Padanian-American League: Oriana Fallaci Memorial

Let this be our small memorial to Oriana Fallaci, defender of her and our culture.

"The moment you give up your principles, and your values, you are dead, your culture is dead, your civilisation is dead. Period." --Oriana Fallaci

Oriana Fallaci Memorial 1926-2006

Oriana Fallaci, the Italian journalist who spent the last period of her life confronting the death of the West, has died of breast cancer, aged 77. Fittingly, she took her last breath in Florence, seat of the Renaissance.

Signora Fallaci's life showed the political complexity that has engulfed Europe. She began her political activism as a partisan against the Axis in the Second World War, and went on to a career as a journalist, where she became known as a tough interviewer. Israeli strongman Ariel Sharon feared she would "scalp" him, while Henry Kissinger smarted when she got him to compare himself to a "cowboy." He later admitted that the confrontation was "the single most disastrous conversation I have ever had with any member of the press."

Her early war experiences made Signora Fallaci a fearless frontline reporter; she was shot in Mexico City by cops in the violent run-up to the 1968 Olympics, and when she died was still under indictment for "vilipendio" (vilification) for exposing and denouncing the Islamification of Europe. The "hate" charges are perhaps her greatest honor and a lasting salute to her legacy. She was so cutting edge that "even" City Lights -- the San Francisco bookstore that smugly pretends to be a beacon of "alternative" thought -- banned her work.

Fittingly, she took her last breath in Florence, seat of the Renaissance [she was a native Tuscan].

A lifelong atheist, Signora Fallaci remained impossible to pigeonhole, and developed an admiration for Pope Benedict XVI for his stance against Islam. She also attracted the admiration of disparate groups: neocons who sought to co-opt her opposition to Islam; feminists concerned about the savage abuse of women in Islam; human rights activists worried about the growing loss of freedom in the name of "tolerance," and racial nationalists who embraced her call for the need of Europeans to grapple with the dangers of a darkening Europe. Signora Fallaci was enough of a maverick that all of her admirers found something to disagree with her on.

Signora Fallaci will be missed by all those who appreciate the heretical, the intellectually challenging and the courageous.

Oriana Fallaci, 1929-2006

Requiescat in Pace

***************************************************************************

The Force of Reason

The Force of Reason (Italian: La forza della ragione) is a 2004 book by controversial Italian author Oriana Fallaci. It focuses on criticism of Islam, and is considered xenophobic by some.

In the beginning of the book, Oriana Fallaci alludes to Mastro Cecco, the author of a heretical book who was burnt at the stake during the Inquisition in 1328, on account of his beliefs. She also claims that Europe, like Troy, is "in flames" and, under a Muslim siege, is becoming an "Eurabia" (originally the title of a journal edited by the President of the Association for Franco-Arab Solidarity, Lucien Bitterlein). Fallaci claims that pacific convivence with Islamofascism is impossible.

The book is a bestseller in Europe and the subject of controversy and Muslim groups are seeking to have it banned. Ms. Fallaci is currently under indictment in her native Italy for the crime of "vilipendio," the vilification of "any religion admitted to the state", in this case, Islam. The charge has been brought by a local muslim leader who is on trail for 'vilipendio' himself, in his case against the catholic church.

[from wikipedia.org; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Force_of_Reason]

***************************************************************************

THE FALLACI CODE

Oriana Fallaci asks: Is Muslim immigration to Europe a conspiracy?

By BRENDAN BERNHARD

March 15, 2006

In The Force of Reason, the controversial Italian journalist and novelist Oriana Fallaci illuminates one of the central enigmas of our time. How did Europe become home to an estimated 20 million Muslims in a mere three decades?

How did Islam go from being a virtual non-factor to a religion that threatens the preeminence of Christianity on the Continent? How could the most popular name for a baby boy in Brussels possibly be Mohammed? Can it really be true that Muslims plan to build a mosque in London that will hold 40,000 people? That Dutch cities like Amsterdam and Rotterdam are close to having Muslim majorities? How was Europe, which was saved by the U.S. in world wars I and II, and whose Muslim Bosnians were rescued by the U.S. as recently as 1999, transformed into a place in which, as Fallaci puts it, "if I hate Americans I go to Heaven and if I hate Muslims I go to Hell?"

In attempting to answer these questions, the author, who is stricken with cancer and has been hounded by death threats and charges of "Islamophobia" (she is due to go on trial in France this June), has combined history with episodes of riveting firsthand reportage into a form that reads like a real-life conspiracy thriller.

