The Off Topic Topic

[Sheilbh]

I feel like this statue shouldn't even be a conversation and it should never have been put up - given that he "bough and married" a 12 year old girl in the 1930s

Milan mayor refuses to remove defaced statue of Italian journalist
BLM protesters targeted monument to Indro Montanelli, who admitted buying 12-year-old Eritrean girl
Lorenzo Tondo and agencies
@lorenzo_tondo
Sun 14 Jun 2020 17.01 BST
Last modified on Sun 14 Jun 2020 19.30 BST


The statue of Indro Montanelli has been vandalised after becoming a flashpoint in Italy's Black Lives Matter protests.
Photograph: Andrea Fasani/EPA

Milan's mayor has rejected calls to remove a statue from a public park of an Italian journalist who acknowledged having bought a 12-year-old Eritrean girl to be his wife during Italy's colonial occupation in the 1930s.

Giuseppe Sala said in a Facebook video that he was perplexed by "the lightness" with which Indro Montanelli had confessed to buying the child from her father, in a widely circulated video of a 1969 talkshow appearance, but said "lives should be judged in their totality" and he believed the statue should stay.

"Montanelli was more than that. He was a great journalist, a journalist who fought for the liberty of the state, an independent journalist. Maybe for these reasons he was shot in the legs," Sala said, referring to a 1977 attack on Montanelli by the Red Brigades.

The statue of Montanelli, inside a Milan park that bears his name near where he was attacked, has been a flashpoint in Italy's Black Lives Matter protests, which have renewed the focus on Italy's colonial past. As well as taking the 12-year-old when he was aged 24, Montanelli led a battalion of 100 Eritreans during the fascist regime's colonial rule.

Protesters over the weekend covered the statue with red paint and scrawled "racist" and "rapist" on the base – the first time Montanelli's past has faced a serious reckoning.

"In Milan, there is a park and statue dedicated to Montanelli, who until the end of his days said with pride that he bought and married an Eritrean child of 12 years to turn her into a sex slave during the fascist regime's aggression against Ethiopia," the anti-fascist I Sentinelli group said on social media.

Montanelli, who died in 2001 aged 92, chronicled contemporary Italy from its colonial era through fascism, the postwar reconstruction and the anti-corruption scandals that overturned Italy's political class in the 1990s.

He worked for many years at Corriere della Sera, before becoming the founding editor of Silvio Berlusconi's Il Giornale.

Initially a proud fascist, Montanelli later distanced himself from Mussolini and was arrested by the Nazis in 1944 during the occupation of Italy, avoiding execution thanks to a cardinal's intervention. His prison experiences inspired a story, Il Generale della Rovere, which was later filmed by Roberto Rossellini and won the Venice Golden Lion in 1959.

He freely acknowledged his relationship with the girl, named Desta, on several occasions. "I think I chose well. She was a beautiful girl of 12 years," Montanelli told the talkshow in 1969, adding a with a smile: "Excuse me. But in Africa it was another thing."

An Eritrean-born journalist, Elvira Banotti, who was in the audience, challenged his romantic account, accusing him of rape and of "violent" colonialist behaviour. He defended himself, saying there was no rape because girls in Eritrea married at the age of 12, but acknowledged it would have been considered rape in Europe. "What difference is there physically, or psychologically?" Banotti then replied.

Edit: Necessary blunt piece by a feminist activist:
https://www.politico.eu/article/indro-montanelli-raped-a-12-year-old-girl-they-built-him-a-statue-milan/

[celedhring]

Though I just want to point out that reason we want confederate statues taken down is because they were set up specifically to communicate to the black population, and their friends, that the white people were supreme once more and celebrate the victory of redemptionism. Typically they will even include commentary announcing this fact on them.

One way to think about these sorts of monuments is to ask "what is the reason we're honouring this person"?  If the reason we're honouring them is good and noble, but that person also happened to do some things that aren't morally acceptable now, that's one thing.  People like Washington and Jefferson would fall into this category.

If the reason we're honouring this person is because of the morally unacceptable things they did (like Confederate generals), that's a whole other thing.

It's not that easy. You'll find many statues of people that are not being honored by the unacceptable things they did, but those unacceptable things make honoring them pretty questionable nonetheless. Sheilbh's article about Indro Montanelli is a good example of this.

