefront.

I did the Radio City Deco show in 1974. I had restored a bedroom suite for Alan Moss, a renowned figure in the design industry, and that pretty much established me as an expert restorer of Deco furniture.

A few years later, in 1977, I was in a show at the Cooper Hewitt Museum, and my eggshell inlaid pieces attracted lots of attention, and resulted in many new commissions.

Your clients have often described your pieces as being the perfect blend of elegance and sensuality.

Whether we are working on decorative screens, tables, mirrors, chairs, beds or lighting fixtures, each piece has a character and life of its own. We build for eternity. I will not compromise on quality.

Aren’t there a lot of materials that these masters used that are not available today, such as ivory?

We don’t encourage using ivory. If we do, we use recycled ivory, like piano keys, or billiard balls, nut picks or queue balls from London for the inlay. There isn’t much call for that anymore. For lacquer we’re using modern materials, veneers are available. Amboyna was difficult to find when I started. It’s the burl of a tree found on the borders of Tibet and China. It’s the bizarre bit growing on the tree. In Paris in the 70’s I found a cache of seventy to eighty year old veneers, and I bought all of what they had. It was fantastic!

I was one of the few people to restore Ruhlmann furniture.

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And what about the skins that you use?

Jean-Michel Frank was huge with parchments. Stingray is available; you can buy up to 10,000 to 20,000 skins. They farm it in the Philippines, so it’s like buying chicken and cows!

Is it expensive?

It’s hard to say what’s expensive when a piece of furniture is worth $1,000,000. So, $50,000 or $100,000 for materials is a very minor cost of the restoration compared to the labour.

You also went to Vietnam after the war and set up a business there. What were you doing?

One of the great masters was Jean Dunant, a lacquerist. We went to research and document how lacquer eggshell was made and we started an export company. But, as time went on it got more and more difficult exporting, so we stopped.

How many people do you have working with you here in the Berkshires?

Not that many, ten to twelve, plus my son Nick who recently decided to join the family business.

How long does it take to make a piece of furniture on average -- a table let’s say?

We made a nineteen foot table made of Eastern rosewood with a sunburst veneer pattern. That took nine months. A chair can take forty to sixty hours to make. Brad Pitt’s bed took nine months! He sent us a model of it: he designed it. He was very exacting. He knows what he wants! We had to produce a video of the bed rotating 360 degrees. It was covered with diamond patterned stingray skins. It was his baby!

Do your pieces ever come up at auction?

No, actually never so far. I made two pieces for Yoko Ono in 1977. She often sells her things at auction, but she still has my two pieces!

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Isn’t Michael Chow one of your clients?

He’s an incredible designer, client, and person. He has one of the keenest eyes. He was the trend-setting jet setter with one of the foremost collections of 20th century art and decorative effects in New York. He has the best finite eye. I teamed up with him and created the Armani store in Las Vegas. He has some of ours screens.

He has originals that we restored for him that are now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The restorer knows much more about the furniture than the experts whom I am having to contradict. The restorer is the person who is inside the furniture and I’ve been sleeping with those designers for thirty years!

Is this business of yours the best well kept secret? You don’t do any advertising, do you?

Absolutely. We are known all over the world mainly by word of mouth. Of course, our web site too, but we never show anyone the inside of what we are doing. You will never walk into a friend’s house and see the identical same piece of furniture and say “Isn’t that a Mongiardo?

I have the same one in blue.” That will never happen.

It’s very exclusive, very confidential.

Our main thing is making customised furniture using materials that the client wants depending on his style, whether it might be pear wood or ebony or more simply oak.

We do a lot of commercial work in the fashion industry.

We are doing flagship stores for Armani in California now and for Donna Karan. We furbished about thirty stores all in African furniture, during her African theme period.

Your work is expensive too!

Anyone buying a house for a million dollars is not going to be placing orders with us. An average piece costs $150,000. It’s unique; it’s a work of art. We’ve survived the recession. We had to tighten our belts, but more commissions are coming in, new money, some new young clients. We are even building a child’s bed for a two year old.

How many others are there in your métier?

Only two or three. I’d say that I’ve been singled out for my sense of craftsmanship. We make every piece by hand. It’s a labour of love. What we are doing here, we’re creating heirlooms -- the heirlooms of the future.

One last question, what do you think of the concept of bio-architecture?

Sounds great to me; better than dehydrating ‘mother earth’ of its oil.

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OUR THIRD SKIN healthy living Western architectural schools, overwhelmed in the last two centuries by an intense and chaotic urbanization, have lost sight of one major fact - a house should fulfil three primary human needs: health, peace of mind and harmony with oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s environment.

Often the biological aspects of a house are neglected, because we forget that an unhealthy environment can have negative effects on our health.

Architect and interior designer Lucia De Nardi explains how important it is for the home to be an organism that is safe and sound.

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when there is static electricity present, thereby impoverishing the air we breathe.

The net result is that we can develop a strong feeling of fatigue and discomfort. It has also been shown that living in rooms with particularly heavy static electricity predisposes us to illnesses such as stress, nervous conditions, high blood pressure, insomnia, and heart circulation problems.

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skin. That’s why, in bio-architectural terms, the home is regarded as our “third skin,” the “second skin” being the clothes we wear.

These “skins” protect our bodies from harmful external agents and guarantee our health and well being.

The quality of the spaces we live in, the kind of fabrics our clothes are made of, as well as all those creams

and cosmetics we put on our skin, have direct bearing on the health and quality of our lives.

Numerous international studies have shown that the ideal atmospheric conditions for humans correspond to a ratio of 60% negatively charged ions to 40% positively charged ions.

This naturally occurring balance is often disturbed

There are two main characteristics to this “third skin” essential to making us feel good, allowing us “to breathe.” First, the “third skin” forms a kind of self-contained osmotic membrane that plays an active part in the biology of its inhabitants.

Secondly, as much as possible, it is an environment as devoid of static electricity or electromagnetic fields.

The result is a home where its residents sleep well, concentrate easily on their work and studies, and relax effortlessly.

Well-being, feeling comfortable and at home, depends also on furnishings and wall coverings. Preference should be given to eco-friendly, natural materials that are free from chemical solvents and additives.

In the last few years, wood has undergone a complete

re-evaluation as a versatile material with aesthetically and structurally ideal qualities. Thanks to its suppleness, its tensile strength, and its capacity for energy dissipation, wood is now preferred above concrete in the construction of quakeproof buildings It is a living material, and as such can adapt to continual changes in the microclimate that is our living space.

Wood absorbs excess humidity in the air, and then can top it up when the air gets dry. Furniture, finishes, and furnishings made of naturally matured wood treated with beeswax, shellac, linseed oil and other herb-based solutions have the additional benefit of not releasing polluting chemicals into the environment.

What’s more, they don’t register permanent surface static electricity, and thereby reduce the chance of dust accumulation.

In the kitchen, wood is a guarantor of hygiene, due to its ability to filter out bad smells and keep bacteria away. Vegetable baskets made of solid wood keep produce fresh for much longer.

Scientific confirmation that wood furnishings have a positive impact on one’s health comes from the Joanneum Research Institute for Noninvasive Diagnosis, Weiz,

Austria. Over a period of twelve months, researchers from this Austrian study monitored and compared two secondary school classrooms. The first classroom had a wooden parquet floor, wooden furniture and cladding, whereas the second one had a floor covered with synthetic material, walls made of plasterboard, and PVC furnishings. The pupils in the first class were shown to have a more relaxed heartbeat: in fact, six beats a minute slower than those in the second classroom. This clearly demonstrated how wood furnishings produce a calming effect and reduce stress.

the frame.

To futher avoid electromagnetic fields in your sleep area, look for carpentry joints and frames using wooden pins and pure rubber straps.

Try not to keep clock radios, TVs, and telephones in the bedroom. Avoid putting electric cable in the wall area behind the headboard, such as electrical wires. If you prefer a bed without a headboard, don’t push it right up against the wall.

Consider installing wood panelling or boarding, four to five cm thick - perfect insulation that could also provide for imaginative de-

ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN coration above your headboard.

Metal frames are banned!

Instead, choose supple, wooden staves, which used in combination with the right mattress will give you “sweet dreams.” The mattress, too, plays an important part.

An ideal solution is to have a futon with a triple-decker structure – its heart being a natural latex rubber, between layers of wool and cotton. The latex from real rubber trees ensures a higher elasticity allowing your muscles to relax. The pure virgin wool maintains a constant temperature – cool

In a controlled study the same team analysed physical and psychological activity, such as sleep patterns, of adult volunteers during a three-week period. Volunteers were observed in rooms finished in Swiss stonepine (Pinus Cembra, the cembra pine), a conifer so well distributed over the whole Alpine region that it is known as “the queen of the Alps.” This study confirmed that furnishing materials have a significant impact, and provided evidence quality of sleep improved when using Swiss stonepine beds as compared to beds made of other materials.

For healthy sleeping, choose a bed made of wood, with no glued components and with no steel or iron in

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ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN in summer and warm in winter. The cotton breathes and absorbs excess humidity. And donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t rush your choice of covering! Your bed should be clothed in materials that are a hundred per cent natural fibres â&#x20AC;&#x201C; linen sheets, cotton and natural silk (even better if they are organic), blankets made of pure virgin wool, and genuine goose-feather duvets.

Bio-architecture, replicating principals found in nature, concerns itself with

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how vital it is to our wellbeing to live in a healthy environment. This implies making design choices and taking measures to restore our health. We need to be discerning in our choices with regard to the quality of manufactured materials and objects that surround us. The criteria we use to make these choices should be based in the logic of ecosustainability, with particular attention paid to the

ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN impact, and repercussions, materials may have on our health over the long term.

After all weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d be off our heads if we put any cream on our skin that could harm us.

Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s why well-considered built environments, using eco-materials in appropriate combinations, will safeguard the health of people living in them.

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The Prince of Allegria Roberto Benigni Roberto Benigni teaches the Italians the true meaning of their national anthem. Massimo Gava writes.

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One of Italian television’s key events is the Sanremo song contest, (upon which the Eurovision song contest has been based). Roberto Benigni, winner of a double Oscar back in 1999, has succeeded in capturing the attention of 15 million Italians on a topic that no Italian politician has ever managed since World War II: the meaning of their national anthem.

Italy, despite being one of the world’s economic leaders and like many other developed countries in recent years, has had to face the challenges of the economic downturn.

Combine that with a series of political scandals, and nationalism has become stale.

One might say that Italians get patriotic only when they

win the World Cup, but since their recent performance in South Africa, even that source of pride has gone. Italians are bored to death by the establishment’s blame game and that’s why the attempt to inject them with a sense of pride around the nation’s 150th anniversary has encountered little popular enthusiasm.

Well, it depends on how the message is conveyed and who is doing the conveying.

For a couple of months, I’ve been receiving clips of the Roberto Benigni video from various friends around the world, silently I responded with, ”Yes, we know the actor is funny.

So what?” Then the teenage son of a friend of mine quoted a phrase I recognised from the Italian national anthem: “United, for God sake! Who can defeat us?” Knowing that he is more inclined to the rap crap than to history teachings, my reluctance began to crumble. I was intrigued to know what had prompted his interest. I decided to take a look for myself.

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in the video, Benigni enters the stage on a white horse carrying the Italian flag, greeting the audience with his usual smile. Upon descending from the animal, he tells his first joke: “I was not sure about this entrance,” says the actor, “because these days are not propitious for knights!” The reference is clearly aimed at the Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who is also known as “Il Cavaliere” because he was awarded a knighthood before he went into politics.

With a serious face Benigni changes the subject: “This evening I am here to talk about the 150-year anniversary of the Italian Republic. In national terms, Italy is just a baby, a minor.” The laughter from the audience can’t be contained, but he goes on, seriously, “Goffredo Mameli was only 20 when he composed the lyrics for our national anthem, and at that time the age of majority was 21. So he was still a minor. Say what, haven’t we had enough of all the “minor” stories?” Catching this second dig at “Il Cavaliere,” the audience response is off the charts.

Benigni gives the best of himself when he starts talking about “ I Carbonari” (the, so called, charcoal burners), a secret revolutionary society that created Italy in the early 19th century. He quotes Silvio Pellico, who while imprisoned by the Austrians wrote “My prisons,” a classic pamphlet in the canon of Italian literature, and the comedian, makes another joke:

“Before you get another Silvio who can write another book like this? …. Heh ! “ The audience by now is completely captivated. With intelligent satire he carries on to mock everyone on the political scene, Roberto bridges generations with the topic of the evening, in his words, “the exegesis of the Italian national anthem.”

He emphasizes the extraordinary opera intrinsic in adolescence.

“They were all kids,” says the actor. “Michele Novaro, who wrote the music, was only 26. They all died young, but they gave their lives for us!” This raises another round of applause. Piedmont, he reminds the audience, is the region where Italian unification began, he says, but “at first, as they united Italy, the capital was Turin, but then it was immediately moved to Detroit. We don’t understand why they have to move everything to Detroit!” The comedian refers to concerns Italians have raised about their 52% stake in Chrysler. It has even been reported by some scare mongers that Fiat Group headquarters will be moving to Detroit, though the rumour was promptly negated by the Fiat Group.

“Think!” says Benigni to the audience: “Italy is the only country in the world where the culture was born before the nation! The joy of living in a place one loves. Think!” carries on the actor, almost enlightened by the word, “Think of the sense of belonging that a language creates. Loving it too much is wrong, how many mistakes have been made for being too much in love? You are in love or you are not. It is like being dead or alive, you can’t be too DANTEmag n.1

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much dead.”

The audience now has tears in their eyes, but hurricane Benigni does not stop. He focuses on the Italian flag, and the patriots who have given the flag meaning. “These people,” he says, “did not live for carpe diem, but for an eternal moment, and nobody could stop them. Cavour, Mazzini, Garibaldi, all three retired poorer than when they entered politics, but they made the Italians richer. Memorable!”

Really memorable. With humility, Benigni is capable of delivering a message of global truth. Political ideology has become a smoke screen for complicated business. So-called “statesmen” become “advisers,” when they have finished their mandates, sitting on the boards of multinationals, banks, hedge funds. It is not difficult to see a kind of abnormality, if you consider that these “legislators” become the “consultants” to overcome obstacles that they themselves put into place.

The rule of free market became the bible for the economic survival policy of a country dictated by speculators.So what happened to political ideology? Where are the leaders? They do not exist anymore. Politicians are shop assistants for global cartels, administrated by an international cast, en route to jeopardising the wellbeing of future generations. The process, so far, seems irreversible. But certainly whomever thinks that is not true is living on another planet. During the Italian renaissance Metternich said that Italy was merely a geographic notion. That is exactly the perception that big companies have of the globe nowadays.

That’s why the genuine act of love that Benigni gives to the Italian people is to remind them of the nation’s real makers: the poets, the writers, the young people who gave their lives to build up a country with a spirit of belonging. With that subtle message, Benigni says “Italy was a dismantled country, these kids came up with a hymn, because a poem provides strength.

The national anthem represents the solemnity of the Italian population, artistic and allegro, a word that cannot translate into any other language. The allegria belongs only to us.” Benigni paces up and down stage, with his unique way of talking and walking that makes him look like a puppet without strings, and his enthusiasm is contagious.

The audience receives him, now, on its feet. The standing ovation is not just in appreciation of his humor and, yes, of sharing his point of view.

After the ovation, Roberto quotes the first line of the anthem: Fratelli d’Italia, l’Italia s’è desta (Brothers of Italy, Italy has woken.) ”Let’s wake up! There is only one way for your dreams to come true and that is to wake up!”

dell’elmo di Scipio s’è cinta la testa.

(Bound Scipio’s helmet Upon her head.)

Italy has put on the helmet of Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus [235-183 BC], the greatest general of all time. Known for defeating Hannibal at the final battle of the Second Punic War at Zama in 202BC, a battle that changed the destiny of the world. “Scipio,” says Benigni, ”was only one of many generals, and still more would come. Julius Caesar, Augustus, Trajan, Hadrian. They invented everything from Roman law to architecture, everything that belongs to the modern world now.”

He continues with the lyrics of the Mameli hymn.

Dov’è la Vittoria?

Le porga la chioma, ché schiava di Roma Iddio la creò.

(Let her bow down, For God created her Slave of Rome.)

“No city in the world had such an impressive adventure as the city of Rome,” says Benigni.

Stringiamci a coorte, siam pronti alla morte.

Siam pronti alla morte, l’Italia chiamò.

Stringiamci a coorte, siam pronti alla morte.

Siam pronti alla morte, l’Italia chiamò, sì!

(Let us join in a cohort, We are ready to die We are ready to die, Italy has called.

Let us join in a cohort, We are ready to die.

We are ready to die, Italy has called, yes!)

“The Roman Legion was made up of cohorts,” explains the actor, “6000 troupes in centuries and they were scary. It was the biggest army in the world at the time.

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Noi fummo da secoli calpesti, derisi, perché non siam popolo, perché siam divisi.

