We are no longer neither flesh nor fowl. We are both flesh and fowl. Synonyms and opposites have the same meaning. To be and not to be is no longer a problem. One is, and at the same time, one is not. Without our noticing the fact, words have become Synonymopposites The opposite of war is peace, but peace has become the synonym of war. Bombing raids are now called “peace missions”. Everyday conversations, newspaper articles, news given by the talking heads on TV are synonymopposites. They explain reality using terms that have a contrary meaning or something completely different. It’s the technique of confusion, a non-place where the cats are all grey like they are at night. Government-destroyItaly. Racism-immigrationregulated. Banks-usury. PDL-PDminusL broadagreements-stitchup. State-mafia. Information-defamation. Honourable-convicted. Leader-Letta. Economist-Monti. Statesman-Berlusconi. Pacification-chickenout. Intelligent-Gasparri. Take a word. Find its opposite and transform it into a synonym. The word under consideration will no longer have barriers. It will become invincible. Its opposite is incorporated and assimilated. P2ist-servantoftheState. Highspeedtrain-tunnelgoodstrainsinValdiSusa. Contributions-electoralfinancing. Jurist-Violante. Parties-democracy. Talkshow-indepthanalysis. Just think about it. How many times have you not managed to find the word to say it? To oppose something? The single thought doesn’t want opposites, only synonyms.

>>> Today, Monday 20 May, I’ll be in Aosta at 8:00 pm. Tomorrow, Tuesday 21 May, I’ll be in Lodi at 5:00 pm and Brescia at 9:00 pm. The live broadcasts will be on La Cosa
The final event of the Tour entitled “Tutti a Casa” {Send them all home}, will be on 24 May in Rome’s Piazza del Popolo. Give your support with a donation <<<<

“Once upon a time there were wars and the young men went off and died and three generation of young men got missed out. Today, luckily, this no longer happens but another type of murder is taking place: the murder of the future. The impossibility of finding oneself through work, this is the most atrocious thing that is happening to a young person in Italy.
And so the only thing I can humbly say to them, with great humility, is that I don’t believe in hope. Anyone who lives by hope, dies hopelessly. I believe in intentions, that you have to make some plans in your head, to do things anyway, to stand up to the circumstances, even hopelessly ...” Andrea Camilleri

