WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM....WHO?

House arrest, in Italy, is not an unusual sentence in cases where the defendant is not deemed dangerous, has health problems or if the person has nearly completed a prison term. Its conditions, contrary to popular belief abroad, are strict, though it is not difficult to imagine that the time would pass more pleasantly if it were "served"  in a luxurious mansion. 

A Milan court  has, since Thursday, been considering whether Silvio Berlusconi should serve the remainder of his sentence in this way or do community service - a far cry, it would seem, from the case of a 54-year-old man from Ragusa who has decided that prison is preferable to eight months at home with his wife. After just 25 days of house arrest, the man has begged police to take him back to prison and "escaped" from home so that they have to do so. 

But we all have our difficulties and house arrest, for Mr Berlusconi, would severely limit his networking possibilities. As it is unlikely that he will be allowed to do community service as patron of an as yet unbuilt centre for the disabled, I understand he would like to help the elderly. Hey, Silvio, that includes me and I could sure do with a little help! 

This bit of nonsense from The Guardian - which I enjoyed immensely -  has made its way into every Italian newspaper I have read, both local and national, and has been reported with amusement here, though also with some bemusement at how the British may spend their time.

WHAT'S IN A WORD?

It's been a depressing couple of weeks for women d'un certain âge, what with the Gallic love rat story and then having Kate Moss pictures pop up everywhere - enough, if you are not armed with a sizeable current account, to make you want to give up, really. After all, even the irrepressible Silvio is ensconced in a Lake Garda beauty salon as I write and one can't help wondering if he'll emerge looking like Joan Rivers.

We lesser mortals must do what we can and when a girl has to buy a bra she has to buy a bra, so it was onward and upward [hopefully] for me as I headed for the bra sale yesterday. I had regarded this as a chore and certainly did not expect the experience to cheer me up, as in the UK it's only all right to be a C cup or above if you are Nigella. Here, though, it's a different matter and I was quite pleased when the assistant called my bosom abbondante and proceeded to bring me some very pretty specimens.

Abbondante is so much better than "big"!

A TRAVESTY OF LANGUAGE

There are no prizes for guessing the top story in every Italian newspaper and in other media here today - it is, of course, the final and definitive expulsion of Mr Berlusconi from the Senate. "Didn't that happen at the beginning of October?" you may ask and the answer is that it did, sort of, but that was a vote by a Senate committee. The process required another vote by the full Senate in order to be confirmed. What you have to understand about Italian politics is that nothing is straightforward, no one ever resigns and everything is as complicated as possible and designed to take the maximum amount of time. If you can comprehend these three principles, you are on the way to grasping the essence.

Tonight I am not going to repeat a tale which has been well reported all over the world but I do want to focus on some of the language being used here in reaction to it. Prior to the vote yesterday - for he can have had no doubt as to its outcome - the former Premier declared the day to be one of  "mourning for democracy". Following the decision, some Senators changed into black outfits and many of Mr Berlusconi's supporters donned black armbands.

Then words like "tragedy" were heard and among these voices was that of Miss Francesca Pascale, Mr Berlusconi's 28-year-old fiancée.  So upset is she at the spurning of her partner that she has asked to see Pope Francis in order to explain the "tragedy" to him. [The Pontiff's reaction has not, as yet, been reported.] Now, whilst it is disappointing to lose one's job at any age, no matter whose fault it is, Silvio Berlusconi is hardly your average pensioner trying to make a few extra pence to pay his winter fuel bills. He is one of the world's richest men, is well past the age of retirement and remains leader of his Forza Italia party. Even allowing for Italian exaggeration, what befell him yesterday cannot be described as a tragedy.

Miss Pascale has not, to my knowledge, expressed indignation or sorrow at events such as the 3rd October migration tragedy in the Mediterranean or last week's disaster in Sardinia and one wonders whether these people have lived unusually charmed lives. As for mourning, Silvio, I'll save that for deep personal loss.

INSIDE LOOKING OUT

When a twitter acquaintance asked me how people were reacting here to the Berlusconi verdict, I was publicly noncommittal but explained to her privately that I was being careful what I said as things might turn nasty. Following the verdict, you see, the well-meaning President Napolitano had worked everybody up by calling for calm and then Senator Sandro Bondi, who is the National Coordinator of Mr Berlusconi's Pdl Party, started talking about the risk of "civil war", a suggestion which I was relieved to see being treated with derision under the hashtag #guerracivile on twitter. President Napolitano called Mr Bondi's words "irresponsible".

For those of you who have not followed the proceedings or are still puzzled by the tax evasion verdict, Italy's highest appeal court upheld the conviction but Mr Berlusconi will only have to serve one year of a four-year prison sentence and gets a choice regarding whether to serve it under house arrest or on a kind of probation which may involve his participating in community service. The question of whether the former Premier will be barred from public office is to be considered by a lower appeal court yet again and this procedure will begin only in October. Mr Berlusconi remains free until the 15th of that month while he considers his position. All this appears quite potty to most people outside Italy and the world's media have already expressed their incredulity. To focus on these admittedly incomprehensible deliberations, however, is to miss the point, which is that, in a country which, although a democracy, still sets great store by who a person is or whom he knows and where money talks in ways long abandoned by Europe's remaining monarchies, it is momentous that the convictìon was upheld at all.

