[trying to write a less navel-gazing blog post] ...In my country every government pretends to reform everything and especially the things that should be consistent during the years, because by doing so each government can delude itself and its supporters into the fact that what is being done will last, when in fact nothing the italian governments do lasts except the things that really should be changed.
Be it evidence of this the umpteenth reform of the School system, that this government is enforcing just like all its predecessors. Anyway this isn't exactly what I wanted to write about.
I read that in the new system students in high school start off with formative "debts" that they have to "pay off" before the end of the five years. Yep, that's the metaphor. They have "debts". They come at school and they have "debts". Maybe it's nothing new. Previously they had "credits", I believe. Not that it makes much difference. At the University they still will have "credits" I think.
Well, whoever invented this metaphor is an idiot.
This notion is so sad, and a disgrace to the idea of education: but also is an indicator of what or who really leads this world and its present-day philosophical and material changes. And this is certainly not the political elite (for them it was "votes" to count at school, not "debts", right? To each its own metaphor.).
So who actually leads and rule? And not only in Italy of course, not only in Italy.

Because I soon will have to fly, and the anticipation makes me quite nervous, it's probably not a coincidence that a post about Alitalia attracted my attention today.
It is known how Alitalia, the italian national airline company, will probably be privatized, due to its irreparable losses in the millions, bad management, waste of public money and atrocious inefficiency. Not even going into organizing rendition flights to take supposed terrorists to be tortured around the world.
Many in Italy grumble against this probable destiny, and they seem to imply that it isn't patriotic to get rid of our national airline company like that. They suggest, and many politicians among them, that the State should throw more money into the bottomless well to resuscitate the corpse (sorry for the double metaphor), because "Alitalia is a national treasure", "property of the people", etcetera.
Theoretically one could agree that it is never a good deal for the citizens to sell out public property, but the thing is the Italian State isn't capable to manage Alitalia. So I don't really know. It's essentially a problem of political feuds and clientele, which makes it ineradicable. Therefore the question seems to be either you sell at one price now, or you sell at a much lower price later.
Well I don't care much anyway, but I read a post today, and just in case you have any lingering doubts on what the right destiny for Alitalia should be, and like me you don't fly much so you don't know by your own experience, check out Alitalia as a ruler of my destiny, by Ms. Adventure in Italy.
I insist that nothing is more helpful to understand your own country than the impressions of the expat.

It’s a guy named Luigi (yes, Luigi) with an Alitalia lanyard around his neck, sitting in front of a display for Air Uzbekistan (no joke). (...) Luigi, our Alitalia representative, well, let’s just say that he is consistent with the level of Alitalia quality I’m used to. Which is, crap. He fuffs about looking for another flight before finally telling us we’ll be getting on the Virgin flight at 11.30. He takes a few moments to tell us about the amenities Virgin customers receive and a moment’s pause would have begged the question “Why is one airline’s customer service representative touting another airline?” but then again, this is Alitalia. (...)
10.30 Back in Terminal 2. “Luigi, we missed you.” Cretino, I feel like yelling. “How is it that no one made our reservation or even called them to tell them to hold the flight for us?”
“Oh.” Luigi picks up the phone to call his “supervisor” but he could be talking to a dial-tone for all we know. Pass the buck, m’amico.
Luigi glosses over the fact of what happened, and again recounts the luxuries that we missed by missing the Virgin flight. “What a shame that you missed it.” My fingers are itching, for his neck. “There’s a limo for first-class passengers, and if you’re really in a hurry, they use a motorcycle. It’s so cool!”

Details of rudeness and inefficiency in this story are comic and shameful. The smell of nepotism (incompetent people hired to badly do a job because they're connected) is all over the place.
The overall picture, quite depressing: because at the slightest snag (the obvious strike), Alitalia rates probably as the worst company to ever fly with.

"...an unsuccessful operation, managed by incompetents, a small tiny brand that perfectly reflects today's Italy, presumptuous and without substance... The obsessive pursuit of consensus [which] generates mediocrity."
-- Oliviero Toscani

Like many, I commented the other day the design of the shameful cucumber-eggplant-zucchini new national italian logo.
Little I knew that the real shame was not much in that little logo -- although that logo cost an awful €100,000 -- as it is in the new national portal our falling nation seems now to have: italia.it.
This so called portal, inaugurated along with the mentioned logo and promoted by the same obscure agencies created by the late Berlusconi's government for "national development", has been payed by the italian taxpayers €45 millions.
Yes, you read it right, €45 millions for a website: and apparently almost €100 millions were originally meant to be invested on the project. Which is, I don't know, probably the price of more than one big e-commerce or news website that produces lots of new content everyday. The figure is so incredible one can't really see it.
How the money has been used? Well, not to create a decent, modern website, that's for sure. So it's anyone's guess what they made of the millions.

