However, Since my friendly adversary, Prof. Ben Lawton is so exceptionally 
well read on matters Italian, it seemed only proper to give him an opportunity
to respond.

I preface his remarks with the comment that I was unable to access either the 
4 PAGE Article in Corriere della Sera, [one of Italy's (Milan) leading 
Newspapers] which was apparently a follow up to an 18 PAGE ESSAY  "The Rage 
and the Pride" by Fallaci, printed in FULL previously in that newspaper.

Relying on the American Press, and particularly The New York Times to report 
favorably, or even accurately on Italy , is fraught with danger, and treading 
a dangerous mine/mind field.

As Prof. Lawton states in his conclusion " In short, as usual, a major event 
is completely trivialized either because it comes from Italy or from an 
Italian."

I will absorb Lawton's Comments, and perhaps respond later, if someone 
else hasn't.

Incidently, he "yanks my chain" by saying he wouldn't dare engage me 
physically, because those who know this mild mannered, and genteel soul, 
are aware that he indeed has a black belt in "martial arts".   
==================================================
Subj:    FW: Oriana Does NOT Flagellate Italy
Date:   11/6/01 10:02:25 AM Pacific Standard Time
From:   lawton@purdue.edu (Ben Lawton)

Recently my good friend and sparring partner (verbal, not physical-I
wouldn't dare engage in the latter with him) Richard Annotico sent me 
...his take  on Melinda Henneberger's New York Times review of Oriana 
Fallaci's response to the September 11 Massacre:
 
PROVOCATEUR IS BACK TO 'SPIT' ON' DETRACTORS OF U.S.

New York Times
By Melinda Henneberger
October 30, 2001

In response to Henneberger Richard wrote, part:

99999999999999999999999999999
Oriana Fallaci was incensed by these detractors, and while I have been
fascinated by her style heretofore, in this case, I totally dismiss her
diatribe, since she indicts ONLY Italians, plus she seems to indict ALL 
Italians.Further she is xenophobic, bigoted, anti female, and filiopiestic.

[Her reasoning is as stupid, is if I were to discount her comments merely
on the basis that her last name derives from both the English and Italian
word meaning: deceptive, misleading, and fallacy.]
9999999999999999999999999999999999

My response to Richard, follows:

Carissimo Riccardo,

Did you base your comments on what Fallaci wrote on or the article by
Henneberger? I ask, because, given your intelligence and your integrity, I
have to believe that you responded to Henneberger's article. Had I only read
that article, I would have come to the same conclusions. However, having
finally read Fallaci, my reactions are rather different.
 

Fallaci does not indict ALL Italians (she condemns those Italians who try to
find alibis for the massacre of September 11 those Italians whose
self-interest and vanity take precedence over the national interest; those
Italians who forget or deny that there is a difference between the
Greco-Roman-Judeo-Italian Renaissance culture and that spawned by Mohammed;
those Italians who only wave the Italian flag at soccer games, but despise
its deeper meaning as symbol of patriotism; those Italians who don't
understand that an attack on the Twin Towers is an attack on all the West;
those Italians who forget the sacrifices that Italians made during the
Risorgimento, WWI to free and unify Italy);

she is not xenophobic (she simply has had it with the invasion of Italy by
illegal immigrants; she is tired of illegals urinating and defecating on and
in Italian churches (this I saw with my own eyes in Florence this past
summer); she is tired of the constant verbal and physical assault to which
women are subjected (this I observed repeatedly this summer); she is tired
of the copy/theft of Italian copyrighted artifacts which are then sold in
Italian cities to duped tourists (this I observed this summer); she is tired
of the fact that you can't walk the streets of Florence because they clog
the streets to sell their wares (this I observed this summer); she is
appalled by the fact thatif the police tries to get them to move, the
illegals react by attacking the police with knives and guns (this I read
about this summer);

she is not bigoted (she simply says that a fundamentalist wing of the
Islamic religion has declared a crusade in the opposite direction against
the West; she then goes on to give numerous examples preceding the September
11 massacre; among many other instances she describes public executions of a
twelve "impure" youths in Dacca. In front of a crowded stadium, full of
people chanting Allah akbar, the youths were bayoneted to death.  Then, as
the crowd of tens of thousands continued to chant Allah akbar the formed and
order row and marched over the cadavers of the youths until they had been
reduced to "a bloody carpet of squashed bones);

she is not anti female (she condemns [somewhat unfairly, I grant you] Muslim
women for tolerating the absurdities of their condition under Islam; she
goes on to describe the horrors perpetrated in numerous Muslim countries
against women and her own experiences which ranged from humiliating to life
threatening).

