Newsgroup: it.politica
Titolo: Objective, and politically UNbiased, reasons to vote NO to soc.culture.pa(d/t)ania

1.0 Introduction
This is a politically-unbiased  argument for opposing  soc.culture.padania,
on the grounds that the argument of the group is not clearly defined.
While   one   can   ,   in   principle,    agree   with   group   such   as
soc.culture.land-of-oz,  on condition that land-of-oz,  through not clearly
existing, is a clearly defined topic.
In the  charter  for  the  groups  creation,  the  proponent,  in an act of
disrespect  towards  other  netizens,  simply  conjured up a definition  of
PaTania that could give THREE  independent  meanings,  depending on how you
look at it.
The NO  vote is  justified  not  just by the  ignorance  of the  topic  the
proponent  wants to discuss, not just the  disrespect  the proponent  shows
toward  third-party  news.groups  users, but also by -->the precedent which
would be created if a soc.*  group with a  nonsensical  charter  were to be
passed.
2.0 discussion of the charter
The RFD for  unmoderated  group  soc.culture.padania  proposed a "Newsgroup
line:  soc.culture.padania  Cultures  of the  padanian  peoples."  with the
following rationale.
begin verbatim
RATIONALE: soc.culture.padania
Padania is the name of the natural region that includes the Po river
basin and stretches itself approximately between the Alps and the
tuscan-emilian Appennin. The newsgroup soc.culture.padania is intended
to provide a forum for the discussion of all issues regarding the
cultures of the padanian peoples (about 25 millions citizens).
Padania is neither an independent state, nor an administrative entity
inside an independent state, however the same happens for the subject
of other already existing newsgroups like for instance
soc.culture.basque, soc.culture.maghreb, soc.culture.nordic.
CHARTER: soc.culture.padania
 	[..]
Possible discussion issues are:
   - culture, history, geography, languages;
-----------------------^^^^^^^^^^
 	[..]
end verbatim
In the rationale  the proponent  claim that  "padania" is a natural  region
means that this region should be identified by means of rational, clear and
objective  geographical  criteria - not subjected to political  bias - by a
third-party good will internet users.
A mountain chain is defined as staring from a point x and ending in a point
y,  eventually  political  criteria  will draw  borders out of it but, as a
matter of fact, a mountain is a mountain and a river basin is a river basin
- both meeting semantic criteria on which all agree.
The proponent claims are therefore that the region is [1] natural, includes
the [2] Po river  basin  and  streteches  between  [3] the Alps and the [4]
"tuscan-emilian  Appennin"  (sic!).  Finally he claims that to this  region
belongs the  "padanian"  people for an  extimated  value [5] of 25 millions
people.
Claim [1] need a long  bibliography  to be discussed  and even with a quick
and rough  analysis  it is clear  that a region  called  padania  indeed do
exists, and, given that the borders do not even vaguely meet the proposed I
introduce in the rest of the post the word patania (with a "t" instead of a
"d") to distinguish the "real one" from the proponent's  claims.  Do notice
that it will be shown  that one really  cannot say from the  charter if the
proposed  patania is smaller,  bigger or a part of the padania which can be
found in literature.
A  person  aware of the fact  that  Alps  "is a great  mountain  system  of
South-Central  Europe  extending  about 1,200 km (750 miles) in an arc from
the Gulf of Genoa (Genova, Italy) of the Mediterranean Sea in the southwest
of Vienna (Wien, Oesterreich) in the northeast for a total of 207,000 km^2"
[After  Britannica]  " will find that the  abovementioned  patania does not
have a neither a defined E-SE border nor a S-SW.
The S-SW border is NOT  delimited  because do exist [in  English]  Alps and
Apennines  (Alpi ed Appennini [in Italian]), so do notice that the original
poster [Fogazzi  Daniele]  INVENTED the word "Appennin" used in the charter
which [after  Britannica  map "the  Apennines  Mountain  range"]  correctly
should sound TUSCAN-EMILIAN  APENNINES.  I guess that never has been seen a
charter  of a NG which  could NOT be found by a search  engine in which the
