Naples takes on Mafia to clean streets, China bans plastic bags & the RC church to exhume Padre Pio
international |
environment |
other press
Wednesday January 09, 2008 12:01
by staring at rats
Really quite a miscellany of human interest stories this one.
Naples is notorious throughout Europe for its rubbish problem, which for many is blamed on the intransigence of the Comora or Napolitan mafia who sabotage every attempt to provide the city with incineration facilities. Over the Christmas the Italian military were sent into the city to clean up mountains of household waste which quite simply has nowhere to go. Today the Italian state has appointed a "garbage czar" to sort it out. Meanwhile the Peoples' Republic of China is to ban plastic bags in an attempt to stop pollution in its land. Very thought provoking. & there is a spat in Italy between a bishop and family members over plans to exhume & display the body of Padre Pio the patron saint of "January blues".
the Naples trash story really is very interesting for many reasons which will be familiar to Irish readers * corruption * mafia * urban planning * ecology * limits of state control * extent of EU directives * oh yep - tourism for any one day Ireland has literally dozens of commercial travellers, students, senior citizen excursionists & so on so forth enjoying Ryanair carbon footprints tramping up & down the bay sucking their ice creams in Pompeii.
......."taly's Prime Minister Romano Prodi has named a former police chief to tackle a waste crisis in Naples and said three new incinerators will be opened. Protesters in the suburb of Pianura are blocking access to an old rubbish dump that city officials want to reopen because landfill sites are full. There have been no waste collections for more than two weeks in Naples.
More than 100,000 tonnes of rubbish lies rotting in the streets. Mr Prodi said troops would help move it......."
latest news .
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7176378.stm
pictures
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/7176459.stm
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Chinese to ban plastic bags
, this story has being blowing about for a while now & China is competing against Los Angeles in the USA to be the first place to prohibit them. This is an excerpt from a news report last June : "What clogs waterways, harms bird and marine life, can be found in abundance in the city and the most remote parts of China and takes millions of years to disappear? The answer is plastic bags. It is hard to imagine that something that seems so harmless could be doing so much damage to the environment both in China and globally. Throughout the world 1 trillion bags are used a year, which accounts for over a million a minute. And considering it takes years for them to decompose, the global fight to limit the usage of plastic bags needs to be revved up a notch or two. Plastic bags not only cause visual pollution, who hasn't been witness to plastic bags strewn across riverbanks, floating in waterways and clinging to trees, but they also clog drains which can lead to flooding in urban areas. Wildlife in the marine environment, such as birds and seals, are dying from intestinal blockages resulting from ingesting the bags. The scary thing is that for something that impacts so heavily on the environment, the majority of people don't give plastic bags a second thought. Often they are used only once and thrown out or discarded as litter. This litter in China has been dubbed white pollution, as it is regularly seen blowing around the streets. A push to draw the public's attention to the issue has wielded some positive results - a few years ago it would have been an anomaly to see shoppers carrying home their shopping in cloth bags, but it is happening in China's capital Beijing. This is due to recent campaigns such as major supermarkets in Beijing providing their customers with reusable cloth bags, and different regions embracing No Plastic Bag Days.
Other supermarkets in Beijing are opting for degradable plastic bags. By simply cutting down on the number of bags you use, reusing bags and encouraging your friends, family and colleagues to follow your example, you will be playing an important role in environmental protection in China. An increasing number of people worldwide are refusing to use plastic bags and opting for alternatives. People use backpacks and sports bags from home to carry their shopping, as well as environmentally friendly substitutes. Two such bags are polypropylene bags manufactured from polypropylene gas, a by-product of oil refining, and calico bags made from cotton. Polypropylene bags have a lifespan of up to three years and can be recycled, and calico bags last for one year. Both can hold more shopping than plastic bags......"
& the latest on the story :-
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7178287.stm
digging up Padre Pio - really really quite something. I just found out he's the patron saint of depression & not only that but January depression. Wow.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7176051.stm
http://www.adnkronos.com/IGN/Regioni/Puglia.php?id=1.0....54541
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Padre_Pio
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Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7& so in addition to the now nightly burning of rubbish (household, restaurant garbage, bulky items like tellies, old washing machines & unwanted Xmas prezzies like puppies) some of the more excitably types burnt buses too.
What can the government do?
Well they're talking very nicely to the mafia consortium about lowering the rent on the deep pit they (the mafia) suggest as a land-fill.
wow.
central Naples January 9th afternoon
central Naples January 9th night
You should remember that in case you're going on holidays there. report from the BBC which ends with the rather lame factoid that in Ireland everyone pays for a plastic shopping bag by law. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7180365.stm Meanwhile for those of you with no interest in waste of any kind but are holding out online 24/7 for a Padre Pio update : alas, all I can do is stir your thoughts a bit by hoping you ask what are they going to do to him once he's exhumed? Maintaining my secular side means of course linking to an old back article on Lenin's preservation/burial issues. http://www.indymedia.ie/article/72340 Because though exhumation of saints is a traditional catholic thing, it is normally done much longer than 40 years after burial by which stage you're really only talking bones & a bit of shroud & there are issues of "religious tourism" to all this (i'm tempted to remind you of the "terror of holy water" article too http://www.indymedia.ie/article/84003 which alas didn't lead to a relax on the liquid bans on European flights. Anyway, if you want to see Padre Pio - he'll be on display for four months this year from April onwards in San Giovanni Rotondo a little town in the south. Nearest airport served by Ryanair is in Naples & the RC church which persecuted & sidelined him back in the "liberal 60's" hopes this such a trip would inspire you to emulate him - for verily the world needs stigmatics.
