This 15 minute interview with Justice Antonin Scalia is RARE, and took place on "60 Minutes" on Sunday April 27, 2008. While many consider Justice Scalia "Right Wing", he considers himself an "Originalist" (in interpreting the Constitution).
He also gets great pleasure out of describing The Constitution as a "Dead" document, in contradicting teachers who describe it as a "Living" Document. While few of us would be able to match Scalia's Intellect or his Debating Skills, I dare to question Scalia's reasoning, and my basis would be while I agree with Scalia that The Constitution was a Remarkable, and Revolutionary Democratic Innovation, it was still created by "Imperfect" Human Beings in a Less Enlightened Era, who were Neophytes at dealing with a New Concept, not to speak of Egos and Self Interest (both personal and state),......and was therefore a LESS than "Perfect" Document, so it does not deserve to be looked at as sacrosanct.
After all, it permitted Slavery, and Women had No Rights. And as Brilliant as Scalia is, He is unable to Recognize that the Framers even recognized their fallibility, and PROVIDED for AMENDMENTS, of which there has been TWENTY SEVEN, the last in 1992, and unquestionably more to come, which makes The Constitution a "LIVING" Document.
In Scalia's Defense, he says that if person's want certain social circumstances or change, although he philosophically might not agree with it, the answer is LEGISLATION, not to "Imagine" that right being in the Constitution.
Also, what I do give Scalia credit for, is his referring to the "pride" he was able to bring to the Italian American Community, by his appointment, to partially "offset" the Mafia "albatross" the Media has hung around the neck of the Italian Americans.
Click here: CBS News Video - Top Stories and Video News Clips at CBSNews.com
http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/i_video/main500251.shtml?id=4048750n?source=newsletter
On so many Videos there are stops and stutters, but the Interview is worth the distractions.
I was fortunate enough to see it on TV.
Thanks to Walter Santi.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Video: Justice Antonin Scalia Interview on "60 Minutes" with Lesley Stahl
Monday, April 28, 2008
The Heart says Fiat 500. Common Sense and the Wallet says Hyundai.
Hyundai, on the other hand, is South Korean and follows the familiar route with its car design, emulating what it hopes Europe will approve. The five-door i10 hatchback is its newest model, coming to market alongside the Fiat 500, which is the less practical of the pair because it does not have rear doors.
Although the i10 looks the much larger of the two, there isn't much in it. It is considerably heavier, and this shows in the way they drive and how they perform.
Hyundai is conventionally upright, whilst the Fiat's tail slopes away and its contours are rounded, in a deliberate homage to its spiritual sire, the original 500 from the 1950s. Fiat in the 21st century was fascinated by the success of BMW's Mini in reprising the mood and magic of the 1959 Mini. The Mini and the Fiat 500 surged into the Swinging Sixties and the emerging pop culture.
It is this mix of style and heritage which helps the Fiat wow, whereas the Hyundai, with no such history of la dolce vita, passes without much attention. The Hyundai is neat but fairly anonymous. However, when my son collected the 500 he found it surrounded by onlookers.
With two passengers and a weekend's luggage on board they then drove 200 miles. I expected there to ensue a fair amount of grumbling and back-stretching, but all three were alert and unruffled by the trip.
This 1.3 diesel model averaged 55mpg. It was quiet enough for none of them to realise it was in fact a diesel car. However, the entry price is £9,300. Only the 1.2 petrol 500 comes cheaper, at £7,905. Whatever else it is, and there is plenty to admire, the 500 is not a cheap car.
The exterior is attention-grabbing and when you look inside you find a matching brightness. This white test car with body stripes in the Italian colours had a matching white synthetic fascia panel with ivory instrument pods. The rest of the interior was light and lively.
Its nearest iconic equivalent is the modern Mini, but the Fiat interior is cooler, less contrived, smarter and more appealing. It is not, though, a physical rival to the Mini, which is the more substantial car with much bigger engines and a meatier personality.
Supposing money is scarcer and you cannot afford the Fiat 500? Then you may turn to the Hyundai i10. It is practical, roomier than the Fiat (en extra two inches in shoulder width in the front seats), and prices range from £6,495 to £7,595, depending on trim. All have the 1.1-litre 65bhp petrol engine which delivers an official average 56.5mpg on two of them, and 119g/km of CO2, meaning cheap road tax.
My test car was the Comfort version, fitted with a four-speed automatic gearbox, which brought its price to £7,895. For this you get air conditioning, electric windows, keyless entry, 14-inch alloys, front fog lights, and a five-year warranty with unlimited mileage. Metallic paint was an additional £325. That is quite a package of value for money.
The four-speeder is far from an exciting performer and also plays havoc with emissions and performance. The i10 with manual gears is already quite lazy, needing 15.6 seconds to reach 62mph from standstill. The automatic lengthens that by three seconds, reduces average economy to 47.9mpg, which is not at all bad, and hoists the CO2 emissions to 139g/km.
Small engines and automatic shifting bring compromises, and this Hyundai is par for the field. It goes about its gear changing smoothly, but noise levels are higher. Yet if you spend much of your time in slow traffic they are so much easier than a manual gearbox. I drove it home from a busy city centre in thick traffic and thought: yes, automatic cars are more restful. Just sit there and steer.
Whilst offering more for your money than the Fiat, the Hyundai did not ride as nicely, giving passengers a tougher time on patchy road surfaces. Other than that, and its generic greyness, it was fine as everyday transport.
Common sense and the wallet says the Hyundai. The heart says Fiat.
Sunday, April 27, 2008
100th Anniversary of Rome Olympics... That Didn't Happen
On Budget, But Five Months Long: The First London Game
Independent UK
Saturday, April 26, 2008
One hundred years ago this weekend, one of the longest and most celebrated sporting events in history began in west London.
Despite the current obsession with all things Olympian, there is nothing planned to mark the anniversary of the 1908 Games. But the events that gripped Edwardian London that summer marked the year the modern Olympic movement matured into an international phenomenon.
Lasting five months, the Games were the longest in history, but it was an Olympiad London was never meant to have. The event had been awarded to Rome but, in 1906, Mount Vesuvius erupted, killing more than 100 people and badly damaging Naples. Italian funds were diverted to the rescue effort and London was tasked with holding the Games instead. Organisers had just 24 months to put everything together.
A grand opening ceremony at White City Stadium was followed by a simple game of rackets. Athletes from across the white industrialised world (no African or Asian nations were invited) participated in 110 events in 21 sporting disciplines. More than 2,000 competitors, including 37 women, from 22 countries travelled to the capital of the most powerful empire in the world to take part.
In four years time, 14,500 athletes will return to London to participate in 29 sports and 39 disciplines, accompanied by 20,000 members of the media and 31,500 sponsors and their guests. Spectators will be able to buy about 9.2 million tickets for an event that is likely to cost at least £9bn - but probably much more.
The Games of the IV Olympiad, as the 1908 Olympics were billed, cost just £80,000. The stadium cost £60,000, while the rest went on staging the events. Most of the money came from donations.
Although the costs were under control, London's first Games did not pass without scandal. Until 1908, the marathon course had always been 25 miles long, but it grew to 26 miles and 365 yards thanks to Royal Family. At Windsor, where the race began, the Princess of Wales insisted on adding a mile so that her children could watch from a balcony. And at White City, Queen Alexandra was not content until she had the best view of the race, which forced organisers to extend the course again by another 365 yards. The length remains the same to this day.
At 5.17pm on a blisteringly hot afternoon in July, Italian marathon runner Dorando Pietri limped into the stadium. He had just 350 metres to complete but was so exhausted that he ended up running the wrong way round the track. Stewards turned the 22-year-old around but were forced to come to his aid again after Pietri collapsed. When he finally crossed the finishing line 10 minutes later, the crowd erupted in a deafening roar. The stadium that day was packed - 75,000 people had crammed in to see the finish of the race, well beyond the stadium's official capacity. Not that that helped Pietri win gold.
Despite his efforts, the Italian was disqualified after the American team complained he had been unfairly helped over the line. First place instead went to New Yorker Johnny Hayes.
The Games created many unlikely heroes. British archers William and Charlotte Dod, who claimed their ancestors fought at Agincourt, became the first brother and sister medallists, while Swedish shooter Oscar Swahn, who liked to wear a top hat and heavy overcoat, won two golds at the grand age of 60.
While there was no torch relay, the opening ceremony was a contentious affair. The Finns, incensed that they should have to march under the flag of Tsarist Russia, refused to carry any banner, while the Americans failed to dip the Stars and Stripes as it passed the royal box. Team captain Martin Sheridan explained at the time: "This flag dips to no earthly king". Controversy, it seems, goes with the territory of the modern Olympic Games.
Berlusconi's Wife Calls for DE-Unification of Italy
Italy Must be Broken Up, Says Berlusconi's Wife
Telegraph, UKBy Malcolm Moore in Rome
April 26, 2008
| Silvio Berlusconi's wife added her voice yesterday to the growing calls for Italy to be partitioned. In an interview with La Stampa, Veronica Lario, 51, said: "Italy has never been well-suited to being a single country, and has never matured enough to become one. There is no longer any value in a unified Italy." Ms Lario, a former showgirl, married Italy's prime minister-elect 18 years ago after catching his eye on a television show. Since then, she has rarely courted publicity, but does run Il Foglio, an influential newspaper. The prospect of a devolved Italy has grown significantly in recent weeks since the Northern League, a secessionist party, won strong support in the general election. Umberto Bossi, its volcanic leader, has repeatedly threatened to "take up arms" against the "corrupt" politicians in Rome who divert the wealth of Italy's North to the impoverished South. Ms Lario disclosed that she was a fan of Mr Bossi and added it was time for Italy to stop being "snobbish" about the League, whose politicians are frequently coarse and populist. "This is a disillusioned country, even after Berlusconi's victory," she said. "The League expresses concrete demands from the most productive part of Italy, which is tired of dragging the rest of the country and does not find itself represented by the Left-wing." Mr Berlusconi, who will find it difficult to maintain a majority in parliament without the League's support, is likely to make Mr Bossi a cabinet minister. He could also appoint Roberto Calderoli, Mr Bossi's second-in-command, as deputy prime minister. In the past, Mr Calderoli has called for immigrants to be shot in their boats and for a national pork-eating day to defy Islam. "If the people have voted for Mr Calderoli," said Ms Lario, "that gives him credibility". |
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Domenico Mancini Publishes "Il Giornale Italiano" in Detroit last 10 years
Italian-American Entrepreneur, 72, Makes Waves from FraserDetroit Free Press Domenico Mancini was just discovering a passion for journalism and a drive to dig for information in 1998 when he was told: "Get your own newspaper." Mancini of Fraser had gone to work that year for an Italian-American newspaper in Clinton Township. He had a desire "make the community more connected and informed." He volunteered his time to report and to drum up more business for the paper. "I went to the newspaper and I said, 'Let me help.' They said, 'What do you know about newspapers?' I said, 'Let me show you. In two months if I not help you and show you what I can do, you tell me good-bye, so long.' "Within weeks, Mancini, a builder by trade, had become a regular contributor of news reports and the generator of many new distribution sites for the paper. "I was writing social, political, cultural articles," Mancini, now 72, recalled of his newfound passion. "I was challenging public servants, questioning decisions." When he started working on a potentially damaging story about an Italian-American politician in northern Macomb County, it did not come as good news to the men who had given him a shot at newspaper work. "They called me one day and said, 'You're making waves.' I said, 'That's what a newspaper is supposed to do.' They said, 'They're our friends.' I said, 'It's our job to keep the citizens informed,' and I said, 'They are also my friends, but they're in public office.' " They told him to get his own newspaper. And that he did. Within weeks that same year -- now nearly 10 years ago -- he started Il Giornale Italiano, Italian for "the Italian News." One of his first steps in starting a newspaper, which he would publish from top to bottom, was meeting with a friend to inquire about a computer and other tools of the trade. "He said, 'You're nuts.' I said, 'We established I'm nuts; give me what I need.' " "I spent days and nights, all my waking time away from work" as a builder. "Three weeks later I had a newspaper on the street." Il Giornale Italiano is still on the streets. Each month 5,000 copies are delivered to Italian-related businesses in metro Detroit, down to Ohio and across the country to California. The father of two children, now grown, started the paper at a time when free newspapers weren't as commonplace as today. The paper is written almost completely in Italian. It's tabloid-sized. There are stories on subjects such as changes to Italian law that would affect residential property owned by Italian-Americans and financial assistance from the Italian government that is available to Italians and Italian-Americans living in the United States. "I thought people should know this money is there. I pressed the point. I kept making waves." He knew his paper was read when the Italian consulate in Detroit reported being bombarded by calls and that there was no more money to hand out. Visits and calls to the consulate's office, which is on Griswold and Jefferson downtown, are a regular part of Mancini's reporting beat. He considers himself a civic journalist and wants to be a contributor to the community at large. To that end, he offers two free citizenship classes each year at the local library. The next one is in March. He also is trying to convince Italian-American young people to pursue journalism. "I am trying to get young kids involved," he said. "We are not represented in journalism." The paper runs ads, too; many of them run repeatedly but are not paid for by the advertiser each time. "I'm losing money. Most of the ads don't pay.... At the end of the month the printer still has to be paid." It costs him $710 a month to print it. That does not include his own time and labor. He also delivers the papers. "My wife says, 'Stop it.' I can't. "You know it's a lot of work, but I love when the people respond and I see I can make a difference. "It justifies the time and money." Mancini lives with his wife, Maria, in the home he built in 1972. When he started his one-man newspaper, he was still working as a builder. A few years later he retired and made it a full-time pursuit. "One day a lady called about a year back. She was asking a lot of questions. No accent. No broken English. Perfect English. I said, 'Who are you?' " She was from the Immigration and Naturalization Service and said they had learned of his newspaper and wanted to put him on their list of stakeholders in the Italian-American community in case they needed assistance with that community. "To me it's fascinating," he said. "Some people are recognizing it." Mancini said he was contacted two months ago by a California business owner who said he received copies of the paper from a relative in Michigan and wanted copies to put out in his place of business. He shipped them and still does, and word keeps spreading like that. "I hope some people there will start their own Italian-American newspaper," he said. "More information, more participation equals better citizens." The paper is reported, written, designed and laid out in an office in a bedroom in his home on Garfield between Utica and 14 Mile. There are two computers, a printer, a scanner. Many newspapers and books and tools of the trade are all around -- including wall-to-wall wires holding clipped-up pages of the January issue. "This is just a room. This shows you how a simple citizen can work to make a difference." Mancini and his wife moved to the United States from Rome in 1970. They had visited family of his wife in Pittsburgh in 1965 and were transformed. "I saw here more opportunity. ... People had more respect for the fellow human." He makes it clear he loves Rome and Romans, but he sees himself as American. That is not to say that he doesn't hold on to his culture and stay connected to his birthplace. Wanting more Italian immigrants to maintain their link to their homeland was what convinced him to start the paper. "There was a lack of information. There was a disconnection from the culture. I said we have to do better," he said. "We should all be informed." He goes on to mention the resignation the day before of Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi following a no-confidence vote from the Italian senate -- a story he will bring to readers. He also was at a stage in his life when he felt he should do something more altruistic, more meaningful. "I had a struggle for a long time. I was finally making good money. Finally when I felt successful I started to look around, get involved more with the community. I saw it was a loose community." He wanted to "invest my time to bring it together. "I said this has got to be a field where I can make a difference." Though Mancini believes in good, old-fashioned newspapering, he will soon be expected to drop his cut-and-paste method of laying out the paper and prepare it on software for the printer. He is trying to figure out how to pay for it and convince his wife to make the investment in a new computer, software and training. "I am the last of the breed," he said. "But I want to keep on making waves." KIM NORTH SHINE can be reached at 313-223-4557 or at kshine@freepress.com. |
California Assemly Bill AB1863 For Schools to Include the Contributions of Italian-Americans
Farmers Focus on Italian Roots
But the 55-year-old owner of the Fruit Bowl, which includes a fruit stand, bakery and ice cream shop, say the roots of other area Italian-American farms go much deeper.
"My family doesn't go that far back," he said. "I'm kind of the unique one."
Lucchetti will be one of several speakers next month at a conference at Las Positas College in Livermore discussing the contributions of Italian immigrant farmers in the Central Valley. There will be panels of speakers from Stockton, Modesto, Madera and Fresno talking about the histories of those areas and their own experiences.
The conference is the first event in a partnership between the Western Regional Chapter of the American Italian Historical Association and the community college. Organizers hope to hold more events discussing the history of those immigrants, said Teri Ann Bengiveno a Las Positas history instructor and president of the historical association chapter.
Bengiveno said the majority of Italian immigrants, especially in California, came in the 1880s to 1920s, heading here from Ellis Island on the East Coast or other entry points, such as New Orleans.
Ken Scambray, an English professor at the University of La Verne who grew up in Fresno, said census records show nearly 23,000 foreign-born Italians in California in 1900. That grew to nearly 101,000 by 1940.
"Italians were the largest (group of) foreign-born Europeans in California and the U.S.," he said.
Lawrence DiStasi, a Bolinas resident working on the conference, said Italians worked along with other immigrants in agriculture.
"A lot of them started small. Very often they would work for someone else," he said. DiStasi said many have now become owners. "Most of them are still there."
Yet they say it is a history that's not widely recognized.
Scambray said the 1960s push for ethnic studies and away from a "Eurocentric" view of history made studying Italian history unpopular.
"There developed an anti-European sentiment," he said. "People stopped thinking about Europeans in the United States."
Bengiveno also said their community also has not pushed hard for recognition.
"Italians and Italian-Americans really haven't demanded the story be told," she said. "It's not going to be told by itself."
She said the focus on Italian-American history has been on the East Coast, where the Italian population is bigger.
That, however, is beginning to change, conference organizers said. They are supporting AB1863, a bill introduced in January that would encourage schools to include the contributions of Italian-Americans in social studies. A similar bill had made it to the governor's desk during the previous legislative session, but was returned at the request of the Assembly, according to the state's legislative information Web site.
As for Lucchetti, the farm owner, he said the number of Italian-American farms is declining along with the disappearance of family farms. Some farmers don't have children, and some of their children have gone into other businesses.
Lucchetti said he remembered telling his dad, now deceased, that he was going into farming.
"He said I was crazy," Lucchetti said. But he said many Italian farmers remain. "I'd say we're still a significant force."
Eric Louie covers education. Reach him at 925-847-2123 or elouie@bayareanewsgroup.com.