Meanwhile, here, a game of "We'll bring down your government if you don't reform the judiciary!" began and everyone thought this was only to be expected and a perfectly normal development. What astonished me about Mr Bondi's reaction was that he found it unacceptable that the leader of "Italy's most important party" should have his passport rescinded and be barred from public office but never seemed to find it unacceptable that this same leader's behaviour had led to serious allegations being made and had damaged Italy's image abroad.

At a pro-Berlusconi demonstration in Rome yesterday Mr Berlusconi again asserted his innocence but said that the government must continue with the economic reforms which his coalition has agreed to and that he did not want his party to be labelled "irresponsible". Thus there is a little calm - for now.

Personally I believe that the good sense of most Italians will prevail and as for the guerra civile, I wouldn't worry too much - we won't be having it before Ferragosto.

THE MORNING AFTER

If ever a country needed a morning-after pill, it was Italy this morning. As Italians went to bed last night - those who did bother to turn in, that is - there was no clear general election result and things weren't any better when they woke up this morning.  As I write, the number of seats allotted to each group in both parliamentary chambers is still changing and this is everybody's nightmare scenario here; an outcome so close that no one will be capable of governing, or at least, not for long.

You can see the results for yourself on the Ministero dell'Interno site and at the moment the centre-left coalition led by Pier Luigi Bersani has 340 seats in the Camera dei Deputati or lower chamber, Beppe Grillo's anti-corruption M5S [Five-Star Movement] has 108, Mr Berlusconi's centre-right coalition has 124 seats and Mario Monti's Scelta Civica coalition just 45 seats.  This makes Beppe Grillo's party - but not group because it is not part of one - the most popular in Italy.  In the Senate, the upper chamber, where seats are allocated according to regional voting, Mr Berlusconi's coalition has 116 seats, Mr Bersani's 113, Mr Grillo's party 54 and Mr Monti's group 18.  [I repeat - the situation is constantly changing and both the ANSA news agency and Corriere della Sera are now giving the figures as 119 for Mr Bersani and 117 for Mr Berlusconi in the Senate.]

In the Senate elections, Sicily went with the Berlusconi coalition, with Beppe Grillo's party coming a close second and Mr Bersani's coalition third.  In the Camera, however, Sicily favoured the Grillo Movement, with  the Berlusconi coalition coming second and the Bersani group third [with almost 50% less votes than the Berlusconi group]. The difference in this region's results for the two chambers may be explained by the fact that you have to be over 25 years of age to vote for the Senate.

In this election young people have had their say and what they have said is that they are fed up with corruption and do not want more of the same. They want jobs and hope and in my opinion it is the lack of hope offered by the undoubtedly sincere Mr Monti that has lost him the vote. You cannot tell people who were not even old enough to vote when the crisis began that, because of a situation which could not possibly have been their fault, they have to accept ever-increasing austerity measures with no end in sight and no dream to follow.  

As for Mr Berlusconi, as usual it is difficult to find anyone who will admit to having voted for him and some people will tell you that they are voting not for him, but for his coalition [which is technically true]. "I wouldn't vote for him but as a celebrity he's fantastic", remarked a friend of mine after one of Mr Berlusconi's recent  television interviews.  "That's just the trouble", I replied. "He's not a celebrity but your former Prime Minister" ["and", I might have added had the conversation taken place tonight, "possibly a future one."] I'm willing to bet that this friend did vote for Mr Berlusconi! Why?  Because "everybody's Silvio" represents Italians as some would like to see themselves, because they admire his business audacity and because, many would say, "Who else is there?"

"Grillo", we might answer. The Left's criticisms of Mr Grillo have been levelled at the fact that he and his party members do not have governmental experience and certainly, this makes many Italians doubt his ability to really carry through.  But who, among those elected previously, has done so?  Mr Grillo is so suspicious of Italy's political establishment and institutions that at one point on Sunday he was urging voters to "lick their pencils" in order to make it harder for an unscrupulous vote-counter to erase their mark.  If I might venture a personal opinion here I would like to tell Beppe that, much as I have always admired him, his scant attention to hygiene in this instance would not give me confidence in a member of his party as Minister of Health. But I always was a fussy soul and anyway, do not have the right to vote in Italian national elections [only local and EU ones].

As the night wears on, desperate attempts are being made to form a coalition capable of governing but I am not hopeful: this is a country in which getting to the point is not regarded as a virtue and anyone asking a question at a public meeting or conference embeds it in the middle of so much flowery rhetoric that often the addressee has no idea what is being asked; writers do not use paragraphs, a contract is treated much like a used bus ticket and an appointment is a vague arrangement which probably means, "I'll call you if I remember to think about it."  What we should be wondering at, then, is not that the political system doesn't work but that anything, ever, works at all. When it does, it works beautifully and stuns the rest of the world and I wish this could be the case with this election result.

As I close my post, there is still no clear winner but I fear that there is a clear loser; its name is Italy.

AFTERWORD

Well, Barack, of all the honours you've received today I'm sure you'll be glad to know that your book made our timely display at the school. 

Sorry, Mitt, but I don't have one of yours. That may be just as well because your remark six days ago about not wanting the USA to "end up like Italy" went down about as well here as your pre-Olympics gaffe in London, though it did have the unexpected effect of uniting politicians from two warring parties [Italy's Pd and Pdl] in indignation.  Minister Gianfranco Polillo, meanwhile, shrugged his shoulders as only an Italian can, concluding that you already have economic problems similar to those of Italy but lack the compensations of the Italian quality of life.