Raccolgaci un’unica bandiera, una speme: di fonderci insieme già l’ora suonò.

(We were for centuries downtrodden, derided, because we are not one people, because we are divided.

Let one flag, one hope gather us all.

The hour has struck for us to unite.)

“In those days there was no flag. There were the cockades [rosettes worn as a badge] from the house of Savoy. Giuseppe Mazzini, the founder of Giovine Italia (Young Italy) and Giovine Europa (Young Europe), chose the color for the Italian flag from a verse by his favorite poet, Dante Alighieri.” And here, Roberto recites the verse from Purgatory where Beatriz appears:

Sopra candido vel cinta d’ uliva donna m’apparve, Sotto verde manto vestita di color di fiamma viva?

Over her snow-white veil with olive cinct Appeared a lady under a green mantle, vested in colour of the living flame

“Find me another country whose flag derives its color from the greatest poet in the world!” In 2009, Benigni toured the globe with The Divine Comedy, the triumph of Italian heritage whose culture and sophistication is never disputed.

What has been contested is the celebration of the unification of Italy, and here Benigni, with his extraordinary diplomacy, replies to an unhappy comment made by MPs of the coalition’s ruling party. He cites British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill, who having resided over the end of World War II, thus freeing the world from Nazi domination, subsequently lost the political party election in his own country. Upon hearing the news, he said, “So we won”

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Uniamoci, amiamoci, l’unione e l’amore rivelano ai popoli le vie del Signore.

Giuriamo far libero il suolo natio: uniti, per Dio, chi vincer ci può?

(Let us unite, let us love one another, For union and love Reveal to the people The ways of the Lord.

Let us swear to set free The land of our birth: United, for God, Who can overcome us?)

Benigni takes a moment to explain the ideas of Giorberti Catholicism and Liberalism and then moves along to the women of the Italian Renaissance. He mentions the Countess of Castiglione and Cristina Triburzio of Belgioiso, who from their own purses hired an army of mercenaries from Naples to free Milan. Stendhal refers to this in his novel The Charterhouse of Parma (1839). Begnini also talks of the Paolucci, and of Ana Maria “Anita” de Jesus Ribeiro Da Silva (1821 – 1849), the Brazilian wife of Italian revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi, who died in pregnancy escaping with her husband to Venice, and of Italian mothers who during that time created comities, writing to each other for news of their children in battle.

Dall’Alpi a Sicilia Dovunque è Legnano, Ogn’uom di Ferruccio Ha il core, ha la mano, I bimbi d’Italia Si chiaman Balilla, Il suon d’ogni squilla I Vespri suonò.

(From the Alps to Sicily, Legnano is everywhere; Every man has the heart and hand of Ferruccio The children of Italy Are all called Balilla; Every trumpet blast sounds the Vespers.)

The Battle of Legnano between Emperor Frederick Red Beard (Barbarossa), and the Lombard League, was fought on May 29, 1176. In Tuscany, Francesco Ferruccio (1489 –1530) attacked the retreating Charles V. “He was wounded and had malaria. Fabrizio Maramaldo, an Italian mercenary at the service of the Spanish, reached him and killed him. Before succumbing, Ferruccio said his famous phrase. “ Coward, you kill a dead man!” At a ball, La Signora Aldobrandini was invited to dance. Her public response to Maramaldo was, “Nobody that has an ounce of honour would dare to dance with worm like you!”

“That’s what the Italian women were like then,” commented the actor. The audience is as enthused as ever, mesmerised, and at this point I can understand why that kid sent me the message that awoke my curiosity.

Benigni mentions another kid, Gianbattista Perasso, a boy of 14 known as Balilla, who witnessed Austrian soldiers beating Genovese citizens because they refused to help pull cannons out of mud.

The Genovesi knew that those cannons would have been used to kill their fellow compatriots and therefore did not want to help the soldiers. When Balilla saw this, he took a stone and threw it at the soldiers. That stone was the spark that started the insurrection in Genoa against the Austrians.

A similar episode, although in a different time, was the war of the Sicilian vespers ending French domain in 1284.

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The last phrase of the national anthem: Son giunchi che piegano Le spade vendute: Già l’Aquila d’Austria Le penne ha perdute.

Il sangue d’Italia, Il sangue Polacco, Bevé, col cosacco, Ma il cor le bruciò.

(Mercenary swords, they’re feeble reeds.

The Austrian eagle Has already lost its plumes.

The blood of Italy and the Polish blood It drank, along with the Cossack, But it burned its heart.)

Benigni explains that the reference here is to the mercenaries at the mercy of Austrian money who, together with the Russians, destroyed Poland. But the bloodshed turned to poison ultimately destroying the Austrian eagle, basically the Austrian empire.

Before bidding goodbye to his rapt audience, Benigni asks their permission for the privilege of singing the national anthem. Like only a few actors in the world can do, he requests that the lights be dimmed and instantly recreates the atmosphere of a lonely boy before a battle, inspired by the poetry of a hymn to fight for his country.

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On a stage that has seen the birth of the biggest stars of the Italian music industry, Bocelli, Pausini, Ramazzotti, and Mina, just to name few, Roberto Benigni sings the national anthem a capella.

Well! Seeing this little man, his voice overwhelmed by emotion, and suddenly it was clear to me why this video had become viral, and why those who’d contacted me had been so excited about his performance. Benigni, in a single evening, returned Italian television to culture, through a history lesson and a lesson in style for everybody in his much loved nation.

of a poet, the knowledge of a philosopher, and the humility of great man to bring Italians of multiple generations together.

He might just be a little puppet on stage in comparison to the grandeur of the establishment. But that little puppet, unlike the others, has no strings attached, and with his courageous allegria, like Balilla before him, has managed to wake up a nation with a hymn at heart.

That is the best 150th birthday gift anybody can give to a young and talented nation that has temporarily lost its way.

Grazie Robertoooooooooooooooo.

In times of depression it often takes an act of courage to wake up a nation. Benigni, Il Magnifico, is not convincing only because he is the first actor ever to get an Oscar for a non-English speaking role, or because he is to star in a Woody Allen movie. Those who saw him in Down by Law, a 1986 film directed by Jim Jarmusch, or his La vita è bella (Life is Beautiful, 1997) knows the artist’s unique greatness. He has managed, with the sensibility

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Kabul: State of Siege The suicide car bomber struck early in the morning. The concussion of the blast shook my building. Another day in Kabul, more wreckage and carnage on the street, routine horror, writes Patrick Janeway.

Photos: by Ananstasija Hozyainova

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was toppled by Coalition and NATO forces, with billions spent on prosecuting the war and reconstruction, the Taliban and Hezb Islami guerrillas only grow stronger and the lot of the average Afghan is still one of crushing poverty, malnutrition, joblessness, illiteracy and fear.

This time the victims were street sweepers, earning a hard living, a salary equivalent to little more that twenty pounds a month for doing a filthy job. Their widows and children without their breadwinner will almost certainly end up on the smog choked streets as beggars. There is no social welfare in Afghanistan and to be stuck in traffic in Kabul is to see a pageant of misery, as the amputees, the widows carrying their babies, the children and the old knock on your window, hands outstretched. As often the hands point to hungry mouths and to the sky, a pantomime meant to invoke divine mercy. Eight years on since the Taliban regime

I work in an Afghan newsroom. I’m a westerner. I won’t say from where, nor will I identify the news organization I work for, nor offer my real name. I am a target just for being here and so are all of my Afghan colleagues just for doing their jobs. Death threats are phoned into the newsroom all the time and my bureau is like a small fortress. Having worked here before as a correspondent reporting on the war four years ago, I’ve returned to

One expects suicide bombings now, it’s part of the everyday ebb and flow of life and death in the Afghan capital. I’ve known war and destruction in other places, but you can’t get used to what high explosive and jagged metal does to the human body. Human entrails and body parts were splattered on a public wall. The crimson puddles so fresh, the blood almost glowed. There were severed limbs on the pavement and in another corner, the smoking, blackened, mangled torso of the Taliban bomber himself. How could anyone imagine this was a pathway to heaven?

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How could anyone imagine this was a pathway to heaven?

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Eight years on since the Taliban regime was toppled by Coalition and NATO forces, with billions spent on prosecuting the war and reconstruction

train Afghan reporters, to make them better story tellers and I have a key advisory role helping to run a busy Pashto-, Dari- and Urdu-speaking newsroom. It’s a job I value and there’s nothing that could compare to what I am doing that I might find in the west. This too is the frontline and the cadre of young reporters I work with are conscious that they are trying to help build a new Afghanistan, creating a tradition of objective journalism where none existed before.

They are keen watchdogs in this putative, fragile and endemically corrupt democracy. With no insurance and for wages of less than three hundred pounds a month they risk their lives every day to tell the story of their people. My reporters stand their

ground, half of them are women and as committed as the men, when they face even greater risks and so many women here in the larger society count for something less than chattel. Afghanistan fights for its very life hoping to turn back the onslaught of the black turbans and the medieval darkness they wish to re-establish, but my reporters don’t waver. My news director says quite simply, ‘Journalism is my religion and it is how I serve God.’ But the enemy is at the gates, quite literally and inside the capital itself. The Taliban operates in three quarters of Afghanistan and nobody can really identify how many militant and terror cells function inside Kabul but some of the shootings and bombings in recent months have occurred virtually on the doorstep of the presidential palace. Then there are the kidnapping gangs doing a DANTEmag n.1

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brisk business snatching wealthy Afghans and westerners for ransom. Kidnapping now accounts for 8 percent of the GDP. According to intelligence analysts a quid pro quo exists between the criminal gangs and the militants, to let the body snatchers do as they will to sow terror and fear, destabilizing the city all the more, especially ahead of national elections, six to nine months from now. So I lead a strange cloistered life much of the time divided between long days in the newsroom and lockdown in my guesthouse, behind the barbed wire and the blast tape.

I don’t go anywhere without a retinue of heavily armed bodyguards, my SUV going at speed whenever possible. I’ve asked my driver to change the route constantly and to never pick me up at the same time. The soundtrack of my life is punctuated by the metallic click of AK-47s being coDANTEmag n.1

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cked and the Dari chatter of my security detail on walkie talkies. If worse comes to worse, there’s a hideaway pistol I’m meant to reach for. Traveling by night is the most worrisome. Few of the streets are illuminated, save for the ash can fires of the guard posts of the Afghan National Police, a force that largely is still badly led, indifferently trained and equipped and suffering from low morale. I joke to other expats that a troop of well determined girl scouts could over-run my neighborhood.

Every time you approach a stationary car in the darkness or see one rapidly approaching alongside or behind, you can’t help but think ‘is it a snatch team, a hit squad or a bomb?’ One of my senior journalists echoed the same concern to me this morning. ‘Every time I see another car, I don’t know what’s going to happen, will

‘Every time I see another car, I don’t know what’s going to happen, will it explode or is it coming to kidnap me?’ it explode or is it coming to kidnap me?’

We worked together four years ago and I am happy to have him in my newsroom and proud he’s reached a top position.

He showed me pictures of his two young children and asked ‘what about them,

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social life in Kabul takes place behind closed doors.

I don’t go anywhere without a retinue of heavily armed bodyguards what future is there now for them, I have no hope.’ And then he reminded me the proper war is not just in the provinces either, as the fighting spreads like a bloodstain not just in the south and east but also now the north and center of the country. ‘I’ve been shot at twice there, in my village, so I can’t go visit, though its only fifteen kilometers from Kabul.’

Because the handful of bars and restaurants where westerners congregate can readily be targeted, social life in Kabul takes place behind closed doors. But I haven’t been terribly interested in exploring the excess drinking and debauchery that can typify R & R for some of the ‘internationals’ here, I’ve been more curious to discover what the Afghan intelligentsia is doing. I was lucky enough a few days ago to attend a soiree with members of the deposed royal family, many of whom are at the core of private efforts to rebuild.

Most of them had spent much of their lives abroad in exile or as children of diplomats, but always returned to Afgha

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I noticed almost all the women, like aristocrats everywhere, looked nothing like other Afghans.

nistan, because the pull of history, ancestry, duty and home was too strong to keep them away.

They were as urbane, learned and worldly a group of people as you’d meet in any first-class world city, but they weren’t poor, carbon copies of westerners, they were themselves and unmistakably Afghan. As they were all nobles of course they were impeccably dressed and the women were exquisite, clad in a combination of Paris, Milan and traditional finery. I noticed almost all the women, like aristocrats everywhere, looked nothing like other Afghans. They had fair Persian faces like Benazir Bhutto did and it made me think that a lot of Iranian blood flowed through the veins of the oldest families since the time of the Persian empire. Every one there was doing something to rebuild Afghanistan, running foundations, charities, educational programs, everything from demining to literacy, though all expressed DANTEmag n.1

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despair at the state of governance.

Not a few were artists and it felt very much like a salon. There was wonderful old Ravi Shankar music playing (and all of Afghanistan has a love affair with India) but the pièce de la résistance was the live performance later: two traditional singers, sitting cross legged on the floor like everyone else, with the tabla drums and a harmonia hand organ singing ancient songs that Captain Burton would have loved to hear.

It was marvelous, a deliberate effort to ignore the reality outside the walls and conversations were full of hope and defiance that the Taliban could be held back. But there was sadness too, a clear

sense that all could fall again and, already in internal exile, leading undercover lives, the court would once more have to pack its bags.

The reality of this place cannot be escaped in the end. One of my top editors this morning told me how close a call he had over the weekend on the AfghanPakistani border. He had meant to travel to Peshawar overland from Turkham, the main frontier crossing between the two countries. An old friend of his luckily recognized him and stopped him before he went over. He told him bluntly, ‘The Taliban control the road all the way to Peshawar, the Pakistani Army is not there, the Taliban can do anything it wants, if

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they stop you they will shoot you or behead you, you won’t come back.’ My editor then immediately called our news director as he too was headed overland to the border. His infant child has been gravely ill for weeks and may die from a severe infection. There isn’t a hospital in Kabul that can treat his baby, so Pakistan was the only choice. But no more. It seems many of the customs agents also work for the Taliban and passports stamped with a western visa are an instant death sentence.

My editor said, ‘between my foreign visas and the government ministers in my cell phone, I wouldn’t have made it, I can’t go to Pakistan anymore.’

When I shake my head in disbelief, my

editor, who escaped the border crossing, sighs heavily, tells me he is going to get a pistol and concludes ‘we have to accept that NATO has already lost the war.’ God I hope not. Another day in Kabul, another day in a city and nation under siege.

Patrick Janeway is a pseudonym for security reasons.

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ITALIA

QUO VADIS

I

In the midst of the Arab Spring, simultaneous with Japan’s multiple near apocalyptic disasters and Britain’s Royal Wedding, the world’s newest country is born in South Sudan, an event not insignificant in global import. Meanwhile, Italy, the seventh largest economy on the planet, celebrated her 150th anniversary as a unified nation state. The odd thing is that it was largely unheralded. And, in Italy itself, instead of an outpouring of patriotic fervor there was instead much griping and an underwhelming collective “so what?” Where has all of Italy’s civic pride gone such that the anniversary of the Risorgimento doesn’t register? Where are Garibaldi’s immortal thousand redshirts?

The national disgrace of its libidinous, theatrical, and, many would say, deeply corrupt and all too powerful but Teflon-like Premier, Silvio Berlusconi, is certainly a factor. But then modern Italian politics have often hovered between tragedy and comic opera, and this perhaps is due to a political heritage that was only very recently democratic. Mussolini and Fascism were not so long ago, and there remains a sizeable block of black shirt Fascists in the Italian parliament, though now more subtly attired.

If the Italian Republic is young, the skullduggery of Italian political culture is far more ancient, and the living link of a Roman and Renaissance legacy is told in blood, betrayal, and dirty money. It is after all Italy that gives us Nicolo Machiavelli and “Machiavellian” as a synonym for the ends justifying the means in an amoral or, perhaps better expressed, supra-moral political context. That contemporary Italian politics produced a notoriously corrupt Bettino Craxi or as cold blooded and authoritarian a figure as Giulio Andreotti, seems only logical if we consider Borgias, Caligulas, and Neros and therefore from this legacy why not also the spectacle of Berlusconi? He is a mad emperor too, not backed by Roman legions, but by untold billions in his personal fortune and monopolistic media empire, that self regulates so much of the dissent against him.

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“There is in fact no law or government at all in Italy, and its wonderful how well things go on without them.”

Lord Byron

And there are those Italians of course who rush to defend their Prime Minister, because in uncertain times, somehow, Italy still functions. So if national politics - be they leftist or rightist - and criminal enterprise are so closely linked that it’s difficult to discern where Mafia influence ends and government begins, what of it? Everybody eats in Italy, things move forward by some miracle and the art of “arrangiarsi” making due, improvising, coming to an agreement, making things happen through compromise, bribery, back door dealing and the personalized cronyism, and nepotism that has long typified how things work in Italy.