correct name is typed!!  ..  ma come se fa..  ma dime ti come se fa..
Besides that the proponent mispells  Apennines it should be noted that Alps
and  Apennines, as a whole, do meet at Cadibona Pass, but why the proponent
specifies  the  Alps as a whole  and only a  SECTION  of the  Apennines?  A
formal  interpretation  (after having  corrected  the  proponent's  blatant
mistake)  leaves a gap as wide as Liguria  (about  100 km) in the  proposed
S-SW border of patania.
Last but not least, while on S-SW patania has a just a gap in the border of
a mere 100 km (estimated) it has an E border which is completely undefined!
Given   that   the   Alps   degrades   at   the   woods   of    Vienna/Wien
(Austria/Oesterreich)  one wonders what the heck the proponent had in mind,
does patania take pieces of Oesterreich too??
If, has an act of mercy, one  substitute  the right name for the  mountains
chain, the situation  does not improve.  In fact to a closer  inspection an
unbiased good-will third party will discover that the proponent has given a
definition of this region (patania) which is not coherent and that can lead
to at least three  different  extension of the area which should be subject
of the discussion in the NG.
So patania  should be dropped  _not_  because on  grounds of  non-existance
(several poster pointed out that a soc.culture.land_of your_dreams could be
admitted)  but  because  the  charter  of the  proposed  paTania  lead to a
confused and ill-conditioned definition.
	Please read the table included and its entries
	first	: name of an Italian region well established in literature
 	second	: population (estimated '97 according to De Agostini '99 annuary)
	third	: does it belongs to the Po river Basin (proponent claims [2])
	fourth	: does it "stretch" between [3] (Alps) and [4] (TEAp)?
PIEMONTE		4 291 783	YES 	YES
VALLE D'AOSTA	  	  119 455	YES	YES
LOMBARDIA		8 974 178	YES	YES
TRENTINO ALTO ADIGE-S.	  922 209	NO	YES
VENETO			4 463 166	NO	YES
FRIULI VENEZIA-GIULIA   1 184 614	NO	YES
LIGURIA			1 645 272	NO	NO(otherwise Cadibona pass should be included)
EMILIA ROMAGNA		3 943 105	YES	YES
--------------------------------------------
ITALIA SETTENTRIONALE 25 543 782       ///	///
The   third/fourth   entry  is  a  Yes/No   issued  on  a  "region   level"
approximation, it would be better to discuss at county level or, better, by
referring to geographical points and not administrative border.
I - Case of good will third party  politicall  unbiased  reader reading the
charter and examining statistical data first:
As it is  possible  to see the only way to reach the  total of 25  millions
people is to add the LIGURIA to the patania.  But LIGURIA does NOT meet the
criteria  [2], [3] and [4] (river basin + mountains) if it does while it is
specified  "Tuscan-Emilian  Appennin (sic!)"?  If some criteria is added to
get LIGURIA in patania (like  inclusion of South flank of mountain  chains,
but this it is _not_  specified  in the charter)  then also part of TOSCANA
and MARCHE ought to be added using the same criteria ( leading to a failure
to meet claim [5] i.e.  population.  and [2] i.e.  Po river basin.
If Criteria [1] is met, then [2],[3],[4] are NOT met.  The charter fails to
define the object of the group.
II - Case of good will third party  politicall  unbiased reader reading the
charter and examining a physical map first:
If criteria [2] (Po river Basin) must be strictly met then the only regions
which can belong to patania are VAL D'AOSTA,  LOMBARDIA,  PIEMONTE EMILIA -
the  population  is, of course,  now well  below 25  millions  people.  The
reason why it happens this is because  North to the Po river Basin there is
the Adige river Basin which  approximately spans to TRENTINO ALTO ADIGE and
VENETO;  FRIULI VENEZIA  GIULIA is of course  related to a different  river
basin area.
If Criteria [2],[3],[4] are met, then [5] is it NOT.
The charter fails to define the object of the group.
III - Case of good will third party politicall  unbiased reader reading the
charter and examining a political-physical map:
There is here something worse, if the proponent claims that he intended "Po
river Basin" as area included AMONG others (so [2] is a fuzzy criteria) The