Lynching of Italian POWs at Ft Lawson, in Seattle, WA, Gets Correction of Revisionism
| A Staten Island Trombonist Breaks a 64-Year Silence About a Military Race Riot A violent tale of justice and injustice from America's uglier racial past Village Voice by Tony Ortega April 22nd, 2008 |
| As Barack Obama pointed out, matters of race in America can be complicated. He's right, and here's a prime example. First, the easy version, the post-MLK, new-day-in-America version: A couple of years ago, a Seattle TV journalist noticed an odd monument at a place called Fort Lawton on Puget Sound. Asking around, he learned that the unusual grave was just about all that was left to mark one of the strangest, and most forgotten, episodes in World War II. The monument marked the 1944 death of an Italian POW found hanging from a noose after a night of rioting by black American soldiers at the segregated fort. It was, supposedly, the only time in American history that a black mob had lynched a white (well, Italian) man. More than 40 black soldiers were subsequently tried in the war's largest court-martial, prosecuted by a young Leon Jaworski, who went on to prosecute at Nuremberg and Watergate. Twenty-eight of the Fort Lawton black soldiers were convicted of rioting, and two of the 28 were also convicted of manslaughter in the death of the Italian POW. None served more than four years in custody, but all of the convicted were dishonorably discharged. At the time, the event was terribly embarrassing for the military and the American government. Within a few years, President Truman would integrate the armed forces. For Jaworski, the trial "notorious at the time" put him on the fast track to his later triumphs. But the Seattle journalist, Jack Hamann, suspected that there was more to the story, and he spent years digging into long-buried government documents to discover a much more troubling tale. What was never in much dispute was that some of the black soldiers stationed at the fort, drinking heavily the night before being shipped out to a possibly very dangerous Pacific location, reacted to a fistfight between one of their own and one of the Italian POWs by swarming the Italians' barracks and beating the living hell out of many of the Italians as well as some white American MPs. Also not in dispute was that the rioters had stabbed unarmed victims with knives and used wooden clubs to break limbs, and that one black soldier drove a Jeep repeatedly over a tent that had men in it. It was probably something of a miracle that more people weren't killed. The dead man, Private Guglielmo Olivotto, was found in another part of the camp at dawn the next morning, hanging from a noose that had been tied to a wire at an obstacle course. What Hamann uncovered, however, was that right from the start, the MPs and the officers in charge at Fort Lawton handled the case by doing just about everything wrong. Evidence was destroyed, statements weren't taken when they should have been, and soon it was almost impossible to figure out which of the black soldiers at Fort Lawton had taken part in the beatings and which hadn't. Hamann discovered that those were the conclusions of Brigadier General Elliot D. Cooke, who was called in after the riot to conduct a thorough (but secret) investigation of the incident. General Cooke found, to his disgust, that the white men in charge at Fort Lawton had completely screwed up the post-riot crime scene. But Cooke's investigation was never made public until Hamann unearthed it decades later. Jaworski had known Cooke's findings, but he kept the investigation secret from the officers who were brought in to defend the black men accused of rioting. Hamann's subsequent book about the affair, On American Soil, thoroughly condemns Jaworski for his actions: The prosecutor knowingly ignored exculpatory evidence in the secret investigation and relied instead on questionable snitches to convict men whom he should have had reason to believe were innocent. On American Soil demonstrates that not only was the investigation of the riot botched, but that there was also good reason to suspect that a white MP "an unreliable man that Jaworski used as a prosecution witness" had the motive, means, and opportunity to commit the murder of Olivotto. There was no physical evidence, and almost no circumstantial evidence, to tie the two black soldiers convicted of manslaughter to Olivotto's murder. Now, here's the feel-good payoff: Hamann's book was such a thorough debunking of Jaworski and the court-martial that the military, reacting to howls of protest from family members of the convicted soldiers (nearly all of whom are now dead), ordered last October that the convictions be overturned, and that all of the soldiers receive (mostly posthumous) honorable discharges. The military reversing itself after more than 60 years. Amazing. In late January, there was a touching ceremony at the Wisconsin grave of Booker Townsell, one of the men convicted of rioting. There was evidence, suppressed by Jaworski, that Townsell had never even left his barracks the night of the riot. Now, his family was able "more than 23 years after his death" to hold a new ceremony giving Townsell the official military burial that he deserved. An Associated Press story about Townsell's ceremony, which included a mention of Hamann's book, was carried by newspapers around the country. One of them was the Staten Island Advance, a copy of which made its way to a modest home on Arnprior Street. And that's when the feel-good story gets a little more complicated. When Anthony DeCesare saw the story in the Advance, he says, he nearly became sick to his stomach. DeCesare says he was at Fort Lawton the night of the riot and can still vividly remember seeing the bloody Italian POWs and American MPs being brought into the hospital where he was receiving treatment for post-concussion symptoms. DeCesare had kept that memory mostly to himself for 64 years. But then there was the story in the Advance, and he says he couldn't believe what he was reading. DeCesare, you see, is seriously pissed off. "It's crooked. It's not the story. It's not the truth," he says. "The whole thing stinks." Next month, Tony DeCesare will turn 93 years old. He lives in a small bedroom that's been turned into both a sickroom and a shrine. For years, he was confined to the second floor of the house, until he finally convinced the VA to install an elevator so he could visit his sister, who lived downstairs - both were too frail to use the stairs and could only shout to each other. That sister is no longer living, but another, Mary Cadier, 85, has come over as DeCesare receives a visitor. He's sitting in a chair next to his bed, wearing a blue robe over pajamas. In front of him is a folding tray piled with documents of his military career. On the walls of the room are other artifacts of his military experience: the Croix de Guerre citation from a grateful France, a detailed drawing of the Panama Canal, where he served before the war, other medals and letters of gratitude. Also mounted on the wall are two trombones and a baritone horn. DeCesare's first love was music, and it was part of the reason he joined the military to begin with: to play in a military band. He was born on Staten Island but spent much of his youth in Maine, where his father, an Italian immigrant, was, of all things, a Protestant minister. DeCesare says that he'd started playing trombone at the age of five; he was 20 years old when he enlisted in 1935, and soon found himself on his way to the Panama Canal with the Fourth Coastal Artillery band. There, he likes to point out, he played for the Japanese admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, who received an official military welcome to the Canal Zone. "If we had known then what was coming in a couple of years," he says, "believe me, we would have given him a different kind of welcome." After two years in Panama, DeCesare had picked up a fungal infection that seriously damaged his lungs, permanently ruined his prospects as a trombonist, and convinced him to take an early discharge. But when war broke out in Europe, he re-enlisted and was shipped to England in 1940 on the Queen Mary. Again a military musician, he was with the first American troops stationed there since World War I. He still has a British newspaper clipping "yellowed, but laminated" that lauds the "crack band" for marching into town. After Pearl Harbor, DeCesare was part of the first major American military offensive of the war, the invasion of North Africa. In November 1942, sailing on the Queen of Bermuda, he went over the side with the others at a beach in Algeria, climbing down ropes and loaded down with gear. The men were so weighed down with what turned out to be antiquated equipment, DeCesare remembers, that many of them simply drowned before they could get to shore. And then things got worse. The reflections on their goggles, he says, were providing something for the enemy "both German and Vichy French" to shoot at. "Guys were getting shot through the head and the eyes" we were greenhorns," he says. Stuck on the beach, they hunkered down. A big shell, he recalls, landed near him but didn't explode. "I didn't move, or I'd go to kingdom come," he says. Eventually, they had to retreat to the ship, landing later at Tunisia. There, he was promoted to technical sergeant and bandmaster - an odd distinction when you're storming beaches, to be sure, but the title didn't get him out of doing jobs like digging graves, he points out. Without a chief warrant officer in his outfit, DeCesare says, disciplining the men of his unit fell on his shoulders. But the last thing he wanted was to send a soldier to a court-martial. When he had to discipline men, he says, he'd have them run around in a square. He didn't want to be known as a pain in the ass - he didn't brook wrongdoing, but he tried to be lenient. Later, riding in Jeeps over mountainous terrain, DeCesare and his men found themselves in an action that became known as the Battle of Kasserine Pass. "We cornered the Germans," he says. "We thought we had them licked. But General Rommel had his tanks dug into the Atlas Mountains." Infantryman DeCesare and his troops followed the U.S. tanks into battle. "We lost," he says. He never knew how he was wounded; he just remembers coming to in a British ambulance and being told to relax. "There was a captain with his legs blown off," he says. DeCesare's skull was fractured, and he'd suffered a concussion. He can only speculate what happened—a shell exploded near him, he supposes. Shipped back to the States for a lengthy recovery, he was suffering from brain trauma - like many of the soldiers coming back from Iraq today, he points out. He was sent to a hospital at a post in Virginia and then was moved to Georgia before being sent by train all the way to Fort Lawton, near Seattle. He was only there for a few months before being moved again to a hospital in Spokane, where he was photographed receiving a Purple Heart in October 1944. Two months later, after being sent to another post in West Virginia, he was honorably discharged. He would receive the Bronze Star for his service. But during his short time at Fort Lawton, in August 1944, one of the most significant episodes in his life occurred. The night of the riot, bloody men were brought into the hospital where he was staying. "The men were bleeding badly. I couldn't, you know, tell you exactly what their injuries were. But they were bleeding bad," he says. Some were POWs, speaking in Italian about what had happened. Others were white American MPs. And some, DeCesare insists, were Japanese. The Italians, he says, were saying that they had been attacked in their barracks by black soldiers. Others talked about being attacked at the fort's obstacle course. But what struck him more than anything else, the thing that haunted him for 64 years, was what a medical officer said to the men on the ward: "You patients, you haven't seen anything. Any of you talk, you're going to get court-martialed." DeCesare repeats it again and again, trying to convey how much it struck him at the time and made him keep quiet about the event for so long. "I swallowed that for 64 years," he says. "Who's going to listen to what I have to say, especially when I got a head injury?" Then, after all that time, suddenly a news story appears in the Staten Island paper saying that it was all a mistake, that the men convicted for the crime were being exonerated. That the military apologizes for the results of the court-martial. And an old man, who still talks about the "colored" section of the fort, who is Italian-American and couldn't help but sympathize with the Italians injured in the riot, says about Booker Townsell, a long-dead soldier whom he never met: "He don't deserve freedom." Sure, you don't even have to say it: DeCesare is just a classic old-school racist, unhappy that "colored" soldiers are getting away with something. It's an easy diagnosis. Except that DeCesare's a bit more complicated than that. There's another yellowed news clipping that Tony DeCesare keeps, this one from 1965. After he was discharged, DeCesare served as a cop for the VA and was finally declared fully disabled in 1954. He couldn't work in law enforcement anymore, but he could still read and write music, and he was still an avid churchgoer, something he got from his dad. He wanted, more than anything else, to help young people make music. But he hated how much young people were kept apart by their different affiliations. In 1965, the Staten Island Advance reported that DeCesare had formed the Summerfield Inter-Faith Orchestra. "What does music have to do with brotherhood?" the article asked. "Anthony DeCesare says it has a lot to do with bringing people together." The article describes DeCesare's efforts to bring together young musicians from different faiths: "We Protestants have been holding back . . . . We've been ignoring the ecumenical spirit." There's a photograph showing DeCesare leading six musicians. A trombone player. A violinist. A percussionist. A sax player. A pianist. A baritone horn. Three of the musicians are black. In 1965. In Staten Island. "I started the Inter-Faith Orchestra in 1965 to bust up this racial, religious discrimination," he says. Heatedly, he points out that some Catholic priests prevented their parishioners from taking part. How does that square with his anger about the Fort Lawton decision, which surely must have something to do with the race of the men who are now being exonerated? "This is about the incident," he replies, "not the race of who caused it." To make his point, he compares the Fort Lawton situation with Abu Ghraib. He's convinced that although low-level soldiers took the heat for what happened at the Baghdad prison, their superior officers should also have been held accountable. At Fort Lawton, he says, not all of the black soldiers took part in the beatings, but nearly the entire black barracks emptied out in response to the rallying cry for the riot, as Hamann's book shows. "The whole unit is guilty," says DeCesare. "There's the problem. . . . I felt really bad. I was in that hospital and saw that. 'Keep your mouth shut or you'll get court-martialed.' " As for the men who were convicted on tainted evidence, he says: "I feel sorry for what happened. If they can prove they didn't take part, that's fine with me. It's not my intention to hurt anybody. It's to tell the truth." Jack Hamann says that he doesn't doubt DeCesare's assertion that he was at Fort Lawton's hospital, but he points out that in talking with the few other witnesses who are still alive, he's found that their memories are often very different from what they said to investigators decades ago. Records at Fort Lawton, for example, indicate that there were never any Japanese POWs held at the Seattle fort. And there was no testimony about Italian soldiers also being attacked at the obstacle course, despite what DeCesare says he remembers the Italian POWs saying. DeCesare's memory, those records suggest, is simply faulty about those details. He doesn't take kindly to that suggestion, however. But even with those discrepancies, Hamann says it's interesting to consider the Italian-American perspective on the Army's about-face, even if some of it is predictable. "I, too, have run across a couple of pissed off Italian-Americans (none of which, as far as I know, have read the book)," Hamann writes to the Voice in an e-mail. "Their spin: why are these damn blacks getting all the attention, when it was Italians who were beaten and lynched?... Of course, that perspective misses the point: Despite the convictions, justice was not served in 1944. "The truth is, Jaworski screwed both the black soldiers and the Italians," Hamann says. He's right. And what his investigation has achieved is remarkable. The anger of a 92-year-old Staten Island man can't really take away from it. But it's also easy to understand DeCesare's frustration. From a 64-year remove, it's not difficult to condemn the flawed justice meted out to black soldiers - men who were already suffering the indignities of a segregated military - for a long-forgotten criminal incident. But for the man—perhaps the only person still alive today—who saw the victims of that crime being treated for their injuries, the military's decision to sweep the whole mess aside by overturning the court-martial verdicts en masse provides little sense of justice having been served either. After the Voice first exchanged e-mails with Hamann about DeCesare, the author mentioned the Staten Island man in a lecture at Seattle University, a Jesuit institution. Hamann says that it prompted one of the professors there to approach him about conducting a public mass for Olivotto as a way to reach out to the local Italian-American community. DeCesare, the professor pointed out, might not be the only one sensitive to the way the story of the military's about-face was being reported. "I thought it was a great idea," Hamann says. In the end, the most striking thing about talking to DeCesare " even knowing that he's messing up the program, our necessary national mea culpa after centuries of being on the wrong side of so many things" is to see how a single night's episode can be the most passionately remembered thing in a life nearly a century long. When asked about his experiences in the decades since - what were the '60s like? The '80s? "DeCesare mostly draws a blank. It has to be drawn out of him that he was married and divorced, and has a daughter with whom he is now closer than he was in the past. His sister says Anthony spent much of his time helping older relatives. And he did continue to write music; he wrote and arranged a march in 2003 to commemorate the soldiers going to Iraq. But except for those details, which feel like asides, he comes back again and again to that night in 1944 and that portentous command: Hold your tongue or be court-martialed. What a thing to carry around for 64 years. http://www.villagevoice.com |
Italy's Padre Pio Goes on Display in Glass Coffin in Southern Italy
Italy's Padre Pio Goes on Display | |
| The body of the popular Italian saint, Padre Pio, has gone on display in a glass coffin in southern Italy. Padre Pio was said to have had stigmata, or bleeding wounds of Jesus, on his hands and feet. His body was exhumed in March on the 40th anniversary of his death. He was canonised by Pope John Paul II in 2002. More than a million people are expected this year to see his body, which is said to be well-preserved. But there is reportedly no sign of the stigmata. The head of the Vatican office dealing with sainthood, Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins, led a special open-air Mass in San Giovanni Rotondo, in Puglia. "This body is here, but Padre Pio is not only a corpse. Looking at his remains we remember all the good that he has done," the cardinal said. Afterwards, Cardinal Saraiva Martins led a group of Church officials into the crypt of Church of St Mary of Grace for a private viewing of the body. Placed in a glass coffin, Padre Pio was dressed in a brown robe and his was covered in a life-like silicone mask. Huge following Already, more than 700,000 people have registered to view his body, and more are expected to make the pilgrimage to the Capuchin friary in San Giovanni Rotondo where it is displayed. Among the pilgrims attending the mass on Thursday was 80-year-old Assunta Antico, who is confined to a wheelchair. "I had a stroke two years ago. I'm paralysed and I want to walk again," she told the Reuters news agency. Padre Pio had a large following both before and after his death. Some of his devotees say he could foretell the future, as well as know people's sins before they had confessed. Some viewed him as a fraud, however, and for many years the Vatican itself was sceptical and banned him from celebrating Mass in public. One Italian historian wrote last year that he may have used carbolic acid to produce his wounds. Before his death, the Roman Catholic Church said it was convinced the monk's claims were not false. The monks who exhumed his body in March said it was in "surprisingly good condition", despite no special measures having been taken to preserve it when he was buried in 1968. "We could clearly make out the beard. The top part of the skull is partly skeletal but the chin is perfect and the rest of the body is well preserved. The knees, hands and nails all clearly visible," said Archbishop Domenico D'Ambrosio, who led the service to exhume the body. | |
Friday, April 25, 2008
Italy and US "Spoleto Festivals" Renew Ties Ended 15 years Ago
In what appears to be a petty gesture, no works by Gian Carlo Menotti are on the schedule. Even worse, No Italian works of any nature seem to be on the two week US Schedule. This "reunion" has a bitter taste!
The Spoleto Festival U.S.A. and its long-lost partner in Italy, the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Umbria, have announced that they will renew an association that ended 15 years ago.
The two arts festivals say they are discussing at least one joint opera production for the summer of 2009. Spoleto U.S.A.’s music director, Emmanuel Villaume, is to conduct at the Italian festival this summer. And there is even talk about forming a single orchestra, though that possibility so far appears remote.
Beyond that, officials refused to offer more details.
“This is the beginning," said Nigel Redden, the general director of the American festival in Charleston, S.C. "We share a genetic makeup, even if it’s not a matrimonio," he added, using the Italian word for marriage.
Giorgio Ferrara, the new director of the Italian festival, said of a collaboration: "The desire is strong. I’m convinced it should be done." He said he foresaw collaboration on opera, theater works and a joint orchestra, though he said high costs would make the orchestra a difficult goal.
The rapprochement was set in motion by the death last year of the composer Gian Carlo Menotti, who, in 1958, founded the Italian festival in the Umbrian hills 80 miles north of Rome. Mr. Menotti founded Spoleto U.S.A. in 1977, and for a time the two festivals shared top staff members, an orchestra, a chorus and chamber music programs.
But after the 1993 season Mr. Menotti cut ties with the American festival at a time when it was having money problems and after years of tussling with local officials. The "subtext," Mr. Redden said, was Mr. Menotti’s desire to impose his son, Francis, adopted as an adult, as director of Spoleto U.S.A.
In 1997 Francis Menotti took over as artistic director of the Italian festival, although his father’s influence remained strong, and relations between the festivals remained chilly. Last summer was the first edition since Gian Carlo Menotti’s death and was subject to criticism, Mr. Redden said. "Apparently it was quite unsuccessful," from both the point of view of audiences and ticket sales, he said.
Meanwhile tension had been growing between Francis Menotti and Italian officials in recent years. In late November the culture minister, Francesco Rutelli, effectively ousted Mr. Menotti and put the festival under the control of Mr. Ferrara, a film and theater director. A ministry statement said the intention was to restore the festival’s "glorious past," noting that public money had paid for the restoration of many spaces the festival used.
Mr. Redden blamed the Menottis for the festivals’ 15-year separation. "It was a one-way street," he said. "Now that Francis has left, it just makes sense that we establish a partnership that is different from one we had before."
The phone at a number on the Spoleto festival Web site still controlled by Mr. Menotti was not answered Wednesday. The site, www.spoletofestival.it, makes no mention of the 2008 season and still contains details from last summer. The new management’s site is www.festivaldispoleto.it.
Mr. Redden said he and Mr. Ferrara had begun discussing a collaboration almost immediately after Mr. Ferrara’s appointment, and they visited each other in their respective countries.
In the first sign of collaboration Mr. Villaume will conduct "Padmâvatî," a rarely heard opera by Albert Roussel, to open the Italian festival this summer. Sanjay Leela Bhansali, a Bollywood film director, will handle the staging.
Mr. Redden declined to discuss the proposed operatic co-production for 2009. Alessio Vlad, who is overseeing the music program at the Italian festival, said Mr. Redden had suggested the obscure opera "Louise" by the French composer Gustave Charpentier. That presented a problem, Mr. Ferrara said, because he hopes to organize each festival around a country, and France is having its turn this summer. He said the matter was still up for discussion.
The Italian festival this year is exceptionally flush, having received $7 million from the national government, out of a budget of $11 million. The rest comes from local government and private sponsors. The total is about twice last year’s budget, though it was unclear what the former management spent because it has not provided an accounting, Mr. Ferrara said.
Mr. Ferrara put together his program in a quick four months. The offerings reflect his background in theater: there is a greater proportion of dramatic works compared to instrumental music, dance and opera pieces, which he said was an effort to correct a past imbalance.
The programs include several French plays, a "Threepenny Opera" directed by Robert Wilson, world music ensembles, a performance by the Orchestra of the 18th Century conducted by Frans Bruggen, chamber music concerts dedicated to Messiaen and Ravel, and an evening of male dance including Savion Glover and others. The festival closes with a concert by the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Daniel Harding.
No works by Gian Carlo Menotti are on the schedule.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Tourists 'Stripping Ancient Rome Bare'
Tourists 'Stripping Ancient Rome Bare'
By Malcolm Moore in Rome
| Rome's ancient monuments are so poorly guarded that tourists are taking away mementos of their visit to the Eternal City with impunity. Archaeologists said yesterday that Trajan's Forum, in the heart of the city's classical ruins, had been stripped of all the fragments of statues and shards of amphorae that adorned the site until recently. To highlight the problem, a reporter from Il Messaggero newspaper carried away large boxes full of ancient artefacts during the daytime without being challenged. An archaeologist working at the site, who asked not to be named, said: "Everything has been taken from Trajan's Forum. The close-circuit television cameras are pointless, and the gates are practically non-existent. Even a child could climb over them. "The treasures of ancient Rome are very vulnerable, but there are lots of gaps in the security system of one of the most important archaeological areas in the world." He added that he had often seen people in restricted areas, collecting keepsakes. The newspaper blamed the 20 million tourists who pass through the city each year for the looting. "Who knows how many of these small fragments now adorn living rooms all over the world?" it said. The forum was built in AD 112, followed by Trajan's Column in the following year. The whole area is currently undergoing reconstruction, including the insertion of a raised walkway for tourists. "This is an open-air museum," said Eugenio La Rocca, the head of Rome's cultural heritage authority. "You have to bear in mind that we cannot cover every angle, especially since restoration work is going on. We cannot put bunkers of guards everywhere. If we did the whole of Rome would be a giant bunker. "However, the area is closed off and the television monitoring system is connected to a cabin staffed by guards. It is also connected to the police." Mr La Rocca said the most valuable artefacts were fully catalogued and carefully stored away in warehouses. |
Monday, April 21, 2008
Cassini Spacecraft to Saturn Mission, 11 years old, Extended 2 more Years
11 Years in Space
Student Operated Press (SOP)
by Krzys Wasilewski
If THEY are out there, Cassini-Huygens will certainly find them. This innovative robotic spacecraft is not only an example of how the enormousness of the human mind equals that of the cosmos, but also shows that cooperation - not competition - leads to success.
