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?