The View from Bologna

Dirty Pig

Roberto Calderoli, 'honourable' exponent of the Lega Nord, spent his week dreaming up ways to stop a proposed Mosque being built in Bologna.

The mosque has already been the subject of hot debate, given its proposed size (a six thousand metre squared building, on land roughly 52 thousand metres squared) - which is apparently much greater than is needed for the Muslim population of Bologna. A sensible attitude, linking the metre squared to worshiper, which would have deprived us of much of the Renaissance's architectural marvels, but let's not dwell on that.

Calderoli came up with, what seemed to him a genius solution, to discourage the building of the Mosque. Rather than get caught up in tedious communal debates on the proposed building, he plans to bring his pet pig to trample over the grounds for the Mosque, thus at a stroke making the land impure and unfit for worship. Like much of the Lega's 'politics' it sounds like a sick joke, but is apparently in earnest (remeber their proposals to take Italy out of the Euro and create a new currency linked to the dollar...).

There's one snag about Calderoli's plan, aside from the fact that it's highly offensive - run the litmus test - imagine he were talking about a proposed synagogue here -it seems it's as well researched and thought out as most of the Lega's proposals. Yasin Gentile, an Imam from Napoli remarked that even where Calderoli to come with 50 urinating pigs, it wouldn't change the suitability of the site. It would be enough, apparently, to wash the ground.

Calderoli's 'initiative' has been dubbed (by himself), in a weak attempt to evoke and ridicule Beppe Grillo's recent V-Day, Maiale Day - or Pig Day. The best comment, thus far on it all has come from Beppe Severgnini, a popular columnist with the Corriere della Sera. When told that Calderoli's protest would be called Pig Day, Severgnini responded 'Egomaniac'.

Cooking the books

Reading through John Dickie's highly readable Delizia! - The epic history of the Italians and their food, an episode jumped out involving a conflict of interest that would make modern day politicians - left and right - proud.

Platina, the author of one of the most popular cookbooks of the age (the mid-to-late 1400s), De Honesta voluptate et valetudine (Respectable Pleasure and Good Health), was a leading humanist in Rome, who has left us a good idea of some, perhaps, surprising approaches to cooking in Italy at the time. For example, the use of sugar was widespread, as a seasoning like salt - often being added to what we now consider savoury dishes like Lasagne. The distinction between sweet and savourty is a later invention - in the 1400s celebrity chefs were more concerned with the Galenic theory of the humours. Platina also gives us an idea of the average cooking time for pasta in the 1400s - an hour for vermicelli, and two hours for maccheroni...

This is all very well, but hardly likely to gain Platina a posthumous entry into any of today's leading political parties. His public moralising would, no-doubt, perk up the ears of 21st century leaders like Cassini and Mastella, but moralising on its own a succesful politico does not make.

What would clinch the deal would be Platina's suggested involvment in an assasination plot against Pope Paul II (not that criminal conspiracy is a pre-requisite for party membership, but it's certainly no hindrance), and his able 'image management' afterwards.

The plot was discovered by Paul II and Platina and a number of his colleagues were locked up in the Castel Sant'Angelo, and subjected to torture. Paul II died in 1471, and his succesor Sixtus IV was quick to release Platina and his co-conspirators. And its here that Platina's credentials as a modern day politico shine through. On his release he wrote extensively defending his reputation, and denouncing the dead Pope for, amongst other things, gluttony (Platina suggested that Paul II's diet killed him, after he consumed two very large melons!).

Platina was appointed by Sixtus IV as head of the Vatican Library. We know very little about the true extent of the conspiracy of 1468 against Paul II, or what role Platina had in it, because in the late 1470s all the documentation relating to the case brought against the conspirators dissappeared - from the vatican library...

The Honourable Members Kick Back

One should perhaps feel grateful after the state broadcaster RAI 1 finally decided to cover Beppe Grillo's massive V-day protest, two days late. If there's one thing worse than being talked about...

The station's increasingly confused idea of what 'news reporting' is meant that the coverage consisted entirely of two main stream political figures giving their opinion on the event - that would be balanced reporting, one imagines. Had one not attended the event, or read the newspapers after, one wouldn't have a clue what the report was about as no mention was made of the actual initiative.

Particularly interesting was UDC leader Pier Ferdinando Cassini's response to Grillo's anti-political initiative:

"Only a political class without ideals and lacking any serious motivation could wag its tail behind Grillo [...] The thing that makes me sad is not just the comic's show, but the scary reaction of those who should have more dignity"

We note that there's no criticism directly of the serious proposal behind the initiative - proposals which it's worth repeating again:
1) No deputies should be able to stand for election if they have prior convictions
2) No deputies should be able to serve more than two terms in parliament (Casini has been there for 7)
3) Deputies should be elected on the basis of direct representation, rather than the current list system in which Party secretaries decide who gets a seat, based on votes, and who doesn't.

