One Casualty of Many, I Fear
An Italian teacher of English left this comment yesterday. It’s a sad story which paints a bleak picture of the teacher’s lot in Italy today.
Perhaps Italy was better when it had governments which lasted 6 months or so. At least the politicians never had time to really mess things up, even if Italy’s short term unstable governments seem to have done a pretty good at job at leaving Italy in the mess it is in now.
Read the copy of the comment to see just how down certain Italians are feeling about life in Italy.
BEING a teacher in Italy is a traumatic process: I started teaching as a native speaker when I was 19, graduated in English as a Foreign Language, passed a “Concorso pubblico” the national exam which qualifies teachers and gives access to a list (graduatoria) for supply teaching and a permanent post.
But all this wasn’t enough to get a permanent job so I had to attend a 2 year training course at University because in the meanwhile the system had changed … at the same time I’ve never stopped teaching English in nursery, primary and secondary schools (beside teaching in courses for adults, training primary teachers, writing and publishing educational materials etc. etc. ).
This year I’m travelling 3 h a day to reach my school and next year with the current reform I will have no job! We are the so called “precari” i.e. we don’t have a permanent contract: the state pays us from September to June and we have to change school every year. Some of my colleagues have been teaching at these conditions for 15, 20 and even 25 years!
I think people abroad should know about the condition of instability of life in which the Italian state keeps us teachers. I will probably go to live abroad as soon as possible, but many colleagues will lose their jobs and this is very sad.
Melanie Segal
Thanks for this sad story. It will be sad day for Italy when you do leave the country. Hopefully you will not and someone will see sense and offer you a good job, but I have my doubts.
And Italy’s politicians, such as Roberto Maroni, and so called impartial journalists, read Emilo Fede, still have the temerity to criticise people like Roberto Saviano for bring to the attention of the world the dire effects of Italy’s political mis-management over the years.
I’ve read 30 pages of Gomorah so far and it’s surreal. Roberto Maroni thinks that Saviano is merely interfering, and the job of dealing with Italy’s mafia should be left to the police and prosecutors. However the police and prosecutors have had plenty of time to mop up the mafia. But they have not cured the disease, as Saviano’s book crudly points out.
It’s wrong to point fingers at Italy’s law enforcement authorities – they are merely kept under resourced, most probably intentionally. And Italy’s police don’t seem to be able to count on protection from their political masters either, as the sad death of Giovanni Falcone would appear to attest.
Emilio Fede, a supposedly leading Italian journalist from Italy’s openly pro-Berlusconi Rete 4, also thinks Saviano is interfering and said as much on Italian TV news. It would be interesting to know who Fede’s friends are, and the sources of money which probably fill his likely overflowing overseas numbered bank accounts.
Certainly 60 years of political instability have made it much easier for Italy’s various mafias to spread their clever tentacles everywhere. And from the comments of Maroni and Fede it appears that these tentacles may well have reached pretty near to the top.
Melanie Segal and many other Italians could be seen to be a form of casualty in a war which was probably won many years ago by Italy’s criminal underworld.
I shall keep an eye on my post box for letters containing bullets.
This post was written by Alex P Roe
Tags: Italian politicians, mafia, Roberto Saviano
Just to say Hi! I’m Lisa, I’ve been reading through your blog with interest – I’m a hybrid-Italian translator (half NZ) based in the Castelli Romani but have lived here/in Rome since my early teens… long-long decades spanning the hyper-sinister “years of lead” aka “Strategy of Tension”. NOT fun – perfidious vicious and bitter decades, with ghosts still walking. So simply by being here through that lot, I’ve accumulated quite a store of background-to-the-background info one way or another.
I’m also a great fan of Saviano – it’s people like him who justify this country’s existence, show us what we could be instead of what we are. What Saviano’s doing is slamming the camorra’s misdeeds into full view, naming names and calling for a moral-revolt the camorra’s devastations – and the high-visibility he has achieved is pressuring/shaming politicians to ACT, push judges/cops to stop playing blind, grow serious balls and make arrests – but it’s helluva-dangerous, Saviano’s fuelled by dark rage and sorrow at what the mob has done to his home-region and his people’s lives (stuffing the region with radioactive waste amongst other things…) so it’s a personal crusade, almost a kind of private war on his part – throwing his angry denunciations right in their face, telling both them and the world what mean vicious bastards they are, what cowards they are. Takes great courage, pride and anger… to call it dangerous is an understatement.
