Skiathos, Greece, August-September, 2009

Every time I go to Greece, now my third time since 2005, I always get the impression that God must have SPECIFICALLY created this country because it`s simply soooooo beautiful!

We chose Skiathos this time because like many out there, we were taken by the splendid movie, “Mamma Mia”, with a forever youthful Meryl Streep and former James Bond man Pierce Brosnan. Much of the movie was actually shot on the other nearby island, Skopelos, but Skiathos will forever be engrained in my mind as the opening scene of both Brosnan and Colin Firth both missing the boat for Streep`s B and B was actually shot on the port`s pier (one nite, with nothing to do, we went to an outdoor movie to see the movie again, the 3^rd time for me, and it was only 100 meters from that very same pier!).

And how was Skiathos? Beautiful beaches and naturally crystal-clear water. I put the town and the island though behind Karpathos (still a rather “primitive” island) and my first, true love, Milos (which I hope to go back and visit soon one day). The Greeks, at least the island folk, are laid back and very, very easy-going, a lot more than the Italians I must say. We rented the usual scooter and like a fool, I hadn`t noticed that at one point it had run out of fuel (it was new and the person who brought it in before me should have filled the tank, which he/she didn`t!). It was an 80cc engine. We got an exchange at the same price (110 euros for 6 days) but with a 125 cc engine. No questions asked! Nice folks the Greeks…

The town itself is quaint with a nice small little port where hovercrafts and ships dock, not to mention the usual magnificent and VERY expensive private yachts. At one point, I thought that David Bowie had showed up (seeing that he has a summer home in Santorini, or thereabouts) because a luxurious British yacht with the name “Duke Town” pulled into Skiathos, and Bowie`s nickname is the “White Duke”! But alas, it wasn`t him unfortunately.

One day was involved going for a boat ride to Skopolos and the tiny island where they shot the final church scene in “Mamma Mia”, the scene where Streep`s daughter after all doesn’t end up getting married (but Streep does instead). On the way there, bombarded continually by our tour guide who kept blasting in four languages over the PA system the words, “Mamma Mia”!, I managed to hear that in the area one of the islands we passed by was to have actually been purchased in the 1960s by none other than the Beatles! In fact, in my many readings on the Fab Four I do recall that it had been John, who on advice I think by their manager Brian Epstein, who had wanted to by a Greek island. The plan though never did materialize. Another island we passed by is apparently the summer home of Richard Gere. We were also told that seals and dolphins were in the area, but given probably that they weren`t paid enough to put on a show for us, they never bothered showing up! And the weather? Except for the first day when there was a very light rainfall, was tremendously hot and beautiful!

But one of the things I get the biggest kick out of going to Greece, or anywhere for that matter outside Italy, is watching the poor Italian tourists who are unable to communicate with the local folk in English. This doesn`t help at all that Italian politicians want to know promote local dialects in Italian schools!

The flight there by the way was via Slovenia`s capital Lubiana. They have chartered flights that go from Udine to Greece but via Slovenia. We drove there from Udine and flew directly to Skiathos. This is the second time we fly this way and I must say that the Slovenian part went off like a Swiss clock (or Slovenian clock seeing that many now say that Slovenia is turning into a small Switzerland!). Hopefully next year we go back to Milos and we see the nearby islands (all pics by M. Rimati).

Old Mad Dog, thanks for the memories (sort of)!

That old former Mad Dog of international terrorism (as defined in the 1980s by Ronnie Reagan), Col. Muammar Gheddafi, hit Rome the other day for a three-day state visit, his first-ever to the Bel Paese, some 40 years after his military coup in Libya.

His arrival was somewhat spectacular in that he came down the airplane steps decked out in his military regalia and with a picture on the right side of his chest. A picture you may ask? Yes, of Omar al-Mukhtar, the old “Lion of the Desert” who had been eventually hung by Italy`s General Graziani (during Italy`s less-than nice colonial occupation of Libya from 1911 to 1943. Some 100,000 Libyans died during that Fascist occupation, something that Gheddafi had not forgotten when he kicked out Libyan-born Italians shortly after he had come to power).

On the bottom of the steps to greet him was none other than our Great Leader, Silvio Berlusconi, who was all hugs and kisses with the crazy old Colonel (close-up tv shots of him showed someone who was evidently propped up with more than one amphetamine!). Berlusconi apparently was not to have been present at his arrival as he had complained of sore neck muscles (!!), but so as to not irritate even further Gheddafi (and push him to open even wider the doors of illegal migrants who wash up on Italy`s shores as they transit through Libya), the Great Leader was there full of smiles and hugs (I personally equate the picture escapade to Obama`s recent visit to Saudi Arabia: out of respect for his hosts, the U.S. President didn’t show up with a long list on his jacket lapel with the names of the 3,000 victims of 9/11, seeing that 11 out of the 15 highjackers were in fact Saudis!).

