Fortuitous encounters

It has been several months since I last found the time, patience and inspiration to write on this blog.

The ambitous nature of the post I was going to publish has somewhat subsided, largely as a result of the fact that the overwhelming clarity of thought, that had possessed me for a few long weeks at the beginning of this year, has largely disappeared.

However, a few weeks ago, possessed by boredom, depression and an overwhelming sense of lack of purpose, I found myself leafing (figuratively of course) through the pages of the BBC's website and reading of the imminent departure of Mark Randell, the BBC's Brussels correspondent, who is relocating to the USA.

Mark published a very interesting and informed article on his impressions of Brussels (largely positive) and placed it in stark contrast to the one that Justin Webb published in 2002 before relocating to the US.

Mark's piece was mellifluous and complimentary of the city's many virtues, while Mark's was a scathing endictment of its limitless inadequacies and idiosyncracies.

Both Mark and Justin (though he did his best) failed to raise any serious controversy, and for that reason, I felt entitled to play my well rehersed role of 'agent provocateur' and contribute to the debate.

Below the comment I left on Mark Randell's blog.

'As somebody that relocated to Brussels at the end of 2004 and is about to reach the ominous 5 years threshold of being based in the capital of Europe, I can recognise myself in almost everything that both Mark and Justin have written in their FOOCs.

Bureaucracy in Belgium is infernal, customer service non-existent, taxes prohibitive, and dog fouling as much of a national sport as mussels and beer.

But it is a city I have learnt to love becuase of its size, the beauty of its architecture, the quality of the public services you can access (both hospitals and schools are excellent), the gentlemanliness of (some) of its inhabitants, its low key charm and, of course, its multi-culturalism.

I have plenty of friends who have lived in Brussels throughout the nineties and the memories that they carry of the place very much echo Justin's 2002 piece. But from what I see and hear (from many of those friends as well), the city has moved on and the refreshing inflow of 1000s of young people from the new member states has not only increased the availability of Milla Jovovich lookalikes in the streets, but also generated a very vibrant night and cultural life.

The only issue that still angers me about every day life in Brussels, and which both Justin and Mark have failed to mention, is the pathetic and petty infighting between the french and flemish communities to which you are constantly and invariably exposed - even as a foreigner - the second you step outside the ghetto of the European quarter.

I am sick and tired of people stepping out of lifts and responding to my well meaning 'bonne journee' in sneering flemish, and I am getting increasingly irritated at having to walk out of restaurants, when in the company of Flemish colleagues, if they do not provide a menu in Flemish.

Two years ago, I attended a political meeting organised by various political parties trying to promote their policies to the expatriates from the EU living in Brussels (yes as an EU citizen in another EU country, you can vote in in local elections).

Within a few minutes, a discussion on public services in Brussels degenerated into a war of insults between flemish and french speaking parties. Trying to capture expat voters by telling them how good bus services are in Ghent was one of the most absurd circus acts I have ever seen.

On that occasion, I was tempted to scream from the back of the room 'just let me know which one of you guys will get rid of the dog S**t'. Sadly, I just decided to leave instead.

Alessandro Fazio'

Nothing exceptional so far. I think my piece reflects the feelings of a vast majority (or minority) of the members of the Brussels expatriate community. And I was not expecting that it should have any consequences. In fact, I feared it would be largely dismissed as an outpoor of frustration and anger generated by a disgruntled octagenarian.

So much for assumptions, I thought to myself on opening my linked in profile the day after posting. A message from a guy that I had not heard from in years was sitting in my inbox, waiting to be read. I hastily opened it, assuming that it would be yet another message from somebody who has lost their job and is eagerly trouping the colour around friends and acquaintances in search of a new challenge (aka job).

To my surprise, however, here was a message from somebody who had read my post on the BBC's website and was visibly disturbed by it. I was reprimanded for the content of my post which apparently provoked a great injustice to Brussels and its inhabitants.

Guess I hit a nerve there. The first sentence that comes to mind: "excusatio non petita, accusatio manifesta".

Alex

If we want to say how we want the men of future generations to be, we should say: let them be like Veltroni

As energetic as all bran for breakfast

To those of you erudite enough (unlike me) to recognise in the title of this post words borrowed from the 18th October 1967 eulogy delivered by el comandante after confirmation of Che Guevara's death in Bolivia the paradox is obvious.

