Bending Pixels according to droste rules.

The Black Angels Essential Mix by I Zebra on Mixcloud

Fascismus and Mafia

[From: http://www.historytoday.com/paul-preston/fascism-and-mafia]
Fascism and the Mafia Christopher Duggan - Yale University Press, 1989 - £16.95 Long before Hollywood glamorised the mafia, the issue of law and order occupied a central position on the political agenda in Italy. The failure of united Italy to resolve her southern problem, the questione meridionale , was blamed on the intractable criminality of Neapolitans, Calabrians and Sicilians. In fact, the south saw little benefit in northern administration with its incomprehensible language and hated burdens of conscription and taxation. However, successive governments, including the fascists, responded with large-scale violence on the grounds that Sicily's rejection of the state revealed the hand of a vast criminal conspiracy, the mafia. Dr Duggan's splendidly readable study sets itself two tasks, to demolish the idea of a centrally organised mafia and to reconstruct one of the Italian state's most determined efforts to destroy it, that made under fascism. Considerable light is shed on the southern problem by this vivid account of the obsessive anti-mafia drive mounted in the 1920s by the Prefect of Palermo Cesare Mori. With the fascist regime worried about its lack of success in the south, the mafia was a convenient excuse. Indeed, the radical Sicilian fascists saw the mafia as a criminal network at the service of the old elites. To their chagrin, the deeply conservative Mori, who had been a fierce opponent of the left as questore of Turin in 1917 and of the fascists in the Emilia in 1921, concentrated his efforts against the lower classes, going to some lengths to protect the local aristocracy. A resolute and violent man, 'with hair on his heart', Mori terrorised areas of the island as if they were enemy territory, mounting sieges and massive nocturnal round-ups, seizing hostages including women and children. The arrests ran into the thousands. After lengthy delays, mass trials were held at which severe miscarriages of justice were perpetrated. Mori was opposed by the local fascist leader Alfredo Cucco and later by the island's military commander, General Antonino Di Giorgio. He defeated both with flimsy charges of mafia connections. Mori was fortunate that his clash with Cucco coincided with Mussolini's push to domesticate the fascist party. However, with doubts arising that he had framed his enemies and with Mussolini anxious to capitalise on fascism's alleged triumph in exterminating the mafia, Mori was withdrawn. He had not crushed the mafia, so much as cowed part of the island. Sicilian criminal life was disrupted but not eradicated. Mafia activities were not reported only because officially they did not exist. Both Dr Duggan's understandable distaste for Mori's blanket repression and his debunking of the idea of a centralised mafia lead him to understate the reality of Sicilian violence. As he himself makes clear, there were higher levels of crime in Sicily than elsewhere in Italy. Even priests and children carried weapons. Aristocrats, lawyers and politicians extended their patronage (manutengolismo) to the speculative middle class leaseholders (gahelloti) who were often at the centre of a criminal group or cosca. They used thugs to run protection and extortion rackets, and impose monopolies in the cattle, fruit, fish and, in Palermo, building trades. For the Sicilian sociologist, Gaetano Mosca, the mafia was an informal network which linked these independent cosche. The harshness of rural poverty, the role played by private violence in maintaining the social order and the Sicilian code of silence, omerta, help explain how a mafia style of behaviour was rooted in the economic and cultural fabric of the island. That there was no centrally organised mafia and that Mori ruined innocent lives does not, however, mean that the mafia was an idea rather than a brutal daily reality. - See more at: http://www.historytoday.com/paul-preston/fascism-and-mafia#sthash.XUfvaRBA.dpuf

Sweden and my short isolation retreat

I landed in Copenhagen yesterday after a 3 hours delay (thank you Ryanair) and caught the train to Bromölla in the Skåne region in south of Sweden.

The weather and temperature are warmer than the UK although overcast. A couple of hours journey; I finally reached my destination and saw my friend that I hadn't seen in 2 years.

We had dinner and chatted for hours; it was nice to be able to do it face to face after 2 years of regular non-fb chats. 

This morning I went with her to school.
The sun is shining and weather is warm and dry.I have been trying to get closer to the lake but the factories block access to the shores, from that point at least.

I will try and get to the shores and snap some pictures.

Lunch at the Thai restaurant and then a walk around town, tonight we are going to visit another friend and his family, 3 kids + one on the way, partner and his 60 year old mother that speaks English,  thank God. But there will be drinking, Swedish style, I foresee a hangover tomorrow.

Will post more snippet later, I am trying to take  pictures with my DSLR instead of using my phone so more pics when I get back to UK.

Crossing the border Denmark/SwedenRandom people at Copenhagen Airport

And Carriage 23 to take me 'home'

***

The holiday was lovely, we visited my friend's ex partner and friend at his and his place with the kids.

I can now say that I am kids-proof!

I played with the two 5 year-olds and cuddled with the 10 months old one.

We visited them twice and it was fantastic.  I felt at home from the first moment I met them.

Sad to go back but looking forward to visit my 'swedish family' again soon.

A. is lovely and it was nice to talk endlessly again with a good friend. 

Who Killed Emiliano Zapata

Born on August 8, 1879, Anenecuilco, Mexico, Emiliano Zapata was a Mexican revolutionary and advocate of agrarianism who fought in guerrilla actions during the Mexican Revolution. He formed and commanded the Liberation Army of the South, an important revolutionary brigade, and his followers were known as Zapatistas. Zapata died on April 10, 1919.