If The Force of Reason sells a lot of copies, which it almost certainly will (800,000 were sold in Italy alone, and the book is in the top 100 on Amazon ), it will be not only because of the heat generated by her topic, but also because Fallaci speaks for the ordinary reader. There is no one she despises more than the intellectual "cicadas," as she calls them — "You see them every day on television; you read them every day in the newspapers" — who deny they are in the midst of a cultural, political and existential war with Islam, of which terrorism is the flashiest, but ultimately least important component. Nonetheless, to give the reader a taste of what Muslim conquest can be like, in her first chapter, Fallaci provides a brief tour of the religion's bloodiest imperial episodes and later does an amusing job of debunking some of its more exaggerated claims to cultural and scientific greatness.

Keep Reading

The book is also animated by a world-class journalist's dismay that she could have missed the story of her lifetime for as long as she did. In the 1960s and '70s, when she was a Vietnam War correspondent and a legendarily ferocious interviewer going mano a mano with the likes of Henry Kissinger and Yasser Arafat, Fallaci was simply too preoccupied with the events of the moment to notice that an entirely different narrative was rapidly taking shape — namely, the transformation of the West. There were clues, certainly. As when, in 1972, she interviewed the Palestinian terrorist George Habash, who told her (while a bodyguard aimed a submachine gun at her head) that the Palestinian problem was about far more than Israel. The Arab goal, Habash declared, was to wage war "against Europe and America" and to ensure that henceforth "there would be no peace for the West." The Arabs, he informed her, would "advance step by step. Millimeter by millimeter. Year after year. Decade after decade. Determined, stubborn, patient. This is our strategy. A strategy that we shall expand throughout the whole planet."

[Note: Regarding above image. All had to wear Fascist symbols. For example, Pope Benedict was in the Hitler Youth. He had no choice. Elian Gonzalez joined the Young Communists earlier this year. Obviously he had no choice in the matter. Quite the contrary, Fallaci was in the resistance movement, and was well known to be on the Left.]

Fallaci thought he was referring simply to terrorism. Only later did she realize that he "also meant the cultural war, the demographic war, the religious war waged by stealing a country from its citizens ... In short, the war waged through immigration, fertility, presumed pluriculturalism.” It is a low-level but deadly war that extends across the planet, as any newspaper reader can see.

Fallaci is not the first person to ponder the rapidity of the ongoing Muslim transformation of Europe. As the English travel writer Jonathan Raban wrote in Arabia: A Journey Through the Labyrinth (1979), in the mid-1970s Arabs seemed to arrive in London almost overnight. "One day Arabs were a remote people ... camping out in tents with camels ... the next, they were neighbors." On the streets of West London appeared black-clad women adorned with beaked masks that made them look "like hooded falcons." Dressed for the desert (and walking precisely four steps ahead of the women), Arab men bestrode the sidewalks "like a crew of escaped film extras, their headdresses aswirl on the wind of exhaust fumes."

Writers far better acquainted with the Muslim world than Raban have been equally perplexed. In 1995, the late American novelist Paul Bowles, a longtime resident of Tangier, told me that he could not understand why the French had allowed millions of North African Muslims into their country. Bowles had chosen to live among Muslims for most of his life, yet he obviously considered it highly unlikely that so many of them could be successfully integrated into a modern, secular European state.

Perhaps Bowles would have been interested in this passage from Fallaci’s book: "In 1974 [Algerian President] Houari Boumedienne, the man who ousted Ben Bella three years after Algerian independence, spoke before the General Assembly of the United Nations. And without circumlocutions he said: 'One day millions of men will leave the southern hemisphere of this planet to burst into the northern one. But not as friends. Because they will burst in to conquer, and they will conquer by populating it with their children. Victory will come to us from the wombs of our women.'"

Such a bald statement of purpose by a nation's president before an international forum seems incredible. Yet even in British journalist Adam LeBor’s A Heart Turned East (1997), a work of profound, almost supine sympathy for the plight of Muslim immigrants in the West, a London-based mullah is quoted as saying, "We cannot conquer these people with tanks and troops, so we have got to overcome them by force of numbers." In fact, such remarks are commonplace. Just this week, Mullah Krekar, a Muslim supremacist living in Oslo, informed the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten that Muslims would change Norway, not the other way around. "Just look at the development within Europe, where the number of Muslims is expanding like mosquitoes," he said. "By 2050, 30 percent of the population in Europe will be Muslim."

