Dell'Utri has been sentenced to 7 years on Appeal. For some time he’s been a senator so as not to end up in prison (appointed by the psycho-dwarf and not by the citizens). The next level of judgement (the “Cassazione”) does not decide on the substance, just on the form. Thus, as regards the substance, Dell'Utri is guilty according to the Italian system of justice. If Dell'Utri stays at large and continues to get the salary and the benefits of a parliamentarian and the people of Italy don’t bat an eyelid, then the one who is right is Marcello, the founder, the trainer and the brains behind “Forza Italia” when he defined the multiple killer Mangano to be a hero! And Berlusconi is also right to define us as “coglioni” {arseholes} and Minchiolini is right to do a TV News broadcast on Dell'Utri’s absolution. For a matter of equity, all the prisoners who are serving a sentence up to 7 years have to be released. PDL and PDminusL could organise an ad hoc summer amnesty like they did in 2006, another bipartisan law “ad delinquentes”. At the next election it’ll be possible to organise a raffle with all the names of the scoundrels who have been released. The people whose names are extracted will then become deputies and senators of the Republic. A parliament of former-convicts, an across-the board party of scratch-card liberty. An ideal continuation of the current parliament full of definitively convicted convicts, at the first or second level or under investigation. What’s the level of “putting up with it” of this country? Is there a country? Has someone stayed at home? A country in which the newspapers are talking about gagging laws for months when it is they that have gagged themselves with interviews on their knees to the “bibliophile” Dell'Utri, to the “honourable” Dell'Utri. I would like to send a message of solidarity to the Federazione Nazionale Stampa Italiana {Trades Union of Italian Journalists}: “Give us back the money from our taxes with which you print the daily lies and shame on you, repent, put a pointy hat on your head bearing the wording: "Venduti"{sold}"
Sometimes you wonder if it’s sensible to oppose the degradation of a people (Dell'Utri is just a symptom, as is Berlusconi) and what needs doing to reawaken the people. You look at yourself in the mirror, older, more angry, more disillusioned. You think about leaving everything and going away. To a civilised country where a person convicted of external collaboration with the mafia would be sent away from any public position. He would be in prison. Avoided by everyone. Remember Borsellino, who knew that he was condemned to death. And you ask who made him do it. Thoughts like that. Thoughts of people who can see the growth of indifference and the indolence of the Italians in the face of any rape of democracy. The Italians are the guilty ones, not all of them, but certainly the absolute majority. They deserve what they have and perhaps even more.

Federalism of public property is pure shit and that’s why it’s been rechristened: “faecal federalism”. The towns are on the brink of collapse because of foolish investments. Their exposure in derivatives is 40 billion euro, the losses accumulated last year were between 6 and 8 billion. In certain cases, like in Catania and Rome, the government has covered the losses of hundreds of millions of euro to avoid the interruption of public services. Now the money is finished. The coffers of the State are a sieve. The public debt is more than 1,800 billion euro. To avoid closing down the towns, they have invented a delinquent package. The expropriation and sale of 11,009 items belonging to the State. Our stuff. Stuff of the citizens. The mechanism is simple. The State hands over ownership of State property to the towns that then put it up for sale to the one offering the best price with the restriction (?) that the sale is used to reduce the public debt. Selling to whom? To the construction companies and to organised crime using false names. Because it’s like that that the beautiful spirits in Parliament will be at peace.
The Italian territory is itemised as "a source of revenue ". it’s not historic naturalistic territory, something that touches our life in an emotional way, our past, our children’s. No! It’s "a source of revenue” that right now is not making enough for the State (estimated at 189 million). For these scoundrels, the Dolomites are "a source of revenue ", not a World Heritage Site. A brief list of the public auction, the complete list will be available at the end of July: Museum of Villa Giulia in Rome, the old walls "Mura degli Angeli" in Genoa, the Idroscalo {seaplane base} at Ostia, the Nuovo Sacher theatre, the former fort of Saint Erasmus in Venice, the tiny islands surrounding Caprera, island of santo Stefano near to Ventotene, beaches here and there from Sapri to Lake Como, part of the “lungo lago di Peschiera” near Verona, shooting ranges and barracks surrounded by public green spaces, mountains around Cortina d'Ampezzo: the Tofane mountains, monte Cristallo, the Croda Rossa, Alpe di Faloria, Sorapis, the forts of Madonna del Monte, Nostra Signora degli Angeli, Tagliata del Giovo near Savona. These names break your heart. They will become hotels, resorts, cement, building blocks, private areas removed from public access.
They’re selling off Italy to cover up their incompetence, to shift the hands of time (the time of default) to go forward a little bit. If we don’t stop them, there’ll be nothing left, not even our eyes for crying. Italy is ours it doesn’t belong to four political guys and collapsed mayors. To prevent this havoc, the citizens should participate in the auction of the goods that they own so that they stay in public ownership. We’ve got to this point….

Text:

Good day to you all. After the National football team debacle – as you know the National team never quite seems to make it when Berlusconi is governing – we have to question why such an apparently endless series of catastrophes befall this Country every time it is governed by a certain gentleman who only ever seems to secure good things for himself and bad things for everyone else. Usually, certain individuals only bring good luck and others only bad luck but he, instead brings both, namely good luck to himself and bad luck to everyone else. Now he has even started bringing bad luck to his closest collaborators, just think of the most recent disasters that have befallen some of his very closest collaborators, from Scajola to Bertolaso and from Matteoli through to Lunardi. Now comes the case of former undersecretary Brancher, recently promoted to Minister on the eve of his trial for receiving money, which he claims that Fiorani gave him to create a lobby group to support the local smart-alecs and Governor Fazio back in 2005, 5 years ago. Obviously, the newly appointed minister wasted no time at all and immediately claiming legitimate impediment, which is an automatic process, meaning that all that is required is a declaration from the Prime Minister’s office, which the Court is then duty bound to take into account. The legitimate impediment may remain in force for an initial 6 months and can be extended twice, in other words, a total of 18 months.

The crocodile tears
This law is the one that was approved at the beginning of this year and was then, as usual, unhesitatingly promulgated by the Head of State, who then received the new Minister of heaven alone knows what, namely Brancher, at the Quirinale to be sworn in.
All that remains are the scathing images from Sky, showing not only the handshake and the swearing in ceremony on the Constitution, but also the toast with champagne and the applause, including that of the State President, who has only now realised precisely what he has done, in other words, appointed an individual who has chosen to become a minister purely and solely in order to escape prosecution. Indeed, the need for him to be appointed as minister was so urgent that the official portfolio would only come up for discussion later, the important thing was to get him sworn in as minister so that he would immediately qualify to claim legitimate impediment. Suddenly the Head of State began to distance himself, but from whom? From himself, I think, because, unfortunately for him, legislation such as the legitimate impediment law could never become law unless the Head of State personally promulgates them and ministers appointed by the Prime Minister would never be able to take office unless the Head of State personally swears them into office. Therefore, Napolitano himself effectively appointed Brancher, not Berlusconi, and Napolitano himself promulgated the legitimate impediment law, not Berlusconi.
So what is the Head of State got to complain about now? Who knows, it’s a mystery. It’s a mystery because Brancher merely availed himself of a law, promulgated by the State, which entitles all incumbent Ministers, including the one in question, to claim legitimate impediment and, if the law was indeed signed by the Head of State, it means that it is currently in force. So how come Berlusconi was able to claim legitimate impediment in all 3 trials, namely the MediaTrade, Mediaset and Mills cases, without the Head of State ever having raised a single objection while, when Brancher does exactly the same thing, the Head of State suddenly comes out and says that there is no legitimate impediment in this case? Do we honestly believe that during the next 18 months the Prime Minister will absolutely not have the odd hour available to attend even one of his trial hearings? Or are we perhaps saying that Brancher’s claim of legitimate impediment is undoubtedly false but that Berlusconi’s legitimate impediment is true? Can anyone honestly believe that Berlusconi has absolutely no free time even though we are only too aware of what he does in his spare time?
Furthermore, is the controversy surrounding Brancher perhaps simply due to the fact that he is small fry while Berlusconi, instead, is a big fish? And that, therefore, it’s very easy to take out one’s frustration on Brancher because it’s far more difficult to take it out on Berlusconi? These are the kinds of questions we should be asking ourselves, but why? Perhaps because, by informing the judges that he believes, heaven alone knows on what grounds, that there is indeed no legitimate impediment when Brancher claims there is, while he has never intervened in any of Berlusconi’s claims of legitimate impediment, our Head of State is trying to tell us that the legitimate impediment law is indeed an “ad personam” law that is only applicable to one specific “personam” and that he only promulgated the law with the intention of saving Berlusconi and that, therefore, it’s okay when Berlusconi avails himself of the law but when any other Minister does so, our Head of State gets angry. If that is indeed the case, then he should have come out and said so from the very beginning. He should have written or had it written into the law that legitimate impediment is only valid in the case of the Prime Minister. So how come the Head of State promulgated a law that also extends the legitimate impediment provisions to other Ministers as well? If he wanted to let us know that the law was tailor made for Berlusconi and only for Berlusconi, he should have forced Berlusconi to specify his own name as the sole beneficiary of that law. Instead, the State President said: but Brancher is Minister without portfolio and therefore falls under the Prime Minister’s Office, so it’s not true that he has to re-organise and organise his Ministry, since he has no Ministry, which is all good and well, but why then did he promulgate a law that makes no distinction whatsoever between the Ministers with portfolio and Ministers without portfolio? If Ministers without portfolio indeed have nothing to do and have a lot of free time, then it would have been enough to force the government, upon pain of refusing to promulgate the law, to insert a special clause specifying that legitimate impediment is only applicable to the Prime Minister and to Ministers with portfolio and not to ministers without portfolio. It’s far too late to complain now because the law as it stands makes no distinction between ministers with portfolio and those without, so Brancher, thanks to a law promulgated by the Head of State with all due pomp and ceremony, has every right to claim legitimate impediment and, I’m sorry to say, he is fully entitled to do so. We know exactly what went on behind the scenes, however, the Head of State, by agreement with the Prime Minister, officially created the perfect conditions for Brancher to legitimately claim legitimate impediment and it is useless to shed crocodile tears after the fact because what’s done is done and he should have thought the matter through properly beforehand.
Naturally, you won’t see any of these issues mentioned in any of the newspapers other than “Il Fatty Quotidian” because, indeed the defence artillery has already been unleashed by the publishers and editors of all the major daily newspapers, who have stepped in to cover the Head of State’s back, claiming that this poor man who has a hell of a life was indeed forced to rubber-stamp Brancher’s appointment , just as he was forced to promulgate all of those shameful laws that he signed into law, and that he only did so under duress, with a very heavy heart, however, unfortunately for him, we all noted his happy little face, his applause and his smiles in the pictures broadcast by Sky!
I say this because this case , like no other before it, has revealed the Prime Minister’s Achilles’ heel, the signs of which are becoming increasingly evident. The handling of the Brancher affair has revealed the image of a punch-drunk boxer, who is being beaten by all and sundry. Brancher has become an essential factor in the equilibrium of Italian politics, but why? Because he is one of those people that never need be asked to do something, one glance is enough. He is one of those people that have grown in stature in the eyes of the Prime Minister thanks to their discretion and silence. One of those people that kept quiet, notwithstanding the fact that he was imprisoned for three months back in 1993 because of the bribes he paid out to the socialists and liberals, while he was a director of Fininvest, in order to benefit from the State sponsored advertising, you know the one I’m talking about, the one that we all love to hate, the anti-aids advertising campaign screened on the Fininvest networks, allegedly in return for which they paid out bribes to the socialists and the liberals of the infamous un-healthcare Minister De Lorenzo. Brancher was arrested for his crimes because he was fingered by Party Secretary De Lorenzo and, for three months , he refused to say a single word so, when he was eventually released, with his lips still as tightly sealed as when he went to jail, his career really took off, but why? Well, precisely because he had kept his mouth shut and, indeed, it was none other than Berlusconi himself, or perhaps it was Confalonieri, one of these two anyway, who told how the Cavaliere and Confalonieri drove around the San Vittore Prison in a motor car, in an attempt to relay a telepathic message to Brancher reminding him of the virtues of maintaining an aura of silence. Now we don’t know whether or not this worked, but what we do know is that Brancher refused to talk and now, purely coincidentally you understand, he has become one of Forza Italia’s incumbent parliamentarians just as another trial commences against him, not relating to the 1993 bribes because the matter of illegal funding is already statute barred and the crime of fraudulent accounting has been decriminalised by the very same Government that Brancher was a part of back in 2002. This time he was nabbed for the money received from Fiorani and, quite obviously, old friends who keep their mouths shut in times of need cannot simply be hung out to dry so, what do you know, suddenly there is this ministerial appointment, it’s as simple as that.
So, as you see, Berlusconi is now completely exposed, not only by the D'Addarios and other young ladies of this world and not only to being blackmailed by Mafia, but also by these ex …, blackmail threats that don’t even need to be explicit, but why? Well, simply because there is not even any need to ask when Brancher accumulated these brownie points, so what are the consequences of this weakness? What follows is the inertia of those that should be delivering the coup de grace to Berlusconi, and this at a time when Berlusconi’s political career is at its lowest ebb, there is no real opposition to speak of, except for the little that Di Pietro is able to muster, notwithstanding the fact that, just the other day, he was the only one that offered any opposition whatsoever to Bondi’s cuts in the Ministry of Culture while the Democratic Party proceeded to side with Bondi simply because they were thankful to Bondi for having shown the kindness and to at least listen to the Democratic Party’s earlier requests. It just goes to show how little it takes to make these people happy, just a little plate of lentils, however, it also reflects the lack of op position when it is time to deliver a coup de grace and the institutions, starting with the Quirinale, continue to simply rubber-stamp everything put before them, obviously except for when the real reasons emerge, which were clearly evident even beforehand, at which point the institutions attempt to distance themselves and mobilise themselves, pen in hand, claiming that the Brancher affair is shameful, but that the Head of State has nothing to do with it because he had no choice.

Bring back Scalfaro and Ciampi
It is not true to say that he had no choice. There are also certain precedents that have been set in this regard, where previous State Presidents have not only sent back tens of laws, but also rejected certain ministerial appointments, like Scalfaro who rejected Previti’s appointment back in 1994 when Berlusconi wanted to appoint him as Minister of Justice, but why? Well, because Scalfaro essentially said: I am the one responsible for appointing ministers, while you merely propose them so, if I don’t like that individual, you have to propose someone else. Ciampi did the very same thing in 2001 when they tried to nominate Maroni as Minister of Justice even though Maroni had a criminal record for resisting arrest and insulting a public official, at which point Ciampi said: I don’t want a convicted criminal in charge of the Ministry of Justice, nominate someone else, so we got Castelli. I’m not so sure that it was indeed a very good bargain, but certainly, from an official point of view, he could find no fault with Castelli other than the fact that he knew little or nothing about justice, but that’s totally another story. However, the impropriety of nominating a convicted criminal for appointment as Minister of Justice resulted in Ciampi rejecting Maroni’s nomination.
That is precisely what Napolitano could have done the other day, stating that: I refuse to appoint Brancher, but why? Because he is accused of having committed a crime and because he got off scot-free on another occasion, because he has been incarcerated previously, because Parliament and the government are not an alternative to going into hiding. Once upon a time individuals used to go abroad to evade the law but these days, they get into government or into Parliament in order to do so.
So just imagine this kind of scenario of weakness existing if the oversight and control bodies were doing their job properly and just imagine what would become of this little regime if the media were doing its job properly because, notwithstanding the fury resulting from constantly being told that the wiretapping law has been improved thanks to Fini’s intervention and the Democratic Party’s proposed amendments, the law will nevertheless probably still be promulgated by August, even if it means keeping Parliament in session until the “Ferragosto” bank holiday, Furthermore, it will be the same bullshit that we have spoken about on numerous previous occasions because the amendments are little more than cosmetic changes that do nothing to change the substance of the law, so everything will be slipped through as the supposed protection of privacy, in full view of the Country’s citizens thanks to the regime propaganda with Berlusconi masquerading as the champion of privacy. Just imagine the publisher of “Chi”, a publication that has turned the violation of privacy into it’s main income earner, masquerading as the champion of privacy! His own privacy perhaps, because that of others is being violated on a daily basis by Berlusconi’s publications, not to mention the television programmes for which privacy is the watchword, as demonstrated by shows such as “Lucignolo”, “Bikini”, the various “Pupe e Secchioni” (known in English as ‘Beauty and the Geek’) and Big Brother privacy shows. Have you noticed the amount of privacy that is revealed in those programmes? Sad but true.
The editor and publisher of television and printed gossip who suddenly becomes the defender of privacy? What privacy is that precisely? Only his own, obviously, because he controls everything and therefore doesn’t allow any news to leak out, but more than that, what we’re talking about is a gentleman that, if there were such a thing as a free media in this Country at this moment in time, he would be called upon to resign and would be facing no-confidence motions regarding one very specific matter that I would equate to the “Watergate” scandal that cost former United States President Nixon his job, namely the Unipol tape scandal.

