Category Archives: the italian left

Amazon.it Brought to Heel by Levi Law

Hon. Levi

While trying to research publication information on the Italian guidebook that profiled my home state, a visit to Amazon.it, which just opened this year, revealed the following warning:

Dear Customer,

It now seems certain that by September 1, a law on the price of books in Italian will come into effect. The main article states: “It shall be allowed that, on the sale of books to the end consumer, by whatever means or method, including mail order, even if such is brought about by electronic commerce, will have no discount to exceed 15 percent of the cover price.”  In compliance with this law, we will continue to offer great prices on our selection of millions of titles in foreign languages. Soon we will offer you the opportunity to choose from a catalog of hundreds of thousands of used books.

Please be assured that you will continue to find very low prices on Music , DVDs and Blu-ray ,Video Games , Electronics , Computers , Gardening and Garden , Home and Kitchen , shoes and bags , watches and many other categories in the future.

Thank you for your trust in Amazon and we reaffirm our commitment to continue to offer not only competitive prices and free shipping, but also the best buying experience.

The team at Amazon.it

PS Till August 31, we will be offering one last opportunity to purchase up your favorite books at prices never before offered. See, for the next few weeks, more than 235,000 books in Italian that we’re offering at a discount of at least 40% cover price.

The law in question is the Levi Law, named after the 52-year-old Democratic Party senator who also introduced a law to gag bloggers in 2007 (the “Levi-Prodi” law), which hasn’t passed yet. (Prodi, darling of the Anglo press for his liberalist views, gave his name to law by virtue of being Prime Minister when it was introduced.) According to Corriere della Sera, over 1000 people signed a petition against the law and sent the petition to Italian President Napolitano.

Back home, where Wal-Mart rules the roost, I miss my neighborhood book and music vendors. There is an argument for small stores and the specialization that they provide. Transactions can transcend mere consumerism and can be a learning experience and create community. Anyone who’s ever had a favorite book or record store knows this feeling. (I can cite Hawley-Cooke and ear X-tacy in Louisville and Normal’s in Baltimore as contributing heartily to my current ethos and worldview.) Italy’s small stores, when they provide this experience, are to be valued and appreciated. But at a time when Italy’s economy continues to stagnate, for the 40th-odd quarter in a row, with low growth that is the fault of too many small businesses and low international investment, this doesn’t seem like a particularly savvy move.

For whatever reason, Hon. Levi seems particularly harshly opposed to the internet as a means of facilitating communication and commerce in Italy. That he is a typical figure of the Italian left should help explain why Berlusconi has held reign for most of the past decade and a half.

But, Italy’s parliament’s slowness this time may be to the market’s advantage. As the iPhone and various tablets take over e-reading, the law may not have much effect.  Amazon has already signed an agreement with Mondadori to distribute ebooks, and Edigita, a consortium that includes RCS and Feltrinelli, will distribute 1000,000 books from 30 different publishing houses.

I wonder what Tim Parks, who spoke eloquently about the rising costs of publishing to the Foreign Press Association in Milan, might have to say about this.

**UPDATE**

The Washington Post reports that even in a weak economy, there still is a niche for small, independent booksellers:

The small, independently owned bookstore is staging a modest rebirth in the midst of a bone-killing economy and the exponential growth of online retailers and e-books.

I wish someone would tell Italian lawmakers that you can actually have Amazon and good, small bookstores too.

**

Update #2:

I don’t have a lot of sympathy for the closing of mega-stores like Borders. I’ll never forget being at the flagship Barnes & Noble store in Baltimore‘s Inner Harbor shopping district, watching a clerk tell a customer over and over again that Invisible Man was in the science fiction section. The customer stood his ground and said, “no, not H.G. Wells’ The Invisible Man — Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.” Assured by his computer monitor, the clerk told the customer that that book didn’t exist.  I’m sure that up in Washington Heights, Ellison did a series of half-gainers in his grave. And you shouldn’t have to guess the races of the characters in this story.

Osama, Mladic, Berlusconi: rough winds do shake

Riffing on the Northern League's fear of a "zingaropoli" or "Gypsyville," this mock poster advises those who don't want a Kebabville to vote on June 1-2. Polls closed May 30.

May ended up being a very bad month for the intolerant: first Osama bin Laden, then Ratko Mladic, and now Silvio Berlusconi, whose coalition was dealt a serious blow in run-off mayoral elections all over Italy this past week. Of course, Berlusconi’s crimes of philandering and corruption are much less grave than terrorism and mass murder, but the effect he’s had on democracy in a country struggling with economic stagnation has not been healthy for western values.

