L’Aquila: The Woe Summit

This image reads so many ways. Given the G8’s unsatisfying movement on global warming, it can be a metaphor for the global house falling in. The disaster tourism read is also very easy to pull out. On a more subtle level, most of the eyes are turned away from the building. Of the key people whose faces are in full and highlighted, Berlusconi is holding forth, seemingly whistling past the graveyard, and Obama is looking away. The destruction is unseen. That feeds the metaphors of insufficient or neglected leadership.

Good photo op for BHO with jacket removed and shirt sleeves rolled up…

Looking on the crowd, where is the “saving grace?”
If I had to pick up a character, then, it is the one with the back to us, short sleeves, and no tie.
“Blind” Berlusconi leading “blind,” interpretation – insensitive crowd politicians!
What did they actually achieve? How much money was spent on the food, lodging, protection, transport and emergency planning in case of an earthquake? What an affront to local population!
What was accomplished? Berlusconi was successful in getting everyone to a place, where they would be away from the protests, Berlusconi’s scandals and direct confrontations.
On the agenda was Iran’s nuclear threat but North Korea was off the topic.
Peace in Middle East? Well if that means more troops to Afghanistan, and more requests for allied troops involvement.
Environment? Well that is for the leaders and not for politicians – see Mount Rushmore.

Other thoughts, not pleasant.
The “Palazzo del Governo” is the foreboding of the “economy earthquake,” that is threatening all the present heads. Then there is the foreboding of the “environmental earthquake,” that is threatening survival of the humans.

On a less symbolic level, this picture just upsets me. Italy is incredible and it literally hurts me physically to see this damage.
I’m scared to death I won’t get to Assissi in time to see the Giottos before the frescoes fall off the walls in an earthquake or that I won’t get my husband to Venice before it sinks.
The whole country should be a world heritage site -

I’m wondering again about your choices of photos.

You pick a pic of a bunch of hard ankles gathered around looking at a pile of crushed stone, and miss this one.
We’ve always thought that Obama was the second coming of Jimmah Carter. Revising that to include, along with Carter’s disastrous handling of anything economic, Bill Clinton’s roving eyes (with hands to surely follow? ).