Italy OH-MY-LOVE!

Quei sorrisi di troppo

2011-11-01T07:07:00.000-07:00

Come leaders deboli nei rispettivi paesi, poco capaci in Europa e non amati nel mondo possono ancora evitare di passare malamente alla storia.

Articolo pubblicato su EuropaOggi.it: http://www.europaoggi.it/content/view/2478/1/

Milano, 25 ottobre 2011

Tanto tuonò che piovve. Ovvero, tanto dissero e fecero – piuttosto male – i leader dei due principali paesi dell’Unione Europea, che mi sono ritrovato d’accordo con Casini (fatto raro) ed il suo sdegno per l’ultima superficiale scenetta a conclusione del vertice europeo di domenica.

In un’ottica euro-sistemica, i ghigni mostrati da Angela Merkel e Nicolas Sarkozy, nel rispondere alla domanda (malposta, faziosa e istituzionalmente balzana) su quanta fiducia avessero nella capacità del leader della terza economia europea di promuovere l’agenda di riforme da loro ‘suggerita’, rappresentano una gaffe istituzionale che surclassa le passate corna e cucù del nostro Presidente del Consiglio. Il nostro, infatti, agisce con spontaneità (superficiale e inappropriata); i due, invece, hanno agito con snobberia (insensata e denigratoria): i problemi di un’economia da oltre duemila miliardi di dollari l’anno non si aggirano a colpi di ghigni – specie quando, da sempre considerati un fardello pesante ma sostenibile (o comunque un problema interno risolvibile con gradualità), d’amblé finiscono sulla ribalta mondiale, additati come un grave male comune che deve essere risolto con le proprie forze, in qualche mese.

Lo spettacolino – doloroso, da italiano e penoso, da europeo – ha fornito l’ennesima prova che l’attuale classe politica europea è di un livello così mediocre che i problemi, in questi tre anni, è solo riuscita ad aggravarli.
Nell’area-euro, se il nostro Berlusconi è ormai un paria internazionale, il duo Sarkozy-Merkel è considerato soltanto perché con qualcuno si dovrà pur parlare.
Da una parte, tra un divorzio, un matrimonio, il tentativo di mettere il figlio ventiduenne alla guida del quartiere finanziario più grande dell’Unione, l’interessatissimo affaire libico e la dolce attesa della moglie più vip di lui, tutto pare aver fatto negli ultimi quattro anni, Monsieur le President, meno che ricoprire il proprio ruolo con decenza.
Dall’altra, il cancelliere tedesco altro non è stato, per l’Europa, che una disgrazia: in 6 anni non ne ha azzeccata una in politica europea (ed estera) - l’ultima è che, per non dispiacere l’elettorato locale bavarese al voto, una quisquilia da 300 miliardi (il 100% del debito greco, il 10% del PIL tedesco, meno del 3% di quello europeo) è divenuta un mostro da 3.000 miliardi che minaccia grandi economie come Spagna e Italia, ponendo a repentaglio l’esistenza stessa della moneta unica (o così dice lo strombazzante tam-tam mediatico).
Inoltre, se da una parte è vero che il mostro è nato dai maldipancia di un sistema finanziario drogato che aggredisce, pur di speculare, ora le banche, ora gli Stati, è anche vero che le banche da salvare da investimenti sproporzionati ed avventati, nell’eurozona, sono sempre le stesse (francesi e tedesche, appunto). Emerge così il conflitto di interessi epocale del direttorio Merkel-Sarkozy, divisi tra l’auto-investitura a leader dell’eurozona (quindi promotori di interessi comuni) e l’essere leader eletti dei paesi col sistema bancario più esposto verso la Grecia (quindi preoccupati di tutelare i propri interessi) – ed il loro modo di agire infatti appare, a tratti, schizofrenico. Forse non è un caso se i componenti del duo riscuotono oggi ben poca simpatia nel loro stesso elettorato (e se ad essere consultata fosse l’opinione pubblica europea nel suo complesso, difficilmente il risultato potrebbe essere migliore).

Perché loro, allora? Perché in una classe di alunni gracilini o malconci i capetti sono il figlio di papà (ovvero la Francia, col suo seggio permanente al Consiglio di Sicurezza delle Nazioni Unite) e quello più robusto (ovvero la Germania, peso massimo europeo per popolazione e ricchezza). L’Italia, membro fondatore dell’Unione Europea, con un peso demografico ed economico simile alla Francia e lo stesso peso (e gli stessi contributi) di questa in tutte le istituzioni europee, è purtroppo esclusa dal gruppo di comando.
Se, da una parte, questo toglie legittimità a qualsiasi decisione presa dai capetti, dall’altra lo schiaffo allo Stivale è innegabile – e brucia, ogni volta. I ghigni di domenica, però, sembrano circoscrivere il danno, individuando in modo fin troppo preciso cosa (chi) è percepito, tra i politici europei almeno, come un problema per il nostro paese.

Sia come sia, l’attenzione politica, mediatica e finanziaria internazionale pare concentrata ad alimentare un dibattito penoso: mentre si cerca di cavare qualche miliardo per tappare i buchi dei bilanci statali, i mercati ne bruciano un centinaio a giorni alterni. Intanto, le ricette proposte per ‘risolvere’ la situazione sono cure da stallone propinate a puledri, come quelle imposte alla Grecia: malata di recessione fino ad almeno il 2012, il deficit schizzato al 15%, la disoccupazione oltre quota 18%, la Repubblica Ellenica non accenna a migliorare. Più che una cura, sembra una macumba. Tanto più difficile da accettare sapendo – come è noto – che lo stato complessivo delle finanze UE è migliore di quello degli Stati Uniti e che, quindi, basterebbe inquadrare il problema in modo diverso per far sì che i mercati cessino di speculare sulla resistenza del blocco europeo. Con un po’ di buon senso e prospettiva (nemmeno solidarietà - vocabolo che all’elettorato tedesco pare non piacere) potrebbero essere trovate soluzioni che non minino le fondamenta dell’eurozona, il cui unico effetto sicuro sarebbe quello di creare nuovi risentimenti tra i popoli europei che dureranno per generazioni.

Per esempio, Italia e Francia, che ancora aderiscono ad un progetto a lungo termine di unità europea, sono favorevoli all’introduzione degli eurobond (in parole poverissime: titoli di debito pubblico emessi dall’Unione Europea). La Germania, che all’ideale politico europeo antepone, con Angela Merkel, l’interesse per le elezioni politiche locali, è contraria, vittima di una modesta classe intellettuale che già prospetta l’eurobond a carico dell’operaio tedesco, a spaccarsi le ossa in fabbrica per mantenere le vacanze del baby-pensionato greco o spagnolo. Più volte, piuttosto, il cancelliere tedesco ha proposto l’introduzione, nelle costituzioni dei paesi che usano la moneta unica, della ‘regola aurea’, per la quale (in estrema sintesi) gli stati nazionali non possono più chiudere i loro bilanci in deficit. Il sud Europa trema ed nord Europa nicchia, poiché una regola simile impedisce agli Stati con in conti in ordine (ma anche no), di spendere di più in tempi di vacche magre.

Tra le tante fino ad oggi prospettate, una soluzione di principio al problema potrebbe scaturire dalla combinazione delle due testé esposte, ovvero dal mettere in comune, a partire da Francia e Germania, il debito pubblico di tutti quegli Stati europei che accettino di introdurre la regola aurea nelle loro costituzioni. Così strutturato, garantito dall’insieme delle economie più grandi e forti (Francia e Germania, ma anche Italia, il cui deficit è determinato, da oltre un decennio, solo dagli interessi pagati sul debito), il debito pubblico comune della zona euro – già oggi inferiore a quello degli Stati Uniti (e con prospettive assai migliori) – diverrebbe non solo di colpo meno interessante per la speculazione finanziaria ma anche un embrione di politica fiscale comune, ponendo un tetto costituzionale alla spesa degli Stati (che potrebbero ovviarvi, per esempio, soltanto in presenza dell’approvazione della maggioranza degli altri Stati membri dell’eurozona e per situazioni di comprovata necessità).
È chiaro, il meccanismo delineato non è applicabile sic et simpliciter. Eppure, questo dovrebbe essere l’approccio da tener presente: fondere i problemi di Stati ormai troppo piccoli per stare con dignità sulla scena mondiale in una nuova forza, capace non tanto di resistere alla globalizzazione ma, piuttosto, di determinarne le regole.
Non resta che sperare che quei leader europei che hanno già governato a lungo (come Merkel e Berlusconi) sentano il desiderio di ‘entrare nella storia’ non per aver portato allo sfascio il progetto europeo ma come coloro che hanno posto le basi della sua ultimazione: la creazione della federazione europea.
Certo, prima dovrebbero smetterla di preoccuparsi delle prossime elezioni – alle quali, in ogni caso, sarebbe bene non partecipassero.

Il peso delle scelte passate. E di quelle presenti.

2010-09-16T03:00:00.000-07:00

Articolo pubblicato su EuropaOggi: http://www.europaoggi.it/content/view/2254/1/

Lunedì 13 settembre 2010

Le piazze tedesche stracolme di una folla entusiasta e potente, nei giorni dei mondiali e della Germania del pallone che faceva sognare, hanno destato, in me, sensazioni lungi dalla dinamica sportiva – anche da quella un po’ baraccona dei mondiali di calcio. Fuori la scomoda verità: nel momento del successo, il tifo di massa in salsa tedesca inquieta. La cinematografia in fasce ci ha tramandato troppe testimonianze perché uno spettacolo tutto sommato innocente non riporti gli altri europei al disagio che centinaia di migliaia di tedeschi generano nell’inneggiare, tutti - nel loro idioma così poco duttile - ad una stessa cosa.

Negli ultimi anni, la Repubblica Federale molto ha fatto per liberarsi dai gioghi del passato, ansiosa di riconfermare – e vedersi riconosciuto – il proprio ruolo di testa di serie del Vecchio Continente.
In questa chiave, la politica estera era l’ultimo dei bastioni che, a neanche sessant’anni dalla demolizione – per la seconda volta – dell’Europa, il paese dei teutoni non sentiva ancora di poter manovrare in autonomia. Eppure, la sempre più accentuata connotazione economica che caratterizza la politica estera del terzo millennio – complice anche l’espansione della visione cinese delle cose nel mondo – ha reso tutto più facile. Così, sostituita all’arma bellica quella economica – nella quale, certo, ancora eccelle –, la Germania ha iniziato di nuovo a tessere alcune importanti trame della politica mondiale.

Al di là delle impossibili battaglie per un seggio permanente alle Nazioni Unite, il primo colpaccio lo ha segnato, in ambito europeo, imponendosi come principale sponsor dell’implosione iugoslava (insieme al Vaticano: quando si parla di diavolo e acquasanta). Così, la Slovenia ha conosciuto l’indipendenza senza colpo ferire (cosa piuttosto rara). Con la Croazia, purtroppo, il gioco non ha funzionato altrettanto bene (e l’Europa si è ritrovata – di nuovo – con una guerra in casa e gli Stati Uniti – ancora una volta – alle prese con questioni che gli europei non sapevano risolvere da soli).
Sarà solo nella decade successiva, però, che il gigante economico europeo si presenterà sul palcoscenico mondiale, scortato – e sdoganato – da Francia (alla ricerca di salvare il proprio ruolo mondiale) e Russia (sempre molto suscettibile quando si tratta della ‘sua’ Asia), nell’opposizione agli Stati Uniti di George W. Bush e della loro invasione dell’Iraq di Saddam Hussein. Un’opposizione per molti aspetti innaturale ed impensabile fino a poco tempo prima ma tant’è, non solo c’è stata ma è stato anche il primo momento di irrimediabile lacerazione dell’unità europea, con l’Unione paralizzata da due blocchi contrapposti.

A ben vedere, è questa ‘incapacità ad unire’ il filo rosso della politica estera tedesca. Politica estera caratterizzata, infatti, dal motto ‘Allegemeine über alles’. A differenza delle politiche internazionali ‘blasonate’, nelle quali è possibile distinguere alcune tradizionali linee-guida storico-politiche (come per Cina, Francia, Stati Uniti e Regno Unito), la Germania, che siano interessi economici da promuovere o da difendere, sembra essere guidata solo dalla logica del portafoglio. Il suo*.
Politiche di questo tipo sono di corto respiro e non prive di conseguenze. Gli esempi più recenti sono eclatanti. E le conseguenze, prevedibili.

La rigidità con la quale la Germania ha accettato di impegnarsi per ‘salvare’ la Grecia – il cui debito complessivo non raggiunge un decimo della ricchezza prodotta in un anno dalla Repubblica Federale – è un caso di scuola di ottusità. La Grecia può aver mentito in modo spudorato pur di entrare e rimanere in Europa, riceverne i fondi ed avere una moneta stabile e per questo può essersi meritata le indelicate bacchettate del ministro delle finanze tedesco circa il ‘dover fare bene i compiti’. Eppure, va anche detto che l’irrecuperabile disavanzo commerciale greco è determinato per la maggior parte proprio dalla Germania. In questi anni l’Ellade, mentre i suoi indicatori economici si gonfiavano a dismisura in modo artificiale a causa dei flussi di investimenti esteri**, è stata invasa da automobili, lavatrici e frigoriferi tedeschi, che la Germania esportava abusando dello spazio unico europeo, senza tema di dazi doganali o svalutazioni ‘competitive’ della dracma. La Grecia, paese (come Spagna e Portogallo), da un punto di vista manifatturiero ed industriale, primitivo, non ha potuto reagire se non continuando ad importare e finanziando il buco nero che si andava a creare tra importazioni ed esportazioni con emissioni di debito pubblico***, puntualmente acquistato da …banche tedesche. Appesa per i piedi e con un cappio al collo, insomma.

Suona un campanello?

È la ricetta che ha già portato alla debacle degli Stati Uniti nei confronti della Cina. In estrema sintesi: gli Stati Uniti importano a dismisura dalla Cina, la quale finanzia il suo stesso compratore acquistando enormi tranches di debito pubblico americano. Gli effetti di questa politica sono sotto gli occhi di tutti****.