He's 54 years of age, an unemployed painter who brought quite exaggerated attention to himself in Italy last October 19th for dying the Trevi fountain red. Thing is, he got the colour mix right. I've tried to dye fountains in my time and have never got the mix of pigments you need to colour the water red & not just pink. Anyway, yesterday he got back into the news & arrested for disorder when he and two mates went to the Piazza di Spagni (big square in Rome - where the pope did a nice fascist mass for the guardia civil) and emptied bags filled with 500,000 multi-coloured plastic balls down the steps.
He had of course told the press he'd do it before hand & then turned it into a political act by reading a little manifesto about garbage. It's Italy's youtube feature & students of that language or culture can follow the links on the embedded video to hear interviews, local reaction & blaa blaa.
Most people seemed quite charmed by it.
Anyway, he's still in custody & will be up in court tomorrow. He's still largely unemployed, not on hunger strike, and without a wikipedia entry.
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Meanwhile fans of embedded video (& I must admit I'm getting into) will enjoy this article from the Italian left wing daily on the Rubbish crises which is chockablock with youtube links. http://www.unita.it/view.asp?IDcontent=72071 Which of course explains the expansion of the rubbish protests of Naples which have been aimed by people at both state & Camorra mafia to the islands of Sardinia & Sicilly. Yes indeed, the people of the mafia dominions are linking up their issues. I've still no news update on Padre Pio.
Speaking at the annual "Italians in the world" conference which tis year was held in manky filthy Naples , Mr Silvio Berlusconi declared the general election open. Of course under articles 92 and 84 of the Italian constitution there is now a brief pause between Prodi's resignation at the discretion of the President & an election. It will probably be held after a brief interim "technical" government filled with Italians nobody can name. This is their way. As I've said many a time there are basically only a few options open to organised states; multiparty democracy, dictatorship, one party state or being Italian. For verily with only one small example we have gone beyond absolute rule by divine right. http://www.rainews24.it/notizia.asp?newsid=77976
http://www.ansa.it/opencms/export/site/notizie/rubriche....html
which brings me neatly to the Padre Pio update you've been waiting on. The Archibishop of Manfredonia has been authorised by the Holy See to explain to readers of "The Christian Family" what exactly they're going to do to Padre Pio once he's exhumed & how there are no _repeat no_ plans to do a cosmetic embalmbing job. If Padre Pio is no longer acceptably aesthetic there will be no visual confirmation that his relic & object of devotion but not _repeat not_ direct worship is in fact his bones.
You'll just have to trust them on that. & why shouldn't you? Padre Pio isn't Jimmy Hoffa.
Meanwhile the whole Padre Pio story is really showing how modern iconists of the very traditional RomanCatholic kind are keeping up to date with modern technology. This week also saw a "aparition of Padre Pio" in a video tape story.
http://www.stpauls.it/fc/0803fc/0803fc50.htm
http://www.portadimare.it/index.php?option=com_content&...id=28
The Italians are going to have an election so as to choose a prime minister on April 13th & 14th. There are many who if pushed for a reaction might think Italy's habit of two day polling is a jolly good thing for democratic participation. They obviously don't know how difficult & time consuming it can be to rig votes without getting caught. Sure I did it once & the mere thought of doing it again puts cramps in my tummy. The starter slogans have been described by the Italian centre, centre-left, liberal & literate leftie press as "kennedyesque" or "obamaesque", understandable given two rally calls of the parties opposed to a Berlusconi re-election have chosen english language slogans. To vote these days you need to speak English.
http://www.unita.it/view.asp?IDcontent=72704
http://www.repubblica.it/interstitial/interstitial10930....html
The first bit of graft is coming out of filthy Naples with kickback sweeteners to the Mafia (who formed a part of this article's title) varying from 800,000euros to one and half million euros per year. It's a figure which is hardly newsworthy in a municipal government corruption or budget shrinkage terms. But I wanted you to think someone was being blamed & false conviction wasn't looming for a city of 975,000 plus registered souls. But all the same it's been squandered & talked about.
http://www.italiaestera.net/modules.php?name=News&file=...=4416
A Padre Pio movie "'Padre Pio Tra cielo e terra'" will be shown in the Chinese Theatre of Hollywood on the 23rd of February as part of the 'Los Angeles, Italia - Film, Fashion and Art Fest'. The made for telly movie directed by Giulio Base & written by Franco Bernini will be introduced by popular actor & director Michele Placido. It shall be the first time the movie shall be shown in the den of the sinister cult of scientology that is Hollywood. Mr Placido of course played the title role of the movie & grew a special beard for the purpose he is noted for his 1978 the Golden Bear award for the best actor in Berlin for his role of a homosexual worker in the ironical melodrama "Ernesto". He had a beard in that too.
http://www.iltempo.it/spettacoli/2008/02/05/836184-mito...shtml
http://www.ansa.it/site/notizie/regioni/campania/news/2....html
Would art critics regard Cecchini's launch of the coloured balls at the Spanish Steps as a novel example of Installation Art?
The Rome corpo cleaners probably had a problematic time rounding up the rolling art materials. Did their trade union issue a statement?
Cecchini is described varyingly as a clown, simplistic futurist (by people who don't know what either word means in an art context), crypto-post-situationalist & in his own words as "in-urban land art".
http://rota.wordpress.com/2008/02/04/a-palle-ferme-graz...ista/