Showing posts with label Modern history. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Modern history. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 20, 2016

We Italians should be concerned

WELCOME TO FRANK MENCHISE BLOG OF GENZANO DI LUCANIA, YOU ARE INVITED TO BROWSE AS LONG AS YOU LIKE.
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Welcome to our blog, Genzano it story
and this post, we Italians should be concerned
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We Italians should be concerned

Italy is a European country in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea that today has many problems of its own. One is that there are too many refugees coming in, the other is the recent earthquake in central Italy. Both these events make life harder for the Italian people, for this reason we should be concerned.  










We Italians should be concerned
Dear readers, I am going to stop writing my life story for a while, I will come back to it another time, because there are other things more important to write about. Let me explain, I have already written and published some articles in another site. Now these articles have a lot to do with Italy, so, because I am a Italian I am going to publish these articles in my blog, that in a way has got a lot of Italian content, so, let me repeat these articles here in my blog, Genzano it story, as I am sure that most Italian emigrant would be interested.
What I am going to write in this article today, it is an issue that has been on my mind for a long time; it has been on my mind, because I was born in Italy and I feel that I am still Italian, therefore, whatever happens in Italy it affects me personally as well, and for that reason, I would like to say something about it if I can, so, I am writing this article to have my say. Anyhow, today while I am trying to finish this first article, I have become aware this I have lots of things to talk about, so there will be more than just this article, as we will explain later. 
The reason why I am writing it now and not before, it is because there are a couple of things that have happened recently and they have pushed me to write this personal article. Now, I believe that as things are today in Italy, Italy seems to have so many problems to cope with, one of which is the illegal migration from Africa and the Middle East. This illegal emigration touches me personally, because in the fifties and sixties, we Italians had to emigrate ourselves to other countries to find work, and one of this emigrant was myself.
But since then, a lot of things have changed and today the Italian people are better off; they are so much better off than then, that instead of people living Italy to find work somewhere else, they are somehow able to help other people that move to Italy illegally, even if they cannot give them some work, because even today there is not enough work for the Italians. I see that this illegal emigration could cause a problem soon. So, I wish that somebody somehow would come up with a solution, how to stop or control it to an acceptable level. You see, I believe that this uncontrolled migration could create some serious problems in the future, therefore, I feel concerned, and here I am writing them.
Anyhow, while I was looking in the news on the Internet, for any signs or any ideas that could slow this unwanted emigration down, to my dismay, instead of finding this solution how to stop the illegal emigrant coming in, in large numbers, I found in Hub Pages an article that was showing the benefit of migrating to Italy and Europe. I know that the writer was writing only his point of views, without thinking of the consequence this could eventually cause. Anyhow, to me this article seems as if the writer is encouraging other people to migrate to Italy and Europe, which I believe is not a good thing to do, as I am going to explain some of the reasons, which will be evident by the time I finish writing about my concerns. But let us leave behind this difference of opinion between me and the Hub Pages writer; because I would like to point out, what are the real problems over there, and then we will talk about some of the major issues one by one, including this article that I found in Hub Pages.
Looking at these Italian issues from far way, since I happen to be today in Australia the land  of the Kangaroos’, because I am so far away, for this reason, I imagine that I would be able to see these important issues, in a different way, and perhaps better than the people that live on the spot in Italy, because I am not directly affected by what is happening over there just now. So, let me write down my point of views, about the illegal emigrant and other things.
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This is a boat full of illegal emigrant people, they could be said to be lucky, because even if the boat is overloaded, it is still floating and they seem safe enough.



