The Italianist

Today, a building in the ancient area of the Pompeii Village, in Southern Italy collapsed. Pompeii has escaped the eruptions of the Vesuvium, it has managed to survive bombs during WWII (accidentally dropped by the Americans). However, it could not resist after years and years of water infiltration into its buildings, due to general carelessness and lack of proper maintenance works. More on this can be found here and here.

I find it symbolic that the building in question used to be the House of the Gladiators. That was the place where gladiators would train and prepare to fight. What happens when such place ‘collapses’? Is that a message that there might be no reason, or no hope, to fight any more?

Luckily, the Italian Minister of Culture, Sandro Bondi, who is in charge of the care of Italy’s heritage, has immediately stood up to comment: “If it was my fault, I would resign!” This is Bondi, in an image that captures his relentless effort to assist the Prime Minister in Parliament:

In addition to his achievements as Minister of Culture, Bondi is well-known for reprimanding Quentin Tarantino, a snobbish movie director, when he had commented on the quality of Italian cinema in a not very friendly way.

Unofficial sources have suggested that the Government is already planning an emergency strategy to deal with this very serious incident that, according to the same sources, is believed to be part of a large plan of the Mafia. As this post is going into (world)press, a meeting is taking place at the Prime Minister’s residence in Palazzo Grazioli, in Rome, where the leader is working hard, with some colleagues, to solve the country’s problems. There are consistent rumours that Berlusconi is about to appoint one of his best men to direct a rescue plan, which allegedly is going to be called “Operation Bunga-Bunga”.

A worker from Albania died while at work in a building site in Northern Italy. He fell off one of the scaffoldings. In dealing with the compensation claims for the victim’s family, who lives still in Albania, a judge yesterday ruled that they should be given 1/10 of what is normally paid to the family of victims who are Italians.

That is correct: a judge ruled that the company that hired the Albanian, and that was responsible for his death due to scarce health and safety regulations, will have to compensate the victim’s family, but will have to pay less than what they would pay if the worker had been Italian. The reasoning behind this decision is that the worker was from an “economically depressed” country, and the compensation claim of the family should be adjusted to the economic reality of Albania. So, for example, if in Italy you need 1000 euro per month to survive, and in Albania 100 euro could be enough, then an Albanian should receive 1/10 of the compensation owed to an Italian.

We are talking about compensation for death. We are talking about people  who work as much as the Italians do. We are talking of people who are exposed to dangerous working conditions because their bosses do not want to waste their money in safety regulations. Now, a judge says that the parents of a worker at work should be paid less so to avoid the risk of “unjustified enrichment”. That’s true, look what these immigrants invent in order to steal our money: they come here and work 14 hours per day, then at some point they jump off the scaffolding so to extort money from their bosses. Damn you, immigrants!

Luckily, justice is in place to defend the country. A judge has finally established that there is no need, for building companies, to raise their safety standard by investing money in safety measures. Quite the contrary, they should simply hire more immigrants: they are much much cheaper to refund. And the boss’ one, I’m sure the judge would say, is a justified enrichment.

It follows, then, that if then worker, who dies in Italy, was from the Emirates, or from Monaco, or from the Vatican, then his/her family should be paid 10 times more to reflect the economic reality of the country of origin. So, maybe some priests are rejoicing at this legal ruling..

For more on “white deaths“, a typical Italian phenomenon, see here.

(blogs.panorama.it)

Sadly, this really happened last week.

The Vatican is always in the first row in the fight against the evil. We see it everyday, with the never-ending effort of its ministers and leaders to spread the word of the Lord and defend it against the vices lurking in contemporary society. The media are also employed to make sure that the good words reach the delicate ears of the faithful. Not accidentally is the Vatican in the heart of Italy, a country where its missionary aims do find a very fertile soil.

Like all the heroes fighting for justice, however, the Vatican too has had too face obstacles and criticisms in the face of recent scandals. One of those who strenuously rejected the allegations against the Church is bishop Giacomo Babini.

This is Don Giacomo:

In April 2010, he stood up to defend the Pope against the various accusations moved against him. Recognizing the gravity of the alleged scandal, Don Giacomo decided to speak up and to warn the public that a scary plot was in action to undermine the Vatican’s image. Giacomo’s shocking revelation about the plot can be found here.