The surveillance of the Berlusconi clan
I say this because the past few days have witnessed the difficult coming on line of the “Il Fatto Quotidiano” website. This self-criticism is not because we were flooded and, dare I say it, swamped by some 400/500-thousand hits, we eventually lost count of the actual number of hits, but the website also went into tilt due to certain technical faults, both of our own making and some caused by the company that we commissioned to handle the establishment of the website. We are still busy trying to rectify these faults, with extreme difficulty I might add, but the “Il Fatto Quotidiano” website nevertheless immediately began publishing the kind of news that no one else covers, precisely as happened with the “Il Fatto Quotidiano” newspaper. We began telling you about this matter that you had never even heard mentioned on television other than the few clues that “Annozero” was able to provide in its last few episodes. An extremely serious affair that no one would know about unless it was spotlighted by the television cameras, which this one wasn’t.
Gianni Barbacetto provided an excellent summary in two episodes in “Il Fatto Quotidiano” and so, using his work, I would like to give it to you in small doses.
What we’re dealing with is an investigation into some local smart-alecs that began back in the spring of 2005, when it was discovered that Fiorani was involved in a number of illegal takeover bids, such as “Popolare di Loti’s” takeover bid for the Antonveneta Bank, Ricucci Magiste’s bid for Rizzoli’s “Corriere della Sera” and Consorte Unipol’s bid for the “Banca Nazionale del Lavoro”, backed by a whole range of financiers shamelessly sponsored by an across-the-board group ranging from the leadership of the Social Democrats through to Forza Italia and the Lega Nord Party. Clementina Forleo arranged for wiretaps to be installed on a number of phone lines and uncovered proof of these illegal activities. At the end of June, various warrants were issued for the seizure of shares in order to prevent these illegal takeover bids. Those wiretapped conversations that made it into the newspapers did not include the conversations involving politicians and parliamentarians, for which special permission is required from Parliament before they can be used in any trial. So the Public Prosecutors asked Preliminary Investigations Magistrate Forleo to ask Parliament for permission to use a carefully selected group of the wiretapped conversations, which were deemed to be the most useful from a legal perspective.
What happened later, during the summer of 2007, was that Clementina Forleo landed up being knifed in the back merely for doing her job and thereby touching upon the untouchables.
But let’s remain back in 2005, when the politicians’ telephone conversations, which were still classified and could not therefore be report in the newspapers because Parliament had yet to authorise their release, remained where they were, so who knows anything about them? Very few people in fact, but why? Well, because the Financial Police of Florence has not even got around to having the wiretapped conversations transcribed yet, so they are sitting in some safe, one copy of the disks is sitting with the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Milan and another is in the hands of the Financial Police. A third copy is being held by a private surveillance company called RCS, which has nothing whatsoever to do with Rizzoli or “Il Corriere della Sera”. This company called Resource Control System (Rcs) is owned by a certain individual by the name of Roberto Raffaelli, who is also the company’s Managing Director, and has been subcontracted by the Government to handle all telephone surveillance in the Milan area because the Government does not have its own surveillance equipment, so it uses the services of private companies to do the telephone surveillance on its behalf, which also explains the soaring telephone surveillance costs that could be significantly reduced if they did it themselves.
This Mr. Raffaelli, who physically conducts the telephone surveillance operations on behalf of the Public Prosecutors Office of Milan, has obviously also heard everything that was said and is obviously required to maintain total confidentiality, but what happens instead? There is one particular audio file, one of the ones involving certain politicians and also one of the most damaging, in which the then Secretary of the Social Democrats, namely Piero Fassino, is heard to say to Giovanni Consorte, in the midst of the BNL takeover bid, “so now we have a bank”, when it already apparel that BNL had got its hands on the “Banca Nazionale del Lavoro” tank to a handful of local smart-alecs that gave him the necessary shareholder majority, totally against the provisions of the OPA, which required a public share purchase offering in cases involving more than 30% of a Company’s shares and that, in this case, involved in excess of 50% of the Company’s shares, but the OPA had not yet been launched and, according to the investigators, this is in fact the illegal aspect of the takeover bid. Fassino asks Consorte what the situation is and Consorte explains that yes, he does indeed have control of BNL and Fassino merely acknowledges the fact, without making any comments regarding the fact that Consorte has just confessed to doing something that the Prosecution would later classify as a serious crime of market rigging and market destabilisation.
This telephone conversation only came to light at the end of December 2005, right in the midst of the election campaign leading up to the spring elections, elections that the centre-left was expected to win easily since, in December, they still held a 10 point advantage over the centre-right and, after 5 years in power, Berlusconi was against the ropes. Instead, after the revelation of that wiretapped conversation in which Fassino tells Consorte “now we have a bank”, Berlusconi made a major comeback, resulting in a split Senate and the centre-left, namely the “Unione” won by a mere 25-thousand votes, tank to the senators elected by citizens living abroad.
This comeback is therefore linked to that telephone conversation that was revealed by Paolo Berlusconi or Silvio Berlusconi’s “Il Giornale” newspaper, who knows to whom it belongs. But of course we know! It belongs to Silvio and there is no other way that the conversation could have come out into the open, but why? Well, because the only people who knew its contents were Mr. Raffaelli, the Financial Police and the Public Prosecutors, all of whom were subject to confidentiality restrictions and therefore it would be a crime for anyone that revealed the information. “Il Giornale” was perfectly right to publish. When someone has any newsworthy information at his disposal, it is right for him to publish it, even if the information is confidential and we’re not questioning “Il Giornale’s” right and indeed its duty to publish any information that may be of public interest, too bad for Fassino that he said what he did.
What is important is to find out how it came about that the details of this telephone conversation were leaked to “Il Giornale”. It doesn’t make any sense to me because, while it is said that there are certain investigators that leak information to the press, I have never come across these people and nothing like this has ever happened to me, but then perhaps the investigators that I normally deal with are far too honest, who knows! In this case the source of that leaked information was in fact discovered, totally coincidentally you understand, and it wasn’t the Financial Police or the Public Prosecutors Office for that matter, but it came from none other than the RCS company belonging to that Mr. Raffaelli, but where’s the link? The link is a certain individual by the name of Fabrizio Favata, who unsurprisingly had spent some time in jail and had also been one of Paolo Berlusconi’s partners for some time, the very same Paolo Berlusconi who also unsurprisingly has spent some time in jail, which proves the adage that those who don’t die will invariably meet again! Favata brings Raffaelli and the audio files of Fassino’s wiretapped telephone conversation over to Paolo Berlusconi and together, Paolo Berlusconi, Paolo Favata and Raffaelli they go and visit Silvio on Christmas Eve, the 24th December 2005 it was, at 19h30. Berlusconi was Prime Minister at the time and was staying in his villa in Arcore. In the sitting room stood a white pine tree, ready trimmed for Christmas. It was Christmas Eve and Berlusconi was lounging half-asleep in an armchair with his eyes half shut, claiming to be very tired. With the Boss lying back, in walked the trio of Paolo, Favata and Raffaelli. Berlusconi apologised, saying that he was extremely tired and couldn’t allow them much time because he had to go to Don Verzè’s Christmas Eve mass at the San Raffaele church, so the two men had to work fast. But what did they do? They hauled out the pendrive containing the audio file of the wiretapped conversation and inserted it into the laptop computer and let Berlusconi listen to Fassino’s telephone call in which he says “we and our families will be eternally grateful to you!”, but why did Berlusconi agree to see two people that he didn’t know from Adam at that time on Christmas Eve? He obviously knew Raffaelli and Favata as well as he knew his own brother because Raffaelli had stated that he wanted to give him a Christmas present and, in any event, this man was well known to Berlusconi because he was trying to secure a 120 million Euro Government mega-contract for RCS, for his company to handle all the telephone surveillance operations in Rumania. The Rumanian President was a man by the name of Adrian Nastase, a great friend of Berlusconi’s and Italy was handling the entire operation to equip Rumania to handle telephone surveillance, so much so that Prefect Del Mese, who was also Head of the Secret Services at the time, went to Rumania in 2004 precisely to set up this co-operation agreement between Italy and Rumania, which Raffaelli obviously hoped would result in his company, namely RCS, making money hand over fist.
This pendrive gift that Raffaelli brings along is truly like manna from heaven for Berlusconi who was attempting a comeback against Prodi, so he was only too happy to get the wiretapped conversation splashed all over the front page of his brother’s newspaper and thereby throw the centre-left electorate into disarray and allowing him to portray the centre-left as a bunch of wheeler-dealers throughout the remainder of his election campaign. Let’s not lose sight of the paradox here, in that here we have Berlusconi, a man whose life mission has been to bring wheeler-dealing into politics, accusing the centre-left of attempting to do just that.
But what happened next? What happened is that one week later, just after the Christmas break and on New Year’s Eve, “Il Giornale” proceeded to publish a full front-page spread under the headline “Fassino tells Consorte: now we have a bank”, followed by a full transcript of that telephone conversation that only the Public Prosecutor of Milan and the Financial Police knew about and had locked up in their respective safes, and that only Raffaelli and now Favata, Paolo Berlusconi and Silvio Berlusconi knew about, so who do you think leaked the contents of that conversation to Paolo and Silvio Berlusconi’s newspaper? Then came the investigation, but why? Well, because at a certain point in time Favata was in trouble, that same individual that put Raffaelli in contact with Paolo and subsequently with Silvio Berlusconi, and he then begins to ask everyone for money, even threatening to reveal everything he knows about this matter, so he goes to the journalists in the hope of the Berlusconi Clan would realise that he was a very real threat and that someone would eventually give in to his demands. He went and spoke to the people at “L’Unità” newspaper, to Peter Gomez of “L’Espresso” and eventually even to Di Pietro to tell him the whole sordid tale. Naturally he wanted money from the journalists, but they didn’t pay him, so he went to Di Pietro, but what precisely did Di Pietro do? Well, he went straight out and laid a complaint with the Public Prosecutor of Milan regarding what he had heard. Thus began a new investigation by the Milan Public Prosecutors Office, who questioned various witnesses about what had occurred, all or most of which merely confirmed that which I have already told you.
The first fitness to confirm the events was a man by the name of Eugenio Petessi, but who is he exactly? He is a friend of Favata. Favata had confided in him and told him what he had just done, about having taken Raffaelli and the pendrive containing the wiretapped conversation to Berlusconi. Petessi was then questioned further and stated that: yes, yes indeed, he told me what he had done. This was an initial clue so the investigators then brought in Raffaelli. Raffaelli stated that the meeting had indeed taken place and that he had indeed asked for help with the Rumanian contract, but he obviously denied having disclosed any information about the wiretapped conversation because that was not only a crime and a clear violation of his obligation of confidentiality as a trustee of said information, but more importantly because if it was discovered that he revealed confidential information, that would have been the end of his work in the field of telephone surveillance and if he was even suspected of selling confidential information, no Public Prosecutor would ever again trust him to conduct telephone surveillance on their behalf. So, obviously Raffaelli could not exactly confirm these events and instead attempted to deny everything.
So Petessi confirms everything that Favata had told him, Raffaelli confirms that a meeting did in fact take place, but denies having handed over any pendrive and Favata claims to have met with Paolo Berlusconi on 3 separate occasions, twice at “Il Giornale’s” offices in Milan and once at Palazzo Grazioli in Rome, this according to Preliminary Investigations Magistrate Giordano, who had ordered Favata’s arrest two months earlier for having attempted to extort money from these individuals and who then also investigated the matter. Meanwhile, the Public Prosecutors Office was busy investigating Paolo Berlusconi following allegations that he was receiving stolen property and had accepted the confidential wiretapped audio files, as well as illegally disclosing their content and alleged delinquent debt because it was suspected that Paolo Berlusconi had in fact kept back all, or at least a part of the money that should have gone to Favata in return for his mediation of the deal, and that another part of that money had gone to that Mr. Petessi who claimed to know all about what had occurred.
The Judge writes that: “At the second meeting, Raffaelli talked about the trouble that RCS was experiencing in getting the orders from abroad and Paolo Berlusconi told him that they could inform certain foreign governments with which the Italian Government, headed up at the time by his broche Silvio, enjoyed excellent relations, in an attempt to favour the business affairs of RCS. At the third meeting, which was held at Palazzo Grazioli in Roma, Paolo Berlusconi introduced Raffaelli – the owner of the surveillance firm – to Valentino Valentini, who was head of the international relations section within the Prime Minister’s Office as well as being one of Silvio Berlusconi’s closet aides, in other words, a kind of “jack of all trades and parliamentarian” who, according to Paolo Berlusconi, would be able to promote RCS’ business activities with various foreign governments, for example the Rumanian Government. When questioned, Valentino confirmed that this meeting did in fact take place in the spring of 2005 and admitted that he gave an undertaking to see what he could do to help, but apparently also explained that he did not know whether Italy’s formerly friendly relations with Silvio’s old friend and former President Nastase would continue with his successor.
Then came the crash and the complete turnaround in the autumn of 2005, when those formerly hidden audio files unexpectedly came to light. Talking about this, Petessi tells the judge that: in October-November 2005 I was in Eng. Raffaelli’s office while he was sitting at a desk working on a laptop computer. After a while he looked up, turned the computer screen towards me and said “I’ll let you listen to something strange”, so anyone passing by would also have heard everything. On the screen, I saw a table with columns, In the first column there were dates and times, while the second column contained some names and in the third column there were a number of remarks, such as “not important” and “irrelevant”. I was taken aback when I realised that the names were those of some very important individuals. In particular, I remember seeing one line bearing the names of Briatore and Ricucci and another bearing the names of Consorte and Fassino, these were the telephone conversations relating to the BPI Unipol takeover bid.

The inquiry that was launched at least partly thanks to Di Pietro
While turning the computer screen toward me, Raffaelli said: listen to this, it’s nothing important in any event. Then he pressed a button and I heard a conversation that took place between Briatore and Ricucci, who were talking about some or other invitation to go on a boating trip, etc. Just as Raffaelli was about to turn the computer screen back towards himself, I was struck by the names of Fassino and Consorte, mainly because of the fact that the first of the two is a well known politician, which made me curious and I asked “and what about this one?” pointing to the entry on Fassino and Consorte, and Raffaelli said: “OK, I’ll let you hear that one too, seeing that it is totally irrelevant”, Irrelevant? I’ll bet! I then heard the beginning of a conversation in which I remember Fassino saying: “now we have a bank”. According to Barbacetto, writing in “Il Fatto Quotidiano”, we know that Petessi is telling the truth because his version of the facts is confirmed by certain previously unknown facts that have never been revealed in the newspapers, for example, the name of a certain attorney who died tragically some time later but that nevertheless appears on the surveillance list, and Ricucci’s invitation to Briatore to accompany him on a boating trip.
Fassino’s telephone conversation intrigues Petessi and is proved to be very handy just a few days later in confirming the Christmas gift. Favata acts as courier between Raffaelli and Paolo Berlusconi and not only does he deliver the usb pendrive containing the wiretapped telephone conversation, but he also tells another story about money. Petessi tells the judge that for more than a year, commencing in June 2005, he had submitted fake invoices to RCS, always on request from Raffaelli and amounting to 40-thousand Euro plus 20% VAT every month. Petessi then regularly delivered the cash provided by Raffaelli to Favata in Milano, near Paolo Berlusconi’s office at “Il Giornale”. Favata had asked him to do this because the money was destined to be handed over to Paolo Berlusconi in Exchange for his efforts to ensure that the Rumanian deal ran smoothly.
Initially Favata had said that he had heard via Paolo Berlusconi that Raffaelli could meet with Valentino Valentini at Palazzo Grazioli in Rome and that these monies that Raffaelli was paying over to Paolo Berlusconi were actually meant for Valentini in return for him smoothing the way for RCS’ deal in Rumania. However, some time later Raffaelli mentioned to him that he had bumper into Valentini on a flight and that Valentini had appeared somewhat cold, so much so, in fact, that Raffaelli commented that in his opinion, Valentini had not been receiving any of the money that, according to Paolo Berlusconi, he would have used to ensure a favourable outcome of the ongoing Rumanian negotiations. In other words, what we’re saying is that, according to what Petessi says, Paolo Berlusconi received the money, promising to spread it around so as to promote Raffaelli’s interests.
So, who kept the money in the end? Well, Paolo Berlusconi is under investigation for delinquent debt because it is suspected that he kept part of the total amount of 560-thousand Euro, that Petessi also kept more than a little of the booty, the Rumanian contract never materialised, Favata, who was facing serious financial difficulties because he shut down a number of companies and was even in partnership with Paolo Berlusconi at one time, began to demand money from Paolo Berlusconi and even made noises to Silvio, choosing people that he believed would be suitable intermediaries, but who did he approach to act as intermediaries with Silvio? Well, Niccolò Ghedini, Giuliano Ferrara of “Il Foglio” and Maurizio Belpietro of “Panorama, then he asked for a loan from Raffaelli, who proceeded to give Petessi 300-thousand Euro from the company’s slush funds. However, Favata continued to demand more money and threatened to sell his story of the Christmas present all around the block.
He contacted “L’Unità” and “L’Espresso” and spoke to Di Pietro, and then the investigation commenced, although he never knew it, because Di Pietro laid a complaint. Then, in 2007, Favata wrote a letter to Petessi in which he said: “Dear Alberto, as you know full well, I am unable to provide a decent standard of living for my family. I’m sure you can imagine what it feels like to live in a town where everyone knows everyone else, to have debts in every shop. It becomes very difficult to buy anything, not to mention paying the bills and this just a week before Christmas to boot. Since Roberto has taken to telling me one thing and telling you the exact opposite, I have decided to sell the story of Paolo because there are two options available: the first is to sell the story to “La Repubblica” where I have struck a deal with one of the journalists. The second, a far more lucrative albeit far more dangerous option, involves Fabrizio Corona. I assure both you and Roberto that I will exercise total discretion. I was hoping to be able to speak to you face to face for a myriad of reasons, but this has not been possible, with affection, Fabrizio”.
In the arrest warrant for Favata, the Preliminary Investigations Magistrate states his conviction that although Favata demanded money and used blackmail tactics, he also mentioned certain things that were true, for example, these meetings with Attorney Ghedini. Raffaelli held a number of meetings with Ghedini and the Preliminary Investigations Magistrate asks himself why. Well, the very fact that Favata was threatening to go public with the entire affair was a problem not only for Paolo Berlusconi, who was one of the Attorney’s clients, but also for Raffaelli himself. If in fact the threats were only a problem for Paolo Berlusconi, there would not have been any reason for Raffaelli to keep coming back for answers, etc. Raffaelli was concerned because if Favata were to sell the story all over the block, he too would land up in trouble and not only Paolo Berlusconi.
So the only people, other than Favata, who could spill the beans were Raffaelli and the Hon. Attorney Ghedini’s clients, namely Silvio and Paolo Berlusconi. In fact, as Barbacetto writes, this story is all about silence because while there are certain people who are talking, there are also others that are keeping quiet. Meanwhile, although Paolo Berlusconi gave Ghedini a defence mandate with regard to this affair and claims that he is the offended party in the whole affair, somewhat surprisingly he decided not to lay any complaint of his own with the Authorities. If he truly was being blackmailed, then why did he not lay a complaint against the alleged blackmailer? He also held back when he was asked to appear in order to explain his alleged receipt of money in return for ensuring the positive outcome of the Rumanian deal, a behaviour that, according to the Preliminary Investigations Magistrate, would only be appropriate if indeed the allegedly offended party, just like Raffaelli, stood to lose far more than what he would gain by coming forward, but why? Well, because if he lodged a complaint regarding the attempted blackmail, he would have to explain that he was the person that took Favata and Raffaelli, with the super-secret pendrive, to see his brother the Prime Minister in the first place!
Therefore, the un wanted publicity that would inevitably result from any trial involving this affair would be a serious problem for him. Then there is also the silence maintained by Attorney Ghedini, who has done everything in his power and has so far succeeded in avoiding having to testify, notwithstanding the Public Prosecutor’s threats to have him brought in by force by the Carabinieri to testify unless he came in of his own free will. The Preliminary Investigations Magistrate has identified Ghedini as being the individual to which Favata physically made his monetary demands, however, when summoned to appear and explain what he knew about the matter, Ghedini refused to appear, but why? Well, because he claimed client privilege since Paolo and Silvio Berlusconi had given him a mandate to represent them for the purposes of this matter and were he to testify, he would be violating client privilege.
Then there is also the assistant working in Ghedini’s legal practice, the one that first received Favata, namely Attorney Cipollotti, who was questioned the other day by the Public Prosecutors. Judge Giordano established that the meeting between Cipollotti and Favata was not professional in nature, as would be a meeting between attorney and client, in the sense that Cipollotti only participated in that meeting as a go-between, to accept a financial demand, and purely because Ghiedini did not want to attend that meeting.
Obviously, throughout this story there is money changing hands and, although we don’t know who actually took the money, one thing is absolutely certain, and that is that the super-secret pendrive came in via the company director, via the go-between Favata and via Paolo Berlusconi who took the whole lot to Silvio, into the hands of the then, and current Prime Minister, a man who claims to be the defender of our privacy but who, if the truth be told, was the actual end-user of that highly confidential and still-hidden information on the pendrive and the one who used it to gain political advantage from its illegal, albeit rightful publication. The information was in any event deemed to be totally irrelevant from a legal perspective even though, in reality, it was indeed of great public interest because it proves that it was he who managed to engineer his political comeback partly thanks to the disclosure of the information by his newspaper and again by his television channels and eventually by his RAI. At that time RAI was focusing the spotlight on legal matters, but why? Well, because it suited Berlusconi, that’s why. Because, no surprise, the legal matters once again involved Berlusconi, so this matter is indeed an incredible scandal, much worse than Watergate, yet no one in Italy really knows anything about it, except for the fortunate few who have been able to read the very few newspapers that have taken the trouble to discuss the issue, one of them being “Il Fatto Quotidiano”.