On April 15, 2008, the mission that was originally scheduled to end in of July this year was extended for two years. Despite financial problems, NASA decided that the Cassini-Huygens project was too important to be scrapped. "This extension is not only exciting for the science community, but for the world to continue to share in unlocking Saturn's secrets," said Jim Green, the director of NASA Planetary Science Division.
The spacecraft began its mission on October 15, 1997. It was one of the first projects run together by three space agencies: NASA, European Space Agency (ESA), and Italian Space Agency (ISA). The Americans were responsible for building the orbiter " Cassini" named after the 18th century Italian astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini. The probe was the result of the ESA scientists and technicians who gave it the name of Huygens to commemorate Christiaan Huygens, a Dutch mathematician and physicist from the late 17th century. The Italians provided a special antenna to control the spacecraft.
Eight thousand people from 16 countries on both continents worked like one person to make sure that their beloved child would lack nothing. The preliminary talks on the joint project began as early as 1982, but several more years would pass until the first elements of the spacecraft were constructed. Since the very beginning, it was ESA that was pushing the mission further, seeing the project as yet another chance for cooperation between European nations and the United States. But in the early 1990s Cassini-Huygens was temporarily put on hold as the American Congress refused to continue financing the costly and risky project. Twice, in 1992 and 1994, did NASA engage its full authority to sway reluctant representatives and twice it succeeded.
Seven objectives were set for the transatlantic spacecraft. When the eyes of the world were nostalgically turned to Mars, the Red Planet (think of the Total Recall movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sharon Stone), the Americans and Europeans decided to send Cassini-Huygens two planets further, to Jupiter. The scientists hoped that the mission would help them answer several important questions - from the structure of Jupiter's numerous rings to the construction of the planet's satellites, with special attention put on Titan.
But Cassini-Huygens carried on board something more than just a sophisticated mechanism. As a truly international venture, it was equipped with a special DVD disk with the voice of over 616,000 people from around the world wishing their best to whomever might hear them. Although the idea was nothing new - Voyager 1, one of the pioneers in space probing, and newer Galileo had several plates with human signs - the then revolutionary DVD technology managed to include more signatures than all the previous missions put together.
Cassini-Huygens reached its target over seven years after it took off from Cape Canaveral. On Christmas day, 2004, the probe separated from the orbiter and began its lone journey towards Saturn and its satellites. In the meantime, some countries had disappeared and some had been born; the World Trade Center twin towers in New York had been destroyed by murderous terrorist attacks; and some of the space aircraft's builders had died, joining their beloved child in the endless journey through space and time. The European Space Agency had undergone changes. From 10 states that had founded the agency in 1974, it had spread to 17, with several more countries waiting for admission.
The data provided by Cassini-Huygens exceeded original expectations. In only the first two weeks, the probe managed to send to NASA headquarters 350 pictures. Most of the pictures of Saturn and its surroundings that we can admire in albums and on the Internet have been taken by the American-European mission. What is more, high resolution photographs of Titan have proved that Saturn's largest satellite contained vast resources of liquid methane and hundreds of times more natural gas that the entire planet Earth.
Cassini-Huygens will start the 11th year of its service in October of this year, but despite its advanced age - who now remembers the obsolete computers from the late 1990s? - it is still working and providing scientists with valuable information. "New discoveries are the hallmarks of its success, along with the breathtaking images beamed back to Earth that are simply mesmerizing," said Jim Green.
Putin Says Italian Women, Second only to Russians in Beauty and Talent
He also called Russian women the "most talented and beautiful," adding that they could be challenged only by the women of Italy.
At that, Berlusconi laughed and the reporters cheered.
MOSCOW " President Vladimir V. Putin, who during eight years of centralized rule has kept his private life largely sealed from view behind the Kremlin’s walls, on Friday bluntly dismissed rumors that he had secretly divorced his wife for the affections of a gymnast less than half his age.
The moment, prompted by a question from a Russian journalist while Mr. Putin held a news conference at an Italian villa with Silvio Berlusconi, the prime minister-elect of Italy, was met with the mix of relish and confrontation that Mr. Putin has often displayed in his sessions with journalists.
He paused and answered another question, and then returned to the subject and pushed back. "What you are saying has not a single word of truth," he said.
The question followed the publication on Thursday of an unusual article in Moskovsky Korrespondent, a Moscow newspaper owned by a former Soviet intelligence officer, which said that Mr. Putin, 56, planned to marry Alina Kabayeva, 24, an Olympic gold medalist in rhythmic gymnastics who has been voted in polls as one of Russia’s most beautiful women. Interfax reported Friday evening that publication of Moskovsky Korrespondent had been suspended "for financial reasons," according to its parent company, National Media Company.
Mr. Putin has been married to Ludmilla Putina, 51, since July 1983 - two months before Ms. Kabayeva was born. The couple has two grown daughters, but Mr. Putin and Mrs. Putina are not often seen together in public, which has long fueled rumors that Russia’s president has had a wandering eye.
Ms. Kabayeva has been a member of Parliament since she was selected for a seat late last year by United Russia, the political party Mr. Putin controls. She has not spoken publicly since Thursday, when the article appeared and its claims were picked up and circulated by newspapers and Web sites in Russia and beyond.
Her spokeswoman threatened legal action against Moskovsky Korrespondent if it did not run a correction.
After denying the article’s contents, Mr. Putin softened a bit and remarked that Moskovsky Korrespondent was not the first to speculate on his personal life.
“In other such publications other successful, beautiful young women and girls have been mentioned," he said with a smile. "I don’t think it will be a surprise if I say that I like them all, because they are all Russian women."
He also called Russian women the "most talented and beautiful," adding that they could be challenged only by the women of Italy.
He then ruminated briefly on the limits of privacy in public life - a condition that he suggested was true even in the climate of limited civic discourse in Russia, which Mr. Putin himself has done much to produce.
“Society has the right to know how public figures live," he said. "But even in this case, there is a limit: private life, which no one has the right to trespass."
He added, in familiar form, "I have always disliked those who, with their infected noses and erotic fantasies, break into other people’s private affairs."
Whether the article’s underlying assertion " that Mr. Putin was romantically involved with Ms. Kabayeva " would stand was not clear. But even the owner of the newspaper, Aleksandr Lebedev, distanced himself from it.
Mr. Lebedev wrote a follow-up article in the paper on Friday, saying that he had been away fishing, and without phone communication, when the original article was prepared and published. Upon his return to Moscow, he said, he had concluded that the article was false.
“I do not like when journalists pull sensations out of thin air," he wrote. "Everything that is written there falls into this category."
He called the report "nonsense" and said it was based on a source he described as the "O.B.S. news agency." Those initials, he said, stood for "one babushka said."
Interfax reported that the paper’s editor, Grigory Nekhoroshev, had resigned.
But the paper’s deputy editor, Igor Dudinski, said the staff stood by the article, adding, "We had information, and we reported it."
Television viewers were spared the speculation, the denial and the backpedaling.
The evening news broadcast on the state-influenced television station NTV did not cover the rumor or Mr. Putin’s remarks. Instead, it devoted extensive coverage to Yuri M. Luzhkov, Moscow’s irrepressible mayor, visiting a factory that makes fertilizer from cow manure.
Book:"Peace" by Richard Bausch: US Soldiers in Italy in Closing Days of WWII
'Peace' is the Goal, But it is No Easy Target
Peace. By Richard Bausch. Knopf. 193 pages. $19.95.
This riveting new novel by Richard Bausch is a terrible but true reminder in a season of war.
It tells the story of a company of American soldiers scrabbling up an Italian mountainside in the closing days of World War II. The Germans are retreating, and Bausch's crew has been sent on a thankless reconnaissance mission: to confirm the retreat without being killed.
Peace is just around the corner. To die now would be to die a pointless death.
What "Peace" makes stunningly clear, though, is that - stripped of talk of honor, duty and a clash of civilizations - death in war has no point, indeed, no value. The book begins in the aftermath of one horrifically illustrative event.
Nine soldiers came upon a cart full of wet straw by the road that concealed an escaping German and a woman. The German sprang from hiding and killed two Americans before he was shot and killed by a corporal. When the woman began screaming, a sergeant walked over and shot her in the head.
This death overshadows every scene in "Peace," lending their mission a cursed quality. The moment - the bullet they cannot hear - waits for them around every corner, beneath every civilian cart. And perhaps no one would care, or even report it?
Bausch uses this tension to great advantage. It chisels his 24 chapters down to minute-by-minute essentials, dialogue whispered and hissed across the eerily desolate hillside as Bausch's seven soldiers, whom he brings vividly to life, creep toward an enemy they cannot see and barely hear.
Bausch is best known as a short story writer, and his skills at compressive drama are on full display here. In a short time a reader comes to know these soldiers quite well: Marson, the former baseball star turned infantry captain; Joyner, the bigoted, paranoid, expletive-spewing teetotaler; Asch, a young Jewish man who responds to the stress of constant vigilance by summoning up bleak trivia.
In moments like this, Bausch's perfectly balanced little novel opens up and becomes about much more than whether or not seven young Americans will survive the night alive.
He uses such rhetorical asides wisely, though, keeping the book's focus on the taut particulars of a forest at night and the soldiers' rising paranoia that an elderly Italian man they dragged from a cart and brought with them as a kind of guide might actually spell their downfall.
These interactions - coupled with flashbacks of a relationship the soldiers enjoyed with a young Italian boy who brought them wine - conjures the vast, unspooling chaos of war.
All the rules of normal conduct have been suspended. Generosity can be lethal; sleep will get you killed. Through much of the novel Bausch's characters don't know exactly where they're going. Once you start reading this tale it's very difficult to put it down. Peace, it makes clear, is not complicated. Peace is when the killing stops.
Manhattan resident John Freeman is writing a book on the tyranny of e-mail.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
A Stroll in Rome: The Requisite Stops
... Night now does not really darken Rome so much as illuminate the many parts that matter, a real-life chiaroscuro of the city where Caravaggio lived and painted. With the daytime heat cut in summer, diners at Da Giggetto in the Jewish Ghetto can ponder both their artichokes and the boney, floodlit columns of the Octavian Gate, which stood there a century and a half before Christ was born. Not far away, the Colosseum " where Enlightenment-age tourists wandered at night with notions of Rome maybe even more romantic than ours " rises with singular heft, each stone arch glowing in the night.
Rome at night is, in short, a city lit like a theater, and, especially in the warmer months, should be enjoyed like one. In fact, Georgina Masson, who wrote the 1965 classic "Companion Guide to Rome," recommended the night as the time Rome should first be seen. The first of her book’s walking tours starts where Rome began, the Capitoline Hill " where Michelangelo designed a piazza, she said, like a 'stage set'" overlooking the nubby ruins of the Forum. "Seen by day it requires something of the knowledge of the archaeologist and the imagination of a poet," she wrote. "But at night ... it is not nearly so difficult to picture the stately ranks of colonnaded temples crowned with the gilded statues and the basilicas rearing their great hulk against the night sky."
It’s hardly a new thought (it is literally one of the oldest), but in my nearly four years here as the bureau chief of The New York Times, I have found that there is no better place than Capitoline Hill to see, in one dramatic sweep, so much of Rome’s history - especially, as Ms. Masson advises, if one starts at sunset.
A superb walk through time might start on the far side of the hill, on Via dei Fori Imperiali. To the south, the Colosseum glows. Up Via di San Pietro in Carcere is Michelangelo’s Piazza del Campidoglio, with a replica of the equestrian statue of the philosopher-emperor Marcus Aurelius (the original is in the Capitoline Museum) unlit but no less heroic at night, a lone horseman in the center of the city, as has often been noted, at the center of the world. If the Forum is antiquity, the egg-shaped piazza and three palaces are among the finest of Renaissance buildings, stripped of detail at night, revealing more their harmony and, if you are that sort, romance.
A walk down Michelangelo’s steps leads to more of this mix of ages: across the street stands the mini-Colosseum of the Theater of Marcellus, and to the right, the ruins of the Octavian Gate. Here, as elsewhere in Rome, the approach to lighting seems much like Italy’s approach to food: there is so much to work with that it seems pointless to dress things up; the light accents, simply, what is already there...
Beyond the ruins, on Via del Portico d’Ottavia, the Jewish Ghetto still thrives, with many of the shops buzzing into the evening hours, and nearby is the tiny Piazza Mattei, where four bronze boys play in the Fountain of the Turtles. Stop, at Largo Argentina, where the columns of the Republican Victory Temples, more than 2,000 years old, jut into the night sky (though it is harder then to see the scores of unwanted cats given sanctuary there). It is a good place to end this mini-nocturnal tour of Rome’s history because it was there " not at the Forum " where Julius Caesar was killed, on March 15, 44 B.C,...
History, though, is not the only reason to walk at night. As residents well know, Rome, which evolved not on a triumphal scale, but on a very human one, is simply a lovely place to stroll. Romans are out in numbers to enjoy the summer nights, so visitors can feel assured they are doing generally as the Romans do.
One place to experience this local life is at Piazza del Popolo, once Rome’s northern gate. Every night, but especially on warm weekends, crowds of Italians stroll and shop, with their teenagers working hard to be cool as they wander about the piazza. Our family has gone there often, allowing ourselves to be pulled into the human wave that drifts south on Via del Corso.
The obvious destination from there is Piazza di Spagna, which is full of people day and night. For all the over-the-top adjectives about the piazza and its famous steps " which attracted Goethe, Joyce, Byron, Shelley and Keats, who died there in 1821 at No. 26, now a museum "...
Unlike many parts of the city, notable for their views, Piazza di Spagna is largely its own enclosed universe, which feels even more insular at night, with a vertical exit signaled by the illuminated Fountain of the Barcaccia, a fanciful fishy barge, up the Spanish Steps to a glowing obelisk in front of the double towers of the church of the Trinità dei Monti.
For a more literal sense of the Roman night as theater, or really cinema, go south to the Trevi Fountain. This is one place given over pretty much to tourists at all hours, in truly unwieldy numbers, but it cannot be missed as art, spectacle and cultural icon. In front of your eyes Neptune stands gleaming mightily as he tames the waters, a metaphor for the great feat of the aqueducts that brought water to the city. But inside many minds, no doubt, runs the famous night scene in Fellini’s "Dolce Vita" of Anita Ekberg and Marcello Mastroianni stepping into the fountain. A dip, though, even if you look as great as they did, will land you in trouble, no matter how hot it is.
And it does get hot, reaching 90 degrees or more in July and August. Many Romans flee to the beach, but the city’s government has taken care that those who stay behind, native or not, enjoy the hours when it is more comfortable to wander, with outdoor plays, movies, concerts and restaurants. In whatever season "and it rarely gets too cold " there is much to do at night, with perhaps the most spectacular activity being the most costly.
For 250 euros (about $400 at $1.60 to the euro) a person, tourists can visit the Vatican Museum in small groups led by personal guides after hours. Galleries packed to a slow shuffle by day are, at night, emptied like drawing rooms of dreams. The Sistine Chapel is shared by as few as a dozen others, and no one yells if you take a picture...
Somehow the world’s most famous chapel plays its part in defining the contrasts of Rome that are sharpest at night: the ceiling is Creation, and so newborn light and hope; the Last Judgment on the wall, torment and death. When you step back outside, nighttime Rome conjures images of Leonardo da Vinci smuggling cadavers of executed prisoners for illicit dissections that informed some of the loveliest paintings ever.
If these metaphors are too high-flown " and the price for a private tour too steep " a free stroll around St. Peter’s Square is altogether different on a summer night. By day, the piazza is hot and clogged with long lines for the free look at St. Peter’s Basilica. By night, the cobblestones of Via della Conciliazione, stretching to Bernini’s colonnade and Michelangelo’s dome and the obelisk dragged to Rome by the emperor Caligula, are all quiet, empty, luminous. You can even check if Pope Benedict XVI is awake by looking for lights from his bedroom in the two top right windows facing the square in the Apostolic Palace, and contemplate what a shame it is that the Vatican has abandoned its most dramatic nighttime spectacle: for years on Easter, the complex was lighted with thousands of small paper lanterns, to apparently spectacular effect.
“The gathering shades of night rendered the illumination every moment more brilliant," an account from Easter 1818 reads. "The whole of this immense church - its columns, capitals, cornices and pediments ... all were designed in lines of fire."
The setting may not be as showy, but a nighttime visit to the Janiculum Hill is no less magical. It is the most spectacular view of Rome - an organic and unimaginably wide panorama from the bright marble of the Vittoriano monument at Piazza Venezia to the dome of the Pantheon to the big bronze angel watching over Castel Sant’Angelo.
Though many restaurants and shops close in the summer, especially in August, the city makes up for it by opening many famous sites for concerts, movies and the like. Among the best is Castel Sant’Angelo, the stout half-barrel near the Tiber, built as the Emperor Hadrian’s tomb, then in the Middle Ages transformed into a castle conveniently close to St. Peter’s (via a hidden passageway in the Vatican walls) when troubled popes needed refuge. It normally closes in early evening, but in the summer, it is opened for concerts, readings and late-night dining. A temporary beach, with actual sand, is laid down next door. The view from the top including a terrace designed by Michelangelo, is stunning, with the Vatican’s dome on one side, all of Rome’s center on the other and the river below.
The main summer festival unfolds on Tiber Island. Every evening between June and September, the island " the only one on the river inside central Rome, where plague victims and criminals were once condemned " sprouts with restaurants, bars and markets for clothes, books and handicrafts. The temperature, and nighttime view up to Rome from the river basin, can be enjoyed via beer, hookah or a simple stroll. The island is also the site of the city’s summer film festival. The screen is outdoors, and viewers sit in plastic chairs rather than camped out on blankets.
For English-speaking visitors, an amusing summer diversion is a performance of the Miracle Players, a theater troupe that since 1999 has put on weekly tongue-in-cheek historical plays with the ruins of the Forum their stage. Last summer they presented "Caesar",.. a brisk 40-minute romp of the emperor’s life, peppered with 100 quotes from ancient sources but inspired more by Monty Python.
During the performance, I found my eyes drifting to the wider stage: the Forum at sunset. The play unfolds next to the Mamertine Prison, the site where by tradition St. Peter was held before his crucifixion (though there are historical doubts), and next to the grand arch of the emperor Septimus Severus. The view stretches from there, in shifting shades of rose and yellow as the sun goes down, across the Forum to the Colosseum.
If you tire of avoiding eye contact with summer street musicians performing "O Sole Mio" the city also puts on regular concerts. The best is the summer jazz festival at Villa Celimontana, running now for over a decade in a gorgeous Renaissance palace, in the shadows of the Colosseum and the Baths of Caracalla. Though the event attracts many international artists, last year featured many Italians, such as the singer and composer Maria Pia De Vito and the drummer Roberto Gatto.
If, at last, the summer heat becomes too much and the desire strikes to escape the city, there really is no choice other than a trip to the nearby Alban Hills, to the town of Frascati, just 15 miles southeast of Rome’s center.
The routine is well established by Romans seeking a few cooler hours in the hills where emperors did the same. First, go to Piazza del Mercato. From the scores of little shops and stands buy sliced porchetta, which is the great local grilled pig, cheese, bread, olives, artichokes and whatever else looks good. Walk to one of the many cantine nearby that sell chilly Frascati wine. Sit down with your food at rickety outdoor tables and order a liter or so of wine. Then enjoy, as you think whatever romantic thoughts you might, the diamonds of lovely light that illuminate distant, nighttime Rome.
LIGHTS ON
From June through early September, the city of Rome organizes concerts, movies, plays and other events. This year’s schedule has not yet been set, but when it is, it can be found at www.estateromana.comune.roma.it. Click on the British flag for English.