Not only is Giacomo a bishop, he is also an emeritus bishop. When one is an emeritus bishop, whatever that means, it must also mean that he has to do more than a normal bishop. So Giacomo felt compelled to say more about the scandals in which the Vatican seems to be involved, particularly in connection to pedophilia, a long lasting element of the Vatican’s missionary practice. Don Giacomo has been interviewed a few days ago on a catholic blog (I do not mention the blog itself, but you can find a report about that interview on this more hit-deserving website). On that occasion, he was asked to explain his thoughts on the concept of homosexual priests.

Here is Giacomo’s telling answer (my catholic translation): “I already said, many times, that I consider homosexuality a real perversion against nature. Now, if these things [namely, being homosexual] are committed in such an obscene way by priests, then it would be the case that, as it once used to be done, we should send these priests to life jail. (…) Homosexuality in a priest, if translated into a depraved practice, is even worse than pedophilia. (…) As a priest, I would be more sympathetic with a paedophile who repents, and suffers for his condition, than with these vicious beings. I tell you more, if I had met a paedophile priest, I would not have denounced him, I would have tried to redeem him. A father, such as a bishop is for the priests, does not denounce his sons who do wrong and repent. However, with the vicious ones we must be intransigent.” Catholically added emphasis.

“Sorry kids, we need to redeem these guys. Now shut up and go back into that dark corner, until we come and get you again.” They must have removed this last bit from the interview..

A comment on the Vatican, from a world-wide famous, and recently deceased, Professor of the London School of Economics, can be found here.

In September this year, the Pope Benedict XVI will pay an official visit to UK. Everyone is waiting for this event with trepidation: both intellectuals and normal citizens discuss what should be done to give Ratzinger the best welcome. The Vatican itself does not hide its excitement about the visit.

Unfortunately, today things got a bit shaky. Courtesy of the Sunday Telegraph, it transpired that the UK Home Office may not be taking this visit too seriously. The issue hinges around a memo written after a brainstorming over the Ideal Pope’s visit. The whole story is here.

Surprisingly, this accident is receiving much more attention in UK than in Italy. The Italian websites mention this accident just in passing. This is partly justified by the fact that today, 25^th April, is an important date in Italy: it is the anniversary of the defeat of Fascism in 1945. The media attention has therefore focused on the celebrations taking place around the Belpaese. Among these, there has been a speech on TV by the Italian Prime Minister.

Now that elections are gone and that the TV can go back to talk politics, Berlusconi appeared on TV to tell citizens about the value of freedom, democracy, and…. the necessity to change the Italian Constitution. His argument highlighted the obvious strong connection between freedom, democracy, and himself becoming more and more powerful.

Thus,  little room is left, on Italian websites, to the Pope accident. The few articles I have found loosely refer to an incompetent with-collar in the Home Office, who has been ‘removed’ already. It  also seems to me that words have often been translated in a vaguely instrumental way (“silly” became “idiot”, “far-fetched” became “hard-core”, etc.). All they seem to do is to highlight that something very stupid, thus not worth discussing, happened somewehere in England..

Catholics may well feel upset by this memo: how can the British ask the Pope to do something against child abuse? And what’s this crazy thing, blessing gay couples! Gay people have no rights; in fact, they are a threat to society. Nonetheless, I think Catholics would have an interest in having the issue discussed on the Italian media. Actually, they may even ask the Pope to change plans and cancel the visit to UK. This would throw many academics and common people into dismal, true: yet, respect is respect.

Instead, the Italian media have remained quite silent on the Pope memo. No one wants to talk about it. Let’s forget it all happened, and let’s focus on freedom and democracy.

(Posters appeared today in the streets of Rome, celebrating Mussolini: “An idea vanishes, when no one is able to defend it anymore” . The phrase was meant to criticise the celebrations for the 25th of April)

A group of workers, for long at risk of being made redundant, have decided to occupy the building of a dismissed jail in Sardinia, on the Asinara Island, to draw public attention to their situation. For the last 4 months, workers at Vylnis, a chemical industry in Porto Torres, have been receiving redundancy payments. Agreements are still sought to sell Vylnis to (potential) international buyers. Yet, talks towards a deal are still a long way from being concluded. The workers, in the meantime, have been left with never-ending uncertainties about their future, and an overall salary of 800 euros over the last 3 months.

