So much for all the big talk – typical Italian bull from Roberto Maroni
Malta’s growing army of far-right ‘thinkers’ became overly excited when Roberto Maroni announced that Italy would be sending back all illegal immigrants starting right now. There they were, all over timesofmalta.com, telling Tonio Borg (who probably feels roughly the same way) and Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici (who almost certainly doesn’t) to wake up, ‘smell the coffee’ (never ones to let a cliche go by…) and start doing the same.
My own view was that we should expect nothing more from the country that gave the world fascism. Maroni gave an interview to L’Espresso a couple of months ago in which he claimed that Italy’s gypsies were unexpectedly and inexplicably upping and leaving for “Zapatero’s Spain, which is more permissive”. That’s right, permissive.
I could have added that we should expect nothing more than big talk and hot bull from the country which gave the world big-talking, bullsh*tting, boastful men who, in their worst and most legendary incarnation, have got to be among the most irritating and untrustworthy on the planet.
No sensible woman takes a certain kind of Italian man seriously, and Roberto Maroni is clearly one of those.
The Times, Thursday, 22 January
Italy only sent back immigrants coming from Egypt
Italy is only repatriating immigrants hailing from Egypt, The Guardian has reported.It referred to a recent statement by the Italian Interior minister, Roberto Maroni, that all those arriving without authorisation would be held on the island until they were repatriated. But the mayor of Lampedusa Bernardino De Rubeis told the paper: “You can expel an immigrant when you are certain of his or her country of origin, but not otherwise.”
Mr De Rubeis threatened to call for a general strike on the island in protest at the hardline immigration policies of Silvio Berlusconi’s government. He launched his challenge as the number of people in Lampedusa’s immigrant detention centre grew to 1,850 – a thousand more than its official capacity.
The Guardian said that so far, only two flights left the island, carrying some 50 migrants back to Egypt, with which Italy had a working repatriation agreement. Similar deals with Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco existed only on paper and there were no agreements with war-torn countries, including Somalia, that account for many of the arrivals.
A spokesman for the Foreign Ministry had said following Mr Maroni’s comments that one should “wait and see”.
Malta has repatriated more than 900 immigrants coming from Egypt.
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The Italians also gave the world espresso:
http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=KAYq9jSUKt4
@DCG
You do not like the Italians, that is for sure; pity that you don’t say anything against the Brits: they do deserve more sympathy considering the big mess they are in. You should at least criticise them for their Labour government and for their belief that the world must continue to bank their debts.
[Daphne – I’m sorry, but I don’t quite follow your line of thinking. If I criticise aspects of Italian culture, why does it then follow that I am expected also to criticise aspects of British culture? Please don’t tell me that you’re still suffering from dualist thinking – Nationalist/Labour, Madonna tal-Gilju/Madonna tas-Sema; It-Taljani/L-Inglizi.]
Hello everybody – after being away for so long, on planes, trains and automobiles, I M Back ( excuse the plagiarisation, Bocca). Not that this is related, i am simply putting it in as this is the most recent post, but have a look at this. To all you people who believe that Arafat was God and the Palestinians are blameless in this conflict, hear what this smart lady has to say. She is not Palestinian, or Jewish, but a Christian Arab from Lebanon.
http://multimedia.heritage.org/content/wm/Lehrman-092706a.wvx
Italy gave the world a hell of a lot more then fascism and you know it., if you remember the comments left by posters here a few weeks back when you more or less said teh same thing in an earlier thread.
[Daphne – Whatever else Italy ‘gave the world’, the inescapable fact is that it also inflicted fascism on Europe within living memory, and gave that world the Mafia. Yes, Italy produced some of history’s most creative geniuses, and is unsurpassed when it comes to food and fashion. But you have to admit that there must be something deeply wrong with a culture and society that can give rise to two of the greatest evils of the 20th century. Your way of looking at things is akin to saying of a mass murderer, ‘Oh, but he cooks well and paints a lovely picture.” Interestingly, Italy’s fascist legacy is discernible even in the fact that, when I pass remarks like this, it’s the right-wing with a fascist approach to immigration and lack of tolerance towards people from other cultures who feel the most pressing need to rush to Italy’s defence, including you. The irony, of course, escapes you. You might also wish to explain why Benito Mussolini’s grand-daughter, instead of living a low-profile life and changing her surname, is proud and confident enough to parade about town declaiming about politics, standing for election, and – more to the point – receiving lots of public support and positive attention. Or why Roberto Maroni can make fascist pronouncements which are greeted with perturbation and widely criticised everywhere but in Italy. To Germany’s credit, I can’t see Adolf Hitler’s grand-daughter – had he one – standing for election as Alexandra Hitler and getting away with it.]
