Drinking through nose

If you think human rights are an optional, you should sign up to New York University Law School and the courses of its new Professor of Human Rights, Dr. Li-ann Thio, scheduled for this autumn. Want to know why? Click here.

(Immediate update. So few people enrolled for her course that it's been dropped. Which apparently makes her a victim...)

Death and the state

Last December I posted on the case of Eluana Englaro, an Italian woman who had been in a state of vegetative coma for the past seventeen years, following a car accident when she was twenty. After years of legal to-ing and fro-ing, buck-passing and prevarication, her father, Beppino, finally obtained permission last July to discontinue treatment and allow his daughter to die, in accordance with her own verbally expressed wishes. 

When I wrote my post, the Minister of Welfare, Maurizio Sacconi, a man who had previously shown no marked religious inclinations, was threatening to close the clinic in which the treatment - a pharmaceutical substance providing nutrition and preventing dehydration - was to be withdrawn, despite the fact that Italy's supreme court, the Cassazione, had authorised its discontinuance. According to Sacconi, the state could neither condone nor authorise murder. In any case, said Sacconi, as the self-elected mouthpiece for the Vatican, Eluana's life belonged not to her, but to God.

Since then, and despite a public consensus that, perhaps surprisingly, ignored the anathema of Italy's increasingly vociferous pulpits and sustained Beppino Englaro's struggle, the situation has developed into one that threatens not only the right of one woman to die but the entire democratic structure of Italy, such as it is. Over the last few day, flying in the face of Italy's president, Giorgio Napolitano, and the warnings of constitutionalists, Berlusconi and his government have been involved in an attempt to improvise a one-paragraph law to 'save Eluana'. The attempt was interrupted by her death, yesterday evening, two days after treatment had been stopped, as a result of cardiac arrest.

It may be the case that some of the people who fought and shouted and legiferated for Eluana's body to be medicated and watered, washed and treated and turned two, three times a day, for her hair and nails to be clipped and her bodily wastes removed - it may be that some of them genuinely believed she was alive in some meaningful way, and that the right to die should be denied not only to the sentient, as is still the case in Italy, but also to the mindless larva Eluana had become. And there's a sort of sentimental absolutism about that position that might even be worth respecting if it weren't applied so readily, and so cruelly, to those who don't share such a belief and abandoned with such alacrity when the body in question is that of a pope or potential saint. 

It may even be the case that some of the religious figures who are now praying that their ever merciful God forgive Beppino Englaro - defined, with infinite understanding, as 'both judge and executioner' by the Vatican house organ today  - it may be that some of these cardinals and bishops actually believe in the sanctity of life so certainly, so irrefutably, that even the mechanical ticking-over of a body incapable of thought and emotional response is considered to be a life worth living, whatever the views of the body's owner, now irretrievable, and of those closest to them, their family and friends and loved ones.

But it certainly isn't the case that Berlusconi - who announced that Eluana was 'still able to have children' as though fertility and the ability to be impregnated were the final measure of a woman's value -  cared one jot about Eluana's right to live. And it certainly isn't the case that politicians like Gasparri and Mantovano, who, until a handful of years ago, belonged to a party that claimed direct descent from a regime that denied not the right to die but the right to live to hundreds of thousands of Jewish fellow citizens, and homosexuals, and communists, and gypsies, have the interests of Eluana Englaro in mind when they scream 'Murderer' at her father. 

Because it isn't the dignity of life that's being defended here, but the vulgar and unseemly - for want of a stronger word - interests of a caste. And when that caste, in its efforts to subvert the constitution and with the assistance of a power-obsessed clerical hierarchy, is prepared to take advantage of the lingering death of a woman and the suffering and civil conscience of her family, it isn't difficult to recognise who's standing on the moral high ground.

