Tante Belle Cose - Italy gets off to a New Start

With our Prime Minister Monti receiving the (sham) recognition* from the Paris journal Trombinoscope as "European of the Year", it's not surprising that things are looking up for Italy, despite the crippled Concordia stuck on its side in troubled waters [insert your metaphor here].


There appears to be a new tide of taking on the tax cheats, petty criminals and those bad apples who seem to ruin the entire barrel, if you are at least to believe the newspapers.  Regardless, it's a welcome sight to see the mainstream media finally bringing to light the Corruption of the Day blasted right on the front pages.  Hopefully, this pace will keep up. 


- This month, we saw the Financial Police (something akin to the IRS) go in to nightclubs all over Milan.  Once the proprietors saw that they were being watched, incredibly, receipts and income rose by 44%, in some cases up to 200% in one night alone.

Of course, it could be that suddenly a lot more people just wanted to party before the end of the world in 2012...

- Rome brought out a fine of €250 for those caught not scooping up the poop.  Surveying the lofty Via Veneto, one woman in a fur said, "Give me a ticket - I can't pick that gross stuff up."

If that's the case, why don't you (and all your paesani for that matter) simply "curb your dog"???

- Italy's new Minister of Equal Opportunities blasted Rome's Mayor Alemanno for playing three-card monty with his City Council members.  Forced by law to have equal numbers of men & women (he has 10 to 2), he simply dissolved his cabinet the day before it was to take effect and re-employed them all.  That way, those who oppose his number-challenged mind, have to start the judicial process all over again.

In his defense, he said he "canvassed lots and lots of women but no one wanted the job"....Really?!  I could name a few, starting with Yours, Truly.

- And, in a case of citizen watchdogs run amok, the Consumer's Associations (for whom I usually nurture unbridled love), retracted their lawsuit against Mr. Della Valle of Tod's shoes for offering €50 million to restore the Colosseum. 

It was an unprecedented case of corporate or, in this case, personal philanthropy, something sorely missing in European society, and these jokers wanted to block it.  Providing this observer with an extreme case of hives from scratching my forehead in utter disbelief.

* A sham given that he started his new job at the end of November 2011.  Just like Obama before him & the Nobel Peace Prize, since when do we now give award for promises and not for deeds well done?  It also stands to mention that in his last year as President of Italy's MBA University Bocconi, it fell from 28th place to 42nd.  Hoping that'll not be the case for Italy as well... 

What does an Italian Groundhog look like?

A blackbird.  

Turns out, while Americans wait and see if a groundhog will see its shadow, the Italians have their own mother nature equivalent.  I giorni della merla - The blackbird's days which fall on the last three days of January and indicating the coldest days of winter.  And although weathermen report that there are (often) days much colder, the legend has stuck.

But leave it to the Italians and their gift for gab and you'll find that the legend has now morphed into a number of different tales, to be recalled by future generations, depending on your point of view.  So, pick your tale:

I. During a very cold winter in Milan's Porta Nuova (I like this, my old stomping grounds)...a family of white birds took refuge in a courtyard of a palazzo.  The father could not find food due to the cover of fallen snow.  It kept right on snowing, so the father bird decided to fly out of the snowstorm looking for food.  Before he left, he settled the mother & three baby birds near a smokestack for warmth.  Able to return only after the storm had passed (3 days), he found his family black with soot.  The sun came out in February, marking the end of winter, but by then even the papa bird had turned black and from then on, blackbirds were born.

II.  ...It was so cold that the family - unable to even flap their wings - perched its nest atop the smokestack.  Finally, after three days they could fly away - but by that time the white birds had turned black, and from that point on, the blackbird came to be.

III.  This version becomes more dark (in tutti sensi):  The papa bird left his family inside the chimney, and went out to search for food.  Upon his return, finding his mate all black, he didn't recognize her and left.  She died of hunger.

IV.  Two young blackbirds return to the hometown of the young female in order to marry, situated beyond the Po River.  Afterwards, once they left for home, back over the river, it got to be too late and too cold.  So they spent two days more nearby with relatives.  On the third day, their next attempt, it was so cold that the male died -- and that's why today you can still hear the lament of the female along the Po river each end of January.