For dining, music and other events around the city, pick up a copy of the weekly guide Romad’è (1.50 euros, or $2.40 at $1.60 to the euro) at newsstands or online at www.romace.it/site/englishsecti
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Joe Calzaghe vs Bernard Hopkins, Light Heavy Bout in Vegas on Sat. April 19
It is also refreshing to see that Joe has chosen to continue to live in this Welch village through all his success, and eschewed the bright lights and big city, and is on a first name basis with all the villagers, who take great pride in their favorite son.
Special to The Times
April 18, 2008
NEWBRIDGE, Wales -- In the valleys here just north of Cardiff, unknown to the world until a recent bit of fame trickled in, two men have been conducting one of those daunting earthly experiments.
Yet again, an irascible father has trained his irascible son in the emotionally freighted pursuit of boxing, and although this act of near-lunacy occurs fairly often in the sport, these two have been at it for almost three decades, attempting to refrain from strangling one another.
If you listen to them mine the British lexicon, you will hear they've grown routinely tetchy with each other. They've even gotten narky. They do have their barneys, and in these barneys they use language downright Scorseseian.
In his autobiography "No Ordinary Joe," the 36-year-old boxer wrote: "I infuriate him, and he infuriates me."
And the father? "I ignite him," said the Sardinian-Italian Enzo Calzaghe, 58, who talks fast, walks fast, eats fast and lives so fast he says people ask if he's on cocaine, and who soon added, "He ignites me."
That day Joe saw a doctor in London and Enzo parked the car pretty much in Belgium so he wouldn't have to pay, and Joe muttered things that cannot appear in this family newspaper. That day they drove to a weigh-in in Cardiff, and Joe tried to tell Enzo to turn left, and Enzo told Joe something that cannot appear in this family newspaper, and Joe got out and walked. Those times Enzo would do Joe's bandages, and Joe would say, "Your hands are shaking," and Enzo would tell Joe something that cannot appear in this family newspaper.
On and on, tetchy and narky and barneys, playing cards thrown against walls after cheating each other, Enzo storming off so often that if you're lucky he'll give you an impersonation of himself storming off, Joe boxing beginning at age 8 with Enzo always the trainer. And the upshot?
Joe is 44-0 as a professional. He hasn't lost since the European junior championships in Prague in 1990 when his bloody headguard kept slipping. He won the WBO super-middleweight title in 1997 and defended it 21 times.
He throttled vaunted American Jeff Lacy in 2006, and Britain voted Calzaghe the BBC sports personality of the year in 2007, a whole big deal here. And Enzo, who knew Joe Bugner in childhood but supposedly knew squat about boxing, well, he has seven various awards and six more accomplished fighters, which does spread out some of the tetchiness.
They've weathered innumerable phases, even the one where Joe grew a mullet and adored Whitesnake.
And now, after years in relative secret for want of a globally splashy bout, after declining an offer to appear on the popular British television show "Strictly Come Dancing" and another to model underwear, Joe Calzaghe plays Vegas on Saturday night in a splashy U.S. light-heavyweight debut opposite Bernard Hopkins.
Father and son find a gratefulness in daydreams realized slowly, the better to sustain the hunger.
Joe repeatedly says and writes of Enzo that, of course, he "loves him to bits." He employs the term "best pal." Averting the son-fires-father drill that has visited boxing families such as the Mayweathers, Mosleys and Joneses, the Calzaghes have long since surpassed a phase in 2000 when advisors suggested changing trainers, and Joe pondered it but deemed it misguided.
What's more, neither has strangled the other.
"Even if we had a row yesterday," Joe said, "I'd have to think . . . what was that about?"
"I'm very crafty," Enzo said with a wink. "I know how to say sorry. I'm not ashamed to say sorry. I know it's her fault. I know it's Joe's fault. But I say sorry."
He's been married to Joe's Welsh mother, Jackie, for 38 years and, he said, "We've been arguing for 37. If I brought flowers, she'd think, 'What's wrong? Something's going on.' "
They welcomed Joe in 1972, and by the early 1980s, Enzo had Joe punching at rolled-up carpet with a certain, uncommon rapidity.
As this frenzied training approach persisted, some derided it. But Enzo, an accomplished musician who had traveled England playing alongside his brother Uccio, just couldn't see why boxers always had to play the same seven chords in the same order, boxing with the same, set-up-the-punch method, and so Joe's most shouting asset would be hand speed.
In the quiet of Wales, residing in government housing in Pentwynmawr, they trained for years in "the mangiest little building you could possibly imagine," as Joe puts it. No ring, just a carpeted area of the floor. Surrounding ropes upheld by broom handles. No heating. Bad toilets. No showers. Buckets to trap rain. Space insufficient enough that elbows would bang walls and bruise.
Joe would exit and "cough up all the dust I'd inhaled."
Finally, six years ago, they moved to a better non-palace, a striking place to find the world's longest-standing boxing champion. It's in an industrial park, down some wooden steps the boxers routinely run, next to a rugby pitch.
The sign outside, "Newbridge Boxing Club," is beige, hand-painted, black trim. Little piles of trash dot the weedy yard. At one point, Enzo wrestles with the mulish front door to yank it open. Indoors, Joe intermittently spits on the floor during a congenial interview in the room next to the boxing gym. In places, it's just a few notches north of squalid. The walls do boast posters of the champ, and one of Stallone's "Rocky," but an Observer reporter spotted a dead mouse floating in a sink, and it's cold and dank in there.
It's also a blast. Enzo chats on, and his brother Sergio stops by, and they prattle in Italian and English and Italian again. Joe says, "We don't argue as much anymore; it's more chilled-out," and it's compelling to think of two men, through dogged anonymity, forging to Vegas in this kind of setting.
So after all the tetchiness and barneys, it's probably best to picture them in the heavy dark of the British winter in February 2006, just before the landmark mauling of Lacy.
Joe had thought about withdrawing, what with his hands wailing again and more cortisone injected, and Enzo had used language that cannot appear in this family newspaper, and sarcastically suggested retirement, but also realistically stated encouragement.
Somewhere in his skull, Joe knew that Enzo knew something, so in the hushed Welsh night, Joe would go on 2 a.m. jogs, and with light scarce, Enzo would follow him in the car, shining the high beams.
And as Joe ran in the patchy snow in the dark, his trainer and father and best pal would keep the window down, and he would keep hollering, "You are fitter than you've ever been, Joe! You will beat this guy."
http://www.latimes.com/sports
Friday, April 18, 2008
Fiamma Nirenstein, "Settler" from Jerusalem's Gilo area Wins Seat in Italian Parliament
most important thing for their Italian identity is to stand by Israel's side. Nirenstein most recent book "Israele Siamo Noi" ("Israel Is Us").
(4) Although living the last 10 years in Israel, Nirenstein had not requested Israeli citizenship,but she felt that this bureaucratic fact does not
| The Israeli 'Settler' Serving in Italy's Parliament Haaretz | |
| By Meron Rapoport April 18, 2008 - Nisan 14, 5768 | |
| Almost 50,000 people live in Jerusalem's Gilo neighborhood, one of the largest in Israel. Up until now, it had no representative in parliament. As of this week, it does. Fiamma Nirenstein, a neighborhood resident for 10 years, was just elected to the Italian parliament. If we stick to the definitions of the UN, which views Gilo, on the capital's southern edge, as a settlement, one could say that Nirenstein is the first settler to be a member of a non-Israeli parliament. This week, in a series of phone calls to Rome, between the first reports of a close victory for the right-wing coalition, to which Nirenstein belongs, and the final reports of Silvio Berlusconi's sweeping victory, Nirenstein explained several times that she has not requested Israeli citizenship but that this bureaucratic fact does not affect her identity. "I feel as though I made aliyah," says Nirenstein in a conversation that fluctuates between Hebrew and Italian. In the elections, Nirenstein did not hide her Israeliness. Her campaign was centered on the view that Israel is Western democracy's vanguard in the struggle against world terror. "I ran for a place in parliament as a representative of the Liguria district. I held rallies in Genoa and other cities in the region," she recounts. "But I didn't talk with the people about local problems. I told them that the most important thing for their Italian identity is to stand by Israel's side." Nirenstein called her most recent book "Israele Siamo Noi" ("Israel Is Us"). By "us," she was referring, of course, to Italians. Even though Italy hasn't experienced much in the way of terror attacks and the number of Muslim immigrants there is small compared with other countries in Europe, the talk about the importance of the fight against Islamic terror, or simply of how to deal with Islam in general, is very much present in contemporary Italian discourse. Oriana Fallaci devoted the last years of her life to writing books in which she forthrightly pegged Islam as the source of all the world's evil. Berlusconi himself, the unquestioned leader of the Italian right for more than a decade, explained at one of his appearances a few days ago: "We must be conscious of the superiority of our culture, which gave prosperity to people in countries that adopted it and ensures respect for human rights and religion. This respect certainly does not exist in the Islamic countries." Perhaps this is the reason why Berlusconi and Gianfranco Fini, Berlusconi's partner and the former head of the neo-fascist party, proposed that Nirenstein join their joint list, Il Partito della Liberta ("The Party of Liberty"). Nirenstein's father arrived in Italy during World War II, as a soldier in the Jewish Brigade. In Florence, he met her mother, who fought as a partisan against the fascist government and later against the Nazi regime. "I was born as a communist," she says. In her youth she was part of the 1968 generation, founded the first feminist journal in Italy and worked at leftist newspapers. After the 1967 Six-Day War, a rift began to develop between her and her "communist comrades," who saw Israel as an occupying country. "I was confused for a long time," she says. "In 1982, I signed a petition against the First Lebanon War. Today I wouldn't sign it. What did Israel gain from the withdrawal from Lebanon?" To the right of Netanyahu Her first visit to Israel was as a reporter, and it was only after this initial visit that she returned in 1992 for the long term. For two years, she ran the Istituto Italiano di Cultura in Tel Aviv, and after the Rabin assassination, she decided she had to stay in Israel. "I had the feeling that this was the most interesting place in the world, and I also felt that the reporting on Israel was biased." She did not obtain Israeli citizenship because she thought an Israeli passport would hinder her in her work, but aside from that, she also thinks that "every Jew in the world is an Israeli even if he's not aware of it. Anyone who doesn't know it is making a big mistake." In terms of the reality of Israel's current political system, Nirenstein is located to the right of Kadima and Labor, and maybe even of Likud Chair Benjamin Netanyahu. She says she believes in the idea of two states for two peoples, but thinks the principle of "territories for peace" has been a failure. There's no point in discussing it, she explains, until the entire Arab world is capable of recognizing Israel. Negotiations with Hamas are absolutely out of the question. But there are polls which indicate that a majority of Israelis are prepared to negotiate with Hamas. Nirenstein: "The public supports a compromise with Hamas, so that it will stop firing on Sderot. But morally speaking, there mustn't be negotiations with Hamas, which thinks that Jews are the sons of monkeys and pigs. You can't negotiate with cannibals, who eat human beings." It's hard to argue with Nirenstein. Not just because of the poor quality of the phone connection to Rome, but also because she thinks that Israel is a beacon that should serve as inspiration for the entire West. "Israel is the vanguard of all the democracies in the world, and the time has come for Europe to recognize that," she says. But in the election campaign you met with Italians who barely know where Israel is. How did you persuade them that Israel is important to their lives? "I said that Italy can learn a lot from Israel. It can learn what a true democracy is, how a democracy can survive in conditions of conflict, without forsaking its fundamental principles. Israel is a culture of life, a culture of people who are always seeking peace. Our problem in Italy is that sometimes we don't know who we are. You can know who you are if you know your enemy and your friend. Israel is Italy's friend." In other words, Islam is the enemy? "I'm not saying that all Muslims are terrorists, or that all Muslims are criminals. But Hamas has announced that it wants to conquer Rome, to make it the outpost from which it will conquer all of Europe." And you think that Hamas really intends to conquer Rome? "Rome is a very symbolic place in the eyes of radical Islam. Italy, with its Catholic culture, is an enemy in the eyes of Islam." Obviously, this all touches on one of the central issues in Italy's recent election campaign: the immigrant issue. Fini, who is slated to be appointed parliament speaker in Berlusconi's new administration, frequently talks about the need to ban illegal immigration. Even the moderate Social-Democractic party, led by the former mayor of Rome, Walter Veltroni, devoted a good amount of attention to the subject. "People feel that immigration is threatening their cities, their culture," Nirenstein explains. "Maybe it's exaggerated, but the residents of Florence, for example, think of their city as a temple for the works of art that were created there. When they see the steps of the Duomo filled with immigrants, they're in shock." I lived in Florence. I remember Italy as a tolerant country. "It's changed a lot. There are entire quarters that you can't enter at night. There's rape, there are assaults, there's drug dealing. There are schools for immigrants where they don't hang the crucifix. The immigrants have contempt for our culture. We gave them work and they scorn our values. There's a deep contradiction between the more radical Islam and Italy's values. "The problem is that there is hardly any moderate Islam in Italy. Just the opposite. In Rome they built an enormous mosque. There are a lot of mosques in Italy, and very anti-Western madrasas operate in them. There's polygamy, there's wife-battering - it's very common. There's a father who killed his daughter for 'family honor.' It's logical that Italians would notice and that there would be reactions." The straight- armed salute In Nirenstein's books, you don't find the aggressive anti-Muslim sentiment that screams from every page of Fallaci's books. But while she isn't part of the wave of opposition to immigrants and Muslims that is sweeping Italy, she does belong to the new right that scored an impressive election victory this week. It seems that there is no such thing as a right way to be "right" in all of Europe: Berlusconi, the avowed capitalist and most avid pro-American in Europe, on the one hand, the Lega Nord (Northern League) with its wild incitement on the other, and then Fini and his former neo-facist party. Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy almost seem like communists in comparison to this bunch. Nirenstein does not "completely" accept this definition. To her, Berlusconi is a centrist who also received votes from the left, because he's "for the downtrodden" and wants to lessen their tax burden. Nirenstein sees herself as "a friend of the Northern League," which just wants to turn Italy into a federal state. She feels this is a legitimate ambition, even if some of the League's pronouncements are "unpleasant." Her closeness to the former neo-fascist party caused Nirenstein some discomfort during the election campaign, particularly after one of Berlusconi's candidates for the Senate, Giuseppe Ciarrapico, proudly announced that he was and remains a fascist. According to Nirenstein, his candidacy "does not fit" with her candidacy as an avowed anti-fascist, a Jew and the daughter of a partisan, but she remained on the list nevertheless. "There's no such thing as a perfect list," she says. Did you encounter people like Ciarrapico during the election campaign? "At one of the election rallies I attended, in Genoa, someone gave the straight-armed salute. I went to the Allianza Nationale [the new name of the former neo- fascist party] people and asked who it was. I said that I protested, that I was stunned to see such a thing and that I did not want to see it again." But Fini himself used to do the straight-armed salute at rallies in the 1960s, when everyone knew where fascism had led to. "I don't know if Fini did that salute, maybe he did it in his youth. But I don't know what more he could have done than to kneel at Yad Vashem. Is he supposed to kill himself?" He may not have been able to do more. But how did you, as a Jew, the daughter of a partisan, feel alongside a man who supported fascism as an adult? "He was a fascist like I was a communist, when I was indifferent to what Pol Pot did, when I admired Che Guevara. I see him as someone who has since developed." Post-election Italy, says Nirenstein, is a better place, a more stable place, a place without a radical left and a radical right. She doesn't know yet what she'll do in the new parliament. Nirenstein would like to deal with foreign affairs, but she knows she'll have to pay a price: For now she'll remain in Rome and bid good-bye to her good friends in Israel. She's not giving up the house in Gilo, though. It will wait for the return of the parliament member from Rome. | |
Italy Moves Toward 2- Party System - From 26 to 6?
The ballot box unexpectedly eliminated all but one of Italy's myriad tiny parties, ejecting Communists, neofascists, Greens and Socialists from parliament as well as various minuscule Christian Democrat formations.
Italy moves toward 2- party system
Smaller parties wiped out in surprise outcome
Despite a 2005 return to proportional representation and a convoluted electoral law, the ballot box unexpectedly eliminated all but one of Italy's myriad tiny parties, ejecting Communists, neofascists, Greens and Socialists from parliament as well as various minuscule Christian Democrat formations.
Italian dailies used apocalyptic tones to describe the shake-up, saying parliament had been hit by an ''earthquake'' and a ''tsunami'' which would leave it with no more than six parties compared to the previous 26.
Tired of the instability created by smaller parties wielding blackmailing powers disproportionate to their size, voters opted for the major parties, pushing Italy towards a two-party system for the first time in the history of the Republic.
The development could end the system of revolving-door administrations in a country which has been through 61 governments since the end of the war.
The fate of outgoing Premier Romano Prodi was emblematic when his centre-left nine-party government was toppled by the defection of a Christian Democrat ally whose party had scored less than 1.5% in the 2006 election. The biggest party in the new parliament will be election winner Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right People of Freedom party (PDL), which gained 37.4%, followed by defeated candidate Walter Veltroni's centre-left Democratic Party (PD) on 33.2%.
The Northern League, a populist, devolutionist party allied with Berlusconi, will be the third largest force after seeing its support jump to 8.3% from 4.6% in 2006.
Next in line is the unaligned centrist, Catholic UDC, a former Berlusconi ally which won 5.6% on a national level but only managed to muster two seats in the Senate where voting is regionally based and parties standing alone must exceed 8% in order to gain representation - a feat the UDC only managed in one region.
Veltroni ally Italy of Values (IDV) led by former anti-graft prosecutor Antonio Di Pietro will be the fifth biggest group after winning 4.4%.
The only remnant of the past was the teeny Sicilian-based party, Movement for Autonomy (MpA) which gained 1.1% but was saved by its alliance with Berlusconi and a catch in the complicated electoral law allowing the 'readmittance' of the most-voted party in a coalition which falls below the 2% threshold needed for representation.
LEFT OUT OF THE PICTURE.
Instead, the once-mighty Socialist party, a constant presence in parliament since its creation in 1892, will vanish from the scene together with the Communists, whose hammer and sickle logo has been a parliamentary feature since 1921.
The disappearance of the Communists, allied with the Greens in a federation called the Left-Rainbow (SA), was one of the most surprising outcomes of the vote.
SA leader and former House Speaker Fausto Bertinotti, a 68-year-old leftist veteran who was standing for premier in the Sunday-Monday vote, was devastated when the SA failed to gain more than 3.1% and promptly quit.
The historic leader of the Communist Refoundation Party, Bertinotti had teamed up with other hard-left groups and the Greens expecting to at least match the 10% the parties had chalked up in the previous election.
His own party had garnered 5.8% in 2006 with regional peaks of 10% and more to make it the third-biggest party in Prodi's winning coalition.
''This is a total disaster - a drubbing of such unexpected proportions and a heavy personal defeat,'' Bertinotti said on Monday evening in announcing his resignation after a life-long career of activism.
Hard-right groups were similarly penalised, including the recently-formed The Right which had been pinning its hopes on glamorous premiership hopeful and self-professed Fascist Daniela Santanche'.
The Right overestimated its chances of stealing votes from a much larger rival, the National Alliance (AN), hoping to profit from the risk AN created of alienating its voters by merging with Berlusconi's PDL party two months ago.
Instead, Santanche' won just 2.4%, losing her seat in parliament in the process.
The Church was seen as another loser by some political observers after the UDC, which embraces traditional, Catholic values and is close to the Vatican, saw its voter support fall from 6.8% to 5.6% and other smaller heirs of the Christian Democrat tradition were eliminated from the picture.
Another party campaigning on a one-issue, pro-life ticket, led by prominent conservative newspaper editor Giuliano Ferrara, mustered no more than 0.4%.
Ferrara, who started up his Abortion? No Thanks movement just two months ago winning the immediate backing of top Church officials, said on Tuesday: ''What a catastrophe... To my cry of pain on such a real and dramatic issue, Italians replied with a resounding raspberry''.
Italian American Network Formed - Featuring Video Clips and Webisodes
Italian American Network Formed
A multiple Emmy Award winner, the Italian American Network's Mr. Ceglio remarked, "As someone who grew up in an Italian American household, I have an intimate understanding of the countless traditions and experiences that are part of a culture that millions of Americans have fallen in love with throughout the years. Embracing this experience, the Italian American Network will offer compelling, contemporary lifestyle programming featuring the beauty, pleasures and passions of a country and a culture that for more than 500 years have enriched our country with the same. There is no lifestyle that has become more admired and envied than the Italian La Dolce Vita - the sweet life." He added, "Beginning with its initial broadband video launch, I A NET will celebrate everything Italian in an entertaining and informative way, regardless of the media platform."
