The Second Chance

One of the worst parts of the acceptance of an apology is to decide whether or not we want to give the person who hurt us to have a second chance at life. Everyone deals with conflict differently, and our own experiences accumulated, our ability to forgive and move on.

With the offer of forgiveness or a second chance at life, it's a difficult situation, and it requires responsibility, maturity, and the input of both parties.

It makes sense to focus on your feelings, and if someone is doing something bad, but try to understand the context of the person’s activities to be able to help you in the process. This is not an excuse for them, and that it's not to devalue your feelings, but it also adds a context to their work, but you can make it easier for you to at least try to express empathy and to offer forgiveness or to move in the forward direction.

As hard as it's, the practice of forgiveness and a second chance at life will help you to grow as an individual. Learn how to get to “choose your battles”, it will help you to understand the solving the conflict is well worth the effort.

Life is too short to do all the bad ways of doing this. Of course, the best solution is to, in some cases, walk away, especially when it’s to correct the situation itself may lead to further damage. However, when you have become full of repentance for what it was, giving a person a second chance, can lead to a better outcome.

Think of the times when they were forced to ask for forgiveness or have a second chance at life. Why did you do this? Because it is a second chance at life, a chance to be a better person and develop as a person. If you want others to be able to see this kind of growth potential in you, and you will need to ask them if they can see the potential in the other person.

Try to keep the treatment in a negative situation as a learning opportunity. You can also learn how to avoid negative situations, but you can also learn how to be a better messenger to them-for both the person who you want to be forgiven, and you will be able to meet each other later in life.

An insult is like an emotional anchor. This will make sure that you are in a swimming pool, the negatives, and it drains you emotionally. Forgiveness and a second chance at life to be your wind, and the sails to move forward.

To deny a person a second chance, you have to deny yourself of the peace that comes with forgiveness and moving forward. Free yourself from the burden of it because it is not for you.

Times when it’s Okay to Give a Second Chance

1. If It is More Than Just Love

Not just by anyone, but only because of your love for each other. There has to be something more than love. Of course, this is one of the most important factors in a relationship, but don’t forget about trust, loyalty, and respect for each other. When love is all that holds you together but do not have that, any other issues, do not give your partner another chance. If you have a solid foundation for a happy and healthy relationship, you need to consider it to have a second chance at life.

2. If It is Severe Enough To Destroy Your Foundation

The decision to give your partner a second chance in life, depends, really, on what they have done to get to that point in the first place. If you have the feeling that what he was doing was not serious enough to destroy the foundation of the relationship, it’s worth taking the time to think about it. There has been some resentment that the destruction of the relationship, and there is no going back. However, other things are a pair of close-by. If you feel like that’s the last one, of course, is to do whatever your heart (and mind) will force you to do so.) be happy.

3. If Actions Speak Louder Than Words

To find out whether your significant other is still a window of opportunity, you waive all of his or her actions. The words are nice, but to be honest, sometimes they don’t mean anything. If your partner says that he or she is going to change, but there has been no action to prove it, so why should I trust him or her? It’s good to get your significant other to have a chance to work with you if you have the feeling that he or she is making a big effort to find out what he or she deserves.

4. When The Both Of Them, Are Determined To Make It Work

Give your partner a chance, therefore, that there is hope, it is that what has happened is the first time it won’t happen again, but the old patterns of behaviour, don’t stop. We have to actively work to change the dynamic. If you are committed to making things work, and a trip to the therapy doesn’t make you want to jump out of the window, you don’t get another chance at what you love is hot.

5. When A Lesson is Learned

If someone does something bad it is, how do we know that they will not have to re-do it? As a rule, they do not do so because they have learned their lesson. However, if your partner has to conclude what he was doing, and now that she knows how to do it right, it’s good to have a second chance at life in order. If you feel you have to ensure that he or she does not understand the consequences of her actions, it just means that you need to learn about — and, unfortunately, nothing is going to change.

6. If They are genuinely Sorry

I am Sorry, but that does not work here. To profoundly move forward after you have done something wrong, you need to be aware of your role in this. They need to understand the pain that they have caused and are sorry.” If your spouse is not regretting what he did, what is it that keeps him or her from doing it again? It is the difference between an apology and an honest mistake. You will find out if your partner is being honest about your excuses. If it is genuine enough it will work out.

Mother's toxic love

Manipulative mothers and the effects of toxic love on their children

“A mother has two duties: to worry and to avoid it”.

Being, not being a mother, is a path as exciting as full of pitfalls, overflowing with bridges and abysses, tears and repairs. It is a bond that starts from afar, when the child is not yet in the womb but lives in the heart, when she is not yet in the flesh but is a ghost child; bond that then continues for the rest of life, even when the child is an adult by birth. The emotional relationship between mother and son (or daughter) should walk the balance between presence and the right distance, between care, nurturing and autonomy.

The alternation of love and the right distance, however, is almost never easy to implement. It is a chimerical dance between the needs of the mother and those of the son, between the mother's projections and her fears. Between the submerged and the unsolved that move the strings of many behaviors or needs of the heart and a child who tries to come out with difficulty from the egg-family.

The ability to be good mothers, or good mothers, depends on a variegated kaleidoscope of factors: on the mother's personality structure, on the child's character, on the parental bond - therefore on the "health" of the couple - and on the family dynamics that they came to be created. The mother walks in the balance like a tightrope between her being her mother, her being her woman and life partner. The balances are complex and sometimes one area looms over the other with the risk of engulfing it.

When the child is small, the mother is usually particularly attentive. Her psycho-physical growth, her well-being and her future depend on her care and attention. The child grows up, and the mother-child relationship gets underway. The balances change, or should change, the balance needle moves towards the pole of autonomy: physical and psychic. The mother, although she is always present, takes or should take a step back.

She teaches him to tie his own shoes, to eat alone, to take the bus to school without getting lost, to cross the street without being run over. The first conquests appear and consequently the first anxieties. Some mothers find it difficult to detach themselves from their child because they think that he, or she, cannot move freely in the world without her indispensable presence, and because she, the mother, no longer has a reason to exist without the maternal role and identity of she.