Walter Veltroni was, is and will always be to Che Guevara what Dan Quayle was to jack Kennedy as Lloyd Bentsen so elegantly reminded him (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWXRNySMW4s).

He has and should be relegated to the dustbin of history. So why have I decided to write about this character that is little known outside of il belpaese?

The answer is simple. Like every intellectual, I serve a prince and did not have the privilege of freely choosing the topic for this post. In other words, I was asked (in rather peremptory terms) to write this one.

And so for those of you not accustomed with Italian politics: who is Walter Veltroni? Pirandello once said that each one of us has three personas: the person we think we are, the person others think we are, and the person we truly are. The third, I guess, being halfway between the first two.

And so it is with this consideration in mind (and obviously some personal variations on the theme) that I shall try to present Walter Veltroni.

Like every politician with an oversized ego, a long list of dubious publications is appended to his name. Any respectable library (in any part of the world) should be capable of furnishing you all with at least one copy of notable topical scripts such as:

• Il PCI e la questione giovanile (The PCI - Italian Communist Party - and the Youth Issue)A dieci anni dal ’68.
• Intervista con Achille Occhetto (Ten Years since '68: Interview with Achille Occhetto)
• Il sogno degli anni sessanta (The dream of the Sixties)
• Il calcio è una scienza da amare (Football is a science to be loved)
• Io e Berlusconi (e la Rai) (Berlusconi and me (and RAI))
• I programmi che hanno cambiato l’Italia (Programs that changed Italy)
• La sfida interrotta. Le idee di Enrico Berlinguer (The interrupted challenge. The ideas of Enrico Berlinguer)
• Certi piccoli amori (Certain small Loves)
• La bella politica (interview book) (Politics, the beautiful)
• Certi piccoli amori 2 (Certain Small Loves II)
• Governare da sinistra (To Govern from the Left)
• I care
• Forse Dio è malato. Diario di un viaggio africano (Perhaps God is sick: Diary of an African journey)
• Il disco del mondo. Vita breve di Luca Flores, musicista (The disk of the world. Short life of Luca Flores, musician)
• Senza Patricio (Without Patricio)
• La scoperta dell'alba (Discovery of the dawn)
• Preface to Barack Obama, L'audacia della speranza (The Audacity of Hope)
  

As I do not want to come across as an arrogant and overtly critical person, I am not going to deny that my four working papers pale into comparison with the length of this guy's bibliography.

The real issue is: what has he written? What would you think this list refers to, were you to recover it on a deserted island? I would think that it is either a section of the library catalogue of a provincial section of the communist party or the bibliography of a rather pathetic apparatchick.

And I guess that the direction of this post has finally been uncovered.

Still, I hope you will forgive me if, I continue in providing additional details about the life, death and miracles of Walter Veltroni.

Ali G once questioned the conventional wisdom of "you are what you eat" with the famous words "if that is true than how come I ain't a giant chicken with Mcmuffin eyes, and cheeseburger hands".

I never really believed that food determines so much of who a person is, but I am firmly convinced that you can tell a lot about anybody by looking at their friends. So, let us get started. Once again, the list is long and to all extents and purposes impressive. Starting and remaining (for the sake of brevity) with two entries at the letter A.

Architects: Gae Aulenti, Renzo Piano e Massimiliano Fuksas

Artists (he is a former minister for culture): Stefania Sandrelli, Laura Morante, Claudio Amendola, Francesca Neri, Giobbe Covatta, Carlo Verdone, Bernardo Bertolucci and, from among the departed, it is probably worth mentioning PierPaolo Pasolini.

Long and impressive as the list may be, it does not stray much from the names of the well known components of the Italian Intelligentsia of the last 4 decades. Walter Veltroni's list of acquaintances, like his list of publications, places him firmly at the centre of the network of personalities that have influenced, driven and shaped the Italian left for decades.

His direct political associations are no more original. A long term member of the politburo running the Italian communist party, his key credential as a reformer is to have acknowledged the direction of events taking place on planet earth and supported Achille Occhetto in shifting the posture of the party from communist to social democrat (and a monumental shift it was, which even preserved the hammer and sickle as a central element in the logo of the "new party").