As part of this mission, the Italian American Network will appeal to both the 26 million Italian Americans as well as the nearly 70 million Italophiles in the U.S. who dearly embrace the belief that "there is a little Italian in all of us." According to a recent study conducted by the leading cable industry research group, Horowitz Associates, Inc., "One in five adults expresses a strong interest in watching a channel like the Italian American Network." As the first multi-platform media company devoted exclusively to serving this audience, I A NET will seek to serve both consumers and advertisers across several electronic media platforms through HD programming that is originally produced and developed by its in-house team, along with co-productions with leading production companies worldwide.
Advertising & E-Commerce
The Italian American Network's completely English-language broadband video platform is advertiser-supported, with charter sponsors including: the Piemonte Italy Regional Tourism Bureau, Perillo Tours and ShopWineandDine.com. To celebrate the launch, Perillo Tours is sponsoring a "Win a Trip to Italy" sweepstakes, with the grand prize winner receiving Perillo's "Roman Holiday" eight-day, six-night vacation for two, including airfare, first-class hotel accommodations and more.
Also part of www.ItalianAmericanNetwork.com is The Italian Zone, an online retail and e-commerce platform that will offer shopping opportunities for a variety of quality products from Italy. The Italian Zone product line-up at launch will range from foods and gifts to cosmetics and specialty items that can be shipped directly to a home or office.
Original Programming
Initially, www.ItalianAmericanNetwork.com will feature originally-produced, English-language programming, updated daily and dedicated to multiple, in-depth content categories including: Food, Travel, Sports, Cooking, Must-See Videos, Phrase of the Day (Italian ones, of course), Our Community, Restaurant Reviews, In Shape (health and fit living), Comedy, Music, Produce Pete, Video Blogs, Behind the Scenes, and even... Italian Superstitions.
Nearly 100 percent of the online content is originally produced, world premiere programming, with video clips and webisodes ranging from 30 seconds to four minutes in duration per piece. ItalianAmericanNetwork.com will also include blogs, podcasts, interactive games and user generated content in the comedy, music and other categories.
Valerie Smaldone, a five-time Billboard Magazine award winner who is best known for successfully holding the #1 position in the New York radio market as the midday host of New York's 106.7 FM, hosts Valerie, an original video series that features candid and illuminating one-on-one interview segments with Italian Americans who are leaders in their chosen fields. Guests range from actors and athletes to musicians, noted physicians and authors.
At launch, other celebrity hosts for IA Net online content will include former star football (soccer) player Giorgio Chinaglia, star actor/screenwriter Chazz Palminteri, television personality "Produce Pete" Napolitano, "Biker Chef" Christopher Coppola and recording artist/television host Rue DeBona.
About Tony Ceglio
Mr. Ceglio, prior to becoming the founder and CEO of the Italian American Network, had more than 30 years of experience in the broadcast television industry as well as a long history with the New York Giants. He joined the Giants staff as the team's first Film Director in 1976 and introduced such innovations as the installation of a state-of-the-art film laboratory and editing facility. He pioneered the process of in-house television program production in the NFL while serving as the Giants first director of broadcasting.
During his 27-year tenure with the Giants, Mr. Ceglio designed the premier video sports editing system in the NFL that was put online in 1986, the year that the Giants won their first Super Bowl championship. In 1986, he was elected as Chairman of the National Football League Video Directors Committee. In this role, he authored practices, policies and rules for all NFL video and, today most of the NFL teams employ a director of broadcasting who uses Mr. Ceglio's business model. Working with NFL Properties, Mr. Ceglio played a key role on the task force which orchestrated a $17 million deal with Sony for the league to switch from film to video. Mr. Ceglio, who has served as executive producer on programs that have garnered 14 Emmy Awards, went on to launch a sports film laboratory business based in Valhalla, New York. In less than two years, the company had built a roster of more than 100 clients.
About The Italian American Network
The new multi-platform media company was founded by its CEO Tony Ceglio to both entertain and inform Americans by providing the nation's first and only daily window to the complete Italian and Italian American experience. The Italian American Network has already received overwhelming interest and support from the Italian American community and, in turn, has established grassroots affiliations with millions of Americans through such noted organizations as: National Italian American Foundation, Order Sons of Italy, Columbus Citizens Foundation, National Trust of Italy, Center for Italian and Italian American Culture, New Jersey Italian American Heritage Commission, and UNICO, to name a few.
The company's headquarters are based in Paramus, New Jersey. For more information about The Italian American Network, its executive team and its content, please visit www.ItalianAmericanNetwork.com
Berlusconi Mocks Spain for "Pink" Cabinet
Silvio Berlusconi, who takes power shortly as Prime Minister of Italy for the third time, caused outrage in Spain after he suggested that the new Government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero was "too pink". (Had too many Female Members).
The remark, that was meant to be light-hearted, passed almost unnoticed in Italy, was greeted with disbelief in Spain.
Stefania Prestigiacomo, of his Forza Italia party, is thought to be in line to become Minister for European Affairs while Mara Carfagna, a former model, television presenter and Miss Italy contestant, has been mentioned as a possible Minister for the Family. Other candidates are Giulia Bongiorno, a member of the former Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti's defence team in several Mafia-related trials, who may become Justice Minister, and Rosi Mauro, of the Northern League, as Minister for Welfare.
Flame-haired Michela Vittoria Brambilla, a former Miss Italy finalist known as "La Rossa" (the Red One), heads a network of political clubs close to Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party, Daniela Santanche, an MP for the right-wing National Alliance party are also under consideration.
Berlusconi has also been rumored to have said his Female Cabinet members would be better looking than those of Spain. :)
Silvio Berlusconi Angers Spain for Mocking Female Cabinet
A heated row has broken out between Spain and Italy over whether women should be given powerful Cabinet jobs.
Silvio Berlusconi, who takes power shortly as Prime Minister of Italy for the third time, caused outrage in Spain after he suggested that the new Government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero was "too pink".
Mr Berlusconi, who won a sweeping victory in this week's Italian election, told a radio station: ?Zapatero has formed a government that is too pink, something that we cannot do in Italy because there is a prevalence of men in politics and it isn't easy to find women who are qualified.?
Mr Zapatero, a self-declared feminist, made equal rights a centrepiece of his first term in office, passing a law making it compulsory for electoral lists and even company boards to be composed of at least 40 per cent women. This week he suggested that he would go even further in his second government by naming more women than men to his Cabinet. "Now he's asked for it," Mr Berlusconi said. "He will have problems leading them".
The remark, which aides said was meant to be light-hearted, passed almost unnoticed in Italy, which is used to Mr Berlusconi?s jokes and gaffes - as well as his unreconstructed male chauvinism. In Spain, however, it was greeted with disbelief.
Magdalena Álvarez, the Spanish Infrastructure Minister, described Mr Berlusconi's remarks as absolutely inappropriate and an offence to citizens. "Many of us women would never belong to a government headed by Mr Berlusconi," she declared.
Women in Spain have not occupied merely minor roles: Mr Zapatero stunned the country's military by appointing a young woman "who is seven months pregnant" as Defence Minister. Both the Spanish and the Italian press have run pictures of Carme Chacón inspecting Spanish troops wearing a loose-fitting maternity blouse, her bump visible to all.
Other Spanish ministers dismissed Mr Berlusconi's contention that there were no women qualified to serve in government. Even Esperanza Aguirre, the conservative president of the Madrid regional government and a leading light of the opposition Popular Party, said that appointing so many women had been "one of the best things" that Mr Zapatero had done.
Mr Berlusconi yesterday held his first coalition "summit meeting" to decide the distribution of Cabinet posts. He has said that he will honour his election pledge to include at least four women in his Cabinet.
Attitudes towards women have diverged sharply in Spain and Italy. The Spanish Government recently forced Dolce & Gabbana, the Italian fashion company, to pull an advertisement showing a man pinning a scantily clad woman to the floor as a group of men looked on.
Italy's Once Mighty Communist Party Fades to Anti Capitalistic "Movement"
In a "Rainbow Left" alliance with the Greens, the communists hoped for 6 percent to 8 percent of the vote. But squeezed out by a new centre-left Democratic Party, they scored little more than 3 percent, down from 10 percent in the 2006 election and not enough to win any seats in parliament.
Gabriele Polo, editor of communist daily Il Manifesto, said the left now had to regroup in an anti-capitalist movement -- not necessarily a party. "We need to create a political bond, to build a credible process based on the four values we share: work, civil rights, peace and the environment."
ROME: They survived the repression of Benito Mussolini's fascist dictatorship, the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall.
But Italy's communists, once the most influential leftist force in western Europe, are in disarray after a disastrous election that means the hammer and sickle will be unrepresented in parliament for the first time since World War Two.
"Even in Italy the wall has fallen, the one that was solid even though it was invisible and had remained standing even after the one in Berlin had gone," gloated Il Giornale, a conservative newspaper close to election winner Silvio Berlusconi.
In a "Rainbow Left" alliance with the Greens, the communists hoped for 6 percent to 8 percent of the vote. But squeezed out by a new centre-left Democratic Party, they scored little more than 3 percent, down from 10 percent in the 2006 election and not enough to win any seats in parliament.
"It is a heavy defeat for the left which, for the first time in the history of the Republic will not have any seats in parliament, after the victory of a populist and xenophobic right," Communist Refoundation said in a statement.
Banned by Mussolini, communists played a crucial role in resisting fascism and German Nazi occupation. The Italian Communist Party (PCI) was elected to parliament after the war and represented a third of the electorate in its 1970s heyday.
When the PCI rebranded after the Cold War, leftists splintered off to establish communist parties which had several ministers in Romano Prodi's outgoing government. The head of Communist Refoundation was speaker of the last parliament.
WRITING ON THE WALL
The Communist hammer and sickle symbol remains on the wall in Via Giubbonari, just off the Campo de' Fiori market square in central Rome.
A marble plaque identifies a former Rome office of the PCI, now occupied by the Democratic Party (PD), the centre-left party which contains the bulk of Italy's former communists.
"It has to stay there," said PD activist Elisabetta Barrella. "It commemorates Guido Rattoppatore, the head of a resistance group who was killed by the Nazis."
Like many ex-communists, 47-year-old Barrella is proud of communism's legacy. She quit when the PCI morphed into the post-Cold War Democratic Party of the Left in 1991, but returned and is now convinced that the new PD is the left's only future.
"When they took the hammer and sickle off the party symbol it was like a knife in my heart," said Barrella, who works in Italy's court of auditors. "In all other European countries there is a social-democratic party, we need that here."
Die-hards say the PD can never represent them. Italian Communists leader Oliviero Diliberto called the left's defeat a "nice result for (Walter) Veltroni," the PD's head who excluded the communists from his party's election ticket.
Outgoing Health Minister Livia Turco said the communists were to blame for their own demise as they had proved nothing but trouble for Prime Minister Romano Prodi, who needed their support to prop up his tiny parliamentary majority.
"You can't be in government and in opposition at the same time. That was a mistake and the election results showed that clearly," Turco said.
REGROUP
While Berlusconi revels in the defeat of the communists he hates, the hard left faces five years in the wilderness.
"At this point we need to start again from scratch and start again with the old symbols, the hammer and sickle," said Diliberto, vowing to keep communism alive.
Gabriele Polo, editor of communist daily Il Manifesto, said the left now had to regroup in an anti-capitalist movement -- not necessarily a party.
"We need to create a political bond, to build a credible process based on the four values we share: work, civil rights, peace and the environment," Polo told Reuters.
Some analysts picking over the election results say the disappearance of the communists from national politics is linked to the surprise victory of the Northern League, Berlusconi's junior coalition partner which doubled its vote to 8 percent.
Although usually considered right wing, the staunchly anti-immigration League which campaigns for autonomy for Italy's rich north, has the support of workers worried about jobs, the economy and crime.
In coverage that implied Italy's hard left had suffered a lasting blow at the election, a headline in Thursday's La Stampa daily read: "The new PCI is the League."
(Editing by Mary Gabriel)
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Italy Election Turnout Puts USA to Shame
| ITALIAN ELECTIONS: AMATO, HIGH TURNOUT, MORE THAN 80 PCT |
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"Carnera- The Walking Mountain"- Movie Premiere Tribute to Primo Carnera
Selling Pompeii - To Control Visitors and Raise Money - Derided as Too American
Authorities have come up with a new plan to control visitors and raise money for the ancient site.
The excavated rooms of the Fullonica of Stephanus wool factory are home to some of Pompeii's best-preserved artifacts. Against one wall the terracotta basins used to wash wool with a mixture of water and urine "a winning formula before soap was developed" offer a rare glimpse into Pompeian life before the disastrous eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79. But on a recent morning these stunning chambers became the scene of a clash of a different kind. On one side French tourists were trying to get out. On the other German visitors were trying to get in. They met, and got stuck, in the room's narrow doorway. After much elbowing, shoving and cursing, umbrella-wielding tour guides broke the impasse. The bottleneck, however, underscores one of Pompeii's most serious problems: overcrowding.
Pompeii's haunting ruins are one of the world's most important ongoing archaeological digs, attracting nearly 2.6 million visitors each year. Not surprisingly, the site is a major source of national pride among Italians, who strive to showcase heritage sites without sullying their historical context. Like many Italian excavations, Pompeii's accessibility allows tourists to wander through the ancient ruins unhindered-provided they can find the elbow room. Now local officials have come up with a controversial plan to fix the chronic crunch. Campania's new regional heritage councilor, Claudio Velardi, wants to limit visitors to the site and offer the newly freed-up space as a venue to rent to large foreign corporations. "My idea is very precise," Velardi told NEWSWEEK. "By programming the number of visitors we could, first, make the Pompeii experience better for everyone. But we could also increase revenue by offering an opportunity for someone like Google or Microsoft to use the site for a private event."
Indeed, Velardi has already had talks with both these tech giants about renting Pompeii for sponsored and private events, even though he faces an admittedly tough battle to get governmental approval to use a public site for any private non-Italian use. Undeterred, he also plans to talk to Pixar and Warner Bros. about leasing the ruins as movie sets after Roman Polanski's film "Pompeii," which is stalled in production, was shot in Spain. Velardi has a long list of other multinational companies that he believes would be interested and able to afford what he refers to only as an "astronomical" rental fee. "This is Pompeii, after all," he says. "It is obviously a venue that would command a major investment."
In most countries this might seem like a sensible suggestion. But in Italy the proposal is seen as absurd and has become a lightning rod for a broader political debate about whether the nation's archeological treasures are going to become backdrops for American-style theme parks. Italian heritage sites have always been run according to strict rules meant to protect their integrity. To many Italians the notion of any sort of commercial meddling by outsiders "especially American concerns that may "Disneyfy" a site like Pompeii" will detract from its aesthetic and cultural value. "We face an incredible battle to do what would, in the end, be the best thing for Pompeii," says Velardi. "The opposition is completely closed to the idea because they see it as selling Pompeii rather than enhancing the site."
Certain sections of the ruins are already frequently rented out for publicly financed events. Last week the grassy Grand Palestra was closed to visitors as workers set up a stage for a grand piano and linen-covered banquet tables for a pre-election dinner sponsored by a local politician. And many organizations regularly sponsor specific projects in return for branding opportunities. The California-based Packard Humanities Institute has given 1.5 million euros in grants toward the conservation of Pompeii and nearby Herculaneum, and local companies like the Compagnia di San Paolo have funded restorations of the Terme Suburbane and the Lupanare brothel.
That, however, hasn't curbed criticism from people like Pompeii's superintendent Pietro Giovanni Guzzo. Guzzo insists that limiting visitors should only be for the enhancement of services and not to turn a privately generated profit, even if the proceeds would go directly to the local cultural ministry for reinvestment. While Pompeii is considered an active archaeological dig, most funds allocated to the ruins are strictly for conservation and upkeep rather than any further exploration. Only two-thirds (44 hectares, or 107 acres) of the buried city has been excavated since the first digs began in the 18th century. An estimated 350 million euros would be needed to dig up the remaining third, but some conservationists would prefer to keep it underground as a way of preserving it for future generations. Velardi argues that renting out the site could even fund future digs.
Other opponents say that the plan also blurs the line between Italy's public cultural heritage and private enterprise. Michele Trimarchi, professor of arts economics at the University of Bologna, worries that opening up the site for private sponsors will backfire. He points to failed experiments like the privatization of some of Rome's major monuments - and the fact that they eventually had to revert to public administrators. "Restricted entry on its own is pointless," he says. "It serves a purpose if it ensures an enhanced visitor experience, which will not come from handing the site over to private sponsors who have already proved disappointing in the heritage sector."
Velardi counters by saying that any corporation hoping to use the site would be subject to a rigorous selection process and would be required to contribute to improving on the premises. This could include renovating an existing excavation or providing funds to upgrade basic infrastructure, like lighting or restrooms. "This is not some sort of scandalous plan," says Velardi. "It's what they do at the MoMA, the Prado and the Louvre." In ancient Pompeii, though, that may just be too modern an idea.
Berlusconi Wins Italian Election!!
Counting for the lower house, the "Chamber of Deputies", had yet to begin. Exit polls indicated the gap between the two main parties here was narrower, at two (2) percentage points.
However, Italian politicians were being cautious in their predictions after their experience in the general election two years ago when the balance of advantage shifted during the evening.
Further complicating matters, the elections employ a complex system under which ballots do not necessarily translate into seats. This is particularly true in the senate where, in each region, the winning party gets a "victor's bonus". Added together, they could have a decisive effect on the overall result.
Berlusconi's Opponent Concedes in Italian Election
Italy's centre-left leader, Walter Veltroni, tonight conceded defeat to Silvio Berlusconi in the country's elections.
Veltroni said he called conservative leader Berlusconi to congratulate him on his victory.
"As is customary in all western democracy, and as I feel it is right to do, I called the leader of the People of Freedom, Silvio Berlusconi, to acknowledge his victory and wish him good luck in his job," Veltroni told reporters.
He said the result is clear even though the final results are not in yet.
Projections earlier today showed the 71-year-old billionaire and his rightwing allies heading back to power in the Italian general election with a convincing majority.
The projections, based on a small sample of the overall vote, gave Berlusconi's Freedom Folk party and its allies 44.9% of the vote in the senate, against 38.2% for the centre-left.
If confirmed as the count unfolds, the margin would translate into a majority of seats that would be big enough to allow Berlusconi to govern without needing new alliances.
However, Italian politicians were being cautious in their predictions after their experience in the general election two years ago when the balance of advantage shifted during the evening.
Counting for the lower house, the chamber of deputies, had yet to begin. Exit polls indicated the gap between the two main parties here was narrower, at two percentage points.
Much will depend on the showing of smaller parties unallied with either of the two main contestants. Exit polls commissioned by the Italian state-owned broadcaster RAI gave them 16-20% of the vote.
Two parties in particular could yet influence the outcome: the Union of Centre and Christian Democrats (UDC), which was allied with Berlusconi, and the Rainbow Left, which takes in Marxists and Greens who were formally united with the centre-left.
Both exit polls and initial projections pointed to a triumph for a third party, the Northern League, which is allied to Berlusconi's movement. The stridently anti-immigrant League could have a big effect on the new government's policies if the forecasts are borne out.
Polls closed just after lunch at the end of a day and a half of voting and a campaign stretching back to the fall of Romano Prodi's centre-left government on January 28.
With both of the leading candidates offering strikingly similar programmes, the contest was a lacklustre affair until the final week, when Veltroni appeared to be narrowing the gap on Berlusconi, the clear early favourite looking for another return to power.
In the last few days of campaigning, 52-year-old Veltroni drew a crowd of tens of thousands in Berlusconi's home city of Milan, while the media tycoon was able to muster only a few thousand in his rival's home town of Rome.
In his final rally at the Colosseum, Berlusconi appeared to give away votes by criticising the local football hero Francesco Totti, saying he was "off his head" for wanting to vote for the centre-left in the mayoral election, which was also being held today.
Italy's next government faces the unenviable task of trying to reinvigorate a failing economy, and that was reflected in the campaign's generally cautious rhetoric.
One issue that helped to doom Prodi's administration was news from the European Union that the Italian economy had been overtaken by that of Spain. Other symptoms of the country's failure came together in a rubbish crisis that engulfed Naples and the surrounding region of Campania.
Both of the leading contenders to become prime minister offered a formula involving lower taxes and higher spending, which they insisted could be made to work with a huge programme of public asset sales.
In the short term, the biggest task facing Italy's next leader will be to decide what to do about the stalled negotiations to sell Alitalia. Talks between unions and the airline's only prospective buyer, Air France-KLM, ground to a halt after Berlusconi said the Franco-Dutch offer was unacceptable. He raised the possibility of an all-Italian consortium of buyers, but none has yet materialised.
