SGRENA CALIPARI
No, that is not the name of a town near here. It is merely the last names of the two people caught in the latest drama of US-Italian politics. Giuliana Sgrena is the journalist that was just released after a month of captivity in Iraq and Nicholas Calipari is the diplomat who negotiated her release who was killed defending her from American bullets.
I say politics because, as usual, there are different stories of what happened depending on your political persuasion. Certainly you are not hearing what we are hearing here as we are called on to defend what our government did as representatives of a foreign minority. We are uncomfortably finding ourselves in that position. We can see first hand how important all of this is here because TV was interrupted constantly last night with special reports and news analyses. More importantly, the last part of the last night of San Remo, the annual love fest of Italian music (kind of like the Academy Awards show or the World Series) was interrupted to show the plane carrying Caliparis body home from Iraq.
What you heard is that the speeding car approaching the check point would not respond to verbal warnings and lights flashing, clearly signalling them to stop. What we hear (this is from eye witnesses in the car) is that there was no check point, there were no warnings, there were not even lights on the two armoured tanks that lay in wait for the car. Suddenly a blinding light hit the car and volleys of shots hit the passenger section of the car (the Americans say they shot at the motor). The shooting did not stop when the driver started yelling, We are Italians! The Americans say they had not been not told that Giuliana Sgrena had been freed, the Italians say they were.
Here is where the politics begin. Sgrena is a communist journalist, and the communists are part of the leftist minority in Italian politics. The leftist say the Italians could not risk telling the Americans sooner because the Americans did not want Sgrena released alive. There is some mystery why here-there are suggestions her captors warned her about the American threats, that she had found out too much about the Americans in her work as a journalist. Whatever the truth, this incident is playing right into the leftists hands.
Now, the leftists are not popular with Italian President Berlusconi, Bushs pro-war buddy, but Sgrenas politic leaning is not a reason for any Italian to want to get rid of her, even though the left is solidly against the war in Iraq (in fact, most of Italy is against the war). Further, an Italian government agent has been killed by the Americans with an explanation that a mistake has been that differs from the eye witness version of things, and a weak apology has been made by the American ambassador in Rome (who unforgivably did what most Americans would do and mispronounced Caliparis name wrong-its ca-LI-pa-ri, not ca-li-PAR-i). And Italians today are demonstrating specifically against the USs actions and, again, against Italian participation in Iraq. Maybe this tragic event will help bring this war to an end soon-I hope so!
I say politics because, as usual, there are different stories of what happened depending on your political persuasion. Certainly you are not hearing what we are hearing here as we are called on to defend what our government did as representatives of a foreign minority. We are uncomfortably finding ourselves in that position. We can see first hand how important all of this is here because TV was interrupted constantly last night with special reports and news analyses. More importantly, the last part of the last night of San Remo, the annual love fest of Italian music (kind of like the Academy Awards show or the World Series) was interrupted to show the plane carrying Caliparis body home from Iraq.
What you heard is that the speeding car approaching the check point would not respond to verbal warnings and lights flashing, clearly signalling them to stop. What we hear (this is from eye witnesses in the car) is that there was no check point, there were no warnings, there were not even lights on the two armoured tanks that lay in wait for the car. Suddenly a blinding light hit the car and volleys of shots hit the passenger section of the car (the Americans say they shot at the motor). The shooting did not stop when the driver started yelling, We are Italians! The Americans say they had not been not told that Giuliana Sgrena had been freed, the Italians say they were.
Here is where the politics begin. Sgrena is a communist journalist, and the communists are part of the leftist minority in Italian politics. The leftist say the Italians could not risk telling the Americans sooner because the Americans did not want Sgrena released alive. There is some mystery why here-there are suggestions her captors warned her about the American threats, that she had found out too much about the Americans in her work as a journalist. Whatever the truth, this incident is playing right into the leftists hands.
Now, the leftists are not popular with Italian President Berlusconi, Bushs pro-war buddy, but Sgrenas politic leaning is not a reason for any Italian to want to get rid of her, even though the left is solidly against the war in Iraq (in fact, most of Italy is against the war). Further, an Italian government agent has been killed by the Americans with an explanation that a mistake has been that differs from the eye witness version of things, and a weak apology has been made by the American ambassador in Rome (who unforgivably did what most Americans would do and mispronounced Caliparis name wrong-its ca-LI-pa-ri, not ca-li-PAR-i). And Italians today are demonstrating specifically against the USs actions and, again, against Italian participation in Iraq. Maybe this tragic event will help bring this war to an end soon-I hope so!
posted by Sicilian Mama at 9:29 AM
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