Journalists From Italy

"I believe in a society where every choice has consequences, and you accept responsibility for them. I reject a society where every desire becomes a right, every whim becomes a right, where I have no responsibilities, I have only rights. I reject it. It’s wrong."

"I believe that the state should incentivize the natural family based on marriage."

"When you are a woman you are often underestimated, but that can help you."

"No to the violence of Islam, yes to safer borders, no to mass immigration, yes to work for our people, no to major international finance."

"Yes to natural families, no to the LGBT lobby, yes to sexual identity, no to gender ideology, yes to the culture of life, no to the abyss of death."

"I am a woman, I am a mother, I am Italian, I am a Christian, and you can't take that away from me."

"If a jet violates airspace, it is shot down."

"Military aid was needed to help a nation under attack."

"The Ukrainian people are defending the values of freedom and democracy on which our civilization is based, and the very foundations of international law."

"Yes to the natural family. No to the LGBT lobby. Yes to sexual identity. No to gender ideology."

"When I am something, I declare it. I never hide. If I were fascist, I would say that I am fascist. Instead, I have never spoken of fascism because I am not fascist."

"Borders exist only if you defend them. Otherwise they do not exist."

"They want to call us parent 1, parent 2, gender LGBT, citizen X, with code numbers. But we are not code numbers… and we’ll defend our identity. I am Giorgia, I am a woman, I am a mother, I am Italian, I am Christian. You will not take that away from me!"

"In the art world I love René Magritte, for his dreamlike and surreal view of life and the world around us. I also really do like pre-Raphaelite artists such as Dante Gabriele Rossetti."

"(My favorite artist that uses dark humor is) the French humorist Claude Serre, with a fine graphic style and a very hard black humor can be found in his series of cartoons, like “Humour Noir & Hommes en Blanc”. Another good example that can be easily found is the book “Idées Noires”, by Franquin. Very different from his usual style, but still a little gem that is not very known to the public."

"I think it’s important that this job doesn’t lose the old handcrafted tradition, and that artists try not to rely only on a computer. The risk that can be taken is some sort of similarity among all different styles."

"I make my art on drawing paper, with Indian ink, watercolours and pastels. Nib and brush are my best friends."

"I remember a simple, poetic, but wonderful cartoon of the great Cheval: a turtle walking slowly carrying on its shell a slug with a happy face, with the antennas folded back by the wind. It can be considered a good example of how drawings can be simple but give a precise idea of the relativity of things."

"I don’t think it would be possible to consider an author the absolute best, because each one among the best artists in the World are to remember for their own particular skills. I think that two of them, at the moment, are Vladimir Kazanewsky and Angel Boligan."

"I love the art of Kambiz Derambakhsh, for his graphic synthesis and his original ideas."

"plagiarism must be stigmatized, but it’s increasingly becoming some sort of “Witch Hunt” nowadays."

"In these years there are a great number of debates about similar cartoons. Many ideas are similar, of course, because the themes are recurring: war, peace, pollution, society, etc. Condemning all artists isn’t right. Many of them have in fact similar ideas, at the same time even if in opposite sides of the World. It’s although important for all the authors to truly check if the idea is truly an original one… Even if checking the whole web, catalogues and magazines could be a hard task indeed."

"I read a lot of newspapers, magazines, books. The news are the fundamental resource to find ideas for the satirical cartoons but also for generic themes, for gag cartoons. Now all the media can give us a big number of inspirations."

"Faced with secularization and the difficulties Christians are confronted with today in transmitting their faith, we might be tempted to close up, trying to create perfect communities that withdraw from the world to preserve their small, or very small, flock, waiting for the storm to pass, looking with nostalgia to a past that no longer exists. On the other hand, another real risk today is that of hyperactivity: we might be tempted to invest all our energies in missionary strategies, thinking that proclamation, witness, and even conversion are not fruits of the Spirit we should give space to, but the result of our skills and protagonism. As a consequence – and, unfortunately, this happens more and more often in our digital age – the risk is that the evangelizer and his ruses rather than the Gospel and its Protagonist become the focus evangelization. Indeed, we need to leave space to the Protagonist: this is the real meaning of conversion as a metanoia, a change of mentality in light of the Gospel."

"The Successor of Peter does not have the problem of making known "which side he is on", because the Vicar of Christ, like his Lord, is always with the innocent who suffer as Jesus suffered on the cross. Every word he says, every attempt he makes, is aimed at saving human lives, at not yielding to the logic of evil, at fighting evil with good."