Thus, in a desperate attempt to bring public attention over their dramatic situation, 15 workers have spent the last 2 weeks ‘in exile’ on the Asinara Island, occupying the site of the dismissed prison that used to host mafia bosses.

“On TV L’Isola dei Famosi  (the Italian version of I’m a celebrity Get my Out of Here) is starting just now. Here, on the Asinara Island, we are starting L’Isola dei Cassintegrati (‘The Isle of the Redundant Workers‘), and we won’t leave until we’ll hear something about our future” – said one of the workers.

It is hard to get attention from the media, especially over such a long time as this case seems to require. These workers must also have been aware that, the now that L’Isola dei Famosi has started, the media will not be concerned with anything but which one, of the booby sluts taking part in the reality showm, will start crying because she does not like eating her own poo.  It is true, reality shows are made to absorb people’s minds as much as possible and to divert them from reality. So the workers on the Asinara Island are going to offer us the first real reality show. The message is clear: while, on TV, famous people go to exotic places, out there in the real world, the redundant workers go to prison islands:

A group on Facebook supports the workers’ case:  ”Unfortunately, the only real reality show”

An Italian judge has condemned three Google (ex)executives for violation of privacy laws. The case refers to the publication, in 2006, of a video showing four teenagers bullying a disabled fellow in a school in Turin. Details of the story can be found here.

The judge found the Google Three guilty of not removing the video immediately after it had been signalled. Google replied they actually did block it a few hours after being contacted by police. It is surprising that the judge chose to punish Google for ‘privacy’ violation, given that it is not a media like a TV channel, for example. The actual perpetrators of crime (the teenagers) have received 10-months community service punishment, and rightly so (they probably deserved more). But why punish Google? What’s its fault?? And why do these things happen in Italy for the first time?

Some suggestions can be found here, and some more here . One way to locate  this episode in a broader context is here.

The New Year starts for The Italianist in the same way in which 2009 ended, that is, with issues of colour. Today’s news report violent clashes in southern Italy among immigrant workers and the local population, in Rosarno, an anonymous village in Calabria with a population of about 15,000. It is interesting to see the way in which the italian media are covering the story, showing black men throwing stones at police, people screaming, white people saying ‘look what the Africans are doing to our town’, a white woman having a miscarriage because of the violence, and the usual articulated comments by italian politicians.

All the media seem quite keen to show what’s happening, but not so much to explain why it’s happening. Unsurprisingly, what we are offered is the government’s umpteenth lecture about the evils of immigration: we’ve let them in, they  don’t want to work and only bring problems. Let’s focus on colours: white is good, black is bad. And now, some hot girls dancing in a bikini. (This has been a brief tour into the mind of the average italian tv news director).

It doesn’t take a big effort, though, to understand a bit more about what the events in Calabria reveals. Yet, often even a small effort seems too big, and it’s easier to go back to the “white=good, black=bad, we’re white, we’re good, they’re black, they’re bad”.

It wouldn’t take much to find out that these black workers work 12 hours a day picking up oranges in the field, and are paid 20 euros per day. It wouldn’t take much to discover that they live in conditions which would be unbearable to anyone. This is how they sleep, where they wash, where they live sharing tiny barracks among 10-15 people:

It wouldn’t take too much to realise that these black workers live in conditions of slavery. Their bosses keep from their wages the costs of transport of goods, of the (scarce) food they offer, of accessing fresh drinkable water (see here, in italian). These immigrants receive no support for learning italian language, which leaves them unable to integrate with the local communities. Nonetheless, it is impressive to see that many of them are able to articulate their thoughts in a better italian than the locals.. The business they work for is run by local criminal organisations, which in Calabria is the ‘Ndrangheta, whose pockets get the profits of this enormous exploitation. The ’Ndrangheta enjoys this overly cheap working force, keeping them in the dark, unregulated, with no hope for future integration, and with the constant threat of being sent back home, of losing even this miserable wage. Or simply being killed.