It’s not a meritocracy. It’s not transparent. It’s about whom you know, who is in the know, who can let you in, and who might be close to Caesar. And after 61 changes of government since 1945, Berlusconi hangs on and maintains a semblance of continuity and stability providing a source of comfort for his loyalists who argue, Italy has always hovered on the brink of anarchy anyway, and that is why it always needed a Capo, whether in a toga, jackboots, or a fine Milanese suit. So what if this one keeps a harem to match a sultan of old? Do the trains run? Do the pizzas get made?

But it is perplexing how a country as deeply dysfunctional as Italy, as close to a Banana Republic in some Marx Brothers Ruritarian fiction as any European country gets, not forgetting Belarus strongman Timshenko’s decidedly unfunny Stalinist police state, teeters so close to the edge and still somehow functions

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and indeed thrives? How can Italy rank as it does in the G-8 and still manage to tolerate the vast mountains of stinking, oozing, uncollected garbage Naples generates? And thinking of the same city under Vesuvius’s gaze, is there any other metropolis in the EU that is not under constant terror attack but still must deploy Paratroopers fresh from Afghanistan to its own streets because violent crime is so rampant the police are overwhelmed to straining point? How does this paradox come about? There may well be no rational explanation except that it IS Italy, it’s in the national DNA, this knack for survival and success under ridiculous circumstances.

And Italy at least is interesting and seldom dull. Moreover, the Italian political quagmire never outstrips Italy’s vibrant culture, unmistakably at the very heart of the patrimony of Western civilization itself. And that isn’t a grandiose, false boast. It’s much more than nimble footed footballers, Gucci shoes, Armani suits, Ferraris, and a culinary magnificence that sets the world salivating… Italy is the home of (yes, dare we say it?) Dante, Caravaggio, Pirandello, Raphael, Vivaldi, Puccini, Verdi, Caruso, Fellini, Zeffirelli, Galileo, Marconi, Stradivari, Mastroianni, Sordi, Benigni and too many more geniuses to mention in every field of human endeavor. And they are responsible for the world, as we know it - a beautiful, soulful, creative, breathtaking world at that.

bling the rule of law…in all of its toxic regional forms, from the Sicilian Mafia to the Neapolitan Camorra, the Calabrian N’drangheta and Puglia’s Sacra Corona Unita, Italy’s wise guys urgently need extirpating from the body of the state, like a malignant tumor from a cancer victim. But then, some would argue, Italy would truly collapse, because the system is now thus, in deep symbiosis with organized crime. Ah, Quo Vadis Italia?

Orson Welles understood and was grateful that Italy was never Switzerland, and never would be: “In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love; they had five hundred years of democracy and peace and what did they produce? The Cuckoo clock.”

Eviva Italia!

Chirs Kline

Certainly, Italy is in dire need of reform - profound, earth shattering, enduring reform. It cries out for it. And in the darkest, blackest soul of Italy, where La Cosa Nostra lurks in its bloodsucking rapaciousness and cruelty, destroying and poisoning all that it touches, including the promise of anything remotely resemDANTEmag n.1

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Face Book, Chapter and Verse.

Social media are evolving, with online services converging ever faster. As the digital world penetrates deeper into our lives, Martin Shah ponders the price of that most elusive commodity â&#x20AC;&#x201C; privacy.

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You know the story. An old pal finds you on Facebook, you ‘friend’ each other, you reminisce, you upload old and fairly damning photos, you search for other long-lost patriots, you trade Wall posts about that night in 1991 (you link to the pub where it all began), then it hits you: your parents are also on Facebook... and they are watching.

It’s true and becoming more of a reality for many – including this writer. Do you really want your mum and dad to see more of your past than you allowed them to see back then? Do you want them to question your unassailable position as the prodigal son, the darling offspring with the immaculate reputation? Do you really want them to see what you bought on fuzzycrap.com in a fit of guilty late-night online shopping? Or shall you welcome them into the arms of your digital doppelganger and let your dubious histories and current goofs flow unimpeded into their gaping eyes? Now, imagine that scenario but replace mum and dad with Acme Ltd. or any other company so inclined. They can

now watch and learn too. And not only from what you do from within Facebook, but from what you do elsewhere on the web.

I, for one, do not like the thought. So what’s a digitally addicted, yet generally private person to do?

This scenario highlights a new phase in the speeding onslaught of issues, real and perceived, around internet privacy and their impact on our lives. And whether your personal decision is to slow down, shut up and re-cloak your digital personae, the bleedthrough to other digital experiences is almost certain. Those other experiences will need your digital scraps to become alive, to adapt, to fulfill. In short, it will be hard to restrict the demand on your digital profile and – most likely – too freaking fun and enjoyable to escape from anyway.

Not surprisingly, Facebook is at the center of this growing flashpoint. It has recently created a deeper fracture in its position of social network gorilla as it turns from a user-directed community into a marketer-driven platform. The new platform, called Open Graph, is a documented and dynamic protocol of your web connections, interests and network activities that is designed to give marketers better relevance and entry points to you (and eventually, your wallet).

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“It’s a game changer,” says Rodrigo Dauster, Chief Product Officer at GEKKO, a London-based online travel service powered by social networks. “From a business perspective, here is a company nearing 500 million registered users that is no longer constrained to its site. Facebook may over-run the Internet.”

Should you care? Consider for a moment: as you read this, your digital profile is being modified, crawled and digested by an unknown and growing number of marketing engines. You’ve probably begun to see more highly targeted advertisements creeping into your web browser, more relevant direct and electronic mail, perhaps even the sneaky upsell

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at your favorite brick-and-mortar retailer during checkout? The frightening aspects of this activity are the sheer scope of the data being amassed and the ease of access to this profile information by any business, small or large. From that point of view, everyone should care, and care deeply.

For some of you, this topic of privacy is trumped by the temptation of exposure: your greater desire is to be seen by your peers in every context possible regardless of the cost. A recent event with a US-based website called Blippy.com highlighted this attitudinal quantum shift. Blippy’s stated service allows users to enter their credit card account details, which in turn allow Blippy to push these user’s transactions into the social web. Want to show off your new designer suit? Well, start by letting Blippy tell everyone how much you paid for it and where. And, as if on cue for this debate, Blippy missed a crucial beat: their platform security left open a hole wide enough for the free search of that data.

With the right query, anyone using Google could find out about Blippy’s user transactions, the amount spent, the specific location (address included) and the complete credit card number. Doh. It is argued by some that Open Graph is designed for just that – the ultimate way to exploit a community of users who simply don’t care about (or don’t fully understand) privacy. It may be the greatest ‘optout’ charade of all time: unless you say no to specific conditions, in specific ways, at specific times, your digital histories and current activities are free game. To get there, other changes are also being made. At F8, Zuckerberg announced that Facebook would no longer adhere to the 24hour privacy shield: “We’ve had this policy where you can’t store and cache any data for more than 24 hours, and we’re going to go ahead and we’re going to get rid of that policy.”

Dauster reiterates, “Users trusted Facebook with their private thoughts, private pictures and private preferences. But they then flipped to an open model with mind-bogglingly complicated privacy settings.”

Interestingly enough, the new nexus of defiance against Facebook’s growing command-and-control mentality is coming from deep inside the web industry itself – technologists, designers, developers – many of whom were early FB evangelists and users themselves. There is a new fervor in alternative strategies.

How about the digital version of ‘Just Say No’? This past May 31st was dubbed ‘Quit Facebook Day’ by the site of the same

BUSINESS

name. There are other rants, both informative and purely philosophical, on many blogs. There are even plugins that help configure the confusing privacy settings for your FB account. There is also Project Diaspora, another cadre of uber-geeks who have set out to develop a social platform that is more open, yet tied to clear principles of privacy. But Diaspora, even with its recent good press and do-good manifesto, has an incredibly challenging uphill battle to reach the competitive scale of Facebook.

Now for the brighter side, lest you think this writer is merely a digital hypocrite. When consumed inside Open Graph and intelligently utilized, your digital breadcrumbs will help create entirely new, and potentially more compelling and valuable experiences.

In fact Facebook already has. The second evolution of Facebook’s fabric, dubbed Facebook Connect, has allowed other websites and enabled devices to access your Friends list and Status updates. See that little icon? This has created a layer of valuable relevance for how you might choose to use (or not) a particular digital service. Do your Friends use it? How often do they use it?

The irony is that for many if not most online businesses, Facebook is a boon to growth and a key strategic lever. Richard Titus, CEO of AND, the digital consumer subsidiary of Daily Mail & General Trust and a FTSE250 company, sees this in a positive light, “This is the natural and welcome next step in the evolution of the Facebook platform.”

“At AND our primary source of revenue and most significant profits derive from businesses which are distinctly web 1.0 vintage: jobs, property, travel, motors and local services and information.” Further, he continues, “Facebook is in the highly enviable position of having only two key priorities: Growth and User Engagement.” Titus fully intends to leverage Facebook’s priori-

ties in order to grow AND’s business.

Dauster, in his leadership role for GEKKO, isn’t all doom and gloom about Open Graph either. “We are implementing the social plugin to make our site more widely known. The recommendation of a friend that ‘likes’ what we offer is the most powerful form of marketing that we can hope for.”

As GEKKO demonstrates, there’s a growing segment of sites and related apps that reflects this new type of digital experience, encompassing both a break-the-mold mentality and the network effect of Facebook and its peers. It is currently blossoming in the online travel – geo-spatial industry: TripIt, Dopplr, Gowalla and foursquare being other recent darlings. Titus is enthusiastic: “I’m a big fan of this new innovative sector, and am a frequent foursquare user.” He revels in his early-adopter win, becoming ‘Mayor of Heathrow’ for a couple weeks this past year while using fourquare. He explains the appeal for his business, “Vectors like location (including a check in status), shared interests and preferences allow us to really improve our quality and personalisation.”

What then to do about privacy? As we go to press here, Zuckerberg has unveiled a new method of managing your privacy settings inside Facebook. The ‘Making Control Simple’ pronouncement is a quick response to Open Graph’s gorilla motives. The irony is that this privacy battleground may well be overshadowed by a currently unknown start-up that comes from the flank to challenge Facebook (remember how Facebook trumped the early social leader, Friendster?) Until then, do as most real-world customers do – if you aren’t being served, vote with your feet. We can do that, right? Anyone know how to delete your Facebook account?

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Idiot Arbitrage

Profiting from Doom Financial tribulation could well get worse, a lot worse: the world economy has fundamental problems that are not being resolved or even acknowledged, argues Jon Goodwin.

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W

We’ve all heard the maxim: give a man a fish, you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for life. It’s been around for 24 centuries now, but it’s easy to ignore. And Mankind has. Repeatedly. Fishing after all involves work. It takes time and an ability to outsmart fish. And since the dawn of civilisation, politicians of every stripe have sought to exploit man’s preference for receiving free fish. Who catches and cleans the fish? Traditionally they’ve forced the job on anglers, as is still done in places like Myanmar, Congo, North Korea, and Zimbabwe. In the developed world, you pay fishermen to fish, you grow your governments to study fish, issue press releases about fish, review fish porn using their government facilities and so on. And you pay for all that by taxing the fishermen. Rival politicians promise more fish and fish funded services. Rather than increase taxes, they issue more debt. Soon they begin issuing debt to pay debt – robbing Peter to pay Paul. And sometime thereafter, as a consequence of its largesse, the country defaults, chaos reigns, political power shifts and the cycle begins anew.

BUSINESS Since the Napoleonic Wars there have been four significant periods in which many sovereign states defaulted on their debts Before 1945 countries defaulted on their debts mostly because of wars, internal political strife and the disruption of trade resulting from conflict. Since World War II however, most debt crises have been triggered by economic shocks (the big exception is Russia and Ukraine after the dissolution of the Soviet Union). In all instances of default, governments failed to insulate their economies and protect their citizens from conflicts and economic downturns which history should have taught them were inevitable.

It boils down to the desire for power and greed. It’s not just elected officials and dictators who are susceptible to this. The general populace also prefers to have its cake and eat. They tend to prefer incurring debt rather than increasing taxes or cutting spending. Ironically this pay-later mentality makes their economies more vulnerable to downturn and ends up compromising citizens’ standards of living. This has been true throughout history. It’s led to the crumbling of empires and redistribution Figure I: Sovereign Debt Defaults Since the Napoleonic War of both power and wealth.

The current crisis did not start with the 1824 – 1837 1868 – 1890 1932 – 1945 1998 – 2004 downfall of Bear Stearns or Lehman Brothers, nor did it begin with Bill Clinton’s mandate to the Department of Housing Argentina and Urban Development to increase home ownership rates among America’s poor.

Brazil Austria Austria Nor is it primarily due to Clinton’s repeal Chile Argentina Brazil in 1999 of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1932 Colombia Bolivia China that regulated financial institutions. It wasn’t even the subsequent failure of the US Ecuador Chile Colombia Congress to regulate the housing industry.

Greece Colombia Germany Not the second Iraq war, funded principally by the US and the UK, (neither of them Guatemala Mexico Greece Argentina has sought to recover the war’s cost by taking royalty interests in Iraq’s petroleum Mexico Peru Hungary Ecuador reserves). These decisions just exacerbated Portugal Turkey Italy North Korea a deeper problem at the heart of developed countries, a problem enshrined in law deSpain Uruguay Japan Russia cades ago. It’s profoundly uncomfortable Venezuela Venezuela Turkey Ukraine to look at this problem – the use of social security programs as tools for the maintenance of political power.

Sources: Standard & Poor’s; Kenneth Rogoff, Harvard; Carmen During the Great Depression the United Reinhart, U. Maryland.

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BUSINESS century lead set up social programs, ‘safety nets’ for its New Deal: the unfunded liability. The difference is that citizens. Democrats, ironically the party that espoused the whereas Ponzi’s unfunded liability was easily quantified, right of Americans to own slaves, with Franklin D. RooseFDR’s is not. That’s because it’s impossible to divine the velt, FDR, in the White House enacted the so-called New future demographic composition of the population and Deal, a series of commercial regulatory and entitlement the economic prosperity of the nation. And you need to be programs supposed to lift the country out of its economic able to do this in order to estimate the future benefit obligapain. Social Security is funded by a tax on wage earners to tions. Politicians keen on staying in power are better placed provide income and medical benefits to pensioners and the than unscrupulous businessmen in one respect: they can disabled. Japan and Western European nations adopted influence their actuaries’ assumptions. Worse, these unfunsimilar programs. ded liabilities relate to the future and that means they don’t The mathematical framework for all this is the same as that feature in governments’ accounts. Instead, these liabilities used by a firm known as Old Colony Foreign Exchange are treated as ‘off-balance sheet’ obligations. You might Company of Boston. It funded its capital requirements only get to find out about them in addenda to governments’ by issuing notes which promised to pay a whacking fifty financial statements or not at all. Just think of Enron. percent interest after only 45 days. Investors loved it. Word Unfunded liabilities are rarely reported in good detail. quickly spread among Boston’s business community.

That makes it extremely difficult for economists, traders, Requests for the firm’s notes increased. Old Colony obliinvestors, voters and serfs to assess how much of a burden ged. Everything was rosy. But one day Joseph Daniels, a lies on a country’s shoulders. But here’s what we think we furniture dealer in the city, who had supplied Old Colony know: 75 years after FDR’s Social Security, the estimated and claimed that he hadn’t been paid enough, sued. Word present value of the US’s unfunded liability for entitlements of the suit spread quickly and a few of Old Colony’s investands at $79.44 trillion. That’s a staggering $256,804 per stors showed up demanding the return of their principal. citizen or $721,023 per taxpayer. In 2010, entitlements repreOld Colony paid them. Shortly thereafter the Boston Post sent the largest component of the country’s federal budget published a favorable article regarding the firm and the reat $1.5 trillion . The unfunded liabilities of Japan’s social turns it paid. On the same page was an advertisement by a program is in peril in the same way. As for Europe, a study bank offering a mere five percent annual rate on certificates for the US National Center for Policy Analysis, published of deposit. The next day Old Colony was inundated with last year (using data from 2004) concluded that the “averequests to invest. Its capital base swelled. rage EU country would need to have more than four times All of this activity was brought to the attention of Claren(434 percent) its current annual GDP in the bank today, ce Barron. The publisher earning interest at the of Barron’s, the finangovernment’s borrowing cial paper, undertook a rate.” My firm, BarraMeFigure II: 2010E GDP, Debt and Unfunded Social Liabilities fundamental analysis of trics estimates Japan and (US$ trillions) public information regarthe US would both have ding Old Colony. He saw to set aside more than five something was amiss: in times their current annual order for Old Colony to GDPs to meet their future meet its financial obligaentitlement obligations. tions there would have to be 160 million postal As well as paying entitreply coupons in circulalements, governments tion; but, according to the will of course need to United States Post Offifund current and future ce, they had only issued budget deficits as well as 22,000. This revelation potentially redeem future incited a run on Old Codebt if they are unable to lony. The firm paid out $2 refund it. The US intenSource: BarraMetrics AG and the Author’s Estimates. million before running out ds to borrow in excess of funds. of two trillion dollars for Old Colony’s chief financial engineer and founder, practithese purposes in 2010 bringing the country’s national debt cal mathematician Carlo Pietro Giovanni Guglielmo Tebal- to $14.8 trillion by the end of the year. That’s more than its do Ponzi a.k.a. Charles was not around by the time FDR GDP. EU countries will borrow in excess of $1.72 trillion on signed the Social Security Act into law 1935. Ponzi had been aggregate and Japan $479 billion. deported to Italy after serving out sentences for mail fraud All Ponzi schemes depend on things going well without and larceny. He had bilked investors of $4.5 million. interruptions in order to cover the schemer’s fraud. In Old Ponzi’s scheme shares the same central feature as FDR’s Colony’s case it was that the post-office would continue DANTEmag n.1

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Figure II Ratio of Working to Retirement Age Persons

10 United States

9

Western Europe

8

Japan

7

Restofthe World

6 5 4 3 2 1 1950

1960

1970

1980

1990

2000

2010

2020

2030

2040

2050

Source: U.S. Census, Population Division, International Database.

to issue stamps. More recently, Bernie Madoff wagered that the stock market would cope fine with any significant economic downturn. Those who trusted him lost more than 11,000 times what Ponzi had cost his investors. The politicians who set up Social Security schemes in the developed world were betting that the populations of their countries would grow uniformly, indefinitely. Preposterous, of course. But at the time with the world coming out of the Great Depression people wanted to believe it. Returning to our old analogy, they wanted the free fish. The United States, Europe and Japan are all on a collision course with the same destiny that befell Ponzi and Madoff. Simply put, the scheme depends on worker numbers, which have been declining, and are set to continue going down in the foreseeable future.