In other words, Europe will be conquered by being turned into "Eurabia," which is what Fallaci believes it is well on the way to becoming. Leaning heavily on the researches of Bat Ye'or, author of Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis, Fallaci recounts in fascinating detail the actual origin of the word "Eurabia," which has now entered the popular lexicon. Its first known use, it turns out, was in the mid-1970s, when a journal of that name was printed in Paris (naturally), written in French (naturally), and edited by one Lucien Bitterlin, then president of the Association of Franco-Arab Solidarity and currently the Chairman of the French-Syrian Friendship Association. Eurabia (price, five francs) was jointly published by Middle East International (London), France-Pays Arabes (Paris), the Groupe d’Etudes sur le Moyen-Orient (Geneva) and the European Coordinating Committee of the Associations for Friendship with the Arab World, which Fallaci describes as an arm of what was then the European Economic Community, now the European Union. These entities, Fallaci says, not mincing her words, were the official perpetrators "of the biggest conspiracy that modern history has created," and Eurabia was their house organ.

Briefly put, the alleged plot was an arrangement between European and Arab governments according to which the Europeans, still reeling from the first acts of PLO terrorism and eager for precious Arabian oil made significantly more precious by the 1973 OPEC crisis, agreed to accept Arab "manpower" (i.e., immigrants) along with the oil. They also agreed to disseminate propaganda about the glories of Islamic civilization, provide Arab states with weaponry, side with them against Israel and generally toe the Arab line on all matters political and cultural. Hundreds of meetings and seminars were held as part of the "Euro-Arab Dialogue," and all, according to the author, were marked by European acquiescence to Arab requests. Fallaci recounts a 1977 seminar in Venice, attended by delegates from 10 Arab nations and eight European ones, concluding with a unanimous resolution calling for "the diffusion of the Arabic language" and affirming "the superiority of Arab culture."

While the Arabs demanded that Europeans respect the religious, political and human rights of Arabs in the West, not a peep came from the Europeans about the absence of freedom in the Arab world, not to mention the abhorrent treatment of women and other minorities in countries like Saudi Arabia. No demand was made that Muslims should learn about the glories of western civilization as Europeans were and are expected to learn about the greatness of Islamic civilization. In other words, according to Fallaci, a substantial portion of Europe's cultural and political independence was sold off by a coalition of ex-communists and socialist politicians. Are we surprised? Fallaci isn’t. In 1979, she notes, "the Italian or rather European Left had fallen in love with Khomeini just as now it has fallen in love with Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein and Arafat."

Considerably less intemperate than her last book on the topic of radical Islam, the volcanically angry The Rage and the Pride, The Force of Reason is despairing, but often surprisingly funny. ("The rage and the pride have married and produced a sturdy son: the disdain," she writes with characteristic wit.) And, Fallaci being Fallaci, it is occasionally over the top and will no doubt be deeply offensive to many, particularly when, in a postscript the book might have been better off without, she claims that there is no such thing as moderate Islam. Nonetheless, the voice and warmth and humor of the author light up its pages, particularly when she takes a leaf out of Saul Bellow’s Herzog by firing off impassioned letters to the famous both living and dead. She is savage about the Left, the "Peace" movement (war is a fundamental, if regrettable, condition of life, she states), the Catholic Church, the media and, of course, Islam itself, which she considers theological totalitarianism and a deadly threat to the world. She is much more optimistic about America than Europe, citing the bravery of New Yorkers who celebrated New Year’s Eve in Times Square despite widely publicized terrorism threats, but here one feels that she is clutching at straws. Though Fallaci now lives in New York, little amity has been extended to her by her peers since the post-9/11 publication of The Rage and the Pride, and she remains almost as much of a media pariah here as she does in Europe. The major difference is that we’re not putting her on trial.

As that Norwegian Mullah told Aftenposten, "Our way of thinking … will prove more powerful than yours." One hopes he's wrong, but if he is, it will be ordinary Americans and Europeans, including courageous Arab-Americans like L.A. resident Wafa Sultan and the Somali-born Dutch politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali (two women openly challenging Islamist supremacism), who prove him so, and not our intellectual classes (artists, pundits, filmmakers, actors, writers ...). Many of the latter, consumed by Bush-hatred and cultural self-loathing, are perilously close to becoming today's equivalent of the great Norwegian novelist Knut Hamsun, who so hated the British Empire that he sided with the Nazis in World War II, to his everlasting shame. The Force of Reason, at the very least, is a welcome and necessary antidote to the prevailing intellectual atmosphere.

