The private and public behaviour of Italy’s prime minister is under intense scrutiny. A leading Italian newspaper has asked him for an explanation. Geoff Andrews adds to its list of queries with ten of his own.

Dear Signor Berlusconi,

It is now nearly three weeks since La Repubblica published its list of ten questions in connection with your relationship to Noemi Letizia. You have chosen not to answer their questions, claiming that the newspaper's initiative was part of a campaign organised by the left. In the weeks since, you have accused La Repubblica of orchestrating a left-wing plot that has extended to the international press, drawing in the Times and the Economist, amongst others. In this period you have also described the Italian parliament as "useless" and judges as being fuelled by "hatred" and "jealousy".

It is now only days before the European elections to be held across the European Union's member-states on 4-7 June 2009, with Italy's on 6-7 June; these will be followed by Italy's hosting of the G8 summit in L'Aquila on 8-10 July. Your response has once again raised questions of wider public interest over your performance as Italian prime minister. I would like to put these further ten questions to you now.

1) You have made many criticisms of the role of the press in this case, despite the fact that Il Giornale (a paper owned by your family), as well as other newspapers, have regularly defended your conduct. Few prime ministers have that privilege, yet you persist in saying that the press is against you. What is your understanding, then, of a free press? For example, would you put any conditions on criticisms the press may make of the prime minister?

2) You accused La Repubblica of "exploiting private matters for political ends". Yet, the "public" and "private" boundaries often overlap in your political life, notably through your own vast private ownership of daily newspapers and several TV stations, while you simultaneously wield political power. You agreed to resolve this "conflict of interests" within 100 days of taking office, yet nothing has been done. There are wide criticisms of this situation throughout Europe. Why have you not resolved this "conflict of interests" and do you not think it presents a problem for Italian democracy?

3) On 21 May 2009, you described the Italian parliament as "useless", suggesting that only 100 MPs were needed to get the work done. At the same time, you claim that the Italian people are "with you". Is your view, then, that the Italian electorate would happily give you more power to "get things done" more efficiently?

4) You have compared the role of government to that of a private company, and contrasted legislators unfavourably with entrepreneurs. Do you understand the difference between being a successful salesman and a successful statesman?

5) On 19 May, an Italian court ruled that you had bribed your British lawyer, David Mills, by paying $600,000 to give false testimony on your behalf. Mills was convicted in February, though you have been protected by parliamentary-immunity legislation passed by your government. You have said that you will be making a statement to parliament on the matter "as soon as you have time", but not before the European elections. Why is that and when will the statement be made?

6) In addition to your criticisms of the Italian parliament, you regularly attack Italian judges for their bias and "insanity". You have recently faced criticism for undermining constitutional procedures, leading to conflict with the president of the Italian republic, Giorgio Napolitano, most recently in the right-to-die case of Eluana Englaro. It has been claimed that you yourself have high aspirations to succeed Napolitano. Can you confirm your intention to become president of the republic and what would you bring to the role?

7) In July 2009 you will be hosting a G8 summit in L'Aquila. At previous summits and international gatherings of world leaders, you have had some communication problems with some of your peers. Do you envisage any more this year?

8) What, in your view, are your greatest achievements as Italian prime minister?

9) During the last few weeks you have denied being directly involved in the selection of TV showgirls as parliamentary candidates for your party, even though your own newspaper Il Giornale has admitted as much. Can you clarify whether you have or you have not?

10) Finally, why does Noemi Letizia, your 18-year-old friend in Naples, call you "Papi"?

Yours sincerely,

Geoff Andrews

From OpenDemocracy.

Good news everyone! I took some time to make this blog a little bit more usable, as well as safe. I made quite a lot of improvements, here's a list of the most significant ones.

Dupal 6.12

I've been running Drupal 5 for quite some time, and I've meaning to upgrade to Drupal 6 (version 12) since I had the chance to work with it and see the huge improvements the community has made to this amazing Open Source Project. It's now faster to load, better looking (improved theming), more secure, easier to use, supports OpenID in its core, and a lot of other small goodies that make it irresistible. It's the most important update, as well as the least noticeable by the end user.

Facebook Connect

See that nice facebook icon, just down the login form? This module allows you to login on my blog using your Facebook login and password. Sweet.

• After logging through Facebook Connect, you can create a local account
• You can choose which of your Facebook public information you want to import and synchronize with your local account, following Facebook Connect API Terms of use
• You can see which of your Facebook friends already have an account on this blog
• You can publish a customizable message on your Facebook feed announcing that your have created an account here
• You can invite your Facebook friends to create an account here

For this purpose I'm using the excellent Facebook Connect drupal module.

I've been meaning to write a serious article the RIAA, the music industry, and their futile and utterly nonsensical war against the music fans. I regularly read torrentfreak, the Creative Commons blog and i followed very closely the Nine Inch Nails new business model. I finally found an almost exhaustive article that I can say it fairly represents the past, the present and the future of the music industry as we know it. A slow and painful death, with the record labels burning to the ground, and we'll all dance around the fire, in feast.

This is a copy of the original article "When pigs fly: the death of Oink, the birth of dissent, and a brief history of record industry suicide" by Demonbaby, a.k.a. Rob Sheridan, Nine Inch Nails' art director, photographer, and video editor.

[Currently Listening To: Music I Didn't Pay For]

For quite a long time I've been intending to post some sort of commentary on the music industry - piracy, distribution, morality, those types of things. I've thought about it many times, but never gone through with it, because the issue is such a broad, messy one - such a difficult thing to address fairly and compactly. I knew it would result in a rambly, unfocused commentary, and my exact opinion has teetered back and forth quite a bit over the years anyway. But on Monday, when I woke up to the news that Oink, the world famous torrent site and mecca for music-lovers everywhere, had been shut down by international police and various anti-piracy groups, I knew it was finally time to try and organize my thoughts on this huge, sticky, important issue.

True.

I report verbatim an article from the standblog which represents perfectly what I think is the future of video and how should the web be: Open Source, open minded, multiplatform, easy, fast and cool.

For years, digital video has been soaring, just like still digital images 15 years earlier. It's now easy to capture video, editing it is now possible thanks to user-friendly applications and with broadband becoming more common, the pipes are now big enough to download video. The only caveat is that Web browsers have not evolved over time to include video, because the dominant browser vendor had little reason to invest in it. Proprietary plug-ins such as Flash, QuickTime or Windows Media have been until now the only way for Web developers to include video in their Web application. Unfortunately, resorting to proprietary plug-ins and patented codecs has drawbacks.