Everyone I've spoken to here seems pleased at the outcome in the US and Mr Monti sent amicable and  restrained congratulations to President Obama today, in marked contrast to those of his predecessor Mr Berlusconi four years ago when the gaffeur par excellence emphasised the then President-elect's "suntan".  Mr Monti added that President Obama is "nice" to work with.

I don't know about you, dear reader, but I feel worn out even though I haven't fought a campaign or cast a vote! Perhaps this is because just two weeks ago we had our own very exciting Sicilian regional elections, in which Beppe Grillo's new M5S party won 47% of the vote. So hold on to your hat, Barack, because we may have real change coming over here!

THE LION, THE PRINCE AND THE TUNNEL

"Bisogna adunque essere golpe a conoscere e lacci, e lione a sbigottire e lupi."

"It is nescessary, therefore, to be a fox to discover the snares and a lion to terrify the wolves."

- Niccolò Machiavelli:  Il Principe

It's been a great week for British humour - unless, that is, you happen to be a Windsor - and it's set me thinking about the differences between Italian and British humour.

Unless you've been living on Mars, you'll know all about the Prince Harry pictures and there have been some headlines and puns worthy of the Bard himself in the British press.  Many Brits have taken Harry to their hearts, regarding him as a bit of a "Jack the lad" who can at least make us laugh and a lot of the menfolk envy him.  Then there is the view that this is a young man who is a serving soldier and if he wants to let off steam in this way on a private holiday, so what?  I can agree with this up to a point but would add that it is not his soldier's salary that allows the young prince to stay in hotel rooms costing £5,000 per night.  You could counter by arguing that he comes from a wealthy family so must have been using his own money and a response to that would depend on your attitude to inherited wealth and privilege. Either way, the prince's security detail are paid for by the British taxpayer so it's not a clear-cut matter of a "private" holiday, as it might have been had the matter involved some vacuous celebrity.  

My Italian friends were surprised when I mentioned the security aspects of the affair as this had not occurred to them and some genuinely thought that the British press [until the "Sun" published the pictures] were "afraid" of the Queen. "Not the Queen but a possible new privacy law", said I and a discussion ensued in which the prince's capers were compared with those of Mr Berlusconi. The Italians felt that the Berlusconi scandals were worse as he held political office whilst I argued that the difference was that Italians could, if they wished, have voted Mr Berlusconi out [I stopped myself from adding, "But you didn't"] whereas it would take more than the franchise to oust the Windsors. 

Italians do get the joke, though and have been giggling along with the rest of us at the facebook pictures of naked soldiers covering up their private parts in ever more ingenious ways as they salute one of their own.  A great deal of Italian humour, you see, is pretty ribald and it is considered quite in order to ridicule a man's virility. On the Saturday and Sunday night chat show Che tempo che fa, genial host Fabio Fazio exchanges banter with comic Luciana Littizetto, who also treats us to a genuinely funny and ironic commentary on the week's news.  Then there will be a little innuendo before la Littizetto tells us that "The only hard thing about Fabio is his knee" or some other such detail which the Italian audience finds hilarious.

I actually rather like la Littizetto, who in February will make a pleasant change from the Belen and Canalis type of glamour girl when she co-presents the Sanremo Song Festival with Fabio Fazio.  That is to say, I like her until the moment when she curls up, legs askew, on Fabio's desk and starts sticking her chewing gum under it.  This is mainly because I have an inborn antipathy to naturally thin women who can curl up on a desk, especially when they also have naturally thin legs.  La Littizetto, when she is not being small and cute, can look just like a neighbour with whom you would compare prices at the supermarket - indeed she plays one in a TV advertisement - and that is part of her charm.  She can act, too.

Che tempo che fa, 19.2.12 - Luciana Littizetto's take on the news [including Sanremo and Belen Rodriguez]

Italians, like the British, have the ability to be self-deprecating and laugh at themselves. [How else could they have put up with some of their awful politicians for so long?]  They can also be extremely ironic and the example that comes to mind is that of Mariastella Gelmini, Minister of Education in the last Berlusconi government.  Not a popular figure with many teachers and students because of swathing cuts she had made in expenditure on education,  in September last year the unfortunate Minister made a gaffe for which she will probably be remembered long after her policies are forgotten: referring to the Abruzzo Gran Sasso Laboratory, where neutrinos that travel at the speed of light were recorded, she said that Italy had contributed to the building of a tunnel between the Gran Sasso and CERN in Switzerland.  Any such tunnel would have had to be 750 km long and of course it didn't exist. The twitter feed filled up with tunnel jokes and the queries of worried parents who no longer felt that they could entrust the education of their precious offspring to one as uninformed as la Gelmini.