A good work has been done by many italian blogs and websites to demolish italia.it piece by piece and to show to the world how badly designed and conceived it is. And how humiliating it is, particularly for the many young talents who really believe in the importance of design, especially for a country like Italy. So much that some of them decided to promote a collective project to create an alternative, better portal.

Among the hundreds of posts unceasingly drumming across the italian blogland on the issue: the observations and useful links of qix.it, the many posts at Diarium Neiminis, in english the comments on this page. But certainly the most complete effort on the case (as far as I know) has been done by ti.ailati.www, a blog expressly dedicated to the portal and its absurd existence. On ti.ailati.www, which also comes with a partial english version, all sorts of depressing detailed informations about the operation italia.it can be read. Details which should really have (and never will have) serious, penal consequences for those who promoted and followed that project.

For example: how the website came 15 months late without anyone paying a penalty for this; how because of the delay --unless more millions are put into it-- on July 2007 all the editorial staff of the portal will be sent home after a regular service of only few months; how anyway the editorial staff has been hired with lousy temporary contracts; how €9 millions were allocated to develop a booking platform for the portal, that was never implemented (without even going into the absurd, useless, control-freak impossible idea of having a nation-wide booking service for tourists); how it took only half a day to a young talented web designer to pass --as a sort of challenge-- from the concept design of italia.it as he saw it on the page to a actual, correct implementation of it, when it took months to the actual designers of the portal to do it wrong; how as a matter of fact the design of the portal is technically incredibly bogus, unfinished, and full of classic outdated web design errors, like using tables instead of styles etcetera.

Just like with the cucumber-logo, the portal italia.it speaks very clearly of what Italy is, in what shape it really is -- but not for the reasons our politicians seem to believe.

-- in picture, above: quando venire in Italia? scarica adesso tecnologia assistiva! from: italia.it

Babsi today wrote about a typical milanese episode (I've lived similar episodes also in Rome, but to me this sort will always be associated with Milan, like a certain damp cold weather and the smell of monoxide).

It's the one where the ticket controllers get on a bus in a small commando team and start checking on the tickets of the passengers, behaving like bullies and blatantly treating certain categories of passengers differently from the others.
They yell, they drag around, they use the force and a whole range of intimidations, or they limit themselves to sermons about the importance of always carrying a "good ticket". When they cannot bully you and yell at you (because you're a citizen) they can always make you fell ashamed of yourself in front of everyone.
The trick always worked and will always work, because many middle-class citizens mistake their own radical fear of being put to shame in front of the others for instinctive respect of the law, although the truth probably is that they would sooner break the law if only they could resist or be indifferent to shame (cf. Kafka's Process). Or, as it is with tax cheating in this country (and a lot of other stuff), if only the crime itself wasn't considered a shame.

Pathetically incapable of professionally doing their job by politely asking for documents and writing down the tickets and normally fine the passenger, using a normal tone of voice and human decency, the milanese controllers are very often ego maniacs who just adore the tough part of their job more than anything else, and have orgasms listening to the barking sound of their voices in the silent bus.
When I was a teenager those in my category where the favorite victims of ticket controllers. Youngsters by the shabby appearance where easily the ones to be mistreated if found without a ticket. Now, only a handful of years later, it is all different. Shabby youngsters carry iPods and cell phones, and the most undesirable of all passengers, the most vulnerable is obviously the immigrant, or B-citizen, whatever you want to call it.

Babsi tells her story with her usual efficiency, and I felt I had to tell about my own by commenting to her post. I am translating here excerpts from both the sources.