Cassini was described as being indignant at the presumably vulgar 'vaffanculo day'. He has been less than indignant though about various members of his own party who have been convicted in the past for a range of sins. One prominent case, according to Marco Travaglio - one of Italy's leading investigative journalists - has been that of Cosimo Mele, a relatively insignificant member of the UDC parliamentary body. Mele was chosen by Cassini and his bunch notwithstanding the fact that he was - and is - under investigation for recieving substantial bribes in return for planning decisions whilst deputy mayor of Carovigno.

Being seriously implicated in a corruption scandal was not enough for the UDC party to decide that Mele was unfit to be in their parliamentary party. This summer, though, Mele was discovered to be the mysterious politician at the center of a sex, drugs (and possibly rock n' roll) scandal. The married politican, and member of the 'family values' UDC, was finally forced to leave the UDC when it was revealed that he partied with two call-girls in his hotel room, and left abruptly when one girl started overdosing on cocaine. He stepped down from the UDC, but not his parliamentary seat or salary.

That would be Cassini's political class with ideals and serious motivation, one would imagine.

If vaffanculo isn't the term, I don't know what is.

Beppe Grillo's V-day

The disjuncture between what goes on and what is reported has rarely been so apparent.

On Saturday, with little-to-no advance television publicity, an initiative got under way in Piazzas throughout Italy. The initiative was to collect signatures to propose a new law with three main clauses:
1) No-one fully convicted of a crime should be allowed to take up a seat in parliament
2) Politicians should serve a maximum of two terms in office
3) Politicians should be directly elected, scrapping the current list system

In Bologna 50,000 people gathered for a number of hours in the main piazza to hear Comedian/Activist Beppe Grillo enthusiastically launch a new internet-age movement dedicated to humbling the current political system. In Napoli over 10,000 people queued up to sign the initiative, with similar scenes occuring throughout the country.

There's plenty to discuss in Grillo's proposals - for example, does it serve a democracy well to dismiss experienced politicians - and plenty to discuss regarding the birth of yet another anti-political movement. Italy has had plenty of recent reformers, eager to channel popular disgust with the political system - a good example being the girotondo movement, associated closely with film director Nani Moretti, which amassed massive crowds a number of years ago to protect state institutions (like the justice system) from encroaching politicians, but to little lasting effect. Indeed, from the middle ages, through to Mussolini's fascist era, there has rarely been a shortage of firebrands ready to whip up the Piazza.

While this monkey was hugely impressed by the event, its aspirations, and - equally important - the means used to achieve these goals, this post is not directly about V-day (Vaffanculo day - or roughly translated, fuck you day). Going back to the opening, the disjunction between what is going on and what is reported has scarcely been so apparent.

The day after the event, the major newspapers - Corriere Della Sera, La Repubblica, La Stampa etc all carried Grillo's event on the front page, given the surprisingly high turn out and collection of signatures (the organisers collected over 300,000 signatures in favour of the initiative). Regardless of whether you agree with Grillo - and many of the papers were decidely hostile to the initiative - it seems hard to deny the newsworthiness of the event.

The main state broadcaster,RAI 1, though, despite having been repeatedly informed about the event, could find no place to mention the nationwide event afterwards in its busy programme on Sunday the 9th.
The running order:
#1 The Funeral of Luciano Pavarotti
#2 The goal-less draw between Italy and France in Milan's San Siro Stadium

The remainder of the half-hour news bulletin was taken up with a spat between Prodi and Berlusconi, the 'Madelaine' case developments in Portugal, developments in a grisly Italian murder case, some pronouncements from Benny XVI on tour in Austria, and finally a law in Louisiana which aims to fine anyone displaying their knickers above the belt line.

Any surprise then that the only succesful anti-political movement of the last decade has been Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia, backed surprisingly enough by his Mediaset group of channels.

Grillo's movement is betting on the mobilisation powers of the internet and thus far he's proved the skeptics repeatedly wrong in terms of what he's been able to achieve with no 'traditional publicity'. Watch this (online only) space...

Newsnight goes Italian

One of the favoured 'journalistic' tricks used by Italian newscasters is the addition of suitable music to add drama to any story. Newsnight, the bastion of British broadcasting - still basking in the moral glow of Jeremy Paxman's critique of modern television - decided last night that the most appropriate way to finish it's special report on the state of morale of the British Army, would be to beam images of troops 'working' in Afghanistan and Iraq with an accompanying soundtrack of the late Luciano Pavarotti. What a touch of class.

Earlier in the week the Guardian reported that the BBC had shelved plans for a 'comic relief' style special aimed at increasing awareness of global warming:

"Planet Relief would have highlighted concerns about global warming and encouraged viewers to take part in a mass "switch-off" to save energy. Among the celebrities mooted to take part were Ricky Gervais and Graham Norton.

However, the plan faced criticism from the BBC head of TV news, Peter Horrocks, and the Newsnight editor, Peter Barron, at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh international television festival 10 days ago, amid concerns that it would breach the corporation's guidelines on impartiality.

Asked whether the BBC should campaign on issues such as climate change, Mr Horrocks told a session at the TV festival: 'I absolutely don't think we should do that, because it's not impartial. It's not our job to lead people and proselytise about it...It is absolutely not the BBC's job to save the planet. I think there are a lot of people who think that, but it must be stopped.'
"

hmm...