Sexual union with Tiger

The Indian artist Maqbool Fida Husain has not been invited to India's first art fair on the grounds that his work depicts a series of Hindu deities without their clothes on. The lady in the work above is the goddess Durga in sexual union with Tiger, according to a site dedicated to dissing the 93-year-old artist. What makes him even more offensive is that he tends to paint Muslims with all their gear modestly on - next to this shocking portrayal of Durga (who appears to be mounting Tiger) on the site is a painting of the prophet's daughter Fatima fully clothed (which you can see by visiting the site). Helpfully, the site offers a fairly substantial collection of the offending works, unlike the artist's official site, which offers reproductions the size of postage stamps. Not content with posting the paintings themselves, the campaign organisers have been busy in a dozen other ways, as you can see from this extract from a letter written to the Kerala government, guilty of having honoured Husain with a prize:

Since the inception of this protest campaign in November 2005, India and various parts of the world are witnessing intense agitations against M. F. Husain. Agitations that include over 1250 formal police complaints, 7 court cases, burning of Husain effigies, citywide strikes, rasta bunds (road blocking), as well as several protest demonstrations in the US and UK. At times, the inaction and passivity of the Indian media and government forced the agitators to lose patience and take a violent turn, as in the case of an attack on the Husain-Doshi art gallery, mob destruction of public property in some cities in India, and public announcements of rewards for maiming or killing M. F. Husain, as well as the closing of the Husain paintings exhibition in Asia House gallery in Oxford Street London after protest demonstrations and a vandal attack.

Nice work, lads. No one can say that maiming and killing aren't ecumenical.

Ave Hitler

Now that the catholic church has got a government prepared to present its belly to the clerical boot without any questions being asked, this photograph is a useful reminder of another epoch in which the interests of church and state also appeared to coincide.

(I wouldn't have felt the need to post this rather snippy comment if I hadn't just heard Minister for Equal Opportunities Mara Carfagna (see topless photo here) explain why Rome, as the heart of Christianity, isn't an appropriate venue for Gay Pride. Maybe someone should tell her that it was also home to Julius Caesar, Petronius, Hadrian, etc. But why bother? Why tell the monkey what the organ grinder already knows?)

Thanks to Marisacat for the photo.

Quotas: footnote

It looks like it's all to do with numbers. How many people come in, how many people are forced to leave. Alemanno says he's going to expel 20,000 illegal immigrants from Rome and I wonder how he arrived at this number, the way I wonder how Stalin arrived at his daily quota of traitors to be arrested and tried and murdered. Do these people use pins, or dice, or multiples of their birth date? And if the numbers don't tally, what then? If there simply aren't enough clandestini? Or too many?

Numbers are part of the rhetoric. The number of Italians who want gipsies expelled, according to a recent opinion poll, is 61 in every hundred. And yes, that includes the 70,000 gipsies with Italian citizenship (as potential expellees, obviously: they're hardly likely to have been asked their opinion on the matter). But what was the question, and how was it framed?

On Annozero the other night, a middle-aged man from, I think, Morocco said that immigrants weren't chattels, to be bought and sold, but human beings. He went on to accuse Roberto Castelli, ex-Minister of Justice, of being a delinquent. This is the kind of language that's used all the time during political debates on Italian TV; it's actually tamer than most. It isn't unusual to hear politicians merrily calling each other shits on prime time telly. Normally nobody bats an eyelid; at worst, there's some muttering about vulgarity in the next day's papers. On this occasion though, Santoro, the ringmaster, silenced the man (physically, by turning his microphone off) and, using the familiar 'tu' form, said he was doing his cause no good and should be more careful before he spoke. Castelli was then allowed to use this act of lèse majesté as an example of how 'they' come over here, insult us, think they have the right, etc. etc.

But how many people watched the show?

Sign language

Come on. Stop faffing around. Read this article. Then sign the petition.

Free speech

In today's Guardian, Brian Klug makes an interesting point about the brouhaha surrounding the Oxford Union's decision to invite two fascists - who shall here remain nameless - to participate in a debate on free speech. He points out that if these two have a right to contribute to the debate then so has he, and so have you, and so has everyone else. And if they don't have a right, then that right can't be denied them.

So what are they doing there? Other than advertise the Union and its attention-seeking president, whose name I shall also not provide.

Rant and let rant?

I was recently forwarded this.

We all have to sign a petition to force Google to remove from their websites lists the website:
http://www.jewwatch.com

This site is devoted to anti-Semitism, hate of Jews and so, with false articles and researches.....It is one of the first website appearing when searching Jew on Google!

To force Google to remove this website, we need to gather at least 500,000 signatures.

We already got 272,000 signatures. We need 200,000 more!

Please sign the petition at: www.petitiononline.com and spread it to all your friends.