Because I realise that this story is rather intricate and even though the basic facts are relatively easy to grasp, I would nevertheless suggest that anyone wanting to know more about it go to the Il Fatto quotidiano website, hoping that there are no further technical glitches over the next few days. On the website, you will find all sorts of previously unpublished documentation regarding, for example, the interviews that Favata requested with Peter Gomez, which he dealt with personally and recorded the conversations in which this gentleman was desperately attempting to benefit financially from an affair that eventually lead to blackmail.
In this way, you will be able to have some idea of the state of information in Italy and why a man as weak as our current Prime Minister somehow manages to hang in there. He only manages to hang in there because, as Petrolini used to say, I’m not upset with you because you dare to whistle at me from the gallery, but rather with the man sitting next to you because he has not yet thrown you over the edge! Spread the word and have a good week!

On the Expo 2015 website, the mission is described as: “Nourish the planet, Energy for Life, embrace the whole sphere of alimentation, from the problem of the lack of food in certain zones of the world to that of education about food, right up to the topic areas of genetically modified organisms (GMOs).”
In fact, as explained in the video, it has another “mission”: to turn agricultural zones into “zones to be built on”. It’s not the planet that will be nourished, but building owners, property speculators, real estate people, politicians, and every type of wheeler-dealer. Who will nourish them? Who will finance the cementification of what remains of the Province and the City of Milan? Not the banks, not the constructors, and certainly not Mortizia Moratti. The bill for Expo 2015 will be picked up by the citizens, starting with the people of Milan, who in place of the development of the transport facilities for private individuals (new metro lines, the creation of a web of cycle routes) and new green areas (the upgrading of the area round the canals, new urban parks) they will have in exchange for their taxes an enormous outflow of cement. What the FxxK has the nourishment of the planet to do with the “porcata” {junk} called Expo 2015? Nothing. This is why Expo 2015 is not to be done. The billions of euro (our money) for Expo 2015 don’t exist. The city of Milan will get into debt and it will off-load the costs onto the citizens and Tremorti onto the empty coffers of the State. What for? For four get-rich quick-speculators who are laying down the law at the expense of the others and lording it over others in the cities?
Good news. The blog’s first fatwa has hit the mark. The target was the double-salary-getter Lucio Stanca, deputy and CEO of Expo 2015. He resigned as CEO and now he is “only” a single-salary-getter. One less. This week the blog’s next fatwa. Suggestions welcome.

Interview with Luca Trada, spokesperson for No Expo.it

Luca Trada: “My name is Luca Trada, one of the spokespersons of the “No Expo” committee, this network of different entities: associations, committees, social centres, individual inhabitants of this area, where 3 years ago we got together at first to stand up against the candidacy of Milan for Expo 2015 and that today is trying to take forward in this city this difficult battle of resistance, of opposition in relation to this great event that in many places has been described as the event that will be the salvation for the future of this city.”

Who benefits from Expo 2015?
Even though Expo has been allocated to Milan, we believe that it’s necessary to get mobilised to try and place many grains of sand in the mechanism of the machinery and try to stop so many calamities and so many disasters in economic terms for the future of the territory of Milan, of the province and more generally the areas that will be involved in Expo. Who benefits from Expo?
From this point of view Expo is a splendid occasion, on the one hand to perpetuate that famous Lombardian model or Milan model that is so often talked about haphazardly and thoughtlessly. That model in fact is made up of 3 or 4 special characteristics: complete financialization, gaining a profit from everything that can be financialized and made to gain a profit in this city, that is by the common good, obviously the management of services and education, health, other services for individuals within the ambit of the local public services and of the local authorities, that is the privatisation of the territory, that means the territory being made to get rental income wherever there is the possibility and the space and thus to get cement everywhere, for houses, for roads, for hypermarkets, and shopping centres.
The other view of this Lombardian model is that all this is fundamentally based on social dumping, on a sort of race to make precarious everything that can be made precarious:

...

Bossi got it totally wrong again, as usual, but Berlusconi did it all in his own interests, once again as usual. It wasn’t Slovakia that was bought, but Italy. The FIGC (the Italian Football Federation) was paid off by the psychodwarf to ensure that Italy lost the World Cup. In play are two nuclear power stations in Slovakia bought out by Enel. The Slovak government was facing harsh public criticism for once again allowing nuclear power stations in its territory to be re-commissioned, plants dating back to the Chernobyl era, and that in a Country that can’t even get differentiated refuse collection right. The hope was that a World Cup victory for Slovakia would annul any opposition within the Country. According to our sources, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico apparently secretly negotiated the defeat of the Italian National Team with Frattini well before his departure for South Africa. That is the only way to explain those apparently inexplicable decisions to leave Cassano, Balotelli, Totti and Borriello out of the team and to rather choose the entire Juventus defence backline, one of the worst of the entire championship. Onto the field went holograms of past football players like Cannavaro, the Condor of the Chilean Andes, and the son of the custodian of Mirafiori, Marchisio. What with Iaquinta and his classic flashing nose acting as point of reference for the opposing team, and an unknown youngster as goalkeeper who was terrorized by every shot that came his way, it was a bit like a rabbit facing a cobra. Our National Team tried in vain to get beaten by Paraguay and New Zealand. Notwithstanding their most valiant attempts, they were nevertheless unsuccessful. The team gave its all in the last game, with all the team’s players acting like pillars of salt. De Rossi’s free passes to the Slovak front line players and Cannavaro’s defence corridors were decisive factors in the game. However, Berlusconi left traces of his shady deal all over the place. The most obvious of these were his absence from the farewell party at Palazzo Chigi for the players departing for the World Cup Tournament, as well as other lesser episodes, such as the various attacks on the players by “Radio Padania” and certain Lega Nord Ministers. All the clues were clearly visible, but Lippi failed to take them into account. He was blissfully ignorant about what was going on, just like at the time of the “Calciopoli” scandal, and he was completely sure that his was the best possible National Team. The National Team’s demise is actually good news because now the politicians can no longer use soccer to draw the attention of the masses away from the economic destruction of this Country. "South Africa and clouds, oh how it makes me want to cry..."

(*) Berlusconi did not in fact pay the National Football Federation and Frattini doesn’t even actually know who Robert Fico is. As for everything else in the story, unfortunately it is all either true or at least feasible.

William Allen Kruse shot himself in the head. He was the captain of a fishing boat in Louisiana. He had lost work because of the black liquid that has been coming out without interruption from the depths of the Atlantic Ocean. Claudio Scajola, however, is OK even though he’s not seen around as much as once upon a time. He no longer gives his usual "ad minchiam" interviews. He lives his life as unaware as ever. Stefania Prestigiacomo, who is still Minister for the Environment, goes shopping when she has the possibility, for fashion and leather goods in the Capital’s streets.
The duo Scajola/Prestigiacomo has allocated concessions for 95 new drilling permits in Italy. 71 on land and 24 in the Mediterranean. The relevant drilling zones in our seas cover an area equal to that of the Region of Abruzzo, about 11,000 square metres. The oil companies can make holes anywhere, from the Tremiti archipelago to the coasts of Sicily, from the coasts of the Marches and off Apulia to the Egadi islands to the island of Pantelleria, from the Ionian Sea to the waters around the Isle of Elba to those of Oristano in Sardinia. The race for Italian oil and the destruction of the environment and of tourism, is an irresistible call for the oil companies of half the world, obviously including the Italian ones. It’s almost a stampede, the race for the black gold. The president of Assomineraria, Claudio Scalzi explains that there is “a certain disorder at the beginning” compensated however, by the movement that brings investment, royalties and vivacity”. As far as I know in Italy, there is no responsibility on the oil companies if there is an accident. The blue flags of our coasts will become as black as oil and they are in fact, already well on the way to that. Italy has the greatest number of non-bathing sites in Europe.
In thirty years, the people of Italy have changed, from Chernobyl to the disaster of the BP oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico. After the nuclear accident, no politician dreamed of proposing new nuclear reactors in Italy. Nuclear was deleted with a referendum. Today, in the face of the biggest environmental disaster in history that could lead to unimaginable outcomes like a dreadful underwater gas explosion, now compressed by oil, with the disappearance of whole States in America, Sogliola and Presty are drilling the Mediterranean and the Italians, like the stars, look on.

Leader? I’m the not the leader of anything. I don’t want to be the leader of anything. You don’t get out of it! Here, it’s not a matter of reform. Here what’s needed is a revolution. Revolution is a word that makes me frightened just to say it. But a true revolution, a revolution to sit down there and say what are these words, what do we have to produce. It’s not possible to make cars. This is a capitalism that incorporates everything. You want to make blades for wind turbines, for geothermal power, photovoltaic panels when it’s always the same ones producing them! It’s a system that has to be changed. Sitting down and starting to send all this lot away.

How incredible is Italy seen from the outside

Andrea Bonini: “There’s a lot of discussion about how Italy is seen from abroad and to what extent our country is more or less ahead or more or less behind in relation to the other European countries. There are those who have been to see it and to measure it in person, meeting the common folk but also Ministers, scientists, professionals, academics, we are talking about Beppe Grillo, recently returned from London and from a true European tour in the main cities of the old continent to talk about and discover Italy seen from abroad. And what they think of us abroad. Beppe Grillo is live from Marina di Bibbona. Good evening. What image of Italy did you find in your foreign tour?”

Beppe Grillo: “I did this tour of London, Paris and Brussels going round to tell people a bit of what could happen to those countries if the Italian virus is catching, so I went to London, I was received, an extraordinary welcome, the BBC, the university, Oxford, just think a bit of difference that there is between us and the English, for example, the Minister of Energy received me, a really kind lady, we do an interview, at the end of the interview, she turned to the interpreter and said: ask Signor Grillo if he has another 5 minutes of his precious time to give me, a Minister that says this, I couldn’t believe it I went mad and I said: I don’t have 5 minutes, Minister, I just have 3 at the most!
I thought of that as a joke, but she took me seriously and said: OK then3 minutes is OK! So we did the interview and then I went out and I had a rented car, a dark blue limousine and she went away on a bicycle. This is one of the tiny things.”
Andrea Bonini: “You’ve talked about the virus of Italy. What is the virus of our country?
Beppe Grillo: "The virus is a tremendous one, it’s a virus … we have taught the strategy of the pimp to anyone, we have invented the banks, fascism, they have always taken the piss out of us, but they are doing irreparable damage. Sarkozy has been in Italy a bit, after that he went back to France and he wanted to make his son the President of the Public Administration. Who did he get that from? Ministers like the Hungarian, in the villa, I won’t say whose villa, in Sardinia, topolanec, he had never gone around nude even at home, I’ve spoken to his wife, we haven’t even seen him, my husband, even in his underpants, not even my children have seen him in his underpants, he was nude in all the magazines, we do mad damage like this and there are already strange things. Just watch out what will happen, you’ll perhaps get Merkel discovered with a trans, this type of thing. I’ve been around a bit, looking, then the most moving things are the young people there, graduated with “110 e lode” {more than first class honours} at university, you go to Oxford and the one teaching English philology is a lady from Naples. We have such extraordinary potential that … they look at you with a veil of sadness, because it would be enough to sweep away this rubbish that we have as politics, as economy, change this system, at least have a try, to give a light, everyone would go back immediately. This is a country with such extraordinary potential that they are emigrating.”

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Text:

Good Day to you all. This week will probably see the end of Marcello Dell’Utri’s appeal case in the Appeal Court of Palermo against his conviction for mafia association, a case that initially involved two accused, namely Marcello Dell’Utri and Gaetano Cinà. Both were found guilty back in December 2004 and Dell’Utri was sentenced to 9 years for external association with the Mafia while Cinà received a slightly lighter sentence after being found guilty of collusion in association with the Mafia.

Dell'Utri, a “political” sentence
Cinà is but one of many individuals that the Palermo judges believe to be a Mafia member. Cinà was a member of the Malaspina Family and was related, via his wife, to the old bosses who were subsequently deposed in the early eighties by the Corleone clan, specifically Stefano Bontate and Mimmo Teresi. But then Cinà died and so his name is no longer mentioned in the appeal process, which leaves only Dell’Utri, who stands accused of external association.
Not only did he lodge an appeal asking that his sentence be overturned, but the Palermo Public Prosecutor Nino Gatto also lodged his own appeal, asking that the sentence be increased from 9 to 11 years of imprisonment because he felt that the sentence handed down at the initial trial was too light.
Thursday’s hearing will probably be the last one in this appeal case, with Dell’Ultri’s making his closing statement, his defence its closing argument and the Public Prosecution’s rebuttal, after which the Appeal Court judges will retire to chambers to consider their verdict. This is obviously an important verdict, indeed a very important verdict not only from a legal perspective, but above all from a political perspective because, unlike Scajola and very few others, Dell’Utri was not hung out to dry by Berlusconi. On the contrary, he has consistently been defended, even publicly, by Berlusconi, by the centre-right newspapers and by the governing majority via certain decisions that we will look at just now and that will somehow affect these proceedings. Therefore, his political role is not merely archaeological in nature because we’re not only dealing here with a man who was the founding father of the Forza Italia Party, but we’re also dealing with a man who is one of the most important and influential individuals within that party. This party appears to have split down in Sicily and we can clearly see Dell’Ultri’s hand behind Miccichè’s manoeuvring with Governor Lombardo to create a different centre-right in Sicily, but there are even some who say that the Pdl in Palermo has become a totally different animal to the Pdl in Rome and that there is a fierce battle going on between the Pdl faction that recognises the stand taken by Renato Schifani and Justice Minister Alfano, and the other Pdl faction that instead supports the stand taken by Miccichè while, behind the scenes of Dell’Utri’s Miccichè, Alfano and Schifani are extremely hostile towards the Lombardo Junta. What has happened, instead, is that a strange alliance has been established that ranges from Dell'Utri and Micciché’s friends, the Fini supporters and all the way through to the Democratic Party, an alliance that is backing the Lombardo Junta and that is positioning itself as the standard-bearer of the party of the south, as opposed to the party of the north that is the power block that controls the central government, spearheaded by the Berlusconi – Bossi duo.
Given the fact that Dell'Utri is still around and hasn’t been ditched, the potential consequences associated with either his final conviction or his absolution will also be political in nature, especially considering the political role that Dell'Utri continues to play. We’re not going to once again reiterate the course of the proceedings and the charges because we have covered those topics on numerous other occasions, but suffice it to say that the charges do not simply hang on the testimony of turncoats. The Dell'Utri trial is a rare example of a trial revolving around external association with the Mafia that would have taken place anyway, even if there were no turncoats, because there is documented proof of his dealings with members of the mafia going back at least 30 years. Proof of this is contained in statements made by Dell'Utri himself, in which he has admitted that he has maintained friendly relations, if not more so, with well-known mafia members such as Mangano, Cinà and numerous others. We recently looked into the Garraffa affair, in which it even appears that Virga, the Trapani Boss, went along and demanded money from this businessman, namely Garraffa, because Dell'Utri was demanding money from him, entirely under the counter. Using a Mafia Boss to recover outstanding debts is obviously not a normal business practice, yet in this case it is a documented fact, as revealed by Dell’Utri’s diaries, which provide proof of the fact that he was still frequenting Mangano back in November 1993, while the Forza Italia Party was in the process of being established and on the eve of the 1994 elections. There were even entries found in the master account books belonging to the San Lorenzo Mafia Family, headed up by Totò Riina’s driver and factotum, Salvatore Biondino. Entries in those account books showed the San Lorenzo Family’s income, which included money obtained from extortion activities and the protection money paid to the clan by local traders, and on the other side the Clan’s expenses, including “gifts”. In reality, there was only one so-called “gift”, reflected in that column as “Can 5 1990”, followed by a figure that was quite obviously paid over to meet the needs of the Fininvest Group. Then there are the wiretapped telephone conversations that document how the mafia members, namely Provenzano’s friends, were actively working to ensure Dell’Utri’s election during the 1999 European elections, this just after the Chamber had rejected the application for an arrest warrant against Dell’Utri, submitted by the Public Prosecutors of Palermo and relating precisely to the Garraffa affair. Then there are the wiretapped telephone conversations between Mafia Boss Guttadauro and Mafia member Aragona, in which they are heard talking at Guttadauro house about how Dell'Utri garnered the Mafia’s votes after having come to an agreement with Mafia Boss Gioacchino Capizzi in 1999, after which nothing more had been heard from him and that, therefore, there was a need to speak with him again. During the course of the wiretapped conversation, Aragona, who was the Mafia doctor that provided a false alibi for which he was convicted on charges of mafia collusion, even claimed that Dell’Utri had invited him to visit his bookshop in Via Senato in Milan to attend the presentation ceremony for Contrada’s book.
But there are also other objective bits of information in this regard, plus the words of Ciancimino, which, as we will see shortly, were never admitted into evidence in the Dell’Utri trial thanks to a highly questionable ruling by the Appeal Court. This is a virtually airtight case, as can be seen from the sentence handed down at the original trial, yeti t is a case that is quite obviously subject to review and perhaps even susceptible to being entirely overturned on appeal, so much so that Dell’Utri’s Attorneys are openly admitting that they are entirely confident that the Palermo Appeal Court will absolve their Client. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens and, naturally, we are not going to make any predictions, although I must say that the signs emanating from the court proceedings would appear to indicate that the ruling may be in Dell’Utri’s favour, also because the Court has made no secret of the fact that the judges are becoming somewhat impatient with the prosecution’s arguments, thereby increasing the speculation that they may be more inclined to rule in favour of Dell’Utri and against the Public Prosecution.