There’s no hope these programs, as things stand, can ever become solvent. Governments will have to adopt substantive austerity measures in order to address their fiscal deficits. History of course has illustrated that politicians, particularly the popularly elected variety, do not have the backbone to take such action until external forces compel them – witness Greece.

Investors can bet on the reckless decisions of power hungry politicians and their greedy electorates. Known as idiot arbitrage, they’ve focused their attention on easy prey, the

low hanging fruit, Greece, Portugal and the Euro. While their assaults in Europe are not likely to abate anytime soon, it is highly likely Japan will be the next target, followed closely by the US. At its peak, this coming earthquake will be so much stronger than the tremors felt in Greece. There simply is not enough available liquidity to plug the $5 trillion dollar annual fiscal deficits of affected governments and refinance many trillions of their debt coming due over the next several years. The total resources of the IMF at the end of February stood at $591.7 billion with a one-year forward commitment capacity of $238.6 billion. That won’t go far!

Neither the Chinese nor the Saudis operate their national treasuries as benevolent funds for spendthrift nations. Governments will have to turn on their printing presses. The consequence will be high inflation, high interest rates, low economic growth, high unemployment and the banishment of several hundred million of their citizens into poverty.

Bernie Madoff ’s $50 billion Ponzi scheme pales in comparison to FDR’s. As he stews in prison, politicians will soon eclipse his record. And they’re still running the show.

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The Booty Trail

By Christopher Thompson

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The newsagent on London’s Battersea Park Road resembled any other small business that predominates along the city thoroughfare. Small, cramped with foodstuffs whose labels read in Polish or Arabic, and owned independently by an immigrant family whose extended members work behind the till. But next to the phone cards promising the cheapest rates on three continents, there’s a hand-written sign which advertises a unique service to the more discerning émigré. Hawala - a Muslim money-transfer service - deals in the tens of millions of pounds each year that flow in and out of Somalia, the world’s most lawless country. “Hawala is like our Western Union - you can transfer anywhere in the world in minutes, no matter if there are banks or not,” said Mohamed, the cashier, originally from Mogadishu, Somalia’s anarchic capital. It’s also the transfer method of choice for Somali pirates who, according to experts, are using some of the same south London convenience stores to launder booty captured on the high seas.

Since 2007 Somalia has become the world’s unofficial pirate capital. According to the East African Seafarers Association (EASA) there were 152 Somali pirate attacks last year - three-quarters of Africa’s total - despite a massive increase in foreign navy patrols.

The United Nations envoy to Somalia, Ahmedou Ould Abdallah, estimates that piracy now brings in US$120 million annually, several times the official national budget and a significant proportion of the US$1 billion in remittances which flow each year between Somalia and the diaspora populations in Britain, the United States, Sweden and the Gulf. Some of that is re-invested locally in businesses, shops and shimmering 4x4s that line the streets of Bosaso, the pirates’ main port. But most goes abroad, to pay-back the syndicates who fund the attacks and the pirates’ family members who profit from the spoils.

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“What happens to the money is exceedingly opaque, partly because of the way Somalis communicate with each other, and also because of the impenetrable way their finance system works,” said Christopher Ledger, a former a former Royal Marine officer and maritime security expert.

Hawala - literally ‘transfer’ in Arabic - originated from the word ‘ha-wil’ meaning to transform or to change. Since it doesn’t use promissory notes there’s no paper trail; hawala moves under the radar of regulators using a method as old as trade itself. Hawaladars - the people who conduct the transfers - will have a book of contacts across the regions in which they conduct business.

If Ali in Somalia wants to transfer £5000 to a cousin in Birmingham, he will approach a hawaladar who operates there. As the money will not immediately leave the country, the hawaladar finds a corresponding partner with enough liquidity to finance the transaction. The system operates on kinship ties and trust, using clan-based allegiances to ensure near instant transfers. The ‘debt’ owed to the hawaladar in Birmingham is noted on a ledger and will be paid back at a later date, usually subtracted from a transfer in the opposite direction. Although identifying information includes details of clan membership, traditional networks now include online money transfers and mobile-phone banking. Rates are rarely discussed. Firstly, few registered money agencies will send funds to Somalia. Secondly, hawala rates will almost always be better than the formal competition. To send £1,500 from Battersea to Mogadishu I was quoted a commission of £40, less than the price of sending the same sum from London to Lisbon with Moneygram or Western Union.

Three thousand miles east of Battersea lies tropical Mombasa, Kenya’s second biggest city and its major port. The storage depots and family run bakeries that line the streets in Mombasa’s Somali-dominated Kingorani suburb don’t mark it out as a place for pirate investment. But it’s neighbourhoods like these where

much ransom money is moved so it can be laundered in the ‘real’ economy and - if desired - transferred onto the west.

Over the past three years so much liquid cash has come in from up north that its created something of a mini economic bubble, particularly in real estate.

“Several rich Somalis have approached local landlords over the past year to buy dilapidated buildings which they destroy and build apartments to let. They pay in cash and some of it comes from ransoms,” said one local estate agent.

Yusuf Abdi, a 22-year old Kenyan-Somali student, said he has an ex-pirate for a landlord. He charges him around £60 for a single bedroom in a handsome four-storey green and white apartment block in central Kingorani. “Some of the money used to build and develop the building came from piracy, I’m sure of that.

[The landlord] is a nice guy though.” Abdi is by no means typical.

Many Mombasa residents openly resent the influx of nouveauriche Somali developers whom they blame for pushing up rents city-wide.

And although most of the cash arrives through hawala - via the

BUSINESS agencies which dot central Mombasa - occasionally less conventional methods are used. One journalist I spoke to said money is placed inside defunct electronic equipment imported into Kenya; on one occasion she had seen the back of a TV removed which was stuffed with dollar banknotes.

Abdi’s friend Mohamed, 20, said: “There are no tangible indicators of piracy but suddenly you see there are many Somali businesses, markets and shops here. Since Somalia is a country of lawlessness the [pirate money] comes through unstructured financial systems. It’s an international syndicate and not just in Somalia - the big heads who mastermind it are outside.”

Poor Somalis, often ex-fisherman, constitute the foot soldiers of piracy attacks but their finance and plan of attack hails from elsewhere.

“There is evidence that syndicates based in the Gulf – some in Dubai – play a significant role in the piracy which is taking place off the African coast. There are huge amounts of money involved and this gives the syndicates access to increasingly sophisticated means of moving money as well as access to modern technology in carrying out the hijackings,” said Ledger.

Unsurprisingly, the pirate gangs use information available to the shipping industry to plan their attacks. In addition to having sophisticated equipment to monitor radio traffic, front companies are believed to have signed up to the Lloyd’s List ship movement database and sources such as Jane’s Intelligence to see what protective measures are being employed by their targets.

Back in Battersea the Somali shopkeeper pointed out that hawala long predates piracy, whose root causes were poverty and a lack of central government for the past two decades.

“Hawala will always be here, regardless of the pirates,” he said, pointing out that some of the biggest hawala agencies operate in over forty countries.

“People want to send money abroad cheaply, quickly and discreetly - and we’re here to help.”

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After walking in the desert with sweaty feet, one man changed the history of footwear.

Massimo Gava meets the founder of Geox.

Breathing Success

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It’s seven o’clock on a warm spring evening in London and some of the biggest names in business have gathered around rows of candlelit tables at a five star hotel. Every face bears a look of anxious hesitation, as if something on the scale of a biblical miracle is about to unfold. Okay so maybe CNBC’s European Business Leader Awards aren’t quite in the same league as the parting of the Red Sea, but in the world of high flying commerce, they sure as hell count for something!

Why else would 56-year-old Mario Moretti Polegato, founder and chairman of GEOX, Italy’s leading casual footwear brand, fly in from Venice to collect the award for Innovator of the Year?

Mr. Geox, as he’s known in the trade, is more than just a little overwhelmed. It’s not the first gong that’s been awarded to this charismatic and engaging boss – nor, I bet, will it probably be the DANTEmag n.1

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BUSINESS last – but this is the equivalent to getting an Oscar and a BAFTA rolled into one – minus the tears and gushing speeches. After Mario thanks the audience and pays tribute to the clients and the Italian universities who’ve stood by him over the years, he settles back into his chair and tells me how his story began.

The rise of Geox has been nothing short of meteoric since its humble inception back in the 1990s. The idea for the patent technology now synonymous with his brand came to him during a walk in the Nevada desert. ‘I was on a business trip to a wine convention. My family’s been making Prosecco wine for three generations and after a long day of meetings I decided to go for a walk to clear my head. I was wearing a pair of rubber soled sneakers that were hurting my feet. So I cut a hole in the base to ventilate them. I took the shoes home with me because I wanted to see whether it was possible to stop the water getting into them.’

It probably doesn’t seem like that much of a big deal until you bear in mind the fact that a perspiration molecule in the human skin is 700 times smaller than its H2O equivalent. But rather than being daunted by the science, Mario simply pressed on until

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he found the solution – a special rubber membrane that keeps out the water and aerates the feet by allowing the heat to escape from the shoes.

The world’s first ‘breathing shoe’ was born, yet the markets were sceptical. To this day he doesn’t understand why, but having spent three futile years trying to persuade leading shoe manufacturers to buy the patent, Mario decided to go it alone. He pulled together a five man team, recruited from his home village in Italy’s Veneto region, to handle product marketing, brand research, sales and finance. The gamble paid off and he has never looked back. Geox is now the world’s second biggest shoe maker in the lifestyle/casual category, employing around 30,000 people, with A-list celebrities such as Angelina Jolie, Sarah Jessica Parker, even Barack Obama among its clients.

Its products are distributed in over 103 countries through more than 11,000 stores, some of them owned by Geox, and are seen treading the leading fashion streets of Paris, Milan and New York. ‘So where did the name come from?’ I ask. His face suddenly breaks into a bemused, patient grin. It reminds me of a driving instructor explaining the highway code to a baffled

learner. ‘It comes from the Greek word Geo, meaning earth. X is synonymous with technology so we combine the two. It’s a new name in the fashion industry and easy to pronounce in any language.’ So there you go.

Mario admits that his foot cooling business has suffered in the chill winds of an economic downturn, ‘Up until 2008 our growth was double digit, but since last year it hasn’t risen above three per cent! In spite of that, profits are still strong with the most recently published figures showing befor tax earnings of 90.2 million euros without having to make a single cut to the workforce.’

Three per cent of Geox’s annual turnover goes into research and development and it’s that investment which has led to the launch of a new line of clothing that fully encapsulates the concept of ‘breathing’ materials. Scientists at the company’s Montebelluna headquarters have invented a new type of technology that uses the special membrane to ease as much as 40% of the body’s perspiration. The jury’s out on what the public will make of jackets that kill off every bodily smell known to mankind but since they potentially cut out the need for a deodorant, they could at least earn green points.

Mario grins at the suggestion, ‘Our mission is to say to the world, “Yes” you can be fashionable and “No”, you don’t have to smell. So there’s no need to hide your body odor with chemicals.

Just wear better gear!’

I don’t think I’m quite ready to give up on antiperspirants – nor can I stop wondering whether Bill Gates prefers a Geox jacket to Lynx For Men. I’m too polite to ask Mario even though he’s known the Microsoft boss for ten years. ‘Why do you two get on so well?’ I enquire. ‘We have our beginnings in common. When Bill started out, nobody wanted anything to do with his ideas.

Now they can’t get enough of him.’

Beating the odds to overcome adversity is a subject Mario often

BUSINESS refers to, especially when he lectures at universities. He believes that young people should always be encouraged, especially when they want to start their own businesses, although he’s quick to stress the importance of integrity, ‘Ethics are a crucial part of business life. You have to respect your customers and be totally honest with them.’ It’s a simple philosophy and one that a few investment banks might do well to follow, but it’s also the bedrock of Mario Polegato’s personality. This is a man who’s passionate about Geox, the future and the people who work for him. Staff are not just workers but they’re also family, and when it comes to proving his family friendly credentials, Mario isn’t afraid to put his money where his mouth is.

Two year ago he opened a modern, high tech kindergarten facility for Montebelluna’s 700 staff. It turned out to be a success in more ways than one, after Mario allegedly encouraged the workers to let rip and make more babies. He may have been joking when he said it, but they took him at his word and the unit is about to be expanded to cope with the extra

demand. He blushes when I remind him about the quip, but in a country like Italy that’s battling with the fallout of an aging population, anything that pushes up the birth rate is welcome.

It’s getting late and I’m feeling twitchy. Not only do I have another I deadline to meet, but there are a few more questions that need an answer, ‘What about the future?’ I ask, ‘What else have you got up your sleeve?’ There’s a bit of a pause before he tells me there are fifty new clothing patents. I guess that’s enough to keep anyone busy, but there’s something else I want to know, ‘What happened to the trainers? If it hadn’t been for them you would never have got started.’ Mario Polegato smiles, ‘You’ll find them on display in a big room. You should never forget where you came from.’

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Airborne Rodeo:

the Unnatural Urge to Fly

Sweeping through the skies in engine-free silence. Paragliding over the Alps sounds idyllically peaceful, unless youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re some intravenous adrenaline addict, like our writer Rupert Dodds.

T

The weather commanded me to take to the air. That day one of Austriaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s greats, a local aviator hero and former world champion was out, planning to set a record.

We were training on some possible race routes for the up-coming British Championship Competition.

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MEAN SANA IN CORPORE SANO - Sport Up on the slopes, 1,000 metres above the Zillertal valley floor it was cold and crisp. Grass and drifts of snow and a hot, blue sunny day all set the blood of free-flyers racing. When the sun heats a rock, hot air rises.

And fast. The chat amongst pilots is full of excitement along with respect for the power of these mountains and the air that gushes off their menacing, heating stone.

Equipment ready, eight of us pilots good to go, and we begin to leave earth one by one. Fortunately we’d all laced our boots on tight because we were literally sucked straight up to 4,000 metres in a ripper thermal, such a narrow column of air that were it visible we’d see a twister. A tornado of air sucking everything in its wake skywards from leaves to glider bags, even the hats off of innocent women and children.

The trick is to keep wing and pilot in the middle of this vortex and ride in it to gain as much height as possible. And ideally wing above pilot while violent invisible forces resist. Those that don’t keep the wing in this zone can tumble out and may have to throw the reserve parachute as they plummet earthwards. It is truly seat-of-the-pants flying.

One moment there’s lovely grass firmly underfoot with cheery insects and little Alpine flowers you can see in detail. But within seconds you behold the entire mountain range miles below stretching off into Italy, Switzerland and France. I swear you can see the curvature of the earth. But not for long. When the ripper reaches heaven it begins to slow and, because we are practicing racing, it’s morally incumbent on us to shriek woooohooo, thank that thermal, check GPS and terrain and then race off down the route striving to go as far and as fast as possible before the next shot of air hooks us in like a drug.

So then we’re zipping along a ridgeline and I’m below it and flying pretty close to precipitous scree and rock faces dotted with tiny patches of grass and snow. I think of the old adage: you’ve not crashed until you’ve actually hit the ground. Well I’m so close to I feel half-crashed already, especially as I’m below the height to deploy the reserve parachute safely. Not that I’m worried. I know it won’t be long before a thermal shoots me back to where the air is nice and thin and those razor-rocks look like distant dinosaur backs. But for the moment it’s all senses pricked for any tumbling air which could swat me out of the way to bounce down a cliff-face – not good.

