In defence of Guido Bertolaso (updated)

A couple of days ago La Stampa newspaper ran an interesting piece by Lucia Annunziata, whose interview with Guido Bertolaso, Italy’s top disaster official, caused a furious reaction on the part of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Now I am pleased to re-publish it in English—translated by Mirino, who is a regular contributor to this blog (thank you!). I really appreciated the article, and

Obama and his once-in-a-generation opportunity

US President Barack Obama should realize that he ‘has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to help make the world a dramatically safer place,’ and that ‘this is his “tear down this wall” moment.’ It’s a fleeting moment, though...

Robert Kagan in today’s Washington Post:

Imagine an Iran whose educated, inventive and highly cultured people were allowed to flourish, fully enmeshed in the global

On-the-job training

“Why does everybody hate me?” Well, he didn’t say exactly this… what “thin Skinned Obama” actually said, according to Mark Halperin (a card carrying member of the liberal media elite), is “The Press is against me.” After all “He hasn’t been in public life very long. . . . He’s experiencing it for the very first time. It’s on-the-job training…”

Never Again

“So I was hiding out in the heap of dead bodies because in the last week when the crematoria didn’t function at all, the bodies were just building up higher and higher. So there I was at nighttime, in the daytime I was roaming around in the camp, and this is where I actually survived, January 27, I was one of the very first, Birkenau was one of the very first camps being liberated. This was my,

Mrs. Clinton's rage

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is very angry. “I deeply resent,” she said at a town-hall meeting with State Department employees, “those who attack our country, the generosity of our people and the leadership of our president in trying to respond to historically disastrous conditions after the earthquake.” However, Mrs. Clinton was not surprised by criticism from countries such as

The choice target

   Translated and commented on by Mirino

I came across the following article in Le Figaro by Isabelle Lassere. Accordingly it would seem that the 11 September complot myth is still surviving despite the seriousness of the disease. Indeed it seems to have cancerously grown into an institutional enterprise in itself. Considering the accumulation of events that since should have negated the

Obama's failure in Haiti?

Perhaps it’s just because I am slightly biased in favor of him—and this because I have learned to trust him—that I can’t help but think that Guido Bertolaso is right and his critics are wrong. Or perhaps not, who knows? However, this is how I feel about the whole matter.

Bertolaso, head of Italy’s civil protection service, was personally sent to Haiti by Silvio Berlusconi because of his

'White surge to the GOP'

There seems to have been a white surge to the GOP in Massachusetts. In the 2008 election, no less than 79 percent of Massachusetts voters were white, and Obama carried them by 20 points, winning the state 62 to 36. How did Scott Brown turn that 26-point deficit into a six-point victory? Most likely by winning the white vote as massively as did Obama, says Pat Buchanan.
But, if that’s what really

Obama, One Year In

~ “LETTERS FROM AMERICA” - by The Metaphysical Peregrine ~

This is the one year mark of the Obama Presidency, with his political party controlling the House of Representatives, Senate, Executive Branch, and the Jurassic Press, AKA the State controlled media. Used to be known as the free press. So what could go wrong? Well, everything did. We have the least experienced, ideologically driven

And the Climate Change Authority admitted mistake

In a statement released on Wednesday, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) admitted that one of its most alarming conclusions—that glaciers in the Himalayas could be gone 25 years from now—was wrong and largely unsubstantiated, as based on news reports rather than published, peer-reviewed scientific studies (and to think that they have always been saying that it was all about the

St Francis, or How to be meek without being a pacifist

“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” What does this verse from the Beatitudes mean? As Steven rightly recalls in a recent post at his blog The Metaphysical Peregrine, most people think this beatitude means that Christians are, or should be, “weak and submissive.” On the contrary, he notes, “it takes a lot of strength and discipline to be meek.” Then he goes on to explain why

Benedict at the Synagogue

And to think that even the day chosen for the visit, was not that smooth. In fact, first of all, for Roman Jews January 17 is the day in which they commemorate the fire that, back in 1793, was ignited in their ghetto out of hatred—the so-called “Moed di piombo,” with the fire timely extinguished by a violent rainstorm that fell out of a “lead” (“piombo”) colored sky.

