Freedom to heckle in a free Country - Marco Travaglio
(41:10)

Good day to you all. I have to apologise, but today, for various reasons, we will once again be talking about the incumbents holding the second and third most senior posts in Government. Let’s start with the man in the third highest post that spoke at Mirabello in Ferrara Province yesterday and didn’t really have anything sensational to say. What I mean is that that there was nothing sensational as far as we’re concerned because he spoke about things that we have known about and spoken about since 1994 when Berlusconi went into politics. I was reminded of what Montanelli was saying in his articles written back in 1993, even before Berlusconi’s entry into politics, yet Montanelli had already seen the writing on the wall. In those articles, he spoke about what the right wing was, what the right wing should be and Montanelli anticipated what he called this fraud, this right-wing mess that Berlusconi had in mind.

Good day Mr. Fini
All of Montanelli’s predictions have come true and the right wing has become the very thing that Fini described yesterday. Pity that Fini was part of that mess until just recently and that was the biggest weakness as regards his address, although the one thing in his favour is that he now acknowledges, better late than never, that what Italy really needs is a normal right-wing. The very fact that he could take the podium in a square filled to bursting point like the one in Mirabello was and, thanks to various Internet sites and the “LaSette” channel, which broadcast his address live, was able to describe what he sees as a very different kind of right-wing, is a very important thing in itself.
The reason being that, for the first time ever, we are witnessing the crumbling of that great monolith that we have called the right-wing for the past seventeen years, which was run on the basis of only one man in total control, or rather remote control as Enzo Biagi used to say, with everyone running after him like a bunch of water kissing his feet. As of yesterday, there is an alternative point of reference for the right-wingers and that point of reference is incompatible with the current berlusconi-ism, except for the what Fini described in politician-speak as a governing pact to avert the risk of early elections, elections that, if they were to be held soon, would be governed by the very same bullshit electoral law that governed the two previous elections.
An electoral law that he himself voted in favour of, although yesterday he at least had the decency to admit that it was a mistake to vote for that law, whereas the members of the Lega Nord continue to defend that law drafted by Calderoli and say that it should not be changed, even after Calderoli himself has labelled it a load of bullshit. In other words, any election governed by a law such as this would clearly amount to fraud in that the parties would continue to appoint whoever the party secretaries want to see in Parliament.
The new right wing that Fini described is one that practices politics, and that was perhaps the most striking aspect of yesterday’s address, particularly for those who claim to be right-wing supporters. To hear a right-wing leader who doesn’t talk only about his legal problems and about his companies because he doesn’t have any specific legal problems nor any companies for that matter, and who can therefore dedicate himself to speaking about the Country’s problems, although as yet he has only talked about them, it’s not like he has sorted them out or anything. So he spoke about the problems that we are only too aware of, obvious problems ranging from the social issue to the issue of the op position, the relationship between the North and the South, the costs of federalism, the policy as regards education and culture, the foreign policy that resorts to sideshows like the kneeling before that good-for-nothing Gheddafi, and then the justice system and all the rest, and I’ve undoubtedly forgotten some others here.
Fini then proceeded to vent his spleen on 3 or 4 key Ministers, even though he only mentioned one specifically by name, and he took it out on the “helter-skelter” education budget cuts that have resulted in the devastation of our education system, before going on about Gelmini and her backer, namely Tremonti. He complained about the indiscriminate cuts to the culture budget and went off at Bondi and his backer, namely Tremonti. He went off about the bended knees to Gheddafi and then about that kind of comic waiter that passes for our Foreign Affairs Minister Frattini. He obviously also vented his spleen with regard to this government’s policy regarding the justice system and therefore also Justice Minister Alfano and his backer, namely Ghedini, whom he referred to as Dr. Strangelove and who has never quite been able to make the Cavaliere’s legal woes go away altogether but has nevertheless managed to inspire laws that have in the past, and still continue to cause devastating damage as we speak.
