Category Archives: immigration

america, electoral crisis, eu, il cav, immigration, italy, the italian right, tunisia

The Chains are Broken, the Knives are Sharpened, the Glock is Photographed

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Morning roundup:

Interesting times in Tunisia.  Is it the Arab’s world Gdansk or is that too much to hope for?  We’ll see.  But it’s something.

I was heartened to see that Yglesias also excused himself from blogging extensively on Tunisia for much the same reason that I did: ignorance.  But he goes a bit further and discusses the incentive for high growth in the country,including a quote from Tyler Cowen as well.

On this side of the Mediterranean, the judiciary is coming out against Berlusconi with knives sharpened, talking about trying him as a sex offender.  I agree with Rodotà writing in the Observer back in November that it’s really tiresome how the man seems to dominate the headlines.  There’s just no escape, even when actual revolutions are happening in the next country over.  Annalis Piras, in London for L’Espresso, astutely points out that attempts to defeat Berlusconi legally just make him stronger during elections — which probably will get called early this year.  How to get out of this Chinese finger trap?

Up in Austria, Mr. Glock’s past tribulations seem like the sort of violent betrayal worthy of a Bernhard novel.  Across the waters in the US, our gun-obsessed culture futiley tries to understand madness, criminality and legislation by zooming in on the weapon itself.   I’m not sure why we have this misprision.  There are many reasons but the most overarching could have to do with David Reisman’s assertion that Americans tend to locate things outside themselves, which Margaret Mead also noticed.  While I dig around JSTOR for the original, here’s Todd Gitlin in his introduction to the 2001 edition of the Lonely Crowd:

Mead herself pointed to a passage noting that other-directed conformism predisposed Americans to project power centers outside the self — a reason the paranoid streak in American life loomed so large, and perhaps also a reason Americans were excessively afraid that the Russians would take them over.

What if we just substitute “immigrants” or “socialists” for Russians?  Does that make it clearer, and take some of the blame away from a pugnacious octogenarian Austrian engineer?  I’d hope so.  The Times piece shamefully ignores much of what is true about human society and economics of supply and demand.  Chekhov’s rule may be true in fiction but less so in real life: just because the gun is there, it doesn’t have to be fired.

Balkans, Bossi, electoral crisis, fini, il cav, immigration, italy, kosovo, lega nord, serbia, the italian right, Wikileaks

More Zungu Zungu, less Bunga Bunga

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This site isn’t meant to break news. But there’s been a near-perfect storm of events — so much excellent newsworthy material on Italy, the Balkans and international relations in general, and not nearly enough time to bang out a coherent thought with me being swamped with both typical and atypical end-of-year responsibilities. Some points: Berlusconi’s survival may well lead Italy into a speculative attack on the order of 1976’s run on the lira, the WSJ has a better handle on Lega Nord than the NYT, Thaci might actually be extremely bad for Kosovo, and Wikileaks will change a lot of things. More germane to my task, blogs like Aaron Bady’s show how good analysis can get one noticed.

With an eye towards the skies, I leave you with this video from the brilliant Taiwanese animators NMA. Merry merry. (Although with what’s going on in London and Paris, it seems that the weather is far greater cause for concern than security.)

america, human rights, immigration, music, Via Sarpi

Thanksgiving Day post

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You may be thinking of Ben Franklin as you dig into your turkey.  Recall — as a graffito artist in my neighborhood apparently has — that the founding father also noted, as many a revolutionary did, that “they that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”  And so witnessing the colossal flop of the anti-TSA “no-fly day” (and noticing also TSA at least playing nice for the press), I leave you with this somewhat revolutionary message from dance musician M.I.A.  (Is it over the top?  You might think so.  More than anything else it reminded me of the Dr. Seuss story the Sneetches.)

M.I.A, Born Free from ROMAIN-GAVRAS on Vimeo.

america, Bossi, fini, il cav, immigration, lega nord, maroni, the italian left, the italian right, the right in europe

Quick Roundup

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ENEL is getting pretty interesting.  Check out their Green Power.  Back when in 2008 I was impressed by their solar generation, tracked by the minute, at their headquarters near Largo Cairoli in Milan.

As was predicted in the Italian press years ago — and in these pages a few weeks back when people were naive enough to think that Fini could bring down the PM — Bossi’s Lega Nord stands to win big from the continued political incoherency. Hit the north?

Hilary in that place where maybe she was shot at, once… not terribly impressive.  But good words on the hate and hooliganism, probably by Tim Judah, I’m guessing.

Yes, these are all from one source.  But one ignores that source at a very deep peril, although it can be mocked humorously.

And last but not least, here’s a fine one from Gotham’s rag on rising income inequality, the reality of which we really all have to confront.  It’s something my Italian students complain about a lot, but the numbers show that Europe has less to worry about than the US in this regard.  As Leonardo DiCaprio mock-quotes Hawthorn in The Departed, “Families are always rising or falling in America.”

immigration, romania

Violence at Cinecitta’ Station

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"What if it was your mother? Your wife? Your sister?"

