The G8 used to be criticized as an evil capitalist group of powerful countries that determines world politics and economics without legitimacy like the UN. There has not been much of such criticism at this year's summit in Japan.

We have a problem in the United States.  Our government has spent the past eight years or so acting in a manner that an honest, independent observer would describe as "borderline-fascistic."  Definitely some hard-right, authoritarian leanings.  But to describe this characteristic of the Bush Administration thusly, you will be called a number of heinous things, as we dare not insult the right wingers by tying them to Fascism, or worse, racism.  

Italy's got a different problem:

[The] National Alliance, are coalition partners in Berlusconi's government. In case anyone missed that, when the Alliance's Gianni Alemanno was elected mayor of Rome in April, his supporters gave the fascist salute chanting "Duce"

Duce.  As in "Il Duce."  As in Mussolini.  And scariest of all his supporters were chanting that.

The skinny on Senator Obama's foreign travel is not very encouraging  .  The itinerary is not well thought out and the inclination to do a big public speech in Berlin is politically inept - Americans like their presidents to be loved by foreigners but they want their presidential candidates to show that they will work exclusively on behalf of the American people.

Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel and the UK are pretty much givens.  Senator Obama needs to meet with the commanders and the troops and establish himself with government leaders in Kabul and Baghdad (and why not Kirkuk and Basra).  We are at war and while it is risky (Dukakis+tank+helmet+MSM man crush on McSame), Obama has to show that he will be comfortable and competent as Commander in Chief from day one.

Israel, being an ally under constant attack, is a must (with visits to VadYeshem but also perhaps with visits to PeaceNow or Reform Jewish sites) as is the UK as our most solid military ally and linguistic mother country.  But why France and Germany?  And why not Italy, Ireland, Poland and possibly Bosnia? More below the fold Report on Itinerary

Per the AP: Shades of the Nazis. Can you spell scapegoat?

The Italian government plans to fingerprint tens of thousands of "Gypsy" adult women and children.

Italian Interior Minister Roberto Maroni, a member of the anti-immigrant Northern League party, said last week that fingerprinting was needed to fight crime and identify illegal immigrants for expulsion. Italian officials have been blaming Gypsies for rising crime.

EU lawmakers scold Italy for Gypsy fingerprinting

The European Union is protesting the decision, and is compiling a report. The routine fingerprinting of peoples if against EU rules.

This action is just the latest in a new round of persecution against the people who call themselves Roma.

More below the Fold.

When my daughter was about 18 months old, I was entertaining the idea of moving to the lower-48 in the Southern regions (yes, it was February in Anchorage).  For the heck of it, I was checking out some "live-in" positions where high-powered, type-A folks were looking for personal assistants to be at their beck-and-call.  I started talking to a nice, older couple...a retired oil exec and his wife who were heavily involved in foundations, fundraising and event planning.  The position would have been perfect!  I sent them my resume, samples of my writing and made sure they knew I had an 18-month-old daughter.

They were impressed with my abilities and tickled at the thought of having a child in the house again.  It really looked like this was going somewhere.  As a proud mama, I decided to send them a picture of Morrigan and I together.

That evening, I received a curt (at first) phone call saying they were no longer interested in my services.  

While we've been very busy here arguing election politics, a fascist billionaire has seized dictatorial powers in Italy.  Sivio Berlusconi's "Iron Fist" legislation has passed the Italian Senate.

I guess Mussolini has been dead too long.

Tibetan peoplehood, culture, and society are inextricably bound up with Lamaism, as Tibet's distinct form of Buddhism is called. The Dalai Lama is both the spiritual and temporal leader of the Tibetan people. Imagine, if you can, Israel's head of state being, by law, a descendant of a High Priest from the days when the Temple still stood.

The question sometimes arises in discussions about Israel whether it is possible for a state to be both Jewish and democratic. Tibet and many European democracies provide interesting case studies that uniformly suggest an affirmative answer. Let's continue with Tibet before moving on to Europe.

Australian military members began their exit from Iraq last Sunday--could a US withdrawal be far behind?

As one of President Bush's staunchest allies in the 'global war on terror', Australia have stood shoulder to shoulder with the US and other coalition partners since the planning for the Iraq invasion in 2003. From January of that year, elements of that country's military have been involved in one form or another in the pre-deployment, invasion and occupation phases inside Iraq but, as of June 1st, that support has come to an end. This shift is due to the recent defeat of conservative Australian prime minister John Howard and the installation of his long-time anti-war Labour opponent Kevin Rudd. One of his campaign pledges was to extract all of his nation's combat troops from Iraq after he won his election (that happened last November) and he has fulfilled that promise less than 6 months after being installed into his leadership position.

A poll conducted for the UK Daily Telegraph* in the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Russia resulted with Obama 52%, McCain 15%.

Daily Telegraph link

The downside was the widespread "anti-American" feeling - though perhaps more accurately anti-Bush feelings in most cases.

*For the McCarthyites out there - yes, it's the Telegraph, a right-wing paper but it's also their poll so no choice.

The LA Times and New York Times are reporting tonight on the testimony of one of Italy's top counter-terrorism cops in the rendition trial in absentia of 26 Americans. From the LA Times:

Testifying in the trial of 26 Americans, most of them CIA operatives, who are accused of abducting a radical Egyptian cleric in Milan, the senior officer described tracking massive amounts of cellular telephone traffic to piece together Europe's only prosecution of the much-disputed practice known as extraordinary rendition.

Recently, fascist marauders in Italy have launched a blitz against immigrants and the Roma population.

A Roma camp was firebombed.

