Re-immigration to Italy

Breaking silence with the last post

2006-10-10T22:16:00.000+02:00

Around four months of silence in this blog won't have escaped the attention of my forty readers.

The reason is simple: I have been away from Italy. It's hard to talk about a country you don't see every day or live in, so I'd rather stay quiet than tell you about what I read in the news.

Now I have made a decision to (once again) move out of Italy. This time the country that is going to have me as a guest is Iran, a place with enough things to talk about on its own. This is why this blog shuts down - until the time I return, that is.

Iranian madness is my new blog on Iran. I will host it on my own web site rather than Blogspot.

I hope that you will follow me in the next journey.

Keep climbing!

-------------------------

Note: most of the posts in this blog have been squarely against the Pope and the catholic church (note the absence of any capital letters). However, I am fully supportive of Ratzinger's speech in Regensburg - yes, the one that outraged muslims around the world.

I encourage you to read Thomas Friedman's article (hat tip to Kuwait unplugged for the text). Seldom do I agree so fully with somebody.

Islam and the pope
Thomas L. Friedman - The New York Times

Published: September 29, 2006

We need to stop insulting Islam. It's enough already.

No, that doesn't mean the pope should apologize. The pope was actually treating Islam with dignity. He was treating the faith and its community as adults who could be challenged and engaged. That is a sign of respect.

What is insulting is the politically correct, kid-gloves view of how to deal with Muslims that is taking root in the West today. It goes like this: "Hushhh! Don't say anything about Islam! Don't you understand? If you say anything critical or questioning about Muslims, they'll burn down your house. Hushhh! Just let them be. Don't rile them. They are not capable of a civil, rational dialogue about problems in their faith community."

Now that is insulting. It's an attitude full of contempt and self-censorship, but that is the attitude of Western elites today, and it's helping to foster the slow-motion clash of civilizations that Sam Huntington predicted. Because Western masses don't buy it. They see violence exploding from Muslim communities and they find it frightening, and they don't think their leaders are talking honestly about it. So many now just want to build a wall against Islam. It will be terrible if Turkey is blocked from entering the European Union, but that's where we're heading, and the only thing that will halt it is honest dialogue.

But it is not the dialogue the pope mentioned - one between Islam and Christianity. That's necessary, but it's not sufficient. What is needed first is an honest dialogue between Muslims and Muslims.

As someone who has lived in the Muslim world, enjoyed the friendship of many Muslims there and seen the compassionate side of Islam in action, I have to admit I am confused as to what Islam stands for today.

Why? On the first day of Ramadan last year a Sunni Muslim suicide bomber blew up a Shiite mosque in Hilla, Iraq, in the middle of a memorial service, killing 25 worshippers. This year on the first day of Ramadan, a Sunni suicide bomber in Baghdad killed 35 people who were lining up in a Shiite neighborhood to buy fuel. The same day, the severed heads of nine murdered Iraqi police officers and soldiers were found north of Baghdad.

I don't get it. How can Muslims blow up other Muslims on their most holy day of the year - in mosques! - and there is barely a peep of protest in the Muslim world, let alone a million Muslim march? Yet Danish cartoons or a papal speech lead to violent protests. If Muslims butchering Muslims - in Sudan, Iraq, Egypt, Pakistan and Jordan - produces little communal reaction, while cartoons and papal remarks produce mass protests, what does Islam stand for today? It is not an insult to ask that question.

Muslims might say: "Well, what about Abu Ghraib, Guantànamo or Palestine? Let's talk about all your violent behavior." To which I would say: "Let's talk about it! But you'll have to get in line behind us, because we're constantly talking about where we've gone wrong." We can't have a meaningful dialogue if we, too, are not self-critical, but neither can Muslims.

Part of the problem in getting answers is that Islam has no hierarchy. There is no Muslim pope defining the faith. There are centers of Muslim learning, in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, but their credibility with the masses is uneven because they're often seen as tools of regimes. So those Muslim preachers with authenticity tend to be the street preachers - firebrands, who gain legitimacy by spewing hatred at both their own regimes and the Western powers that support them.

As a result, there is a huge body of disenfranchised Sunni Muslims, who are neither violent fundamentalists nor wannabe secularists. They are people who'd like to see a marriage between Islam and modernity. But right now there is little free space in the Sunni Muslim world - between the firebrand preachers and the "official" ones - for that synthesis to be discussed and defined.

I had hoped Iraq would be that space. Whenever people asked me how I'd know if we'd won in Iraq, I said: when Salman Rushdie could give a lecture in Baghdad. I'm all for a respectful dialogue between Islam and the West, but first there needs to be a respectful, free dialogue between Muslims and Muslims. What matters is not what Muslims tell us they stand for. What matters is what they tell themselves, in their own languages, and how they treat their own.

Without a real war of ideas within Islam to sort that out - a war that progressives win - I fear we are drifting at best toward a wall between civilizations and at worst toward a real clash.

Elections are over

2006-05-29T23:35:00.000+02:00

Yes, we did have another round of elections in here. You know, elections are a fun period for everyone: schools close on Saturday in order to prepare voting stations, companies pay people a journey back home in order to vote (no, we can't vote by post for some reason I've never understood) and the political blatter covers the real problems of the country.

However, your re-immigrant needs something else to think about in order to alleviate the stomach sickness, and what better than a shot of "Sua Santità", His Divine Holiness the Pope Benedict XVI to do that?

You should know that the pope is now in Poland, on a tour in Warsaw and Oswiecim, better and sadly known as Auschwitz. It's quite symbolic for him, a German national, to go to the place where Germans (and Catholics) have committed humanity's greatest crime, and I certainly won't go into such issues in here.

However, and on a much lighter tone, it seems that the pope's presence inspires people's fantasy. Look at this:

Polish Public TV to Ban Lingerie, Beer Ads During Papal Visit

Would life be the same without catholics? of course not. Glass in hand, let's sip this one slowly as it deserves full attention.

Polish public television will ban advertisements for such things as beer, lingerie and contraceptives during this month's visit by Pope Benedict XVI.

Interesting how they correlate beer, underpants and condoms, eh? I could understand the underpant bit, seeing a tanga after Ratzinger's face is probably quite shocking. On condoms it's a long story, and I don't want to go into it. But what about beer? Let's read on:

A committee will review them to ensure that their content does not conflict with live coverage of the papal visit.

Right. And where's the conflict between beer and pope? can't pilgrims have beer after their long walks to holy sites? I fail to get it. But let's continue our read, it's not over:

The network's list of unacceptable ads also includes those for ``intimate hygiene products'' and ``explosives and flammable materials,'' the Web site said.

Ah, now I get it. Only people with no fuel in their tank and with dirty dicks and asses are allowed in front of the TV when Pope's on.

Behind Bolivia and Namibia

2006-05-07T17:50:00.000+02:00

While browsing the 2006 press freedom ranking and I was not too surprised to find Italy lurking in the middle of the grey area that groups the partially free countries. Slightly more worrying was the fact that we were lagging behind countries like Bolivia and Namibia, which I have never visited but which are not usually quoted as models of democracy and liberty.

It is interesting to see what the detailed country report has to say about us:

Freedom of speech and the press is constitutionally guaranteed. However, media freedom remains constrained by the continued concentration of media power in the hands of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who, through his private media holdings and political power over the state television networks, controls 90 percent of the country’s broadcast media.

Oh, really? Let's continue:

In July 2004, the parliament passed the Frattini Law, which is intended to deal with the conflict of interest between the prime minister’s public office and his media holdings. The law stipulates that persons holding government office cannot “occupy posts, hold office or perform managerial tasks or any other duties in profit-making companies or other business undertakings.” Although this prevents the prime minister from running his own businesses, it does not prevent him from choosing his own proxy, including a family member.

Fine, we know this. But what is really the problem with the Italian press? I think I get it, in one small sentence towards the end of the report:

Most press outlets are privately owned but are often linked to political parties or run by large media conglomerates that exercise some editorial influence.

I believe this is key. It's not that Mr. Berlusconi owns so many TV channels and newspapers, nor that the law allows him to do so. The main problem here is that too many papers, radio stations, TV channels, advertisement companies, magazines, internet sites and so on and so forth have a political party behind. I have visited many countries for long periods of time, but I have never seen political parties permeate the daily life of a citizen as much as in here.

Now, for the joy of around 50.1% of Italians, Berlusconi has lost the latest elections. This means that a liberal, libertarian, centre-left government will be able to promote press freedom and finally pass a law that prevents concentration of power in the hands of government members or people with some influence.

Who wants to bet a lukewarm Heineken beer against a bottle of 1997 Brunello that they won't?

Elections are over

2006-04-22T18:13:00.000+02:00

You may have noticed an absence of posts in this blog as per lately. This is not because I refuse to talk about elections, although I'm pretty sure that apart from Financial Times editorialists few individuals abroad have been spending their first springtime days searching for controversial opinions on the duel of the sectuagenaries (as you'll remember, both Prodi and Berlusconi were born in the 1930s).

Instead, I've been busy nurturing a springtime flu and putting the final touches to my doctorate thesis, which is now very near completion. Hence the silence.

And amidst all this pain, the elections have gone, Prodi's centre-left coalition has won but hasn't really won, and Berlusconi's centre-right has lost, but not quite. You don't understand? don't worry, it's Italy we're talking about.