The illegal emigrants’ problem
Anyhow, I should say first that I am proud of what the Italians are doing these days, since what they are doing is being done on humanitarian grounds. We know that helping other people in need is the best thing that we humans could and should do, so, we should encourage this sort of behaviour all the time. But, there is a big question mark here. Could this sort of behaviour in the long run be detrimental to the helper themselves? So, let us see what this could mean.
As we have said, in Italy we have a big problem with the illegal emigrants, because there are too many of them coming in, we also believe that from what we see happening in the world, this emigration problem will continue for a long time. So, we Italian should be concerned, but not only we Italians should be concerned about that, because, I believe that also the rest of the world should be concerned about what is happening today in Italy and other part of the world as well.
Anyhow, let us continue these discussions, or point of views if you like to call them that; so, let us see what is happening in Italy, because there is some news from Italy that should concern most of us Italians, even if today, some of us like myself happen to live outside Italy, perhaps these issues should concern other people as well. My own personal point of views is that Italy today is under a strain, it has been so for a long time, because of the refugees and the illegal migrants that come to Italy every day, the last count that I have heard of, there were 156 thousand refugees this year alone, there were also over 4200 people that drowned in the Mediterranean Sea, so, the Italians and other countries as well feel that they should help them and they do, because on humanitarian grounds that needs to be done.
But, this is not all that needs to be done today, because even this drowning issue is not the main problem for the Italian people over there, because, for the last two months there have been several earthquakes in central Italy, which have damaged lots of towns, and there were near 300 victims from these earthquakes, in some of these towns there is hardly any building left standing. So, Italian people should solve these two huge problems that keep going on, one after the other, with no end in sight.
Now, in this article, I would have liked to talk about three main issues, the earthquake problems, the refugees and illegal emigrant, and last of all discuss about the article on Hub Pages that seems to encourage illegal emigrant to go to Italy, the gateway of Europe. But it looks like that this article is becoming too long already. So, I may have to write two or three articles to say what I want to say. But to conclude this article, let me talk about the earthquake and the Italian response.
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This photo that we have taken from the internet, is one of the many buildings severally damaged during the earthquake.







The Italian earthquake  
Today, if we Look at what is happening in Italy, here we are talking about the earthquake and everything else, I believe that the Italian authorities are coping very well indeed, in doing what needs to be done. As most of us may have noticed in the daily news, there are too many things that the Italian authorities need to do all at the same time, while they have also so many other problems going on. Now, the Italian are not rich people, because Italy is a small country in size compared to other countries with the same population; Italy is also poor, because every now and then there are these earthquakes that destroy many towns, like what has happened just now. Some people might think that you can just rebuild again and the problem is over. But it is not so, you see every time something is destroyed, the country becomes poor because of the destruction. In Italy, there are too many mountains, so, some of this territory is not easily cultivable, but the Italians are good at finding what they could grow on some small piece of land, if they live in the mountains, and they do. They are also good at doing other things, since most of them are individual that try hard to solve their own problems. But even knowing that they can solve many problems, today they should be concerned, because there are several negative things all happening at the same time. Anyhow, now let us talk about what the Italians are doing because of the earthquake.
When earthquake like these that are happening in Italy take place and there are hundreds of dead people, and tens of thousands have their houses destroyed and become in a way refugees, usually other countries come to help, but this time there was no much help from outside Italy, and if there was any it was not mentioned much in the news. So, it seems from here that the Italian people could cope with the earthquake problem so far by themselves.
The Italian government and authorities have been quick to get involved, so, they have already promised to the people that they will rebuild the damaged houses and everything else that needs to be rebuilt, so, now it remains to be seen, if what the authorities have promised the people affected from the quake, is going to be delivered on time and to the standard that they have promised; we hope they do, for the benefit of everybody involved.  
Now, I should say that next step is going to be a critical one, because while the government is giving money to re-build, the damaged houses and everything else that needs to be rebuilt, there could be some greedy idiots that don’t care about the plight of the rest of the community that need help, so, they want a share of the government money; here I am talking about the mafia and other criminal groups, I hope that they are caught in time from the Italian authorities before they do any damage. My own personal view about them is that they are a disgrace to the Italian people that work so hard to achieve a good outcome for everybody, they should be ashamed of themselves, instead of being proud to be robbers.
Anyhow, I believe that I have said enough about the earthquake for the time being, because I would like to talk a bit about the refugees and illegal emigrants that come to Italy by thousands just about every day, which is another problem for the Italian government and we should be concerned about that, as we are going to write in our next article, that perhaps we could call, Italian concerns continued.
See you soon.
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Genzano it story
We Italian should be concerned
IS GOING TO BE CONTINUED;
Next time with, Italian concerns continued
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Monday, September 5, 2016

