Aeroplane to Aeroplano

Sarajevo   The European Implications of a War among Muslims . By Luca Susic (translated by L. Pavese)   It looked like the case had been definitively closed in April of 2013, when Croatian President Ivo Josipovich firmly declared that his country did not sell weapons to the Syrian rebels but rather to the Kingdom of Jordan. But a few days ago, several Croatian newspapers resumed the offensive, repeating that, during the first seven months of 2013, Croatia sold material worth more than 26 M€ (millions of Euros) to the Syrian anti-government forces. In fact, according to the newspapers, the export of light weapons was organized through Jordan, and the incredible increase of sales to the Middle Eastern kingdom is offered as evidence. President Josipovich According to Mr. Danko Radaljac (a reporter for the daily Novi List) in the course of her first twenty years of independence Croatia supplied Amman weapons worth a total of just $ 1.035, basically

"Ukraine," in the old Slavic language, meant "the borderland," or "the frontier." Today the old name acquires a new meaning, while  anti-government protesters are in the streets, demanding a closer relation with western Europe, to which they feel the Ukraine culturally belongs, and demonstrating against what they perceive as a pro-Russian stance on the part of President Yanukovich. The Ukrainian Greco-Catholic Church, which has re-emerged after almost a century of communist persecution, is trying to play a pacifying role, during these turbulent times in the "borderland," but it is essentially still perceived as a "foreign influence," and it is running the risk to be driven underground again. The following article, by Stefano Magni,  is interesting, because many conservative Catholics in western Europe (certainly in Italy), faced with the secular, atheist drift taken recently by the European Union, which is becoming more and

Jijé Di Massimo Introvigne (translated by L. Pavese) Joseph Gillain (1914-1980), also known as Jijé, one of the greatest authors in the history of comic-books, was born one hundred years ago in Gedinne, Belgium. He’s being remembered in an exposition at the Maison de la Bande Dessinné (House of the Comic Strip) of Brussels, Belgium, (which is very near the downtown train station). Jijé by Jijé T he exhibit is very rich with previously unpublished works and original drawings. Rino Cammilleri already wrote about Jijé on La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana at the time of the reprinting of the Italian edition of Jijé’s Don Bosco (ReNoir - Nona Arte, Milan, 2013); but the Brussels show places Jijé in the right context and helps us to understand him better. T he Belgian school of comics, whose other famous representative was Hergé (Georges Remi, 1907-1983), the creator of Tintin, is known as the school of the “clear-line,” as opposed to the two other great tendencies, th

    The Savoia Marchetti S.81 bis.         The picture above the headlines portrays the S. 81 bis, an almost unknown version of the Savoia Marchetti S.81 Pipistrello (Bat), a very important, ubiquitous  Italian bomber that fought in the Ethiopian campaign, in the Spanish Civil War and in all the theaters of the Second World War in which the Regia Aeronautica was engaged (and, later, even with the Luftwaffe). The S.81 prototype At or around the end of 1934 and the beginning of 1935, when the production of the Savoia Marchetti S. 73B (Belgium) airliner for SABENA began, the S.73's were advertised as derivatives of the S. 81 Pipistrello bomber which, meanwhile, had reached the flight test stage of its development; but the three-engined S. 73 airliner did not derive from the bomber at all. In fact, as late as September of 1934, the 18 passenger airliner version of the S.81 was still referred to as the S. 73C (Civile, that is, commercial). Aguelock (in today&#

Soulbrush A NON - POLITICALLY - CORRECT PORTRAIT OF NELSON MANDELA.   By Marco Respinti (translated by L. Pavese) Good confessors tell the sinners, who are determined to change, that a long period of abstinence is equivalent to a second virginity. Maybe that’s the reason why the “canonization,” while he was still living, of Nelson Mandela made everybody forget his true origins. But that’s why good journalists exist. Nelson Mandela’s real name was Rolihlahla Dalibhunga, and he was a prince of the cadet branch of the xhosa speaking line of Thembus. He was born on July 18, 1918 on the shore of the river Mbashe, in the district of Umtata, in Tembuland, capital of Transkei (the former Bantustan), in the south-eastern Republic of South Africa, which has been  independent since 1979. The family moved to Qunu, where many still think he was born, when his father lost his succession rights to the throne and fell out of favor with the colonial authorities. In elementary school,