THREE MILLION EUROS

THREE MILLION EUROS

Three million euros is the amount awarded as compensation for the 17 years spent in prison by an innocent man, one would wonder if this is the price of a depredation.

This is what I had written in recounting the Ilaria Alpi affair. 

But now unfortunately a further question must be added: Is three million euros the cause of Hashi Omar Hassan’s death?

According to the thesis bouncing around the various news outlets, the reason for the killing is precisely related to the compensation money.

But the Order of Journalists together with Usigrai and Federazione Nazionale Stampa Italiana, in union with all the associations participating in the #NoiNonArchiviamo campaign, 

have signed a writ of incorporation as offended parties to continue to demand the truth about the death of Ilaria Alpi and Miran Hrovatin.

Let’s take a step back: with the previous story, I had stopped with the compensation for the wrongful imprisonment of Hashi Omar Hassan. To summarize what happened next we can refer directly to his appeal published

on the Facebook page of Chi l’ha visto

Hashi Omar Hassan therefore asked for help so that he could find his family in Sweden and Somalia.

In Somalia, however, he found death, a violent death, just as violent was the death of Ilaria and Miran.

A bomb under the seat of his car in Mogadishu blasted him and the silence that like a dusting will fall back on the truth, beginning to cover it again with the blanket of time.

AVANTI, PARLA – COME ON, TALK

AVANTI, PARLA – COME ON, TALK

Come on, talk! About an order or a peremptory invitation?
Changing the pitch can be both.
What if the request comes from a longtime friend and the tone is simply curious?

As happened to me when reading Giulia Caminito‘s book, also in this case I found a completely unconventional way of writing, even if I have not been conquered in the same way.

When Porci con le aliWinged pigs came out, Lidia Ravera‘s debut book, I was still reading Mickey Mouse but the echo of the sensation generated remained impressed on me, as well as the post-1968 wave that brought with it an epochal change.

This book brings back to those years, however, in a slow and alternating way, more like an undertow that laps slowly.

And slowly one realizes that the story was built specifically as a system on a very specific foundation: the base, the true fulcrum of the whole story.

If on the one hand I was curious to deepen a page of Italian history of which I have never read, but which I have lived through news stories, on the other I found myself questioning my way of thinking.

Is the constant effort on myself to eliminate judgments and prejudices really effective?

And again: would I have had the same point of view if I hadn’t found myself in front of a perfect “grandmother”?

How often have we said then that it is not enough to give birth to be mothers, but if life offered a second chance?

I firmly believe that children and young people teach us constantly, and that they are saving.

The food for thought also ranges from the controversial question of knowing how to forgive oneself, to the survival instinct.
From the intrinsic power of silence to the benefits of music.
From consistency to hypocrisy.

All this is a portion of what emerged from the conversations with Monica: this time too I owe this reading to her, just as I owe to her the enrichment on a human level that I was able to draw from it.

What do you think about it?
Do you prefer a book to reveal a story or a reflection?
Come on, talk …

SILENT DEATHS

SILENT DEATHS

I have already talked about PM2.5 because frankly it is a topic that is very close to my heart and I find it absolutely important, despite continuing to pass more or less in silence.

The effects on health are hidden and manifest over time, there are no obvious infections or symptoms, but when the disease is noticed in many cases it is late.

The death tolls are terrible and yet they are rarely mentioned.

I find the latest publication from The Lancet Planetary Health absolutely frightening which indicates Brescia and Bergamo in first and second place among the European cities for mortality rate due to these damned particles.

And not only that: they are followed by Vicenza in fourth place and Saronno in eighth, meaning that out of ten cities, four are Italian, concentrated in the northern area, mainly in Lombardy.

But many other inhabited centers also have chilling levels of pollutants, available here

As if that were not enough, it should also be considered that despite everything there is also a hidden share: air pollution is a leading environmental cause of mortality around the world. Cities are generally hot spots for air pollution and disease. However, the exact extent of the health effects of city-wide air pollution is still largely unknown.

I have the hope of shaking some conscience, in the small, so that this theme is given an adequate echo, even if my voice falls into the same silence of all voices dull in the suffering among the indifference of most.

WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE

WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE

No need to argue: everyone knows ZOMBIE of The Cranberries.

I can’t simply call it a song, to me it’s history.
It has recently exceeded one billion views on YouTube and I admit that some are mine.
A deserved success, which closes the circle of the previous song of the year proclamation at the 1995 MTV Awards.
Zombie was shot by Samuel Bayer, who also made the video of “Smells like teen Spirit” to be clear, but more than the undoubted quality, I would linger on the message and on the voice of Dolores O’Riordan.
Unfortunately now the first thing that is mentioned everywhere about her is the circumstance of death, but I would like to talk about life.
Not of her biography in detail, but I would particularly underline how she wrote this piece in a flash, after learning of the tragic death of two kids from a bomb.
Although the episode took place in Ireland in 1993, a specific sadly known context, Dolores has always avoided politicizing.
“In your head, in your head” Dolores repeats it, she invokes, she invites to think, it would seem banal and yet too often it is not.
Hers is a cry to unite, to awaken.
“Violence causes silence.”
I find that Dolores knows how to make this silence speak, she knows how to give voice to pain, she knows how to shout not anger, but the strength to say enough.
Zombie is against violence, against the inability to stop violence.
This song’s our cry against man’s inhumanity to man; and man’s inhumanity to child.”
Dolores O’Riordan

I don’t know about you but as far as I’m concerned, the thought comes loud and clear and settles viscerally.
Her “another mother’s breaking heart” becomes mine.
Her voice, her unique way of singing, constitute the focal point: a catalyst, which allows the message to communicate all its disruptive despair.
Zombie was inspired by a child’s death. His life was taken in the arm’s of his mother. She was shopping in London last year, and there was a bomb planted in a rubbish bin in London and he happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time and he died. The reason the bomb was planted was because of a political territorial kind of thing that goes on in the North of Ireland and the UK. So the references to 1916 was when a contract was signed, which signed away the 6 counties to England. And it still goes on today: the war, the deaths, and the injustice.”
Dolores O’Riodan

Zombies who see and feel pain, yet do nothing.
Zombies not from horror movies and yet terribly scarier: us.

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