So why the memories for me? Well, one fine day back in 1982 (circa) at Winnipeg`s University of Manitoba when I was doing my French conversation course, the prof asked me if he could see me after the class. I thought that perhaps I spoke too much. Instead, he asked me if I had heard of the news that some 400 Libyan students who were to enrol in aeronautical schools in Libya were on their way to Canada to learn English. A small group would be coming to Winnipeg and my prof wanted to know if I wanted to run the English language lab and to teach these guys (all young men by the way). At the thought that in 1981 I`d be earning 10 bucks an hour, well, I naturally jumped at the idea. The 400 students had initially wanted to go to the States to study but there was NO way that Reagan, given also American public opinion, was going to allow 400 supposed “terrorists” come to the U.S. to study, so Canada got them instead (and I`m sort of glad because I earned a bucket of money trying to teach them English!). News had even slipped out that Libyan terrorists, who had arrived amongst the students, were ready to travel to Washington to assassinate Reagan. The then Canadian foreign minister (who just happened to have hailed from Winnipeg), Lloyd Axworthy, went in front of the national cameras to dispel the ridiculous news that Canada had allowed entry to some 400 terrorists (we ALL ended up knowing later that, according to the late, great Pierre Trudeau, Reagan saw communists and other subversives EVEN under his very own bed)!

The fellows? I felt that three-quarters of them were brainwashed by Gheddafi. In fact, one was such a staunch supporter of the man (as I found out when I`d poke fun at the Colonel) that another student told me that he was born in the same town as Gheddafi, and the Colonel had helped his family! Others though didn`t have the same opinion: one of them even got his hands on Larry Flynt`s “Hustler” magazine. At the last page of the porn mag, Flynt had a picture of a donkey`s ass with in the middle the picture of someone famous. The title of that page was: “Asshole of the month”! The Libyan student looked at me and in English said: “Hey Mario, who`s the asshole of the month this month”? I looked at him and said, knowing very well where he got the idea from, “Where did you find out about that”? He looked and smirked. I said I didn`t know who the asshole of the month was. Seeing that amongst the students there had also been spies from Gheddafi`s regime in order to keep an eye on these guys who for the very first time in their lives were savouring democracy, he whispered: “Gheddafi”!

And how were they as English students? Camels were actually much more intelligent! In all the years that I`ve taught English, both in Canada and in Italy, I don`t think I`ve ever come across a collection of bigger brick-heads than the Libyans! Apparently, a few had even managed to literally rape one of our female teachers, a specialist in the teaching of English as a Second Language who had come in from Toronto (I was told that back home in Libya, the sisters of many of these male students couldn`t even go downtown WITHOUT a male chaperon by their sides. Just imagine when in a place like Winnipeg they`d see women of all ages calmly walking about on campus or downtown alone. Their hormones basically went berserk)!

But the best was yet to come as 1982 would be indeed a very, very special moment for Italians all over the world, including the kids of Italian immigrants such as yours truly: the World Cup in Spain which would eventually give Italy its 3^rd World Cup title. And where`s the connection with the Libyan students? Well, most of them were actually pretty damn good soccer players and they also had a love for Italy as they`d get to pick up Italian news and Italian lifestyle via satellite (I actually got some to play for a local 1^st division soccer club in Winnipeg. It had been my very first contact with the Ramadan period: amazing, in the heat of the summer they`d play 90 minutes without touching a single drop of water either before, during or after the match! For us non-Muslims we naturally thought that it was purely nuts to try to play soccer in 35 degree-heat WITHOUT drinking any water! And it showed as in the 2<sup>nd</sup> half of the matches they`d just slowly wither away!), so when it came time to watch the two epic matches for Italy against Maradona`s Argentina and Falcao`s Brazil, here I was in a room at the U of M in front of the tv set surrounded by Libyan students who, knowing my Italian roots, were ALL out of spite (but not out of hatred as they loved everything which was associated with Italy) cheering AGAINST Italy! One can only imagine what I had to go through…

But on with Muammar`s visit to Rome. The Italian president, Napolitano, who greeted the Colonel at the Quirinale , the presidential palace, was seen to have had a rather strange look on his face as he saw the Libyan leader approach him with the strange picture on his chest. No doubt Napolitano was certainly NOT amused. Gheddafi`s entourage was comprised of some 300-400 people, including his faithful female bodyguards. The Colonel, always an eccentric fellow (very memorable was the time when in the 1980s as Arafat and his PLO combatants were holed up in the north of Lebanon as the Israelis were bombing the hell out of him, Gheddafi had given his Muslim brother the following advice when Arafat`s options of a quick exit from a rather dire situation were getting slimmer by the moment: “The best thing that you and your troops can do is that of committing suicide”! With friends like that, who indeed needs enemies (Arafat and his cronies would eventually be whisked off by ship to nearby Cyprus) ended up staying not in a downtown Roman hotel, nor at his embassy, but in a Bedouin tent in the middle of Villa Pamphili, which is Rome`s largest public park!