In the second place,

Is a US default inevitable?

Imagine four hurricanes hitting the East Coast in a single season. Well, according to Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, that’s what the financial crisis of 2008 was all about. And that’s how “they” happened to be blindsided. Yeah, they never saw it coming, and somehow they “just missed … that home prices don’t go up forever,” in Jamie Dimon’s (JP Morgan) words. Ok, there were also those birds of

The growing threat

              by Mirino

Following Rob's article about the sailor and survivor, Harold B. Estes.  This would also be pertinent. It's been around for some time but deserves to be widely read simply because it's true.
Almost every day we are reminded of this without even having to look for such reminders. For example yesterday I read that the Algerian actrice 'Rayhana' was attacked in Paris,

Beyond comprehension

Most of us really can’t begin to imagine what it must be like to lose everything in a natural disaster. The sheer weight of loss and the accompanying despair is overwhelming. Looking through the pics of the devastation wrought in Haiti by yesterday’s earthquake, every good soul must feel kinship with those suffering in grief.

It is truly beyond comprehension.

Father Philip is right, and

The WWII vet and the Holocaust survivor: a telephone conversation about President Obama

Harold and Esther are both in their 90s, and they are amazed, angry, and determined not to see the US die before they do. And they both are not fans of Obama’s apologetic attitude towards nations classically hostile to both America and Israel. Sara K. Eisen—Esther’s granddaughter—got the crazy idea that they should meet...

'The Pillage Idiot Guide to Offensive Statements by Public Officials'

It’s one thing for Barack Obama to grant absolution for an ally's dubious racial remark, but when Al Sharpton absolves the offender, you just know there are different standards at work.
Here is a flow chart mapping out the politics of offensive statements. Via Instapundit.

Burma: a culture lost in translation

“We Are Because They Are: A Culture Lost In Translation” (part 1/part 2) is an interesting documentary film about Burmese living abroad (in this case in Norway). Once home away from home, Burma is destined to become a foreign land to them. It’s worth looking at and thinking about.

How Tibet was sold out for a fistful of pounds and a few dollars more

Last week, Christopher Booker, columnist at the Sunday Times, reported on “the strange eagerness” of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office “to appease the murderous regime in Tehran.” But now we have learned that David Milliband’s appeasement of Tehran has a strong precedent,

Another example of the FCO's willingness to kowtow to nasty regimes has been flagged up in another newspaper, where a

St Paul's Cathedral

“ St Paul’s is, as I remembered it, a very handsome noble architectural exploit, but singularly unaffecting. When I formerly came to it from the Italian cathedrals, I said, “Well, here is New York.” It seems the best of show-buildings, a fine British vaunt, but there is no moral interest attached to it. ”


~ Ralph Waldo Emerson [from his journals, April? 1848], in EMERSON IN HIS JOURNALS,

The thousand faces of the real Islam

Her name is Anna Mahjar-Barducci, she is a young journalist and writer living in Italy, born to a Moroccan mother and Italian father, and married to an Israeli Jew. In the eyes of orthodox Islam, as well as of her fellow Muslim immigrants, her marriage and that of her mother are an apostasy. “When I see a Maghrebi on the street,” she says, “I have to change direction. He starts to greet me in

International complicity

And now there is also a defence of the Islamic Republic of Iran posted at Socialist Unity today. As an eloquent example of how far certain sections of the British (and European) Left have sunk. Hat tip: Harry's Place (the “other” Left).

The 'Religion of Peace' strikes again

He is a 28-year-old Somali with a regular residence permit in Denmark, but with close links with Somali terrorist group al-Shabaab and possibly al-Qaida militants in East Africa. He broke into Kurt Westergaard’s home armed with an ax and knife, shouting threats of “blood” and “revenge.” Yet, fortunately Westergaard and his granddaughter, who was in the home on a sleepover, succeeded in fleeing

Happy New Year!!!

“ The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective. Unless a man starts on the strange assumption that he has