In which we learn Italian profanities

Beppe Grillo's hand gesture is not sign language for "Vaffanculo." (I checked.)

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi looks a little uncomfortable. Is it media unrest or heartburn?

Thousands of angry Italians congregated to demand media reform in their country today, led by anti-political comedian Beppe Grillo.

The rally participants christened their protest "V-day." Not "v" as in "Valentine," or the kind of thing Eve Ensler talks about all the time, but as in "Vaffanculo!" I will not tell you what that means because this is a class blog, not a slam book of slurs and cusses, but if you're dying to know, Reuters explains it here.

Grillo ranted and raved to a crowd of at least 45,000 supporters against Berlusconi's media monopolization, comparing Berlusconi's ownership to a hypothetical Barack Obama owning Fox, ABC, and other television networks. Berlusconi owns Mediaset and exerts a good deal of control over RAI, the Italian national network, "indirectly controlling" up to ninety percent of Italian television audiences.

Berlusconi claims there's no real conflict of interest and that the leftwing media attacks him regularly, poor guy.

Blogger-comedian Grillo devised a petition to revoke the Gasparri law, a form of extreme media deregulation that limited competition and enabled Berlusconi's Mediaset to expand digitally.

While he brings up a lot of legitimate points, it seems Grillo's a tad off on the Obama comparison. If Berlusconi is complaining about being attacked by liberal media personnel, I think a better analogy would be "Rupert Murdoch running every network as well as the country." Thank Heaven he wasn't born in America, otherwise we might have a media mogul running for president.

I think a good alternative for the Italian people would be to quit watching TV and just YouTube everything. Screw political discourse--do you really think Berlusconi's networks will bring the Italian people anything like that Numa Numa guy?

*By Jessica Sager, who speaks fluent "Fritalian."

Kim Jong ILL: Nukes and North Korea

Kim Jong Il: Wanted for being awesome. (Image courtesy of www.boingboing.net.)

In news that would have the Team America: World Police officers in a frenzy, the United States revealed that North Korea assisted Syria's secret nuclear weapons program and that the reactor that Israel destroyed was "not for peaceful purposes."

Like, 0MGZ REALLY?!

Seriously people, let's think back a little. Hell, we don't even have to--the Associated Press did for us. Since December 2002, we've had reason to believe North Korea was up to no nuclear good when they tried kicking U.N. inspectors out of the country, then in January 2003 when they withdrew from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, then in July 2006 when it launched missiles into the Sea of Japan and in October of that same year, when they admitted to conducting their first nuclear test.

Can someone explain to me why we invaded Iraq for maybe having nukes (then taking it back and saying we wanted to liberate their people) when North Korea has made it clear since well before March 20, 2003 that they actually have the materials and the drive to produce chemical weapons?

John McCain's closed fist shows the kind of foreign policy he favors. (Image courtesy of Reuters.)

Meanwhile, Reuters reports that McCain is subtly attacking Obama's stance on North Korea and other foreign policy, saying that unconditional talks with dictators like Kim Jong-Il won't really help U.S. foreign diplomacy. But since when do we care about diplomacy anyway? Take a look at Iraq. They didn't even have weapons materials, and yet we gave up diplomatic efforts in favor of what was supposed to be a quick, easy war in spite of U.N. opposition. And look how far that's taken us!

Oh, wait...



*By Jessica Sager, who promises she will never die.