They say that the art of diplomacy was “born” some 2,500 years ago in the kingdom of Ebla near the Mediterranean coast in what we would call the Middle East in the kingdom of Hamazi in what is now Northern Iran. Modern diplomacy instead has its roots, coincidentally, in 15^th century Italy where permanent embassies were first established. And while the Obama administration has no doubt looked on the recent Gheddafi visit to Italy with some level of scepticism (will Obama indeed be meeting next month Gheddafi in L`Aquila during the G8 Summit seeing that Gheddafi is currently the head of the Organization of African States?), the Italians are no doubt masters of the art of getting along with former tin-pot dictators like Gheddafi, the Americans and also the Israelis: Muammar and his fellow compatriots (still) sit on loads of oil and natural gas deposits which are very, very dear to ENI, Italy`s state run petroleum company which is present in 70 countries around the world. Not only is oil and natural gas dear to the Italians and to Gheddafi`s cash registers, but the old Mad Dog also controls the taps on those thousands and thousands of illegal migrants who come up from such desperate and failed states as Sudan , Chad and other Third World countries (in a public debate, Gheddafi no doubt sent shivers down the spines of more than one politician as he asked: “Do you want 1 million, 10 million or 50 million illegal immigrants arriving in Italy”?). And as other European countries know very well, many of these poor and desperate migrants eventually use Italy (where they land on the island of Lampedusa which in 1986 saw Libya`s missiles practically land on its shores. More on that later…) as a simple springboard in order to make their way north to Germany, France or England.

On a final note, Gheddafi`s Rome visit brings back one final memory: in 1986, somewhat exasperated after Gheddafi had allegedly been behind the terrorist bombing of a disco in Germany (which killed several U.S. army personnel), Reagan decided once and for all to put the Mad Dog back in his kennel. He proceeded to bomb the hell out of Tripoli, killing along the way also one of Gheddafi`s (adopted) daughters. Well, in that very same period and moment I had just landed a job (right after my MA in Hispanic Studies at Queen`s) at the U.S. Consulate-General in Winnipeg! Yes, I still recall that we had been put on high-alert as a result of that bombing by U.S. warplanes (it now turns out many years later that the Craxi government, somewhat back-stabbing the Americans along the way, had warned Gheddafi of the imminent bombing. The missiles fired at the island of Lampedusa near Sicily weren’t in fact aimed at Italy. Apparently, back in the 80s on the island itself the Americans had positioned a very sophisticated radar station there which monitored Soviet submarine activity in the Mediterranean. This bit of somewhat intriguing news came out awhile ago by that old master himself of Italian diplomacy, seven-time Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti, who at age 90 was present during Gheddafi`s conferences in Rome). I still remember that we had had members of the RCMP patrolling outside the consulate and we had been even told to be careful when heading home after work in case we were followed by Libyan agents! It was all good stuff for the makings of a great James Bond movie (I`d go through something similar at the end of the 80s in Montreal when the U.S.S. warship Vincennes blew out of the sky an Iranian Airbus, and then again in 1991 while working at the U.S. Embassy in Rome during the first Gulf War)!

The ol` Colonel is notoriously famous for making his hosts wait endlessly for him. On one occasion, poor King Abdullah of Jordan had to wait and bake under sun and under the airplane steps 3 hours for Gheddafi to descend from his plane. Another European leader was made to wait instead a whopping 10 hours for the arrival of the Mad Dog. Well, Rome was no exception either to Gheddafi`s strange whims: Gianfranco Fini, the leader of the Parliament, after waiting uselessly 2 hours for Gheddafi to show up, said to hell with the conference (and with him) and proceeded to cancel it! Gheddafi`s excuse? That he was holed up at his embassy in holy afternoon prayers!

Yup, never one to let down an international audience that old Mad Dog of international (lunatics)!

Should July 20th, 1944 be re-enacted in Italy?

I found out some rather strange information the other day. It appears that a fellow by the name of Robert Bernardis is a distant relative of my grandfather, whose name was Vittorio Bernardis (my mom’s dad). Some believe that he was the cousin of my grandfather’s grandfather.

Robert Bernardis was born in Innsbruck, Austria, on August 7, 1908 and was executed in Berlin on August 8, 1944. And why pray tell was he executed? Because he was a lieutenant and a resistance fighter who had been involved in the failed assassination attempt on July 20th, 1944 against Adolf Hitler along with Claus von Stauffenberg (the very same of Tom Cruise fame and the recent movie “Operation Valkyrie”. I saw a similar movie on the same topic years ago but it was a German production, and quite better than the American version actually).

