Conspiracy Theory.
No sooner is there someone
(il Presidente del Consiglio, Silvio Berlusconi) complaining that his defeat in an open competition has been "rigged" by competitive 'players', than another conspiracy is announced with a claim by Italian soccer federation president,
Franco Carraro, to excuse the failure of the Italian football team to get their act together and actually play football well enough to stay in the Euro2004 competition. Yes, maybe I'm being a little
harsh about the team as a whole, as there were several players that actually did play consistently good football. But, and this is a big but, there was a singular lack of team spirit and barely any show of the kind of patriotic spririt which any national team must have if it is to succeed on the sports field. Totti being suspended for spitting was a sad indictment of Italian luck in football - with
players earning more than the majority of Prime Ministers and other world leaders, is it any wonder that they have the ability to
overreach their importance. The fact that footballers are not usually considered to be amongst the
brightest or best educated representatives of their country doesn't seem to get in the way of them expressing their views of the world (often amounting only to a view of their own self-importance) to the world press making themselves look like complete and utter fools into the bargain.
Pazzo? Is that the right word here?
Well, it had to happen, I suppose. Il Presidente del Consiglio, Silvio Berlusconi, has now
claimed that the European Elections, where his party, Forza Italia, scored only 21% of the votes, was rigged. Yes, I'm being serious here - he (il Presidente del Consiglio, Silvio Berlusconi) is claiming that the left-wing political parties in Italy have it "in for me" and he has now claimed that some ballot papers marked in favour of his Forza Italia party were cancelled by officials.
Former left-wing prime minister Massimo D'Alema said Berlusconi's comments were "a desperate gesture by somebody who is in trouble". He added, "If a prime minister reaches this point, the best thing is to leave him alone in his delirium".
Ah well. It's only Burlesquoni...............
What did you do last weekend, then?
I've seen claimed many times by various English visitors that
Milano is a dead city as far as touristic entertainment is concerned. I would like to try and set the record straight here now. Last weekend was a so-called "White Night" weekend. That is when Milano opens itself up with it's shops open and entertainment, music and art of all kinds, available for everyone right through into the wee small hours.
They estimate that half a million people, perhaps more, took to the streets until four or five in the morning for rock, jazz, tango and classical music, exhibitions, poetry readings, film shows, chess and draughts.
Piazza Duomo was off limits to traffic. The pavements of
Via Torino were as crowded as they are usually in the run-up to Christmas. The streets were so busy it was almost impossible to move with young couples, families and groups of friends everywhere enjoying themselves in the city centre. Bars and restaurants were packed. For the occasion, the portico of the church of
Sant'Ambrogio was open to host ten philosophers, who offered their nocturnal musings on the ten commandments. An audience of 350 or more listened attentively as philosopher
Giovanni Reale discussed Plato and the Existence of God. The organisers from the
Teatro Parenti, who were not expecting such a large audience, had to add a hundred extra seats, because even the ten commandments can be fun, it seems.
"The main thing is living, moving and taking part", said 61-year-old Bruno as he waited for more than half an hour in the queue at
Santa Maria delle Grazie, at 3 am, to see the
Last Supper. Just this once, Leonardo da Vinci decided to stay up until four in the morning, to the delight of visiting art lovers. The queue was enormous, but people waited quietly and cheerfully for their turn to experience one of the great delights of the art world. After the Last Supper, what about a stroll to
Porta Ticinese? Or, as 20-somethings Alessia, Vanessa and Manuele suggested, to the Duomo to see short films on the maxiscreen that had shown the European Championship football games earlier in the evening. And after that? On to
San Lorenzo for the "Nostalgia de Milan" concert.
Last year, Rome's White Night was ruined by a power failure, the famous power blackout caused by a fallen tree in Switzerland - apparently. The fear that "Murphey's Law" would strike started with fears about the weather, worries which disappeared after a couple of hours of light drizzle, just as people were thinking about going home and plastic sheeting was being thrown over the tables in Piazza Duomo and the musical instruments in Piazza Santo Stefano, where the Centro Mogol was to hold a concert of music by famous song poets. But the rain relented. After fairly heavy rain during the rehearsals, it stopped and after a very short time, everything had dried leaving the fears of rain as a dim and distant memory. Piazza Duomo was packed, like everywhere else, although the manager of one clothing store in the
Galleria was hoping for bad weather. "We're open until midnight, but in commercial terms, we're hoping for rain, because people will then take shelter in the Galleria".
The plastic-encased front of the Duomo discouraged only the Japanese tourists, who gazed wistfully up at the few spires still visible, cameras in hand, headsets in place, listening to the exhaltations of the Japanese tourist guide. The rock concert on the large stage set up by the RTL broadcasting station attracted entire families from as far afield as Saronno, Bassano, Parma and even Palermo. Fathers even applauded Paolo Meneguzzi, as their daughters waved deliriously and shrieked, "True, that I still love you true. False, that I cheated on you false...". Kids took improbable photographs with their video mobiles, as did the 30-somethings who had travelled from Pavia and Lodi to see the Pooh or Paola and Chiara. After serving as a tango dance floor, Piazza Affari was taken over by outrageously dancing young fans of House or Electronica music until about one in the morning.
