Having reached his fifth reincarnation (in the same body, unfortunately for him), Giulio Andreotti once said that: "It may well be a sin to think the worst of people, but so often it turns out to be true ". When I announced the scheduled date for the 5-Star Woodstock event, I heard a little voice inside me, warning me about the boycotting culture that has become as regular as clockwork here in Italy. I was not in the least surprised, therefore, when I discovered that, TWO MONTHS IN ADVANCE, the Government Railways trade unions have announced a 24-hour strike that (purely coincidentally you understand) just happens to coincide perfectly, thanks to geometric trade union power, with the commencement and the ending of the 5-Star Woodstock event, namely from the evening of Saturday 25 September to the evening of Sunday 26 September. So, as of now, I’m want to invite all of the train drivers, inspectors, chief inspectors and hostesses who will be free of all work commitments on that weekend to come along and join us at the demonstration event in Cesena. I have always loved trains and during the course of this event, in between the appearance of one band and the next, we will also be discussing the future of public transport in this Country.
I’m as happy as a Tibetan monk prior to the advent of Maoism. I am fully expecting strikes throughout the entire public transport sector at the end of September, and indeed even the total paralysis of the Country. This is one of those occasions on which I often ask myself questions about life in general, and today’s nagging thought that I just can’t seem to shake off is: "To whom are the trade unions ultimately accountable? To D'Alema, or perhaps to Bersani?".
It’s going to be an absolute mission to get to Cesena, an obstacle course if you will, because these guys will try anything. So come on foot, by bicycle, in campers, in caravans, in tour busses organised by the Meet Up groups, in car pools, on motorcycles or even on horseback. All roads will lead to Cesena on 25 and 26 September 2010. Thirty bands and musicians have already agreed to be there and in the coming days I will be introducing them to you one by one. The event will kick off on the Saturday evening and it’s going to be two days off music and talking about the future. We will be talking about politics, not about politicians. "But meanwhile the locomotive runs, runs, runs, with steam whistling it almost seems to be alive" Francesco Guccini. They may never give up (is it in their interests?), but neither will we.

From the Ministry of Public Transport and Infrastructure:
"RAILWAYS SECTOR: TRAIN DRIVERS AND ON-BOARD STAFF OF TRENITALIA
Strike timing: 24 HOUR STRIKE FROM 21h00 ON 25/9 TO 21h00 ON 26/9"
Anyone wanting more information on the strike can send an e-mail to: relazionisindacali@mit.gov.it

Previous postings on the 5-Star Woodstock event:
- Appeal for 5-Star Woodstock - 7 July 2010
- 5-Star Woodstock at Cesena - 23 July 2010

In Italian politics, as in Settimana Enigmistica, it’s possible to play a game, the game of Spot the difference . to find the differences in relation to each other. Between the declarations and the facts. It’s a game that even children can play.
- First difference: "We’re cutting pensions. It’s what Europe wants " versus "the right t o a pension is earned after two and a half years for the parliamentarians "
- Second difference: "Let’s get the State to reduce waste " versus "The parties are sharing out a billion euro in public financing got from contraband for election expenses. The PDL alone (Tremorti’s party) is pocketing half a billion euro "
- Third difference: "The delocalisation of companies abroad is a problem of the market " versus "The companies ranging from Bialetti, to Omsa, to Fiat are delocalising in Serbia or in Romania thanks to EU contributions paid with the taxes of the Italians and their products are anyway maintaining the ‘Made in Italy’ brand. "
- Fourth difference: "Parliament is an expression of the will of the people by means of the vote " versus " Parliament is elected name by name, family by family, arse-licker by arse-licker by 5/6 people responsible for the parties "
- Fifth difference: "In Italy, there’s the freedom of the press " versus "The newspapers are financed by the State, without that financing, they would close down, from Libero to Il Foglio. They have the same independence from political power as ‘Pravda’ (in Russian meaning ‘truth’) at the time of Stalin "
- Sixth difference: "Presidents of the Regions can only be elected for 2 consecutive mandates " versus " Presidents of the Regions don’t care at all and they hang on to their position for life - like Formigoni (PDL in his fourth term of office) and Errani (PDminusL in his third) "
- Seventh difference: "Federalism is one of the objectives of the government " versus "ICI, the only federalist tax, has been abolished and funding to the regions has been cut "
- Eighth difference: "The President of the Republic is the guarantor of the Constitution " versus " Napolitano signed the Lodo Alfano, declared unconstitutional "
- Ninth difference: "Italy repudiates war " versus "Italy participates in the wars in Afghanistan and in Iraq where there is a daily massacre of civilians and in the past it has contributed to the bombing of Serbia "
- Tenth difference: "The fight against tax dodging is a priority " versus "The fiscal shield has rewarded the complete tax dodgers and organised crime, with taxation at just 5% on capital "
- Eleventh difference: "The parties are fighting the mafia and they honour Falcone and Borsellino " versus "Two senators convicted at the second level for being in close association with the mafia, Dell'Utri and Cuffaro, have seats in Parliament and often even at the dinner table of members of the Opposition. "
- Twelfth difference: "There’s a Majority and an Opposition " versus "The PDL and the PDminusL exist. They are parties of the mess up "

I realize that I could continue with the game of spot the difference for hours. Today I’m leaving you with a bit of work. If you want to continue….
They will never give up (but is it in their interests?). Neither will we.

Image modified from"The Disneyland Memorial Orgy poster"

In an Italian wood, under a crystal display cabinet, the sleeping beauties are lying in what seems to be an everlasting sleep, victims of the tons of bad apples devoured in the years gone by. Joyful little animals have been ever surrounding them. The little squirrels of the P2, so clever that they have never been captured, the Verdini birds of the P3, the CL wolves, the mafia foxes, the 'ndrangheta martens, the camorra weasels and in the sky, swirling around in great circles happy vultures searching for carrion and bribes. The sleeping beauties are dreaming. Their eyelids slowly blinking at the appearance of a new ethereal Right, uncorrupted and inspired by noble minds from the past, from Cavour to De Gasperi. This vision produces for the dreamers, for those like Bocchino, Granata, and Fini nocturnal pollution, political coitus producing rare pleasure. The sleep that they have been experiencing has lasted for nearly two decades. At odd times, but so very rarely, there had been a hint of reawakening, for the “ad personam” laws, for the scandals, the corruption, the criminal convictions of Previti and Dell'Utri. The trials involving Mills and Mondadori, shook them however to such an extent as to alter their position in Papi’s massive bed. They turned over from one side to the other, almost by 90 degrees, while waiting for the handsome prince who will never give them a kiss, but who has had a go on them with every position of the Kamasutra, their lethargy is about to come to an end. The smell of the wood going up in flames is like a magic potion. It is transforming them from being knowing and conscious SnowWhites into illuminated statesmen on the route of the next government. The dwarf at the edge of the showcase reveals himself for what he is. A lascivious individual who has got them through, co-opted them and promoted them to be State SnowWhites by deception. The dwarf, like mother, never told them anything. This is why they believed him. They gave in, they kept quiet and they accepted every position. Now the sky is blue. The dwarf has become like a former lover who has become awkward to forget about. An adolescent reddening is coming over the cheeks of the sleeping beauties now that they are accusing the one with whom they have shared the straw bed. There’s no lack of new pretenders. Their seductive charms still intact. What’s waiting for them is an orgy of democracy with the whole parliamentary arc. The SnowWhites can be forgiven everything. It’s an issue of pure love. The love of the gang bang and of armchairs.

The destruction of the territory is taking place even thanks to three sets of actors: the banks, the parties and the construction speculators. The parties give the concessions and create the infrastructure, the speculators rake in the money. In the case of Mediapolis, a commercial monstrosity that will destroy the morainal area at the foot of the Serra of Canavese, the banks are IntesaSanPaolo and Unicredit, the parties are both PDL and PDminusL and it doesn’t matter when they are alternating in the leadership of the Region of Piedmont and the entrepreneurs are almost unknown. A part of the ownership of the company Mediapolis is connected to a company in Luxembourg whose shareholders are not known, as is explained by the journalist Marco Preve, the author of the book called “La Colata” {outpouring). The area destined to be Mediapolis is owned by Olivetti, thus by Telecom Italia, that has not opposed it. Bernabè is from Trentino and he’s not interested.
The trick to “get the project to move forward” is always the same: “work, work, work”. The area of Canavese, that with Olivetti was in competition with the most famous names in the world in the field of computing, has been reduced to hoping for a shopping centre and in doing away with the most spectacular European amphitheatre related to a moraine.
If the Region of Piedmont has money to throw away on this crazy idea, let it rather use it to promote the small and medium sized enterprises in the field of technology. Let it think of the future of the young people and let it preserve Canavese. Meanwhile, up until the moment that they withdraw the financing from Mediapolis, I’m inviting the readers of the blog to close down their current accounts with Unicredit and IntesaSanPaolo. They will never give up (but is it in their interests?). Neither will we.

Interview with Marco Preve author of "La Colata"

What is Mediapolis?
- What is Mediapolis? First of all it’s 600,000 m² of green space, there behind me, in a zone that is absolutely still uncontaminated from an environmental viewpoint, above all it’s at the foot of the moraine called La Serra that is one of the places most well known in Italy for its natural beauty. What is Mediapolis? It was so many things, just recently it was to be a great theme park on communications, but then if you go and have a look at the project, if you go and read it, you realise that basically as well as a series of vague ideas about centres, laboratories that would have something to do with communications, then it’s not clear whether it is mass media or communications like the TV, or simply entertainment. Above all Mediapolis is a really a big shopping centre. The millions of visitors that the project owners and the people coming up with the ideas hope will come, will above all go to enrich a whole chain of shops. To cope with this avalanche, with this throng of possible and hoped-for visitors, the project has plans for a series of enormous infrastructure projects, motorway access roads, roads, flyovers, projects to hold back the water and even a heliport. To whom does Mediapolis belong? We have discovered that it is difficult to discover the real owners. In this case there’s the promoting company and it’s called Mediapolis Spa, and within that there are about 30 entities, some are individuals, private people who are owners of the areas of land who have sold, others are gentlemen, people of Ivrea who have decided to participate in the operation. And then unmissably we find three foreign companies, one of which is also called Mediapolis, but it is based in Luxembourg, another one, Brainspark, is based in London, and another is based in the Netherlands. As many of you will know, these are geographic locations that allow for tax benefits. And not just that but they make it possible for those who want to hide money maybe from those in Italy who want to know more. People who want to know who the real owners are. This is done by means of funds, shares, bonds, quotas and in fact right now it’s impossible to say who is behind these companies.

Text: Good day to you all. Today we begin with a series of pre-recorded summer episodes because I’ll be going on leave. It also means that, luckily for both you and me, they’re a little shorter that the usual episodes.

The Clan and the new CSM (Upper Council of the Magistrature)
This Monday we’ll be discussing the CSM, which will be totally re-constituted once the magistrates have elected their 16 council representatives, or the so-called “togati” (literally the men with the togas).
The CSM consists of a Chairman, who is also the incumbent Head of State, namely the State President, plus another two legally appointed members, namely the Senior President of the Court of Cassation and the Chief Prosecutor of the Court of Cassation. In other words, there are currently three appointed to the CSM by virtue of their position, so these two incumbent magistrates and the incumbent State President are not elected but are members of the CSM anyway. Then there is a Deputy President of the CSM, who is elected by Parliament from amongst the 8 lay members that, according to the wishes of our founding fathers, should be senior figures from the legal profession or the world of jurisprudence, individuals with proven ability, authority, prestige and independence who, in the past few decades, and precisely because they are elected by Parliament, have instead been failed politicians in search of a lucrative position, or in some cases even permanently appointed politicians who spend five years serving on the CSM before returning to active politics, where they proceed to neither represent the law, nor the citizens as would be required of a parliamentary appointee, but merely the interests of their respective political parties.
But let’s start by looking at what our Republican Constitution has to say about the CSM, which is a constitutional body. In Article 104, we read that “The Magistrature is an autonomous body that is totally independent from any form of political control”. So it is an Order, but also one of the State powers. The CSM is presided over by the incumbent State President with the Senior President and the Chief Prosecutor of the Court of Cassation as members by right, while 2/3 of the remaining members are elected by all the appointed magistrates and the remaining 1/3 of the members by Parliament. So, as I’ve already stated, the current composition of the CSM is 8 lay members (1/3) and 16 “togati” (2/3).
1/3 by Parliament, in a normal sitting made up of ordinary university professors in juridical matters and Attorneys of 15 years’ standing, in Counsel elects one Vice President from amongst the individuals designated by Parliament. The elected Council members will remain in office for a period of four years. Earlier I said 5 years, I apologise, I was talking nonsense. They remain in office for four years and cannot be re-elected immediately for a second term. They have to sit out at least one term before they once again become re-eligible and while in office, they may not be registered with any professional association, nor may they be elected to Parliament or any Regional Council.
According to Article 105 and in terms of the structural regulations, the CSM is responsible for all engagements, appointments, transfers, promotions and disciplinary action involving magistrates. Article 106 states that the appointment of magistrates must occur by means of an official testing and selection process while the regulations also provide for the appointment of Honorary Magistrates to fulfil any of the functions normally assigned to individual judges and the CSM may call upon these magistrates to act as councillors for the Court of Cassation by virtue of their experience as university professors specialising in legal matters, on condition that they have 15-years of experience in the field and are registered in the professional registers for higher jurisdictions, and that’s what we need to know about the CSM.
But what is happening now? What is happening is that the Magistrature, or at least a part of it, is at the centre of a controversy because a little group of magistrates have been caught out, in wiretapped telephone conversations, dealing with the wheeler-dealers of what has been called the new P2, also referred to as the P3. People involved with Mr. Carbon, the man convicted for the crash of the Ambrosiana Bank, with Dell’Utri, convicted for tax evasion, convicted on appeal for mafia collusion and accused of numerous other offences involving slander, etc., with a certain man by the name of Pasqualino Lombardi, a retired surveyor from Avellino that was incredibly had his fingers in all sorts of pies, with a man by the name of Arcangelo Martino, a former socialist and now a member of the Popolo delle Libertà, now also convicted of collusion, and a variety of other shady characters. Amongst these magistrates caught dealing with members of this clan are the Undersecretary to the Justice Department, Massimo Caliendo, Judge Gargani, who is the brother of a former Christian Democrat and now Forza Italia Deputy, and then there’s Judge Marra, who was shoo’d-in as Judge President of the Appeal Court of Milan due to pressure exerted by this clan, as well as a number of others, such as the Judge President of the Appeal Court of Palermo, a man by the name of Marconi, and others that that even the CSM is now dealing with.
This clan was putting pressure on members of the CSM to get certain buddies appointed as magistrates, individuals that the clan deemed to be reliable or not to appoint magistrates that the clan, or their masters deemed to be unreliable. While this Council was making these types of appointments, we mustn’t forget about the Senior President of the Court of Cassation, a man who fortunately went on pension a month or two ago, namely Vincenzo Carbone. He too was on decidedly friendly terms with that Pasqualino from Avellino, and that during his tenure as Senior President of the Court of Cassation and Chairman of the United Sections when they chucked out or punished certain magistrates on behalf of the clan, magistrates that supposedly “unreliable”, such as Clementina Forleo, Luigi De Magristris, Nuzi, Verasani and Apicella in Salerno. They punished Alfonso Sabella who didn’t get the appointments he asked for and was subjected to a discreet lynching after having opposed the disassociation, a plan that was part of the State – mafia negotiations that took place while he was with the Prison Administration Department and in charge of the prisons. Unreliable magistrates in power, this clan and its hangers-on, both amongst the lay members and the “togati” of the CSM, were simply brushed aside or even punished.
Therefore, in order for the CSM to regain its intended prestige, it would be essential that this new CSM be made up of individuals with a proven history of autonomy and independence, that we go back to the original constitutional spirit that strived to improve the quality of legal counsel and, indeed, there is no lack of excellent candidates. There are a number of eminent jurists and eminent constitutionalists that Parliament could opt for. Also because one of them would go on to be chosen as Mancino’s replacement. The Vice President and Mancino, we’ve dealt with this on numerous previous occasions. It certainly cannot be said that he was the epitome of autonomy and independence during his tenure as Vice President. Even as a young man, he was a political animal, as a Christian Democrat, then as a member of the “Partito Popolare” and then in the “Margherita” . In recent years we have noted that his rulings and the positions he has taken have certainly not been those of a man who is supposed to be the epitome of absolute independence, because he too obviously had friends, etc., which I suppose is quite normal and certainly not a crime in itself, however, it would be preferable if the members of the CSM, and especially the Vice President, didn’t have such potentially influential friendships and such an active political career behind him.

