through europe

On the 2nd December 2010 FIFA announced the country that will host the FIFA World Cup in 2018. This may seem an unusual place to start to unravel the trends of power - but the reaction to this announcement and to the beginning of the release of 251,287 US diplomatic cables by Wikileaks, gives a hint of a shift in attitudes towards democracy and corruption.

There’s a haunting image that’s grabbed my attention like no other. It’s been circulated frantically and has appeared on countless newspapers and websites in the past weeks. Its’ focal point is unclear, the colours are faint and muddy, the lens has bloated the centre of the frame, distorting the portrait. The image undercuts our current habits as viewers, used to a form of direct unequivocal communication, to clear rhetorical symbolism: the protester high atop the vandalized police van, the politician admonishing, protected by a forest of microphones, the young hooded student, arm high and tense, throwing an object overhead; something in this photograph resonates beyond this imaginific regurgitation of 68, yet it is happening now, amidst the rest of the rhetorical scenarios.

I'll be brief  and almost telegraphic, because I have many things to say and little time.

1. Let's have a look at the landscape at the end of the year 2010. The Obama hope has dissolved, and the European crisis has broken out. A new Logic has been installed at the heart of the European life, since the financial crisis of Greece: Angela Merkel, Nicholas Sarkozy and Jean-Claude Trichet resolved that European society has to sacrifice its current levels of life, public school system, its civility, in order to pay the debts accumulated by the financial elite.

Quasi telegrafico. Molte cose da dire poco tempo.

1. Uno sguardo al panorama alla fine del primo decennio. La speranza Obama si dissolve, e scoppia la crisi europea. Una nuova logica si istalla al cuore della vita europea, a partire dalla crisi finanziaria greca: Merkel Sarkozy e Trichet hanno deciso che la società europea deve sacrificare il suo attuale livello di vita, il sistema della scuola pubblica, la sua civiltà, per poter pagare i debiti accumulati dall’elite finanziaria.

The arrest of Julian Assange sounds the death knell for Western democracy. They caught him, they cut off the wires and the funds. But what did this man exactly do? Simply demonstrate the power of the Network. Western authorities, despite their disdain for Chinese Censorship, behave exactly like Hu Jintao as soon as the power of the networks threatens to introduce Glasnost, to suggest any form of transparency or even, perhaps, expose the realities of power.