COPING On march 10th in Italy the red zone has been extended to the entire national territory. An unprecedented measure made necessary by the out-of-control evolution and expansion of the Codiv 19 virus on the national territory, transforming Italy into the epicentre of an unknown epidemic. My family and I, who were in the mountains trying to turn the closure of the schools into an opportunity to give a little holiday to the girls, immediately returned home to Rome where we were trapped. The unstoppable and sudden advance of the restrictions soon ended up preventing any kind of movement and any kind of outdoor activities, especially for children. My 6-year-old daughter, in her first year of primary school, was snatched away from teaching at a fundamental moment in her education, turning us parents into teachers, responsible for teaching her how to read and write. While we decided to seize this imposition as a valuable opportunity for union in the family, outside the home the instrument of social distancing combined with the direct consequence of economic disaster is causing mistrust and fear.

Gaza has been isolated for about eight years now, as a result of the blockade imposed by Israel. But it is a land so tiny and poor of resources, that it remains totally dependent from the “exterior,” even just to feed its population. The main resource for survival, water, makes no exception. In the past, the underground was the primary source for drinking water, but years ago the over-exploited coastal aquifer started absorbing water from the polluted sea, contaminating the little fresh water remained intact. On this issue, the United Nation released a dramatic report in the summer of 2012, which indicated 2020 as the point of no return. At that time all the underground water in Gaza would be contaminated by chemicals, nitrates and chloride, since long enough to loose the aquifer forever. By the same year, population will increase by 500,000, multiplying the need for purified water. But desalination cannot be considered a long-term solution because the filtering system produces something very close to distilled water, which isn’t appropriate for human consumption, as it sucks precious minerals from the body tissues. Nevertheless, at present, municipalities are unable to provide drinking water to their citizens, so people have to buy it privately. Filtered water may cost up to 4,5 dollars for cubic meter, and of course barely a few can afford to buy it. These are emergency measures, and there’s something big missing in the equation. Power, electricity, fuels. After Protective Edge operation on the summer of 2014, many water and electricity infrastructures were severely damaged, causing a serious emergency in the immediate aftermath. Almost one year later, the path to recovery has still to be found. In 2012, when UN report was released, Gazians were already struggling to secure a decent living. Of the 1.8 million people living in Gaza nearly two-thirds are dependent on aid in some form or another. In this economic disaster, sanitation becomes a real, huge issue for everybody. Awareness is spreading among people who are starting to be concerned for their health. In absence of treatment, sewage runs a very similar circle to water, and, at the end of it, the mix ends up being pumped back to everybody’s tap. In absence of huge and very exceptional investments this process can’t be broken. Living standards are obviously facing fast and constant degradation. And it is quite disappointing to notice the laws of market and greed seem prevailing in the Strip, as everywhere else. Even here, where almost no one can enter. Even here, where all the differences are flattened by common, very poor, unhuman conditions. Even here, where passionate solidarity should be a must for all. Gazians are just like living deads walking toward what now seems to be an inevitable destiny of misery. Something has to change, forcefully and rapidly, otherwise all will be lost. The survival a generation, the youngest one, the most numerous, fragile and exposed, is under threat.

In Cairo, Egypt, hundreds of people have died in the recent clashes since President Mohamed Morsi, from the Muslim Brotherhood, was ousted by the army on the 3rd of July. Mohamed Morsi supporters, have condemned what they call a “military coup”, while the anti-Morsi activists simply follow the large popular rally of the recent months. Further to the many demonstrations in the district of Ramsis and around Rabaa square, in which the police, the anti-Morsli and the supporters of the the Muslim Brotherhood clashed; 7 people were killed and more than 261 injured. The consequences might not be as serious as they were prior to Morsi being ousted, yet the events of the 15th and 16th of July are the first violent confrontations involving pro-Morsi since weeks.