A “clean” CSM that works in everyone’s best interests
It would therefore be appropriate for the political parties to take not one, but ten steps back. It would be opportune for the Head of State to stand firm when he tells them to elect the lay members. Because the lay members are elected by Parliament with an absolute majority, not just 50% plus one, there is always the risk that the parties could get involved in some horse-trading, namely the risk that centre-right tells the centre-left “we will vote for some of your preferred candidates but not for certain others”, but equally that the centre-left says to the centre-right “we refuse to vote for certain people, so we’ll vote for certain others”. So the onus lies with the President of the CSM to make an appeal so as to avoid the appointment of politicians’ attorneys or politicians themselves as permanent members, however, the names of the proposed 8 lay-members of the new CSM that we’re seeing in the newspapers are all those of politicians or politicians’ attorneys, many of whom have anything but lily-white backgrounds.
The centre-right should nominate 5 of these lay members and the centre-left the remaining 3, with the Vice President of the CSM being chosen from amongst these. Now we know full well that Berlusconi would like to place some of his trusted buddies in the CSM because his view of the institutions is a distinctly proprietary one. In other words, “I send in people that are loyal to me”. He even thinks this way in terms of the Constitutional Court, so you can just imagine when it comes to the CSM. As a matter of fact, one of the people he wants to appoint is former Justice Minister Bondi, the man that conceived the “Save the thieves” Decree, the one that instigated the audit of the Milan Public Prosecutor’s Office and a man who has been a Parliamentarian for the past 50 years, so enough said.
He also wants to appoint Gargani, the broche of the magistrate that is facing a disciplinary action with regard to his dealings with the P3 and, while we’re not saying that the one brother must be held accountable for the actions of the other brother, however, as was stated in “Il Fatto Quotidiano, the Gargani brothers, both from Avellino, do indeed have a common history in that Judge Gargani, brother of the Hon. Gargani, has spent a lot of time at the Ministry and has often worked at the Ministry, within successive Berlusconi governments, so we’re not talking about any major detachment from the ruling class, and now they want to put them..... oh well, let’s talk about certain others.
So it’s obvious that we cannot rely on Berlusconi to appoint anyone who has displayed “proven autonomy and independence” and it would indeed be extremely surprising if were to do so. However, we could expect certain other people to do precisely that, for example the Fini supporters, who instead apparently want to appoint a certain Mr. Lo Presti, a Sicilian attorney who has also been a parliamentarian on several occasions in the past and who is also certainly no stranger to political gamesmanship. This is to be expected of the Democratic Party, which, being allied to the Italia dei Valori and UDC parties in the opposition, is called upon to agree on 3 candidates, that is unless the UDC manages to get one of the 5 centre-right appointments, so who else would the gentlemen of the Democratic Party want to nominate? They want to nominate D’Alema’s former attorney, a certain Guido Calvi. While he may undoubtedly be an excellent attorney and a great person, he too is far too politically inclined, in addition to the fact that he has represented D’Alema in the past, in the Unipol case for example, in which he castigated the magistrates that investigated, that indeed dared to investigate the dealings of D’Alema and his spouse, wiretapped their telephone conversations and then had the gall to ask Parliament for permission to make use of the wiretapped information. Guido Calvi was also one of the main “ayatollahs” against Clementina Forleo, etc. So, is it opportune for D’Alema’s attorney to be appointed to the CSM? I think not! Just as it is inopportune to appoint Fanfani, grandson of the long-time politician and himself a “good person”, however, also a Margherita parliamentarian for a number of years, or the appointment of a number of other politicians whose names will be announced over the next few days.
Who does the UDC want to send to the CSM? They want to send Michele Vietti, a staunch ally of Casini. A Christian Democrat politician from Turin who was also a former Undersecretary in the Justice Department at the time of the second Berlusconi government, when the UDC was still allied to Berlusconi. As Undersecretary in the Justice Department he approved of, voted in favour of and indeed helped draft all of the shameful laws promulgated during that legislature between 2001 and 2006, as well as being actively involved in the rafting of the tables stipulating the impunity thresholds for the false accounting legislation. As you know, false accounting only constitutes a crime beyond certain thresholds and, surprise surprise, Vietti calculated those thresholds so that Berlusconi fell below them, thereby scuppering all his trials relating to false accounting charges, and this the man they want to see appointed to the CSM and even elected as Vice President of the CSM to replace Mancino, and that with the blessing of the Democratic Party?.
I remember that, years later, even Tremonti stated that perhaps it would be appropriate to reinstate false accounting as a crime, as it was before, but Vietti responded by saying that “I am opposed to the idea of changing the false accounting law once again because that would make it look like the previous one was drafted specifically to protect certain individuals from prosecution”. No! Really? There is no way they would want to change the false accounting law after it had allowed Berlusconi to get off scot-free, scuppering his trials by simply claiming that “the law no longer recognises these activities as a crime”, simply because, with the invaluable help of Castelli and Vietti, the law had decriminalised the offence. Is this the kind of person that is likely to be able to restore the prestige, autonomy and independence of a CSM sullied by the P3? They are sending in an individual who is already politically contaminated so there’s no fear of him becoming contaminated at a later stage, but does the Democratic Party honestly want to make this kind of choice?
In “Il Fatto Quitodiano” we launched an appeal to the Fini supporters, the Democratic Party and the Italia dei Valori party to nominate individuals with proven independence, without any party membership cards and without any form of political background. To date, only Di Pietro has bothered to respond. Micromega launched a similar appeal, signed by Margherita Hack, Paolo Flores D’Arcais, Andrea Camilleri and Umberto Eco, but there has been no response whatsoever, except for tens of thousands of messages of support. In fact, you should go onto either the Micromega website or the “Il Fatto quotidiano” website and log your support. Only Di Pietro has responded, saying “I won’t agree”, although initially it looked like he wanted to nominate Attorney Li Gotti, who is also an excellent person, but he is a parliamentarian and a former undersecretary at the time of the Prodi government, and it’s not a good thing for party members to be nominated at this stage, so Di Pietro said: “I’ll take a step back and I’m happy to support the nomination of a jurist like Vittorio Grevi, like former President of the Constitutional Council, Gustavo Zagrebelsky, like former judge Bruno Tinti or like Franco Cordero, one of the founding fathers of criminal law and the Italian criminal code and procedure. These are the kind of people we are hoping to see appointed, or any one of many others such as Prof. Giostra, Prof. Ainis, or “Il Fatto” collaborator and highly distinguished constitutionalist Lorenza Carlassare, or even former Milan Prosecutor Borrelli, who would be an excellent and most noble candidate that would undoubtedly bring a definite shine to the CSM. I think that the kind of CSM that is about to emerge this week, as from today, also depends on all of us. It depends on the amount of pressure exerted by these appeals and on the number of signatures that these appeals manage to garner in order to put pressure on the Democratic Party, where it would appear that D’Alema’s buddies have already done a deal with Casini’s buddies to support Vietti in exchange for Casini remaining in the opposition rather than heeding the call to side with Berlusconi, as indicated by the dinners at Vespa’s home. The CSM must not be used as a bartering tool by the politicians. That is what we hope and what we must expect from the opposition parties. The Democratic Party voters must remember this because it is precisely at such crucial times that we can really evaluate the performance of the opposition parties. It is precisely at such crucial times that we should decide who to vote for in the next elections, whenever that may be, and if the Democratic Party is willing to support this massive rip-off and send Vietti or some other politician to the CSM, it means that, as a party, they haven’t learned any lesson whatsoever, that they haven’t changed at all and that, therefore, they don’t deserve our trust.

The only way to let them know is to write in, phone them, sign the appeal, send these gentlemen faxes and e-mails, threatening to never again vote for them unless they finally give us a CSM that is free of party interference, or at least free of interference from those parties that say, believe and hope that the people believe are different from that of Berlusconi. Spread the word!

Super-capitalism is a tyrannosaur in uncontrolled liberty. Its cage was thrown open definitively with the collapse of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989. From that time it has no limits. It has become bulimic. It devours what remains of the social democracies without let up. It’s growing. It’s growing year by year. The World Trade Organization (WTO) was born in 1995, seven years later. 97% of the nations of the world belong to it. It has the aim of abolishing every tariff barrier to international trade for everything: commercial goods, services, intellectual property. Production has been delocalised anywhere in the world where the cost of labour is lower because there’s a lack of checks on safety, trades union rights, protection of the environment. And often the same minimum rights with the recruitment of armies of child slaves under the banner of profit.
The multinationals have cashed in the gains of super-capitalism. They have protected their T.rex through the media that have praised it and that are praising its virtues and have demonised the “ anti-globalisation” campaigners. The market and democracy have fused together, as though man himself is becoming an out-of-date product. The conquests of generations of people to get a social State (what else can a State be if it’s not “social”?) have been cancelled out. And the ones that still remain are being constantly transformed into dis-services for the glory of T.rex as has happened with public water: “The aqueducts are not functioning? We’ll give them to the private sector!” Less State, more Market.
Is it possible to control a starving T.rex? Its stomach is the planet. Derivatives, futures, swaps have been able to infect world banks for almost twenty years to the indifference of the supervisory bodies of the States and of the international organisations. A new 1929 that has started but has not yet finished. The States have become markets, fabricators of optical illusions, specialists in debt. Dozens of States have already gone bust, others will follow. For the moment, to keep T.rex calm, there’s the creation of new debt to add on to the debt. A contradiction in terms.
Italy in its small way does not draw back from the banquet. The images of Gianni Agnelli and Luciano Lama seem like photomontages. Marchionne and Rinaldini are two parallel lines. They can never meet. Marchionne is blackmailing the government, and he can do that, legitimately, with T.rex at his side to protect him. Serbia and the delocalisation at 400 euro a month for each worker are waiting for him. Super-capitalism is an excess. It will die by itself and it will be replaced by another excess that is equal and opposite. Obviously, unless we die first.

So it’s A OK!
The
5-Star Woodstock event will be held in Cesena on 26 September. It’s all your fault! You left me no option, what with your 3800 comments and thousands of e-mails. That’s not the way to behave! All because of a plea for help that I made in a bout of depression brought on by the approach of my 59th birthday (I am well aware that I look younger than that, and that I’m actually older than that, but 59 seems like a fair compromise), but that’s no reason for you to respond with such enthusiasm. You obviously enjoy seeing me get all emotional... you do it on purpose, just to complicate my life for me. Now I’ll have to spend the entire month of August organising, working, making telephone calls and paying suppliers. My entire family hates me and I suspect that they’re about to try and have me committed so that they can share out what’s left of their inheritance before Woodstock ever happens. Increasingly, I hear them talking in hushed tones in the kitchen while I’m sitting at the PC working. I’m already practicing some blues on my keyboard and since you’re the ones that wanted Woodstock in the first place, now you mustn’t complain if I land up playing, singing and bathing you in sweat for an hour from the stage.
The 5-Star Woodstock event is not going to be just about music, but indeed also about the future. One global expert for every one of the 5-Stars will be participating in the event. It will be a time for new words, an exciting time when ideas will turn into plans and blog nicknames will become real faces, real friendships.
Italy is petrified, all its windows and doors are closed. I was reading a newspaper just the other day, absent-mindedly, just two or three articles. A newspaper from two weeks ago, which I only realised later and I discovered that I couldn’t even tell the difference. The information we are fed remains unchanged. The journalists continue to write about other journalists. The politicians continue to either applaud or criticise other politicians. The television stations continue to do news reviews covering the newspapers and continue to invite politicians as guests. It’s all about today, where yesterday never happened and tomorrow will never come. A mortar and pestle in which all that is being ground up is rotten water. For months now, all that they’ve talked about is the new gagging law, which is more or less the same as the old one proposed by the Prodi government. The ones discussing it are people that have been voluntarily gagging themselves forever in order to satisfy their left-wing or right-wing or middle-of-the-road bosses. What’s the use of talking about gagging, especially now that even the children are aware of the State’s involvement in Paolo Borsellino’s murder and realise that nothing has changed since then? The time for talking, making amendments, open dialogue and the time for ten/twelve useless little party leaders that aren’t worth the air they breathe is coming to an end. It’s time to move on from mere words to real actions that will take us into the New World to come. A world that I may perhaps never see, but that the young guys and girls of Woodstock most definitely will.
Music and the future will take turns from early morning to late night on the 26th September. We are even busy setting up areas for camper vans and tents. Entry will be free of charge, although anyone who wishes to do so will be welcome to make a donation. By popular demand, there will even be special areas set aside for families and children. A big thanks to all of you who are there to help pick me up when necessary (and sometimes it really is necessary), to the Municipal Council of Cesena for their willingness to help and to the many artists that have answered the call. In order to make room for everyone, Woodstock would have to last an entire week. Bloody hell, I’m about to cry, you bloody idiots!

Go to the 5-Star Woodstock section!

Tremorti, the Minister of the Fiscal Shield, of the amnesties, and of faecal federalism, the one who steals from the dead by taking money from the dormant accounts of our immigrants and of our dead relatives, this gentleman, in fact this little gentleman, today delivered his daily bullshit, this time on the referendum about public water.
First bullshit: “The referendum is false in its ideological content. It’s not crystal clear like water.”
Second bullshit: “Water belongs to the people and thus the basis on which more than a million signatures for the referendum to repeal the law is “false”.”
Third bullshit: “The directive is the application of a treaty. In relation to the contents of treaties you can’t have a referendum to repeal the law.”
The referendum has no ideological content, only sociological. The ownership of the management of water has to remain in public hands, and it mustn’t be entrusted to multinationals that operate exclusively to gain profits with the assistance of the parties. The treaties that Tremorti is rabbiting on about (what treaties?) didn’t stopped the mayor of Paris in January from returning the management of water to public authorities with a saving of tens of millions of euro.
The referendum will go ahead and the Italians will once more be masters of their own water. Let Tremorti and the PDL/PDminusL across-the-board committee “Acqualiberatutti” tell that to their contacts.

Interview with Giuseppe Marino
Hi. I’m Giuseppe Marino. I’m a journalist and the author of a book called “La casta dell’acqua” {the water caste} published by “Nuovi Mondi”. It tells the story of the water resources in Italy. It explains how water is managed, unfortunately, pretty badly, and it talks about a few recent happenings that have their roots in the early years of the 1990s when there was a large popular participation, a lot of interest in relation to this topic of water that has thus been brought to life again above all with the collection of signatures for the referendum to repeal the Ronchi Decree that opened up the management of water to the market.

Water in Italy is not a transparent sector.

…

If you who are reading this, have donated a contribution for the electronic microscope bought by means of a popular collection on the blog, the first thing I have to say to you is another “thank you” for the trust you have placed in me. The second is that the microscope has found a home, a home that is accessible to every research worker, as is explained by Stefano Papa, the head of the Faculty of Science and Technology in Urbino and the third is that the results obtained will be constantly made known on the blog.
In September the blog will start a permanent campaign against incinerators and will get politicians and those who construct them to face up to their enormous responsibilities. You can die from incinerators.

Interview with professor Stefano Papa

Good day. I’ll present myself. I’m professor Stefano Papa, the head of Urbino’s Faculty of Science and Technology. About 8 months ago, our faculty took possession of the ESEM electronic microscope donated to us by the Associazione Bortolani. The ESEM was bought as a result of a collection, initiated by Beppe Grillo together with the Associazione Bortolani. It was donated to us to carry forward the research work relating to the reason why it was bought: work with nano-particles.
The microscope was transferred to the university in March and it was installed. In this time a further agreement has been drawn up with Arpam of Pesaro to provide access to the instrument and this is to be signed in the next few days. Arpam is a structure that is certified at a national level for research into asbestos and for diagnostics on asbestos and the intention is to develop research on other materials that can cause damage to health, as well as particulates. We found that we were collaborating well with them and they accepted to transfer this high value instrument (at a scientific and a diagnostic level) to their premises. This is due to happen by September. The choice of Arpam has been strategic because we too do research on asbestos and because both of us want to open this chapter on nano-particles and because there are other research projects on environmental pollutants that we wanted to take on. And this instrumentation is going to be of help in all that.
Thus we are extremely grateful to the Associazione Bortolani and to Beppe Grillo who has been the great promoter of this choice, as well as for the acquisition which is to come. We have chosen the station of Pesaro because there are certain advantages: because we have skilled personnel who are living in Pesaro. They are the ones who already know how to work with this instrument and who are already doing diagnostics on other scans in relation to asbestos and because Pesaro is really near to the train and it could simplify access for the two researchers who have worked on this instrument up until now. With the train that goes from Modena to Pesaro, access to the premises is quick and so it’s easy to continue a certain number of investigations. We want to make use of this structure because it presents other instrumentation that is specifically for environmental investigations, thus it’s possible to amplify the possibilities by carrying out multidisciplinary research, for example mass spectrometry. We will give all our energy so that in the future it’s possible to achieve important results and anyway, in accordance with the request from the Associazione Bortolani, we will continue to give updates on the activity in relation to diagnostics and investigations on the territory, as well as new scientific research. I hope I have given a satisfactory explanation, especially for all those (thousands of people) who have given a financial contribution, to make the purchase of this instrument possible.

We have arrived in the realm of Minority Report, guilty of having the intention of committing a crime, not of having committed it. Piero Ricca and a few citizens of Milan have been considered guilty of unauthorised demonstrations even though they have not demonstrated at all. They were betrayed by the glance. In certain cases, the police are infallible. They can discover your bad intentions even behind your sun glasses. The presumed offenders thought to be about to cause a disturbance during the celebrations for the psycho-dwarf, on the rooftops of the Duomo, were moved away by a hundred anti-riot police in via Mercanti and kept under observation by sixty police officers. Eyeball to eyeball until the stroke of midnight. Then all home to listen to the triumphs of the government on the final TV News.

“By now, clearing the square using the army, to silence dissent. The leader of the band is afraid of being impudent in full view of everyone. He knows that the fiction imposed by the media regime is no longer enough. And Craxi’s end is a nasty nightmare during the nights with no escort. So that’s why the police are used to keep potential party-poopers far away from the TV scenes.
Last night Mister B. was given an award on the top of the Duomo of Milan as a fantastic statesman “of the people and among the people”. Waiting for him were the top brass of the civil, military and religious authorities. With him there were Lele Mora, Confalonieri, Fede and all the wannabe vassals, courtesans and lackeys that circle around him. The occasion was an Aznavour concert for the restoration of the “Madonnina”. We arrived in piazza Duomo about 9:00pm after coming back from the commemoration for Paolo Borsellino. There were about 15 of us, with no banners, or flags or loudhailers. The police recognised unwelcome faces amongst us, people who had previously disturbed the peace and they prevented us from entering the square. For them we are guilty of having the intention of “an unauthorised demonstration”. The usual excuse, already refuted by a recent verdict that absolved us in a similar case three years ago. There’s first a dialectical engagement: we insisted on being free to move around freely, they preventing us from doing so by using force. The words of a carabinieri were passed on to me: “I am not blocking anyone”. A free conscience in a world of slaves.
I and a few others managed to get half way along the square. Here an absurdity happened. A scene from the last (and desperate) phase of a banana regime. Two or three functionaries of the Questura try to take us away with alacrity. They were anxious, in a hurry. They must have received orders from a terrified little chief. Their number one objective was myself. They chased after me and I tried to get myself free while shouting out my indignation. A crowd of curious folk gathered, a few of them even seemed outraged at the abuse that was happening in front of their very eyes. But very few dared to express words of disapproval. In a loud voice I drew attention to the seriousness of the episode. Resisting that form of preventative repression of dissent means defending the freedom for everyone, not just our freedom. At a certain point there’s the arrival of a contingent of police officers in anti-riot gear, roughly about a hundred. On the orders of the director of the questura, they surrounded us. And they took us away by force as far as via Mercanti, showing indifference to our protests. There we were watched over until midnight by at least sixty officers (that was the number counted at 11 pm when there were just 20 of us) lined up in such a way as to prevent us from getting access to piazza Duomo.
We tried to gain access to the main journalistic teams to tell them about what was happening. The only one to arrive was a reporter from Radio Popolare. I spoke on the phone to the reporter from Ansa. He called the questura and received the reply: “nothing has happened in piazza Duomo”. “Do you know why the journalists are not coming here? – commented a guy from the questura – because you have no contents”. To explain to him about the state of health of Italian journalism and that liberty is not in the DNA of this nation, seems to me a hard slog. Only when the party was over were we once more free to walk across the central square of our city. There’s one doubt: at the next public exhibition of our Beloved Leader will we be prevented from going out of the house or will we be dragged straight to the police station, as happened to the dissidents in the glorious days of the (first) Twenty Year period? How frightening words are. And how putrid are these dying hours of the regime.” Piero Ricca

Text:
Good day to you all. We are here in Palermo, in the Hotel delle Palme and last night we presented a film on DVD on Paolo Borsellino, entitled “Via d’Amelio, una strage di Stato” (“Via d’Amelio, a State-sponsored murder”), which was produced jointly by Marco Canestrari, who is right here in front of me and behind the video camera, and Salvatore Borsellino.

