Free Republic

ROME — Italy’s universal vaccine mandate for workers went into effect Friday, triggering countrywide strikes and protest rallies. In the northern city of Trieste, for example, over 5,000 protesters flooded the port and rejected offers of free coronavirus tests while in Genoa the ferry terminal as well as the international airport terminal have been blocked by large anti-Green Pass manifestations. Along with strikes, employers are reporting unusually high numbers of workers calling in sick, Italian media report. Some 80 percent of Italians have received the vaccine, along with the four and a half million who have been infected with coronavirus...

Was Christopher Columbus born in Genoa, Italy? Most definitely not, say an unlikely collection of experts from European royalty, DNA science, university scholars, even Columbus's own living family. This ground breaking documentary follows a trail of proof to show he might have been much more than we know.Who Was The Real Christopher Columbus? | Secrets and Lies of Christopher Columbus | Timeline

On this date in 1459, the former Doge of Genoa Pietro di Campfregoso was stoned to death by his city’s enraged populace. This Pietro (English Wikipedia entry | Italian) succeeded his cousin to the merchant oligarchy’s head in 1450. Genoa resided in a crab-bucket of rival peninsular and Mediterranean powers, and Pietro was distinctly out-scuttled in the 1450s. Genoa unsuccessfully supported the Byzantine Empire when it was decisively conquered by the rising Ottomans in 1453, and the Genoans found themselves consequently rousted from a number of Aegean and Black Sea possessions. Meanwhile, fickle Italian fortune brought Neapolitan troops to the...

A case of misplaced blame. All those blaming Columbus for sailing west must turn one chapter back in the history books to find that it was actually Islamic jihad disrupting the land routes from Europe to India and China that resulted in Columbus looking for a sea route. Nearly two centuries before Columbus, the 17-years-old Marco Polo left Venice for India and China with his father, Niccolo Polo, and uncle, Matteo Polo, in 1271. Together they traveled 5,600 miles to the east to meet Kublai Khan, the grandson of Ghengis Khan. Kublai Khan was Emperor of China, Korea, North India,...

On 14 August last year, the city of Genoa in northwest Italy woke to a strong summer storm. By 11.30am, the rain was so heavy that visibility had fallen dramatically. Videos captured by security cameras show vehicles slowing down as they crossed Morandi Bridge, which grew progressively more enveloped in a grey mist. A few minutes later, a 200-metre section of the bridge collapsed, including one of its three supporting towers. The tragedy killed 43 people and left 600 homeless. It also dealt a hammer blow to Italy’s once-proud engineering history – and the country’s confidence in its mastery of...

Another Columbus Day came and went...although not as such in Minneapolis, which voted this year to honor Indigenous Peoples’ Day instead, a time to reflect on the price American Indians paid for the greed and ruthlessness of my European ancestors. Yet it is ironic that Columbus should take the blame, for he was our first “multicultural” hero. An Italian Catholic who sailed for Spain, Columbus was one of a handful of celebrated Americans who did not fit neatly into the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant mold. The worst strike against Columbus was that he was a Roman Catholic. Catholics had a special...

Your highnesses, as Catholic Christians and Princes devoted to the Holy Christian faith and to the spreading of this faith, and as enemies of the Muslim sect and of all idolatries and heresies, ordered that I should go east, but not by land as is customary. I was to go by way of the west, whence until today we do not know with certainty that anyone has ever gone there. He sent me that I might bring the true faith to the Indians. ~ Christopher Columbus There are many reasons for defending what crucially needs to be defended, that except...

The Morandi Bridge has collapsed in the northern Italian city of Genoa. The bridge, a part of the A10 motorway, is about 100 metres tall, Italian media say. There are unconfirmed reports that cars may have been involved. Photographs from the scene show huge sections of rubble on the ground underneath the middle of the bridge.

Speaking to workers and business people in Italy’s port city of Genoa Saturday, Pope Francis surprised his hearers by praising entrepreneurship and touting the importance of healthy businesses for the economy. “There can’t be a good economy without good businessmen, without their capacity to create and to produce,” he said, shattering his reputation as an enemy of the free market economy. The Pope recognized that the essential value of work and employment is only possible when companies are sound and successful. Without denouncing unemployment benefits, Francis insisted that state intervention wasn’t a real solution. “A monthly check from the state...

The Algerian Connection Why did Saddam financially support an al Qaeda affiliate in Algeria? by Thomas Joscelyn 08/03/2005 12:00:00 AM LATE LAST MONTH an Algerian-born terrorist named Ahmed Ressam received a commuted sentence of 22 years (prosecutors had recommended 35 years) in prison for his role in planning to blow up the Los Angeles airport. His sentence infuriated many since his involvement in the plot against LAX was immediately transparent. After all, he was captured in December 1999 after driving off a ferry from British Columbia in a vehicle laden with bomb-making explosives. Ressam received a commuted sentence after providing...