The net effect of these three incredible events has been to clog Premesso’s news-gathering apparatus with an overload, so apologies for the lack of updates.

The campaign in Milan reached histrionic levels of fear and xenophobia, most of it coming directly from the premiere’s own party. The tactic backfired, and John Hooper, writing in the Guardian, quoted Professor James Walston of the American University of Rome, who made an excellent point mirroring my own in the case of Magdi Allam a few weeks ago:

Watson said he feared Berlusconi’s tactics could have a lasting impact on interracial and interfaith relations in Italy. “This type of language has been used by the prime minister, not some neo-fascist maniac on the fringes,” he said. “It will be difficult to bring Italian political language back to acceptable European levels.”

Seeing this tactic lose out was refreshing, and often funny to boot. (Read more of Walston’s excellent analysis, included a piece from which the above quote was taken, on his blog, or watch at interview with him shortly before the eight minute-mark here.)  Young Italians may not be taking to the piazze the way their Spanish compatriots are, but they are taking to web and producing hilarious results. Web-savvy Milanesi hilariously parodied the brutish xenophobia online; check out pages on Facebook encouraging people to vote for the mayor today (June 2), a national holiday celebrating the birth of the first republic, or supporting a fictional Muslim district of Milan called Sucate.

To come: photos from the streets.

Magdi Allam’s Politics of Fear

Italia extra ecclesiam est

Some readers have criticized my use of the word “nutjob” to describe Magdi Allam. That is admittedly an imprecise description of a journalist-turned-demagogue whose views are nativist at best and racist at worst. Like Oriana Fallaci before him, Allam has a deep and abiding fear of Muslims in Europe. Unlike Fallaci, Allam was born in Egypt.

Allam made a reputation writing for the mainstream Italian press in support of multiculturalism, the positive effects of immigration, and against the clash of civilization, but had a rather radical change of heart in late 2002.  Since his baptism by none other than the pope himself in 2008, he has acquired a fervid fear of Europe’s Islamizication that now dominates the pieces he writes for Berlusconi-owned il Giornale now.

Here are some recent headlines of articles written by Allam:  “the duty to break the Islamic siege.” “Let’s rebel against Europe to avoid the invasion.” “The scandal of the minaret in Milan.” “Allam yells ‘never again’ to convince Milan.” A commenter on the last article writes that “there is no shame in Islamic prayer.  It is an act of war; a claim on territory.”

It is a shame that a cosmopolitan writer of such insight now resorts to the kind of ugly race-baiting that garners support from the most virulent and provincial supporters of an ethnically homogenous Italy.

As he says in “Let’s Rebel Against Europe,” Allam has given himself the noble struggle of protecting Judeo-Christian values in Italy. That Christian Europe finds itself in an identity crisis thanks to low churchgoing and low birth rates I do not dispute. That the Catholic Church can use its influence for the good – as the Pope did yesterday in Venice, speaking of compassion of refugees and immigrants I do not dispute either.

But when Italy’s right to display crucifixes in classrooms was upheld using some supremely contorted legal reasoning, the fact that it was an Italian and a Fin that brought the case to court was overlooked by the Italian press. Equating all Italians with Catholicism and integration with religious indoctrination is regressive identity politics. Allam happily practices this.

Allam’s posters offer no proof that he makes a distinction between legal and illegal immigrants.  Showing different-looking faces and habits with NEVER AGAIN emblazoned above them feeds but one instinct: fear, a powerful driver in Italian political life. Once sown, what strange fruit does such fear yield?   Read about it in the papers, or in Human Rights Watch’s report that I wrote about when it came out: Africans beaten with bars, Indians set on fire while sleeping, Roma driven out by mobs, mafia exploitation of Africans in Rosarno, further ghettoization and political irrelevance.

Immigration presents massive problems in Italy that are different to the problems in the US, UK or even France.  Italy’s late entry into the colonial game, rapid rise to wealth and a tradition of xenophobia based on local rivalries all present extreme problems for newcomers.  As a 2008 Brookings paper pointed out, though, low growth, lower birth rates and the lack of willingness of Italians to do low-skill jobs, however, means that immigrants are not only necessary but the only bright spot in an economy that stagnates year after year. Strife all along Italy’s borders, from the Mahgreb to the ex-Yugoslavia, for the past two decades means they are inevitable.