And since elections are over, what better than our lovely, election-hassle-free, second government, also known as the Vatican, to fill the headlines? Here's a few entertaining bits.

First, let's start with their new foreign policy in a nutshell: Church will speak to Hamas government

In this brilliant piece the Custodians of the Holy Land (but where's that again?) say that:

"Contact with Hamas?For the time being it’s only informal. But the Church will certainly speak to the new Palestinian government. It’s inevitable"

Sure. No matter about the poor people in Israel who had relatives and friends injured or killed in the last Tel Aviv bombing. But there's still an objection:

"Obviously, there is a problem with the fact that until a few months ago, Hamas was sending its suicide bombers to blow themselves to pieces on buses in Tel Aviv."

A small problems indeed. But it can be solved:

"... But we are not a government. We don’t choose our interlocutors”.

Sure. Except they fail to say who chooses them.

Before I puke, let's get to something else:

Archdiocese will pay $300,000 to settle last of sex-abuse suits

Interesting. So they do have somewhere to put that 0.8% of our tax that we are almost forced to pay them every year thanks to one of the stupidest laws in the world. Interesting to say what the plaintiff said about this:

"In the end, I knew I wanted to show what the archdiocese did was wrong," he
said. "Clearly a $300,000 settlement shows they acknowledge something there."

Yes it does, and it shows they have money, since he was not the only one that got compensated for bad priests behaviour at school:

Burden was the only eligible plaintiff to opt out of a $25.7 million class-action settlement between the archdiocese and 243 other plaintiffs.

But all is well what ends well:

Burden's settlement is more than three times the median payment -- just over $85,000 -- that the class-action plaintiffs received. The highest individual payout in that case was $218,801.

Now that's quite a number. I know the median is not the average, but I could very well have been molested by a priest whose dick does not even harden for that sort of money. I may start going to church again after all!

But here's my favourite bit for the day, coming from no less than my personal idol, cardinal Carlo Maria Martini (depicted above in his most exciting day of life), formerly archbishop of Milan, currently unemployed and seeking not to be kicked out by Pope Benedict's sweep of cardinals:

Cardinal Martini on AIDS –Condoms Lesser of Two Evils

This is about the fight against AIDS, which the Popestate is deliberately spreading in Africa and other less evil countries by actively discouraging the use of condoms.

Hear the words of wisdom:

"the progress of science and technology creates frontier zones or grey areas” where “it is not immediately evident what is the true good of man and woman”.

Erm... excuse me, his excellence? can you speak clearer?

It is therefore “a good rule not to make hasty judgements and to discuss calmly so as not to create futile divisions”.

Ah, ok, I get it. You don't want us to speak about it? well, sorry, but the re-immigration cannot be quiet. After all, this blog is evil as well.

Countries I've visited

2006-04-01T13:14:00.000+02:00

I just found a nice web page where you can create a picture of the countries you've visited! Here's mine...

To do the same try this page.

Having come to approximately 40% of the current average life expectancy for a male born in my country, and having been to only 17% of the countries in the world, it is evident that I should intensify my travelling.

Pride and disgust

2006-04-01T12:57:00.000+02:00

Someone (I don't remember who) said that Italy is a country that can make their citizen proud and disgusted within the space of 100 metres.

No definition could have been more appropriate on a grand springtime day like today, when you wake up to the smell of flowers, almost burn in the heat of the sun (gee! it's hot out in the balcony!) and then open your Opera browser (but you'll be forgiven if you use Mozilla) to find the following pieces of news:

Afghan Christian given asylum in Italy,

and

All-male kiss an offence.

To put it another way: pride and disgust.

Italy and Belarus on the street

2006-03-25T23:15:00.000+01:00

Here is an example of how advanced a country Italy is.

Ignore the fact that the two candidates for a prime minister post, Romano "sausage" Prodi and Silvio "conflict of interest" Berlusconi were both born in their thirties, as only one other leader in the EU (hat tip to Beppe Severgnini for this).

No, thank you very much, sir! we are a modern democracy, and if leaders in their seventies are all we can produce, we will witness fair and peaceful elections on April 9, when we will experience a 12-year flashback and go back to the 1994 Berlusconi against Prodi duel.

We are not Belarus, where former president Alexander "I will die as a president" Lukashenko has just reconfirmed himself by means of yet another spoof election. The last dictator of Europe has no intention to leave his post it seems. Why bother with elections anyway if you have to have the same face around?

But the belarussians do not seem to agree and they have taken to the streets of Minsk, where police has had to break up their peaceful march under orders of the ever-reigning president.

Hell, why, they cannot even put out doubts of vote rigging (for that's what it was, by word of EU observers and not the opposition leader!) and they're immediately arrested and beaten.

But that's Belarus, and we're Italy, a showcase of democracy, the world's shopwindow of tolerance and peace... NOT!

Here is what some peaceful Italians were doing in Milan during a peaceful street march only a couple of weeks ago.

Basically, anti-fascists (read: communists, since we do not have too many fascists any more down here) put a couple of buildings, several cars and one newspaper kiosk on fire, injuring several passers-by, during a street march that turned into a large riot.

Now, I do not know and do not care what they were marching for. But think about the paradox: in Belarus they march against a president who has allegedly rigged votes in an election, and the army comes down in riot gear and arrests them. In Italy they march against the fascists (?) and start putting buildings on fire and injuring passers-by. Then the army comes down in riot gear, many of them get injured as well and someone even complains that the so-called demonstrators were arrested.

The clashes were so serious that they prompted the US government to issue a travel warning, saying US citizens in Italy are in danger because they may become targets of street clashes. But don't worry, they say, "such warnings are common in other friendly countries, such as Israel and Saudi Arabia." And what was our reaction? you guessed it: we're outraged!!!

I would hereby like to express my solidarity to the population of Belarus, and apologise on behalf of all democratic Italians for the awful use some of us have made of their basic right to hold a march.

At the same time, I feel ashamed to be a citizen of that very country where those people who made a mess of Milan were born.

Chickenware

2006-02-19T12:30:00.000+01:00

The inevitable has happened: bird flu, also known as HN51 virus, has struck in Italy as well, killing so far a small number of wild swans, but bringing the threat of a devastating epidemic much closer to us than Thailand or China.

Now, I will not start elucubrating on the fact that thousands and thousands of people every year die of ordinary flu, and no-one seems to give a damn about them. Instead, these days every dead bird makes the headlines: good morning, here's the top news from TG1: 15 dead people in car accidents because of fog, dead swan found in Sicily, genocide in Darfur...

No, that's not what I wanted to talk about. We know the sales of newspapers are declining 5% a year, and they are doing whatever in order to stop the trend. And what better than a few dead birds to bring up TV audience at election times?

What really makes me think I'm living among 58 million idiots is that the sales of chicken and turkey meat has declined 70% after the discovery of the dead swans, causing the loss of thirty-thousand jobs!

Now, you don't have to be a genius to guess that Italy is the only country in Europe where this has happened. And this is true in spite of the fact that we have perhaps the best food higiene control system in the world (heck, we even run the EU food safety agency!). Besides, other EU countries are importing more of our chicken than ever before, a clear sign that they trust our standards.

Now, here's a message to those demented monkeys that stop buying bird meat because of chicken flu. Since they're probably too illiterate to read this, I'll speak with pictures.

Here's how the chicken whose meat you have eaten so far is grown:

As you can see the environment is comfortable and higienically optimal for food.

Here's how the animals look after slaughtering:

The way they are kept obviously guarantees the maximum cleanliness.

Now here's a picture of the chicken you are refusing to buy:

(thanks to Il pollaio del Re for the pics)

And here's a picture of a more intelligent animal than you:

I can assure you that the chicken breast we ate last Friday was delicious, and cost only 3 euros for half a kilo.

Disgust

2006-02-04T18:17:00.000+01:00

I'm disgusted. And yes, it's about those old cartoons depicting prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him) that a Danish paper called Jyllends Posten published a few months ago. Fellow Saudi blogmate Religious Policeman has a good story of the event.

But unlike what you may believe, I'm not disgusted by the reaction of the Muslim people. They are wrong, of course, since they do not have the right to torch embassies and kidnap people if they decide to feel offended about some innocent cartoons.

Instead, I'm profoundly disgusted by the reaction of most of our rotten, corrupt, ass-kissing, money-sucking political and religious authorities. From British foreign minister Jack Straw's delirating attack against free media to the usual Vatican blatter about respect (for hell's sake, it took THEM fifty years to apologize about the holocaust - who are they to say how we should behave with their history of torture, inquisition and bigotry? Another wasted chance to shut the fuck up).

Luckily today comes my fellow Siena citizen Giannelli with another of his excellent cartoons. We definitely needed some wit here.

In the cartoon you can see Berlusconi in form of a divinity (he probably thinks of himself as a semi-god) asking prophet Mohammed: "you got offended by twelve cartoons? what should I say then?".

Absolutely brilliant, and Kudos to Corriere della Sera and many other Italian papers who had the balls to not only republish some of the famous cartoons, but also added some of their own. Special mention for Giuliano Ferrara's Il Foglio, who came out with a very explicit first page (see below).

There is still some light at the end of the tunnel.

