A Quantum Diaries Survivor

The good news today is that a government decree cancels the insane rules of the Bossi-Fini law which made almost impossible for foreign students and research scholars to come to Italy for their studies. 

The decree (n. 17/2008) determines looser requirements for extra-UE citizens who seek to enter Italy. Accepting the european directive on the admission of citizens from extra-UE states for scientific purposes, the institutes will be able to obtain a visa for foreigners, avoiding lengthy bureaucracy and barrages.

Bossi and Fini, the first a xenophobe and the second an ex-fascist, cooked up a very restrictive law in 2002 as members of the Berlusconi government. The law dictated the procedure of expulsion of illegal foreigners or ones with no documents. It also made much tighter the legal admission of immigrants. It is this second part of the law which has partly been overruled today.  

Dwarfs and dancers, “Nani e ballerine”: this is the way italians call large incoherent aggregations designed to attract interest by their entertainment value. As the italian electoral campaign livens up, one sees definite trends in the formation of the main coalitions that seek a mandate to govern the country.

On one side we see the Democratic Party, whose leader Walter Veltroni bargained today an agreement with the Radicals, led by Emma Bonino (who is best known outside Italy as a former UE Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid, and is neither a dwarf nor a dancer), while showing the door to ex-DC Ciriaco De Mita, now 80 years old, after 45 years in the italian parliament -arguably, an expert dancer of the italian politics tango. De Mita takes offense, but a party which seeks to show some novelty in the political panorama cannot objectively rely on people like him. Instead, I salute as a very good idea the fact that 50% of the candidates for a seat in the italian parliament proposed in the lists of the democratic party will be women - but I remain a bit skeptical until I see that proposal materialize in a definitive electoral list.

On the other side the “Freedom Party” (Partito della Liberta’) led by Silvio Berlusconi made the news today by offering a candidacy to Aida Jespica, the supermodel and showgirl (see left). Jespica declines, saying she is not interested in italian politics. But worry not: we are going to see more dwarfs and dancers joining the electoral lists of PdL.

Showmen and women, singers, soccer players - there is a place for everybody, a big smile and a camera-ready face the only requisites. I still have in my mind the words of Gabriella Carlucci (right), a showgirl elected last time in Forza Italia (Berlusconi’s own party-company), who recently had the guts to oppose to the appointment of Luciano Maiani as President of CNR, openly criticizing his scientific curriculum: a good example of a failed occasion to shut up. How dare these dwarfs and dancers express a judgement on one of our best scientists ?