Posts Tagged ‘Italy’
Image from Reuters
Wave goodbye: Italy’s Prime Minister on his way out.
This train don’t stop: Cain vows to stay in the race.
Can you find me now? GPS tracking worries highest court.
Heaven getting heavy? Rapper Heavy D dies.
Image thanks to the LA Times!
It’s okay Silvio, the Italians are pretty sick of you too.
Wake up and smell the smog!
Don’t have time to read Dick Cheney’s whole memoir? No worries - the Daily Beast has the highlights!
Cultural cohesion…through hot dogs?
A reflection on Labor Day: end of summer, workers’ movements, and cleaning the house.
If you are depressed about things in the USA these days… don’t try to escape the madness by taking a vacation in Europe… you’ll only get MORE DEPRESSED.
Recently, countries like Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Italy, Britain have been grappling with gigantic economic disasters of their own.
Governments are in deep debt… almost bankruptcy. Politicians in those countries are desperately trying to tackle the problem with mixed success (See cartoon above).
Meanwhile, peeved citizens have been revolting against government painful economic remedies, as seen in Ireland this past weekend.
Iceland is in such desperate straits that it is re-drafting its constitution.
Yesterday, the entire country voted to elect 31 individuals, who will make up an assembly to put together a new charter for the island nation. This dramatic action is at least partially influenced by Iceland’s financial crisis in 2008.
Makes you wonder if the United States should consider this, too? If you could change something about the US constitution, what would you change?
Asia
North Korea recently joined YouTube and Twitter, using the social media platforms to mock South Korea and the United States. Interestingly, the messages are aimed at South Koreans, not at North Koreans, who are denied access to websites like YouTube and Twitter.
Europe
Ladies of Italy, rejoice! Venice is soon going to see its first female gondolier! Until recently, the trade has been limited to men due to the tradition of fathers training their sons to become gondoliers. Now, there is a course in becoming a gondolier and more women can try their hand at the profession.
Middle East
There’s another controversy involving Facebook! An Israeli soldier posted pictures of herself smiling and posing next to blindfolded and handcuffed Palestinian prisoners, causing an uproar among Palestinian groups. The Israeli Defense Force has released a statement disapproving the picture, but the soldier sees nothing wrong with her actions.
Thanks to the Guardian, we see some Silvio Berlusconi statuettes with some blood for flare in light of recent events...
This is one of a series of dispatches from our Foreign correspondent currently based in Scotland:
Ahhh… December 17. Almost time for me to resign my post as USDemocrazy Foreign Correspondent in Scotland and return to the ol’ homestead.
Can’t wait to get back to the place I know well, complete with crazy politics, late nights, and unique smells. And that’s just in the USDemocrazy headquarters.
But before coming home, I decided to pop over to Italy to check on things there.
(Editor’s note: The timing with the Recent attack on Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi (Ouch)is purely coincidental)
What was the biggest culture shock going from the UK to Italy? The politics? The people? The food? The language?
Nope — the traffic. …read more.
We at U.S. Democrazy don’t find ourselves on top of a whole lot of lists (unless it’s a list of goofballs). But we’re happy to celebrate those who do!
With that in mind, today we would like to announce… Iceland’s #1!
That’s right! The World Economic Forum recently evaluated countries who have reduced disparities between the genders. The frozen folks in Iceland moved from their No. 4 spot in 2008 to triumphantly snatch the title this year. Congratulations Icelanticons, Icelandators, People of Iceland! …read more.
Thanks to Wikicommons
We at USDemocrazy are always impressed by strong leaders. For this reason, our editors are a constant source of disappointment.
So, with the news late last week of President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize, we decided to dedicate this week’s Awesome Sites collection from the World Wide Web to the websites of world leaders!
We’ve got all sorts… and they are quite varied and curious.
The Italian Court decided that even public officials can be prosecuted, which might get Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in trouble.
15 years after the Rwandan genocide, an intelligence officer is found and captured.
Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay leaves Dancing With The Stars.
We at USDemocrazy have a pretty stacked social schedule for this weekend. (Filling in at our grandmother’s bridge game counts, right?)
Imagining that you might too, we’ve decided to expand our classic “What’zup today?” section to help you catch up on some of the important, or just interesting, or maybe bizarre, stories floating around the world wide web. You know, so you have something to talk about at all the parties you’ve promised to attend in the coming days.
Here goes nothing…
Here, The Daily Beast explores the possibility of “The Next Sarah Palin?” Can there be a “next” when the original is still hanging around? We smell a rivalry…
Kelly Ayotte, New Hampshire’s GOP rising star, is a folksy, gun-loving mother of two who has her eyes on a Senate seat. And, you betcha, she married a dude who puts Todd to shame.