But Milan's White Night was more than just a football stadium atmosphere. It's not every day you see the statue of Manzoni in Piazza San Fedele with a couple of pigeons on its head and a crowd sitting at its feet, in the street or on one of the few benches, listening respectfully to roller-coaster saxophone riffs. Nor is it easy to find in Milan a place where dialect singer-songwriter
Aurelio Barzaghi from Vimercate is singing his "Ho vist un pret" ("I saw a priest"). It's provincial - or at best Italian country/folk - stuff, and not at all Big City, self appreciating music. Yet Aldo Beselli, his paunch prominent and showing his dramatically lined features, was singing away, "ma vegn in ment la prima dona biòta..." ("I recall the first naked woman..."), concluding sagely, "El mund a l'è di giuvin, sota a chi toca" ("The world belongs to the young. Who's turn is it next?"). Well, the youngsters were there, sitting on walls, arm in arm, swaying and deliriously happy.
Dialect is back in fashion, and who cares if it's vernacular? Everything goes into this pot, to make a primordial, nostalgia-rich soup. It is no easy matter cramming all this in to a single night - "all this discomfort of choice", as Marta put it, on her way to Palazzo delle Stelline to hear a poetry reading with music.
Another group of young people, each with several ear or eyebrow piercings, proclaimed "every night should be a white night". Seventeen-year-old Fabiana enthused, "Being able to go shopping at midnight is great, isn't it?" Will she stay out until four? "Of course. I might not even go home at all". Her companion Claudio is an IT consultant. He remembers Rome's White Night last September. "Power cut or no power cut, we still had a good time". The evening's schedule for Andrea, beer in hand, is to "get seriously wasted". But Silvia is more cautious, "We're going to Porta Ticinese and we'll stop for a drink at the place that has put most stuff out. Then we'll take a look around"..
All in all, a great weekend, with literally thousands of happy, well behaved people of all ages and social classes, mixing freely and enjoying themselves immensely. The magic of Italy, putting it simply.
based losely on an item in the CORRIERE DELLA SERA
Europe - all together now?
With the
agreements reached in
Brussels last Friday regarding the Constitution (
Italiano o
English), I felt I should just go over some of the issues and try to find some sense in the
discussions and the Constitution itself. The more
extreme flag-waving British have always seen the rest of Europe as a bit of a serpant headed monster - fuelled by centuries of war and argument, perhaps a little reminiscent of the
Japanese soldier rescued from the small island in the Pacific that still believed the war against the USA was happening - after 29-odd years.
It is interesting to see the situation from the perspective of distance - away from the
British press and
television - and also away from the influence of the French press and television. You might gather that my own belief is that Britain and France are equal in their tendancies toward xenophobia - but
France has learned how to have it's own voice heard across Europe far better than the British have. There can be very little doubt that it is France that has campaigned for a Federal Europe - dragging a still guilt-ridden Germany with it - although with a far smaller voice than France has, despite having a population 50% larger. With the growth of the EU, admitting a further 10 Member States to the alliance of Countries that make up the EU, there has been a shift of power away from France and toward a more balanced position. The downside of this movement is, of course, the fact that the whole political movement of Europe will now be substantially slowed down from the vision of Europe that has become the cornerstone of French thinking.
The great tragedy now is that
British thinking has been subverted and led into believing the mistruths of the
politically inept glory-seekers of the
likes of Kilroy-Silk because of the disasterous involvement of the UK in the US led war of attrition and aggression against the Middle East countries that either directly oppose the Israeli State or the US ownership and control of oil resourses. Of course, these are a relatively small number of people that, like political groups are demonstarting in Britain at the moment, are able to control and direct the beliefs of the general population of their countries by means of propoganda and calls for religious "duty".
Well, what of the EU in al this now? With all of the argument over Federalism, have we actually "lost the plot" of the EU? It is certainly true that there is surprisingly little interest taken in the EU in Britain these days - if there ever has been any taken since
Heath managed to negotiate entry into the then EEC, despite the best efforts of the
French government to prevent British entry. The situation in Britain isn't singular though. Several other Member States have similar views and feelings that they have stiffled publically declaring because of their own localised political issues. So, we are guilty of having abdicated our own responsibilities in Europe just for the sake of a quiet life. We have certainly been quiet though. It is rare that anyone feels any kind of comitment or involvement in the very many problems that the EU has generated for itself. Problems mainly surrounding accountling and accountability. Problems that should have been dealt with promptly - if even accepting they should have even been allowed to develop and grow in the first place. With our (and othe MS's) lack of interest in the whole process of the EU, the process has been allowed to develop in the best self-serving interests of those with the self-seeking ambition to milk it for all that it's worth - and it's worth an awful lot!
We have to ask ourselves whether this situation is one that we can continue to simply feel observers of - or should we take it on the chin and admit our own mistakes in order to prevent the mistakes continuing - which would surely lead to the ultimate failure of the grand "European Experiment".
So long as there are people with the raw, self-seeking ambition that Kilroy-Silk has demonstrated he has in
abundance (ironic) over the years - or, in France,
Le Pen - or any of the other
Fascist politicians that are always going to exist in our faltering democracies, there will be a movement to
destroy the foundations of a European alliance of countries. Who wants a Europe when they can have the ultimate power in their own backyard - without the responsibility for their actions that would be the case if their country were to remain in the Europe as in the original visions of Europe - not the
Federalised vision of Germany and France. Perhaps a Federal Europe will be possibly - in the future - but there are just too many problems that need addressing before anything Federal can be included in the short-term discussions of the EU - despite there being individual politicians that would dearly love to see themselves as the first President of a Federal Europe, I've no doubt.
