Friday, March 23, 2007

An offer you can't refuse!

Once again the Italians have broken the balls of the Americans and Brits: it appears that in the kidnapping and subsequent release the other day from Afghanistan of the Italian journalist Mastrogiacomo (of the left-leaning national daily, La Repubblica), he had been traded for 5 somewhat dangerous Taleban terrorists, terrorists who once freed may possibly attack NATO forces, which include countries such as the US, Britain, Canada and Germany.

This has apparently sent the Yanks and Brits a wee bit ballistic (including the Germans) as their approach is that “we don’t deal with terrorists” (under former Prime Minister Berlusconi it was believed that more than one Italian hostage was released upon payment of a LOT of Italian euros!)!

History repeats itself as in the case of the terrorist Abu Abbas who had masterminded the hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro in the 1980s (with the subsequent death of the American tourist Leon Klinghoffer). This shouldn’t be all too surprising how Italy manages to eventually get shafted, by above-all the Americans, in diplomatic affairs. And the Brits aren’t that lenient either with the Italians: in the March 10th edition of The Economist the “Science and Technology” section of the magazine discusses the interesting(?) behaviour of cowbirds and the way that they protect their chicks, a sort of protection racket according to the magazine. In two sections of the article the cowbirds are compared to the Italian mafia (“…is that the host bird’s real chicks are pawns in a protection racket of a sort the Sicilian Mafia would be proud to have invented”…”Even the Mafia never thought of that one”)!

No respect, as usual, for Italy…

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