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else sometimes below. You don’t want this and it’s not funny. You do have to think of it however, to be prepared. So I scuttle down the ridge watching the rocks as sharp as razors and my friend Hans is flying above, slightly higher and thus safer. I can’t help wishing I was up there with more cliff-face-clearance.

There was no warning. In an instant, the wing is below and in front of me and turned 90 degrees. Blink and you’d miss it. Not that there’s time to blink now. The rock face is coming up faster than free-fall speed. Instinctive reaction required: get the wing back above. All the subconscious tricks in my 20 years of flying now fire together to make this happen. But at the mercy of the washing machine of nature, and at this height above the rock face, that isn’t very likely. Every fibre of brain and body is bent on survival. I’m not thinking that even if I do get the wing back above me, that might just make me pendulum and smash straight into the menacing rock-face.

One nanosecond and it shot beneath me. The wing’s back above but it shoots too far behind and is collapsed 90 degrees off track, facing straight toward the jagged cliff. There’s no time to think.

I’m going in and fast. It’s all pure reaction and instinct. No time to plan for the impact. I know this is not going to be good. But before I can even think of my fate I’m down with a massive crack. Must be legs or back gone, or both. If I am alive, that is. Obviously be alive if I’m thinking of broken legs and back.

I look around to take stock of the crash. Unbelievably, I have landed on a tiny patch of grass, the only one on this near vertical razor.

Heady with the euphoria of my surprising immortality, I still keep to my senses knowing that if my back is broken I mustn’t move. I begin an unrehearsed check-list. Feel bones in arms – check. Bones in legs – yes. Ankles too – good. A surge of excitement runs through me: I might not be a badly broken boy after all. No really major injuries. How the hell did I pull this one DANTEmag n.1

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MEAN SANA IN CORPORE SANO - Sport off ? I start gentle movements to see if the back is good. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fine.

Juicy bubbles of jumping joy and I want to dance and scream in disbelief. Just metres in any direction from where I actually landed would have meant a shattering of bones and almost certain death. I thank God just in-case. Buddha too, and Allah and my lucky stars, all of them. Feeling like a man freed from death row.

Excitedly gathering up the wing, all I can think of is flying off this mountain to proclaim my longevity to wife and friends. I will probably be cackling away to myself for weeks to come. But no, fate rears up again and slaps me into humility. Apparently disorientated from my euphoria, I have slip on the sheer slope and Newtonian destiny is back to haunt me. There begins my second DANTEmag n.1

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MEAN SANA IN CORPORE SANO - Sport tumble, this time with me wrapped inside my wing. You’re on a rock face you monkey!

Unable to see anything but light then dark, then light then dark, the ball of me and paraglider material bounce down mountain.

No mental cheers now, I turn to firing the final charge of electricity into my ragged survival glands. Then suddenly we’re sliding, no longer rolling. I quickly manage to get my boots to the downward end of the paraglider rock-sleigh. With a thud one boot gets a lock on a good firm rock and we thump to a stop.

Silence. Quiet as death itself.

Motionless moments full of grace. I recite my litany again, checking limb by limb, bone by bone. This time, once more, there’s no major damage. I berate myself: this must be the last time. I have to get off this mountain safely.

I dread unwrapping myself from my nylon sledge. Will I see I’m about to fall down something steeper? Clearly I’m nowhere near the valley floor because although the tumbling felt like it took a lifetime could only have been 30 or so metres from my starting point.

I move deliberately slowly, now with the knowledge that though I again feel euphoric with the joys of cheating death, this may not be the end of the story. My boot has gone straight through two surfaces of the paraglider.

I’m amused at how therapeutically my fears turn outward – worried more for my flying machine… will it still go? There’s no getting around the fact that I am injured and still have to get off this mountain. Flying will be one hell of a lot easier than walking. It’s too steep for a rescue helicopter. Gradually I peek out of my Dacron duvet.

I’ve come to a halt in a narrow but very steep dry melt gully. Not perched on a precipice after all.

Relieved, I carefully unwrap myself, bundle up the tattered glider and begin the very slow traverse to slightly less vertical ground. Laying the wing out with holes in it and broken flying lines was as terrifying – all my hopes now lay in its airworthiness.

My adrenaline pumpers had seized and I was overcome with a

sick feeling of stale adrenaline as well as the will to get off this unfriendly slope and down onto the sunny valley floor. Down to safety to tell people I was OK and get to the hospital.

The wing laid out and as ready to fly as the poor battered thing could be, I took a last ditch leap from my would-be conqueror cliff. The wing came up. It flew! It lifted me off the ground and were up in the air together. Unbelievable. And yet… everything appeared to be coming up at me a bit faster than I’d like. Looking down at the rapidly approaching, sharp pine trees I should easily have cleared. It now looked as if I was going straight into them. Clearly the damage to my wing had been much worse than I had anticipated. To top that, I was in rapidly sinking air too.

For a moment I almost gave up and just let go into the trees. I had a sense of defeat as I yet again faced the irrepressible will of nature’s adversity. But somehow another bolt of survival instinct came from nowhere and I found myself gingerly but instinctively searching for some rising air, fully mindful of the fact that were I to encounter a ripper thermal right now, it would probably do just that to my wing – rip it. The sense of hope and fear weighed down with weariness made it very difficult to fly with any skill but the amazing thing about this sport is how in the moment It forces you to be. When it’s life and death, that’s human nature.

White knuckled and as beaten as my beautiful wing, I projected all my love onto her, just to get us over the trees. Please put us down safely on soft earth. Gradually and as gently as you could ever wish for, we started to rise. First neutralising the sinking air and then ever so slightly going up. It was truly beautiful. It was like… well, like walking on air. Over the trees we went with metres to spare and down the valley until I could see the tiny spring flowers in the cool, deep green grass. So deep that as I buried my face in, kissing the earth, the grass blades were tickled my ears.

Every detail on the tiniest blossom filled me with joy. I counted 13 beautiful white petals and wanted to see flowers and feel that ground very near to me forever.

After three days recovery in bed with what turned out to be broken ribs and internal bleeding, the British Championship Competition began and I joined the gaggle of other compulsive aviators. It just so happened that I was in the lead from the go, racing for the first turn-point. I looked back and saw the unforgettable sight of over a hundred other pilots chasing behind me like the Luftwaffe. But something had changed in me, and changed forever. All those tiny trimmings that we do to make the wing fly faster in a race suddenly didn’t matter. I dropped back a notch or two, finishing the race of 80km in 6 hours. For the first time my position didn’t matter. All I could think about was the thrill of being alive.

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High Fly in Patagonia The wine is top notch, the fly fishing’s mellow and the scenery just breathtaking in Chilean Patagonia’s exclusive fishing lodges, writes. Neil Geraghty

S

Scotch on the Rocks is legendary in Chile but its popularity has nothing to do with the whiskey; it’s the ice that makes it just so.

Every bar worth its salt has a freezer packed with jagged chunks of translucent ice carved straight from the Patagonian glacier fields.

I was sitting at such a bar on board the catamaran Chaitan clutching a tumbler of Johnny Walker and trying to avoid a long spike of ice slicing at my nose every time I took a sip.

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It was the return leg of my day long cruise to the San Rafael Glacier on Chile’s fractured southern coastline. Early autumn’s April sunshine was streaming through the windows and a saxophonist, working his way through the passengers’ nationalities, had reached the French and was playing a mellow Sous le Ciel de Paris. The air was filled with that animated chit chat you always hear following a great day out and the glacier had been so stunning we were all in need of a few stiff whiskies to bring us back down to earth.

The weather had been generous. I’d arrived a few days earlier in Santiago which was shimmering in golden Mediterranean sunshine. I’d then hopped on a 4 hour flight down to Patagonia, skimming along the Andes past a line of dazzling snow capped volcanoes silhouetted against turquoise blue skies. Then, as we approached Balmaceda on the border with Argentina, the plane slammed into a thick wall of slate grey cloud. Seeing the bedraggled Pampas disappear into a rain swept Argentina, my heart sank. Huddled into a freezing minibus, rain lashing the windscreen, I was truly depressed. 45 minutes later, as we approached the cheerful regional capital Coyhaique, I could sigh with relief. Half formed rainbows were chasing away the last ragged clouds to reveal a bucolic landscape straight out of The Sound of Music.

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lush temperate rainforests and semi-arid Pampas. Powerful Pacific weather systems swirl over the Andes and chuck absolutely anything at this remote region. In summer you’ll need to pack raincoats, sunscreen, thick sweaters, shorts, T-shirts – the lot – to be properly prepared.

For those in the know, Coyhaique is one of the best fly fishing destinations in the world and has long been a favourite bolthole for stressed out Wall Street bankers. Rainbow as well as brown trout thrive in the glacier lakes and clean swift flowing rivers. The Coyhaique River Lodge is typical of the comfortable fishing lodges surrounding the town. The architecture is crisp and masculine: cavernous pine bedrooms, slate bathrooms and floor-to-ceiling windows that maximise the spectacular mountain views. When you return from fishing trips, you’re always welcomed by a Pisco Sour (Chile’s zesty national cocktail) and with no TV there’s little to do in the evenings other than unwind by the roaring log fire, savour Chile’s great wines and dig in to some good conversation.

Excursions to the region’s most beautiful fishing spots are included in the lodge’s tariffs and are led by multilingual guides who are always delighted to teach novices such as myself the subtle artistry and guile of this much loved sport. Alejandro Trepiana is typical of the guides who work throughout the summer months at the lodges. A resident of Santiago, he started fishing with his grandfather when he was five, fell in love with Patagonia long ago and yearns for the day when he can settle down permanently

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in this wild and remote corner of his country.

My first fishing lesson in the Coyhaique River was picture perfect. Knee deep in water that was strewn with smooth granite boulders and flanked by meadows of swaying blue lupins, Alejandro patiently took me through the gentle back flick and hammer movement that builds up momentum for a perfect cast.

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as slow as a game of pooh sticks. Upstream Betinho, a master fly fisherman from Brazil, where the sport has a huge following, was effortlessly forming graceful whiplash lines and sent them whistling through the air, gently bouncing the artificial fly on the water’s surface in perfect imitation of a mayfly. The kingfisher knew professionalism when he saw it and promptly flew over to Betinho for richer pickings.

The Carretera Austral, the 1000km highway built the in the 1980s, has opened up some of the most remote regions of Pata-

gonia and the following morning we sped off southwards for a day’s fishing in a beautifully stark glacier lake at the heart of the majestic Cerro Castillo mountain range. Here Alejandro gave me a master class in the weird and whacky world of artificial flies.

With a glint in his eye he opened up a box to reveal hundreds of neatly categorised flies, all hand made by himself, sparkling like Christmas decorations. The intricate workmanship was astonishing, as were the names. From the scarlet and red Royal Wolf, a classic design from the 1930s, to the stripy Turk’s Tarantula, they DANTEmag n.1

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la MEAN SANAdolce IN CORPORE SANO - Travel vita

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read like a rogues’ gallery of James Bond villains.

That afternoon I took a hike up the sun drenched slopes of the surrounding mountains. The rocky landscape was covered in crimson fire bushes, graceful tussocks of golden grass and exquisite alpine flowers worthy of a prize winning exhibit at the Chelsea Flower show. Half an hour into my hike a curtain of cloud reminiscent of a Dementor’s storm in Harry Potter spilled over the serrated mountain tops. The temperature plunged from 20 to 2 degrees. Before I knew it I was battling like Scott in the Antarctic through a blizzard. Eyes stinging from the snow and struggling to breathe, I arrived back at camp just as the storm blew over. Within another half an hour we were tucking into a picnic around a campfire, basking in warm afternoon sunshine.

Exhilarating and unpredictable, I was beginning to love the craziness of Patagonia’s climate.

No trip to southern Chile is complete without a visit to the San Rafael Glacier, part of the largest ice field outside the Poles. The Chaitan leaves at the crack of dawn from the picturesque town of Puerto Chacabuco and takes a full five hours to reach the glacier. Over breakfast, our bleary eyes watched the sun slowly rise over the Andes to reveal a magnificent landscape of precipitous mountains covered in lush temperate rainforest plunging down into azure fjords. The Patagonian coastline has one of the greatest tidal extremes in the world and it’s not uncommon to see marooned mussels dangling from the branches of trees DANTEmag n.1

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leaning out above the fjords.

The coastline also has an active volcanic underbelly and steaming hot springs pour into the icy fjords, creating some of the most sublime swimming spots on the Pacific coast.

By early afternoon expectations were running high. Someone spotted icebergs floating in the fjord and a buzz of excitement spread over the boat heightened by a flock of honking geese that were migrating in V formation, away from the encroaching Antarctic winter.

The build up reached a climax when loud speakers broke into a stirring rendition of Chile’s national anthem. Sandwiched between two mountains, a 4km-wide cliff of fractured ice flows into the lagoon calving ethereal, pale blue icebergs that float out to sea like giant aquamarines. The catamaran has two inflatable dinghies that take small groups of passengers out amongst the icebergs and closer to the cliff face. Not too close – every five minutes or so the glacier let out an explosive roar like cannon fire and great chunks of ice tumbled down sending mini tsunamis across the lagoon. Exhilarating stuff, it had us clutching the sides of the dinghy for dear life.

Returning to Coyhaique, I checked into the Cinco Rios fishing lodge owned by Sebastian and Claude Galilea, the dapper brothers who also own the Estancia del Zorro on the Argentinean border. With thousands of sheep in the surrounding countryside, the area is one of the best in Chile to spot condors who feed on any ovine casualties and the following morning I headed towards the border hoping to catch a glimpse of this giant scavenger. En route, we passed a Huaso, a Chilean Gaucho, who was carrying a forlorn sheep draped over his sturdy brown horse. Happy to stop for a chat, he explained that the sheep are prone to cramp and occasionally need a lift to keep up with the flock. He’d just been shearing the wool around the sheep’s eyes, which gave the odd impression that the poor creature had spent too much time sunbathing with sunglasses on.

Out on the moorland 30 or so condors were circling low around a sheep carcass, the curious juveniles swooping barely 10 meters above my head. Battered by the wind and awed by my close encounter with these majestic birds, I felt all the freedom and exhilaration that makes Patagonia one of the greatest outdoor adventure destinations in the world.

For more information on Chile please visit www.prochile.co.uk or www.visit-chile.org Coyhaique River Lodge: www.coyhaiqueriverlodge.com Cinco Rios Lodge: www.cincorios.cl

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Mending the Silence: the Sanctuary of

TRESKAVEC

Up in the mountains of Macedonia stands a crumbling monastery, inhabited by a solitary priest. Phoenix Troll travelled to meet him.

T

The night before my visit to the Monastery of Treskavec, I had pitched my tent near the fortress towers of Marko, just under the giant Meccano cross beside the Macedonian city of Prilep.

It was a tumultuous night â&#x20AC;&#x201C; rain and fierce winds lambasted my tent like some small raft at sea and above which I could hear the sheep dogs baying. Inside my makeshift shelter, I thought of wolves and relished the fear of being surrounded by them. At close intervals, a flash of lighting, like a giant match struck against the night sky, would alert me to my own shadow. It was the perfect prelude to what was to come

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MEAN SANA IN CORPORE SANO - Travel I was 10km away from my goal. Dedicated to St. Bogorodica, it sits at the foot of the Zlatovrv summit and was built in the 12th century. It’s not the most distinguished monastery in Macedonia, nor is it the most spectacular, although it does possess a large collection of Byzantine frescoes which date from the 1400s and are in dire need of renovation. The Pelagonia valley, the Babuna mountains, Pelister and Kajcmakcalan can be seen in the horizon, and at night, the city lights of Prilep, Bitola an Krusevo draws them closer into view.

I awoke at daybreak and mapped the trail by sight from the summit near the cross. Just as the rains had cleared the air, my mind had loosened itself from its habitual moorings. The morning was crisp and serene. As I walked down the hill towards the trail, I noticed it was wellmarked and meandered gently, cutting across the ridge that lead to the mount. It was not a particularly arduous walk, but long enough to feel gratitude when I reached a sort of openair sanctuary, complete with picnic tables, chairs and even complimentary tea and coffee.

I rested here for a short while, taking in the tranquillity, before the last steep leg of the journey.

Treskavec Monastery jutted abruptly out of the rock. A pole marking the distances to various cities – Moscow (1,983km), Berlin (1,376km), Stockholm (1,989km) seemed to pitch it in a near-perfect state of solitude.

The world seemed remote and, in the wake of that solitude, almost inconsequential. Fronting the monastery was a lawn and a well-proportioned vegetable patch. A tall, handsome, bearded priest in a black robe was raking the grass he had just finished mowing. He looked up to greet me with black, vivacious eyes, and introduced himself as Father Kalist. He explained that since he was the only person there, he had to attend to innumerable chores every day. He asked me to make myself at home inside.

