Premesso di Soggiorno

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.

Rand Paul in the Corriere

This time I’m not writing to encourage you to vote for an artist. This is for real. Or as real as it gets with opposing the Civil Rights–rejecting, Amero-believing regressive lunacy that will become our state’s cross to bear. Yes. A man only an alien could love…

Kentuckians, get out there and vote. I realize that outside of Louisville and Lexington things don’t look too good, but we have to defeat this fool Rand Paul. Or at least try. The race is not only being closely watched outside of KY, but outside of the US. Here’s an observation from the Corriere — an aside in an article about Joe Miller that caught a bit interest in the country of Berlusconismo.

The headline reads, “Fights, insults, handcuffs, threats. The U.S. and the ‘politics of rage.'”

It is the latest in a series of examples of the “politics of rage”as it’s called by the influential U.S. website Politico.com: the anger of the electorate (or more correctly the extreme frustration according to some polls) that is finding more expression than ever in a bad attitude and is ready to be used in the struggles of both Republican and Democrat politicians, as is clearly visible from the red faces and eyes bulging in clashes performed on television and in relationships with journalists.

Other examples: last Sunday in Kentucky, Republican Rand Paul was so offended when his Democratic opponent accused him of being “a member of a group that insulted Christianity and Christ” that he declared: “Have you lost your sense of decency?” He may refuse to appear at the next televised debate.

Do your part to crash the tea party/teabag the teabaggers/piss in the teapot/your insult of choice here. I for one am filling out my absentee ballot tonight.

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.”

The Artist is Presented

It’s voting season. And this year in the US, it will be important to vote. But that’s not what I’m pushing here. You need to go here and vote for Igor Tosevski for Wooloo’s artist of the month.

The Piano Has Been Drinkin' (Not Him)

When I lived in Macedonia, I met one Igor Tosevski through a series of mutual acquaintances. After long periods in rustic and rural places, going for a coffee or a meal with Igor and his longtime parter, Tanya, was always a breath of life. Conversation was never limited. Their horizons seemed to be continually broadening at a time when mental space in Skopje was continually shrinking. No mean feat, that.

In addition, I got an education in situational art beyond the passing acquaintance I’d had with pompous and effete fops in the US. Sure, guerrilla art has been the provenance of a certain urban class of elites since its inception. But what does it mean to do this in the former Yugoslavia and in Macedonia, especially during the nineties, when it was prudent to keep one’s views to oneself? What does it mean to do this during times of nationalism and small-mindedness? The stakes are much higher than what they might be in Milan or New York.

In 2004, I had the good luck to see Process at a time when the Macedonian government’s inability to regulate or commodifiy any kind of production — much less art production — was making the lives of most people a bureaucratic hell. The use of a rubber stamp to create a giant self-portrait in a room festooned with the actual legal text stipulating that artists must register as ‘traders’ was a biting commentary on the attempts of post-socialist bureaucrats to privatize virtually everything.

In the same year, I had the even better luck to go with Igor on some of his missions to paint occupied Territories at various sites around the country. Macedonia had just narrowly avoided the kind of senseless violence and partition that still plagues places like Kosovo and Bosnia today, so the act of painting arbitrary (or, sometimes not-so-arbitrary) lines in the people’s common spaces, delimiting them for obscure motives, was even more trenchant. The looks on people’s faces ranged from apathy to disgust to — rarely — joy. It was a project that bound the absurd with the deadly serious in an active, physical, even fun way.

Igor’s art is compelling and actually makes one question what is going on in one’s surroundings. It accomplishes that very rare thing of succeeding where so many others have failed miserably. (In that way it reminds me of another artist from the same country that once upon a time, there was.) It is timely; never hectoring, always thoughtful, with a keen eye to the political but not overtly so. It’s good art. That’s uncommon.

And after two and half decades of work he’s finally getting some recognition, so go over to Wooloo and vote for him. With any luck, you may be seeing him somewhere familiar soon.

Of Chetniks and Padanians

Beppe Grillo hilariously sums up the commonalities between Southern Europe’s most toxic nationalist-separatist groups. Wow, takes me back to the early nineties when deeply mistaken writers were comparing Serb separatists to those sane, cozy Northern Italian separatists.

Sorry kids, it’s in Italian — it’s been a long week.

“Football”

FINAL UPDATE: I can’t really say it any better than the Guardian does here.

Belgrade’s Vreme ran this story today. There was a rather choice photo of masked Ivan Bogdanov burning an Albanian flag; it’s since been replaced so I leave you with this video that tells the story even better.

Clearly burning the Albanian flag has everything to do with winning a match against Italy. The message is hardly hidden, though — the t-shirt reads “Northern Chetniks” — which I’d wager refers more to the looting murderers of the 1990s wars than to the WW2-era Royalists. And this Ultra would probably be proud to tell you that, if he weren’t currently in jail in Genoa and pathetically blaming this ugly nationalism on his sick mother. Please.

To all those naive enough to say, “politics aside, what a cool Ultra!”, I say, you are deeply mistaken if you think you can de-politicize this. These “Ultras” hung up signs comparing Kosovo to Palestine, and Bogdanov is a member of a group named after the year that the Serbs lost the Battle of Kosovo — ushering in over 600 years of victimhood that opportunistic leaders in their recent past have used to fuel toxic nationalism that, guess what, led to the first wars on the European continent since the Second World War. If you want to be boneheaded enough to glamorize pointless violence and destruction, and forcing the cancellation of a normal sporting event, be my guest. But please don’t suggest that there is an apolitical dimension to this. There isn’t; suggesting otherwise is an unwelcome parade of ignorance.

Genoa

Why is Genoa always a place for spectacular violence? There is much to be said about the violence of Serbian football fans in Genoa yesterday, but alas, I have to be away from the computer all day today. Mainly what I want to say is that Vuk Jeremic can apologize in the media all he wants, but his irrational policies about Kosovo stoke this kind of gangsterism, and I’ve no doubt — none whatsoever — that this violence and the violence at the gay pride parade were nurtured by politicians. You will hear lots of blame given to gangster overlords like Darko Saric, but the informed reader would do well to keep Jeremic’s clean-cut image, excellent English, and “Western” credentials in mind when trying to understand these extremely non-spontaneous events. It has a stench of the Milosevic years.

Violence at Cinecitta’ Station

"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.

The Importance of Being Serbian

Belgrade’s Gay Pride parade has been an opportunity for the its nationalistic and regressive right-wing youth to rebel against European values for as long as Serbia has been trying to rehabilitate itself after the Milosevic regime, i.e., the last decade. Although the mobs of the right succeeding in actually stopping it last year, this year they didn’t quite get so far, and the parade was successfully run, for the first time. The hooligans put on such a performance that they made the media nonetheless. This should serve as a reminder, as the riots after Kosovo’s independence over two and a half years ago did, that the same elements that fed the gangsteristic nihilism of the Milosevic years are still hard at work.

The implications of these sentiments reach far beyond Belgrade and deep into the region, particularly in Bosnia’s Republika Srpska. There’s more — much more — to be said on this, but for now, let me point you to this excellent piece by Marko Hoare.

Sarpi on Sunday

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.