Yesterday, I heard of the terrorist attack in Kabul that made six victims among Italian troops and also killed fifteen bystanders. This morning, I read newspaper articles on the incident and very few of them mentioned the countless other victims, many of them civilian, that the war in Afghanistan has made. Tonight, I watched Terminator Salvation, which Warner Bros released last May, just when US drones were making “mistakes” in that devastated country. I was then reminded of the title of a famous book by Hannah Arendt. Those Hollywood movies serve one main purpose, that is, to banalize war, making it acceptable to our senses. And as we get used to the spectacle of violence, we are less likely to feel rage and therefore question the causes of the real violence that we hear about everyday on the news.

And what about Terminator Salvation, the videogame?

And of course the toys…

The BBC reports that a US military inquiry has uncovered serious “mistakes” made by US forces in bombing suspected Taliban positions in Afghanistan last May. According to the Afghan government, 140 people were killed in the strikes. US authorities admits only 20-30 casualties, the result of “errors” made by American personnel that did not comply with the standing rules of engagement. But those cannot be called mistakes, when countless pleas to stop bombing civilians have come not only from the Afghans themselves but also from UN agencies, NGOs, and non-corporate media outlets. Those who want to know are well aware of what has been going on. It has been known for years.

It is the same old story that we have been hearing at nauseam in political and scholarly debates on the Vietnam War. It was a “tragic mistake,” we are told. It wasn’t. That’s too easy. You make a mistake when you hurt someone even though you didn’t mean to. But, just like now in Afghanistan, everybody in Vietnam at that time knew that bombing, whether indiscriminate or not, was taking a heavy toll indeed on the Vietnamese people. When you hurt civilians, knowing perfectly well that your action will amount to that, you commit a war crime.

These days what Karl Rove has to say is quite interesting. Rove was George W. Bush’s chief political adviser for most of his presidency, more specifically, from 2000 until 2007. Rove had started working for Bush in 1994 and was the electoral strategist in the early and most ideological of the Bush years. From time to time, he now contributes interesting columns on major media outlets. “The President is Keeping Score,” a detailed analysis of Obama’s political strategy and Congress politics, was published today on the Wall Street Journal.

In 2008, Ferrari saw its profits growing once again. The recent figures from the company’s balance sheet confirm a decade-long positive trend. As in the past, North America made the largest contribution to Ferrari’s fortune last year, but the Eastern European, Middle Eastern, and Asian markets, too, grew. While the mainstream auto industry worldwide is facing an unprecedented crisis, with the Big Three on the verge of collapse and even Toyota in trouble, the appetite for luxury cars seems to be growing. Now Ferrari is about to launch the new California model, hoping to make another big splash in the United States. It is probably a sign of how richer the rich have gotten in the years leading to the current economic downfall. But exactly how much?

Il miracolo dell’Hudson River ha dominato le headlines di questo 15 gennaio 2009. Ma ce n’è stato anche un altro di miracolo oggi. La Nasa ha risposto alla domanda che David Bowie pose nel lontano 1972: There is life on Mars.

Well, we already knew that. We had a Martian in the White House for the past eight years! Just listen to his Farwell Address, also given on January 15. Not to mention the millions of other Martians in America, pretty rootless aliens who, according to a FOX News poll, still consider Bush a good person, but say history will be cruel with him!

A delicious chocolate Pentagon for just $10,99! You can find it on sale at Costco, in Arlington, Virginia, just a couple of blocks from the actual thing… yummy!

Today, in his weekly address, President-Elect Barack Obama announced a number of reform proposals in areas that include energy, infrastructure, education, information technology, health care, and unemployment. He said: “These are just a few parts of the economic recovery plan that I will be rolling out in the coming weeks.” It is not clear, however, if Obama’s plan will suffer from some of the same problems that befell another economic recovery plan, the European Recovery Program, better known as the Marshall Plan. His plan, Obama also said, will be “for both Wall Street and main Street.” Watch Obama on YouTube.

Si vota a Washington, alla Bell Multicultural High School, 3101 16th Street, NW. Si vota per il prossimo inquilino della Casa Bianca, dove 16th Street finisce, un paio di kilometri più giù. Non si vota per il Congresso perché, come sta scritto sulla targa della mia macchina, qui vige la strana regola “taxation without representation”. Si vota sotto un cielo plumbeo nell’ultimo giorno della Bush Era.

However it goes, either the first African American president or the first female vice-president ever will be elected a week from now. The first seating senator since JFK will also be elected president. There is no need to expand on the first point. The picture above, however twisted, does it enough justice. But the second point is no less worth considering. Despite Obama’s call for change and his relative newness on the national political stage, and despite McCain maverick persona, this is the first time in many years that a Washington insider from the upper chamber of the US Congress will become president. LBJ, an ex-Senate Majority Leader, followed Kennedy in the White House and was elected as an incumbent. Nixon was also an ex-senator when he was elected, but he had been in the Senate for just two years, from 1951 to 1953, sixteen years before he was sworn in as president. The next elected president was Jimmy Carter, an ex-governor of Georgia and the first of a series of self-described outsiders including Reagan, Clinton and Goerge W. Bush. The current president’s father, George W.H., was something of an exception, having been a House representative from 1967 to 1971, US ambassador to the UN from 1971 to 1973, CIA director in 1976-77, and vice-president for eight years. He was not reelected.

Ieri sera il candidato repubblicano alla presidenza degli Stati Uniti, John McCain, si è giocato le penultime chances di essere eletto. Penultime, perché c’è ancora un dibattito e non si sa mai, e perché può pur sempre verficarsi la October surprpise. Ma mi pare difficile che da qui a una settimana qualcuno inventi la macchina del tempo! Vabbé, facciamo quattro settimane, quelle che, più o meno, mancano al giorno delle elezioni. Già, perché solo una macchina del tempo potrebbe rimettere in pista il vecchio McCain, che ieri scalpitava sul palco perché le antiche ferite di guerra gli fanno ancora male e non sa stare fermo.  E come è penosamente suo solito, sollevava le braccia con fatica, fino all’altezza delle spalle circa. Più di lì non va, per via delle fratture riportate in Vietnam una quarantina d’anni fa.

E mentre lui si aggirava, Obama lo guardava benevolo. Giovane, snello, energico, sicuro di se stesso, calmo – not an angry black man at all, he knows that he doesn’t want to look like that, never – lui, Obama, looked presidential. The nail in McCain’s coffin, si direbbe da queste parti. Dopo la scelta di una cheerleader ultra-conservatrice come running mate, che se lui dovesse andare al Creatore prima di lasciare la Casa Bianca potrebbe ritrovarsi a capo delle forze armate americane…

…dopo il tentativo di glorificarlo come eroe di guerra alla convention repubblicana. Sì, eroe di guerra. E mi chiedo: che ci stava a fare McCain in Vietnam? E mi dico: dava il suo contributo, certamente eroico, al massacro di un paio di milioni di contadini…

…è arrivata la più grave crisi finanziaria dalla Grande depressione. E adesso ci vuole polso. Adesso gli americani, che fino a un paio di settimane fa ancora tentennavano, sceglieranno Obama. A meno di sorprese dell’ultimo momento, come dicevo qualche riga più su. Ma lo Zio vive a un paio di chilometri in linea d’aria dalla Casa Bianca e preferisce non pensare alle sorprese.