[from 'LA Weekly'; http://www.laweekly.com/art+books/books/the-fallaci-code/12921/]

***************************************************************************

Oriana Fallaci: 'The Enemy We Treat as a Friend'

January 29, 2006

Heroic Italian thought criminal Oriana Fallaci asks why the West tolerates Islam

"There are moments in Life when keeping silent becomes a fault, and speaking an obligation. A civic duty, a moral challenge, a categorical imperative from which we cannot escape." -- Oriana Fallaci

Now, I ask myself: "What do you say, what do you have to say, about what happened in London?" They ask me face-to-face, via fax and email; often scolding me because up until now I have remained silent. Almost as if my silence were a betrayal. And each time I shake my head and murmur to myself: what else should I say?!? I’ve been saying it for four years--that I fight against the Monster that has decided to eliminate us physically and, along with our bodies, to destroy our principles and values. Our civilization. For four years I've been talking about the Islamic war against the West; about the death cult; about European suicide. About a Europe that is no longer Europe, but Eurabia, and that with its feebleness, its inertia, its blindness, its servitude to the enemy is digging its own grave. For four years, like another Cassandra, I’ve been shouting until I'm hoarse "Troy is burning! Troy is burning!" and I despair of the Danaids for whom, like Virgil in the Aeneid I weep for a city entombed in its torpor. A city that, through its wide-open doors receives fresh troops and joins complicit parties inside. For four years I've been repeating to the wind the truth about the Monster and its accomplices; that is, the accomplices of the Monster who, in good or bad faith, open wide the doors--who, like those in the Apocalypse of John the Evangelist, throw themselves at his feet and allow themselves to be stamped with the mark of shame.

I began with "The Rage and the Pride." I continued with "The Force of Reason." I followed with "Oriana Fallaci Interviews Oriana Fallaci," and "The Apocalypse." And in each one I preached, "Wake up, West! Wake up!" The books, the ideas, for which in France they tried me in 2002, accusing me of religious racism and xenophobia. For which Switzerland asked our Minister of Justice to extradite me in handcuffs. For which in Italy I will be tried for vilifying Islam; that is, for an offense of opinion. (An offense that carries a sentence of three years in prison; none of which will be served by the Islamist caught with explosives in his cantina). Books, ideas, for which the "Caviar" left, the "Fois Gras" right, and even the "Prosciutto" Center have denigrated and vilified me, putting me in the stocks together with all who think as I do. That is, together with the sensible and unprotected people who are defined by the radical-chic in their frivolous talk as "the riff-raff of the Right."

Yes, it's true: In newspapers that in the best of cases pharasaically opposed me with a conspiracy of silence now appear titles using my concepts and words--"War Against the West"; "Cult of Death"; "The Suicide of Europe"; "Wake up, Italy! Wake up!" Yes, it's true: Though without admitting I wasn't wrong, the ex-secretary of the Democratic Left now submits to interviews in which he declares that "these-terrorists-want-to-destroy-our-values"; that "this-slaughter-is-facist-in-nature-and-expresses-hatred-for-our-civilization". Yes, it's true: In speaking of Londonistan, the section of London where some 700,000 Muslims live, the newspapers which at first gave comfort to the terrorists--going so far as to make excuses for their crime are now saying what I did when I wrote that in each one of our cities exists another city. A foreign city that speaks its own language and observes its own customs; a Muslim city where terrorists go about their business undisturbed and, thus undisturbed, plan our deaths. The rest is now spoken of openly; even Islamic terrorism, something that was carefully avoided in order not to offend moderate Muslims. Yes it's true: Now, even the fifth columnists and the imams express their hypocritical condemnations, their mendacious loathing, their false solidarity with the relatives of the victims.

"There are moments in Life when keeping silent becomes a fault, and speaking an obligation. A civic duty, a moral challenge, a categorical imperative from which we cannot escape." --Oriana Fallaci

Yes, it's true: Now, thorough searches are being made in the cases of the accused Muslims; suspects are arrested; perhaps it will even be decided to expel them. But in substance, nothing has changed. Does the matter of the One God really suffice to establish a concord of concepts, of principles, of values?!? This is the point, in the unchanged reality of post-attack London that perhaps troubles me the most. I am also troubled because it goes along with, and thereby reinforces that which I consider the error committed by Pope John Paul II: not to fight as much as he should have, in my opinion, against the illiberal and anti-democratic--no, cruel--essence of Islam. During these last four years, I have done nothing but ask myself why a warrior like John Paul II, a leader so singular who contributed more than anyone else to the downfall of the Soviet empire and, therefore, of Communism, showed himself to be so weak towards a disease worse than the Soviet Empire or Communism. I have done nothing but ask myself why he did not inveigh openly against what was happening (and is happening), for example, in Sudan where the fundamentalist regime was practicing (and is practicing) slavery. Where Christians were eliminated (are eliminated) by the millions. Why he was silent about Saudi Arabia where anyone with a Bible in hand or a cross around his neck was (and is) treated like scum to be put to death. Still today, there is that silence I don’t understand, and...

