27/04/2015 - Broken glass and cracked walls. There is more order in the rubble of Donetsk airport than in Western minds committed to understanding the crisis in Ukraine. Especially on ideological references, confusion is king.
23/04/2015 - Sleeping with light is not easy. With the flashes of mortars then, even less. The windows vibrate, it seems the storm. The difference between a storm and artillery is basically that artillery is valid even in good weather.
20/04/2015 - Many things have changed in the last thirty years. To understand it, just think that in Sanremo in 85 there was Zucchero, in 2015 there was Amara… With the crisis, even names tighten their belts.
Despite the bad tempora is currunt some facts have remained the same. Thirty years ago the film was released Ritorno al futuro and the terrorists with the Volkswagen minibus shooting at Professor Doc were Libyans.
18/04/2015 - 6 am The ticket is made by the driver, a grizzled gentleman who has not laughed for some years. It costs 150 hryvnia, almost 5 €. The bus is German, former GDR. Barbed wire at a winter funeral would be more cheerful, but it has its charm.
14/04/2015 - In these days there is much reflection on the translations of Turkey towards Islam, with all due respect to secularism, the fulcrum of the nation wanted by Ataturk. There is also much discussion about Ankara's alleged authoritarian drifts. Those drifts so feared by the keyboard hominid convinced that democracy is choosing the type of olives at the aperitif, the frame color for the stupid glasses or the most vigorous photo for the social profile.
13/04/2015 - At the time of Rocky IV, for cinema and the collective imagination, Ivan Drago was Russian. For history, he could actually be Ukrainian, Belarusian, Lithuanian, Estonian ... that is, he could come from any of the 15 republics of the Soviet Union.
10/04/2015 - On 7 October 1571 in Lepanto the Christians defeat the Turks, postponing the end of Western civilization for a few centuries. A lot of water has passed. So much so that in Milan Lepanto is a street. In Rome, even a metro stop.
09/04/2015 - It comes to mind every time I pass Marseille soap on my underwear, before putting them in the washing machine: Marseille soap comes from Aleppo soap.
In Aleppo, Syria, they have been doing this for more than 2000 years, mixing olive oil and laurel essence. It is the hard soap par excellence, famous throughout the world.
08 / 04 / 2015 - (Six years after the earthquake a reflection on how the world is going ...)
How big is Qatar? More or less like Abruzzo and like Abruzzo is washed by the sea. One might think that Qatar and Abruzzo are similar. It is not exactly like that.
07/04/2015 - Kenya, among the many traits that describe it, has three characteristics that when taken together make it unique:
1) is in Africa
2) there is a semantic difference between words Kenyan e Kenyan
3) borders with Somalia
04/04/2015 - Let's go back to Yemen when the wildfire spreads.
It is a good opportunity to avoid tuning into Maria de Filippi every time the Middle East is mentioned on TV.
03/04/2015 - The Lausanne accords on Iranian nuclear power make headlines as the viaticum for a new world of peace. However, diplomacy counts more than demagogy and not everyone welcomes the news by peeling their hands. Country you go, reaction you find.
03/04/2015 - Coppola is not a hat but a director. The director of Apocalypse Now, not of Pierino to the rescue. In the collective imagination, it is the best known film on Vietnam. So known that many say they have seen it even if it is not true.
02/04/2015 - There are three ways to piss off an Argentine:
1) to give you advice on how to prepare grilled meat;
2) boast football superiority;
3) to say that the Malvinas are English and are called Falkland.