After the Austrian Anschluss in 1938, Bernardis accepted the new régime, but critically. Once the Second World War had begun, experiences at the front such as witnessing the murder of civilians changed his mind and he became involved in the resistance movement of the Third Reich. By 1944 he held the rank of a Lieutenant Colonel. He was not stationed near Hitler’s headquarter Wolfsschanze near Rastenburg, but in Berlin, when the July 20 assassination attempt was carried out. Unaware that the bomb had failed to kill Hitler, Bernadis was responsible for the order that set “Operation Valkyrie” in motion. That same evening, he was arrested by the Gestapo. He was sentenced to death by the German "People's Court" and executed the same day.

Von Stauffenberg instead went ahead with the attempt at Wolfsschanze on 20 July, 1944. He entered the briefing room carrying a briefcase containing two small bombs. The location had unexpectedly been changed from the subterranean Führerbunker to Speer's wooden barrack/hut. He left the room to arm the first bomb with specially-adapted pliers (a task made difficult because he had lost his left eye, his right hand and two fingers on his left hand during an attack by British fighter-bombers on 7 April, 1943 in Africa. He spent three months in hospital in Munich). A guard knocked and opened the door, urging him to hurry as the meeting was about to begin. As a result, von Stauffenberg was able to arm only one of the bombs. He left the second bomb with his aide-de-camp and returned to the briefing room, where he placed the briefcase under the conference table, as close as he could to Hitler. Some minutes later, he excused himself and left the room. After his exit, the briefcase was moved by Colonel Heinz Brandt. When the explosion tore through the hut, von Stauffenberg was convinced that no one in the room could have survived. Although four people were killed and almost all survivors were injured, Hitler himself was shielded from the blast by the heavy, solid-oak conference table and was only slightly wounded.

Von Stauffenberg was executed in July, 1944 for, as he himself said, HIGH TREASON. This interesting bit of information surfaced recently as von Stauffenberg’s son, Franz Ludwig Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, was invited on May 24th, 2009 to a literary event in the town of Gorizia which is located about 30 kms from Udine. A cousin of mine did some research on the subject and came up with the news that amongst the conspirators there was also Robert Bernardis.

With that said and if this story is true, does that mean, given my family background, that quite possibly I have assassination attempts in my DNA? If that were indeed the case, Mr. Berlusconi, how do you sleep at night?????

Poor Silvio, he (still) doesn’t get any respect!

A REAL treat and an honour for me last weekend as here in Udine we had during the literary encounter, “Vicino/Lontano”, none other than my second “God” (the first one being MIT’s Noam Chomsky, the so-called “greatest living intellectual” around): The Economist’s former editor, Bill Emmott (in the picture, the man with glasses and goatee beard). A treat because for the last 20 years or so, I’ve been subscribing to what many call “the finest magazine written in the English language”!

As question time fast approached, mine was actually the first. A few years ago, when Emmott was the magazine’s editor, The Economist blasted our Great Leader, Silvio Berlusconi, with the following title (under his picture): “Why this man is unfit to govern Italy”. I asked Emmott if he still believed that statement was true. “Yes, I STILL believe that Berlusconi is unfit to govern Italy”. At which point I clapped VERY loudly (I wasn’t the only one in the hall, thank God!).

Reading the May 2^nd edition of The Economist, in the Leaders section, we come across the following title: “Regrettable Berlusconi: What a pity Italy’s prime minister does not use his political muscle to reform his country”. The article starts off with the following statements: “This newspaper has never thought much of Italy’s prime minister. In 1994, during Silvio Berlusconi’s first brief stint in the job, we called on him to resign. In 2001, before his second, we declared that his frequent brushes with the law and the conflict of interest inherent in his ownership of almost all the country’s commercial television channels made him unfit to lead Italy. A year ago, as he campaigned for the job of prime minister for a third time, we advised Italian voters to back his main opponent, Walter Veltroni. Yet Mr Berlusconi has gone from strength to strength, even as his country has not”.

Inside the magazine we see instead a cartoon of good’ol Silvio decked out in the colours of his beloved Milan soccer team (he owns it) and with one of his legs which depicts the geographical configuration of Italy, the famous “boot”, as the heel part is kicking a ball with Italy’s national flag colours. The caption underneath the sarcastic cartoon (see below for other sarcastic remarks on Berlusconi by The Economist) says: “The Berlusconisation of Italy”.

But the “let’s poke fun again at good’ol Silvio” doesn’t end there! No siree. In today’s International Herald Tribune (May 13^th, 2009), we have in Celestine Bohlen’s editorial, “Boorishness works for Berlusconi”, the following comment on Silvio’s treatment and would-be divorce from his wife, Veronica Lario: “How can anyone be shocked anymore by Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s top entertainer and its longest-serving prime minister since World War II?....Mr. Berlusconi, a former cruise-ship crooner, makes a point of going public with all his sexual innuendos. It’s like the face-lift and the hair implants (my note: scroll down to see what The Economist had to say on hair plants vis-à-vis Silvio’s head!): He’s ready to do anything to prove that he is still a sexy beast…At a city hall event in Rome this week, he tried joking about the charge that he was pursuing underage girls: “I like Finland and Finnish women, as long as they are of age”!

