David Borrelli, candidate for the position of President of the region of Veneto in the last regional elections tells us how it went.

Meetup: " David, it’s a general opinion that Beppe Grillo‘s 5 Star MoVement had incredible success in the last elections, two councillors elected in Emilia and two in Piedmont. However you in Veneto, you have been left out in the cold even though it seemed as though you had the numbers. What happened? "
D. Borrelli: An issue that is simply technical in the basic electoral law. Many people put a cross on the symbol of the 5 Star MoVement that was nearest to my name, and were convinced that probably in that way they would have guaranteed me a place in Veneto’s regional council. Instead, unfortunately, the election law sets out exactly the opposite. They should have put a cross on the symbol that was the furthest away from me, the one connected to the provincial list and many people didn’t know that and they “made a mistake” in voting which didn’t allow us to enter.”

Objectives
Meetup: "When you made the decision to have a try, what was the objective that you gave yourself?
David Borrelli: “Obviously it was an objective very different from becoming a councillor. We knew that a regional list is a very important challenge, very tiring, so our main objective was to succeed in putting the symbol of the 5 Star MoVement in all the provinces of Veneto so as to give every voter in Veneto the chance to know that we exist and that we are here and this objective was achieved and so we are all very happy because we all knew that there was a serious problem, above all connected to the signatures. It was difficult to collect so many signatures. We managed it and we are happy about that.”

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The election campaign
Meetup: "The presentation of the lists created problems in the whole of Italy, for example in Lazio, in Lombardy, what were the major difficulties that you encountered during the process of the presentation of the lists?”
David Borrelli: Yes sure, the collection of signatures was hard, the weather was cold, time was short, and so yes that was a difficulty, however I believe that the presence of certain independent candidates within Italia dei Valori had an influence. These people who up until a few months ago perhaps presented themselves in their own towns with civic lists connected to Beppe Grillo using his name and his face, according to them, suddenly with a specific project connected to Sonia Alfano suddenly decided to put themselves forward as independent candidates within Italia dei Valori and this inevitably created a few problems, a bit of confusion. The voter no longer managed to understand who they should vote for. In this sense it did cause absolute confusion. Another of the big problems according to us, was the silence, as Beppe often says, when the media doesn’t say that you exist, everything becomes more difficult. This is our true, true enemy: silence. Apart from then breaking the silence when there’s an attack, something that is unfair, for example, here, those candidates that I talked about earlier produced a press release expressly asking people not to vote for us. This came out in the newspapers. When Beppe goes on holiday, Beppe gets into the newspapers. On the other hand, when we do something positive, when we put ourselves forward as candidates, when we say that we exist, a veil of silence comes down. We didn’t get angry with these people who have made this choice. This is the year of love and so we wish these characters a long political career because I believe that that is what they want. So we wish them that with all our hearts, however, we wish them that outwith the 5 Star MoVement because we are something else, at times, in life, we happen to find ourselves at a fork in the road and it’s right that each one of us chooses the path that we feel is the right one for us. They have chosen another one. We say good bye with a “see you again” and we wish them good luck.”

