Imagine the closing of an entire newspaper/magazine/portal online because judges deem one simple phrase published, on one of its pages, to be defamatory. No need to imagine it, as it’s already happened this month – not in China, as one might think, but in the heart of the EU; Italian judges, deeming one phrase published [...]
The View from Bologna
The View from Bologna is TMO's blog dedicated to Italian culture, history, society and politics - all from the viewpoint of a straniero
Digital censorship – Italian judges close down disaster information site
Sunday, February 19th, 2012Hurling the little streets on the great – Gorbaciof
Saturday, February 18th, 2012While everyone’s getting caught up in the buzz about The Artist, I have a shameful confession to make: silent movies have always bored the bunions off of me – as a child I gnashed my teeth in despair when Charlie Chaplin or, god forbid, Harold Lloyd came on the television. That’s not to write off [...]
Gordon Brown could do with the Berlusconi touch
Thursday, June 4th, 2009Poor Gordon Brown – he must look with no small amount of envy across Europe to Italy, where Silvio Berlusconi looks set to romp home in this weekend’s European Election vote with his Popolo della Liberta party expected to win somewhere around 40% of the vote (which combined with their righ-wing alliance partners the Lega [...]
Berlusconi's very public divorce
Monday, May 4th, 2009Silvio Berlusconi has always vaunted two major talents – an ability to control the media (both his own – a substantial slice of tv and print – as well as those supposedly independent), and a masterful ability to keep together seemingly shakey partnerships. It’s against this backdrop that his second wife, Veronica Lario, dropped a [...]
Gramscian Football
Tuesday, April 21st, 2009There are chilling moments in the life of any straniero when they realise that, with all the reflection, study, and will that certain ways of thinking, produced by local culture, tradition, and a very different history, will always be beyond them. These are moments, more often than not, conjured up out of hot-air when politicos [...]
The first person to pay for the Abruzzo disaster
Friday, April 17th, 2009Responding to some ill-defined public outrage (in part manafactured by newspapers owned or close to the Berlusconi family), both Prime Minister Berlusconi and the speaker of the house of deputies, Gianfranco Fini, called for swift and decisive action – not against builders responsible, in Abruzzo, for using shoddy materials and cutting costs, nor against civil [...]
On recognising comment spam – in an Italian political setting
Thursday, April 16th, 2009You know you’re getting spammed in the comments when you receive a gushing tribute, to a post you wrote about Walter Veltroni, saying that the topic is ‘quite trendy on the net at the moment’. You can say many things about Walter Veltroni – and many do – but to the best of this blog’s [...]
Aid for the Abruzzo Earthquake
Wednesday, April 8th, 2009Economists at LaVoce have issued a proposal for the Government to easily raise 172 million euro that can be set aside for reconstruction work. In belt-tightening times you’d imagine the government would be all ears, but I’ve the suspicion that this is a proposal that will be deftly ignored. In June the country is set [...]
Will the right questions be asked about the earthquake in l'Aquila?
Tuesday, April 7th, 2009A state of emergency has been declared, funds are being allocated, and politics has been set aside momentarily in order to respond to the devestating earthquake which hit Abruzzo yesterday. It’s not a time for reflection, as Silvio Berlusconi pointed out in his press conference yesterday brushing aside the suggestions that this earthquake had already [...]
Italy's Brain Drain – 5 proposals to address the problem
Monday, March 23rd, 2009The chart-topping political debates in Italy at the moment are the economic crisis, crime and security, federalism, and illegal immigration – ranked in importance according to the particular peccadiloes of each political party. One interesting phenomena, which is tied to each of these issues in one way or another, is the issue of Italian emmigration. [...]
