And now, after the verdict on Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito in the killing of British student Meredith Kercher, the U.S. media is getting its own back against the Italian justice system and, to a degree, against the Italians themselves (here are two eloquentexamples). And, what’s worse, I think they are basically right: the Italian justice is a worldwide embarrassment, but a large number of Italians bear moral responsibility for that. I’m specifically talking of left-wingers and liberals, who for reasons of political calculation have been blindly rallying behind left-wing magistrates whose main purpose was/is to destroy their opponents—right-wingers and moderates, whom they regard as enemies, not just political rivals—rather than to pursue justice.
This attitude has understandably generated a sort of delirium of omnipotence on the part of a number of magistrates. They never fail, they never commit mistakes, they never even exaggerate, they always tell the truth and do not try to deceive people or break the law, and they are always super partes—no matter if they act as political activists and show their deep contempt for one political party or another, in both private and public occasions—this is, in the best case, the arrière pensée which “inspires” the vast majority of the Italian liberals and left-wingers. In the worst case, and not infrequently, they are obviously in bad faith, but the outcome is exactly the same.
Yet now, perhaps, it is time for those people to pay the bill, or to start doing so.
Notes on Perry - “I think Perry is undervalued at this point…” Well, so do I, to be honest. And as a matter of fact (see below)...
GOP Primary News And Notes - “Rick Perry may have had a less than stellar roll out with voters but he’s rolling in the dough.” Yeah, as the old saying goes (and with all due respect), “Don’t count your chickens before they hatch.”
Employment in Italy -
“Italy’s official statistics office ISTAT releases figures on employment and unemployment levels [...]. The figures reveal that there are anomalies concerning unemployment levels in Italy’s south.” Well, it’s actually quite surprising that there are only two anomalies...
Tea Party Activist Gets Help from Morgan Freeman’s Neighbors - Ali Akbar, a Tea Party activist who sent a letter to Morgan Freeman inviting him to a Tea Party told Roger Simon that Freeman’s Mississippi neighbors would attempt to deliver the letter personally. Freeman, as many will recall, accused the Tea Party of racisim... “My evaluation of Akbar,” says Roger Simon, “is that he is quite determined to reach Freeman and get some response from the actor to his invitation.” Bloody hell, it might turn out to be a damn good fight!
Thirty Three Things (v. 55) - Issues and problems such as Holden Caulfield’s immortal question about where the ducks from the Central Park pond go in winter, but not only this. Some examples: Did Americans in 1776 have British accents? What would really happen if you nuked a volcano? Famous Quotes That Were Never Said, The Dead Sea Scrolls Are Online In High-Definition, Unusual Ways to Die Through the Ages, etc.
According to Giuliano Ferrara, editor of the newspaper Il Foglio, there are things foreign correspondents in Italy might want to learn from the Amanda Knox trial about the Italian justice system. By the way, never forget that, apart from what may pertain Silvio Berlusconi’s troubles with it—defending the indefensible is impossible for nearly everyone—this is the same “justice” which has been holding the whole political system in check in this country since about 20 years, and, what is more, amidst much international fanfare and celebration. But read what Giuliano Ferrara has to say about the whole thing.
P.S. You might also want to read what I wrote about one year and a half ago—nothing news under the Italian sun...
So at last the court overturned the homicide convictions of Amanda Knox and her co-defendant Raffaele Sollecito, allowing for their immediate release. I am very happy for them, even though, being far from an expert in judicial matters—in which I am neither well-versed nor, to be honest, particularly interested—I am not the most qualified person to write about this subject. And in fact, were it not for the half-dozen or so American friends of mine, who emailed me asking for an opinion on the Amanda Knox case, I wouldn’t be writing this post (I thought it was better to write a post rather than a half-dozen emails). Be it as it may, my very humble opinion is this: the more I have been reading about the Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito trial, the more I realize that there was no proof of their guilt. That’s why I cannot but agree with Amanda’s lawyer Carlo Dalla Vedova who told the court that his client had been “crucified, impaled in the piazza” for a crime she never committed, and that she had spent more than 1,000 days in prison on the basis of “evidence that cannot stand up to other hypotheses.” Not a good story for the Italian justice system. Yet, now justice seems to have been done. Let’s not forget, however, that what was at stake in Perugia was not only the future of Amanda and Raffaele, but also the reliability of the Italian justice system. And in the latter case there have been no winners, only survivors.
