Women of Italy, Unite!

[JackLuis]

For the last two months we have seen people power on the streets in North Africa protesting the way they have been treated by their governments. Now we see Italian women protesting their minimization by the "patriarchy",

ROME (AFP) – Thousands of women took to the streets of Italian cities Sunday calling for "dignity" and greater rights after a series of lurid prostitution scandals involving Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

"We are defending the dignity of women," read a placard held up at one of the rallies in Palermo, where thousands of women marched through the city.

Thousands more rallied in Bari, Trieste and Venice -- with men also joining.

Has the "People Power" protest phenomena, jumped not only the Mediterranean, but shifted into more specific rights?

The Italian leader is fighting off allegations that he paid for sex with a 17-year-old prostitute nicknamed Ruby the Heartstealer and then used the power of his office to try and cover up the crime.

Berlusconi and Ruby, real name Karima El Mahroug, deny having sex but many people have been offended in the way the Italian leader has defended himself.

"I have never paid a woman," Berlusconi said in one interview last year.

"I have never seen the satisfaction that there could be in it without the pleasure of conquest," he said.

And in a speech in November he remarked: "It's better to be passionate about beautiful women than to be gay."

Berlusconi's supporters have condemned the rallies.

Here is a artical about Ruby.
http://static.fanpage.it/gossipfanpage/wp-content/uploads/gallery/ruby-rubachuori-la-minorenne-marocchina-del-premier/facebook-di-karima-el-mahroug-600x450.jpg
Here is a gallery of The PM's women.

Some would say it is better to be passionate with a beautiful gay woman.

Will this emancipation movement spread across the world? Will people realize that they can, with enough participation, Change Their World?

As this concept of "I've had it up to HERE! And I'm not going to take it , anymore!" presses outward from the suppressed peoples of Islamidom, how far will it go?

"The women taking to the streets today are not very numerous and are rallying only for political ends," Education Minister Mariastella Gelmini said.

Fabrizio Cicchitto, a member of Berlusconi's People of Freedom party, said participants "belong to the leftist anti-Berlusconi movement."

More than 50,000 women have signed the movement's manifesto in just a week.

It denounces "the indecent, repetitive representation of women as a naked object of sexual exchange" in newspapers, advertising and on television.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

I'm sorry but 'united' and 'Italian' don't fit in the same sentence. Especially when it refers to the women. Sigh! As my grandfather once said, "Italy is a good place to be from---as far from as you can get!" He never went back, even for a visit.