Il sillogismo però è imperfetto, ché la Germania non è la Cina e la Grecia non è, evidentemente, gli Stati Uniti*****. Il risultato, perciò, non può essere che ancor più catastrofico. Non solo, Germania e Grecia fanno parte della stessa (rigida) Unione monetaria, per cui se la prima basa la sua competitività sulle esportazioni – magari proprio in territori meno sviluppati e privi di industria propria –, la seconda non potrà che risultare sempre più svantaggiata. Per questo motivo il pacchetto di misure per la competitività da 80 miliardi in 4 anni che Frau Merkel ha messo in piedi dal nulla, lasciando a bocca aperta partners europei e stampa internazionale, è destinato a fare più danni che altro ad Eurolandia.
La sindrome del ‘primo della classe’ sembra non permettere alla Germania di capire che ‘la classe’ ora non è solo la federazione tedesca, ma l’Unione Europea nel suo insieme. Fregarsene del collega che rimane indietro – per non dire, ostacolarne la crescita – alla lunga fa danni a tutti. Al di là della correttezza di un simile comportamento in una Unione fondata non più sulla sola cooperazione economica ma anche su principi di solidarietà tra i paesi aderenti. Eppure, a politiche (tedesche) invariate, il crack greco è stato solo posposto di qualche anno.

In sintesi, la Germania tratta l’Europa – soprattutto quella meridionale – come la Cina tratta gli Stati Uniti. Poiché, tuttavia, la Germania è parte dell’Europa e non dispone della potenza né demografica né economica né diplomatica della Cina, la strategia assomiglia più a quella del serpente che si morde la coda che non al dragone che azzanna l’elefante.

* La incredibile gaffe del Presidente della Repubblica Federale, che ha portato alle sue dimissioni, è un esempio lampante di questo modo di pensare.
** Vedi articolo sul tema.
*** La correlazione tra bilancia commerciale e nuove emissioni di debito pubblico non è diretta ma quasi. Per uno studio in materia, vedi
**** Vedi articolo sul tema.
***** Parte dell’espansione cinese è (o comunque è stata) guidata proprio dalla delocalizzazione industriale statunitense (i quali, quindi, ancora oggi recuperano in profitti parte del differenziale di competitività con la Cina). Nulla del genere è possibile vedere nella relazione tra Germania e Grecia.

Quando i maiali volano. Male.

2010-05-03T09:01:00.001-07:00

Martedì 27 Aprile 2010

I PIGS non volano più.
Che fosse una favola, in fin dei conti, lo si sapeva fin dall’inizio.
Un’analisi per sommi capi di alcuni protagonisti dello sfortunato acronimo mostra come gli eventi di questi giorni non abbisognavano dell’indovino per essere anticipati.

Come non iniziare dalla Grecia. Travolta da duemila anni di disgraziato destino, l’Ellade, conscia della bruttezza che oggi circonda l’Acropoli (in restauro dal tempo dei colonnelli o quasi), ha maturato una sindrome del brutto anatroccolo che non ha precedenti. Se i greci all’estero, per limitare i complessi, tendono ad elevarsi (battendo sulla consunta trimurti filosofia-repubblica-Atene prima del barbaro resto del mondo), così le loro istituzioni, non sapendo più dove sbattere la testa tra piazza in rivolta e Germania che con poca eleganza discetta di ‘fare i compiti’, invece che ammettere i passati strafalcioni (da mascherare per anni lo stato dei propri conti fino a rifiutare con sdegno, fino a pochi giorni orsono, l’ipotesi di ricevere aiuti dai vicini europei), passa ad uno sterile contrattacco sull’Italia e, per bocca del vice primo ministro, non si capacita di come mai questa non sia oggi al posto suo. La puerilità di simili argomenti, svolti però ai massimi livelli, rende poco utile approfondire l’analisi su un paese le cui modeste dimensioni (economiche, geografiche e geopolitiche) in ogni caso fanno sì che anche l’ipotesi peggiore non sia una colpo mortale per nessuno.

Passerò, quindi, alla Spagna. Già in tempi non sospetti avevo mostrato perplessità circa l’effettiva esistenza del ‘miracolo’ Iberico. Drogato di finanziamenti europei per due decadi e sommerso di facili investimenti stranieri per oltre un decennio, il cittadino medio spagnolo ha visto, dalla fine della dittatura (trent’anni orsono), più che raddoppiare il suo tenore di vita. Una sorta di piano Marshall degli anni ’90 dove, però, l’unico scopo di chi investiva era far quattrini. Lo sviluppo incontrollato - in un paese storicamente povero e senza una banca - ha provocato danni ben più gravi di qualche svista. Così, accanto ad alcune meraviglie architettoniche, sono spuntate città nel deserto - le più, disabitate o non finite -, autostrade dove pendenze da montagne russe generano d’estate code di tir in panne, costosissimi treni ad alta velocità con aria condizionata a singhiozzo, metrò senza bocchette per l’aria dove la gente collassa a go-go per la canicola.
La disoccupazione, scesa all’11% grazie all’overdose finanziaria, è riesplosa non appena i flussi monetari europei e quelli internazionali sono svaniti, tornando al 19%. Non solo. Gli spagnoli, come gli italiani, sono vecchi (e non fanno bambini). A differenza di questi ultimi, però, i primi non hanno mai avuto la possibilità di imparare a risparmiare. Ergo, arricchitisi all’americana, all’americana tornano poveri. Molto in fretta (e tra i debiti).

Portogallo e Irlanda (perché è chiaro, la ‘i’ di PIGS sta per Irlanda) sono fenomeni su cui, parafrasando le recenti parole della Banca Centrale Cinese, si può glissare.

Alla domanda su come sia possibile che quelle economie - che i soliti autolesionisti in salsa pomarola si erano affrettati a proclamare ‘modelli’ per il Belpaese - si siano ridotte in questo stato, la risposta è, forse, logica prima ancora che economica.
Imbottireste un bambino di vitamine perché cresca più in fretta?
L’interrogativo, in fondo, tanto banale non è, specie se traslato in campo economico ed in tempi in cui la speculazione finanziaria regna incontrastata – con buona pace degli occasionali anatemi di questo o quel capo di stato.
Ciò che è banale nello sviluppo umano, infatti, per lungo tempo (fino alla concezione - per tutt'altri motivi - dell’espressione ‘sviluppo sostenibile’) è stato considerato un’aberrazione a livello economico (‘sostenibile’ implica ‘controllato’, concetto imbevibile per il genio capitalista e globalizzato). Eppure, sembra che la ricetta sia sempre quella: perché una crescita sia armonica deve avvenire in modo graduale e coinvolgere tutti gli elementi di un organismo.

Tradotto in termini geo-economici, saltano subito all’occhio due falle che hanno caratterizzato la recente crescita dei PIGS.

La prima, è che investimenti di proporzioni immani – i mostruosi flussi monetari dell’economia globalizzata (e speculativa) – si sono concentrati in pochissimi punti: per la Grecia, Atene (e briciole per Salonicco); in Portogallo a Lisbona (con rimasugli a Porto); in Irlanda, tutto è iniziato e finito a Dublino. La Spagna, in virtù del suo diverso peso geografico, demografico e culturale (e quindi economico), è riuscita a spalmare il flusso di denaro in modo appena più organico – tuttavia limitato ai 3-4 centri urbani maggiori (e con gli strafalcioni ricordati).
Questo tipo di sviluppo – che vede gli investimenti concentrati soltanto nel centro urbano principale, tagliando fuori il resto del paese (che rimane culturalmente ed economicamente al palo) – è considerato ‘crescita da secondo mondo’.
I Paesi in questione, storiche Cenerentole d’Europa, nel momento in cui l’eterodirezione finanziaria si è data alle gambe si sono ritrovati d’amblé la zucca al posto della carrozza, registrando dissesti di bilancio che si è soliti associare alle economie sudamericane. Secondo mondo, appunto.

La seconda falla è che la crescita, così concentrata, è stata sostenuta in modo eccessivo da eccessivi investimenti esteri, attraverso marchingegni finanziari degni del miglior alchimista. Le economie dei PIGS erano dopate – a botte di steroidi. Paesi il cui reddito pro-capite era neanche due terzi di quello italiano si sono ritrovati in pochi anni a dichiarare - con malcelata soddisfazione - il ‘sorpasso’ sullo Stivale, ignari di aver raggiunto, però, il limite. Una situazione del genere non regge se non continuando con overdose dopanti – e comunque alla fine il gioco non vale la candela (vedi le conseguenze della crescita artificiale made in USA del secondo evo Bush).

La combinazione di questi due elementi è prodotta dall’inversione di un principio logico prima ancora che economico: invece che tramutare ricchezza reale in finanziaria, la ricchezza finanziaria – volatile e incerta per natura – ha fatto da sostituto (e non da sostegno) di quella reale. Il sintagma non regge, ché l’alchimia non è una scienza e due più due alla fine non fa cinque, alla faccia del principio della moltiplicazione monetaria.
In questo modo, la muscolatura orgogliosamente mostrata dai PIGS si è rivelata di botto per ciò che era, ovvero il frutto di una concimazione dopata, sospesa la quale i suini ritornano - in preda ai crampi - al loro peso naturale.

L’Italia, è evidente, poco ha a che spartire con questa ridda. Certo, l’idea che burocrazia farraginosa e sistema bancario primordiale, tenendo alla larga perfino la più bieca speculazione finanziaria e condannandoci al limbo della crescita zero virgola, siano stati una salvezza, è un po’ ringraziare di non essere trapassati mentre si è in coma.
Eppure, al di là dell’abisso economico e geopolitico che divide il Belpaese dai PIGS, a questo forse si deve buona parte della relativa stabilità che il sistema italiano è riuscito a mostrare nel periodo. Oltre che all’euro, si capisce. Senza di esso, la speculazione avrebbe preso di mira – di nuovo – la lira. A quel punto, chi oggi richiama – a vanvera – scenari argentini, sarebbe, probabilmente, già nel giusto.

Jus sanguinis e jus curriculi: la confusa rendita del giornalismo nostrano d’oggi

2010-02-25T08:36:00.000-08:00

All’inizio avevo pensato ad un titolo del tipo: “Il giornalismo nostrano d’oggi: mediocre onanismo autoreferenziale di gente di mezza età che si sente aristocrazia”. Poi ho pensato che, forse, un titolo così all’inglese – ovvero nello stile di quel paese che a molti della categoria piace tanto per la sua incredibile libertà d’espressione – avrebbe potuto offendere, anzitutto, proprio loro.
Lorsignori i giornalisti, s’intende.

Eppure, cosa altro si può pensare quando uno dei principali quotidiani del Paese ti rifila 7 paragrafetti infarciti di qualcosa come 15 espressioni comuni (o modeste varianti), 8 citazioni di veri o presunti ‘grandi pensatori’, di cui 7 vivi (!), di cui 6 giornalisti (?!), di cui 5 cinquantenni (…) ed un ultraottantenne?
Cosa pensereste, poi, se proprio quei 7 paragrafetti componessero un accorato appello al vostro senso civico, richiamandovi a reagire all’atarassia ignorante e zotica che appanna il Paese e propinandovi intanto quell’orrido ribollito per il quale siamo tutti vittime di un declino generalizzato che nemmeno l’autore di tale componimento (il quale, candido, si pone fra gli ‘intellettuali’ del Paese) ha idea di come invertire?

Vi dico quello che ho pensato io.
Ho pensato che, dopotutto, l’ultima fatica di Ilvo Diamanti su Repubblica (http://www.repubblica.it/politica/2010/02/14/news/diamanti_14_febbraio-2291160) è di una tale bruttezza che trovo tutt’ora difficile non cadere nella tentazione (comunque illecita) di pensare che, se questo è il frutto di ciò che oggi si considera egregia coniugazione di libertà e bontà d’espressione, un periodo di vera austerity intellettuale forse varrebbe la pena provarlo. Tanto più per uno che chiama le sue rubriche ‘Mappe’ e ‘Bussole’. Se non altro, si potrebbe salvare qualche albero.
O un po’ di corrente.
O un po’ di tempo.

Intendiamoci: niente di personale tra me ed il signor Diamanti. La mia, in effetti, non vuole essere (solo) una censura di quella che già la mia professoressa di lettere al liceo avrebbe bollato come ‘nozionismo sequenziale’ affastellato a chiacchiere da domestica a ore e intriso di un pessimismo che di cosmico ha solo il nome, senza alcuna rielaborazione personale.
La mia vorrebbe essere una critica, sintetica ma ragionata, ad un sistema che ha perso il senso del proprio ruolo, né sembra avere quello della sua dimensione. Una critica al giornalismo nostrano d’oggi: così impegnato a puntare il dito contro ‘l’anomalia italiana’ del giorno da non rendersi conto di rappresentare un’anomalia in sé.

Diamanti, cinquantottenne, a sostegno dei suoi argomenti chiama in causa, cita o si riferisce a Berselli (59), Stella e Rizzo (57 e 54 anni), Bernard Manin (59), Ezio Mauro (62), Boffo (58). Forse intuendo lo strale che verrà, mette le mani avanti con Sartori (86) e Banfield (deceduto nel ‘99, oggi di anni ne avrebbe 93).
Al di là del discutibile ricorso ad una tale mole di ‘affidamenti’ in un singolo pezzo, sono il solo a percepire qualcosa che non va, in questa messe di nomi e numeri?

Giusto. Tutti cinquantenni.
Ovvero tutti formati in quella Italia anni ’70 sfacciatamente ricca, sfacciatamente facile e ancora più sfacciatamente post-sessantottina che rappresenta, oggi (guarda caso!), l’eldorado di cui molti di questi signori vagheggiano il ritorno (terrorismo a parte). Quell’Italia dove, nella bilancia, il piatto dei doveri iniziava a traballare (per saltar per aria del tutto nella decade successiva), lasciando a terra, ancora oggi tra noi, la percezione girondina per cui il diritto anticipa il dovere (che del primo è solo funzione sgradita ma necessaria).

Poiché ‘a pensar male si fa peccato ma spesso ci si azzecca’, siamo cinici: quando un diploma era ancora un mezzo miraggio, per questi primi figli borghesi di una Repubblica ancora molto rurale e operaia è stato facile far passare una laurea, un modesto francese e quattro parole di inglese per delle atout insuperabili.
Probabilmente, in alcuni casi lo erano.
Meno chiaro è, però, se tali figli del Belpaese che fu riuscirebbero a cavarsela ab initio e con altrettanta versatilità nell’Italia del nuovo millennio.