And then many Italians STILL today get offended when they hear that foreigners believe that Italian males still go around pinching the behinds of Italian women? Can’t expect much with the likes of good’ol Silvio and his 72 year-old sexual escapades, can we (pic by M. Rimati)?

“Der Italienische Clown” strikes once again!

No, the title in German isn’t my doing. It belongs to an editorial by Germany’s “Die Welt” newspaper and no doubt needs NO translation whatsoever. It comes the day after one of our “Great Leader’s” (aka Silvio Berlusconi) many faux pas at the recent G-20 and NATO summits in England and France/Germany respectively.

In the former case, good’ol Silvio was overheard yelling “Mr. Obamaaaaa” twice during the photo opportunity with other G-20 leaders at Buckingham Palace and in the presence of none other than Queen EII (she apparently turned around after the picture was taken and asked somewhat annoyed, “But who’s yelling”?, looking towards the back of the photo line-up from where the yelling was coming from). The other faux pas from the Clown himself was during the G-20 photo shot where he practically grabbed both Obama and Russia’s Medvedev and hugged them both while smiling away in the middle of the two. Again, the Clown was at his best (seeing that when Obama won the U.S. elections, Berlusconi had referred to him as someone who is “tanned”, I’m just wondering what Obama’s reaction was when he had to be part of Silvio’s photo opportunity!).

The icing on the cake though came at the NATO summit. As Germany’s Angela Merkel was waiting for the arrival of the other NATO leaders (27 if I’m not mistaken, not including the Clown) in order to commemorate the many fallen NATO soldiers in Afghanistan with one minute of silence, Berlusconi was seen arriving in his official car while talking on his cell phone. As he got out of his car, and seeing Merkel off in the distance, he waved to her as though to say (while talking on the phone with Turkey’s prime minister Erdogan), “Yeah ok, I’m coming, just give me a sec ok”? (the purpose of his call was to convince Erdogan to accept Denmark’s Rasmussen as NATO’s new sec-general). No doubt from Merkel’s expression on her face she probably muttered to herself: “Ok, so what’s this coy and sleazy Italian up to this time”? He continued to talk away merrily on the phone by the river bank as other leaders began lining up, including Obama and NATO’s Dutch sec-general (I would also imagine that Canada’s Harper was punctual and already there with the other NATO leaders as Canada has lost a rather high number of soldiers in Afghanistan). But not good’ol Silvio as he was still chatting away on the phone with his Turkish buddy, and missed the solemn occasion.

Evidently and luckily, not all agree with Silvio’s constant shenanigans at the international level (magnificent was his gesture a few months ago as he hosted his other buddy, Vlad Putin, on the isle of Sardinia. As many know, Russia has witnessed several “mysterious” murders of its journalists. At one point, a Russian female journalist posed a rather provocative question to Mr. Putin. Listening through the interpreter, and evidently siding with his chum Vladimir, Berlusconi imitated a machine gun-like gesture in the direction of the poor journalist (perhaps an A-47 Kalishnikov in Putin’s honor?), as though to say: “Watch out otherwise you’ll end up just like your fellow journalists”! It would seem, from the observation of other journalists who were present at the press conference, that the young Russian journalist had sh.. her pants as a result of Silvio’s fine and “humane” gesture!). The reaction to his recent escapades comes from La Repubblica newspaper (06/04/09). It shows President Obama in the courtyard of Prague’s splendid castle courtyard addressing a very large crowd. The photographer managed to capture the essence of that moment: it shows Obama in the foreground speaking to Czech citizens and tourists. In the background a banner is raised amongst the crowd (apparently the only one which is visible). It reads the following: “Obama sorry 4 Berlusconi”! It was written by two Italian 24 year-old students on an Erasmus exchange program in Prague.

Few could have said it any better (and they certainly deserve a medal for their exceptional and eloquent gesture)…

March 28, 2009: the Big 5-0 has finally arrived!

Yes, still crazy after all these years (as seen in the picture just after the fantastic AC/DC concert in Milan on March 21, 2009)! So how does it feel to turn 50? Well, with the exception of a few gray hairs (where by the way the sun don’t shine!), a sprained ankle which I’ve been carrying around for some 20 years, a herniated disc (some 15 years), a sore shoulder from one of my many falls playing soccer and a screwed-up knee (again, from 40+ years of playing soccer), well, other than that (the ol’ prostate is STILL doing fine by the way!), I can’t complain much. And yes, at 50 I’m still kicking a ball around with the boys and kicking some serious ass too!