The new “the FBI made me do it” defense makes its debut… A blogger charged with making threats against lawmakers and government officials claims the FBI taught him how to do it all.
“His job was basically to publish information which would cause other parties to act in a manner which would lead to their arrest,” Orozco said.
Robert “Mr. Smug” Gibbs gets dizzy more often than you think. Why? A photo.
The “burqini” for Muslim women gets banned in northern Italy. One would presume it just doesn’t show enough skin for the Italians.
A modest fit burqini, thanks to: http://www.ahiida.com/
“The sight of a ‘masked woman’ could disturb small children, not to mention problems of hygiene,” mayor Gianluca Buonanno was quoted as saying.
Who is better at swimming: Shaq or Michael Phelps? We will soon find out….
America loses another pioneer in news… The inventor of the news magazine and the televised presidential debate, Don Hewitt, has passed away.
We’ve heard about the uproar at health care town hall meetings, but have we seen the best protest signs? The Huffington Post helps us out in finding the most amusing. Our favorite:
What this country needs is more "Arrested Development."
You think American news outlets have major spin going on? Try living in North Korea. (OK, that wasn’t fair…)
Last week, KCNA took a similarly rose-colored look at the fact that the country’s capital city still has no traffic lights and relies instead on a corps of women who direct traffic the old-fashioned way, by hand, in an article headlined: “Traffic Control Platform beneath Umbrella Installed at Intersections of Pyongyang.”
Must be cool under there.
Is Putin back in the saddle? (Come on, that one’s worth a little smile.) The presidency may be in his future (despite also being in his past…).
See why we're funny?
Apparently, T-shirt-making is a science. That ragtag collection in your dresser doesn’t pass muster when it comes to T-shirts being fashionable, you know.
This shirt, if you’ll excuse me for sounding ridiculous, may be the most perfect garment I own. The fabric is thin to the point of almost being sheer, made of high-gauge long-fiber Sea Island cotton that is difficult to describe without resorting to clichés: soft as a buttered, cashmere baby’s bottom? Yes, that soft!
Barney Frank loses his cool over health care “Nazi policy” accusations come up. Well, it is August…
After all the uncomfortably testy town-hall footage we’ve seen this month, watching Frank deal with an over the top Obama-as-Nazi accusation is pretty entertaining. Nothing like an accusation of Nazism to lighten up August.
Time has come for the Afghan vote! (Catch up on the Afghan election situation here.)
And to wrap up, a bit of fake news: Obama gets tangled up in coat hangers! (Via The Onion.)
Thanks to Wikicommons.
Politicians sometimes don’t tell the truth (and we at USDemocrazy are SHOCKED!). Sometimes politicians don’t just lie to the public… but also cheat on their spouses! (SHOCK! HORROR!)
Throughout history, extramarital relationships have tarnished a number of politicians (and entertained legions of their opponents).
For instance, who can forget Bill Clinton’s involvement with Monica Lewinsky, an event that led to his impeachment by the House of Representatives (though the Senate didn’t close the deal)?
And even other past presidents have indulged in an extramarital fling or two (or twelve). President Grover Cleveland’s wayward reputation earned him the political slogan, “Ma, Ma, where’s my Pa? Gone to the White House, ha, ha, ha.”
John Edwards, one-time presidential hopeful in 2008, admitted he lied about an affair. In addition to that misdeed, he is being investigated for money he paid to his mistress’s company.
And now today, there is news of an international affair of state.
The culprit this time is Italy’s playboy prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi. His wife has had it with his paramours and is filing for divorce. The final straw for Mrs. Berlusconi was suave Silvio’s plan to nominate a number of models and actresses, nicknamed “Berlusconi’s Ballot Babes”, for the European Parliament.
How will the Italians take their prime minister’s divorce? Berlusconi probably hopes they react like the French.
French President Sarkozy’s divorce of his wife Cécilia and subsequent marriage to model Carla Bruni was met with a Gallic shrug (it seems the French care less of their politician’s personal lives than we prudish yanks).
Even in America an affair doesn’t always spell the end of a politician’s career. Take former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer (nailed for being Client #9 at a prostitution ring). The kinky cavorter is back in the headlines (and not for unseemly reasons). He has resurfaced as a financial expert (he was known as a watch dog of Wall Street crimes) and now appears as a columnist for Slate Magazine.
Spitzer has bounced back to the point where in a recent poll a majority of New Yorkers would prefer him to current Governor Paterson (the man who replaced Spitzer during the scandal). Talk about a SHOCK!
So it seems that mistakes can be forgiven (at least by the public). Does this shock you?