The elections employ a complex system under which ballots do not necessarily translate into seats. This is particularly true in the senate where, in each region, the winning party gets a "victor's bonus". Added together, they could have a decisive effect on the overall result.
http://www.guardian.co.ukMonday, April 14, 2008
FBI- 100th Anniversity- 1908-2008 - Founded By Charles Joseph Bonaparte
FBI Celebrates a Century 1908-2008
From Federal Bureau of Investigation Web Site
Bonaparte Founded G-Men
As Attorney General Under Theodore Roosevelt,
One of the most picturesque figures in American politics, the grandnephew of Napoleon, first organized the "detective force of special agents" of the Department of Justice now known as G-men.
This was Charles Joseph Bonaparte, Secretary of the Navy and later, Attorney General, in the cabinet of Theodore Roosevelt. He was a grandson of Jerome, the younger brother of Napoleon I, who married Betsy Patterson of Baltimore, and the only authentic member of royalty who ever entered American politics.
Known nationally as the "Imperial Peacock," and more intimately as "Souphouse Charlie," Bonaparte wrote prolifically - articles, speeches, essays and books - against public and private sin, on political and social subjects, for the magazines of the early 1900's. He was regarded as the one of the sharpest wits of his day and yet was one of the most humorless of men. He was by instinct a royalist, by profession a democrat and a reformer. He lived his three score and 10, and died childless and poor, June 28, 1921, already long forgotten.
Wed on Christmas Eve.
While on a yacht trip in 1803, the 19-year-old Jerome had met the moneyed, year-younger beauty, Elizabeth of Baltimore. On Christmas Eve these two were married. Napoleon was furious at his younger brother and refused to recognize the union. He suggested forthright desertion.
Two years later Jerome and Betsy went back to Europe on the yacht. But they parted at Lisbon, Portugal. Betsy got 60,000 francs a year as settlement; Jerome married again, and took up the business of being King of Westphalia. Then Betsy's son, Jerome Napoleon, was born, to be legitimized later by Napoleon III.
Not until 1915 did Betsy get her divorce from Jerome. Then, using her settlement money, she traveled about and lived among the society of the Continent until 1840, noted for her beauty, caustic wit and her lavish expenditures upon her son. He grew up to call himself Jerome Bonaparte-Patterson, married Susan May Williams of Baltimore and in his turn became the father of two sons. One of them was Charles Joseph; the other Jerome Napoleon, distinguished himself as a roving soldier in various campaigns abroad.
Left Grandsons $1,500,000.
Betsy, now returned to Baltimore, died there at an advanced age in 1879. During these last 18 years in Baltimore she lived obscurely in a small boarding house, plodding about the town in rain or shine, collecting her rents. She took charge of the education of her two grandsons, sent Charles up to Harvard and, when she died, left the two boys $1,500,000 in gilt-edged real estate.
Charles, born on June 9, 1951, was taught early by his mother to keep out of the pride parade which he might have marched in because of his royal blood. She sent him first to a French school near his birthplace in Baltimore, then provided private tutors for him.
At Harvard he was a brilliant scholar, graduating in the class of '72. Two years later he had completed work in the Cambridge law school and September 1, 1875, married Ellen Channing Day of Newport, R.I. He began practicing at once in Baltimore. Having money, he put himself on the side of justice. Public cases appealed to him, so he allied himself with the local reform rings, He became a member of the Baltimore Reform League and helped found the Civil Service Reformer, organ of the Maryland Civil Service League.
Earned Sobriquet in 1884.
It was at this time, 1884, that he earned a sobriquet which followed him all his days thereafter. As a Catholic who was never absent from his pew in Baltimore Cathedral on Sunday mornings, Bonaparte was violently opposed to the public school system, just then getting on its legs in America. "As ridiculous the State should provide free schools," he argued, "as that it should supply free soup houses!"
A newspaper wit took up the phrase and a descendant of the American line of a reigning royal family in Europe became "Souphouse Charlie."
Through his civil service reform activities, Roosevelt heard of him. They first met in 1889, while Roosevelt was a member of the Civil Service Commission. Both Harvard men, they worked together. Later, as President, he sought Bonaparte's services on the Board of Indian Commissions, then as special counsel to prosecute alleged frauds in the postal service. These offices lasted from 1902-05.
In 1905, with the expectation of succeeding to the Attorney Generalship on the retirement of William H. Moody, he accepted the portfolio of Secretary of the Navy in a long-winded letter to Roosevelt.
At the time, there was great newspaper raillery directed at him; "The grandnephew of the Little Corporal as head of the United States Navy." But then, as all his life, he was indifferent to newspaper comment. He was probably one of the most indolent Secretaries the Navy has ever had. For weeks running his attendance at his office was limited to an hour a day. He still kept his residence in Baltimore and, leaving there by the 11 o'clock train daily, he got to Washington at noon, dashed to the Navy Department and then caught the 1 o'clock train back to Baltimore. He lingered longer in the Capital only on cabinet-meeting days.
Became Attorney General.
In December, 1906, when he was 45, he became Attorney General. This office suited his abilities better. He appeared before the Supreme Court personally in 560 cases during his incumbency and delivered 138 opinions through the Department of Justice to the President and heads of departments. Only three of these latter were not completely his own. He argued 49 cases orally before the court and submitted seven on briefs. Twenty of these cases came under the anti-trust laws, helping to dissolve the American Tobacco Co. and earning him another epithet - the "trust buster" - which only amused him.
While in this capacity he aided in the organization of a body of special agents which in later days have come to be known as "G-men." They gained no great reputation during his regime, it is said, because, wishing "to make his own mistakes," Bonaparte kept such tight check on his detective force that he left them little room for initiative.
An interesting sidelight on this point would reveal the origins of this force of men about whom so much has been in print lately but about whose beginnings little has been told.
Contrary to prevalent opinion, the G-men are in no sense a recent governmental development. A specific act of Congress of May 27, 1908, is responsible for their establishment and J. Edgar Hoover, far from being their first head, is their sixth.
Archives Aid Story.
Pieced together from interviews with two men - David D. Caldwell and Staley Finch, both still active in the Department of Justice - and old records from the archives for the Attorney General, the story, briefly, is this:
Part of the reason Bonaparte had been appointed to the office of the Attorney General by Roosevelt was to give over his special talents to the prosecution of offenders in the vast land fraud activities going on in the West at that time - 1905-10. When he came into office the newspapers were also carrying frightful stories of timber frauds, peonage and crimes against the Treasury laws of one sort or another.
As far back as 1878 the reports of the Attorney General had called to the attention of Congress the fact that he had really no force for the investigation of "official acts, records ad accounts" of district attorneys, marshals and clerks. The following year a small appropriation was provided for such a group of examiners. The report for 1884 shows that the Attorney General was using examiners to look up the accounts of the court offices in the field where there was also much corrupt practice.
Records then become vague for a time, but it is certain that these examiners were being hired from other departments of the Government having detective forces. It is certain also, that not a few men were impressed from the Treasury Department secret service branch, but being paid by the Department of Justice out of special funds appropriated for this usage.
Organized Own Bureau.
By act of Congress in 1908 this practice was forbidden. The Attorney General was forced to organize his own Bureau of Investigation.
In 1906 the Attorney General had reported that criminal identification records were accumulating at the Federal penitentiaries. He recommended that Congress authorize the collection and classification of those records and their exchange with the States. In 1908 he announced that arrangements were being made for the exchange. The following year, the records had been transferred to Washington the year before all were sent to Leavenworth Penitentiary, in Leavenworth, Kansas. There the first Bureau of Identification was set up. It was not until 1923 that this Bureau was again moved to Washington and made a part of the Bureau of Investigation.
Before 1908 the Department of Justice's group engaged in collecting evidence of Federal law violations then was a mixed group hired from other departments, but paid for from different appropriations from the Department of Justice. They were called an office of examiners, and subdivided into seven services - for land and timber frauds, peonage, etc., investigations.
Executive Force Lacking.
Then came Bonaparte. His first report, for 1907-8, says in part: "The attention of Congress should be called to the anomaly that the Department of Justice has no executive force, and, more particularly, no permanent detective force under its immediate control. This singular condition arises mainly from the fact that before the office of Attorney General was transformed into the Department of Justice a highly efficient detective service had been organized to deal with crimes against the Treasury laws, which force has been in effect lent from time to time to this department to meet its steadily increasing need for an agency of this nature, without, however, being removed from the control of the Treasury Department."
[p.4]
He further suggests that if the Department of Justice "had a small, carefully selected and experienced force under its immediate orders, the necessity of having these officers (i.e. the mercenaries from the Treasury Department, etc.) suddenly appointed as special deputies, possibly in considerable numbers, might be sometimes avoided, with greater likelihood of economy and a better assurance of satisfactory results."
But behind this recommendation there had been an inter-office memorandum from one David D. Caldwell, then a young attorney in the office of the Assistant to the Attorney General, Bonaparte. It had been suggested, in the early months of 1907, that this force of hired men from the Secret Service and elsewhere, who had been doing the criminal investigation for the Department of Justice, be made a permanent part of the office of the Attorney General, under the head of one man there. These Secret Service men, loaned by John E. Wilkie, then their chief, were doing good work - riding bumpers and rods on trains out West, gathering information, and arresting their men at straggling village water tanks. But they were not under the controls of the Department of Justice. Caldwell, now attorney with the Department of Justice, saw this as a situation likely to need correction. He is perhaps the first man who planted the seed which later grew into the Department of Federal Investigation.
Finch Headed Examiners.
Within the Department of Justice at this time, as nominal head of the examiners, was Stanley W. Finch, now attached to the Accounts Division of the Department of Justice. He had been connected with the Department since 1893, and by 1908 was chief bookkeeper in the division which took charge of investigations.
He, too, saw the great need of organizing this heterogeneous group of examiners under on head in the Department of Justice. Therefore, with the advent of Bonaparte, he prepared …
[p.6, c.1]
… memoranda for the Attorney General which would bring about such a result.
The ball had begun to roll. Caldwell, plus Finch, plus Bonaparte, was too much for Congress. The act of 1908 brought matters to a head. The Department of Justice was forced to organized its own Bureau of Law Violation Investigators.
The seven services were congealed, and Finch was given the title of chief examiner. Then the prisons branch was lopped off and put in charge of R. V. La Dow, and that department is now known as the Bureau of Prisons, with Sanford Bates director.
Finch Gathers 25 Aides.
With the title of chief examiner, Finch became first head of what was later to be known as the Federal Bureau of Investigation. By authority of Bonaparte, Finch grouped about him approximately 25 men - the original G-Men. Together, Finch and the Attorney General went over the list of men available for this special investigating work. First, a set of standards was worked out, corresponding very much to present-day qualifications; the men, of course, were to be physically fit; they were to be well educated - preferably graduates of some college and members of the bar; they were not to be unusual in appearance, so that they could pass unnoticed in a crowd; they were to have a knowledge of language, if possible. They were to be appointed by Bonaparte, upon Finch's recommendation. In this first batch appointed were half a dozen of the men formerly fired, from the Secret Service. These taught shadowing and "policing" to the others. One of them, Finch recalls, was a linguist who came form the Immigration Service; some came from the Treasury and other departments' accounting divisions. All were competent criminal investigators of one sort or another.
In the report of 1908, Bonaparte describes these first G-Men as "Special Agents, under direct orders of the Chief Examiner, who receives from them daily reports and summarizes them for submission to the Attorney General *** directly controlled by this department, and the Attorney General knows at all time what they are doing and cost."
In his last report, he said, "The last six months shows clearly that such a force is, under modern conditions, absolutely indispensable to the proper discharge of the department, and it is hoped that its merits will be augmented and its attendant expense reduced by further experience."
Office Name Changed.
Under George W. Wickersham, who succeeded Bonaparte, it was built up to a "substantial force," says Finch who remained in the position of its head until 1911. Still further to augment his division and strengthen its position, he prepared two letters which Bonaparte signed. One changed the name of this Division from Office of the Chief Examiner to Federal Bureau of Investigation. The other named him chief of the newly named bureau. The first real activities of the G-Men, as such, were to gather details and make arrest in the then all-important "bucket-shop" cases which sprang up all over the country, and to break up the strong rings of violators of the Mann act.
Thus were born the G-Men of today, really a governmental body 27 years old.
With the retirement of President Roosevelt in 1909, Bonaparte went back to his law practice in Baltimore after three years and eight months in the cabinet.
For the remainder of his life he remained active in politics, however. As a lawyer, he was sharp in repartee, was an eloquent speaker, noted for his wit, vocabulary and sarcasm - "keen as a Damascus blade," according to contemporaries. He became founder of the National Municipal League, and later its president. He was for 12 years an overseer of Harvard University. He was much in demand as a public speaker in civil service reform, remaining an advocate of the merit system to the end of his days.
Florid, Complex Style.
He wrote continuously and voluminously for newspapers, magazines and in book form. He was frank in his writing, hating waste and hypocrisy in a deadly way. His style was florid and complex, with sentences 500 words long a commonplace. Books, speeches and essays now moulder forgotten.
His relationship undoubtedly got him a certain prestige, but he never mentioned it. Once, denounced as a "transplanted Frenchman" and therefore sinful, he promptly replied that he was Italian and Scotch, and without a drop of French blood. He never visited France or the Bonaparte family in Europe, and it irritated him to be told he looked like Napoleon. It is probable that he harbored the remembrance of Betsy's desertion and the annulment of the marriage by Napoleon.
He had few intimates during this latter portion of his live, visited no places of amusement, and was seen rarely at social functions. He became a values advisor to Cardinal Gibbons, and seems to have made this great Catholic his main companion. In this capacity, and as trustees for many years of Catholic University in Washington, he rated the newspaper reputation of "one of the greatest Catholic laymen in America."
He is described by those who knew him as tall, sturdy, with a large, strong neck and a massive head: "A vast round, rugged head; a double-decker head; a cannon ball head, like a warrior's, with room for two sets of brains, bald and shiny." His hair and eyes were jet black, his hands and feet small. He had the clear ruddy complexion of an outdoorsman. He constantly wore black, carried an umbrella - not a cane - and looked like a "studious professor."
He did much of his thinking on the street, striding briskly along, his massive head-"with curious rises over the temples"-swaying from side to side. Thus in transit he seldom recognized his most intimate friends until roused.
Newspaper men liked to interview Charles Joseph. He was always good for an interview, always "good copy." They liked to say, "Beneath the forehead lurks the Bonaparte smile. It is there all the time." His interviews show him to have been conscientious, a man of many peculiar tastes, but with few sympathies.
His property gradually slipped through his fingers, although he was diligent with his accounts and never missed a day at his office. When not at work in the modest legal quarters he maintained, he divided his time between his town and his country house. This latter was Bella Vista, about 15 miles from Baltimore. From there he used to drive to town each morning behind a pair of fast-stepping "roadsters."
He was fond of the life of a gentleman farmer, and on his 300-acre place, stocked with blooded horses, 33 cows, fine sheep, hogs and poultry, he maintained a studious neatness, from stable to dog houses. He was a good judge of horseflesh and fond of French harness.
For seven months of the year, from May to December, he lived as a Maryland farmer, in this grass-covered valley. He rose punctually at 5:30, walked an hour, then drove to Baltimore, silent on the trip. He habitually retired at 9 in the evening and, a fresh-air "fiend," insisted on open windows and doors.
Thus he passed his last days. As a neighbor once said, "sensible folks like him, and the damn fools don't."
'My Brother Is an Only Child' - Sibling, Political Rivals in 1960s Italy
'My Brother Is an Only Child' (sibling, political rivals in 1960s Italy)
Chicago Tribune
The fey illogic in the title of "My Brother is an Only Child" hints at the style of this funny-sad film, which flips from dark to light moods and back with suave, unpredictable dexterity.
The movie is a sweet, gently real portrait of two brothers coming of age in 1960s Italy and at the same time aswim in the muddy waters of postwar European politics. The brothers live in a rural area in cheap temporary quarters while awaiting long-promised, government-subsidize housing--a wait that, as years go by, resembles the tramps' futile patience for Godot.
That's just the backdrop allowing director Daniele Luchetti and screenwriters Sandro Petraglia and Stefano Rulli ("The Best of Youth") to explore two rich, well-delineated characters. The hero, Accio (Elio Germano), is the younger brother, and he has the mix of resentment, rebellion and cheekiness shared by a lot of younger siblings. He bristles at authority, tied in his mind to his older brother's bullying horseplay. Accio is the family black sheep, something of a bully himself and constantly at odds with parents and siblings. He abruptly leaves what he finds to be the hollow piety of the seminary, only to fall in with local fascists still loyal to Mussolini's vision of Italy--figures not that dissimilar to our own later skinheads.
Accio succumbs to this noxious group partly in reaction to his brother's ardent communism. That brother, Manrico (Riccardo Scamarcio), is a glum, moody, womanizing idealist--a turbulent firebrand portrayed by Scamarcio with something of the mien and nascent menace of a young Johnny Depp. In the early years, Manrico's communism is youthful zeal, but, as time passes, as Accio rejects fascist violence, Manrico becomes more entrenched in left-wing politics and even bits of terrorism. Accio shifts to Manrico's political viewpoint, but he's nowhere near the idealogue, more a resigned individualist than tireless activist. That difference in the brothers' temperaments--zealot vs. pragmatist--comes to a head in their relationship with the same woman, Francesca (Diane Fleri), Manrico's girl, but Accio's friend and flirtation.
Luchetti's camera lingers and his pacing is sometimes too leisurely, but the movie blends pastorale and politics with uncanny ease and fluidity. It's a raucous family drama--emotions erupt unpredictably and swing from joy to anger with recognizable naturalism. And it's a history lesson, a look at '60s strife inside a corner far removed from our more familiar American images of that era. It's also brightly performed, from sullen, boorish, yet charismatic Scamarcio to the instinctive, charming, infuriating characterization by Germano, who renders Accio an inimitable, memorable fellow.
In Italian, with English subtitles.
sismith@tribune.com
- - - - -
No MPAA rating (contains adult language, violence, and some mild sexual content).
Running time: 1:48.
Opening: April 11 at the Music Box Theatre.
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Puglia: Italy's Heel Has it All -- Except Hordes of Tourists
Puglia: Italy's Heel Has it All -- shh, Except Hordes of Tourists
Miami Herald From Associated Press By Giovanna Dell'Orto Sat, Apr. 12, 2008
POLIGNANO A MARE, Italy -- Puglia has some of the brightest seas, most diverse art and architecture, most mouthwatering peasant cuisine and kindest people in all of Italy -- including strangers who will go out of their way to lead you to one after another stunning beach on impossibly lapis-lazuli waters.
Puglia is the heel to Italy's boot, and after two weeks spent touring the region, I felt grateful that charter airlines don't disgorge hordes of tourists here. These are just some of the reasons:
BRILLIANT SEAS
''I said put it back, this is a natural park,'' a stern father told his son. He was pointing to the octopus that sat with protruding eyes on the boy's shoulders after being plucked from the crystalline waters at Natural Maritime Reserve of Torre Guaceto, just north of Brindisi.
With more than 500 miles of coast on two seas, the Adriatic and the Ionian, Puglia has all sorts of gorgeous beaches. For white limestone cliffs spotted with the deep green of gnarled pine trees, try the southernmost tip of Salento.
At opposite ends of this peninsula, I swam in the fingerlike cove of Porto Badisco, where legend has it that Italy's mythological founder, Aeneas, landed, and I dove even deeper into history at Portoselvaggio, where remains of Neanderthal men were found.
A few miles north, it's all about sandy expanses, like Punta della Suina, where the setting sun turns the transparent water pink.
But it's Torre Guaceto that gets my gold medal -- for the baby-powder white sand, the schools of silvery fish flitting from reef-like rock formations in pools of turquoise water, and the scent of pine needles drifting from the pristine forest that borders the beach.
LIVING HISTORY
No other image says Puglia better than the trullo, a rural home that's essentially a whitewashed teepee of small limestone slabs stacked without mortar, with a cone surmounted by pagan or religious symbols. They are scattered among olive groves and huge prickly pear cacti in the Valle d'Itria, inland in a triangle between Bari, Taranto and Brindisi.
Of unknown origin and unique to Puglia, they date at least from the Middle Ages. Most are still inhabited and more than 1,400 huddle in Alberobello. The town might feel a bit too touristy for Puglia, with its souvenir shops exhibiting plastic trulli, but it only takes a look at the clotheslines in a trullo backyard to realize that real life goes on in this primitive fairytale place.
Farther inland is the Murge, scorched highlands grooved by canyons where, in the Middle Ages, people built cave dwellings as homes and churches when they fled from pirates.
