It’s strange, at times, how you wake up in the morning with some new questions. Questions that even the day before you weren’t even thinking about. And it’s disturbing that those questions are so obvious, radiant, so vivid, that you get so surprised that you had never formulated these questions before.
If a mayor is the indirect cause of the death of hundreds of his citizens through a respiratory disease, is he guilty? Should he be convicted of culpable homicide on many people with aggravating circumstances? If a President of the Lower House signs the Fini-Giovanardi and Fini-Bossi laws and he is allied with Berlusconi, is he a Left-wing President? If a president of Fiat keeps quiet at the moment of getting cash as State aid and after that then speaks up against the short time-frame for the Statute of Limitations, is he the man of tomorrow? If an anti-mafia writer publishes his books with the Mondadori that was purchased with the corruption of judges is that a thing that is right and fitting? Well then why don’t Marco Travaglio or Lirio Abbate do that? If the mafia is in power, is its task to fight the competitors of organised crime that are present in the market? Who authorises a Minister to call the state employees “lazy-bones” when the ones with the top absence records are the Parliamentarians? Why does no one sound the alarm for the Public Debt that is growing at the rhythm of almost a billion a day when it is clear that it will take us into bankruptcy? If a guy has being making “ad personam” laws for fifteen years with complete impunity, is it because they are of use to everyone, even to the presumed Opposition? If Andreotti is “prescritto” {subject to the time limit for the Statute of Limitations} for mafia, why can he stay in Parliament? Is it perhaps a mystery of the Vatican Faith? Will the Fiscal Shield be used by those parliamentarians of the PDminusL who were not present at the moment of the voting? And if that is the case, how can a citizen find out? If a party doesn’t liberate itself from its convicts and it gets them elected to Parliament, is it because those convicts are blackmailing the party leader? If the convicts that are in the first line of closeness to the mafia are elected as senators is it for the votes that they bring with them? If a parliamentarian does two jobs, actor, lawyer, administrator, does he do twice as much filth? Does the money that he takes away from the unemployed take away his sleep? If nuclear is anti-economic who gains? If "Il Fatto Quotidiano" refuses public contributions and just lives on the money from its readers, why are we gifting public money to La Repubblica, Libero and il Corriere della Sera? If throughout the whole world, there’s investment in broadband why has Gianni Letta blocked 800 million euro already approved? If digital terrestrial is of no use, what use is it? If in Italy there is not the crime of torture, then it’s possible to torture Bianzino, Cucchi and a hundred other poor wretches? If D'Addario is still alive and Brenda is dead, is it because the former is protected and the latter has lost her protector?
The last question that arrives when you are still in front of the mirror, the one that definitively ruins your day, is not new, it comes back every morning and you don’t manage to be liberated from it: “Which are filthiest, the Italians or the ones that govern them?” Then you put on your helmet and you go out to face the unknown.

The Calendario dei Santi Laici 2010 is available. It can be downloaded for free or purchased in the coffee-table-version at a price that’s up to you.