Who are the judges that are hearing the Dell’Utri case
This ruling is due at a time when the atmosphere has become completely overheated due to attempts that have been made to influence the said ruling, the same kind of attempts to influence that always occur on the eve of such an important ruling as this. It is enough to remember that, back in December 2004, when the Court Judges had just retired to their chambers in Palermo, Pierferdinando Casini, then Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, felt honour bound to telephone Dell’Utri to assure him of his friendship and support and then to announce to all and sundry, in writing and on a Chamber letterhead, that the Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, the third highest government post in this Country, confirmed his friendship and total support for a man who was shortly thereafter found guilty of associating with the Mafia and who was then sentenced to 9 years of imprisonment for his criminal collusion.
This was an extremely serious act of interference on the eve of the judges’ ruling and when the judges emerged from Chambers with their ruling in hand, they were well aware that they were not only convicting a friend of Berlusconi, but also convicting Casini’s friend Dell’Utri, which made no difference whatsoever because they convicted him anyway, but there was pressure on the judges then, as there is once again now.
Amongst those that are accused of having exerted pressure on the judges are the people here at “Il Fatto Quotidiano”, and me personally because of the article I wrote for “L’Espresso”, but what did I actually write? I wrote about something that seems perfectly obvious to me, namely that it would be somewhat difficult for the Court to justify any decision to absolve Dell’Utri, especially since the Court of Cassation recently overturned the Milan Appeal Court ruling of two years ago, in which Dell’Utri was found not guilty of attempted extortion and making serious threats in the Garraffa affair, when he despatched Mafia Boss Virga to go and collect a debt owed to Dell’Utri, under the counter, and thereby also absolving him of a lesser crime that was already statute barred. The Court of Cassation ruling essentially states that the matter cannot simply be classified as a case of serious threats because either there were no threats made, but if any serious threats were indeed made, as was proven during the trial, then they were aimed at extorting money, in other words at obtaining undue benefits by means of intimidation, which is classified as “attempted extortion” and is only “attempted” because Garraffa never did pay the money over. Therefore, the Appeal Court was ordered to re-open the appeal case, taking into account the fact that either there were no threats made or there were indeed serious threats made, then those threats are sufficient to constitute a charge of attempted extortion, regarding which there should have been a conviction rather than the charges being statute barred. As I was saying, it would be very difficult to justify a ruling absolving Dell’Utri seeing that the Court of Cassation, which is a higher Court than the Appeal Court, has already established that Dell'Utri did indeed commit the crime of criminal extortion using the services of Mafia Boss Virga back in 1990/1991, in other words less than 20 years ago and, therefore, if it has indeed already been established that he was still exchanging favours with the Mafia as late as 1990/91 then, not only could the crime of association with the Mafia not be statute barred, but there can also be no absolution. So I was simply saying that this speculation of possible absolution by the Appeal Court could well be thrown up into the air by this latest development involving the Court of Cassation, but could this ever amount to putting pressure on the judges? I don’t believe so because it is simply a case of a journalist doing his job, which is essentially to review the facts and consider the evidence.
On the issue of undue pressure, just think that Belpietro has even accused us of adopting Mafia tactics to threaten the Appeal Court judges with headlines like: “The Fatto Quotidiano’s extortion attempts against the judges in Dell’Utri’s appeal case. Having got wind of a possible absolution for Dell’Utri, Travaglio & Co. cast doubts on the integrity of the judges”. The tone is decidedly mafia-like, saying nothing but implying plenty and misrepresenting people’s actions. But in reality, what else could they be referring to, other my article in “L’Espresso”? Belpietro is referring to an article written by two extremely good, indeed two of the best informed journalists that we have here in Palermo, both of whom luckily work for “Il Fatto Quotidiano”, namely Peppino Lo Bianco and Sandra Rizza, whom many of you know as the authors of the book entitled “L’agenda Rossa di Borsellino” and more recently another excellent book entitled “L’Agenda nera della Seconda Repubblica”, which I strongly recommend that you read and that you already know about because it has already been discussed on Beppe Grillo’s blog. In this book, Sandra and Peppino talk about the behind the scenes events that led up to the massacres, the negotiations and then about the cover ups by the State, which are only now finally being revealed tank to the revelations made by Massimo Ciancimino and Gaspare Spatuzza.
But what did Lo Bianco and Sandra Rizza write about in “Il Fatto Quotidiano” just the other day? Something that is being rumoured in Palermo and that no one else has had the courage to write about, with the exception of Lirio Abbate of “L’Espresso”. You know who Lirio Abbate is don’t you? He is a courageous journalist who is living under permanent armed guard after he and Peter Gomez co-wrote a book entitled “I Complici” (The Accomplices), in which they talk about politics-mafia dealings. So what is the word around Palermo these days you ask? There are certain rumours doing the rounds regarding all 3 of the Palermo Appeal Court judges. We didn’t spread these rumours, nor did we resort to spreading any malicious gossip, as Belpietro claims, by saying nothing but implying plenty. No, we did not mention the rumours but merely stated the facts, leaving everyone to come to their own conclusions regarding the rumours. The facts regarding the 3 Palermo Appeal Court judges are that, in terms of the latest wiretapping reforms, they want to prevent the journalists from publishing the names and photographs of these judges and the public prosecutors, but why? Well, because not all judges and public prosecutors are the same and, indeed, it is true that there are some good ones, some bad ones and some that are merely so-so. In turn, the newspapers have a duty to scrutinise the poker that be, including the magistrates and so, if something needs to be said, then they say it, but why? Well, because the justice system is accountable to the public and, therefore, the public is entitled to know who is running the justice system. Obviously, the things that are being said about these 3 judges are not particularly serious in nature, but I will nevertheless tell you what they are in just a moment because they could yet turn out to be rather important.
The story goes that one of the members of the 3-man Panel of Judges, specifically Sergio La Commare, was censured by the Upper Council of the Magistrature because, some fifteen years ago, he was caught passing a note to a Public Prosecutor that was prosecuting in a case presided over by the judge in question, in which note said judge, faced with having to plough through a veritable mountain of documentation and spend hours in Chambers, asked the prosecutor to provide him with a summary of the evidence because he didn’t particularly want to drown in the paperwork. This act was deemed to compromise his duty of impartiality and of showing undue regard for the Public Prosecutor’s Office. Therefore, this judge, an honest judge who may well have been guilty of treating his duties too lightly perhaps, but nevertheless an honest and capable judge, was censured by the Upper Council because it was felt that by passing that note he had failed in his duty to remain unbiased and was therefore transferred from Palermo to Trapani.
Another of the judges presiding over this case, a man named Salvatore Barresi, was a member of the judges panel that presided over the initial Andreotti trial and now that he is an Appeal Court judge, there are those who say that he played a major role in the decision to absolve Andreotti of all charges due to lack of sufficient evidence, a ruling that was later torn to shreds by the Palermo Appeal Court, which overturned the original ruling and ruling instead that the crime was indeed committed, but prior to 1980, and was therefore statute barred, a ruling that was later confirmed by the Court of Cassation.
But why did we even mention this Barresi? Well certainly not because he absolved Andreotti, because he was fully within his rights to do so if he believed that it was the right and proper thing to do. Although it transpired later in the legal battle that the decision to absolve Andreotti was wrong, however, many bad legal decisions have been made in the past and even though the absolution of a guilty offender is indeed a legal error, as is the conviction of an innocent person, experience has taught us that the absolution of guilty offenders is a far more frequent phenomenon, but as long as he made his decision in good faith he made the right choice on that occasion, even thug it was later overturned.
We’re talking about Barresi now because amongst the numerous things that Ciancimino’s had to say about his father, he also said that, as a young man and prior to becoming a magistrate, this same Barresi used to play poker at the Ciancimino home because he was a school friend of one of Vito Ciancimino’s children, the other one, namely the one that I believe is now an attorney and is named Giovanni. Is there really anything wrong with Barresi going to the home of a school friend, even if it was the home of the Ciancimino family? It may well be true that everyone knew what Ciancimino was, but obviously the young Barresi could not even vaguely imagine that he would one day become a magistrate and that his visits to the Ciancimino home would come back to haunt him even though he had not committed any crime, participated in any illegal activity or, for that matter, done anything that could compromise his integrity and his public image, etc.
In a moment I’ll tell you why it is so interesting to write about this matter, however, in the meantime I’ll tell you what has been said and written in recent days regarding Judge President of the Appeal Court that is currently judging Dell’Utri, namely Claudio Dall’Acqua, who is not only a senior judge, but also a man that is absolutely beyond reproach. He has two children, but fortunately the sins of the father cannot be held against his children, or vice versa. One of his children worked for a company called Abitalia, which was linked to Edilia Venusta, a company that was expelled from Confindustria because of its links with the Mafia, in that the company’s owner, a certain Mr. Rizzacasa, was arrested just a few days ago on suspicion of being involved in money laundering, at which point the judge’s son immediately resigned from that Company.

Strange happenings in Palermo
Some time ago, when the judge was already on the bench, his other son, Fabrizio, became Secretary General of the Palermo Municipality, so I’m sure that now there are people who will claim that this was an automatic career move? Not at all! He was appointed as Secretary General of the Municipality of the Sicilian Capital in good faith by Mayor Cammarata. Cammarata is a trusted associate of Micciché and is, therefore, obviously a strong supporter of the Dell’Utri faction of the Pdl, yet he appointed the son of the judge who is presiding over Dell’Utri’s appeal to act as Secretary General in his Municipality. We mention this because it is a particularly interesting situation, in that the judge’s son was appointed ahead of various other pretenders to that post, notwithstanding the fact that they were deemed to have greater seniority and experience, so the appointment has raised many eyebrows. Now we don’t know why he was appointed directly by the Mayor and perhaps the judge’s son is the greatest Municipal General Secretary in the world, however, this appointment is not the greatest thing ever, also because it comes in the wake of yet another decision by the centre-right governing majority that involves the judge himself rather than his son and that was made while he was already presiding over another of Dell’Utri’s appeal cases. Last year, the then Judge President of the Palermo Appeal Court was obliged to recuse himself from an appeal case involving charges of aggravated criminal defamation. Dell'Utri was accused of having orchestrated a plot whereby a number of fake turncoats that he even met with personally were attempting to discredit the real turncoats that were implicating not only him, but also the entire top structure of the Cosa Nostra in numerous other trials. He was facing criminal charges of aggravated defamation but he was judged to be innocent of these charges at the initial trial. This was not the greatest ruling ever and, as a matter of fact, the Prosecution decided to appeal the decision and, on appeal, he suddenly found himself appearing before a Judge President that was renowned for being extremely strict, so much so, in fact, that he had even handed down a harsher sentence in the Andreotti trial and had also convicted Contrada on his second appeal, so he was considered to be a really harsh judge.
Yet they managed to rid themselves of this judge, but how? They got rid of him by appointing him as consultant to the Parliamentary Anti-Mafia Committee. Indeed, just before the end of this appeal case, the judge in question abandoned the trial and the appeal case had to recommence from scratch, which proves that this interference with judges or members of their families during Dell’Utri appeal cases are not merely isolated cases, so it is not entirely surprising that some people have pulled up their noses at the promotion of Judge Dell’Acqua’s son while the father is still in the process of judging Dell'Utri, which obviously doesn’t necessarily imply that Judge Dall’Acqua is not unbiased, anything but, and indeed we are certain that he, like the other two judges serving on the panel, will remain unbiased. However, it shows the importance of knowing the judges and their background, particularly in the case where there are political interests involved.
So why is it so important to specifically mention this ancient and youthful friendship that Ciancimino’s son talks about? We haven’t heard Barresi’s version of this story, which could be important because of the Palermo Appeal Court’s decision not to hear any testimony from Ciancimino’s son during the Dell’Utri appeal, so inevitably certain people will begin to wonder whether this was because one of the judges was a regular visitor to the Ciancimino home and then, all of a sudden, Ciancimino’s son becomes a potential witness in the Dell’Utri trial and the 3 judges unanimously decide that no, he won’t be allowed to give testimony in that trial.
The other day, indignant about the accusations that raised certain questions regarding their propriety, the 3 appeal court judges emerged from Chambers with an announcement in hand, something that has never before happened in any trial proceedings but, I also note, also failed to raise even the slightest objection, which was even more unusual. I don’t know if this sort of thing is even permissibile, however, it was done and I certainly cannot remember any previous precedents in this regard. Anyway, the judges emerged from Chambers and proceeded to re-open the proceedings by reading this statement, which went as follows: “We remain indifferent in the face of the current media pressure and we remain accountable only to this Country’s laws and to our own consciences”. Obviously I believe that the public has the right to expert some answers and I therefore believe that if anyone should feel obliged to provide certain answers they should do so immediately. Naturally the 3 judges presiding over the Dell’Ultri trial were immediately defended by a lay member of the Upper Council of the Magistrature, an individual that is a strict Berlusconian at heart, namely Gianfranco Anedda, an individual who consistently refuses to vote in favour of any document designed to protect magistrates against insults from Berlusconi or other members of the Cult, yet this time he offered to draft a procedure to protect the judges of the Appeal Court, claiming that there were certain insinuations being circulated that were aimed at discrediting the presiding judges. Now, all of a sudden, just because these insinuations were made by the newspapers and were against certain judges that Dell’Utri presumably thinks are on his side, finally Cult-member Anedda is ready to step up to the plate and vote in favour of a statement supporting the 3 judges. All we can say is thank heavens that out of some 9-thousand judges in Italy, he has finally managed to find 3 that he actually likes. The problem is that this time they haven’t had to endure any political attacks and insults and they haven’t been followed by anyone attempting to find out what colour socks they happen to be wearing. We simply told 3 true stories, no insinuations or suchlike, facts that the 3 judges in question didn’t even bother to deny in the statement they read out in court, limiting themselves only to stating that they are totally unbiased and that they will not be swayed by anyone, which we are very pleased to hear because we expect nothing less of them!
I don’t think that they should necessarily be so proud about their impartiality in that impartiality is an absolute prerequisite for any judge. The real pressure and the real intimidation against the judges presiding over the Dell’Utri case is coming from elsewhere, from political quarters, specifically from Dell’Utri’s political quarters, from his newspapers and from the Ministers and his parliamentary colleagues. The greatest intimidation that has occurred to date was the one that affected and indeed massacred Massimo Ciancimino for having dared to talk. Within the next few days, a DVD entitled “Sotto Scacco” (facing check-mate), produced by journalists Marco Lillo and Udo Gumpel will be appearing together with “Il Fatto Quotidiano” on the news stand. I saw it yesterday and I strongly recommend that you get it. The DVD deals with the issues we are talking about now, namely the massacres, the negotiations, Ciancimino and Spatuzza. It contains a lot of new and interesting facts and attempts to shed some more light on the situation. A more or less 2-hour summary of the events that we are discussing now, naturally including some previously unseen interviews and documents. It is truly important and in some ways even frightening. This DVD also includes a long interview with Massimo Ciancimino, who talks about all his father’s meetings with Provenzano, with General Mori, etc, and shows the house and the various places and, at one point, he says: this is a very strange because I keep on being asked why I decided to talk. Yet before I decided to come forward, in other words until two years ago, no one had ever asked me why I wasn’t talking.
A strange country indeed where someone is asked why he chooses to do his duty as a citizen and agrees to testify. Why he answers the questions put to him by a magistrate and why he hands over certain documents. Here in Italy a man that doesn’t subscribe to the principle of “omertà” is considered to be strange, so obviously the Mafia has already won the battle when “omertà” is deemed to be the norm and when individuals like Mangano are even considered to be heroes for not talking while others like Ciancimino, who is not actually a turncoat, decides to talk anyway and is an eyewitness is constantly asked why he has decided to talk. Ciancimino talks and talks and because of this decision he has been massacred by the press and the politicians, while the judges, instead, not only don’t massacre him but even consider him to be a reliable witness, so much so, in fact, that just a few months ago, on 27 January, the Second Section of the Criminal Court of Palermo, the Court itself, not the Public Prosecutor’s Office or the prosecution for that matter, but the presiding judges handed down a 10 year and 8 month prison sentence for mafia-related crimes to one of the many Forza Italia regional councillors, namely Mr. Mercadante, and amongst the prosecution’s witnesses was none other than Ciancimino’s son. The sentence handed down by the Court that judged Ciancimino’s words during the initial trial, states that: “The Court believes the testimony provided by Massimo Ciancimino to be extremely reliable because of his logical and coherent account, without any contradictions whatsoever, and also because every occurrence he mentioned was subsequently confirmed. One thing that is absolutely certain and that undoubtedly emerged during the course of this trial is that he (Ciancimino’s son) was indeed physically present at the meetings between his father and Mr. Provenzano, where they discussed business matters, tender contracts, mafia affairs and politics. Massimo Ciancimino’s closeness to his father resulted in him being an excellent witness, if not an indirect participant in meetings and events that are now of interest in terms of current investigations in that they may be useful in terms of reconstructing the perverse series of encounters, alliances and political and institutional agreements that turned the Corleone Clan into a power hub rather than merely a group of unscrupulous murderers with the ability to influence the socio-political and economic history of Sicily and other parts of the Italian Republic from the 1970’s through to the late 1990’s”.

