mercoledì, novembre 29, 2006
[Dicembre 2006: Claudio Lolli al Casinò, la vecchia piccola borghesia in piazza]
# posted by diderot @ 8:54 PM 10 comments 
"DA LEGGERE SUBITO, PER GLI AMICI DELLA RIVOLUZIONE ITALIANA, MA PIU' ANCORA PER I NOSTRI NEMICI, COMPRESI QUELLI INTERNI AL BLOG"
# posted by diderot @ 8:52 PM 2 comments
lunedì, novembre 20, 2006
Tratto da "L'eco del Tigri" del 9/4/2053: "Alla prima presentazione de "La grande impostura" irrompono una ventina di giovani con striscioni e magliette raffiguranti l'effigie di Christopher Hitchens, occupano la sala, cantano canzoni americane. (...) "Un libro infame per fare soldi sulle spalle della Liberazione!" accusano (...)".
# posted by diderot @ 4:27 PM 4 comments
domenica, novembre 19, 2006
via della Pace, Grimaldi Superiore
# posted by diderot @ 1:17 PM 0 comments
giovedì, novembre 16, 2006
PROHIBITION AND DRUGS
by Milton Friedman (Newsweek, May 1, 1972)
"The reign of tears is over. The slums will soon be only a memory. We will turn our prisons into factories and our jails into storehouses and corncribs. Men will walk upright now, women will smile, and the children will laugh. Hell will be forever for rent."
That is how Billy Sunday, the noted evangelist and leading crusader against Demon Rum, greeted the onset of Prohibition in early 1920. We know now how tragically his hopes were doomed. New prisons and jails had to be built to house the criminals spawned by converting the drinking of spirits into a crime against the state. Prohibition undermined respect for the law, corrupted the minions of the law, created a decadent moral climate-but did not stop the consumption of alcohol.
Despite this tragic object lesson, we seem bent on repeating precisely the same mistake in the handling of drugs.
ETHICS AND EXPEDIENCY
On ethical grounds, do we have the right to use the machinery of government to prevent an individual from becoming an alcoholic or a drug addict? For children, almost everyone would answer at least a qualified yes. But for responsible adults, I, for one, Would answer no. Reason with the potential addict, yes. Tell him the consequences, yes. Pray for and with him, yes. But I believe that we have no right to use force, directly or indirectly, to prevent a fellow man from committing suicide, let alone from drinking alcohol or taking drugs.
I readily grant that the ethical issue is difficult and that men of goodwill may well disagree. Fortunately, we need not resolve the ethical issue to agree on policy. Prohibition is an attempted cure that makes matters worse-for both the addict and the rest of us. Hence, even if you regard present policy toward drugs as ethically justified, considerations of expediency make that policy most unwise.
Consider first the addict. Legalizing drugs might increase the number of addicts, but it is not clear that it would. Forbidden fruit is attractive, particularly to the young. More important, many drug addicts are deliberately made by pushers, who give likely prospects their first few doses free. It pays the pusher to do so because, once hooked, the addict is a captive customer. If drugs were legaily available, any possible profit from such inhumane activity would disappear, since the addict could buy from the cheapest source.
Whatever happens to the number of addicts, the individual addict would clearly be far better off if drugs were legal. Today, drugs are box incredibly expensive and highly uncertain in quality. Addicts are driven to associate with criminals to get the drugs, become criminals themselves to finance the habit, and risk constant danger of death and disease.
Consider next the test of us. Here the situation is crystal clear. The harm to us from the addiction of others arises almost wholly from the fact that drugs are illegal. A recent cominittee of the American Bar Association estimated that addicts commit one-third to one-half of all street crime in the U.S. Legalize drugs, and street crime would drop dramatically. Moreover, addicts and pushers are not the only ones corrupted. Immense sums are at stake. It is inevitable that some relatively low-paid police and other government officials-and some high-paid ones as well-will succumb to the temptation to pick up easy money.
LAW AND ORDER
Legalizing drugs would simultaneously reduce the amount of crime and raise the quality of law enforcement. Can you conceive of any other measure that would accomplish so much to promote law and order?
But, you may say, must we accept defeat? Why not simply end the drug traffic? That is where experience under Prohibition is most relevant. We cannot end the drug traffic. We may be able to cut off opium from Turkey but there are innumerable other places where the opium poppy grows. With French cooperation, we may be able to make Marseilles an unhealthy place to manufacture heroin but there are innumerable other places where the simple manufacturing operations involved can be carried out. So long as large sums of money are involved-and they are bound to be if drugs are illegal-it is literally hopeless to expect to end the traffic or even to reduce seriously its scope. In drugs, as in other areas, persuasion and example are likely to be far more effective than the use of force to shape others in our image.
by Milton Friedman (Newsweek, May 1, 1972)
"The reign of tears is over. The slums will soon be only a memory. We will turn our prisons into factories and our jails into storehouses and corncribs. Men will walk upright now, women will smile, and the children will laugh. Hell will be forever for rent."
That is how Billy Sunday, the noted evangelist and leading crusader against Demon Rum, greeted the onset of Prohibition in early 1920. We know now how tragically his hopes were doomed. New prisons and jails had to be built to house the criminals spawned by converting the drinking of spirits into a crime against the state. Prohibition undermined respect for the law, corrupted the minions of the law, created a decadent moral climate-but did not stop the consumption of alcohol.
Despite this tragic object lesson, we seem bent on repeating precisely the same mistake in the handling of drugs.
ETHICS AND EXPEDIENCY
On ethical grounds, do we have the right to use the machinery of government to prevent an individual from becoming an alcoholic or a drug addict? For children, almost everyone would answer at least a qualified yes. But for responsible adults, I, for one, Would answer no. Reason with the potential addict, yes. Tell him the consequences, yes. Pray for and with him, yes. But I believe that we have no right to use force, directly or indirectly, to prevent a fellow man from committing suicide, let alone from drinking alcohol or taking drugs.
I readily grant that the ethical issue is difficult and that men of goodwill may well disagree. Fortunately, we need not resolve the ethical issue to agree on policy. Prohibition is an attempted cure that makes matters worse-for both the addict and the rest of us. Hence, even if you regard present policy toward drugs as ethically justified, considerations of expediency make that policy most unwise.
Consider first the addict. Legalizing drugs might increase the number of addicts, but it is not clear that it would. Forbidden fruit is attractive, particularly to the young. More important, many drug addicts are deliberately made by pushers, who give likely prospects their first few doses free. It pays the pusher to do so because, once hooked, the addict is a captive customer. If drugs were legaily available, any possible profit from such inhumane activity would disappear, since the addict could buy from the cheapest source.
Whatever happens to the number of addicts, the individual addict would clearly be far better off if drugs were legal. Today, drugs are box incredibly expensive and highly uncertain in quality. Addicts are driven to associate with criminals to get the drugs, become criminals themselves to finance the habit, and risk constant danger of death and disease.
Consider next the test of us. Here the situation is crystal clear. The harm to us from the addiction of others arises almost wholly from the fact that drugs are illegal. A recent cominittee of the American Bar Association estimated that addicts commit one-third to one-half of all street crime in the U.S. Legalize drugs, and street crime would drop dramatically. Moreover, addicts and pushers are not the only ones corrupted. Immense sums are at stake. It is inevitable that some relatively low-paid police and other government officials-and some high-paid ones as well-will succumb to the temptation to pick up easy money.
LAW AND ORDER
Legalizing drugs would simultaneously reduce the amount of crime and raise the quality of law enforcement. Can you conceive of any other measure that would accomplish so much to promote law and order?