Disaster aftermath

2006-02-03T12:50:00.000+01:00

The disaster is over. God's anger on us is a memory of the past. We can take a breath of relief. Together with the Tsunami in the Indian Ocean and the earthquake in Pakistan, we can classify last week's snowfall as one of the most dramatically moving events that stroke our little planet in the millennium.

(that's Milan on February 1 - notice the efficient snow shovelling technique called "melting" - it's an import from the Middle East)

Now, you see, Italy is very special. It has winters, but they are seldom snowy. Rome, our capital city, has seen a relevant snowfall only once in the last decade. However, at times, in periods when you would least expect it, snow happens to fall down. But this time it was beyond expectation. Snow!?! In northern Italy, the land of Giorgio Rocca> and Piero Piller-Cottrer, in the end of January?!? coincidence is hard to believe sometimes!

Rub your eyes, blink twice: it's snowing indeed. It so does for a day and a half. So what do most Italian people do when they see 70 cm of wet snow (the largest single snowstorm in twenty years) on the ground?

Needless to say: they keep on with their lives as if nothing has happened. They do not go out and make snowmen, throw snowballs at passers by or ride sledges. They do not stay home with their wives and open a nice bottle of vin brulé. Instead, they go to work, try catch a flight at the airport, take a train to visit their loved ones, do the weekly shopping, and so on.

Yes, sir, we are productive people, we never stop and always expect the best. And what happens when you have 70 cm (that's about 2ft6in) of snow falling within 36 hours? surprise! disbelief! things stop working?!? how could that be??? look how brilliantly other European countries, certainly much better at terms with severe winter, such as Finland and Sweden react to such events, how seamlessly they go through severe snowfall. How could we expect Italian infrastructure to perform less than perfectly?

In the wake of the indignated protests of people who complained about the delays and cancellations, here's a few pieces of advice for the next time snow is forecast to fall in Italy.

1) Travel as much as you can, with as many connections as you can find, and make your schedule as tight as you can, taking particular care not to leave any cushion time: things won't go wrong.

2) Drive normally, enjoying the sight of the white blanket ahead of you. Never contemplate the use of snow chains as stopping to put them on may disrupt traffic behind you.

3) Remembre not to shovel the pavement in front of your house. Doing so may prevent people from falling down, thus taking the enjoyment out of a day spent at home.

4) Use motorways extensively, especially in traits that witness heavy lorry traffic. Ignore speed limits as usual, as they are put there by ignorant politicians who have no clue how good a driver you are and how safe your car is, especially in slippery conditions.

5) Do not listen to Italian authorities urging you not to move. Who are they to say that you and 58.2 million other Italians should be deprived of your basic right to expect things to function perfectly regardless of the weather?

6) Make as much noise as you can in every situation. Complain, shout, shake your head in disgust, fuss around or just throw snowballs to old ladies. It will help improve the general mood.

50 years behind

2006-01-14T23:12:00.000+01:00

These days our newspapers have quietly slipped into electoral mode, giving space either to useless debates on ethics between left and right wing coalitions (who the hell has ethics any more in today's Italian politics?) or to sensational pieces of news, such as the chance that pornstar Rocco Siffredi may join the Isola dei Famosi, perhaps the most sleep-inducing of today's reality shows.

In the worst cases you may even bump into articles elaborating on how democratic cashmere may be.

Before going and getting drunk on toilet disinfectant, of course, you will have turned on Re-immigration. And for your consolation, here's a nice and interesting piece of news: the EU is 50 years behind the US for innovation.

Unbelievable? no way - actually I had a hard time believing that Italy is ranked as "average" in the list of European countries, so I checked the full report and figured out why we do not rank bottom of the bottom, as we would deserve if judged by our R&D expenditure, which is the lowest in the EU when compared to GDP.

Actually, if you check the rate of innovation outputs (such as patents) compared to inputs (such as money invested in R&D), you can see that Italy fares pretty well. So we innovate much more than others compared to what is invested in innovation.

Why is that? because, fundamentally, we are very receptive to innovation, as this ranking confirms. And it is evident if you just walk the streets: Italians are keen on trying out new things, they are ahead of many others in mobile technology, they encourage design to advance by being very selective when choosing products from the market and they are generally very demanding (that's also why they always complain, if you are wondering).

If you check the innovation readiness ranking you can perhaps notice a curious fact: out of the four countries that are rated as most innovative, two (Finland and Germany) rate way below EU25 average, and two others (Denmark and Sweden) rate slightly above, but still way below Italy. Out of ten Italians, six are attracted or enthusiastic about innovation, while in Germany the number is just above four.

And why is it that Germans and Finns don't want to use new technologies, but produce way more innovation than us? you name it: our government is busy trying not to lose the next election, and whoever wins them will do everything they can to keep voters happy by a series of populistic measures (less tax for everyone!!!) and by re-inforcing lobby protection mechanisms (see my Christmas wish number 5). After all, aren't we number 42 in the economic freedom ranking (kudos to Mahmood for the link).

Can you imagine someone running for election by shouting "you'll all have to pay more taxes because we need to find the money to become more competitive" actually getting any votes? Come on! innovative Italians out there want to save money to buy the latest SUV equipped with the latest technology.

So let's get back to reality. I'm happy not to be the last in Europe this time (and my warmest thanks to Greece who usually saves us from occupying that position in other rankings).

Happy New Year (and a sixth wish)

2006-01-01T12:09:00.000+01:00

A very happy new year it is, with the first of my wishes (see my earlier post) having already come true!

Yes, this is not a dream. Exactly 12 hours after I posted my wish for Fazio's resignation in this blog, the magic happened, and for once Italy got back a part of its dignity.

Why only a part? in order to answer, you should know the background of this story, here is a good summary.

Let me try to explain the basics to you if you still think you are not familiar enough. Warning: what follows (in italics) is a complex and boring attempt of an explanation for an extremely complex financial operation. The story is also typically representative of what happens in Italy with this sort of stuff, so skip if if you have stomach problems.

A foreign bank wants to buy an Italian bank and makes a hostile buyout offer. It practically offers a certain amount of money to all the shareholders in exchange for their stock, and if the majority of them accept it will take the bank over regardless of the bank's administration council's will (hence the term "hostile").

The two banks in question are ABN AMRO, the Netherlands' biggest bank group and one of the largest in Europe, and Antonveneta, which is facing difficult times due to its overpaid and inept management structure.

Now what happens just a bit later is that a much smaller Italian bank (called BPI), led by a suspicious chap with loads of friends sitting at strategic places in government buildings, makes the same kind of offer. Everyone is surprised by this, since BPI is really small, and people with a grain of salt in the brain are starting to ask where they may be getting the monies for such a big buyout.

Now, surprise surprise, it turns out that Mr. Fiorani was allegedly getting monies by cheating ordinary people who had simply trusted his bank. In the meantime, Fazio was passing him confidential info during the obligatory bid assessment that the Bank of Italy has to carry out.

Ok, the thing is much more complex than that, but anyway Fazio had two basic choices:
- if he was aware of what was going on, he should have resigned (since he was basicaly participating in a crime);
- if he was not aware what was going on, he should have resigned (since he should have known about these facts).

Now this should have happened half a year earlier, not after judges issue an investigation warrant against him. So only part of Italy's dignity was recovered. But better late than never.

So my first wish has come true before Christmas. This entitles me to a sixth wish to add to the list of five. This is a big one, so I'm aware that it's going to stay in the wish list. But I'm an optimistic person, so I'll put it out.

6) See Italy lead an international alliance for the reconciliation of Israel and Palestine.

This means active reconciliation, in terms of common development projects, investments, infrastructure development for basic freedom of movement and an airport for the Gaza strip and West Bank that is co-financed by Europe and Israel. It also means sharing intelligence targeted to the final defeat of Hamas and all other similar organizations who criminally exploit poor and uneducated people in in order to carry out terrorist attacks against a democratic country in the name of religion.

And what is your wish? Let me hear that in the comments section!

Happy new year!

Five wishes for the New Year

2005-12-18T17:48:00.001+01:00

Haven't blogged that much lately, too busy with work and studies to spend my time ranting about things that anyway never change.

However, in sight of the new year (gee, how fast has 2005 gone!) I would like to bring out my own, personal five wishes. They concern my country and not myself, and they are entirely questionable, so feel free to post your own in the comment section.

1) See Fazio step down. I've been wishing for the same to happen earlier (scroll towards the end), so I don't have too much hope. However, the recent case with BPI has for the very first time in several years magically generated unanimous comments from all political forces. These comments more or less said: get out! I'm sure I'm justified when I wish for that to happen, too.

2) Witness the closure of Alitalia. This loss-making, chronically inefficient, structurally archaic company has showed that it cannot fly people from A to B in an economically sustainable way. Let's just shut it down instead of prolonguing its agony (and yes, I had said this before as well).

3) Show the world that we are a credible country by producing a proper plan to finally cut our emissions and adhere to the Kyoto protocol that we subscribed long time ago without purchasing emission quotas from other country (what the fuck is that mechanism there for?)

4) Run the Turin 2006 Olympic games without incidents and sell out all tickets - myself, I'm going. What about you?

5) Listen to whoever wins the election declare: "as a first thing we shall abolish all professional orders, starting from journalists, notaries and engineers". I have never said very much about professional orders, but I will. For now, let it suffice to know that they are a cancer of our society since they actively resist the process of changing archaic laws. One example: why on Earth do I have to go to a notary and pay him a fee in order to purchase a second-hand car???