I haven't clicked on the site, which sounds not that dissimilar to the numerous hate-fests that riddle the web, directed at pretty much any definable minority from Roma to gays to liberals and visited, one imagines, by people who already share the views expressed and enjoy the sizzle of seeing them on their screens and of feeling they belong to their own grubby little tribe.

Certainly, it makes me uncomfortable to think that it should appear so quickly on Google searches. But it makes me even more uncomfortable to find out that half a million people can render a site effectively invisible by forcing Google to take it off their listings. Censorship is a double-edged weapon and I'd be very worried if, having used it to remove this undoubtedly loathsome site from circulation, it were then used against, say, Joe.My.God or any of a thousand other sites or blogs that represent ideas unacceptable to large swathes of the public. It surely wouldn't be difficult to find 500,000 rabid homophobes only to happy to sign that kind of petition.

In the long run, it seems preferable to let the ranters rant than to lose the chance to express our own opinions and beliefs without being hounded into obscurity.

Language slaves: update

It's come to my notice that numerous teachers of foreign languages in Italian universities (yes, lettori), despite having regular full-time contracts, are expected to make up any lessons they may have missed as a result of illness or public holidays. In other words, they aren't paid when they're ill or when they're prevented from working by state-imposed interruptions, even though they, like all other workers with regular contracts, pay national insurance and have the right to be paid in both cases. In other, even simpler, words, they're being shafted.

This is an administrative decision, proving once again that there are two battles to be fought. The most visible is for academic status, although that's not worth a great deal in the humanities faculties of Italy, where full professors are often unpublished (or as good as: look up S. Nuccorini in any reputable citation index) and, mercifully, unsung, except by themselves. The most irritating is the one for basic workers' rights, routinely denied us by ignorant and servile university administrations.

Language slaves

An update on the situation of university language teachers in Italy, otherwise known as lettori. The academic year looks set to begin with the usual mood of rage tempered by resignation as emails from colleagues throughout Italy relate the new attacks on the category, almost but not entirely composed of non-Italians, by the ill-educated, largely unpublished, downright stupid, short-tempered, wilfully or idly vicious caste of native professors and their administrative lapdogs.

Three emblematic situations.

In Viterbo, despite pressure from the unions and lawyers, lettori continue to be obliged to clock in, unlike all other teaching staff, because they aren't considered teaching staff, and to fill in registers and reports of their activities, unlike all other administrative staff, because what they do is teach. For the director of the university language centre, a woman called Alba Graziano who's published a couple of books on George Meredith (one of them in a series edited by, er, Alba Graziano), lettori are tecnico-amministrativo personnel, and that's that, so fuck logic and the evidence of her own eyes. She probably wouldn't recognise a language teacher if it hit her in the face (don't tempt me), but she knows enough about protecting her turf not only to force her language slaves to have their activities timed like office staff, but also to inform them that they're overpaid, under-worked and, in the face of the university contract, which presumably she hasn't - or can't - read, part-time workers, with all the effect this has on pensions rights, and so on. I don't know how much they get in Viterbo, but it's unlikely to be more than the €1,150 I get each month. That's right, about £700. Poor sods. No wonder they're demoralised.

In Rome, a colleague is told that she has to come into the university three days a week to teach her hours, something she's been doing with great success for the last few years in two days. She refuses, pointing out to the rabid barone - responsible, god help them, for timetabling - that her contract says nothing about the number of days she has to teach but only the number of hours. All hell breaks loose. Meetings are held. At the highest level. There is much shouting in corridors as short-fused middle-aged women with too much power and money face the prospect of paradigm shift. The university isn't concerned with the quality of my colleague's teaching, which is recognised as being exceptional, but with punishment and the blind wielding of power. Ironically, the stick it's chosen to beat this particular drum (and colleague) is the contract used for the short-term recruitment of professors. That's right. Professors. Sounds familiar? When it's in the interests of the university to treat lettori like clerks, they're clerks. When, less often, it's in the interests of the university to treat them like professors (i.e. when office staff get a raise and teachers don't), they're suddenly, briefly, hiked up a notch. Until the next time they ask for a piece of chalk.