Via D'Amelio, a State-sponsored murder
Today is the 18th anniversary of the Via d’Amelio massacre and we simply have to discuss this issue, an issue that you will see in today’s newspapers, complete with headlines referring to some disappointment or the failure of yesterday’s demonstrations on the eve of this special anniversary. If the truth be told, there was no such failure. What there was, was a silent march to Utveggio Castle, the very castle from which someone first spotted Borsellino as he approached the bell-pushes of the intercom system of his mother’s home and that was the precise moment when the electronic signal was sent to blow up the entire square.
So, there were in fact tens of “Red Agenda” youngsters there yesterday. I agree that it wasn’t exactly a monumental demonstration, but then it was never intended to be such, but rather just a little pilgrimage. In a large cinema in the historic town centre, we presented this film and the cinema was jam-packed, notwithstanding the fact that it was exceptional hot and the air conditioning wasn’t working. Outside the cinema, there were even more people than the number that had managed to get inside, and they were at least able to able to follow the discussions on an outside screen. Salvatore Borsellino was obviously inside the cinema, as were Antonio Ingroia, Gioacchino Genchi, Nicola Biondo the undersecretary and all the youngsters that breathed life into the three days of demonstrations leading up to the 19th July. Claudio Gioè, was also there, the actor that read Manfredi Borsellino’s account of his father’s last day of life in the film that I mentioned earlier.
However, given that there were a few thousand people there last night, you’ll see that no one will say a word about it. It’s very convenient for the regime’s press to give credence to the idea that Palermo is dead, resigned to its fate. A Country that really doesn’t give a damn about the Capaci and the Via d’Amelio murders and one where, even if the whole truth never really comes out into the open, it doesn’t really matter at all. Unfortunately for them, the truth is far more powerful than these plugs or even lids that they certain individuals are trying to put on this story, also because the internal crisis in the system that we are living with on a daily basis is also adding on little bits of the truth. In fact, I was thinking about this yesterday evening while I was watching this film, made by youngsters that are young enough to be my kids. It is a film that reveals that there are thousands of people, some of them even very young people, who have understood precisely what happened at Capaci and in Via d’Amelio. We may still be missing some of the names and surnames of some of the main players in this affair, but we know exactly where they come from, we know all about the circles they move in, we know precisely who handled the negotiations, because there is simply no way that two officers of the ROS could have done so without the backing of the Government and probably also the opposition parties, otherwise they would never have dared to make such a risky move as to make a deal with Vito Ciancimino, just as Vito Ciancimino would never have dared to make such a risky move as to back any pact between the Cosa Nostra and the government institutions, so obviously everyone’s back was well covered and everyone must have been representing those organisations that they claimed to be representing.
As I was saying, each day some new piece of the puzzle emerges, also thanks to the work being done by certain journalists, intellectuals, magazines, editors, newspapers. Just yesterday, merely by way of example, while all the other newspapers’ led with some strange headlines, like “Tremonti against the idea of a technical government”, now there’s a headline to really get your juices going isn’t it, Il Fatto Quotidiano’s Marco Lillo was busy revealing the latest document that Ciancimino’s son had just handed over to the Palermo and Caltanissetta Magistrates that are each busy with their own investigations into the background to the Via d’Amelio massacre. It is a most important document in that it is a manuscript, handwritten by Vito Ciancimino himself in 1993, but written about whom? Well, according to Marco Lillo, about an important figure in the economy who was about to rise to the position of Premier. Back in April of 1993, two governments were about to change sides, the last government of the First Republic fell, namely the Amato government, while the Ciampi Government was being born. The latter was a coalition government headed up by the then former head of the Italian Central Bank, so he was probably the important figure that seemed to be about to rise to the position of Premier. Ciampi was the link between the First and the Second Republics because, after that coalition government, we then went to the polls in the elections of the 27th April 1994, which Berlusconi won.
Don Vito was in jail. He had been arrested in December 1992, immediately after having handed over to the Carabinieri, on Provenzano’s behalf and via his son Massimo who acted as postman, a number of maps showing the location of Riina’s hideaway, where Riina was subsequently arrested on 15 January 1993, just a short distance away from the Via Bernini villa where he had been hiding from the police. So Vito Ciancimino was in jail at that time and he wrote a letter in an ongoing attempt to get the parliamentary anti-mafia committee chaired by Luciano Violante to listen to him, however, Violante studiously ignored his appeals, so he then proceeded to write to Ciampi, telling him a number of interesting things. If the existence of this document were to be confirmed and its content certified as authentic and were it to be precisely dated, it would be a vital to the investigations and the trial regarding the alleged negotiations because, according to Vito Ciancimino, the regime was attempting to complete its last major task. I wonder what this biggest ever task and what regime he was referring to? For Ciancimino, the word regime was not a generic term. What Ciancimino referred to as the regime was in fact that bunch of crooked politicians that had often used him, and that he had used in turn when they were the agents that had been hanging around him for 30 years, partly in order to keep an eye on him, partly to guide him and partly to be guided by him. Police officers, agents from the Palermo anti-mafia squad and high profile politicians with whom Ciancimino had had certain dealings, that’s what he meant by the regime, that gray area that exists somewhere between the State and the Mafia and involves high profile individuals both in the Government and in the Mafia.

Vito Ciancimino’s latest letter
He claims that the regime is attempting to complete its last major task, a leopard-spot operation, changing everything so that nothing will change. As a matter of fact, Ciancimino was useful in that he helped them capture Riina and enable them to display the trophy that was Riina’s head while instead, behind the scenes, the State had put itself into Provenzano’s hands. The State never did search Riina’s hideout because it didn’t want to find any proof of the negotiations. That proof remained in Provenzano’s possession and so the latter became absolutely untouchable. He travelled freely all around Italy, without a care in the world, even though he had technically been on the run for 30 years and had held 6 meetings in Rome, the last one being just before he was once again placed under house arrest, but hardly under surveillance at all. Or rather, he was kept under surveillance until Provenzano came to see him, after which, since they would not and could not arrest him, the entire lot of them got away. So, the final major task was this leopard-spot operation that led to the removal of Vito Ciancimino, who was arrested after having in fact assisted in the capture of Totò Riina, and his replacement with someone else who would go on to complete the final negotiations, the final task that led to the establishment of the Forza Italia party shortly thereafter. According to a number of the investigators, the person who took over from Ciancimino was none other than Marcello Dell’Utri, who sprang into action precisely between 1992/1993, came up with the idea of the Forza Italia party and met with Vittorio Mangano twice during the course of 1993.
After this initial phase, Ciancimino adds: “I am part of this regime and I know full well that precisely because I am part of it, I will soon be taken out of the picture”. So he had already realised that he had been arrested because he was being taken out of the picture and deposed, he was no longer useful so it was better for him to be in jail so he couldn’t spill the beans, and then he adds: “after that first devious attempted solution suggested by Colonel Mori to halt the massacres, an attempt that was in fact scuppered by the murder of Borsellino, who was certainly firmly opposed to this agreement, they were finally forced by circumstances to accept the only possible solution in order to slow down this bloodbath that now represents only one part of the subversive strategy”. Then he adds: “On numerous occasions I pleaded in vain to be heard by the Anti-Mafia Committee”. We don’t know whether or not this letter ever got to its destination, namely to that important figure in the economy who was about to become head of the Government, but what we do know is that he was talking just a few months before the Capaci and Via d’Amelio massacres and just before the murders that took place in the summer of 1993. In fact, he states that this bloodbath was far from over and indeed, soon after, further massacres occurred in Florence, Milan and Rome. After all, if we’re talking prior to the Ciampi Government, then it had to be before April 1993, namely the Saturday after Riina’s capture, 6 or 7 months after the Capaci and Via d’Amelio killings.
Lillo writes that this letter is important for 3 reasons: Firstly because it dates Mori’s attempt to after the Capaci massacre but prior to the Via d’Amelio one, but I’ll explain later why this is so important. Secondly because it identifies the Mafia massacres as being part of a broader subversive scheme devised by an architect that heads up a system of which Don Vito himself is part, albeit a small part, in that he feels that the killing season has ended. Finally, because this letter, if it is indeed genuine of course, confirms the Magistrature’s most disturbing suspicions regarding the death of Borsellino, judge and close friend of Falcone, who also opposed to the negotiations. According to the letter attributed to Don Vito by his son, this could well be the reason why his death sentence was carried out so quickly.
Why are these facts so important, you ask? Well, the fact is that General Mori has never denied having held meetings with Vito Ciancimino, but he claims that these meetings took place only after the Via d’Amelio killing, thereby excluding and eliminating the possibility that Borsellino was killed because of his opposition to the negotiations, that is if Mori’s negotiations began after Borsellino’s death of course. If, instead, he had begun his negotiations prior to Borsellino’s death, then there would be reasonable grounds for suspecting that Borsellino, having been told about the negotiations, said “NO” and that was therefore removed from the picture in order prevent him from interfering with the negotiations.
This letter is useful because it confirms what Ciancimino has always said and what has been stated by a number of other Mafia turncoats, namely that, after the Capaci attack but before the Via D’Amelio massacre, Riina was extremely happy and chipper, because he said: they’ve been busy – namely his political masters – and we must give it another little shove. The little shove he was talking about was one that didn’t actually suit the Mafia because the Mafia had no reason to kill Borsellino so soon after Falcone’s death, but the State had already forgotten all about the Capaci massacre, just one month after the funerals of the Falcone, Francesca Morvillo and the bodyguards. The Anti-Mafia Bill that had been tabled by Martelli on the Saturday after the Capaci slaughter was immediately smothered in Parliament and never became law. After all, if things could just be left as they were for just a few more weeks, the entire thing would have been gone and forgotten forever.
Instead, the Borsellino murder, following just two months after the death of Falcone, caused a public furore that forced that Government to draft and promulgate that Anti-Mafia Decree, with all its provisions relating to turncoats, etc, on the 6th August, I think it was, so that second murder was definitely not in the Mafia’s interests. However, Riina knew full well that in the long term, that favour that he was doing for his political allies that had been very busy would, in fact, benefit the mafia and he would be well paid, so, against the Cosa Nostra’s immediate interests, he went ahead and committed that atrocity, thereby eliminating Borsellino from the picture.

There were indeed certain negotiations
If this letter proves to be genuine and dated as we believe, that would make it a genuine document of the period when, just a few months after those events, Vito Ciancimino attempted to tell the incoming Prime Minister, who was a technical man and therefore perhaps somewhat less a part of the political government circles and Violante’s Anti-Mafia Committee who would never want to listen to what Ciancimino had to say, that he knew precisely when General Mori began with his negotiations, and who better to know these things? He states that the negotiations began prior to the Via d’Amelio massacre and immediately after the Capaci ones. This claim would be indisputable because it was made back in 1993, long before the emergence of this diatribe that is General Mori’s version of events, which dates the negotiations to the period after the Via D’Amelio massacre. Indeed, we read in the letter that: after that first devious attempted solution suggested by Colonel Mori to halt the massacres, an attempt that was in fact scuppered by the murder of Borsellino, who was certainly firmly opposed to this agreement, they were finally forced by circumstances to accept the only possible solution, etc.
But what precisely was that possible solution? Obviously an agreement that was far more broad-ranging than that initially proposed by Mori, and here Ciancimino was obviously hoping to whet the addressee’s appetite and make them want to hear the rest of what he had to tell, but no one wanted to listen. The most interesting thing about these affairs is that the mafia members and the offspring of mafia members are far more willing to talk about them than the men of the State and the institutions are. We have had to wait 18 years for Claudio Martelli to appear on “Annozero” and remember that, after having been informed about the contacts between the ROS and Ciancimino senior, his Ministry of Justice had warned Borsellino, and Borsellino, as we can well imagine, stated that he was completely opposed to the negotiations. So even Martelli confirms that the negotiations had to have begun prior to the Via d’Amelio massacre, otherwise how could they have warned Borsellino if he was already dead? If the negotiations had begun later, they would have had to warn a dead man.
Liliana Ferraro, a manager at the Ministry and the person that took over from Falcone, also confirms that she had warned Borsellino, so it is obvious that, as far as she is concerned, the negotiations involving Mori and the ROS dates back to before the Via d’Amelio massacre and may indeed have been the actual cause of the massacre, as claimed by Vito Ciancimino. Then, last summer, after Ciancimino’s son had spoken about these events, along came Violante, pretty as you please, and suddenly also remembered, 18 years later, that indeed General Mori had urged him, as Chairman of the Anti-mafia Committee, leader of the communist party and a member of the opposition, to meet with Ciancimino. Imagine that! A Carabinieri General proposing, at least according to Violante, a private meeting between the communist head of the anti-mafia committee and the mafia-leaning former Mayor of Palermo, yet Violante never wondered why Mori had become a sort of messenger for Ciancimino’s appeals and, even worse, has never said anything in all these years in which the Public Prosecutors of Palermo put Mori on trial for having failed to search Riina’s hideout and then also for his failure to arrest Provenzano in 1995 at the Mezzojuso homestead.
He did absolutely nothing to assist with the investigations into General Mori’s actions, and only when Ciancimino’s son stated that his father also wanted some cover from the left-wing, from Violante in other words, the aforesaid Violante, now apparently affected by tarantism, suddenly remembers that little detail that could have been extremely useful at the time because it proves that there was a very close connection between General Mori and Vito Ciancimino, so much so, in fact, that General Mori was busily trying to place Vito Ciancimino with the right wing and, as we have seen, also with the left wing.
So the mafia members and the offspring of mafia members are talking far more than the politicians are. Perhaps then it is mere coincidence that all the politicians with short, selective or intermittent memories not only didn’t have their careers come to an abrupt end, but indeed have done extremely well career-wise. Both those that forgot everything and those that are now beginning to remember a bit more about what happened, but merely because they have been obliged to do so as a direct result of statements made by the Spatuzzos or the Ciancimino juniors of the day, or because of the papers of the father, which have come to haunt them, as if revealing the truth from the grave, which is that, paradoxically, the Mafia is more ready to talk that the State is.

I believe that this is the scenario that we are currently facing, so we’re waiting for the magistrates to reveal the names and surnames of those involved in the negotiations and to discover everything that there is to discover regarding these events. However, we have understood the overall picture of the massacres and I believe that it is well-summarised in that film presented by the “Red Agenda” movement in Palermo, entitled “Via d’Amelio una strage di Stato”. Have a great week and spread the word!

Wiretapping record April 2010. Imprecise location in Brianza.

B/P3:Italy has gone bust
T/Rex: It’s enough to just not say so
T/Rex: and to say the opposite is even more effective!
B/P3: But Italy has gone bust all the same. Every month the public debt is growing by 10 to 15 billion. You know perfectly well that in a bit it won’t even be able to pay the interest on the debt … Telling a pack of lies is no use any more …1900 billion of debts forecast for spring 2011 …
T/Rex: We will make use of the policy of the Anti-phrases (*)1...
B/P3: Anti-phrases ?
T/Rex: Yes, it’s a bit like the Anti-mafia that makes an agreement with Provenzano
B/P3: (Laughter…)
T/Rex: It’s simple. We’ll do the opposite of what they did in Greece.
B/P3: Explain.
T/Rex: George Papandreou announced the default. You’ll say that we have started the recovery, that we are better than the average of the European States. (*)2
B/P3: Yes sure – I can say that. You know that’s not a problem for me … but the ship is sinking all the same … Real unemployment is the highest in Europe. Salaries are the lowest and the money in the fund to pay laid-off workers is about to dry up.
T/Rex: Greece first declared there was a crisis and then it put into action the anti-crisis measures. They presented a shit image… We, however, will present a great image. We will put into action the anti-crisis measures without announcing the pre-default. But we will say they are for the recovery
B/P3: The Italians are stupid but not to that extent…
T/Rex: You have always over-estimated them. Otherwise folk like Ingroia and Travaglio would already be in prison to the jubilation of the populace. Anyway, you can always try later with them…
B/P3: Have we got an alternative?
T/Rex: Yes – the “coup d’état”, but I just think of it as a back-up measure. Papandreou put a block on the salaries of public employees, he increased pensionable age, he put the Greek islands up for sale (*)3. We’ll do the same. We’ll call it a package for development and we’ll say that it’s Europe that obliges us to do it. Italy will be sold off to the private sector by means of “ Federalism of public property”, for the pension that’ll come only after 40 years of contributions and there’ll be a block on public sector increases for three years. The important thing is to keep the Confindustria and the banks onside. We won’t touch the gains of the public concessions and we won’t tax the banking sector.
B/P3: What would you say to some “spaghetti alla puttanesca” and some European seabass?
T/Rex: Great idea. And while we are eating I want to talk to you about Public Parks in concession to the private sector and a tax on grinding, you know … Luigi Menabrea’s old law of the 1800s
B/P3: Ah – but the default, will we manage to escape it?
T/Rex: No, but no one will notice

(*)1 Anti-phrases: it is saying the opposite of what you are thinking. It’s divided into irony (lighter) and sarcasm (heavy).
(*)2 A fact that actually happened with the declaration of the Italian GDP growing by more than the European States (+0.4%)
(*)3 March 2010, the Greek government put in place a series of measures aimed at restoring public accounts to health. Measures included blocking the salaries of public employees and a reform of the pension system, for a total of 4.8 billion euro.

