LOCAL BROADCASTER EMERGENCY FUND

LOCAL BROADCASTER EMERGENCY FUND

If I say “emergency fund” what do you think?
I associate it with the thought of special help, with a kind of protection that makes it possible to cope with a delicate and difficult financial situation.

In this period various words are taking on new meanings linked to the current context: bonuses, financial aids …

Treccani dictionary defines a fund as a set of monetary means held in a given period for a specific purpose.

“Local broadcasters emergency fund” here I had imagined something a little different than what was communicated by Mise, which actually writes the wording exactly in quotation marks under the title:
Fund for local broadcasters – Extraordinary contribution for the transmission of institutional communication messages (health emergency).

The decree of 12 October in the Official Gazette fully explains that:
the beneficiary local radio and television broadcasters undertake to transmit within their information spaces the institutional communication messages relating to the health emergency that will be made available through the platform made available by the Ministry of Economic Development.

It is also worth reading the attachment: a rate table with variable amounts according to the number of passages to be transmitted at fixed times.

I’m perplexed, how far are we from the comparison with buying advertising space?
Yes, I know, it is bad to make these speeches when there are moral issues involved, but I really would like to understand.

What’s your opinion?
Have you ever listened to any of these broadcasts? Are they announced as institutional communications?
Is RAI really not enough?

Why this “conditional help” when for months every news broadcasts news and interviews with government members, not to mention the amount of dedicated programs and talk shows?

Maybe I’m wrong, you always correct me.

“NOW THE SOUND OF #BEIRUT IS SWEEPING GLASS, THE PIECES OF SHATTERED LIVES.”

“NOW THE SOUND OF #BEIRUT IS SWEEPING GLASS, THE PIECES OF SHATTERED LIVES.”

Now the sound of #Beirut is sweeping glass, the pieces of shattered lives. It is and always is the people here who clean up the destruction of the establishment – and rebuild.

Rusted Radishes wordstruck me almost like the images that flow under our dismayed eyes.

Pieces of shattered life.
Terrible.

And after the bewilderment stunned one wonders WHY.
Impossible to understand it now.

The news chases each other, it all seems so absurd, incredible.
So I tried to read as directly as possible.
Looking for and hoping to find an entry.

Beirut Today writes:
The highly-flammable chemical compound had reportedly been unloaded from a ship impounded at the port in 2013, and then unsafely stored in a warehouse there for six years, according to statements from both the prime minister and presidency.
Lebanon’s Supreme Defence Council said those responsible would face “maximum punishment.” The Lebanese Cabinet also tasked the army with placing all officials who oversaw storage and guarding at Beirut Port since 2014 under house arrest pending the end of the investigation.
The port is a major commercial route that has provided Lebanon, a country that relies heavily on imports, with a lifeline of nearly all needed goods. With its largest port and essential importing facility devastated by the blast, analysts are concerned how Lebanon can maintain the flow of much-needed food, and medical supplies.”

Instead of finding some sort of meaning, it is all the more absurd.

But above all I found Lama‘s voice
“Every official, parliamentarian, judge, minister, general manager, director, and piece of … who knew about the threat of the container that ended up blowing up and killing dozens, injuring thousands, and destroying our city is probably putting on their suit and readying themselves for another day of lies and deceit.
You’ve robbed the country blind. You’ve undermined each and every one of its facilities. You’ve drained every account, facility, fund, project, institution, and corner of this country.
Your resignations mean nothing. We demand justice and accountability.
We demand justice for every life lost, for every citizen injured, for everyone who lost their home and their business and their land due to your gross negligence and your criminal behavior.”

I have no other words.
Collecting shatters is also dangerous at the moment, given the toxicity of the air.
Yet I leave you this video.