************

Naturally, I understand that the philosophy of the Catholic Church is based on ecumenism and on the commandment "Love-your-enemy-as-yourself." That one of its fundamental principles (at least theoretically) is forgiveness, sacrifice, turning the other cheek. (A sacrifice I refuse not only for pride; that is, for my way of maintaining my dignity, but also because I believe there is a motive of Evil on the part of those who do evil.) But there also exists the principle of self-defense or, instead, legitimate defense and, if I’m not mistaken, the Catholic Church has made use of this principle more than once. Charles Martel turned back the Muslim invaders lifting up the crucifix. Isabella of Spain tossed them out of Spain while doing the same. And at Lepanto there were even Papal troops. In order to defend Vienna, the last bulwark of Christianity, in order to break the siege of Kara Mustafa, there was also, and above all, the Pole Jan Sobienski with the image of the Virgin of Chestochowa. And if those Catholics had not applied the principle of self-defense--of legitimate defense--we, too, would be wearing the burka or the calabash. We, too, would be calling the few survivors infidel dogs. We, too, would be cutting off their heads with the halal knife. And Saint Peter’s Basilica would be a mosque, like the Church of Saint Sophia in Istanbul.

Thus, three days after the latest massacre, when Pope Ratzinger renewed the theme of dialogue, I was astonished. Your Holiness, I speak to you as a person who admires you very much. Who loves you, because you are right about so many things. Who, because of this, is mocked along with those nicknamed "devout atheist," "sanctimonious layperson," "clerical liberal." A person who, above all, understands politics and its necessities. Who understands the drama of leadership and its compromises. Who admires the stubbornness of faith and respects the renouncements and generosity that it demands. But I must pose the following question all the same: do you really believe that the Muslims would accept a dialogue with Christians, or with other religions, or with atheists like me? Do you really believe that they can change, reform, quit planting bombs? You are a very erudite man, Your Holiness. Very cultured. And you know them well. Much better than I. Explain to me then: When, in the course of their history--a history that has lasted for 1400 years--have they changed and reformed?

...The Catholic Church experienced epochal changes, Your Holiness. And again, you know this better than I. At a certain point, it is remembered that the Church was preaching reason; thus choice; thus the Good, thus Liberty, and she ceased to tyrannize. To kill people. Or constrain them to paint only Christs and Madonnas. She understood secularism. Thanks to men of the first order, a long list of which you are a part, she leant a hand to democracy. And today, she speaks to people like me. She accepts them and, far from burning them alive (I never forget that up until four hundred years ago the Holy Office would have sent me to the stake), she respects their ideas. They do not. Therefore, there can be no dialogue with them. And this does not signify that I want to promote a war of religion, a Crusade, a witch hunt, as imbeciles and frauds. Religious wars, Crusades--me?!? A non-religious person? Go figure. Like I'd want to incite a religious war or a Crusade. A witch hunt--me?!? Being considered a witch and a heretic by the same laypeople and the same liberals, go figure. Like I'd want to start a witch hunt. It simply signifies that to delude one's self about them is against reason. Against Life, against one’s own survival. And woe unto those who take them into their confidence.

***************************************************************************

The Rage and The Pride

The Rage and the Pride (La Rabbia e l’Orgoglio in Italian) is a book written in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks by Italian journalist and author Oriana Fallaci, which condemns Islam as a totalitarian force bent on destroying Western civilisation and attacks those in Italy and other Western countries, who she believes have turned a blind eye to the threat of Islamic fundamentalism.

The book was originally an article written for Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. The book has been a bestseller in Italy and Europe, where it has sold over 1.5 million copies.

The book has received criticism for being, according to Fallaci's critics, Islamophobic. In the wake of the article, Fallaci has received support from many right-wing political groups, receiving most criticism from the left wing. Some Muslim groups, in countries such as France, have evaluated the possibility of banning the book. However, the courts dismissed the request, as well as an additonal request to have a 'health warning' style caution on the front of every cover.

[from wikipedia.org; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rage_and_The_Pride]

***************************************************************************

July 16, 2005

Book Review - 'The Rage And The Pride' by Oriana Fallaci

Reviewed by Ellison J. Peterson

'The Rage And The Pride' is a book like I have never read before. Written as a result of the events of September 11th 2001, it started out as a newspaper article by the world famous, and now infamous Italian journalist and author, Oriana Fallaci, for the Italian national newspaper 'Corriere della Sera.' However, when she had come to submit the piece to her editor, of which he had reserved two pages, she realised that what she had done was "given birth to a small-book." And what a book it is!

