After a multi-year long gestation, the City of Rome’s new museum information system - called SIMURT (Simurgh would have been nicer… especially if you’ve read Borges) - was finally presented this morning with bells and whistles on Capitol Hill.

I’ll get more details, soon, but from all I know up to now one can only wonder if it’s been born dead, or if it will be just another havoc causing mule…

Or did someone already hear of temporary joint ventures of non-specialised companies, providing engineering, infrastructures and software for knitting together a large network of museums? Who’s gonna provide maintenance and assistance, or major adjustments, once the joint venture won’t be such any longer?

Back yesterday from Venice Biennale’s previews (with an awful night-train…).

Interesting works from Latvia, Germany, and Rumania.

Didn’t make it to the Italian pavilion, though, which opened only yesterday. But being set up by Vittorio Sgarbi (Sgarbi-Shmarby, a.k.a. the howling tv-hound, for his ever-same exploits of aggression and four-letter-words naming on - especially Berlusclowni’s - broadcasts) I didn’t doubt it would most probably be a flop - which ilFatto today confirmed, by the way.

Mr. Sgarbi as the Italian pavilion curator at this year’s Biennale is the last little dirty present that Italy’s past Minister to the Cultural Heritage Sandro Bondi (a.k.a. Bondi-the-poet and poor-man-Bondi) gave to the country - a previous one being the weird monkey-business with Dragomira Bonev and the fake prize given to her in Venice last year.

“…Where are you running, hey? Listen to us for a sec and you’ll get everything straight: He’s the Cat, I am the Fox, we are in biz together - a business you can trust!…”

So sings Edoardo Bennato in a song, inspired by The Adventures of Pinocchio (Carlo Collodi, 1883)…

MAXXI (and MACRO) opening, at last: of museums and art, Italian Machiavellianism and other monkey-business…

On FT.com - http://bit.ly/91mkHR

Sandro Bondi, Italy’s Minister for the Cultural Heritage - though much better known for the passionate post-romantic love poems he’s dedicated to fellow members of Berlusconi’s Partito dell’Amore (i.e. Party of Love - “wow!”, would Cicciolina say, and will probably sue him for copyright infringement…) - announced over the weekend that he would skip Cannes, the world’s most prestigious film festival, because the program included “Draquila: Italy Trembles,” a documentary on the 2009 earthquake in L’Aquila.

No one is known having spared a tear for that.

However, the poor man is supposed to have added: “this film is propaganda!”, and THIS in turn provoked a roaring, widespread outburst of laughter, since the government he’s in - or is it a (monkey)business committee? - would make Goebbels and his Ministry of Propaganda look like a bunch of barefooted dilettantes.

“Draquila”, by Sabina Guzzanti, accuses Mr. Berlusconi’s government and its cronies of capitalizing on the post-earthquake reconstruction to misuse public money while trampling over urban planning restrictions and civil rights and manipulating public opinion. It also alleges that Mr. Berlusconi tried to transform the Civil Protection Agency, which was put in charge of the rescue and reconstruction efforts, into a multitentacled private enterprise with practically limitless powers, operating at his bidding.

This is the cover of my new book - “Contro il nuovo razzismo in Italia” (Fighting against new racist trends in Italy) - I’m waiting for the proof to arrive in a week or so (finished working at it last night)…

This is the book description: “In 1997 I released my research study on multiculturalism and the approach to multicultural issues in some English speaking areas: Canada, the US, and Great Britain. Proposals made included cultural mediation awareness in the public sector, comparative study of legislative and public information tools and solutions in other countries, and a lot of preventive planning. None of this has happened. Quite on the contrary, Italy is now plagued by a sudden rise in xenophobic aggressiveness, new rights-denying local regulations, and a brand new, outspokenly racist legislation. Fighting this trend is not only a political choice, it is also a civic duty. Publishing this 13 years old research can be a contribution in the right direction”.

So - why should I, a museum professional, orientalist, and photographer (all things needing hours, months, even years of devoted study and/or traveling) spare some time with this kind of “militant” work? “Perhaps”, as I wrote on the book’s back cover, “because it isn’t at all true that ideologies are dead, and also… because there’s a limit to tolerance” of the crooked setting and all the monkey-business prevailing in today’s Berlusconistan.

In this video, Marco Travaglio explains the setting of the fake-concrete business in Italy: names of defendants under trial, involved companies, helping hands, Mafia connections, political destinies of involved politicians (usually brilliant - some are now MPs, some became members in Regional Public Boards, some were sent to the EU Parliament…).

Marco Travaglio - to whom the German Association of Journalists awarded in 2009 its yearly prize for Freedom of the Press, describing him as a “brave and critical colleague […] exposing continually the attempts of Italian politicians, especially Silvio Berlusconi, to influence the media to their advantage and to negate critical reports” - speaks in Italian, but you should absolutely try to read some of his investigative reports, to have a real idea of what’s going on in Italy.