confusion introduced by saying "Alps" in the charter is even worse than the
one  of  misspelled   Apennines.  In  fact  a  good-will   third  party  by
examination of a physical and political map will immediately spot that, due
to Alps does not "finishes" but "trends"  (Britannica) at Vienna's Wood the
area of  patania  does not  belong  to Italy  only but also can  belong  to
Switzerland,  Austria, Germany, Slovenia.  The population of patania is now
well  above 25  millions  people and it has  reached an  amazing  amount of
different languages and Separate AND  well-established  culture, this rules
out  the use of  "approximately"  in the  charter  because  it can  lead to
differences in area up to a 40 %.
By  considering  [2] (river basin) in a relative  sense and keeping  strict
only [3] and [4] (mountains  encompassing), criteria [5] is not met because
one ends up with pieces of Slovenia,  Croatia and Switzerland among others.
The charter fails to define the object of the group.
3.0 Conclusions.
Not  political   SUBJECTIVE   criteria,  but  simply   UNBIASED   OBJECTIVE
geographical  ones, should lead to the  conslusion  that the proposed group
should  be  rejected  (No vote)  because  the  object  described  cannot be
univoquely  defined by a good will  politically  unbiased third party.  And
not only, the proponent was not able to spell correctly the mountain chains
around paTania!!
Last, but not least, the RFD was  ill-conditioned  from the very beginning!
In fact  soc.culture.italian  was included only because Russ Alberty forced
the  proponent  to do so,  and,  given  that  Italy  is the  country  which
contributes  from 100% to a ca.80%  extent  the whole  territory  of the so
called  patania  (according to the criteria  met) this cast a shadow to the
claim that patania is a "natural" region.  If patania is the one defined as
in case III  (therefore  has more than 25 millions  people and more than on
land  involved) then the RFD must be crossposted  the RFD to all the groups
considered.
I would like to point out that a No vote is a good  choice  even for people
who  usually say Yes to the  creation  of any  newsgroups,  in fact, if the
proposal  fails, the proponent  will  probably  propose it again later but,
this time,  hopefully  specifying  finally the borders of paTania in such a
way  that  with a  pencil  and a map,  and by  connecting  only  "unbiased"
geographical points, a good will third party user will be able to determine
what is the  subject of the NG.  Believe it or not this will be  celebrated
as a great event in all the it.*  domain and SCI given that it is more than
three  years that we are not able to squeeze  out a  definition  of patania
from the guys of it.politica.lega-nord.
Thanks for your time in reading this, please vote No.
  	Claudio De Diana
  	in cooperation with Giorgio Torrieri
Ocio!  E' in corso su news.groups la discussione per la creazione (RFD)
di soc.culture.padania, questa e' in Inglese ed il voto (CFV) anche. Se
non volete partecipare alla stessa almeno ricordatevi di votare  NO  al
momento giusto. Altre info su lega  
http://www.metro.it/isola/index.htm
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[snip series of ridiculous arguments]
Claudio and Giorgio: this is clearly delirious. I have decided not to vote
for or against the creation of soc.culture.padania simply because I do not
care for it, but this sort of tactic will only bring votes to the NG.
Just a few days ago you were both making political arguments for voting
against the creation of the NG: after you have been told repeatedly that
those sorts of arguments are not valid  reasons for voting no, you have set
out to write the post I am replying to which is simply ridiculous in its
pretense of being not political and unbiased, beginning with the "paTania"
word you keep using..
Simply put: the RFD says that the geography of Padania is a possible topic
of discussion. Why wouldn't a thread on soc.culture.padania which deals with
the topic of where exactly Padania begins and ends be appropriate?
IMHO, the only argument which would make sense for a NO vote is that Fogazzi
has repeatedly tried to unduly influence the process by omitting
soc.culture.italian from the list of groups to which the RFD was to be sent.
Francesco

