Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi continued to cause a stir during a Rome visit Monday by wheeling out another four busloads of young women to receive another lecture on the Koran.

Islam is “the last religion and if you want to believe in a single faith then it must be that of Mohammed,” the colonel reportedly told 200 women hired by a Rome hostess agency, some of them wearing headscarves and one sporting a picture of Gaddafi around her neck.

“He didn’t try to convert us,” said Elena Racoviciano, 21, from Naples, after emerging from a photography exhibit at the new Libyan Cultural Institute.

Gaddafi held a similar meeting with 500 women provided by the same agency on Sunday, three of whom reportedly converted to Islam.

“Women are more respected in Libya than in the West and the United States,” was another of Gaddafi’s remarks conveyed by Racoviciano.

In his first encounter with the hostesses, after an impromptu stroll around central Rome, the dictator urged them to marry Libyan men.

Gaddafi’s lectures to the women and his statement that Islam should be “Europe’s religion” have sparked opposition from Catholic and feminist groups as well as prompting accusations that Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi is pandering to him.

Read more here.

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After 18 years of investigations, we’re closer to the truth about the massacre of Via d’Amelio of July 19^th 1992, in which  anti-mafia judge Paolo Borsellino and 5 men from his escort were killed in an explosion. “An incredible and heavy truth that the political world couldn’t withstand,” were the words spoken before the Anti-Mafia Commission by the prosecutors of Caltanissetta Sergio Lari and Nico Gozzo who have reopened the investigation on the assassination of Judge Paolo Borsellino.

“The judiciary,” said Gozzo, “will be able to hold the truths that are emerging on the massacres. The state also will be able to support them. I don’t know, however, if the same will make policy.”

“It’s a crucial moment,” said Lari, “two years have elapsed from the first declarations of Gaspare Spatuzza. From the evidence we acquired it appears that it was not only the Mafia who wanted the massacre in via D’Amelio.” In other words, a contract between the Italian state and the mafia, Lari reiterated, proved that there were “people who despite having the duty of loyalty to the institutions betrayed these principles.”

Meanwhile, the Board considered it appropriate to apply the secret contents of the hearing today: the scenarios outlined by the magistrates contain elements that investigations are deepening.

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• Sicilians mark Borsellino death (bbc.co.uk)

“L’Aquila can’t collapse: it’s a city that knows how to fly”. This new message of hope is now written on a t-shirt  which thousands of L’Aquila wore in Rome on Wednesday as they protested against the Berlusconi government’s handling of the earthquake-shattered city. There were moments of tension: two young men were injured, and even L’Aquila’s mayor, Massimo Cialente, was struck by police batons.

Their slogan was: “It’s a shame, you’ve got golden salaries, we’ve got rubble”. Demonstrators requested that the government halt all taxation of L’Aquila residents. They also demanded a series of measures to boost employment and the economy by establishing effective procedures for reconstruction and funding. “These aren’t privileges, but fairness and rights!” shouted the demonstrators. “We’re here to defend our survival. If we return to pay taxes today, with a salary of €2000  we can put only €600 in our pockets.”

The mayor of L’Aquila, who lead the demonstrators, was received by President of the Senate, Renato Schifani. Though initially Mayor Cialente aimed to lead the protest outside the Parliament, “there was an unexpected blockade by the police,” Cialente said. “When I went to the Senate, we were in agreement that they would open a gap. It’s a shame that people are still away from home: the earthquake wasn’t enough, now the beatings.”

Read more here.

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Many value The Odyssey, Homer’s epic recounting of the heroic adventures of Odysseus (or Ulysses) on his return home from the Trojan war, to be the best book ever written. And the best story of this epic is said to be the narration of the Proci, Latin name of 50 [another tradition says 108] local chieftains of Ithaca, the island kingdom of Ulysses, who were the insolent suitors of Penelope, the virtuous wife of the absent king. Of course, the Proci expected Ulysses never to return from the Trojan war and the subsequent vicissitudes. It was legitimate that each of them would aspire both to marry the beautiful queen and to sit in the royal throne.

The problem was that the Proci, in waiting for Penelope’s choice of a husband, had installed themselves in Ulysses’ palace and, while assiduously importuning the queen, were banqueting every day on the king’s larder. They were squandering the wealth of the king, attended by his serfs.

The story ends with Odysseus reappearing disguised as a beggar in the banquet hall and slaying each of the Fifty (or Onehundredeight) Proci with the tremendous royal bow, the same bow that none of the Proci had been strong enough to draw. Ulysses the Hero was so good at the immense bow as to kill all of them with lightning speed.

In narrating the misdeeds and fateful destiny of the Proci, Homer the greatest of the poets did unwittingly predict what happens today on the political scene of many countries including his own, Greece, and why not, even the United States. However, let’s take Italy. Her politicians are nothing less than Proci who occupied the palace of the King -the King being the People- 65 years ago when the Allies won WW2. Since then they incessantly dissipate  and steal the wealth of the kingdom.

The righteous end of the Italian story should be the King/People coming back and slaying them – i.e. throwing all of them out of power, and the worst ones into labor camps. Then the People should ‘reign’ -exercise the sovereignty himself though some form of selective direct democracy. No more professional robber politicians. No more Proci.

The fact that the Northern League Party (a government coalition party) and its components hated Italy has been known.

For example, on Sunday the new governor of the Veneto region opened a local school with “Va pensiero”, the separatist anthem of Padania, instead of the Italian national anthem. Meanwhile, other Leaguers insult the Italian flag, saying it should be burned. And still others have publicly stated that they won’t support Italy at the World Cup.

But what Radio Padania (Northern League’s official radio station) did yesterday during Italy’s World Cup match against Paraguay has really caused a stir. The radio, commenting on the Italy – Paraguay match openly supported Paraguay and of course celebrated when the South American defender Antolin Alcaraz scored the 1-0 goal to give his team the temporary lead. “We scored!” Radio Padania’s commentator Roberto Ortelli cheered. “With Cannavaro completely dominated by the Paraguayan player.”

And then there was also Radio Padania’s simultaneous controversy against Fabio Cannavaro, who proposed that the Azzurri donate any eventual prizes to the 150 year celebration of Italian unification- a unification that, of course, those of the Northern League dislike.

After the match, at a press conference Italy coach Marcello Lippi responded angrily: “Radio Padania?” I don’t care. These are ridiculous and low-level things.”

Read the article here.

France will host Euro 2016 after finishing ahead of close rivals Turkey and rank outsiders Italy in a UEFA vote on Friday.

France President Nicolas Sarkozy appeared at the ceremony to support his country’s bid as the French, who have also hosted two World Cups, were awarded the tournament for the third time.

Turkey were bidding to host their first major football tournament while Italy’s chances had been written off after a critical review of their bid following UEFA’s inspection visits.

Problems and delays in Poland and Ukraine, who will jointly host Euro 2012, may have persuaded UEFA’s executive committee to avoid choosing Turkey, an untried country.

The Turkish government had promised to invest one billion euros ($1.23 billion) all in public money, in stadiums for the event. It would also need to spend an estimated 20 billion euros on national transport infrastructure, including high speed trains.

Read more here.

It’s yet another Italian Euro-shame, this time at the OCSE summit in Paris, writes La Repubblica.

During the conference, while talking about the European economic situation, Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi makes an unbelievable speech. In fact, he starts to quote Benito Mussolini’s diaries while making a point: “As prime minister, I never felt I had power. When I was an entrepreneur and I had 56 thousands workers I had the feeling of having power. In a real democracy, I’m at the people’s disposal, everyone can criticize and insult me. Whoever is in this position does not really have power,” Berlusconi said. Then, he quoted the diaries which he had recently read: “I dare to quote a speech from the man who was once considered a great dictator: ‘They say I’ve the power, but I’ve no powers, maybe the gerarchi have it, but not me. I can only decide whether to guide my horse to the right or to the left, nothing else.’” Berlusconi continued: “The same happens to me, because everyone has the right to criticize and insult me…”

It’s an incredible and shameful speech. But this isn’t a rarity. In fact, this isn’t the first time in which Berlusconi quotes Mussolini. The most resounding gaffe is dated September 2003. In that circumstance the Premier said to a journalist: “Mussolini didn’t kill anyone, he just sent people on vacation in internal exile.” At that time the British journalist of “The Spectator” was astounded by that nod to fascism. But the story hasn’t changed. The Italian euro-shame continues. The only problem is: who’s the speech writer of Italy’s Premier? Berlusconi or Mussolini?

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Marco Garatti, Matteo Dall’Aira and Matteo Pagani, the three Emergency operators arrested last April 11^th in Lashkar Gah in southern Afghanistan, were released by the Afghan security forces, says Italy’s La Repubblica. They were accused of participating in a plot to carry out an attack against the governor of Helmand province.

The aid workers, recognized “not guilty” according to the Afghan intelligence press, Nds, were brought to the Italian Embassy in Kabul, and will be repatriated soon. They express their happiness: “We’re so happy being out,” said Marco Garatti. “We’ve passed terrible moments. We’re especially happy to be out with our names completely clean. Our reputations and Emergency’s  are intact”.