Witnesses that are not permitted to testify
The Public Prosecution of Palermo requested that Ciancimino be called to testify during the Dell’Utri trial. The 3 judges, namely Dall’Acqua, La Commare and Barresi denied the prosecution’s request, but why? It is perfectly legal and it is up to the judges to decide whose testimony to allow and whose testimony not to allow during the trial. The parties request and the judge decides, however, we have to wait and see what he decides and why, although we may obviously speculate and comment if we at least know what the decision is. In this 9-page tome of a ruling, the judges presiding over the Dell'Utri trial state that Ciancimino’s testimony cannot be heard due to the principle of progression, unresolved conflict and the general nature of his statements, but how do these appeal court judges know what Ciancimino’s statements contain unless they have listened to said statements in the courtroom? Is their judgement based on what they have read in the newspapers? Or on what they have seen on television? On what they’ve heard from others? How can anyone deem a witness to be reliable or unreliable or too general unless they have heard what he/she has to say? Who told you that the witness’ testimony is too general? Are you basing your judgement on the written statements gathered by the Public Prosecutors and attached to the prosecution’s application for this witness to be allowed to testify? Statements made to a Public Prosecutor have no legal value since the introduction of the new clause 111 of the Constitution. Since 1999/2000, anything said outside the courtroom is of no legal value, so Ciancimino’s statements are only worth something once they are made on the witness stand during the course of the Dell’Ultri trial and only the judges can decide whether the witness is reliable, unreliable, too general or superfluous, contradictory or coherent, progressive or immediate, so it is up to them to ask the right questions, listen to the answers and then to judge. How can they judge beforehand? Before having heard what he has to say? How can they judge a witness that they’ve never met face to face except while playing a game of cards with him?
This is the first question that immediately comes to mind, so the decision to exclude a witness that has previously been deemed to be credible by the Court during the course of a different trial but also dealing with the relationship that his father had with the Corleone clan is not only questionable, but also somewhat disconcerting. This is the basic reason why it is useful to go and see who these appeal court judges are, and not to overlook any details whatsoever in order to understand why they made such a disconcerting decision. We have to look into who they are in order to understand what they’re saying. This has nothing to do with any insinuations or blackmail or messages or attempts to influence the proceedings. It’s called the right to report or indeed the duty to report and if they had listened to Ciancimino and then classified him as unreliable in the sentence, then we would have taken note of the fact that the Court had instead deemed him to be reliable, however, if they don’t even hear what he has to say, then how can they simply say that he is an unreliable witness? That is why certain people have got the impression that perhaps this Court is leaning towards absolution rather than conviction, which may be totally the wrong impression, by all means. We will only know how the trial will end once the final ruling has been issued, however, such an over the top and strange statement certainly warrants attentions. The newspapers are also here to criticise the Magistrature when they make decisions or put forward peculiar theories like the one we have just read about.
The other example of conditioning, over and above the as yet unfounded accusations against Ciancimino junior, is the decision taken by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and, more specifically, the Committee that deals with the protection of mafia turncoats and state witnesses, not to provide witness protection for Gaspare Spatuzza is one that was made a full year after the application by the Florence Public Prosecutors Office and a few months after similar requests were submitted by the Public Prosecutors Office of Caltanissetta and the National Anti-mafia Prosecutor.
All of them believe that Spatuzza is a genuine turncoat who has never yet been proven wrong. Indeed, every time proof has been found, that proof has confirmed rather than negated Spatuzza’s claims. Then there have also been certain declarations that perhaps couldn’t be either confirmed or negated, for example, when someone talks about what someone else told him, then either that someone else must confirm what he said or it becomes a case of Spatuzza not really wanting to say what actually happened, which doesn’t mean that it is not true simply because it hasn’t been confirmed, but simply that the information cannot be used at trial. We don’t know whether it’s true that Graviano Giuseppe told him that Dell'Utri and Berlusconi were handing the Country over to the Mafia because unfortunately Graviano is not talking. Graviano’s brother claims that he never heard any such thing. Giuseppe is taking his time. He says: we’ll see, perhaps I will talk, but I cannot talk now. Exempt me from the threat of provision 41 bis. So who says that Spatuzza’s claim is not true? At worst it won’t be admissible in court unless it is confirmed, but in order to state that it is not true, proof has to be found to the contrary.
So why is Spatuzza being denied witness protection? According to the undersecretary in charge of this case, namely Alfredo Mantovano, Spatuzza’s statements regarding Dell'Utri, Berlusconi, the mafia and the killings were made too late, in other words after the 6-month deadline for telling all, as prescribed by the law of 2001. This law was introduced by the centre-left. Napolitano himself masterminded the law when he was Minister of Internal Affairs in the First Prodi government back in 1996/97. He said that there were too many Mafia turncoats, imagine that! In a Country where there are 30-thousand mafia members, he stated that one thousand mafia turncoats were too many. Not that there were too many mafia members, all of whom were getting up to no good and shutting people up, but too many turncoats that were prepared to spill the beans, so they began to work on that law. It took some time and the law was eventually drafted by Minister Fassino back in 2001 and was passed by an ample centre-right and centre-left majority. It is an horrendous law that effectively discouraged hundreds of potential mafia turncoats from coming forward, so much so, in fact, that virtually no more turncoats came forward after the law was introduced, except for Spatuzza, who is not a turncoat for convenience because now it is no longer a bargain to come forward since that law eliminated all of the benefits and, in addition, set this 6 month deadline, not one minute more, to tell of perhaps 40/50/60 years of mafia activities. How can anyone be expected to remember everything that he has done during 60 years of life, in merely 6 months?
Spatuzza is certainly not a turncoat for convenience. He is a turncoat who has had a spiritual revelation following a long religious encounter with Bishop de L’Aquila, etc., which makes him very different from all the other turncoats. They left him out in the cold because they claim that he only talked about Berlusconi and Dell'Utri after the expiry of that 6-month deadline, however, the 3 Public Prosecutors Offices plus the National Anti-mafia Prosecutor all know the law and they are also well aware of the fact that Spatuzza only mentioned certain events more than 6 months later, so why did nonetheless request witness protection for him? Perhaps because they felt that it was totally impossible for him to tell them everything he knew within just 6 months. There is a even Court of Cassation ruling that is part of that law, namely that, within 6 months, the mafia member must reveal everything that he has done and everything that he personally knows about. Initially he must provide a declaration of intent, listing the topics and points that he will be talking about, after which he must start talking about the things he did and those that he personally knows about. As regards anything that he heard from others, he can continue to talk about them later, the important thing is that they must appear in the initial declaration of intent that he drafted right at the beginning of the collaboration.
But what did Spatuzza do? According to the Florence Public Prosecutors Office, Spatuzza duly outlined the scenario right from the word go, namely during his initial interview, and he has never revoked his decision to talk. The subsequent circumstantial evidence that he provided, in which the names of Berlusconi and Dell'Utri emerged, was supplementary information on a topic that had already been clearly stipulated, so much so that, although Spatuzza began collaborating in early 2009, on 16 June, in other words around the expiry of the 6-month deadline, he said: I will reveal the names of certain politicians and other important individuals, however, I didn’t want to make my statements more interesting before I had time to assess how they would be received, so I didn’t want to immediately mention Dell'Utri… because otherwise they will say that I only dangled these names in front of the magistrates to ensure that I would receive protection, so I first spoke about what I did, like the Via D’Amelio murder, unlike Scarantino who incriminated himself, after which proof to the contrary was uncovered and now the case is to be re-opened even though a final verdict has already been handed down. So we have people in jail who had nothing to do with the events, but why? Well, because they were convicted of a crime that Spatuzza in fact committed and so, on 28 April 2009, the Florence judges asked the government, and more specifically the witness protection Committee, to provide protection for Spatuzza. Spatuzza was waiting for them to give the OK before mentioning the names of those politicians, so that no one could accuse him of using that information as a bargaining chip in Exchange for protection. If he had mentioned the names any earlier, they would have said: you see, they have rewarded him for having named Dell'Utri and Berlusconi. Instead, he wanted them to first assess whether or not his collaboration regarding the things that he had done was indeed genuine, in other words the Via D’Amelio murder as well as a number of other unresolved crimes that he helped to solve by saying: I did it!
Thus, his actions delayed the revelation of those names and, notwithstanding the fact that he had previously revealed his intention to name names shows his absolute good faith and his lack of any malicious intent and his desire to allay any suspicion of exploitation, this landed up costing him this rejection, because they are now saying: you didn’t mention this immediately, although, if he had mentioned the names immediately, they would obviously have said that he did so to ensure his own protection while, actually, that protection had already been requested prior to him naming those names and before the magistrates even knew whose names he would mention. Therefore, denying protection because he named names too late is totally absurd, both logically and juridically, because protection was requested before he named those names. In any event, as Attorney, Italia dei Valori Parliamentarian and the most famous turncoat Attorney Li Gotti explains, this decision is neither here nor there. Where have you ever seen a Government that usurps the authority of the Magistrature by deciding which turncoats are reliable and which ones aren’t and, above all, which turncoats should be granted protection and which ones shouldn’t? That’s all we need! Worse still, in this case we’re talking about a government headed up by one of the very people whose names Spatuzza revealed in connection with events that occurred during the season of the massacres.
Therefore, a conflict of interests is a very real possibility. Once upon a time, the turncoat would talk, the judges investigated his claims, the government protected him and the mafia threatened him, but now the chain has become somewhat shorter in that the Mafia doesn’t even need to threaten Spatuzza since he is already under threat from a government headed up by the very person that Spatuzza is bringing to task. I don’t know if I’m making myself very clear. This constitutes extreme intimidation of a key witness in mafia-related trials and an important witness in the Dell’Utri trial, although his testimony is not decisive in that Spatuzza is in many cases merely confirming what has already been said by 30 other turncoats and has already been confirmed by various objective sources. In any event, just imagine the predicament of the judge, sitting in Chambers, who knows full well that, should he deem Spatuzza to be a reliable witness, he will not only incur the anger of Dell'Utri, but also that of an entire government that has gone so far as to attempt such a risky move, namely to deny protection to a turncoat that has even raised certain questions regarding cases that are already closed, such as the Via D’Amelio killing and the 1993 murders. Fortunately, the Ministry’s decision can still be taken on appeal to the Regional Administrative Court and I think that this is precisely what Gaspare Spatuzza’s defence attorneys are going to do next.
So we will have to wait and see what happens. By next week we can probably meet again and, unless the discussions in Chambers turn out to be extremely protracted, we will be able to comment on the appeal ruling, confirming yet again that, until proven otherwise, the judges impartiality is absolute and that the things that we have written about cast no shadow of doubt on their good faith and impartiality. If anything, it is that decision not to admit the testimony of a witness like Ciancimino that raises doubts regarding the judge’s independence, far more so than their personal affair that have no bearing whatsoever on the case but may well be of interest for their curiosity and news value.

In closing, I would like to remind you that this week, indeed within a matter of hours, “Il Fatto Quotidiano’s” website, namely www.ilfattoquotidiano.it, will be up and running. Perhaps you have already seen the widespread advertising campaign that we launched, which I am personally very proud about, so allow me to strongly recommend it to you as your primary website. Particularly for those of you who follow Grillo’s blog, I suggest that you could perhaps keep Grillo’s website as your primary website but I hope that this will become your second preferred site because it is set to become far more than just a site where post the odd article from “Il Fatto Quotidiano”, but something completely different. It is set to become a fully fledged news site that aims to report today’s news in real time, rather than yesterday’s news, and that will host a platform of blogs run by personalities that we hope will astound and entertain you and perhaps even make you angry. But, above all, there will be editorials with which you will be able to interact. For example, you will find counter-arguments to the television news items and we will be dissecting the television news reports, virtually in real time, in order to reveal their daily bullshit and the truths that they are trying to conceal. This is just a little foretaste of the many things that you will find on www.ilfattoquotidiano.it within the next few hours. Pass on!

The president of the Senate, Renato Schifani has been compensated with 16,000 euro for a “wormish” judgement by Marco Travaglio: “Once upon a time we had De Gasperi, Einaudi, De Nicola, Merzagora, Parri, Pertini, Nenni... one can see the whole string and then arrive at seeing Schifani. I’m asking who will be the following one in this plummeting parabola, after that there’s only mould, probably the earthworm as a life-form, from mould you can get penicillin among other things, and thus it was a mistaken example”. The judge specified that “it is evident that the references were exclusively related to the man Schifani” and Travaglio was found guilty only “in relation to that part of his intervention” and not on what Travaglio affirmed about his relationships with mafia men. According to you, can you feel like an earthworm after this judgment by the magistracy? The verdict speaks clearly: Schifani is worth more than an earthworm! ”Earthworms slither through the earth, by swallowing the soil and digesting its organic components. For this reason, they carry out a very important role in aerating the soil and in the formation of humus .” This is what the earthworms do, but Schifani, what role does he carry out in the great frame of Nature? It’s possible to affirm with a certain amount of sureness that an earthworm is more useful than Schifani. I am ready to take some soil to the Tribunal to prove it. If there were in existence an “Association for the Protection of the Earthworms” that’s the one that should ask Travaglio for compensation for “moral damage” for an enormous sum that could be compared to the despicable comparison. To pay the compensation to the earthworms, Travaglio would have to write a book a day (more or less like he does now, - editor). Schifani is not a worm, first of all, because the worm has its dignity as an anellid that Schifani doesn’t even dream of, and secondly because no worm on this earth would carefully avoid discussing in the Senate the proposal of the popular law: “Clean up Parliament” signed by 350,000 Italians with their identity document. Only if someone had accused Schifani of being Schifani should it be considered a serious insult, detrimental to his reputation. But not worm. That is a compliment, a totally inappropriate comparison. Let no one dare to refer to me as a Schifani, otherwise, I am warning you in advance, I will take a court action with ample evidence to take as proof. Long live the worm! Down with Schifani.

A meteorite smashed into the earth and it was more devastating than the one that fell on the Yucatan peninsula and marked the end of the dinosaurs. A meteorite made up of 6.5 billion fragments of the human species that gave rise to the sixth Great Extinction on the planet, after the fifth that saw the end of the Mesozoic Era. A voracious species that loved solitude that lives in artificial ecosystems. The other species are superfluous, often annoying. Their destiny leaves them indifferent. The climate changes brought on by man will by the year 2050, cause the disappearance of a quarter of all the species of fauna and flora. A “mass specicide” that is happening now, day by day. Since 1973, Malesia has lost 266 species of fresh water fish. The island of Guam has lost its land birds. Lake Victoria has lost 50 species of cichlids. The United States has lost 7 species of birds. Man is draining the freshwater reserves, that account for just 2.5% of all the water on the planet and that are host to 10,000 species of fish (out of a total of 25,000) and 5,473 species of amphibian. Fish have disappeared from 80% of China’s great water courses, that’s equal to 50,000 kilometres. 35% of frogs, toads, and salamanders are endangered. 34 have disappeared in recent years, and there’s no more trace of 113 of them.
In the history of the earth, the extinction of the odd species has always happened, However that has never happened with the timing of a biological catastrophe that man started 150,000 years ago. From the time that Homo sapiens came onto the scene, the rhythm of extinction has increased 100-fold and furthermore, more species are disappearing, the faster is the rhythm of extinction because of the disappearance of whole eco-systems in which a number of species live interdependently.
Have I terrorised you enough? Because I too am terrorised. And I have just delicately picked up a little ant in the living room, and put it down on the grass outside. I did the same with a tiny fly on the glass of a window that I opened and wished him well as he flew out. I don’t want to be the only species on the earth. Solitude has never been a thing I liked.

(*) figures taken from "The Creation" by Edward O. Wilson

To my dearly beloved fellow citizens
The word “hypocrisy” comes from the Greek word meaning simulation. Ypokritès was an actor, and “hypocrisy” was merely the term used to define the roles portrayed by the various actors on stage. The talent for hypocrisy is innate in all those politicians that say one thing and behave in the exact opposite manner. The most amazing part is that they do so right under our noses without suffering any consequences. We have to ask ourselves how this happens and what it is that grants immunity to certain people, like mister Stanca, who receives a double salary as parliamentarian and as managing director of Expo 2015, or that entitles certain people to receive full pensions after only two and a half years of occasional presences in Parliament while requesting that the legal pensionable age be raised to 70 years of age for everyone else, or for that matter the existence of some 600,000 official cars while politicians in other Countries are expected to use public transport. Perhaps the answer lies in the fact that the Italians love and respect a good hypocrite. After all, it’s not easy to force other people to be virtuous while doing the exact opposite yourself, and then still getting well-paid for doing so. It is absolute, unadulterated magic. Everyone would like to know how it’s done. It takes admirable (and hypocritical) gall for an individual to claim that he is in favour of abolishing the Provinces while at the same time standing for election to the Provincial Councils, just as it takes quite some cheek to expect others to make sacrifices while the political parties continue to cash in on a billion Euro of election funding (hypocritically referred to as "reimbursements") notwithstanding the fact that this type of funding was previously rejected by referendum. The politicians are nothing other than actors playing a role, yet the citizens take them seriously. The prisons are full of people that were caught using marijuana, thanks to a law introduced by a Parliament that is overflowing with cocaine addicts. Those who religiously pay their taxes receive visits from the Tax Authorities while the tax evaders can obtain a pardon by paying a miserly 5% thanks to the hypocritical so-called "Tax Shield". Hypocrisy is purely a matter of style, language and terminology. The hypocrite’s words are pompous yet proper and rhetorical yet harsh. The hypocrite will always find the right way to say something, to celebrate the Unity of Italy or social unity. The Italian Language Vocabulary itself has to be re-interpreted as a Dictionary of Opposites. The hypocrite’s power derives from a kind of mass hypnosis, enchantment and a loss of the ability to reason. Yet this power exists among us, thanks to us and is exercised over us. We (hypocritically) fight the Mafia, but then we proceed to leave a mafia turncoat like Spatuzza open to mafia retaliation. We swear allegiance to the Constitution and then we want to amend it. "Love and do whatever you wish", said Saint Agostino. "Become a hypocrite and do whatever you wish" is the Italians’ special version. Not for everyone, mind you, but only for those that can get away with it. Nevertheless, the mystery remains: "Why are they allowed to get away with it?"