Benedict XVI at the Angelus, in regard to yesterday’s celebration of the Feast of the Guardian Angels:
God is always near and active in human history, and follows us with the unique presence of His angels, who today the Church venerates as the Guardian angels, in other words ministers of God’s concern for every man. From the beginning until death, human life is surrounded by their constant protection.
“ America is the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence; perhaps the only piece of practical politics that is also theoretical politics and also great literature. It enunciates that all men are equal in their claim to justice, that governments exist to give them that justice, and that their authority is for that reason just. It certainly does condemn anarchism, and it does also by inference condemn atheism, since it clearly names the Creator as the ultimate authority from whom these equal rights are derived. Nobody expects a modern political system to proceed logically in the application of such dogmas, and in the matter of God and Government it is naturally God whose claim is taken more lightly. The point is that there is a creed, if not about divine, at least about human things. ”
This famous G.K. Chesterton quote is perhaps even more relevant today than it was when it was written, back in the early Twenties. Is the culture of the United States significantly different than that of Europe? Yes, and that’s why American Exceptionalism is still a closely held value by the American people. Here is how American political sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset—who was the son of Russian Jewish immigrants—put it in his 1996 American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword (by quoting, in turn, Chesterton):
Born out of revolution, the United States is a country organized around an ideology which includes a set of dogmas about the nature of a good society. Americanism, as different people have pointed out, is an "ism" or ideology in the same way that communism or fascism or liberalism are isms. As G. K. Chesterton put it: ‘America is the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence.’ … The nation’s ideology can be described in five words: liberty, egalitarianism, individualism, populism, and laissez-faire. The revolutionary ideology which became the American Creed is liberalism in its eighteenth- and nineteenth-century meanings, as distinct from conservative Toryism, statist communitarianism, mercantilism, and noblesse oblige dominant in monarchical, state-church-formed cultures.
Other countries' senses of themselves are derived from a common history. Winston Churchill once gave vivid evidence to the difference between a national identity rooted in history and one defined by ideology in objecting to a proposal in 1940 to outlaw the anti-war Communist Party. In a speech in the House of Commons, Churchill said that as far as he knew, the Communist Party was composed of Englishmen and he did not fear an Englishman. In Europe, nationality is related to community, and thus one cannot become un-English or un-Swedish. Being an American, however, is an ideological commitment. It is not a matter of birth. Those who reject American values are un-American.
New Fox News Poll - Herman Cain rises to top 3, Newt Gingrich up, Rick Perry down after debate debacle (He lost ten points of his once substantial lead!).
Ron Paul’s Republican problem - On the one hand, his call for fiscal austerity resounds with tea party-affiliated primary voters. On the other, his views on foreign policy—including the idea that America all but incited the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11—are decidedly less popular. (How many Paul-ites are actually Republicans? Awful question, I know)
Herman Cain: How high can he rise? Ever since his straw poll win in Florida last weekend, it’s been pretty clear that Cain has some momentum. (Be it as it may, but who said Republicans are racist?)
The saint who threw Satan out of heaven - (Today is the feast of Saint Michael the Archangel—not a saint for hopeless cases, such as both the eurozone crisis and Rick Perry... but he is the First Knight of the Kingdom, after all!)
“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,” said last Friday cosmologist and astrophysicist Martin Rees soon after a team of scientists working at CERN (European Scientific Research Organization), published a research paper in which they announced that neutrinos generated at the CERN research facility located in Switzerland were found to travel faster than the speed of light. Which was indeed an “extraordinary claim,” and in fact the team—a collaboration between France’s National Institute for Nuclear and Particle Physics Research and Italy’s Gran Sasso National Laboratory—took many months to carefully check, recheck and check some more their data before deciding that they could not disprove what their own eyes were telling them. As a matter of fact, as the so-called “scientific method” demands, a good scientist never says “never.” That’s also why Antonio Ereditato, who participated in the experiment and speaks on behalf of the team, said: “We will continue our studies and we will wait patiently for the confirmation.”
Never say never. But now, if we expand our field of vision to include the issue of global warming and climate change, a question arises spontaneously:
Wouldn’t it be refreshing if left-wing politicians, the environmental left and the mainstream media took a minute to reflect that if something so set in stone as the absoluteness of the speed of light might be overturned, perhaps these claims that the “science is settled” when it comes to global warming are a bit misplaced? Wouldn’t it be nice if all of those people put some effort into understanding the scientific research that tends to refute the alarmists – and there’s plenty of it out there – rather than turning the issue into a show of hands?
In Wealthy Germany, the Church Should Become Poor! Never before his third voyage to his native land had Benedict XVI given such powerful emphasis to the ideal of a Church poor in structures, in possessions, in power. At the same time, however, he insisted on the need for a vigorous "public presence" of this same Church. Is it possible to have both at once? (Also sprach der Papst von Rom - 4)
How at last my fellow Italians fell out of love with Silvio, by Beppe Severgnini, Italian political commentator and author of Mamma mia! Berlusconi’s Italy Explained for Posterity and Friends Abroad. Italy is currently crossing a treacherous border – perhaps the third and final such crossing, as far as Mr Berlusconi is concerned. The first border was between complicity and embarrassment. The second divides embarrassment from irritation and shame, while the third is between shame and anger.(This definitely fits to “italomaniacs” in search of strong emotions—sort of Cavalleria Rusticana in pinstripes)
Berlusconi “stunned and saddened” by bishop’s speech - Political sources said Berlusconi was left “stunned and saddened” by the speech by Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco (see my previous post), who said Italy needed to “purify the air.” “It’s one more nail in the coffin,” said James Walston, political science professor at the American University of Rome. “When and if Berlusconi stands for office again, the bishops’ message is clear: don’t vote for him.” (The definitive scientific prove that Silvio is human)
Harris Poll: Romney, Ron Paul Best Obama - Mitt Romney stands the best chance among Republican presidential contenders of beating President Barack Obama in next year’s election, according to a new Harris Interactive poll released Tuesday. The former Massachusetts governor also was the favored GOP candidate among independent voters, with Texas Rep. Ron Paul following close behind, according to the online survey of 2,462 adults taken in mid-September. The news was also good for Paul when pitted against Obama in a head-to-head matchup. (OK, but what the hell happened to Rick Perry?)
"It is time once again for the Church resolutely to set aside her worldliness" Only in this way can the real scandal of Christianity, that of the cross, shine among men, without being overshadowed "by other painful scandals on the part of the preachers of the faith." The pope's speech to German Catholics active in the Church and in society (Also sprach der Papst von Rom - 3)
Do you know what the editor-in-chief of Vogue America, Anna Wintour, and the head of the Italian Bishops Conference, Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, have in common? Well, they both don’t like Silvio Berlusconi. Not even a little bit. At least not anymore (especially in the latter case). And they both take a great care to let the world know it. Of course there are also important differences between the two: one is that Mrs. Wintour hardly knows who this guy is and what he is like, whereas Cardinal Bagnasco—along with the rest of the Italian people—obviously knows Berlusconi all too well. Which is not a good sign for the Italian prime minister: you just don’t need to know him well to feel (Mrs. Wintour) “disgusted and embarrassed” by him, or “mortified” (Card. Bagnasco) by his “sad and hollow” behavior.
Add to this Pope Benedict XVI’ call—last Thursday, before he left for his third trip to Germany—for “an increasingly intense ethical renewal for the good of beloved Italy,” and you’re done!
Cardinal Bagnasco and Silvio Berlusconi
Well, it is true that Cardinal Bagnasco did not name explicitly the prime minister—nor, of course, did the pope—but there is little doubt about whom he was referring to when he denounced “licentious behavior and improper relations” or when he said that Italians had been left in a state of “dumbfounded astonishment” by their political class—not that the rest of the Italian political class are exactly saints…, er, au contraire, but, as the old Latin saying goes, “Est modus in rebus!”
All this, of course, while not only Berlusconi but all of Italy itself is now under a kind of worldwide microscope, after having had its sovereign credit rating cut by Standard & Poor’s, with the ratings agency keeping the country’s outlook on negative in a major surprise that adds to contagion fears in the debt-stressed eurozone.
Hard times, no doubt about it. One could argue that the prime minister has earned a well-deserved (and long) vacation for all the hard work he has done for the country, to say nothing about the inevitable exhaustion following his legendary “athletics exploits.” But I’m afraid he is too damn stubborn to admit—because of his strong sense of duty toward the country, of course—that taking a break might be a very extremely good idea. For the good of his health, of course. But you may be sure that I, along with crowds of conservatives, no matter whether Catholic or not, both here in Italy and abroad, are praying for him and will keep him in our thoughts and prayers until he decides to take a break from his stressful job, or better still to put an end to it once and for all. As the Jennifer Hudson song goes, “If this isn't love, tell me what it is.”