"People who suffered persecution, as well as their relatives and friends, know that while individuals can always change their hearts, and even the cruelest criminal may convert, structures based on evil principles can only either persevere in their wrongdoings or change their foundations and become something totally different."

"Let’s interpret [Argentinian American economist Alejandro A.] Chafuen’s remarks in its deepest and broader sense: social justice has little or nothing to do with interference by abusive powers, be it from a government, a rogue bureaucrat, an ideological faction, or an organized group. As [Father Luigi Taparelli d’Azeglio] made clear, Chafuen argued, the “justice” implied in “social justice” is not only what the law establishes. It does include the strict, and even technical, legal aspects of the law, but it is chiefly a matter of social concord. It is philosophical before being legal; it is spiritual in nature."

"As the movie [The Book of Eli] teaches, words may have the power to convince and move if they are rich and meaningful, or the power to disappoint and let people down if they are poor and prosaic. Media use words to challenge power or to promote alternative powers, becoming either servants of the power, or watchdogs of the power, or another power themselves. All depend on the words that media choose to use: either the words of truth or the words of the yes-men and the servants of the powers that be. ...Truth is not limited to its material vessels. Media have the power to mobilize for freedom of religion, belief, and creed of Tai Ji Men and all other persecuted groups because they are guardians of words, and words may contain truth. Media only need to start believing it, in Taiwan and all over the world."

"Is there a risk that reducing the debate on religious liberty to different forms of state recognition, including the Italian “,” may implicitly or inadvertently confer to the state the power to grant to religious groups the right to exist? In practice, states do have such power in different countries. The question is whether giving such an authority to the state is morally and philosophically correct. Perhaps, a state should just watch over the compliance of its citizens with the laws (assuming the laws are just), regardless of their religious persuasion, and leave religious groups alone to live and self-regulate their lives. The state is not the source of religious liberty, although it should acknowledge and protect it."

"The same truth we trust to finally prevail is the same truth [Freedom of Religion or Belief] is made of. Religions and spiritual ways are not all the same. What is the same is the honest spirit that animates all believers in different religions. What is really true of all religions, including religions that a believer in another religion may regard as false, is the afflatus for truth that motivates them. No matter how different beliefs and believers may be, no matter how many conflicts they may have between each other, that single element, a thirst and hunger for truth, makes them similar, make their devotees sisters and brothers, make them human and unique."

"Peace is the most desirable of all human conditions. It is a promise of Paradise. When all human worries and griefs will be over, we will participate in the fullness of being with no unrest, anxiety, or disturbance. For believers, this is our ultimate goal. It is also part of our nature. Peace is our fate because peace is our origin. Our human nature is made out of peace, and peace is what we are made for. All troubles are in fact caused by the disruption of our original condition, which is both our origin and our destiny. Peace is then quite a serious thing—something that may be cast in doubt today, if we consider how this precious word is too often misused. Peace is the opposite of war, in a broader sense, but it is not just the absence of war. ...Only deeply peaceful men and women can build a truly pacific society, one that would be able to resist and last."

"A disordered society—to use Kirk’s language—is both a mass and a mess of disordered souls. A band of disordered souls can hardly give birth to a justly regulated community. Order, both in the individual soul and in society, is the science of what comes first and what comes next in sight of decent behavior in all occasions. Order promotes a viable fellowship among human beings, a meaningful social existence, even a personal saintly life. It is a matter of priorities and hierarchy, of choices and waivers. Only an ordered community of ordered souls can feel the moral call to share one’s neighbor’s burdens."

"Education is not the idea of adding to persons something they do not possess. It is not writing anew on an empty blackboard. It is regaining the consciousness of something that was lost by recalling it to memory. Even better: it is finding what is valuable but is deeply buried within us, and bring it to the surface. ...Paideia is in sum an ideal of civilization, independent from how many material things one knows or is able to do. The civilization of the educated is in fact not a society of Einsteins who all know everything. It is a community of free people, whose freedom consists in the ability of reconnecting with their lost selves."

"…it is logically absurd to want to defend the environment by making humans suffer for this. In fact, the environment is for humans. As there can be no humans if the natural environment is inhospitable to life, an environment with no humans is not what all of us are interested in. …To function properly, [the society] needs to cherish the unalienable reality of its members. If someone considers a fellow human being or a group of humans or the whole of humanity as an enemy, a virus or a disease to be extirpated, societies become terrestrial hells. …From Tai Ji Men’s teachings one can in fact easily draw the idea that there can be no real care for the environment if there is no conscientious care for humans."