The Italian problem of today

WELCOME TO FRANK MENCHISE BLOG OF GENZANO DI LUCANIA, YOU ARE INVITED TO BROWSE AS LONG AS YOU LIKE.
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Welcome to our blog, Genzano it story
and this post, The Italian problem of today
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The Italian problem of today
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This map of Italy, shows you how close is Italy. to the coast of Africa. So, it is easy for the illegal emigrant to try to come to Italy by boat. This is creating a real problem, because there are too many emigrant, as we all know from the news. In fact during last week there were 15 thousands new arrival. When will this stop one may ask? And will Italy be able to cope with all these illegal emigrants?
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Italy position and population

The Italian problem of today, exists because Italy is a peninsula in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, so, it is easy for the refugees to come to Europe going through Italy. We believe that this is the main reason why so many refugees or illegal emigrants arrive in Italy every day, and sometime even thousands of them can come in just one day, other times just a few, but it is a problem that might never end, unless we of the western wold are able to find a solution. Therefore, we should be concerned about it, since it might bring lots of other problems. 
We have reasons to believe that Italy cannot cope with this incoming of refugees for long, so, something might happen that will show us this weakness soon. What is happening now is this, Italy accept these illegal emigrant or refugees on humanitarian grounds, they even go to help them when they get in trouble in their boats on their way to Italy, but there are just too many of them arriving every day; so it is a never ending problem. Most of the western world is worried about these refugees’ issues, but they don’t know what to do to stop them.
Let me point out this to you briefly, since I have written the first part of this article, there have been several terrorist attacks that involves illegal emigrants and refugees, but that is not all; for instance, today on the Italian news, we have seen the eternal city of Rome full of uncollected rubbish in the streets. This is another problem that the refugees will produce, since there are more people, there will be more rubbish. Now the rubbish can be collected, but where to take this rubbish will be the problem of the future. We will talk about this when we come back to this in a few days. 
Today I am editing this article, so, I can add other things that have happened since last time I wrote this article. There has been an earthquake in central Italy, where near three hundred people have died. At the same time, in a few days about 15 thousand refugees have arrived in Italy. It is very warring, therefore, I feel sad for the Italian people, since they have to cope with this other disaster. So, in the world there are also more problems every day, that is all one can think about.
The Italian problem of today
As we have talked at the beginning of this article, there are many illegal migrants in the world today; they are illegal migrant because they forcefully go everywhere, even when they are not wanted at all; here I am afraid that I have to say that when they do this forceful migrating they could easily upset the way of life of the people that are forced to receive them against their will; but let us see what could be the causes of this migration, and then extend our search to what could be the outcome of this forceful emigrants that come in unwanted, because I am worried that something nasty might happen in southern Italy soon.
The causes of this unwanted illegal migrating, it is that these refugees are in search of a better life, there are many reasons for that, but above all of them is poverty, sometimes poverty is so bad that people could even starve to death, now that is really when people are very poor and they are forced to find a way how they would be able to feed themselves; here the rest of the world that are better off should really try to help them and there is no question about it.
But on the other hand there are people that are not that poor and they want more because they are greedy, they may start to believe that the rest of the world is better off than they are and therefore they want to grab whatever the others have, and this seems to be the main problem that the entire world is facing today.
Anyhow here we want to talk about the Italian problem, mainly because I am an Italian that has emigrated from southern Italy, and therefore in this article I would like to talk about Italy and my native town and the surrounding towns and countryside. So we would like to start thinking and imagining what could be like in the future to live in southern Italy, in these towns with all these new migrant coming in. But first of all who are these emigrant we have to ask and why they are migrating.
This is the main thing that worries me. These people that are arriving as refugees in Italy and other parts of Europe, they don’t seem to me that they are not able to feed themselves well, in their own country of origin. So, feeding themselves does not seem to be the real problem for these people. Therefore, what other problems they might have one should ask.
Before we are able to answer that question, we would like to define the sort of refugees we are talking about here. There are at least two types of refugees, the real refugees are those people that are forced to run away from a natural disaster or war. The rest of them are not real refugees, they are illegal emigrants that are looking for opportunities to live a better life.
Now, there is nothing wrong for people wanting to live a better life, if the better life they are looking for is hard work, and this hard work is easily available in the country they emigrate, but if they are looking for a better life, just because they believe that the people in the country they have emigrated are better off, just because they have heard that in their country of origin, then there will be great problems. These problems that they could cause, it is the reason why I am concerned.
We could say many other refugee’s things, but we are not going to, as we are stopping here and leave our concerns to the Italian people that are still live there. I feel that at least I have said what I needed to say about my concerns.
I believe that we have said enough in this post, so see you in our next post, where we are going to start with my life story.
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Genzano it story
The Italian problem of today
IS GOING TO BE CONTINUED;
Next time with, my life story
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Wednesday, July 20, 2016

