Second: Berlusconi spoke in Parco Sempione tonight. I’ve been jogging past the set-up (or rather, altering my route so I can manage to have a run through the set-up) for the past week, and I’ve been noting the contrast of the massive police buildup — not only your standard Guardia di Finanza, Carabinieri, Polizia dello …
Monthly Archives: October 2010
Rand Paul
A quick weekend roundup: in my home state, Rand Paul debated Jack Conway, and some coverage — inasmuch as Kentucky has become a major political battleground, is worth reading. I wonder how the legions of Tea Party supporters riding around on scooters will like being told that they have to work longer before drawing some …
A Day in the Life…
Absolutely unrelated to anything else on the blog, this is getting a lot of attention and it deserves it. I won’t try to editorialize on it, but just go read it.
Swiss Intolerance
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 …
Chermany
Bloomberg has a couple of excellent pieces out this week on what’s going on with the French and German economies. The story of how Germany lately managed to rally its growth and drive down its unemployment rate is of particular interest to the Italian observer, in that a lot of the success seems to have …
European Stereotypes Maps
European stereotypes have been entrenched since at least the time of the first Grand Tour. But as organizational tools, maps have the power to change the way one perceives the world. Personally, I’ve found alternate maps fascinated by maps ever since getting a Gall-Peters world map sometime in the eighties. So for a little Saturday …