The Monastery itself was clean and well kept, even though many of the rooms were dilapidated. The frescoes were crumpling and the stucco paint in the dining room was flaking away. There were broken clay pots and tiles lying on the floor, which I conjectured could have been priceless. The Church of the Assumption of the DANTEmag n.1

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Holy Mother was, unlike many of the Orthodox sites of worship I had already visited, an unassuming building, baring some of its Roman-Christian foundations, and filled with the fragrance of candle wax and incense. Back in the courtyard, the only other guardians included a tribe of cats and an inert, slobbering Saint Bernard who seemed to hardly register my presence.

This crepuscular space seemed to exist only for itself, like an object not meant for display but which guards its unkempt my-

stery with quiet obstinacy. I felt I was infringing on something private, as when one enters a bedroom and sees, displayed on the unmade bed, the discarded garments of the night. I was afraid to make any noise, take too resolute a footstep, lest I impinge on the sanctity of that space. I though of Father Kalist’s vigorous house keeping, equipped with just some obsolete tools and his hands.

The energy he put into it seemed to conform to the sanctity, as if what he was mending was the silence itself, a solitary vessel of silence, foundering in time, and which would sooner or later be

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turned into yet another stale vestige; one of the many antiseptic, public places of visit. It was only days later, when I visited the sated, tourist-infested banks of Lake Ohrid, that the recollection of this interior sanctum really pierced me all the way. I wondered with sadness at how long it would take for Treskavec to fall in turn, for modernisation to catch up with it and reclaim it for the present.

In the monastery’s cavernous kitchen I met a fellow pilgrim, a young doctor who made the trek there every Sunday. He came to visit Father Kalist principally, whom he considered a mentor

and for whom he had a deep respect. Irrespective of whatever religious compulsion existed behind this weekly pilgrimage, I could not help but marvel at this seemingly anachronistic form of tutelage.

City folk had their own variety of tutelary interaction – they had their counsellors, their psychoanalysts, their football coaches, perhaps even their friends and family. But in the case of the doctor, there seemed to be something beautifully gratuitous about it – as gratuitous as the way in which I was welcomed without much ado into the monastery walls. There was no screening process to gauge the suitability of the potential guest, no monetary exchange, no secret handshake.

He conversed with ease in English and admitted to a weakness for Italian pop music – singling out Adriano Celentano as his favourite. He told me about the dispute over the country’s name, ‘Macedonia,’ how Greece insists on it being referred to at the United Nations as FYROM – the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia – to distinguish it from the Greek province of Macedonia. We were both waiting for Father Kalist, hoping to lunch with him. We were mesmerized by the priest. Unfortunately, this was not to be. The doctor told me I could spend the night in one of the monastery cells and help myself to whatever food I could find there. If I wanted to, I could leave a contribution in the church. After a quick lunch of nuts and dry fruit, he guided me on a short hike up Mount Zlato and the surrounding hilltops.

Early the next morning I packed my bags, paid a visit to the church and lit a candle. I made a contribution, but as I did, I realized how little that gesture resulted from a sense of obligation, a need to pay one’s dues or reward my host for the provision of good service and hospitality. The lack of calculation on behalf of my host was a gift which I received and thanked for in silence by way of an absence of calculation on my part. That day, inside my cluttered, condition-bound existence, I lit a free-floating candle of joy and remembrance.

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New York The brand new Yotel New York is located on West 42nd Street and 10th Avenue at Times Square West.

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Featuring 669 stylish cabins, this is the brand’s first opening outside of its current international airport locations, and is the largest hotel to open in New York in 2011.

saving space • Monsoon shower • Technowall with TV, music and power services • Workstation •Free super strength WiFi

Each of the Yotel’s Premium Cabins include the following innovative features: • Motorised moving bed for

As well as automated self-checkin at the futuristic, innovative lobby, check out the Yobot – The world’s first luggage robot

is a radical approach to storing left luggage; it’s fun, it’s efficient and it is only the beginning of baggage management.

Up on ‘Four’, Yotel New York features 18,000 square feet of flexible work and entertainment space including: • Dohyo restaurant, Japanese word for the Sumo wrestling pla-

Room rate: from $249 per night

tform and descriptive of Yotel’s original table sharing concept.

The tables lower and raise for Japanese style seating and there is a performance entertainment area out of dining hours • Club Lounge with individual Club Cabins for meetings and private parties, bar and a DJ booth • Studiyo for meetings, yoga,

Website: www.yotel.com Tel: +1 646 449 7700

cinema, events and parties • The Terrace, New York’s largest outdoor hotel space features two bars, cabanas and amazing views up town Yotel New York also has eighteen First Class Cabins and 3 VIP 2 Cabin Suites, some of which come with private outdoor terraces and hot tubs.

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Is the dining scene too predictable for you? Then try the delights of underground restaurants.

by Veena Kanda.

I

It’s not that underground restaurants are literally subterranean. They’re just called that they’re not necessarily strictly speaking legal.

Also known as supper clubs, private dinner clubs, pop up restaurants, and guerrilla restaurants, this phenomenon is a variation on the Cuban paladares. Why not legal? They don’t bother with all the

Dining

ground guff about regulations about licensing. None of your health and safety. Many of these restaurants are in homes and industrial premises: the addresses are often kept secret until the very last minute.

Underground restaurants capture a crucial aspect of dining for me: the communal nature of the experience. As a selfconfessed foodie, there is nothing better to my mind than talking about food, planning the next meal, exchanging recipes even as you’re between mouthfuls of a good meal.

What the pop-up restaurants provide is the dimension of dining with strangers. Why eat with strangers rather than your friends? I am not sure that I have a straightforward answer to that. I guess it’s the refreshing change in spending an unpredictable evening. Who knows who I’ll meet, or what we’ll be talking about?

London is crawling with these informal establishments. My first experience was at the Hidden Tea Room, at a secret location in Shoreditch. I went with a friend who, a fellow devotee of proper English tea. I must admit it was a little odd arriving at 7:30 on a Friday evening for afternoon tea prepared by an American woman. We had been informed of the location two days earlier, and been issued with a secret password and instructions on what to say to a possibly

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MEAN SANA IN CORPORE SANO - La Doce Vita curious porter. In the event, the building turned out to have a large foyer and before long there was a number of fellow initiates waiting to be admitted to the sanctum. We were led down long corridors, up stairs and around corners to an elegant apartment, whose living-cum-dining area boasted one very long table. I took up virtually the whole room. Warmly welcomed, bubbly in hand, we were placed at table for tea. Our hostess, known as Lady Gray, surprised us from the off. The first course looked like a misshapen scone, but was an American biscuit with cheese and garlic.

Divine. But none of our implorations could wrest the recipe from the lady of the house.

Next came finely-presented finger sandwiches accompanied by individual pots of tea from a vast menu. In true grand style, we were then served a homemade mango and pineapple sorbet to ready our palates for what was to come. The kitchen was secluded from us by a curtain and yet the warming aroma of baking wafted through the veil to us. We were not disappointed.

Scones were produced. Warm, light and buttery with generous servings of clotted cream and jam. Impossible to resist ‘just one more’. We locked horns over the traditional conundrum: what to dollop on first – the cream or the jam? With one too many scones under our expanding belts, out came lemon drizzle cake, shortbread biscuits, and calorie-busting toffee brownie. This was beginning to require commitment. But who can resist a decent cup cake?

Relief was at hand with flower tea in a glass pot and, for the hard-core lunatics still capable of a sugar rush, home-made mint chocolate truffles. Three hours of indulgence. And to think Lady Gray and her husband both have full time jobs doing other stuff.

My next underground experience was different: Bootlegbanquet is run not by amateurs, but two professional high-end chefs, Helio and Pieter. Hosting the evening is Brendan who looks after everyone like they are his best mate. Good job he’s so genial, as I got lost walking the back streets of Shoreditch with my companion, an underground virgin. A quick phone call and Brendan came to the rescue. We were not alone. It should have been easy to identify our fellow diners in the street: all dressed up and clutching bottles of wine, looking around, lost. Not that reaching this location was simple: we had to duck beneath railings to get in. This place felt a little less salubrious than the last one, but that just added to the underground feel. It was an industrial building with a stairwell like that of a bad car park with all that entails. I could hear my DANTEmag n.1

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dining partners’ thinking to themselves ‘what have I let myself in for?’

Once through the door, it was very smart. A huge open kitchen, Prosecco, canapés of asparagus wrapped in Parma ham. We sat down to a first course of smokey aubergine with home baked foccacia and Greek yoghurt. Pieter told us the provenance of all our dinner: the smoked eel we had in a salad with horseradish and beetroot was from a single producer in Norfolk. Just sublime. Main course was line caught sea bass from the waters off Dorset – very fresh – on a bed of spinach and endive. The great thing was that none of the flavour of the fish was diluted in fussy sauces, jus or foam. My dining partner was not quite as impressed as I was. Whilst he expected underground dining to be more experimental or ethnic, for me the adventure was to eat good food in a novel setting. Pudding was a treat –a choice of home-made caramel ice cream or a grappa panna cotta. I say ‘choice,’ but the lads were generous, so I had both. By the time we had all eaten, Helio, Pieter and Brendan joined us for coffee and moved around the table chatting to everyone.

I came away feeling as if I was leaving a friend’s house. There were hugs all around and promises of Facebook befriending to keep in touch for future events.

Underground restaurateurs are a strange bunch: they all have different reasons for being in this game. For some, it’s a starting point for their ambitions to open a restaurant in the future. For others it’s purely the pleasure of cooking for others.

They all have a love for food in common. Should you try them? I’d recommend them if only in they turn out to have been a passing fad. You get to eat well with others in unusual places. There’s plenty to be found online. Look out for the White Room Supper Club. If you can persuade the artist Simon Tyszko that you’ll be good company, you’ll find Phlight to be one of the more exclusive supper clubs: impressively, it has a Douglas C-47 Dakota aeroplane wing in the middle of the room. The Pale Blue Door features shows hosted by the hilarious A Man To Pet. Also look out for Miss Marmite Lover which does themed evenings. The choice is spectacular. You may think such places are unnecessary, given London’s massive official restaurant industry. But their underground cousins do provide a perfect antidote to the bland sterility of the tired established institutions.

And a touch of illegality, unpredictability, even anarchy is sure to spice up your meal.

MEAN SANA IN CORPORE SANO - La Doce Vita

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South Africaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s

Life of Wine Wine tasting in the Cape is not just a sensual treat. Jacqui Taylor discovers a whole world of history and culture deserving of exploration.

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I was in my late thirties when I developed an obsessive interest in wine. I moved out of the corporate environment in funky, cosmopolitan Cape Town to Stellenbosch.

This university town is surrounded by some of the most beautiful wine estates in the world. Not only had I transferred from urban sprawl to agricultural heartland, but I found that the architecture, music, culture, food and people of the town had all been influenced by wine.

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MEAN SANA IN CORPORE SANO - La Doce Vita I wanted to know how wine could have such an influence on society, and in doing so discovered an historical and archeological web of interesting stories with African, European and Asian influencers.

The captivating tale of Solms-Delta Wine Estate and its people is a microcosm of life in the wine lands over the ages and its history adeptly illustrates the effect of the vine. Professor Mark Solms, an international renowned neuro-psychologist, and the owner of Solms-Delta together with the Wijn de Caab Trust and British philanthropist Richard Astor, initiated a project

were mostly Muscadel, and other white round grapes, very fragrant and tasty.’ The foundation had been set for the start of a long and interesting relationship between man and grape in the Cape.

However, when the Dutch discovered that the land had already been occupied by ‘people of the bush’ or ‘bush men’ as the Dutch named them, battles broke out in the Cape as the landless settlers moved into the areas inhabited by these Bushmen.

These San/Bushmen retaliated against the invasion by attacking the lives and property (mostly cattle) of the Trekboers who orga-

that resulted in the establishment of the Museum van de Caab in a section of the original 1740 cellar. Archaeological exploration discovered a Stone Age settlement site a few metres away from the current homestead. The artifacts found provided proof that the San had lived in the area for centuries. Their stay was interrupted by the Dutch traders who settled on the Southern tip of Africa in the 17th century, bringing with them the European wine culture of their day. Jan van Riebeeck, the first Dutch colonial administrator tasked with building a settlement in the Cape, wrote in his diary on Sunday 2nd February 1659 ‘Today, praise be to God, wine was made for the first time from Cape grapes, namely from the new must, fresh from the vat. The grapes

nized themselves into military commandos and proceeded to annihilate most of the San adult males. The San women and children were enserfed into farm labour and over the first two centuries the wine that was produced on Delta was made by slaves. Slaves were also bought to the Cape from Batavia (Java), Bengal, Madagascar and Mozambique. After emancipation in 1834, many of the freed slaves continued to work for their former owners, due to poverty and the social and family ties they had formed in their farming communities.

The Museum presents an opportunity in the Cape Winelands to obtain an understanding of life on a wine farm where both colonial owners and the descendants of indigenous communities had an influence.

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The estate offers three wine ranges, which use varying quantities of desiccated grapes to create wines with distinctive styles.

The resulting products have been named after their historical community links. The Solms-Wijn de Caab range is made purely of Rhône varietals. Solms-Hegewisch is made entirely from desiccated grapes. The lighter Solms-Astor range consists of unusual Cape wine blends and is inspired by Solms-Delta’s involvement in reviving the

traditional folk music of the rural Cape.

The Dutch had a significant impact on the architecture and gardens of the region and one of the most beautiful examples can be found at the magnificent 18th century Vergelegen Estate that was granted to Williem Adriaan van der Stel, the Cape’s colonial Dutch governor at the time. The estate was modeled on the grand gardens of the

European aristocracy. The large grounds have been kept in the formal garden style of that period with some of the original Chinese camphor trees outside the historical Cape Dutch manor house. It’s a place of serenity and peace with the rose garden, the white garden, the herb garden and the symmetrical ponds surrounding the beautifully restored Manor House.

Vergelegen has won the International Best of Wine Tourism awards several times.

blends, the reserve tier consists of singlevarietal wines and the Premium range of every day drinking wines.

Wine and food enjoy a symbiotic relationship in the Cape over the centuries and Michael Roux Junior, of La Gavroche, published a recipe book where he paired one of Cape’s best known wines, Vin de Constance, with his recipes. The home of the dessert wine is on the slopes of the Table Mountain National Park.

Situated in a valley between the Atlantic and the Indian Oceans, Constantia was the first wine farm in the Cape.

The Swedish botanist who sailed around the Cape with Captain Cook

MEAN SANA IN CORPORE SANO - La Doce Vita Dutch in style – the house is thatched and U-shaped with sash windows. The estate is now owned by the Jooste family. A comprehensive list of Michelin star restaurants around the world list Vin de Constance, details of which can be found on the estate’s website.

Pinotage, the offspring of the breeding programme between the Hermitage and Pinot Noir grape, is synonymous with Kanonkop Estate, owned by the Krige family, fourth generation wine farmers. The English translation of the name is Cannon Hill. The cannon, which is still on the estate today, was used in the 17th century to notify farmers when a ship arrived in Table Bay harbor so they could load up their wagons and sell their produce. In 1935 Pinotage seedlings were grafted onto rootstock for the first time in the world and the first Pinotage grapes were planted

It’s known for its excellent wines as well as its architectural designed cellar, sunk into a hill. The octagonal design of the winery reflects the shape of the walled garden laid out by Van der Stel in 1700. It has four levels, the bottom of which is a barrel maturation cellar. The wines are made by cellar master, André van Rensburg, who has been awarded the Chateau Pichon Longueville Comtesse de La Lande trophy for the best red blend twice since he joined Vergelegen. The estate produces 3 tiers of wines: the flagship range is Bordeaux

visited Constantia several times in 1772 and was amazed at the demand from Europe for ‘the racy, very delicate dessert wines which has something peculiarly agreeable in the aroma of it.’ The estate was later divided into several wine farms, one them named Klein Constantia. Its wine, made from Frontignan grapes was a favourite for Europe’s aristocracy and rulers, including Napoleon, Frederick the Great of Prussia and the Duke of Wellington, as well as Jane Austen and Charles Dickens. Although Vin de Constance is now made using Muscat de Frontignan grapes, it comes in a reproduction of the wine’s original 18th century bottle.

The Manor house was built in 1818 and the design of the building is typically Cape

in 1953 at Kanonkop. The first bottle of their internationally acclaimed Kanonkop Pinotage was sold in 1973. The vines are still producing grapes that are used today.

In 2008, Abrie Beeslaar, the winemaker at Kanonkop, was voted International Winemaker of the year at a gala award ceremony in London. The estate has won numerous international awards including Winery of the Year.

There are over 4000 wine producers in the Cape and it is easy to understand how a compulsive disorder would develop. I’m sure that if I spent the next 11 years visiting a different wine producer every day, I would end up writing an encyclopedia. But even for an obsessive such as myself, the true pleasure can only ever be in the tasting.

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NonnoPanda TALES

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One day, wandering along life’s path, I got lost in a dark jungle and, unable to find the right way, I bumped into two strange creatures … an Elf and a Goblin. When they saw me, big bear that I am, they ran back into their holes.