Re police: it’s also very dangerous being a local cop/magistrate in a mafia/camorra town unless you play by the “unwritten rules” – so bringing in the army is partly smoke-in-our-eyes partly makes sense: they’re not locals, don’t have vulnerable wives/children on the spot as “hostages” so are less easily blackmailed into passivity.
You mention Maroni, Fede pooh-poohing Saviano… you should check out Berlusconi’s own background some time! First things that come to mind: no-one quite knows where the money that brought him up from cruise-ship crooner to property-development magnate (Milano Due) to TV tycoon originally came from – however, his father was a bank-clerk in a bank connected with Michele Sindona. And Berlusca was on Licio Gelli’s P2 list.
A guy called Marcello dell’Utri is/was one of Berlusconi’s right-hand men, his stable-hand at his Arcore villa – name of Mangano – has Sicilian mafia written all over him. Check out those names on wikipedia… preferably the Italian version. Noting that in Sicily, Berlusconi’s PdL share of the vote in the last elections was 65%+ as compared to around 46% elsewhere. Hmmmmm…
If you’re interested in more sinister Italian- background info, names of books that illuminate dark corners etc etc and more-than-meets-the-eye stuff in general, just send me an e-mail…
All the best -
Lisa
Hi Lisa,
Wow! What a long comment! Thanks for taking the time to write it:-) Good to hear that you’ve been wading through my blog. Thanks for reading, and do feel free to disagree or correct inaccuracies.
“I’m also a great fan of Saviano – it’s people like him who justify this country’s existence, show us what we could be instead of what we are.”
- Great to hear, and I know you are not alone, thankfully.
And I know that Saviano is one heck of a courageous man. One of Italy’s modern day heros.
“Re police: it’s also very dangerous being a local cop/magistrate in a mafia/camorra town unless you play by the “unwritten rules” – so bringing in the army is partly smoke-in-our-eyes partly makes sense: they’re not locals, don’t have vulnerable wives/children on the spot as “hostages” so are less easily blackmailed into passivity.”
I also know, and have written about the dangers of being a cop trying to deal with the mafia. The mafia is somewhat glorified, but the fact is they are ruthless and will stop at nothing – including killing children, if they are really angry. They have so much control that this does not happen too often luckily.
As for the stuff on good old Berlusco, I knew most of that, including the mysterious stable hand, and I refer to Wikipedia in Italian often because it is so much more detailed than the versions about the same Italian subjects in English.
Berlusco is an Italian par excellence, in that he knows how to work the system to good effect, and now that he has power, he’s been tinkering with the Italian system to ensure that it cannot be used against him. He has his own lawyers in parliament, making laws! The Alitalia situation is riddled with convenient modifications to Italian laws, for example – I discovered this from a very detailed documentary on the subject by RAI 3′s Report program – excellent impartial journalism.
Mr B is a clever man, but does not think about Italy, aside from using it as a place to squeeze money from. But he does employ a lot of Italians, and keep many others in employment, which cannot be said of many of Italy’s politicians.
I am interested in more sinister background info, but I’m not sure what I can do with it. However, it would be interesting to know of these sources and to discover how many have been translated into English. Telling people out of Italy about the situation here may make a difference in Italy – but only if it is as sharp as Saviano’s work. Even then, the change needs to come from the inside – but, with the exception of Di Pietro, no Italian politician today wants to do much – and many do not have to, they know they will be voted back into power, and they know they have nice fat pensions. Images of Nero twiddling thumbs while Rome burns spring to mind.
I will be writing to you about “stuffing the region with radioactive waste”. I want to know more about this and to try, not that I can do much, to spread the word that nuclear power is far too risky in today’s Italy. And there are great alternatives, which I have written about, and which could do a lot for Italy’s tarnished world image.
Again, thanks for commenting.
Kind regards,
Alex