One astute blogger reported the actual temperature indications.  In fact, they found that:  

The average temperature of the three days in question is 3.6 degrees celsius, while the average of all of January is 2.8 degrees.  At nearly 1 degree more, it "proves" that legends and tall tales are just that, indeed.  

Nonetheless, be sure to throw an extra blanket on your bed just to be sure...

Italy Strikes: Just what are they (all) on about?

Italy has been hit not just by mild earthquakes, but rolling strikes by seemingly every single category of worker and (non) across the country.  Even the indignados showed up at Parliament to put there own take on the problems befalling our broken system.  The only people, of course, who haven't complained (so far) are the Parliamentarians, still grossly overpaid, outnumbering their foreign counterparts by 2 to 1, and outrageously detached from the populace.  As gas stations, pharmacists, trains, taxis, truckers and more stop their work and take to the streets, Italy is starting to feel as though we're engaged in our very own intifada.  There's even police violence to put them in their place, as we witnessed with the fishermen marching on parliament as well.


So, let's take a look at our PM's efforts to bring Italy into the liberalized world of work and see what everyone's complaining about. [Everybody except the body that gives itself raises in the face of budget cuts, allows for never-ending perks, and goes against the law by deciding that those assisting the mafia are okay to serve as well.  With the Mafia Inc. the number one business in Italy, at least they can say they're pro-business].  


- Adding 5000 more pharmacies / As I state in my book, you would be forgiven for thinking that those neon green crosses were a modern update to the holy shrines found on nearly every street corner.  Turns out, there are not enough of them.  And the govt's going to make it easier to open one.  Pharmacists protest that it would ruin their profession.
- The govt wants to add more notaries as well, simplify some procedures, and improve competition in the auto insurance industry by forcing cos. to provide competing tariff information (I'd love to see how that's going to play out).
- They no longer wish to enforce min/max tariffs for lawyers as long as you are forewarned of the charges and they do want to enforce max bank charges and a ceiling on highway taxes, which today is the very definition of highway robbery.
On the whole, I think it looks like liberalization and keeps govt out of private companies & prof'l offices. Correct me if I'm mistaken.
- Adding to the pot, the govt wants more taxi licenses - unleashing the equivalent of the wrath of God - when, in fact, they should spend money on taxis by giving them all a crash course in Supply & Demand.
- The petroleum cos. and truckers are pissed over liberalizing gas contracts, meaning any gas station, despite its name, can buy from any supplier.  They're also keen on breaking up the supply chain to add to more competitiveness.  Gas stations will also be able to sell products in a mini-market, which I believe has the added consequence of pissing off retailers.  They will no longer have limits on the number of self-service stations either.  As for this last one, I have no idea why it was in place in the first place.
- The govt may win its battle on allowing shops to open / close when they want to, doing away with the siesta in the interim, but retailers won their war against allowing anyone to hold sales and offer product discounts whenever they want to.  They - incredibly - believe if that were the case, the large outlets and mega-stores would hold sales all year round and put them out of business.  
Little do they realize that those stores are already putting them out of business, and, those companies, with such low margins cannot readily afford sales 365 days per year...Once again, for a quickie course in Economics 101 is called for.
- And finally, the govt wants to put an end to nationalized work contracts (e.g., you're paid for your category whether you're an engineer in Lucca or Lecce).  This is an effort to liberalize the labour pool, allowing people to negotiate their pay & perks directly with the company they're looking to work for.  Naturally, this has put in a tail spin every single person that does not make up any of the above categories, starting with train people.  The workers argue that without a govt mandate, companies will start bringing salaries down to nothing as jobs are so hard to come by.  That's true, but eventually, the companies are going to need to attract people too.


As Mario Monti stated (a bit more eloquently than here), "I hope I've pretty much pissed everyone off."


It certainly is starting to look that way.

Italy's Horseracing Sector - Off course by a length?

This, too, was once an Ippodromo Race Course
LET'S NOT DESTROY HORSERACING!