As Giovanni Trapattoni said the other day when he turned 70 (perhaps Italy’s most famous soccer coach who is currently Ireland’s national team coach): “It’s not the age on your ID card that counts but how you feel in you head”! I’d say I agree with that statement. To all friends (and foes) who are reading this and who are hopefully raising a chalice in my honour (!!!!), I do hope to be around for another 50….

‘Atsa matta for you!

Well, once again those darlings over at The Economist poke fun of Italians and our Great Leader, Silvio Berlusconi. The Science and Technology part of the fine magazine always proposes something interesting (an example? One issue awhile ago stated that we tend to put on more weight nowadays because we tend to eat more processed food which is softer). In the February 21^st issue (p. 77), they spoke this time about how gesticulating can help children learn, especially arithmetic (according to the magazine, “Introspection suggests that gesturing not only helps people communicate but also helps them to think”).

To emphasise the point, The Economist uses two examples. The first one is that “It is sometimes jokingly said that the way to render an Italian speechless is to tie his writs together”. The other example, as one can see by the picture, is the face of what appears to be a “typical” Italian male, gesticulating with his hands and with underneath the caption: “An Italian emphasis”!

The other example we see is taken from the cover of the February 28^th- March 6^th edition. We see, based on the recent meeting of European heads on the fate of Europe, Germany’s Merkel, France’s Sarkozy and Britain’s Brown all around a restaurant table. The waiter presents the three European leaders the menu of the day. If one looks closely the list includes something on a few major European countries, such as Russia (a brilliant play on words of a spaghetti dish called “à-la-puttanesca”, that is “à-la-whore”, transformed by The Economist into “à-la-Putinesca”). The list goes on and on, touching also Greece and the Irish. But there’s no mention of poor Italy. But wait! Indeed there is mention of Italy, you just have to look very, very carefully to find the jab at poor’ol Silvio: just at the bottom and basically covered by the price of The Economist around the world is the menu which says, “Silvio to go (if only)”!

Since reading the fine British magazine (almost 20 years now), I don’t ever recall any Canadian Prime Minister being made fun, nor criticised, of as much as Berlusconi has in all these years by The Economist. Poor us…

And YOU thought you had a lot of red-tape bureaucracy?

You have to feel sorry for yet another “Rodney Dangerfield” of Italy: a poor Kurdish fellow holed up in a jail in Trieste, fed up of a situation that was going nowhere, decided to rip up some pillowcases into small strips, tie them together and hang himself. Things were going roughly according to plan when all of a sudden the prison guards saw what was going on and saved him from a sure death.

Perhaps happy (or not, that remains to be seen), the Kurd was eventually released from prison and even obtained political asylum, but along the way has to pay the Italian state some money. For the time spent in jail? Obviously not. No, he has to pay 7 euros, for the torn pillowcases! A rather honest fellow, and evidently glad that someone eventually saved his life after all, he pays the whopping fee of 7 euros. There begins a rather “Dantesque/Kafkesque inferno for the man: State judges feel that his “crime” is rather severe and that he has brought “damage to goods belonging to the Italian Public Service”. In other words, the 7 euros will not suffice and even though he was taken up by suicidal thoughts, that isn`t enough to warrant the destruction of public property, so the fine is instead jacked up to 30 euros!

Is the case finally resolved? No siree. Three, yes, three judges get together behind closed doors to carefully study the case. The verdict is that the “law is the law”! and the Kurd cannot be left off the hook and must pay the fine. But there`s a small light at the end of the Kurd`s tunnel: no longer is the fine 30 euros but it`s been “discounted” to 25 euros! The case may just now be turned over to a higher court (!!!!).

And then one wonders why in Italy the judicial system not only doesn`t work properly but that more complicated cases (such as those involving murders or terrorism) drag on for years and even decades?

Oh Silvio, why don`t you just...

Our `Great Leader`, Silvio Berlusconi, is at it again. Given the recent odious spate of rapes in Italy, especially in Rome, Berlusconi`s thinking of increasing the number of soldiers in the streets of Italy in order to ensure more safety amongst citizens, up to 30,000 of them.

But as he himself has stated, there`s a problem. `Rapes are inevitable and in order to avoid them, we`d have to have one soldier for every beautiful woman, and in Italy there are several million`! The opposition, as in the form of Rome`s former mayor Walter Veltroni, called Berlusconi`s comment `Irresponsible and highly offensive to many Italian women` (apparently, Facebook has something out now from a group of guys stating that gang rapes are fun! Veltroni is up in arms about the posting and wants the page close down. No kidding?).