While one doesn't have to agree with everything Fallaci says (as I stated
above, her comments about the Afghan women are less than kind and less than
honest, and I am certain Fallaci herself is aware of this; her description
of American patriotism may be a bit overly optimistic), this is
unquestionably the most impassioned wake up call for Italian patriotism I
have read in decades. It is also a long overdue rejection of PCness (be it
leftist, rightist, or multiculturalist) a paean to the values of the West
and to their fruition in the United States.

Fallaci's essay is 20 single-spaced pages long. The criticism of the aspects
of Italy mentioned above constitute a minimal part of the essay.
Henneberger's review synthesizes the entire essay in two paragraphs. The
other paragraphs concern her biography or are comments on reactions to
Fallaci. In short, as usual, a major event is completely trivialized either
because it comes from Italy or from an Italian.  And, sadly, because for the
most part the Italian American activists don't read Italian or are
not particularly concerned about things Italian, this further manifestation
of defamation will continue to go unchallenged.

Until Italian Americans send their children to "Italian school" as
"religiously" as Jewish Americans send theirs to "Jewish school," the
New York Times and other such publications will be able to continue to
publish drivel such as this. To defend your culture you have to know about
it--and that includes its history, its literature, its cinema, and its
language.  

Sciao-as usual.

Ben
========================================================
-----Original Message-----
From: Trimtantre@aol.com [mailto:Trimtantre@aol.com]
Sent: Friday, November 02, 2001 10:56 PM
To: Trimtantre@aol.com
Subject: Oriana Flagellates Italy.--NYTimes Article
 

The ANNOTICO Report
Thanks to:Dominic Tassone at dominic@mobilito.com for the NY Times Article.
==================================================
[Preface: As in most European countries, in Italy there is a segment of
people, mostly extreme leftist, are opposed to the US led Military Action 
against Afghanistan, citing that:

1. This is really Israel's War,
claiming that Bin Laden would have little support in the Muslim World,
if the US had not consistently shown overwhelming favoritism for Israel
to the disadvantage of the Palestinians.

2. That the US is Hypocritical,
in that the US is bemoaning an attack on Civilians in a War, when
In our bombing of GERMANY, heavily populated civilian districts were
intentionally targeted. The idea was that by targeting the civilian
population,
we would disrupt Germany's economy, destroy the morale of its citizens and
create chaos by rendering millions of people homeless.

Low-income areas were especially targeted for destruction because the
population was denser and the buildings closer together. In February 1942,
Allied bombers were specifically instructed to concentrate on built-up
residential areas instead of targets such as dockyards and factories.

In JAPAN, the use of the A- Bomb at Hiroshima and Nagasaki on an almost
totally civilian population.

Oriana Fallaci was incensed by these detractors, and while I have been
fascinated by her style heretofore, in this case, I totally dismiss her
diatribe,
since she indicts ONLY Italians, plus she seems to indict ALL Italians.
Further she is xenophobic, bigoted, anti female, and filiopiestic.

Her reasoning is as stupid, is if I were to discount her comments merely
on the basis that her last name derives from both the English and Italian
word meaning: deceptive, misleading, and fallacy.]
========================================================
PROVOCATEUR IS BACK TO 'SPIT' ON' DETRACTORS OF U.S.

New York Times
By Melinda Henneberger
October 30, 2001

ROME, Oct. 29 - Oriana Fallaci, the war correspondent who
practically invented it's-all-about-me journalism some 30
years ago, had in effect become the Italian J. D. Salinger,
refusing to give interviews and publishing not a word for
the last decade.

But now, at age 71 and sick with cancer, she has suddenly
returned to her role as professional provocateur. In an
expletive-rich indictment of Muslim immigrants and Italian
ambivalence toward the United States that filled four full
pages in the country's leading newspaper recently, she sent
Italy's intelligentsia on a search of its soul.

