Ordinary Days (Part 1)

“…Being a biased, politically incorrect pamphlet about the goings-on in this part of the world…”

There’s a thread of news that caught my eye during the last few days, somewhat related one to the other, that I feel deserve a comment both complex, and intertwined. Going from the general to the particular, from highbrow politics - through petty local policies - to gender studies, and possibly even to Biblical reminiscences, we have the following.

• The EU has just been awarded the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize “for over six decades contributed to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe”. Wonderful. In the same hours, though, the Troika (the folks who overview the counter-default procedures and measures our fellow EU country, Greece, is supposed to need in order to be “saved”), have recommended that Greek islands with less than 150 inhabitants should be evacuated, and the same (the inhabitants, not the islands) transplanted somewhere else. Like you would do with with small plants in a winter garden, sorts of.

Now, I’ll not stay here and wonder it that means that those same islands should subsequently be put on the market for large groups (banks, maybe?) to cheaply buy them wholesale, reserving them - as pristine Greek gems of the Mediterranean - to their selected customers (eventually allowing some of the previous inhabitants to commute back and pick up some underpaid, folkloric McJob).

I’m rather wondering why on earth no occasional IED casually intercepted the troika on their cursed way to Athens airport (I have to admit it - just like “Blondie” and Tuco at Sad Hill Cemetery’s bridge, I do like it to be loud), or why nobody did at least spit into their face on departure as a typical, local “cheerio farewell” gesture.

• On a local level, we have Mr. Gianni Alemanno, an ignoramus known for favouring his own vast environment’s appetite for more or less appealing jobs in the whereabouts of Rome’s City Council. More prone to disseminate the Net with pictures of himself - as an eager garbage picker, a snow shoveller, a happy bicycle rider, a.t.l. - than to take care of the city he incidentally is the mayor of, he publishes a blog. With great pride, he declared yesterday that his “Piano Nomadi” (in Italian for Nomads Programme - it sounds somehow to me a bit like the Final Solution of days of old, doesn’t it?) was speedily proceeding: another 160 Roma people had been transplanted from their previous, more or less illegal, camp sites to far off locations, away from public transportation, infrastructures like schools (yes, the majority of their children do go to school), medical dispensaries, or shops, and minimum living standards. In the process - usually taking place late at night, or very early before daybreak (Wounded Knee, remember?) - possessions are routinely scattered and destroyed by police and bulldozers.

I had commented, way back in August 2009, that his idea of tackling the issue (“A maximum of 6000 Nomads will be set in Rome, and they’ll be divided in 12 camps, fenced and guarded by the police” - Alemanno on ANSA News from Cortina d’Ampezzo, 14 August 2009) was despicable, and his concept of camps pretty similar to that of a German KZ. This time, I have commented on his Facebook profile that his was a great strategy to foster integration, and facilitate the transformation of Roma youth into law-abiding citizens.

A post (?) fascist guy whose eyes stand as near to each other as Mr. Bush Jr.’s - and likewise ominously resembling a chicken - is not to be blamed for not getting this quite right, so I’ll have to make it fool-proof: my Facebook comment to his post yesterday was indeed a sarcastic remark, and not a praise…

We can only hope for him and his kin to be likewise picked up at dawn - sometime in one of their next lives, maybe - to be transported elsewhere. Maybe to an evacuated Greek island. One with no fresh water, nor trees.

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