Berlusconi is not new to these kind of `drug induced` comments on women. In one of his many trips to the States, as he was visiting Wall Street, in order to attract foreign businesses to Italy (something which a former U.S. Ambassador to Italy, Spogli, has tried apparently to do unsuccessfully), he came out with another `brilliant` statement. He said that, `We also have beautiful secretaries in Italy`!, meaning to say that most multinational bosses are men anyway, so in between a conference and a cup of coffee, well, why not try with them in their offices… Now, in a country like the States which has had the likes of Carly Fiorina (Hewlett Packard) and Meg Whitman (Ebay) at the helm of these companies, a comment like that certainly DOESN`T go down well with American businesspeople (Berlusconi doesn`t seem to understand that it only ends up giving the usual image of Italy that most men do nothing but pinch the asses of secretaries!).

Having had in my teens a former girlfriend who was repeatedly raped and sodomized in France while transiting through to Spain, and having seen the devastating effects on her and on eventually our relationship, Berlusconi should in a large stadium, such as San Siro where his beloved AC Milan plays, face a `firing squad` of 80,000 Italian women who have been raped or who have been victims of sexual harassment. It would be nice to see what would be left of our `Grear Leader`! Probably not much.

The calling of the tiny blue pill!

Palermo: An 82 year-old Sicilian man, apparently not quite through with the many joys of sex, decided to pop a Viagra pill in his mouth and proceed with some sexual adventures with his 82 year-old spouse. The problem though was that his wife became rather alarmed at her husband’s sudden sexual prowess, and politely declined the offer. Naturally, the husband, somewhat excited by the magical powers of this tiny blue pill, would not cave in, and insisted on being satisfied by his partner.

Worried that in the past her husband had had serious cardiac problems, the wife called the Carabinieri in order to calm he husband down. The agents found the man somewhat “infuriated” at the thought that someone could possibly interfere in his own personal (sexual) business. The man’s wife justified her call to the Carabinieri by saying that she was worried that so much passion could be fatal to her husband given his past heart problems. Only once the couple’s children arrived did the man finally come to his (sexual) senses, and the agents then left the couple’s home. What took place that night once the effects of the Viagra pill dissipated, remains to be seen.

Personally, I was once almost clobbered on the head by a pensioner and his umbrella in my neighbourhood postal office in Rome. I had been patiently lined up at the wicket when an old man entered. It was rather evident that he wanted to cut to the front of the line, at which point I gently tapped on his shoulder and made a gesture with my hand indicating that the end of the line was BEHIND me, and not in FRONT of me. The old man began raising his voice, threatening me with verbal abuse and waving in my face his umbrella, almost wanting to hit me with the object. Not only did I yell that there were almost 200 witnesses in the postal office if he indeed wanted to hit me with the umbrella, but as I exited the postal office, I yelled out in his direction (and in front of 200 people, including the staff): “You’re wife shouldn’t give you so much Viagra as it goes directly to your head”! Wicked indeed these Italian old timers.

Bring out your dead (again)!

According to Italian newspapers, the island of Sicily and Finland have about the same population, 5 million people, yet Sicily’s healthcare costs about 30% MORE than the Finnish one. Why? Well, because local Sicilian family doctors have kept receiving regional funding not for patients who still today are “alive and kicking” (to paraphrase an old Simple Minds song), but for those who have gone on to a better world! Approximately 51,000 of them, since 1990. And family doctors on the splendid island of Sicily (and there are many of them) have continued receiving funding, even for those patients who are no longer walking on the face of the earth.

According to the Guardia di Finanza (the Italian tax police), the financial damage to the Sicilian healthcare system amounts to “only” 14 million Euros. Italian journalists have therefore posed the following question: but if a family doctor doesn’t see his own patient for months or years, shouldn’t he/she do some type of follow-up? In normal cases (and countries) yes, but certainly not in Sicily.

One can see day in and day out that where there’s an (illegal) buck (or Euro) to be made in Italy, you can be sure that it can be made. Even by milking the dearly departed!

Oh, what a lucky man (I was)!

I studied approximately 20 years in Canada. Of these 20 years, 8 were spent in two different universities (Manitoba and Queen’s). I got two degrees from these two fine universities. I also studied (albeit via distance learning) 5 years at the University of Leicester, UK (and from this university I got a second master’s degree).

Those first 12 years were obviously spent in elementary, junior high and eventually high school (in Winnipeg). That I still recall, not ONCE was there a strike in any of my schools, including university. Not ONCE did we protest in the streets of Winnipeg (or Kingston). Not ONCE were my teachers and professors absent (except naturally if they were sick, and that was rare too!). Not ONCE did I have to take my lessons outdoors (!!!). And not ONCE did I get whacked on the head by the city cops because I was protesting the government’s stand on Canadian education.

The story, as I’m presently writing, in Italy is QUITE different: as of October 30th, 2008, a massive general school strike (including teachers) is going on in Italy against school reform as proposed by the 35 year-old minister of education, Mariastella Gelmini, who is under Silvio Berlusconi’s right-wing government. So bad is the situation that even the October 18th issue of The Economist has reported on the sad state of Italian education (with a title which is play on words by an old Alice Cooper song, “Schools out”).