In Bologna, a colleague asked to have extra holiday to make up for holiday lost through illness this summer, as stipulated in her tecnico-amministrativo contract. She was told that she can't take any holiday during the period of teaching activity. Why not? Why doesn't this contract apply to me? Because I'm a teacher? Well, yes. Er, no. But I can't have time off because I should be teaching? I didn't say teaching! So what do I do? Whatever you do, you can't have time off.

Heads, they win. Tails, you lose.

I am human just like them

Johann Hari may have got it wrong about Iraq (and, if I remember correctly, he's acknowledged this more than once) but he's spot on when he talks about homophobia. His article in today's Independent, examining the way gay kids are the victims of bullying in schools, points the finger not only at the bullies themselves (victims of food additives?), but, more significantly, at teachers, who fail to do anything, blame the victim or actually support and substantiate anti-gay behaviour, and, of course, at the government, which seems to think the problem doesn't exist.

He's particularly incensed by the fact that homophobic bullying is more common in faith schools. This is hardly surprising; monotheism doesn't have a great record when it comes to recognising gay rights. But I wonder what would happen if someone suggested that the government fund, or even recognise, a school for gay kids along the same lines as those used for faith schools. It might be a ghetto (though this would be no truer of a gay school than of any other selective structure - including one based on class; it's significant that ghetto is only ever used pejoratively), but I'd rather be in a ghetto than standing alone in a hostile playground.

And if you aren't convinced, read this suicide text, quoted by Hari, sent to his sister by Jonathan Reynolds, a 15-year-old boy who'd been bullied after coming out to friends:

"Tell everyone that this is for anybody who eva said anything bad about me, see I do have feelings too. Blame the people who were horrible and injust 2 me. This is because of them, I am human just like them. None of you blame yourself, mum, dad, Sam and the rest of the family. This is not because of you."

Ten minutes later he'd been sliced in half by a train.

Butchery

Of the 93 protesters beaten to a pulp, pissed on, verbally abused and then framed by the Italian police after being woken from their sleep at the Genoa G8 summit in 2001, at least 59 were foreign. It's well known that none of these foreigners contacted their embassies. Apparently, they didn't want to. They even signed forms in which they claimed to have no fear for their physical safety and no desire to speak to their countries' representatives.

The problem is that all 59 forms have now been revealed by investigating magistrates to be photocopied, completed by the same two hands, and bearing illegible signatures. Many of the forms don't even have the birth dates of the people who are supposed to have signed them.

Genoa's deputy police chief, now being tried for the events of the night following the death of protester Carlo Giuliani at the hands of the police, has called the attack on the sleeping demonstrators 'an act of Mexican butchery'. It's salutary to remember that butchery of this kind can take place in any country in which it's tacitly, and explicitly, condoned by the government, as this was. While the public Berlusconi was flower arranging in Genoa's prettier squares, his less savoury doppelgänger was putting the boot in at one remove.

The smiler with the knife under the cloak, as Chaucer put it.

Good riddance to...

...Bernard Manning, admirer, among other things, of Mother Teresa. And before you get sentimental and talk about his perfect comic timing, read this, taken from a Guardian blog posting by Strunt:

A charity dinner was held in 1995 near Manchester to raise funds for the police. One entertainer invited was Bernard Manning (then 65, pictured left), one of the standup comedians who do the rounds of working men's clubs in Northern England and notorious for his anti-ethnic jokes.

The dinner was attended by some 300 policemen - all white except for one black officer. Targeting this single Blackman, Bernard launched into a string of racist jibes. His audience (yes, the police audience) all whooped with delight and cheered him on. Here's a sample of the jibes reported in News of the World (April 1995):

"Where is he? How are you, baby? Having a night out with nice people? Isn't this better than swinging from the trees? - You're black, I'm white. Do you think colour makes a difference? You bet your bollocks it does!"

"They actually think they're English because they are born here. That means if a dog's born in a stable, it is horse."

"They used to be happy people in the cotton fields, singing their bollocks off day and night. A fella used to go around with a whip... 'Oh, massa, give us another crack of dat whip. I love dat whip'..."

"A Liverpool docker went to South Africa for a job. The boss tells him: 'It's people like you we want here. Here's a test. There's a revolver, go out and shoot 6 niggers and a rabbit.' The docker asks: 'Why do I have to shoot the rabbit?' He got the job.

Laugh? I could have died.