If you ask Turkish or Iraqis if the Kurds have the right to apply for a
newsgroup on Kurdish culture, they will certainly answer that the Kurdish
culture does not exist.
The will explain you that the whole (Turk's or Iraqi's) press and historical
sources deny the existence of such a culture, so this culture does not
exist.
The Internet and the Usenet users are supposed to be more open-minded than
any other media user concerning minorities' cultures.
When I quoted the U.S. Bill of Right, the Universal Declaration of Human
rights and the Italian Constitution, I was not claiming the constitution of
the newsgroup as a universal right, I have only tried to demonstrate our
right to apply for it.
Notice that I used Turkey, Iraq and Kurdistan only as an example of
nationalisms.
Monica Ferrero
Cuni/Cuneo
Piemont

First off, could you please stop writing in fully justified text.
It's really hard to read.
Seren...@my-dejanews.com
 writes:
<snip: a long post>
Come one, this was a ridiculous post (and the sad thing is that it
looks like it took you a long time to write it).
Who cares, if the proponent misspelled the Appennines?  Using this as
an argument against the group just makes yourself look foolish.
Why do you think one needs to put EXACT borders into the RFD to
propose a soc.culture group?  What are the borders of Scientia
(soc.culture.scientists is an existing group) or maybe that should
read: what exactly is a scientist?  Should one have voted NO on
soc.culture.german, if its rationale included a specific area (1)?
You should use a bit of common sense.  From the definition given in
the rationale probably everybody with a map can find the region were
padania is supposed to be.  I don't care, whether padania really is
where it is supposed to be or whether it only exists in the mind of a
few, but I know where I would look for it, should I feel the urge to
go there.
Disclaimer:
I don't care the least about this group.  I just care about politics
being dragged into the discussion of an RFD.  This is news.groups and
about politics the only thing I can say is:
  Politics?  We don't want no stinking politics.
Footnote:
(1) Table taken from the Sueddeutsche Zeitung Magazine:
The area of Germany according to:
  Brockhaus (1998/99):                    357 042.00 km2
  Columbia Encyclopedia:                  357 039.00 km2
  Spiegel Almanach:                       357 022.00 km2
  Fischer Worldalmanch:                   357 021.44 km2
  Federal Office for Statistics:          357 021.43 km2
  Baedeker Alliance Guidebook:            356 978.00 km2
  Encyclopedia Britannica Online:         356 973.00 km2
  Duden Student Dictionary 1994:          356 957.00 km2
  CIA-World Fact Book (
www.adci.gov/cia
): 356 910.00 km2
  Lonely Planet, Intern. Guidebook:       356 866.00 km2
  Encyclopedia Britannica:                356 733.00 km2
This makes it impossible to put a correct area of germany into the
rationale of an RFD.
-- 
Boris Schaefer -- 
s...@psy.med.uni-muenchen.de
Why does a ship carry cargo and a truck carry shipments?


Giovannoni,  out of curiosity,  while are you replying to a post which
you have clearly not read, let alone understood?
Indeed  I  carried   political   argument   against  the  creation  of
soc.culture.pa
(d/t)ania  and, given that I was told by several posters
that  they  could  not  be  accepted  - I  looked  for  objective  and
politicall  UNbiased argument against the creation of such a newsgoup.
I use to learn from my mistakes, can this be told for you, Giovannoni?
It is really a pit that your  (Giovannoni)  political  faith just make
you blind to the fact that it is an OBJECTIVE  argument the mispelling
of   the   correct   TUSCAN-EMILIAN   APENNINES   (after   Britannica)
"tuscan-emilian  Appennin"  (after  fogazzi, to what language  belongs
"Appennin"?  Maybe it is written in "fogazese"?)
If this  ill-conditioned  newsgroups will pass (and I hope not) in the
future  nobody  will  be  able  to  track  down  this  hypotetical  NG
(
soc.culture.pa
(d/t)ania)  by typing in a search  engine  the  correct
word  "Apennines"  (english)  or  "Appennini"  (italian)  because  the
charter is written in a mixture  of  "english"  and  "fogazzese"  (the
peculiar language of the proponent).
This is an  objective  argument,  a charter  which  defines  a natural
geographical   region   using  word  that  do  NOT  exist  in  english
ingenerates  confusion,  hence must be avoided its  creation by voting
NO.  period.
That's an objective AND politicall UNbiased argument.  period.
Next time,  giovannoni,  avoid to waste bandwidth and other users time
by kindly READING the post you are supposed to answer to.  ok?
Claudio De Diana
P.S.  I keep using patania to  distinguish  the possible  geographical
padania from the  proponent's  one which  boundaries, as it was shown,
cannot be inferred from the charter.