“A really serious intrusion into the private life of people, motivated by partisan logic in the counter-position between economic and financial blocks, logic that tends to be of benefit not to the company as such, but to the one who in that moment in history is the controlling owner.” Mariolina Panasiti, Giudice dell'Udienza Preliminare {judge for preliminary hearings}, Milan.

Interview with senator Elio Lannutti, president of ADUSBEF

Blog: Elio Lannutti, president of ADUSBEF, we are talking about a really important affair that relates to the economy of the country but also to other aspects that are more complicated. There’s a story: one day in the shareholder’s meeting of an important company, there’s a pensioner who has a handful of shares. He raises his hand because he says that the company of which he is a shareholder doesn’t manage to install for him one of the basic services. This company is Telecom Italia. This pensioner is a man who needs ADSL at home and can’t manage to get them to install it. He takes his protest to the top brass of the company and the company installs his ADSL for him. In this case it was a matter of ADSL, however, they do a nice dossier and he is spied on completely. By whom? By the company itself! What on earth are we talking about?”

The responsibility of Marco Tronchetti Provera

Elio Lannutti: ”We are talking about the illegal creation of a dossier on the orders of Tronchetti Provera. This same Marco Tronchetti Provera who has managed this company by transferring some important pieces, the real estate, to Pirelli, to his faithful attendant Carlo Buora, together with Riccardo Ruggiero and we are talking about happenings that are really recent. Just in the last few hours, the Milan Gup {judge for preliminary hearings} has affirmed that the illegal dossiers created on the orders of Marco Tronchetti Provera and the spies like Ghioni and Tavaroli were part of a strategy put in place by Marco Tronchetti Provera. The document says: “The illegal dossiers, Gup, activity for the exclusive interests of Marco Tronchetti Provera.” The Milan ‘Gup’ is Mariolina Panasiti and by now it is a truth emerging from a trial document laid before the court in the documents presented in a plea bargain by the other actors in this affair.
We are talking about the Italy of the ones who are spied on and the ones who do the spying, we are talking about blackmailers, of rotten economic powers, in which there are financial cells that are inter-connected: Tronchetti, Mediobanca and bankers, fragments of the covert secret services, probably Opus Dei, masons and all those oligarchs who have constructed a parallel spy network so as to favour their own exclusive economic interests to the detriment of the citizens, and of the whole of society, of the Telecom users who pay the line rental. From this, other worrying facts are also coming out in relation to a few strange murders, like that of Niki Gatti who committed suicide in the Sollicciano prison in 2008. On 24 June 2008 his mother called for justice and that was denied her. How did Niki Gatti die? No one knows and the case was closed leaving doubts and on this case I have presented a question, a formal parliamentary question and leading on from that there’s a fine thread that arrives at the present day to Telecom Sparkle, the latest happening of Fastweb of the former Senator Di Girolamo and of all the other kickbacks and the money laundering.

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Two courageous journalists (fortunately they still exist in Italy) went off to the Kosovo that was “liberated” by the UN and obviously by Italy at the time of D’Alema. The situation they describe is, if possible, worse than before the intervention. The only certain result is the umpteenth American base dotted around the world. In Kosovo, as we are told by Romano and Ciulla, the mafia is necessary to maintain control and power. The same script as for the American invasion of Sicily in 1943. At that time, the Allies installed the mafia people in the local authorities to control the territory and they constructed their military bases. Nothing has changed.

Interview with Giuseppe Ciulla and Vittorio Romano, authors of "Lupi nella nebbia" {wolves in the fog}:

G. Ciulla: "My name is Giuseppe Ciulla, I’m a freelance journalist, this is Vittorio Romano also a freelance journalist. We often do work for the RAI and in our free time we write things. We’ve written this book called “Lupi nella nebbia, Kosovo, l’ O.N.U. ostaggio di mafie e Stati Uniti” {wolves in the fog, Kosovo, the UN, hostage to the mafias and the United States}, published by “Jaca Book”. It is the result of a journey, an investigative journey in Kosovo. Basically, it’s an investigation that shows how for 10 years, in Kosovo that has been administered by the UN, that this administration has produced not just misery and poverty in this area, but above all, it has given legitimacy to a ruling class that is bound hand and foot to organised crime. This is evidenced by a series of secret reports, by intelligence that we have discovered and that we are publishing in the pages of this book.

United Nations, Organised Crime

V. Romano: “We have stayed a bit with our memories in 1999, thus the intervention of NATO, and the 78-day bombing of Serbia, the “liberation” of Kosovo. What has happened in the 10 years that have followed? After that there was the start of a new phase, that of the administration by the UN. The UN is administering everything. It is reconstructing roads, administering justice. The police in this State (or non-State) of Kosovo, that is as big as Abruzzo, to be clear, the police work is done by 14 thousand NATO troops even though the number is going down in Kosovo however, they have had all the tools in these 10 years to combat Kosovo’s greatest scourge and that is organised crime. OK, what have we discovered in this journey of investigation in Kosovo?
All the current leaders in Kosovo are mafia people. They belong to clans that are trafficking in heroin, even in organs, according to a report that we are publishing in this book, Ramush Haradinaj is the former Premier and he is the most important trafficker of heroin in the country.

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Italy is like the Amazon basin, it’s disappearing. Every week, hectares of greenery are transformed into hectares of cement. A meadow is no longer a meadow. It’s a business. Every day what are appearing are earth shifters, second and third houses, and buildings that are never lived in. Whole areas are built on for no need, for no tenants. Cement kills tourism. It chops out jobs. It doesn’t create jobs. Cement is laundering the dirty money of the national mafias who are investing in bricks and mortar. In Milan, skyscrapers are going up when a third of the city is for sale or is searching for tenants to pay the rent. Expo 2015 is just cement. You can’t eat cement, but the politicians are eating on the back of cement, as are the local authorities and organised crime. That Italy is disappearing under a flow of cement, like Pompeii buried by a flow of lava, makes you feel compassion and anger. The towns should forbid the construction of every building that is not necessary and if appropriate, they should check up to see if there is already an existing building that could be restructured. We need to start a new industry, that of deconstructing buildings and sheds that are not occupied. With public money, our mayors must no longer build a single room unless it is to be used for a social purpose. Those of you reading this who are working with cement and those who are recyclers, listen to me, constructing is no longer a business, invest in renewable energy and in tourism.

Interview with Ferruccio Sansa and Marco Preve:

F. Sansa: "I am Ferruccio Sansa, a journalist with “Il Fatto Quotidiano”. Together with Marco Preve, of “La Repubblica”, and with other colleagues namely: Andrea Garibaldi of “Il Corriere della sera”, Antonio Massari of “ Il Fatto”, Giuseppe Salvagiulo of “La Stampa” - we have written a book called “La colata” {pouring out the cement}. It’s a book that talks about the enormous risk that Italy is subject to right now, the risk of being ruined forever by cement.

The urgent need to take sides
It’s a book that has taken us a year’s work. There have been 5 of us and the work has been really long and hard. We think that right now it’s the moment to write a book about cement in Italy, because the consequences of what is being decided, of what is being done will be paid for by all of us later on. Right now, at this very moment, we have to decide which side we want to support, whether we want to be “pro” or “contra” cement. Here, it’s not just a choice for environmentalists and chic radicals. On the contrary, that has nothing to do with it. This is an alibi used by those who want to construct. It’s a choice that has a profound influence on our quality of life, our life and on the lives of our offspring, on our present existence and on our future. Quality of life means “how we live” whether we live well or not. Italy has decided, unfortunately to concentrate its energy into cement and asphalt and the consequences of this choice will be really serious: because it’s a choice, as we demonstrate in this book, with all the relevant figures, that is absolutely uneconomic. It creates damage that cannot be undone. Damage to one of the main industries of our country, namely tourism. Construction creates jobs that last only a short time and that are for low skilled workers. So don’t be taken in. Construction has few advantages. Furthermore, it’s an animal that eats itself, because Italy has its main wealth in beauty. If we ruin the beauty, we lose jobs in tourism, we lose jobs in so many ambits of our economy that survive thanks to the beauty of Italy.

As everyone knows, on 29 December 1890, at Wounded Knee the massacre of 300 Lakota Sioux women and children was carried out by the army of the United States of America. Thirty years earlier, in 1860, at Gaeta, as almost no one knows, nor are they expected to know, another massacre was carried out by the Savoy army, in which thousands of women and children civilians died. Hundreds of thousands perished in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies during and after the war of occupation. Gaeta was the epilogue of the war. While the government of the United States assigned reserves to the Lakota people, the Savoys expropriated Gaeta and even today it is territory that is almost completely the property of the State. The celebration of the Unity of Italy is a farce if its origins are not remembered. Without the memory of the past, there can be no future for Italy. What does it mean to be Italian for those who don’t even know their own history?

Interview with Antonio Raimondi, Mayor of Gaeta, Antonio Ciano, an essayist on the Risorgimento and Luca Ciardi, an historian.

The end of a kingdom
Antonio Raimondi, Mayor of Gaeta: “A kingdom ended at Gaeta, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, rather than the birth of the kingdom of Italy, it was the end of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Just this idea, allowed me to turn upside down the accepted view of things, the history of the Risorgimento is a story told only on the side of the winners, the great personalities are Garibaldi, Mazzini, Cavour and still others, Victor Emmanuel II, are in so many squares in Italy, the main streets are dedicated to these characters, especially Victor Emmanuel II is to be found on horseback in many squares and streets in Italy. However, it seems that Francesco II was a “reuccio“ {little king}, and they even referred to him as “Franceschiello”, but this was in an affectionate way, then king Ferdinand II was a shady character. In the historiography of the nineteenth century, it seems that the Bourbons are a second class lineage.

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The gagging law is both tragic and funny at the same time. It is tragic because it legally sanctions the disappearance of freedom of information and it is funny in the sense that freedom of information has been nonexistent in Italy since time immemorial. The gagging law essentially photographs something that is a matter of fact, and this is something that many of the “cover your arse” types don’t agree with. They wanted to continue to not inform in their own way, in other words silently. The regime - because we have been living under a regime for some time now - is a bipartisan one that the very people who are now rending their garments happily made possible, indeed vital at the time. The "glorious war machine that is information " operated across the board, without worrying about anyone and with no respect whatsoever for freedom.
Two years ago, I called for a referendum on "Freedom of information in a free Country ", which demanded three things, one of which was for the abolition of the Gasparri Law, which had placed the control of television broadcasting in the hands of only one man. I and two million other people who heeded the call and added our signatures on 25 April 2008 were ridiculed by the newspapers at the time. “La Repubblica” even went so far as to publish a scathing front page editorial. The “Corriere” allocated more space to an interview at the feet of that renowned bibliophile named Dell’Utri than it did to the VDay event. “La Stampa” published a photograph of Grillo yelling up at the backside of the horse statue in Piazza San Carlo, shot from below so as to make it look like there was no one else there while, instead, there were 150,000 people there on the day. The television channels, in a somewhat more restrained fashion, totally ignored the event. Confindustria, the trades union, the left wing that will win in the end and the political parties were all against it. The very ones that are now calling for street demonstrations under all manner of banners have never raised a finger to change the rules. When the citizens took to the streets, they left them to their own devices. When he was Prime Minister, D'Alema proceeded to introduce that infamous law (Law No. 488, art.27, clause 9, dated 23/12/1999) by which he handed television broadcasting over to Berlusconi as a gift. The PDwithoutanel is a collaborative party, it’s in the parties genes, while the other parties are merely the “would-be usurpers” of the Regime, living vicariously in its shadow. This government, this Parliament and these parties will have to collapse in order for us to be able to start again.
What to do? If everyone truly is equal, then each one of us will have to decide for him/herself whether to take part in civil disobedience and bear the consequences of that decision. Most of all me. I will continue to spread information in Italy, from an Italian website and via an Italian server. If everyone is truly equal, then we should not allow everything to change because nothing has changed. The transition from the First Republic to the Second Republic resulted in new faces wielding the same old powers. Indeed, the real danger is that history may repeat itself, in other words, that whitewashed sepulchres or false opponents appropriate the State. The citizens should be the only point of reference. No one has the right to usurp their power. Least of all the political parties that, in the midst of an economic crisis that is destroying the Welfare State, have not even had the decency to waive the one billion Euro of so-called (by them) electoral reimbursements and have continued to allow parliamentarians to qualify for full pensions after only two and a half years of service. They are all nothing more than willing accomplices, including the newspapers that live off public charity thanks to the State subsidies, Confindustria, which is essentially a State concession holder and the Trades Union that, just like the stars, have always just sat back and watched. When dictatorship is as blatant as this, no one can any longer deny its existence. The gagging law may actually be good news because at least, in its own way, it is a reflection of the truth.

With the new gagging laws in place, the book entitled "L'Agenda Nera" (The Black Agenda) could not have been released. It is one of the last opportunities we have to inform ourselves about the birth of the Second Republic, the one in which we have been living in a state of suspended animation for the past 15 years and that was born from the blood of Falcone and Borsellino. The cynicism of the Italians will cause them to be forgotten because, while it is true that the majority of the people of this Country don’t know what happened and have no desire whatsoever to know what happened, there are thousands of politicians, businessmen and journalists who do know what happened, perhaps even precisely what happened, but choose to remain silent in order to preserve their place at the trough or perhaps simply in order to survive. Montezemolo or Monti or Ms. Marcegaglia, Casini, D'Alema or Fini, De Bortoli, Galli of the Lodge or Romano have always stood in the background acting as part of the scenery. The gagging law was born with the Via D’Amelio massacre, but there was no need for any law or any gagging, because the Italians have gagged themselves.

Interview with Giuseppe Lo Bianco and Sandra Rizza

12 years of information blackout
Blog: "Three years after Paolo Borsellino’s “Red Agenda”, the Agenda now appears to have changed colour. The Agenda has become black, the mystery has deepened and once again there have been attempts to hide the truth, which could be somewhat upsetting."
Sandra Rizza: "‘L’Agenda Nera’ is a kind of logical follow-up to ‘L’Agenda Rossa’, where the story begins just where L’Agenda Rossa ended, in other words at the precise moment of the explosion in
cioè nel momento dell’esplosione di Via D'Amelio on 19 July 1992. It’s the story about how the investigations into the Via D’Amelio massacre were derailed between 1992 and 1994 with the aim, at least according to the Public Prosecutors of Caltanissetta, of steering the inquiries towards the perpetrators while drawing public attention completely away from the investigations into the masterminds behind the attacks. "
Giuseppe Lo Bianco : "We have begun with the Via D’Amelio explosion. The events of 19 July 1992 were the ending point of “L’Agenda Rossa”, which told the story of the 56 days between Capaci and Via D’Amelio. In “L’Agenda Nera”, we have taken up the story from the time of that explosion, revealing how the investigations were derailed. It’s a story about the process that eventually led to a number of mafia members being put on trial, indeed the entire top structure of the mafia, based on the testimony of a mafia turncoat by the name of Scarantino, who later turned out to be a false fitness, a man that told a bunch of lies that resulted in the Court of Cassation rubber stamping 3 convictions. But suddenly someone else popped up, a man by the name of Gaspare Spatuzza, who re-wrote the story of the Via D’Amelio massacre, thereby putting the spotlight back onto the Court of Cassation rulings and revealing another historical truth. This obviously resulted in some very detailed and meticulous work being done by the public prosecutors, which, given the previous experience, included the video taping of all the questioning sessions held at Caltanissetta during this new phase of the investigation. One thing must be said, however, and that is that many people think this way in this Country because it is as if there had been a 12-year blackout . This Country, the story of the massacres and the fight against the Mafia was forgotten for 15 years. It simply disappeared, first from the political agenda and then from the agenda of the newspaper editors. This is a Country that has simply written-off a media blackout that lasted at least 12 years and we are now trying to make up the lost ground.

Bombs for a political-mafia progression
Blog: "The people that instigated Scarantino, did they really do it to hide something that was that important? How did they manage to convince a man to give up all those years of freedom?"
S. Rizza: "Obviously we have to consider the allegations made by the investigators, and here there are two possibilities: 1) that the derailing was done in good faith, in the sense that at a time when there was great institutional confusion, the policemen needed to deliver some sort of guilty party in double-quick time in order to satisfy public opinion and the prosecutors themselves. Having a large amount of information at their disposal, which had been gathered from local informants, according to the Public Prosecutors of Caltanissetta the policemen decided to use this information, attributing it to a fake turncoat because this was the only way to ensure that the information would undoubtedly result in a speedy and concrete legal process; 2) the policemen, or in any event whoever ordered the derailing, did so for subversive reasons and with subversive aims, in other words, to cover up all the political manoeuvring that was being orchestrated at the time and that would lead Italy towards the greatest institutional change the Country had seen during the post-war era, in other words, the move from the First to the Second Republic. In this sense, the statements that Spatuzza is making now are extremely significant because he talks about the bombings of that era as being a political-mafia progression. He talks about political terrorism, for the first time attributing some sort of political intent to those massacres, almost as if someone outside of the Cosa Nostra had driven the mafia thugs to commit the massacres with a political objective in mind, an objective that was totally different to those of the Cosa Nostra."
Blog: "Meanwhile, the request for protection for Spatuzza is facing an increasingly uphill battle. Why doesn’t the State provide protection for such a major “supergrass”?"
G. Lo Bianco: "Because it is an age-old story, the deeper the investigations go, the greater the resistance from certain political quarters and certain institutional quarters. The higher the anti-mafia investigations reach up the pecking-order, the greater the resistance against allowing the prosecutors access to the tools they require for the investigations. In this case it comes as no surprise that the approval to provide Spatuzza with adequate protection is facing such an uphill battle."
Blog: "Ciancimino is talking because he wants to save his father’s legacy and Spatuzza is talking because he is seeking protection. There is this theory that people only talk because they want something in return. Is this how it always works? Is this like an attempt to uncover Spatuzza?"
G. Lo Bianco: "I think that in a Country where there is rule of law the simplest question to ask ourselves initially is whether or not they are telling the truth. If they’re telling the truth then we should not be concerned with the reasons why they choose to talk or not to talk. The problem is to confirm what they are saying and, if they are indeed telling the truth, then we must continue with the investigations."
In Florence recently, Prosecutor Grasso said that: "it cannot be excluded and it is indeed quite possible that the Cosa Nostra was looking for political connections, that they were attempting to switch taxis from the old Christian Democrats to one of the socialist parties, to a new political party. The indications are serious, precise and concordant and lead in a specific direction, however, prudence is necessary in this case because there is a risk that …". Grasso then changed the tack of his statements in an interview with “La Stampa”, in which he specified that he had never mentioned Berlusconi and Dell’Utri. In fact, he had not mentioned Berlusconi and Dell’Utri when speaking to the families of the victims of Via dei Georgofili, but did he mention them, as all the prosecutors did, in the archiving request lodged in 1998 and filed with his colleagues at the Public Prosecutors Office of Florence? Messrs. Fleri, Nicolosi, Crini and the dearly departed Gabriele Calazzi? The archiving request relates to a case in which Berlusconi and Dell’Utri were under investigation as the possible hidden masterminds behind the massacres, and essentially contains the very things that Grasso said when speaking to the families of the victims of Via dei Georgofili, including two very specific references.

