Saint Mario, where are you?

Let us hope that “Saint Mario” will indeed save us from ALL this mess…

Bravo Monti!

In 22 years that I’ve been living in Italy I can safely say that I’ve only worked at two events that have come off like a Swiss watch: the 2005 funeral of Pope JPII (I was NBC’s interpreter) and the December, 1999 FIFA Gala in Rome when both Maradona and Pele’ came to receive their World Player awards (n.b. FIFA is a Swiss international sports organization)! In the former case, the mayor of Rome back then was Walter Veltroni. Leaving aside the millions of pilgrims that had come to Rome to see the body of the old Polish Pope, everything ran very, very smoothly, but just because BEHIND Veltroni and the City of Rome was the Vatican, and the Vatican in front of a few billion people who watched that same funeral on tv and with dozens of heads of state who showed up (Bush Sr,, Bush Jr. and the Clintons, just to name a few), well, Rome couldn’t put on a brutta figura (a bad image) in front of the entire world.

I also worked at the disastrous Genoa G8 Summit in 2001 (when protesters totally gutted the entire city) and at the 2006 European Special Olympics held in Rome. I was in charge of the 55 heads of delegation that had come to Rome for those same games. Memorable was it when in my office I had a dog running through my legs (yes, the real live version with 4 legs)! The dog belonged to the boss, who was the daughter of a big-shot in Rome’s local sporting community. Naturally, no one could tell her anything because otherwise… My office resembled Grand Central Station, TOTALLY chaotic and with a mutt running around between my legs too! Unable to properly work in those conditions, I got up and left the job…

Bravo instead for Italy’s PM Mario Monti who said NO to Rome’s candidature for the 2020 summer Olympics. It would be just one HUGE financial “quick sand” (the same just happened a few years ago when Rome hosted the world swimming championship. Money was sucked up with facilities that have been left to rot) with the usual corrupt politicians, businesspeople and the Mob siphoning off millions and millions of Euros, Euros which could perhaps be spent in a much better way (such as providing toilet paper in many Italian hospitals, or paper for photo-copy machines in many Italian schools which can’t afford it. Some parents even have to provide the paper for their kids)!

Just look at past events such as the 1990 World Cup held in Italy (I had been Korea’s interpreter in Udine during that event). Some twenty-four workers died rebuilding some of Italy’s (still) decrepit stadia, not to mention costs that ballooned WELL over estimates, as in the case of Rome’s Olympic stadium (the big boss then of the Italian Olympic Committee, a guy by the name of Gattai, was accused of mishandling funds. From the 80 billion liras to refurbish the stadium the total cost ended up being some 220 billion liras!). Then there are also venues which were built and weren’t even ever used, such as the Vigna Clara subway stop in Rome (I think it had been turned into a disco and then into a Ping-Pong center!), or the Ostiense Air Terminal (the old Ostiense train station is where Mussolini had greeted Hitler upon his arrival to Rome). That was affectionately called the “Beaubourg of Rome” (what an INSULT to the real one in Paris!). Rome officials, under then mayor Franco Carraro (I think he got caught up in the 2006 soccer scandal in Italy), had estimated some 1 million passengers would have gone through that Air Terminal during and after that World Cup event. Well, that didn’t materialize, and after just 1 year, the place was shut down (it got eventually turned into a disco and then a “haven” for the homeless. I think the place is now frequented by Afghan refugees!).

Some also believe that the current economic woes in Greece can be traced back to the 2004 Athens Olympics. While the Games themselves were rather successful, many stadia are now simply “White Elephants”: just totally abandoned and with incredible costs to Greek taxpayers (a good example of mismanagement is also what happened in the case of the 1976 Montréal Olympics. Poor Québec taxpayers ended up paying for those Games for years through a special cigarette tax. The Olympic stadium there, affectionately known as the “Big O”, finally had its retractable roof (back then the VERY first in the world!) working only some 12-13 years AFTER the event took place)!

Given the current and rather drastic economic situation in Italy and the rest of Europe (if Greece does exit the Euro, what’s going to happen to the rest of us?), do we REALLY need to spend a kazillion Euros on something that by 2020 we don’t even know if a) we really need and b) if any of us in the “Old Europe” will still be alive and kicking (n.b. some U.S. Embassies in Europe a few weeks ago had already warned their citizens to brace themselves for social unrest in some European countries. After all, if folks can’t afford to eat and to feed their loved ones, where on earth are they going to get the money in order to survive, except perhaps engaging in an armed conflict in order to overthrow the powers-that-be who can’t seem to change things, as in Greece’s case)?

Other than the two events I mentioned at the start of this post, I STILL have to work at a large major event in Italy that has gone off WITHOUT a major hitch!

The sites of Rome at Christmas time!

Sites and colors of Rome during Christmas, 2011!

Are North Americans becoming more like Italians?

Is the U.S. (and also Canada) becoming a wee bit more like Italy? From a November 14^th, 2011 article by Roger Cohen in the New York Times, “Generation Boomerang”:

“Silvio Berlusconi recently waved away Italy’s financial crisis as a big fuss about nothing.

“Restaurants are full”, he said, and, “it’s difficult to reserve a seat on the plane”, and holiday resorts are “fully booked”.

The Italian prime minister, who has pledged to resign as the nation’s financial crisis deepened, squeezes in his governing between dalliances and has earned a deserved reputation as one of the world’s least serious leaders. But having been in Italy in the past few weeks, I can confirm he has a point. Perhaps nobody wants Italy’s bonds, but they sure want its beaches and bella figura. There’s no mistaking a rich country when you see one.

Italy’s oldest and surest insurance policy is, of course, the family. Jobs may be scarce and times tough, but Mamma is always there. Italian children leave home at an average age of 28 (my note: and even older too!!!!). The Supreme Court ruled a few years back that a father could not cut off financial support to his college-educated daughter of 26 because young people were having a hard time finding jobs.

Americans used to laugh at this Italian penchant for staying home, which extends to some degree across all of Mediterranean Europe…. Nobody’s laughing any longer. The boomerang trend in the U.S.—young people who leave home only to return—is growing as jobs prove harder to find. The share of men aged 25 to 34 living with their parents has jumped to 18.6%, the highest level since at least 1960, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. America is going the Italian route….

Whatever Italy’s faults, it is a nation of hidden solidarities. The weave in the Italian tapestry is dense; the American tapestry is frayed. Perhaps we will now get a generation of Americans who, forced to stay at home until they are 30, are also thereby obliged to learn something of trade-offs, respect, communication and sharing—and with them a country of a little less “I” and a little more “We”....

I don’t think jobs are coming back in a hurry and I don’t think the power shift in the world—away from the U.S. and toward emergent powers—is going to slow down. Family can be a dampener of hardship and frustration. It certainly is in Italy, a nation that adapted a long time ago to the loss of its imperium. In the place of its legions it found fellowship. America could do worse.

An old joke asks why it’s obvious that Jesus Christ was Italian. Answer: Because he lived at home until he was 30, always hung out with the same 12 dudes, believed his mother was a virgin. And his mother thought he was God. Now that Americans are living at home until they are 30, expect the miracles to commence”.

Ciao Silvio, and may you finally "rest in peace"!

Ciao, ciao caro Silvio! May you (and ALL of us!) finally rest in peace!!!!

"Should I Stay Or Should I Go"?

Poor Silvio, one of the more recent depictions of him in "The Economist", dressed like a clown and with a topless woman on his tie!

I wonder if he's thinking of The Clash's other famous song (after "London Calling") right now, "Should I Stay Or Should I Go"? The small fellow in the bottom right and who's dressed like a fireman is instead Mario Draghi who is trying to save the Euro while Silvio is trying to sink it with his economic policies!

The other pic, at least for Italian readers, needs no translation!

Poor us....

When Obama won the presidential elections, Berlusconi referred to him as “that tanned fellow”!

From a recent La Repubblica article (my translation):
“The last example came out of Washington the other day when Obama was thanking those countries which helped liberate Libya from Ghedaffi. Heading the list were naturally the French and the British but he managed to name all of them, including Norway, Denmark and the Arab League. The only country he didn’t mention was ours, even though Italy has supplied the airbases, military commands and the navy to the mission in Libya. But it’s been quite some time now that Italy has been confined to a “leper’s hospital”. And we all know who we can blame for that”.

Italy’s own version of the “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse”!

Yes, the Italian version of the “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse”, that is “Conquest”, “War”, “Famine” and “Death”.

That good’ol Berlusconi, ALL rolled into one!

Great advertisement!

The Ecomomist comes out once per week. That (should) mean that in one year there are 52 issues, right? So you'd think that in order to advertise their fine magazine on the iPad, iPhone and what-not (on the 2nd last page), they'd use a variety of covers, even say those dedicated to climate change problems or the world economic crisis, right?

Instead which cover have they used for their August 6th-12th, 2011 edition? The one with poor Silvio! Not THE greatest way to pay respect to a country's leader, right?

It was 22 years ago today….

Yes, 22 years ago today on September 12, 1989 I landed in Rome to go work at the U.S. Embassy. After those 30 years spent in Canada I decided to make the big jump over the big Atlantic Ocean.

My analysis of these 22 years so far? Well, as I’ve been saying now for several years: I’m MORE than happy to be living in Europe, a wee bit less than living in the so-called Bel Paese, especially with the current leader, Berlusconi.

THE great thing about living in the “Old Europe” (as Donald Rumsfeld once called us here) is that I can in one hour’s time drive up to Austria, then I can be in 30 minutes in Slovenia and then with a mere two-hour flight I can be on a beautiful island in Greece, such as Samos where we recently went for our holidays. In Canada, where did I go in the same amount of time from Winnipeg? To the border with North Dakota! Oh boy, in terms of “culture”, what fun, eh?

Oh Silvio!

Never a dull moment in Italy with Silvio!