Village United and Arnett Gardens showed signs of good early season form yesterday afternoon, when they played out an entertaining 2-2 draw in their opening game of the 2010-11 Digicel Premier League, at the Elliston Wakeland Centre in Falmouth.
Source: The Jamaica Observer
Monday, August 30, 2010
Monday, August 9, 2010
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Note Book: The Path We Chose...
Every human being is consigned to death after a relatively short and delimited life, even while humans have the intellectual capacity to imagine a better world that is presently beyond their experience.
We all have our heroes. For some it is Superman! For others it is God. For others it is us. For others it is our parents. For others it is the Goddess Mother Nature. For every person there is a reality. For every person there is a truth only they can define. Depending on their experience their heroes are positive or negative, but they will have them...As a human race we are evolving, what we evolve into is entirely up to us. Just as our reality is up to us, so is the future reality of our children and how they then build upon it.
Governments are not the social-maximizing entities they are often assumed to be in introductory economics textbooks. Policies reflect pressures by domestic interest groups and the preferences of governments and political institutions, as well as actions of other governments, who in turn are responding to their own interest groups.
Monday, April 26, 2010
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Congrats!!! Wolmer's Boys Win (2010) Champs
Copied from the Jamaica Observer
Sunday, March 28, 2010
The Heroes Circle-based school, which won the first staging of the Championships back in 1910 at Sabina Park, also won the title in 1915, 1917, 1924, 1927, 1929, 1938, 1939, 1941, 1949 and 1956.
The victory charge was led by Dwayne Extol, who won the 400m, placed second in the 400m hurdles, second in the 200m and clocked 47.89secs on anchor in the 4x400 relay to secure the title.
The team was coached by Christopher Harley, David Riley, Gregg Scott and Lamar Brown.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Abandoning Elderly Relatives A Cruel Act
Jamaica Observer
Tuesday, March 09, 2010
Tuesday, March 09, 2010
We are moved by the Sunday Observer's revelation that some Jamaicans are abandoning their elderly relatives in the St Ann's Bay Hospital and, even worse, refusing to accept them back home after their hospitalisation.
The story of Rosemarie, the 86-year-old woman who has been living in the hospital since 2008, is enough to melt the coldest of hearts.
No member of her family, she said, had bothered to visit her. In fact, according to Rosemarie, her relatives had turned over her care and well-being to Jesus.
That kind of neglect is not easy to accept, and that was obvious in her sotto voce comment during the interview: "Sometimes I feel like jumping through the window."
While we do not get the impression that the treatment meted out to Rosemarie is widespread, we cannot accept the fact that it is being done. Indeed, the Sunday Observer reported that Rosemarie is one of nine such senior citizens at the St Ann's Bay Hospital and that there were 27 abandoned senior citizens there in 2008.
Equally disturbing is the experience of social workers who report that when they try to return some of these seniors to their relatives, the attempt is greeted with threats of violence.
"We have had cases where persons have picked up stones to stone us or draw knives at us when we go to return their relatives, and so we have to call the police to come in and assist us," said Ms Kerrian Adair-Campbell, one of two social workers at the hospital.
The problem is so bad that, according to Ms Janet Boswell, the senior social worker in the region, the police have, in some cases, advised that the senior be left on the verandah or steps at their relatives' home.
That, of course, is tantamount to dumping people like animals or produce and is highly unacceptable, especially that it is coming from the police who ought to have more than a passing acquaintance with the law.
What is clear from the story is that many people, including the CEO of the hospital, Mr Eon Jarrett, are unaware of the provisions of the Maintenance Act which, basically, states that every person who is not a minor has an obligation to maintain their parents and grandparents.
The Act also gives authority to any local authority or other Government agency that is providing assistance to the elderly or any other dependant to make an application to the Court for an order for the maintenance of that dependant.
Mr Jarrett, therefore, has access to a remedy for the problem he's experiencing at the St Ann's Bay Hospital. We would suggest that he and his counterparts at other State-run hospitals across the island implement a programme to inform patients' relatives of their obligation under the law. That, added to the follow-up visits done by social workers to ensure that seniors are not being abused by reluctant relatives, should help create a culture of appreciation for these most vulnerable members of our society.
Of course, we are not unaware of the fact that the neglect that some parents experience from their children has its genesis in the parents' limited, and sometimes lack of contribution to their children's upbringing. However, two wrongs simply cannot make a right.