Italy’s immigrants are struggling to find a voice as they come of age, many of them raising children who are passing to adulthood now. But other than a handful of newspapers in the bigger cities and a good website, there is little unity or political voice, and nothing like the Southern Poverty Law Center or Anti-Defamation League in the US or Anti-Racist Action in the UK, in part because immigrants have not ‘made it’ yet.  Suspicion of people with different colors and accents runs deep.

The opportunistic and the cynical gladly tap these fears for their own narrow self-interest, and I fail to see how monitoring images that appeal to this cynicism is buonismo. A better example of buonismo would be to dismiss criticism of Allam based on his earlier writings in praise of immigration, multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism.  It is a shame that Allam followed in the great tradition of Italian politicians and leaders before him in choosing to pursue his own narrow self-interest that bound him to Berlusconi rather than to found what could have been Italy’s first multi-cultural or pro-immigrant party; a sort of anti-Lega proving that immigrants could successfully integrate.  But perhaps such cynicism is part of full integration.

There are good arguments to be made for preserving Italy’s cultural heritage and for stopping the flow of dangerous, cheap, or illegally made goods. Demagoguery that sustains the politics of fear is not the way to do it. I will give Allam the benefit of the doubt that perhaps the “Department of Identity, Citizenship, Integration and Development Solidarity” that he says he would found might help matters.  American citizens do have to submit to a short 10 question test before they can put their hands on the flag and take a short oath.  But such ceremonies, like baptisms, are largely symbolic. True integration is cultural and economic, based in tolerance and understanding and not bureaucracy.  The test of adherence to a symbolic creed is in the actions it produces.  In the case of Magdi, his actions speak far louder than his words or his images.

Hat-tip to Eleonora Bianchini of Il Fatto Quotidiano and author of The Book the Northern League Would Never Let You Read for also writing on the folly of Allam’s rigid bids for assimilation via conversion this week.

Italy and Refugees

Luca Turi: Albanians on the ship Vlora fleeing armed conflict in the Balkans

As Italy struggles to accept massive flows of refugees from the Arab Spring, one hopes that the G7 country has learned something in last 20 years.  As Berlusconi’s channel report that the refugees are complaining about the quality of food and as leghista Roberto Maroni makes doom-laden statements about a biblical exodus, I urge contemporary Italians to look back to the events of early August 1991, when mass looting, rioting, and total loss of civil society led Albanians to flee their country — which was, like Libya, a former Italian colony.

By way of trying to get Italians to look beyond their own bell-tower in these days in which the country’s biggest trade partner has become the focus of international news,  I quote award-winning Italian journalist Enzo Biagi from the Corriere della Sera of 12 August 1991 (quoted in Paul Ginsborg’s indispensable Italy and its Discontents).  Substitute “Libyans” for “Albanians” to try and get a picture of today.

The dream of the Albanians has dissolved, but so too has that of the Italians. The fifth industrial power in the world has not been capable, in three days, of distributing ten thousand cups of coffee… Those plastic sacks of water thrown from above to the dehydrated immigrants, those sandwiches scattered by the solders into the scrambling mob — it was like being at the zoo.

As Fyodor Dostoyevsky said, “the degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering the prisons.”  Consider the refugee from a war-torn place as a prisoner of circumstance, and let us hope that the degree of civilization that Italy offers its non-citizens is as high as what it promises its own.

As Sylvia Poggioli reports from Lampedusa:

The people here are angry and they suspect the government wants to exploit the crisis for electoral aims. U.N. officials have criticized the government for being extremely slow in moving the migrants away from this tiny island to bigger and better equipped facilities on the mainland.

Now, keep in mind that the coalition, the ruling coalition, includes the powerful Northern League, which is virulently anti-immigrant. The interior minister, Roberto Maroni, is a member of the Northern League and he’s been warning for weeks of what he calls a biblical exodus from North Africa.

Now, the foreign minister [Frattini] went to Tunis yesterday to try to negotiate with the new authorities there, ways to monitor more carefully the Tunisian coast to prevent the exodus. And Italy went so far as to propose a payment of up to $2,500 to each Tunisian who voluntarily returns home. But the Northern League leader [Umberto Bossi] blasted the idea, saying why should we pay them? We should just pick them up and send them back.

Read and listen to the whole interview here.

Bossi and his similar-indignant followers — “paying immigrants?!  But the state doesn’t pay us hardworking Italians!  They’re treating immigrants better than their own people!” reeks of a selfish insularity that isn’t hard to imagine in the land where one needs not look beyond one’s own family home, or town steeple at best — one that should be brought into sharp relief by the disturbing images of Iman al-Obeidi‘s silencing and forced evacuation  from the Rixos Hotel yesterday.