They consider it small, to be looked after, fragile for a world so full of pitfalls and threats. A child who is raised on bread and anxieties will in turn become an anxious and insecure adult, fragile and scared of the new, with low self-esteem. He won't be able to manage on his own, with a good chance he will seek out dominant partners to guide him in the hope of receiving parental care and psychological support in return.

When a mother's love suffocates

Sometimes a mother's love becomes a noose, a handcuff, an encumbrance. She becomes morbidly asphyxiating. It takes away the air, the living spaces, it clips the wings to the growth and adult dimension of the child's existence. Some mothers, due to their personality structure, because they in turn were raised by cumbersome and omnipresent mothers whose footsteps they reproduce again, because they are unhappily married, and for many other reasons they become asphyxiated mothers. Hyper vigilant, controlling, exuberant, super present, substitutes for the needs of the children.

In practice, they make a very dangerous shift from their lives and their most secret needs to that of their children. They try to have control over everything thinking they know what is the best choice for their child, an attitude that becomes more acute when the child grows up and starts making his own decisions independently. Which high school to attend, which boyfriend or girlfriend to love, how to dress, make up, or not to shave.

The child who becomes an adult leaves a void that cannot be filled, thus, when the mother has made only the mother, she cannot stand detachment, she cannot transform the bond into an adult and resolved bond, veering dangerously and in spite of herself towards a dimension of selfishness, narcissism and manipulation, of extreme seduction.

Moms who love too much

Badness or previous traumas? The script that repeats itself

Except in cases of previous psychopathologies, a mother does not become engulfing or aggressive out of pure pleasure or out of innate malice, but because of the childhood they have lived, which she has not elaborated and which she tends to re-propose in a dangerously unchanged way. These are mothers who in turn have suffered mothers or bulky, icy, rigid parents. Women who have themselves been humiliated, as well as controlled and manipulated.

These mothers were trapped in their childhood bloody wound which they attempted, amateurishly and inadequately, to heal by establishing a compensatory bond with their children. One of the most powerful mechanisms of the psyche is the compulsion to repeat, a sort of trap that leads to repeating ancient relational scripts, even the most dysfunctional.

History repeats itself, but this time the roles are reversed: the victim becomes the perpetrator, and the unloved daughter becomes an unbearable mother. In other cases, the behavior of manipulative mothers is due to character and personological traits that are difficult to change: women with a strong and dominant character who always need to keep everything under control, to control, to command.

Another case of unhappiness for children is their permanence in dysfunctional families. Unhappily married women shift their denied needs onto their children, sublimate and compensate. They promote him as a substitute partner, they make him a boyfriend, a lover, a husband who frantically tries to satisfy their need for care.

In the shadow of the mother no child grows.

 
The recurrent use of lies and denials

Between guilt and the need to fix, a child doesn't understand why he's sick, because he struggles to feel independent. Because he feels wrong, out of the box, inadequate. He feels the links of the maternal grip on his skin, but he doesn't see them, he doesn't know how to loosen it, how to get rid of it. He is afraid of hurting and disappointing her, of causing her further pain by her independent or rebellious behavior. To love in freedom, to dress as he wants and to choose the job he likes. In short, to become himself.

The cumbersome shadow of an intrusive or too present mother can have serious implications in the achievement of independence and happiness. A child raised under the hegemony of a manipulative mother had to get by as well as she could. You have learned the recurrent use of lies or half-truths in an attempt to carve out a corner of the sky.

Lying is for him a way out of the maternal grip, a real survival mechanism. At first he implements it so as not to disappoint his mother, to avoid the sense of guilt following her non-approval, in some way to try to survive; over time, he learns to use this "resource", he makes it his own, so he will automate its saving use even in adulthood, to avoid assuming responsibility for his actions as an independent person. The lie defends him from reality testing, protects him, will cloak himself to hide his emotions and fears, with the sole purpose of not disappointing his mother, in a vain attempt to live or rather to survive in any context.

Unresolved and intrusive mothers treat their children as if they were personal property. A precious asset to take care of and worry about, always and forever. This toxic bond has a whole range of implications for the child's emotional, psychic and sexual development. In the love and sexual sphere, a child who becomes an adult will live in bonds of love in a limping way: on the one hand he wants to love and be loved, on the other he fears unconsciously betraying his mother and finding an engulfing woman like her.

He thus develops a clear difficulty in establishing intimacy and a genuine emotional connection with an adult partner. He will look for unequal ties without real planning to defend his fears, and his immobilism of the heart. On the sexual level, he may experience an erectile deficit due to an excess of anxiety - from performance and from relationships -, premature ejaculation, due to the ambivalent relationship with the female figure, or delayed ejaculation due to hyper emotional control.

Even the choice of the ideal woman will be a path fraught with difficulties.

For the invasive mother no woman can be good for the heir. Too high, too low. Demanding, uncompromising. Accommodating, resigned. foreign.

Functions and dysfunctions of a family.

How a mother manipulates: from sweet to hostile words to symptoms

Taking care of a child doesn't (not always) mean worrying about them. Keeping fear to yourself for a symbolic and tiring stage in her life is equivalent to giving him the opportunity to take flight. Ensuring that the child who has now become an adult, at least in terms of age, can access his adult dimension of existence: the psychic one and autonomy.

An invasive mother does not give up and manipulates her as she can. She seduces with grace and an excess of fuss and kindness, she wounds with sharp and judgmental words. And when she's not getting what she wants, she manipulates with the symptoms, developing an anxiety neurosis, and blaming her illness on her wayward and ungrateful son.

A good mother, or rather a good mother, should take a step, sometimes even more than one, backwards to make her child fall and get up again; her that she makes mistakes and fixes, that she chooses wrong loves to then understand what she no longer wants from her life; that she finds her psychic center of gravity, without crutches or vicarious maternal substitutes.

Il burino di periferia

Immagino lo sconcerto e la tristezza di papa Francesco. Sono mesi che invita, chiede, implora la pace per l'Ucraina o almeno una tregua. Viene suo ospite a Roma il presidente Zelensky e si presenta in Vaticano come un burino di periferia, in maglione girocollo e gli dice che la pace non gli serve e che semmai ci sarà solo come e quando vorrà lui, che non ha bisogno né di consigli né di diplomazia, tanto - avrà aggiunto - di armi ne ho e ne avrò a volontà, me le regalano USA, UE e GB fin quando mi serviranno ed in modo illimitato, quindi non si parli neppure di un armistizio, il Vaticano non mi serve e anche le proposte cinesi vanno rifiutate.