I may not be posting for a while as I'm leaving to the North of the world on December 22. Back online in 2006: happy ending to all of you.

Growth forecast

2005-11-18T21:30:00.000+01:00

My fellow Siena citizen Giannelli's cartoon on today's Corriere della Sera kicks ass!

The writing on top means "growth forecast" - obviously a word game comparing Mr. Berlusconi's recent statements on Italy's economy and his fixation on hair transplants.

Unfortunately, the man also looks hopelessly poised to lose the next elections, so he sees an image of Mr. Prodi (whose hair is still all in place) when looking at the mirror.

Simply ingenious.

Olympic Cola

2005-11-16T20:05:00.000+01:00

It's good that I'm so busy with work and my PhD thesis these days. This way, I have an excuse to isolate myself from what happens in our country, and newsclips such as this seamlessly flow.

Now you must have clicked that link, but just in case you haven't I'll report the highlights.

Municipalities in Rome protest at sponsor of Olympic flame.

I'll explain this to you: Coke is sponsoring the winter Olympic torch's northbound journey through Italy, and inept, corrupt, incompetent and populist Roman administrators have decided to exit the anonimity that their mediocrity has pushed them into and taken an easy target: Coca Cola.

Rome’s eleventh municipal authority [...] claims that the Olympic sponsor is breaching workers’ rights in Colombia, and will not allow the flame to pass through its territory

Ah, that's the trick. They have the poor Colombians work long hours corking bottles, so their name should not be seen in Rome. Just release those poor workers and send them back to the heavens of coke (the powdery one) fields! they'll love it there!

The deputy mayor, Maria Pia Garavaglia, was quick to say that “municipality chairs can wage all the political battles they want to, but they cannot impose them on citizens, who risk losing out”.

Long live people like you Maria Pia! I'm only afraid that you'll lose elections because you make way too much sense. To the administrators who had this brilliant idea: whether the torch goes by Rome or not is none of your fucking business - go back stamping the useless forms you make us fill every day!

“I attended a meeting in Bari with three hundred local administrators, mayors and councillors”, said the chair of the eleventh Roman municipality, Communist Refoundation member Massimiliano Smeriglio, “and our protest was unanimously approved.

There we go! what is the name of the party that this connection element between mankind and apes belongs to?

Communist refoundation!

Now of course communists are very well known for their widespread respect of human rights, therefore this chap has all rights to complain about Coke saving money on Colombian workers' canteen food. But this is not all...

There is, for example, a motion before the regional council, which will be voted in a few days. It calls for a committee of inquiry to find out whether what Colombian trade unionists say is true, in other words whether Coca-Cola is breaching human rights.

Now Lazio, the region where Rome is built, is densely populated with thieves, prostitutes, drug traffickers, burglars, windscreen washers, people smugglers, car burners, members of parliament and other assorted criminals. Why the hell are these people worrying about some guys in Colombia that have found a proper job that takes them away from the misery and poverty that they have on the street?

I have a proposal: let's send this piece of a Communist genius to Colombia to investigate what is really happen, and then arrange some kidnapping so that he never comes back again. Actually I think I'm being too optimistic here: the kidnappers would pay us to take such scum back.

Italian design at work

2005-11-10T23:54:00.000+01:00

The brightest of you must have noticed that I'm not always too kind with my country, and that I don't hesitate to give my people the sort of bashing they all too often seem to call for.

But I'm ready to recognize we're world class at so many things. And I wouldn't have come back to Italy if I didn't love this country.

There's one thing we're really, really good at: making cars. Forget about the shopping-trolley performance of Ferrari in Formula 1 this year: if you say sports car you say Italy. Maserati, Alfa Romeo, Lancia, Lamborghini and, yes, even FIAT with its excellent new punto are companies we're proud of. But the most extreme, absurd and unreachable of all cars that we make, and the most awe-inspiring in its sheer beauty, is the one and only Lamborghini. Take care at the new Gallardo Spyder and you'll see what I mean.

And the web site doesn't even come close to describing what such a car actually looks like. Lambos rock so massively that even the police have bought one! (I shot the picture in Fiumicino airport some time last year.)

Well done, Lambo. And keep up the good work - we're proud of you.

Who gives a fuck?

2005-11-01T23:30:00.000+01:00

This November 1st public holiday (All Saints, if you don't happen to live in a catholic country) keeps on amazing me. If you have good weather, you can have the privilege of witnessing the whole country going somewhere at the same time, and coming back at the same time. Then, surprise surprise, there is traffic! how amazing! today the queue on the way to Rome was around thirty-five kilometres!

But this wasn't what I was going to talk about. Given that the whole country is away, supply of proper news is a bit on the short side. The obvious consequence is abundance of what I call the "who gives a fuck" sort of newsbit. Here's a few examples for your joy and delight.

Here's a good starter: the EU tries to reassure us about chicken flu, and what do they say? you can eat raw eggs! Thanks very much, I was already contemplating suicide for not being able to do so. What a relief!

Then the meal goes on: Italian men produce their first kids later than men from all other nationalities. Revelation! I believe it must have taken hordes of scientists and statisticians to discover that people have kids late in a country where it is perfectly normal to witness youngsters inhabiting their parents' place at the age of 35? or do we expect women to come and have sex in front of their in-laws?

But the meat is still to come. We're even trying to save extinct languages!!! When someone explains me why we're trying to save Bushman or Pygmy and at the same time we constantly flush Italian down the toilet? whenever I hear a subjunctive tense used correctly I'm tempted to expose a flag from the balcony and we're trying to save the dialects of the Amazon? do something useful in your life, for fuck's sake!

And could a dinner be complete without a sugary dessert from nothing less than our beloved Pope Benedict XVI? Prepare your taste buds: we must preserve Italy's holiness!!! Can I ask you something, his highness? in the name of fuck, what holiness do you mean? that of the homicides, corruption, tax evasion? is it the holiness of the person who shoots trick-and-treaters (hat tip to Corpodibacco)? or the one that has our civil servants arrange official meetings with terrorist organizations?

I'm getting pissed off. I'd better not give a fuck.

New toy

2005-10-29T16:48:00.000+02:00

You may be wondering why I'm not blogging that much these days.

No, it's not that things are going better here in my re-immigration land. Actually it's pretty much the other way round.

The reason I'm not producing so much ramble about the ways my country could be better is that I got a new toy! The fabulous autumn we are enjoying, with temperatures in the mid twenties and sun, means I'm out as often as I can.

Lousy pic, I know, but it was taken by a drunk guy with a camera phone, so you can't expect too much. I'll add more as time goes by.

What's the fuss all about?

2005-10-29T01:30:00.000+02:00

I'm amazed at how "buonisti" Italians can be. Buonista is a nice word in our language, it means that you try to be good to others (and behave accordingly) in whichever situation, even when the others are blatantly damaging you or when they are breaking the law.

In Italy, you should know, we have a number of people (they seem to be millions) who in the name of "buonismo", or the art of being "buonista" to your own advantage, try to gain votes, money, privileges, power or whatever else their arrogant ego tells them to pursue.

Several of these people occupy civil servant posts, and most of them (though not all) have leftish thoughts.

Now don't get me wrong: I'm a leftish liberal myself. I have re-immigrated all the way from Finland, where welfare and equal rights are the foundation of society. The thing is they come together with two other things we are currently missing here in Italy: respect for the law and open market.

That's the recipe for a wealthy, peaceful and advanced society: you produce wealth by means of open market rules and fair competition, then give part of that money you make to other less lucky people in form of taxes and other contributions.

In Finland, if you don't pay your taxes you will not only be prosecuted and made to pay: you will be despised by the whole society.

In Italy, instead, we are "buonisti". We (and especially those pseudo-leftish people) consider it bad to point fingers against other people who break the law and, in doing so, damage all of us. Buonismo is exactly what is bringing mr. Cofferati and mr. Veltroni, mayor respectively of Bologna and Rome.

You see, these guys have decided that illegal immigrants who try to sell you stuff on the street should be prevented from doing so. In Bologna they started enforcing the law against those extremely annoying, intrusive, arrogant people who insist in washing your windscreen for a fee at every red light.

Now you can't imagine how annoying it is to have someone trying to wash your windscreen at every bloody traffic light that you happen to stop to. To whoever wants to do it to my car I'd like to remind that:
1) I like my car dirty
2) I have enough brain cells to decide when it's time to wash the windscreen
3) if I decide it is time to wash my windscreen, I bring the car to a gas station where I can do the job for free.
So please get the fuck out of there before I get pissed off.

Anyway, back to our mayors: Cofferati is sending away rogue car washers while Veltroni, in Rome, is focusing on illegal street sellers. Now you don't have to be a member of Mensa to figure out that those kiosks actually bother whoever tries to walk in Rome's cobbled streets with some company. So Veltroni said: no more illegal sellers in Piazza Navona.

And then the fuss came: how could they do it? throw out people who very often they are not only illegal sellers, but also illegal immigrants? these chaps must be nuts. Let's forgive them, let's let them live a peaceful life, in respect of all religious and social mandates. How can we have the right to tell an illegal seller: you should not be here? no, my dear readers, this is Italy. You respect the law, fine. You break the law, fina anyway: you'll be forgiven (or they'll forget, or the leftish buonisti will come and defend you).