There are more compelling anti-war arguments out there that take diminishing state resources into account; here is Bob Herbert’s American perspective.

That the two countries have different interests regionally goes without saying.  But what Italy and her elites — different to France and Britain, for example — seem to have a hard time realizing is that the degree of involvement that the country has in the region and in Libya specifically means that the country cannot continue to idly sit by.  The lamentable reaction to the many (non-Libyans) coming ashore in Lampedusa reflects this idleness.

Some have said that Eni is essentially the foreign policy arm of the Italian government.  Be that as it may, it would be heartening to see the government doing more than simply throwing its hands up into the air, occupied — as usual — with the naval-gazing exploits of a philandering prime minister.

150 Years of Unity?

And the rockets' red glare?

Italy’s political situation, overshadowed lately by events in Middle East, is grim.  Berlusconi’s coalition totters.  Fini’s breakaway group seems waiting for the right moment.  Indeed this fall March was bandied about as the right time for a vote.  More power has flowed to Lega Nord’s Bossi, whose ministers voted again making the 17th a holiday, and Berlusconi even showed up tot he vote with a handkerchief in green — breakaway Lega’s color.

As the case was in WW2 and the anni di piombo, the north is again the battleground for Italy’s future.  Lega parliamentarians are in the middle of passing aggressive decentralization reforms that could be completed as early as May.  If so, Berlusconi will lose ground as Bossi’s secessionists take Italy back to a past of campanilismo and freedom from taxation.

With typical Italian flair for a big show, Turin is prepped for an unlikely show of Italian nationalism.  Italian’s lukewarm sentiments towards their nation are legendary.  The political crisis going on for the better part of a year highlights this, especially when a member of the ruling coalitions regularly insists that unification is not worth celebrating.  It leads one to ask, what’s all the fuss about?

Friday AM Roundup

What’s great about Friday morning?  Having the Economist placed at your feet.  And even though this is a blog, sometimes it takes having the paper placed in your hands to do a good scan.

Tying together all the threads

Premesso’s not-quite week in review, drawn from the weekly of record:

1. On February 15, La Padania interviewed Pier Luigi Bersani, PD secretary.  (Shown elsewhere on this blog with his sleeves rolled up.)

Salient quote: Va anche bene che il governo rimanga nell’ambito del centrodestra. “It’s also all right if the government stays center-right.”

Is el Senatur sharpening the knife?

English language coverage.

2. As the holes in the immigration walls get harder to plug, shifting from Ceuta and Melilla to Lampedusa to the Greece-Turkey land border, Greece talks of suspending the Dublin Convention for asylum seekers.  The Economist’s Charlemagne comes out with the following sound idea: “A painful compromise might be tried: if Greece wants to suspend Dublin II, it should accept a temporary suspension of Schengen and the return of border controls.”  Me likey.

3. The Oscars: “this year’s awards are less relevant than ever.”  More need not be said, except that Hollywood need to keep looking to that export market.

4.  In Lexington, Obama’s handling of Egypt gets a look.  Much howling and gnashing of teeth from John Bolton, Niall Ferguson and Michael Scheuer, among others.  But maybe No-Drama Obama was the Decider?

Obama is said to have been more certain in private that Mr Mubarak’s jig was up than America’s public pronouncements (especially those of Hillary Clinton, his sometimes behind-message secretary of state) let on. He flatly rejected the Israelis’ analysis that the Egyptian president could hang on and that America should do everything to help him. Mr Obama’s conversation with Mr Mubarak on the evening of February 1st is said to have been the toughest between an American president and an ally since Ronald Reagan’s scolding of Menachem Begin during Israel’s bombing of Beirut in August 1982.

5. In Schumpter, the uneasy art-business axis is examined.  Damien Hirst is one shrewd businessman.

Damien Hirst was even more audacious. He not only realised that nouveau-riche collectors would pay extraordinary sums for dead cows and jewel-encrusted skulls. He upturned the art world by selling his work directly through Sotheby’s, an auction house. Whatever they think of his work, businesspeople cannot help admiring a man who parted art-lovers from £70.5m ($126.5m) on the day that Lehman Brothers collapsed.

And following in his footsteps in Venice, perhaps the Zero Group?  Stay tuned.

Benigni

I’m not going to even pretend that this will be easily comprehenisble to those without a command of both what’s going with Berlusconi these days and the Italian language, although the Corriere‘s English language edition — serviceable but nothing compared to examples like Germany’s Der Spiegel — can elucidate here.