While the world has been buzzing over the sinking of the Concordia, while those of us in Italy are experiencing the rolling strikes of taxi drivers, now pharmacists, then truckers, lawyers and gas stations in protest of the government's austerity package, there's been one group on strike and seemingly getting nowhere fast: the horse racing industry.  But this poster doesn't just reveal what's wrong with the horse race sector of Italy, it's a poster advertising what's wrong with almost the entire country's approach to each and every sector: 


First, let's ignore (if you can, without scratching your head in a WTF moment) the idea that an empty field - the late great Circus Maximus - was once a race course track.  Once again, resorting to "our glory days" - and here, evoking the Greatness of Roma: Caput Mundi.  Too bad we have to go back to centuries before our own calendar even started for show-and-tell.  I get it:  let's not abandon our race tracks and leave them in ruins.  
But, showing me a popular tourist attraction - no longer in use - and attracting more people than the modern-day race tracks -- in my opinion isn't the best way to go about doing this.


Where are the race tracks?  Family days at the races?  Competitions like the Kentucky Derby?  Name that foal?  Go to the wiki on Horse Racing, and under Italy you find only a mention of the Palio, a race held twice a year and lasting only 30 seconds at that.  I love the races, the San Siro stadium in Milan, but have rarely set foot inside - more often to admire the magnificent bronze horse of Leonardo gracing its entranceway out front.  Like much in Italy, unless you're in the know (or follow the cultural bloggers - who work for free) the world at large knows nothing of the exceptional cultural offerings taking place nearly every second across the boot.


Next, we have the appeal to the government to step in & save the day. Keeping 15000 horses from the butcher's block, and maintaining many a worker.  Instead of employing marketing techniques, school programs and user-friendly websites to keep things going, just throw more good money after bad.  People wait for the government to give money to make movies, the government to pay for theaters and opera houses, and a host of other cultural events.  So much of it is so ill-spent it's absolutely criminal.  The Italian people cough up money so that those on the receiving end can live high on the hog, improve their vast art collections, and do a number of things that have nothing to do with actually producing or promoting their venue.
Italian generosity also keeps these low-funded but culturally phenomenal concerns from stepping up to the plate and fundraising, sensitizing the public, building trustees, investing in their own improvements and more.  If they did these things, waiting for a handout would not be even considered an option.


Finally, we have the strikes and street protests.  Too bad it's the first time I ever saw the horses make their way into the public arena.  More of this to promote their races (okay, it might be illegal) and maybe they wouldn't need to take to the streets begging people to pay attention.  If they had just added signs, race times and cards of horse's names... maybe people would actually take the time to check them out.


But, let's go back to the Glory Days.  As I stated before in my entry on strikes,  the theory goes...because we were once great, we can lose touch with our professional prowess, ignore the potential customers, run things as if it were a private club, not allow any new blood (and here I'm thinking of the Arabs who saved Kentucky), not invest in new and better ways to do things...


After all, we were once the great Made in Italy brand.  And that should be reason enough to expect the throngs to keep coming.