Passaparola with the writer Andrea Camilleri

“I would like to talk about something that I feel is fundamental. Something that few people seem to take an interest in and most people in Italy seem to not care about at all. But is is a serious matter. I would like to talk about the protection of the Italian language. Someone said: “Look who’s talking - and you’re writing in dialect”. Apart from the fact that I also write in Italian, however, you see, that’s not the problem. The problem is that recently, well a few years ago, they decided that the European laws were to be translated into English, German and French. Before that, they were translated into Italian. Then Italian got excluded. They’re no longer translated into Italian. If you want to know what Europe’s laws say, you just have to know English or French. Otherwise tough luck. You have to get them translated.
This means a step back for our language. Our Deputies in Europe should have forcibly opposed this move. Why’s that? Because I’m noticing that in the field of technology, English terminology is quite common. There’s ever more use of English words even in every day life. And not just there but even the politicians are using the English terminology for Italian laws or for Italian regulations, like “election day” and so on. What’s the point of all this?! This is provincialism above all. You hear a President of the Council using English words and to me, an Italian, that makes a mark on me. It’s as though the British Prime Minister were to use Italian while speaking in Parliament. It’s madness! It’s pure madness.
There are Italian words that mean exactly the same thing. Why not use the Italian words? Let’s not talk about the world of fashion. By now they only talk English.
That’s how languages die! Do you know how many languages die? Six languages every 15 days in the world. A language becomes unused and then it dies.
My God, we have a really strong literary tradition. Fortunately, that will not disappear. But there’s the risk of making Italian become a dead language.
Take care. I’m not an autarchic like there were in the fascist times, when Wanda Osiris had to change her name to Wanda Osiri, removing the final “s” because it sounded foreign, or "Saint Luis Blues" became "Tristezza di San Luigi”, which was a mental delirium, but I’m saying that a just defence of the language is absolutely necessary.
We have waged a dreadful war against the dialects, but the dialects are the strength of a language. We have this rare thing, the multitude of dialects that other nations, other peoples, don’t have. The language is national. It’s like a tree, that sends out its roots into the whole of Italy and it draws in words towards the centre. Once upon a time, this is how the words became the language - from the periphery to the centre.
And they were like life-giving sap for the tree of language.
They produced live leaves. If the land where the roots of the trees get their nutrients, if the land is polluted with foreign words, the tree will die and this is a risk that we are encountering, not now, for sure, but certainly in thirty years time! So I’m inviting you to have less provincialism and to retrieve some really beautiful words for our really beautiful language.
I’ve written a book called “Come la penso” {How I see things} and it’s just been published. There are a few things in this book: “Why - can you get to eat culture? Culture is not something sacred, something just for people of culture, for the few. It’s for everyone! Then what is culture? It’s not just literature, but the culture of a manual worker, how an office worker carries on their work, it’s about how the administrator of the condominium is thinking. Culture is us! Because we are culture. The human is culture.
Sure, there are higher forms of culture, but when I hear that Italy is the country that spends the least on culture in the whole of Europe, I’m stunned into silence, because - well - what have we come to? Above all there’s the stupidity of not understanding that if you spend money on culture, then culture gives you back your money three-fold. Because spending on culture means keeping Pompei on its feet and not letting it fall to pieces. It means making it possible to keep museums open at all times and in all circumstances. It means exploiting our works of art even for the tourist industry. I don’t know whether I’m contributing to culture by publishing books. When you think that I’ve sold six million copies in Germany and they are writing to me from Germany: “But what’s it like in Sicily? I would really like to go there”, and at times, when I reply I’m turning myself into some sort of tourist operator. I don’t know whether it’s a matter of culture, but it is a matter of money that definitely comes back to Italy through tourism.
Let’s do Montalbano on TV … I’ll tell another story. The BBC takes it and shows it in the UK in the early evening. You won’t believe it! Am I not getting a letter from a British tourist company that is sending two charter planes to Sicily full of tourists who have seen Montalbano?! Culture provides food. I’ll keep on saying - the money invested in culture gives a threefold return to the State.
Thus as well as raising up the person intellectually, it is also beneficial to the finances of the Italian State. This idea of giving advice to young people isn’t really very comfortable for me, partly because I’m 88 years old and someone giving advice to young people is presuming at 88 years of age to understand the youth of today. That is presumptuousness.
This is why I don’t want to act like a lovely grandpa. I always try to avoid that assiduously.
Today, however, there is something that I can see, not how they are thinking because they do their own thinking about their own affairs and that’s how it should be. To understand today’s young people, you need to be their contemporaries, and that’s something I’m not. I’m a contemporary of the atomic bomb, of the TV and the miniskirt and I stop with the miniskirt that seems a good place to linger.
As well as that, things are beginning to get difficult for me. Let’s not talk about computers and the Internet. However, it’s clear that a series of economic, social, financial, and political circumstances are killing the young people of today.
Once upon a time there were wars and the young men went off and died and three generation of young men got missed out. Today, luckily, this no longer happens but another type of murder is taking place: the murder of the future. The impossibility of finding oneself through work, this is the most atrocious thing that is happening to a young person in Italy.
And so the only thing I can humbly say to them, with great humility, is that I don’t believe in hope. Anyone who lives by hope, dies hopelessly. I believe in intentions, that you have to make some plans in your head, to do things anyway, to stand up to the circumstances, even hopelessly. Think of being on a life raft. But you just have to get this life raft to a beach, while never losing, not tenderness, but the courage and the strength that comes to you because you are young.
This is what I wish for you: never lose the strength and the belief in your youth.
As for the adults. Many of the adults are responsible for the situation we have today. Thus a bit of advice that I can give to the sensible adults is to take quite a lot more interest in serious political life, because abstentionism makes things worse. To take part in public life and in political life with your own opinions is always something positive. Thus continue to exist in society.
Spread the word if you think its appropriate and if you don’t think its appropriate, stay silent.”

You could find these posts interesting:

Passaparola. Culture is for eating - Dario Fo

Florence is not selling off its culture

Culture against the system

>>> Today, Sunday 19 May, I’ll be in Orbassano, at 5:00 pm and Ivrea at 9:00 pm. Tomorrow, Monday 20 May, I’ll be in Aosta at 8:00 pm. The live broadcasts will be on La Cosa.
The final event of the Tour entitled “Tutti a Casa” {Send them all home}, will be on 24 May in Rome’s Piazza del Popolo. Give your support with a donation <<<<<<<<<<<<

The M5S is not left wing (and neither is it right wing) It’s a Movement of the Italian people. It doesn’t want to have a "shared journey" with anyone who has brought about the ruin of Italy. We don’t want dead weight. PD, Sel or PDL, this side or that, for me they’re all the same.