And each time we feel anger and resentment at the parental neglect we may have suffered, we should reflect on the words of Dr Martin Luther King, Jr: "...He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies."
Friday, February 19, 2010
Guilt and Responsibility
Since sin is pervasive and self-interest is universal, people pursue their own interests, often in blatant disregard for, or at the expense of, the interests of others. As a result, political conflict is rarely a contest between innocent saints and culpable sinners. Rather, political conflict is a by-product of humans pursuing individual and collective interests that they perceive as politically and morally legitimate....Not surprisingly, groups find it easy to blame others for moral wrongdoing, although they are reluctant to acknowledge their own role in fostering and sustaining it.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Mark R. Amstutz: The Healing of Nations
If a nation is to reckon effectively with past regime offenses, it must publicly acknowledge wrongdoing, for without truth telling there can be no accountability, and without accountability there can be no forgiveness. Indeed, the only route to individual and collective moral rehabilitation is through memory and acceptance of responsibility.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
John Perkins: Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
I am certain that when enough of us become aware of how we are being exploited by the economic engine that creates an insatiable appetite for the world’s resources, and results in systems that foster slavery, we will no longer tolerate it. We will reassess our role in a world where a few swim in riches and the majority drown in poverty, pollution, and violence. We will commit ourselves to navigating a course toward compassion, democracy, and social justice for all.
Admitting to a problem is the first step toward finding a solution. Confessing a sin is the beginning of redemption. Let this book, then, be the start of our salvation. Let it inspire us to new levels of dedication and drive us to realize our dream of balanced and honorable societies.
Admitting to a problem is the first step toward finding a solution. Confessing a sin is the beginning of redemption. Let this book, then, be the start of our salvation. Let it inspire us to new levels of dedication and drive us to realize our dream of balanced and honorable societies.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
"Thank You Jamaica"
This is personal but I will shear it with you.
Thank you JAMAICA
For holding me up
THANK YOU JAMAICA
For helping me in times of need
THANK YOU JAMAICA
For sheltering me
THANK YOU JAMAICA
For shearing your wisdom with those
Who walks on your shores
THANK YOU JAMAICA
For giving away almost all you have.
It's only a pity...they don't see you as I do.
But don't cry JAMAICA, I'm standing by.
You have made me strong to help you through.
THANK YOU JAMAICA
I know you love me too.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Haiti Lies in Ruins; Grim Search for Untold Dead
January 14, 2010
By SIMON ROMERO
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Survivors strained desperately on Wednesday against the chunks of concrete that buried this city along with thousands of its residents, rich and poor, from shantytowns to the presidential palace, in the devastating earthquake that struck late Tuesday afternoon.
Calling the death toll “unimaginable” as he surveyed the wreckage, Haiti’s president, René Préval, said he had no idea where he would sleep. Schools, hospitals and a prison collapsed. Sixteen United Nations peacekeepers were killed and at least 140 United Nations workers were missing, including the chief of its mission, Hédi Annabi. The city’s archbishop, Msgr. Joseph Serge Miot, was feared dead.
And the poor who define this nation squatted in the streets, some hurt and bloody, many more without food and water, close to piles of covered corpses and rubble.
Limbs protruded from disintegrated concrete, muffled cries emanated from deep inside the wrecks of buildings — many of them poorly constructed in the first place — as Haiti struggled to grasp the unknown toll from its worst earthquake in more than 200 years.
In the midst of the chaos, no one was able to offer an estimate of the number of people who had been killed or injured, though there was widespread concern that there were likely to be thousands of casualties.
“Please save my baby!” Jeudy Francia, a woman in her 20s, shrieked outside the St.-Esprit Hospital in the city. Her child, a girl about 4 years old, writhed in pain in the hospital’s chaotic courtyard, near where a handful of corpses lay under white blankets. “There is no one, nothing, no medicines, no explanations for why my daughter is going to die.”
Governments and aid agencies from Beijing to Grand Rapids began marshaling supplies and staffs to send here, though the obstacles proved frustrating just one day after the powerful 7.0-magnitude earthquake hit. Power and phone service were out. Flights were severely limited at Port-au-Prince’s main airport, telecommunications were barely functioning, operations at the port were shut down and most of the medical facilities had been severely damaged, if not leveled.
A Red Cross field team of officials from several nations had to spend Wednesday night in Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic to gather its staff before taking the six-hour drive in the morning across the border to the earthquake zone.