The Land of Fires is conventionally 1076 km2 triangular shaped area, covering the surface between Naples and Caserta province... But in real, it is (still) much wider. Once, this region was the land that made famous the mediterranean diet and lifestyle as one of the healthiest in the world, a model for the others, a place where the quality of products and food was well renowned far abroad. Today farmers are migrating, defeated by consumer’s distrust and legal troubles. Here, thousands of landfills, among legals and illegals, are concentrated in an area that used to be one of the most fertile of Europe. During the past three decades at least, Camorra had buried tens of millions of tons of industrial, toxic and radioactive waste, coming from northern Italy and Europe, under regional authorities and central government full time blind eye and making it a clear example of the effects that the historical agreement between the government and Mafia organizations. In late 2013, a report of the Parliamentary Inquiry Commission on this case, including former Camorra boss Carmine Schiavone declarations, got declassified opening the Pandora's box of this criminal deadly traffic, after more than 15 years of silence. In this records, confirmed by well known epidemiologists and geologists, Schiavone declared that this land will soon start facing an holocaust like event with “all dying by cancer “, as we reach the point when this toxic materials will massively infiltrate the aquifers, contaminating a major portion of Campania's underground drinking water resources. According to experts the constant worsening of the situation will have a maximum peak in 50 years by now, with the possible evacuation of the region as a consequence of living standards degradation. So even in the perspective that the worst has still to come, people of every age, especially children, are already in the middle of a cancer epidemic. After having kept aside this reality as long as possible, now Government indifference, and sometime shameless denial about the magnitude of this issue, are facing the rising of a long term resistance by the people. A growing network of well organized committees are getting on streets asking the Government for a fast and transparent solution to be found and discussed. So far, aside all the promises, we can just notify that almost nothing, or very little, have been done on this direction.

HUMAN ERROR There is a revolution coming just behind the corner, a silent wind for change blowing, something radical but still barely visible. What just few years ago was simply considered as science fiction is now getting very real because of two simultaneous scientific revolutions. If on the one hand the advances in computer science are making available the necessary computing power on the other hand the advances in brain science are giving a broader understanding in order to control the human biological algorithm. Soon as in the next 5 or 10 years we could see more change in society than in the last 10.000 or even more. Recent brakethroughs in Machine Learning shown us that we might be much closed do General Artificial Intelligence than we thought just few years ago. Such changes are not limited to the so called fourth industrial revolution, but they may change the Human/Machine paradigm forever.

COVID_19 THE FIRST WESTERN OUTBREAK Italy was the first country to face an outbreak of Coronavirus in the west. On 10 March 2020, the country enters LockDown to the disbelief of its inhabitants as well as all European citizens. Italy will soon become a laboratory on a national scale, tracing the guidelines for what will later become the health response on a global scale. Since the beginning of the pandemic, the government led by Giuseppe Conte does not seem to have been able to really meet the needs of a country largely based on the restaurant and tourism industry and to find a formula to prevent the gradual economic collapse of the country.

NO GREEN PASS On 15 October, after a series of strict implementations in the social life of citizens, the green pass also becomes compulsory to access the workplace, both public and private. A transversal measure that applies no exceptions whatsoever, whether you work from home or in agriculture. The issue of the Green Pass permit is conditional on vaccination against Covid-19 (valid for 12 months), recovery from the disease (valid for 6 months) or a diagnostic swab (valid for 48/72 hours). The implementation of this measure is considered by many to be unconstitutional because of its basic incompatibility with Article 1 of the Italian Constitution and the discrimination it causes against a section of the population estimated to be at least 15 million. As a result of the implementation of this decree law, Italy has been overwhelmed by a wave of dissent that has few historical precedents. Even the army unions found themselves in public disagreement with this measure, leading to the first armed forces strike the republic has ever seen. The remonstrance carried out by the dockers of Trieste with a five-day strike and blockade of port activities took centre stage in the news, inspiring an equal number of strikes and blockades in the port cities of Genoa, Ancona, Ravenna and Gioia Tauro. At the dawn of the evacuation by the police in riot gear and carried out with all the necessary provisions, water cannons, tear gas and batons in the face of a protest that had taken the form of a sit-in, the determination of the fringes of the population bearing these grievances continued to react in a compact and supportive manner, increasingly expanding the front of the protest at the national level. The government, in opposition, granted a meeting with the Trieste dockers on Saturday 23 October, which was attended, on behalf of the executive, by the Minister of Agriculture Stefano Patuanelli, who offered to open a direct channel with the government to bring the dockers' grievances to the Chamber. The relentless widening of the front of dissent seems to presage a season of long duration and not easy to resolve.

TO GIVE AGAIN THE LIGHT The Mali is the fourth poor country in the world. In this region, a lot of factors acclimatizes them and genetic, two million persons render blind people on twelve million inhabitants. The strong light and the polluted waters of the Niger river where the persons wash themselves are only some of these aspects. In this context of extreme uneasiness and need, a humanitarian initiative of the Air Force becomes part, helped from equipe surgical ophthalmic of the Fate bene Fratelli and from the AFMAL. The mission in its seventh edition of December 2007, has carried caught up the target of more than 700operations. Often in Mali, the blind persons accompany to therefore sayings children guide, that they can be taken in family or buys. In this context to render blind person independent does mean to free also the child guide who would accompany it for all the life. This mission takes the name "To give again the Light"