Un'ora dopo - sempre in maglione - viene ricevuto a palazzo Chigi e al Quirinale con tutti gli onori, addirittura abbracciato da una Premier che sembra aver perso al suo confronto ogni logica od autorevolezza. A sera Zelensky è già in Germania e poi in Francia presentandosi sempre come emblema della pace. A Londra addirittura lo riforniscono anche di missili a lunga gittata, strano modo di costruirla la pace visto che sono armi offensive e non certo difensive.

Nessuno che nelle varie tappe gli chieda mai conto di come spenda i fondi, come usi le armi, come venga controllato, che fine abbia fatto l'opposizione interna e come intenda rappresentare in futuro le minoranze etniche, se mai in Ucraina ne esisteranno ancora e, anzi, lo invitano ad entrare in Europa al più presto quando altri paesi più meritevoli dell'Ucraina, attendono invano da decenni.

Domande addomesticate, mai stringenti (vero Vespa?) o tantomeno imbarazzanti: con Zelensky non si usa. Lui, presentandosi come campione della libertà, con la guerra ha comunque fatto l'affare della vita e se intanto gli ucraini (e i russi, ma quelli non contano nulla) muoiono a centinaia… chissenefrega.

So di essere critico su di lui e forse non condiviso, ma mi piacerebbe chiedere ai lettori del Blog se la mia posizione – nonostante una pressione quotidiana costante e martellante di tutti i media a favore di Kiev – sia così isolata o è invece più diffusa. Perché, a dispetto dei media tutti schierati con Kiev, incontro in giro tanta diffidenza, tanti timori e riserve sulla posizione italiana ed europea nei confronti di Kiev. Possibile che gli scettici capitino tutti a me?

Catena di comando

Nove giorni e nessuna risposta alla domanda con la D maiuscola: chi, la sera di sabato 25 febbraio, ha deciso che, ad uscire in mare per controllare quel barcone segnalato da un aereo di Frontex nel mare Ionio, dovessero essere le motovedetta della Finanza e non i mezzi specializzati della Guardia costiera?

Chi ha deciso che, per quella che era in tutta evidenza una imbarcazione che trasportava migranti, doveva essere avviata una operazione di polizia e non di soccorso?

Prima alla Camera e poi al Senato, strappando una standing ovation che stride (quantomeno) con la gravità della vicenda, Matteo Piantedosi non chiarisce assolutamente nulla sulla catena di comando che, nelle sei ore antecedenti al naufragio di Cutro, avrebbe potuto cambiare le sorti di quel barcone lasciato solo nel mare in tempesta con il suo carico di 180 vite, più di metà delle quali andate perdute.

Si autoassolve il ministro dell’Interno, non spiega, partecipa allo scaricabarile di Stato che fa risalire alla segnalazione di Frontex tutte le scelte fatte nelle ore successive. E, soprattutto dà risposte che, oltre ad ignorare prassi consolidate nel soccorso in mare, sono palesemente false.

Una su tutte: “L’attivazione di un soccorso – afferma Piantedosi - non può prescindere da una segnalazione di una situazione di emergenza. Solo ed esclusivamente se c'è tale segnalazione, si attiva il dispositivo Sar. Laddove, invece, non venga segnalato un distress, l'evento operativo è gestito come un intervento di polizia. È esattamente quanto avvenuto nel caso in questione".

Ignora evidentemente il ministro dell’Interno non solo le regole del Piano Sar, riscritto dalla ex ministra dei Trasporti Paola De Micheli nel 2021 e attualmente vigenti, ma ignora soprattutto quella che da anni è una delle linee guida indiscusse della Guardia costiera, sancita peraltro da innumerevoli sentenze della magistratura: e cioè che tutte le imbarcazioni che trasportano migranti “devono essere considerate subito in distress, in ragione del fatto che sono sovraccariche, inadeguate a percorrere la traversata, prive di strumentazione e del personale competente”.

Fonte: Alessandra Ziniti per Repubblica.it

 

C’E’ DEL MARCIO (PURTROPPO) ANCHE IN EUROPA

Pochi anno saputo (la censura sulla notizia è stata quasi totale) che nei giorni scorsi il New York Times ha denunciato la Commissione Europea per non aver reso pubblico lo scambio di messaggi tra la presidente Ursula von der Leyen, e il CEO di Pfizer Albert Bourla, relativi al contratto che ha portato all'acquisto del vaccino Covid da parte dell’Europa.

Il quotidiano (di solito citatissimo ogni volta che parla male di Trump e dei repubblicani, sempre ripreso in TV e sui giornali italiani) sostiene che la Commissione aveva l'obbligo di rendere pubblici i messaggi, in nome della trasparenza, visto che hanno portato ad un contratto per miliardi (non milioni!) di euro.

Le accuse alla Von der Leyen per il suo rapporto privilegiato con Pfizer (il cui vaccino è costato all’ Europa 10 VOLTE di più rispetto ad AstraZeneca) risalgono ad aprile del 2021, quando il New York Times, sulla scorta di un'inchiesta di neztpolitik.org, rivelò che i due avevano trattato direttamente tra loro tramite “chiamate e sms” una fornitura di 1,8 miliardi di dosi di vaccino anti Covid. Da qui l’intervento della mediatrice europea,

Emily O’Reilly (la “mediatrice europea” è la garante sulla trasparenza delle operazioni della Commissione Europea), che invano ha chiesto di avere accesso alle conversazioni confidenziali. La Commissione tramite la ceca Vera Jourovà – commissaria alla trasparenza - aveva spiegato che i messaggi potevano essere stati cancellati, a causa della loro "natura effimera". (bel modo di fare inchieste…)

Nella vicenda si è ora inserito anche il Parlamento europeo con molti eurodeputati che hanno chiesto alla Von der Leyen e a Bourla di comparire in audizione, ma finora nessuno dei due ha accettato di farlo.