Fallaci, born in 1929 in Florence, Italy, is well respected within the news arena and was a war-correspondent in Vietnam, for the Indo-Pakistani War, the 1965 Hungarian insurrection, in the Middle East, in South America, the 1968 massacre in Mexico City and the 1970s Latin American upheavals. She was also seriously wounded in the Gulf War and was a special correspondent for L’Europeo, an Italian political magazine. She has written for numerous leading national newspapers as well as being the author of a great many books. Fallaci is well known for her outspoken interviews with such people as Sean Connery, Sammy Davis Jr, Yasir Arafat, Henry Kissinger, Ayatollah Khomeini and many, many others. She was also a resistance fighter during the Second World War.

Fallaci actually translated the English edition of 'The Rage And The Pride' herself from it's original Italian and acknowledges that there are a few "oddities" in its terminology, grammar and sentence structure arising from her own particular writing style and her own translation. Nevertheless, she offers it to us as it is as she wants to have "total responsibility for every word and comma" that she writes under her name in the English language that she loves as much as her own. Actually, I appreciated this greatly and found that it is written in a beautiful style, a style with unconditional passion, pride and rage and a style that only Fallaci herself can produce.

It is a beautiful little hardback book. A hardback which is actually nice to hold with golden writing inset in the cover and a simple red dust cover which adds an air of mystery to it. I would say never judge a book by its cover and this is one not to judge until you have read it.

The book is aptly named in its simplicity, for it is written from the author’s heart and soul. It is written literally with a pride and a rage in response to all that she was feeling as she watched those horrendous events unfold on that tragic day of September 11th 2001. It is written with a pride and a rage for the culture that she loves so much and that is so viciously under attack today. It is written with love for the victims of that day and for those of tomorrow and is ultimately written with fierce honesty in a flaringly unabashed style where she feels no apologies are necessary. It "burst like a bomb," an "unrestrianable cry" and what we have is an emotional, no holds barred expose of the author’s feelings towards the Islamic faith that openly promotes such catastrophes to happen. 'The agenda being to dominate the world with the purpose of opening "the eyes of those who do not want to see, to unplug the ears of those who do not want to listen, to ignite the thoughts of those who do not want to think."

Fallaci points out that she has remained quiet for far too long and the time to confront a religion and culture (and she states that the "clash between us and them is not a military clash. Oh, no. It is a cultural one, a religious one.") that is so dangerous and is at total odds to our own is now. She writes in her own unique style exposing Islam as "the hate for the West" that "swells like a fire fed by the wind. And the followers of Islamic Fundamentalism multiply like protozoa of a cell which splits to become two cells then four then eight then sixteen then thirty-two to infinity." She writes that she has "remained as silent as an old and disdainful wolf. A wolf that consumes itself in the desire to sink it’s fangs into the sheep's throat, the rabbit's neck, yet succeeds in maintaining control." But also stressing the importance to note that "there are moments in Life when keeping silent becomes a fault, and speaking an obligation. A civic duty, a moral challenge, a categorical imperative from which we cannot escape."

"The clash between us and them is not a military one. It's a cultural one, a religious one, and the worst is still to come." --Oriana Fallaci

It must be in all honestly, one of the most politically incorrect books that I have ever read but one that is written with extreme caution and attention to detail rather than a simply blistering attack with unintended misconceptions and falsehoods.

Such was her dedication and willingness, her shock, horror and love, to pour out onto the pages her heart and soul and to get it to the masses that she worked on it "Without stopping, without eating, without sleeping." Yet, is open to point out that extreme and great care was taken as writing is a very serious matter for her and something that is not to be taken lightly or written half heartedly. She states that it is "not an amusement or an outlet or a relief. It is not because I never forget that written words can do a lot of good but also a lot of evil, they can heal as much as kill."

The book has caused quite a bit of controversy throughout the whole of Europe and the Western world, especially from the Muslim communities. In 2003 a Muslim group tried to have the book banned in France but when that failed they tried to get a disclaimer in each book. This was rejected also. In May of 2005 Fallaci was sued for saying 'unpleasant' things towards Islam in her new book, 'The Force of Reason' by Adel Smith, the head of the Union of Italian Muslims. However, in June of 2005 in a shocking reversal of events he was sentenced to 6 months in prison for defaming Christianity for which he is well known.

