World & Media Archives - Page 2 of 5

Archive by category "World & Media" (Page 2)

The broken bridge

Reflections on a tragedy. August 14 in my mind was already associated to the image of a broken bridge. Don’t ask, it’s personal. You may have heard how my hometown of Genoa was struck by a disaster: the collapse of a significant portion of the Morandi Bridge, a highway overpass 1200 meters long (3/4 of a mile) that meant a lot to us. Not just a vital thoroughfare necessary for traffic coming and going from, to and through the city, the port and the rest of the region. A cumbersome acquaintance, a familiar sight, a piece of our lives. The intersection between beautiful and ugly. A source for apprehension. So many…

The birth of Fake News

Have you ever wondered how the expression originated? I mean, in a wider sense the dissemination of fabricated stories, mostly for propaganda reasons, dates back at least to Ancient Greece, and that’s just because we have limited data from earlier civilizations. But why the sudden alarm for the spread of fake news? Not all TED conferences are created equal. Some even contain inconvenient truths. Sharyl Attkisson is a tough cookie: a investigative journalist who worked in the mainstream media, a respectable voice that can’t be silenced by pretending she comes from the unwashed fringe. Although of course she left CBS when her tough stance and pointed critique of Obama’s administration…

Imaginary conversation on a plane in Sweden

This young student, Elin Ersson, became an instant celebrity because she took a stand against the deportation of an Afghan man from Sweden to Afghanistan: she boarded the passenger plane with which he was being sent out of the country and refused to sit down, protesting the deportation while recording the incident on a Facebook video. Teary eyed, she must have felt immensely proud for her bravery and humanitarian commitment while the sheepish Goteborg airport authorities caved in and disembarked the man. This is 2018: people her age have no memory of a world before 9/11. Nowadays air travel is subject to all sorts of security checks: you can be…

Why so much fake outrage? Why siding with criminals?

Time cover, Donald Trump looking down on crying child (fair use: critique)

The quest for the evil roots of the Left: our first step is observing the apologists of illegal immigration. Scene 1, Honduras: a well off family, at least for the standards of developing countries; the husband has a good job, the wife drives a car nicer than mine. They have 4 children. Scene 2, USA-Mexico border: the woman from scene 1 decides to leave the country taking the youngest daughter with her, not even bothering to say goodbye to her husband and her 3 other children. She wants to seek her fortune in the United States, even if she’d already been deported in 2013. She gives 6000 dollars to a criminal…

The truth about refugees

Let’s begin by discussing political asylum per se. Afterwards I want to get to the core problem, the abuse of the term “refugee” while pushing for a path to citizenship for scores of migrants that wouldn’t qualify. It’s the elephant in the room: the meaning and procedures behind the granting of asylum seldom get any attention. As you’ll find out if you follow me in this journey, I needed only a little effort to unearth some gems of social justice extravaganza. I’ll use my country as a reference point, not only because it represents a faithful representation of all the excesses of a leftist cultural-industrial complex, but because over the last few…

Medium sucks

Medium is a neutrality-agnostic platform. They push in one direction, even against their interests. Discussing the bazillionth propaganda-infested email I received from Medium, the most successful blogging platform of the moment. In their imagination the titles of the promoted articles would entice me to click, read and possibly become a premium member, paying for the privilege of being served tons of one-sided articles, plus (thanks God) quite a few dealing instead with matters unrelated to politics. In the email I received there were 2 articles in the Politics section. One is just the usual tripe about the dangers of Fascism today, as expressed through the point of view of a hallucinated author…

Yawn @ German elections

The obligatory comments on the 2017 German general election are pouring in, with pundits serving up large scoops of alarmed rhetoric over the unprecedented return of “the Nazis” to the Bundestag (German Parliament), for the first time since WWII. The reality is way more mundane and unimpressive. The new “populist” party AfD (Alternative für Deutschland = Alternative for Germany) this time was able to seize an impressive 13% of the vote, while in 2013 they fell short of the 5% barrier to entry in the parliament. But they’re far from being Nazi sympathizers. You may ask yourself, instead, since their political platform would have been deemed pretty reasonable for a…

Charlie Gard executed by the wannabe Übermenschen

In-depth (fastidious) analysis of a post-human, anti-human authoritarian act (+a side of tasteful disinformation). A.1. Presto, Godwin! In the worldview of the Nazis, the Jew wasn’t just a mortal enemy; it was seen as some unsightly subhuman, a thing, a disgusting thing. They rounded up millions of pacific, respectable and productive people, mostly (at least in the West) from the well-off, and (when they weren’t killing them immediately) they let those poor souls wither away in concentration camps, as terminally-ill, bony shadows of humans, fighting for their life like scared rats, begging for a morsel of moldy food. That’s when the self-appointed Übermenschen (the Superhumans), the “Aryans”, could triumphantly point…

Describing the next political crisis in graph terms

Plus some obligatory ramblings about Islam. A comment posted under my article discussing the fickle behavior of voters inspired me to further elaborate on the nature of the political crisis ahead of us (Europeans, at least). The idea being: we’re facing a phase of instability, characterized by erratic election results but no significant choices being made, other than letting the current course continue unabated (top-down economic policies, EU mega-state “integration”; restrictions on freedom of speech, especially for non-Muslim religious groups; moral decay, gradual abolition of the family, culture of death; ethnic substitution through immigration). I compared the current situation, with many changes of direction but no real movement, to the…

Reshuffling. Or: About The Capricious Voter

Philippines, electoral advertising in the streets

Pretending to change the rules of the game while being predictable and misinformed. Recent General Elections in the UK and France, plus local mayoral races in Italy, represent good examples of a puzzling trend: voters ostensibly voting to upset the forces in power, or at least those forces that seem stronger at the moment, as if the unwashed masses wanted to evade control (while actually failing at it). As if moderation and wisdom were embodied by an erratic behavior that isn’t fully committed to any cause or political project, instead rushing to support the latest movement or political figure promising “change”, then at the next opportunity punishing that very same party…

Ty Cobb and Alex Schwazer: victims of fake news

Ty Cobbs in action, sliding in third base

2 Athletes, 2 very different stories Tyrus Raymond “Ty” Cobb was a legendary baseball player active between 1905 and 1928. He still holds some MLB records, including best batting average. But his reputation has been ruined by fabricated stories, mostly about his purported racism. Alex Schwazer is an Italian race walker, 2008 Olympic Champion, who was disqualified twice for doping offences: at first, in 2012, because he was cheating; eventually, in 2016, because he wasn’t. A new man, deeply changed, he was dead serious in his quest to fight doping. Did someone decide he was an inconvenience for a world of Athletics that got used to turn a blind eye on…

What is or isn’t homophobia

2 French policemen attack a peaceful protester against gay marriage

I just realized that today is the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia. I come very late to the party, so excuse my unpolished manners. Sooo. Homophobia is an imaginary mental disorder. Its definition was created towards the end of the 20th Century and popularized in the 21st. Turns out that centuries of civilization zoomed by without people coming up with a similar idea. Until now. Lucky us. The idea of being afraid of homosexuals. Going to great lengths to prove that you’re not. Embrace nonsense, fall right in line, or else. Homophobia comes quite handy as an instrument for oppressive -nominally democratic- regimes censoring free speech,…