“It’s a relief for us all,” the President of Italian Republic, Giorgio Napolitano said. Even Emergency expressed great satisfaction for the outcome: “We’re happy they’re free, we hadn’t any doubt about they’re innocence. Their release depended on the work of all those, both in Italy and Afghanistan, that have been working together for their freedom.” Regarding a possible return to their operating in Afghanistan, Emergency founder, Gino Strada said: “Everything will be evaluated, because we don’t understand how such a situation arose. We won’t leave the hospital, although it was militarily occupied. Our staff has been prevented from working, but we want to remain, because that hospital is the only way to care for the population.”

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Everybody knows that European socialism is a thing of the past. Whatever efforts existed to build a sort of a socialist society died in the early Twenties with the disease and death of Lenin, followed by the aberrations of Stalin (the latter anticipated, by the way, by Lenin). Today, the socialist catalepsy is especially impressive in Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, where Socialists are or have recently been in power. Triumphant capitalism is totally accepted, in fact, even by the extreme leftist Opposition.

But in Italy a small group, once connected with the reformist, liberal wing of the former Communist party and now led by ex-members of parliament G. Cervetti and E. Macaluso, is today trying to assert the ‘New Reasons of Socialism’ (such being, in Italian, the heading of a monthly and of an online daily they publish). I know of another small group which is going to join ‘Le ragioni del Socialismo‘ for a specific task it choose for itself- developing experimental hypotheses that because of their newness and boldness might excite interest in a number of semisocialist formulas or programs.

Here, some of such hypotheses are mentioned:

1. Semisocialism should not side with the Old Left, as humanitarian sentiments and aspirations to justice exist in the Right too. The Old Left is so sectarian that it only attracts diminutive segments.

2. Semisocialism can involve many Italians who now do not bother to vote, as they reject present terms of political discourse.

3. A semisocialist country should adopt neutrality: reasons to stay in the North Atlantic alliance have subsided. Sweden and Switzerland, while belonging to the West, manage without Nato.

4. A semisocialist country can cut to a minimum its military budget. Now, Italy has a comparatively small, very expensive and very superfluous aircraft carrier (the Italian peninsula itself is kind of an aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean), named ‘Cavour’.  It should be sold to some futilely ambitious emergent country. The phony prestige of Italian admirals should do without that single Big Ship.

5. Semisocialism should disregard trade unions- they stopped being useful half a century ago.

6. Unproductive public expense, such as lavish treatment of politicians, should be curtailed, so that better subsidies are paid to families of the unemployed and decent hostels are built for the homeless poor.

7. Digital, two-way television now permits innovative trials of direct democracy.

8. Indefinite economic growth has become impossible or too arduous, so advanced societies should move to a no-growth concept.  Returning to the simple life will hurt only the affluent few, if a modest income is assured to everybody. Productivity will fall, happiness and tourism will surge. The inevitable flight of investment capitals because of semisocialism should be encouraged, provided it is accompanied by the physical flight of possessors of said capitals, with their families, associates, expensive cars, coats and boats, etc.

The resurrection of some socialist objectives may of course sound chimerical. But who knows. Several European realities of today -say free education and medical care- used to be utopias.

Massimo Calderazzi is member of the Société Européenne de Culture, to which many eminent
scholars and a few Nobel prizewinners belong.

Italy has two intrinsic features affecting the cost (and quality) of life: Italy’s workers have the lowest salaries in the EU, but also face the highest prices in all of Europe. But above all else, the thing that costs Italians the most is petrol. Oil companies can raise prices for every little thing. As the price of oil per barrel increases, the price of petrol rises. Yet, in Italy, when the oil price per barrel drops, the price of petrol still remains high. In the past few days (even for the Easter holidays) the prices reached at €1.432/ liter for unleaded gasoline and €1.236/ liter for gas oil- unreasonably high prices that have raised the level of petrol in Italy to being the highest in Europe.

But is the blame for this situation only on the oil companies? Let’s see. In Italy there’s another big feature: taxes on gas. On every liter of petrol the Italian state earns the 70% in tax revenues. But what kind of taxes? These unbelievable taxes are used to repay even things that happened seventy years ago. For example we’re paying off the War in Abyssinia of 1935, the Suez crisis of 1956, the Vajont disaster of 1963, the Florence flood of 1966, the Friuli earthquake of 1976 and many more unfortunate events. Italy has the highest costing petrol in Europe because oil companies raise prices, and because of ridiculous and ancient taxes. The result: no one does anything and nobody says anything. The state collects and lets the status quo continue.

And meanwhile the gas increases and people pay. And pay more than anyone in Europe.

Read here.

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