Nasty violence at Cinecitta’ station at the end of Rome’s Line A metro yesterday, in full daylight: after an argument in the line over whose turn it was, a 20-year old Roman struck a 32-year old Romanian nurse in the face. She went down and fractured her skull; he walked off and was later arrested. The security camera video up on the Corriere‘s website shows every detail, from the woman giving the man a push first to him calmly picking up his — ticket? — change? — off the ground, and then the extremely slow reaction time of the crowd. The man already had charges brought against him; for what the paper doesn’t say. I can’t but help thinking that national origin played a much larger role in this than age or gender. Would have he done the same to a 32-year old Italian? American? How much attention would this have gotten if it were Romanian-on-Romanian violence? One wonders.

Several years ago a Forza Nuova poster tried to stoke primitive fears with a provocative poster, intimating that the hordes from the east would be coming in to rape Italian women soon.  As we see, no nation necessarily has a premium on violence against women.

UPDATE: Life “hanging by a thread,” says Corriere.

Chinatown, Chinese, immigration, Via Sarpi

Sarpi on Sunday

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Capitalism in a sack

This is just a first impression.  And first impressions tend to mislead.  But a Sunday stroll on via Sarpi finds an amazing bustle of activity.  Fashionable, well-dressed people shop for shoes and crowd into grocery stores, arms full of fresh meat and vegetables.  Every shop is open.  A gaze into some shows that, beyond the storefront where wares are displayed, that there are many more rooms deep inside, extending all the way back into a courtyard.  Men rush into these courtyards with handtrucks stacked with heavy plastic bags packed with merchandise.  Window shopping aside, this is, of course, more or less how the neighborhood is  every weeknight.  Consumption and production thrive.

The point to take away is that every one of these shops is Chinese.  Every single Italian shop is closed, which is totally normal for a Sunday, but the contrast is sharper given the amazing activity of the Chinese.  And I should point out that although the Italian shops are closed, plenty of Italian shoppers are around, looking at the shoes, cautiously examining vegetables at the market, getting take-out pasta or roast chicken from the deli that also sells barbecue ribs and fried squid.

The first article of the Italian constitution is that it is a “democratic republic, founded on work.”  The presence of a via Sarpi shows what kind of future Italy is being created today.  Those who ignore it will not be able to do so for much longer.

Chinatown, Chinese, immigration, italy

Immigration is Not Zero-Sum

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Elisabetta Burba had a story in this week’s Panorama on Italy’s Chinese population.  It’s really not bad writing in that it lists many success stories and is generally favorable.  It includes details I didn’t know, such as a quote from one expat Chinese saying that “the Filipinos will work under a boss, but we all want to have our own business, be our own boss” — something any red-blooded Italian should take heart with.  But before I get too giddy handing out the accolades, I should say that the print version includes maps of five different city streets and store-by-store diagrams indicating which businesses are foreign-owned.  This is an issue, especially when coupled with making note that the particular Chinese who come to Italy are called “China’s Jews.” Perhaps not intentional, but tasteless at best, as were the cover (see graphic) and at least part of the title (“We Were Evicted — We’ll Win” — why must someone lose, Chinese or Italian?).   Hard to find online, but here’s a terribly-formatted version. In Italian.

Be sure to click on the above link to read about Burba’s role in the run-up to the war in Iraq.

eu, human rights, immigration, lega nord, romania, the right in europe

Swiss Intolerance

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If you thought Lega Nord images stereotyping Southern Italians and immigrants were bad, check out this new poster against the opening of Swiss borders to Italian (and other European – presumably Romanian) workers. Given that hordes of Milanese commute to Ticino and vice versa and that, uh, Italian is one of Switzerland’s official languages, this point to paint the Italian as ‘other’ seems particularly desperate. Corriere has good coverage in English, although the article suffers a bit from some self-pity. One wonders if anti-immigration proponents reading this — particularly the bit at the end about American perceptions of Italians a century ago — will note the parallels.

But is the ship really sinking?
Bossi, immigration, lega nord, maroni

Bossi Youth

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MTV.it has an interesting series of videos up on the youngest members of the Lega Nord. I saw in the Corriere, mainly because I’d never imagine that MTV in the US would be capable of anything less than totally vapid. Have a look; although the one I watched (Filippo) is filmed in Novara province, the terrain reminded me a lot of the Polesine.

eu, immigration, italy, lega nord, the italian right, the right in europe

Svezia, inferno e paradiso

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One expects political upheaval in Italy. After all, the country has had as many governments as Boliva since World War Two, and my primer on Italian politics had a photo of parliamentarians fist-fighting on the cover.

From the back cover, "Fisticuffs in the Italian Parliament"

But — Sweden? As Stephen Castle wrote in yesterday’s New York Times, Swedish politics are usually “worthy, high-minded and often utterly predictable, Swedish politics has rarely offered much by way of excitement” — pretty much the exact opposite of Italy’s opportunistic and treacherous circus, in other words. It’s certainly new to me — I’d have expected to hear more about the Netherlands, France or, if you want to look at the Scandinavians, Denmark — but inasmuch as it traces all the main themes common to the Italian debate — the future of the welfare state, the decline of industrial society, and rising immigration — I’ll be following it closely.