According to The Economist, Ms. Gelmini wants to “shake up” Italian education by introducing two education bills, which have naturally irked the (left-wing) opposition. As usual, the teachers’ union’s main complaint is a programme of cuts aimed at saving almost $11 billion (US). Ironically, in all this utter chaos surrounding Italian education something does shine in its educational system: international studies find that primary schools in Italy are the only part of Italy’s education that does well. Where Italy though seems to fail is in secondary education, according to international comparisons. According to one expert, the north of Italy is around the OECD average, but the south is on a par with Uruguay and Thailand.

Universities aren’t well off either. First of all, many fine young students, especially researchers, flee the country (in what many always call the “brain drain”) to foreign countries who not only offer more money for their research programmes but who are also void of a lot of nepotism and “ass-licking”: one faculty at the University of Bari was discovered with 9 members of the SAME faculty all working together (they naturally got in because they were all good). In many other cases, given the mighty power of the university “barons” (old-time professors who never retire and who wield incredible power), many young researchers who come up with a marvellous discovery in Italian university labs have to sign-off on their wonderful discoveries NOT with their names, but with the name of their lab directors.

The general situation in Italy is slowly declining. Just yesterday (Oct. 29th) in Rome at Piazza Navona, which is just a few metres away from the Italian senate, left-wing and right-wing students clashed with the usual guerrilla war-like scenes in Italy which are reminiscent of the 1968 period and also the (in)famous G8 Summit event in 2001 in Genoa (some scenes are also quite comical, as the two students and one parent who got dressed up as the Three Wise Kings and delivered to Ms. Gelmini a petition with 15,000 protest signatures!). And just last week in Milan, cops squared off against angry students who wanted to occupy a university building. My blurb on outdoor lessons? Again, the situation is quite comical because university professors, in a sign of protest, are holding throughout Italy many of their lessons outdoors, in town squares and streets (one lesson the other day was held right in front of Rome’s Palazzo Chigi, the seat of the government). The profs also bring along their blackboards, chalk, books, etc. The scenes are rather reminiscent of old Greek philosophers who used to teach outdoors, but in this era of modern-day buildings it is quite comical to see physics profs discussing Einstein’s theories as scooters, pigeons, buses, cars and pedestrians are whizzing by (not to mention foreign tourists who probably can’t quite figure what’s going on)!

My suspicion, unfortunately, is as soon as a rather nervous and trigger-happy cop is going to shoot off his gun (even by accident), not only will the usual “martyr” come out of the affair, but the old (or new) Red Brigades will once again raise their ugly heads and take advantage of the political and social turmoil (some experts believe that the R.B. have never totally disappeared as just a few years ago some political figures were assassinated by the so-called “new” R.B.).

The title of my posting this time? From an old Emerson, Lake and Palmer song (Lucky Man). The reason for it? Because I am SO lucky that I studied in Canada (and the UK) and NOT in Italy. I’ve sustained one thing in 19 years that I’ve been living in Italy that North American students are not necessarily MORE intelligent than Italians—some American students probably think that Seneca is a new Cuban baseball player with the NY Yankees!—but I will sustain one thing: that perhaps in North America, and in the UK, we’re much MORE prepared than Italian students because we don’t spend so much of our time striking and sitting in bars and cafés drinking coffee and beer (that was the scene I saw today as I was walking around the centre of Udine. Many students just took advantage of the strike as an excuse to not study).

An example? Some 25+ years ago, when I’d come home after a long day of lessons at the U. of Manitoba, I’d take a break, eat dinner and then in order to get some work done (in peace and quiet without having to hear the dogs barking or the tv), I’d hop into my car and go to the library of the U. of Winnipeg (which was also closer to my place). I’d get there at about 8 pm and I could (peacefully) study for up to 4 hours, without anyone bugging me. Let’s now fast-forward to 2008 (almost 2009 actually) and the University of Udine. I recently taught English to Phd students there. The lessons would go form 5:30 pm to 7:30 pm. Once the lessons were over, in order to exist the building, I’d have to wait for a student and his electronic pass in order to get out. As I’d exit the building, I would notice the opening/closing hours: 7 pm with the sign saying: “closed on Saturdays and Sundays”. I’d ask myself the following: “But if students can’t for one reason or another study at home, where do they go study”? The study facilities (from my own modest observations) in North America come second-to-none. Ditto for university sports facilities (the sports complex for example at the U. of M, in my time, was practically BIGGER than the entire town of Udine (pop. 95,000 souls). And as we all know, some of the world’s greatest athletes have come out of North American university sports facilities (one in particular? Michael Jordan from the U. of North Carolina. Ditto for Mia Hamm, once deemed the world’s most popular female soccer player).