It wouldn’t even take a great effort to see that the riots in Rosarno did not start out of the blue: the night before, two immigrants had been knee-capped by some people from a car; other two had been hit with bars and are now in hospital in serious conditions. No one knows who did this, but rumours have it that  the good whites, not the bad blacks, did it. During the riots, an immigrant has been run over (not by accident) by a car guided by a local. The locals can be rightly upset by havin their town, windows, cars smashed by this angry mob. But who is to be blamed for all this violence?

It wouldn’t take a big effort to realise that what’s happening in Calabria is the result of a more complicated reality than the simple “black=bad” equation. Unfortunately, and unsurprisingly, the Italian Government does not help making things clearer. Roberto Maroni, the Minister of Home Affairs, has ben prompt to condemn the violence taking place in Rosarno. Let’s remember his face, and his wonderful red glasses:

For Maroni, the problem is clear: we have shown too much tolerance towards the immigrants. Weve been overly generous in accepting these people, and now it’s time for a clampdown (again?) against illegal immigration. I wonder whether Maroni eats oranges, and asks himself where they come from. I wonder if his brain is crowded with images of arian people picking up oranges behind the corner of his house in Northern Italy, waving the italian flag.

But I have to admit that it takes some courage to say Italy has been too tolerant towards immigrants. See this.

Similar comments about the riots in Rosarno have been made by the famous Italian diplomats, the Minister of Defence, Ignazio La Russa (who looks quite happy with the clampdown)

and Maurizio Gasparri (who yet remains focused on thinking about women’s tits)

Once again, according to the italian media it turns out that the blacks are to be blamed. There’s no Ndrangheta, in Italy; there’s no slavery; there’s no racism. Last week, the Inter FC striker Mario Balotelli, who apart from being a great scorer, also happens to be black, expressed publicly his disgust for being constantly targeted by racist insults from the public when playing in Verona. The next day, the major of Verona (a member of the Northern League) hit back at Balotelli, labeling him “immature”.

Don’t abuse their tolerance, Mario.

A small town  in Northern Italy, Coccaglio, has been working towards realising a so-called ”White Christmas Plan“. The plan does not rely on singing Xmas songs under the snow, but on sending police door-to-door to look for illegal immigrants. The operation is due to end on 25th December, hence the ‘Christmas’ bit of the plan’s name.

The plan is part of a ‘security’ program enforced by Roberto Maroni, the Italian  Home Minister famous for his red glasses and his sympathy for ‘civic police’. Coccaglio’s councillor for safety, Claudio Abiendi, explains how “Christmas is not a celebration of hospitality, but of Christian tradition, of our identity”. Hence, the ‘White’ bit of the plan’s name.

This blog seems obsessed with Berlusconi. It is, in fact. I would rather write about other stuff, but the actuality still puts the Italian Prime Minister under the spotlight.

Berlusconi’s reluctance to deal with the courtroom is well-known. The blog has already devoted a few posts to describing his constant attempts to avoid charges, escape questions, delegitimize judges and decriminalize a series of once-upon-a-time illegal practices. Every time the judges make some threatening sound towards the PM, they face public uproar on the media. “Giustizia a orologeria!” (“Clockwork justice!”), is the mantra that all the members of PDL repeat constantly on TV and on the press. This aims to convey the warning that the judges – being (according to the PDL) communists- are constantly plotting against Berlusconi to make him fall. In the past days, more warnings for ‘clockwork justice’ are being sent over the italian media: the judges are getting too close again. We need to stop them! This time though, there is less reason to feel simply depressed, almost bored by another episode of the soap opera Berlusconi-Law. This time, a word has been mentioned, a word that is heavier than ‘corruption’, ‘anti-constitutional’, ‘immoral’. The word is mafia.

