eyes on the U.S.
Freedom, Faith And The Italian Roots Of Rick Santorum
La Stampa's election correspondent catches up with the Italian-American senator from Pennsylvania, the breakthrough Republican candidate, whose standard stump speech includes an immigrant's tale of the American dream.
Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum with his wife and one of their seven children (Gage Skidmore)
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Paolo Mastrolilli
Rick Santorum is clearly proud of his Italian roots. And the story of his grandfather's arrival in America is with him all along the campaign trail. "My family instilled in me the values on which I base my life and my political career," he told La Stampa earlier this week.
Now, 24 hours after his come-from-behind second-place finish in the Iowa caucuses, it's time to try to better understand the American political world's man of the hour. We caught up with Santorum at a "Rock The Vote" rally for young people in Des Moines on the day of his impressive caucus showing. The candidate was joined by his wife Karen and six of their seven children. The only child missing was Bella, the youngest at three-and-a-half, who is afflicted by Trisomy 18, a condition similar to Down syndrome. It's an illness that doctors say usually has a life expectancy of around one year, but Bella is still here, and her parents fight every day to see her grow up.
The Santorums are practicing Catholics, and this is the way they look at life. They already lost a son, Gabriel, born prematurely, who died just two hours after his birth. The parents asked the doctors' permission to bring the tiny corpse home and introduce the baby to their other children as their little brother who'd turned into an angel. The Santorums also wanted to sleep with him at least one night. Odd and macabre, say his political adversaries. Admirable and moving, say his friends.
When he takes the microphone on the youth rally stage at a local high school, Santorum begins right away to tell his family's story: "My grandfather didn't like fascism. When Mussolini arrived in power, he decided he would build his future in a country that believed in his potential. And so he came to America."
At the time, his grandfather, Pietro, already had a son, Aldo, the future father of the Pennsylvania Senator. But Pietro had decided it was best to leave the family behind in Riva del Garda, in northern Italy, while he got settled in the United States. There he found a job in a mine. When Aldo was seven years old, he and the rest of the family moved to America.
"Pietro ended up continuing to work in those mines until he was 72 years old, digging coal," Santorum told the crowd. "I'll never forget the first time I saw someone who had died. It was my grandfather. And I knelt next to his coffin, and all I could do at eye level was look at his hands. They were enormous hands. And all I could think was, "Those hands dug freedom for me.""
Recalling Aldo Santorum's pasta sauce
Indeed, Santorum's father, Aldo, who died last January, went on to complete high school and joined the military in 1942, repairing airplanes in the Pacific during the Second World War. When he returned from duty, thanks to the G.I. Bill, he went to college, graduating in psychology.
"Dad was always the cook of the family," said Santorum. "On Sundays we would always have pasta and sauce. When I was a kid, I didn't like his sauce -- it was too heavy -- but now I find myself making the same thing for my kids."
It's a blue-collar story, and Santorum gets strong applause as he leaves the stage, which is when La Stampa manages to get close to the surging candidate. "La Stampa? I know your newspaper. I'm proud of my Italian roots. I always tell the story of my grandfather because he is a source of great inspiration for me. The core values in which I believe, on which I base my existence and my politics, come from that."
Do those values include the right to life? "Of course, the value and dignity of every every life. It is what motivates me more than anything else to get up each morning to do battle," he says.
Right now Italy and all of Europe are facing a serious crisis. How do we overcome it? Santorum doesn't hesitate: "You must go back to the lesson of my grandfather, who worked hard, with no excuses and no complaints."
And for America? "Same response, same lesson," says the candidate. "Follow the example of those who built this country, with their own drive and work ethic."
Read the original story in Italian
Photo - Gage Skidmore
La Stampa ("The Press") is a top Italian daily founded in 1867 under the name Gazzetta Piemontese. Based in Turin, La Stampa is owned by the Fiat Group and distributed in many other European countries.
iran regime
How A Drone Strike Inside Iran Exposes The Regime's Vulnerability — On All Fronts
It is still not clear what was the exact target of an attack by three armed drones Saturday night on an arms factory in central Iran. But it comes as Tehran authorities appear increasingly vulnerable to both its foreign and domestic enemies, with more attacks increasingly likely.
One of the Saturday drone attacks arms factory in Isfahan, central Iran
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PARIS — It's the kind of incident that momentarily reveals the shadow wars that are part of the Middle East. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack by three armed drones Saturday night on an arms factory complex north of Isfahan in central Iran.
But the explosion was so strong that it set off a small earthquake. Iranian authorities have played down the damage, as we might expect, and claim to have shot down the drones.
Nevertheless, three armed drones reaching the center of Iran, buzzing right up to weapons factories, is anything but ordinary in light of recent events. Iran is at the crossroads of several crises: from the war in Ukraine where it's been supplying drones to Russia to its nuclear development arriving at the moment of truth; from regional wars of influence to the anti-government uprising of Iranian youth.
That leaves us spoiled for choice when it comes to possible interpretations of this act of war against Iran, which likely is a precursor to plenty of others to follow.
Iranian authorities, in their comments, blame the United States and Israel for the aggression. These are the two usual suspects for Tehran, and it is not surprising that they are at the top of the list.
The U.S. press reports that Israel was responsible for this attack, the first against Iran since Benjamin Netanyahu's return to office with a far-right coalition. According to the The New York Times, it was the Mossad, Israel's secret service, that carried out the operation.
Nevertheless, a key question remains: what exactly was the target? Was it related to arms supplies to Russia? Or the Iranian nuclear program? Both scenarios are possible.
Did the drone strike nuclear weapons' operations?
The West has condemned the supply of Iranian drones to Russia, which is used to target Ukrainian infrastructure. At the end of December, The New York Timesreported that the Biden administration was considering limiting Iran's ability to assist the Russian war effort.
The Iranian nuclear program is another explosive possibility.
But Israel, sensitive to its relations with Russia, has no reason to take such risks for a conflict in which the Jewish state has refused to get involved.
The Iranian nuclear program is the other explosive possibility. European and American efforts to revive the nuclear deal that was broken during Donald Trump's administration have failed. For months now, there have been no real negotiations, and Iran's centrifuges have been running at full speed, bringing Iran closer every day to its ability to produce a nuclear weapon. Israel is vehemently opposed to this program as it is to other Iranian weapon programs, such as missile production, which it believes is a direct threat to its security.
Anti Iranian government protests in London on Jan. 28
Loredana Sangiuliano/SOPA Images/ZUMA
Tehran's domestic repression
Yet the disparate issues, ever more, blend into one. Iran is increasingly seen as a kind of besieged fortress, with a regime that has hardened ideologically as its legitimacy grows weaker.
The scale of the uprising led by Iranian women has seriously worried the leaders of the Islamic Republic: they have opted for repression, with hundreds of deaths that have reduced the number of demonstrations but not the popular discontent.
This internal hardening is also noticeable on the outside. And now, we see that the alternative is the risk of direct confrontation. The drones in Isfahan are arguably only a foretaste of what's to come.
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Inès Mermat
France Inter is a major French public radio channel and part of Radio France. It is a "generalist" station, aiming to provide a wide national audience with a full service of news and spoken-word programming, both serious and entertaining, liberally punctuated with an eclectic mix of music.
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