Ooooohhhhh, Grandma will be spinning in her grave !

How many gears has an Italian tank got?

10 reverse – and 1 forward just in case of attacks from behind.

It’s the way I tell ‘em.

all the best Craig

As you might gather from Frazer’s post, I’m 25% Italian.

Why are French roads lined with trees?

So German armies can march in the shade.

just encase you don’t already know I have a cousin sisters who likes cooking Italian food.

Q. Why are most Italian men named Tony?

A. When they got on the boat to America they stamped To NY (Tony) on their foreheads.

Q. How did they advertise surplus W. W. II Italian rifles for sale?

A. “Never fired, and only dropped once.”

The new Italian warships have half of the portholes below the waterline. That way the new Italian Navy gets a good look at the old Italian Navy.

Italy goes to war like the Brits go to the Olympics: it’s not the winning that counts, it’s the taking part.

Jokes about the Italians not being too into war are all fine and dandy, but what does it tell you about the more militaristic nations.

I’d much prefer to live in a country that valued beauty and style and music and life than one that sublimated these earthly pleasures for service to the new world order.

I’m afraid that the Italians just aren’t as subserviant as the average Brit.

I suspect that if you thought more clearly about it you’d feel the same.

I’d rather be a formaggio eating Italian surrender monkey than a British squaddie getting his nuts shot off for a pipeline.

LoL, just what this blog needs, occaisional hilarity and redirection.

It is also remarkable how much the first and second great unpleasantnesses, as i prefere to call them, show what people remember most, how much these two events have been inscribed into our lives, in any of the countries we care to mention in Europe.

I was born in 52, but it was a business of our allied powers to make us remember of what our fathers mistakes were like.

Under the disguise of a ‘day out in Neuengamme’, near every Hamburg school, we were marched past the stench of burned bones, still apparent like a cloud of something so disgusting that it stamps itself into your brain. T

hat was the policy deemed by the British to make us remember, the follow up generation, having to have my morning break in the grounds of a concentration camp, sandwiches and all, thats what turned me into someone who cannot stand any sort of nationalistic prancing, whether its the posing displayed at the Olympics, or marching for some or other false notion that makes us all think killing is OK.

This little last hurdle, imho, is the obstruction which keeps us as animals.

People wallow in war rememberance, making peace is never high on their agenda and we are kept in this belief by a plethora of information day in, day out.

Could it be that these calamities to human intelligence, are in fact the greatest thing that ever happened to us?

Hence we are made to continuously remember, regardless as to whether we have been born during those days, but because the short cicuit that blanks our brains and makes us war rather than jaw, is being kept alive, somewhere in the world and comparissons are made with other conflicts in its myriad of connotations.

But, have you heard the one about…..

An elderly Italian man who lived in the outskirts of Monte Cassino went to

the local church for confession. He said: “Father, during World War II, a beautiful woman knocked on my door and asked me to hide her from the enemy. So I hid her in my attic.” The

priest replied: “That was a wonderful thing you did, my son and you have no need to confess that.”

“It’s worse than that, Father. She started to repay me with sexual favors.”

The priest said: “By doing that, you were both in great danger. However, two

people together under those circumstances are greatly tempted to act that

way. But if you are truly sorry for your actions, you are forgiven.”

“Thank you Father. That’s a great load off my mind. But I have one more question.”

“And what is that?” said the priest. “Should I tell her the war is over?”

I’m afraid that the Italians just aren’t as subserviant as the average Brit.

I suspect that if you thought more clearly about it you’d feel the same.

- Stop being so pedantic pedant.

It’s only a bit of fun, and anyway, what about all those massacres of Ethiopians and Libyians these unsubserviant Italians managed to carry out during Il Dunce’s time as the Sawdust Ceaser?

I believe they managed to wipe out three-quarters of the population of Libya.

The Italian military did give a good account of themselves in WWI, I believe.

ingo

That was funny.

Anyway I think Italy was really good at starving Libyans to death by fencing the country off, locking up women and children in concentration camps and filling wells with concrete. They were also really good at dropping poison gas on Ethiopeans with Aircraft.

Not so good at fighting men with guns though. This goes for Libya and Ethiopia as well as WW2.

WW1 does not show the Italians in a good light. Far from it. They were Germanys alies, and agreed to fight by Germanys side. As soon as it became clear which was the winning side, they fought for the other side.

Maybe the same will happen now and the Italians will all join the Taliban?

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! ?” An ecstasy of fumbling,

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,

And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime9 . . .

Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est

Pro patria mori.

Give a man his due Chris. The wonderful Wilfred Owen, as typed up by you.

Oh dear. I hope you don’t think I was trying to pass that off as my own stuff. If that had been the case, I certainly would have left my e-mail address to let you order some more of my masterpieces.

Quite simply, seeing the elevated cultural level of this blog’s readers, indicating the poet’s name seemed a little pointless.

It would be a bit like saying:

“Imagine there’s no countries

It isn’t hard to do

Nothing to kill or die for”

and then putting John Lennon’s name after it.

Much too pompous!

Which John Lennon would that be?

Yokomoko’s husband or John, Lenin’s English cousin?

‘WW1 does not show the Italians in a good light. Far from it. They were Germanys alies, and agreed to fight by Germanys side. As soon as it became clear which was the winning side, they fought for the other side.’

- Posted by: Arsalan Goldberg at December 4, 2009 5:22 PM

They also did this in WWII as well Asalan mate.

Although this is all supposed to be a bit of leg-pullling – the Italian resistence of WWII was magnificent and, never to be forgotten, was the fact that the Italian authorities throughtout WII refused point-blank to participate or cooperate with the Nazi in the Holocaust of the Jews. Not many Nazis allies and puppet regimes can say this.

all the best