Look at this man:

His name is Marcello Dell’Utri. As the picture shows, he’s very good at climbing the ladder. To the point that, from his humble origins in Sicily, he’s climbed up, up, up till the Parliament, where he now sits in the Senate, with the PDL. For a very telling biographical sketch of Dell’Utri, click here. In 2004, Dell’Utri was condemned to 9 years imprisonment for complicity with the Mafia. The verdict was based on the following motivations:

“ The number of activities carried out by Dell’Utri, given his causal role in them, amounts to a concrete, voluntary, conscious, specific and precious contribution to the maintenance, consolidating and strengthening of Cosa Nostra, which was also offered the opportunity, still through Dell’Utri’s mediation, to get in touch with relevant economic and financial groups, thus being able to pursue its illicit ends, both the merely economic and the political ones“. (translated from it.wikipedia.org). Dell’Utri today is still a member of the Senate. He has appealed against the verdict.

This story starts from here. The trial against Dell’Utri is still running, and tomorrow an important witness is due to talk: the mafia boss Gaspare Spatuzza. Spatuzza is facing a life sentence for the killing of father Pino Puglisi, a priest who was preaching against the mafia. Also, he has been sentenced to life for being the material executor of the terrorist attack in Florence, on 27th May 1993, in which a whole family died and more than 40 people were injured. That happened during the years 1992-1993, when the mafia carried out a series of dramatic attacks in Italy.

On 23rd May 1992, Cosa Nostra blew up an entire chunk of a motorway, to kill the judge  Giuseppe Falcone. Look at what they did:

Two months later, 19th July, they blew up an entire street of Palermo to kill the judge Paolo Borsellino:

Both massacres happened in Sicily. In 1993 though, bombs went off in the mainland of Italy as well. One in Rome, in May; another one in Florence; a third one in Milan, in July. Why was the mafia causing all this mayhem along the country? What did they want?

It was a message to the State. After the big scandal that (temporarily..) wiped out most of Italy’s political class, the Christian Democratic Party (DC) that ruled for 50 years (see the movie Il Divo for a great portrait of Italian politics under DC rule) lost control of the country. The Mafia too lost a valid ally: at the same time, after the killing of Falcone and Borsellino, the Italian Government enacted a series of policies to block Cosa Nostra’s attacks against the institutions. One of these was the Article 41bis, a rule prescribing harsh treatment in jail for (among others) those charged with mafia crimes.

After the third 1993 attack, in Milan, another bomb failed to go off, in Rome next to the Olimpico Stadium. Had it gone off, it would have killed around 100 Carabinieri who were standing outside the stadium. The official explanation was that the bomb’s mechanism, luckily, had failed. The unofficial one was that the attack had been called off at the last minute. The ‘pact’ between Cosa Nostra and the State had been reached.

Gaspare Spatuzza has chosen to speak to the judges about those years. He has become a ‘pentito’, a state witness. Under interrogatory, he has revealed that in 1993 he was told by the Graviano brothers (the two mafia bosses whose leading role he took over after they were arrested) of the possibilities of a ’pact’ with the State. The Gravianos first told Spatuzza to organise the attack at the Olimpico stadium. On a second meeting, in 2004, they told him that the pact with the State had been reached. “Graviano was very happy -Spatuzza told the prosecutors. He said we’ve got the full deal, and that these were serious people, not like those loser socialists (possible reference to the previous Italian PM Bettino Craxi).” Spatuzza says he was told that those “serious people” were “the one of Canale 5″ (one of Berlusconi’s tv channels) and “a countryman of ours”, namely Marcello Dell’Utri. He has clearly made the names of Berlusconi and Dell’Utri as those with whom Cosa Nostra was making a deal 16 years ago.

In 2001, Berlusconi won the elections for the second time, thus becoming (for the second time) Prime Minister. In spite of his alliance with the Northern League, he received full support from Sicily’s voters. Full means full: 61 candidates were elected in 61 constituencies. 100% success. Quite remarkable.

A year later, during a football match at Palermo stadium, the following banner was exposed by a somewhat strangely quite group of football supporter:

“United against Article 41 Bis. Berlusconi forgets Sicily.”

The Article 41 bis is still in place. Mafia bosses have started talking to the judges (their natural enemy), about (and against) Berlusconi after 17 years. Are they giving up the hope for a change?

Spatuzza is due to speak tomorrow at Dell’Utri’s trial. Stay tuned.