“We were on the plane here with a couple of different agencies, and they all are having similar challenges of access,” Colin Chaperon, a field director for the American Red Cross, said in a telephone interview. “There is a wealth of resources out there, and everybody has the good will to go in and support the Haitian Red Cross.”
The quake struck just before 5 p.m. on Tuesday about 10 miles southwest of Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital, ravaging the infrastructure of Haiti’s fragile government and destroying some of its most important cultural symbols.
“Parliament has collapsed,” Mr. Préval told The Miami Herald. “The tax office has collapsed. Schools have collapsed. Hospitals have collapsed. There are a lot of schools that have a lot of dead people in them.”
He added: “All of the hospitals are packed with people. It is a catastrophe.”
President Obama promised that Haiti would have the “unwavering support” of the United States.
Mr. Obama said that United States aid agencies were moving swiftly to get help to Haiti and that search-and-rescue teams were en route. He described the reports of destruction as “truly heart-wrenching,” made more cruel given Haiti’s long-troubled circumstances. Mr. Obama did not make a specific aid pledge, and administration officials said they were still trying to figure out what the nation needed. But he urged Americans to go to the White House’s Web site, www.whitehouse.gov, to find ways to donate money.
“This is a time when we are reminded of the common humanity that we all share,” Mr. Obama said, speaking in the morning in the White House diplomatic reception room with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. at his side.
Aid agencies said they would open their storehouses of food and water in Haiti, and the World Food Program was flying in nearly 100 tons of ready-to-eat meals and high-energy biscuits from El Salvador. The United Nations said it was freeing up $10 million in emergency relief money, the European Union pledged $4.4 million and groups like Doctors Without Borders were setting up clinics in tents and open-air triage centers to treat the injured.
Supplies began filtering in from the Dominican Republic as charter flights were restarted between Santo Domingo and Port-au-Prince.
Some aid groups with offices in Port-au-Prince were also busy searching for their own dead and missing.
Sixteen members of the United Nations peacekeeping force in Haiti were killed and as many as 100 other United Nations employees were missing after the collapse of the mission’s headquarters in the Christopher Hotel in the hills above Port-au-Prince.
Forty or more other United Nations employees were missing at a sprawling compound occupied by United Nations agencies. Ten additional employees had been in a villa nearby.
It was one of the deadliest single days for United Nations employees. The head of the group’s Haitian mission, Mr. Annabi, a Tunisian, and his deputy were among the missing, said Alain Le Roy, the United Nations peacekeeping chief.
The Brazilian Army said 11 of its soldiers had been killed. During a driving tour of the capital on Wednesday, Bernice Robertson, an analyst with the International Crisis Group, said she saw at least 30 bodies, most covered with plastic bags or sheets. She also witnessed heroic recovery efforts. “There are people digging with their hands, searching for people in the rubble,” she said in a video interview via Skype. “There was unimaginable destruction.”
Paul McPhun, operations manager for Doctors Without Borders, described scenes of chaos.
When staff members tried to travel by car, “they were mobbed by crowds of people,” Mr. McPhun said. “They just want help, and anybody with a car is better off than they are.”
Contaminated drinking water is a longstanding problem in Haiti, causing high rates of illness that put many people in the hospital. Providing sanitation and clean water is one of the top priorities for aid organizations.
More than 30 significant aftershocks of a 4.5 magnitude or higher rattled Haiti through Tuesday night and into early Wednesday, according to Amy Vaughan, a geophysicist with the United States Geological Survey. “We’ve seen a lot of shaking still happening,” she said.
David Wald, a seismologist with the Geological Survey, said that an earthquake of this strength had not struck Haiti in more than 200 years, a fact apparently based on contemporaneous accounts. The most powerful one to strike the country in recent years measured 6.7 magnitude in 1984.
Bob Poff, a Salvation Army official, described in a written account posted on the Salvation Army’s Web site how he had loaded injured victims — “older, scared, bleeding and terrified” — into the back of his truck and set off in search of help.
In two hours, he managed to travel less than a mile, he said.
The account described how Mr. Poff and hundreds of neighbors spent Tuesday night outside in a playground. Every tremor sent ripples of fear through the survivors, providing “another reminder that we are not yet finished with this calamity,” he wrote.
He continued, “And when it comes, all of the people cry out and the children are terrified.”