Houses in multi-ethnic neighborhoods have had their windows smashed.

Stores owned by immigrants have been ransacked.

And the Interior Minister, Roberto Maroni, had THIS to say about it, "Episodes of this kind are sometimes inflamed by crimes committed by illegal immigrants."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/...

The New York Times has a stupendously bad article about the "rebirth" of nuclear energy in Italy: Italy Embraces Nuclear Power, it turns the declarations of one right-wing politician into a big policy change, complete with breathless assertions about Europe and energy that are so bad that they are not even wrong...

A lesson for you kossacks is that, while you're rightly critical of what the NYT and other papers write about US politics, you tend to believe a lot more what they write about European politics or economies - when it's just as slanted. Please be as skeptical about non-US topics, they are no less ideological or partial there.

Crossposted from UNBOSSED

The head of Utah-based EnergySolutions ripped open a tiny salt packet and poured it into a 2-foot-tall vase half filled with red sand.
   The salt, CEO Steve Creamer said, symbolizes the amount of Italian radioactive waste the company wants to store in Utah, and the leftover foot of space represents the amount of storage space remaining.
   "Just a pinch," Creamer said Tuesday of the salt.

Remember Silvio Berlusconi, Bush's Italian pal?

Bush: We welcome the Prime Minister as a good friend ... He understands the history and the values that our two countries share."

Well, yes, it does appear that Silvio has an interest in history, in particular a fascination with the 1930s.  Now that Berlusconi's conservative party has once again taken control of Italy, they've been sharing their history lessons with the country.  First, there was the election of one of Berlusconi's lieutenants as the new mayor of Rome.

On Monday night, the area around Rome's city hall rang to chants of "Duce! Duce!", the term adopted by Italy's dictator, Benito Mussolini, equivalent to the German "Führer". Supporters of the new mayor gave the fascist Roman straight-arm salutes.

Does Godwin's Law still apply if people are proudly waving the banner of fascism?  While one Berlusconi lieutenant was celebrating his mayoral victory, another was reminding the opposition that not following the new government didn't mean just getting a beating at the ballot box.

The prime minister-elect's closest ally, Umberto Bossi, the Northern League leader, kept up the intimidating rhetoric, arriving for the first session of Italy's parliament warning of violence if the centre-left did not go along with his plans for federalism.

"I don't know what the left wants [but] we are ready," he told reporters. "If they want conflicts, I have 300,000 men always on hand."

And if there was any doubt at all about where this is heading, Berlusconi put his signature on the official fascist embrace.

Silvio Berlusconi, who won a general election earlier this month, welcomed the latest evidence of Italy's leap to the right by declaring: "We are the new Falange." Although he took care to wrap his remark in a classical context, his choice of words appeared to be a nod and a wink to his most extreme supporters. The original Falange - the word means "phalanx" - was the Spanish fascist party, founded in the 1930s, which supplied Francisco Franco's dictatorship with its ideological underpinning.

Once again Bush has demonstrated the kind of keen human insight that he got from peering into Vladimir Putin's baby blues and discovering him to be "straightforward and trustworthy."  It's clear that in sitting down with Silvio, Bush partnered with a man who's determined to bring fascism back to Italy, even if it requires violent suppression of opposition. Either Bush was completely taken in by two men who were determined to put in place non-democratic nationalist governments run by threat and cronyism, or he was sympathetic to those positions.  Neither choice is particularly comforting.

Earlier, Bush had bragged of his partnership with Berlusconi.

The people of the United States and Italy love freedom. And we know that freedom must be defended.

We also understand that defending freedom requires cost and sacrifice.

Having helped to secure a foothold in Europe for neo-fascism, what future sacrifices might be needed to ensure that Italian freedom is retained?  

I hear there's a good beach at Paestum, down in Salerno.

Monday night, Rome elected Alemanno, a former neo-fascist youth leader, -- a few weeks after Silvio Berlusconi won the General Election, and secured a majoriy with an alliance with Umberto Bossi, the Northern League leader, a far-right party.

According to the Guardian:

On Monday night, the area around Rome's city hall rang to chants of "Duce! Duce!", the term adopted by Italy's dictator, Benito Mussolini, equivalent to the German "Führer". Supporters of the new mayor gave the fascist Roman straight-arm salutes.

Above: Campaign poster for Lega Nord (Northern League) candidate

Telegraph:

Silvio Berlusconi branded illegal immigrants an "army of evil" yesterday in his first day in office after winning Italy's general election.

Mr Berlusconi, 71, who was elected on Monday to serve a third term as prime minister, said that he would "step up neighbourhood police, who can be an army of good, placing themselves between the Italian people and the army of evil".
[...]
His comments will have pleased his "post-fascist" allies and the Northern League, which declared four years ago that immigrants should be shot in their boats.

A bitter (no pun intended) irony unfolded this morning when I got an e-mail from my cousin down in Sant'Agnello, Italy, near Naples and Sorrento, where she has been living for the past five years and where I had hoped to escape in exile should McCain win in November.

She gives me bad bad news; Well it turns out the Italian people, by a wide margin, made Italy a little less desirable for me.

More on the flip

Italian parliamentary elections take place today.  Unfortunately, according to the exit polls, Berlusconi's coalition is poised to lead again.  However, the new Partito Democratico led by Walter Veltroni (the extremely popular mayor of Rome) is currently the #1 party.

How did a new party gain so much support in so little time?  Veltroni's adoption of a positive campaign, modeled after Obama's, seems to have struck a note with Italian voters.  He even used the "Yes We Can" slogan--in Italian, "Si Può Fare."