We should be concerned

WELCOME TO FRANK MENCHISE BLOG OF GENZANO DI LUCANIA, YOU ARE INVITED TO BROWSE AS LONG AS YOU LIKE.
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Welcome to our blog, Genzano it story
and this post, we should be concerned
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We should be concerned
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Today, even in a place where people go to have good time, it is not safe to go. See what has happened in Nice France, another terrorist attack has killed 84 people plus. Today in this world we should really be concerned.
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We should be concerned
Dear readers, I would have liked to have started by continuing to write about my concerns, as I said in the last post an old man view of the world. But, because violent events have happened in the world that are in line with my concerns, I would like to mention them first and then we will continue to write about our concerns, just the way I wanted to write them. You see, what has happened in France then in Belgium and now in Nice and now is happening in Turkey, it all has something to do with movement of people that emigrate from one place to another, because they are not happy, and also the native people of that region that are not happy. These violent happenings today make me concerned, and everybody should be concerned about them. Now let us go back to what I was going to say.
 Today we should be concerned, because there is this movement of people that could be considered like a Biblical Exodus. You know what I mean, the Jews left Egypt to go to their Promised Land, in their way they had many problems, one of their biggest problems was that they had to fight the people that were occupying their Promised Land, so, in the process many people were killed. Now that is just one example of what happens when a large number of people move from one place to another; of course there are many more examples if we read our human history, but, I believe that I have explained my point of view.
We believe that there is a link here for us to be concerned. Not only in some regions of Southern Italy, but perhaps the entire continent of Europe, as there are too many called refugees that arrive from Africa, the Middle East and Asia, so, as an old man I am concerned. Now, even though this looks like a worldwide problem, I would like to tell my own country people what I see coming. You see, today I am viewing all these happenings from the land down under here in Australia. Now, because I am so far away, my point of view might be different from what the people of Southern Italy are seeing, but at the same time it is always good to have a different opinion.     
What has given me the idea of writing this article the first time, it was that I have been writing about the history of Monteserico castle, which is the past history of this regions of southern Italy, because I come from this region, and therefore there are lots of times that I go back to talk about it, for one reason or another, since I am a native of this region. 
Since we have written about the history of the castle of Monteserico, and whatever has happened around this castle of Monteserico and also about Genzano town, since Monteserico is in Genzano territory. Now having seen what has happened in the past, our minds looks at the present times and tries to forecast the future, we know that our human history keeps going on and at times seems to repeat itself, we wonder now what the future holds for us; here I have to say that there are a few negative signs for the future of this region, which already seem to be happening, as we have said at the beginning of this post, where the entire world seems to have problems already.
But let us go back to talk about Southern Italy, in order to understand what I am worried about, it is necessary to know a bit more about this region of Southern Italy and the inhabitant that have lived and are living there. You see this region is not rich, the only thing that it is going on there is wheat farming, and also some mixed farming for their own use; there are a lot of small farms that would be able to sustain the native inhabitant only. We have also to say that there are times when these small farms do not produce enough and people have to leave the farms and go to work somewhere else, if and when they are able to find another job, even if they have to go to another country. You see this is the main reason why I left our small family farm and migrated to Australia. But today the opposite is happening, people go to Italy instead of leaving it.  
Anyhow, we know that a few things might have changed since I left Italy, but if they have changed it is not a great deal, as there are no industries of any sort beside farming, so the way of life over there is very much the same as it was in the fifties when I was there. As you can see from what I have said, this region of southern Italy could not support any outside people that would like to come there and stay there, and that is one of my concerns.
But as we have said already this would also apply to several other regions of Italy and indeed the entire world. We really have to think about what we need to do next, so whatever concerns I have for my native town and Italy, they are also concerns for the rest of the word and above all the western world, since that is the place where people are moving to.
We are going to continue to say a few more thing next time we write next post, that we are going to call, the Italian problem of today, but I can tell you now that this is not only an Italian problem, because it involves most of the western world, plus other countries here and there.  So, see you soon, when we write our next post.