A quiet place is what we are all looking for, a place where feel good and safe, sometime is just an immaginary one. Green Bank instead is real and a very small town rising in the middle of the so called "National Radio Quiet Zone", a huge squared area of approximately 10.000 square miles located prevalently in West Virginia, where since the early 50s' all kind of electromagnetic radiation is banned. The reason for it is to protect and keep safe the observations produced by the Green Bank Telecope (GBT) hearing at the deepest possible space and trying to understand the secrets of the universe, included the possibility of finding an intteligent form of alien life. Time passing by this strange scenario of contrasts between the advanced science used at the observatory and the almost absence of modernity all around it has gained the curiosity of the media, allowing the world to better know about this place. Thanks to the chronicles Green Bank has soon become the new Mecca for many people claiming to be affected by Electro Hiper Sesitivity, anable of living their lives among technology and especially wireless technology which commonly fully permeates every corner of our Hyperconnected societies. Since then Electo Sensitive people from all around the world is coming to visit and to understend if this might be their (so bad wanted) quiet place. They come invited by some of the members of a small community of Electro Sensitives enstablished starting 10 years before, a community adding members every year. They feel under attack, alarmed by the espantion and proliferation of these "possibly" harmfull technologies, uncapable of living normally when immerse in the Soup, as how they call the outside world where we all are surrounded and flowed with by Electo Magnetic Frequences. They are refugees of the modern world, struck from their own lives and families, sometime runned here within 24 hours after coming to know about this place. They call themselves Canaries, here like in a mine risking their lives to tell us about an invisible danger and give us advises from the world of tomorrow.

The Black Tide (Target Killings in Karachi) Since 2007, there is a never ending war within Karachi. The 18 million people city is overpopulated and divided in two by the two main ethnic groups that refers to the two main political parties in Karachi. The Urdu ethnic group and the Pashtun ethnic group are involved in a never ending fight for the domain and the political leadership in the city. Karachi former political capital of the country is still the trade and financial capital of Pakistan today. Who is in power in the city, represent a fundamental allie for any political party that wants to prevail in the political elections. Since a long time and till now the MQM party, which main members belong to the Urdu speaking ethnic group, is leader in the city. The opposition main party is the ANP party, and belongs to the Pashtun ethic group. MQM accuse ANP to call Pashtun people from the frontier provinces in order to increase their number, grab the governmental lands and as direct consequences of this two policies is also accused to dangerously increase the already high overpopulation in the city. MQM on the other hand is accused by ANP to produce fake results in the elections and to be a terroristic organisation that maintain his power with a systematic spread of violence. This are the main political groups, but in this silent war, all the parties are involved. In 2010 the number of deaths that this fight for the political domain in the city has produced is approaching the numbers that is produced by any other more conventional war. At least 1200 people have been killed just in Karachi since the beginning of 2010, and a number of killings happening in September have increased the violence to a level rarely seen before. The common people is deeply scared and they would the army intervention in the city to stop this massacre, and to feel more safe to move around. The reality is that nobody, from the local to the national government, looks really intentioned to stop the violence. Everybody has big interests to obtain or maintain the leadership, rising the point to become an international affair. On September 16, MQM leader Imran Farook, residing in London, has been brutally assassinated in front of his house and in Karachi as a consequence of this act, a new ruthless tide of killings has begun.

THE LASHKARS The name Lashkars goes back to the origins of Islam, historically they are tribal warriors, organized to defend Islam by fighting against infidels and invaders. After the success of the military operation launched by the Pakistani army in May 2009 to expel the Taliban regime established in Malakand division, in the SWAT district on the border with Afghanistan, the Pakistani government approved the deployment of local tribal elements to fight and expel all Taliban militants who had managed to find safe hiding places. Generally nowadays Lashkars are a traditional Tribal Militia, whose formation depends on the need to fulfill specific objectives. The formation of tribal militias is not a novelty in the history of the province of FATA (Federally Administrated Tribal Areas), but given the positive results it has been applied also in the SWAT Valley. It is here that they play, especially thanks to their deployment on the territory and with the assiduous activity of night patrols, a key role against the possible infiltration of extremists and Islamist militants. Looking across the border, this self-organized civilian militia is also a vivid example of how the anti-insurgency strategy practiced by the United States in Afghanistan could be successful. The Lashkars are all men, who in their civilian lives often play the role of breadwinner, in many cases representing the only source of livelihood for their loved ones. They accept their role without the guarantee of any economic compensation for their families in case of death during their call to arms. They are devout and strongly religious people.