Last week Alessandra Mussolini went on hunger strike, albeit with regular sugared cappuccino breaks. This week she’s relented, seeing that no ground was made in her efforts to have her party recognised for upcoming regional elections in Lazio [and Milan, where she has also had her party Alternativa Sociale banned for the collection of false […]
I’ve always said that bipolarism is dangerous and the absolute majority anti-democratic. We irritate them. We’ve created a short-circuit
A.Mussolini, 15.03.2005
The Mussolini in question, is not il Duce, but rather la nipote, or grand-daughter, Alessandra Mussolini, speaking in Rome today, where she has started a hunger-strike. The reason? Her new party has been barred from standing in the upcoming regional elections in Lazio, due to alleged irregularities in their paperwork*.
American soldiers killed Italian secret service agent Nicola Calipari. That much is fact. While transporting released Italian hostage, Giuliana Sgrena, to the airport outside Baghdad, the car in which he was travelling came under US fire. He died from a single gunshot wound to the head.
According to American Military officials, the car was travelling at high speed and failed to stop, despite flashlight and hand signals. According to Giuliana Sgrena, and an Italian carabiniere (Army policeman) also travelling in the car, there was a strong flashlight followed immediately by gunfire (around 300 shots). Who do you believe?
The San Remo Festival is hard to explain. To suggest that it’s Italy’s answer to the Eurovision Song Contest doesn’t quite capture it. It is tacky, certainly, and devoid of any musical merit whatsoever, so in that much it bears a resemblance. It is, however, one of the jewels in national broadcaster RAI’s calendar, bringing […]
Nervous times for non-believers are here, as the press and media in Italy go into a mystical overdrive inspired by the death of Sr. Lucia of Fatima fame; the death of Don Luigi Giussani, the founder of Comunione & Liberazione*; and the continuing illness of Pope John Paul II (6 pages devoted to him in […]
Bologna is basking in the glow of attention afforded by American writer John Grisham, who has chosen to ambient most of his latest novel The Broker in its medieval city centre.
The story revolves around an imprisoned, high-profile lawyer (obviously) who receives a controversial pardon in the dying days of an administration. On his release he is spirited out of the country, by the CIA, to a new anonymous life in Bologna. Of course there is skullduggery afoot, and in truth our hero has been placed out of American Jurisdiction in order for the rest of the world’s baddies (Mossad, the Saudis, and Red China) to get a shot at eliminating him.
While Bologna basks, in Milan a row has developed over the last three weeks between the Italian magistrature and a number of Government ministers over a case against three supposed Islamic militants.
The late, great, Italian singer-songwriter Giorgio Gaber understood perfectly well that left-right labels were about more than mere politics, as he satirised in Destra-Sinistra (Right – Left):
I blue-jeans che sono un segno di sinistra
con la giacca vanno verso destra,il concerto dello stadio
In Jorge Luis Borges’ short story The Lottery in Babylon, the lottery evolves from a simple game into a complex system of punishment and reward, in which every free man is entered automatically. It becomes a metaphor for fate, with a mysterious company drawing numbers to decide which citizens of Babylon should be happy, and which sad.
In Roberto Benigni’s film Johnny Stecchino, Benigni arrives in Sicily and is introduced to Palermo by a gangster. The mafia man talks about the great “piaghe” or curses that blight Sicily in the eyes of the world: Etna, the volcano, that, however destructive, is a part of nature and beautiful in its own way; drought, which again is a natural burden that has to be put up with; the final curse that blights Sicily, though, is a man made curse, and one which inspires fear in all those who encounter it, pitting brother against brother, family against family – (drum roll!)… the traffic!
News from the frontlines in the war against smoke, and smokers, here in Italy is relatively subdued. Fines have been few, and the streets are crowded with smokers. It may just be coincidence, but Bologna has been obscured by fog for the last couple of days! Of course there are some exceptions to the rule. […]