The Italian press loved the "Gelmini Tunnel" and it loved the Harry story this week  but you know its journalists are perplexed by the British when they start referring to us as "i sudditi di Sua Maestà"  ["Her Majesty's subjects"] and they were certainly perplexed by this week's lion story!  If you are not from Britain, you may not know that campers near Clacton-on-Sea in Essex reported seeing a lion on the loose on Sunday night and people in the area were advised to stay indoors.  As armed police and helicopters swarmed to the area, did my compatriots go into lockdown mode?  No, they carried on much as usual and continued to go "down the pub".  I couldn't help smiling as the landlady of the nearest pub was interviewed, saying she was "a bit worried" but that her customers were still coming.  That's the kind of reaction that makes you strangely proud to be British!  On this occasion , too, twitter came into its own:  "Essex girl" and her companion "Essex man" are unflattering stereotypes in popular culture [better that you read about them here] so when, within minutes of the "lion" news breaking, a twitter account in the name of "Essex Lion" was opened, the tweeting party went on all night.  This puzzled a lot of my Italian twitter friends and I reflected that, had a lion been on the prowl here, everybody would have barricaded themselves in [elegantly, with good food on the stove and packs of cards to pass the time, it must be said].  As the night wore on and Sunday merged into Monday I think someone must have called Moody's because the poor old lion was downgraded, first to a "big dog", then to a "wildcat" and finally, yesterday, to a domestic cat called "Teddy Bear".  But the British are nothing if not stubborn, as many would-be invaders have found out,  and as I write  this on Wednesday night, there are still folk in Essex who are convinced they saw a lion despite the fact that the police called off their search yesterday morning.

In the Italian press we are "i sudditi di Sua Maestà" again.

UN GRANDE SPETTACOLO

Image:  Wikipedia

In Italy we have been witnessing a "great show" all week and its finale was played out in front of the eyes of the world yesterday, when Silvio Berlusconi at last resigned.  

Rumours of the Premier's political demise had  begun to circulate on Monday on twitter, as Italy struggled to save itself fiscally by satisfying the demands of its eurozone neighbours.  But by the afternoon the Premier had denied the rumours and people all over Italy were trying to work out how to get the cork back into a bottle of champagne.

By Tuesday, however, the scenario had changed again and it was announced that the Premier would resign, but only after full approval of the "Stability Budget" by Parliament - a process which, under normal circumstances, could have taken up to a month.

This time, though, the President and the people, aware of the gravity of the country's situation and of its terrible image abroad, swung into action:  The Budget was rushed through Parliament and by yesterday afternoon everyone was waiting to watch Mr Berlusconi's last journey as Premier - to the Quirinale to hand in his resignation to President Giorgio Napolitano.

The Premier's appointment with the President was, we were told, for 8.30 pm but, this being Italy, no one really expected events to run to time.  Nevertheless, as the minutes ticked by and it became known that Mr Berlusconi was holding a Party meeting, everyone began to wonder if he was about to pull a last rabbit out of the hat - and in fact he did, laying down certain conditions for the Pdl's [People of Freedom] participation in and support of a new, transitional government.  The most reported of these conditions is that Mario Monti, the academic and former EU Commissioner who has become Prime Minister while I have been writing this post, will not, as an unelected Premier, be a candidate when elections are eventually held.

At last, nearly an hour late, Mr Berlusconi was driven to the Quirinale.  He made it known that he was upset and "embittered" by the jeering crowds, who were singing the partisan song, "Bella Ciao" and chanting "Galera!" ["Prison!"] and  "Buffone!"  Ah, Silvio, thus have the mighty ever fallen.  

The announcement that the Premier had, indeed, tendered his resignation came at 10 pm, the twitter feeds went crazy and the spumante was flowing in the streets of Rome and several other cities.  Sicily is traditionally conservative and all remained quiet here in Modica, although the town has a left-wing Mayor in office [by the skin of his teeth]. 

And that brings me to the question which is always asked abroad about Mr Berlusconi:  How did this tycoon, so often ridiculed in the rest of the world, stay in power for so long?  Part of the answer is, of course, that the country has had no effective Opposition, but the real answer, I believe, lies in the personality of the Cavaliere himself: Many of his supporters would claim, with justification, that he did not amass his millions by being stupid and that he has received little credit for his business achievements.  They admire a man who can rise to the top and remain there.  Secondly, as I've written before, Mr Berlusconi appeals to a very Italian instinct - the instinct for joy -  and it is this which may, paradoxically, have toppled him.  

The trouble is that the country's young people, who feel they have no hope, can manifest little joy.  Every day I meet students who tell me that they feel they have no future and that they are ashamed of their country.  And I, as a lover of Italy, have been heartbroken at times, in the past few years, to see the country so derided abroad, largely because of the antics of one man.

That said, I do not think that Mr Berlusconi is all bad:  I am sure that he is very charming and I would rather spend an evening with him than with Nicolas Sarkozy.  My hope for Mr Berlusconi is that he will ditch the airhead models and find the companionship he so obviously needs in a kind, intelligent woman nearer his age.  [But when did men ever learn?!]

Now we are going to have a new, "technocrat" transitional government and what will happen is anyone's guess:  Mr Monti may be able to sort the whole, sorry, economic situation out.  If he needs advice, he will find no shortage of it, with those two self-appointed "headteachers" of the eurozone,  Merkel and Sarkozy, ready to fly to Italy to tell him what to do. Personally, I hope he tells Merkozy to get stuffed as some people, it seems, need to be reminded that Italy is a sovereign state.  As so often happens in hard times, we may see a resurgence of the right;  extreme right-wing parties are already advocating an "Italy for Italians" and the independence-seeking Lega Nord may prove to be more dangerous outside government than within it.  My own country, the UK, panicked by events in Greece and Italy, may even leave the EU, a policy which I believe would be domestically disastrous and which would have serious repercussions for British expatriates here.

