Spring in Italy
12 Apr 2012 Leave a Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: corruption, Italy
Hunting for New Esthetic
http://www.flickr.com/photos/brucesterling/sets/72157629758514181/
In Englsih,en frnacais
What a strange country, my American friend keeps saying after years of experience here: I can understand the Serbians, I can understand almost anybody in the world now, but not Italians. Why do Italians say things everyone knows they don’t mean? Why do Italians tolerate things they all claim to despise?
It’ s not easy to be Italian, because you just have to know why certain things happen, over and over again throughout history, although nobody wants them or plans them. But also, very importantly: nobody stops them. One of them is corruption.
Many years ago, when I was a girl living in Italy with my parents, my father worked for the Yugoslav import export firm with a prominent site in Milano Italy. One important expense to run his firm, an expense rather hard to demonstrate to his Yugoslav accountants, was the bribes he paid to high ranked officials in the Italian police and government.
For Italians this activity was merely a public secret. More
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Panic in Eurozone
02 Dec 2011 Leave a Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: euro, Italy
While the rest of the world is preparing for a Euro default, in Italy the euro is still thick on the ground and in our pockets and purses.
After the fall of Silvio Berlusconi, with the new technical government in power, a state of bewilderment and stupor has come over the press, the economy and the citizenry. As expected, on a daily basis, old never-resolved scandals, acts of corruption and misdemeanors are surfacing. The thin Berlusconi media-balloon of lies and secrecy no longer holds any water. That’s not to say that light is actively being shed on the dark doings of the former government. Public attention is transfixed by the perils of the European currency and Italy’s huge, unmanageable debt. More
San Salvario, mon amour
01 Dec 2011 Leave a Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: Italy, Turin
stasera a Casa del Quartiere, programma Besciamella, parliamo di San Salvario
Noi gente di San Salvario di Jasmina tesanovic
Noi non viviamo né in Italia né a Torino. Viviamo nel nostro borgo, dove le porte non sono chiuse, ma non sono nemmeno visibili. Voi che varcate la soglia di San Salvario, non vi perderete, ma non ne uscirete mai più. È una condanna magica al borgo, che vi prenderà nel vortice della vita quotidiana che un giorno diventerà storia. Storia di vite piccole, di vite strambe, di vite tragiche e molto felici. Ma pur sempre storie degne di essere raccontate e non dimenticate. Io racconto la mia.
La mia è la storia di una donna che ha perso la patria, che ha perso la madre lingua, che ha perso il patrimonio, che però non ha perso la testa. Sono una donna che è sopravvissuta alle guerre balcaniche raccontando storie.
Anni fa, quando sono venuta la prima volta a San Salvario era maggio e cadeva la neve.
Avevo appena perso mia madre la mia patria la mia lingua il mio patrimonio. Ne ho tratto un libro. Stavo sul terrazzo della casa della mia amica quando qualcosa mi colpi alla testa. Qualcosa di caldo, che strillava e si dibatteva freneticamente. Qualcosa che si era impigliato nei miei capelli sciolti e ricci. La mia amica mi disse: è un pipistrello, che sta lottando per liberarsi. Ho sempre chiamato mia madre “il pipistrello”. More
Bye Bye Bunga Bunga
12 Nov 2011 Leave a Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: Berlusconi, Italy
“I haven’t been so inspired since 1994,” an Italian friend of mine posted on her Facebook page.
Well, I too can remember the year 1994, when I was in Milan, giving a public speech among some so-called intellectuals, soon after Berlusconi was elected. I had come there directly from Serbia, struggling in the thick of the Milosevic reign of terror.
I remember warning my Italian friends, feeling frightened, extremely emotional. I described a ‘soft dictatorship,’ how a small caste of oppressors gets into power legally, because WE vote them in, and then they steal and fake everything that WE, the people, never delegated them to do. And how, finally after waging wars against all the OTHERS in our own name, they finally turn on their ultimate victims and wage their war against US.
How they destroy every aspect of reality that stands in the way of a total exploitation: meaning the destruction, the ruin, of the people, ideas, customs, habits, prosperity, morality, of a nation and its history, of a time and a space. Afterwards, after the dreadful crash, who feels empty and responsible? We, the citizens who voted, we whose states were surrendered to the exploiters and profiteers, we, the participants, we are the ones humiliated in front of our children and the whole world.
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Berlusconi Bye Bye
09 Nov 2011 Leave a Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: Berlusconi, Italy
Is this really the final end of the Berlusconi era, or just another pause for the Cavaliere to catch his breath?
Will he return on a fresh horse as the savior of an ever-crumbling Italy, as he has done repeatedly for the past 20 years? Will my Italian friends finally be able to travel abroad without a miasma of shame, and not be forced to explain to all what a bunga bunga orgy means? Will the numerous foreigners living and working in Italy, legal, clandestine, and semiclandestine, be able to face their children and say: we did the right thing to come here? Will they say: a new day dawns on the peninsula, the specter of crisis, gloom and crime has finally lifted! Work hard for your future!
These are open questions, and frightening questions today in Italy after yesterday’s dramatic countdown, and Berlusconi’s declaration that he will step down only after passing an emergency law on the Italian economic crisis. United Europe and its presses have closely followed the saga of the decadent emperor. They know that it was global economics and not his domestic scandals that pried the scepter from his hands. More