So this proposed governing pact doesn’t amount to much and we can clearly see that, as some of today’s newspapers point out, these two are not like a separated couple still living together, but more like a divorced couple living together. Fini has been very astute because, while he was slicing up the Sacred face and amazing body of Mr. B, he left it to the latter to make the split official, accusing him of having betrayed his election promises and challenging him to decide whether or not this new party called “Futuro e Libertà” would be forced to emerge from the shadows. At this point, it is up to Berlusconi, who has been left holding the baby, to decide whether to revoke the expulsion of Fini and his supporters, in which case it may just be possible for the two of them to remain allies for a few more months, or whether to confirm the expulsion, in which case he obviously cannot simply kick someone out and then expect them not to establish some other party. Fini will obviously have to establish a new party, but obviously it will be all Berlusconi’s fault, and when Fini says: we are willing to vote in favour of the five items of the new programme, but we first want to see precisely what is hidden behind these 5 points, to see what you mean by justice system reform, he is obviously not prepared to simply buy a pig in a poke and just accept these 5 points. However, Berlusconi has already announced that these five points are absolutely non-negotiable because he knows exactly what they entail and demands loyalty without question from his allies, to the extent of accepting everything, sight unseen.
Thus we have started on a path that will probably lead to early elections in the Spring, if not before, and what has happened is extremely important, and not because anyone should necessarily fall in love with Fini nor because anyone should follow blindly without waiting to see whether or not Fini is able to do as he promises, but because we now understand what kind of right-wing Fini would like to see, also because, while he is a very able, capable, cutting, rather relaxed and sarcastic speaker, we have to ask ourselves whether he has the kind of leaders behind him that would be necessary in order to implement the things that he claims to want to do. That is the question. When we look at some of Fini’s Colonels, like Fabio Granata, like Angela Napoli, like Flavia Perina and like a number of others, it would seem that he does. When we see young intellectuals like Filippo Rossi and the members of the “Club di Fare Futuro” (literally the Making the Future Club), it would seem to be so, but when we see the Bocchinos, the Ursos and certain others, then we say no, or maybe, but the important thing is that for the first time ever the monolith is crumbling and the right wing is no longer speaking with one voice. It seems to be the same old thing about trials and television, but they also speak about … now that there is another right wing emerging, for the Italians, be they right-wingers, middle-of-the-roaders, left-wingers, apathetics, weak-kneed, agnostics or displaced, it is nevertheless an important event because finally, after more than 17 years of unchallenged satrapy, the numbers are changing. Just two years ago, Berlusconi had the most overwhelming majority ever seen in Republican history, yet now he no longer has an outright majority in the Chamber and he risks losing his Senate majority too if another one or two senators should change sides in addition to the 10 that have already left the PdL to join the “Futuro e Libertà” crowd, so clearly, like it or not, what is happening is indeed a major event.
Where this will lead us is anyone’s guess, but the mere fact that there is some light at the end of the tunnel, in the form of a normal right wing of some sort that talks politics rather than business, must surely be welcomed by anyone who truly has Italy’s interests at heart, because there can be no viable democracy unless there is a right-wing, a left-wing and normal politics, run by those who specialises in this, after which everyone is free to vote whichever way they like. Whatever the case may be, I believe that even the left-wing supporters, those that favour the five-star movement and those that don’t even go and vote cannot but be happy to see that the right-wing is no longer just Mediaset and nothing else, no longer just the Standa and nothing else and no longer just the Mediolanum and nothing else, but rather a group of people who apparently want to be politicians rather than doing so simply to avoid prosecution, otherwise they would have stayed alongside the man who only wants to do business and avoid prosecution.
To close this initial discussion about Fini, all that remains to be seen is what he will do next, having earned this right tank to his rather belated but nevertheless excellent address yesterday. I want to touch on an issue within the issue and something that was not entirely truthful. I fully understand the fact that Fini doesn’t want to give Berlusconi any pretext for saying that Fini wants to rid himself of him by legal means. As it is, they are already trying to discredit Fini thanks to his unedited comment to that Magistrate, in which he said that Spatuzza’s statements were a ticking time-bomb and should therefore be investigated and which they interpreted as meaning that Fini was hoping that Berlusconi would be convicted on the basis of those accusations, in other words, that Fini was standing on the river bank waiting for Berlusconi’s legal bullet-riddled corpse to come floating down the river. So Fini didn’t want to provide him with any such alibi and said: we are not in favour of any shield that serves only his purposes, so we are not in favour of this so-called expedited trial procedure, nor of any other laws that would destroy the entire legal system simply to save Berlusconi from two trials involving him personally.