Being a peaceful and endangered species, I did not think I could frighten a soul in nature’s kingdom. But obviously I was wrong.

After a while, they very timidly tried to approach each other, while maintaining eye contact. They spoke, and the sounds of their own voices scared them and they rushed back into their holes.

What strange creatures, I thought. But, just as I had their attention, they had mine. So I decided to stay and see what other peculiarities they would show me.

Soon the first one emerged showing only his head and then the other one did the same. Seeing that I caused them no threat, they grew accustomed to my presence.

I sat still not making a sound. They both looked at me, puzzled. But, no question had been posed, so they continued to make friends at a distance, from the safety of their holes.

“Oh! It’s you. You scared me,” the Goblin said. “I thought you were

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a Human.”

“You scared me too,” replied the Elf. “I thought you were a Human as well.”

“My father,” said the Goblin, “sent me to see what the devil these Human rascals were getting up to. We haven’t heard them for a long time. My father suspects they are up to no good.”

I think you will be disappointed,” replied the Elf. “Why?” asked the Goblin.

“They are all dead,” said the Elf with a smile, as if he knew the answer to a riddle.

“What?” said the Goblin. And he could hardly contain his shock.

My shock, too!

“All dead,” continued the Elf, stretching a little.

“How?” said the Goblin frowning. “Wait a moment, are you having me on?”

“All I know is that the Human race is extinct,” the Elf said with an even bigger smile on his face.

I gulped but let them carry on talking.

“Holy Nature! That’s breaking news!” said the Goblin.

“Ha, Ha,” the Elf burst out laughing. “You fool! Do you think the news is necessary now that the Humans are all dead?”

The Goblin lowered his head and whispered, “You’re right, but if there is no news how will we know what is happening in the world?”

“What are you talking about?” replied the Elf. “Well, if the Sun’s risen or set. If it’s going to be cold or going to be

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hot. If it’s rained, or even snowed. If the wind’s still blowing. How will we know?” asked the Goblin.

The Elf tried to comfort him.

“I believe that Fortune has withdrawn to one side. She’ll just see how things are, without poking her nose in. There won’t be any more kingdoms and empires that blow up and burst like soap bubbles. Nobody will fight wars because there will be nothing to fight over.”

“Holy potato!” said the Goblin moving away from the Elf. “How will we know what day it is? How will we know if the Moon is waxing or waning?”

The Elf replied, “How ingenuous you are, my dear. Do you really think the Moon doesn’t know what to do? It will carry on slowly revealing itself, a little bit at a time.” And he mimed the scene to cheer the Goblin up. “A thumbnail, a toenail, half moon. Two thumbnails, two toenails, full moon. Then slowly it will shy away - a thumbnail, a toenail, half moon - finally disappearing again.”

The Goblin smiled seeing the Elf ’s ridiculous show.

“That’s the Moon’s little game. No different from what women would do to draw men into their lovers web.”

This somewhat original point of view made me laugh, but I contained myself so that they wouldn’t run back into their holes.

“But what about the Days of the Week? They won’t have names anymore,” said the Goblin.

“It won’t be that bad, you’ll see!” replied the Elf who seemed to have an answer for everything. “Do you think that just because you can’t

call them by a name they won’t exist anymore? Don’t be so mundane.

I honestly don’t think it will make much difference.”

“The way you talk! It feels like you are telling me there is nothing to worry about,” said the Goblin, becoming rather anxious as the thought of Human disappearance began to sink in. “How will we know how many Years have passed since we were born? How…” “But that’s the advantage”, interrupted the Elf. “We can make ourselves out to be younger than we are. The Humans did it all the time. Then they wrote down the dates so they couldn’t lie anymore.

There was always a record stored somewhere for any purpose. Whereas not measuring the time, we won’t have to think about it.”

“You are right,” said the Goblin. “We could grow old without knowing it. Hurray!” That thought made him so happy that the Go blin began skipping about, and I have to say I would have done the same if my old legs had let me.

“Age won’t exist anymore,” said the Elf jumping from one rock to the other. “Or ageism! Those wretched people who define old age as a parking lot, where you wait to pass away.”

He glanced at me once, then carried on talking.

“They consider youth as the high point of life. They didn’t take experience into account. So if an old person -” the Elf glanced at me again, “- was in fact younger than a young person, and didn’t do what an old person was meant to, he’d be considered ridiculous.”

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COLUMNS fools!” The Goblin stopped his skipping. “How did they become extinct?”

I had been asking myself that question. Not surprisingly the Elf had an answer.

“It started like this.” he said, sitting down on a rock. “Some of them fighting wars over religious thoughts and others tearing themselves apart in exchanges they called business. Others, quite a lot of them actually, out of tune with what they thought to be life, died by their own hand, or with drugs, prescription drugs, for relief from pain.

Others in idleness that chief vice. Lots racked their brains over computers, a maze of technology. In the end, they were poisoned by the products they themselves made.”

“Still, I can’t believe that everything could collapse just like that,” said the Goblin.

“That’s shouldn’t surprise you,” said the Elf, trying to cheer him up.

“You’ve existed since the beginning. You should remember this isn’t the first time. Many animals that existed in the old days are now just fossil remains. Those beasts didn’t use as many tricks but ended up the same way.”

“If it really happened like you say, I’d love one or two of those bigheads to come back here and see how everything carries on as it did before, without them.”

The Goblin, excited by the thought, took the Elf ’s paw. They started dancing, talking louder and louder.

“They believed the world was made just for them,” said the Goblin.

What kind of bamboo leaves had I eaten? Maybe GM ones? The two of them were unfazed by my presence by now. The Goblin even gave me a smile.

It was only when the Elf said, “Humans didn’t understand the world is for Elves” that the Goblin broke up their game.

The Goblin said, “Do you believe that?”

“Of course,” replied the Elf. “But everybody knows the world is made for Goblins,” said the Goblin.

“Oh! That’s rich!” said the Elf, squaring up for a fight. “For Goblins, eh? That live underground. The Sun, the Moon, the Sea, and the Countryside ... what’s that to a Goblin?”

The Goblin got closer and, facing the Elf, replied, “For that matter, what does an Elf care about gold and silver mines, and the rest of the Earth below?”

Just as I thought to intervene, a voice out of nowhere said, “What are you doing?” And a beautiful creature appeared.

The Elf drew closer to her, “Can’t you see? We are arguing.”

“What about?” she asked.

The Goblin following behind the Elf, “I said the world is made for Elves and he said it was made for Goblins.”

“But who are you? A human? They both asked, almost at the same time.

“A Human, ha ha ha…!” She laughed. “I am product of man’s imagination, an illusion that became real. Exactly like you, my friends.

Here you are, squabbling over stupid things, just like the Humans used to do.”

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discovered who she was.

The Goblin got closer, “You are right, Fairy, we let ourselves get carried away. How strange that we should do that.”

“It is not so strange,” said the Fairy, “the Humans were like that too.

They argued all the time, and without seeing the things that were really worth arguing about and fighting for. That’s how they forgot their feelings.”

“Oh yes,” said the Goblin, “I know what the Humans would say.

They took over our earth, digging with mechanical arms, waking us with huge blows, extracting our stuff, because they thought it belonged to them. Nature had hidden it from them almost out of fun, just to see if they were clever enough to find it.”

I had to admit to myself that their point made a kind of sense.

“Yes, and that’s not it!” added the Elf. “They thought that the things of this world had no use but to serve them. They didn’t realize that everything was held together, and of use to something. The history of mankind became the history of the World. How is it that they didn’t realize they were turning the World upside down?”

The Fairy said, “Lots saw their habitats disappear just because they were of no use to the Humans.” “ They didn’t understand they were damaging themselves,” added the Goblin.

“How could they have become so blind?” asked the Elf. “You know their saying: “The blind leading the blind.” Obviously they made a virtue out of it,” said the Fairy.

She had a point.

The Goblin said, “All the fruits of the earth had been given to them.

But they worked on trying to create new things and never grasped that they were creating illusions.”

“Or perhaps they pretended not to know,” the Elf added.

“I will tell you a story,” said the Goblin, sitting down on a rock.

“Once, when there were still the Humans, I saw some women queuing at the local water fountain with pitchers on their heads. They were complaining. The full weight of the pitchers gave them a headache.

A few years later, in the same country, I saw they’d rigged it so that the water ran directly to their homes. But the headaches hadn’t gone away. Before the water arrived in their homes it had to be processed.

They used chemicals, which caused these headaches. A few years later, the same women from the water queue, were lined up at a “supermarket.” A big shop that sold everything - where you could buy from looking at a photograph, and sometimes even things you didn’t need because they were on sale. The women complained that the water at home was polluted and undrinkable. They were edgy because they had to wait to fill up various containers. Hence their headaches.”

The Elf was laughing. “It’s true. The Humans were complaining about the distance they walked to their village. At first they had animals carry them to ease their effort . Then, to reduce the time it took even more, they used “cars.” They depended so much on these cars that there were so many they couldn’t move anymore in town. They found they could get around more quickly on foot, so they went back to walking!”

The Fairy said, “They created a new illusion. Having this thing would make them luckier or cleverer or more beautiful or even more intelligent. The Human thought that by owning something others didn’t have he would be better than them. I, more than any of you perhaps, was a creation of their dreams. Dreams that helped them get through

COLUMNS night time, a rest from the daily grind. My role was to suggest situations and ideas to them, which I gleaned from their hidden desires.

I made these real during the hours they were free to think without constraints. They woke up in the morning able to face the day ahead with greater calm and enthusiasm. Others wanted to realize their dreams straightaway because they saw things in a different light. They made themselves think that everything was possible where there was a will to do it. Then they announced that the Humans lost a third of their life in sleep. If they managed to overcome that need, they’d be able to do more, so they started not to sleep, to suffer insomnia. They couldn’t relax anymore. They believed in nothing, unless it was verifiable by the waste paper ” money,” or the solid plastic paper called something else.”

The Goblin said, “Like those who studied with books to learn how to live, going to school. Everybody was clever but could only talk about others who they thought were cleverer than they were, those who had read more books.”

“They no longer had a sense or a measure of things,” said the Elf. “Everything was topsy-turvy. The Humans became confused. They no longer followed their natural rhythms; they lost any real contact they’d had between themselves.”

“Perhaps you mean that they didn’t talk to each other anymore,” said the Goblin.

“They talked to each other but they didn’t listen to each other,” replied the Elf. “Their illusions overwhelmed and disoriented them. It was a vortex. They knew what they were doing wasn’t helping. Their business was without the exchange of real goods. It was a gamble.

The lucky ones tended to get luckier and the unlucky ones unluckier.

Instead of correcting that, they went on talking and talking to convince themselves it was correct behaviour.”

“Perhaps the problem was the Humans didn’t believe,” said the Goblin.

“But they had things to believe in!” said the Fairy. “If only they looked around. If they had given in to their feelings, travelled the world like Ulysses.”

“Instead,” said the Elf, “they took a wrong turn. They traded a life of harmony with for one of deliberate confrontation, challenging the world and each other.”

“You say that,” said the Goblin, “but maybe that was too painful and full of sacrifice. With illusions, they didn’t suffer.”

The Fairy replied, “It postponed the pain, but the Humans were never happy. Overturning everything nurtured their aspirations. I believe it was inevitable that they choose that path.”

“Ah! They would have had to have been Gods to understand that,” said the Goblin. “They just wanted to distinguish themselves from other animals.”

“But they ended up confirming that they were animals like the rest, convinced that the earth revolved around them,” said the Fairy.

“They were under an illusion. And to think they studied the history of ancient civilizations, and attributed their unexplained fall to a lack of technology!”

“I’ll tell you,” said the Elf, “the Humans may have disappeared but the rivers haven’t yet grown tired of flowing, nor the plants of growing. And the sea doesn’t have to be used for traffic. You don’t see it drying up or changing colour. The stars and the planets still come out, the sun and the moon still set. Mother nature seems to be

smiling again.”

“I dare say the earth doesn’t seem to miss those wretched people” said the Goblin.

“Well then, dear friend, that’s what you can tell your father,” said the Fairy.

“Sure”, said the Goblin, “I’ll tell my father: that the Humans are dead, but one can still hear the sound of wind that rocks one to sleep; that daylight is more brilliant than ever; that rivers and seas carry on.”

The Fairy said, “There’s no point saying all that. All you need to tell him is that the earth is clean now. He’ll know that’s not an illusion.”

Then she smiled.

Just then, the wind started to blow and the branches of the weeping willow waved like an unfolding curtain. Then they were gone.

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Leviathan

By Chris Kline

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The West’s initial response to the Arab Awakening was all at once too slow in coming, maladroit, indecisive, badly informed, and less than sharply focused. At the most seminal moment in modern Middle Eastern history in living memory, from Washington, to Number 10 Downing Street, to the Elysee Palace, the key corridors of Western power trembled with artlessness. Now that NATO intervention in Libya has reached military impasse, selective amnesia prevails elsewhere.

So Colonel Gaddafi is now an indicted war criminal, and Western rhetoric rails at his brutality with righteous indignation.

Meanwhile, Saudi Troops help the Bahraini Crown crush nonviolent democratic aspirations; Yemen’s Saleh pushes his country further to the brink; and, Syria’s Al Assad proves himself as much a butcher as his father. The Arab street is awash with the blood of innocents peacefully demanding freedom.

But there’s plenty of myopia to go around, Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu seems as determined to fall on the wrong side of history as any Western power, building more illegal settlements, brashly slamming the White House’s peace overtures. Insisting on a return to 1967 borders that would make a two state solution with the Palestinians possible, is anathema. Netanyahu’s is so intransigent, one would think he doesn’t want peace. Perhaps like Arafat or Sharon his political persona can only exist in conflict.

Now that Hamas is reconciled with Fatah, he may just get his wish. He can’t use peace. Anyway, what does he owe America, what is a paltry 30 billion dollar aid package between old friends?

And in Teheran bizarrely President Ahmadinejad keeps praising the Islamic revolution across the Middle East… Does the Iranian President live in a parallel universe NASA has yet to discover? The Awakening has clearly been marked by its democratic character, and has firmly rejected extremism, leaving Al Qaida and fundamentalism on the ash heap of history.

I have a message for OBL: Carlos the Jackal. Bader Meinhoff.

The Red Brigades. Abu Nidal and Black September. Timothy McVeigh. The Shining Path. You exceeded all of them. The horrors you inflicted, the suffering you caused, your capacity for

destruction was on an unprecedented scale in the annals of the murderous vocation you embodied. Osama Bin Laden, arch terrorist, hateful demagogue, indiscriminate killer of men, women and children, willful mass murderer, a criminal of epic savagery grotesquely disguised as a warrior prince. So here’s the bad news, you aren’t beloved of God, you strayed as far away from his message of love as you possibly could have. The Holy Koran forbids the taking of innocent life, of non-combatants, of adversaries that surrender, of harming a single leaf of a living tree, and of killing fellow Muslims, or other people of the Book, but you did all these things and had your followers believe it was God’s work.

Your vision of Islam was monstrously distorted, depraved, and even obscene. You hallucinated the birth of your global Caliphate but you did not summon a vision of the ancient kingdom of Al Andaluz, where Muslim, Jew, and Christian lived in harmonious meritocracy and helped spark the Renaissance. No, you sought a claustrophobic world of darkness and intolerance. You had hidden long in caves, and so to sought to imprison humanity in the cave of your strangled worldview.

Now as Islam and the Arab World liberates itself from tyranny, how fitting, how irrelevant you have been to this profound change.

Chris Kline is the American Grandson of the late President Sukarno, key architect of the Non-Aligned Movement, liberator and founder of modern Indonesia, the world’s most populous, predominantly Muslim nation. Kline is open adherent of the mystical Sufi tradition within Sunni Islam.

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History Repeats Itself Food for thought! Continues from page 12 The story then briefly is this.

The hereditary Prince of England, shortly after his marriage with Caroline of Brunswick, in order to effect a separation, which he desired, feigned to entertain doubts of the virtue of his wife. Twice did he accuse her, and twice was she declared innocent: notwithstanding which she was obliged to absent herself from her royal consort, and “Pro bono pacis,” was advised to travel through the different parts of Europe. Among other places she went to Italy, where finding herself one by one abandoned by those English who constituted her court, she was under the necessity of forming a new suite from among the Italians. It is more than probable this Princess proceeded in this selection with all the requisite and usual circumspection; at all events it appears that for more than two years she had every reason to be satisfied with her new attendants; who not only served her with fidelity, but appeared to be as it were enamoured of her wit, her goodness, her virtues, and her condescension; her liberality was equal to her approbation, to the goodness of her heart, and to the dignity of her birth and of her condition, Yet notwithstanding these favourable appearances, notwithstanding the ancient adage, “Nemo repente fit malus,” most unexpectedly is it discovered that all these.

“Are crows in the borrowed plumage of the dove, And in the clothing of the lamb, devouring wolves.”