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As a consequence of the initiatives taken against the 5 Star MoVement in Veneto, Davide Bortoletto, Franco Dal Col, Maurizio D'Este, Carlo Reggiani and Erik Pozzato are warned not to speak in the name of or on behalf of the 5 Star MoVement nor to make use of the related logos: "Lista Civica 5 Stelle" and "MoVimento 5 Stelle"
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The photo of the VIP Box at the Lazio-Roma match last Sunday can seem innocent, much ado about nothing, instead it’s the demonstration of the existence of a virus that attacks politicians. A disease that even infects the newly-elected ones and that in fact establishes two social classes in Italy: the VIPs and all the others. For the Derby in the Box of the Olympic Authorities, 242 places managed by the host team and by CONI, the people seated in the light blue extra-large armchairs were the new masters of the ‘Bel Paese’, that for them is the true ‘Paese di Bengodi’ {wonderland}. They are VIPs who have won the ticket of the Italian Lottery, dark blue cars, a pension after two and a half years in the legislature, free absenteeism in the Italian Parliament and in the European one, double and triple jobs, double salary, immunity from the laws, luxury flights. Between a buffet and a soft drink, the VIPs applauded the players on the field and showed their superiority as tribunes of the people, of the common people, like in Caesar’s time. Among the many: Renata Polverini, Paolo Bonaiuti, Clemente Mastella, Maurizio Gasparri, Francesco Rutelli, the directors of the RAI and the RAI Board member Soderini, Fabrizio Cicchitto, Giulio Napolitano, son of the President of the Republic. When they meet up, they recognise each other, they sniff each other like dogs in the park. They do things. They see people. “Friendly and informal environment, colleagues are relaxed” (words of the VIP Gasparri).
Symbols are important. A Box full of public employees who pose as the masters is the proof of our minority-status. The master is the servant and the one who should be serving has become an arrogant “parvenu”. Millions without work. Dozens of suicides of unemployed people in despair and a country in economic and moral ruin don’t disturb the VIPs. They are “relaxed”. They have no clocking-in card that needs pinging , no work obligations, no one checking up on them. They can, with an elegant metaphor, “fare il cazzo che gli pare” {do any fucking thing they like} and receive a fabulous salary. They love posing as statesmen, establishing new alliances, indicating unknown horizons. The only thing they don’t do is work, carrying out the task for which they were elected. An activity that is too plebeian. They don’t mix with the plebs. I think that the time has come for the settling of accounts, with courtesy, without violence of any kind. It’s not possible to continue making believe that nothing has happened. We will start with us. If we meet one of our employees on the street with their body guards, or stopped at the traffic lights with their dark blue car and driver or at the entrance to an important match or at a “first night” at La Scala, or in a TV studio or in any other place other than Parliament where they should be working … in that case, let us very courteously remind them of their duties in relation to the ones that pay them their salary with the deductions for their taxes. Do a video recording of the conversation, that I hope will be cordial, publish it on YouTube with the tag: "Educa il nostro dipendente" {educate our employee} and send a notification to the blog. In the future I will issue democratic fatwas by means of videos to a few employees who are examples of the category. They will never give up (but is it in their interests?). Neither will we.

Text:
Good day. I am Peter Gomez. Marco Travaglio has been blocked by the Iceland volcano, not because he is in Iceland but because he is out and about in Italy for a series of presentations, so today I’m going to try to talk to you about the things that Marco would have talked about.

The mafia must not exist
This week, both Marco and myself were really struck by the umpteenth outpouring of our President, Silvio Berlusconi about the facts relating to Cosa Nostra. Last week on 16 April, the day when the public prosecutor asked for a prison sentence of 11 years in the Appeal hearing for Senator Marcello Dell’Utri, who was sentenced to 9 years in prison at the first level trial for external collaboration in mafia association, Silvio Berlusconi came out with one of his “leitmotiv” that have been typical of his way of doing things since 1994 and this time, for the newspapers, he attacked Roberto Saviano, the author of “Gomorra”. In reality, the issue is more complex and it doesn’t relate only to Roberto Saviano, but it relates to all of us.
For those of you who haven’t read it, I’ll remind you what Berlusconi said. He said that our mafia turns out to be the sixth in the world and that however, it is the one that is well known because it has had promotional support that has brought it to be an element that is very negative when people are judging our country and he then called to mind the 8 series of “La Piovra” broadcast on TV in 160 countries in the world and above all the literature about the mafia happenings starting off with Gomorra and going on to all the others. For those who have read the newspapers in the last few days, you’ll know that Roberto Saviano is dealing with his own way of defending himself and he has also mentioned the idea of leaving his publishers, “Casa Editrice Mondadori” and this is why he has brought about the intervention of Marina Berlusconi, the Premier’s daughter, who is the President of Mondadori. In fact, behind this posturing by Berlusconi that as I said, is not at all new, there’s a hidden way of thinking that is very old and is not even “made in Berlusconi”.
In fact, the first one to come out with this story was Michele Greco, the father of the mafia who during his trials started to attack furiously “The Godfather “ by Mario Puzzo”, saying that the book, that novel, all that talking about the mafia, was what had brought him to the dock. Premier Berlusconi , then, in October 1994 picked up this type of declaration for the first time, saying that we had done a lot of damage to the country with the fiction about the mafia, because the mafia represents only an infinitely small part of Italy in relation to the 57 million inhabitants that were in the country at that time and immediately after that stand that he took in October 1994 there was another equally significant stand taken and it was taken by Totò Riina who at that time was already in prison because he was arrested 15 January 1993 and Riina from his cage responded: “Is it true?” President Berlusconi is right. All these things are inventions. All these things by “tragediatori” who are discrediting Italy and our beautiful Sicily. They say so many naughty things with this story of Cosa Nostra, of the mafia that they make people run away, but what mafia? what “piovra”? and it’s all fiction!
It’s not a matter of being polemical with Berlusconi but it’s a matter of dotting a few “i”s. The figures tell us that Berlusconi has an image of our country that is completely unreal. The first cause of underdevelopment of the regions of the south that today is being shared with the rest of the country starting with fiscal federalism to arrive at the secession, is organised crime, going beyond this way of rating things to see whether the mafia is at the first or the sixth position, certainly Cosa Nostra right now is behind with respect to the ’ndrangheta, but it’s still true that the mafias in Italy according to Censis {Centro Studi Investimenti Sociali = research body}, have a turnover of about 100 billion a year, that is 9.5% of Italy’s GDP is produced by organised crime. 70% of Sicily’s commercial companies and industries pay a “pizzo” and in fact this figure goes (or did go) up to 80%. With a survey conducted by means of anonymous questionnaires sent to 700 different entrepreneurs, Censis came to the conclusion that the reason why there is a big gap, a disjunction between the regions of the South and those of the North, is actually put down to organised crime. There’s a figure that is the best to however explains the significance of Cosa Nostra and the ’ndrangheta in the present day or what is the meaning of the power of organised crime in relation to civil society and it is a figure about the economy that has nothing to do with good or evil. Certainly we can remember that organised crime in this country, in the last few years, in the last 25 years has killed more than 10 thousand people, while all of us continue to talk about the threat of terrorism, when the terrorism of the time of the “years of lead” saw a total of 600 people killed, but the most impressive figure is the figure that we have to reflect on to understand what we are talking about when we are talking about the mafia. It’s a figure that comes from the reality of Bagheria. Bagheria is a town of 40 thousand inhabitants that is 20 kilometres from Palermo. For many years it has been the social centre of the old boss of Cosa Nostra, the old boss of all the bosses, Bernardo Provenzano. Well there’s a clinic that has existed for some time and still exists now. It’s the Santa Teresa Clinic of Bagheria. It’s owned by Michele Aiello, a pseudonym for Bernardo Provenzano. This clinic was really at the forefront. It was perhaps the private clinic that was the most advanced in the whole of Sicily. The best anti-tumour therapies in the whole of the island were carried out here. This is why patients came from all over the island.

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The Ferrovie italiane {Italian Railways} have performed miracles. The 2009 accounts bear witness to that. In 4 years, the “rationalization of operating costs” have brought about a reduction of 1.1 billion euro. The net profits have grown by 175% and have arrived at 44 million euro. The people of Viareggio who died, would be happy if they knew that. The blog is publishing the denunciation made by a former technical verifier that should be taken into account by the relevant magistrates. Up until now, as far as I know, no one has been charged with the Viareggio disaster.

”I am a former worker and technical verifier of the railways. This witness statement is in support of the victims and the families of the Viareggio disaster that took place on 29.06.09. The goods wagon that caused the disaster, was derailed on 22.06.09 at Vaiano on the Florence-Bologna route. If that wagon had been checked on the spot or sent to the nearest “squadra rialzo” (workshop) by means of ultrasound laser, (a technology that was already in existence 40 years ago), they would have discovered that the axle had been damaged and it would have been substituted, involving 30 minutes’ work.
This was the procedure 40 years ago, today technology has taken giant steps forward, with high speed trains (Rome-Milan) in 3 hours. That is right for modern needs, even the reduction of the work force can be accepted, however not at the expense of railway safety; in fact the goods sector has almost been forgotten: obsolete wagons that are more than 40, 50 or 60 years old, not undergoing preventative checks, moreover, there are tanker wagons transporting really dangerous liquids that can explode. 32 people died at Viareggio, dozens of people with 60%, 70%, 80% and 95% burns all over their bodies. I started with the railways on 15.06.1970 as a skilled worker in the locomotive depot at Leghorn. Even at that time, an engineer from Florence came to check the axles. Every 1-2 years these planned checks were carried out, or if the locomotive or the wagon had been subject to even a tiny derailment, perhaps in the goods yard. Then I became a verifier, and if anything like that happened, I stopped the wagon and if there was no danger, I sent it to the nearest “squadra rialzo” (FS workshop) for a general check. My task was to check the trains that were arriving and above all those that were departing and to check the brakes, then I issued a document called a TV40 that I got the engine driver to sign in duplicate, one for me and one for him, then the station master gave the “permission to go”.
In the station, there was a station operations team, today called “formatore”, that together with the manoeuvres team, made up the train in accordance with the weight, length and destination, etc.; then the controller made a note of all the wagon identification numbers that are written on the sides of the wagons and in other places, then he issued an M18 document in duplicate that he got the engine driver or the train operator to sign. One copy stayed in the files of the departure station and one for the arrival station or the marshalling yard. Thus even if the wagon catches fire there’s a paper document or a computer document of the number of the wagons. When a train derails, at times, it takes kilometres before the train stops, thus especially if the wagon is loaded it is very very stressed and the axles are the first ones to suffer because the wheels hit on the cement sleepers. Some witnesses saw the train of the disaster giving out sparks at a distance of about 20 Km from Viareggio. Doubtless the wagon was braking and the overheating for so many kilometres, by induction acted in such a way that the axle which had already deteriorated from the torsion then broke (you can see this clearly in the photo). The almost certainty that the wagon of the disaster is the same one that was derailed in Vaiano and that in Viareggio it was the first one at the head of the train, while at Vaiano it was the last one at the tail. These types of trains have blocked composition. When they arrive at the arrival station they go to the unloading or loading point, then the locomotive goes to the depot and when it next departs, the head becomes the tail and vice versa.
I have personally many times seen wagons with braking in operation that were stopped in the station after the one where the anomaly was noted; today, unfortunately, the stations are deserted because of the reduction of staffing levels. It would have been enough to place heat detectors or video cameras connected to the ‘Dco’ {Central Operations Manager} and the train would have been stopped in time thus averting the disaster. I am making this denunciation now because just 15 days ago, photos of the derailed wagon at Vaiano came into my possession.” Menchini Marco

Everywhere you turn in Italy you come face to face with a sacred cow. Should you dare to want to turn it into steaks, try to move it from your path or you simply state that this is a sacred cow, perhaps even a skinny one, then the custodians of the sacred cow will immediately step in. The cow, because it is indeed a cow that we are dealing with, is often unaware of all the fuss and continues to do precisely what cows do, namely browse on the grass and parade around the media that invite it to express its hard lowing. Still renowned is the cult of the Veltroni cow at Lingotto in Turin. For many months this cow was adored by the newspapers, just like the golden calf was adored by the Jewish people (who then proceeded to get rid of it). Topo Gigio, instead, continues to infest the management of the has-been little pdwithoutanel party with his daily gems. The cow that was to succeed Agnelli, the Attorney’s ruminant heir, was protected for years by the entire constitutional spectrum, from Fassino through to Bertinotti and from “La Repubblica” through to the “Corriere della Sera”. This was a voracious cow, hungry for dividends: the tronchetto of unhappiness, the quadriped (or quadrumane?) who has for some time now been spending his days in the Milan Courts claiming that he was a President of the company but was unaware of what his people were getting up to. A cow that was not of sound mind. Sacred cows can be identified by the number of front-page quotes, presences on talk shows and their moral superiority. As regards the fallen sacred cows, as happens to almost all of them sooner or later, are never butchered, but recycled in moderation. They are approached for an opinion, to sit on the board of some or other bank, or for a Sunday interview. Sacred cows are always "politically correct": humanitarian, anti-racist, progressive and non-violent. One sacred cow leads to another, writers, journalists, politicians, their media consumption is endless. Sacred cows are free to plunder the henhouses and eat all of the chickens. Since they are sacred and since they are cows (if they were foxes it would be entirely another matter) no one can shoot them. Sacred cows have their own personal protectors, like the god Krishna in India. In Italia, instead of protectors in the true sense of the word, the sacred cows have wretched pimps that create myths in order to distract the citizens while they run off with the loot. Who are the current sacred cows? I can’t say, but I can only think who they may be. Let he who is not afraid of the sacred cows cast the first stone (against them).

Yesterday, 15 April 2010, we crossed the Rubicon of legality. Alea iacta est. The main role player was not Julius Caesar but, more modestly, the Pdl-Pdwithoutanel duo, which has been attempting to destroy democracy in Italy for almost twenty years and, by the way, doing a pretty good job of it. The river in question was not the Rubicon, but the Italian Parliament, the Cloaca Maxima of Italian politics. The Chamber approved the “Save Errani-Formigoni” law with 435 votes in favour, 21 against and 41 abstentions. The pair, well seasoned over numerous legislatures as Premiers of the Emilia-Romagna and Lombardy Regions are safe for the time being. Until yesterday, . the law that prevented anyone from standing for more than two consecutive terms effectively prevented them from standing for re-election. Now, thanks to the ad-hoc decree, Errani and Formigoni have been re-virginised and they have been given a new electoral hymen. The law approved by the Deputies is in itself undeniable proof of the fact that Errani and Formigoni were not eligible for election. This is a post dated law designed to legitimise behaviour that was previously illegal. The “Save the Election List” decree effectively set a precedent for all future do-it-yourself postdated laws. Have you not paid your taxes? No problem, all you do is get together in the lounge with members of your family and you draft a little post-dated decree containing a tax shield. Have you been fired together with other temporary workers? All you do is call a meeting to approve a law ordering immediate reinstatement. Are you unable to pay your water, electricity and gas bills? All you do is draft a little post-dated law granting yourself a 100% reduction and send it off to Equitalia with postage to be paid by the addressee. Calderoli should simply burn both the Civil Code and the Penal Code. They are absolutely useless. Any law can be changed after the crime has been committed. It is merely the simplification of democracy, an entry into a new world in which everyone does whatever the hell they like thanks to post-dated legal provisions. The “Save Errani and Formigoni” law is yet to be approved by the Senate, but this is a mere formality. The Senators are obedient people. Then Napolitano still has to sign it into law, but this too is a mere formality. However, the decree is unconstitutional and I am committed to bringing it down. Meanwhile, for as long as the decree is in force, everyone will be free to make their own post-dated little laws and little decrees. Not even the gods can change the past, yet our politicians succeed in doing so without any problems, just as they are confidently screwing with our future. The corruptor becomes Prime Minister, the Mafia member a hero and Errani and Formigoni Regional Premiers. Are you disgusted by what is going on? Is the law standing in the way of your ambition to become a highwayman, thief, mafia don or extortionist? This is now all in the past. Thanks to the post-dated laws you will feel like a new man and, perhaps, once you grow up, you could even become a Deputy.