Jon Stewart on the Situations on Italy

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Greetings from Barga--'The most Scottish place in Italy'

The BBC sent Duncan Kennedy to Barga to check out its Scottish connection.

Hunting in Italy

via Beppe Grillo's Blog

In the 2010/2011 hunting season there were 100 victims, 25 dead and 75 injured. Mostly in Tuscany, Sardinia, Lombardy and Veneto. Overall it went well, considering that for months Italy is transformed into a shooting range. A wood is more dangerous than the war zones of Afghanistan. During an Autumn walk, the sound of birds singing is replaced by the roar of rifles. If you don’t run, you become the wild boar, the hare or the deer. And not even within the walls of your own home are you safe. “Our house is in a zone frequented by hunters in Ceglie. At times you happen to hear gun fire even when it’s the closed season for hunting. It happens that the hunters are shooting at a distance of 10-15 metres from my house. One morning in January, at the first light of dawn, while we were asleep, we were woken with a start by a loud sound of glass shattering. A blast of lead shot had hit the window of the bedroom where my sons (aged 15.11 and 5) sleep, shattering the glass” (12/9/2010)

Hunting is sick, just like gun ownership in general. And, just like with gun ownership, only a small percentage of hunters is a problem. But that small percentage is too high.

What do you think? Please leave a comment.

Caption This

Sorry about that. I just realized it's not safe to have a picture like that on a blog whose server is in Italy. If you thought the U.S. was bad with the Patriot Act and all that, I hear it's worse here.

If we're lucky though, The Prince will put up the picture.

Berlusconi

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The Earthquake in L'Aquila Italy

I shared some of my immediate thoughts concerning the earthquake the other day. We live in a similarly sized town about 40 miles away, close enough to have felt the big quake and all the aftershocks. The airwaves have been flooded, both radio and television. The death toll is approaching 300; on the fourth day they're still finding bodies. It's pretty dramatic stuff.

Tonight I heard about a special unit of the fire fighters that is accompanying people to their half-destroyed homes to retrieve valuables. These are people who fled in the middle of the night with just the clothes on their backs, and they were the lucky ones.

One of the first reports was of a hospital, 90% destroyed in which five children died. The problem is it was built just 15 years ago and the immediate implication is that contractors and local politicians conspired to take short cuts on the building codes. Seismic regulations had already been in place at that time. Our friend Il Principe has a scathing indictment of this form of Italian corruption.

A few years ago in a town called San Giuliano, a school caved in killing 26 kids. The country was outraged. Investigations discovered that some frighteningly high percentage of the schools were in jeopardy. Then it went away. I doubt if much has changed.

My own experience with it was a certain road I used to use driving to work from my old house. When I first started using it, I saw them paving the road. After six months they were back doing it again. By the third or fourth time, I realized they were paving the road so poorly that they'd have to come back within a year and do it all over again. I kid you not, this particular crew of pavers had practically a lifetime's work right there, and no one seemed to care. I multiplied that by what must have been going on in other parts of the city, this is Rome we're talking about. No wonder nothing works.

Anyway, people who choose to live here don't do so because Italy is so organized. They say if you want that you move up to Switzerland or Germany. No thanks.

Blood Oranges

Our friend and frequent commenter, Il Principe, has posted a most delightful piece about living in Rome. This post could easily follow my own What I love about Rome (part I).

Here's what the Grand Prince has to say about the blood orange:

Intrigued by the name of the variety when I first heard about it, I was curious as how they tasted compared to Florida oranges. Pleasantly surprised, the blood orange has a mild sweet flavor. It is fun to eat the oranges, look down at your hands, and see the red juice that looks like blood dripping from your fingers.

The witty title of his post is The Godfather, Berlusconi and oranges in Italy. In describing shopping in the outdoor fruit markets of Rome, here's how he ties it in.

Although I am never worried about getting shot at like Don Corleone did when he was picking out some oranges in the movie, I am however always on the lookout for the old ladies and those hand trolleys. Then again, if I keep on writing the truth about Berlusconi, some of his friends from Cosa Nostra in Sicily may make a trip up north and look me up.

Because I like to focus more on The Godfather than either the blood oranges or Berlusconi, I leave you with this. Check out the acting brilliance of the late great John Cazale.

Berlusconi Does it Again

The International Herald Tribune carried the story yesterday of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's latest gaffe. In response to the recent seeming increase in rapes in and around Rome, Berlusconi proposed to deploy 300,000 soldiers in the streets to fight crime. But he qualified this solution by saying, "You can't consider deploying a force that would be sufficient to prevent the risk. We would have to have so many soldiers because our women are so beautiful."

Giovanna Melandri of the opposition Democratic Party said Berlusconi's comments were "profoundly offensive," saying the pain of rape could never be joked about in such a way.

Berlusconi, in an effort to explain himself, said he was complimenting Italian women "because there are only about 100,000 people in law enforcement, while there are millions of beautiful women."

He stressed that rape was a serious and "disgraceful" crime. But he added that people should never forget a sense of "levity and good humor" whenever his comments are concerned.