Babsi:

At the bottom of the trolleybus, a boy. The boy who's turning a blind eye to them and who has a wool jacket with patches on the elbows. Ticket, they say to him. Without the "please" that was reserved to me. The boy acts dumb. Hey, the ticket, kids one. Where are you from? Egypt? And where do you get the tickets? In Egypt? The boy utters a long guttural sentence: I am sure that he is understanding and he is insulting them. Or that he is cursing. Always the same one, almost pensionable; He is looming up in front of him, standing astride at this point, and insisting: or you just thought to come to Italy to fool the Italians, eh, dark boy? "Morocco", says the boy. "Morocco, not Egypt". Resurgence of national pride. Oh, Morocco. It's the same. Here it's paying for the ticket. The second interferes: so, do you or do you not have it? He doesn't have it. I don't know why he doesn't. Because he doesn't have a buck, probably, but I lived in London washing dishes and I asked for money at the Earl's Court subway station to pay for my tickets (...)
They're back to grill the boy with the patches on the elbows. I.D., says the old one. E-D? tries to parrot the boy. Oh, when there was Mussolini the things went all right, snaps the man in uniform... I clear my throat. Excuse me? When there was - who? I surprised him. He's looking at me resentfully. Don't you get in the way, miss. I don't get in the way. I'm interested in civility and good sense. I breath in despite the fever. "Apology of fascism, you know."
Now everyone is looking at me: the moroccan boy, the woman in pink, the six controllers, the one who's yelling in the cell phone no se puede. "When there was Mussolini, gentlemen, should be taught at school - I swallow - how much this country was violent and illiberal". Silence. "Not - I swallow - on the buses." My man in uniform is outraged: on the buses, miss, one should pay the ticket! That's all! (...)
Three controllers out of six make the boy get off the bus: the rough way.

Me:

(...) I was fined plenty of times during my junior and high school years. Once I was chased down half Viale Padova by a controller, up to the inside premises of school, many times I was grabbed by the jacket, yelled on my face, carried down the 56 or the 92 or the 33, underwent the sermons I hate, I lied and gave false identities and shrugged and laughed in the face and trembled of fear and shame.
Still today that I always pay the ticket in every city of the world, when I see uniforms instinctively I shiver and look for escape routes.
Always hated controllers because of their intimidating air. Never solved the ambiguity, whether the State was always right, even when it came with the shitty face and the bullying policeman-like behavior and all the rest, or whether it was never right, because of the great lie that was held together all around.
Finally, I don't care for the apology... I find the law-enforced anti-fascism very cretin (it certainly doesn't keep people from being or becoming fascist in new and old ways), but the way I see it bullying and barking voices are more than sufficient reasons to put oneself in the way, since they represent all the possible worse, all the possible fascism to expose and impede. If only to get in the way was anything useful-- or even if it wasn't useful at all. Provided to have clear in an instant which side one is on... and instead one loses precious seconds to understand it.

This illustrates very well the totalitarian tendency which is implicit in the anarchist or pacifist vision of society. In a Society where there is no law, and in theory no compulsion, the only arbiter of behaviour is public opinion. But public opinion, because of the tremendous urge to conformity of gregarious animals, is less tolerant than any system of law.

-- George Orwell, Politics vs. Literature: An Examination of Gulliver's Travels, 1946

"Create new post" says the blogging interface. Yeah, it's been a long time since I have last discussed the Italian politics and I would love to reopen that scary box. It's not like there aren't things to talk about, since the departure of Berlusconi and the advent of Prodi. The funny verminy stories about the Vicenza U.S. military base being the more juicy of them. I just want to clarify that my avoidance of said subjects does not depends on a major sympathy felt for the new rulers. In fact, if possible, my sympathy is even less for Prodi's government than for Berlusconi's, because I know this sort of guys better, and I recognize better the indulgence of which they enjoy, and the lies that they spread. Even if they're more honest, if a concept like honesty would ever be possible in politics and particularly in the Italian politics. Besides it would be much more interesting and useful to criticize the "friend" than the "enemy", if one would still believe in criticizing politicians.
The thing is, after having hoped for so long for the fall of Berlusconi, everything still seems so hopeless in the Italian panorama that one doesn't really finds a reason to sweat for how rotten things are. They are just rotten, that's all. What's worse, they are rotten while having more energy or initiative. And I always felt that the little that was left of good in Italy was so because of a lack of initiative and energy.