The most famous dwellings of all are thesassi in Matera, which is just across the state line in the Basilicata region. Below the modern town and built on the side of a steep ravine, two whole neighborhoods of single-room cave dwellings and rock-hewn, frescoed churches were inhabited first by hermits and then by families until the 1960s. While some are now trendy hotels and restaurants, they still look so authentically ancient that Mel Gibson filmed scenes here for The Passion of the Christ.
CITIES AS ART
Art is not a masterpiece in a museum but a whole downtown in Valle d'Itria cities like Locorotondo, or, by the coast, in Bari, Ostuni and Lecce.
Locorotondo is a round nest of a village where everything is white except for the bright splashes of red flowers that overtake its wrought-iron balconies. Ostuni is even more blinding, though a sea breeze caresses you as you hike up and down its steep inclines and marvel at the sculpted baroque portals on its whitewashed houses.
But you haven't seen Baroque in all its theatrical, indulgent, luxuriant excess until you've spent an evening among the wreaths of fruit and the pinup women sculpted on the golden limestone churches and palaces of Lecce.
By comparison, the medieval downtown of Bari is austere, centered on the Basilica di San Nicola, built between the 10th and 12th centuries to honor its patron saint (yes, it's the real St. Nicholas, ``Santa Claus'').
The busy port city is trying to overcome its dangerous reputation, but the only person that chased us in the narrow alleys was a grocery store clerk with a cold bottle of water, concerned that ours had become too warm as friends and I waited for another clerk to make our sandwiches.
ART GEMS
Medieval masterpieces are everywhere on the eastern coast, beginning with the inscrutable Castel del Monte. We know the octagonal castle was built by Emperor Frederick II, one of the most powerful men in the Middle Ages, in the early 13th century. But nobody quite knows why.
Isolated on a small hill, it lacks both the architecture and the location for a military fort, and it's way too imposing to be a pleasure palace. The most evocative hypothesis is that it was an intricate symbol, built around the magic intersection of astronomy, mathematics and the Christian faith.
Traveling south, the Romanesque cathedrals at Trani and Otranto seem to rise from the sea. The latter's floor is covered by a mosaic from 1165 representing the tree of life, a hopeful message in the site of a massacre -- a chapel houses the remains of the 800 citizens who were slaughtered in the church where they had fled an assault by Islamic armies in 1481.
Puglia, like most of southern Italy, has been conquered over and over by northern and Mediterranean armies since Greek colonizers established flourishing city-states on its coasts. More than 2,500 years later, their heirs still speak Griko, a dialect of archaic Greek, in the inland Grecia Salentina.
OCTOPUS TO FIGS
I'll admit that the powerfully alcoholic red Salentine wine played a role in my dancing the pizzica pizzica, the local version of tarantella, one night in the streets of tiny Serrano.
But the food that went with it at the farmers' fair was just as worthy of celebrating, including Puglia's staple, orecchiette (ear-shaped pasta), as well as horse meat steaks, ciceri e tria (handmade tagliatelle with garbanzo beans), fave e cicoria (pureed fava beans and chicory), cakes spilling over with figs.
Meat, grilled or cured, reigns inland, nowhere more spectacularly than at Cisternino in trulli land. At night, the absurdly numerous butchers of this whitewashed village set up tiny tables on the sidewalks and cook to order whatever you select from their marble counters, preceded by minuscule black olives, homemade cheeses and salami.
Seafood, including delicacies like octopus and sea urchins, rule the coast in hole-in-the-wall trattorie like Nonna Tetti in Lecce. I had a hard time finishing pignata di polpo there, when the whole octopus was brought to me in a clay pot -- especially since I had already had mozzarella di bufala, fried vegetables, and linguine with mussels.
I needed similar endurance when gratitude compelled me to start my last dinner in Puglia with a humble pizza margherita. This must be the only region in Italy where the tomato-and-mozzarella staple of generations of students and workers still only costs about $2.50.
Puglia is Italy's top olive oil producer, so, for 660 miles back to northern Italy, I carried a three-gallon tank of thick olive oil in front of my car seat, sheltering it from the sun that for two weeks hadn't stopped blazing and that pervades every facet of life here.
I kept thinking about a verse from an Italian poem that was used on an old tourism ad for southern Italy. Roughly translated, it was something like this: ``No earthly hope can give my heart peace as much as the certainty of sun that overflows from your sky.''
PUGLIA: www.pugliaturismo.com or 011-39-08-3223-0111.
GETTING THERE: Puglia is best visited by car. Fly into either Bari or Brindisi and then rent a car.
Italy Votes on Sun/Mon Might Return Berlusconi to Power
The campaign has been uncharacteristically low-key - some say outright boring. Amid campaigns to boycott the vote and punish a political class seen as collectively responsible for the nation's woes, turnout will be another factor.
From The Associated Press
ROME: Italians vote Sunday and Monday in a general election that could bring conservative billionaire Silvio Berlusconi back to power as the nation grapples with a sense of decline and fears that no candidate will be able to put it back on track.
The voting is being held under a discredited election law seen as fostering government instability. It comes amid worries of economic recession and disillusionment toward a political class that has failed to solve the nation's problems.
A garbage collection crisis has left tons of trash piling up on the streets of Naples. Efforts to sell the loss-making national carrier Alitalia are up in the air after a proposal by Air France-KLM has encountered the opposition of unions and political powers. A buffalo mozzarella health scare has hurt exports and hit one of the country's culinary treasures.
"Italy is no longer seen on the world stage as the 'Bel Paese' of the arts,..." charged the 71-year-old Berlusconi, vying for his third stint as premier in the last 14 years.
Berlusconi blames the outgoing center-left government and vows to put Italy back on its feet. Despite a questionable record during his five-year term between 2001-06, he says he is the man to do the job.
His main opponent, former Rome mayor Walter Veltroni, has insisted on the need of generational change - he's almost 20 younger than Berlusconi - and has promised deep reform and an ideology-free approach to tackle the country's problems.
"We need to turn the page" has been his campaign's mantra.
Berlusconi entered the race as the front-runner, capitalizing on the unpopularity of the outgoing center-left government of Romano Prodi, whose early end forced the vote three years ahead of schedule.
But even if Berlusconi has professed confidence in a strong victory up to the last days of the campaign, Veltroni has appeared to narrow the gap, according to polls released before a pre-election ban on publishing polls took effect. And analysts say a crucial factor might be the undecided voters - a significant chunk in the electorate of 47 million.
Amid campaigns to boycott the vote and punish a political class seen as collectively responsible for the nation's woes, turnout will be another factor.
"Those Italians who are going to vote" and one big question is how many of them will actually turn up to vote "are pretty depressed about the situation," says Professor James Walston of the American University in Rome. "The recent events of Alitalia and other problems have shown it and underlined it even more: Italy is not a happy nation at the moment."
Italy's economy has performed worse than the rest of the euro zone for the past decade. The International Monetary Fund predicts the Italian economy will grow by just 0.3 percent this year, compared with a 1.4 percent average growth for the 15-country euro area. While the cost of living has grown, Italian salaries haven't.
The main candidates propose similar recipes, both promising to lower taxes, cut red tape and reduce the costs associated with politics, from the number of lawmakers to their salaries and perks.
As a result of the national mood, the campaign has been uncharacteristically low-key - some say outright boring.
Aside from the occasional joke on women or jab at his opponents, Berlusconi has been sober, calling for sacrifice and not promising economic miracles. Veltroni has called for respect among political adversaries, largely refraining from personal attacks on Berlusconi. There never was a debate, as the conservative leader refused it.
"Beyond the official statements, they are somewhat aware that there's a risk that whoever wins the election might not have the necessary strength to govern," said analyst Pietro Grilli di Cortona.
A tricky proportional-representation system might hamper the prospects of stability for whoever wins - and even raise the specter of a stalemate. The system's main flaw it that, due to a complicated mechanism of majority bonuses, it can fail to guarantee a workable majority in the Senate if the election is very close. (For example, Prodi, whose victory was very narrow, had a one-seat majority in the upper house).
In a bid to win independence from small and often troublesome allies, both leaders have streamlined their coalitions: Veltroni runs his new Democratic Party virtually alone, while Berlusconi is running alongside the party of Gianfranco Fini, his former foreign ministry, and, in the north, with the Northern League.
The move is welcomed by analysts, who say that potentially cohesive blocs - as opposed to the varied coalition assembled in the past 15 years - should enhance government stability.
While Berlusconi and Veltroni are the only candidates with a realistic shot at the premiership, there's the usual plethora of parties trying to win some of the 945 parliamentary seats that are up for grabs.
They include a group of former Christian Democrats, an alliance of radical leftists, a far-right party, an anti-abortion list. Their showing will be significant insofar as they can take away precious votes from either mainstream bloc.
Prodi, whose last government lasted only 20 months, is not running.
Friday, April 11, 2008
"Italy's Sorrow: A Year of War, 1944-1945" The Italian Campaign That Sould NOT have Happened
He does not skate over the conduct of Allied troops who apparently looted more freely than the Germans, or the appalling record of French Moroccan troops, who raped their way through the mountains south of Rome without being held to account then or later. Meanwhile in the areas still occupied by the Germans, there was civil war between the partisans and the diehard Fascists of the Republic of Salo.
Caught in the Middle
From The Economist Apr 10th 2008
Italy's Sorrow: A Year of War, 1944-1945
By James Holland
TWENTY months separate the landings at Salerno in September 1943 and the surrender of German forces in Italy a few days before VE Day. Progress was painfully slow. Geography favoured the defence. The Allied armies, made up eventually of contingents from no fewer than 17 countries, were depleted by the removal of experienced units for the landings in France and never enjoyed numerical superiority over a German army capably led by Field-Marshal Kesselring. Against well-trained troops, the massive Allied air superiority was rarely decisive.
The Americans' mistrust of Winston Churchill's Mediterranean strategy was part of the problem. They wanted to take the shortest route to Berlin. But since an invasion of France was not feasible before mid-1944, there were strong arguments for an assault on Italy. It was the only area where the Allied armies, which had defeated the Germans and Italians in north Africa in the spring of 1943, could realistically engage them on land that year. A successful invasion would knock Italy out of the war and require Hitler both to reinforce his army in the peninsula and to replace half a million Italian troops in the Balkans. The Americans were in the end convinced but they never saw Italy as a priority.
James Holland, a historian of the second world war, provides a thorough and impartial overview, drawing on many eye-witness accounts. They provide insights into aspects of the war that are not well known outside Italy though occasionally at the expense of the narrative flow.
He who holds Rome
But his chosen focus on the last year of the war means that he does not deal in detail with what is surely the key event in this tragic period in Italian history: the bungled arrangements for an armistice in September 1943. Mr Holland quotes Churchill as remarking to Franklin Roosevelt that -he who holds Rome holds the title deeds of Italy- but, thanks to this bungling, it was the Germans who held the city and they did so until June 5th 1944 when publicity-hungry General Mark Clark stole a march on the British 8th Army and drove in proclaiming this was a great day for the American 5th Army, which he commanded.
The slow progress of the war brought great hardships to the Italian people, particularly those caught near the front-line. So did the brutal German retaliation for the activities of the partisans. Hundreds of thousands of Italians were sent to do forced labour in Germany despite Mussolini's protests. Mr Holland's account of the failure of the Allied Military Government to do much about the starvation and social breakdown in the liberated areas is an uncomfortable echo of today's Iraq.
He does not skate over the conduct of Allied troops who apparently looted more freely than the Germans, or the appalling record of French Moroccan troops, who raped their way through the mountains south of Rome without being held to account then or later. Meanwhile in the areas still occupied by the Germans, there was civil war between the partisans and the diehard Fascists of the Republic of Salo, led by an increasingly irrelevant Mussolini. It was not the war in Russia but it was a cruel affair.
The Sicilian Straits Bridge, 142 years Old, but Not Built Yet.
The Straits of Messina have been making waves ever since Ulysses narrowly made it between the shores of Scylla on the mainland side and Charybdis on the Sicilian side. According to the Ancient Greek historian Strabo, a Roman consul returning from the Punic wars with Carthage lashed together boats across the straits in order to transport 104 elephants he had captured after battle with the vanquished Hannibal. They were swept away by the currents.
Shortly after the birth of modern Italy in 1865, the government's newly created Ministry of Public Works, as one of its first acts, commissioned an engineer to draw up plans to build a two-mile span linking the island of Sicily to the mainland. The bridge, which was to connect the Sicilian city of Messina to the Calabria region on the toe of Italy's boot, was to be the physical symbol of the country's unity. It has been in the planning ever since.
After World War II, the bridge took on new significance: It was to be a technical marvel that would demonstrate Italy's progress to the world. "For us, it was like going to the moon," says Giuseppe Campione, a former governor of Sicily.
In 1955, the government formed a public-private company, the Messina Bridge Group, to study how Sicily could be connected with the mainland. The bridge would also drag Italy's backward south into the modern age.
No Italian Job Takes Longer Than This Bridge
April 10, 2008
ROME -- In America, politicians score points with voters by railing against bridges to nowhere. In Italy's election on Sunday and Monday, candidates are worked up about a non-bridge to somewhere.
Shortly after the birth of modern Italy in 1865, the government began preparing to build a two-mile span linking the island of Sicily to the mainland. The bridge, which was to connect the Sicilian city of Messina to the Calabria region on the toe of Italy's boot, was to be the physical symbol of the country's unity.
It has been in the planning ever since, and over the years, experts have studied the bridge's impact on everything from Mediterranean trade to bird migration. But ground has yet to be broken, making the bridge an emblem of the chronic indecisiveness that links Italy to the past.
Now, with national elections imminent, the bridge looms as a major campaign issue. It is dividing the two leading candidates, who have different visions of what the country needs.
Silvio Berlusconi, the flamboyant billionaire and two-time center-right prime minister, is determined to build the bridge. He is convinced that Italy needs a grand project to shake off its lethargy and jog its economy. He also believes that only he can succeed where so many others have failed.
"Building this bridge entirely with Italian hands is a matter of national pride," Mr. Berlusconi told a campaign rally recently.
His opponent, bookish former Rome mayor and center-left leader Walter Veltroni, wants Italy to get real. More than a century of talk has led nowhere. He says it's time to put aside grandiose projects and focus on more down-to-earth priorities like improving roads and schools.
Mr. Berlusconi leads in the polls, but Italy's arcane electoral rules make it difficult to predict a clear winner. The result could be a draw, leading to more inaction on issues ranging from the country's crushing debt to youth unemployment -- and of course the bridge.
With a price of nearly €5 billion, or about $7.9 billion, the bridge is an example of profligate public spending, many say. Italy is littered with half-finished projects. Work is still being done on the highway running between Naples and the southern city of Reggio di Calabria decades after it was first begun.
In Messina, plans to create a duty-free port were drawn up in 1951. The tax-exempt port was never realized. But the company to manage it was -- and still exists, with four employees and a 14-member board of directors.
Costly Ruse
Many argue that with its endless planning, the nonexistent Sicily bridge is little more than a costly ruse. "It's a bottomless pit of funding," says Sen. Felice Casson. "The money could be put to much better use elsewhere."
Yet those who support linking Sicily to the mainland say the project has been a relative bargain. In more than 20 years of operation, the company created to build the bridge, Straits of Messina SpA, has spent just $235 million. Company officials say that's a trifle considering the ambition of the project.
To be sure, nothing at all has been built with that money.
The Straits of Messina have been making waves ever since Ulysses narrowly made it between the shores of Scylla on the mainland side and Charybdis on the Sicilian side. According to the Ancient Greek historian Strabo, a Roman consul returning from the Punic wars with Carthage lashed together boats across the straits in order to transport 104 elephants he had captured after battle with the vanquished Hannibal. They were swept away by the currents.
In 1866, Italy's newly created Ministry of Public Works, as one of its first acts, commissioned an engineer to draw up plans for a bridge, which then sat in a drawer for years.
After World War II, the bridge took on new significance: It was to be a technical marvel that would demonstrate Italy's progress to the world. "For us, it was like going to the moon," says Giuseppe Campione, a former governor of Sicily.
In 1955, the government formed a public-private company, the Messina Bridge Group, to study how Sicily could be connected with the mainland. The bridge would also drag Italy's backward south into the modern age. Architects from around the world were drawn to the project -- considered an engineering challenge because of the swift currents, earthquake-prone shores and great distances.
The late marine explorer Jacques Cousteau helped with research. At one point, a study was commissioned to study the effect of the bridge's shadow on fish. None was found.
But 26 years later, the Messina Bridge Group was still studying different options. Some proposed a tunnel. Others wanted a floating tube suspended under the water. Still others put forward a massive suspension bridge.
So, in 1981, the government created a new company, Straits of Messina SpA, to pick up where the old one left off. The new company began hiring engineers and urban planners. By 1992, it unveiled its plan: an elegant, single-span suspension bridge -- longer than any other at the time -- designed by the since-deceased English engineer William Brown.
That year, however, a massive political bribery scandal in Italy, dubbed Tangentopoli, brought down the country's ruling class and froze public-works projects for years. Governments continued to order up studies on how to build the bridge but never got around to doing so.
The bridge has had some close scrapes with birth and death. In 2001, Mr. Berlusconi, then prime minister, decreed the bridge would be built. He called for bids and chose a contractor. Then he was voted out of office before work could begin. His successor, Romano Prodi, put a bill before Parliament that would have killed the project once and for all. The bill narrowly failed.
Today, 142 years after the first plans were laid, debate over the bridge is much the same.
Organized Crime Risk
Environmentalists are steadfastly opposed. So are ferry operators who fear the bridge would put them out of work. Others think the project risks being a boon to Sicily's organized crime.
"Risk? It's not a risk. It's a sure thing," says Luigi Croce, the chief prosecutor of Messina. Several years ago, Mr. Croce conducted a study concluding that if the bridge were built, the Mafia would control everything from local road work to the catering contracts for construction workers.
Leandra D'Antone, a history professor at Rome's La Sapienza University, recalls first hearing talk of the bridge as a child growing up in Sicily. She has spent the bulk of her academic career studying the bridge and documenting its progress. "Will they ever build it?" she asks. "I doubt it."
Nino Calarco was chairman of Straits of Messina SpA for a decade before resigning in frustration in 2001. "Ulysses was warned about the dangers of this place," Mr. Calarco says.
"I can see the straits from my house," he says. "There's still no bridge there. One day there will be, but I'll be dead and buried by then."
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Italian Elections This Weekend: Berlusconi and Veltroni : Reluctant Winners ???
Dire Economy Means Bleak Prize for Next Italy Govt
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
"Lambrusco" by Ellen Cooney. The Italian Indominatable Spirit during WWII
"Lambrusco comes from a double root: I'm the granddaughter of Italian immigrants on my mother's side, and my non-Italian dad is a World War Two veteran. As a baby boomer I grew up with a close relationship on an intellectual level to all things of the 1940s, and on a personal
level, to everything Italian. I'd known for a long time I'd one day write an Italian novel, but for some 15 years I kept putting it off, until it finally came to me to combine those two roots and see what happened. So the sources are deep.
The Italian I spoke as a kid was all lost, so I underwent intensive language study, traveled in Italy, and fell in love with Emilia-Romagna, the home of Lambrusco wine, Parmesan, the beautiful Adriatic coast, and Fellini, my all-time favorite film guy. While doing some research in a Rimini archive I began to gather stories of Italian partisans and what it was like along that coast when bombs were raining down every day from American planes--and the place was under German occupation, and things looked pretty hopeless. I was taken over by the events of the time in a powerful way, probably because with my limited language abilities, librarians and archive people gave me access to hundreds of photos, many of which no American ever saw before me. All the partisans of my book are based on real guys' photos. I was lucky that my imagination kicked in with a big cast of characters, like in an opera (or a Fellini film).
What became my subject is not the war, but how all those people didn't lose heart, how they coped, how they interpreted the meaning of resistance in personal ways. How they held onto their spirit. The whole time I was writing I was listening to Italian songs, and remembering the songs of my childhood, and remembering all those WWII films and books I watched and read with my dad. If I conveyed any sense of what the war was like, that's great, because I was often terrified and devastated like my characters. Putting in the song lyrics--and writing them--was how I coped with everything I'd learned and felt."About the book:
The New York Times Book Review has called Ellen Cooney, "a remarkably talented author." In LAMBRUSCO (Pantheon Books/April 22,
2008/$25.00), she takes us to wartime Italy with a captivating novel of a mother searching for her son.