This is a very open and frank book. Absolutely no one is spared Fallaci's pen as she blasts Islam for its open yet widely unknown intolerance, bitterness, hatred and it’s ignorant stance on the human rights that we of the West hold so dear. Whilst Fallaci targets various European and American leaders, media moguls, the politically correct, the ignorant and the multiculturalists amongst scores of others she is not shy to comment on the touching unity seen with the support from around the world, the brave fire fighters that risked there own lives to save those trapped in the burning towers of the World Trade Centres and surrounding buildings, and the selfless civilians that did the same.

It states on the dust jacket something of which I fully agree so I see no need to reword it: "With her brutal sincerity she hurls pitiless accusations, vehement invectives, and denounces the uncomfortable truths that all of us know but never dare to express. With her rigorous logic, lucidity of mind, she defends our culture and blames what she calls our blindness, our deafness, our masochism, the conformism and the arrogance of the Politically Correct. With the poetry of a prophet like a modern Cassandra she says it in the form of a letter addressed to all of us."

Indeed, a tremendously stirring book. A book that chucks a bucket of cold water on your nicely snuggled up in bed body and yells at you at an ear drum splitting level to get your head out of the sand. It is a wake-up call in words that you do not want to miss!

With all this she states that "The worst is still to come." And I look forward to reading her sure to be next masterpiece, 'The Force of Reason.'

[from 'Ellison J. Peterson ONLINE'; http://ejpeterson.blogspot.com/2005/07/book-review-rage-and-pride-by-oriana.html]

***************************************************************************

Oriana Fallaci

Oriana Fallaci (born June 29, 1929) is an Italian journalist, author and political interviewer. A former partisan during World War II, she had a long and successful journalistic career.

She has been called Italy's most celebrated female writer by Ferruccio De Bortoli. The Los Angeles Times described her as "the journalist to whom virtually no world figure would say no."

She has interviewed many internationally known leaders and celebrities such as Henry Kissinger, the Shah of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini, Willy Brandt, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Walter Cronkite, Omar Khadafi, Federico Fellini, Sammy Davis Jr, Nguyen Cao Ky, Yasir Arafat, Indira Gandhi, Alexandros Panagoulis, Archbishop Makarios III, Golda Meir, Nguyen Van Thieu, Haile Selassie and Sean Connery.

After retirement, she returned to the spotlight after writing a series of articles and books highly critical of Islam and Arabs that aroused substantial support, controversy and accusations of Islamophobia and racism.

Career

Fallaci was born in Florence.

During World War II she joined the resistance despite her youth, in the democratic armed group "Giustizia e Liberta"

Her father Edoardo Fallaci, a cabinet maker in Florence, was a political activist struggling to put an end to the dictatorship of Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini. It was during this period that Fallaci was first exposed to the atrocities of war.

Fallaci began her journalistic career in her teens, becoming a special correspondent for the Italian paper Il mattino dell'Italia centrale in 1950.

Since 1967 she worked as a war correspondent, in Vietnam, for the Indo-Pakistani War, in the Middle East and in South America. For many years, Fallaci was a special correspondent for the political magazine L'Europeo and wrote for a number of leading newspapers and Epoca magazine.

In the late 1970s, she had an affair with the subject of one of her interviews, Alexandros Panagoulis, who had been a solitary figure in the Greek resistance against the 1967 dictatorship, having been captured, heavily tortured and imprisoned for his (unsuccessful) assassination attempt against dictator and ex-Colonel Georgios Papadopoulos. Panagoulis died in 1976, under controversial circumstances, in a road accident. Fallaci maintained that Panagoulis was assassinated by remnants of the Greek military junta and her book Un Uomo (A Man) was inspired by the life of Panagoulis.

Fallaci has twice received the St. Vincent Prize for journalism, as well as the Bancarella Prize, 1971 for Nothing, and So Be It; Viareggio Prize, 1979, for Un uomo: Romanzo; and Prix Antibes, 1993, for Inshallah. She received a D.Litt. from Columbia College (Chicago).

She has lectured at the University of Chicago, Yale University, Harvard University, and Columbia University.

Fallaci's writings have been translated into 21 languages including English, Spanish, French, Dutch, German, Greek, Swedish, Polish, Croatian and Slovenian.

Controversy

A journalist from Florence, Tiziano Terzani, expressed disagreements with her approach in an open letter to her in Corriere della Sera while David Holcberg at the Ayn Rand Institute supported her cause with a letter to the Washington Times.

Fallaci has received support from rightist political parties and movements such as the Lega Nord in Italy, where her books have sold over 1 million copies alone, but also from individuals and organisations in the rest of the world.

