Marian's Blog

Italia back to the polls: it's Veltroni or the other guy, again

Not being there, I feel I'm missing out as Italia prepares to vote - again - on tomorrow and Monday. (Can't the U.S. take the hint about weekend elections?) Italy's current election situation seems sooo eerily deja-vu, like we've been here before, which, in a very real sense, we have, and like it hasn't been that long ago, which it has not. Sunday's choices for prime minister are Walter Veltroni of the Partito Democratico, and a resort to the immediate past in the form of already two-time former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi (a billionaire also known as Italy's third-richest man and formerly the richest). Last fall Berlusconi morphed his Forza Italia party (named for the football - soccer - club he owns) into a new political party called Popolo della Liberta or the "People of Freedom" party. Back in January 1994 in her short essay, "Recent Italian Politics", in Z magazine, writer Serena Anderlini-D'Onofrio described Berlusconi's first term as PM:   

"... the new government is in the hands of a person who came into politics only about a year ago, leads a party named after the national soccer league, and has more experience in manipulating the media than in being prime minister. The result is a situation in which, if you are a woman in politics, you need to either declare war to abortion or be a dictators' daughter to get in the news; the "family" is back under the supervision of a Catholic ministry; and the space for open discussion on cultural diversity has been dramatically reduced.

The bold section is marked by yours truly. That reference to a "dictator['s] daughter" probably is about politician and self-declared fascist Alessandra Mussolini, who is Il Duce Benito Mussolini's granddaughter and film diva Sophia Loren's niece. I'm still learning what really goes on politically in my 'other home' though I am not looking forward to another Berlusconi term in office in order to find out.

So where's my white folks??? Cheney and Barack Obama related

To be honest the only real news about Dick Cheney and Barack Obama being related is that yet again we see a person from a different background is treated quite differently from we
Black Americans.

Just like the central yet undiscussed fact that he bears his own family's African name (which by definition of our experience, Black Americans do not) Barack Obama's blood tie with Dick Cheney is not through enslavement. Instead it's through white families up to and including his mother, who conceived him with a continental African, from Kenya, to be precise.

What of we millions of Black Americans? Up to the present no white American (nor European) politico has yet bragged of or publicly mentioned their family relations with us. And yet that area is such fruitful turf! Through my own arduous and emotionally tortuous family research I've connected with maybe two or three white relatives from my mother's family. Luckily, they've been good people. Mind you, a bit like Mr. Obama, these folks were not slaveholders. They are not related to my family through slavery, but through my white female ancestors in Tennessee and North Carolina. In another part of my family, my maternal grandfather confided to me forty years ago how his white cousins came to eat and play at his mother's home in Leavenworth, Kansas. But when they turned twelve, with no warning, they just stopped coming. My grandfather added that some of the white kinfolk moved from Leavenworth to New London, Connecticut where they took jobs at a federal naval base. This was 60 years ago, at least.

U.S. Midterms: "Appetizer for 2008" - Gergen

What was unimaginable less than 48 hours ago has occurred. Democrats have won both the House and the Senate while Mr. Rumsfeld has been shown the District line. Sayonara, Don. I couldn't have said it better than David Gergen on CNN declaring Tuesday's election results "the appetizer" for Election Day 2008. Gergen also aptly declared what's happening in America as "political high drama". A-men. In today's early hours, Thursday, 9 November, Associated Press has now declared Jim Webb winner while Mr. Webb has publicly thanked the people of Virginia (1607-2007) for electing him that state's new U.S. senator. Unlike perhaps a few folks I don't really intend to brag. At least not much. Globally and inside the U.S. all of us are dealing with many sobering things. Yet now at least there's the opportunity to begin again and to do some things which are both practical and right. Tuesday's really was a seismic vote.

World Cup: Italia advances 1-0 over Australia

Italia's Francesco Totti put it away today at the World Cup. It may as well have been a photo-finish since for 94 minutes (and thus into overtime) neither team scored. Then, an Aussie stumble and some fancy Italian footwork handed Italia the chance for a penalty goal. In the 95th minute Italia WINS on Francesco Totti's penalty kick. He came all the way back from a badly broken leg in 2005 to his first-ever World Cup goal today on the penalty. They must already be in the streets and will be partying tonight in Roma and across Italia. Bravo Francesco, bravo Italia! Just one tiny thing: Was it me or did I really see Totti stick his thumb in his mouth as he celebrated his goal?? Anyway... thanks, Australia, for a game well-played.

Ayan Hirsi Ali: Coming to the US and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI)

Quick. Put your thinking cap on... This is not Eddie Murphy's movie about a continental African coming to the USA. And what's the message here: if you can't persuade more indigenous US Blacks to 'go conservative' then import them? As with so many other issues and events involving the US or touching it yet rarely reported to or discussed with average US citizens, this news has potential to influence other issues. Yet much of mainstream US media probably won't report this, let alone examine what it means, until later. If ever. In Europe the news is that Somali-born women's rights activist and member of Dutch parliament, Ayan Hirsi Ali, is "renouncing" life in the Netherlands to come to the US. Ali wrote the script for the tinderbox short Submission, filmed by Dutch filmmmaker Theo van Gogh (yes, a relative of the painter) who was murdered two months later in November 2004 by a man seeking revenge against the film's message. Since then Hirsi Ali has been under heavy guard. In recent days it surfaced that apparently she lied about herself and her eligibility to seek and gain refugee status in the Netherlands when she arrived there in 1992. According to Ali and the Wikipedia article about her (linked at her name), from September 2006 she'll be in the employ of the conservative American Enterprise Institute. Dio mio. Sounds like the outline of yet another film.