And when he did look beyond his traditional pool of contacts and acolytes, he opted for launching an 'entente cordiale' with Berlusconi that Beppe Grillo described as reminiscent of Garibaldi and Vittorio Emanuele II in Teano.

Last but not least, I shall give the word to the man himself, in hope that we may be able to understand who he is and what he stands for.

"I have always had an idea of politics as a civil mission, a mean and not an end." Fine By me

"As many authoritative international observers have noted, Italy has taken, unexpectedly, the role of a laboratory of political innovation. " That might be true, and I would love to know who they are!

"Millions of Italians have voted in the name of a new politics, a politics more somber in the use of public resources and more efficient in administering them, a politics more humble and more competent." said the former mayor of Rome and 'Politburo' member

"We are therefore in the presence of a new concept: that of the citizen-voter, who is also the true protagonist of the creation of the democratic party: and it is in full respect of the primacy of this new figure that we have to construct the organisational model of the new party. A model in which participation does not depend on affiliation. A model in which the greatest energy is born from the greatest liberty. From the union of autonomy and direct responsibility. It is an innovation challenge and it is something that needs to start from us, something that needs first and foremost to make its way into our heads." Would the above involve a resolution of the crisis at Alitalia? If yes, I fail to see how.

"A party in which, every political position, will be assigned by reference to the personal qualities of candidates and not by reference to the affiliations of old, to oligarchic or current related logics" Said he before distributing secretarial posts to representatives of the various factions in his 'party'

"But altogether the democratic party is interested in fostering the evolution of aggregational processes and programmatic (as well as value) innovations in the whole Italian political system......Therefore programmatic and institutional innovation. And Political innovation." Anybody recognise the familiar arcane and indiscernible way of speaking so typical of old guard politicians in Southern Europe?

Many of you might ask after bearing with me for the full length of this post: what is my point?

My point is very simple. Italy needs radical reform and that cannot be delivered by an insider that has been a protagonist of Italian politics for four decades. That much I am SURE about.

The thing I am not sure about is something I discussed with a friend, on a recent trip to Valencia.

His theory is that modern systems of democratic governance were not invented in southern Europe. Italians playing democracy are like football players playing cricket.

The modern democratic system is an Anglo-Saxon creation. Democratic government is to Italian and Spaniards what eating 'al fresco' is to the British: exotic, very demanding (not natural and effortless) and generally associated with BAD results (or food).

As for Veltroni he is just another sour element of democracy all'Italiana - and thank god he's gone!

Alessandro

• Italian Opposition Leader Says He 'Failed' (nytimes.com)
• Has Italy's Left Found its Own Obama? (time.com)

Poetic justice

Inspiration is male, not female. A tormented demon, not a man.

And the martial and triumphant tone of my first posting, so reminiscent of the soviet national anthem's powerful opening C, shall now give way to the charged sentence openings so typical of Ernst Hemingway.

As some of my (by now) numberless accolytes have pointed out, my first post read like a declaration of war to the world, but was not necessarily followed by an appropriate sequel. The lion of the sea triumphantly emerged from the water, only to retreat in disorderly fashion, terrified at the sight of a penguin (or any other clumsy and perplexing animal that you prefer to imagine).

So, and despite all my initial good intentions, this post has been neglected for about a month.

Part of the reason is that I had selected an extremely topical subject for my second posting (details of which I shall not disclose).

However, as i started grappling with the complexities of the subject matter, it became quite clear that, had i stuck to the original topic I selected, my second posting would not conjure a vision of Leonardo elegantly committing the world to canvas with an effortless stroke of the brush, but would most likely bring to mind the image of a rather clumsy and chubby teenager trying to kill a fly, annoyingly intent on landing on his nose.

In other words, the subject I picked is one at which, i soon realised, i could do no more than take rather unprecise and ineffective jabs, running the risk, with every twist and turn, of punching my own face, or even worst, of loosing my balance and ending up with my face in the mud.