Your bodies, their bigotry

Amnesty International's recent advocacy of abortion in the case of rape, incest or risk to the woman's health has inevitably got up some clerical noses. One of the largest belongs to cardinal Martino, president of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, who is quoted as follows:

"The inevitable consequence of this decision, according to the cardinal, will be the suspension of any financing to Amnesty on the part of Catholic organisations and also individual Catholics,"

Well, he can say all he likes about what the hierarchy is supposed to do with its fabulous, unaccounted for, wealth, but individual catholics may continue to feel that the work done by AI continues to deserve their support. Let's hope so. It's certainly persuaded me to join up, for the first time in years.

In the meantime, Eggs Benedict has returned to the dangers represented by television and the Internet. Right, like BBC documentaries, Eggs? Readily available on Google? Or maybe it isn't that personal.

If he's so against the commercialisation of human dignity why is he doing everything in his (considerable) power to ensure that Berlusconi takes over the reins of the Italian government again?

Naughty Fausto!

The Families Association Forum is frothing at the mouth about the fact that Italy's Speaker at the House of Deputies, Fausto Bertinotti, friend of Castro, Carlos and, er, the Dalai Lama and just back from a rejuvenating spiritual break on Mount Athos, has decided to support Gay Pride. Their gripe is that he refused to take part in Family Day, which apparently disqualifies him from participating in anything else, ever, especially if it's gay friendly.

I've been thinking how odd it is that, among these people who presumably use reason in other areas of their daily lives, the idea of family should be seen as inimical to the idea of being gay. Where do they imagine we come from? Hordes of turkey-baster wielding lesbians in Amsterdam or San Francisco? Stem cell manipulation in some illicit Scandinavian laboratory? Parthenogenesis? (If that's what it's called when you spring fully armed from your father's thigh.)

Doesn't it occur to them that we're as much a product of the heterosexual family as anyone else? Doesn't it occur to them that most of us, without heterosexual families, wouldn't exist? Doesn't it occur to them that, despite their efforts, many of us are still loved and cherished by the families that made us,a nd to which we continue to belong?

It's as though I'd somehow lost my human status, not only as a complete, fallible, reasoning being capable of love, but as a son and brother and nephew and cousin (and dog owner) too. But these people aren't really interested in families at all. They're too busy getting hot under the collar about what other people do in bed. They're too busy telling other people what to do.

Thoughts on Family Day

Last Saturday, over a million people (I’m quoting the organisers’ possibly over-generous estimate) gathered in Piazza San Giovanni, Rome, to assist the Vatican hierarchy in its dirty war against civil union legislation and, indirectly, the centre-left government. On the same day, in Smirne, Turkey, a million and a half people gathered to protest against the interference of religious bodies in the affairs of the state. Italy is a member of the EU; Turkey would like to be. I’ll let you decide which of the two countries was closer to the spirit of Europe last Saturday.

A woman with seven children, present at Family Day, was asked how she managed. Her answer: God provides. So what was she doing at a demonstration demanding more state support for those with fertile incontinence large families? Trying to have her host and eat it?

Listening to people talk in favour of Family Day it would seem that the only criterion that distinguishes a family from any other form of social aggregation—and that gives it inestimably added value—is breeding capacity. No progs, no parity. It used to be common to hear gay people refer to straights as breeders. Maybe it still is. But I never expected to find this idea taken so firmly on board by ‘Eggs’ Benedict and his merry band. (Although, thinking about it…)

A commentator on Italian state television (TG2, to be precise) said that the Family Day demonstrators were there to stand firm against a Europe that wanted to ban the use of words like Mummy and Daddy.

The buses and trains used to ferry the faithful to the demonstration from all over Italy, at the cost of something like a million Euro, were paid for by the Vatican, using money provided from people’s taxes (otto per mille*) for charitable work and the upkeep of the church. It’s an odd definition of charity. Or maybe large families can’t afford a day out in Rome without a handout. I wonder who paid for the ice cream.

*Otto per mille. Italian tax payers can devolve 0.8% of the tax they pay to a religious body of their choosing. Most of the people who bother devolve it to the Vatican (maybe as a result of the constant TV advertising, paid for by this money). The percentage of tax that isn’t assigned to anyone is divided up in the same proportions as that which is. The Vatican, in other words, gets a substantial slice of revenue from people who don’t want to give it to them. In Italy, this freebie is part of what is known as the separation of church and state. Anyone for Turkey?