Caesar was killed by 23 stab wounds. The psychodwarf was referred to as Caesar 23 times in the wiretapped telephone conversations. A mere coincidence perhaps, but nevertheless one that certainly bodes very well. Amongst those 23 imperial references uttered by the P2-ists involved in influencing the Constitutional Court’s ruling are many that will go down the in History of the P3 because of the terminology, the substance and the total lack of respect for the law:
- Amm', about Caesar, the Courts have already sent word
- I believe that the dossier (on Caldoro) has already arrived in Caesar’s chambers
- Marcello, who also speaks on behalf of Caesar
- My cousin Caesar wants to know... he phoned me, my nephew Caesar... action...action and results
- The fact is that I even met with Caesar last week... He was happy about what we’re doing with regard to the 6th of October (*).
However, there are a number of other points need to be made about these wiretapped telephone conversations. First of all, it's not the Advisor Marcello Dell'Utri that speaks on Caesar’s behalf but rather the other way round, in other words, Berlusconi that speaks on behalf of his Sicilian puppet master Marcello.
The 6th of October, the day on which the Alfano Bill was rejected because its unconstitutionality (“All men are equal before the law”) was patently obvious even two a second grader, even if not to Morpheus Napolitano, does not coincide with the Ides of March.
Caesar was killed by 60 conspirators in the Senate in Rome, while the psychodwarf doesn’t have anywhere near 60 opponents, not even if one includes all the members of both Chambers of Parliament.
That true Campania native, ("mo comm' stann' e cose") Cosentino, who was so confident about the bribery of the magistrates, is still free as a bird thanks to the Pdwithoutanel, otherwise known as Caesar’s Trojan horse. The no-confidence motion was defeated because the Pdwithoutanel prostrated themselves at Caesar’s feet (as usual).
Abstentions: Messrs. Bachelet, Cuperlo, Parisi, La Forgia, Bernardini, Madia, Mantini, Maran, Boccia, Capodicasa, Concia, Coscioni, Ferrari, Giachetti, Ginefra, Marini, Mecacci, Recchia, Sarubbi, Schirru, Tempestini, Turco Maurizio, Vannucci, Viola and Zamparutti Zunino.
Not present for the vote: Messrs. Tenaglia, Calearo, Fioroni, Gasbarra, Lanzilotta, Letta Enrico, Morassut, Bobba, Sereni, Vassallo, Merloni, Boffa, Bonavitacola, Bressa, Bucchino, Carra, Castagnetti, Corsini,Cuomo, D’Antona, De Pasquale, De Torre, Fadda, Ferranti, Fiano, Fiorio, Genovese, Giacomelli, Giovannelli, Gozi, Losacco, Lovelli, Lulli, Marantelli, Margiotta, Mosca, Murer, Narducci, Pedoto, Piccolo, Rosato, Russo, Samperi, Scarpetti, Servodio, Testa, Vaccaro, Vassallo, Vernetti and Vico.
Absent: Messrs. Veltroni, Bersani, Colannino, D’Alema, Lusetti, Melandri, Pistelli, Touad, Ventura, Gentiloni, Beltrandi, Calvisi, Cenni, Colombo Furio, Damiano, Gaglione, Luongo, Lusetti, Marroccu, Melis, Motta, Portas, Tullo and Calipari.
“Away on official business”: Messrs. Fassino, Migliavacca, Bindi, Albonetti, Barbi, Farina and Rigoni.
This is the kind of opposition to Caesar. Brutus and Cassius are represented by Bersani, thanks to an early escape to New York, and Red Support D'Alema ("The legal route is not the way to get through this crisis"). Any fresh elections would once again be won by Caesar, even in the event that the opposition were to be the official victors.

(*) The date on which the Constitutional Council was scheduled to decide on the constitutionality of the Alfano Bill.

"FIAT according to Gauguin"

The Earth viewed from space, from a handy crater on the moon, from one of Jupiter’s moons, as it has become in the last 100 years, one frame after another, would appear as a set of people possessed by the devil, in a state of acceleration. A nest of maddened ants rushing in every direction after the destruction of their ant hill. A fact that is incomprehensible to a being from Jupiter, but even for any old person with a modicum of common sense.
If once upon a time, the questions about our destiny were: “Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?” (*), now, at the time of Obligatory Transport of goods and human beings, the question has become the single one of: “Why are we on the move?” The time and the money spent for the transfers are the main investments, but also the riskiest ones, risking our lives. Driving a car is like going off to war with your wife waving a hanky at the door of your house. A million deaths every year in the world. 120,000 in Europe. We are like an aeroplane en route for God’s house with the automatic pilot set by petrol moguls, automobile manufacturers and bankers. You no longer live in order to work, but to transport. The WTO has created an infernal mechanism with goods that fly, go by sea, travel like obsessed things around the planet. The Chinese tomato, the Mexican basket, the Belgian pig, the Scottish shrimp will be the new astronauts when in the future we use immense cargo aircraft to transport them in the stratosphere.
There must be a profound reason, superior to the economic one, for this biblical self-destruction in movement, a furnace, a modern Moloch to which we sacrifice the Earth and our time. A problem more for Sigmund Freud than Adam Smith. We are investing in roads and not in connectivity. The industrial organisations have the same structure as in the nineteenth century. Teleworking via the internet has been possible for some time. But it’s always put off until tomorrow. Internet is work at kilometre zero. Companies should get incentives to decentralize. Tele-transport is no longer science fiction. You can create objects at a distance, directly in your living room at home. Internet is the new transport, of ideas, and not of merchandise. An alternative to movement exists. It’s called thought.

(*) quote comes from the painting of that name by Paul Gauguin

Scandal chases away scandal. By now, there is the scandal of the day, like the egg. Sometimes they exaggerate and there are two or three at a time. An inflation of scandals. Their repetition, that has been going on for decades, has annulled their substance. The scandal no longer scandalises anyone. However, normality is anxious, worrying, sometimes terrifying. The citizen with a traditional family: a wife and two children. Owning just one house with a twenty year mortgage on it. Paying all the taxes, neither taking, nor giving bribes, and not going with transvestites or prostitutes, is dangerous. He is the one that is scandalous. His behaviour is to be reprimanded because he could encourage someone, not yet disinformed by Minchiolini to attempt to imitate him. The term “scandal” is derived from the Greek word “skàndalon” meaning obstacle. In the Italy of the new millennium, the obstacles are the honest ones, not the scoundrels. The gem of the scandal are those that oppose the scandals and for this reason they are punished. Italy is a modern fairy story with the moral of the story turned upside down, where the wolf is the granny, little red riding hood is a prostitute, the mother is one who runs a regenerated brothel, and the hunter is a drug dealer. A story of vampires where the human beings are the true monsters with their stubbornness to want to live in the sunlight. Camilleri and Lodato are telling the story of this upside down world to which we have (by now?) become accustomed. You can read their book "Di testa nostra" with exclamations of surprise at each scandal of recent years or you can be resigned to be cynical. You choose. In a rude poem Andrea Camilleri writes:
"We know that the fish starts to smell at its head.
Today the fish’s head is literally fetid,
but half the Italians get inebriated on that stench,
they fill up their lungs with it as though it were mountain air"

Interview with Saverio Lodato

S. Lodato: My name is Saverio Lodato. I’m a journalist. Andrea Camilleri and I have written a book called: "Di testa nostra" that is the real continuation of another book that I wrote with Camilleri called “Un inverno italiano”. Both of them collect the articles that we published over the years in which Andrea Camilleri, the writer-inventor of Montalbano speaks his thoughts on what is happening in our country, Camilleri is speaking in a new way about politics and current affairs in all fields, he is commenting on news items, revealing the background to the stories, interpretations, perspectives that the whole of the Italian media world has been hiding in recent years.

Scandal chases away scandal
Why did Camilleri and I decide to start this column in the daily paper L’Unità and then decide to collect the whole thing and produce a book? Because Italians are kept in the dark about what is happening in our country: Italy is a country where scandal chases away scandal. Every day the Italians are bombarded with millions of words on the scandal of the day. It’s never possible to understand who are the ones responsible, who are the brains, and what conclusions are reached with these scandals, because every so often there’s a new scandal.”

...

Each day there’s a new series of swoops on the Casalesi clan. The number of people belonging to the clan must be going towards infinity as after each arrest, there are still some who are free. It’s an endless battle that has been going on for years like a weather forecast. On 11 October 2008, there was the arrest of 7 people connected to the Bidognetti break-away faction. On 7 November 2008 Davide Granato and Giuseppe Alluce were arrested. 21 November 2008 saw the arrest of Gianluca Bidognetti, son of Francesco (nicknamed: Cicciotto e' Mezzanotte). 21 December 2008 saw the arrest of Metello Di Bona, the clan’s strategist. 14 January 2009 Giuseppe Setola was arrested. 30 March 2009 saw the arrest of 38 people belonging to the Casalesi in Naples, Caserta, Milan, Ferrara and Reggio Emilia. 6 April 2009 saw the arrest in Modena of 5 people connected to the clan. 29 April 2009 Michele Bidognetti was arrested. 3 May 2009 saw the arrest of Raffaele Diana, the boss of the Casalesi. 18 May 2009 Franco Letizia was arrested. 14 July 2009 the “Direzione Investigativa Antimafia” {DIA = Anti-mafia police unit} based in Naples confiscated goods worth more than 50 million euro, held in the name of 30 fictitious people that can be connected to 5 people. 15 July 2009 saw the arrest of 44 people belonging to the clan. 13 August 2009 saw the arrest of 9 people including the super-fugitive Maccariello Raffaele, convicted and sentenced to life in prison. 18 March 2010 there were orders issued for 20 people suspected of being clan affiliates to be remanded in custody. 30 March 2010 saw the arrest of Carmine and Nicola Zagaria. 14 April 2010 saw the capture of Nicola Panaro. 15 June 2010 saw the arrest of Nicola Schiavone, son of Francesco Schiavone and nicknamed Sandokan. (*) 12 July 2010 17 people arrested, including Nicola Ferraro, former UDEUR regional councillor.
How many people are really in the Casalesi clan? The security forces are at risk of falling into depression for the size of the phenomenon. But above all how many politicians are there who have been appointed by the Casalesi clan serving in the Regions, the Provinces and the towns? Perhaps more than the number who are actually members of the Casalesi clan? And how many politicians have been arrested? To stand up to the spread of the Casalesi, the parties have done everything possible. Nicola Cosentino of the PDL, is undersecretary of State in the Ministry of Economics and Finance instead of being in prison. The activation of the remand in custody (confirmed by the Court of Cassation) for the crime of external collaboration in camorra associations has been rejected by the Lower Chamber’s Committee for authorisation to Proceed. The PDminusL has built a barrier against the advance of the clan with a limitless struggle lasting twenty years in the Campania region in which it “its underpants have had more battles than all the Japanese had in the Philippines (see video) “. At the last election the PDminusL chose “The Final Weapon”, Vincenzo De Luca, Statute-barred from an internal vocation, always hunting for the Casalesi and for padre Zanotelli. The sheriff of Caserta, even though he has the secret support of part of of the PDL, has not managed it.
Now the Casalesi have a free hand. It’s difficult to have it more so than before, but they will try. To tackle the losses inflicted by the Police and the Carabinieri they have started a (new) acquisition campaign among the Campania politicians. Anyone available must hurry. There’s already a queue.
(*) from Wikipedia

Text:
Good day to everyone. Today we’re at “Il Fatto Quotidiano’s” editorial offices in Rome. This is the Managing Editor’s office, but since Editor Padellaro is in a meeting at the moment, I snuck in here for a few moments to tell you a story that is truly verging on the surreal, or perhaps it is indeed our reality, however, as Michele Serra wrote, it shows inter alia that this is a Country for the elderly, even as regards wheeler-dealers because, even in their case, nothing changes in that they always seem to arrest the same old guys.

New P2, same old P2-ists
Flavio Carboni is 78 years old and I think he has more arrests under his belt than he has hairs on his head. In fact, he wears a toupee and he’s had a triple bypass, yet, according to the investigators, he is still up to all his old criminal tricks.
But today we’re not here to discuss crime, after all, who actually gives a damn about crime anyway? What is important, however, is to take a look at the behaviours that emerge from some wiretapped telephone calls, which could very well be the last that the investigators will be permitted to wiretap before the sword of Damocles that is the new Gagging Law descends on the Magistrature. The matter is extremely interesting precisely because Flavio Carboni is a repeat offender, indeed a multiple offender as everyone is only too well aware. We all know his face, right back from when we were still in short pants and went to nursery school, we heard about this wheeler-dealer called Carboni who had landed up in jail for Calvi’s murder, for Calvi’s case, for this fraud and for that bit of nonsense, etc.
He was sentenced to eight years for the fraudulent bankruptcy of the Ambrosiano, the biggest case of fraudulent bankruptcy in the history of Europe, before the collapse of Parmalat that is, a bankruptcy that ruined tens of thousands of families. In any other country, a man like him would still be sitting in prison, so it would be necessary to send him back in every now and again. He certainly wouldn’t be invited into the high political circles because once a man is burned, he is burned forever, or at least that’s what the rules say. Here by us, instead, every time someone is arrested or convicted, they accumulate brownie points to include in their CVs, so this time we find Flavio Carboni together with a bunch of other “wheeler-dealers”, holding meetings at the private home of the “Popolo delle Libertà” party co-ordinator, one of the Verdini triumvirate, which also includes Bondi and La Russa, with Verdini as the majority shareholder. What the hell were they doing at Verdini’s house? They were attempting, sometimes successfully and sometimes not, to steer certain legal cases, to rig legal cases, they dealt with the appointment, promotion and punishment of magistrates that refused to toe the line, and with ministerial inspections. Often, the head of the Ministry of Justice Inspectorate, the very talkative Neapolitan Arcibaldo Miller, also attended these symposiums, as well as Justice Undersecretary Caliendo, a former magistrate and staunch ally of so-called Justice Minister Alfano, who therefore favours judges that toe the line, punishes those who don’t and influences the verdicts of the Court of Cassation, for example, the one that annulled the arrest warrant issued by the Preliminary Investigations Magistrate of Naples against Undersecretary Cosentino who was due to face charges relating to collusion with the Camorra. This merry band also decided who would be appointed as President of the Appeal Court of Milan, the choice being between a highly experienced magistrate with democratic demeanour, a man by the name of Rordorf, or a so-so magistrate preferred by the clan, a certain Marra. Naturally Marra won. Marra won because the Deputy Chairman of the Upper Council of the Magistrature, Mancino, who was apparently contacted by these wheeler-dealers, as revealed in certain wiretapped telephone conversations, changed his mind at the last minute and voted for Marra instead of supporting Rordorf as expected.
These are the kind of activities that were discovered tank to the wiretapping of this gang’s telephone conversations. I’m going to stick my neck out here. What’s the bet that sooner or later it’s going to come out that this same gang of individuals, or other people using the same tactics, wheeled and dealed in order to get rid of Clementina Forleo, Luigi De Magistris, Salerno Public Prosecutor Apicella and his assistants Gabriella Nuzi and Dionigio Verasani, because that’s the way they work. It seems to me that, in anticipation of finding out if it is indeed true that there is a new P2 or whether it is merely the old P2, or a P3, or whether or not there are any crimes involved, the most interesting part of this entire affair is that the affair has shattered the long held belief that have doggedly remained in place for 15 years, namely that Italy has a highly politicised Magistrature, which I agree it has, and that it shouldn’t be so politicised, but who are these politicised Magistrates exactly? If someone were to ask a question in passing, namely, who are these politicised magistrates, without fail the answer will be that they are the magistrates from the “Mani Pulite” (Clean Hands) pool, those that handled the “Mani Pulite” investigation, one of whom later resigned from the Magistrature and went into politics. You will hear people saying that that the politicised magistrates are the Public Prosecutors of the Palermo pool that prosecuted numerous politicians of the First Republic, as well as a number of politicians of the Second Republic and who are now investigating the suspected masterminds behind the killings. The politicised magistrates are those that investigated the kidnapping of Abu Omar by members of the Italian and American Secret Services, those that wanted to nail poor D’Alema and poor Consorte at the time of the bank takeover bids, those magistrates that investigate politicians. It would appear that these are the politicised magistrates and, just like politicians come in a range of different colours and flavours, equally these politicised magistrates are sometimes labelled as left-wingers or right-wingers, depending on the leanings of the individuals that they happen to be investigating at the time, and when they are investigating both left-wingers and right-wingers, then they have been sent in by the CIA or the KGB, or by the powers that be, or by SPECTRE to de-legitimise the politicians and take over power like the revolutionaries did in Greece, in Turkey or in South America. Fortunately, these wiretapped telephone conversations emerge at some later stage and we begin to realise that the problem lies with the politicised judges and politicised Public Prosecutors, but who are they? They are those people that take orders from, or receive favours from, or are intimidated by the politicians and the clans and then proceed to act as lynchpins between the world of political and economic-financial power and the Magistrature, namely the Carbonis. Carboni himself said so in an interview: I propose certain transactions, I connect people, I – he says at a certain point in an interview published in yesterday morning’s edition of the “Corriere della Sera”, naturally hidden away at bottom left and under the headline “Carboni reads Schopenhauer and writes to relatives and politicians”, or so he says – am anti-clerical but also religious. Politics is made up of compromises and I’m the one that helps others to reach that compromise. I deal exclusively in affairs of State, with matters involving the State and a month wouldn’t be enough if I were to tell you my life story so, for the time being, you will have to be satisfied with this. I’m the one that covered Silvio Berlusconi’s head (back?) and I even gave him one of the houses that the currently lives in”. The house in question is Villa Certosa, which previously belonged to Carboni before being sold to Berlusconi, who was Caroni’s partner in many business dealings in Sardinia. But what precisely does he mean by “covering Silvio Berlusconi’s head (back?)”? Putting a wig on him? Can’t be, because Carboni is the one with the wig while Berlusconi’s head is covered in bitumen, so covering Berlusconi’s head can only mean one thing then, namely, that Carboni is one of Silvio Berlusconi’s protectors. After all, they were members of the same P2 Masonic Lodge, so we don’t have to imagine any P3 to realise that there is a mutual Masonic brotherhood between them that goes back a number of decades, so much so, in fact, that 30 years have passed – next year it will be 30 years since the P2 scandal of 1982 – and there is still this strong bond. So we find this same P2-ist Carboni who was finally convicted for the Ambrosiano crash in the lounge of the Verdini home, together with the co-ordinator of the relative majority, none other than Verdini himself, but what were they doing there? Ensuring the appointment of a preferably friendly judge to the Milan Appeal Court where Berlusconi’s cases are heard. To influence the Constitutional Court to block the majority that wanted to reject the Alfano Bill as unconstitutional, once again to protect Berlusconi. They wanted to prevent the arrest of Undersecretary Cosentino. They wanted to commit slander against Caldoro, Cosentino’s opponent in the Campania Region, using a fake dossier on the man who was subsequently elected as Regional Governor of Campania. Because Cosentino had been sidelined, mainly due to the pressure exerted by the Fini supporters, and Caldoro had got through, they now wanted to destroy him too, but why? Because when the Camorra needs to prove that they control the territory, they cannot permit the election of an individual that has taken the place of a Camorra man and so Caldoro had to pay the price, he had to pay the price even if it meant helping the left-wing to win. They played against their own party rather than give credit to Cosentino’s rival, so they had a dossier ready and waiting, containing allegations of transsexuals and all sorts of other affairs, modelled on what had happened to Marrazzo.

