Palm oil and women rights, the courage of feeling different and the anniversary of a terrible moment of Italian history: 5 beautiful articles written by extraordinary authors
The unbearable life of Palm Oil, by Paola Iotti
There is palm oil in almost everything we eat, even in organic food. There is palm oil in biscuits, chips, crackers, pizza, sandwich, junk food. It is also used for beauty products, as a fuel for cars and to produce electricity.
Is palm oil dangerous for human health? Belgium suggested its citizens to stop using it because of the huge amount of saturated fat it contains, which can cause the increase of cholesterol and diabetes.
Trying to understand if palm oil is contained in products we eat, is something not easy for a consumer.
Labels are sometimes misleading in explaining which kind of oil was used, that’s why The European Parliament has recently obliged producers to be more specific.
The author of the article, Paola Iotti, remembers a reportage filmed by the Rai, in which journalists were denied permission to be allowed in the factories where palm seeds are processed to extract oil.
This behaviour is somehow suspicious: why deny the access to the factories if there is nothing to hide?
Probably because the products of the palm, if processed in a certain way, are dangerous for human health.
Why palm oil is so used?
First of all, because it’s cheap. It resists to high temperature, it has no taste, it is easy and cheap to produce.
Labourers, who are responsible for palm plantations, are under-paid. Palm plantations are grown in the southern areas of Asia, especially in Malesia and Indonesia. Lands are obtained by burning huge territories originally covered by forests. In this way, a lot of Co2 is release by burned materials: the entire process is very polluting and dangerous for animals and people that live in the area.
It has been reported that Indonesia, which is not an industrialised Country, produces a third of world greenhouse gas emissions.
In addition to this, the destruction of huge parts of forest has a very bad influence on the climate and on our Planet’s balance in general.
Michela Kuan, a biologist working for an organization against vivisection, went to Borneo to report what really happens to orangutans.
Those that don’t die because of the blazes, are chased and beaten to death.
The luckiest ones are those that manage to reach some safe areas, rented by animal rights organizations.
Do we need all this?
Do orangutans?
No, of course.
However, it is worth for producers, always trying to improve their profit and their gain, despite the terrible consequences that such production causes to the entire Planet.
Furious memories of a vagina, by Deborah Biasco
The author of this article focused on why having a vagina is something to be sorry for.
Nature provided women with an only vagina. Luckily, only one.
Why a vagina should be furious? Probably because it has been suffering from a vast range of unfair abuses.
If never penetrated, it’s not attractive enough, if too willing, it’s considered too easy.
If betrayed, abused, the vagina is guilty itself.
If a vagina betrays its partner, it can be punished with every kind of violence.
If the vagina is educated and brilliant, people should keep an eye on it, because too dangerous.
If it has reached an important role, people would ask how she managed it. Because of her beauty, of course. And if it isn’t beautiful enough, it would never obtain anything.
This isn’t fair.
Why a woman should be condemned just because she has a vagina? Because she’s a woman?
Where are fathers, sons, husbands, when defending their women is up to them?
Scholastic projects on gender equality should be sustained; pupils should be educated to consider women equal to men.
And violence against women should never be reported as something normal, something that simply happens: because it something horrible. When someone suffers, is always a tragedy.
What happens in Capaci 24 years ago, by Andrea Umbrello
One of the main characters of the Italian fight against mafia was Giovanni Falcone, brutally killed with a bomb while he was driving with his wife the 23rd May, 24 years ago.
His murder was organized by Sicilian mafia in 1992 when and 5 quintals of TNT exploded in the middle of the highway to Palermo.
Three cars driven by Falcone’s guards and the magistrate himself were destroyed during the accident, and 5 people died, including Falcone and his wife, Francesca Morvillo. Other 4 people were injured by the explosion.
Their funeral took place in Palermo, in a church crowded by people who believed in Falcone and in justice.
Everyone remembered Falcone’s words: Men goes by, ideas stay.
My brother is an only child, by Deborah Biasco
The author of this article wanted to express the diversity of someone still able to be sensitive.
She talked about someone who could have been her brother, who is different from every other person. That’s why she called him “an only child”.
This person still prefers sunsets to happy hours, a book and a starry night to people’s boredom.
He’s a different boy in a sea of homologated people, that’s why he is considered dangerous.
He still believes in hope and in humanity: he founds something beautiful in everyone he meets.
He’s the exception, realizing every day why he’s alive and the sense of his entire life.
Catanese student and the stump speech against Ministry Boschi, by Francesco Massetti
Newspapers and media in general, defended and praised a young law student, Alessio Grancagnolo, who spoke against the Ministry of Institutional Reformations, Maria Elena Boschi, during a meeting at the University of Catania.
The author of this article, defended the Ministry who accurately replied to Alessio’s accusations which could be considered more political than juridical.