Let us hope, however, that all will be well.  I have actually been rather proud of Italy this week, for it was not the bankers who ousted Mr Berlusconi - it was democracy in action.

Finally, for those of you who are going to miss the Cavaliere, don't worry too much:  his new CD of love songs will be out on 22nd November.  But you may prefer to spend your hard - earned cash on earplugs.

GOING POTTY

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What a day Thursday was for those whacky news stories that can only, it seems, happen in Italy.  For those of you who may have missed them, I'll summarise them here:

The first giggle was over the tale of a somewhat optimistic Viterbo [Lazio] police officer who was arrested by his own colleagues for growing no less than 17 cannabis plants in his barracks.  [The carabinieri are military in Italy.]  Maybe he had been relying on a law, passed by the Italian Supreme Court in June, under which we are each allowed to grow one cannabis plant, for personal use, on our own balcony or terrace.  I don't suppose even a barracks has 17 balconies and one has to admit that the unfortunate officer was - well, pushing it.

Basilica di San Salvatore al Monte, Firenze
Image:  Wikimedia Commons

No sooner had I stopped laughing at that than news came through of a group of monks in Florence who, having had two precious Bibles stolen from their Basilica, were praying for the thief to be punished ..... by an attack of diarrhea.  I wonder how long he'll stay on the run?

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More seriously a survey of the five largest EU countries reported yesterday that Italian housewives are the most unhappy in Europe:  the economic downturn has worsened their situation and it is harder than ever for them to find adequate child care - assuming, that is, that they can find employment in the first place. In addition, 95% of Italian men have never so much as emptied a washing machine - we do not know whether they have ever loaded one but the odds are not brilliant - 70% have never used an oven and most do not help at all in the house or with bringing up children.  Half of the women interviewed said they regretted getting married and most, sadly, regretted having had children.  The antics of the Prime Minister, who is deemed to be setting a bad example to a generation of men who hardly need his encouragement,  were the last straw for many of the women.

Ruth Orkin: An American Girl in Italy - 1951

Then, late last night, came a surprising and delightful item of news:  Ninalee Craig,  the American Girl in Italy of the famous and iconic Ruth Orkin photograph at last spoke publically about the circumstances in which the picture was taken and how she felt about it.  It seems I was wrong when I wrote about the photograph here, which just goes to show what can happen when you judge one era from the viewpoint of another, but I am pleased to know that Ninalee was happy on that long-ago day and it was nice to end the evening on a positive note.

LET'S HEAR IT FOR HILLARY!

Every girl knows that there's no therapy like retail therapy and, of all the stores out there, none can beat the shoe shop for the busy woman in need of an instant fix.  So if the woman just happens to be in the Eternal City and has a squad of security men standing by ready to whisk her to the via Condotti the temptation would be hard to resist, right?

Who, then, could blame Hillary Clinton, in Rome on Thursday after experiencing "the most intense 38 minutes of my life" last Monday,  for keeping Silvio Berlusconi waiting while she destressed at Salvatore Ferragamo's place?  I'm sure the Italian Premier understood, shrugged his shoulders and uttered, "Pazienza".  Let's hear it for Hillary!

MIGRATION UPDATE - 4

The migration situation on Lampedusa and along the whole Mediterranean coast of Sicily is changing hourly but I am going to try, here, to sum up the main events of the past ten days.  In doing so I beg your indulgence, reader, for the personal opinion that creeps in now and then - I cannot help it!

Lampedusa has, again, found itself at breaking point as boats from North Africa have continued to arrive and the situation culminated in there being more migrants on the island than inhabitants. As the world's media  reported the inhumane conditions that the migrants encountered there - including what became known as the "hill of shame" near the port, where around 3,000 desperate people were sleeping in the open - few outside Italy spared a thought for the indigenous population who, fearing for their way of life and their tourist industry, were desperately appealing to both the Italian government and the EU for help.  What the Lampedusans did not need, in my opinion, was Mr Bossi of the Lega Nord using a dialect phrase to tell the migrants, in no uncertain terms, to go back where they came from.

No civilised country should allow the sad scenes that we have seen on Lampedusa in recent days but the  Italian authorities, whatever their shortcomings, have the extremely difficult job of trying to identify people who do not want to be identified - as shown when a boat crammed with Egyptians claiming to be Libyan docked at Catania last week - and are, I repeat, being left to handle the crisis  largely on their own.

A tragedy, then, was waiting to happen and happen it did on Wednesday night, when up to eleven migrants, including a one-year-old child, drowned in the Sicilian Channel whilst trying to reach Lampedusa.  Twelve survivors from their wrecked boat were picked up by the Italian Coast Guard from two Egyptian fishing boats which had reportedly saved them.  The Italian Coast Guard is suspicious of the presence of the Egyptian boats in the area, however, and it may be that we have not heard the end of this story yet.

Alongside this tragedy, a story of hope has also emerged this week and it concerns a baby boy called Yeabsera or "Gift from God" who was born on a migrant boat spotted in the Channel on Saturday evening.  Mother, father and child were first transferred to a mobile clinic on Lampedusa and when news of the birth reached some of the women of the island, they brought baby clothes and other gifts for the child, thus proving that humanity and kindness are far from dead on Lampedusa.  The family were later flown to a hospital in Palermo and mother and baby are said to be doing well.