The politicised Magistrature
So this is what they were up to. The interesting thing is that every time these gentlemen made a phone call to ensure a favourable ruling, in other words, one that was the exact opposite of the right or proper ruling, but why? Well, because there is no need to phone if the judges indeed make a good or proper ruling. If someone phones it’s precisely because the judges are about to make a good and proper ruling. If a judge is indeed dispensing justice then the only reason for putting pressure on him is to try to get an unjust ruling, so what do you think happened every time these gentlemen exerted any pressure? What happened every time is that they found someone who was willing to listen, be it the former President of the Constitutional Court, the President of the Court of Cassation, candidates for the Milan Court of Appeals, who would then take the call from this bunch of would be wheeler-dealers who are a total embarrassment because of their seniority and fluency. It’s enough to read a few extracts from the wiretapped call records to realise that they are speaking in an unbelievable kind of Italian that seems to have come from one of Bombolo, Cannavale and Lino Banfi’s films, except for the fact that Lino Banfi was far too smart for these guys. These guys immediately found willing ears and thus they spoke with senior magistrates who are, needless to say, members of the plenum of the Upper Council of the Magistrature, sitting alongside the State President and the Deputy Chairman Mancino. Then they would speak to the Gennarinis and the Peppiniellis with the kind of familiarity that is truly disturbing!
So this is the problem, this politicised Magistrature. In past wiretapped conversations, you won’t ever hear the voices of the Di Pietros, the Davigos, the Colombos, the Grecos, the Borrellis, the D'Ambrosios, just as in the current ones you won’t ever hear the voices of those depicted as politicised magistrates, like the De Magistris’, the Woodcocks, the Forleos, the Spataros, the Casellis, the Ingroias, the Scarpinatos, the Tescarolis and many others. You will never hear their voices. You will only hear those of the people from the Roman underbrush, where you will find bigwigs from the Court of Cassation, from the Upper Council of the Magistrature, from the National Association of Magistrates, politicians, and wheeler-dealers. In a country where the controllers and their victims are used to being hand in glove, living in the same houses and sitting in the same lounges, anyone needing any further proof of what it means to have power in Italy only need to examine the guest list for Thursday night’s dinner at Vespa’s house. In that house belonging to Propaganda Fide and given to Bruno Vespa by Cardinal Sepe himself, for which Vespa claims to be paying 10-thousand Euro in rent, a splendid home with a terrace overlooking Trinità dei Monti, the following people met: Vespa, Vespa’s wife Augusta Iannini, a Rome judge who has for many years now been a manager in the Ministry of Justice, head of the Legislation Department and the person that is responsible for taking all of the laws that Alfano has drafted in his usual Visigoth and translating them into proper Italian. The dinner guests also included Gianni Letta, Undersecretary in the Prime Minister’s Office and former Deputy Chairman of Mediaset, Gianni Letta’s wife, the author of that famous hotchpotch that formed the basis for the Bi-cameral hotchpotch of 1997, as well as Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Pierferdinando Casini, coerced by Berlusconi to replace the potential vacuum left by the possible departure of the Fini supporters that would result in the event of a divorce between Berlusconi and Fini, and Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, owner of Mediaset and everything else we can think of, accompanied by his daughter who, in addition to being Chairperson of the Mondadori publishing group, is also involved in MedioBanca, which in turn has a finger in the pie at the “Corriere della Sera”. This merry band consisting of a RAI journalist, a judge and, oh, I almost forgot to mention the other person that was there, namely the banker Geronzi, who is currently Chairman of Assicurazioni Generali and accused of involvement in the collapse of Parmalat and Cirio.
So, a judge, a journalist, politicians, a Cardinal, a financier, another amphibious businessman politician like Letta and, I almost forgot, Bank of Italy Governor Draghi. Officially, the dinner was organised to celebrate Bruno Vespa’s 50 year in the journalism field, yes indeed, he calls the rubbish he dishes up “journalism”, but unofficially, the purpose of the dinner was to attempt to re-unite two lovers who lost each other in the cold, namely Pierferdinando Casini and Silvio Berlusconi, all organised by a journalist surrounded by cardinals, criminal suspects, a judge, financiers and the Comptroller of Italian Finance, namely Draghi. So that’s how things are done over here and, unfortunately, there is always some or other magistrate also involved, usually a Roman one, selling the blessings of the marvellous “porto delle nebbie” and that’s the real problem. When we talk about the politicised Magistrature, we should immediately think local and think of the fact that the closer one get’s to the corridors of power, like here in Rome, the more one will find magistrates that have obviously lost all sense of mission and are therefore deemed to be approachable for favours. It’s not even necessary to bribe them, as was the case once upon a time in the Previti era. There is no money changing hands here to bribe judges , all there is, is a gelatinous system whereby someone phones someone else, someone is friendly with someone else, someone asks for a favour for someone else and, the most interesting thing of all, is how the centre-right’s newspapers deal with this whole affair. Instead of saying: you see, there are certain judges that are politicised, they’re friends of ours, they’re friends of the government, they are the regime’s judges, they come out with articles that attempt to downplay this new P2, depicting it as a Totò and Peppino story, an honest Gang. In last Wednesday’s edition of “Libero” there is a fantastic article written by Gianluigi Nuzi, in which he states that they are even attempting to credit Berlusconi with a murder, but why? Well, because there is simply no way. Berlusconi may well have millions of faults, but he is not the type to accept bribes, after all, he is extremely wealthy in his own right! Just imagine that! Berlusconi, who has spent his entire life paying bribes, now being depicted by his own newspapers as someone who may indeed be guilty of many things, but bribery, no way!
Then there are the words that have emerged from these wiretapped conversations. The are other players in this affair in addition to Verdini, the Tuscan proprietor of Credito Fiorentino Bank and political party co-ordinator. Instead of resolving the conflict of interests of Berlusconi, who believes that it there is nothing even vaguely unusual about a man who owns his very own bank and also happens to be involved in politics without leaving the bank, the very same bank through which it is alleged that the money collected by Carboni from a group of businessmen involved in the construction of wind farms. Now this is not merely another power generation business venture, but one that is designed to suck up European Union funding for every wind turbine generator erected. Then, however, there is no problem when these wind turbine generators never turn, but why? Well, because these guys have already grabbed the money and done a duck, so this wheeler-dealer put together this consortium to build wind farms in Sardinia, but what happened then? Well, what happened was that then politics got involved because, as you know, the political wheels have to be oiled and so a part of the Carboni consortium money was diverted to Verdini’s Credito Fiorentino Bank in the form of a deal to purchase shares in the Tuscan newspaper, a subsidiary of Berlusconi’s newspapers in Florence and Tuscany, established by Verdini and sailing in rough waters, probably also due to the fact that it is illegible! That’s Verdini for you!.
So, after the initial arrest, Verdini is under investigation for corruption and illegal secret association for having somehow re-established the P2, thereby violating the law that prohibits secret associations. The first of the individuals arrested, a certain Pasqualino Lombardi, a long-serving Avellino politician with certain highly ranking friends that include Upper Council of the Magistrature Vice President Mancino, and Arcangelo Martino, a former socialist convicted, I think of collusion, a Neapolitan who, I’m sure some you remember, rushed in to defend Berlusconi last summer when Berlusconi was having some problems coming up with a credible explanation for how come a man in his position took a helicopter or a plane from Milan to Casoria, which is a place where only members of the Camorra usually go to shoot each other or get married, to attend a party for a young lady, the 18-year-old Noemi Letizia, who had been very definitely underage until just the day before. Berlusconi and the young lady continued to make contradictory statements that didn’t hold water, until a certain Martino popped up, saying that: Berlusconi is right, as I can confirm. Berlusconi met Noemi Letizia’s father at the Hotel Raphael in Rome during a meeting with Craxi and they immediately became firm friends with this well-dressed public servant from the Vesuvio area, to the extent that Noemi’s father would phone Berlusconi from time to time on his private cell phone, Berlusconi would take the call and, abracadabra, he even went to the daughter’s party with a gold jewel in hand. It was obviously an out and out lie, one of the many designed to put that embarrassing matter to bed. Imagine that, a Prime Minister dallying with underage girls, as confirmed by his wife! Martino provided a fake alibi for Berlusconi, so they arrested him (Martino), as well as Pasqualino Lombardi and, obviously also Flavio Carboni.

But what was this secret association working on
As we have already said, this business involving the exchange of favours was in fact part and parcel of 3 or 4 different affairs. The first of these is the case of the Constitutional Court, which was due to hand down a ruling regarding the Alfano Bill on 6 October 2009. There was great consternation because everyone knew that the Alfano Bill was in fact unconstitutional and that, therefore, it would be necessary to entice a couple of judges to vote both against their conscience and against the Constitution. Thus began the bartering involving a variety of exchangeable goods. For example, there was Pasqualino Lombardi, the Christian Democrat from Avellino, who spoke to Treasury Undersecretary Cosentino, saying: “he is quite happy with what we’re doing about the 6th, namely the Constitutional Council hearing concerning the Bill so, quite obviously, what Arcangelo was saying was that he has to give us something in return, he must give us you, without busting our chops, don’t you agree?” This “he” that was apparently quite happy with this group putting pressure on the Constitutional Court was none other than Verdini, who had met with Lombardi, with Martino, the man who provided the false alibi in the Noemi case, Justice Undersecretary Caliendo, Ministerial Inspectorate Chief Miller and the ever-present Marcello Dell’Utri, who is also involved in this scandal because he apparently moves in these circles and indeed, the Rome judges are assessing his involvement and also because, fortunately, there are also a number of excellent public prosecutors and judges in Rome. When I spoke about the “porto delle nebbie” earlier, I was talking about bigwigs in the Rome Court of Justice, some of whom are indeed crooked, but certainly not all of them, so much so that the Rome Public Prosecutors Office is responsible for this investigation.
So that’s the secret organisation set up by these gentlemen, but what were they hoping to do? Well, on the one hand they were wanting to back Cosentino with regard to the arrest warrant, while on the other hand they were putting pressure on the Constitutional Court to overthrow the then majority and thereby ensure the confirmation and approval of the Alfano Bill. This Lombardi fellow spoke to Martino on the 28th September last year, they were only doing what had to be done, and they’re still doing so, however, very quietly and without exposing themselves because they’re involving thousands of people and not just one. They call all the politicians that they know in order to find out whether perhaps these politicians know any of the Constitutional Court judges. They even contact the same old Renzo Lusetti, formerly of the Democratic Party and now a member of Ruttelli’s Ap, once charged in Naples for his involvement in the Romeo scandal, and ask him “Do you have any friends in the Constitutional Court? Then there is an incredible telephone call made by this Pasqualino Lombardi to the President Emeritus of the Constitutional Court, Cesare Mirabelli, a man covered in lace, ermine and what have you …, because Lombardi wants to know whether one of the judges who was apparently undecided with regard to the Bill, namely Maria Rita Saulle, was a friend of his. Now listen to what this wheeler-dealer from Avellino, in fact Irpino, says over the phone to a President Emeritus of the Constitutional Court: “that woman on the Council who says she’s a friend of yours, can we at least convince her?”. Initially at least, Mirabelli tries to protect himself by saying “I don’t know that convincing will do any good”, at which point Lombardi snaps back, saying “we have done all we can, we have in any event tried to ensure that we have got to almost everyone and at the moment, I’m telling you it looks like 4 are against, 5 are in favour and 3 remain undecided. So you try and find out whether we could have any luck with the lady”. In other words, so much for a Totò and Peppino’s band of honest men. These guys had already succeeded in convincing 5 Constitutional Court judges out of 15, and some of them they didn’t even need to bother with because, if you remember, Judge Napolitano and Judge Mazzella had already had dinner and discussions with Berlusconi, Alfano and Gianni Letta on the eve of the ruling on the Alfano Bill.
Mirabelli again tries to keep himself out of it, but then this Lombardi, a surveyor from Avellino who also worked as a contributions judge, says “what is needed is a final push. We’ll talk again tomorrow Professor, but these friends of mine, who are also friends of yours by the way, are putting pressure on me!”, that’s friendship for you. Then there are also a number of other calls in which the vernacular is used. In one of these, Pasquale tells Martino: “call whoever you need to call and tell him that the mustn’t bust our chops. They must just do what they’re told and when the time comes, they must just tell whoever they have to tell”, and then, just a few days prior to the Consultative Council verdict, : “we have to speak to him today, I’ll speak to him, where the hell is he? He’s out, see to it because we can’t afford to catch butterflies”, you understand? Butterflies don’t exist, all that does indeed exist are strong, heavy elephants and they’re not at all pretty. At the end of the day there’s a fuck off because he doesn’t bring in any votes but he still comes to us!
This would be extremely funny if it weren’t for the fact that we are dealing with conversations concerning decisions that are crucial to our democracy, such as the decision regarding the Alfano Bill or the one regarding the arrest of an Undersecretary that refuses to step down and involving a Senator who also refuses to step down even after having been recently re-convicted for mafia activities, namely Dell’Utri, as well as national co-ordinator of a relative majority party, what’s his name, who has stepped down, for the time being that is? One of the judges that was party to these meetings also stepped down today, namely judge Martone who is just some mushroom or reject, but a past President of the National Association of Magistrates, as did Naples Councillor who was busy creating a dossier on behalf of Cosentino’s friends, aimed at depicting newly elected Governor Caldoro as a man who kept company with transsexuals . He was a member of the Caldoro Junta and was obliged to resign because how could Caldoro have a councillor working with him that had, inter alia, created a dossier of lies against him? Can you believe that things have degenerated to such a point?

"Be good "
The final thing that is particularly disturbing involves the man who was the President of the Supreme Court of Cassation until just a month ago, namely, Vincenzo Carbone. The same Pasqualino Lombardi, the surveyor, called him and said: “When Mr. President?” and the man on the other side already knew what it was about. Instead of saying something like: “what are you saying? Who are you? You must have got through to the wrong number!”, he responds to the question “When, Mr. President?”, he answers “28 January”. Lombardi says: “Oh, 28 January? Can’t we make it any sooner?” This to Carbone, Senior President of the Court of Cassation, ermine, lace, purple robe, badges, knotted hair and all. Carbone says “be good”, yet this is the top man and President of the Court of Cassation, so can you guess what they were talking about? Well, about the Court of Cassation appeal regarding the arrest warrant issued against Cosentino, and they were even discussing the date and even wanted to bring it forward. On 26 January, in other words just two days prior to the scheduled date of the hearing on the 28th, Lombardi once again called Carbone, actually no, he called him on the 17th, ten days before the scheduled date of the hearing, Lombardi called the President of the Court of Cassation and tells him: yesterday I was with a bunch of good friends. Again on the 25th, 3 days prior to the hearing, he tells Cosentino: “Tomorrow morning you must pay a visit to Gianni Letta, di you understand?” The next day, the 26th in other words, two full days prior to the official ruling, Lombardi again called Carbone and said: “Listen to me, has Letta called you at all?” Carboni answered: “no, why do you ask?”. Lombardi answers: “he was supposed to call you!” They had told Carbone that since he was due to retire, they would extend his term of office as President of the Court of Cassation for a further two years, but who? The Berlusconi government of course, and indeed in another telephone conversation we hear Carbone saying: “What am I supposed to do once I go on pension?” The Government was working on a solution, namely to keep him on board for another two years. If you read the papers just the other day, you will have read that Carbone has recently retired as President of the Court of Cassation and is to stand for election as President of Consob or one of the other Authorities that are currently in the process of being restructured. He was the man that asked “What am I supposed to do once I go on pension?”. Please note that magistrates normally go on pension at 75 years of age, but this man didn’t know what he was going to do with himself, so they had to find him some other job, after all, this was the 78 year-old Carboni, the man who set up the P3, and now they’ve gone and arrested him again.
Then there is the matter of Marra, the current President of the Appeal Court of Milan, nicknamed Fofò by his friends. His real name is Alfonso and there is a whole operation afoot, involving Lombardi, etc, to get him appointed ahead of his better qualified opponent, a man by the name of Rordorf. At a certain point, Lombardi and Co. ensured that Mancino would make a last-minute turnaround and, just when everyone was fully expecting him to opt for Rordorf, he would instead opt for Marra, which is precisely what he did, he voted for Marra. This is an episode that reminds one of the case in which the Upper Council of the Magistrature was expected to appoint Falcone as Examining Magistrate in Palermo, until they made a number of last minute about-turns and appointed Meli. In a now famous public meeting, Borsellino spoke of a “Judas” that had touted Falcone’s election and then voted the other way.
So, when you hear any talk of politicised magistrates, think of these guys. When you hear any talk about political abuse of the justice system, think of the dossier that was built up by the centre-right Cosentino buddies against the centre right Caldoro circle and when anyone talks about De Magistris or about the case involving Clementina Forleo, or the case involving the Salerno Public Prosecutors that were thrown out of the Region, out of Campania, not to mention Chief Public Prosecutor Apicella who was dismissed completely from the Magistrature, while De Magristris was sent to Naples and prohibited from ever again working as a Public Prosecutor, which is precisely what also happened to Nuzi and Verasani, remember that the investigations against these magistrates were led by none other than Arcibaldo Miller, a member of this jolly band, and that the disciplinary hearings were handled by a Chief Prosecutor from the Court of Cassation in which one of the kingpins was Martone, the same man that resigned from the United Section of the Court of Cassation that heard these magistrates’ appeals against the unjust penalties handed down to them. The Chairman of this United Section was none other than Carbone, the wheeler-dealer surveyor from Avellino that Lombardi referred to as Mr. President and spoke to on an informal basis, the same Carbone that, at that time, was asking what the powers that be had in store for him when he retired at age 75.

