I'm heartsick for you that those times seem to have returned. I wondered if the current economic turmoil would bring back the bad old days when civil war and conflict were so much a part of life in Europe.

It is amazing how our portals of understanding can be opened through art. Letizia Battaglia's photographs of Sicily recently re-surfaced, and brought back Hannah Arendt's observations about how banal evil really is. The mafia tend to be romanticized as some sort of seductive 'brotherhood' through books/movies like The Godfather and television shows like The Sopranos. It is such a lazy-assed view of violence, corruption and moral turpitude.

I hope the perpetrators are found soon, and punished fully.