Welcome to Illegality Land.

Setting priorities

2005-10-18T11:04:00.000+02:00

Here's a couple of pieces of news about nowadays Italy. This is about money, so it's as boring as it gets, but no money no honey, so let's get into it quick and dirty.

First, I'm happy to hear that after around 50 years of planning, dreaming, discussing, allying, cancelling, replanning, modifying, questioning and delaying, the project to build a bridge between continental Italy and Sicily has finally been awarded to a company. It's the first good sign that we don't only talk in Italy: sometimes we can even do things.

Money wise, it's an impressive thing, comprising a road and rail link over the 8 kms of strait that separate Sicily from Calabria. The cost of the project, at 2002 values, is estimated at 4.6 billion euros, but the financial impact will be some 6 billion euros.

Now stop for a while and think about 6 billion euros. It's an incredibly large sum. You could take that money and, say, buy a copy of Ligabue's last CD to every inhabitant of the six larges european nations. In an impulse of generosity, you could buy every Italian person two pairs of shoes at high street prices, or you could pay yourself fuel to drive until Pluto and back around 45 times with your average city car. In a nutshell, it's as much money as you will never even figure out, unless your name is Berlusconi or Gates of course.

So it's good that we got the money for this project. We are a modern, European nation, and we are doing our best to improve our infrastructure. Given that it currently takes around 22 hours to travel the 1650 km distance that separates Aosta from Palermo by train we could very well do with some improvement in infrastructure.

But then I remember that we are in 2005 Italy, a country that is officially in an economic recession. We live in a place where the government just approved the strictest budget law that anyone can remember of, in a desperate attempt not to breach the EU rules that we have so eagerly accepted.

This year is a special one, because we have elections. And if you have elections, you cannot cut too much, otherwise people won't vote you. And you see, Italian politicians like their jobs, so much that they seldom make unpopular decisions. This has even prompted Standard & Poors, the international rating agency, to express worries about the effectiveness of our policies, particularly concerning tax.

Nevertheless, we just cut our budget for culture and arts, and are even putting the 2006 winter olympics at stake with budget cuts to the companies that were supposed to provide vital services such as transport.

Now you may start wondering whether all this makes sense. If you look into the figures, it's quite hard to find any logic in this. In fact, you could rephrase it this way: are we all fucking mad?

Think about it: we're trying to save the pennies here and there to stay in Europe and not lose our face in front of the likes of Lithuania and Cyprus, we are into recession, our research and development budget is at central-african levels and we build a bridge over the strait, just to shorten travel time between Aosta and Palermo from 22 to 20 hours?

And then we wonder why people don't pay tax! Do you trust a family man who renovates the ceiling of his house while his kids have not enough food?

I'm amazed. Just hope that whoever goes into the prime minister seat next will cancel this folly and give the money back to where it belongs: more public transportation, fixing the electrical and water distribution network, renewing our roads, maintaining our monuments, planting more forest, cleaning our dirty rivers and enlarging our ports so that even ships to Sicily will be faster.

And please, let Sicliy be the marvellous island it is today. Would you ever feel so wonderfully isolated, so mystically separated from the rest of the world if there was a bridge? Sicily has survived perfectly for thousands of years as an island (see the pic above, which I took in an undisclosed village near Messina). We don't need the bridge.

Siena rocks!

2005-10-03T22:15:00.000+02:00

You may know that Siena is not only my hometown, but the home of one of the most surprising teams in the Italian main football league, Serie A.

I have grown up in Siena at the sight of a local football team that was struggling between third and fourth division. A couple of years ago Siena made a wonderful rise to Serie B, and right after to Serie A. They managed to avoid relegation last year in an exciting comeback, and earned themselves another year in Serie A.

This year they are flying up high in the top half of the ranks, and just managed to conquer the Olympic Stadium in Rome by defeating the local team (AC Roma) yesterday with a sounding 3-2 score.

Their yearly budget is a tenth of the one that Roma has. They have two points more than Roma.

Congrats to this wonderful example of management.

Browser woes

2005-10-03T20:49:00.000+02:00

I fucking hate this piece of utter crap that is called Internet Explorer. I had just finished writing a long, loooong blabber on tourism in Italy when the browser crashed and fucked up all my work.

Why does Blogspot force us to use this pre-historic, shitty, unusable, ball-busting, arse-penetrating subspecies of a program and does not support stable and cool browsers like Opera in their most advanced features?

I'm pissed off today. Loads of work during the weekend, shitty customers, terrible weather and no salary raise.

Need a holiday - I'll book something soon.

Going commercial today

2005-09-24T02:53:00.000+02:00

When I was living in Finland I managed to get a DSL service without having any fixed phone line.

Fact is, in Finland a fixed phone will cost you more in flat subscription fees than your average mobile bill, which is why many people toss the thing down the wastedump and take good care of their Nokias (there's hardly another mobile phone brand in that country).

But today I will turn this post into an advertisement area.

Yessir, mac is going commercial, and quite cheap. Give me a couple of beers (possibly from some really talented beermakers such as Menabrea or Peroni and not the Carlsberg/Heineken/Warsteiner crap) and I'll be your friend for the rest of life. Now here's the story.

When I moved to Rome I wanted to get DSL as well and couldn't be bothered with fixed phone service either. Not that mobile calls are anywhere near as cheap here as in Finland (changing operator seems to do the trick though). But my company, you see, pays my personal calls as a part of their excuses for not giving me a higher salary, so the hell with a fixed phone line. Besides, you cannot switch off a fixed phone, it bears a bulky annoying presence in a shelf that could otherwise be occupied by nicer stuff such as wine bottles and condom boxes, and I hate the fact that someone might be calling my home and not me.

So I wanted DSL, as I said. When I was in the process of getting a connection I learned about a new service offering policy. I would call it useless service at rip-off prices without attention to customer needs.

Here is how to implement it:

- bribe politicians so that you keep control of the last mile and the law that is supposed to liberalize it never actually takes off;

- oblige whoever wants to open a DSL connection to open a fixed phone line;

- charge 100 euros for activation (what the fuck?!? the phone line was already there since the previous tenant had it until a couple of months before I requested it! what am I paying with those 100 euros?);

- charge 35 to 50 euros every two months as a basic subscription fee;

- unilaterally include several useless services in the subscription, and charge of them, without actually asking the customers whether they actually want them;

- make it so hard to get rid of those services that people prefer paying for them rather than having to send twenty-five faxes to twenty-five different numbers;

- grossly understaff your customer care and be careful to hire only spasticated morons who cannot recognize the difference between a telephone pole and a beautiful Italian lady.

So I have ended up paying 210 euros a year (310 euros the first year) for a service I don't use just because I want DSL. Of course, it took them only 93 days to actually come and install it, so they really compensate for their ugly bundling with efficient customer care. Ah, and the activation of a phone line was mandatory before you could even ask for an ADSL line, so I paid 93 days of totally unused phone service.

You're a smart reader, so you're probably interested in this business. It's profitable, allows you to achieve 0% customer decrease and you can organize top-management meetings in Valencia watching the America's Cup regatta rehearsals from a luxury yacht while entertaining your corporate customers at the expense of the families who need to have internet. Meanwhile, we're lagging behind all other European nations in numbers of internet connections per person.

So you may want more info on how to start a business like this. Naive request, but I'll reply: just check the Telecom Italia web site.

Sorry I spoke clearly for once!

2005-09-19T14:47:00.000+02:00

I was actually quite surprised, and in the positive way, when mr. Prodi, the candidate of the centre-left to the PM post in next spring's elections, spoke out on gay marriage and cohabitation. You can read a good summary of what he said here.

Now isn't that beautiful? he's a Catholic, but still says that there should be equal rights for those who make decisions that contrast with the Vatican's octuagenary policymakers' dictates. The statement was particularly juicy since it is also in sharp contrast with the enormous heap of useless crap that Prodi's gang has vomited on us during the last four years.

Being opposition to Mr. Berlusconi can't be that hard, one would think. Just read the papers, shoot and counterpropose something that actually makes some kind of sense. But the bunch of populist arms (surely stolen from agricultural tasks) that forms the leftwing coalition (?) has managed to fuck up even that trivial task, hiding answers to our questions behind multi-coloured peace flags. I can't even start thinking what they would do with real government issues.

So mr. Prodi's speech was a welcome breath of fresh air. Except it lasted for a weekend only. The uproar of the white togas from the Vatican raised the moods of all people from right to left. What the fuck? giving ordinary rights (such as that to unite themselves into marriage) to people that choose to live their way without any stupid and anticonstitutional law forcing them to live almost like drug traffickers or wannabe terrorists? isn't that a serious thing we should all fight against? Fuck all the other problems of Italy, this isn't going to become a law.

And there he goes back! today he releases a statement that has had me look for a needle to sew my testicles back, more or less saying: "I was misunderstood, I do not support gay marriage but believe in justice for all".

Bad show, mr. Prodi. You should have also apologized for your misbehaviour. Next time try something in the line of "Sorry I spoke clearly for once".

Volleyball(s)

2005-09-12T22:24:00.000+02:00

Yesterday I was in the company of around 14500 other people filling the excellent Palalottomatica arena in Rome watching the Italian team play Russia in the final of the European Volley Championship, which was wonderfully organized by the cities of Rome and Belgrade (kudos to them).