When the troublesome magistrates land up in this kind of situation, then you begin to understand why the troublesome members are chucked out of the Upper Council of the Magistrature and why Carbone’s Court of Cassation then confirms this nonsense while, instead, the genuinely politicised magistrates never leave, except when they’re caught red handed with their hand in the cookie jar. Spread the word and continue to follow these stories in “Il Fatto Quotidiano”. Have a great week!

“A falling tree makes more noise than a growing forest .” Laozi.
Whatever the sound: a rustling of big leafy fronds, a sudden crash, an echo of leaves stripped from broken branches, even before you can understand the direction and the intensity, you know it’s a new scandal in the forest. It’s enough to casually glance at the headings in a newspaper or listen to half a sentence in a café in the morning. The fallen trees are a common news item, background hum. Our hearing is so used to the constant sound of rotten wood or dried-out wood that is lying on the ground that every other sound is a marvel, an exception, so improbable to be invariably ignored. The voice of the forest is in fact unknown to us. The campaign groups, the associations of citizens that develop a new idea about refuse, about renewable energy, about the regeneration of the territory and a thousand other positive ideas, are invisible to our senses. Covered up by the incinerators, by nuclear power stations, by the Great Useless Works, by the endless trials for mafia and for corruption of members of the government and of parliamentarians. A noise that leads to deafness, repeated and wearing like a vuvuzela. The trumpeters of the scandals, the crows in every bush, have the task of transforming the crashing noises in melodies, the rotten wood into politicians, into industrialists, into blameless bankers, even after the verdict of the Court of Cassation. In the forest each one counts for one. The tiny shoot can become a great oak. The forest is enough in itself and perhaps this is disenchanting, this apparent indifference in relation to the degradation of Italy is in reality a step change from the past, a slow change to doing it yourself, taking into your hands the future of your own country, from the Val di Susa, to the referendum for public water, to the new industry of waste recycling at Vedelago, to the cleaning of rivers and streams, to the “gruppi di acquisto solidali” (GAS) {purchasing solidarity groups}, to the participation in town council meetings, to the opposition to military bases like the one at Dal Molin in Vicenza. The forest grows, the old trunks, corrupted and full of woodworm, fall down. It seems that the noise they make covers up everything. Keep your ears open. Like the American Indians, put your ears to the ground. There’s a new music that’s growing. It’s honest and discreet but it’s irresistible. It’s you.

Today, the Italian press that has always worn a muzzle, decided to also don a gag. It did so to protest against the gagging law. It’s a bit like a rapist taking to the streets to protest against a rape, or a serial killer protesting against a multiple murderer, or a robber protesting about a bank heist. It is a beautiful July day. The atmosphere is decidedly less oppressive, without all of the usual paper scrawled with nonsense lying around in the streets, don’t you agree? I am so pleased about this strike that I would like to see it being repeated 365 days a year. The newspapers are funded via our taxes, without which they would have to shut down. Given today’s strike, I think it’s only right that their annual funding be reduced by one 365th. What use are the newspapers anyway? All they do, in any event, is seek to influence public opinion on behalf of their owners and send mafia-style messages as required. The newspapers should not be confused with true information. Newspapers and true information are totally incompatible. Where the former exists, the latter is nowhere to be found. In the past few years, the only true information has been spread by the bloggers, the Web and the counter-information sites, certainly not by Scalfari’s “La Repubblica” or De Bortoli’s “Corriere della Sera”, or for that matter even the PDwithouanel’s “L'Unità”. Newspapers have been rendered obsolete by the Web, just as the telegraph rendered the Pony Express obsolete so many years ago. In order to be able to publish an article, the newspapers have to somehow juggle the interests of their shareholders, which are essentially the reflected wishes of the lobby groups, and the demands of the Board of Directors, Management, the editorial committee and the Chief Editor, and then they can go ahead and type a load of nothing (at best) or perhaps a promotional piece. Where then is freedom of expression? Has anyone at the “L'Espresso” ever conducted an investigation into the Olivetti’s demise at the hands of Carlo De Benedetti? Or, for that matter, did the “Corriere della Serva” ever publish an editorial against Tronchetti Provera WHILE he was Chairman of Telecom Italia? The newspapers are busy dying like flies in winter. They only manage to survive thanks to the warmth provided by public funding (*). “Libero”, “Il Foglio” and “Il Riformista” would disappear overnight were it not for our tax Euros. The worst political attack against Berlusconi was the ten questions regarding his sex life. At the initial hearings in the Mills, Bassolino and Dell’Utri trials, there was only a blogger reporting on the proceedings, namely, Daniele Martinelli, while the newspapers maintained an obsequious silence. The citizens are the only ones spreading any information at all. The journalists register must be abolished. All of us are journalists. It is nothing more than a register established by Mussolini in order to control the regime press and is no longer necessary in this day and age because every career journalist has a (inherent) strong self-control mechanism of his own. My dearest useless rag reporters, where were you guys when this blog broke the news of the Aldrovandi, Rasman, Bianzino and Gatti murders years before you timidly and cautiously began to write about this affair? Were you perhaps ensconced under the editor’s desk doing a Lewinsky on him instead of backing the call for a referendum for the abolishment of the Gasparri Law at the second Vday event? Today’s strike reminds me of a bunch of lemmings committing mass suicide, so let’s all hold thumbs and hope that this gesture is very successful.
(*) Except for "Il Fatto Quotidiano", which has refused to accept any public funding

In the courtroom of the second civil section of the Milan Tribunal there was an army of lawyers all well tanned. They were there united to defend Formigoni, the illegitimate president of the Region of Lombardy according to law number 165 of 2004, article 2, comma 1, letter f according to which a candidate is not eligible again once his second consecutive mandate has come to an end. The twenty year period of Formigoni is about to be completed. It was the citizen Vito Crimi that presented the action brought by the 5 Star MoVement. The defence lawyers were engaged by Formigoni, by the Podestà , by the elected councillors of the PDL and by the Region of Lombardy (in this case paid by Lombardy’s taxpayers… ). The debate lasted an hour and a half followed by an hour and a quarter in Chambers. The Tribunal rejected the action. In ten days we will know the reasoning for the decision. Anyway, the 5 Star MoVement will appeal. We will not stop. The spirit of the law that prevents more than 2 mandates is simple. It’s to avoid the situation that instead of a President of the Region, a monarch installs himself with all his camarillas, his business turnover, his omnipotence. It’s to avoid the creation of a “Cupola”, extraneous to any form of control. As it turns out from the documents presented to the court, Formigoni doesn’t even have a residence in Lombardy. His address is that of a house under construction. Formigoni must be dismissed, or rather, given that we are talking of a monarch, he must be deposed. They will never give up (but is it in their interests?). Neither will we.

Interview with Vito Crimi and his lawyer Giuseppe Enrico Berti:

Vito Crimi: “I am Vito Crimi. Today is 8 July and we are in the Tribunal for the hearing against Roberto Formigoni. We have presented a complaint against the eligibility of Roberto Formigoni who is ineligible in accordance with a law, namely law 165/2004. That’s why we are here. Today, the hearing has just taken place. It’s just finished. We had the chance to give our arguments. On the other side we have had a “school of Lawyers”, representing the whole world. Only the army was missing. A curious thing that I like to point out is that the main arguments, the most important ones, were presented not so much by the lawyer representing Roberto Formigoni, but by the lawyers of the Region of Lombardy. This is something that we believe is scandalous, that the Region of Lombardy, is the citizens, thus at our expense, and it’s their lawyers who are defending the right of Roberto Formigoni to govern. It truly seems to be an abuse of power. Now the judges have withdrawn to Chambers. We expect the verdict to arrive any minute. Obviously, we will keep you up to date on the result.”
Giuseppe Enrico Berti: “I am Giuseppe Enrico Berti and I have represented Vito Crimi in this case and thus the 5 Star MoVement. Today has seen the public hearing organised as a result of our having brought the case and the presentation of the counter-case from those who are opposing us. Today we replied to their memoranda and we discussed the main themes. The two main themes were the immediate perceptibility of the “comma” that is by now famous, article 2, letter "f" of law 165/2004 and then of the efficacy of the law through time.

...

Today I need you to help make a decision. I would like your opinion on “Woodstock 5 Stelle” {5 Star Woodstock}. Whether to do it or not. I have asked a few established artists to participate. They all said “no”. The date is the last Sunday in September. A gentile “no” with different blending: “I have an engagement … I’ll have to weigh it up … I have to do a recording … I’ll have to think about it … I’m out of the country “. In certain cases they got the secretary to reply. Even some of those who participated in the V-Days have said no. Only one has given me an unconditional yes: Cristiano De André, and I thank him with all my heart. On the stage of an event that should last 12 to 14 hours without interruption there’ll have to be me (I can get by at the keyboard) and Cristiano. I would even try but perhaps it would be too much for you and my coronary arteries. I’ve chosen a place for Woodstock 5 Stelle. I won’t yet tell you where out of a sense of superstition, with an enormous meadow where some folk could even sleep under the stars. A space for 100,000 people. To organise it however, I have to hear what you think, get your go-ahead, and that of the artists who accept to “exhibit themselves” on the stage. In fact, they are taking a risk. The can lose contracts, evenings, TV appearances just because they “go with Grillo”. Woodstock 5 Stelle will be a moment of enjoyment and life culture. Music and international stars of water, of the environment, of energy that will talk to us about the future that we would like. The event is free. The cost of the event will be financed by the voluntary contributions of the participants and if that’s not enough I will cover it. This is an appeal to free artists. Woodstock 5 Stelle has to be a shout in the petrified forest in which we live that is offering us leaders aged almost 60 in exchange for the psycho-dwarf, I’m going to be part of it, I’m putting up some money, but I have to have your support. Give me a sign. Speak to me and if you are an artist telephone me yourself, not your secretary. I’m here ready and waiting, with my eyes looking to the sunrise, to the sun rising over the sea. I feel like a poet and even a bit of an “abbelinato” {simpleton}. They will never give up (but is it in their interests?). Neither will we.

The blog is launching a collective fatwa against all the parliamentarians that have earned (or who are silently/absently earning ) the right to a pension after a single legislature: “Every parliamentarian who does not renounce the right to get a pension gained after only one legislature is cursed.” It’s a gentile fatwa, in fact it’s enough to renounce the pension to escape the curse. A few million young people will never receive a pension and many million older people are receiving a miserable pension after 35/40 years of work, often exhausting work.
The net monthly pension of our employees (after just 30 months of a legislature) is equal to a monthly minimum of 2,797 euro. The pension is paid out at the 65th year of age but only for those who were elected for the first time in 2008, however, all the others get it well before that. In 2009, the cost of parliamentary pensions was 219.4 million euro. There are parliamentarians who have been getting a pension from the age of 50. Many combine their pension with other life annuities. Parliament is a pension-factory and the parliamentarians know that very well. In fact parliament is dissolved ONLY after the time period for earning the right to a pension has elapsed and that is after two and a half years. It’s the pension applied to the principle of governability. The parliamentarians who are asking for sacrifices from the Italians have not been able to eliminate the odious privilege of 30 months for the right to a pension and to impose a maximum. Why should a parliamentarian receive almost 10,000 euro a month? On the basis of what right? The maximum has to be reduced to 3,000 euro a month. If that doesn’t happen, every citizen must no longer pay even a cent to INPS {State pension body}.
Read these names (*). They are just a “taste” of those who receive a generous (gross) pension thanks to the taxpayers. Thanks to you. Luciano Benetton: 3108, Rosa Russo Jervolino: 9947, TIziana Maiolo: 6590, Nicola Mancino: 9947, Pino Rauti: 9387, Alfredo Reichlin: 9947, Stefano Rodotà: 8455, Eugenio Scalfari: 3108, Vittorio Sgarbi: 8455, Giuliano Urbani: 6590, Walter Veltroni: 9014. I know that while you are reading that you are suddenly getting angry, you are clenching your fists and your stomach is getting tighter. That’s why I haven’t given the full list. I’ve done that for you. Just be content that one who is differently-a-worker like Topo Gigio Veltroni has at the age of 55 years got a pension of more than nine thousand euro, that Luciano Benetton can rely on a pension to face up to the possible setbacks in the market and that Scalfari has a tiny monthly nest-egg. The parliamentarians of today and yesterday are taking the pension for us. Because they feel better and so arsehole.

(*) Source: l'Espresso.
PS. The first fatwa against the double-salaried Stanca has hit home. The former-warehouse manager at IBM has resigned from EXPO 2015.

PPS. On Thursday 8 July at 11:30 at the first civil section of the Milan Tribunal there’ll be the hearing for the action that the 5 star MoVement has presented against Roberto Formigoni. Immediately after the hearing, as the law sets out, there will be the verdict.

Text:

Good day to you all. So, Aldo Brancher resigned from his post as minister after only seven days: clearly he had searched in vain to find out what portfolio he had been assigned.
I joke, obviously. The use of legitimate impediment, or let’s just say Brancher’s legitimate use of the legitimate impediment legislation created such controversy and dispute because of the sheer cheek with which the entire episode occurred, that, in the end, following a meeting held with Brancher at Arcore, Berlusconi was obliged to dump him.

Brancher, minister by sheer coincidence
Silvio Berlusconi, instead, remains firmly ensconced as Prime Minister. He has already made very good use of the legislation on no less than three occasions, namely in the Mills, Mediaset and Mediatrade trials and his abuse of legitimate impediment has not raised any institutional objections whatsoever and indeed they all made as if nothing had happened.
Nicola Cosentino is still firmly ensconced as Undersecretary to the Treasury, even though there is still an arrest warrant issued by the Naples Public Prosecutors Office hanging over his head, a precautionary ordnance already issued by the Preliminary Investigations Magistrate and already confirmed by the Court of Cassation that has never been executed because this little gentleman is barricaded within the Council of Ministers and within Parliament since the Chamber raised the barricades and refused to grant the Public Prosecutors permission to take Cosentino away. Yet we note that this affair also created little or no controversy within the main opposition party, which instead, as some of you will no doubt remember, after having tabled a no confidence motion, together with the Italia dei Valori and UDC parties, demanding Cosentino’s resignation even before the arrest warrant was issued, the Democratic Party then proceeded to guarantee the failure of that motion by making sure that tens of its members walked out of the Chamber in Parliament. Those members’ votes would have been enough to adopt the motion in that many of Fini’s supporters had also opted not to side with the centre right coalition.
So what we’re saying is that this is yet another truffle fest and indeed the umpteenth festival of hypocrisy. Now there will undoubtedly be certain individuals that will try to claim the credit for Brancher’s resignation when, in fact, Brancher’s resignation is actually due to factors within the centre right coalition. As usual, it all happened within the centre right coalition. If Bossi and Fini’s supporters hadn’t disassociated themselves, Brancher would still be there but, instead, Berlusconi was obliged to sacrifice him because otherwise there was a good chance that his majority would have been sunk by the individual no-confidence motions tabled by the opposition parties.
Let’s just say that the Head of State also participated in this truffle fest by signing the legitimate impediment law, which, without his signature, would never have been promulgated as one of this Country’s laws, and by signing Brancher’s appointment as Minister of heaven alone knows what and then denying Brancher the right to make use of the provisions of that very same legitimate impediment law, a law signed and promulgated by Napolitano himself and by virtue of his appointment as Minister by Napolitano himself. The very same Napolitano who didn’t say a word when Berlusconi claimed legitimate impediment, perhaps in order to conceal his little parties in Brazil, complete with a number of gorgeous lap dancers. I have nothing against someone who enjoys parties with gorgeous lap dancers, but when that someone claims, in an official document from Palazzo Chigi to the Court, that he won’t have a single hour available in the next year and a half – which is precisely what the legitimate impediment law requires, without having to provide any reasons – and then, thanks to the Brazilian press, we find out that these little parties are part of an official State business trip, that is when those little parties become a major issue for discussion. It is only right that they become a major issue for discussion because he should be appearing in court during his own trials instead of attending these little parties, yet the Quirinale has been ominously silent in this regard. It’s simply easier to take it out on Brancher and, therefore it is indeed becoming increasingly attractive to throw our support behind Brancher who hasn’t done even one third of the things that Berlusconi has gotten up to – I’m referring to the fact that he used the legitimate impediment provisions to avoid only one trial and has already given up that right – and who is now being lynched as if he were the gang leader. Let’s not overlook the fact that Berlusconi is indeed still the gang leader. Over the next few months we will surely find out just what Brancher was promised in return for his personal sacrifice.
No matter what you may read about Berlusconi having dumped him, Brancher is one of those aides that cannot simply be dumped because he is one of those guys that have a zip instead of lips. He is a man that has spent three months in San Vittore Prison as a result of the Finivest bribes that were paid out while he was Confalonieri’s right-hand man, bribes which were paid – we already mentioned this on Monday but it’s worth repeating – to Craxi’s Socialist Party and un-health minister De Lorenzo’s Liberal Party in return for the then Government placing a great deal of the advertising relating to the aids campaign with Mediaset. In other words, public funds given to Mediaset, one of the most highly State-subsidised companies ever.
Public funds given to Mediaset for advertising the “If you know it you’ll avoid it” anti-aids campaign because, if they hadn’t done that advertising, people would supposedly have welcomed AIDS with open arms! So then, more public funds were given to Mediaset in Exchange for bribes given to certain politicians and that’s the reason why Brancher was arrested. He closed the zip and he didn’t say a word for three months. When he was released his future career was assured and indeed, shortly thereafter he was appointed as Forza Italia Parliamentarian, then as Undersecretary and more recently as Minister, but now he will go back to his post as undersecretary and will therefore remain part of the Government, that’s what I think, anyway. Perhaps one day we will discover what Brancher’s reward was, given that his appointment as minister has gone down the drain.