That Maroni’s promises have not been fulfilled is hardly surprising, given the obvious difficulties that implementing his crude policy would entail. As for the man’s character itself, his coarseness is in no doubt. Like so many of his fellow coalition members, he boasts a criminal record. He was handed an eight-month sentence for an incident in 1996, in which he attacked police officers conducting a search of his political party’s headquarters. Ironically, given your charge, in addition to grabbing two policemen by the legs and knocking them to the ground, Maroni also berated the officers as “fascists” and “Mafia”, among other things. On a lesser note, he also admitted in an interview to the Italian edition of Vanity Fair in September 2006 that he illegally downloads music. He also distinguished himself by virtue of his upstanding humanitarianism by proposing that the fingerprints of gypsy children should be recorded for security purposes. And this man is the Minister of the Interior, lest we forget. You couldn’t make it up.
[Daphne – But that’s exactly my point, that Italy is the sort of society in which it is possible for a man like that to (1) achieve popular support and (2) become a government minister, and foreign minister no less.]
1. The Mafia is an original Sicilian product. If one wishes to describe the Mafia as one of Italy’s gifts to mankind, then one should make obligatory excursions into Italy’s politico-ethnic history.
2. In a modern, functioning, liberal democracy, it should be licit and legitimate for Mussolini’s grand-daughter to behave as she wishes, as long as she does that within the framework, which is granted by Italy’s valid constitution.
3. Hitler was Austrian. Descendants of Hitler’s German associates still carry their original names, although they are not politically involved in public, a notable exception being Manfred Rommel, who was a very popular Christian-Democrat Lord Mayor of Stuttgart for quite a long time.
I stand to be corrected.
[Daphne – In a modern, functioning, liberal democracy, modern, functioning liberal members of that society would reject a fascist’s granddaughter who continues to espouse her grandfather’s fascist beliefs, to boast about the family connection, and to wear his name with pride. It is beyond revolting. The Italian tolerance threshold for wrong-doing appears to be extremely low indeed. Hitler was Austrian but identified himself as German, made his political career in Germany, and led Germany to destruction. The Mafia is certainly one of Italy’s gifts to mankind. It started out in Sicily but infiltrated the rest of the country including the political power-house in Rome. And as if that were not enough, Reggio, Campania and Puglia developed their own embedded criminal networks. The experience of the people of Sicily and southern Italy was no different to that of the people of southern Spain, of Portugal, of southern France or of Greece for that matter. There is really no excuse.]
Daphne remarked:
[…. modern, functioning liberal members of that society would reject a fascist’s granddaughter who continues to espouse her grandfather’s fascist beliefs, to boast about the family connection, and to wear his name with pride. It is beyond revolting. The Italian tolerance threshold for wrong-doing appears to be extremely low indeed.]
Ways of the world, Daphne, some or most would/could/may reject, others not necessarily. Well-known drawbacks of a liberal democracy. The overwhelming majority of Germans do agree unequivocally that Hitler led Germany to destruction.
It was not my intention to excuse anyone/anything through my contributions. However, one is always obliged to tone down emotions in order to face realities in their proper perspective.
Good for you Daphne.
And here’s the latest news:
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20090123/world-news/un-agency-concerned-about-italy-refugee-site
If it were only the fascism, it wouldn’t be so bad, but there’s the Mafia and its offshoots and a deep-rooted philosophy as expressed by Macchiavelli that ‘the end justifies the means’. So Italians lie, cheat and betray friends and enemies alike and have done so for hundreds of years. Their politicians and leaders of society are frequently corrupt. In WWI Italy betrayed its partners Austria and Germany and fought on the other side. In WWII Italy joined Germany only after Hitler had practically conquered the European mainland. Yes, there are bits of Italy that can be admired, notably their food and wine but by and large they don’t have much to write home about.
@ Emmanuel Muscat
You should be grateful that Britain – for a time virtually singlehandedly – opposed fascism and thanks to the British Europe is free.
[Daphne – What really gets me about Italy is that everything is so damned chaotic and disorganised – except for crime, which is organised really well.]