“ Lord, it is time. The summer was very big. Lay thy shadow on the sundials, and on the meadows let the winds go loose. Command the last fruits that they shall be full; give them another two more southerly days, press them on to fulfillment and drive the last sweetness into the heavenly wine. ”
“Nothing can go faster than the speed of light.” That’s one of the very pillars of physics and Einstein’s theory of relativity (and one of the few things I can remember of my science studies in high school). But that’s what seems to have been rocked by new findings from the world’s largest physics lab, the CERN of Geneva, which stunned the world of science by announcing they had observed tiny particles known as neutrinos travelling slightly faster than light (see here and here).
Researchers themselves were so astonished by their findings that they spent months checking their data, without finding any errors that would disprove their claim, and cautiously invited the world to prove them wrong. Yet, presenting the findings to a packed and clearly skeptical auditorium at CERN on Friday, Italian scientist Dario Auterio said they were of “high statistical accuracy” and could not be explained by extraneous effects such as seismic tremors or moon phases.
The burning question of Martin Luther must once more become our question too - The pope to the Evangelical Church of Germany. Ecumenism stands or falls on the question of God and of evil. The twofold challenge of "evangelical" Protestantism and of secularization. How to revive the faith without watering it down. (Also sprach der Papst von Rom - 2)
The Weakness Behind Sarkozy's European Vision - French President Nicolas Sarkozy has a vision for Europe, one which involves increased solidarity to save the euro zone. His attempts to convince Chancellor Angela Merkel are hiding his own country's weaknesses. Some are concerned that Germany may soon stand alone. (Might be not a bad idea)
There's a Judge in Berlin. And He Wants King Solomon Back - After Regensburg in 2006 and Paris in 2008, the third grand lecture of this pontificate. Pope Benedict holds it in the German capital, and in heart of its political system. Citing Saint Augustine: "Without justice what else is the state but a great band of robbers?" (Also sprach der Papst von Rom - 1)
If one pays attention to the way things have always been in the painting field, I think it’s just as Oriana Fallaci once said, “Listen: if I am a painter and I do your portrait, have I or haven’t I the right to paint you as I want?” I mean, portraits are not as much a matter of objectivity—which has very little to do with truth, as far as my philosophical understanding of this whole thing goes—but of insight, intuition and inspiration. That’s also why it’s common sense that a great portrait is very often (if not always) much more a portrait of the painter rather than of the subject. And this is how the art of portraiture is doubly individualistic: first in regard to the subject; and second with regard to the artist. It’s no surprise, then, if portraiture is one of the most typical expressions of the age of the Renaissance, that is to say the period in which, in accordance with the cliché (but a well-founded one), the “individual” came into being—and at any rate, the emergence in 15th-century Italy of the personal portrait as a distinct and polyvalent art form is indisputable and undisputed.
With this being said, here is the point of this post. The Staatliche Museen zu Berlin and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, have partnered to organize a landmark project tracing the development of the Italian portrait in the fifteenth century. The exhibition, titled “Renaissance Faces - Masterpieces of Italian Portraiture” (Gesichter der Renaissance - Meisterwerke Italienischer Portrait-Kunst), started on August 25 at the Bode Museum in Berlin and runs through November 20. After which the show is due to travel to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (December21, 2011 through March 18, 2012).
Luca Signorelli
Portrait of an Elderly Man
The exhibition—with some 150 works, from 50 great museums, by more than 40 masters of the early Renaissance—takes the visitors from the beginnings of portraiture in Florence and details its spread and stylistic developments in the courts of Ferrara, Mantua, Bologna, Milan, Urbino, Naples, papal Rome, and finally in Venice, where only late in the century a portrait tradition established itself.
The works on display are by the most important artists of the period: Donatello, Filippo Lippi, Botticelli, Pisanello, Verrocchio, Ghirlandaio, Mantegna, Masaccio, Giovanni Bellini, Antonello da Messina, to mention only a few names.
But the major highlight is Leonardo da Vinci’s “Lady with an Ermine” from the Czartoryski Collection, Cracow. Indeed, Charles Baudelaire was right when he said, “Nothing in a portrait is a matter of indifference. Gesture, grimace, clothing, decor even—all must combine to realize a character. “
In short, as far as I can tell, whether you are currently in Berlin, or will be in New York from December 21 to March 18, this exhibition is a must see.