Intanto, possiamo star certi che tutti i giorni questa messe di cinquantenni si riunirà, su qualsiasi spazio (giornali, televisione, internet, teatro, tribune, convegni, etc.) e non per fare domande a chi, magari, la riunenda causa la rappresenta per davvero. Piuttosto, per scambiarsi personali opinioni sul punto. Che decidono loro, direttori, conduttori e ospiti delle manifestazioni a cui partecipano.
Eccoli lì, in reggimento: Santoro (59), Mentana (55), Gruber (57), Lerner (54), Ferrara (58), Belpietro (52). Un po’ sostenuti, i più in sovrappeso, brizzolati o alopecici, queste ed altre gaudenti penne hanno imparato ad usare, soprattutto, la televisione. Ad uscirne (in genere, verso le elezioni) ed a rientrarvi (poco dopo) - alla faccia della personalizzazione del servizio. Ogni giorno si invitano, si lodano e si imbrodano, discutono e litigano, si accusano, si diffamano e si querelano, poi fanno pace in diretta e tutto ricomincia da capo. Quando riescono a non interrompersi a vicenda, portano avanti il solito processo al Paese e le conclusioni sono sempre tre: 1) ciò che accade da noi non si è mai visto altrove; 2) ciò che accade da noi è fatto molto meglio altrove e 3) il nostro declino non è riscontrabile altrove.
Viene da chiedersi se lorsignori altrove ci siano mai stati.

In questo reality di giornalisti di mezza età, in cui ci viene ricordato in continuum cosa è la libertà e come fare per difenderla, mi sia concesso di dubitare che titoli ed anagrafica di codesta brizzolata assemblea siano compatibili con l’auto-investitura a ‘guardiani del sistema’ a cui quotidianamente assistiamo.

In effetti, appurata un'educazione mediamente modesta rispetto ai severi standard di oggi, fa un certo effetto notare quanto piaccia a Lorsignori discettare sul tema – mentre le nuove leve del giornalismo si scannano per un posto di stagista a tempo indeterminato.
A ben vedere, il rapporto degli odierni principi del calamo con le nuove generazioni in genere non è tra i migliori. Per quelli di loro che non hanno figli, i giovani sono incapaci o, al più, mammoni. Quelli che i figli ce li hanno, consigliano loro di emigrare.

Così facendo, però, non fanno altro che confermare la pochezza della loro preparazione, l’incompetenza con cui valutano il presente e, in fondo, alimentare il sospetto che il loro successo sia dovuto più a circostanze fortuite che non ad effettive capacità.

Anche il requisito dell’età manca (necessariamente, direi). Persi nella credenza che esserne stati - magari - allievi per un certo tempo conferisca un qualche diritto ad esprimersi in egual modo, Lorsignori sembrano non rendersi conto che per essere dei Montanelli o dei Biagi – o perlomeno degli Scalfari - l'età conta eccome. Il disordine (reale e concettuale) nel quale si sono formati ed hanno vissuto non sembra permettere loro di capire che, cinquantenni, le penne d’oro della Repubblica non si dimenavano, non si scomponevano, non si sovresponevano.
Compostamente, scrivevano (e bene).

In sintesi, ciò che poteva Montanelli era direttamente proporzionale all’eccellenza della persona, della sua storia e della sua carriera. Non era privilegio (né, tantomeno, diritto) della categoria in sé.
Lorsignori, novelli aristocratici, sembrano credere invece che i privilegi conquistati nella vita da altri si siano trasmessi, jus sanguinis, a loro.
Nulla di più sbagliato.

Se il Cespuglio fosse stato nero

2010-01-11T12:05:00.000-08:00

Ad azzardare l’incauto paragone, sembra di rivedere l’Italia degli anni ’80. Ormai a suo agio nel ruolo di potenza regionale, ben prona a quella ‘politica della sedia’ inaugurata cent’anni prima dal Benso, il Bel Paese s’indebitava e si svalutava spensieratamente, illudendosi che le cose prima o poi sarebbero andate meglio. Magari, aggiustandosi da sole. Soliti italiani, verrebbe da dire.
Alcuni di loro, oggi, avrebbero però un’idea piuttosto precisa di come ringraziare quella passata classe politica, scellerata e incompetente, che altri vorrebbero riabilitare.
Ma questa é un’altra storia.

Piuttosto, in una sorta di (analoga?) sindrome di Peter Pan permanente, gli Stati Uniti, col solito fare da ragazzone cresciuto troppo in fretta che caratterizza il loro agire politico, sembrano aver deciso di credere - passatemi la metafora - che per affrontare un abnorme problema di ‘dipendenza’ sia più efficace ‘raddoppiare la dose’ piuttosto che, dico per dire, cercare di astenersi.
E giù tutti ad applaudire.

Mi spiego.
L’immagine internazionale irrimediabilmente compromessa, travolta dai debiti e da una crisi che ha prodotto la fine di quell’unipolarismo – che, quand’anche tutto ipotetico o solo psicologico, ha permesso alle generazioni occidentali degli anni ‘80 e ‘90 di percepire il mondo come invariabilmente sicuro –, conscia che dall’Europa non sarebbe arrivato alcun sostegno consono a soddisfare la filosofia nazionale ‘I want it here, I want it now’, la SuperPotenza si è allora lanciata tra le braccia del suo ‘spacciatore’, assai lieta di proseguire quella ‘terapia’ che la ha già portata sull’orlo del tracollo economico e industriale.
E così, occhi increduli e vagamente offesi (quelli europei) hanno visto celebrare, poche settimane orsono, l’anomalo sodalizio tra ciò che resta del Bastione d’Occidente e il neo-Impero Celeste (sempre in salsa comunista) – che del Bastione tiene ben saldi i cordoni della borsa.
Oltre alla sindrome di Peter Pan, quindi, pure quella di Stoccolma. Attenuata, forse, dalla convinzione che la supremazia militare americana sia ancora vergine di concorrenza e permetta ampi spazi di manovra, si necessest.
Ai posteri.

L’autore di cotanto capolavoro di geopolitica economica è Mr. Obama, nuova rivoluzionaria (?) guida dell’adolescente sindromico di cui sopra, la cui insana passione per la Repubblica Popolare ed il suo ufficiale riconoscimento di ‘unica altra potenza’ nel globo è stato cortesemente ricambiato con l’oscuramento del suo bel discorsetto all’Università di Shangai (ma anche di un po’ tutta la sua visita).
E giù applausi.

Agli attoniti leader europei – specie, sia pur per ragioni tra loro diverse, di Francia, Germania, Spagna e Regno Unito – resta il bucolico ricordo della scampagnata pre-elettorale allestita dall’allora candidato democratico - cosa mai vista prima - e degli abbaglianti sorrisi ricevuti in cambio dell’unzione del Gotha d’Europa – anch’essa senza precedenti e, col senno di poi, piuttosto ridicola.
Tutti d’accordo: del signor Cespuglio, nessuno ne poteva più. Vero è anche, però, che da quando è sul trono, Obama non fa che prendere l’Europa a sberle.
D’altra parte, nessuno osa protestare: qualunque politico facesse trapelare scetticismo nei confronti di Mr. President oggi andrebbe incontro alla gogna mediatica planetaria.
Per ora.

Per il resto, la politica estera made in USA verso i partner occidentali si fa notare più per le gaffes della presidenziale moglie – una robusta signora che ha frainteso in modo strepitoso il suo ruolo, tra pacche alla Regina Elisabetta, rifiuto dei tradizionali riti delle mogli dei capi di stato ai vertici internazionali, saluti palesemente differenziati a leader stranieri, mises stravaganti a go-go, etc. – che non per la chiarezza delle idee del marito, il cui unico segno finora stampato nella memoria collettiva è la splendida dentatura, invariabilmente esposta in ogni occasione.
Intanto, tutti continuano a ‘sperare’.

Lungi dal voler prender le difese del predecessore, vale forse la pena sottolineare come, per quanto poco attribuibile al suo ‘genio creativo’ (innegabilmente modesto), Giorgio Cespuglio un’idea abbastanza chiara, in politica estera, ce la aveva. Il poveretto credeva nell’Occidente con la O maiuscola, unito da valori fondanti quella ‘civiltà’ tutto sommato comune tra Europa e America. Idea opinabile, forse. Assurda, no. Non solo, una siffatta nozione di mondo faceva comodo a molti.
Che poi, meschino, abbia veramente creduto che quei supposti valori comuni potessero rendere l’Occidente unito (o unibile) contro certe situazioni è, di nuovo, tutta un’altra storia.

L’‘idea di mondo’ di Barack Hussein, piuttosto, forse anche in conseguenza del portato storico che lo contraddistingue, non solo è al momento scarsamente comprensibile ma, per quel poco che se ne comprende, assai poco condivisibile.
L’inizio è ecumenico: viva la pace, l’ambiente e il multilateralismo. Pare che a Washington si sia insediato il Papa. Poi arriva l’idea della diarchia mondiale sino-americana: un frisbee in testa agli europei (e un prevedibile boomerang per gli stessi americani); nel mentre, la perdurante politica del sorriso di plastica lascia il tempo che trova, mostrando forse più l’imbarazzo di una persona conscia che il potere che gli viene attribuito è, in buona parte, già scivolato dalle sue mani; infine, l’ennesimo surge di truppe americane in Iraq e Afganistan si fatica a considerarlo un segnale di discontinuità rispetto a chi c’era prima.
Intanto, giù un nobel (condito con la filastrocca ‘per avere la pace ci vuole la guerra’, un azzardo che grida vendetta).

Da ultimo, si potrebbe notare come, nel bene e nel male, religioso salvatore per oltre novanta milioni o parafulmine degli accidenti di altri sei miliardi, ad animare scena e dibattito interno ed internazionale dell’epoca sia sempre stata la figura del Cespuglio e nessun’altra.
Ad un anno dall’insediamento, il messia politico di inizio millennio, sorrisi a parte, è già stato scavalcato in popolarità, in sequenza, dalla moglie e dal segretario di stato.

Sia come sia - e sia brutale -, la tentazione di credere che se Mr. Bush fosse stato nero oggi mi sentirei meno in imbarazzo ad usare la parola ‘Occidente’, è forte assai.

to Mr. Hooper, on his "Silvio Berlusconi leads tributes for Mike Bongiorno, Italian TV's 'Bruce Forsyth'"

2009-09-13T12:08:00.000-07:00

important consideration on the article "Silvio Berlusconi leads tributes for Mike Bongiorno, Italian TV's 'Bruce Forsyth'", written by Mr. Jhon Hooper (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/13/silvio-berlusconi-bongiorno-funeral):

the article incredibly ignores the reasons at the basis of the concession of the honor of State funerals to Mr. Bongiorno.

1- the first one, fundamental, is that Mr. Bongiorno has been a partisan during WWII, captured, deported and then saved through an exchange of prisoners.

2- the second, non-fundamental yet non-insignificant, is the plain consideration, within the country, that the television has finally uniformed (when not actually formed) the Italians, otherwise speaking, even after WWII, a plurality of dialects unintelligible among themselves.
it is therefore obvious that the man that has been there since the very beginning of the history of the Italian TV has played a non-insignificant role in such uniformation.
in this sense, the comparison with Mr. Forsyth is untenable.

arguable as these reasons might be, while I have obviously no objections to articles openly against Mr. Berlusconi (such as the present one), to use Mr. Bongiorno's funerals to attack him (and consequently the whole country, supposedly clouded by Mr. Berlusconi media-witchcraft) by displaying an incomplete analysis of the facts (such as those above reported, completely ignored) is believed a method far from the credibility the Guardian has gained worldwide with its usually remarkable work.

with the hope you might want to consider the present words as an incentive for a clarification,

best regards,

Giuseppe Matteo Vaccaro Incisa

sent to reader@observer.co.uk on sunday, the 13th of September 2009, at 9.06pm.

Erroneous synecdoche

2009-06-02T01:39:00.000-07:00

Geneva, the 30th of May 2009

How much do you like to be harassed by superficial conversations, based on stereotypes or – probably worse – journalistic trumpetings?
How many times have you been genuinely surprised that even your friends – even those close friends – not only could associate to clichés, hearsays and idiotic speculations but also tried to sell them to you as perfectly logical arguments, based on the evidence that this person or that journal ‘said that’?
How often have you tried to smooth those sins against logic, proposing different and ‘normalizing’ perspectives? And how often have you been accused of spatial-arrogance, because you can’t know more than this person or that journal?

Let’s go to the point. I already had occasion to express my personal distance from Mr. Berlusconi. I had also expressed, though, my ‘necessary vicinity’ to figure of the Prime Minister of Italy. The scission between the two things is as crucial as basic, for anyone interested in filling his own mouth with big words such as ‘democracy’ (in western sauce).
That is why I can certainly understand any critic over the person (indeed, sometimes clownish), yet I become way more rigid when the critic-virus extends to the Institution he represents, the Government of Italy in general and, by further syncopated extension, to ‘the Italians’. Because, in the end, ‘they are like him’ or, invariably, ‘they elected him’.
The former account is not true; the latter, a failed syllogism.

As Italian, at some point I got a little sick of this constant light (when not heavy indeed) international press reprimanding from our glorious international neighbors. Sickness becomes real annoyance, then, when even supposedly professional figures seem to base their analyses on extemporaneous mixes of third-hand hearsays and prejudices more than on coherent set of information and some proper research on the subject.
Instead of receiving some journalism I’m often left with the impression I’m reading a smattering of CIA’s world factbook seasoned with some villain’s protesting for anything – as if it is hard to find villains protesting for something convenient to any thesis (or simply eager to hit the news).

Ever more often, reading international news on Italy (or having dinner with friends from abroad), looks like a trial, as an Italian, because of what my PM does or says – or, worse, for how he does or says anything.
Here is, then, the erroneous synecdoche: since my PM is a debatable person then, by extension, so are Italy and the Italians, in a vicious circle that sees the person phenomenally contaminating the whole country, people and institutions.
Way worse, if you do not associate to the reprimanding chorus then you’re automatically disqualified, classified as a ‘Belusconian’, your word losing weight because tolerating the ‘elsewhere’ intolerable.
It is that 'elsewhere intolerable', though, that does not convince me, at all.
The vicious circle, in fact, might be also somewhere else.
I believe such an unpleasant confusion of terms and concepts derived by ignorance, and creating more. A soft-crime, the most evident sign of the loss of the conceptual divide between information and (superficial) opinion, perpetrated by nowadays media for the sake of filling columns or air-time.

The latest international remarks on Italy - and their effect on the international crowds - appear to go exactly in this direction.
Probably, the time for an answer has come.
The Italian Government ridiculous? Fine.
Before attacking a PM of any country, though, you might want to drop a glimpse at that one of your own – and those who came some time before.
Let’s not talk about politics, democracy, western values or other big paraphernalia. Let’s just remain on more cosmetic and immediate considerations.
Thus, instead of providing for justifications (which, anyway, I wouldn’t have many) to counter the alleged deficiencies of the Italian PM, his unfitness to drive the country, or reply to the idiotic consideration that he might set a dangerous precedent for any other government in Europe, let’s have a look to a few neighboring excellent Heads.
In the try to remind, to everyone, that after all we’re all on the same boat.
And to offer a different perspective, for once.