I’ve just read the article in the Times on line about the EU group visiting the detention centres in Malta
and what it thought of them. Then I read the comments…Don’t you think the Times should stop having comments below articles about illegal immigrants and asylum seekers? I’m sure there are people like me whose blood pressure shoots up and who want to bang their heads against the wall when they read these comments. During the time it takes me to skim through them, I can’t bear to read them properly. I am not proud to be Maltese.
[Daphne – No, I don’t think The Times should stop publishing those comments. I think it’s performing a crucial service by revealing the true extent of far-right sentiment and racist thinking in Malta. I’m one of those people who prefers to know the full extent of a problem, rather than hoping it doesn’t exist. Yes, like you I become desperate and furious when reading those kinds of comments, but then we both know people who can spell and construct a sentence, who don’t post comments on http://www.timesofmalta.com, and who think exactly the same way. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve had to control myself at table. It’s very difficult.]
You might be right about the Mafia and the rest, but one thing is for sure apart from the beautiful sites, the Italians know how to live as anyone who has walked the streets of Trastevere in Rome or the Navigli in Milan or visited any of the villages around Lago di Garda or stopped for a coffee on the shores of Lago di Como.
[Daphne – I don’t know about that. They have huge unemployment and vast exploitation of young graduates who are cajoled into working for free on the promise of a job and then ‘let go’ when the experimental three-month period is up. It all depends on what you prefer. Given a choice between living in a well-organised state with low unemployment and relatively little corruption or none, and a disorganised state with rampant unemployment, no prospects and high levels of corruption, I would choose the former any day. Food and beauty just don’t come into it. You can always cook a good meal and make a nice espresso at home. The trouble is that we only visit Italy as tourists and so think it’s wonderful. Try living there – unless you’re very well off, you have access to none of the good things we have when on holiday.]
Hey Daphne,
Do you know what made Mussolini famous? He made the trains run on time. At least he organised those.
Now seriously…
I went to Berlin a while back, beautiful architecture and all that, but do you know what got me thinking? People openly selling military surplus gear with the Red Star as souvenirs. Now imagine if the same souvenirs were of the SS, or had some Swastika on it? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that they SHOULD be sold, I’m saying that NEITHER should be sold. Read Anne Applebaum’s 2004 Pulitzer Prize winning book Gulag to see the atrocities done there.
There is also a certain myth created around left-wing icons. We have films celebrating the life of Che Guevara, where the myth of his being some Robin Hood character was all propaganda created principally after his death. But imagine the reaction if a film celebrating the life of some paramilitary death squad in Colombia was made? The only difference is the political ideology, not their methods.
Are the atrocities committed by Pol Pot, Mao and Stalin, any less than those perpetrated by Hitler, Mussolini and Pinochet?
[Daphne – Well, actually Mussolini didn’t make the trains run on time. There was a very good article about that in the ‘urban legends’ series in, I think, The Sunday Times Magazine. It was all propaganda. The work on reforming the train system had begun years before and was spearheaded by a particularly clever and industrious civil servant. The results of his labours came to fruition at the same time as Mussolini’s rise to power. It was a fortunate coincidence for Mussolini, who claimed the credit himself. But then you know what I said earlier about Italian men like Maroni, they’re all bull and big talk.]
[Daphne – What really gets me about Italy is that everything is so damned chaotic and disorganised – except for crime, which is organised really well.]
Ah well, we all know that in the UK, everything runs smoothly like clockwork.
[Daphne – X’mentalita bazwija, Sybil. I’ve already pointed out to somebody else that dualist thinking (Britain/Italy) makes no sense at all in 21st century Malta and is a clunking legacy from the past. You might as well tell me sarcastically that everything works like clockwork in Germany and Denmark (it does). And yes, things work a lot more smoothly in Britain than they do in Italy, where literally nothing works.]
[Daphne – Your way of looking at things is akin to saying of a mass murderer, ‘Oh, but he cooks well and paints a lovely picture.”
http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/criminal_mind/psychology/serial_killer_art/index.html
At last someone who hates the Italians. Greatest wankers on the planet, on a par with the French and the Portuguese.
[Daphne – I don’t hate them, for god’s sake. I think merely that they are accorded far too much adulation in Malta.]
