Articles
THE POPE EXCOMMUNICATES THE MAFIA, FINALLY, New Yorker, June 24, 2014
In some ways, it is surprising that Pope Francis made news by travelling to Calabria and excommunicating members of the Mafia. He went to a town where members of a local Mafia group, known as the ’Ndrangheta, had murdered a three-year-old boy, together with his grandfather, and burned their bodies, in a case tied up…
Continue readingWILL LE PEN LEARN FROM AN ITALIAN COMEDIAN’S MISTAKES?, New Yorker, May 27, 2014
The extraordinary success of Marine Le Pen’s National Front, in France, and of other right-wing, populist parties has, with good reason, been the main story of last weekend’s European Parliamentary elections. Running on an anti-euro, anti-immigration platform, Le Pen won a historic twenty-five per cent of the vote, handily outpolling France’s main conservative party, the…
Continue readingThe Return of Berlusconi — end of reform? La Repubblica, July 23, 2014
MERCOLEDÌ, 23 LUGLIO 2014 Pagina 29 – COMMENTI LA VOGLIA DI ESSERE DIVERSI ALEXANDER STILLE APPENA arrivata la sentenza di assoluzione, Silvio Berlusconi comincia di nuovo con le vecchie abitudini: domande di grazia, nuove leggi ad personam, eccezioni alle norme per permettergli di ricandidarsi. Avete notato che l’Italia è diventato un paese un po’…
Continue readingMont-Sant-Michel is trying an extreme makeover to save its dreamlike setting, Smithsonian magazine, June 2014
“One needs to be eight centuries old to know what this mass of encrusted architecture meant to its builders,” wrote Henry Adams in his book Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres. And that was more than a hundred years ago. Mont-Saint-Michel has gone through several major transformations since Adams’ time and is in the midst of another one now…
Continue readingThe Rise and Fall of Right-Wing Populism in France and Italy, New Yorker, May 28, 2014
The extraordinary success of Marine Le Pen’s National Front, in France, and of other right-wing, populist parties has, with good reason, been the main story of last weekend’s European Parliamentary elections. Running on an anti-euro, anti-immigration platform, Le Pen won a historic twenty-five per cent of the vote, handily outpolling France’s main conservative party, the…
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