Her essay, "The Rage and the Pride," began by announcing
that reports that some Italians had celebrated the Sept. 11
terrorist attacks on America had so enraged her that she
had decided to break "the self- imposed silence I have kept
for 10 years to avoid mixing with cicadas."

"They say: `Good. Serves the Americans right.' ' she wrote.
"And I am very, very, very cross. Cross with a cold, lucid,
rational rage, that commands me to answer them and first of
all to spit on them."

That was just a warm-up for the scorn she heaped on fellow
Italians.

"My country, my Italy, is not the Italy of today," she
wrote, "the pleasure-loving, vulgar Italy of people who
think only about retiring before they are 50, the evil,
stupid and cowardly Italy of the little hyenas who would
send their daughter to a brothel in Beirut just to shake
hands with a Hollywood star, but when the kamikaze of bin
Laden reduce thousands of New Yorkers to mush, laugh and
say it serves America right."

She was tougher still, though, on Arab immigrants, saying
their arrival in Italy amounts to a colonization, "a secret
invasion." Going well beyond Prime Minister Silvio
Berlusconi's recent comments about the superiority of
Western civilization, she wrote: "We might as well admit
it. Our churches and cathedrals are more beautiful than
their mosques."

Her tone and anti-immigrant theme were all but universally
rejected, but the criticism of her native Italy as a
country of divided loyalties, deeply conflicted about the
American-led military action, is getting a serious hearing.
 

The discussion took on new life this week after Corriere
della Sera, the Milan newspaper that published her original
piece, ran an article with the headline, "One Italian Out
of Four `Justifies' bin Laden."

The article said one-quarter of all Italians could not only
understand the reasons behind the Sept. 11 attacks but
could also "justify" them - although the actual polling
data showed that 27 percent found the attacks completely
wrong, 22 percent thought them mostly wrong and only 6
percent considered them mostly right.

Signs of mixed feelings abound here. Some graffiti say,
"Siamo tutti americani," ("We are all Americans"), but
other spray-painted messages declare, "Siamo tutti
palestinesi." ("We are all Palestinians.")

In Italy, as in many other countries, condemnation of the
terrorist attacks has been mixed at times with a sense that
what happened to America amounted to some form of
retribution for the country's dominance of the world's
economy, culture, politics and military power.

As so often in the past, it appears - at least to some -
that she has hit a nerve in a country where Mr. Berlusconi,
a conservative, has already used strong anti-immigrant
language that was welcomed by some Italians even as it has
angered others.

Ms. Fallaci grew up poor in Florence and fought in the
anti-Fascist resistance as a teenager. She always took
sides in writing about wars from Vietnam to the Persian
Gulf, and she became the best-known political interviewer
of her generation.

She famously called Yasir Arafat "a man born to irritate,"
and described Henry A. Kissinger, whom she interviewed in
1972, this way: "Do you know that obsessive, hammering
sound of rain falling on a roof? His voice is like that."

"Each interview," she once said, "is a portrait of myself,
a strange mixture of my ideas, my temperament, my patience,
all of these driving the questions."

In the latest article, she was not even vaguely sisterly
toward Muslim women: "If in some countries women are so
stupid as to accept wearing the chador, so idiotic as to
marry a cretin who wants four wives, that's their problem.
But to treat them with indulgence or tolerance or hope is
suicide."

This report, from Manhattan, where she now spends most of
her time, was as angry as anything she had ever written.

Yet most of the prominent writers and thinkers who answered
her in print disagreed but did so carefully and with a
respect that was almost as astonishing as her original
article.

The novelist Dacia Maraini wrote that "if you turn this
into the first move of a holy war, you are helping him,"
meaning Osama bin Laden, adding, "It is a trap, Oriana, in
which you seem to have fallen, spurred on by the
impetuousness and the courage - a little quixotic in this
case - that characterize you."

Giovanni Sartori, professor of humanities at Columbia
University and professor emeritus at the University of
Florence, concluded that while he did not completely agree
with her, "Oriana Fallaci must be right, since her accusers
are thoroughly wrong."

The leader of the leftist opposition, Francesco Rutelli, a
former mayor of Rome, said: "I subscribe to a small part of
her intervention. She's not a political leader, so she can
write what she wants. And all her life is a life of
literature, passion and personal commitment, so what she
writes is important."

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/30/international/europe/30ITAL.html?ex=100545
7500&ei=1&en=0f89110e8075ffdd