Lo scorso ottobre, la Procura europea aveva annunciato di avere aperto un'inchiesta sull'acquisto dei vaccini anti Covid dopo che una relazione della Corte dei conti dell'Ue aveva sollevato non poche perplessità sulla gestione della trattativa tra Bruxelles e Pfizer.

La presidente UE avrebbe infatti trattato personalmente con la casa farmaceutica senza neppure coinvolgere il gruppo negoziale in cui sono rappresentati gli Stati, rifiutandosi inoltre di rispondere alle richieste di chiarimento della Corte.

E’ inammissibile che una politica “tratti in proprio” questioni di questo tipo, soprattutto quando è tuttora senza risposta l’altra indagine sul coinvolgimento di Heiko von der Leyen (il marito della presidente!) in un progetto di ricerca sui vaccini a mRna, la tecnologia usata dalla tedesca BioNTech e da Pfizer per il loro farmaco contro il Covid.

Il progetto è finanziato anche dall'Italia con 320 milioni di euro provenienti dal Pnrr (cioè lo paghiamo tutti) e prevede la partecipazione della società biotech statunitense Orgenesis, di cui Heiko von der Leyen era direttore scientifico. Dopo le polemiche, il marito della leader Ue si è dimesso dall'incarico all'interno del progetto, ma resta aperta la questione di un pagamento esorbitante a Pfizer per i vaccini se poi vengono pagate dalla UE anche le ricerche scientifiche.

Ma queste non vi sembrano notizie importanti e degne di dibattito? Eppure il “Corriere della Sera” non mi risulta abbia pubblicato una riga, così come molti altri quotidiani italiani, a parte “La Verità” che dei vaccini ne ha fatto una campagna quotidiana. Ursula è santa per definizione, ma mi sembra che invece ci sia davvero del possibile marcio a Bruxelles a livello anche di Commissione (ovvero di governo) e dovremmo cominciare tutti a farci delle domande su forniture, vaccini, armi, gestione delle risorse che fanno impallidire perfino il “Qatargate”. "

La vergogna delle mine antiuomo italiane

La recente polemica innescata dalla Russia riguardo la questione delle mine antiuomo italiane ci porta letteralmente in un cammino minato. Se è vero che le mine antiuomo (in particolare) non vengono più prodotte in Italia (non è detto che noi italiani siamo totalmente fuori perché le mine della Valsella erano e sono ancora prodotte in Iran per esempio), è pur vero che le mine se correttamente conservate possono essere utilizzate anche a distanza di anni dalla loro produzione. A parte il caso dell'Irak menzionato a seguire, le mine sono state vendute un po' ovunque, dal Medio Oriente alla Cina e a quasi tutte le nazioni più o meno impegnate in conflitti sottotraccia, quelli che non finiscono mai ma che seminano morte e distruzione continua anche in assenza di combattimenti. 

“Migliaia di mine anticarro e antiuomo di fabbricazione italiana sono state scoperte dai corpi del genio delle Forze popolari di mobilitazione (PMU) irachene nei pressi di Bassora. Durante la guerra tra l’Iran e l’Irak queste mine erano utilizzate lungo il confine”.

Così l’agenzia irachena al Sura ha diffuso una notizia che ci riguarda. Corredandola di fotografie in cui spiega che le migliaia di mine fatte riaffiorare dalla sabbia del deserto dalle milizie filo-sciite sono mine anticarro Valmara Vs 2.2 e mine antiuomo Valmara 69, i famigerati prodotti di punta dell’export italiano della Valsella tra gli anni Ottanta e l’inizio degli anni Novanta in questo campo. Sono passati ormai più di trent’anni dalla sanguinosissima guerra tra Iran e Iran (1980-1988); l’Iraq è stato sfigurato da una lunga catena di altri conflitti che perdurano tuttora, come sappiamo bene. 

E nel frattempo in Italia la Valsella quelle mine non le produce più: smise di farlo già prima della messa al bando, giunta vent’anni fa con il Trattato di Ottawa. E questo avvenne grazie al coraggio e alla determinazione di Franca Faita e delle altre colleghe operaie che a Castenedolo (Bs) decisero di dire basta a un lavoro macchiato di sangue e lottarono per la riconversione di queste produzioni pur redditizie anche per loro. Eppure nonostante tutto questo le mine antiuomo italiane sono ancora disseminate in vaste aree del mondo e pronte a uccidere.

Va aggiunto che non è un caso che dal Golfo Persico la notizia venga fuori proprio ora e che a diffonderla sia una milizia sciita. Le armi della Valsella erano infatti state vendute negli anni Ottanta all’Irak di Saddam Hussein in funzione anti-iraniana. E la bonifica di quel confine rimasto di fatto impraticabile dai tempi della grande guerra degli anni Ottanta è anche un segnale politico preciso in un Irak dove realtà come le Forze popolari di mobilitazione vogliono far pesare sempre di più l’asse con Teheran a scapito dei sunniti, i grandi sconfitti. Dunque anche le mine italiane diventano oggi un facile simbolo nella lotta di potere in corso a Baghdad.

Ma al di là di queste letture interne irachene resta il dato di fatto che le mine italiane tuttora continuano a essere disseminate e anche ad uccidere. A ricordarlo è ogni anno il Landmine Monitor 2017, il rapporto compilato a ogni fine anno per fare il punto sull’obiettivo di un mondo senza mine-antiuomo non solo prodotte ma anche in funzione, che la comunità internazionale – sulla spinta del Trattato di Ottawa firmato nel 1997 – si è dato per il 2025. Obiettivo che – nonostante investimenti significativi nelle bonifiche in alcuni contesti – in altre aree del mondo resta lontanissimo. 

Sono tuttora 61 i Paesi dove si ritiene che vi siano ancora mine antiuomo. E nel 2016 – l’ultimo anno sul quale si hanno dati – le vittime di queste mine sono addirittura aumentate: 8605 persone nel mondo sono rimaste vittima dell’esplosione di uno di questi ordigni e ben 2089 sono morte. Si tratta di un dato che non si vedeva dal 1999 – scrivono gli esperti. Va poi aggiunto che nonostante l’impegno preso dalla comunità internazionale a non utilizzare più questi ordigni, due Paesi non firmatari del Trattato di Ottawa – il Myanmar e la Siria – hanno piazzato nuove mine antiuomo in propri territori di confine durante il 2017.