Dell’Utri’s mafia messages
Another gentleman that, thanks to this gesture, is assured of a comfortable old-age is called Marcello Dell'Utri, although he is not the only one. There are indeed many more like him, as we are finding out on a regular basis. Marcello Dell'Utri has kept his post as Senator, obviously, even after the seven year sentence handed down on appeal just the other day for external association with the Mafia... a bit later we’ll comment on this sentence that is not yet official, because all we have so far is the initial ruling, and also on the comments regarding this sentence that the media have managed to distort totally, even going as far as completely overturning the true meaning of this ruling.
Meanwhile, it’s interesting to hear what Dell’Utri had to say. Amongst the many things that he had to say were two in particular that have made us think, and not us for that matter because I think that they have particularly made Berlusconi think very carefully.
At a certain point, immediately after the sentence was handed down, one of Dell’Utri’s defence attorneys, namely Attorney Mormino, the one with white hair who looks a bit like a mirror image of Salvo Lima, stated that: “Dell'Utri has only been convicted for what he allegedly did prior to 1992 in order to protect Berlusconi and his companies from the Mafia”. In other words, Dell'Utri is paying on Berlusconi’s behalf. He didn’t do all those things for himself, but in fact he sacrificed himself for the greater good of Berlusconi. That’s the first message that emerges.
Now add that to the second message that Dell’Utri sent out during a press conference held just a few hours after the ruling confirming his conviction, and I repeat, his conviction and sentencing to seven years imprisonment for mafia collusion: “Mangano is still my hero. If I were in his shoes, I don’t know whether I would be able to refrain from naming names”. So, put together Dell'Utri’s attorney’s reminder that “The things that he did, if he indeed did them in the first place, were done to save Berlusconi” and now he finds himself facing seven years in jail while Berlusconi gets off scot-free, and Dell'Utri who says that “Mangano is a hero because he kept his trap shut. Not everyone is that lucky. I, for example, – he says – if I were to find myself in jail, in other words if my conviction were to be upheld by the Court of Cassation and I were obliged to serve four years of my sentence - because, as you are all aware, in Italy the last three years of a sentence is served doing community service, the first four years would still be extremely hard for a someone that is accustomed to spending his time amongst bookworms and ancient books – I don’t know whether I would be able to keep my trap totally shut”. Now if that isn’t a veiled threat directed at someone who will undoubtedly understand its true implications, then I don’t know. It certainly wasn’t directed at us because this gentlemen knows nothing at all about us, so who could the message be directed at then? Perhaps at our esteemed Prime Minister?
We have to learn to interpret these messages sent out by a man convicted on appeal and sentenced to spend seven years in prison for colluding with the mafia. I remind you that the Appeal Court is the last institution that rules on the merits of a case and all that then still remains is one more possible ruling on the issue of legitimacy, in other words, depending on whether or not there were any procedural violations, the Court of Cassation could still overturn the ruling but, otherwise, this is the end of the road as regards the merits of the case. So the last word regarding the facts lies with the Appeal Court and the last word regarding the process lies with the Court of Cassation. It should also be said that anything that Dell'Utri says has to be deciphered and decoded in terms of Mafia language, so when Dell'Utri sends a message, it is a mafia message, and that the person sending the message is relying on the intended receiver’s intelligence, but the message nevertheless utilises mafia language.
In your opinion, when he continuously repeats his claim that Vittorio Mangano was a hero, is he doing so merely to pay homage to the memory of the dearly departed Vittorio Mangano, or to bring some sort of joy to his widow and orphans, or perhaps in memory of an old friend who has now been dead for some ten years? If I’m not mistaken, I think that the tenth anniversary of Mangano’s death will be in the next week or two. Do you honestly believe that this is all just his way of paying homage? Obviously not! When Dell'Utri states that “Mangano is a hero because...”, he’s actually talking about himself rather than about Mangano. He’s talking about himself in that, notwithstanding all the legal wrangles of the past few years, he has managed to keep his trap shut and wants to continuously remind those that could have faced serious repercussions due to the legal wrangles of the past few years if he (Dell’Utri) hadn’t been so heroic and had instead let something slip.
Look, let’s be honest, there are many ways to let something slip, for example, all that is needed is for someone to say just a little too much during a wiretapped telephone conversation.
All he needed to do was send in one of his aides who could suddenly break down and start spilling the beans. So perhaps it is appropriate to remember what Cartotto stated to the Caltanissetta and Palermo magistrates who were questioning him with regard to the birth of Forza Italia. Cartotto simply stated that “I remember when Marcello Dell'Utri instructed me to begin devising a new political party linked to Fininvest and I remember it because he had a number of personal doubts at the time. Sometimes he would go off against Berlusconi and he once told me that 'What Silvio doesn’t understand is that if I were to talk...'”. This issue of “if I were to talk...” is a very old story dating back to the time before the establishment Forza Italia and who knows whether that “if I were to talk...” wasn’t perhaps enough to even convince the “Cavaliere” to avoid any delay when he was evaluating the pros and cons of getting into politics. All these issues are somewhere in the documentation, all we need to do is to understand what we’re reading.
Instead, many people are pretending not to understand what they’re reading, while other people are only discovering much later what they could have seen a lot earlier. I have kept a sort of list of all the newspaper headlines, which are extremely interesting in terms of realising the depths to which the Italian media has sunk. It’s important to do a little review every now and again.
“Dell'Utri the politician not guilty of mafia activity” shouts Giuliano Ferrara’s “Il Foglio”: inside is a comment entitled “But not the massacres”. “Libero” stated: “Dell'Utri the part-time Godfather. Hypocritical conviction. Convicted for mafia collusion, but only prior to 1992 – did anyone say anything – so the case will be statute-barred, the justicialists will be able to attack and no one will have lost anything”. Just in passing, I would like to point out the immortal article by a certain Mr. Mazzoli, which must be an oversight. It’s entitled: “Too much freedom of information has killed off true journalism”, imagine anyone even thinking of writing something like that?
“Part-time underling. Statute-barring will ensure that justice is done. Gone is the Forza Mafia theory”. “Dell'Utri disappointed: the judge is like Pontius Pilate”. “Silvio relieved: a house of cards comes tumbling down but all the Fini supporters see is a conviction”, but what else could they possible see, given that we’re dealing with a seven year jail sentence? In this regard, “Il Giornale” instead chose to headline the exoneration of Tartaglia: they were apparently surprised that Tartaglia, the souvenir thrower, was declared insane, of being “not of sound mind” and therefore totally incapable of standing trial. What a surprise that was! Who would have guessed that they would rule that the man was not of sound mind? Having already indicated a number of possible masterminds behind the attack, in the end it was discovered that the man was simply off his rocker.
“Forza Italia linked to the Mafia? Bullshit”, that’s the headline regarding the seven-year sentence handed out to founder and mastermind behind the Forza Italia party.
Here are a few more of those entertaining headlines: “The paradoxes of the Dell'Utri trial” from that genius Giordano, the inventor of that “Lucignolo Bikini” programme that ventures into that dangerous minefield of the law.
I would also like to mention the jurist with the streaks that refers to external collusion with the Mafia as “That crime that doesn’t exist in the Penal Code”. Then there is the excellent example of fence-sitting by Macaluso, entitled “Harsh penalty, but equally serious words from the Chief Prosecutor”. The “Il Riformatorio” headline reads “Stumbling block for the Forza Italia-mafia-massacres of 1992 theory”. A great play on words, “Marcello Dell'Utri” “The theory regarding the 1992 massacres torn apart”.
So that’s how our newspapers react. I can’t show you the television news reports here, although perhaps some of you have already seen them: the TG1 was absolutely marvellous! The TG1 went as far as claiming that “The Court didn’t believe the prosecution, nor did it believe Spatuzza, whose testimony was immediately denied by Filippo Graviano, and swept aside the prosecution’s case, which collapsed entirely”. This report was delivered by a lady by the name of Grazia Graziadei, and I would like to point her out to you because, just lately, she has increasingly started becoming a Minzolini clone. Just the other evening she even presented the doctored facts regarding wiretapping. Speaking live from Palermo, she reported the “collapse of the prosecution’s case”, notwithstanding the fact that Dell'Utri had just been sentenced to seven years imprisonment, while she and the Seantor were busy “celebrating”. Obviously, knowing the man, they were all expecting that he would be handed down a life sentence, so when they realised that he had only received a seven-year sentence, these people were happy for him. “Well done, you’ve really been lucky this time, only seven years!” In a few years’ time, they will all undoubtedly gather willingly in the courtyard of some or other penitentiary to celebrate and toast this stroke of luck: “You see! Only seven years, they’ll pass, you were lucky!”... Cuffaro, Dell'Utri, all very happy. However, you will undoubtedly remember when Previti made a joyous toast to his sentence of a mere seven and a half years following the Imi-Sir Lodo Mondadori trial. It takes so little to make these people happy and they’re so easy to please. Seven years seemed to be so little, but the fact is that they are far worse than they seem and these people don’t handle the passing years very well.

The regime’s diversion tactics
Why do I say this, you may ask? I say this because when the sentence was handed down against Andreotti, it was fairly easy to pass it off statute barring as exoneration. This time around, once the ruling was handed down, sentencing Dell'Utri to seven years of imprisonment for mafia collusion, I said to myself “I wonder how they are going to defuse, diminish and draw attention away from such a heavy and serious conviction this time?” Why do I say heavy and serious, you may ask? Well because neither Dell’Utri nor any other offender will ever again find such a benevolent Appeal Court! We have already told you who the three judges were that judged Dell'Utri. They were three judges from whom he and his entire defence team expected extremely favourable treatment, especially given that already during the latter hearings, the judges had come across as being very, very, very sympathetic to the defence’s demands while being extremely hostile towards those of the prosecution. Therefore, we must also take the attitude of the Court into account. This was not a Court that is renowned for its harshness and severity, but one that some would say is more renowned for its respect for civil rights, even in cases where civil rights have nothing to do with the matter at hand. When evidence has been withheld from a trial and it is then stated that there is insufficient evidence, the judges would be expected to say “bring on the evidence, so that the proof will be available”. In any event, a seven year sentence handed down by such a Court against the Prime Minister’s right-hand man for Mafia collusion, remains an extremely heavy and serious penalty indeed!
So, what could they do to defuse a major bomb such as this sentence? By sheer ability, this planned, organised and scientific disinformation system somehow managed to draw the attention entirely away from the crux of this matter, namely that Silvio Berlusconi’s right-hand man had just been sentenced to seven years, on appeal, for having colluded with the Mafia, while his left-hand man has already been sentenced seven and a half years in jail for having bribed certain judges. What we’re dealing with here are the two guardian angels that have stood alongside Berlusconi from the time of his very earliest steps into the world of business, finance and publishing and all the way through into Government and Parliament. Previti was the attorney that bribed the judges and thereby personally ensured that all the court cases were decided in the companies’ favour, while Dell'Utri was the go-between in the agreements between Fininvest and the Mafia: even this most benevolent Appeal Court of Palermo agrees, in its present form, by ruling that everything prior to and up to 1992 had been proven. So let’s start by clarifying some of the dates. Up to 1992 means that it has been proven that, throughout the whole of 1992, Dell'Utri was essentially acting as a member of the Mafia, but what precisely was the Mafia involved in back in 1992? They were involved in the Lima crime, the Salvo crime, the Falcone murder, the Borsellino murder and the negotiations with the Carabinieri, is that clear enough? In other words, these crimes are not excluded from the period specified in the conviction ruling. I don’t know precisely what the official ruling will state, but the specified time period includes the year in which the Capaci and the Via D'Amelio attacks took place and it also includes the year in which, according to Cartotto, Dell'Utri began to think about establishing a new political party. The same thing has also been said by Massimo Ciancimino, who even went so far as to state that, even before the Capaci attack, there had already been certain rumours circulating in Ciancimino territory that a Fininvest political party was about to be born. So the year 1992 is included and 1992 was the year in which the foundations were laid for what was later to become the Forza Italia party, something that Dell'Utri has always denied precisely because he wants to separate the events of that time from the birth of the Forza Italia party.
Let’s take a look at four or five media red herrings used to undermine the potentially catastrophic repercussions of this particular conviction.
Dell'Utri states that Mangano remained in prison until the day of his death in the cell, notwithstanding the fact that he was suffering from cancer, merely because he refused to lie at the request of the magistrates, who promised him that he would be released if he was prepared to falsely accuse Dell'Utri and Berlusconi. He has been claiming this for many years and everyone has been bringing it up for years, without anyone asking one very specific question, namely, “Excuse me asking, but where did you hear this? Who told you this, where is the proof and who promised Mangano that he would be released in exchange for his perjured testimony against Berlusconi and Dell'Utri?” On what grounds could anyone make any promises to a gentleman who was sitting in prison because he was arrested in 1999 and, just a few months thereafter sentenced to two life terms for three homicides, one of which he had committed personally. This was his situation at the time. He was in prison for having masterminded three homicides and was serving the two life sentences handed down at the original trial. This in addition to two previous convictions for drug trafficking offences in the nineteen-eighties. There is no way that anyone would promise a man such as this that he would be released immediately in return for slanderous testimony because he was so close to death. Not even in terms of the law regarding turncoats! Firstly there would have to be a case review, then the decision would have to be made as to whether or not he was indeed telling the truth, after which he would be moved to a secure location to prevent any vendetta being carried out against him by other imprisoned Mafia members. So this immediate release that he spoke about is absolute nonsense because no one would have been in a position to guarantee any such thing. Furthermore, if indeed Dell'Utri knows the names of the individuals that put this obscene proposal to Mangano, then why doesn’t he press charges against them? This is nothing more than a monumental lie that Dell'Utri continues to tell and that has grabbed the attention of the public, although no one has yet bothered to ask these questions. It would be enough to ask these questions and the entire story would fall apart. However, as we all know, certain questions are never asked.
Secondly, according to what Maurizio Belpietro says, and I’ve already mentioned the headline that reads “It is comical sentence regarding an apparent part-time mafia member and little more than an underling, who is apparently also an Italian kingpin.” Dell'Utri states: “it’s an inexplicable sentence worthy of Pontius Pilate. The judges have depicted me as a mafia member until 1992, but they contradict themselves. If this were true, then there is no way the Mafia would have let me go , particularly in 1992 when they would have been hoping to gain some advantage from their alleged new-found power and from the politics of the day”. And I must say that, in this regard, both Belpietro and Dell'Utri make a valid point, however, if an individual is a mafia member, even an outsider, then how can he suddenly stop being a mafia member at a moment’s notice? Being a Mafia member is not like smoking! Just as it’s highly unlikely that a smoker could simply quit smoking from one moment to the next, it’s equally highly unlikely that someone like Dell'Utri could simply stop being a mafia member, especially in 1992. Shortly thereafter a new party was established and can anyone honestly believe that the mafia would have dumped him just when he, as the mastermind behind the Forza Italia party that was about to come to power, would be most useful to the organisation? The Mafia was attempting to fill the political vacuum left behind by the “Tangentopoli” scandal and just when the Forza Italia party came along to fill that vacuum, the Mafia proceeds to dump Dell'Utri? No way! Dell'Utri is dead right when he says that we will soon realise just how many things he actually knows! His makes an extremely compelling argument.
So what doesn’t fit then? What doesn’t fit is that the ruling does not indeed state that Dell'Utri stopped being a mafia member back in 1992. We will still get to discover the reasons for this, but Court rulings don’t usually deal in this kind of nonsense. The judges are not required to write a full biography of Dell'Utri’s life from the cradle to the Senate, but they are required to rule on which of the prosecution’s charges there are sufficient grounds to warrant the conviction of Dell'Utri, and on which charges, instead, there are nonexistent or insufficient grounds or sufficient contradictory evidence to warrant his conviction on those charges.
The charges are dealt with in chronological order and the judges stopped at 1992, evidently because they believed that there was insufficient evidence to support the charges relating to events that occurred after 1992. They don’t say that he stopped being a mafia member, but simply that “we don’t know what happened thereafter because there is insufficient evidence, so we will convict him for crimes committed up to 1992, because 1992 is where we have found the last bit of irrefutable evidence of his links with the Mafia”. They’re by no means saying that he is no longer a mafia member, but simply that they have proof that he was indeed a mafia member until 1992.
At this point some or other citizen, journalist, opinion-maker or historian could take it one step further and state that it is indeed quite obvious that his (Dell’Utri’s) links with the Mafia continued because indeed there are recorded meetings between him and Mangano in 1993, as well as other probable meetings with Mangano even after that and telephone conversations with known mafia members such as Guttadauro, Provenzano’s man Carmelo Amato whose telephone conversations from his driving schools were recorded, revealing the arrangements made regarding Dell’Utri’s election campaign for the 1999 national elections and the 2001 European elections. There are even recorded attempts made by a fugitive criminal by the name of Palazzolo who went into hiding in South Africa and who was attempting to sort out his affairs by pressurising the Berlusconi government in 2004-2005 and by convincing Dell’Utri’s wife, via certain mutual friends, to put him in touch with her husband.
The judges ruled that all of these events were inadmissible for the trial, including numerous other events dating back to 2008 and reported to the Reggio Calabria Public Prosecutors Office, as well as Dell’Utri’s telephone conversations with members of the Piromalli Clan, yet the judges said that “we’re not interested in any of these facts because they involve the 'ndrangheta and we are only trying him for colluding with the Mafia”. That’s great! So they’re not at all interested in knowing whether the individual that they’re busy trying for colluding with the Mafia also has possible links with the 'ndrangheta?
So the proof is available. There are telephone calls, actual wiretapped recordings and not merely a lot of hard work and Spatuzza telling stories. Even though we are not qualified judges, we can nevertheless fill in the blanks remaining after this ruling, assuming of course that these blanks are not perhaps filled by the Court of Cassation at a later stage in overturning the judges’ decision not to admit this evidence due to lack of foundation. We’ll have to wait and see what happens.
It wouldn’t be the first time that a ruling drafted by Salvatore Barresi, who is the reporting judge in this case and a member of the 3-judge panel, gets torn apart and destroyed in one of the higher Courts. The ruling that cleared Andreotti of all charges in the original trial, which by the way also bore Barresi’s signature, was overturned by the Appeal Court, which found Andreotti guilty until 1980, when the case was eventually statute-barred. The Court of Cassation may well decide to scrap this ruling but, meanwhile, let no one attach any inappropriate meanings to any Court rulings: this ruling may well only cover the period up to 1992, but that is simply because the judges have deemed that they cannot proceed any further than 1992, certainly not that he (Dell’Utri) was no longer linked to the Mafia after 1992. Furthermore, no clear evidence emerged from the trial to suggest that Dell'Utri broke his ties with the Mafia at any stage or, for that matter, that the Mafia broke its ties with Dell’Utri at any time. It was probably felt that the later events, or at least those that the judges indeed admitted into testimony, were insufficient to confirm that, even after 1992, there was any demonstrable and proven exchange of favours. As you know, external collusion with the mafia is not the “smoking gun” type of crime that it is often thought to be. The Court of Cassation has explained this and has clearly outlined the features of this crime in its rulings in the cases involving Contrada, Ignazio D'Antona and the Sicilian Christian Democrat politicians. It involves a genuine exchange of favours and not merely talking to a mafia member over the phone, having a cup of coffee with one of them or even attending one of their weddings, although such behaviour could arguably be deemed to be somewhat inappropriate and undignified. External collusion is deemed to occur when you, as an outsider, make your services available to an organisation to which you don’t belong, not merely on one or two occasions, but on a regular basis, so that the organisation can help you to improve your career, to make money, to gain more power or to acquire more votes and, in return, you, as an outsider, perhaps a politician, a Bishop, a Priest, a police officer, a member of the Carabinieri, a crooked magistrate, a businessman, a financier or a banker, undertake to promote the interests of that organisation.
Yet in this case it’s a very simple matter: they ridicule the sentence by saying that “he only colluded with the Mafia until 1992, but then he stopped”. Clearly they were merely throwing a bone to the Prosecution, after which they will obviously proceed to dismantle the rest as well because either you are a mafia collaborator always, or you aren’t one, never. And they have chosen the “never”.
Indeed, Dell'Utri himself says that “They should have cleared me of all the charges, even those relating to before 1992, but they didn’t do so merely to satisfy the Public Prosecutors and not to be seen to be giving them a slap in the face”. So, in other words, they give the Prime Minister’s right-hand man seven years, two years off the original sentence, merely to placate the Public Prosecutors?
Why would they need to placate anyone? “Well, in fact the actual problem lies with the Public Prosecutors: Caselli and Ingroia are two very powerful individuals with the power to influence their environment. I hope that we don’t land up with a Palermo judge in the Court of Cassation”. They are so powerful that Ingroia was kicked out of the anti-mafia squad while Grasso was Chief Prosecutor, and Caselli had the dubious privilege of having three “contra personam” laws introduced by Berlusconi in 2005 in order to prevent him becoming the next National Anti-Mafia Prosecutor. This tells you just how powerful these men are, although it also shows how powerful the magistrates are that managed to get rid of Ingroia and that went on to become Anti-mafia Prosecutors. They just happen to be one and the same person, just by the way.
This comment about the bone being thrown out for the Prosecutors refers to the fact that the Palermo judges always seem to side with the Public Prosecutors with the biggest balls, the ones that we’ve heard so much about, and the fact that all of the trials involving politicians that were being prosecuted by members of the Caselli pool, namely Ingroia, Scarpinato, Lo Forte, Paci, Di Matteo, etc., all came to nothing. Apparently then the Caselli-ists insist on prosecuting politicians and their cases come to nothing while, instead, the Grasso-ists prosecute the “right” cases, involving “genuine” charges, and they win every time. That may well be so, but Contrada was finally convicted and the case was handled by Caselli’s Prosecutor’s Office while, instead, Andreotti was found guilty but the case was statute barred within just six months, and this case was also handled by the Caselli-ists. Dell'Utri was convicted at the original trial and again on appeal and D'Antona and a number of other Sicilian Mafia members all went the same way. The only high-profile exonerations have been those of Mannino Judge Carnevale. In order to get Carnevale exonerated they had to resort to amending the Court of Cassation jurisprudence so as to disallow all of the testimony provided by the judges of the Judges’ Panel chaired by Carnevale himself within the Court of Cassation. Their testimony revealed the full extent of the pressure he exerted on them in order to get the earlier convictions of Mafia members overturned and, given the fact that, according to his colleagues, he applied the pressure in question within Court Chambers, what happens within Chambers cannot be revealed outside of said Chambers, not even during the course of trial. So, because they threw out the proof, the Court of Cassation judges essentially exonerated their colleague, Judge Carnevale. You understand?
So after so many years of hearing them tell us that Caselli is a failure because he loses all his cases against politicians, now suddenly they’re saying that he wins them all because he influences the judges. These are the very same people that previously said that he lost all his cases. If he is indeed losing all his cases then he is obviously not influencing anyone and it counts for nothing but if, instead he is indeed extremely powerful and able to influence everyone, then it would mean that he wins all his cases. So let’s take a look. In fact, he has won some cases and lost other cases, as always happens with court cases that could go either way.
“The crime could become statute barred because almost twenty years have passed since 1992”, which is the year in which Dell'Utri committed the crimes. These guys can’t even do their math, nor do they even have an abacus: the crime of external mafia collusion is also covered by the same Regulation 416bis that covers mafia association in general. The Penal Code does not contain any specific regulation pertaining to external mafia association: all the crimes specified in the Penal Code can conceivably be committed in collusion with other perpetrators. When someone are in collusion with other perpetrators of crimes, according to the provisions of article 110 there is collusion to commit a crime. The Penal Code does not contain any specific clauses covering collusion to commit a robbery or collusion to commit a terrorist act, there is the punishable crime of terrorist, subversive and Mafia activity and then, for anyone in collusion with the perpetrator, there is such a thing as external collusion.
Therefore, mafia collusion with the dual aggravating circumstances of money and arms, and here we’re talking about the Cosa Nostra, a mafia organisation that is armed and involved in crooked business in order to make money, then the statute barring deadline only expires 22 and a half years after the crime was committed, just as in Andreotti’s case, although he was accused of direct participation in Mafia activities rather than merely external collusion. What does 22 and a half years plus 1992 equal? It equals 2014 and a half. Given that we are only midway through 2010 at the moment, it means that the statute barring deadline will only expire four years from now, assuming of course that the Court of Cassation confirms that the crime technically ended in 1992. Should the Court instead order a new appeal in order to deal with the period after 1992, then obviously statute barring the deadline will be delayed accordingly. But if the Court of Cassation upholds the Appeal Court ruling, then there are still four and a half years prior to statute barring. Dell'Utri has no hope whatsoever that his will be statute barred by the Court of Cassation, so when everyone says that the Appeal Court sentence was specifically intended to ensure that the case would statute barred by the time the Court of Cassation eventually got around to handling it, they are talking absolute nonsense. Indeed, they don’t know what they’re talking about but they want us to believe that nothing else will happen following the appeal court ruling, that everything will go down the drain and that, after all is said and done, even the judges know that Dell'Utri had nothing to do with any crime. They handed him seven years in order to cut him free, without any consequences, to make the prosecution happy? Seven years.
“External collusion is such a generic and diaphanous crime that it includes both good and bad associations. The Court of Cassation will see to it that this shameful and anti-juridical sentence gets overturned as happened specifically in the Mannino case”. This anti-juridical embarrassment was devised by Falcone specifically for the Mafia, although it had already been applied previously, in the 1700’s for collusion in banditry and again in the Seventies for external collusion in terrorist activities. Since 1987, when Falcone drafted the sentence-ordnance for the “maxi-ter” trial, external mafia collusion was officially classified as a separate crime. It is obvious that Falcone only addressed the problem in 1987, because prior to that mafia activity didn’t officially exist! However, specifically during the mid Eighties, tank to the confessions of Buscetta, Contorno and Calderone, we managed to arrest the mafia members and hold the so-called “maxi-trial” on the basis of the Cosa Nostra’s pyramid structure with a fully fledged control centre, sub-branches, etc. Prior to that mafia members were exonerated of their crimes and everyone denied the very existence of any such structured and centrally controlled criminal organisation.
Therefore, the problem of outside collaborators was never even considered, because at that stage they weren’t even able to convict the internal ones! Then, in 1987, after having nailed the obvious mafia members, Falcone and Borsellino began to turn their attention to the white-collar members like the Salvo cousins, Ciancimino and many others, which required a new legal perspective, hence the crime of external collusion. Indeed, Falcone wrote that: “the acts of collaboration and collusion committed by people working within the public institutions could result in far more dangerous, not to mention devious and invasive support for the power of the mafia and that could be deemed to constitute collusion in mafia activities. It is precisely this collusion with the mafia that is one of the major causes of the growth of the Cosa Nostra and its counter-power nature and, consequently also of the difficulties encountered when attempting to suppress criminal activity”. That was because when the criminal organisations had accomplices within the institutions, they were harder to hit and because the very people that should have been fighting the mafia were often colluding with the organisations instead of fighting them, that’s what Falcone was saying.