Concordia's Deep Throat

The tragedy of the Concordia has been rocking the airwaves and bandwiths for days now, each day bringing out new revelations.  But for every bit of news that goes reported, it seems that it gives rise to even more questions. So true also in the case of the mystery Moldavian who was hunkering down in Moldavia after jumping ship and skedaddling as fast as her dancer's legs could take her.  But the most pressing question, in the first days of the tragedy was...How could this have happened?!  We've been met with a captain's smorgasbord of explanations ever since.
A friend who was holed up at Rome Airport’s Hilton Hotel with many of the crew members all last weekend simply asked them the next obvious question:   “So what was really going on there?”  Little did she know before it broke at the UK's Telegraph that the word on the street was that our wonder-boy was most likely banging a “Russian whore” on the bridge before banging his boat into the hard rock basin below the Island of Giglio.  That's not true.  Turns out, she's Moldavian.  A former "dancer" for Costa lines.  Perhaps in the way Berlusconi's Egyptian princess, Ruby Rubacuore (Heartstealer) is also a dancer?   
I, for one, do not believe the Italian macho press when it states it was she who "egged him on" to go closer & closer to the shore -- in the land of the Papacy, ahhh...don't we love a modern-day Eve?   After all, the videotapes of the bridge have yet to be released.  It would make much more sense that he was trying to impress her by taking his boat so close to the island.
In fact, as he approached, he jokingly asked the Commodore (by phone, and the man Schettino had purportedly wanted to salute), "Got water?"  Talk about famous last words.  Can't wait to see that on a t-shirt.
From the get-go, no one has believed Captain Schettino’s version of events.  Especially his last alibi, "I tripped and fell into a life boat".  Hundreds trying to get into those boats didn't make it in...He goes onto say he was stuck in his little dinghy - not able to jimmy the boat down into the water...So much for his mariner's skills at that.
But doesn't that make a convenient excuse for explaining your absence?  It'll go down in the annals of history alongside "The dog ate my homework."
I'm going with my version instead:  Perhaps he had jettisoned off the boat to make sure his “lady friend” would be on land before being found out -- a Poseidon Adventure version of having your wife come home while you’re in bed with your lover, so you shimmy her out the window to make a clean escape.

He also supposedly called a taxi, but never took one (reports vary).  Perhaps the taxi driver can shed a bit more light onto who his passenger was?  It would explain his absence and his presence on a lifeboat when people were anxiously trying to jump ship from the prow.
Nonetheless, the audacity of Schettino's admission makes the entire disaster even more senseless.  It also certainly explains the stunned reaction of our Captain once he was caught knee deep in it – and with his pants down.  

Schettino, for his part, was only following in the example of our former Prime Minister who had come to love the brazen mixture of power, money, whores, spectacle and thumbing your nose at the rules.  In fact, both men started out in life on cruise ships. It comes as no surprise at least to this observer that, at first accosted by the Coast Guard Commander and later upon arrest, our Captain Coward denied everything just like Silvio -- right down even to the existence of the rocks that has torn more than his boat apart.

Captain Coward and the Sinking of the Concordia

There has been so much excellent commentary combined with a whole lot of conjecture on this terrible incident, I didn't want to weigh in on what seems to be a singular act of bravado by a seriously inept commander.  Usually, guys love to show off.  But when Evil Knievel jumps over a cliff, or a motocross racer does it, they usually only put themselves in danger (save for the spectators down below).  
Many people find it compelling to compare the Italian disaster with the Titanic, whose 100th Anniversary is this April.  I don't think that's foolish journalism.  If we are to believe Cameron's depiction of the causes behind the sinking (it wasn't the iceberg, btw), it was the ship owner's desire to arrive in New York's harbor ahead of schedule.  Speed was the cause, and once they saw the iceberg it was simply too late.  No boat or plane can be protected from sheer chutzpah (and I refuse to use the term, "human error" - "spectacularly poor judgment" would be a lot more accurate) by a guy showing off at the helm.  Furthermore, if this act of bravado had taken place off the coast of say, Iceland or Newfoundland, we would be mourning a lot more than the 30 or so who are dead or still missing.
What I find remarkable about the entire fiasco is - believing the Captain's statements made - that he "...Didn't know or didn't think there were rocks so close to the Port of Giglio."  Or his statement of today, that once he realized he was too close, it was too late to maneuver a tidy 8-story city out of harm's way.  
Anyone who has ever swum or rowboated or kyacked around any island can tell you...there are rocks in shallow waters surrounding it as you go out to sea.  But, don't take my word for it:  Captain Schettino could have just meandered into the Aquarium in Genova - the port town where his boat docks - and studied an entire topographical representation in amazing detail of the ocean floors covering our beautiful blue planet.  He could even have skipped the lines, the Aquarium is owned by Costa - the same Company which owns his sunken ship.  For the map image, click on the link here and look at page 2 of the pdf file.
However, judging by comments on online news pages worldwide, many are blaming the "bumbling Italians".  When it comes to our skipper, nothing could be further from the truth.  Italians - like the Greeks before them - have been sailing the seven seas long before other humans dared venture off the land [you can insert here your own metaphor on commandeering sinking ships].  Shipping companies, cruise ships and ferry operators worldwide are often manned by all-Italian crews.  Their skippers and engineers are flawless.  Bravery - and usual calm under pressure is legend (unfortunately not employed by the Italian Coast Guard Captain in his - rightfully placed - extreme frustration) and can be seen in the countless examples of their soldiers and Carabinieri stationed in Iraq & Afghanistan and in hot spots 'round the world.  
When it came to "organization" of the rescue effort, certainly I would fault the captain and his crew.  Misleading announcements picked up by the Spanish couple egressing from their cabin (they prod the crew member, "If it's an electrical outage, why are you wearing a life jacket?!!) and the fact that half the lifeboats where on the side that was listing into the water would reap havoc on any emergency procedures.  But, is this justifiably due to Italian disorganization?  Although I dedicate an entire chapter in my book to disorganization, Hurricane Katrina and the fiasco of America's emergency services in that disaster come to mind...or the response of BP in the Gulf of Mexico, which was entirely English, indeed.  The reason why Captain Sullenberg of the Hudson River landing is so famous is that that kind of cool and outcome in such extreme circumstances is so totally unusual.  [I might add that his boss, the head of USAirways was a total pig-headed idiot when it came to his response].
Nonetheless, for Captain Schettino ("Rollerskate" in English), this is one instance when "rockering" doesn't make for a swift and easy maneuver - and a move that he'll not get out of anytime soon.