Another issue that I would love to bash on everyday, sort of like aioros does, is the one of the childish and ludicrous and hypocrite and mafia-like ways of the Italian journalism, which, every single hour of the day and almost without exceptions proves itself to be composed of individuals well-intentioned to dumb their fellow citizens down --a inch more every year until they'll touch the rock bottom and below, into total unconsciousness.
It's hard to find the necessity of all the everyday collections of naked women aside of the news titles, of all the collections of commonplaces and condensed knowledge without anything left of intelligent --or of all the news item like this one, that are totally irrelevant even under a sociological aspect, and only are there for morbid insensitivity.
But everything falls into place when one simply realizes that the global project is seriously the one of total unconsciousness, so there's really nothing new or special about the Italian journalism. It just is journalism. Tiredly dragging us all towards a future when the only arbiters will be the empty words of taste and not the written laws.

So where the occasional political observer goes these days, when he feels all the tiredness of the worn out scenario he knows already? It probably goes to the blogs, the last throes to be felt by the dying collective body -- thanks God and the CIA and the NSA for inventing them.

It is with amounts of dizziness, shame and a little pride that I can announce that I "cured a day" at Dennis Cooper's blog today.
I did so by achieving what a long time ago was called "make yourself beautiful with another bird's feathers", basically presenting and translating a number of great Italian pieces of modern poetry in the english language (please note: The poems are distributed on seven different posts, for seven different poets).
For my italian readers, and probably also for most of the others, some of the names will be known and possibly slightly nauseating classics of our history, like Montale or Ungaretti or Pasolini. There are others that aren't equally known anyway, so it can be interesting anyway, or so I hope.

The same battery of translations and introductions is also available here on my blog on a special page called 7 italian poets. I opened this replica only because I plan to periodically expand it with new names and poems (the poets here are already eight, actually).

Anyway, I recently learned that I enjoy translating poetry very much. It really puts me inside the poem, in the words and the music of it, it puts me under the illusion of being for a little while partially good as the poet, only for mounting on his shoulders, and it is very exciting (yep, and you pretty much can figure out the standards of the excitement I get in my life by this).

--in picture above: with another bird's feathers, etc.

Dagospia.com featured today a bleak summary of the receptions of Roberto Benigni's 2005 movie "the tiger and the snow", out in the U.S. now.
It would be useless to link to the article since the bastards at dagospia hide their materials after few hours and you have to pay to read. A fair gist of the tenor of all U.S. critical response to Benigni's new film can be read at the reverse shot blog.

Have you read it? Ok. Well, let me tell you that not all of us "old-world cretins" are crazy about Benigni either. I have avoided anything from this guy since "Il piccolo Diavolo" and have no regrets.
When he got the award for "Life is Beautiful" and all the people in the U.S. went crazy about him, many here including me thought "how can those new-world cretins love that sort of stuff?". Because Benigni can be so rhetoric and bloated and self-indulgent and disloyal and unbearable. And Nicoletta is a stiff tragedy mask, everybody with a little taste knows that.

On the other hand, it is certainly unfair to tie forever one artist to his beginnings, but what Benigni did back in the seventies to the early nineties and around that time was pretty unique and fantastic. One of the greatest comic talents Italy ever had since the times of Totò (seriously).
The way he could demolish and make fun of everything... the range of voices and faces and inventions and crude imaginary he had was amazing....
I saw Benigni once performing on stage when I was a teenager or so --for a two hours show-- and came out devastated: in physical pain for how much I had laughed.

But all comic talents get bored of their role after a while, and after that everyone is easily disappointed.
I mean, I loved him in "Down By Law", mostly because of Jarmusch's genial touch. And the readings of Dante's work he made some time later were great stuff. But Benigni in the last years really took a regretful turn. It seems that he wants to be a sort of new moralistic Chaplin, but you can't be a new Chaplin by definition, and the memory of the world isn't that short, plus the world isn't that delicate or innocent anymore.

I am almost finished. I only wanted to add that the reason why I felt like writing this post is that the case of Benigni is a typical case where Italy's destiny in the world is so perfectly illustrated.
Italy has too many friends and admirers that are no real friends nor real admirers. They look at the boot in the sea seeing a myth and a fable and an idea that isn't real. Then comes the moment of revelation where the sloppiness and the provincialism and the conceit and mafiosaggine that all the admiration had overlooked tragically emerges.
So what I wish for my country are not more applauses, at least for a while. Instead I hope that Italy could one day cease to live on its past fortunes and start to honestly face a reality where the sheer word "Italian" doesn't make up for everything anymore. And where awards must be really deserved.