The year is 1943. Nazis have invaded Italy, and American troops have landed. Aldo's restaurant in coastal Romagna, where Lucia Fantini
(wife of the late Aldo) entertained customers with her glorious opera singing, has been seized by Mussolini's Blackshirts. A new Resistance
squad of waiters and local tradesmen has been formed, led by Lucia's beloved son Beppi. When Beppi disappears after blowing up a German truck, she sets off to find him.
In her picaresque, operatic journey across a devastated Italy, Lucia is aided by a beautifully drawn cast of characters, including Annmarie
Malone, an American Army Intelligence officer who's a professional golfer back home; Tito Roncuzzi, a butcher who has taught neighborhood dogs to pee on the Fascists' boots; Etto Renzetti, a factory owner who scoffs at Dante; and Ugo Fantini, Aldo's physician cousin, who has reasons of his own for wanting to be near Lucia.
As the tale unfolds in its sensual and emotional richness, along with a number of daunting obstacles, we are reminded that there are
life-sustaining things which even war can't destroy: friendship and humor, love and song, and the grape—Lambrusco—that nourishes them all.
Ellen Cooney is the author of six previous novels, and her short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker and Glimmer Train, among other
publications. She has taught creative writing at MIT, Harvard, Boston College, and the University of Maine. The granddaughter of Italian
immigrants, she was a lifelong resident of Massachusetts, and recently moved to midcoast Maine.
"Cooney explores how war causes not just injury to the body but more importantly explains how every participant can be `injured in his
nerves, in his self, in his soul.'" -Kirkus Reviews
"Cooney accomplishes her task of portraying, on a very personal level, the moxie and individuality of the Italian villagers as they face the
challenges of war." -Publishers Weekly
Friday, April 4, 2008
When in Doubt in Car Design, Hire an Italian
When Isuzu had design problems in the 70s, and they wanted a new Impulse, they went to Giorgetto Giugiaro, and he penned something pretty cool. VW has gone to Giugiaro, too--he penned the first generation Scirocco In the early 90s, Lexus went to Giugiaro for the GS 300, and Subaru went to him for the SVX.
So what's the deal now? Are BMW and Subaru too proud? Come on guys, make it easy on yourself and hire an Italian. You'll end up with better looking cars, and you'll sell more of 'em, too.
When in Doubt, Hire an Italian
Two of my favorite imports, BMW and Subaru, just can't seem to get it right lately when it comes to exterior styling. BMW is still working through the whole Bangle nightmare, and I personally have not quite recovered from the travesty that is the new Impreza/WRX/STI. Seriously, is it that hard to design a good looking car?
Maybe these manufacturers should just focus on what they are good at: building kick-ass cars. Maybe they should leave the exterior design to people who know what they are doing: Italians. No one ever decided not to buy an Italian car cause it was ugly. People decide not to buy Italian cars because they are too expensive, or because they are too fire prone. But Italians know how to design great looking cars.
Isuzu figured this out back in the 70s. When they wanted a new Impulse, they went to Giorgetto Giugiaro, and he penned something pretty cool. VW has gone to Giugiaro, too--he penned the first generation Scirocco. In the early 90s, Lexus went to Giugiaro for the GS 300, and Subaru went to him for the SVX. So what's the deal now? Are BMW and Subaru too proud? Come on guys, make it easy on yourself and hire an Italian. You'll end up with better looking cars, and you'll sell more of 'em, too.
Dual Citizenship Gains Popularity with Americans of Italian Descent
Italian law allows foreigners of Italian descent to claim citizenship even if they have to go back four generations to link to an ancestor who was born in Italy. The concept of applying for citizenship that is technically already yours, called jure sanguinis (Latin for "by right of blood"), isn’t unique to Italy, of course.Other European countries only recognize the so-called blood right for only two generations
However, the Italian government doesn’t make it easy to apply (it takes an average of three years and costs about $1,000), but thousands of Americans are doing it despite the bureaucratic tangle involved.
Dual Citizenship Gains Popularity with Americans of Italian Descent
Jessica Amato, a 30-year-old anthropology professor from San Francisco, has a name for born-and-bred Americans of Italian ancestry who apply for Italian citizenship.
She calls them sleeper citizens.
“With this Italian citizenship, you’ve had it your whole life," said Amato, who is eligible even though both her parents and her grandparents were born in the United States. "So you’re just applying for activation."
Italian law allows foreigners of Italian descent to claim citizenship even if they have to go back four generations to link to an ancestor who was born in Italy. The concept of applying for citizenship that is technically already yours, called jure sanguinis (Latin for "by right of blood"), isn’t unique to Italy, of course. But what distinguishes Italy from other European countries is that others don’t recognize the so-called blood right in the progeny of émigrés more than two generations down the line.
That means that if you’re an American who wants Italian citizenship, you can reach back to your great-great grandfather Giuseppe and make it happen - at least in theory.
The Italian government doesn’t make it easy to apply (it takes an average of three years and costs about $1,000), but thousands of Americans are doing it despite the bureaucratic tangle involved. (If you have any doubts about just how tangled the process can be, consider the fact that the Italian embassy wouldn’t even respond to requests for information on how many Americans have become dual Italian citizens, and calls to consulates around the country went unanswered.)
Dual Italian citizenship connects Americans to more than their heritage. They can freely work, retire, invest or get health care in any of the 27 member states of the European Union.
The appeal of Italian citizenship comes "from the economic standpoint of somebody that is doing well," said Giuseppina Spillane, who fields citizenship queries as a program director at the National Italian-American Foundation.
Spillane compared the attitudes of North Americans with that of South Americans who fled to Northern Italy following Argentina’s economic meltdown in the early 2000s. "Argentineans were really in need of basic necessities and some sort of help by the government," she said. Americans, by contrast, have the attitude of "I can invest by buying property over there, retire over there. I can go to school there, get a master’s."
Dona DeSanctis, the executive editor of Italian America magazine, said she’s seen "many more" applications during the last five years. Spillane confirmed that assessment, saying Italian citizenship was now "very much in demand" and that consulates and the ministry of interior were "very overwhelmed" with applications. So overwhelmed, apparently, that the Chicago consulate has stopped accepting them until 2009, according to a recorded voice mail message.
If you don’t enjoy the sound of recorded messages, there’s help. Donald McLean, the owner of myitaliancitizenship.com, a six-year-old company based in Nova Scotia that helps citizens-to-be gather documents, said 100 new customers a month sign up for $55 document searches.
McLean said he didn’t know why jure sanguinis citizenship has become so popular. "It’s a curiosity why so many Americans are getting it,"he said, suggesting it might have to do with increased Internet usage.
Anthony Tamburri, the dean of the John D. Calandra Italian-American Institute at Queens College in New York City, said he wasn’t sure, either, though he believed that awareness of citizenship eligibility increased in the run-up to the 2006 general elections in Italy.
The Silvio Berlusconi government "fought hard for Italians living abroad to vote," at least in part, Tamburri said, because of the perceived conservative leanings of the Italian-American population. (The first-ever mail-in ballots in the country’s history didn’t win Berlusconi the election, however; his party, the Forza Italia, narrowly lost to the Romano Prodi party.)
The uptick in applications also matches a surge in Italian ethnic pride in the United States, said DeSanctis, the editor of Italian America Magazine. "Italians always aimed to blend in because they were a despised minority," she said. Yet between the 1990 and 2000 censuses, the number of people who identified as being from Italian descent increased by more than 4 million. "What that indicates is a greater ethnic awareness," said DeSanctis, pointing to the worldwide "balkanization of ethnicity" as a cause.
Italian-Americans often "don’t speak Italian. They’ve only been to Italy on vacation. But they want to identify with their Italian roots," DeSanctis said, adding that dual citizenship is one way to do that.
For Nick Iovacchini, the 28-year-old owner of a sports apparel company in Hoboken, N.J., becoming an Italian citizen gave him the chance to play baseball overseas.
Iovacchini was a junior at Rice University, in Houston, Texas, playing shortstop and second base for the school team, the Owls, when an Italian team recruited him in 2002. The Bollate, from the province on the outskirts of Milan, were allowed only so many foreign players. Iovacchini, as an Italian citizen, wouldn’t count.
“They said the key to you doing this is getting your Italian citizenship," he said. "I wasn’t the world’s greatest player, so it’s not like I had a big, bright professional career here in the States in front of me."
He and his father, Eric Iovacchini, an attorney who has since founded Bella Consultants, based in Asheville, N.C., to help people with their own applications, soon realized what dual citizenship could mean for their family beyond "the baseball side of things."
With global perceptions of U.S. hegemony at an all-time low, having European citizenship is a definite plus. "It’s so practical," said McLean. “It opens up a whole section of the world."
“You never know when you’re going to want to pull out a European passport," said Iovacchini, who always travels with both passports.
One time he landed at an airport in South America where there was a long customs line for Americans, who had to pay $90 to enter the country. But there was a second line for Europeans. And they got to walk through for free.
Euro Out ?? Lira Back ??
The Demise of the Euro
Avi Tiomkin
It is only a matter of time, probably less than three years, until the euro experiment meets its end. The financial crisis in the U.S. is hastening the process, as investors flee the dollar, pushing the euro to a price of $1.59. But it will not stay high for long. Countries like Spain and Italy will withdraw and return to their old currencies. Once that happens, get ready for the return of the deutsche mark and the French franc.
What will undo the euro: the mounting tension between the inflation-obsessed German bloc (including Austria, Luxembourg and the Netherlands) and the Latin bloc of France, Italy and Spain. The Germans, saddled with memories of the hyperinflation that brought the Nazi Party into power, remain singularly focused on fiscal and monetary discipline. Despite core inflation in the euro zone of only 2.4% and a slowing global economy, the Germans insist that the European Central Bank maintain a tight monetary policy. In direct opposition to Germany, the Latin bloc, joined by Ireland, wants the ECB to lower interest rates.
Spain's worsening real estate slump dramatically illustrates the problem faced by the Latin bloc. For years Spanish home building and buying outstripped that of Germany, Italy and France combined. Now that the boom has turned to bust, the Spanish central bank cannot lower interest rates. Nor can the treasury devalue the currency. Bound to the euro, Spain can only complain to the ECB, while watching its economy circle the drain.
European heads of state and the European business press are making their discontent public in stark language. "We cannot continue to cope with the autism of some bankers who do not understand that the priority is not fighting inflation, which is nonexistent, but fighting for more growth," declared French President Nicolas Sarkozy last year. In October, in response to German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck's comment that he "loves a strong euro," leading Italian business newspaper Il Sole ran a headline labeling the remark "a declaration of war." "Italy has lost the ability to grow," the Italian finance minister, himself one of the founding members of the ECB, admitted recently.
The euro has long had detractors, who question the viability of political and monetary union in Europe. Haunted by World War II, the generation of leaders that included Helmut Kohl and François Mitterrand was willing to give up sovereign powers and national interests to create a common currency. But with no shared language, customs, culture or political system, the euro zone has never existed except as a construct in the minds of bureaucrats and politicians.
Now, as the divisions increase, insiders are beginning to take a dim view of the prospects for continued monetary union. "We believe the euro will not survive in the long run in the absence of some kind of political support," the president of BusinessEurope, a pan-European business association, stated in early March.
Along with the steep selloff that will precede the disintegration of the high-flying euro, other markets will be shaken. Look for much higher interest rates for prospective euro deserters like Spain and Italy as spreads for benchmark German bonds widen.
What should investors do? Gradually start to hoard dollars and short the euro. Another strategy is to sell investments in Italy and Spain and buy German fixed-income assets.
The political situation in Europe is likely to accelerate the euro's demise. Now that the Spanish elections are over, politicians there no longer feel the need to remain silent about mounting economic woes. If, as Italian polls predict, Silvio Berlusconi becomes that country's prime minister, the man who criticized the euro as "a disaster" would join a common front ready to take action by the time Sarkozy's France assumes the European Union presidency this summer.
The tight-money Germans will not push to preserve the euro. A poll released at the end of 2007 by Dresdner Bank showed that 62% of Germans support reinstating the deutsche mark as the country's currency. It appears that their wish will come true.
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Carla Bruni Enlisted by Britain to Give it Style, Glamour and Sophistication
Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, the first lady of France has been appointed by Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown to spearhead a government initiative aimed at injecting more style and glamour into British national life, after Italian born Carla charmed the entire country of England, in her visit last week and was heralded as a new Princess Diana. I am impressed with Carla Bruni, and admire a PM who sets high goals, but this maybe asking the impossible. :)
Calling Carla: Brown enlists first lady to give Britain style
Continental good taste and sophistication should be a birthright for all, says PM
Guardian - UK
Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, the first lady of France, has been appointed by Gordon Brown to spearhead a government initiative aimed at injecting more style and glamour into British national life, the Guardian has learned.
Moving rapidly to capitalise on the national explosion of Carlamania, which saw Bruni-Sarkozy heralded as a new Princess Diana during the French state visit to the UK last week, Brown will formally announce the latest addition to his "government of all the talents" in a speech tomorrow at the Institut Français in South Kensington, London.
For too long, he will say, Britain has suffered an inferiority complex with regard to mainland European countries such as France and Italy, whose citizens are seen as effortlessly stylish and sophisticated.
"I want a Britain, now and in the future, where good taste and sophistication are the birthright of the many, not the privilege of an elite, whether in fashion, in food and drink, or in cultural pursuits," Brown will say. To launch the scheme, the Italian-born Bruni-Sarkozy, 40, will relocate to London for three months, starting in June, according to one Brown aide. She is expected to commute back to Paris via Eurostar for French state engagements involving her husband, President Nicolas Sarkozy.
"At first, when it became clear she was going to upstage [Sarkozy] during the state visit, we got a bit worried about it all looking a bit frivolous," the aide said. "But it was during the banquet at the Guildhall that the prime minister had his eureka moment. Yes, she charmed him. But the key point is that he is committed to putting that charm in the service of a better Britain."
Bruni-Sarkozy will focus initially on improving the UK's dress sense and cuisine. The aide joked that she would steer clear, for the moment, of the other popular British assumption about the French and Italians - that they have more exciting sex lives.
She is understood already to have spoken to the chief executive of Marks & Spencer, Stuart Rose, to discuss the launch of an affordable range of high-street designs inspired by the demure tailored grey suits that won her so much acclaim during last week's visit. They were created for Dior by the British designer John Galliano, who has signed up as a supporter of Brown's plan. The M&S versions will be roomier, and may incorporate several more practical features, such as zip-up pockets and mobile phone holders.
Bruni-Sarkozy has also expressed an interest in meeting Jamie Oliver to develop plans to introduce a more "continental" approach to eating and drinking, which could see British parents encouraged to serve small volumes of red wine with meals to children as young as seven or eight.
To coincide with the prime minister's announcement, the thinktank Demos will release a report this week arguing that the answer to a wide swath of social and economic problems facing Britain may lie in adopting a more French approach.
"The missing ingredient in the UK's approach to a range of pressing policy challenges is straightforward: it is savoir-faire," the report's authors said in a press release.
The study concludes that numerous national problems - including the decline of Britain's railway infrastructure, the collapse of Northern Rock, and the scourge of binge drinking - could all have been more successfully addressed had politicians and bureaucrats demonstrated "a certain je ne sais quoi".
The elation that greeted Bruni-Sarkozy in the UK last week, including rapturous newspaper and television coverage, frequently threatened to sideline the president, who unleased a tirade against one French journalist who asked him if she was stealing his limelight. But Bruni-Sarkozy herself enjoyed the state visit enormously, an Elysee spokesman said yesterday.
"The riotous scenes that greeted her wherever she went made her feel right at home, just as if she were in France," he said.
French diplomats in London expressed delight at the apparent rekindling of the often chilly relationship between the two nations. "This week has been so wonderful - such a change from the usual British media coverage of France and the French, which is based on a handful of ill-founded stereotypes," said Jean-Claude Forestier, assistant attache for cultural affairs at the French embassy in London. "It has been crazy here, with all the international media enquiries about Carla.
We have been working absolutely round the clock, from 9am to 3pm, just to
keep up."
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
UW Student Amanda Knox and Two Accomplices Ruled to Remain in Jail by Rome Court for Perugia Sex Killing
Defense attorneys were hoping to prove that the Prosecution did not have sufficient evidence to have clear and convincing evidence to prevail at trial with a jury, and therefore would entitle the defendants to be released with or without bail, subject to later arrest.. The Court could have also considered the very probability of the "flight" of the Defendants, rendering continued interviews impossible, and the resulting onerous extradition procedures. Confiscating Passports has not proved effective.
If leads dry up, often Police spend a great deal of time "negotiating" with multiple defendants to offer inducements to the least "culpable" defendant with lessor sentences, if they testify against their more liable co defendants. The passage of time also wears down the Defendants resolve to continue to deny. The Prosecution takes the chance of possible leads that grow cold, with other students preparing to complete their studies within 2 months and return home.
UW Student Ordered to Remain Jailed in Italy for Death Probe
Seattle Times
A court in Rome has decided that University of Washington student Amanda Knox will remain in jail while police continue to investigate the death of her roommate.
Today's ruling continues custody for the Seattle woman, her Italian boyfriend and another man who have been jailed since the stabbing in November in the city of Perugia, Italy
All deny involvement in the death of the roommate, British student Meredith Kercher.
Police say she was stabbed in the neck during a sexual assault in the apartment she shared with Knox.
Italy's Need for an Army of Elderly and Child Caretakers
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Nazi Hunt: Italians do it Better
European Jewish Press
ROME (EJP)---Italy and the United States are the two most successful countries in bringing former Nazi war criminals to justice or managing to at least convict them in absentia.
Maintaining American Pride Amidst some "Ugly Americans" in Italy
Broad Abroad: Maintaining Pride Amidst some "Ugly Americans"
The Brown and White Student Newspaper since 1894 Lehigh University By Gwen Purdom April 1, 2008
"Living in Europe will take a lot of adjusting," everyone warned. "You may set up your lawn chair for the Fourth of July parade three days in advance," they said, "but over there Americans are not very popular."
After bracing myself to be pelted with Italian meatballs, however, such pessimistic warnings seemed entirely unfounded. The old woman running the sandwich shop waited patiently as I stumbled over the Italian word for artichoke. The delivery men cheerfully realigned my bicycle chain after watching me struggle to do it myself. My eight-year-old host sister illustrated Italian vocabulary words on napkins at the dinner table.
Almost every Italian I meet is approachable, friendly and helpful, despite my blonde hair, pathetic attempts at Italian and Vera Bradley wristlet. If Italians dislike Americans, they certainly aren't showing it.
Unfortunately, the elusive concept of "ugly Americans" became mortifyingly clear in the course of a single evening and I needed no Italian perspectives to see why. I[I heard ]
"I can't believe they don't have the menu written in English."
"I hate how they never bring you butter here, I have to ask for it at every restaurant I go to."
After waiting weeks to experience the ristorante many called Florence's finest, the complaints that floated toward us from the adjacent table of fellow American college students induced a cringe with every word.
"Excuse me, last time I was here we sat at that table, could we move?"
"I've been here for like two months but my Italian class is a joke, my teacher only speaks in Italian so I never pay attention ? pomodoro is like cheese, right?"
"Scoo-zee, I asked for my steak medium-rare and this looks medium, can you have them re-do it?"
The server was polite and helpful, with a nearly genuine smile, using the little English she knew, while my cheeks seared red in shame at the thought of being associated with these students.
Those 20 minutes of obnoxious dinner conversation embodied the kind of demanding, superior attitude and ignorance of other cultures that fuels negative stereotypes of American travelers, student or otherwise, and I had the unique experience of witnessing it from a semi-foreigner's perspective. And let's just say they were lucky I didn't have access to my own Italian meatballs to chuck.
Some students seem to forget they are guests in a foreign country - supposedly here to immerse themselves in a different culture they paid good money to explore. By clinging exclusively to their own traditions and cultural assumptions, these students are not only leaving a damaging impression, but also shortchanging their own experience.
It's the differences we're here for - if you're looking for English menus and table butter, they are readily available back home.
This overheard interlude reminded me that words and actions, in some small way, reflect on all of us, even if you really would prefer butter to olive oil.
But as I promise to look at that evening's embarrassment as a lesson in foreign relations, I will also hold another Florence evening as a lesson in American pride.
When a Super Bowl party began (game time: 12:30 a.m.) the national anthem cut through the din of the bar like a blazing Fourth of July fireworks display. The room was crowded with American study abroad students eager to get a taste of something familiar after spending weeks in an unfamiliar world.
And as we followed Jordin Sparks' lead on the big screen, belting out those ingrained words until the room reverberated with "The Star-Spangled Banner," I realized that even while discovering and embracing the traditions of a foreign culture, it is always important to honor your own traditions as well.
And you can't get much warmer and gooier than that.