The Italian “Truman Show”
Blog: How can the public simply ignore the thought, and indeed the suspicion that we have a head of government that is on very friendly terms with someone who, according to an initial sentence handed down by one of the Country’s Courts, has acted as go-between for the Cosa Nostra and the very influential world of Milanese finance, without rebelling totally? How did they manage to hoodwink the public opinion of 60 million citizens for 12 years?"
S. Rizza : "I don’t want to once again dredge up the old rhetoric regarding public opinion in this Country, or the extent of the narcosis that this Country has had to endure because of what Barbara Spinelli has rightly termed this Italian Truman Show, namely the construction of a false reality by means of the television, which has drawn the attention of the Italian population away from the actual reality of the issues, above all the battle against the Mafia. I think that if the Italian public had been aware of the content of that archiving request way back in 1998, things may not have turned out totally differently, but perhaps the Italian public would have had the right to see the content and could have exercised their rights in the polling booths and would perhaps have voted differently. Of course, this is looking back with hindsight, however, I believe that the public in a Western Country has the right to know what things a certain part of the State is getting up to, namely the public prosecutors, and although the matter is covered in an archiving request, in the final analysis it essentially re-writes a piece of history and establishes a number of firm principles, markers about which it is better to provide as much information as possible. I remember that Prosecutor Vigna once told me that: "Be aware that you won’t find any juicy bits of information in the requests to remand suspects for trial. You are far more likely to find them in the case archiving requests". This statement has proven to be oh so true."

Blog: "But was Paolo Borsellino killed to prevent him from digging up the truth, or was Borsellino killed so as to ensure that any facts that he had already uncovered would die with him?"
S. Rizza: "What we are dealing with here is merely speculation. One of the theories doing the rounds is that Borsellino was perhaps eliminated because he had become aware of the negotiations taking place between certain members of Government and the Mafia. One thing is certain, namely that Borsellino’s murder and the derailment of the investigation after Borsellino’s murder are perhaps the most disturbing of all the many historical derailments of justice in Italy, because the Borsellino affair was a watershed marking the switch, the very moment of the political changeover from the First to the Second Republic in this Country. It was the biggest change ever recorded in Italian history from the end of the war until today. We have to ask ourselves why did that massacre happen? Why then? Why 56 days after the Falcone murder? What happened immediately thereafter? Only by answering these questions will we be able to make any sort of sense of Borsellino’s death.
Blog: "If everything that Spatuzza is true and is subsequently confirmed as being the absolute truth, thus proving Spatuzza’s credibility beyond any shadow of doubt, would this shake the public opinion out of its lethargy of recent years or would everything remain as it is today?"
G. Lo Bianco: "I honestly believe that the Italian public is amongst the most cynical anywhere in the world, so I have no illusions in this regard. However, I also believe that the public nevertheless has the right and the duty to know what has gone on during these years and it is no secret whatsoever that Italian history has had more than its fair share of dark times, black holes and issues that have remained unresolved for 50 years now, and has probably been kept afloat by a thin black thread that connects all of those events. If there is any hope that something could emerge from the investigations into even the more recent murders of Falcone and Borsellino and those of 1993, I believe that the Italian public has the right to know that this could completely upset the status quo and, from this point of view, I must say that I’m not particularly optimistic.
Blog: "Is there a risk that this would become a good excuse for not talking about it?"
G. Lo Bianco: "No, absolutely not. I don’t believe that this could become any sort of alibi for anyone. "
Blog: "However, you will stick out like a sore thumb. "
G. Lo Bianco: "We must look at it another way. Why are such books so necessary in this Country and why are these things not written about in the newspapers? In my opinion, this is the question we should be asking, because many of my colleagues in this Country have stopped doing their job, either by choice, or because they have been forced out, or because the entire system of conflicts of interest is so restrictive that eventually it restrains every profession and all purely professional comment. "
Blog: "Mr. Lo Bianco, you talk about an investigation that is essentially ongoing, so with these latest regulations, you probably….. indeed certainly wouldn’t have been able to mention any of this."
G. Lo Bianco: "I want to say that there is a chance that this book will probably the last one published before this new wiretapping law comes into effect, because probably, indeed certainly this book would not have gone to print because Sandra and I would have risked spending two months in jail and the publisher would have risked being fined 300-thousand Euro in terms of the provisions of the draft bill."
Blog: "How do we bypass this attempt to gag everything, and everyone, and to limit the spread of ideas and of knowledge? In which case this book would probably only have been released 5 or 10 years from now. "
G. Lo Bianco: "I have some very clear views in this regard. I believe that newsworthy information has its own intrinsic power, a power that is able to overcome any attempt by the powers that be to suppress it. These days, what with globalisation and globalised information, it is a simple matter to go and find the news on the Internet sites of other European Countries, for example news regarding Italy, which would then inevitably also land up within the Italian information circles."

The parties are asking for sacrifices from the citizens, but no one has asked the parties for sacrifices. Don’t ask yourself what the party can do for you, but what you can give with your taxes to the party. Politics is the only unproductive sector that has a turnover that is continually growing. In 1993, public financing to the parties was abrogated in a referendum with 90.3% of the votes. But can a party live without money? The parties that enjoy the advantage of occupying Parliament, have made laws over the years that have repaired the referendum. All together in chorus, without ideological distinctions in the name of the fork, the true symbol of Parliament. The word “financing” is substituted with the much more elegant term “reimbursement” to put the citizens off the track. In 1999 the law 157/1999 brought in funds for elections to the Lower and Upper Houses, the European Parliament and to the regions with an overall maximum of 193,713,000 in annual chunks per legislature. In the case of early elections the “reimbursements” are interrupted.
The parties however, have expenses that we humans cannot even imagine and they modify the 2002 regulation with the law 156/2002 that brings the amount of prize money for Parliament to 468,853,675 euro and reduced by 1% (from 4%) the quorum needed to get a “reimbursement”. The parties, whose most well developed organ has always been the stomach, do not stop here.
In 2006, the law 51/2006 introduced the double “reimbursement” in the case of early elections. The “reimbursement” is valid for every one of the five years of the legislature, even if it is interrupted, and it is cumulative with the “reimbursement” for the following legislature. For the political elections in 2008 the PDL earned the right to 206,518,945 euro, the PDminusL 180,418,043, the Lega 41,384,550 and on and on stealing from us all the other parties as well (every “reimbursement” is added to the residue of the 2006 elections, thus about half). The cost of the parties, excluding the salaries to the various elected people, is close to the sum of a billion euro if you add the “reimbursements” for the current legislature, the part of the previous one that was given retribution anyway, the European elections and the regional elections.
The 5 Star MoVement has participated in the Regional elections. It obtained 500,000 votes in 5 Regions. It was self-financed with 40,000 euro. Each vote cost 0.08 euro. It refused 1,700,000 euro for election “reimbursement”. It has demonstrated that you can do politics without stealing from the citizens. Before asking for sacrifices, the parties that are aiming to gain, let them renounce the electoral “reimbursements”, otherwise, but it is just a euphemism, let them FxxK off!

To sit down and have a discussion with Italian nuclearists is not just useless, but counter-productive. It’s the classic story of the one who starts up a discussion with an imbecile. Anyone observing from the outside sees two imbeciles talking. Nuclear power was turned down in a referendum, full stop. It cannot be re-introduced by lobbyists and political lackeys, The people of Italy, who are used to putting up with almost anything, don’t want it from an instinct of survival. In the country with the most powerful mafias in the world who would manage the waste products? Nuclear costs more than any other type of energy: who will pay for it? In a few decades, uranium will run out and its price will go up from one week to another. It is the LEAST renewable type of energy in the world. Helen Caldicott, the author of:” Nuclear Power Is Not the Answer to Global Warming Or Anything Else”, explains the dangers of nuclear power for our offspring and theirs. Unemployed, with no pension and nuclearised.

Interview with Helen Caldicott

H. Caldicott: My name is Helen Caldicott. I’m Australian. I’m a paediatrician a children’s specialist and for four years I have been involved in the medical implications of nuclear power an nuclear war, as well as being on the faculty at Harvard Medical School and practising medicine as well.

Blog: Why are there still so many countries in the world, like UK, that are continuing to include the nuclear option in the energy mix?

H. Caldicott: Well a lot of people are quite ignorant about the nuclear fuel cycle and the radiation effects within the body and all the side effects from nuclear power from uranium mining to milling to enrichment to building the reactor to the reactor producing large amounts of routine radioactive emissions that produce radiation that then concentrates in the human food chain and then in breast milk and then bones and the lungs and also radioactive waste which lasts for about half a million years and over time will absolutely contaminate the food chain so people will be eating radioactive food and babies are 10 to 20 times more sensitive to radiation than adults. Foetuses thousands of times. And people don’t understand that this is a medical problem and most people do not have the biological information to understand it. Hence the nuclear power industry has been pushing a huge propaganda campaign saying that they are the answer to global warming because they produce no carbon dioxide. They actually do produce a large amount of carbon dioxide as well as they will produce epidemics of cancer, leukaemia and genetic disease in all future generations.

Blog: So how much do nuclear power cost considering all the costs that society pays?

H. Caldicott: Well a nuclear reactor itself costs about 12 to 15 billion dollars now to build but that and all the other parts of it, the enriching of uranium, the huge amounts of insurance that is all paid for by the government, the government subsidises the whole nuclear power industry – the costs of the medical problems down the time frame are not included. The costs of looking after patients, particularly children with cancer and genetic disease are never including. The costs of storing radioactive waste for half a million years are never included. The transportation of radioactive waste is never included. So that it's so much cheaper to conduct or build renewable energy sources like wind and solar and geothermal and co generation and high grade efficiency in the use of electricity.

Blog: Is there a safe nuclear power option at all?

H. Caldicott: No, absolutely not. There are absolutely no safe nuclear power options. If you read my book, "Nuclear Power is Not the Answer to Global Warming," you'll understand why when you have read the book. There is no safe nuclear power. And equally you have to talk about costs to build nuclear power plants, but I'm sure Berlusconi doesn't understand what I'm talking about.

Blog: So who wants nuclear power?

H. Caldicott: Pardon? Who wants nuclear power?

Blog: Yeah, who wants it?

H. Caldicott: The politicians have been dealt a big a propaganda campaign and maybe some money, I don't know. The politicians are scientifically and medically illiterate. In other words, they understand no science. Like Berlusconi, what science does he understand? Does he understand medicine? How long it takes to get cancer once you're irradiated, like five to six years. Does he know the results for Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
So most politicians are corporate shills, if you will, of the nuclear power industry. Like they are of the oil industry and the coal industry. They go where the money is, not where the people's future and well being and health is.

Blog: What about military lobbyists behind the nuclear option?

H. Caldicott: Well, of course nuclear power was founded in the Manhattan Project to produce plutonium to make bombs. And then nuclear power was an offshoot of that, because the people who built the bombs felt so guilty about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where they killed over 200, 000 people in a flash of light, that they thought if they could harness the atoms for peaceful purposes they would feel less guilt. I knew many of those men; I worked closely with them. They hated nuclear weapons, and I can tell you that their guilt was not assuaged by the time they died. And they knew, they knew, how dangerous it was and is. They're all in their graves now.
You should also know that every nuclear power plant makes 250 kilos of plutonium a year. Plutonium lasts for half a million years, and you only need five kilos to make yourself a nuclear weapon. So any country that has a reactor can make over a hundred nuclear weapons a year if they want.
That's why people are worried about Iraq. That's how Israel made its bombs. That's how Britain made its bombs. That's how Pakistan and India made their bombs. That's how China made its bombs. Nuclear weapons and nuclear power are part of the same industry. Once you've got nuclear power plants, you can have nuclear bombs.

Blog: Is there at least one example....

H. Caldicott: Does Berlusconi want nuclear bombs?

Blog: Is there at least one example in the world of correct management of nuclear waste?

H. Caldicott: No. No country has solved the problem of nuclear waste, nor will any country ever solve the problem. Because whatever you put it in copper, steel, concrete within 50 or 100 years, that will rust and break apart and nuclear waste will leak out into the environment, the water, concentrate in food, milk, meat, vegetables. And people will be eating radioactive food. Their babies will be born deformed, as babies are being born deformed now in Fallujah and Basra in Iraq, where they used radioactive weapons and still do. In fact in Fallujah, the doctors are telling mothers not to have any babies, because almost all of them are born grossly deformed, either with no brain, or single eyes, or no arms. I mean, that's what the future holds.

Blog: What should common people, normal people, citizens, do discard the option of nuclear power? Any options for that lobby?

H. Caldicott: Yeah. First, they must be well informed. It's imperative that they understand the information. I have to suggest I know my book has been translated into Italian that everyone who listens to this should read "Nuclear Power is Not the Answer to Global Warming." And once they've read that, they need to spend some days with their feelings, working out what they're going to do. Truly we need a revolution against this really ghastly, wicked nuclear industry. It's much worse than tobacco, much worse than smoking, much worse than asbestos.
People can use their democracy by going to see their politicians and educating them. Take doctors with them dressed in their white coats with their stethoscopes. Go and see Berlusconi; take over Berlusconi's office.
Italians are good, I think. They're passionate people, they really care about life. They can work out what they're going to do to make sure their country closes down all the nuclear power plants.

In Italy there are two classes: that of the old and that of the young. The first is in government, has a pension, at the end of their working activity they have the TFR (lump sum payment) , they have enjoyed an Italy that has almost disappeared with clean rivers, free beaches, low levels of crime. The old have a future behind them. They have had the hope of emerging in their professions and many have been successful, have had the security of a job with an indefinite end point. The old people have been able to choose between the big companies like Italtel, Telecom, and Olivetti. They have bought an apartment and the luckier ones a holiday home.
The old people have not got their sons and daughters to study, they have made them “precarious”, taken the environment away from them, the right to public water. They have got them into debt with 30,000 euro a head (the salary over 3 or 4 years for an intern). The old people enjoyed things, each in his own way, while ignoring the generations that follow on. They have done that and they can continue to do that because it is they who hold the power. Italy has the oldest President of the Republic and President of the Council of Ministers in the Western world.
Italy also has 17 million pensioners. Many of them have only partly paid for the pension that they are receiving. Millions have been at home since the age of 50 or 55 even without mentioning the “baby pensioners” with 15 to 20 years of contributions or the scandalous pensions of the parliamentarians after just two and a half years of legislature or the double and triple pensions, the pensions that are more than 10,000 euro a month, the pensions that are accumulated with one or more salaries. In this situation of privileges and of profound social injustice, it has been decided that the young people will retire at age 70, that is basically never. This is not acceptable.
If there’s the need to have a reform of pensions, everyone has to do their bit, or no one has to. Why is it that a young man with his work, has to maintain the social State of which the older generations are the beneficiaries? A young person aged 20 who starts working in 2010 will retire in 2060. From here to eternity. Anyone who does an exhausting job is ready for the old folks home at 70. Why should a young person pay the contributions for example, for Felice Crosta, the former president of the rubbish collection agency in Sicily who has been getting a pension of 1,369 euro a day? It’s everyone or no one.
You can retire at age 60. The raising of the pension age is due to the enormous waste of public money for the CURRENT pensions, not for the future ones that are drawn out over time, always just a bit later and later, as has happened with the bringing together of the pensionable time frames. Let’s discuss the CURRENT pensions, then in time we can discuss the future ones. Let’s put a maximum cap on pensions for every Italian, for example 2,500 euro. Let’s forbid the accumulation of pensions. Let’s abolish with a retro-active effect, the “super-baby” pensions of the parliamentarians and above all, let’s give to every pensioner a pension that is in relation to what he has really paid in contributions because the difference of a few billion euro is on the shoulders of the young who will never even see a pension, not even the TFR, and perhaps, not even a job. Sacrifices have no age. Your age is not a privilege.

Good day to you all. This bottle of fizz indicates a birthday. Today Passaparola is having its 100th episode. We have come together 100 times plus one time when it was Peter Gomez. I’m tea-total but however I would like to have a symbolic toast with all of you for this tiny event that is a great satisfaction. I hope that it gives you as much joy as it gives me. We have seen each other 100 times. At the beginning, only a few people knew about this happening and now it has become a fixed meeting. At first there were just a few thousand, then we have arrived, they tell me, in the various output formats of Passaparola including direct streaming, You Tube etc. with an average of 250/300 thousand people who connect including those who connect to the live broadcast and those who watch the recorded version or who perhaps watch it more than once, that being a “perversion” that I cannot understand but that apparently is quite widespread.

Internet under attack

And we have even arrived at peaks of 600/700 thousand thanks to the extraordinary collaboration of Bruno Vespa when we had the honour of a citation on “Porta a Porta”.

You will perhaps remember the episode after the attack on Berlusconi in Piazza Duomo, when we talked about “hate” and we said that “hate” cannot be a category that can be applied to politics and thus everyone has the right to love, to hate who they want, if they want, even if perhaps we shouldn’t ask a politician to make himself loved or hated, but simply to carry out a technical service for the citizens. That episode was seen, above all after the citation on “Porta a Porta” by almost 700 thousand people which is a lot!

We are not going to make comparisons, but there are lots. I don’t want to flatter myself, to praise myself and to thus befoul myself. I just wanted to say that in the name of Grillo’s blog that has organised –invented this appointment, it has made this space available to me, and in the forthcoming months we will try, perhaps even from the end of the summer, to develop some interaction tools, I think that’s how you say it, to improve the circulation of our programme and even to improve the audio-video quality with some devices that I’m not capable of explaining to you, but that I assure you are about to be brought into use.

That’s the end of the idle talk, of the celebration of self and now we will talk, as always, of the things that the other people don’t talk about.