Tutto questo ci ricorda quanto abbiano effetti nefasti a lungo termine gli affari generati dalla vendita delle armi. E quanto questo tema resti di attualità in una fase in cui anche il made in Italy ha pesantemente partecipato alla corsa agli armamenti che le guerre del Medio Oriente hanno innescato. Come più volte ricordato anche su questo sito è dalla Sardegna che sono partite tante delle bombe che l’aviazione dell’Arabia Saudita continua a sganciare sullo Yemen, devastato da ormai cinque anni da una guerra che nessuno vuole vedere. Ordigni che anche quando non utilizzati restano negli arsenali, pronti ad essere riciclati per le guerre e per le vittime di domani.

Secondo il Landmine Monitor 2020 sono stati registrati circa 5,554 incidenti da mine/ERW, più della metà dei quali provocati da mine improvvisate (2,949). I civili sono ancora la maggioranza delle persone coinvolte negli incidenti rappresentando l’80% del totale, e di questi circa la metà coinvolge bambini (43%).

La situazione relativa al 2020 mostra che 60 Stati e diverse altre aree sono contaminati da mine antipersona inclusi 33 Stati firmatari del Trattato per la messa al bando delle mine, 22 Stati non firmatari e cinque altre aree. Nel 2019 almeno 156 km² di terreno sono stati dichiarati liberi da mine e più di 123.000 mine antipersona sono state bonificate e distrutte. Nel 2019-2020 molti Stati hanno indicato miglioramenti all’accessibilità, nella qualità o nella quantità dei servizi per le vittime. Tuttavia, nel 2020 la pandemia ha aggravato il problema della scarsità di risorse per le attività di assistenza alle vittime in molti Paesi.

In Italia la storia della Valsella Meccanotecnica sintetizza la produzione di mine italiane dagli Settanta fino alla fine degli Novanta. Tra il 1970 e il 1983 l’azienda ha goduto di un periodo strepitoso da un punto di vista affaristico. Soltanto nel 1983 gli affari con l’Iraq vanno talmente a gonfie vele da far balzare il fatturato oltre la soglia dei 100 miliardi di lire. Successivamente con l’acquisizione da parte della Borletti, la Valsella Meccanotecnica entra nell’orbita del Gruppo Fiat. Dal 1993 in poi a seguito della mobilitazione dell’opinione pubblica e della messa al bando delle mine antiuomo, il tema della riconversione aziendale emerge con decisione. Nel settembre 1997 la Valsella Meccanotecnica viene messa in liquidazione.

Oggi nessuna azienda italiana produce più mine o bombe a grappolo. Nonostante questo enorme passo avanti, il Parlamento italiano dovrebbe sbloccare il ddl C 1813, “Misure per contrastare il finanziamento delle imprese produttrici di mine antipersona, di munizioni a grappolo”. Per la Onlus “Campagna Italiana Contro Le Mine”, appare abbastanza singolare che una proposta di legge arrivata alla firma del Presidente della Repubblica, il cui vulnus è stato sanato nel passaggio al Senato, oggi soffra così tanto a proseguire nel suo iter. La legge sarebbe un fiore all’occhiello della diplomazia italiana impegnata nel disarmo, una buona pratica da condividere e promuovere in Europa.

Rispetto alla legge, un argomento su cui si è dibattuto in questi anni – anche a livello internazionale – e che ogni tanto riemerge è che, qualche volta, le autorità di vigilanza, chiamate in causa dalla legge a stilare le liste delle aziende o realtà da escludere dal supporto finanziario, hanno sempre sollevato dubbi di competenza o capacità di individuare fonti adeguate per stilare le liste. Qualche volta adducendo problemi specifici di riservatezza che circondano il settore armiero.

Secondo il rapporto Worldwide Investments in Cluster Munitions, esiste una responsabilità condivisa del 2018 che mostra 88 istituti finanziari di tutto il mondo i quali hanno investito 9 miliardi di dollari Usa in 7 società coinvolte nella produzione di munizioni a grappolo bandite dalla Convenzione di Oslo sottoscritta e ratificata dal nostro Paese. Parliamo della Avibras (Brasile), Bharat Dynamics Limited (India), China Aerospace Science and Industry (Cina), Hanwha (Corea del Sud), LigNex1 (Corea del Sud), Norinco (Cina), Poongsan (Corea del Sud). In totale 7 aziende di 4 paesi coinvolti nella produzione di munizioni a grappolo con cui si sono trovati collegamenti finanziari.

E' arrivato Natale

Facendo gli auguri ai lettori del mio blog avrei voluto scrivere parole un po' diverse dal solito. Non tanto per buonismo pre-natalizio quanto perché forse bisogna ammettere che il mondo cambia poco chiunque governi, e che troppo spesso sembrano sempre vincere i “cattivi”.

Tanto per parlarne, per molti anni ho tenuto una rubrica settimanale su un giornalino di provincia per il quale scrivevo pezzi interessanti e seguiti e stavo rileggendo il mio pezzo del Natale 1992, scritto esattamente 30 anni fa. Se lo avessi riprodotto interamente qui oggi quasi nessuno avrebbe scoperto che era “datato” perché descriveva una situazione di disordine mondiale e di sostanziale ingiustizia planetaria esattamente allora come oggi.

Sembra proprio che nessuno voglia imparare dalle esperienze passate, che pochissimi vogliano seriamente mettersi d’impegno per costruire e non solo distruggere.

Ma forse non è vero: trent’anni sono tanti per ciascuno di noi, ma un nulla rispetto alla storia eppure – se non volete arrendervi alle banalità - vi consiglio di leggere il bel libro “Factfulness” di Hans Rosling (sottotitolo: “Dieci ragioni per cui non capiamo il mondo e perché le cose vanno molto meglio di come pensiamo”) edito da Rizzoli. 

Scoprireste che, a dispetto di mille crisi, il mondo in questi 30 anni è andato decisamente avanti nonostante tutte le auto-distruzioni umane e i grandi numeri ci dicono che il livello di vita è generalmente migliorato anche nei paesi “poveri” nonostante epidemie e guerre.