How not to start with the almighty France. Their hyper-president, half-Hungarian and half Greek (not that this would imply anything, were we not to be talking about France), at the age of 54 has three marriages on his shoulders - the ‘making of’ of the last of which (with an Italian singer) has been one of the two main subjects of his electoral campaign. So much for talking about being scared of foreigners. His agenda of ‘rupture’ – the other main subject – two years after the hyper-government started, lays probably somewhere off in a forgotten drawer, stopped by cab-drivers in riots, Parisian suburbs in riot (and fire), students in riot, professors in riots, public employees in riot, and I don’t continue because I got a word-limit here. The Mr. Attali ‘Commission for the French Growth’, prompted as the battering ram of the new French economical revolution, is listened less than the Cuma’s Sybil, any of its proposals now looked with more apprehension than expectation by both the French people and its Government.
To wrap up: he’s not ‘French’, he’s far from being a family-model, he’s certainly not a model for discretion and understatement (CBS interview-case docet), he’s not really pushing the French growth at the supersonic level he promised.
Anyway, no one thinks France today might ‘weight less’ or its institutions less valuable because of Mr. Sarkozy. Nor anyone would associate Sarkò’s pathetic Napoleonic stance (political, stance) and debatable public behaviors to the French people.
The rive gauche may still snobbishly refer to him as the ‘Hungarian-dwarf’, yet you’re left wondering how much the majority of the French may have detested the idea to have a woman at the Élysée to prefer this in lieu of her. So much for talking about a modern country, the ‘driving civilization of Europe’. Going with this reasoning, the only way to imagine Mrs. Royal winning the past election is for her to have had a gay opponent.
In fact, today Sarkò may appear losing some consensus, yet the Parisians (hence, the French) are over-bending for his conservative party, whose advantage over the socialists is calculated in more than 10 points.

Let’s move to a more ironic case, Spain. This baby has been breast-fed for two decades with floods of cash by the three main contributors of the Union (i.e., Germany, France and Italy). As a thank you note, its current Prime Minister, a little boyishly, declared some day last year that Spain had overreached Italy on per-capita GDP, with France being next target. Some days after, he had to admit the loss of over 70.000 jobs in a week. Today, the unemployment rate of this country has soared back to 18% - a figure which, in Europe, is comparable only to post-bombing Serbia. Perhaps time has come, for Mr. Zapatero, to focus a little less on childish ‘who has it harder’ among European colleagues, stop trying to propose its social legislation as a model for the entire Union – being that de facto annulled by the majors of two-thirds of the Country, conveniently Catholic and dreadfully corrupted – and start realizing that, given the new alleged wealth, no more money is coming from Europe to let him keep living the dream of a richer Spain.
In any case, no one thinks that having a preposterous Prime Minister apparently overwhelmed by complexes and whose economical failure is the most consistent and endangering of the continent has diminished the credibility of the Spanish institutions. Nor anyone would associate Mr. Zapatero to a typical Spaniard.

Next: the United Kingdom. The situation here is actually so bleak one is tempted not to stitch the knife on its Government. Yet, it may be worth recalling that Mr. Brown’s consensus is already the ‘longest lowest’ of the whole Western hemisphere since tracking of consensus started, ranking worldwide just next to Mr. Olmert and Mr. Koizumi. He governs since June 2007 without actually having been elected and he postponed the next poll up to June 2010, in order to ‘show his vision for change’. No matter how the British elections mechanism works, from this standpoint it looks debatable enough – and the real reasons behind the poll’s delay, debatable even more. However, no one would ever think Mr. Brown as an unelected dictator, his try to postpone the elections year after year as an attempt to the British democracy.

Of course, one could spend also a couple of words on Bulgary, republican-ly governed by the pretender to its throne; Greece, whose politicians have lied for almost a decade on the economical figures of the country in order to accede to the Euro-zone; Austria, whose disastrous results of year 2000 elections were to bring a neo-Nazi to Vienna’s Chancellory (if it wasn’t for an unusually bald ostracism of the European partners); or the Czech’s President, the current diplomatic disgrace at the rudder of the European Presidency.

However unfit they might appear, these leaders are not automatically considered to represent projections of all their citizens, or an ideal image of them. They simply represent their countries, and their populations, as a natural consequence of the democratic system in which they live and that allowed their election. Everyone feels free to criticize them, right because the critic goes to the person, not to the institution they represent.
No one would ever think to accuse, because of the behavior of their political leaders, the Greeks to be all liars, the Austrians neo-Nazis, the Spanish full of complexes or the French retrogrades to the unimaginable.

Unfortunately, for Italy, the attitude of the international press shows remarkably stricter (and syncopated) standards, the gestures of Mr. Berlusconi not only – and rightfully – severely stigmatized, but – very wrongly – considered as ‘typically Italian’, improperly creating an association which at best is only very partially true.

Shall I say that sometimes is best to have a look at the mirror first?

Russia's struggle to keep up and about debatable myths

2008-11-11T13:14:00.001-08:00

Toronto, the 24th of August 2008

At school we are commonly taught that, at the time of the Roman Empires, Byzantium was considered ‘the east’ of the world – or, at least, the eastern capital of its part worth knowing.
It is not often stressed that, around a thousand years later, such title probably shifted to Moscow.
We learn the sad story of the definitive death of the Eastern Roman Empire (indeed, not much Roman since quite a while) and the lost of the first seat of Orthodoxy (by that time re-baptized ‘Costantinopolis’) by the hands of the bad-Muslim-guys (whose preference for the ‘Istanbul’ name will be shortly after formalized), yet we don’t get much learning on where the boundaries of Europe (and Christianity) shifted up afterwards.
The impasse persists today, the eastern official frontier of the European continent still edging on the rather hazy Ural hills.

A consistent contribution to such geographical mistiness lays right in the genetic and the history of the Russian people and their capital. In fact, even if placed way eastern than the ex-Roman-Imperial-seat, Moscow always considered itself part of the European space and culture – thanks also to the vast chunks of territory held eastward (and south) of it. Not far from its sight, ethnic traits may vary and believes change, yet the Russian capital was European (and Christian), those further east being eventually not much more than inferiors to be subjugated*.
Placed somewhere the idea of Europe had not yet arrived and that one of Asia was probably better to be left in nomadic remembers, Moscow and the Russians decided to be part of the ‘west’ of the world**, their reference being from that moment the old Roman capitals as well as the ‘new’ European tigers (namely, Paris and Vienna).
In turn, eastward of Moscow European maps symbolically placed a dispassionate hic sunt leones label for many centuries, not really caring of what there could be east out there (probably assumed too cold anyway).

The stretch between western choice and eastern geography and origin consequently determined the development of an authentic frame of mind and culture of unmatched complexity – sometimes apparently schizophrenic.
Take the language, for instance. Too far from an effective influence of old Latin linguistic rules and declinations, these have been processed in a way similar to the German language. Yet, rather than German-style sticking with the rules, here rules have been taken as simple references for words which – all – became exceptions, written in a different and more extensive alphabet whose canons of pronunciations are rather obscure – to a good share of natives, too.
It does not surprise (too much) that such impressively sophisticated minds, despite numerically insignificant, have been able – case unique in the history – to achieve and retain control of over one/eight of the world’s surface.

Indeed, hardly deniable elements such as distinctive chauvinism, marked xenophobia, a certain inclination for quite drastic methods of disputes resolution and the inner desire of supremacy that still today characterize the Russian society at many different levels played their part in this success, essentially contributing to the progressive subjugation of cultures and populations rather modest (where not nomadic), while trying to achieve the dream of a single dominion spanning from the Pacific Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea – and eventually dipping in the Indian Ocean, too.

How to explain such a contradictory picture within a society that has already centuries of history on his back – and thus would be supposed to have processed and diluted (whether not resolved) its opposing elements? How to reconcile Muscovite nowadays lust and hyper development or Saint Petersburg’s luxury with, say, roads that just outside Moscow’s 10 lanes drives need a solid old-style Land Rover to be crossed? Or what about the disastrous living conditions that bond a stunning majority of the Russian population, from Moscow’s suburbs to the Pacific coast? And how to describe what happened just a few months ago, when the world assisted to something a large part of it probably assumed as definitely buried in books of history*** – a war on the European soil?

Mostly because of its polyedric facets, to western minds Russia keeps appearing a sort of permanently drunk and ill-fat bear. An edgy creature able of occasional good gestures – normally flooded in paternalistic sauce – as shocking turnarounds whose rationale can perhaps be found more easily in a nursery than in studies of international relations.
Too big, too rich - and simultaneously too poor -, too prone to machinations and, when these don’t work, too aggressive in its reactions, Russia’s behavior may often look not far from that of a clumsy elephant in the western crystal-equilibriums of relations and power.

Today, the old Russian giant, despite ‘minimized’ in its territorial ambitions with the collapse of its last Empire in communist sauce, after a decade of world-derision while struggling not to fall into bankruptcy, not to lose more pieces and not to explode at some point – given the ruinous conditions of part of its nuclear arsenal –, it looks having decided to follow the last chance destiny provided it to ransom its debatable history after Catherina the Great by not spreading the wealth given by its immense and inestimable resources. Astoundingly, instead, it seems concentrated in the effort to restore the -supposed- magnificence of its Great Power.

Dressing melons with dijonnaise, the new recipe aims to reconcile the irreconcilable, through ambiguous recalls to those ‘great’ remembers whose only merit is to have shaped Russia’s nowadays clay feet. By one side we thus have a new magnificat of the worst imperial ‘autocracy’ (terms per se outlandish enough) that ever touched Europe, by the other the unbury of the myth of the Soviet Power – in the rest of the world cynically considered less disastrous than Nazism just because it has never troubled or invaded any State that really mattered in Europe. Happy synthesis of the previous is then the sudden glorification of this Putin-guy, Magnus Artifex of Russia’s new dignity.

Of course, no one contends Russia’s right to (try to) draw a coherent picture of its own history.
What generates perplexities is that, after the communist-block-parenthesis, Russia still maintains towards the West an unnatural opposition, in the new try to prove itself something that is not east, nor west, but just something big enough to be self-sufficient. Such self-portrait, of course, convince only Russia’s establishment, leaving the ‘West’ appalled, the ‘East’ (i.e., China) eager to take advantage of such an illusion and the ‘South’ (i.e., the ex-Soviet satellites) rather scared, being the only area Russia can still effectively bossy.

You really don’t have to be Napoleon to realize that to fulfill such an ‘alternative’ project you might need the troops to do that.
Tightened between a Union of 500millions people and a new Empire of 1.3billion, in semi-permanent crisis with the 300millions Super-Power, Russia’s scarce 135millions inhabitants - who practically all live in its western portion - dwindle at the amazing rate of -500.000 Russians per year. Beyond the Urals – where more than two/thirds of Russia’s territory lays – you can find barely six millions of Russians today. If -by uneventful chance- you get lost in Siberia, you are most likely to get information by a Chinese (entrepreneur) than a Russian (miner).
Of course power over there still belongs to a bunch of Russian post-perestroika foxes, but the question is: for how long?

With this question in mind, the first main -and supposedly secret- reaction the Russian Government has been able to imagine is an atomic war plan with a -realistic- retreat of Russia’s Might back to the Urals' line, with the Chinese nowadays ‘ally’ taking over the area. It is true that, after all, history proved China - the engine behind two-thirds of Russia’s amazing growth - quite a problematic counterpart already. Chinese capitals are the most welcome (they’re not tied to annoying EU standards of transparency), Chinese people are necessary (since there’s no one else around), but here fears for a Chinese invasion go well beyond their metaphorical meaning.
Indeed, the other main reaction is instead more immediate and concrete: in the last years a very convincing birth-incentive plan has been put in place. Still, it is hard to expect a few million people to quickly level the ground where just over the border a few hundred millions are potentially ready to resettle.

Russia’s bent toward the West is depicted by its internal migration much more effectively than its official foreign politic. The brand new SCO military alliance will probably work just until Russia will prove to be useful and second China’s interests.
Let’s hope in Confucius wisdom.

* this consideration may lead to the conclusion that the gradual extension of the Russian control over regions of Asia formerly held by populations of different ethnic origin, culture and religion was rather a form of colonization than the progressive formation of the Russian state-entity. In fact, an average time of 400 years of ‘Russification’ of these areas should have been sufficient to promote a sense of national identity which, though, today shows to be quite weak right out of the main urban centers and lacks manifestly alongside most of the Russian borders.

**this besides the communist-era parenthesis, which anyway produced an internal division between ‘the wests’ more than creating an autonomous ‘east’ – which is instead represented by cultures like China, Indochina and Japan.

***besides the Chechen’s chronic crisis

In the name of the Father: the Christian root of the West

2008-07-01T07:33:00.000-07:00

London, the 21st of June 2008

Just some days ago I stumbled in a stylish colleague’s piece at an online review I cooperate with. Allegedly, it analyzed the actual relationship between the Catholic Church and the Republic of Italy - which happen to both have their ideal, historical and administrative capital city in Rome.
Even if admittedly factious – consciously misinterpreting some facts and ignoring others – such reading raised in me a bunch of perplexities. Because the article was actually well written (even if kind of pedantic). The mind elaborating those critics was aware it was writing most of them in spite of evidence and truth. In the end, that was a divertissement, a rhetorical exercise, a confounding illusion taking for granted things actually not existent. Regardless of this, general opinion – a few comments, essentially – seated aside the proposed view, openly confirming its rightness when not supporting it by remembering the usual list of crimes Church have committed in its two-millennia of history.

Let’s put it candidly: I consider myself Christian in a very general way – more in the sense of a deep cultural heritage than in a strictly religious way. Churches see me, if not as a tourist, just for the annual-Christmas-event and more to say hello to annual-lost friends than for listening longwinded speeches based on improbable metaphors (after a Christmas dinner… go figure!).
Anyhow, confuting the article’s openly-factious-arguments in the effort to propose again a ‘normalizing view’, I think necessary at first to balance the historical heritages and the actual possibilities of something effectively unique in the western side of the world: having a capital city – not even that big – which is also the seat of the major western faith. Rome.*

Since from the very beginning the charming manoeuvres of the author – capturing reader’s attention with a sort of embedding statement – start, with an incipit that, translated, would sound more or less like ‘the incompatibility among religious positions and democracy is not [yet and inexplicably] ruled by law…’.
Such an assumption shall be – democratically – rejected. Besides the appeal such a concept exercises at first out the mind of anyone, can somebody explain me how can be possible to tell someone you’re not allowed to participate to the national political debate on everything because… you’re a priest? Shall I just remember that, until not a long ago, one of the candidates to the US presidential elections was a reverend? Among the things I don’t really appreciate there is the utilitarian two-sided-way Italians often try to manage any topic. The United States of America? When comfortable to some thesis, they’re the greatest democracy in the world; when not useful anymore, they’re just a bunch of idiots that can’t understand that, apparently, there should be some limitations to their liberty of choosing their future leaders since some kind of sub-culture (perhaps inspired to a distort self-created imaginary of the same US) would impose by law the incompatibility among religious positions and democracy. A sort of first-step basis to probably add, then, that religious offices should avoid talking in public over certain subjects and to conclude, in the end, they should not mind at all of secular-matters. As if they’re not citizens. As if they’re not humans.
Of course, democracy is that system that allows some people to express this way. This said, I don’t really know if to thank the Holy Spirit or the human rationalism for that, anyhow thanks for letting democracy be that wonderful mechanism that – until it works properly – never allows these people to become majority in any country.

