The female Mussolini, a century later

 

The first female Prime Minister, or a fascism resurgent, fittingly (though not treated as such) with only weeks left to the centenary of the march - or, in the Duce's case, train ticket purchaser - to Rome? I could not say, for the truth of events is said to inevitably be those of the beholder. But at the same time, other and often the very same voices cry out: Fascism! Here, now embodied in something, or someone generally thought to represent the new, the best, the salvation or rebirth of Western democracy - young, female, driven, aiming a lance at the pus-riddled boil . Such rhetoric is of course not reserved to those heralding the ever-threatened, ever-victorious (and until recently finished) march of democracy across the world, and the victories gained much necessarily, if this democracy is to involve regular and competitive elections, be put to the test every generation, if not every day. Every day, we are asked to evaluate and re-evaluate these sacred and undeniable truths, and whether Western man - and, now very much, woman - very much desireth to live under the constraints, or absence of such's, of this democracy and liberalism. 

The Duce himself, after experimenting adolescently with every drug of extremist, or let's say radical politics (radical, or radix, being - like fundamentalist - a matter of "back to the roots", thus making the flavour of the term more conservative than I'd say I previously found... but the taste of knowledge is not always pleasant). 

This new, thawing war

The Russian invasion of a now sovereign Ukraine, called "special" and undoubtedly military, has beyond the question of numerous ends showed within a continuing line or cycles of history, imposed upon us a confrontation between West and East, between Russia and the United States and its allies. That this is the main takeaway seems apparent, more important than the question of Ukraine; more than the events recently occurring near Bucha and Izium, whatever the legal terminology and consequences. 

And in this heralded new Cold War, now increasingly warm even to German homeowners, must not go beyond the tepid without 

This new Iran or ours

It was impossible to fathom, perhaps even to the Mullahs then entering their fourth decade of ever-continuing ascendancy over new generations' souls and - more importantly, I think - bodies, that the grim, blood-soaked and cinematographically slow and muted death of Neda Agha-Soltan would inject vital energy and a desire beyond the peril of death (perhaps to be branded as fanatical) into a movement clearly posed to overthrow the Islamic republic. 

Now, with an evermore popular uprising, simple as well as fatal in its intention, aimed at the moral laws of the continually existent Islamic republic, the same questions needs be posed with ever-growing 

This new Sweden of ours

 I commented the last election in this fair(ly) hyperborean non-republic in dubious and not-friendly-to-estimate-terms, with the capital solution that either the liberal parties would be squeezed out and join a bloc of left, or the ostensible left, in opposition to a right-far right complacency, or else the ostensible far right would link hands with their presumed (and very much courted) brethren to oust the Labour predominance still in the air - and now reaffirmed, in a strong kind, in this very precarious crisis-ridden election of ours. Now both these events have occurred, and a resurgent right... somewhat resurgent, and somewhat of the right, is returned into power, and only the limitations of a deeply divided, schizophrenic Liberal party group and the inevitable 

Come on, now they're rising up

 The revocation of Italian society and - emphasise superfluous - politics of Fascism, capital F imposed to make the Italian ending superfluous as well, has been a story of many twists and turns. Its constitution makes both the republic unassailable and the reconstituting of the (1943) dethroned and defrocked fascist party illegal (an event which thus occurred already before the provision was enacted; a rare case of pre-constitutional unconstitutionalism) 

A small service to Her Majesty

Among the scariest events are those who - like our own, never-to-be-experienced mortality - are those whose arrival are not only common, but inexorable. The counting down, from the inevitable (although delayed to such a point transcending immortality) or mother and namesake Elizabeth to that of the good consort, to