Where you draw the line is pretty tricky, mind. And probably the line moves as our societies change.

[Syt]

An agreement has been reached to ban car traffic into Vienna's First District. However, there are a few exceptions: people living there, taxis, people driving to one of the parking garages there, delivery services to shops/companies, workers like plumbers etc. .... so basically the only ones banned are the ones driving through (which no one in their right mind does, anyways), or people commuting there who don't have access to a parking garage (most companies pay for that, though) and a small group of people who live outside the district but go to one of the shops/theaters or whatever.

[Valmy]

It's not that easy. You'll find many statues of people that are not being honored by the unacceptable things they did, but those unacceptable things make honoring them pretty questionable nonetheless. Sheilbh's article about Indro Montanelli is a good example of this.

Where you draw the line is pretty tricky, mind. And probably the line moves as our societies change.

Yeah well the ones honoring the unacceptable things are far worse and are actively damaging to society. The ones where you need to go Lisa Simpson on Jebediah Springfield are a little different.

[crazy canuck]

Why would anyone wait for water to come to boil on a stove when they can just use an electric kettle?

Answer, only if the quantity of water needed is greater than what the kettle can hold.

[Zanza]

My induction stove can heat water faster than the electric kettle.

[Richard Hakluyt]

According to the internet American mains voltage may be the reason for low usage of electric kettles :

eg https://amp.insider.com/why-americans-dont-use-electric-kettles-stove-top-2015-12

[Valmy]

My induction stove can heat water faster than the electric kettle.

Those things are so cool.

[Barrister]

According to the internet American mains voltage may be the reason for low usage of electric kettles :

eg https://amp.insider.com/why-americans-dont-use-electric-kettles-stove-top-2015-12

Doesn't account for why Canadians (who have the same voltage in our power) do use electric kettles.  I couldn't find any statistics, but according to someone's tumblr account dedicated to pointing out the differences between Canada and the US, we do use them a lot more.

https://whatsdifferentincanada.tumblr.com/post/51210309089/electric-kettles 


Huh - I just found out that is labelled as "the Garbon".

[garbon]

Yes it has been that way for a long time.

[garbon]

According to the internet American mains voltage may be the reason for low usage of electric kettles :

eg https://amp.insider.com/why-americans-dont-use-electric-kettles-stove-top-2015-12

My mother's one does take forever and a day compared to the one I use here in the UK.

[Tonitrus]

Might be a London thing due to limited space? Everyone seems to have them up here.

London/student flat thing maybe. Also I think space for the ventilation pipe is a bit of an issue because London flats are dreadful for that generally.

One of the benefits deemed necessary for us visiting American servicepersons is the free provision/loan of a tumble dryer (and washing machine).  They're always a vent-less type/condenser* dryer, though.



*These get a lot of complaints about not fully drying clothes, but with the right setting, my clothes always comes out fully dry...just as fast as a vented dryer.  Just have to empty out the water reservoir every two loads.

[Syt]

So, the two Austrian politicians from the Ibiza video. The latest info is that apparently Strache used party funds to buy viagra. For tens of thousands. (He's still being investigated for misuse of the party expense account - previously there were thousands of Euros sunk into Clash of Clans, among other things).

His partner, who was known for his hard anti drug stance ... well, there's an image now of him where it looks very much like he's doing a line of cocaine.

[Richard Hakluyt]

Might be a London thing due to limited space? Everyone seems to have them up here.

London/student flat thing maybe. Also I think space for the ventilation pipe is a bit of an issue because London flats are dreadful for that generally.

One of the benefits deemed necessary for us visiting American servicepersons is the free provision/loan of a tumble dryer (and washing machine).  They're always a vent-less type/condenser* dryer, though.



*These get a lot of complaints about not fully drying clothes, but with the right setting, my clothes always comes out fully dry...just as fast as a vented dryer.  Just have to empty out the water reservoir every two loads.

I find that it feels like the clothes are not 100% dry when they are still hot; but once they cool down to room temperature they are fine. They are one of the great labour-saving devices imo 

[HVC]

tens of thousands on Viagra? that's dedication.