"When words, ideas and concepts lose universal meanings, and all becomes subjective perception, the chaos of conflicting interpretations, where the only absolute is that everything is relative, rips humanity apart—until Humpty-Dumpty-like masters find enough power to rise above others, imposing their vision to a world that will easily eat out of their hands, since it shares the same relativistic premises. ...No one can truly respect fellow human beings as brothers and sisters unless their inviolable dignity is fully recognized."

"Those who merely tolerate fail to acknowledge the full dignity and humanity of others, including enemies. Tolerance is in fact the concession of something that some who consider themselves superiors grant to some they consider inferiors, out of their graciousness or, worse, their haughtiness. When simply tolerated, people do not have an inherent right to exist because they are human beings: they enjoy existence only because someone else recognizes and permits it."

"French philosopher Paul Ricœur (1913–2005), in his book “De l’interprétation. Essai sur Sigmund Freud,” published in 1965, coined the expression “school of suspicion” to describe the collective cultural aim of such famous authors as Karl Marx (1818–1883), Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), and Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900). While proclaiming very different and even opposite philosophies, in Ricœur’s view the ultimate attempt of Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche was to teach that reality itself cannot be trusted and fundamentally lies, and that all existing authorities are false. As “masters” (or teachers) “of suspicion,” their credo was not the legitimate critique of existing authorities for their mistakes and misdeeds, but the basic delegitimization of the very concept of authority in itself."

"Yes, we all know that curiosity killed the cat, but indifference kills people, both physically and metaphorically, every single day, when it surrenders to despots, aggressors, and villains."

"Freedom is immaterial and universal, and for this reason untouchable and undeniable. While liberties can be denied and curtailed, freedom cannot. While suffering for the loss of their liberties for more than a quarter of a century, Tai Ji Men dizi could always enjoy their freedom. Freedom lives in their souls and spirits and is not affected by external harassment."

"While violence is always something negative, force is the capacity and power to make the objects of will possible. It has a fundamental moral side in the cognate term “fortitude,” which is one of the four cardinal virtues, or the hinge excellencies that are required for a virtuous life."

"…all human beings are guardians of other fellow humans. Being the keeper of somebody else does not in fact mean stripping others of their liberty and right to self-determination. It means to be always there, if and when needed—spiritually and, when possible, also materially."

"In 2010, Kilgour and Matas were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. In fact, who works more for peace than the one who debunks lies, defends the innocents, and saves lives? Of course, Kilgour and Matas were never awarded the prize, but this tells us more about the world we live in than about the two [civil] rights defenders."

"Shifu and Shimu are the spiritual parents of the dizi, and the Tai Ji Men community would not have existed with only one of them."

"…Senator Hatch taught us that an abusive tax system is particularly dangerous for freedom of religion or belief. Religious and spiritual movements are vulnerable, and ideologically motivated bureaucrats can do much damage to them. Tax reform and the defense of freedom of religion or belief are inseparable."

"Religious freedom does not mean that all religions are the same: it means that truth matters, and this is what religion and the sense of the sacred are all about. Every man and woman has the right to know the truth, but only full freedom allows them to progress in that direction."

"Good journalism questions the land of a thousand [forbidden topics] even at the risk of uncanny and disturbing findings. …Now, journalists are neither detectives nor spiritual preachers. It is enough when they do their job properly. But there is always also an investigative side to the journalistic profession, as well as an ethical one. Journalists are not detectives but through their job they can perform some measure of investigation; journalists are not detectives, but they can provide facts that detectives may somewhat use. Journalists are not even spiritual guides, but, properly doing their job, they can offer occasions and clues that can also help to somewhat nourish the soul of their readers. Let’s all wisely stay away from preaching journalism, but good journalists can at least avoid poisoning their own as well as their readers’ souls."

"Sin and evil will never be eradicated from humanity, but human beings have the moral duty to tame, contain, and battle sin as much as possible. Since politics is the art of governing people for that supreme goal that is good, let us hope that, on Taiwan’s Judicial Day, Taiwan’s politics would find a way to regain its independence from the wrongdoings of some of its branches and corrupt officials, and consider the solution of the Tai Ji Men case as a top priority. Only in this way will Taiwan become a full-blown democracy."

"We cannot speak of [civil] rights without centering our attention on [the moral compass of] conscience, one among a few distinctive features that make humans human‒and humane."

"[Civil] rights and democracy cannot be protected when independent media are routinely intimidated."

"Taxation imposed in an exaggerate, unjust, or unlawful way violates citizens’ fundamental rights to liberty and private property, and amounts to persecution, which is another name for violence."