Mussolini was a Fascist who didn’t make it. Generalissimo Franco or as better know El Caudillo, lived happily ever after still rubbing his hands as Lady Macbeth did. A historical observation: Mafia was totally controlled under the Fascist regime only to emerge, liberated from prisons to help the Allies landings during World War II; they knew better than anyone else the Sicilian terrain. After the war they were left to operate freely…as long as they helped to see that the Communist Party would never come to power, but after the downfall of Communism, they became ‘politically’ redundant.
@Sybil
What’s your message on that “serial killer art” piece?
As a reply, sort of, to the comment about murderers painting pretty pics, I guess.
@Daphne
If dualistic thinking re Britain/Italy makes no sense in modern day Malta then you are never in Malta when an Italy/Great Britain football game is played during the World Cup competition and you never ever hear what the plebs say on radio phone-ins during sports programmes.Funnily enough, it is not the first time that I read articles in the local press where this sort of “dualistic thinking re Britain/Italy” is very noticeable.
Germany and Denmark….. you forgot Swizerland.
[Daphne – We are not speaking about football, I am not interested in sports, and God forbid ‘the plebs’ should set the standards for rational thought on their phone-in shows. You might as well say that racism makes sense in 21st century Malta because timesofmalta.com is riddled with racist comments.]
@Sybil
Just thought there was a deeper meaning in it.
My previous comment was made in a light vein but as a matter of fact I have lived in both countries and each has its good and bad points. Yes, in Italy there are the social problems that you have mentioned but this is not very different from the UK situation – here one would find families with over three generations not knowing what work means – just living off the dole.
Both countries have their problematic areas – try walking in Nottingham’s city centre after 6.00pm in winter – and presently the financial situation of a large number of employees is not that rosy either.
Though I believe that the “level of richness” as compared to the standard of living in Malta is much better than either country, on the whole I find that in the UK meritocracy is more evident and in my personal experience, there are few know-it-all-I-am-better-than-you-as-I-am-a-professor persons, even though their CV has to be compiled in over two volumes. So given a choice where to work and live I would live in the UK, but retire in Italy (still in love with the country).
@ Daphne
Just out of interest, what percentage of the Maltese people do you think are far right and racist? Because the more I meet either through their comments on line or socially, the higher I think the percentage is, and the more shocked and upset I get.
We are no longer a colony, we’re independent, we live in a republic, we form part of the EU and we still
use the expression “If you don’t like it, go home”.
When will Malta grow up?
[Daphne – I have no idea what the percentage is, but it must be very high. All I know is that whatever the social situation and the sort of people present, whenever the topic of conversation comes round to this, I am invariably in a minority. I was once at an excruciating dinner-party where I thought it best to signal to my husband that we had better leave before the coffee arrived because my blood was boiling and I feared a scene, given that I have an uncontrollable temper despite being very calm most of the time. Fortunately, somebody noticed and made strenuous efforts to change the direction of the conversation. We were being served by a Filipina who, we were told, was in Malta raising money to support her four-year-old son back in the Philippines after her husband had been killed. She was in the kitchen the whole time, scrubbing and cleaning away, until 11pm at least. She slept on a truckle-bed under the stairs, was given no time off except for a few hours on Sunday, and the hostess boasted about how little she cost. Basically, she paid her less for a 14-hour day, six days a week servitude than I pay my Maltese home help for three mornings a week. And while the household slave was popping in and out of the kitchen fetching and carrying, the conversation was about how They are stealing our jobs, changing the social fabric, bringing things down, how They will never integrate because They are too different. There have been many similar situations and they are all the result of the most unbelievable ignorance. It made me realise what it must have been like to live among rednecks but not feel the way they do in Georgia, the United States circa 1955.]
@ Daphne
I agree with and have experienced everything you write and find it incredibly depressing. Is the percentage as high in the under 30 age group? They are our only salvation.
[Daphne – My sons, who are in their 20s, tell me it’s as bad among their contemporaries, which kind of means there’s no hope. In a way, you wouldn’t expect any different because young people here pick up their value system from their parents – they don’t break away or challenge anything – and they grow up in homes where the conversation is utilitarian, there are no books, newspapers or journals and they have mothers who are isolated from the real world and have no interest in anything outside the home, while their fathers are largely absent from the picture and so have little influence. There is no doubt that the mother is the greatest influence, for better or worse, on children and teenagers in Malta, and women here are very poorly educated in the widest sense of the word. Men are not much better, it’s true, but at least they’re exposed to different experiences through work.]
Beautiful women, ugly man!
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10553600