Meanwhile, nearer here, a boat carrying 350 men, 100 women, some of whom are pregnant and 40 children ran aground in the Marina di Modica on Monday night.  The passengers, mostly from Eritrea and Somalia, are being housed in the Cpa [Identification Centre] at Pozzallo.  

Italy, however, is not the hoped-for destination of most of these migrants:  many, especially the Tunisians, wish to reach France, where they have relatives and or connections.  The problem is, of course, that France does not want them.  It is estimated that over 1,000 migrants have now escaped from the village built to house them at Mineo [Catania Province] and some of these, again showing the determination that got them to the shores of Europe in the first place, have managed to get to Northern Italy, only to be turned back at the border town of Ventimiglia.  Four such migrants were found by border police on Wednesday in the boot of a car being driven by a Tunisian with French residency.  They had paid their "friend" €300 for the privilege of risking death by asphyxiation.  Other migrants are said to be risking their lives negotiating the treacherous and now heavily policed Alpine passes.

But every tragedy has its hero and the hero of this one has, for the Lampedusans,  turned out to be Silvio Berlusconi.  The Prime Minister, flying in yesterday, announced that he would clear the island of migrants within 60 hours, ensure publicity for its tourist industry on television, obtain tax cuts for its residents and that, as a gesture of solidarity, he had purchased a €1.5 million villa there.  [He had "seen it on the internet."]  And that was not all, for our supersonic showman kept the best news for the end of his speech:  the Italian government is to nominate Lampedusa for the Nobel Peace Prize.  That won over even the most die-hard of the Prime Minister's detractors on the island and who, in the islanders' position, would not rejoice?  You may well be wondering, as I did, why Mr Berlusconi had not acted earlier but he had an answer for that: he had not, it seems, had a "clear picture" of the situation until he came to see for himself.  Hmm... I cannot help remembering L'Aquila and at least one Sicilian newspaper has dismissed the performance as the "Silvio Show" today, but you have to admit it worked!

Today the Italian government has, with justification in my view, turned on its European neighbours, particularly France, for not helping in this crisis and I have to ask why a group of nations so ready to cooperate over a "no fly zone" - a euphemism for war - cannot cooperate over a humanitarian crisis partially caused by their actions.

ITALY MAGAZINE ROUND-UP - 24

Here is my pick of last week's Italy Magazine articles.

Everyone is talking about the rubbish crisis in Naples but, in the run-up to Christmas, let us not forget a more positive claim to fame that the city has.  Everyone also continues to talk about Mr Berlusconi and you really would think that the Prime Minister's manhood had caused enough trouble;  then this story broke.  If, on the other hand, you are fed up with stories of the airheads who surround him, here is the perfect antidote.

Immigrant workers in Brescia found a unique way of drawing attention to their plight but the day after this story appeared torrential rain forced them down from their crane.  

Tired of politics and protests?  Here you can learn why it will shortly be time for tea in Rome 

With an early genereal election in Italy looking increasingly likely, I wrote about my personal experience of participating in Italian elections for my Patti Chiari column.

Happy reading.

RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL DAUGHTER

Karima Keyek, better known in Italy as "Ruby Rubacuori" ["Ruby, stealer of hearts"] and famous as the girl who sparked the latest Berlusconi scandal,  has expressed a wish to return to her native Sicily.  Although she is being driven around Milan in a red Ferrari and is wearing Saint Laurent, our Ruby hankers for the simple life of Catania where, she says, a girl can enjoy herself dining on a slice of pizza and a beer.

Ruby, it seems, has been offered a job as a belly dancing instructor in a Catania gym and she is not letting the fact that she has never attended a belly dancing class in her life put her off, for she believes that the ability to perform Arabic dance is something that she has inherited from her Moroccan mother.

The Saint Laurent dress is a present from friends, by the way and those friends do not include Mr Berlusconi, insists Ruby petulantly.  We look forward to seeing you enjoying the simple life in it, Ruby.

ITALY MAGAZINE ROUND-UP - 21

Here is my pick of last week's Italy Magazine articles:

It was the week in which we discovered that the Milanese have the most extramarital affairs in Italy and Mr Berlusconi's love life came under the media spotlight once again as the term bunga bunga entered the Italian language.  The passing of Paul the psychic octopus - who was, of course, Italian and really called Paolo - was mourned and if the CEO of Fiat gets his way Italians will soon also be mourning a national icon.  It wasn't all gloom, however, with Christina Hendricks telling us that living in Italy made her both curvier and sexier whilst a young man from Cervia [Emilia-Romagna] was declared the world's best sommelier. 

Here is a Venetian festival that I would love to attend this month.  How about you?

For my Patti Chiari column, I had the pleasure of inteviewing my friend Giusy Asta, a Modican wedding planner with a difference.  Giusy's shop in Modica Bassa is one of my favourite places here.  Take a look at the article to understand why.

Happy reading.

ITALY: AN OUTSIDER'S VIEW OF THE STATE OF THE STATE

In a week when Italy's Premier has made what is being seen as yet another outrageous gaffe and is generally being depicted abroad as a buffoon, I think it is time for me to add my two-centesimi worth to the debate.  For anyone who has not read of the latest scandal, the background is here but to cut a long story short, the Prime Minister of Italy is being accused of inappropriately helping a minor to evade police charges of theft and illegal entry into Italy. Erotic parties are said to have regularly  taken place at Mr Berlusconi's Milan residence and the girl, who denies having had sex with the Premier, says that he gave her money and gifts.  Yesterday Mr Berlusconi shocked progressive Italians and caused indignation around the world when he said that it is better to like beautiful women than to be gay.