Louise Ivers, the clinical director of the aid group Partners in Health, said in an e-mail message to her colleagues: “Port-au-Prince is devastated, lot of deaths. S O S. S O S ... Temporary field hospital by us at UNDP needs supplies, pain meds, bandages. Please help us.”
Photos from Haiti on Wednesday showed a hillside scraped nearly bare of its houses, which had tumbled into the ravine below.
By SIMON ROMERO
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Survivors strained desperately on Wednesday against the chunks of concrete that buried this city along with thousands of its residents, rich and poor, from shantytowns to the presidential palace, in the devastating earthquake that struck late Tuesday afternoon.
Calling the death toll “unimaginable” as he surveyed the wreckage, Haiti’s president, René Préval, said he had no idea where he would sleep. Schools, hospitals and a prison collapsed. Sixteen United Nations peacekeepers were killed and at least 140 United Nations workers were missing, including the chief of its mission, Hédi Annabi. The city’s archbishop, Msgr. Joseph Serge Miot, was feared dead.
And the poor who define this nation squatted in the streets, some hurt and bloody, many more without food and water, close to piles of covered corpses and rubble.
Limbs protruded from disintegrated concrete, muffled cries emanated from deep inside the wrecks of buildings — many of them poorly constructed in the first place — as Haiti struggled to grasp the unknown toll from its worst earthquake in more than 200 years.
In the midst of the chaos, no one was able to offer an estimate of the number of people who had been killed or injured, though there was widespread concern that there were likely to be thousands of casualties.
“Please save my baby!” Jeudy Francia, a woman in her 20s, shrieked outside the St.-Esprit Hospital in the city. Her child, a girl about 4 years old, writhed in pain in the hospital’s chaotic courtyard, near where a handful of corpses lay under white blankets. “There is no one, nothing, no medicines, no explanations for why my daughter is going to die.”
Governments and aid agencies from Beijing to Grand Rapids began marshaling supplies and staffs to send here, though the obstacles proved frustrating just one day after the powerful 7.0-magnitude earthquake hit. Power and phone service were out. Flights were severely limited at Port-au-Prince’s main airport, telecommunications were barely functioning, operations at the port were shut down and most of the medical facilities had been severely damaged, if not leveled.
A Red Cross field team of officials from several nations had to spend Wednesday night in Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic to gather its staff before taking the six-hour drive in the morning across the border to the earthquake zone.
“We were on the plane here with a couple of different agencies, and they all are having similar challenges of access,” Colin Chaperon, a field director for the American Red Cross, said in a telephone interview. “There is a wealth of resources out there, and everybody has the good will to go in and support the Haitian Red Cross.”
The quake struck just before 5 p.m. on Tuesday about 10 miles southwest of Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital, ravaging the infrastructure of Haiti’s fragile government and destroying some of its most important cultural symbols.
“Parliament has collapsed,” Mr. Préval told The Miami Herald. “The tax office has collapsed. Schools have collapsed. Hospitals have collapsed. There are a lot of schools that have a lot of dead people in them.”
He added: “All of the hospitals are packed with people. It is a catastrophe.”
President Obama promised that Haiti would have the “unwavering support” of the United States.
Mr. Obama said that United States aid agencies were moving swiftly to get help to Haiti and that search-and-rescue teams were en route. He described the reports of destruction as “truly heart-wrenching,” made more cruel given Haiti’s long-troubled circumstances. Mr. Obama did not make a specific aid pledge, and administration officials said they were still trying to figure out what the nation needed. But he urged Americans to go to the White House’s Web site, www.whitehouse.gov, to find ways to donate money.
“This is a time when we are reminded of the common humanity that we all share,” Mr. Obama said, speaking in the morning in the White House diplomatic reception room with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. at his side.
Aid agencies said they would open their storehouses of food and water in Haiti, and the World Food Program was flying in nearly 100 tons of ready-to-eat meals and high-energy biscuits from El Salvador. The United Nations said it was freeing up $10 million in emergency relief money, the European Union pledged $4.4 million and groups like Doctors Without Borders were setting up clinics in tents and open-air triage centers to treat the injured.
Supplies began filtering in from the Dominican Republic as charter flights were restarted between Santo Domingo and Port-au-Prince.
Some aid groups with offices in Port-au-Prince were also busy searching for their own dead and missing.
Sixteen members of the United Nations peacekeeping force in Haiti were killed and as many as 100 other United Nations employees were missing after the collapse of the mission’s headquarters in the Christopher Hotel in the hills above Port-au-Prince.