Anyway I’ll tell you a bit of news that I’m sure the “Internet people” have already had wind of and that is that a week ago the Senate approved in the security package, one of many, an amendment by Senator Giampiero Dalia, UDC, Art. 50 bis, the repression of the activity of “apologia” or instigation to commit crime by means of the Internet. This week the text approaches the Lower House and this article is number 60. The Senator is not part of the government Majority, but the Centre-Right Majority has been very happy to approve his amendment because when it’s a question of suppressing liberty, above all on the Internet, the “transversalism” is to be found in abundance even more than for the rest. On the basis of this amendment, if any citizen by means of a blog, should invite others to disobey a law that they believe to be unjust, and there’s no end to the opportunities, we see them approving one a day, we have even the law on wiretapping that we have already said for months that we will violate to guarantee information getting to the citizens, thus we are doing apologia and instigation to violate unjust laws as conscientious objectors.
Obviously we are not talking about instigating others to go round shooting or to go thieving or to commit crimes against other people, we are talking about civil disobedience to give more information even when we will be forbidden to do so.

This, and then naturally we don’t really know if it will even go over the boundary of the right to criticise an unjust law, will be given a penalty with the block on the blog or the website: the service providers will have the obligation to block the blog and the websites that do this subversive activity of instigating others to not respect an unjust law. I’ve read on the website “perlapace.it” that is coordinated by local bodies for peace and human rights, that this measure could cause the black out of an Italian site wherever you are, even abroad, and it’s enough that the Minister of the interior says with its own decree that the activity of that blogger has to be interrupted and they order the block to be operated by the Internet service providers (ISP) , and the filter has to be applied within 24 hours, and the penalty for the ISP is between 50 thousand and 250 thousand euro.

For the bloggers the penalty is from 1 to 5 years in prison on top of a further penalty of 6 months to 5 years for instigation to disobey the public order laws or hate between social classes. The moral here is: this law could immediately clean out all the search engines so that they no longer have any links that are inconvenient to the Caste of power. In practice, it will be possible to block in Italy, as already happens in Iran, in Myanmar and in China, sites like Facebook, You Tube and to clear from the Internet all the blogs that at the time represent in Italy the only non-conditioned or censored source of information. That’s what they write on that site: Italy is the only country in the world in which a media company, that is Mediaset has cited You Tube for damages asking for 500 million euro in compensation. With this law there will be no obstacles even as a preventative measure, after Cassinelli’s draft law and the setting up of a Committee against digital multimedia piracy that in less than 60 days will have to present to Parliament the text of a law on this topic. This amendment to the security package, in fact will make explicit the government’s project to normalise with repressive laws the internet and all the system of relations and information that up until now it has not managed to dominate.

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”First they isolate you, then they kill you”. This is the thought I had when i read the libel: "I silenzi e le ambiguità dell'onorevole Di Pietro" {the silences and the ambiguity of the honourable Di Pietro} in Il Corriere della Sera under the signature of Marco Imarisio. A long article with a mention on the front page, with a photo, based on infamous slanderous insinuations, and at the same time puerile. A degree in record time, the Lucibello - D'Adamo axis, the photo with Contrada worthy of “il Bagaglino”. You can sum it up as the excrement of writing, as “merda mediatica” to discredit Antonio Di Pietro. There would be nothing strange if the article had appeared in Libero or Il Giornale: they defend the interests of their owner, Silvio Berlusconi. And they do that in the light of day, thus they are substantially innocuous. For il Corriere della Sera, the issue is completely different. It’s the daily paper that is most widespread in Italy, it’s apparently moderate, and it has a strong influence on public opinion. The fact that il Corriere was the unofficial mouthpiece of the P2 in the great times of Gelli and of Tassan Din has by now been forgotten. The article is accompanied by a worrying tag: “il caso” {the case}, but it doesn’t actually report any cases, not even one. Imarisio the spokesperson, throws the stone and then hides his hand in such a grotesque way that you start to doubt his mental health: “Every other year what comes out are doubts and ironic things, his personal “tour de force” to get a degree in Law at the State university in Milan … The institution of the presidency of the faculty confirms that everything is in order. But the illations, the various types of falseness, have gone on, amidst the silence of the person directly affected …” The “person directly affected” has shown his degree certificate in a video and he has brought a court action against Berlusconi who had raised doubts about it. What else should he have done? Telephone Imarisio? The latter does not stop there: “After his recent publication with the director of Sisme Bruno Contrada (in one of the barracks of the carabinieri well before Contrada was arrested, editor) il Corriere invited him to have a discussion on the issue”. Antonio Di Pietro gave a response to the press and on his blog, even though, in my opinion a “raspberry” would have been sufficient. What discussion on the issue is he talking about if there is no issue? The conclusion on Minzolini’s declarations is like P2-ist applause: “According to Di Pietro the publication of the declarations of the architect Zampolini are to be read as “part of a subversive strategy” against him, decided by "shady instigators and beneficiaries", the fault of the lobbies, the fault of a system of news that is lined up against him”. Di Pietro rejected the accusations by providing evidence and he has taken out a court action. What else should he have done? Should he have sent a telegram to Il Corriere to put them in the picture?
Finally, the strapline, a pure product of hallucination: “Suspicions and accusations have been tumbling out about the former prosecutor for some time (after those of Previti, editor). He has always won in the tribunal, but on certain matters he has not provided clarity.” But if he has always won in the tribunal, what else does he have to clear up?
Anyway, Imarisio has nothing to do with it, and neither does the doorkeeper of il Corriere, the former journalist, Ferruccio De Bortoli. The line taken by il Corriere is decided by the Board of Directors, and so by the lobbies. Here is a brief and incomplete list (*) of the directors of RCS: Philip Elkann, present also on the Board of Directors of Fiat, Diego Della Valle, present also on the Board of Directors of Assicurazioni Generali, Tod's and CIA, Jonella Ligresti, present on the Board of Directors of Mediobanca, Italmobiliare, Milano Assicurazioni, Fondiaria and Premafin finanziaria, Enrico Salza, present on the Board of Directors of Intesa San Paolo, Bernardino Libonati, present on the Board of Directors of Telecom Italia, Telecom Italia Media and Pirelli, Renato Pagliaro, present on the Board of Directors of Pirelli, Mediobanca and Telecom Italia. The joke that the editorial line of thinking is decided by the editor and the redaction committee is exactly that: a joke. When I see an article in the future like that on Di Pietro, about Della Valle, Ligresti or Philip Elkann, perhaps I’ll revise my opinion. Antonio Di Pietro must not remain isolated. They will never give up (but is it in their interests?). Neither will we.

(*) data up to date on 01 January 2010

The North American Grey squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis Gmelin, 1788) belongs to the Family: Sciuridae, Order: Rodents, Class: mammals. The Common European squirrel, or Red squirrel, (Sciurus vulgaris, Linnaeus 1758) belongs to the Family: Sciuridae, Order: Rodents, Class: mammals. What strategy would you use in order to eradicate the Red squirrel? Introduce packs of wolves? Perhaps allow the hunting of Red squirrels all year round, even by sixteen-year-olds? Or spread baited traps throughout the woods? In addition to not being a final solution, all of these measures would be highly visible, would soon be discovered and would undoubtedly solicit a reaction from the protectors of red squirrels in particular and from animal lovers in general. In order to eradicate all the red squirrels from an area, you have to introduce into its territory some other mammal that competes for the same food resources, one that occupies the red squirrel’s space, one that is better able to store fat to carry it through the winter and, if possible, one that is a carrier of infection for the red squirrel. If the mammal in question also happens to be another squirrel, let’s say the grey squirrel, then the strategy is absolutely perfect. As a matter of fact, wherever the grey squirrel has arrived in Europe, the red squirrel has disappeared. Within the PDwithoutanel, Massimo D'Alema is the perfect equivalent of a grey squirrel. In order to annihilate a party of thoroughbred red squirrels like Enrico Berlinguer no quarter was given. As well as D'Alema, an entire colony of grey squirrels was also introduced: from Violante, the absent-minded mafia sympathiser from Collegno, to La Torre, the collaborator of the wolves, through to Fassino, the decoy squirrel. In other woods, such as those of the Psi, it was sufficient to introduce a bulimic and voracious squirrel like the mother of all squirrels, namely Craxi. In that case, however, even the woods disappeared together with all of the red squirrels. The former socialist grey squirrels migrated to all of the woods of the Second Republic, from the Lega’s Padanian woods, to Andreotti and Lima’s Sicilian Mafia woods, through to Fini’s post-fascist woods and, obviously, also the salmon pink, caviar and yacht woods of the post-communists. So as to maintain the status quo, whenever new colonies of red squirrels develop from time to time, the system attempts to infiltrate some grey squirrels into them. This is a warning to the remaining red squirrels: should you find a grey squirrel anywhere in your woods, don’t hesitate to feed them to the martens.

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Ps: "The petition against Roberto Formigoni (in other words against his election as Regional Premier of Lombardy) has been assigned to Judge Alda Maria Vanoni, section president of the Milan Court. The first hearing has been scheduled for 8 July 2010 at the Milan Court ". Vito Crimi - MoVimento 5 Stelle Lombardia.

The Peter principle states that: "In any hierarchy, every individual tends to rise to his highest level of incompetence". In Italy, the validity of this principle is so patently obvious to everyone and indeed so clearly visible that no further proof is required. Bureaucrats, ministers, newspaper editors, managing directors and party secretaries are living proof of that maximum level of incompetence. However, the Italians also have unexpected abilities, as revealed by their thousand-year history, which would have been enough to sink any other race. As a nation, the Italians have gone well beyond the Peter principle by adopting the “Cover your Arse” principle. Unlike other peoples, an Italian always knows when he holds a position that is beyond his capabilities. In order to hold on to the post and pass it down to his children, he behaves like a perfect arse cover. The Cover your Arse rule, a follow-on from the Peter rule, states that: "Every Italian tends to do the opposite of what his profession requires so as to be able to continue to practice his profession". In order to continue to write, the journalist must not inform people. The university baron doesn’t promote research or new talent, which would undermine his own offspring. The Antimafia committee has nothing to do with the mafia matters. The Authorities don’t exercise any authority whatsoever. Consob doesn’t intervene with regard to conflicts of interest at the Stock Exchange. The State President doesn’t respect the Constitution (see the Alfano Bill). Senate Chairman Schifani doesn’t discuss the proposed "Clean Parliament" bill, thereby ignoring the 350,000 signatures and the will of the people. The Civil Defence organisation doesn’t warn the Country’s citizens about imminent earthquakes. Telecom doesn’t increase connectivity. Confindustria helps our industry to relocate to other countries. The Justice Minister introduces laws that promote injustice. Veronesi sponsors incinerators that cause tumours. The tax system rewards tax evaders by introducing the Tax Shield. The world may seem to have been turned upside-down, but it is all mere common sense. It’s all a matter of survival and has nothing to do with maliciousness, bad faith or extreme incompetence. Positions are sacred in Italy and anyone who can is born with an armchair (things used to be more restrained once upon a time and the most fortunate were born with a shirt on their backs). In some cases, the few stubborn ones that insist on practicing their profession in the proper way not only lose their jobs, but sometimes even their lives, as happened in the cases of Falcone and Borsellino. Well-placed Italians normally also have a family. Why risk losing your nearest and dearest and a highly paid post? I fan incompetent individual is also open to bribery, he will always do better career-wise than the other incompetent individuals. And if an incompetent individual is both open to bribery and an expert in the art of covering arses, then he could aspire to any high office he wishes, even that of Prime Minister.

Precious evidence from Alfio Caruso, who for many years was Indro Montanelli’s collaborator, and the author of "Milano ordina uccidete Borsellino” {Milano orders: kill Borsellino}. He explains that for the murder of Paolo Borsellino and his body guards and for the attempts on the lives of Carlo Palermo in Trapani and Giovanni Falcone in Addaura, use was made of the same military explosive coming from the North of Italy. Thus, there are two scenarios: the mafia, every so often, removed explosives from the military arsenals, or the military personnel supplied explosives to the mafia. The latter scenario is the most plausible (the former is honestly ridiculous), just as though the mafia were acting as the armed branch of higher interests. Alfio Caruso is also talking about the connecting thread between Carlo Palermo’s investigations on arms trafficking, that reconstructed a framework with external participants, ranging from the Israeli secret services of Mossad to Craxi’s PSI, to business leaders, to the mafia, and Falcone’s and Borsellino’s investigations that followed. In the end, the question is: Is it always the same? Who is truly in command in Italy? Not the government, not the citizens. So who, if the mafias themselves are often just the ones carrying out orders? How many secret services are operating in our country and with what aim?

The red thread of the three murder attempts
Caruso: Good day. My name is Alfio Caruso. Perhaps some of you will remember that we already met up for the publication of my book: “Milano ordina uccidete Borsellino” {Milano orders: kill Borsellino} and today we are here for the new elements that have come out about the attack in Via D’Amelio. In fact it has been discovered that the explosive used in Via D’Amelio, is an explosive that comes from the North of Italy, and that it is a military explosive, there’s the suspicion that it has come from a military arsenal and above all the element that is most disturbing is that this explosive was already used in 1985 for the slaughter in Pizzolungo which saw the death of the young Signora Asta and her two little twins as well as in Addaura for the failed attempt on the life of Falcone.

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Tremorti is living among us in accordance with destiny and necessity. But you can see that he is not in his natural habit. He is suffering, a lot, for the inferiority of the people surrounding him and they don’t understand him. You can see this from his mimicry of the hen’s backside laying an egg. He is one who is a misunderstood person of rare magnitude. In order to communicate with his inferiors at times he turns to his favourite interpreter, the journalist Cazzullo (in nomen omen) of Il Corriere della Sera. In a double page spread, what is reported is the tremortian thinking with accents that are lyrical, historical and a “taking for a ride” of the Italian tax payer.
Tremorti doing geometry: “We can do a point on a quadrant of our history … by taking a sheet of paper and by drawing on it two axes at right angles, one horizontal and one vertical. The horizontal axis is the one of the space that has suddenly dilated and on the vertical axis can be marked, for the first time in history, the superiority of the paper economy over the real economy”.
Tremorti no global: “It is illusory to think that globalisation, causing the emersion and the momentous and sudden movement of enormous masses of merchandise, of workers, of capital could develop without imbalances that are in turn enormous and momentous.”
Cryptic Tremorti: “In the market “over the counter", there’s been a return to the same values as before 2008”
Galactic Tremorti: “A declaration articulated in the form of the trilogy: "Property - Integrity - Transparency". This is the basic nucleus of the "Global Legal Standard" proposed by the Italian government in 2009”.
Economist Tremorti: “The crisis has hit us not because Europe has entered globalisation , but because globalisation has entered Europe”.
Hamlet Tremorti: “It was true growth? Or was it not true growth?”
Relativist Tremorti: “The instantaneous time of the crisis has gone against the long time of our political construction”.
Philosopher Tremorti: “The age-old metaphor of the simplification is not dissolved but is cut with a blow of the sword”.
Thinker Tremorti: “Faithfulness is a value that is both moral and political: Political because it’s moral and moral because it’s political.”.
Analyst Tremorti: In the ring surrounding Europe, the countries in crisis are not so much the PIGS countries but the countries of "Fire": Finance, Insurance, Real Estate".
The final part of the interview is a tremortian way of being taken for a ride: “Europe is a country that produces more debt than wealth … Italy has colossal tax evasion, that perhaps feeds the present from the economy, by means of the “Illicit” but not in the future, by subtracting resources from research, universities, etc.” (Tremorti did the total amnesty for tax dodgers with the Fiscal Shield by means of a miserable 5% rate of taxation. The Italian public debt has grown by hundreds of billions of euro, during his time at the Ministry of the Economy in the different Berlusconi governments – editor)
Cazzullo added a translation from tremortian, including the neologisms ("Fire countries" is for example a term created by Tremorti himself) to the cazzullian {Cazzullo-style language} so as to give access even to the most unprepared readers.
In turn, cazzullian has to be translated into Italian. That’s a simple operation that anyone can do. You take the two pages of Tremorti’s interview and you use them as toilet paper. Even Tremorti is a resource.

"A few hours after the Israeli attack on the "Freedom" flotilla in international waters, the Blog has got hold of Greta Berlin, the spokesperson for the Free Gaza Movement. She was contacted by telephone in Cyprus.

Interview with Greta Berlin

G. Berlin: "At 04:30 this morning, the Israeli navy attacked us. They came down the ladder from the helicopters. They got onto the deck of at least one boat and we think now two, and they started to shoot. They were shooting at unarmed civilians who were taking 10 thousand tons of supplies into Israel. They shot without any provocation and they shot within international waters. We were seventy miles off the coast of Israel.
This was our ninth voyage. And we entered Gaza five times successfully in 2008 and we were not stopped because it is Israel that is the illegal entity in the area. They have no right to stop us. They are the ones that occupy and they are the ones that put a blockade on a million and a half Palestinians.
The last three voyages we were brutally stopped. So we decided that we would go with a flotilla –and that’s why we took the 10,000 tons. I think Israel is terrified that if this is successful then a sea-link will be between Gaza and the world and that is the last thing that Israel wants.
We go into Gaza. We go from the international waters straight into the waters of Gaza. We don’t ask Israel’s permission. We don’t acknowledge that it has the right to imprison a million and a half people. This is a civilian initiative because the governments around the world won’t do anything to help the Palestinians. It is Israel that is illegally occupying Gaza and not the other way round.
So when we were attacked this morning we were attacked in international waters. We had done it successfully. We had already set the precedent that we were going to sail into Gaza without any permission from the Israeli authorities. We don’t have to ask the Israelis whether to go or not and they brutally brutally saw this last night by murdering at least 10 of us and maybe even more.”
B log: What should the Italian government do to help your initiative?
G. Berlin: “I’m sorry, but I really shouldn’t laugh. But, you’ve got Berlusconi! I mean, it’s like having Bush! What can they do? I don’t think that the Italian government will do anything, any more than the American government will do anything. This is a citizen’s initiative. People who are reading what you are writing or listening to what you are saying, we need to rise up and say: “we are not going to allow this to happen any longer”.
Israel has occupied Palestine for sixty two years. It has brutalised the Palestinians for sixty two years and nobody has done anything about this. Israel no longer has the right to do this to a people who had nothing to do with World War 2.
So we need to stop it. I don’t count on governments. I’m an American. I never count on government to do anything. This has to be done by the citizens of the world, because governments have completely turned away from the Palestinians.”