At the first European Social Forum, which was held in Florence in November 2002, Fallaci invited the people of Florence to shut up every shop and stay in the houses and compared the ESF to the Nazi occupation of Florence, but despite her worries nothing happened and all the demonstrations were peaceful. Sabina Guzzanti, a popular leftist comic, mocked at her during the Forum.

Italian pacifist singer Jovanotti mentioned Fallaci in a song, Salvami, where she is described as "the journalist and writer who loves war/because it reminds her of when she was young and beautiful."

In 2002 in Switzerland the Islamic Center and the Somal Association of Geneva, SOS Racisme of Lausanne and a private citizen sued her for the supposedly racist content of The Rage and The Pride. In November 2002 a Swiss judge issued an arrest warrant for violations of article 261 and 261 bis of the Swiss criminal code and requested the Italian government to either try or extradite her. Roberto Castelli, Italian minister of Justice mentioned this fact in an interview broadcasted by Radio Padania affirming that the Italian Constitution protects the Freedom of Speech and thus the extradition request had to be rejected, the episode is mentioned in her book The Force of Reason.

In 2003 the MRAP (Movement against racism and for the friendship among peoples) sued to have The Rage and The Pride banned in France. A French court rejected the request, as well as the group's request for a disclaimer to be placed in each book.

In May, 2005, Adel Smith, president of the Union of Italian Muslims, launched a lawsuit against Fallaci charging that "some of the things she said in her book The Force of Reason are offensive to Islam." Smith's attorney, Matteo Nicoli, cited a phrase from the book that refers to Islam as "a pool that never purifies." Consequently an Italian judge ordered her to stand trial set for June 2006 in Bergamo on charges of "defaming Islam." A previous prosecutor had sought dismissal of the charges.

On August 27, 2005, Fallaci had a private audience with Pope Benedict XVI at Castel Gandolfo. Although an atheist, Fallaci has mentioned her great respect for Pope Benedict XVI and her admiration for his 2004 essay titled "If Europe Hates Itself."

Awards

On November 30, 2005, Oriana Fallaci received the Center for the Study of Popular Culture’s Annie Taylor Award in New York. The writer was honored for her "heroism and valor" that made of her "a symbol of struggle against oppression and fascism". Since 9/11, Fallaci has dedicated herself in the fight against "the greatest threat to Western civilization since the Cold War, Islamofascism."

On December 8, 2005, the writer received the Ambrogino d'oro, the most prestigious award of Milan.

On December 14, 2005, she was awarded by the President of the Italian Republic, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, with a gold medal for her efforts (benemerita della cultura). Because of the writer's serious health condition, she couldn't travel to Italy. She sent a message stating (translated from Italian):

The gold medal moves me because it gratifies my hard work of writer and journalist, my engagement to the defense of our culture, my love for my Country and for Freedom. My well-known health condition prevents me to travel and to withdraw personally an award that, for me, a woman not accustomed to medals and to trophies, has an intense ethical and moral meaning.

On February 22, 2006, the president of Tuscany, Riccardo Nencini awarded Oriana Fallaci of a gold medal. Nencini explained that the writer is a symbol of Tuscany's culture in the world.

Books by Oriana Fallaci

* A Man, a novel about a hero who fights alone for freedom and for truth, never giving up, and so he dies, killed by all. (1979)

* The Seven Sins of Hollywood preface by Orson Welles, Longanesi (Milan), 1958.

* The Useless Sex: Voyage around the Woman Horizon Press (New York City), 1961.

* Penelope at War (1962).

* Limelighters (1963)

* The Egotists: Sixteen Surprising Interviews (1963)

* Quel giorno sulla Luna (1970)

* Inshallah, a fictional account of Italian troops stationed in Lebanon in 1983.

* If the Sun Dies, about the US space program.

* Interview With History (1976, a collection of interviews with various political figures Liveright)

* Letter to a child never born, a dialogue between a mother and her unborn child.

* Nothing, and so be it, report on the Vietnam war based on personal experiences.

* Oriana Fallaci intervista Oriana Fallaci, Fallaci interviews herself on the subject of "Eurabia" and "Islamofacism". (Milan: Corriere della Sera, August 2004).

* The Rage and The Pride (La Rabbia e l'Orgoglio, 2001).

* The Force of Reason (La Forza della Ragione, 2004)

* Oriana Fallaci intervista sé stessa - L'Apocalisse (in Italian). An update of the interview with herself. A new, long epilogue is added. Publisher: Rizzoli, November 2004.

Fallaci has also written essays and novels revolving around news events.

[from wikipedia.org; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oriana_Fallaci]

***************************************************************************

Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Oriana Fallaci Memorial

No comments: