Breaking silence with the last post

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!

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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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.