Mediterraneo, Società Civile, Politica e Interculturalità
“Israel is doing the dirty work for all of us”. When the German Chancellor stated it during the last G7, held in mid-June, he was proud of himself and proud of being a pro-Israel supporter whatever it happens. Those words, however, were probably the clearest statement ever by a European politician of this century which…
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Years ago, a Palestinian writer, we were in Ramallah, told me that every time Israel comes with good news, you have to worry about the bad news hidden behind it. She had given me the keys to understanding how things work, and I didn’t realise it. It was 2005, Arafat had disappeared, and the second…
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Forty-five years. Forty-five years had to wait for a prisoner of the tyrant of Damascus to taste freedom, coming out of the prison of as-Suwayda, just as a rabbit can come out of a magician’s hat. His family did not even know where he was, he had been forgotten by almost everyone, because that is…
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It was a quite evening, and as usual, once he had finished eating dinner, without abandoning his sitting position, he stretched his legs over a chair to his side. Trade had again been generous to him that night, no doubt Brussels was well served in fact, as plenty of fine delicacies had arrived at his…
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It is so hard to switch the radio off and forget about the developments on the ground, especially since I was there years ago, and am now struggling to imagine the level of destruction. Each hour, each event counts in the tragedy of Gaza. Each piece of writing in Western and Arab magazines deserves a look…
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Israel’s biggest challenge is how to cope with ghost people. The Palestinians, the Palestinian question have been removed since several years from Israel’s political agenda and from the majority of its citizens’ collective soul. Palestinians are simply ghost people. I saw it with my eyes. There are highways connecting Israeli cities with Israeli settlements located…
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Last week, the European parliament approved an historic bill, the Nature Restoration Law. Through a series of extremely unpredictable voting rounds, the bill was first of all kept alive by a majority of 12 voters only : 324 MEPs voted against the motion to reject the bill en bloc submitted by the conservative forces of the…
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Statement of the Maydan Association following the wreck of a migrants’ ship occurred off the Greek coast last June 14, 2023. The statement below is in EN and FR. More than 80 migrants were reported dead on Wednesday the 14th of June on the coast of Greece, and more than 600 remain missing and are…
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One week ago, representatives of European social organisations and movements gathered in Florence on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the first European Social Forum, which gathered in Tuscany thousands of people of the anti-, alter-globalisation movement from across the continent. It was the time of the mobilisation against neoliberal policies, and against the…
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This article was published on European Alternatives on October 3, 2022. “Complaining is fine, but some people must have voted her if she’s won the elections!”. Last Tuesday, two days after Italy’s election day, a woman cashier working in one of Florence’s Coop supermarkets blurted out a simple truth while serving a client. It seemed…
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It was only 1987 that the true facts behind the celebrated Stalin’s rule were made public, and The Moscow News published Lenin’s testament, where the founder of Soviet Russia had called for putting Stalin on the sidelines because he was too brutal. Those days, Gorbachev was segretary general of the CPSU’s[1] central committee, function he…
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On April 25, Italy celebrates the liberation from Nazi-fascism. On April 25, 1945, the Allied forces and the Italian partisans broke through the Gothic Line, and the Germans and Italian fascists withdrew from the main Italian Northern cities. It was the beginning of the full liberation of the country. Hundreds of parades and rallies have…
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Italian high-school students, when they study the making of the Italian State as a unified entity, read in books that Camillo Benso Count of Cavour, prime minister of the Kingdom of Sardinia (and Piedmont), secretly met in July 1858 the French emperor Napoleon III in the town of Plombières, to discuss Piedmont’s new military structure…
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Of Kabul I remember the dirty snow and the shops of pistachios and walnuts. Of Kabul I remember that thick, dark smog layer encapsulating the town’s air bubble I could see from above, from the top of Shir Darwaza mountain. A whole humanity was swarming in the streets under the layer, squeezed like their poor…
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It has always been a fascinating puzzle to me how our brain works, and how memory influences us and the way we look at the surrounding world. We always say that a person with a good memory is better equipped and has better skills to understand what happens around him. Memory is an extraordinary faculty…
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Gianluca Solera 