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And in the very moment that is to decide upon the reputation, the honour, the liberty, the throne, perhaps even the life of their beloved mistress, they all agree “Miris in modis” to charge her with guilt and infamy, and with unblushing front to calumniate her, in the face of nations, of Europe and of the whole world.

“Miris in modis” have I said, because with one consent they all conspire to aid this horrid plot. The domestics of her household, the ladies who attended upon her person, the boatmen, postilions, servants of inns, all unite in deposing upon oath the same things “how too Theodore!” Whence, let us inquire, was the source of so unexpected revolution? B. Bergami, an enterprising youth, of good family and education, but reduced by the vicissitudes of fortune to a low condition, upon hearing that the Princess of Wales was in want of a courier, ventured to offer himself, and had the good fortune to be preferred. His zeal, activity, and amiable deportment, engaged the Princess so strongly in his favour, and so forcibly excited her compassion, that she soon raised him from the ignoble office courier, and conferred upon him honours and distinctions which were aspired to by Princes and Sovereigns. Bergami is no longer the servant of the Princess of Wales, he becomes the counsellor, the companion, the guest, the confidant, the friend of the presumptive Queen of Great Britain.

“Illud amicitiae sanctum et venerabile nomen” It shall be to me as the pillar of Hercules, beyond which nei

COLUMNS ther the footsteps, nor the gaze of the unprivileged may penetrate. To all, however, it will not be equally sacred; so great an exaltation, so sudden a transformation, failed not to excite the envy of the other officers of her court: and hence the idle gossiping of coffee houses, and of assemblies, the observations, the conjectures, of enemies and the misrepresentations of circumstances, in themselves probably innocent, but susceptible of malicious interpretations, and of doubtful, perhaps a vicious colouring. It was not long before these slanders were spread over Italy, and throughout a great part of Germany.

“ Fama malum quo non aliud velocius ullum”.

Hence they were rapidly propagated, and arrived in England, where, by the desire and the management of a powerful King, they took deep root, and increased beyond measure. The ministers of this king thought themselves obliged “ex officio” to investigate the matter; commissioners are sent to Milan, the principal seat of scandal, and examine those who were employed about the person of Caroline, those who waited upon her, those who might have been witnesses of the imputed crime.

Their depositions are received under the seal of secrecy, the few to whom the secret is known, are not only disposed, but desirous of burying it in oblivion; conditions are proposed and rejected: Caroline secure in innocence, and encouraged by the voice of the people, exclaims as Caesar.

“ Aut regina aut nihil” Witnesses are brought to London, but before what they are about to declare can be made known, even before their arrivals, villages, cities, whole provinces, unite with the partisans of the Princess, and with the enemies of the king, and together with a great part of the people, arise, and with one voice exclaim Our queen is innocent!

In fact we have twice before seen this unfortunate Princess accused, and the accusations brought against her supported, not by evidences drawn from among the lowest of the people and from a foreign country, but from the most respectable order of society in England. Truth, nevertheless, shone conspicuous, and virtue triumphed, and then was not heard the powerful voice of party proclaiming, through the world, a new

unparalleled crime against a female of royal blood. Thus then to me appear to have been not idle, but ridiculous, the prating impertinence of those editors of newspapers, who under the specious name of the advocates of the people, take occasion to maintain falsehood and error; the supplications, the protestations, the petitions, the uproar of the populace, easily excited, and always ready with the first breath to

“Scinditur studia in contraria” the threatening of the rebellion, of recrimination, of the subversion of government; the rhapsodies of a Wood, of a Cobbett, and of all the promoters of anarchy and confusion; the insults offered to those very judges who twice before had found her innocent, and her accusers perjured: ridiculous in fine the invectives uttered against the Italian witnesses, who had not yet arrived in the country, and whose evidences not yet given all declared would tend to perjure themselves. Without all this disturbance, in my opinion, the queen had been a third time judged innocent, or else the good and just, spite of a different judgment, had concurred in thinking her so. To what then tended so much noise and clamour? Only to irritate the minds of her enemies, to engage, to instigate them. To oppose steel to steel, and flame to flame, to provoke them to maintain the accusations once pronounced against her.

It is not my intention, nor my business, in the honourable undertaking which I have proposed to myself, to lessen the arguments in favour of the Queen: much less is it my purpose to vindicate the character of a Sacchi, a Rastelli, a Majochi, or of the others. But since from this subject occasion has been taken to calumniate my country; since, according to the doctrine of Mr. B, every thing is justifiable in a lawyer to effect the success of his client; I who am the advocate not alone of one, but of millions of females, boldly assert the accusations pronounced against these witnesses to have been, if not false and unjust, at least illegal, inefficacious, intemperate, and imprudent. This then is the ground I take; this is the first point which I maintain; without endeavouring, without wishing to prove that these Italian witnesses were not forsworn, because even if they were, which is extremely possible, neither falsehoods, nor those of a thousand conspirators, had there been so many, nor all the possible crimes of thousands upon thousands from the same nation, would entitle anyone to censure, to degrade, or to insult the characDANTEmag n.1

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It is the unfortunate inheritance of man that vice and perfidy are found in every corner of the globe.

But let us separately examine these charges. … “In that country,” says he, “there is no spark of liberty.” Do you, or rather does your own unhappy country possess this liberty? Ask the worthy inhabitants of the “ Island of Sorrow” of which you are a worthy son, what is the liberty they boast?

Ask the vast numbers of your countrymen, who tired with weight of servitude, have left their homes, to seek for peace and liberty in foreign lands and above all, in this, the only abode of liberty, the blessed America? ... “It was not,” says he, “an excess of prosperity which caused the Americans to revolt, but an excess of oppression which induced them to turn against their mother country the arms which they had used in her defence. Perhaps this warning may not have the effect of undeceiving the other powers of Europe, for they will see in it only a punishment to the pride of the English, and will fail to view it as dreadful lesson to themselves.

They will wait till a common cause render the catastrophe universal.

… “In their degenerate soil there is no grace of religion, no sense of moral,” says Mr Phillips.

Why then, oh ye millions and millions of holy minded beings, in the seclusions of convents do you spend your days, disengaged from the world and its enjoyments? Clothed in sackcloth, denying yourselves beds of ease and limited to scanty portion of food? Devoting yourselves to the service of God to the diffusion of the gospel and to the instruction of the people? Imposing upon yourselves every act of charity and of humiliation? To preach the word of God to pray for the welfare of the people; to inculcate in the virtuous the contempt of riches; to exhort to charity and forgiveness; to teach beneficence to the rich and resignation to the poor? What, shall we then raze to the ground these convents, these abodes of innocence, these temples of God? Shall we destroy the hospitals of Milan, of Turin, of Genoa, of Venice, of Rome, of Naples; cities which as well for the number as for the magnificence of their benevolent institutions surpass all others in Europe. Shall we close down those houses where the poor receive support and education; where the afflicted and inDANTEmag n.1

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firm obtain relief and comfort, where without fee, and without interest, orphans and unfortunate infants are made to partake of that bounty from the funds of charity, which, from the hand of a father they have lost or never known? … How many travellers, in fact, have published in their accounts thousands of things against Italy and how few, on the other hand, have made a fair and candid representation of her? Who has not spoken of the frequency of robberies, of the impositions of inn-keepers, of the insolence of postilions, of the dishonesty of servants, of the rudeness of the custom house officers, of the petulance of beggars, of the little regard paid to the marriage vow, of the want of trifling conveniences, of a disposition to idleness, to gaming and to dissipation, on the want of cleanliness in the streets and houses, and even of the very insects which infect the country? Complaints altogether unfunded, or at least greatly and maliciously exaggerated, and in fact, neither more nor less applicable to that country, than to every other in the world. But who has with the same warmth mentioned the many merits of Italy, which ought to be so much more interesting to a judicious and impartial observer?

Who has spoken of the meritorious temperance of a people who have the greatest profusion of delicious wine? Who has spoken of the liberal hospitality accorded to strangers of every nation and without any enquiry into their condition? And indeed it appears to me to be most ungrateful, in those who return from a country where they have been courteously received, and kindly treated, and from which they ought at least to bear some the benign effects of the climate, to carry in their hearts only the seeds of malevolence and envy, with which to commemorate the favours received from its polite inhabitants, by censuring their taste, their habits, their manners and even the very entertainments given to themselves. These may be assimilated to those buzzing wasps and hornets, that do not extract the sweets from flowers, in order to produce honey, but only to feed and delight themselves, and afterwards spoil and destroy with their sharp stings those very flowers on which they have luxuriated. There is yet another species of travellers not less inimical to Italy; these are they who travel merely for the sake of saying that they have seen the world; who collect and display without judgement every thing they see, or fancy; these gratify their own vanity in becoming authors and think to favour the world by publishing their remarks. Oh how much better would it be for these

“ Periturae parcere chartae” the envy of the other officers of her court: and hence the idle gossiping of coffee houses, and of assemblies, the observations, the conjectures, of enemies and the misrepresen

COLUMNS tations of circumstances, in themselves probably innocent, but susceptible of malicious interpretations, and of doubtful, perhaps a vicious colouring. It was not long before these slanders were spread over Italy, and throughout a great part of Germany.

“ Fama malum quo non aliud velocius ullum”. than by a mass of impertinence, of puerility, of abuse, of indecorous anecdotes and falsehood, to disgrace themselves, to disgrace themselves their country, and the age to which they belong! It is not my intention, nor my wish to attack these writers; I only, by way of caution, remind their reader, that as men of elevated mind such for instance as was the highly gifted John Eustace, whom we may well call the model of travellers and whose beautiful and learned volumes

“ Nocturna versate manu versate diurna” stoop not to observe trifles as

“ Aquila non capit muscas” so these pigmy authors see not, or understand not, great things, as

” Muscas non capit aquilas”.

I advise you therefore not to place too much reliance on the statements of such narrators, whose aim it is not to give information, but to afford momentary diversion, which indeed, is oftener obtained at their own expenses than that of others. ….It appears to me indeed to be rather singular, that certain modern travellers should have taken to inform us (giving Tiraboschi as his authority) that “there was a time when it was the reproach of Italians, that the Scotch went into their country for the purpose of educating them; “forgetting at the same time, to mention Lancastro and Anselmo, two Italians the 11th century, who instructed all who succeeded them, not excepting

Cartesio himself, in the science of metaphysics, in literature, in theology, philosophy, criticism and the purest Latin. This too says Tiraboschi: Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio, spent great part of their lives, and their fortunes, in promoting the restoration of learning and of language; and that their improvements, particularly in Latin, were afterwards carried into France by the Italians, as is attested by one of their most virtuous kings, Francis the 1st, in these memorable words “ Gratias agamus Italis qui nos ex barbaris fecerunt Lations “ that almost every nation in the world owes its best history to an Italian: as Sarpi and Leti were employed by England and Holland to write theirs, as that of the French revolution was given us by Davila, that of the council of Trent by Sarpi, by Maffei that of India, that of the Low Countries by Bentivolglio. Of the Turks by Beccattini, and history of literature by Sodarini, the history of Prussia by Denina, by Priorato that of Germany, and that of your own country by Botta. And on the present century these Italians have carried their own illustrious name, the most abstruse sciences, and the most various branches of learning, into the most principal cities in the world; Zeno, Metastasio, and Casti, into Vienna; Goldoni and Biagioli to Paris; Mazzola and Migliavacca into Dresden; Conti to Madrid; Coltellini, Moretti, and Stratico to Petersburgh; Veracci to Bavaria; Caramondani, Algarotti, and Denina to Berlin; Pananti, Foscolo, and Cavallo, into the proud city of London, which has not disdained to receive, and to respect them, as three luminaries of poetry, letters and astronomy. … Nor do I fear or hesitate to declare that the number of discreet and virtuous women in Italy is ten times greater than of those who are dissipated or vicious. Then should it not be said “the Italians have few Statesmen,” but rather would they say, they are the Italians that gave the world a Macchiavelli, a Paruta, a Sarpi, a Mazzarini and who still give to France a Servetto, to Saxony a Marcolini, and to Prussia a Lucchesini.

Then would they say Italians have no warriors; but rather, the Italians gave to Bonaparte, who was himself like them, an Italian, eighty thousand men, who were the flower of his immense army, and who so often extorted from this new Mars of our age the highest eulogiums. To confirm this honour to my country, let us hear the world of Vincezo Monti the incomparable encomiast of that great man.

The raging spirit that imprisoned lies In that profounder bosom, is a spark Of Italy’s own sun; and on his brand The daring rest, that in old latin soul It is heavenly promised kindled.

Yet another charge remains, not less unjust then all the rest, for me the controvert and this the unfounded imputation of a supreme love of idleness, Hear me, I pray you, yet a little while, that I may endeavour to prove to you, that there is no more active or industrious people on the face of the earth than the Italians. Without the advantage of gold and silver mines, DANTEmag n.1

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COLUMNS repressed upon the sea. From whence the family of Doria Pamphili, Colonna, Spinola and Litta draw an income of .40-70 90and even 100.000 piastres? How is that our females shine with the lustre of a thousand sparkling diamonds? Is there perhaps in Italy some second Midas who changes objects into gold?

Yes, and this miraculous Midas exists in the happy fertility of the soil, an inexhaustible mine of wealth, of which their enemies never have, nor ever can deprive them; and which has so often arisen with renewed beauty from its own ashes.

But what would this fertile soil avail, without the industry and labour of its inhabitans. These draw gold from the well-sown fields; these from the leaves of the mulberry, from the clusters of the vine, from the juice of the olive, from their fruits, and from their well-flavoured fish extract: these produce a never failing source to their country by the music they compose, by the books they print, by the manufactories in paper, straw, chalk, instruments in glass and in marble; and in fine, from the works of Bartolozzi, of a Pickler, and Ermini, a Santarelli, a Morghen, and of a Canova, who rendering Princes and Sovereigns their tributaries, thus restore to their country, by the force of their abilities, a part of that wealth, which by the force of arms has been wrested from them. Judge then if a people so laborious, so industrious, and so persevering can with justice be accused of characteristical love of idleness. Yet would I not be understood to say, that there are not some Italians who pass their hours in various amusements. But however reprehensible are such amusements, when they occupy the time, which should be given to industry, to agriculture, to the improvement of the sciences, or to private duty, they are almost equally commendable in those who follow them only as the recreations of a studious and reflecting mind, which returns from such relaxations to its usual employments, with redoubled force of energy. And if it be ridiculous in an Italian to censure a Spaniard, because he takes delight in beholding the sanguinary bull fight, in seeing that animal thrust his horns into the lacerate side of the noble horse, and often into that of his rider. How much more ridiculous must it appear, that an Italian should be censured, insulted, and derided, because he prefers a food which is more pleasing to himself, rather than that which is more pleasing to others; because he drinks muscatel and artimino in preference to beer or cider; and because he takes delight in the recreation of the coffee-house, of the casino, of theatres, of concert, of conversaziones, and “In the open air, in fishing.” I think of our amusement as being neither vile, nor barbarous, but analogous and agreeable to the nature of the nature of a mild and gentle people, and which the great Ariosto did not consider as subjects beneath his inimitable verses; but which very diversions of fishing and sporting he allotted among the delightful recreations apportioned by Alcina to noble Ruggieri in her enchanted garden. These are the admirable lines in which must now be criticised and degraded, as is everything else which regards there modern degenerate Italians,

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Now by clear streams with grateful shade o’ercast They read the amorous lays of age past Amidst deep vales or smiling hills prepare To hunt the mazes of the fearful hare, Now for the thrush fallacious springes set Now the sweet juniper with bird-lime wet Now with barb’d shook, or meshy net they try From quiet floods to drag the scaly fry.

I doubt not that you view with indignations, if not with the detestation that I do, her enemies, her persecutors, her calumniators, and chiefly Phillips, who neither called by duty, nor accused by interest, but goaded on by the perfidious spirit of slander, has dared depict her in its blackest dyes. For what atrocious slander is it not, to say that the Italians have “no spark of freedom, no grace of religion, no sense of morals?” that “Their churches are scenes of daily assassination, and their faith mere formality?” Every word, every syllable which he has uttered against Italy, is tinctured with basest calumny.

Let these grey locks, this body bent with age, these lips, which so soon in the awful presence of the Creator must render an account of every word and action, and which loudly, boldly cry, calumny, calumny attest it. There are passions, there are vices, there are crimes in Italy, but there is likewise religion, humanity and charity, and a thousand other Christian and social virtues, which commend the esteem and veneration of nations. If not then for my efforts, at least for the deathless names of these four firm pillars of the sanctuary, of Italy, and of the age, three things do I venture to request – Indignation against Phillips; pity mingled with esteem, for my oppressed, but not unworthy country; and for myself indulgence, sympathy and pardon.

…To all those “Phillips” in and out of Italy, If you have gotten this far, you must have read the answer that the illustrious Lorenzo Da Ponte the librettist of Mozart has given him. Enough said! Let’s join the celebration of the 150th anniversary for the unification of a great country.

Massimo Gava

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