Fishing - Highlight of Bush presidency since 2001

Everybody's blogging this because it's so incredible.

George Bush says his best moment since becoming president of the US was catching a fish. The fishing took place at his private lake in Texas. He told this to Bild am Sonntag - a German paper, adding that his fish was a 7-1/2 lb perch.

What can anyone add to something like that? 

State of Black Union look at Katrina & Bush- Poppy won't be pleased; 2007 in Old Virginny

Barely a month ago George Bush pere (the daddy) told all of us how badly he felt for his boy George as Rev. Joseph Lowery and former president Jimmy Carter took W to task at Mrs. Coretta Scott King's funeral. Well, Daddy definitely will not be pleased with, and he and Barbara may not want to see, CSPAN's video of the 2006 Sobu conference. Al Sharpton, Harry Belafonte and Louis Farrakhan each takes a turn putting Bush act II's name in his mouth, and repeatedly including his role in the devastating federal response to Hurricane Katrina. All this was in Saturday's SOBU State of the Black Union conference. Um-um-um. I almost felt sorry for Bush. Again. But this time thank heaven he wasn't there applauding and wondering how to act. And all this was on his "home territory." No, not Connecticut. Houston. In Texas. No matter who or where you are, if you consider yourself a thinking human being please read and consider supporting SOBU's Covenant with Black America. In remembrance of the early British North American presence - the root of the UK-US 'special relationship', and of course not excluding Britain's role in the slave trade - SOBU organiser Tavis Smiley announced in Houston that next year's conference will convene in good olde Jamestown, Va. Throughout 2007 Virginia will remember the last four hundred years since American Indians saved the bacon of English settlers at a place that came to be known as Jamestown. So many Black Americans have ancestors and family from Virginia. Incidentally, we wonder how the quadricentennial planners intend to accurately incorporate the fact that until 1792 Kentucky was part of Virginia.

Oilman's view of the State of the Union

Today's MSM news sounds like one of the chief talking points of Bush's state of the union speech was "Americans are addicted to oil." I thought we'd realised that in the '70s. So I suppose in another 30 years Bush will pronounce the world is experiencing global warming. He says it's technology that will save us. MEMO TO MR BUSH: Technology alone will not save the people of the US and the global North (along with the rest of the world) from its their own wasteful behaviour. Technology is a means - not a saviour.

Lawless World: America and the Making and Breaking of Global Rules... - Sands' book on the Bush-Blair Choice for War

Hmm... how will the public and press on the western shores of the Atlantic pond react to news of British human rights attorney Philippe Sands' revised account of the UK-US joint prelude to the war on Iraq? Sands teaches law at University of London. His aptly titled book is Lawless World: America and the Making and Breaking of Global Rules--From FDR's Atlantic Charter to George W. Bush's Illegal War. As a matter of fact, recently I asked here: What might a discussion between FD Roosevelt and GW Bush sound like? The publisher's website - Penguin UK - features this short interview with Sands. "In the explosive Lawless World, Philippe Sands argues that recent American actions are undermining the global legal order established after WW2 and promoting its economic interests at the expense of human rights and the environment. Here Sands explains that his book is intended to challenge, inform and even outrage readers. ..." Meanwhile Simon Walters' article about the book appears in The Mail on Sunday (yesterday's newspaper, 29 Jan, from London) with the title, "Blair in Secret Plot with Bush to Dupe U.N." Could all this possibly be 'twew'? Walters says Sands' book claims Tony Blair "offered his total support for the war at a secret White House summit as Mr Bush displayed his contempt for the UN, made a series of wild threats against Saddam Hussein and showed a devastating ignorance about the catastrophic aftermath of the war." And continuing: "The revelations make a nonsense of Mr Blair's claim that the final decision was not made until MPs [Members of British Parliament] voted in the Commons 24 hours before the war - and could revive the risk of him being charged with war crimes or impeached by Parliament itself. ... The book also makes serious allegations concerning the conduct of Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer and Attorney General Lord Goldsmith over Goldsmith's legal advice on the war. ... it alleges the British Government boasted that disgraced newspaper tycoon Conrad Black was being used by Mr Bush's allies in America as a channel for pro-war propaganda in the UK via his Daily Telegraph newspaper."

What if FDR met Bush?

A curious thought crossed my mind recently. What might Franklin Delano Roosevelt have thought had he ever met George W. Bush and engaged him in, um, conversation? Possibly even one about public social policy. Can one imagine the elite but also seriously social justice activist (especially in her appreciation of Black Americans and especially right there locally in Washington, DC) Eleanor Roosevelt in the same setting with Laura Bush? Equally fascinating considering that FDR and G.W. Bush share the same East Coast American social class (and no matter how much others constantly spin Bush's 'nouveau working class-cattle ranch' socio-economic and geographic pretentions), President Roosevelt must've known - or at least at some distance - the reportedly rather notorious Bush grandfather, Prescott, who allegedly organised and provided material financial and industrial support to Nazis in Germany - until some branch of the U.S. government "intervened". Are those accounts true? So many questions, so few answers, so little public discussion.