Forse un bilancio vero non andrebbe però fatto solo su statistiche mondiali più o meno tranquillizzanti per quanto riguarda salute, istruzione, clima o vita media anche se, al di là dei catastrofismi, è per fortuna la verità. Quello che non entra nella statistica - e invece dovrebbe “pesare” soprattutto in questi giorni natalizi - è piuttosto il bilancio di ogni singola vita, quello dei rapporti umani che ciascuno di noi ha e vive con il prossimo.

Qui non c’entrano proprio le statistiche visto che ciascuno è arbitro di sé stesso e le conclusioni deve trarle da sé con bilanci che forse vengono più facili proprio a fine d’anno, ma che dovrebbero coinvolgerci anche (o soprattutto) per quell’“incidente” che siamo abituati a festeggiare – malamente, nel senso che troppe volte ne tradiamo il senso - una settimana prima di Capodanno, ovvero quello che chiamiamo Natale.

Non so come effettivamente siano andate le cose in quel di Betlemme ai tempi del fu Cesare Augusto, so che da lì è nato (o continuato) un grande discorso che coinvolge tutta l’umanità, anche se quasi sempre facciamo finta di non pensarci, occupati da tutt’altro.

Solo qualche volta, magari nei momenti tristi o in quelli – come a fine d’anno - in cui più facilmente si fanno bilanci, ecco che ci accorgiamo che il discorso dentro di noi è sempre incompiuto, ma che comunque da soli non ce la facciamo perché il “prossimo” - quello che sta appena là fuori - comunque ci interroga, ci impone di non pensare solo a noi stessi se siamo minimamente logici con principi non tanto religiosi quanto intimi, istintivi nella vita umana.

Per chi ci crede (io “ci spero”) la testimonianza che è nata in quella stalla è particolarmente aperta, spalancata verso “il prossimo tuo” tanto da costringerci a pensare non sono alle statistiche del mondo ma piuttosto a quel nostro bilancio intimo, unico, personale.

Possiamo non farlo, girarci intorno, far finta di dimenticarlo, ma prima o poi siamo comunque costretti a farlo perché in fondo - a quegli strani atomi che compongono la coscienza del nostro corpo e danno linfa al nostro spirito - questo bilancio diventa una specie di necessità e sale dal di dentro come un tappo di sughero che risale verso la superficie dell’acqua e che nessuno può fermare: prima o poi riemerge in piena luce.

Se ci fermiamo a pensare un po’ su questi nodi ecco che allora la luce delle luminarie di questi giorni conta davvero poco mentre vale ben di più quella luce che ciascuno di noi può accendere dentro di sé.

Alla fine per festeggiare il Natale “vero” – al di là dei “seasonal greetings”, formula ipocrita di auto-assoluzione per chi non ha più nemmeno il coraggio di dirsi cristiano - dovremmo soprattutto pensare seriamente a questi aspetti, senza nasconderci dietro a regali più o meno riciclati, obbligati o banali solo perché “si usa” scambiarseli.

Riflettendo scopriremo che ci serve assolutamente una luce, ma soprattutto la “nostra” luce, quella che riceviamo quando arriviamo in questo mondo ma che poi un giorno dovremo restituire. Ed è comunque bello, alla fine, distribuirla intorno a noi.

Potremo farlo in mille modi e in tutta libertà, magari cominciando a rifletterci un po’ e poi visitando chi è solo, perdonando un torto, aiutando un poco di più chi ha bisogno. 

Distribuire un po’ di quella luce è il regalo più bello che potremo fare ed è fantastico che possiamo costruirlo da noi prima di tutto proprio per noi stessi.

Anche questo è rinascere, ed è davvero Natale.

Love over sixty between false myths and reality of the body and heart

Heart pounding and shortness of breath. The hands that tremble, the passion that flares up. Common sense that turns into irrationality. The burning feeling that obliges one to do and say unspeakable things and apparently not in keeping with one's age. Emotions that become feelings and thoughts that detach from reality.

A recurring thought, which is a candidate to become an obsessive thought. These and many others are the symptoms of falling in love. And they are ageless. Among the urban legends about love, one unfortunately reigns supreme: youthful love can be passionate and irrational, it can overflow the banks of conscience, while adult and grizzled love absolutely not, it must wear the shoes of prudent love .

A common voice correlates the passion and elitist feeling of love to the chronological age of the protagonist of that couple bond; therefore, the ability to love after the "antas" is considered a risky, imprudent choice, bordering on recklessness and indecency.

This is a great falsehood, because the verb to love does not know age, skin color or gender. The average age has considerably lengthened, many diseases are treatable today, and aging is no longer combined with a worsening of psycho-physical health conditions.

The quality of life has improved globally, therefore, today's fifties and sixties correspond to yesterday's forties; and love and sex life belongs to the concept of quality of life.

To love, to get excited, to donate psychic parts of oneself and to get involved again, is an unequivocal sign of the fertility of existence.

Prudent love versus love and that's it

The word love doesn't go well with the term prudent, rational, weighted. Terms that clumsily and forcibly are associated with grizzled bonds. But does love age? A love without tachycardia and a good dose of enthusiasm, based on common sense and reasoning; a love that does not transform and that does not transform itself, that does not shift the barometer from reason to loss of control, is a sort of bad copy of the original feeling.

True love is not age related, but depends on many other elements that are sometimes present, other times not, regardless of age. There are prudent loves among young people and all-round loves among the over forties, and vice versa.

The homeopathic doses of feeling and the fear of letting go of love do not depend on the age of the protagonists of the couple bond, but on the defense mechanisms of the psyche, on how the partners were nourished in their respective childhood lands, and if they have really been nourished, by how much and how they are willing to invest in the couple's journey, and by that indispensable dose of healthy madness that belongs to those who really love. Love seduces and scares, so often, at all ages, short-term love affairs are preferred, with high emotional intensity, but with a low level of effort.

Youthful loves follow one another and represent the trials and errors of becoming an adult. Often fleeting, sometimes intense and destructive, other times they are ferry loves : they wear the clothes of Charon and help to pass through the land of adults. Grizzled loves are more aware loves.

Loves that have overcome the obligation to aesthetic perfectionism, able to let themselves be overwhelmed by the waves of emotion, without bumps and without too much slow motion.

Love and caution: alibi or reality?