This strange frivolous attitude is typical of the Prime Minister. Some feel it's because he thinks he's above the law and above the normal restraints people normally have to exercise in public life. He says whatever he wants. His background as one of the wealthiest businessmen in the world as a media mogul prior to entering politics might lend credence to this theory.

A few years ago he amazed the world and created an international incident when he said German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder could play a Nazi in the movies. His reluctance to apologize for these gaffes, I suppose, is based on the fact that they're made in jest and it's not his fault if people don't have a sense of humor.

After 9/11 he made comments about Islam that were much more serious, at least when taken out of context. One of his famous quotes is this:

"We must be aware of the superiority of our civilisation, a system that has guaranteed well-being, respect for human rights and - in contrast with Islamic countries - respect for religious and political rights, a system that has as its value understanding of diversity and tolerance."

Immediately after these remarks the rest of Europe denounced him as imprudent and reckless, perhaps endangering our countries unnecessarily. One response was to compare Berlusconi to bin Laden.

"The billionaire [Osama] Bin Laden and the billionaire Berlusconi are cut from the same anti-communist cloth. They both represent fundamentalism - one of the markets, the other of religion."

What's your opinion? Do you think Berlusconi is like bin Laden? Do you think his making a joke at the expense of the German Chancellor was so wrong? Do you think his making light of rape is acceptable?

Please leave a comment. Thanks to Bob S. for the idea.

Italy

Thanks to Il Principe for a fascinating analysis, I guess we can say Italy is not all good food and museums. There are terrible problems here with the organization, the bureaucracy is almost impossible to navigate, for example. But it's in the political world that the major problems exist. Corruption, they say is rampant. And in the article I've linked to, it's nothing less than Freedon of Speech we're talking about.

...due to the Prime Minister controlling over 45 percent of the private airwaves, power to appoint directors to the public television stations, and the related print media Silvio Berlusconi controls, anyone can see why the people are not marching in the streets demanding a change in government.


What's your opinion? Is the 1st Amendment right to Freedom of Speech unique to the United States? Do other 1st world countries, even if it appears in their constitutions ignore it for all practical purposes? Is America still the bastion for this type of freedon in the modern world?

Regardless of those questions, I do love living here, as I've said before.

Please let us know how you feel.

Blog Hiatus - One Week

I'm going away tomorrow on family business which will take me to Los Angeles and Las Vegas. It's not that I don't expect to find a good internet connection there, that's a joke because what we have to put up with here in Italy is awful, it's just that I expect to be busy with family and friends.

Please feel free to keep the commenting going on the other threads. God knows, we've certianly not exhausted them yet.

I leave you with this:

What I Love about Rome (part I)

The food is enough reason never to move. The olives and olive oil, the pasta at almost every meal, the bread, coffee, in-season fruits and vegetables, all these and more are a great part of why I love living in Italy. More than the quality and deliciousness of the food is the attitude of the Italian towards it. The food and the meal are not exactly considered sacred, but there's something of that in their attitude. We Americans often note how Italians sit for much longer than we normally do at the table. For an occasion like a birthday or anniversary it's not uncommon to sit at the table for three or four hours. Now this is something I never really mastered, but when watching it in action, I marvel at their priorities. They value the company of one another. A simple lunch-time conversation seems to them more important than whatever might be scheduled for afterwards. I like that.


The driving in Rome is quite a shock for the newly arrived expat. Immediately the excessive speed and reckless maneuvers on the part of the Roman drivers make quite an impression. Upon reflection, what's missing is the police presence. Growing up in New Jersey, our driving lives were spent with one eye on the rear view mirror on the lookout for the dreaded State Troopers. My ambivalence about the pros and cons of driving here is typical of much of what I love and hate here. I don't like the inconsiderate recklessness and even dangerous stunt driving some of them do, but I like the freedom to make an occasional deviation myself from the established driving norms, the rare u-turn, the double parking or even parking on the sidewalk - only when necessary, of course.



These days on the news there's a lot of talk about the malady of coming back to work after summer vacation. They've actually named it "mal di rientro." According to the experts, a full 50% of Italians suffer from this insidious disease. Symptoms: headache, irritability, inability to concentrate, sometimes even nausea or backache. My first reaction is what a bunch of wimps. But then I remember their way is better. Considering leisure time more important than the career is a good thing.



The Italian family is more in tact than it's counterpart in America. Divorces are less commonplace and the grown-up children usually live with the parents until age 30 or more. The low divorce rate must be a vestige of the Catholic influence on society. The kids staying home is usually due to economic necessity. This situation has given rise to a mildly pejorative word, "mammoni" which describes young men who are overly attached to their mothers and usually live with them until marriage. We would say "mamma's boys." Putting the American judgment on it, we quickly disparage the entire society which encourages this. But, once again, theirs is a better way.


And how about the sites? During the first five years I lived here my lifestyle allowed me to explore the art and architecture daily. Today I still drive around the Coliseum regularly and marvel at it's grandeur. Here's a video I found which shows some of the main attractions, every one of which I've walked around and investigated and snooped into countless times. What a city!