![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
We are in the throes of a serious and unexpected political crisis. Fazio, the Governor of the Bank of Italy, was found to favour under-capitalized Italian prospective buyers of a bank over the better qualified Dutch banking giant ABN Amro. A leaked transcript of a phone call with the chief Italian bidder showed the supposedly imartial guardian of Italian banking law calling a bidder by his first name and coordinating strategies to shut the Dutch out. This shocking revelation has split both majority and opposition, with the majority of both demanding that Fazio resign. However, a leading MP from Berlusconi's own party, Guido Crosetto, party spokesman on banking (!), took Fazio's side against his own leader (unusual enough in that party, which was invented to give Berlusconi a political base).
Brace yourself, because you might just throw up when you find what this piece of filth actually said. Many people, he stated, "are slobbering after Italian banks; above all the great Jewish and American freemasonry which is practically knocking down our city gates." Asked to clarify his views, Crosetto pointed at Merrill Lynch, "a peculiar kind of banking institution, whose shareholders are... specifically Jewish." He also charged Romano Prodi, opposition leader and former chairman of the European Commission, with being their "hired hand".
In front of this vile outburst, which also entailed the kind of party disloyalty which Berlusconi would not normally tolerate, the Prime Minister has done precisely nothing. He has not slung the scum into the outer void. He has not even deprived him of his party office, which he could and should have. He has only written a bland newspaper article in which he says that "nobody could possibly imagine us to be anti-Hebraic, when we are the best friends of the State of Israel." Which, apart from being a political version of "some of my best friends are Jews", is only true in that the Italian right is not quite as savagely pro-Arab and anti-Israeli as the undisciplined hordes of the left. But just as you were beginning to think that perhaps there is something to be said for the Berlusconi coalition (or at least, that the left are just as unqualified to govern), this sort of thing reminds you how far down the scale of ignorant rabble they really are.
Brace yourself, because you might just throw up when you find what this piece of filth actually said. Many people, he stated, "are slobbering after Italian banks; above all the great Jewish and American freemasonry which is practically knocking down our city gates." Asked to clarify his views, Crosetto pointed at Merrill Lynch, "a peculiar kind of banking institution, whose shareholders are... specifically Jewish." He also charged Romano Prodi, opposition leader and former chairman of the European Commission, with being their "hired hand".
In front of this vile outburst, which also entailed the kind of party disloyalty which Berlusconi would not normally tolerate, the Prime Minister has done precisely nothing. He has not slung the scum into the outer void. He has not even deprived him of his party office, which he could and should have. He has only written a bland newspaper article in which he says that "nobody could possibly imagine us to be anti-Hebraic, when we are the best friends of the State of Israel." Which, apart from being a political version of "some of my best friends are Jews", is only true in that the Italian right is not quite as savagely pro-Arab and anti-Israeli as the undisciplined hordes of the left. But just as you were beginning to think that perhaps there is something to be said for the Berlusconi coalition (or at least, that the left are just as unqualified to govern), this sort of thing reminds you how far down the scale of ignorant rabble they really are.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-14 11:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-14 12:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-14 01:12 pm (UTC)Ick.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-14 02:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-14 03:18 pm (UTC)I don't know. I'm not in power.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-14 03:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-14 04:37 pm (UTC)Times haven't changed, beyond that the calendar recognises. Technology has changed. People haven't.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-14 04:52 pm (UTC)"Times haven't changed, beyond that the calendar recognises. Technology has changed. People haven't."
Well, we've changed some. But, compared to our technology, the amount that humans have grown or developed is infinitesimal enough to practically be none at all. So, no real argument here.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-14 05:17 pm (UTC)I've changed my approach in life over the years. I am not much any longer the social activist type. I exhausted myself for years with that, to the point of poor health and seriously crippled relationships. No. The key for me is to just live my life the way it should be led and hope for some kind of example to be seen by others, others who might like to inquire as to what I'm up to and why. I've had some 'success' with that, moreso than I ever did by being 'active'.
Maybe I'm weird.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-14 05:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-14 09:37 pm (UTC)Well put. One thing I have noticed a lot is that the majority of really "dedicated" social activists is that they more often than not come from backgrounds totally unrelated to the social cause for which they joust windmills. They go forward for their cause often with a zeal normally reserved for the religious or the insane. The rationality and reason they say they desire from others is alien to their point of view.
My personal belief is that 90% of social activists in the United States are such out of guilt, guilt at living so well compared to the rest of the world (among other things). Rather than take a measured and practical approach to helping solve problems they get caught up in a 'blame the [ubiquitous] establishment' and/or the 'make everyone else change but me'. Quite often they want other people to foot the bill, too. Ugh. It's irritating to write about. The point is... change isn't change unless it's voluntary, and most all activists these days don't realise that.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-15 04:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-15 10:40 am (UTC)Um... yes, exactly like PETA.
[retches again]
no subject
Date: 2005-09-15 04:38 am (UTC)Ah, retroactive contraception. You know it's the right thing to do.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-15 05:11 am (UTC)