The theory of caution at a certain age is quite frequent and sadly in use. Many protagonists of shipwrecked loves imagine their sentimental and sexual life as if it were a sort of flat calm. Thoughtful. Perhaps crowded in terms of the quantity of meetings to the detriment of the emotional quality because it is risky.

A sort of love multitasking that facilitates a multi-level relationship life, but prevents its depth. There is nothing more wrong. The sacred fire of love doesn't deal with the registry office, with the first wrinkles and graying hair, instead it characterizes courageous loves.

The bold. Those who still have so much to say and give themselves, ready to invest again and again, with a heart without fence walls, with a good dose of boldness and vitality, without reservations and without the most acrobatic strategies to balance emotional balances .

In love there are no budgets, accounts with the abacus or emotional compromises. There are no costs and benefits, who gives more and who less should reign supreme the ability and desire to love and be loved, in any season of life.

The emotions experienced at a certain age take on a more intense meaning, because they force us to come to terms with ourselves. As adults you shouldn't lie to yourself, you should already know what you no longer want from life and, why not, what you still want. Loving at all ages is the most powerful of the elixirs of life , because pleasure always remains a sentinel of life.

Love over sixty between false myths and reality of the body and heart

Grizzled loves create conflicting emotions: some shun them, some praise them. There are those who challenge biology and want to become a parent. Who has been in the past, but he was too young to be aware of and fully enjoy the joys of parenthood and want to try again in hindsight.

They are not tired bonds, characterized by emotional and sexual asthenia; they are bonds nourished and warmed by the awareness and playful relationship with sexuality and sexual health. They are certainly not lukewarm and bored loves, they are instead highly emotional bonds, with butterflies in the stomach of a teenager and a grateful gaze towards the life of an adult.

Many sixty-year-olds today have already crashed against the rocks of previous shipwrecked marriages, but despite the wounds of the heart they hope to be able to love once again, with the secret hope that this time is the right time.

Experienced couples, bored couples?

Not at all. They are couples who have substituted fear for the fullness of life, lack of knowledge of themselves and their partner for a more in-depth reading of the dynamics that characterize the couple's relationship; all warmed up by an empathetic and authentic dialogue.

This emotional climate nourished by a good relationship with oneself, with one's body and with one's world of impulses, makes the over fifty excellent lovers, who experience sexuality in a playful and conscious way, without the anxiety of performance and possible conception.

Loving extends life

Love with its hormonal and emotional bath extends life. Many studies show that over 65s in love live longer and in better health than singles, divorced and widowed people.

Salt and pepper hair does not correlate with the early retirement of love life and with life under the sheets, but with the courage to start over. Many men and many women are no longer satisfied with the half measures of living love: they close exhausted relationships, cut the dry leaves, and start over.

With enthusiasm, with love, with the heartbeat of falling in love, sometimes with a wedding ring on your finger. The desire to love and to love well survives the wear and tear of time that dusts everything and becomes a true cornerstone of many existences.

A love advanced in years has the power to make peace with love, takes on a repairing meaning, and is the healthy bearer of a great transformative force capable of healing the previous wounds of the heart.

Age does not protect against the fear of loving and from love, but love, on the other hand, protects against advancing age.

Optical illusion

What does this optical illusion teach us about our brain. The black spot that seems to actually get bigger - guess what? - is still, but deceives our eye pupils.

If looking at the image above you have the impression that the black spot in the center is enlarging to the point of sucking you in, do not worry: the image is actually fixed and the hole in its center is not increasing in size, even if ours brain would like us to believe otherwise. In addition to being a curiosity to share with friends, optical illusions like this offer research groups important insights to better understand how our brain works and how we see the world, or at least think we see it.

The expanding black spot, for example, was the subject of recent research recently published in the scientific journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience . The illusion was shown to 50 men and women without sight problems, while the research group detected with a particular instrument the movements of the eyes and in particular of the pupil, the small hole that allows the passage of light inside the eyeball.

The analysis revealed that the people who see the effect of the apparently expanding black spot more than others are also those whose pupils expand the most when they look at the image. The study also found that about 14 percent of the people involved saw the illustration for what it was: a static image with a dark spot in the center that was always the same size.

Your pupils are constantly dilating and narrowing, yours are doing as you read this article, to adapt your vision to the amount of light around us. In low light conditions, the pupils dilate to try to let in as much light as possible, while they shrink when there is a lot of light, for example when we are outside on a sunny day.

In the case of the optical illusion, the spot in the center is not getting darker nor are other lighting conditions changing, but the perception that it is expanding is due to how our brain sees things and causes the pupils to respond in unexpected ways. , writes the research team in the study. As one of the authors explained to the New York Times : “There is no reason why the pupil should change in this situation, because nothing is changing. But something has clearly changed in our minds. "

The mechanisms that determine this reaction, as well as those to other optical illusions, are not completely clear, but the research nevertheless exposes some hypotheses. The vision of the image has that effect because the way it is made, with a gradient that becomes darker and darker, induces a sensation similar to the one you get when you go from a bright place to a darker one, like a gallery. without lighting. The impression is therefore that of a darkness that progressively envelops us, and hence the feeling that the black spot is widening.

Our brain works by processing signals and detecting differences, then referring to previous experiences with similar characteristics. Observing the image recalls the sensation you get when you enter a dimly lit room, and from this comes the effect of seeing the image enlarge as if you were moving into that new environment.

Human beings, like all other animals, do not have systems in their organisms for measuring external stimuli and what is happening around them with great precision. Our eyes, for example, do not measure light as a camera would do by returning a precise data: they collect much more vague information, which is then transmitted to the brain where it is processed on the basis of other data collected by the other senses and experiences. . The result in this case is what we call vision and which has many more subjective elements than we imagine.

It is this subjectivity that causes the different perception of the “expanding black spot” effect of the image, and causes some people to see no expansion or motion effect. This is also the reason why some people are more prone to the effect when it is played with a background other than white. For example, in their study, the research team reported that the effect is most frequently seen when the background has magenta as the color.

In a certain sense, the stimuli our brain almost always responds to by trying to guess, trying to get as close as possible to the best solution. This system works in most cases and allows us to have, for example, the right coordination to drive or even more simply to remain standing without losing balance, but in some circumstances some contradictory stimuli - such as those deriving from an optical illusion - they can break the mechanism or make it work less efficiently.