The final went more or less this way: the first set was exciting and well balanced and Italy won 25-22. At the beginning of the second set Russia started playing it the physical way, and since their shortest man could take our libero for a walk on leash it was easy for them to downplay us by 10 points. Same story in the third set, with Russia winning a desolating 25-14. At that point they were only missing a set and I was starting to have a deja-vu since the other match we played with them only 4 days ago ended 3-1 with us winning the first set and then loosing three straight.

After all, this is what we've got used to by following sports like football, where the average Italian match in the last 22 years has resembled more the Berlin love parade than a sports event.

But I forgot that we're talking about volleyball, a game that is usually played by people with balls. It's hard to describe the feeling of seeing your national team outplay so overwhelmingly the much more physical Russians. The final tiebreak that we forced them to after an imperious third set was so one-sided that it felt like a rehearsal with a junior team.

The Italian coach Montali, when asked what the reason for their success had been, explained it with three words: "work, work, work". May that be an example for all Italians.

Foreign architects invading Italy - perhaps

2005-09-12T19:10:00.000+02:00

Ah, this is really one of my favourites.

I feel good when I read this stuff, since the media every now and then wakes up and realises our country is going to the bog. There's uproar for about 2 months, then everyone forgets the issue in the name of other much more compelling stuff, such as whether a party named UDC is going to run together with mr. Berlusconi's Forza Italia in the next elections or not. I'm not talking bullshit, unfortunately.

Back to the initial issue, it's damn serious in itself: Italian architects claim foreign designs are invading Italy.

Now you may be tempted to feel bad about this. Think about it: we taught the world how to build sports arenas, villas, sewage systems, aqueducts, churches, temples, cities and you name it, and now we're succumbing to foreigners. We built the first artificial canal when the Germans didn't even know how to eat with one hand instead of two, and we invented the concept of water distribution when the English were still wondering how to get to the other side of the Thames and now we're losing ground to Iraqis and Japanese.

So it may sound serious that foreign architects are now building in Italy. But stop for a moment and think. Renzo Piano's work is acclaimed worldwide, and it was him they chose for the rebuilding of Berlin's Potsdamer Platz (the Sony Center is absolutely stunning - go there if you haven't seen it!). When the Chinese want to add a new residential area in Shanghai (called Pujan) they ring Vittorio Gregotti's bell. And many times have the Belgians commissioned work from Ettore Sottsass.

So what's the big deal about? we're still exporting architecture and creativity! Who cares if we don't get work in Italy! This is the nice part of globalization, why complain about it? tired of travelling perhaps? In fact, this smells suspiciously of a protectionism request, and these times it's not fashionable. Is there a reason why red tape and delays for Italian commissions should not affect foreign firms as well? ok, for sure having your company registered in Italy does mean a lot of unnecessary bureaucratic achievements, but does this really justify appealing to the President?

Mr. Architects, we are proud of you. Don't spend your precious time moaning about this stuff. As Dante Benini rightly puts it, whoever presents the best work wins.

Expelling extremists?

2005-09-10T01:31:00.000+02:00

Ah, now here's some good news: after years of lax tolerance we have finally started to kick extremists out. The last victim is the Imam of Turin, as you can read in this commentary.

Good job, he deserved to get the hell out of our country and go back to his yacht club in Morocco long time ago. Now a few questions arise, and I hope someone will answer.

First: why was he expelled now and not, say, three years ago when he evidently helped recruit and finance a terrorist attack in his own lovely country of Morocco (where he regularly goes sailing, but of whose people evidently he doesn't care)?

Second: will our border checks be so effective that he can't come back? I somehow doubt it, though I hope I'm wrong.

Third: how many such other Imams are there in Italy? and how many other people that are linked to terrorist activities around the world? and if there's many of them, why don't we charge with the crime of international terrorism, which is now (finally, insh'allah) recognised by our law? does sending them to their own countries where no-one checks on what they do and where they can find all the volunteers of the world for all sorts of Jihad-like activities actually help?

Fourth (unrelated): what the fuck is mr. Fazio waiting before he steps downa and relieves us of having to endure the sight of his face yet another day?

Muttawa's back!

2005-09-10T01:13:00.000+02:00

Muttawa, one of the web's favourite blogs, is back and active (since over a month ago, actually, so it's not that big news, but come on, I don't check all sites every day).

Welcome back, Alhamedi - the web was missing you!

Katrina ten months ahead

2005-09-09T00:41:00.000+02:00

Kudos to National Geographic, who forecast Katrina in an eerily accurate way on an article they published ten months ago!

Now, mr. Bush, wasn't it you who said that a disaster of such proportion could not be foreseen? Time to step down perhaps?

And since we're talking about this, time to step down for you, too, mr. Fazio! I have no idea how certain people can stand sitting in certain chairs after so many scandals. If you have no clue what I'm talking about, here is a good summary.

Terrorist attack in Italy?

2005-09-09T00:26:00.000+02:00

It is now a known fact that the average terrorist is a total idiot, so it's worth having a laugh on their shoulders. In Italian only, sorry, and I'm too lazy to translate...

Perchè l'Italia è al sicuro........

Bin Laden ha dichiarato:"E' molto difficile fare un attentato in I talia". In realtà alcuni documenti del SISDE rivelati recentemente affermano che Bin Laden ci ha provato, tempo fa diede ordine di organizzare un aereo in Italia. Due terroristi, provenienti da un Paese del Medio Oriente, arrivarono a Napoli con la ferma determinazione di eseguire "il castigo di Allah per gli infedeli italiani". Ecco com'è andata.

Domenica ore 23:47
Arrivano all'aeroporto internazionale di Napoli, via aerea dalla Turchia: escono dall'aeroporto dopo otto ore perchè gli hanno perso le valigie. La società di gestione dell'aeroporto non si assume la responsabilità della perdita e un impiegato consiglia ai terroristi di provare a ripassare il giorno dopo: chissà, con un po' di fortuna... Prendono un taxi: il taxista(abusivo) li guarda dallo specchietto retrovisore e, vedendo che sono stranieri, li passeggia per tutta la città per un'ora e mezza. Dal momento che non proferiscono lamentela, neanche dopo che
il tassametro raggiunge i 200 euro, decide di fare il colpo gobbo: arrivato alla rotonda di Villaricca, si ferma e fa salire un complice. Dopo averli derubati e coperti di mazzate li abbandonano esanimi nel Rione 167.

Lunedì ore 04:30
Al risveglio, dopo la mazziata, ambedue i terroristi riescono a raggiungere un albergo sito in zona piazza Borsa. Decidono quindi di affittare un auto presso la Hertz di piazza Municipio. Quindi si avviano con direzione aeroporto, ma giusto prima di arrivare a piazza Mazzini, rimangono bloccati da una manifestazione di studenti, uniti alle tute bianche anti-global ed ai disoccupati napoletani, che non li fanno passare.

Lunedì ore 12:30
Arrivano finalmente in piazza Garibaldi decidono di cambiare dei soldi per muoversi più liberamente: i loro dollari vengono cambiati in biglietti da 100 euro falsi.

Lunedì ore 15:45
Arrivano all'aeroporto di Capodichino con la ferma intenzione di dirottare un aereo per farlo cadere sulle torri dell'Enel del centro direzionale. I piloti ALITALIA sono in sciopero perchè chiedono la quadruplicazione del salario e vogliono lavorare meno ore. Stessa cosa per i controllori di volo, che pretendono anche la pinza obliteratrice per tutti ("altrimenti che controllori saremmo?", hanno dichiarato). L'unico aereo disponibile che c'è in pista è uno della MARADONA AIR con destinazione
Alghero e ha 18 ore di ritardo... gli impiegati ed i passeggeri sono accampati nelle sale d'attesa... intonano canti popolari... gridano slogan contro il governo edi piloti! Arrivano i celerini... cominciano a dare manganellate a destra e a manca, contro tutti... si accaniscono in particolar modo sui due arabi.

Lunedì 19:05
Finalmente si calmano un poco gli animi. I due figli di Allah, coperti di sangue, si avvicinano al banco della MARADONA AIR per acquistare i biglietti per l'aereo con destinazione Sassari, dirottarlo e farlo schiantare contro le torri Enel. Il responsabile MARADONA AIR che gli vende dei biglietti, tace il fatto che il volo, in realtà, è già stato cancellato.

Lunedì 22:07
A questo punto, i terroristi discutono se continuare oppure no... non sanno più se distruggere Napoli è un atto terroristico o un'opera di carità.

Lunedì 23:30
Morti di fame, decidono di mangiare qualcosa al ristorante dell'aereoporto: ordinano panino con la frittata e impepata di cozze.

Martedì 04:35
In preda a una salmonellosi fulminante causata dalla frittata, finiscono all'ospedale San Gennaro, dopo aver aspettato tutta la notte nel corridoio del pronto soccorso. La cosa non sarebbe durata più di un paio di giorni, se non fosse subentrato un sospetto di colera dovuto alle cozze.