The 15th century explorer who opened up the American continents to Europe was actually called Pedro Scotto - not Christopher Columbus - and his family originally hailed from Scotland, a Spanish historian has claimed. Alfonso Ensenat de Villalonga has disputed conventionally-accepted narratives on the explorer's origins - that he was the son of a weaver in Genoa, Italy, or that he was from Catalonia or Galicia in Spain. In fact, he was from Genoa, but he was "the son of shopkeepers not weavers and he was baptised Pedro not Christopher," Mr Villalonga told Spain's ABC newspaper on Sunday. And his...

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Saturday that the Americas were discovered by Muslims in the 12th century, nearly three centuries before Genoese explorer Christopher Columbus claimed the discovery in the name of Spain. "Contacts between Latin America and Islam date back to the 12th century. Muslims discovered America in 1178, not Christopher Columbus," the president said in a televised speech during an Istanbul summit of Muslim leaders from Latin America. "Muslim sailors arrived in America from 1178. Columbus mentioned the existence of a mosque on a hill on the Cuban coast," Erdogan said. Erdogan said that Ankara was even...

Egyptian intelligence warned American officials about a week before Sept. 11 that Osama bin Laden's network was in the advance stages of executing a significant operation against an American target, it will be reported on Tuesday (in the NY TIMES)... MORE... A senior U.S. intelligence official denied the warning was received...

Was Columbus Greek?Was Columbus a woolworker from Genoa or a Byzantine Prince and sailor from the island of Chios in what was then the Republic of Genoa? The ferry that sails between the island of Lesvos and Athens port city of Pireaus stops at the island of Chios, a few miles off the coast of Asia Minor. If you are traveling from Athens it arrives at four a.m. and unless you are awakened by the change in the rhythm of the ship's engines as it slows down and backs into the quay you won't even know you have been there....

Christophoros Columbus: A Byzantine Prince from Chios, Greece, by Ruth G. Durlacher-WolperCover of the book by Ruth G. Durlacher-Wolper. Over 500 years ago, Admiral Christophoros Columbus stepped upon the soil of San Salvador Island, Bahamas, in the New World, with the banner of the Royal Standard of Spain flying in all its glory. The captains of La Nina and La Pinta followed him off the La Santa Maria, carrying the banners of the Green Cross. Behind them came the weary crew -- men whose faith had weakened during the hard journey, but who had had their faith revived time and...

Was Columbus from Chios? Read Matt Barrett's review of the Book by Ruth G. Durlacher-Wolper Christophoros Columbus: A Byzantine Prince from Chios, Greece Was Columbus a woolworker from Genoa or a Byzantine Prince and sailor from the island of Chios in what was then the Republic of Genoa? There has been more written about Christopher Columbus than about any person with the exception of Jesus Christ, and yet his past has been shrouded in mystery. We all have been told that he came from Genoa, a city in Italy and sailed for Isabella and Ferdinand, the king and queen of...

A Portuguese historian believes he has solved the age-old mystery surrounding the nationality of Christopher Columbus. According to Manuel Rosa, a lecturer at Duke University, North Carolina, the explorer was in fact the son of Polish King Władysław III. It has always been thought that King Władysław III fell in battle against the forces of the Ottoman Empire at the Battle of Varna in 1444. According to Mr Rosa, however, the king managed to survive the battle unscathed and fled to the Portuguese island of Madeira where he lived out the rest of his life as a hermit and married...

SNIPPET: "(ANSA) - Genoa, June 11 - Six Italians were arrested Thursday on suspicion of plotting to attack Group of Eight summit facilities. The Rome-based group was trying to revive the Red Brigades terrorist organisation that plagued Italy in the 1970s and '80s, officials said." SNIPPET: "The six, including two men from Genoa, one from Milan, a Sardinian pro-independence militant and an old-guard Red Brigades terrorist, have been taken into custody on terrorism charges. Five have been taken to prison and one, reportedly found with a bomb, was placed under house arrest because of his age. The arrests were the...

ROME (AP) — Italian police arrested six people Thursday in raids on a group of suspected radical leftists who were allegedly planning a terror attack, authorities said.

GENOA, Italy (CNS) -- At first glance, Pope Benedict XVI's two-day visit to the northern Italian city of Genoa seemed designed to highlight the ascendancy of the region's prelates in his pontificate. The pope chose Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the former archbishop of Genoa, as his secretary of state. He named the new head of the archdiocese, Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, president of the Italian bishops' conference. And the archdiocese's liturgist, Msgr. Guido Marini, is now the master of papal liturgical ceremonies at the Vatican. But for all the local pride it evoked, the pope's May 17-18 visit had broader implications and...