But, you may say, must we accept defeat? Why not simply end the drug traffic? That is where experience under Prohibition is most relevant. We cannot end the drug traffic. We may be able to cut off opium from Turkey but there are innumerable other places where the opium poppy grows. With French cooperation, we may be able to make Marseilles an unhealthy place to manufacture heroin but there are innumerable other places where the simple manufacturing operations involved can be carried out. So long as large sums of money are involved-and they are bound to be if drugs are illegal-it is literally hopeless to expect to end the traffic or even to reduce seriously its scope. In drugs, as in other areas, persuasion and example are likely to be far more effective than the use of force to shape others in our image.
# posted by diderot @ 9:00 PM 3 comments
mercoledì, novembre 15, 2006
Cronaca vera
"Io non voglio idee stupide"
Fabri Fibra
"Il futuro non è più quello di una volta"
Paul Valéry
Fabri Fibra
"Il futuro non è più quello di una volta"
Paul Valéry
Sotto uno di quei copricapi un tempo riservati a pescatori e topi d'appartamento poi sdoganati presso il grande pubblico dalla buonanima di Alberto Castagna, in via Matteotti, o due sere dopo, declamando ignobili versi criptoleghisti e, peggio ancora, facendo uscire dalla propria bocca un "fondamentalmente": le manifestazioni divine molteplici e perturbanti, la fede di Nazarìn incrollabile.
La rassegna del Tenco, la trentunesima senza Franco Califano e la prima senza Roberto Vecchioni, ha visto durante la premiazione di Lucilla Galeazzi (miglior album dialettale) un anticipo di quanto già previsto su queste colonne, cioè un maggiore spazio di Giovanni Choukhadarian nella conduzione dello spettacolo nell'ottica di un superamento della conduzione singola che vede prevalere sul modello "Santoro" il modello "Sofri-Ferrara" però teodovoto.
Non sono mancati nomi già noti e questi non hanno deluso: il grande spettacolo di Caparezza, la garanzia di Samuele Bersani (canzoni dall'Aldiqua) e di Morgan (qualche Canzone dall'appartamento e un inedito), mentre su gli altri, più o meno conosciuti, sospendo il giudizio, salta troppo in mente l'articolo di Alberto Pezzotta sul numero 113 di Segnocinema a pagina 43 e non si capisce il motivo - o forse sì. Ci sono pure canzoni contro la guerra e quelle difficilmente sono belle canzoni. Poi c'è Patrizia Laquidara, senza dubbio il momento più alto dell'intera rassegna insieme col finale di Capossela. Non sono mancate le sorprese: l'apparizione di Stefano Bollani nel finale, un Ozzy Osbourne, già leader dei Black Sabbath e animatore di reality show, oggi blogger organico a Nazione indiana, con un repertorio che attraversa la tradizione americana, un nutrito manipolo di supporter della Rosa nel pugno e un bravissimo Rocco Papaleo che ricordavamo in sceneggiati militaristi (con sigla di Jovanotti, incredibile!) che rilegge Proust secondo una chiave vicina a quella del grande folksinger abruzzese Nduccio. Grande edizione nonostante lo sgomento nell'aver visto rimanere intentata l'opzione postmoderna Baustelle più Non voglio che Clara.
# posted by diderot @ 12:28 AM 4 comments
martedì, novembre 14, 2006
Referring Link : http://www.google.it/search?hl=it&q=cover bonnie e clyde testo&meta=Host Name: ip-addr-196.9.palazzochigi.it
Country: Italy
ISP: Presidenza Del Consiglio Dei Ministri
# posted by diderot @ 10:18 AM 1 comments
lunedì, novembre 13, 2006
"Blankets" di Craig Thompson
# posted by diderot @ 7:43 PM 1 comments
"Lunedì 13 novembre il musicista e scrittore Giovanni Lindo Ferretti sarà ospite unico di Ritanna Armeni e Giuliano Ferrara nella puntata in onda come di consueto dalle ore 20:30."
# posted by diderot @ 7:41 PM 2 comments
