Dai un’occhiata al Tweet di @Gazzettino: https://twitter.com/Gazzettino/status/430664678566793216
Thought this was worth reblogging, as my busy schedule nowadays doesn’t really allow me to broadcast directly my thoughts. Thanks Italy Calling for the contribution.
The demonstrations that took place all over Italy on 14th November as part of a European Day of Action against austerity are already setting the pace of the new management of public order. In Rome in particular it’s been forbidden for months to get anywhere close to the political headquarters during demonstrations, despite the revocation of the decrees introduced last year by the Mayor to turn the whole of the city centre into a red zone.
View original post 512 more words
Long before Occupy, before it became evident that something was going wrong, someone was already protesting.
First came Seattle, in 1999, and the movement looked scary. Someone decided it had to be silenced. Then came Genoa, in July 2001.
It was probably supposed to be a lesson for all, worldwide. Amnesty International called it “the most serious suspension of democratic rights in a Western country since the Second World War”. You might want to watch this.
After a 9-hour debate, the Italian Supreme Court has issued its final sentence against the 25 defendants – policemen and heads of security forces – responsible for the violence against the activists sleeping in the Diaz school during the G8 summit in Genoa in 2001. Result: most of the charges have been declared time-barred, leading to impunity for all the people involved. In the meantime, 10 activists are facing a total of 100 years of jail between themselves for crimes of “devastation and looting”.
View original post 509 more words
Sardinian pecorino cheese, bread, and Rosso di Montefalco. Watching Italy vs Croatia, Euro 2012…forza Italia!
The reason why Italians always tend to run late is because we try to do things together. Conciliating (?) all sorts of different needs and situations require time.
Lots of time.
And the delay accumulates. Like debt.
National debt, national delay.
I started working on the translation in english of my graduation thesis: The Language Network – 2.0 dynamics and SLA (second language acquisition), and I hope to share it with all of you at the last in a couple of weeks.
It deals with the numerous points in common between the web and the language systems, offering a new perspective on SLA.
Should you already be fluent in Italian or just curious and impatient, here you can find it already in Italian.
As soon as I’m done I’ll publish it here on the blog, maybe on a separate section, don’t have it well figured it out yet.
I already got myself a job at the University for Foreigners of Perugia thanks to it, so in the next future I’ll be working on bringing it to life.
Stay tuned.
Oh yeah I like this one! Get yourself some peanut butter and get practicing people! If you don’t know where to find PB because maybe you are currently oversea, go for a nice spoonfull of Italian Nutella (You knew it was Italian, right?)!
Enjoy!
How do we pronounce this one, you ask? Has the odd G + L + I + E combination got your tongue in knots?
Simply say, “beehl-yeht-toh.”
No, not “big-lee-etto”. No. No. No! Don’t even think about it! You’ll make my ears bleed with that one…
Practice with me: Beehl-yeht-toh. Beehl-yeht-toh. Beehl-yeht-toh. The trick to the pesky -gl sound, I always tell my Anglophone friends, is to move your tongue as if pushing some imaginary (and very non-Italian) peanut butter off the roof of the mouth. Got it? Good.
So why are we talking about biglietti (plural of biglietto)? What are the confounding things, anyways?
Well, for 4 out of the last 5 years (this one included!), March has been the month that I’ve laid down my credit card, said addio to my precious…
View original post 143 more words
That’s some movie downloading for you!
In Perugia, Corso Garibaldi, Mauro Gatti busy with some reels in front of his Cinema teatro Sant’Angelo.
Cinegatti is the company founded by Mauro and Mirco Gatti that manages the Sant’Angelo, following their father steps and continuing the family business, resisting the cutthroat competition of huge multiplex cinemas that rised in the suburbs. Together with Cinema Zenith.
The Sant’Angelo is also the only place in Perugia (that I am aware of, at least) where you can watch movies in their original language, carrying on the tradition that sees this city as a meeting and exchange point for languages and cultures.
The shipwreck of the Costa Concordia at the Giglio island, and especially the behavior of the captain (phone call recording with English subs), was an ice-cold shower for many Italians. Used to political and economical problems, what has happened in the last months and the last weeks, the fall of the government, the nominated setting up of a so-called technical one, the darkest market clouds we have ever seen gathering up and starting probably the worst financial and economical storm of our lifetime, had still left us kind of numb; Italians are told all their life not to expect too much, to believe that public life and markets are corrupted, that history is implacable and life is short, so better take advantage of whatever one can until one’s able to: in a few words, we are culturally ready for pretty much anything, and this coolness, that at times becomes coldness, often shocks the rest of the world.
This time, though, it’s all of us being shocked. All we have gone through in the last years, months, weeks is finally coming up. People are finally sick. It took Schettino for us to get indignados. Sicily started already, even though mainstream medias don’t talk about yet. Things might not seem connected, but they are. The reaction is starting. The analogy made by Beppe Grillo in his last post is unbelievably accurate.
The Concordia shrinking and sitting by the coast of the Giglio island symbolized our reaching the bottom. From now on, we can only rise.
I wonder if when people think about Italy’s winters they still suffer of the stereotype created by anglo-saxons literature of the 800’s.
And then I think of what in Italy we think of the winter; consequences on our social life, the cycle of seasons of our body, the tiredness of the dark months, the imposed fashion styles and those who follow them, seasonal products and dishes, project for the next good season, the grey sea and the abandoned beaches, enel gas’s bill…
Italy beyond stereotype 