As Italy goes into total shutdown for August, I have so much work at the day job that it’s literally made me sick for the past three weeks, but spending more than four hours on the phone with lawyers every day should do that to anyone. Ironically, I have been working on a series of …
Continue reading “Provoking the Unprovocative: Reactions to Norway”
Apropos of the histrionic tone towards immigration that Italy’s runoff elections took recently, it’s interesting to take a look at how the issue was approached in Britain 43 years ago by Enoch Powell, the conservative firebrand best remembered for his “rivers of blood” speech. James Walston has a good bit about this up in one …
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 …
Continue reading “Osama, Mladic, Berlusconi: rough winds do shake”
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 …
Journalist-cum-politican Magdi Cristiano Allam loves Italy, he tells us. The Egyptian-born Italian, who made a publicized conversion to Catholicism, seems quick to absorb Italian values — if rampant, no-holds-barred race baiting is an Italian value. Going far beyond provocative and into offensive, his images of Muslims praying in Milan’s piazza Duomo, Chinese rioting against shop …
Human Rights Watch released a report on the state of racism and xenophobia in Italy yesterday. The results are not cheerful reading. I wrote about this two years ago for the American, and it’s not heartening to see that things have been in a continued downward spiral. As usual, the Italian press reacts with typical …
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 …