For some other good reads, click on these links below (some in Italian):

http://news.yahoo.com/italian-cruise-capt-francesco-schettino-biggest-idiot-2012-211000948.html

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/01/17/145366815/facing-disaster-what-is-a-ships-captain-expected-to-do?ft=1&f=1001&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=pulsenews
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/18/us-italy-ship-crew-idUSTRE80G1D120120118
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/2f1f39a8-4110-11e1-b521-00144feab49a.html#axzz1jufrjaTr

http://www3.lastampa.it/cronache/sezioni/articolo/lstp/438730/   (article in italian)

It takes a village...

The Italians have a wonderful expression for when something happens someplace which is identical in breadth and scope of a happening somewhere else -- Tutto il mondo è un paese - The whole world is a village.  
And so it was, while reading my Detroit Free Press, I was reminded of this when 44 yr old white collar thug Brian Marsack risks being sent up the river for ripping off the elderly of their life savings.  His response?  "They were old and didn't need the money anyway."  Like Madoff, I guess he was a better financial planner - he was planning for his retirement more responsibly.
It's a sad start to a New Year but one that always brings me back to fine Italy.  Here (and everywhere, I imagine) it is a national sport for faux utilities personnel to get into the homes of the elderly and rob them blind after stunning them or knocking them out with chloroform of some sort.  Others prey on seniors by pretending to know them or their offspring, and then happily escort them to a bank machine for money their relative purportedly needs.  
Recently, two Neapolitan criminals received 15 years in jail each for killing an elderly American tourist just for his Rolex--the man had simply set out to visit the city from a cruise ship nearby.  We are constantly hearing reports of people being pulled to their deaths for their purses or necklaces in street crimes by fast-moving criminals (often on scooters).  And although a friend of my great aunt's once grabbed the necklace off the man who had grabbed hers -- he got a fake gold necklace, she ended up with the real thing -- these stories usually don't have such happy endings.
Luckily, many elderly are growing more and more aware of the perils of these sorts due to outing the scams on TV shows.  But sadly, like the family featured in the Detroit article, many of them get ripped off by the people they know best.  In fact, the article goes on to state that:  


"A 2009 study by MetLife says seniors are cheated out of $2.6 billion each year, and the perpetrator is likely to be a relative or caregiver.

The study estimates that for every case that's found, there are likely four more cases that went undetected."

The article offers a few pointers for seniors such as: Do not give information such as Social Security numbers and bank account information over the phone and Be wary of charities asking for money, even if they sound legitimate.  I would add a few of my own:  ignore letters or emails saying you've won money, seek advice on business deals - even if thru a good friend or relative, and never open the door to strangers.  

Wherever you may live.  As the saying goes, the whole world is just a village.