Ehi folks, the evidence of man-made global warming is INCONTROVERTIBLE (as the American Physical Society states). And this is how Nobel laureate Al Gore—for those who don’t already know, the man who invented both the internet and anthropogenic global warming—described the science of climate change last Wednesday in a telephone interview: “It’s not a hoax, it’s high school physics!”
Yet, unfortunately for him, another Nobel laureate, Ivar Giaever, resigned last week from the American Physical Society in protest of the group’s insistence on that very thing. In an email message to Kate Kirby, executive officer of the APS, Giaever wrote:
In the APS it is ok to discuss whether the mass of a proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible?
The claim (how can you measure the average temperature of the whole earth for a whole year?) is that the temperature has changed from ~288.0 to ~288.8 degree Kelvin in about 150 years, which (if true) means to me . . . that the temperature has been amazingly stable, and both human health and happiness have definitely improved in this ‘warming’ period.
And again unfortunately for Al Gore (and the APS), public perception of climate change has steadily fallen since late 2009. According to a Rasmussen Reports public opinion poll released on August 31, 57 percent of adults believe there is significant disagreement within the scientific community on global warming, up five points from late 2009.
It’s what might be called a modern madrigal, more precisely a modern villotta, in fact it has most of the characteristics of the rustic song form which first became current in the early 16th century in northern Italy. But most of all this song is a cornerstone of the Alpini choral repertoire, and a sort of national anthem for the Friulian people, in whose dialect—or language, as my friends from Friuli would say—it was written by Arturo Zardini, a primary school teacher, back in 1920.
“Stelutis Alpinis” (meaning edelweiss, the flower which symbolizes the Alps) tells the story of a dead soldier of WWI who asks his wife to pick up an edelweiss from the place where he was buried, somewhere over the mountains: “Pick one of those edelweiss / It will remind you of our love…” That’s why when someone dies on the mountains Friulans sing this song at the funeral—while in the other Italian Alpine regions they usually sing “Signore delle cime,” yet another sad but very beautiful song of the Alpini.
“Stelutis Alpinis” is such a beautiful song that it has been adapted and performed in many different ways, in both choral and solo modes. Here are a couple of examples. The first is a traditional version, performed by the choir of the Brigata Alpina “Julia” (subtitled in English), the latter is a wonderful rendition (and adaptation) by the Italian singer-songwriter Francesco De Gregori. The song is included in the album Prendere o lasciare (1996).
P.S. Needless to say, this post is especially dedicated to Italian legendary climber Walter Bonatti (R.I.P.), whose funeral will be held tomorrow in Lecco.
Italian legendary climber Walter Bonatti has died at age 81. His record was impressive and amazing: at 18 he made the fourth ascent of the north face of the Pointe Walker on the Grandes Jorasses in the Mont Blanc range, at 21 he made the first ascent of the Grand Capucin rock pinnacle, at 24 he was the youngest man to be chosen to join the Italian K2 expedition... a long track record of successes and achievements (see here, here, here, and here to get an idea).
And yet, to be honest, what amazes me most is the fact that, unlike most of his fellow mountaineers—at least as far as I know—he had not followed in his father’s footsteps, nor he was, in his early years, a mountain man, having grown up on the banks of the Po River, in the flatlands of Lombardy and Emilia. He was an outsider. “My character and personality were already beginning to form in my childhood home by the River Po: the great river was like an ocean for me, the sandy river banks like deserts and the Alpine foothills on the horizon the highest mountains in the world,” he said in a 2010 interview. But he used to spend his holidays by his uncles in the mountains of Bergamo… and thus it happened that he decided to become a mountain guide and to move to Courmayeur, below the mighty Mont Blanc group. And that’s where the real life of Bonatti started. The life of a man who reached out for the uttermost difficulty, the unexplored. He cobbled a philosophy from his passion: pursuit of the impossible, he called it. His was a story of independence and freedom of spirit: there is no such thing as the “destiny,” man is the master of his own destiny.
“He was among the greatest of all time, without a shadow of a doubt,” the British mountaineer Sir Chris Bonington (nineteen expeditions to the Himalayas, including four to Mount Everest and the first ascent of the south face of Annapurna) told the Guardian. And Doug Scott, one of the first two Britons to conquer Everest, called Bonatti “perhaps the finest Alpinist there has ever been.”
His memoir The Mountains of My Life, which was republished in English in 2010 to celebrate his 80th birthday, is certainly one of the best books in mountaineering literature.
, which was republished in English in 2010 to celebrate his 