Forty or more other United Nations employees were missing at a sprawling compound occupied by United Nations agencies. Ten additional employees had been in a villa nearby.
It was one of the deadliest single days for United Nations employees. The head of the group’s Haitian mission, Mr. Annabi, a Tunisian, and his deputy were among the missing, said Alain Le Roy, the United Nations peacekeeping chief.
The Brazilian Army said 11 of its soldiers had been killed. During a driving tour of the capital on Wednesday, Bernice Robertson, an analyst with the International Crisis Group, said she saw at least 30 bodies, most covered with plastic bags or sheets. She also witnessed heroic recovery efforts. “There are people digging with their hands, searching for people in the rubble,” she said in a video interview via Skype. “There was unimaginable destruction.”
Paul McPhun, operations manager for Doctors Without Borders, described scenes of chaos.
When staff members tried to travel by car, “they were mobbed by crowds of people,” Mr. McPhun said. “They just want help, and anybody with a car is better off than they are.”
Contaminated drinking water is a longstanding problem in Haiti, causing high rates of illness that put many people in the hospital. Providing sanitation and clean water is one of the top priorities for aid organizations.
More than 30 significant aftershocks of a 4.5 magnitude or higher rattled Haiti through Tuesday night and into early Wednesday, according to Amy Vaughan, a geophysicist with the United States Geological Survey. “We’ve seen a lot of shaking still happening,” she said.
David Wald, a seismologist with the Geological Survey, said that an earthquake of this strength had not struck Haiti in more than 200 years, a fact apparently based on contemporaneous accounts. The most powerful one to strike the country in recent years measured 6.7 magnitude in 1984.
Bob Poff, a Salvation Army official, described in a written account posted on the Salvation Army’s Web site how he had loaded injured victims — “older, scared, bleeding and terrified” — into the back of his truck and set off in search of help.
In two hours, he managed to travel less than a mile, he said.
The account described how Mr. Poff and hundreds of neighbors spent Tuesday night outside in a playground. Every tremor sent ripples of fear through the survivors, providing “another reminder that we are not yet finished with this calamity,” he wrote.
He continued, “And when it comes, all of the people cry out and the children are terrified.”
Louise Ivers, the clinical director of the aid group Partners in Health, said in an e-mail message to her colleagues: “Port-au-Prince is devastated, lot of deaths. S O S. S O S ... Temporary field hospital by us at UNDP needs supplies, pain meds, bandages. Please help us.”
Photos from Haiti on Wednesday showed a hillside scraped nearly bare of its houses, which had tumbled into the ravine below.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Jamaican Recipes: Peanut Porridge
Peanut Porridge (Serves 4)
3 cups oatmeal
1 1/2 cups raw peanuts
3 tablespoons yellow cornmeal
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
Water, as needed
1 teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon vanilla extract
1/8 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg
½ cup sweetened condensed milk
½ cup evaporated milk
1. Place the oatmeal in a food processor and pulse until it becomes a powder. Transfer to a mixing bowl.
2. Wipe out the food processor bowl, then place the peanuts in the food processor and pulse until almost smooth. Add to the oatmeal powder.
3. Add the cornmeal and flour to the bowl, then add enough water (about ½ cup) to the mixture to make a loose paste.
4. Bring 1 quart of water and the salt to boil in a pot. Slowly pour the peanut paste mixture into the water, whisking constantly to avoid lumps.
5. Reduce the heat to low and cover the pot loosely with the lid so that steam can escape. Allow to cook for 10-12 minutes, stirring occasionally.
6. Stir in the vanilla, nutmeg, sweetened condensed milk and evaporated milk.
7. Remove from the heat and allow to cool slightly before serving.
3 cups oatmeal
1 1/2 cups raw peanuts
3 tablespoons yellow cornmeal
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
Water, as needed
1 teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon vanilla extract
1/8 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg
½ cup sweetened condensed milk
½ cup evaporated milk
1. Place the oatmeal in a food processor and pulse until it becomes a powder. Transfer to a mixing bowl.
2. Wipe out the food processor bowl, then place the peanuts in the food processor and pulse until almost smooth. Add to the oatmeal powder.
3. Add the cornmeal and flour to the bowl, then add enough water (about ½ cup) to the mixture to make a loose paste.
4. Bring 1 quart of water and the salt to boil in a pot. Slowly pour the peanut paste mixture into the water, whisking constantly to avoid lumps.