The remark, in my opinion, was not a gaffe but a carefully orchestrated appeal to the Berlusconi heartland of sexually conventional Italy.  Everywhere an Italian looks, it seems, there are sex scandals but at least the Prime Minister is attracted to the right gender, goes the logic.   So when smiling Silvio shrugs his shoulders and conveys the message, "Look at me - I'm a regular guy", he reassures middle Italy whilst also appealing to a very Italian instinct - the instinct for joy.  After all, the reasoning continues, even the Premier's detractors would have to admit that the man has worked hard so doesn't he deserve a little fun?  And hey, is there any man out there who wouldn't like to party with pretty girls?

This is not to say that everyone is defending the Premier - far from it, for many Italians are expressing shame at the way in which their country may be perceived abroad.  Many women in Italy, feeling that the Premier's behaviour is degrading to their sex, have been expressing their shame for some time and Mr Berlusconi's estranged wife, Veronica Lario, is a heroine to some.  Personally I am not sure about her status as a heroine, for independent women do not expect men to provide for them nor do they hark back to a career they abandoned upon marriage as a justification for that provision, for who knows how that career would have fared?  If I were to name a heroine of the Berlusconi era, it would be Rosy Bindi, President of the Democratic Party and long the target of some of the Premier's cruellest remarks, which she deals with extremely well and with remarkable restraint.

But if Italians are ashamed of  Mr Berlusconi and are losing faith in  the governing Coalition, whom, then, do they trust?  Not the Opposition, generally seen as weak and not, en masse, the federalist Lega Nord [Northern League, currently part of the Coalition];  possibly Gianfranco Fini, President of the Chamber of Deputies and founder of the parliamentary group Futuro e Libertà per l'Italia.  Mr Fini is perceived as strong and able to stand up to both the Lega Nord and the Premier.

There are brave journalists, too, who defy government attempts to gag the press and, although Mr Berlusconi's media holdings are vast, most Italian newspapers, contrary to popular belief in other countries,  do question the Premier's behaviour.

As an outsider who cares very much about Italy, I would stand with another heroine of mine, Rita Levi-Montalcini and put my faith in the country's young people:  time and time again, and with astonishing equanamity, young Italians put themselves through impossible procedures to obtain jobs that do not, in reality, exist for them; they are politically active and aware in ways that a country like Britain should envy; and they are ready to do their utmost to achieve the peaceful change that is needed.

Italy, despite or perhaps because of everything, is still a proud democracy.  What it is not, however, is a meritocracy and this is the factor that is holding it back.   Only Italians can decide whether this situation can change under this Premier.

SILVIO DOES IT AGAIN

This is an article of mine published in Italy Magazine today.  I am reproducing it in full here because I am outraged and it will be "old news" by the time I do next week's round-up of this week's stories. I would like to ask my sparring partner James and his anti-feminist friends how they can claim that feminism was never necessary when a twenty-first century, western leader can make a remark such as the one described here:
 

BERLUSCONI INSULTS FEMALE POLITICIAN

During a visit to the private Università Telematica Ecampus in Novedrate [Lombardy] yesterday Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi insulted Democratic Party President Rosy Bindi for the umpteenth time. Referring to some female students, who had been invited by email, Mr Berlusconi said,

“Here are some beautiful girls who have graduated with maximum marks and they don’t look like Rosy Bindi”.

Later signora Bindi issued the following statement:

“I congratulate the students who have graduated. As for the Prime Minister’s remarks, I will only note, sadly, that among the many signs that his rule is coming to an end we now have this repeatedly wearing evidence of his vulgarity.”

Last night Mr Berlusconi denied that he had said anything vulgar, adding,

“I said that to enter politics it is not necessary to look like Rosy Bindi. I didn’t say whether it was better to or not. Of course we’d all prefer [women politicians] to look like the Madonna”.

Last year Mr Berlusconi told Rosy Bindi, on live television, that she was “more beautiful than intelligent”, causing nearly 100,000 Italian women to sign a petition declaring that the Premier’s sexism was an insult to both women and democracy.

What would you have replied if you were Rosy Bindi?

SILVIO THE SECOND

I'm nursing a sore throat so will leave the Italian regional elections to sort themselves out tonight.  Meanwhile, I thought you might like this article of mine published in Italy Magazine last week:

A 36-year-old metal worker from Ghana has named his son, born in 2005, after Silvio Berlusconi, Adnkronos reports. Anthony Boahene, who has lived in Italy for eight years, says he is not very political but admires the Prime Minister “as a person” and likes his style. He also says that he understands Mr Berlusconi’s tough line on immigration.

The five-year-old boy was brought from Africa to Modena [Emilia-Romagna] by his father in February and Mr Boahene registered the child’s name as Silvio Berlusconi Boahene as a gesture of gratitude for his own “permission to stay” in Italy.

Little Silvio is proud of his name though his teacher, it seems, is less so, having declared that the child will be known simply as “Silvio” at school. The Prime Minister has no greater fan than his namesake, who not only supports Milan but adores Mr Berlusconi’s electoral campaign broadcasts on TV. He even believes that Silvio the politician is really his grandfather, says his father proudly.

Mr Boahene wants his son to study politics to prepare for his eventual life as President of Ghana or Italy. There’s nothing like confidence in the future!

Would you name a child after a politician?

HOW NOT TO CLONE A CROWD

This is an article of mine which was published in Italy Magazine on Wednesday:

Now, hands up all those readers who are guilty of editing their holiday snaps, for surely we all do it these days? Who does not “improve” their photos a little with a digital editor before pressing the “share” button? “And where’s the harm in that?” you may ask. Well, the trouble is that we are not all the Prime Minister of Italy so our photos are not going to be scrutinised by millions of people, including experts in photography and lighting.

The photos in a book about Mr Berlusconi which went on sale last week have undergone just such close examination and the verdict is that they have been rather clumsily adjusted. The book, entitled Noi amiamo Silvio [We Love Silvio] is, according to its publisher and editor, Alberto Peruzzo, a testimony to Mr Berlusconi’s commitment to his work in the national and international spheres. The Premier is pictured among flag-waving supporters and with other world leaders.

One photograph in particular drew the attention of Vacon Sartirani, a graphic designer from Bergamo, Corriere della Sera reports. Mr Sartirani bought the book out of professional curiosity, having heard much criticism of the editing and graphics. When he turned to the image in question, of Mr Berlusconi with supporters in Milan’s Piazza del Duomo, two things immediately struck him: the first was the caption, which wrongly dates the photo to 2008 when it was actually taken in 1998 and the other was that the crowd has been “cloned”, for if you look carefully you can see exactly the same people in each half of the image. Mr Berlusconi is holding some flowers, which, seen through a magnifying glass, are obviously drawn. Mr Sartirani scanned the photo and sent it to the San Precario blog, whose readers have been having a very jolly time finding other inconsistencies in it.

Mr Sartirani says that in other photos in the book Mr Berlusconi’s features have been lit in a totally different way from those of bystanders. Although this is normal practice with pictures of the rich and famous, here it has been badly done, he adds.

Mr Peruzzo, the editor, shrugs his shoulders in the face of all this criticism and declares himself to be merely a politically neutral friend of Mr Berlusconi. He admits that he showed a draft of the book to the Premier, who suggested some changes, before ordering the print run of 70,000 copies. Mr Peruzzo remains convinced that the book will be a success. So, the moral of the story is: we need to be careful with those Photoshop retouches. We don’t want to end up on the Photoshop disasters site, do we?

Do you retouch your digital photos?
Do you think digital retouching is deception?

Personal note - 5.5.10

As soon as I saw the picture, I realised I had seen it before and I knew where: it is on the dust jacket of Tobias Jones's hugely interesting and entertaining book, The Dark Heart of Italy, published in 2003. You can't see whether the crowd is cloned on the cover but you can see that the flowers are drawn. Moreover, this does prove that the photograph could not have been taken in 2008.

ELUANA'S MIRACLE?

I have just been helping a private student gather information on the Eluana Englaro case and the fact that she had been set this task is an indication, I think, that this heartbreaking yet very political story is not going to drop out of the Italian headlines any time soon. I am aware that the background to the story, and Eluana’s death, have been reported in Britain but for those of you who do not know of it the situation is as follows:

Eluana was left in a persistent vegetative state following a car accident in 1992, when she was 19. After 9 years, her father asked for her feeding tube to be removed so that she could die naturally, a request which was denied by two courts. In July 2008 the Milan Court of Appeal decided that Eluana’s father had the right to have the tube removed. This decision turned very much upon the fact that Eluana had apparently stated that she would not wish to be kept alive in such circumstances. There was an immediate outcry from the political Right and the Catholic Church. The nation was said to be split more or less fifty-fifty over what would be the moral and humane course of action. Then the Italian Parliament took the case to the Cassazione, the Final Court of Appeal, on the grounds that the Milan Court ruling would change existing legislation. The appeal was rejected. In November the High Court stated definitively that Eluana’s father could have the tube removed, again to resounding criticism from the Vatican. Prime Minister Berlusconi then issued a decree which would have forced doctors to continue treatment. However, President Napolitano refused to sign it. Eluana had by then been moved to a private hospital in Udine to have the feeding stopped and there she sadly died, earlier than expected, on February 9th, just as Parliament was debating new legislation based on the Berlusconi decree.

Since then, all sorts of outrageous allegations have been flying around, the Pope has referred to the case indirectly and the country continues to discuss it. This article from the British journal The Economist concludes that the situation shows us two aspects of modern Italy: Berlusconi’s attitude to the judiciary and the considerable power of the Catholic Church.

My own conclusions would be slightly different: Firstly, whatever Berlusconi’s political motives might have been , he is a right-wing Catholic and we must expect him to react as such. Pointing to shortcomings in his private life would only provoke the reaction, “What has that got to do with it?” here. Secondly, although I am not a Catholic – indeed, I am not anything that I can define for you with regard to religion – I do see the Catholic Church as a safeguard in cases like this. Thirdly, the fact that nearly 50% of those polled thought that Eluana should have been allowed to die naturally shows that attitudes are changing, for this would not have been the result even a decade ago. And finally, from my discussions over the past week or so I would say that Italy is very much a country that still believes in miracles. Sometimes they do happen and perhaps, for Eluana, there was one on February 9th.