Italy increasingly seems to be slipping back into the dark ages.
"Where in the world does the average citizen spend just two hours a week online? An isolated backwater, perhaps? Or maybe netizen figures from a far-off land trapped in a time bubble of its own desiring? Well, close. This bastion of digital indifference is Italy, one of our closest neighbours, a super-rich G7 nation and homeland to the inventors of the telephone and radio." This is social networking, Italian style, The Guardian, 6thNovermber 2008
Something has to be said about to much Internet access (something I am very prone to!). . However, I have found that the online world can enhance my off life world, though it is very easy to lose yourself. Thankfully my journey into Azeroth was short lived, namely because I was not very social online!
The example given is Italian banks not suffering the same way as their UK counterparts because of their lack of techno know how. There does seem to be a rather disturbing trend in Italy and among Italians in recent years. Believing that they are the best, and the unpleasant fascist elements that keeps rearing its head. I just wonder if its all just part of a trendwhichdislikesthemodernandthefuture and harks back to a "better time" (before the Internet, when Italy had empires, woman could not vote etc).
To say that Turkeys membership aspirations for the European Union has been rather thwart is a bit of an understatement. French, German and Austrian political and popular opinion has been rather against it, and there has been a general anti-Muslim sentiment across much of western Europe.
However....
"Put crudely, Turkish membership will signify a choice for Europe between becoming an outward-looking union at peace with its internal diversity that prioritises the economic and security needs of its members, or an insular, almost parochial grouping, searching for an imagined cultural homogeneity." Turkey is central to the EU, The Guardian 10thNovember 2008
There are sentiments that I strongly agree with. The EU itself is the product of an outwardness and creating an environment in which inherent diversity could be accommodated without conflict. Turkey is just another step, and as long as she signs up to the a common set of rules, there is no problem.
The cultural bigitory of current members is against the European ideal
This is fucking bogus. There is no such thing as a camera licence (well, maybe in Burma or Saudi Arabia). Anti-Terrorism laws allow police to check what someone is doing (ie no blowing shit up). And in the UK it is legal to take pictures in public spaces. People have no right to not have their picture taken in public (which given that there are 4 million cameras in the UK we should be getting used to!).
I hope the officer got an education...police enforce the law, not make it up!