 culture does not exist.
	Let's stop here, you are not answering my
	purerly geographical (i.e. objective) point.
	I bet that the Kurd, being smart enough to
	use a dictionary, are able to write correctly
	in English the name of their mountains, towns,
	rivers or whatosever in a RFD.
	If a good will user is trying to locate a group
	which could be of any interest for him by searching
	in all the charters (which is a perfectly logical thing
	to do) he/she will not be able to reach the proposed
 
soc.culture.pa
(d/t)ania if, as it is should be
	expected, he/she uses the correct spelling of the mountain
	chains quoted in the charter.
	Is it clear now? it is useless to speak about, as you
	make in the rest of the post, of "the U.S.
	Bill of Right, the Universal Declaration of Human
	rights and the Italian Constitution, etc.."
	what I am talking about is that one cannot put his/her
	electronic finger on the 'Appennin' of the charter because
	that mountain chain it is NOT written that way neither in English
	nor in Italian (nor in 'patanese' [the language
	of patania] because one of the biggest expert
	of patanese [i.e. the proponent of the NG] stated
	that doubling of the same letter does not exist in this language)
	have a nice day,
	Claudio De Diana
	P.S> I am using patanese (instead of padano) because
	I guess that at this point is clear the difference
	between proponent's claims of 'patania' and the
	'natural region padania' which can be found in literature.


by kindly READING the post you are supposed to answer to.  ok?
Come on Claudio, take it easy: you are clearly losing it....
Francesco

   Politics?  We don't want no stinking politics.
Admirable aim.
But the one who made "politicising" inevitable is the one who
tries to pass a newsgroup with a "geographically-defined" topic for
discussion but a name that only a political minority associate to that
region.
G. Torrieri


 Boris Schaefer -- 
s...@psy.med.uni-muenchen.de
Claudio De Diana



Indeed not, to vote against your proposal there are _both_
political (subjective) and geographical (objective) reasons,
for example your blatant mistake on Appennini.
The guys around here asked for NOT political objections
and therefore I stress that one.
Claudio De Diana
P.S> a lot of Italian users does not see news.groups due to
their server, follow-up resetted
P.P.S> ehi fogaz(z)i "I already answered to all his critiques" when
are you going to sweep out from your homepages the *Arab* words attributed
to Celt-german-whatsoever-is-not-southern by your amazing linguistical
and etimological skills?


Seren...@my-dejanews.com
 writes:
| > Who cares, if the proponent misspelled the Appennines?  Using this as
| > an argument against the group just makes yourself look foolish.
| 
| Who cares? A search engine cares, for example, or do you have
| one smart enough to look for Appennin (proponent's choice)
| instead of the correct Apennines (one 'p')?
AFAIK, there are some search engines that do fuzzy matching.  I'm sure
these would find both spellings.
| I suppose that somebody who tries to locate a NG which could be of
| any interests will use a search engine and the charter of the groups
| is a good choice, given that it exists for sure, while not always
| FAQ exists.
I don't think there are much people that really search for a newsgroup
by search engine.  Usually they search by name and description, at
least in my experience.
| Information is found only if it has the correct label, what do you
| expect to find when looking for info?
| "brain surgery" or "bruin surgeri" or whatever you want.
A load of rubble :-(
Seriously, usually if I don't find a good result, I check alternate
spellings.
<snip>
| The proposed patania has got a surface which could vary up to a 50%,
| indeed yes, I think you should have voted against soc.culture.german
| if the proponent mispelled name of geographical feature included
| in the charter and was not able to point, in the charter,
| out were on a map Germany lies.
I can find out where RFD-Padania lies, at least approximately.  It's
not like you would search in the US.
| Let's make a game, try to demonstrate using the charter, that
| pieces of Slovenia and Croatia cannot be included in it or try to
| solve the dilemma of an Eskimo who is going to have holidays
| in Venezia and want to decide if he has to post on soc.culture.italian
| to have info about hotels or somewhere else.
The simple solution is to cross-post.  It's also an appropriate
solution in this case, because the eskimo is interested in a feature
(i.e. hotels) of the geographical region that overlaps between the two
groups.
-- 
Boris Schaefer -- 
s...@psy.med.uni-muenchen.de
Spelling is a lossed art.