5. Reduce the heat to low and cover the pot loosely with the lid so that steam can escape. Allow to cook for 10-12 minutes, stirring occasionally.
6. Stir in the vanilla, nutmeg, sweetened condensed milk and evaporated milk.
7. Remove from the heat and allow to cool slightly before serving.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Cruel chants show nation out of step with itself
4:00 AM Tuesday Dec 15, 2009
The songs are varied, offensive and, in at least one case, openly racist.
"If you jump up and down, Balotelli dies" is a favourite with supporters of arguably the most famous Italian football club, Juventus.
"A negro cannot be Italian" is the chant that explains the vitriol.
The target of the abuse is 19-year-old Mario Balotelli, a footballer with Italian champions Inter Milan and a rising star of Italy's Under-21 national team.
In England, Germany or France, Balotelli would be making headlines in the sports pages as one of the most exciting young prospects in the national sport. In Italy, his treatment at the hands of a minority of hostile football fans is turning him into a symbol of the country's seeming inability to embrace a multi-ethnic identity.
This month, Juventus were fined for anti-Balotelli chanting at a match for the second time this season.
Balotelli was born - and immediately abandoned by his Ghanaian parents - in the Sicilian capital, Palermo.
He is an Italian passport holder and was brought up by adopted parents in Brescia from the age of 2. He speaks with the accent of his region, but has had far more racist abuse than other black stars in Italian football because his Italian identity is seen by some as a provocation.
"The difference [from other black players] is Balotelli is totally black and totally Italian, and that has provoked a short circuit among fans," said Sandro Modeo, a correspondent for Corriere della Sera.
As Italy's immigrant total reaches 7 per cent, the treatment of many of the "Balotelli Generation" - the half million children of immigrants born in Italy who qualify by law for Italian citizenship on their 18th birthday - is becoming increasingly controversial in a country which still overwhelmingly considers itself white.
Last weekend a black Italian writer, Pap Khouma, wrote an open letter to La Repubblica, headlined "Being a Black Italian: my life as an obstacle course".
In it he described incidents of routine discrimination: regular requests to provide his permit to stay in Italy; being mistaken for a street-seller by his Milanese neighbours.
On one occasion, while running through Milan's streets late for work, Khouma was stopped by a policeman, asked for his papers and escorted to the local station as a non-EU "foreigner".
"Have you any idea," Khouma asked the paper's readers, "what it means to be Italian and black in Italy in 2009?"
For Gian Antonio Stella, a columnist for Corriere della Sera, the racism is evident and ignoring it is a national pastime. "Britain has reflected on its colonial past, Germany had done the same with Nazism, but Italians still believed the myth of the Good Italian, soft colonialism and insisted the racial laws of the 1930s were passed by fascists, not Italians".
Despite the difficulties, the Balotelli generation is beginning to make its presence felt. The Italian under-14 cricket team is largely made up of Asian-Italians and won a European tournament this northern summer. Lihao Zhang, an 11-year-girl of Chinese extraction, living in Voghera, the Lombardy heartland of the xenophobic Northern League party, received glowing press reviews after winning a school competition this year for poetry written in local dialect.
"The offspring of immigrants are easing into Italian culture, meaning Italian traditions are not going to be lost," said Alessandro Campi, a professor of political science at the University of Perugia. "If anything, these children will have more problems with their own families' cultures, than with their friends."
As for Balotelli, a one-match ban for Juventus fans from their home stadium, follow-up fines of more than €20,000 ($40,460) for the club and questions in Parliament have failed to stop the chants, which are not limited to Turin where the club is based.
The coach of Ghana's national team, Milovan Rajevac, has publicly invited him to play for the country in the World Cup.
And the beginnings of a backlash against the abuse may be emerging. Some commentators are calling for the 1.88m striker to be selected for the Italian team.
"I am sorry for Balotelli, he should be left alone to play football, but right now he is symbol of a cultural shift in Italy and a yardstick for whether we can make that change," said Stella.
If Balotelli is picked by Italian national coach Marcello Lippi to play in the World Cup, the selection may signal a new era for black Italians.
"Balotelli is pure talent," said Fare Futuro, a think-tank run by the prominent centre right politician Gianfranco Fini. "Genius and lack of restraint all in one. What else could be more Italian than that?"
- OBSERVER
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