WAR OF THE WORLDS

WAR OF THE WORLDS

What time is the end of the world?
No, let’s start from the beginning: The War of the Worlds is a novel written by H. G. Wells, one of the forerunners of the science fiction genre, originally published in installments in 1897 on the Pearson’s Magazine in London.
First curious anecdote: HG Wells took in part inspiration from Giovanni Schiaparelli’s theories about Mars (and if you always read me remember our save the date 🙂 )
The astronomer and director of the Brera Astronomical Observatory in Milan observed some lines on the surface of the red planet, and hypothesized that they could be natural channels for the transport of water as they changed from one observation to another.
At this point there is another beautiful smile because what is one of the painful keys for all of us Italians? Knowledge of English!
Why do I say this? Because its natural channels were translated with the wrong term that distorted the theory by transforming them into artificial canals. Hence the assumption that they had been excavated by … Martians, precisely.
These famous “Martians” who populated the fantasies of many, embodying the most varied forms and descriptions, before being replaced by the most universal aliens.
These famous “Martians” who inspired Wells first and then Welles, Orson Welles.
Curious also this coincidence, one e above all and a patented invention separates them, another curious fact, always in 1897, always in London, and always by an Italian: Guglielmo Marconi.
Why do I switch to radio? Because in the meantime we arrive in 1938, and the radio is still the fledgling mass media and, exactly as it works today for the internet, it is seen as a form of potentially dangerous communication. It is seen as a vehicle of social mutation, for the rapid diffusion to the easy reach of a large number of people, and above all harmful to the publishing giants, worried about losing their income.
And precisely at CBS Orson Welles conducts The Mercury Theater on the Air: a program consisting of the narration of the great classics of literature, for the truth poorly paid and not much followed.
But Orson, at that time a Shakespearean actor, expresses his genius by using the program also to deal a blow to the system, deciding to cut the news in real time, and in view of the imminent Halloween, structures the Martian invasion described in the book like a real-time radio commentary.
It is in fact on October 30, 1938 when the reading of the opening words of The War of the Worlds is on air, interspersed with musical broadcasts, as usual, until an announcement interrupts the music and transposes the text setting it in the United States. With the help of screenwriter Howard Koch, completed with mock interviews with experts, imitations of press releases from the authorities, and sound effects to which Orson Welles pays special attention.
At the beginning and during the transmission it is clearly stated that it is the transposition of the novel, but many tune in at different times and the illusion effect created artfully succeeds perfectly.
It is said that a man called the New York Times to ask “what time is the end of the world?” to which the famous song written by Michael stipe of R.E.M. is inspired.
There is a chorus that supports the exaggeration of the estimates that count people running in the street, panic scenes, or hysteria, and I honestly don’t intend to dwell on the numbers, since, especially in this period, we everyday hear tragic counts.
In fact, in Grover’s Mills, New Jersey, there is a commemorative plaque with the following inscription:
On the evening of October 30, 1938 Orson Welles and The Mercury Theatre presented a dramatization of H.G. Wells The war of the worlds as adapted by Howard Koch. This was to become a landmark in broadcast history, provoking continuing thought about media responsibility, social psychology and civil defense. For a brief time as many as one million people throughout the country believed that Martians had invaded the earth, beginning with Grover’s Mill, New Jersey.
The important thing that Orson Welles has more or less voluntarily shown us is that people are led to believe rather unconditionally what is communicated to them by the mainstream mass media.
How many times have we heard “TV said it?”
How many care to check the news?
This time I went beyond coffee time, but today we can also indulge in chocolate, what do you say?
Now I conclude with the last strange coincidence: in The War of the Worlds the Martians are defeated by a virus.

TRUTH OR SURROGATE?

TRUTH OR SURROGATE?

How do you deal with coffee substitutes?
Barley coffee, decaffeinated coffee: are alternatives valid for those who for various reasons must give up real coffee, or if not coffee, better to leave it alone and drink something else?
I found myself thinking about surrogates while listening to the news.
Does the truth still exist? More and more often, I have the impression of having to drink a long series of substitutes, or worse still, it seems to me that I have to swallow the notorious Parmesan, as if it were taken for granted that so much is fine even if it is not the real one, because after all what costs less is convenient.
So hearing that a soldier gets confused and shoots down an airliner taking off for an American fighter, for me it’s a bite of Parmesan, but everyone eats it, that’s okay, let’s continue our things, it doesn’t matter if anyway look at it, it’s paradoxical.
Without wanting to do pub geopolitics, it doesn’t worry you to think that it is considered plausible that a soldier, alone, in the era in which we even control the washing machine with a simple application on the cell phone, could launch a missile without authorization, without checks, without certainties, and without any sense?
Wouldn’t you call him Lee Harvey Oswald?
Or, maybe it’s me who, repeatedly disappointed, see the truth more and more like a Siberian Tiger: magnificent, but now almost extinct.

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