The other trials concerning the killings and the negotiations
Now for the last of the red-herrings. Belpietro writes that: “the ruling doesn’t mention any connection whatsoever between Berlusconi’s entry into politics, which was the real objective of this trial, and Dell'Utri’s mafia activities. Indeed the ruling dismisses Spatuzza and Ciancimino’s testimonies as sesquipedalian nonsense and archives the issues of potential responsibility for the killings and the alleged links between the Mafia and the Forza Italia Party”. “Il Giornale’s” Lino Iannuzzi, another expert of heaven alone knows what, writes: “The whole deck of cards collapses in the prosecution’s case regarding the negotiations between the Mafia and the State and the hidden masterminds behind the killings”.
Even “La Stampa” lets it all hang out by stating that: “This ruling exonerates Dell'Utri from the most serious charge, namely of having plotted a mafia coup by means of the 1993 killings”. Then there is “Il Riformatorio”: “Stumbling block for the Forza Italia-mafia-massacres theory”. “Il Foglio” states: “But not the massacres”.
However, Dell'Utri was not tried for the massacres. He was investigated, together with Berlusconi, in connection with the killings in Florence, Milan, Rome and Palermo and then the charges was archived. Here he was not on trial in connection with the massacres, the charge was external collusion. The State-Mafia negotiations are not the topic of this trial and they are merely examining them in the light of General Mori and Captain De Donno’s negotiations in the trial involving these men. As regards the 1993 negotiations and the possible hidden masterminds that Spatuzza spoke about, and others before him, the Public Prosecutors of Florence, Palermo and Caltanissetta are currently busy conducting their preliminary investigations.
So, if any evidence emerges from the investigations, there could well be more trials in the pipeline in which Dell’Utri is deemed to have been somehow linked to the killings or the negotiations between the State and the Mafia. In this trial, however, there were no charges whatsoever relating to these alleged State-Mafia negotiations. Another issue is the fact that the Mafia chose to back Forza Italia because the party in question had been founded by Dell'Utri, who was undoubtedly a long-standing friend of the Mafia. Now this was one of the charges that were proven, at least until 1992.
We can only imagine what went on in 1993, but we’ll see how the judges will manage to overcome that note that I mentioned to you and that you will find on the www.ilfattoquotidiano.it website, which, thank God, is now finally up and running and has been extremely successful, also thanks to all of you. Those are the entries made in Dell’Utri’s diaries that indicate certain meetings held between Dell'Utri and Mangano in the Milan offices of Pubblitalia in November 1993, just at the time when Forza Italia was in the process of being born. We’ll have to wait and see how the judges get past those entries that supposedly don’t prove that there was any sort of exchange relationship in 1993 just when Forza Italia was being born.
In any event, the entries are there and they are genuine, according to what the judges write, and each of us can come to our own conclusions, not legally but politically and historically.

As for the rest of the ruling, we’ll discuss it once it is ready and the motivations behind the ruling have been released.
Spread the word and continue to watch out for more news in Il Fatto Quotidiano and the ilfattoquotidiano.it website, and obviously and most importantly on Beppe Grillo’s site. Goodbye and have a great week.

In piazza Navona there was D'Addario and there were the prostitutes of journalism and of Italian politics. The former has practised the oldest profession in the world, but not the worst one. The latter have been prostituting themselves for decades and they have transformed information and politics into a brothel. For them, the “gag” is second nature and if they are contesting it, it is because they have arrived at the end of the line. The authors of Berlusconi’s rise to power, his true protectors, and sometimes also pimp, were in the square pontificating. D'Addario’s arrival produced a short circuit.
The first stone was thrown by Roberto Natale, the president of the Federazione Nazionale Stampa (FNSI) {National Press Association}: “You are not welcome”. Part of the “No to the gagging law” crowd whistled at her and welcomed her with shouts of "Escort di merda” {shit escort}. A public stoning of the harlot. Her presence was, for the noble fathers of the left and for the ninety-degrees journalists (their preferred professional position) an offence to their dignity. Franco Siddi , FNSI secretary proclaimed from the stage: “Liberty is above all knowledge. FNSI will oppose with all its strength, today in the streets, and tomorrow by remembering in its newspapers, with articles and presentations, the dangers that we are experiencing. For our part, we will not stop and we are ready, if this measure were to be passed, to take the case to the European Court of Human Rights that will certainly find in our favour.” This freedom was denied D'Addario on whose wiretapped information the newspapers survived well for a whole summer. Even the previously-convicted PDminusL-guy Enzo Carra, got worked up and said: “I am here for the freedom of information and I find it to be truly discrediting that such an important and imposing event is monopolised by the self-promotion of signorina D’Addario". He can say it. Unlike the "signorina" he has frequented the prisons of the nation that for these politicians is like a badge of honour. Benedetta Buccellato of the Association for Italian Theatre added: “It seems a bit much to me that an escort has come backstage to do her press conference. She is the nation’s shame.” Not to be confused with D'Addario, the nation’s shame were the journalists who were present, gagged from birth as well as the politicians who have allowed every “ad personam” law, every conflict of interest and who have handed over the information system into the hands of Berlusconi.
In the square were Enrico Letta (his uncle’s nephew), Walter Veltroni, Piero Fassino, Anna Finocchiaro, Paolo Cento and even the “desaparecidos” Bertinotti. As you remember, Veltroni and Bertinotti are the two gentlemen who brought down the first and second Prodi government thus handing Italy back to Berlusconi. Bersani reminded us of the suffering of Morpheus Napolitano: “The President of the Republic has reminded us with a certain sense of disappointment that his advice has not been followed. They wanted to force things through by getting the draft law on wiretapping onto the agenda. At this point, I’m here to have the draft law withdrawn. He was expecting modifications and to tell you the truth we were all expecting that.”
Two years ago was the second V-Day. “Freedom of Information in a free State.” A million and a half signatures for the abolition of the Gasparri law, of the Mussolini-memory register of journalists and of the public financing of newspapers. The following day, la Repubblica attacked the demonstration with a front page editorial, il Corriere della Sera only just mentioned it, preferring an extensive interview with Dell'Utri, the political scientist, and the TV stations ignored it.
Present in piazza Navona were the prostitutes of the Second Republic. All our employees, journalists and parliamentarians financed with our taxes. D'Addario will have her defects, but at least she’s not maintained by us.

Mussolini’s Italy had eight million bayonets, while the Italy of the new millennium has 17 million pensioners. Before you can go on pension you will have to wait for them to depart en-masse. Those who are currently working (or looking for jobs) keep on seeing the bar being raised, requiring 35/40 years of contributions and perhaps even more. In essence, today’s twenty or thirty-year-olds will never ever be able to go on pension. The odds of anyone being able to work continuously for 40 years without any break in service and with full monthly pension fund contributions to the INPS are about as good as the odds of winning the “Superenalotto” lottery.
The Country is split into two classes: the pensioners and the lost. Lost because they are either working at piecemeal jobs, off the record, or are unemployed, underpaid or terminated. Because their pension is merely a social mirage. Pensions are the true "class divide" in Italy. It’s not right to expect young people to increase the pensionable age and increase the number of years of contributions to qualify for their pension while there are entire battalions of pensioners receiving two or three pensions, parliamentarians that qualify for full pensions after only two and a half years of service in the legislature, millions of pensioners who receive a pension for which they only paid half, or even less, of the normal contributions, hundreds of thousands of so-called “baby pensioners” and pensioners with gilt-edged pensions. The minimum pension must be guaranteed at all costs, as well as all those pensions for which the required contributions have actually been paid. In all other cases, what is needed is a tabula rasa. Unless this happens, all those people that are currently paying contributions to the INPS, especially the younger ones, should refuse to contribute even a single Euro more. It’s like throwing money down the drain. No one can guarantee whether and when you will get it back.
Making sacrifices should be expected either of everyone or no one. What is the current situation regarding the pensions paid to former parliamentarians, former Regional and Provincial Premiers, former ministers and municipal leaders and former State Presidents? How many consulting pensioners are there in this Country? How many pensioners is out there that are getting more than 4000 Euro? How many of them continue to vote in favour of maintaining the status quo with regard to pensions together with the two-faced Pdl-Pdwithoutanel?
It appears that the only those who have reached pensionable age can get ahead. The combined age of the Berlusconi-Napolitano duo is almost ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY YEARS. The weirdest thing is that the "lost ones", the youngsters without any present and even less of a future, not to mention no pension, have not yet got really pissed off. They are destined to work like slaves and then die on the job, just like the oarsmen of the Roman Galleys. Meanwhile, the 4000 Euro a month plus pensioners will be living it up at the Club Med with boxes of Viagra their bedside tables. Come on guys, I say not a penny more to the INPS, it’s far better to hide your money under the mattress. Watch this space for more advice and suggestions in future.

Sunday afternoon, as a guest of friends. Germany- England. Football, I know, I’ve said it, we have to hate it, but every so often, once every four years, you can break the rules. Everyone in an armchair, beer, sandwiches and free-running belches. The match is not broadcast. The RAI has not bought every World Cup match as it has always done. Anyone who wants to watch all the matches has to pay. It’s another wedge of the shared reality that disappears, that becomes a market, like every human desire, need, and aspect of our life. As a kid, in July, I watched the Wimbledon competition on the television. Every afternoon. Then it disappeared, swallowed up by pay TV. I’m still stuck at Rosewall, Rod Laver and Borg. After that, darkness. I know from the newspapers that Federer lost at the quarter finals and Capello went away miserable because of the defeat. I know, I’ve read it but I haven’t seen them. Reality is becoming paid for. In certain cases, like the sports events, even with multiple payments: TV licence plus pay TV. It’s a slow expropriation of reality, even the minimum one of small pleasures. Of the joke in the bar that you can’t do.
The market is getting into every day to day space. It’s transforming reality into merchandise. In order to live, you have to pay a ticket. We are living in a capitalistically modified reality that has overcome the era of the creation of needs and it has pushed beyond that. Man himself is now the most precious merchandise. Capital is invested in his need to live, to exist, from cradle to grave. On the ring road, there are enormous adverts saying: “Fully comprehensive funerals at 1950 euro”. A bargain! It’s worth booking your death, the cost of living is going up every day.
The world is divided into the pay-world or the free-world. The technique is to make what is a natural right like a free beach or a free school into something miserable, and to promote the pay-world. The pay-grass is always greener. The motorway connection roads will be pay-roads. We have already paid for them with our taxes, but they will convince us that they were free up until now as a generous concession, that it’s right to bring in a toll. That we mustn’t steal from the State-Market. I feel as though in order to live through the next hour, I have to put a token into a machine. It’s a matter of time. We will get to the point of a life of points.

PS. The 5 Star MoVement portal is nearly ready and it will be revealed any minute now.