In support of this bitter (yet respectful) reading of my colleague’s article, his genuine surprise for the recent Time’s degrading of the Pope out from the 100 most influential people of the world. This is symptomatic of another peculiar Italian-way of seeing things with the Church of Rome: the more you see the Pope and its establishment as influential per se, the less you will be prone to concede that, for the rest of the world, the way the Pope is seen is that he might be influential only for those who want to listen to him. Corollary of this is world’s surprise for our occasional complaints over alleged ‘Church’s interferences’ with Italy’s internal affairs agenda. Normal answer to this is that it is not the Church or its representatives that need to shut their mouth up on anything, it’s just up to Republican institutions to act independently from what the various kings of faith say.
And if they’re not able because in the same city, perhaps moving the capital’s administrations somewhere else in the country could be an effective idea to be considered.

Briefly said, the medley of political and religious power is a typical element of human societies at their basic and post-basic levels (i.e. ‘Caesaropapism’). History has showed, though, that priests and sorcerers don’t work that well as perfect administrators or war heroes. Nor this was their aim, usually. Religions love to control people much more than govern or subjugate them. As long as State expands, modernizes or gets in touch with other civilizations, new challenges to this control are continuous. For the Catholic Church (the only existent for a millennium, sided by a young - and prosecuted - Islamism) the secular-issue did not emerge until the authority that preceded its born (and gradually accepted it) ceased to exist: after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, becoming itself the eldest authority in Europe, the temptation arose (and got formal with the fake ‘Contantine’s donation’), lasting with varying success until the year 1870.
Usually, where the political power is weak – or nonexistent – people looks to any other available authority worth trusting. In Rome – actually in the whole Italian peninsula and unlike France, the Austro-German Empires, Britain or even Spain – no real political authority existed until the clumsy Kingdom of Italy was born, in 1861. Would you be that surprised, then, in discovering that after 1500 years of dominance as the only ever-existing and never-changing authority the Church of Rome is still deeply rooted in the costumes and feelings of the whole country?
The European Union, the Erasmus program and the globalization are quickly leveling out gross cultural differences, shaping the minds of younger Europeans under a more uniform style. It would be deeply superficial, though, not to remember that post WWII Italy was still close to Europe more in words than in facts, being not much more that a giant countryside of superstitiously believing peasants.

These considerations allow me, then, to feel perfectly comfortable in declaring myself laical even recognizing that the Western lowest common denominator, the matrix of its modern sentiment, is its Christian root. Within the Christian world, then, the Roman Catholic Church still today represents the majority of it and anyhow is plainly recognized as ‘the Authority’ even by the other Christian Churches – directly or implicitly, since the only with a definite world-wide structure. As long as ‘the’ referral term, even for critics, is that one and that one only, this is the authority you count on for your own existence – the one you very probably originated by (and eventually will reunite with…).

On the Roman Church’s structure, another wrong assumption to invalidate is the article’s incoherent intertwine made between its democratic-deficit-regime (recalling Bruno’s condemnations or Galilei’s abjuration – as if democracy would not jail every day innocent people or hadn’t poisoned Socrates to death) and a sort of assumed egalitarianism Church is alleged to promote or represent. Aside this, article’s submissive comments focused on the outrageous ‘golden palaces’ where clerical establishment live instead of sharing the outcasts’ misery. Well, let’s try to fix this: Church and faith, prior to Lutero’s intervention, were not conceivable as anything else than strictly hierarchical: hierarchical was the medieval fight for supremacy within the Conflict of Investitures as well as hierarchical is the structure of the Christian faith. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Such vertical structure is son of the time in which it has been conceived. As in the welfare state you have the so-called social-security-cushions to moderate pure meritocracy and capitalism, in the medieval Church you have major and minor virtues, mercy and compassion to mitigate the inevitable differences that separate castes. Our soul might be equal to that one of anyone else, but for God’s sake no one has ever said we had all to be equal in our real lives. Not even in the Soviet Empire. The idea should be to alleviate and enhance poor’s conditions, not to downgrade to misery in order to better understand them.

Almost natural comes, then, the answer to another critic on the ‘interreligious dialogue’ sabotage Pope Benedict would allegedly operate. All the monotheist religions, from the whole Christian family to Judaism and Islamism, consider themselves connected but superior to the others. I do actually not find anything strange in that, otherwise they would not be monotheistic religions. It might be just my personal view, yet the ‘interreligious dialogue’ is a fictitious relativistic concession to modern times, something unconceivable per se in the DNA of these religions. Brutally said, it is possible to dialogue with those completely different from you, trying to find some matching points and pray together, but why to chat with somebody you want to reunify with or absorb, since pray’s wording is actually the same already? That’s not having a dialogue, it’s lying.

Last assumption to be straightened is the one that, the other way rounding the previous reasoning, sees the nowadays Roman Catholic Church as a ‘minority’, and would like it to be treated consequently. Well, allow me to ask: in respect to what? It Italy the 90 per cent of the population or so keeps defining itself as Catholic, and in that not-that-small four-sided piece of the world that goes from Moscow to Vancouver to Buenos Aires to Athens the 90 percent of the population is Christian (not considering important parts of Africa or Australia, etc.). Among all Christian beliefs, Rome’s Bishop always has been recognized of a sort of ‘primacy’ as the successor of Saint Peter (theological scuffles where on what this should imply in terms of concrete powers in relations to the other pontiffs).
Indeed, the idea of ‘equal treatment’ – natural son of modern times – shall be counterbalanced with the principle of representation – thanks to which, for instance, political parties share available media-time in proportion of their concrete representation. Let’s put it like this: I am definitely not a fan of the ‘Vatican-minute’ our main TV-news provider (the TG1 on RaiUno) daily grants to the Roman Church’s apparatus, yet I am surely not willing to sacrifice on the altar of the ‘equal treatment’ other single-minutes for Jewish, Muslims or Are-Krishna communities (and no, I really don’t feel to be anti-Semite or whatever kind of racist and intolerant adjective may come up to your mind).
On the other side, it should also be noted that ‘to protect the rights of minorities’ means to extend rights already of common use to the major part of society and yet not conceded to some nucleuses of it, because of popular or politic will. Democratically (and politically) speaking, decision is here whether to extend Church’s privileges (beside the Vatican-news-minute – a quenched-to-be practice) to the other creeds, not to retreat them in order to set back a supposed equal treatment among all faiths. As before, we don’t have to be all poor to be equal. In the end, it’s a political decision, the fact it has not been enforced yet does not necessarily mean we live under a tyrannical regime that does not respect diversity. Moreover, I believe it is way too early to ask such to a country who defined Catholicism as the State Religion until just 17 years ago.

To conclude, a thought I would like to share with the Catholic reader. As known, Catholicism is not the most modern-friendly faith. To be honest, no faith likes changes, yet Rome proved itself quite reluctant even in considering the eventual existence of most of those occurred in history (for the first couple of centuries at least). Such attitude is also connected to the ‘papal infallibility’, an inglorious and antihistorical dogma put in paper in 1870 but at all times existed and enforced. One of the result of this concept is that, formally speaking, any actual critic to any action of the Pope, its establishment or the Christian faith in general for as it is structured and approved by the Pope, transforms you immediately in a protestant. This is a point Catholic people often forget (or simply not consider) and the Church of course does not stress, probably conscious of the unlimited negative potential such principle can cause in modern times.
But now tell me: are you sure to be 100% Catholic?

*There is another city that has an even more peculiar position: Jerusalem. Capital of two states (or at least that is what is supposed to be soon), holy city for three religions. Though, a speculation on it is not possible under the aspects of the present thesis, not being Jerusalem considerable as a ‘western’ city.

Devoured by your own shrinks: Naples’ excruciating disaster

2008-06-01T10:47:00.001-07:00

Naples, the 16th of May 2008

Three days in Naples usually grants you an experience hardly definable other than ‘great’: the charming breath of a past European capital hits you with its magnificent palaces, breathtaking views, irrational toponymy and intense decay. How not to mention the food. Even me, kind of post-anorexic-modelish-weight-obsessed-milanese-guy, I am simply overwhelmed by the eclectic chain of wonderful tastes continuously offered. Pure food lust prevails over usual inappetence, eating becomes a moment you’re eager to see arriving – and you actually keep on doing. You get somehow used even to what you once thought intolerable – and even manage to like it: the local accent (that of course they proudly identify as a per se idiom) and the chaotic traffic (that you need to courageously face by keeping on moving – wherever – unless you want to get furiously horned by the entire vicinity at once).

And again, eating. With the eyes. With the mouth. With the nose, a bit less. Being in Naples in these days shows also, in fact, something not in the ‘common imaginary’ - not at least until a year ago or so. The whole world has talked enough already about ‘the problem’ of Naples and its suburbs. Submerged by rubbish. Suffocated by its own garbage.
At a closer look, the show reminds a plot of desperate drama, hyper-titanized worries, factious news and few – very few – reasonable voices. Joining ‘the few’, in the attempt to propose a ‘normalizing view’, I was then seriously slapped by realizing that to restore the real normality back over here, extra-ordinary measures need to be taken this time. Measures that, of the kind of reasonability I came pompously with, have almost nothing in common.

When talking about big cities, common experience tells us that usually there is at least an area where is ‘better not to go’. The absence of it unequivocally makes the distinction between a proper city and a village (or a countryside town, at the most). This is an area you are supposed to know by yourself you shall not free the ‘little adventurous’ that lives in you, thanks to your (hopefully) innate instinct of survival.
In the best cases such an area would be just one, lingering behind a discreet warn coming by close friends or caring hotel concierges when visiting (e.g. Geneva). More commonly, there are at least a couple and they would be reported in tourist guides, branded as ‘potentially dangerous sites’ (e.g. part of NYC’s Harlem district). In the worst cases, those are areas where the State has withdrawn, renouncing to a piece of its territory with the apparent scope to ghettoize the rejections of society and safeguard the others wherever else (sticking with New York City, what has been the almost entire neighborhood of the Bronx for the last six decades or so). Kind of open-air wide-tolerance areas, where (almost) anything is accepted to happen – within its borders and among its ‘components’.
The key-element for the ‘social acceptance’ of these areas is normally one: they have to be small, mostly secluded and sometimes the government should put in at least some fake-try to recover some pieces of it. Sometimes, too, some artist would go living there, eventually become amazingly famous and very possibly die soon afterwards.

With Naples, such key-element is basically reversed. In fact, without considering the waste mismanagement, as a rule the 2/3rds of the city are off-limits for the normal citizen, a figure that could be raised to 4/5ths for the average tourist. Mid-and-upper-bourgeoisies are trenched between a couple of streets and squares in the center and Posillipo*, these areas connected by the promenade avenue – of course congested even at 1am.
Thus, between those areas you can’t go because it’s ‘better not to go’ and those others you’d better not to go because they are invaded by rubbish or shrunk in traffic, there’s not that plenty of space to live in.

On the rubbish side, my local friends keep telling me that ‘it has never been like this’. In their experience, the historical (read: touristic) areas of the city have always been safeguarded at least in their appearance. Rubbish was maybe dropped off a couple of hundred meters away, but ‘the core’ had to stay clean – replicating a kind of Neapolitans’ concept of living that applies to everything: to always show much more and much better than you can actually do. Even if you’re just a muddled trump. Actually, the more you are and the more you tend to show off, in a vicious circle that sees broken guys ostentatiously offering dinner for forty people just before vanishing from circulation. Though, this is off the today-topic.
Well, here I am in ‘the core’, at the cross between via Filangeri and via Chiaia. All I can see – and I am not a hygienic-maniac – does definitely not remind a clean scenario: garbage is overflowing trashes almost everywhere, and at the end of both the streets colorful mounds remind to everyone how bad non-diversified trash can smell.

Besides the cleaning, what keeps my mind mumbling is the tie between such distasteful situation and the above ‘better not to go’ areas. By one side, the obvious consideration that to allow criminal organizations to manage and eradicate in whole pieces of the city or in the entirety of the suburbs does not seem a recipe that could produce anything good. By the other, discovering the way these organizations maintain consensus over their crowds has been somewhat shocking.

In fact, being the waste (mis)management a hugely profitable sector for these criminal groups (receiving contributes and reimbursements for the waste disposal – which is of course not done, being trash merely unloaded somewhere else in ‘patrolled’ countryside), they simply react to the State’s awakening over the topic just by proposing a more tempting alternative.
The State offers the construction of incinerators which will be finished who knows when and where you perhaps will have a work paid just a bit more than a misery per month? Look, here’s a 100: would you please go marching against? You get another 100 later.
Managerially speaking, kind of effective: in an area where unemployment and un-education reach percentages of underdeveloped country, criminals ‘own’ the land and the State has been absent for generations… do you really expect anyone to refuse 200 Euros for some protesting?
Here we are, then, with small but theatrical demonstrations (pure joy for medias eager for some show), people chaining themselves to railway lines, women with babies at their arms hysterically crying because their milk is full of dioxide (or whatever): an exquisite fair of fakes inexplicably taken in consideration where it should be known for what it is and ignored by consequence.
Aside this, some WWF foolish excitedly explains (to whichever camera gets close enough) that saving the nests of the ‘crow picchiuto’ is at the moment the real emergency to take care of – in a region collapsing beneath hundreds of thousands of tons of rubbish. As if the crow in question would be happier anyway in some years from now, at conditions unchanged.

Another kind-of-sociological consideration is that, as it is normally supposed to be, Naples has a government rooted in the society that votes for it. So far, being the 2/3rds of the city rooted in criminal environments, what would anyone expect to be elected? Would you then be surprised for real, acknowledging that the situation kept on getting worse for the last fifteen years or so, just to reach the point such rooted collusion between corrupted society and puppet-local-government has lost the control of its same dirty game?