Saturday, July 2, 2016

This is an old man view of the world

WELCOME TO FRANK MENCHISE BLOG OF GENZANO DI LUCANIA, YOU ARE INVITED TO BROWSE AS LONG AS YOU LIKE.
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Welcome to our blog, Genzano it story 
and this post, an old man view of the world
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An old man views
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This is the castle of Monteserico, it happens to be in Genzano di Lucania territory, we have talked about this castle recently, for these reasons I am continuing to write something of the history of this region of Southern Italy.

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Old man views
Old people are usually concerned about many things, because they have seen too many bad things happen during their lives, therefore, they always fear for the worse. Because they feel concerned, they believe that their role is that they have to look at what has happened recently and try to compare yesterday events to today happenings, in the hope that they could be able to see what is going to happen next, it is a sort of getting ready for the worst. This does not mean that what they see would really happen, but it might have a good chance that it could happen, therefore, they would like to warn the people around them about those concerns that they have.
As I have said above, we old people worry too much and are usually concerned about many things. Now as you might know, I have been writing a few articles that I have published in Hub Pages, in one of my last articles, I have been talking about, the Norman castle of Monteserico, (The Norman castle of Monteserico, this is the link if you want to check it out), this castle is situated in Genzano di Lucania and it is my native town. In the history of this castle of Monteserico, we have seen that there were many wars and other violent happenings that have happened in these parts of Southern Italy; therefore, I am asking myself, are these violent happenings that have occurred in the past going to happen again?
In my views as an old man, I am looking at the world and see what is happening today, what I see is uncertainty all around, so, I think that the world is going mad these days. For this reason, I feel that the human race that was supposed to know how to behave these days, it is not doing what we are supposed to do. We might think that we have reached the age of reason and we know everything that we need to know, but from what is happening we have not; so, what is wrong with humanity I would like to ask?
So, as an old man today, I see many things that make me concerned. When we look at the news on TV or reading a newspaper, or the news on the Internet is almost impossible to avoid to see the violent things that are happening in the world. One of these bad news is about the terrorist news that is happening very often. We know that the bad and violent news are reported more often than the good and normal everyday news. Because they have happened and the public needs to know, but really, we are becoming tired of all these bad news, because they most times they are so ugly that one wants to switch off the TV, throw away the newspaper and turn off the computer.
So, my dear readers, I have to say that my heart is crying, it is crying because there are so many wrong things going on in the world today, so, I believe that we have to try to do something positive, or at least talk about it, in the hope of finding a way out. Who knows somebody might come up with a solution.
As you will see from the following description, this article is going to be about the world present happenings of these days, so even though I have named this hub, an old man view of the world, this old man needs to attach this story to a particular region of the world, in order to make his story real. Now as it happens I have written already a few hubs about my native town of Genzano di Lucania and also about the second castle of this town called, the castle of Monteserico, which has a real history of its own, sense this castle was the castle of the Normans and Robert Guiscard duke of Southern Italy in the year 1047 or there about, it was also the castle of another famous person Fredrick ll that owned this castle around the 12th century in Southern Italy.
We have to say here that history has a good chance to repeat itself, so, we are worried to a certain point, because what happened in the past were very violent. Our concerns are that we believe that today again history might be taking its course and it might repeat itself; because something might happen again around these regions of Southern Italy, because there are so many illegal emigrant coming in. You see this region of Italy has an history of invasion and changes, starting with the Greeks, then the Romans, Spartacus and others, the Normans, The Swedes just to point out a few.
Today it seems that what is happening is not very important, but, the views of this old man that is writing this article is that: they seem to occupy the whole country and we Italians are letting them in and welcoming them, even if some of us are concerned, but I don’t see that this peaceful welcoming is going to last long, because most regions of Italy are not rich and will not be able to sustain all these emigrants, so, if this refugees problem that we are witnessing today keeps going on, there could be another violent story that could soon unfold in the future in these regions of Southern Italy, therefore we just wonder, if history is going to repeat itself again, and some violent events are going to happen.
So, we should be concerned to say the least. Anyhow this post is becoming too long for the average readers of today, so, see you in our next post called, we should be concerned.