Terrorism? For the love of God...

The boundaries of what constitutes terrorism are daily being redefined in Italy. I've already spoken below about the way in which rough-and-ready political comment is considered a threat if the person to whom it's addressed wears a long black frock is an archbishop. Now, according to the media and politicians throughout the admittedly rather limited spectrum provided by parliament, the term is sufficiently ample to include remarks made by one of the presenters of the traditional Mayday concert, organised by the three main Italian unions in Piazza San Giovanni, Rome, each year.

Andrea Rivera said that he couldn't stand (non sopporto) a church that refused burial to Pier Giorgio Welby, a terminally ill patient whose right to die was recently affirmed with the assistance of a courageous anaesthetist, but that granted it without hesitation to Pinochet and Franco. He isn't the first to think this, as was clear from the warm reception of the crowd. He also remarked. 'The Pope says that he doesn't believe in evolutionism, I agree. Let's face it, the church has never evolved.' ("Il Papa ha detto che non crede nell'evoluzionismo. Sono d'accordo, infatti la chiesa non si è mai evoluta.")

Now he's being accused by Ratzinger's house organ of insulting the pope and of playing to an 'easily excited' mob. For the Osservatore Romano these constitute terrorism. If it were only the Vatican rag saying this it wouldn't be so bad, but a bandwagon this tempting in a country that still declares itself 80% catholic (and that echoes with empty churches) is naturally filling up with the Tom, Dick and Harries of pre-election political leaders.

There's nothing more dispiriting than seeing this ragbag army of pluridivorced parasites and closet cases waving their compromised fists at the TV screen to defend a foreign state against the legitimate comments of their fellow citizens.

Bagnasco: Shame!

When does a comment become a threat? Apparently, when it's directed at the head of the Italian Episcopal Council. God's ferret stepped down a couple of months ago, to be replaced by Archbishop Bagnasco of Genoa. This would be of no more interest to most people than a change of management in any other state-subsidised company if it weren't that Bagnasco almost immediately used his pulpit to compare the recognition of civil unions to laws permitting paedophilia and incest, two troughs in which the church has its plurisecular snout. Needless to say, the idea that such laws might be proposed exists entirely in Bagnasco's mind.

Not surprisingly, some people reacted badly to this and, given the almost universal kowtowing to the church of the media and political world, chose to express their disapproval in a time-honoured Italian way: by writing it on a wall. The first graffiti, saying BAGNASCO VERGOGNA (Shame), appeared soon after the sermon (subsequently withdrawn, in pure Berlusconian fashion, when Bagnasco announced 'I didn't mean what I said'). Since then there's been a low level urban resistance of demonstrations, heckling, further graffiti. All part of the normal democratic process, you might think, but you'd be wrong. Bagnasco, according to the single voice that is Italian politics, is being 'threatened'.

Yesterday, or the day before, he received two letters. The first contained a bullet - a traditional mafia warning and thus, although it's unlikely to have been sent by the mafia, certainly construable as a threat. The second contained a photograph of the venerable archbishop with a hand-drawn swastika across his face. A threat? It's not particularly subtle, but neither is comparing a gay couple to paedophiles. It isn't the nicest thing to see over your bowl of episcopalian corn flakes, but it doesn't undermine the very tenets of democracy either, whatever parliament might say.

If the church wants to live by the sword of gratuitous insult, then it ought to be prepared to see itself nicked by the smaller infinitely less powerful pinpricks of protest.

Roy Zimmerman: Defenders of Marriage

Archbishop Arsehole stays mum over corruption

Amid claims of Nigeria's presidential elections being conducted in the same climate of anarchy and corruption (see this report in today's Independent) that marked last week's general elections, you'd have expected the moral fulcrum of the nation, Archbishop Arsehole, to have a word or two of reproach and guidance.

But no. He's got other things on his mind. Like an anti-homosexuality bill imposing five-year sentences on people accused of deviant behaviour (like, er, sharing a table in a restaurant).

Maybe the dozen or so churches in Virginia whose congregants voted to join Arsehole's archdiocese in December (you don't believe me? Read this) are immune to the moral dilemma of electoral corruption. They know from their own experience that a dangling chad is a small price to pay to keep the nation pure.