Videoblog

The day I became a robot

According to the blurb on YouTube, this is an “experiment in virtual agent news production”. Watch and enjoy! The original on which it is based can be found here.

‘Spanish Robin Hood’ continues march across Andalucía

Fascinating to see the way the economic crisis in southern Europe is
giving new life to parties and politicians who, until just a few
months ago were on the fringes of the debate … Syriza and Alexis
Tsipras in Greece, Beppe Grillo and the Five Star Movement in Italy,
and now Juan Manuel Sánchez Gordillo, the mayor of Marinaleda in Spain
whom I must have interviewed for the first time back in the 1970s when
he was campaigning for the rights of Andalusia’s downtrodden
day-labourers, the ‘jornaleros’. There’s more on him in this report by
my Guardian colleague, Giles Tremlett,
and for a video of the sacking of the supermarket:
http://gawker.com/juan-manuel-sanchez-gordillo/

Aerial political warfare

Applause as a plane flies over holidaymakers on the Adriatic Riviera trailing a banner that reads “Don’t come back, Silvio. Thank you”: a plea directed at Italy’s former (and future?) Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi.

The stunt was funded collectively by members of a Facebook group in response to a similar aerial banner commissioned the previous week by one of Berlusconi’s senators, that read “Come back Silvio” (See photos here: http://www.repubblica.it/cronaca/2012/08/25/foto/silvio_la_sfida_nel_cielo_torna_non_tornare_-41464301/1/).

“Greetings to the guests of the state”

Controversial footage of Raffaello, the Neapolitan singer who recorded the opening theme of Gomorrah (http://youtu.be/lqTfiJcTy14), at a concert in Palermo.

Prompted by members of the audience, he first of all (at 0.17″) relays greetings to “the guests of the State”, (i.e. the inmates of its prisons), and provokes ecstatic applause from the crowd. Then (at 2.00″), he sends “thanks and best wishes” to Luigi Abbate, who may  — or may not — be ‘Ginu ‘u mitra’  (Gino the machine gun), alleged ‘godfather’ of the Kalsa distict in which the concert was held.

Corriere del Mezzogiorno (http://corrieredelmezzogiorno.corriere.it/napoli/notizie/cronaca/2012/25-luglio-2012/bacione-forte-gino-abbate-raffaello-saluta-boss-palco-palermitano-2011168309726.shtml) had no doubts about who it was.