fpb: (Default)
[personal profile] fpb
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.

Date: 2005-09-14 11:10 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] patchworkmind.livejournal.com
While disconcerting, I don't find what Fazio said of the Jews or Americans surprising. I do, however, find it disturbing that the Italian PM seems content to sit on his hands and let all of the matter apparently slide. That seems... I dunno. It's just more unseemly than I figured Berlusconi for, at least to appear such.

Date: 2005-09-14 12:41 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] fpb.livejournal.com
It was not Fazio who made the anti-Hebraic remarks, bad though his behaviour may otherwise have been. It was Representative Guido Crosetto, a member of the governing coalition and party spokesman on banking for Berlusconi himself. Fazio certainly ought to go, but Crosetto should precede him.

Date: 2005-09-14 01:12 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] patchworkmind.livejournal.com
Ah, then I misread the post. Well, that a party spokeman and government official made such comments is substantially more disturbing than the bank head. Oooh. That is worrisome.

Ick.

Date: 2005-09-14 02:57 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] super-pan.livejournal.com
Sometimes I feel like racism is emerging strong as ever. We've made so much progress, truly we have, but it's an uphill struggle and I think we're backsliding big time.

Date: 2005-09-14 03:18 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] patchworkmind.livejournal.com
Racism is good bait for those in power to throw out to those who might otherwise turn their attentions to what those in power are doing. For while, battling racism was a good distraction. The pendulum may have started back the other way.

I don't know. I'm not in power.

Date: 2005-09-14 03:24 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] super-pan.livejournal.com
Racism is an end in itself. People with power, wealth and prestige like to keep it amongst their own. Nowawadays, fighting racism is not so clearcut as it was in previous generations. Instead of being a grand battle, it seems like a bunch of nitpicking, so noone wants to bother.

Date: 2005-09-14 04:37 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] patchworkmind.livejournal.com
Well, to a degree it is nitpicking. The playing field is so strewn with varied victim groups, some self-indentified and others not so, that today seems to have a strange feature of people seeming to compete for sympathy (and often dollars).

Times haven't changed, beyond that the calendar recognises. Technology has changed. People haven't.

Date: 2005-09-14 04:52 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] super-pan.livejournal.com

"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.

Date: 2005-09-14 05:17 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] patchworkmind.livejournal.com
Alas, I've been studying and analysing people for many years, people all over the world and history. I wish there was an argument, something more than unique situations with particular individuals at specific times. There are always exceptions, but it's just they can't be the rule.

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.

Date: 2005-09-14 05:34 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] super-pan.livejournal.com
"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" In a way, this is an active social good, and in fact, is often more effective and productive than the "social activist types", who repulse more people than not it seems. Many of the social activists that I know are kinda creepy, usually hypocritical, and in it for themselves. And the others are often just worn down by it all. But there are people that I admire and try to emulate for the way they live their lives everyday.

Date: 2005-09-14 09:37 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] patchworkmind.livejournal.com
Many of the social activists that I know are kinda creepy, usually hypocritical, and in it for themselves.

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.

Date: 2005-09-15 10:40 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] patchworkmind.livejournal.com
[retches violently]

Um... yes, exactly like PETA.

[retches again]

Date: 2005-09-15 04:38 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] gunderpants.livejournal.com
You know, I think I might invent a time machine so I can go back in time and prevent them from being conceived.

Ah, retroactive contraception. You know it's the right thing to do.

Date: 2005-09-15 05:11 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] fpb.livejournal.com
Under those circumstance, I might drop my objection to abortion. How nice to know that one might prevent Bossi and Berlusconi from ever playing havoc with the Italian commmonwealth.

Profile

fpb: (Default)
fpb

February 2019

S M T W T F S
     12
345 6789
10111213141516
17181920212223
2425262728  

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jul. 16th, 2025 07:24 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios