All animals are equal but some are more equal than others


Italy is not a democracy. It’s a telecracy, an oligarchy, a mafiocracy. All of these together, but not a democracy. The citizens cannot elect their representatives. So it is not an elected democracy. The citizens cannot participate in public decision making. So it is not a participatory democracy. The citizens have no right to be informed. So they cannot make decisions. But if citizens cannot elect or participate or be informed, what is left?
It’s extraordinary how the Italians, most of them, don’t realize and remove the reality of living in a dictatorship. When I think about it I get uncomfortable. Only for five minutes, which are however, long minutes. Then my body temperature goes up and I start bashing away at the keyboard like a machine gun. Any scrap of information is like a democratic bullet. Another hole in the colander of the system. They cannot silence all the voices on the Internet.
I have received two letters about the existence of democracy, one from Federico in Amsterdam and one from the Villafranca Meetup.
In Italy, water has been privatised by the psycho dwarf (did you know that?), however in the Netherlands, water policy is determined by the people of the Netherlands. The town of Vigasio in the Veneto region is pouring cement over 4.5 million square metres, but they don’t want the citizens to get in the way. The Local Authority is “Casa Loro” {their house} but the salaries they receive is our money.
They will never give up, (but would it be worth their while?) neither will we.

"Dear Beppe,
I am Federico Bonelli from Amsterdam. I have received a letter in which I have been asked to vote for representatives on the water management council. The council is public and elected. In the letter, there’s the form and a pre-paid envelope, and it gives an internet site for information about lists of candidates and their policies.
I went to the website and entered my postcode and then I saw a number of questions to which you can reply freely. You can say anything from "totally agree" to "completely disagree". The questions are significant and I get help from Babelfish (yes, the Dutch language is not easy!), from Wikipedia and occasionally I ask my wife, who is Dutch. The program creates a graph with two axes: spending and environment. My vote is represented as a pencil and the opinions of all parties are represented by their symbols. If my vote is in the same place as a symbol, then you see the name of the person to vote for with the responses they gave to the questionnaire and the reasons they have given for their answers. Who has paid for this service? The citizens through their taxes! Because it was created by the water organisation. Instead of public money going to the party to produce a flood of letters or commercials on TV, here they use my money to publicise the views of candidates and to compare them with mine.
Relevant questions, not rubbish. "Is it OK to ban people from watering their gardens?" "Should farmers pay for cleaning up the water?" "Is it OK to expropriate land to increase the green areas?"
The questionnaire has obliged me to find out about the issues and I now know a little more about water. But there are many other considerations to note: democracy in relation to environmental choices that relate to you, linked to the territory and essential resources, use of government money not to finance the populist campaign of the party, but to make known to the citizen, the views of the party; Internet and statistical tools to inform the citizens. I think of Italy and I want to cry. To console myself, I drink a glass of tap water. It's very good. I remember Rome's water when I was a child ... before it was normal that it had a horrible taste to make us buy bottle after bottle of mineral water. Greetings." Federico


"Dear Beppe,
We are the members of the Meetup group of Villafranca (Verona). On November 18 we attended the Vigasio council meeting where they are debating a huge project called Motorcity.

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We have already repeatedly denounced the fact on our blog and on our Meetup. Thanks again." Friends of Beppe Grillo, Villafranca di Verona