Benigni once again proves he’s one of Italy’s top satirists, taking the PM down on a variety of levels.  If it just seems silly, then at least skip ahead to 3.23 where he starts dancing around.

Weekly digest: more Berlusca, the seriousness of ‘bunga-bunga’, more rain, and more Republicans

Goodbye Ruby Tuesday

It’s been awhile and no updates. Yet, in the US we’ve had the midterms, which happened pretty much as predicted, and here in Italy Berlusconi again dominates the headlines with another sex scandal. At this point I’m so fatigued by his scandals that I’m withholding comment until I figure out just how much of a survivor he is. Needless to say it’s hard for me to imagine a gulf of power any greater than that between the Prime Minister of a G7 nation and an undocumented 17-year old immigrant. It remaines whether Italians will let this distract them from the many economic and domestic crises that threaten the bel paese or whether this will galvanize them into action. Of course my weariness is probably not atypical.  American writers often assume that the next scandal will be the last straw —  wouldn’t it be at home? — but only a few seem to understand the lack of clear alternatives and the cynicism that has permeated Italian politics for the last twenty years.  British writers, however, often do.  The Telegraph has all you really need to know to understand the events of the last week.   And if reading an Anglo-Saxon male writing about the Italian politics seems odd to you, then the Guardian weighs in as well with the powerful voice of Maria Laura Rodotà of the Corriere.

As a side note, I’m thrilled to hear that the unctuous Lele Mora is under investigation.  No one who has seen the scenes in Videocracy in which Mora, puffy and dressed all in white, in an all-white room in an all-white house, celebrates Mussolini with a fascist cellphone ringtone and introduces his young musclebound brainless tronisti proteges, would disagree.

Of course, as a longtime Italian-observing friend of mine quipped, if Berlusca had sprung for the quick release of a Moroccan man from jail, then his popularity might really flag. But the PM is hasty to admit that hey, at least he didn’t do that.  His exhortation that loving “pretty girls [is] better than being gay!” got the headlines and got people out to protest as well.  And produced a spew of plays on words: “better gay than Berlusconi,” “better gay than fake daddy” (playing on the nickname that the previous sex scandalizer Noemi had for the PM).

On the upside for happenings meneghine, I was pleased to see on a recent walk down via Manzoni that La Scala is doing Lulu this season. Now how can I get to it?

And in happenings Venete… wear your rainboots, avoid back roads, and keep your livestock on high ground.  Rural areas experienced terrible flooding this week, not as far south as Rovigo, but around Padova and Vincenza.  Bertolaso, seeming to be in both Naples and the Veneto at the same time, is on the scene.

If it had been in Italy…

But it wasn't; it was in Chile. Grazie dio.

A student passed me this joke on the Chilean mine disaster, which also plays on a lot of other recent Italian news (Sarah Scazzi, Giancarlo Tulliani‘s house, the Naples trash crisis, the electoral crisis).  Mainly it’s funny, if you get it all.  Deep Italian current events, knowledge, sure, but enjoy:

If it had happened in an Italian mine, things would have gone like this.

Day 1: everyone’s together in an effort to save the miners. Live TV 24/7, Bertolaso on the scene.

Day 2: on Bruno Vespa’s show, a model of the mine, with Barbara Palombelli, Belen and Lele Mora co-hosting.

Day 3:  at the first signs of difficulty, the hunt for guilty and responsible parties begins.

BERLUSCONI: It’s the communists’ fault!

DI PIETRO: It’s because of conflicts of interest!

BERSANI: Uh… what happened?

BOSSI: they’re all hicks; leave them there!

CAPEZZONE: It’s not a tragedy, is a great opportunity, and deserving of this government and this prime minister!

FINI: My brother-in-law has nothing to do with this.

Day 4: TOTTI: I’ll dedicate a goal to the miners.

Day 5: THE POPE: Let us pray for zee miners who are in deez day wery close to the devil!

Day 6: With ratings falling, Chi l’ha Visto (Italy’s version of Unsolved Mysteries) does an episode.  Hostess Barbara D’Urso interviews the children of the miners: “Tell me, do you miss your daddy?”

Day 7-Day 30: All attempts fail.  Bertolaso is named worldwide head of civil protection. After a month, the miners get out by digging with their hands.

A year later, the 33 miners, fired long before,  are prosecuted for damage to the mine site.

Original, albeit slightly different, here.

Quick Roundup

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.”