Early Years

Born on August 8, 1879, Emiliano Zapata was orphaned at the age of 17. A revolutionary from an early age, in 1897 he was arrested because he took part in a protest by the peasants of his village against the hacienda (plantation) that had appropriated their lands. After he was pardoned, he continued to agitate among the peasants, and because of his rabble-rousing, he was subsequently drafted into the Mexican army. After serving for only six months, Zapata was discharged to a landowner to train his horses in Mexico City. In 1909 his leadership skills were already well known, and he was summoned to his village of birth, Anenecuilco, where he was elected as the village’s council board president.

Early Agrarian Battles

A man of the people, Emiliano Zapata became a leading figure in Anenecuilco, where his family had lived for many generations, and he became involved in the struggles of the local peasant farmers. There were many conflicts between villagers and landowners over the continual theft of village land, and in one instance, the landowners set an entire village on fire in response to peasant protests. Zapata managed to oversee the return of the land from some haciendas peacefully, but it was an ongoing struggle. At one point, after failed negotiations, Zapata and a group of peasants occupied by force the land that had been appropriated by the haciendas and distributed it among themselves.

During this time, and for many years to follow, Zapata continued to faithfully campaign for the rights of the villagers, using ancient title deeds to establish their claims to disputed land, and then pressuring the governor of the region to act. Finally, in the face of the glacial pace of governmental response and the clear favoritism toward the wealthy plantation owners, Zapata started to use force, simply taking over the disputed land and distributing it as he saw fit.

The Revolution Begins

Around this time, Mexican president Porfirio Díaz was being threatened by the candidacy of Francisco Madero, who had lost the 1910 election to Díaz but had subsequently fled the country, declared himself president and then returned to confront Díaz.

In Madero, Zapata saw an opportunity to promote land reform in Mexico, and he made a quiet alliance with Madero. Zapata was wary about Madero, but he cooperated once Madero made promises about land reform, the only issue Zapata truly cared about.

In 1910, Zapata joined Madero’s campaign against President Díaz, taking on an important role as the general of the Ejército Libertador del Sur (Liberation Army of the South). Zapata’s army captured Cuautla after a six-day battle in May 1911, a clear indication that Díaz’s grasp on power was tenuous at best. The battle was described as "six of the most terrible days of battle in the whole Revolution,” and it was clearly a clarion call to the Zapatistas. When Díaz’s men withdrew, Zapata’s forces took control of the town. This defeat, paired with defeat at the First Battle of Ciudad Juárez at the hands of Pancho Villa and Pascual Orozco, led Díaz to determine that his time was up. A week later, he resigned and headed to Europe, leaving behind a provisional president.

Francisco Madero entered Mexico City in victory, and Zapata met him there to ask him to exert pressure on the provisional president to return misappropriated land to its original landowners, again returning to the cause most deeply embedded in his heart.

Madero insisted on the disarmament of Zapata’s guerrillas and offered Zapata money to buy land if he could ensure the disarmament. Zapata rejected the offer but began to disarm his forces regardless. He soon stopped the process, however, when the provisional government sent the military to confront the guerrillas.

The Revolution Deepens: The Plan of Ayala

Following Zapata’s rebuff of Madero’s offer, relations between the two soured, and in the summer of 1911, Madero appointed a governor who supported plantation owners’ rights over those of the peasant farmers, angering Zapata. Attempts at compromise between the two fell flat in November 1911, days after Madero became president of Mexico, and Zapata fled to the mountains.

Disillusioned with Madero’s stances on land ownership and his post-revolutionary stances generally, Zapata prepared the Plan of Ayala, which declared Madero incapable of fulfilling the initial and ongoing goals of the revolution.

With the Plan of Ayala, the Revolution was renewed, this time with Madero in its sights instead of Díaz. The Plan promised to appoint a provisional president until there could be legitimate elections and pledged to buy back a third of the (stolen) land area held by the haciendas and return it to the farmers. Any hacienda that refused to accept this plan would have their lands taken, without recompense. Zapata also adopted the slogan "Tierra y Libertad" ("Land and Liberty").

With Zapata’s Revolution an ongoing event, in 1913 General Victoriano Huerta assassinated Francisco Madero and took control of the country. Huerta soon approached Zapata, offering to unite their troops, but Zapata rejected Huerta's offer.

This prevented Huerta from sending his troops to confront the guerrillas of the north, who, under the direction of Venustiano Carranza, had organized a new army, led by Pancho Villa, to defeat him. Huerta was then forced to leave the country in July 1914.

source: http://www.biography.com/people/emiliano-zapata-9540356

Viva Zapata! 1952: http://vhd.me/qTwu

American Grindhouse Documentary

The salacious and uproarious AMERICAN GRINDHOUSE explores the hidden history of the exploitation film, those popular purveyors of cheap sex and violence which leapt from the tents of carnie sideshows into features like FREAKS, and spawned diverse offshoots including scare films, horror, sexploitation and roughies. Featuring interviews with famous grindhouse directors and fanatics, this is the most comprehensive documentary ever made on these masterpieces of the lowbrow.

Love

"The ways of love are all the same, whether infantile, childish, sexual, tender, sadistic, erotic, or whispered. It's simply a question of understanding, of understanding oneself above all: in bed, in broad daylight, madly or not at all, in shadow, in sunlight, in despair or at table. Otherwise, it's no use. Any of it. And the little time we have left for living, while we're still alive, in other words capable of giving pleasure, and the little time we have left for thinking (or pretending to) in this vast, mindless cacophony that daily life has become, ineluctable, uncontrollable, and truly unacceptable to any civilized person, we must make absolutely certain that we share."


Francoise Sagan "Des bleux a l'ame (Scars on the soul)

Vladimir Mayakovsky

I suddenly smeared the weekday map

splashing paint from a glass;

On a plate of aspic

I revealed

the ocean’s slanted cheek.

On the scales of a tin fish

I read the summons of new lips.

And you

could you perform

a nocturne on a drainpipe flute?