The research team working on the image of the expanding black spot also speculated that the brain tries to predict the future when it receives the information about the illustration. The visual stimulus takes a few fractions of a second before reaching the brain, which will then have to process it and figure out what to do with that information. At the end of this process, however, other things have already happened around, so there is a minimum delay between reality and what we can perceive.

The hypothesis is that our mind tries to compensate for this delay, trying to predict what may happen in the next moments, then finding confirmations or contradictions when the new data arrives. This ability can be essential when dangers arise, for example, which require you to respond very quickly to avoid the worst. And you never know what you might encounter in the dark in a tunnel.

It's easy to say hole

A concept familiar to all becomes rather elusive when it needs to be defined: a straw, for example, how many holes does it have.

Asking a friend if the straw he's drinking from has a hole or two can be a great way to ruin his drink. Finding an answer that everyone agrees is not easy, and it can further complicate the debate. Does the glass that contains the Spritz technically have a hole? And how many holes do the taralli to accompany it have? And olives, do they have the same problem as straws? Ultimately, what is a hole really?

Our general knowledge of holes is rather incomplete and their definition has long kept philosophers, linguists and mathematicians busy. The word "hole" is used to mean quite different things, which usually have an opening of some kind in common: the keyhole, for example. In the philosophical field, on the other hand, there are some more complications, which derive from the difficulty in defining holes from the point of view of their existence.

Let's take one of the "taralli" from the aperitif: if we eat it entirely in one bite, have we also eaten its hole? The most logical answer seems to be yes, but what if we ate it gradually instead? In that case we would have broken the "tarallo", which would have lost its hole, and we would not have eaten it. This tells us that holes derive their existence and the very possibility of existing from their surroundings.

In a sense, and playing a little with words, holes can be called parasites: their existence depends entirely on the existence of something else. There cannot be a hole if there is not something enclosing it.

In everyday practice, things are simpler and everyone knows what a hole is when they hear about it. Engineers, who are quite practical types, distinguish between "blind hole" and "through hole": the former identifies an opening that only partially penetrates an object, while the latter a hole that passes completely through it. For these distinctions they usually prefer the term " hole ", basically a synonym for hole, but used above all to define something with regular margins and width: a hole in the wall made with a drill, for example.

Blind holes
A glass jar has a blind hole: it is the opening through which biscuits can be inserted and removed. Imagine being able to reshape it , as if it were made of plasticine, and change its shape - without removing material, adding or combining it - until it assumes that of a glass. We changed some of the characteristics of the object, but the blind hole remained: technically the glass has a hole, thanks to which we can fill it, empty it and drink.

Now let's imagine being able to shape the glass, widening it and reducing its height, to obtain a bowl. We are less inclined to think that a bowl has a hole, but if it was true for the glass, we can apply this definition also in this case. The bowl can then be molded into a deep plate, which would still have a blind hole as we understand it, and finally into a flat plate, which would have lost its opening instead. 

In this hypothetical experiment, in the transition from jar to glass to bowl to deep plate and finally to flat plate we never subtracted or added material, nor broke something or joined anything together (for example the edges of the opening). The material has always remained the same and has simply been remodeled: the blind holes can be removed without the need to close the opening that originates them, nor to weld the edges or to add other material.

Holes and topology Through
holes, on the other hand, are more complicated. The hole in a tarallo ready to be baked cannot be eliminated by reshaping it in the way we changed the shape of the glass jar, if not by crushing and welding together the dough that makes up the tarallo, or by adding more.

We can consider a tarallo as a close relative of the donut, which in turn is geometrically definable as a " toroidal " (empty inside). To obtain one, simply take a circumference and make it make a revolution around an axis external to it.

Defining a toroidal hole, and ultimately any through hole, requires some mental gymnastics, and among the most gymnastic in this area are mathematicians. Their training ground is the "topology", the part of geometry that deals with the study of the properties of mathematical objects, which do not change when they are deformed (as long as they do not create tears, overlaps and glues, as we have seen with the examples above ). This seamless modeling in topology is called “homeomorphism”.

In topology, a sphere and a cube are homeomorphic (i.e. equivalent) objects, because one can be deformed into the other and vice versa, without having to add material, glue or overlap it. On the other hand, a torus and a sphere are not homeomorphic, precisely because the torus has a hole that cannot be eliminated in any way with a simple deformation (no, closing the hole by bringing the parts together would not be a simple deformation).

These conditions explain the saying, to be honest, widespread almost exclusively among those who deal with these things, according to which "topologists do not distinguish a cup from a donut". The two objects are in fact homeomorphic: a donut can be obtained starting from a cup, simply by deforming the original object without gluing, creating tears or overlaps. The two objects are homeomorphic because they both have only one through hole (the blind hole of the cup, as we have seen before, can be eliminated).

For topologists, blind holes are not particularly interesting, since they can be eliminated, while through holes attract great interest, because they have unique characteristics that affect the way we can use geometric shapes.

How many holes
Returning to the aperitif, how many holes does a straw have? The question went viral on the Internet a few years ago, following a BuzzFeed article on the subject, which received a lot of attention in the United States. At the time, most people had replied that there were two holes, colloquially referring to the two openings in the straw.

In reality, a straw and a bull have only one hole. To realize this, just imagine modeling a bull by lengthening its shape, until you get that of a straw. The same holds true in reverse, imagining to reduce the height of the straw more and more, until you get a torus that will have a hole in its center.

In topological terms , a straw can be described as the product between a circumference S 1 and an interval I , which in turn can be defined as [0, L] (hence L defines the length of the straw). On the geometric plane, the circumference isolates a space that we can consider as a hole, because the only way to fill it would be by adding material or by welding / gluing some of its parts together. I , on the other hand, has no hole, and consequently the straw has only one hole.

Starting from these basic elements, which we have simplified a little while trying not to pierce the main concepts, not only can shapes and their transformations be mathematically described, but other important information on the properties of objects can also be derived. Homology, for example, allows the algebraic objects to be traced back to sequences of groups, which encode the quantity and type of holes present in each object. Taralli included.