Trying to understand a system does not mean finding reasons to accept it for as it is. That’s what certain self-acquitting southern culture does, reprehensibly. You expose your concerns over a problem that lays a couple of meters from your cup of tea and you get – disconnectedly – responded with the ‘Great Greece’ argument. Yet, when a local government fails in the basic objectives to keep the place it is supposed to govern safe and clean, question arises whether it is actually doing something. Besides countless fairs, parties and expòs - worthless as impossibly expensive.
Quite a long time ago a bunch of law-experts elaborated the so-called ‘principle of subsidiarity’. Such principle provides central government to substitute local whether this shows itself unable to manage situations such emergencies, calamities or other matters excessively thorny for a smaller section of the State.
However you want to classify such dirty-criminal-disaster, it is evident that Naples’ system is not able to self-regenerate from the inside. State’s long inaction over local government’s failure shall be replaced with a gesture showing the concrete will to gain back the control over an area of the Country that common way of speech now simply give it for ‘definitely lost’. A resignation which is intolerable, indeed.
Emergency situations require for emergency procedures. Emergency procedures usually do not take that much into account sophisticated elaborations such as inviolable rights or laws and Constitutional principles at their defense. Emergency procedures are the last call men-of-law - or in love with the law - would ever regard to. Still, even people once very concerned with balance of powers and individual supremacy occasionally admitted certain derogations. Before the rise of the Roman Empire, the Senate used to face crisis by nominating a dictator (that was, literally, the term), whose six-months duty was to set back the order. The army at his disposal, his actions went beyond laws and bureaucracy and no one could oppose him in those fields he had been nominated for. Six months. At the end, to the Senate the burden to ratify his actions, or to deny them by restoring the previous order.
In a country where to ‘take a decision’ is considered the first step towards the tyranny, no one is responsible for problems yet the godfathers of tiny-tiny-little successes are wherever, this is where ‘reasonability’ - and those who used to think themselves reasonable - ends: I can’t find a reason not to consider such an idea attractive.

European identity? The (almost complete) failure of an empirical test

2008-05-01T06:16:00.000-07:00

Manila, the 29th of April 2008

As far as I can remember, I have always been a convinced supporter of the European Union. Even when this implied, for Italy as for many other countries, the amazing rise of prices following the introduction of the Euro; or when, doing a stage in the Commission, I realized the incredible waste of public money and the astonishing amass of unproductive (and poorly-paid) bureaucracy living in it; despite the constant attempts of France to see and use it as if it is a kind of organic extension of the ‘Hexagone’; regardless of the failure of the referendums for the approval of its painfully-mastodontic Constitution; and even now that, not refraining from acquiring new competencies out of fanciful interpretations of the Treaties’ wording - thought to mean completely different things - suffers of a quite consistent lack of capacity to manage efficiently even those undisputed.

Half Italian and half French, I committed (and still regret) the enormous mistake to think that if I was able to accept all this, there was little that could not be accepted by ‘those others’ European colleagues. Moreover - and most importantly -, if I was able to decline my nationalism in favor of a more ‘mature’ sense of European identity, why people from the rest of the continent shouldn’t do the same? (British obviously excluded).
Such personal vision of things clashed miserably this last week.

After some thirty-hours of fly-stop&jet-lag – plus other four of bumping-jeep and slow-motion-boat away from Manila airport –, I finally reached my destination: dragged out in the middle of the jungle, in a tiny island in the middle of the Philippines Sea, I could now see the resort where two good friends of mine decided to get married. The main characters of this exotic tale are, of course, not autochthones (come on, it would have been way too easy!): the bride is Greek, the groom Danish.
Besides the reasons that brought about a hundred Europeans to assist to a wedding of colleagues on the other side of the world - which could be a good story anyway -, there is something else probably more appropriate to talk about. Let me try to give you the picture.

The crowd that decided to be part of the event was almost equivalent in terms of ‘quantity’. Half of it was Greek, the other half Scandinavian - without considering some irrelevant intrusions such as mine, that one of a Croatian, and an American. What had me impressed first has been that, despite most of them had arrived many days earlier than me (got there just the day before the ‘I do’ part), everything I could see was more about to resemble - say - two different dishes than a modern fusion-pot. Keeping the metaphor, two dishes made of completely different ingredients and out of different cooking. You know, those kinds of platters you really can’t match out of a single meal - ok, maybe now I’m exaggerating a little.
Anyhow, quite soon I also had the chance to understand some of the reasons why this was happening.

By one side, the 'angels'. Despite not very much into reinvigorating stereotypes, those Scandinavian guys were all indisputably tall, blond, blue-eyed and lovely-smiling, kind of mildly levitating around the intricate jungle-resort. Not the warmest folks, sure say. Easy it was to perceive the delicate though intensive ‘social-scan’ you were put through, before deciding if being conceded of the angelical word.
Perhaps because all ‘coupled’, everyone showed a quite individual attitude. People could get together for dinner time, waterskiing or a small chat, but before and after then everyone managed its own time mostly independently.

By the other side, the Greeks. First, all singles. Then, again not to reinvigorate southern-European stereotypes but how not to notice the constant presence of something to eat or to drink around, in their hands or on the table - any table, anytime. The table, then, the real and main character for almost any kind of activity – from actually eating to organizing anything, relaxing, talking, discussing or just spending time, staying all together (in the Philippines, with around 35 degrees Celsius and 140 per cent of humidity).
But here I hadn’t just ‘Greeks’. I had Cretans - a quite peculiar kind of Greeks, as I had to discover. Fashion-victim and ever-perfect make-up girls, muscular&shaved-bodied guys (and those who were not into the gym-mania were big enough not to need any anyway), this people has been as amazingly warm in welcoming the new arrival (i.e. me) as remarkably fast in closing itself after a formidable barrier: the one and only use of the Greek language. A ‘guilt’ strengthened by the fact that almost every one of them was able to speak good English and those weaker with it were good in Italian or French. Still, no matter the presence of people from other countries (not even the groom, actually), they would always keep on speaking of their own business, in their own language. Some reprimanding-fake-coughing ignored, the sensation of being left aside the conversation started soon, unsurprisingly. Only exceptions? The ground of ‘Greece vs. international clashes’ (what else?). Still, besides – quite obviously – better not to mention the word ‘Macedonia’ with any Greek (which I did, of course, with fairly disastrous results), those Cretan-guys showed me something hard enough to understand. During my short stay I had, in fact, not a few instances of a peculiar kind of Minoan-centrism. Generally speaking, Greek people are usually very proud of their country - with good reasons, of course. Mostly, these reasons are close enough to some of those that allow Italians to be proud of their own country: great history, great minds, great remembers of both. Still, this couldn’t help me not to feel something wrong when one of them - a 27 years old insurance agent - plainly verbalized: ‘I don’t travel that much. This is my first time out of Europe. In the end, my friend, the whole world is coming to Crete, why should I ever leave it?’. Proud support immediately came from another - a lawyer, who got his degree in Italy to come back and exercise the profession in... Heraklio*. I was somewhat daunted. If they were thinking something like that, what was I supposed to think, then? Never to trespass the signal ‘end of Florence’? Forgetting to ever sort out the 8éme arrondissement? Following this ‘Cretan-reasoning’, I was committing a quite consistent offense to myself by leaving my countries, not being satisfied with their rich culture and keep on travelling around the world. ‘My friend’ – the insurance agent unquestionably analyzed – ‘it is evident you have some restlessness and anxiety to heal’.

Back to the nordic side, on the language aspect immediate relief came from the fact that none of the Scandinavians ever dared to talk in Danish or Norwegian in front of somebody that could not understand. Very respectfully, not even between them. With some exceptions, of course.
In fact, here comes a sort of mismatching comparison I would have probably not guessed doing before being at this event. Apparently at least, younger generations of Scandinavians are highly cosmopolitan. They transmit a mature sense of ‘Europeanity’ - the one I feel too, that consideration that there is no alternative solution to the European Union for any of its actual or future members, and that we’re all ‘Europeans’, besides and before our national identity. Nordic-elder-generations, though, showed to be remarkably – and quite embarrassingly – driven by a number of stereotypes at first I believed jokes without taste. Sadly worse, they weren’t. This people are actually still convinced that Southern Europe is a land at best good for tourism. Not enough, for that kind of tourism that resemble more a safari in Africa than a vacation in just another part of the same continent. Prejudices as terrible streets and disgraceful traffic (…), laziness and unproductiveness (!), non-drinkable water (?), diffused misery (?!) or fears for being seized (?!?) plainly flowed out of their mouths (and sometimes you regret having received an education that forces you not to respond in adequate terms to older people). A tough economical-superiority prejudice was evident towards any country not belonging from the hyper-rich&productive ‘north’.
On the Greek side, here comes a ‘reversion of terms’ quite awkward, too. On this front, for instance, while from the elders it was easy to perceive a sense of respect for – say – what has been for more than 30 years the only southern European country with a weight on the world scenario, the young Greeks showed a much more disenchanted vision, using that (terrible) way of speech ‘Italians and Greeks: one face, one race’ just to read it in the way of a nowadays supposed equivalence of the two countries. Towards any non-Greek (or, better, non-Cretan), a slight sense of 'cultural superiority' was left mildly rolling on the floor. Sometimes this 'self-sufficiency' resulted kind of nasty. And actually misplaced. Not few the times in which the terms of reference for the northern colleagues have been not the warmest. Nor the most appropriate.

Of course there were some moments of aggregation. Another Danish-Greek affair even managed to born, actually. Even though, those were definitely too rare sparkles over a quite bleak scenario: the two groups lived their vacations mostly separately, keeping their indifferences, complexes and prejudices throughout the whole stay – and probably more.

Vive l’Union Européenne.

* Crete’s chief town

Italy’s general election: among unforgivable mismatches, necessary hopes and normalizing views (on the winner, too)

2008-04-19T02:41:00.000-07:00

Florence, the 15th of April 2008

Right before starting to write, on a (supposedly) prestigious social-web-network it occurred to my eyes to stumble on an unpleasant sight. Commenting on the results of the Italian general elections held in the last two days, a sincerely pitiful Swedish lady (or at least, one with a name that sounded like Swedish) expressed her genuine scarcity of understanding for the last choice of the Italians – which has been to give a quite vast majority to Mr. Berlusconi and his conservative party. Among the elegant words of the lady in question it was possible to perceive a slight sense of disappointment, like if all the Italians had just chosen a terrible tie to be put over their splendid suit. An unforgivable mismatch.

For the sake of transparency, let’s say that such believed ‘mismatch’ happened without my help. Perhaps driven by superficial reasons, I decided I couldn’t help a 72-years-old sir (despite ‘technically immortal’, as his doctor once said) reaching the button-rooms for his third time. Reasoning was simple enough: everyone has his own time in the history; yours is over since quite a while, for me at least.
Such ‘for me at least’ turned out almost to be a ‘for me and some other friends only’, since vote went down quite differently.
Besides the aging-matter, I wasn’t very interested in this whole electoral campaign: once acknowledged that the real economical power has left the country a while ago to land in some office in Brussels, and that most of the rules that are of direct concern of the private citizen are originated by local sources (such as regional or city councils), not much interest remained for those things that cannot be make properly up because of lack of funds (i.e. the pension system) or those others that none of the contenders showed a will of change for (as, for instance, university or health care).
Thus, I assisted to the present elections with a fairly ‘detached’ mood. Good news for me, as said, was that one of the two main contenders was closer to have lived half a century rather than an entire one. Another good news was the simplification of the composition of the so-called ‘parliamentary arch’, being reduced the political parties admitted in it (from around 30 to something like 5). Perhaps this will also mean, sometime in the future (go figure!), a drop of the astonishing number of MP we actually have (around a thousand) and a consistent withdrawal of their - mostly indecent - privileges, which would also be a quite good news.
Of course all these eventual ‘good news’ do not counterbalance much of the economical situation of the country - fairly unhappy, despite not ‘disastrous’ as many picture it.
Anyhow, I do feel such sense of necessary hope that sees the elections’ champ in love enough with the big country that chose him to try turning the ‘unhappy trend’ upside down, with all his efforts.
That is what I think is worth believing in when talking about the elections of your country, no matter the winner.

Beyond the personal approach to the whole election-thing, I was instead somewhat surprised by the posts and replies found on the thread inaugurated by the perhaps-Swedish-lady. Actually, not much by what declared by her; much more instead by the debate that followed.
Some Italians, bees captured by the honey of self-pity, started ‘crying on themselves’ complaining that yes, this was an awful choice that put in ridiculous the whole country (?). Till here, nothing unusual – beside the slight sense of irritation provoked by a reasoning that admits something as ‘normal’ only if it is in line with the ‘what I think’ personal sonata.
What resulted instead quite out of the line was a comment of an English guy (or, at least, someone with a name that sounded like English), which I’m delighted to share here:
‘It is a very sad moment. What is wrong with this country? I am astounded and appalled this criminal is voted in again? When Italy is finally kicked out of the EU maybe the Italian citizens will care about who governs them’.
I won’t say I was ‘astounded and appalled’ for such idiocy at least in the same way the preference for Mr. Berlusconi of the Italian voters left this guy. Still, what had me quite perplexed was the deep ignorance such bunch of ungrammatical words expressed. 36, to be precise. A couple of lines, 162 characters and a smashing hit of 5 concepts of respect and democratic values to the waste, sacrificed to the altar of the ‘freedom of the expression’. Synthetically said, a good lost chance to keep the mouth shut.
Who instead might have opened his, replying to such absurdity, stayed shut.
That’s why I’m opening mine now, in their name (even if not requested, nor eventually invited to do so). I just need to propose a normalizing view of something that has been pictured so abnormal in the time now many think it is for real. Without realizing that, most of the times, it would be worth remembering first that good jingle ‘nothing bad has happened in your neighboring country that has not been done in yours already’.

First of all, limiting the analysis of the elections of an important western country to ‘sad moment’ and ‘what’s wrong with this country’ says more of the teller than of the supposedly analyzed country. Italian citizens do care of who governs them in a manner that, numerically speaking, almost double the care showed by any northern European democracy: over the 80 per cent of those who had the right to vote decided to exercise it (something that somewhere else, in the north, happens in percentages that do not hit the number 45).
Then again, even without being a Mr. Berlusconi-hooligan, I am still the first to believe that there is no reason in pointing fingers where there is nothing to point at. Mr. Berlusconi is not a criminal: never it has been condemned for any sort of ‘crime’, nor in the legal neither in the broad definition of the word. There have been, in Mr. Berlusconi’s history, charges for corruption of MPs, judges and other relevant administrative figures - plus some financial investigations - all prior to his political career. Despite this does definitely not seem close to the CV of a nun, it is also necessary to see things from a global perspective. This ‘self-picturing-evergreen-guy’ created a huge economical empire rotating over the axis of the media industry in the last 20 years, a period in which nothing else of comparable dimension has been created in any other economic sector of the country (besides banks aggregation). Such period is also the one in which the economic performance of Italy has been much less brilliant than the thirty-years-term of miracle preceding it, and where political immorality started being that pervasive illness that brought then to the ‘fall of the first republic’ (year 1992) under the hammering punches of the judges. The scandals of corruption and bribery out of this Pandora-investigative-vase were thousands. Let’s then be practical: would you really expect that anyone who’s building up an international media enterprise would not ‘accommodate’ into any corrupted system if ‘helpful’ to his interest? If your answer is ‘no’, here’s the reply: I agree with you, but that’s probably why no other industrial giant rose in this time. If your answers is ‘yes’, then I have to admit that is such ‘pragmatic approach’ what most likely made the fortune of Mr. Berlusconi's entrepreneurial career and his media giant, Fininvest. Anyhow, point is that he didn’t act as the only evil among masses of angels.

In conclusion the Italians - perhaps according also to their supposedly creative nature - privileged a man who pictures himself standing aside the principle of ‘doing’ (even if accompanied with some - say - wide interpretation of the rules) than a younger guy whose working experience outside the political context is somewhat close to zero.
The choice of the Italians, which I do accept as both Italian and democratic, shall be respected also because there’s almost no country, in Europe and abroad, that hasn’t had an even ‘blacker sheep’ than a media tycoon at the main rudder of its political institutions.
In the best cases, even those rare ‘whiter sheep’ had their ‘black moments’. I still remember a hopelessly bold Mrs. Thatcher – just to stick with that apparently-English-guy comment – hypothesizing, out of the blue, not to release anymore the Hong Kong colony back to the Chinese republic, after having resolved the Falkland crisis (basically a bunch of rock-cliffs close to Argentina) with a magnificent parade of the Royal Navy in the middle of the Atlantic sea.
Of course she had to re-state her words a few moments later, with a much different tone.
Vive la real politik.

Kurura banare: the end of the welfare state

2008-03-31T10:32:00.001-07:00

Milan, the 23rd of February 2008

In the Japanese language, the words ‘kurura banare’ mean ‘de-motorization process’. That is what is now happening throughout the Nippon society. Over there, hyper-urbanization combined with astonishing technological evolution produced massive cultural changes, to the point young people have started to feel having a car not to be any longer a ‘need’. Car is not seen any more as a sort of ‘status symbol’, nor is felt necessary (thanks to excellent public transportation services). The whole process, of course, figured to be great business for those rent-a-car companies that fill the gap whether this young people decides to spend some days in the country-side.
While I do completely associate with such trend (having renounced to the car since years, preferring a personal mixed recipe of Vespa, bicycle & metro - plus some weekend-rent-a-car), it comes in my mind how such de-structuring process should be good to happen in some of the European-continental welfare-state systems.

In fact, the other day, while executing my duties in Court as junior barrister, I’ve assisted to another scene that kept me thinking quite much the following afternoon.
The lawyer I was with – a super-fashion Milanese-style lady whose straight black hair were chocked in a hyper-tight horse-tail – has the reputation of ‘angel of the evils’, and she won’t miss to confirm the legend as true this time too.
What’s the story of the case: a young guy in the middle of his adolescence, all of a sudden and without any clear reason, decides to drive a ‘decorative wooden and light-metal knife’ into his mother’s chest. Being the knife, as said, purely decorative, it managed to get broken before doing any serious injury. Still, the subsequent try to choke the woman was a pretty evident sign that the knife didn’t 'accidentally fall' on the mother’s chest. What happened next is quite classic: the neighbors intervened, an ambulance arrived, duly following investigations were held. The results of this one-and-a-half year of time and public money investigative waste (and of jail-custody of the boy) was that the guy is evidently disturbed (surprise!) - say, schizophrenic - and need to be hospitalized in an appropriate institute that would try to take care of him and his problems. Since the Italian welfare state – despite some imperfections – is still quite good, it provides for such institutions. Of course, for free: citizens must be taken in good care without charge whether they need. This is such a basic principle of a modern state that most of the time the second part of such principle gets easily forgotten: free of charge, within the limit of sustainability of the system itself and considering who is the ‘needy citizen’. Here we are with two other elements: the family of the boy, beside some ongoing-divorce disputes, is wealthy enough to have an apartment that many would define ‘huge’ without further discussion; second, they refused to let their sunny-boy into the state-clinic (whose technical name is, in truth, quite scary: translated, it sounds something like Psychiatric Judiciary Hospital) and wanted him to be hospitalized in this ‘kind-of-private’ institution (with a much more reassuring label: ‘Humanitas’) that would gladly accepted the guy if the judge were giving permission.
Here was the work of my Lady-lawyer: let this result be possible, at public expense.
Since she’s a hawk, she eventually achieved her goal. Congratulations.

Now, the analysis of what happened, under an healthy ‘welfare-state perspective’, is less brilliant.
Despite perhaps light-weighting the emotional background of the whole story, allow me to give you two numbers: 1.200 and 6.400. Well, the first is the cost (in euro) of the hospitalization in the public structure. The second is the coverage needed for the same person with the same treatments in the ‘kind-of-private’ ‘Humanitas’.
The decision of the judge put the whole cost on the State’s side. The main reason in sustain of such decision was that the ‘Humanitas’-thing would have been a more appropriate solution for a post-adolescent boy that may still have some little chances not to see his schizophrenia degenerating (and even some littler chances of some improvement when the adolescence-hormones-storm would elapse its course). Such chances, as reported by a skiddish psychologist’s analysis, are a statistical failure, yet and obviously it is a precise state-duty to take care the thing.
Till a certain point.
Here comes my deep criticism for such decision (and for many others in this trend): ignoring the conditions of the system, making decisions that mine its stability and have cascade-effects potentially economically disruptive. And here we get the post-‘60s life-absolutist dirge: ‘life has no price', ‘no matter the cost, we have to save that baby!’ and so on. Of course, I do profoundly disagree with that. It’s that ‘no matter the cost’ that makes me feel something wrong. It reflects a kinf of absolutism that appears to me a good signal of foolishness.
Why the hell the State, that already provides for institutions whose goal is to take care of people with problem as such of this young guy, should pay five times more to provide for the same assistance given by a private body? Of course, the garden over the latter might be bigger, the bathrooms freshly renewed, the companions more ‘socially respectable’ (?), still it’s totally unintelligible to me such choice, in a country where the average net salary is 1.200 euros per month, whose public debt is over the 100% of the GDP, the growth in the last 20 years has done everything but flying, etc…
The State shouldn’t be put by its own bodies (i.e. the judiciary system) under pressures which are based on arbitrary considerations blatantly overwhelming its possibilities. Even more where, as in this case, the family has the theoretical chance to provide for the treatments by itself: they should be the ones providing for the expenses that exceed the average possibilities of the system. The cost matter, a lot. And it matters even more where there's not that much money to spare. I might be slightly too paradigmatic but, in principle, the average monthly income generated by a citizen (again, 1.200 euros) shall also correspond to the effective monthly-capacity the state may dedicate to any of its citizens when needed. Of course there might be exceptions. In any case, surely not when a substitutive treatment to the one already publicly-available is requested without any concrete reason. I won’t put a sixty-million people system - quite crackling already - in further crisis because a wealthy family does not want his kid stacked into a state-clinic and pretends instead the State to cover the huge expenses of their ‘socially respectable’ caprice.
Hell… that’s what is just happened, though.
But don’t go asking to those some 20-million workers who happen to earn barely a 1.000 euros per month if they would agree with this other human-dignity-concerned (actually a kind of more opportunistic and social-appearance-saving) decision.

European self-disruptive backlashes by over-extension of individual rights

2008-03-16T04:00:00.001-07:00

Brussels, the 6th of March 2008

The first reaction I have had to the last article of Antonio Cassese (published on ‘La Repubblica’ yesterday the 5th) was something between incredulity and astonishment. After having re-read the article, the amazement still stands there, unmoved.
Of course, most of such incredulity is directed to the European Court of Human Rights, whose two recent decisions were enthusiastically commented by Mr. Cassese.
The two pronouncements, in fact, concern cases where the subtle line among safeguard of public security and compression of individual rights is tried to be found. Behind the scenes, you can see that sort of nowadays ‘organic contrast’ between governments and courts: the first (try to decently) run nations, the latter (try to properly) rule over individuals - though potentially and indirectly affecting entire societies with even a single pronouncement.
Since the hippy-time spread all over the world - producing its bunch of disasters - the ideal pendulum that marks the tension between national/common interest and individual rights stably stands over the latter side. Over the last four decades a quite impressive cultural change has been at first coldly perceived, then steadily absorbed and now strongly sustained by Courts all over the western side of the world (but not only). Such sustain now commonly let people think their list of ‘rights’ almost endless and possibly subjected to an amazing and extensive variety of interpretations, while that one of ‘burdens’ or ‘social duties’ reduced to a mere symbolic representation connected to a dreadfully narrow vision of things such as ‘till I don’t hurt anybody, I’m a good citizen’.

First of all, I do strongly oppose to such vision of things. If you think like that, you perhaps are a good being, but you’re still far away from being anything close to a good citizen. Words such as ‘citizen’, ‘citizenship’ and ‘society’ (and even ‘idiot’) represent much more that the simple amass of individualities reunited in a syncopathic urban stockpile. The common society is made of active parts that contribute both in their own unique way as well as in the ‘standard’ way necessary for the ‘collective machine’ to work properly. This means not only to live the life as you rightfully prefer it to live it (possibly within lawful boundaries). It means also to contribute to the effective functioning of our society by doing gestures that might not be anymore considered strictly among ‘individual burdens’, still, neither they can be taken simply and only as burdens of others or - worse - State’s burdens.
To get practical, I’m not yet convinced that you hold the indubitable right to have clean streets and parks if you don’t feel in the same way the burden to keep them clean yourself or, well worse, you like playing tax-dodging. You shouldn’t claim for social-care misery or security inefficiency if an old lady gets bag-snatched in front of you and, having the chance to do it, you don’t even manage to trip the snatcher up and let him fell to the ground. You shouldn’t feel that untouchable right to censure your administration if you haven’t felt first the stringent burden to go voting: to vote is not simply a right you may choose to exercise, it’s an ethical burden of any respectable citizen (no matter how creepy the candidates might be). Going with this, I’m not sure you have a full and untouchable right to free medical treatments whether you went beyond the double of your supposed weight just because you lacked of self-control, or whether you smoked (and let many others suffer from your smoking) for more than forty years and then you surprisingly discover you’ve got cancer. On the overweight side, I might even wonder why the hell you should pay the same price for the airplane ticket I’m paying (or, better, why part of the price of my ticket is generated by your overweight - it probably works like this).

To force the ‘we’re all equal’ phrase into the hippy version gets the backlash that most of everyone’s faults find a sophisticated justification through the extensive interpretation of their rights. Thus, faulty people feels somehow justified and confident that it will always be found a way to redirect the fault to ‘someone else’s responsibility’ (normally, the always-to-be-blamed State). With good peace of concepts such as ‘social responsibilities’ and ‘social cohesion’.
The trend that sees States and states-entities always responsible for everything and liable for anything bad happens around us (or, worse, to us) is not to be shared whenever is tied to or produces a diffused low-sense of individual responsibilities. Even in the best reading, such theory is not sufficient to lead to a decent outcome: to be an honest tax-payer doesn’t release you from taking any further action to keep in good health - and even improve - the society in which you live.
Such lowering of the individual responsibilities is also a consequence of the negative interaction happened - and still on the way - between the individualism typical of the urban-American society (where, on the other hand, you could see a strong sense of the nation in its entirety - at least until some years ago) and the as-much-typical tendency of European societies - endorsed by the judicial courts at their highest level - to compress the list of individual and social burdens while reading those that survive more as kind of ‘complex rights’ rather than what they simply are: burdens.

Connected to this, the two sentences of the European Court of Human Rights have ruled that no matter the prove of danger is reached towards a person plainly qualified as terrorist - by the courts of two different countries plus the same Court of Human Rights - there is no way to drive out the soil of the endangered country such individual if he succeed to construe the doubt that, when back in his country of origin, he may be subjected to torture.
Since the concept of torture, for the same mechanism above mentioned, has been expanded in the time to unthinkable boundaries (not far from including slapping), it is quite obvious that decisions such as those two of the European Court of Human Rights might harm entire pieces of legislation of many countries that have accepted its jurisdiction.
Decision such as those should be firmly opposed. Besides wonderful rhetorical constructions, a terrorist doesn’t usually move in a country to find better food and shelter, in the try to have a decent restart of his life. A terrorist camps himself in a country that is the object of its activity or a good connecting point for others terrorists placed somewhere else. In the best hypothesis, he uses the loopholes of our judiciary system in order to set around those parts of his system which are incompatible with ours.
In any case, our systems shall refuse to guarantee protection to those who not only are not interested in integrating their livings with the ones they come to live with, but they join our soil with the only proved purpose to try to harm our systems and hurts its constituents.
Granting to those people protection only means to revert the same principles that perversely brought our systems to accord such an improper extension of their individual rights, to the point to accept the self-disruptive principle ‘better you alive than us harmed’.

Portrait of a paralytic decadence

2008-02-28T06:55:00.000-08:00

Florence-Milan train trip, the 28th of February 2008

Many Italians keep thinking France as something necessarily ‘bigger and more important’ (in what, specifically, is not exactly clear). Thus, they automatically recognize to the neighbouring country a sort of ‘superior role’ out in the world and in Europe. While the first thought may be true under some aspect, the following recognition is - nowadays - a critical mistake based on an unbalanced evaluation between the French history (unarguably one of the most influential in Europe throughout the last millennium or so) and its actual size and place in the world (here, the same as a quite abundant bunch of countries whose clinical geo-political definition is something like ‘regional powers’).
On this track, yesterday I read an article where an Italian journalist, sorting out some still-strong-number of the French now uncertain economy and comparing those to the Italian depressive environment, declared himself ready and steady to suffer of the French version of the ‘decline’ rather than laying into the Italian paralysis.
Allow me to (modestly) disagree with that. The Italian and the French economies are, under a global point of view, quite similar one to the other, and heavily interdependent. It’s not surprising that, from the outside (and beside some specificity), they’re considered basically the same thing*, and they’re very probably tied to lay in the same social, industrial and economical destiny (whatever it might be, anyhow within the EU).
So, to plan to get off the Titanic just to board on the Royal George results to be a quite surprising conjecture, to me at least.

Still, the journalist expressed an opinion to which masses of Italians would immediately associate with. Beside the ‘greener grass of the neighbour’ way of speech… why?
Being the supposedly French ‘bigger size’ off the desk, the way to ‘picture yourself to the world’ still stands clearly. And here, again, Italy and the Italians show to be the nastiest enemy of themselves.

The word France, still today, keeps immediately recalling vaunting concepts like a sumptuous kingdom, a huge colonial empire, Napoleon, Louis XIV, a UN Security Council Permanent Member. Even concepts as nationalism and chauvinism, or protectionism and statism - despite mostly deprecable - still project a sense of power and self imposition unmatched everywhere else. Quite unpleasant, maybe. Still, pretty powerful. Let’s say it: the French are good image creators and keepers. In fact, would you remember that such a proud and glorious country has been shockingly overwhelmed twice by the German troops within thirty years, and once temporarily divided in two pieces? Or that both of its victories in the world wars have been quite Pyrrus-style? Or would you go thinking that if there was a prize for the most idiot emperor ever, that would fall straight into Napoleon the third’s hands? And that, while playing the ‘master of the continent’ role, France has generated, directly or implicitly, more wars in the history of Europe than any other country? Or, in the end, that just a bunch of months ago the capital, the so-hyper-everything Paris, was practically under siege, crushed in suburbs’ riots?
Of course not. That’s where the magic is: France’s ability to focus on its positive and powerful images and to keep projecting these all over the world (quite often, even too much).

The word Italy, instead, has acquired today a strange taste in the mouth of many people. The sense of magnificence of the Roman Empire, the Florentine Renaissance and the Venetian splendour keeps matching with the positive - yet over-abused - concept of ‘creativity’ (i.e. fashion, design, style, etc.). Though, even the other jewels that would naturally follow (as, for instance, everything connected to the high technological development over engines, telecommunication and a variety of hyper-nano-complicated stuff) get sunk in that stereotyped mantra made of ‘pasta-pizza-mandolino’ now spread over the world. From who? From the same Italians, first and most efficiently: at home as abroad, our behaviour too often gives the perfect idea of where such stereotypes might be taken out from. Then, for instance, also from some Hollywood-guy of Italian origin: they’re rich, they’re famous, they’re all male, they think it’s so-fancy to reconnect to their blood because of some great quality Italian man seem to have… down there. No one seems to realize that such mantra muddles up concepts a good part of which are disagreeable enough - mixing sun, vine, good-food and charm to laziness, disorganization, political instability and corruption: the portrait of decadence.
If Italy wasn’t already the house of three powerful criminal organizations (and an interesting crossroads for some others), such decadence would at least acquire a ‘charming taste of ancient’. If one of its biggest cities wasn’t almost completely out of the control of the State and submerged by rubbish - mostly because one of those criminal organizations is based there -, that sense of decadence wouldn’t smell so badly. If, then, that specific city wasn’t the one from where all the words of the mantra come from, such decay wouldn’t be perceived so strongly all over the civilized world.

Every country has its darker side. Italy has it in its noisiest place.
Here we are, with the perfect recipe to be perceived as the portrait of a paralytic-decadence, despite the rest of the country might behave completely differently.

*CIA world factbook.

The constant misunderstanding between the Serbs and the rest of the world

2008-02-22T05:46:00.000-08:00

Milan, the 22nd of February 2008

International politics is not that far from being a boxing match. Among babies. While studying this much overrated subject, practitioners amass degrees and PHDs just to come to the self-evident truth that the world is governed by ‘those who have it bigger’. The big&bossy child simply spoons away the snack from the younger. That's how it works, baby.
For this very reason international politics goes very often everywhere but in the ‘right’ direction. Diplomatic crises quite often appear more like children’s fights than the management of the ‘equilibrium of the world’ (or whatever they like to praise it).

The case for Kosovo and the Serbs does not make an exception to the rule.
The first to be blamed are the same Serbs, of course. The antipathy they have been able to generate all over the world is impressive. Their reputation might not have been that high anytime (because of a critically complex history) but they now officially represent the only case of internationally-prosecuted State in the world, as far as I can tell.
First, Germany and the Vatican (urged by blatantly personal interests), recognized the new Slovenia and Croatia entities in the first 90’, sealing the end of the Yugoslavian-state era over quarrels that perhaps could have been managed differently by the same Slavs. Then, the creation of the fake-state of Bosnia-Herzegovina – decreed elsewhere abroad - swiped out another piece of Serbia (now an autonomous state called ‘Republic of Serbia’ within the Bosnian federation). Then, because of a disastrous leader and a disgraceful political class, they get bombed by NATO. Soon after, they lose control of another piece of their country, the – unlikely to be created – Kosovo province, put under the joint administration of UN and EU. In the end, they’re now forced to accept the total loss of that piece of land instead of the loose control & territorial unity recipe they proposed.

The reasons for the doggedness international institutions keep serving such sour dishes to the Serbian people (enhancing the historical sense of victimization they feel since the Turks domination) is given by a variety of factors. All of those, though, may be driven back to a single element.
Serbs have always had – or, as they say, they have been perceived as if they had – a peculiar sense of territorial possession over the Balkans. The myth of the ‘Greater Serbia’, in various declinations, has been generated and nourished all over the last couple of centuries. This conception got well along the idea of unity of the southern Slavs (that’s what the word Yugoslavia meant) Croatians, Montenegrins and – to a lesser extent – Slovenes shared either. Not that Serbs hadn’t any reason to believe they should be the driving force of the process (and of the system created thereafter). It is true that among the cultures there around (excluding the Magyars, which are a per se case) Serbian can be easily recognized as the 'master' of the region. Tightened between catholic Austria and islamic Turkey, they have been able to develop an impressive array of arts and literature, always devoted to their own Orthodox Church. Beside the fact that Serbians always have been far more numerous than their neighbours, Belgrade is, still nowadays, the only relevant capital of the area. The Serbian language (actually a double-alphabet system, using both Latin and Cyrillic) is the stool on which the neighbours grafted their dialects in the time. It is only apparently superficial to say that the only concrete difference between a Serbian and a Croatian* or a Montenegrin is that the first is orthodox, the others are catholic - still, they're all Christians.

Hence, because of their history, Serbs tend to see themselves as the local godfathers, the historical ‘holders of the keys’ of the region. The more the thing is evident (and mostly true), the more all the others react evidencing the differences (and what of that is not true).
Serbs never actually intended to annihilate the culture, the traditions and the specificities of the other Slavic groups, part of the ex-Yugoslavia. What they needed, as a true psychological need after centuries of being at the frontiers of Europe – in their vision, defending it from the muslims invaders, or at least not allowing them to go further north (most of the time) -, was to see recognized their role of ‘guardians of Europe’ from the rest of the world (or at least from Europe) and, from the Slavic colleagues, their position of master of the region.
such psychological need has always obtained quite cold answers. The total lack of diplomatic skills – quite typical of all the Slavs – turned to show Serbians as arrogant and despotic, unable to manage a state that – all of a sudden – was internationally acknowledged as a ‘multi-ethnic’ state (which Yugoslavia never was: there were all and just Slavs).
Under their perspective, Serbs had a sincerely hard time trying to understand why they got so much international attention when they decided not to respect an internal pact of succession for the presidency of the Yugoslavian federation and then refuse to accept the dissolution of the nation: in the end, Tito was Croatian, and he was on charge for 35 years, why the hell should they not try to force a little the things and recompose the breaking puzzle, even with some military suggestions?

Here we are, with the perfect recipe on how to lose pieces of your country at a very fast pace.
Serbians pay not only the bills they accumulated on their own (effectively undeniable, even if to a lesser extent than generally thought). They pay also for the bills left open by Yugoslavia to the world, before suddenly dying hit by a lightening heart attack. Of course, for the bad news you always need a scapegoat. Since you’re the biggest, here we are, recognizing you, now, the master’s role.
I know, it wasn’t exactly what you meant when aspiring to that recognition.

*Though, right now a young Croatian can’t understand that easily a Serbian. The linguistic ‘diversification process’ enacted by the Croatian governments during the last decade is shocking, in its effort to differentiate what is basically non-differentiable. Still, it’s hard to believe that where you had a single nation with a common language for about 40 million people, now exist a number of city-states all of them claiming to have (and to always have had) their own unique language.

US foreign policy (effective) countersenses

2008-02-20T02:31:00.000-08:00

Florence, the 20th of February 2008

It seems that yesterday Mr. Bush, from Tanzania, managed to say something like 'The US recognizes Kosovo because we think it will be helpful for the stability of the region'. He also quickly added that 'everyone has now to contribute for its development and peace'.

Am I the only one to feel something wrong about this, here?

I still can't exctly realize how Mr. Bush, notwithstanding the international failure that represents worldwide, keeps expressing awkward concepts (from the less probable areas of the world).
It must be that anxiety generated by the realization of the end of his personal era (at least hopefully), well connected to the realization that almost nothing of good has been done in the meanwhile. He probably starts to be conscious of the fact that his mark on history will be - in the best hypothesys - much controversial. That's maybe why, considering the bright present of Mr. Clinton (mostly to be wondered, too), he has probably thought that branding the Balcans with his fingerprints would have been at least a nice cherry on top of the quite revolting cake of his foreign policy.

Of course, the EU has returned - after the Lebanon short bright moment - in his traditional foreign policy apnea. So, there is actually to be wondered wheter is better a creepy foreing policy or a non-existing one. Or, even worse, a dozen of different non-relevant policies, such as those kept along by the single EU states, in their absolute global unrelevance. And yet here we are, with the old princes of Europe united in their will of recognition of the next European fake state, the poor Spain forced in huge conceptual contradiction, Greece, Romania and Cyprus blatantly against as well as blatant is the ignorance of the whole fact by the other 20-or-so EU brothers.

Even now, with the United States at the lowest point possible of their international credibility, the European Union just couldn't decently address a matter that, one way or the other, will have to deal (and pay for) simply because of the next incorporation.
Under this perspective, the EU Balcan's agenda appears to be set by the US, no matter their international weakness and not considering the concrete costs and consequences such fragmentation brings along.
US push to bomb Belgrade, Europe (through NATO) follows. They sustain (without not a real concrete reason) the need of independence for Kosovo, Europe - is still forced to - follow.
The Union, instead, in this moments gets frozen. Spain, trying to escape fears over possible domino-effect in its territory but too tied to the franco-german policy, digged itself into a 'we will follow Bruxelles advice' statement. Now it tastes the sour blend of its inner territorial contradictions, magnified at Union's scale.

Kosovo's recognition, which some may re-arrange as a US diplomatic success, will increasingly became an EU responsibility.
I might be cynical, but the only thing I see are billions of euros in the waste.

Crackling country

2008-02-18T04:07:00.000-08:00

Madrid, the 17th of February 2008

While trying to reach the Barcelona airport, I got a call from a friend from Italy.
At the end, the taxi driver looks at me, skiddish.
The trip to the airport isn't that long, but the quantity of motorized cranes and derricks along the way is somewhat astonishing.
'Ehy, the rhythm of the construction works over here is amazing! It looks like Las Vegas!', I dare to say, with an uncertain Spanish.
Expressing blatant admiration, though, appears not to be the best bid to conquer Catalans' affection.
The taxi driver answers quickly and slightly snobbishly: 'Of course! This is the right way of doing things! Not like your country, where you keep changing government every semester, wasting public money in a couple of elections per year! By the way, what about Prodi? Will you have now that Berlusconi guy, again? He's mafioso, right?'
The slam is tough, and it hurts.

***

The day after, in Madrid, while having hard-party time with (incredibly snobbish) friends of mine, I get slammed again.
One of the girls, in the middle of light-talks amongs Spanish regional quarrels, suddenly pops her eyes on me: 'Hey, and what about your country? Is there any new election going on, right? Will you have that mafioso Berlusconi again?'
The previous experience, the alcohol - and probably the bare nerve - this time can't help me from preventing a hostile answer.

***

I know, my country has lost much of its industrial charm. Of course, some top-class jewels still stand. Even the once bewilderi FIAT has - somehow - managed to rebuilt a sort of decent image. Still, the downward feeling persist.
Our devouring ability to hypercriticize everything has turned out to be a lethal weapon.
We finally succeed into let the world believe that our country is a little misplaced in that big-thing we contributed to found (and heavily keep maintaining) - the European Union.
The idea of a country where the concept of law is too often associated to a confused legislative overflow coming from people with an - at least - arguable concept of the reason of their presence into the Parliament has finally spread to be a common way of speech among European citizens.
Of course, this was also before.
The difference now is that those same critics come from people who just a little time as a decade ago - or so - would have dreamed to live in our country. To be part of our system. We might have been messy and noisy, but still we were one of those few&rich economic giants of the world. Our disorganization and clumpsy juridical system was all due to the 'inimitable creativity' and that fine 'sense of interpretation' (of the rules) given by our cultural history.
Now that other countries join the 'club of the riches' (not so few anymore), heavy disenchantment comes along a sistem were leaders are always the same (wheter they keep the same age appearance or not), a strike follows another and 1/3rd of the country with less than 1/4th of the population simply and inexplicably keep dragging the rest down, notwithstanding a half-cenutury-waterfall of financial aids.
Of course and most importantly, the recent international doubts on us now happily marry with our hyper-destructive criticism and permanent sense of crisis.
Around the 60', our fathers used to describe Italy as an 'economic miracle' - as it was. Critics, then, were the natural stimulation to enhance a system which still had a lot to grow.
Now we got no miracle anymore, so the sense of critic stands there, stoney and lone, digging the grave for a country that seems not to find an alternative to its decline.

Would that be too much to pray for some thinking before spreading all over Europe and the rest of the world such wrong sensation? Where is the joy of shrinking your country down the edge of creepy comparisons (like 'we're worse than Argentina now...')!? Is there any sense in going in the most corrupted country of Europe (yes, as Spain still is) and keep listening to people telling you that your leaders are mafiosi?! Look, I'm definitely not a Berlusconi's supporter but there's no reason diffunding untrue statements: he was inquired and then discharged. That's it. Like - or better - many other leaders all over the world: wanna talk about Spanish Franco who has almost hit the 21st century? Or what about Mitterand? And Chirac? Or the Austrian almost-nazi ex-chancellor Haider? And what about that great President-guy that has freed himself by his alcohol addiction just to fall into a world-crusade mania?
Not criticizing anyone, just showing that everywhere in the world is the same. Rarely the best rule. Perfection is not in human dna (we wouldn't have to constantly evacuate, otherwise).
Though, some populations are definitely louder than others in let people know their cracklings...