And so the agonising process of identifying a meaningful subject matter begun, over and over again, for more than four weeks. As explained in my first post, there is no subject about which I have no opinions that the world should be aware of, but, i shall take the liberty on this occasion, to beg for mercy and share with the readers of this post a few lines crafted in a style I have rarely used. And if poetic justice really exist, I hope that you will all be lenient, and condemn me to the dustbin of history, rather than committ me to the executioner, or even worst the local asylum.

At times the wind blows hard on our helpless bodies,

we're often forced like grass, to bend in a direction we don't like.

Great, wonderful and the same time terrible are our lives, always we can but follow turbulent waves and flows.

Like reckless ships,

the winds push us away from our best known shores and from the ports in sight,

towards new lands and ventures.

Dust shaken off we unleash our wings and raise towards new heights

follow the stars to end up melting in the sunset, tired of flying and eager to start living.

It's hard however leaving for the unknown when time runs out.

The sun starts burning hot, the sea suddenly is dark and evil.

The only consolation, unlike those men who left their homes and friends under a sky of war brightened by fear alone,

the fact that bridges will not fall.

Yes, but the fear that they'll grow old unused is greater.

And the wind blows and pushes us away,

forgets to leave us time to choose the words,

forgets to leave us time to say adieu, maybe goodbye.

good night,

Alessandro

In my humble opinion...

Nothing to say about the album but the title seems fitting....

Dear All,

The date is 5th of February 2009 and the time is 00.02....and i hope, with this preamble, to have lent some gravitas to the first opening lines of this post.

I have no precise idea, to be honest, of exactly what sort of information I will be publishing on this corner of the web (if any) and even less of a clue of who (if anybody) will ever be bothered to read my scribblings.

The reason why I have decided to start the ambitious endeavour of becoming a world renowned opinion leader is quite simple. As I become older, more and more set in the ways of corporate life (and in my own deluded mind) more successful (and hopefully mature) my ego has reached dimensions such that it now feels constrained within the realms of my body and everyday environment and suffers an impulse to conquer the rest of planet earth.

I do not quite know, in all honesty, whether the world around me is becoming progressively (or maybe I should say regressively) more stupid every day, or whether it is me that is turning more and more into the sort of opinionated bastard that feels the right to comment and have opinions (not ideas but OPINIONS) on pretty much everything, from the way flowers should be arranged in my living room to Barack Obama's policy towards veterans of the war in Iraq.

The above is not a question that has featured prominently in my mind in the recent past if truth be told, were it not for the fact that i have acquired a habit of commening on current affairs in The Economist. It all started as little more than a joke, an attempt to make the sort of witty and apparently insightful remarks (that are in most cases ill informed and simplistic) so typical of readers of The Economist and Woody Allen lovers. Over the weeks, however, what started as a self surfing exercise in the art of sounding articulate and informed became not only a regular habit, but also a trigger of very interesting exchanges and a way of feeding my ever expanding ego (yes, my posts in The Economist have been receiving reccomendations by the bucketload).

And so here I am, determined to make a difference or die a heroic death (my ego again) in trying to do so. What, why or for whom I will make a difference i have no idea, but i will try nonetheless.

I shall not make this first blog topical in any way and will only make a passing comment on an over dinner conversation I had with my wife tonight.

Rumour has apparently spread within the European Commission that Barroso may not,after all, be reappointed as president of the college of the Commissioners. Whether that will actually be the case, or whether the rumour is simply an indication that his political fortunes have turned (if he ever had any) towards the oblivion that belongs to any politician is not the object of my reflections. The interesting question in this affair is the reason why the guy has suddenly found his head (or some more intimate parts of his anatomy) on the chopping board.

My wife answered that question without any hesitation: his handling of the financial crisis. HIS handling of the financial crisis? Are we talking about the same financial crisis that has paralysed credit markets world wide, pushed America into the deepest recession since the great depression, thrown the federal reserve into disarray, sparked talk of a potential UK default and even saw Alan Greenspan having to explain himself in front of a congressional commission of inquiry? Now we turn around to a shy, miserable and unimaginative former prime minister of Portugal (who happens to be the totally powerless president of the Commission) and say "shame on you for not fixing this mess"? Now that is RICH! or may be it is just politics.

Good Night,

Alessandro