“What is right wing? What is left wing?" (*)

To be a bit racist is right wing
whereas to let anyone come into Italy is left wing
accelerating the time frame of the Statute of Limitations is right wing
justicialism towards your opponents is left wing.
The clandestine person is left wing
Extreme nationalism is right wing.
But what is right wing what is left wing ...
A great GMO soup is right wing
cement on top of a wheat field is always left wing
all the “talk shows” are run by payrolled journalists,
on the right or on the left ...
But what is right wing what is left wing ...
Shouting “Forza Italia” at football matches
has a slightly right wing flavour
but bringing a canoeist into the government, a bit German,
is a bit more silly than left wing.
But what is right wing what is left wing ...

The TAV in the Val di Susa is one sign of the left wing
with truncheons and tear gas they’ve gone towards the right wing
pensioners in the street supporting Berlusconi are a bit right wing
when they’re trade union members they’re also left wing.
But what is right wing what is left wing ...
Same sex marriages are a left wing banner
paid prostitutes are more than ever right wing
Monte dei Paschi in company, like having a piss, is left wing
the illicit pot of money is always basically right wing.
But what is right wing what is left wing ...
The P2, beautifully sky blue and transparent
is obviously a bit right wing
whereas the bureaucracy that strangles the State is left wing.
But what is right wing what is left wing ...

Ideology, ideology
I still don’t believe there is one
it’s a folding screen to dupe the people.
The MoVement is above and beyond that and it talks to the Italian people,
not to the PD-folk nor to the Berlusconi-folk.

But what is right wing what is left wing ...
The thinking of the Confindustria is born on the right
now it has even become OK for the left
no one knows whether corruption has only been right wing
but now it is certainly also left wing.
But what is right wing what is left wing ...
The vigorous clenched fist salute
with the wad of money held up is a gesture of left wing directors
the salute that’s a bit Roman, with an open palm, even though it’s been OK’d
is still a bit fascist.
But what is right wing what is left wing ...

Even the Pope recently
has become a Qualunquismo supporter and a bit of a populist.
he says he’s thinking about the poorest and not about the banks
whether they are right wing or left wing.
The State that has negotiated with the mafia
is a shitty State, for twenty years the same stink on the right
as on the left
The electoral law nicknamed "Porcellum" was delivered from the wombs of the sows on the right
however with help of the left wing boars

Ideology, ideology
I still don’t believe there is one
it’s a folding screen to dupe the people.
The MoVement is above and beyond that and it talks to the Italian people,
not to the PD-folk nor to the Berlusconi-folk.

(*) Freely inspired by "Destra Sinistra" {Right Left} by Giorgio Gaber

>>> Today, Friday 17 May, I’ll be in Martellago, at 5:00 pm and Vicenza at 8:30 pm. Tomorrow Saturday 18 May I’ll be in Cinisello Balsamo, at 2:00 pm, Brugherio at 4:00 pm, and Imperia at 9:00 pm. The live broadcasts will be on La Cosa.
The final event of the Tour entitled “Tutti a Casa” {Send them all home}, will be on 24 May in Rome’s Piazza del Popolo. Give your support with a donation <<<<<<<<<<<<

While investigations are going on all over Italy into the 22 people that left a comment about Napolitano on this blog, I’ve discovered that the President is in agreement about the abolition of article 278, laying out the crime of “vilipendio” {public insult} against the President of the Republic. He said this at a time you wouldn’t have thought of, in 2009, as revealed by his former spokesperson Pasquale Cascella who said that Napolitano invited "anyone who has the authority to initiate legislation to feel free to propose the abolition", leaving the general public to weigh things up as they see fit "then let it be the citizens that judge what is freedom to criticise and what is not, in relation to institutions that should be kept outside of the political and media mêlée". Strengthened by the reassurance of the President that "in relation to “vilipendio” against the Head of State, it’s up to Parliament to decide", on Monday the MoVimento 5 Stelle {5 Star MoVement} will lay before the Senate, the proposal to abolish article 278 and on Monday it will do the same in the Lower House. A law associated with the Codice Rocco that protected Mussolini and the King. I’m sure that our initiative will get the unanimous support of both Chambers. Napolitano is on our side. Anyone voting against the abolition of this law is also against the President of the Republic and could get tarnished with the crime of “vilipendio” {public insult}.