Domenica 17:20
Dopo dodici giorni escono dall'ospedale e si trovano nelle vicinanze dello stadio San Paolo. Il Napoli ha perso in casa con il neopromosso Palermo per 3-0, con due rigori assegnati alla squadra siciliana dall'arbitro Concettino Riina da Corleone. Una banda di ultrà della "MASSERIA CARDONE", vedendo i due scuri di carnagione, li scambiano per tifosi del Palermo e gli rifilano un'altra caterva di legnate. Per di più il capo degli ultrà, un tale detto "Peppo o Ricchione", abusa sessualmente di
loro.

Domenica 19:45
Finalmente gli ultrà se ne vanno. I due terroristi decidono di ubriacarsi per la prima volta nella loro vita (anche se è peccato!). In una bettola della zona portuale gli rifilano del vino adulterato con metanolo e i due rientrano al San Gennaro per l'intossicazione. Gli viene anche riscontrata la sieropositività all'HIV (Peppo non perdona).

Martedì 23:42
I due terroristi fuggono dall'Italia in zattera con direzione Libia, semiorbi per il metanolo ingerito e con una dozzina di infezioni a causa del virus HIV. Giurano ad Allah che non tenteranno mai più nulla contro il nostro amato Paese.

Sorry, dear tourists, Italy is dirty

2005-09-05T20:40:00.000+02:00

It took the new president of Calabria, the tip of the toe of Italy's boot, to finally take the courage to admit that Italy is dirty from bottom to top.

Chapeau to Mr. Loiero for having the balls to say this. It's not easy, particularly for him, since his region takes a large part of its sustaining from tourists spending their hols in its fabulous coastline.

If you have travelled anywhere south of (or in) Rome, you'll have noticed it yourself: Italy's tolerably clean at the best, and filthy at the worst.

Now let's get back to the basics: why is it so? answer: because we dirty our own country. Just look at the side of the street in the average crossing in Rome. It's a festival of plastic bottles, paper tissues, newspapers, glass, corks, cigarette packets and so on. Now just climb into any car in Italy: it will be perfectly clean, almost aseptic.

My friends always complain about my car being so dirty inside. I admit I'm a desperate case, since I wash it about 3 times a year (particularly, when rats walk away in disgust). But the truth is: I never ever throw even a chewing-gum from the window. When I smoked (Yes, sir! I just stopped and feel excellent!) I hesitated to throw ashes from the window.

So what do you make of it? clear: people would rather keep the street dirty and the car clean. As Tim Parks rightly wrote over 15 years ago, this is quintessential Italy: ceremony within, anarchy without.

No complaints then if tourists go to Spain and Turkey instead. We can cry about economic recession, but they will keep on leaving. Or shall we start keeping our country a bit cleaner, if not for the tourists at least for ourselves?

SomAlitalia

2005-08-24T17:55:00.000+02:00

I am getting more and more convinced that I live in a third-world country.

I just got the strike calendar for the next two weeks (yes, everything is unplanned in Italy except strikes).

Take a read here for your joy and delight.

Now you don't need to know Italian to realise that the whole thing is about Alitalia, and is a hell of a mess.

Now a couple of questions to Alitalia's crew (which I'm sure will not be answered as usual).

First: your company has been on the verge of bankrupt for years and has only been saved by suspicious bank loans and public aid. Why the hell make it worse by not going to work? don't you think you are making things worse for yourself?

Second: if you don't like the way Alitalia treats, why don't you get the fuck out of there and go work for other companies? air travel is experiencing an unusual boom, and I'm sure you can get plenty of opportunities around. Or is it so that Alitalia employees enjoy many more privileges, higher salaries, lower working hours and less control than their counterparts who work for Lufthansa or BA?

I only fear that Mogadiscio will be offended about my nickname "SomAlitalia". In Angola things probably function better.

The Pope reads re-immigration!

2005-08-21T19:33:00.000+02:00

I quote myself from my August 19th post addressing the Pope:

Aren't there better reasons to open your mouth nowadays? for instance, apologizing to Islam for the crusades or stating that contraception is allowed if used to prevent disease?

And now I read this piece of news. The following bits immediately caught my eyes:

He told the huge crowd that there was "much that could be criticised in the Church". "We know this and the Lord himself told us so: it is a net with good fish and bad fish," the pontiff said.

Well, chapeau for this one. And also:

The Pope spoke of past wars that had been waged between Christians and Muslims with both sides invoking God's name as if, the Pope said, killing the enemy could be pleasing to God.

The Pope said by working together, Muslims and Christians could "turn back the wave of cruel fanaticism that endangers the lives of so many people and hinders progress toward world peace".

What can I say, his highness? thanks for reading my blog, and mostly thanks for following my advice!

Monti speaks out

2005-08-20T13:44:00.000+02:00

Mario Monti, one of the Italian members of the previous EU commission, and one of the world's most respected economists, has decided to speak out by means of an article on Corriere della Sera.

It's about Italy, and it's not merry. But it's all true, and I strongly believe that it's up to all us Italians to, as he says, roll up our sleeves and start building a better country.

True, the governments we have "enjoyed" in the last 15-20 years are largely to blame for this situation. But let's don't forget that it's us who elected them, and at the end of the day a political class is a more or less representative sample of a country. If there were not so many corrupt, sleazy criminals in this country they would not systematically get up to government positions.

So let's go to work! myself, I'm working on my PhD thesis. More on that later.

Before opening your mouth...

2005-08-19T15:57:00.000+02:00

... be sure your brain is connected.

Our dear German Pope doesn't seem to follow this old suggestion. Take a look at his last speech.

His Holiness, can you please tell us who gives a flying fuck about the crucifix when the world has so many problems, many of which are due to the Catholic Church's lack of action towards other religions and key issues such as euthanasia, contraception and abortion?

Who gives a shit about a wooden cross if it cannot force us to be competitive, uncorruptible, and honest? people?

Aren't there better reasons to open your mouth nowadays? for instance, apologizing to Islam for the crusades or stating that contraception is allowed if used to prevent disease?

Medal, at last!

2005-08-12T22:06:00.000+02:00

Three cheers for Alex Schwazer, who unexpectedly took home Italy's first medal in a so far extremely disappointing World Championships in Helsinki

It had better be gold for Stefano Baldini, otherwise even Bahrein will have done better than us. I know they purchase their players with oil money, but I wouldn't want my friend Mahmood to celebrate too long.

And hell, we buy players as well - spot the Italian name in our basketball national team!

Strike abroad!

2005-08-12T14:14:00.000+02:00

I sort of like it when there's a major strike abroad. It makes me feel less ashamed about the way our pre-historic, delinquent and criminal trade unions have treated air, rail and bus passengers on a regular basis in Italy since I was born and before.

Now it's British Airways facing the monster, though Alitalia will follow course at the end of the month, in an evident breach of a law that forbids strikes during the busy August season. I only hope that the criminal trade union leaders and the strike participants will be prosecuted for breaking a law of the Republic of Italy.

I also silently hope they will get fired one day, but another stupid law practically forbids firing anyone in Italy. So once you got a job, it's yours for life, even if you stop working or start stealing from your company (it's happened!). And then we complain there's no jobs: of course no-one hires you if they are sure you are going to stay there forever.

Ah, I'm getting bitter. I need a beer. It's Friday, and it's been a shitty week: mobile phone stolen, loads of work, motorbike still not repaired and generally bad weather.

Fuck it, and I even already had my hols.

On and off the air

2005-08-10T18:42:00.000+02:00

Whoa, it's air accident galore these days.

First Sicily, then Estonia.

Looking forward to riding my motorbike tomorrow evening! Of course nothing can happen to me since I'm such a good driver!

But hold on a second...

With all respect to the victims of these tragedies and to the people who are rightly working in order to find out what happened, why the hell did the Italian government publicize so much the allocation of 1.5 million euros for the ATR 72 accident investigation?

Since in Italy we have over five thousand people dead on street accidents every year, wouldn't part of that money be better spent in improving the disastrous condition of our roads, especially in the cities where most of the deadly crashes happen?

And most of all, Mr. Pisanu and Mr. Berlusconi, why do you advertise a normal fund allocation so loudly? I'm sure it's not because election time is coming... (heh!)

Italian money goes to terrorists

2005-08-03T19:21:00.000+02:00

Now here's the midsummer surprise (it's actually midsummer today, and not in late June as Northern Europeans claim).

Italian money goes to terrorists, as this Italian article reports.

This is not the surprise. We know that some of the world's most radical Imams are hosted in great luxury in our country, which finances the building of mosques where, instead of praying, certain people that define themselves Muslims actually conjure new slaughters of innocents. For sure, some of the money those people make thanks to our stupid laws can get back to criminal groups in their countries.

The surprise, instead, is that the money sometimes is directed to terrorists through charities. Say, I give money for the kids of Afghanistan, and the money goes to the family of the next suicide bomber to compensate the loss of two precious working hands.

What about checking all those so-called charities and making an international investigation on where they put their money? Or is that too little an effort for our extremely busy UN officers?

Victory, finally!

2005-07-29T22:14:00.000+02:00

For the first time in history, Italy has won a world championship medal in the 100 metres freestyle. Three cheers to Filippo Magnini ("er Magna")!

Alles verboten? steigen Sie aus!

2005-07-29T12:29:00.001+02:00

Now here's an interesting piece of news from the most entertaining source of information north of the Alps: the Bild, by far and large Germany's largest newspaper in terms of circulation (it must also have the crappiest web site in the country, by the way - it looks awful in my Opera 7.54).

