Italy as a nation - chapter one

It’s not easy being Italian.( Read more... )

big fat history book - YOURS FOR FREE!

- um, if you can read Chinese and use big fat .pdf documents. I have a beautiful e-copy of THE CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES in Chinese which I don't need, but would hate to have to delete. Anyone who asks can have a copy.

the international situation

So far, Western politicians and commentators have one and all proved utterly incompetent in understanding anything that was going on in the Arabic world. It's been amateur hour for weeks, and while the ugly rape of that American journalist seems to have calmed some of the more stupid enthusiasms, the very fact that everyone was sure Gheddafi was doomed from the moment Bengasi rose up shows that the stupid had not gone away. In this climate, I can only say that Obama's policy of reluctance was probably as good as anything that could have been done. At least he has not been swept away by the folly of his country's commentators. And at least he can now say to everyone else: "I have only helped in what everyone else wanted to do." Collective amnesia of the kind that frustrated Bush II is rather less likely this time - though, given the abyss of international hypocrisy that accompanies the folly of commentators and politicians, hardly impossible.

VITTORIA!! VITTORIA!!

One day after the 150th anniversary of the proclamation of the free and united nation of Italy, the European Court of Human Rights voted by fifteen against two that the display of the Crucifix in school rooms does not violate any human right.

I was wrong in fearing that the Court might judge wrong, and equally wrong in doubting the Government's will to go on with this. IN spite of all his other enormous faults and flaws, Berlusconi has, at least once, acted honourably. Let us record this wonder (we are not apt to witness it again soon) and give thanks to God.