A state of emergency has been declared, funds are being allocated, and politics has been set aside momentarily in order to respond to the devestating earthquake which hit Abruzzo yesterday. It’s not a time for reflection, as Silvio Berlusconi pointed out in his press conference yesterday brushing aside the suggestions that this earthquake had already […]
The chart-topping political debates in Italy at the moment are the economic crisis, crime and security, federalism, and illegal immigration – ranked in importance according to the particular peccadiloes of each political party. One interesting phenomena, which is tied to each of these issues in one way or another, is the issue of Italian emmigration. […]
Sometimes I wish that, when buying a book in a book store, you were automatically given a complimentary title – that is to say, a book that will help you read the one you’ve just bought, as opposed to the ‘like this? you’ll love that’ recommendation. For example, with Paul Auster’s Man in the Dark, […]
As February draws to a close, and this blog’s ‘to read’ pile of books is increasingly resembling babel, it’s worth taking some consolation – knowing that a too-high percentage of these books will remain, forever, merely glanced at – offered up by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his rightfully acclaimed The Black Swan: The writer Umberto […]
Errol Morris, the documentary-maker whose films include The Fog of War, and Standard Operating Procedure, is a man who is interested in images, and in particular photographs. To mark the end of the Bush administration, at the end of January, Morris invited three photo editors to discuss a selection of images of W. ranging from […]
It was without a doubt a media coup, when Berlusconi announced on Friday that he would be pushing forward a special decree to intervene in the case of Eluana Englaro. And, not just a media coup, for some. The Englaro case been in the media spotlight for months, since a definitive sentence was handed out […]
This monkey has only a passing interest in football, and so found little of interest in the rumours that Brazilian star Kakà was to leave Berlusconi’s AC Milan. Little of interest until browsing the latest from La Voce, the online magazine from some of Italy’s leading economists. The site posted an intriguing article by Tito Boeri […]
As happened in various European cities over the last fortnight, in Italy a number of high-profile protests took place against the Israeli bombardment and invasion of Gaza which to-date has resulted in the death of up to 1,3001 Palestinians. In cities like Rome, Bologna, Milan, and Florence, amongst others, parades took place that included the […]
Raja Shehadeh is a lawyer, a Palestinian activist who has legally contested land seizures. He is also one of the founders of Al Haq, a non-governmental organisation that works to protect human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories. More importantly, for the purposes of this blog, he is a walker and a writer. These two […]
Facebook gets more free publicity as the debate rages around the company’s decision to enforce strict guidlines regarding what can and can’t be shown in breastfeeding photos posted by users to their personal pages. A storm in a prurient teacup, according to many given the other issues cropping up with the popular social network platform, […]