Oh, poor things, you Germans! you complain that we "spaghetti-eating Italians" forbid you to burp your lousy beers out in our beaches and go topless while we in your country cannot even visit a church without asking for a mortgage extension? you complain that you don't feel free anymore in Italy while we go mad trying to find a parking place in Baden Baden? (after penetrating three badly signposted pedestrians area I eventually did, for 15 euros a day!)

I have a solution for you: go to Benidorm. Get the hell out of here, and free up some parking space from your ugly Mercedeses for the benefit of those who actually accept our rules. If you're not happy with the way the Spaniards treat you, there's always Egypt (which will surely turn cheaper any moment now) or Dubai.

In any case, steigen Sie aus, bitte! We don't really need Bild readers down here. Long live Frankfurter Allgemeine!

American muslims issue Fatwa against terrorism

2005-07-29T11:22:00.000+02:00

About bloody time: a Fatwa against terrorists!

Now when are the Italian muslims going to follow course? are they ever? if not, we must assume that they repute that terrorism is perfectly justified by Islam (which is far from true) and that they silently endorse terrorist attacks. Since silence is consent, we should expel them and return them to their havens of prosperity: Tunisia, Morocco, Albania and Algeria for a start, then I'm sure that Saudi Arabia and Iraq will be happy to take some of them, and Pakistan is always in lack of workforce.

Notice that I'm not against Muslims in Italy, I'm actually welcoming those that come here to work hard and respect our culture (while keeping their religion and habits as long as they don't break our laws, granted). I'm only against those Imams, and there's plenty, that live in here, drive large cars and get nice government subsidies while silently tolerating (in the best case) terrorists. We know for sure that some of the Iraqi terrorists came from Italy. Can we do something about it please?

And by the way why do I have to read this in a Saudi paper? why no news on it on main Italian papers? Corriere, Repubblica, hello? anybody out there?

Illuminating the masses

2005-07-25T14:30:00.000+02:00

That piece of a German genius that our cardinals elected as a Pope to replace good old Karol has once again liberated words that illuminate the masses.

I quote him on the recent terrorist attacks: "the recent attacks are not targeted against Christians".

Now I have to go to the window and shout out the bad words that are accumulating in my mouth. I'm in Kuwait right now, so the chance that someone understands Italian cursing is very slim...

Ok, I'm back. I just hope the Pope has been on holiday and his old brain has relaxed a bit too much. This is too bad since he had done quite well at the job of staying quiet when necessary, and saying fairly reasonable things so fa.

His Holy Excellence, I know that you're not reading my blog, but if you happen to bump here, can you explain me what the fuck this phrase means? The criminals who are bombing our underground and threatening the churches of Rome are the same that are shedding blood every day in Baghdad. Isn't that crystal clear to everyone down to the last monkey in this planet?

What do you mean by saying christians are not the target? do you mean that next time terrorists will screen people according to their religion on entering a potential bomb attack target, just like in Saudi mosques?

Isn't it plain clear that they are just trying to frighten the hell out of the (stupid) masses so that we'll leave Iraq and they can start a civil war in there?

What does all this have to do with Christians?

I'm amazed.

On vandals and spare parts

2005-07-22T01:56:00.000+02:00

The world is going bollocks.

No, I'm not referring to terrorist attacks, but to much less important, if significant, things. Some vandals toured the street where I live in Rome, in a nice and quiet residential area, and the result was two flat tyres in a car, a few more cars (including mine) suffering different sorts of scratching and deformations and my lovely little Suzuki motorbike with a damaged piece: the spark plug cover, which will cost me 166 euros to change thanks to Suzuki's spare part shipping policy.

The policy is quite difficult to explain, but goes more or less like: we know you have an old bike and that spare parts are hard to get in the second-hand market, so we will rip you off by forcing you to buy things you don't need and justify it by means of logistical efficiency excuses.

In a nutshell, I really hope that the bastards who raided the street and did all this useless damage will suffer from a couple of weeks' dissentery attack, and that their mums will suddenly divorce their dads leaving them with pizzeria food for the rest of their lives.

And I do hope that Suzuki will revise their spare parts shipping policy, because they're losing loyal customers with this game.

Priest denies burial mass to cohabiting woman

2005-07-20T17:34:00.000+02:00

Time for a bit of good healthy anti-clerical material.

It is today's news that a priest refused to celebrate a burial mass to a woman from Calabria (that's the tip of Italy's toe) because she has been a sinner.

And what was the sin? you guessed it: she was co-habiting with her partner, without getting married with him. The reason for the cohabitation is that he didn't want to get divorced from his former wife.

You can read the whole story in Italian here: http://www.repubblica.it/2005/g/sezioni/cronaca/parroco/parroco/parroco.html

My first reaction was that of outrage and disappointment for this insane behaviour on the Church side.

But then I counted till three (which was enough) and realized that the Catholic Church is slowly digging its own grave by decreeing its irrelevance in daily affairs.

Frankly: who the hell cares about the mass? certainly not the poor dead woman, and certainly not her man, who as a co-habiting partner is a sinner himself. Certainly not me, and hopefully none of their relations either.

And by the way, who the hell cares about the Church anymore? how many youngsters follow its rules and stay virgin until the wedding and use no contraceptives in the whole of their life? how many Italians go to Church every Sunday and never wish to have other people's things and women?

Welcome back to the Inquisition.

They got her

2005-07-17T23:25:00.000+02:00

In memory of Benedetta Ciaccia, innocent Roman victim of the terrorist attacks in London, this blog will be silent tomorrow.

Graffiti painters forced to clean up!

2005-07-14T21:54:00.000+02:00

I read this piece of news yesterday in the local paper, but can't find any web links to it. Anyway, two French youngsters (those French, always bothering the rest of the world :o) were caught painting some graffiti in the EUR area of Rome by a few nightguards.

Dirtying buildings with graffiti is a breach to the Italian law, and bears a jail sentence of up to a year. Well, these guys were taken to the mayor's roomand reproached for what they had done by the man himself! moreover, they were proposed to clean the buildings they had written on in exchange for a cancellation of the police report (which meant no trial would happen).

They accepted, and could be seen today cleaning walls in EUR.

Way to go mr. Veltroni! those who dirty should be forced to clean up!

Driving habits

2005-07-14T13:43:00.000+02:00

A reader commented on our crazy and lunatic driving habits. I will go so far as to disagree.

Actually I'll go even further: I hereby claim that Italy (and especially Rome) has the most civilized driving habits on Earth.

Before you start storming with angry replies, hear this: among the large countries, Italy has the highest car density in the world. If you put all the cars in Rome on the street at the same time, they would not fit. Yet, you see so few accidents, and most of those are due to scooters, careless pedestrians and bad road condition.

So you'll want to know how to drive in Rome. Here's some basic rules.

1) Don't be stressed by vehicles of lower size, they'll take care of themselves.

2) As a pedestrian, find the nearest zebras, then start crossing with moderate and constant speed, always looking to the forthcoming driver (there'll be one). Don't wait for drivers to stop, force them to, and never panic: they will.

3) The most dangerous things on the road are scooters. The larger these are, the more treacherous they are, since their drivers tend to consider them as bicycles, but they have the size of a small car.

4) The second most dangerous things are Smart cars (those ugly two-seaters made by Mercedes and Swatch, which tend to be driven by bimbos and teenagers with more gel on the head than brain inside).

5) The third most dangerous things are pedestrians who don't follow my advice n.2 and do one of the following: suddenly start crossing very fast, then stop two metres away from the pavement; start crossing then back off; start crossing slowly without looking; then start running when they see a car approaching; start crossing outside the zebras (they are indeed very important); start crossing, then answer the mobile phone or (even worse) start texting their friends.

6) When negotiating a crossing that looks too messy (such as the one between Via di Decima and Via Colombo, a real masterpiece of demential engineering), go slowly forward and be prapared to brake suddenly in case your neighbours happen to have a different opinions over priorities.

I'll come back with more. Comments please!

Suspending Schengen?

2005-07-13T23:02:00.000+02:00

In the wake of the London bombings, France has decided to suspend the Schengen agreement, which allows free circulation of goods and people among a certain set of European countries. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4680163.stm for details.

Almost all other EU countries, including Italy, have re-inforced border checks.

I can't comment on what France did - they must have had their reasons. I can however comment on what Italy's interior minister, Beppe Pisanu, just said to the media that Italy thinks that we do not need to suspend the Schengen treaty (although we will re-inforce the borders). See http://www.agi.it/english/news.pl?doc=200507131641-1189-RT1-CRO-0-NF82&page=0&id=agionline-eng.italyonline for the official announcement.

Well done, Minister! No need to shut Italy's doors, let's instead fight the terrorism forces from within (there's many of them, as the first jail sentences for terrorism that coincidentally came out today proved).

Starting to blog

2005-07-13T21:52:00.000+02:00

It's now been over a year in Italy again, after leaving the country in early 1997 and making a comeback in May 2004.

Those who can search the web a bit will find out that I have been in Finland for most of that time.

Going there was quite a cultural shock, but coming back to Italy is (or at least was supposed to) be even more of a shock.

Now that I have re-adapted, I live like a northerner but like the south. As one of my best friends once wrote, I'm an impressive hybrid.

This blog will report on things I see. Through my northerner's eyes, or through my Italian heart. Depending on the situation.

I will welcome all comments.