In saying this he said something that is not entirely true. He was talking nonsense when he claimed that a constitutional Alfano Bill would bring Italy’s justice system closer to those of the other EU Countries, which supposedly already include protection against prosecution for the most senior members of government in order to enable these individuals to govern without any distractions. Meanwhile, it cannot exactly be said that in the past two years since the advent of the Alfano Bill that was rejected and subsequently replaced with the legitimate impediment bill, Berlusconi has been particularly disturbed by his pending trials because there has not been a single hearing for which his presence was required in all that time, yet the results have been precisely those that Fini outlined yesterday, namely, a government that has failed to maintain its election promises, a government that has achieved nothing of what it was elected to do, in other words a non-government, a non-PdL, and certainly not as a result of any trials because the trials have been on hold for these two years, so Berlusconi has not failed to govern because of the trials. Berlusconi has failed to govern because he simply doesn’t give a damn about governing, irrespective of whether or not he has any legal cases pending against him, so this is the first of Fini’s nonsense claims.
His second nonsense claim is that, in other Countries, those that govern have their pending legal cases suspended or postponed until their time in government comes to an end. That is absolute nonsense and is simply not true. There is no European Country or any democracy anywhere in the world in which those that govern are entitled to special immunity. There are indeed certain Countries that have parliamentary immunity, countries in which this type of immunity is in any event linked, in the broadest sense, to operational offences committed during the course of carrying out parliamentary functions and, in the strictest sense, to things that are said and laws that are voted for, in other words, actions strictly associated with parliamentary functions. In Berlusconi’s case, as we all know only too well, there are two pending trials involving him, in his position as the head of Mediaset, namely the Mediaset trial and the Mills trial, neither of which has anything whatsoever to do with his government activities or as a member of Parliament. They only concern him as a private citizen and there is no Country on earth where a parliamentarian, whether he is Prime Minister or a normal member of the government, can claim parliamentary immunity in order to shield himself from accusations levelled at his as a private entrepreneur or private citizen. In any democracy anywhere in the world, Berlusconi would be on trial, irrespective of whether he is a member of parliament or even Prime Minister, but why? Well, simply because there is no special additional immunity granted to any individual who happens to be serving as Prime Minister, other than that very bland and light, basic parliamentary immunity granted to the Prime Minister or any Minister for that matter. These people constantly point to France, where trials are suspended only when the offences relate to the official functions of the Head of State and not to those of the Prime Minister. As a matter of fact, Prime Minister Fillon has no immunity whatsoever, although he has no cases pending, while Sarcozy, whose post is equivalent to that of the State President in Italy, who obviously has immunity as regards his official functions for as long as he remains in office. So, in other words, Ministers and the Prime Minister do not have any special immunity from prosecution in France. Furthermore, in France, the Ministers and the Prime Minister are not appointed from within the group of parliamentarians, so they don’t even enjoy the limited immunity granted to the common of garden variety parliamentarian. They are as naked and exposed as the day they were born when they enter Parliament, which means that while the parliamentary immunity in any Country provides that no parliamentarian may be arrested without parliamentary approval prior to final conviction, Ministers and indeed the Prime Minister can be arrested because they don’t enjoy any such parliamentary immunity. So they must stop spreading these lies, namely that any constitutional Alfano Bill or legitimate impediment legislation will bring us closer to or standardise our legal system with that of other EU Countries. The truth is they don’t bring us into line with anything at all, except with Libya, or perhaps with Putin’s Russia or Lukashenko’s Bielorus. There is no existing true democracy where any provision is made for the Prime Minister’s trials or the Minister’s trials, also because, normally, no individual that is under investigation ever gets nominated for the post of Prime Minister or appointed as Government Minister, because if he is later convicted, he is already a pensioner and, if he is convicted after being appointed as Prime Minister or Government Minister, he is forced to resign and become a pensioner. If, instead, he is eventually absolved, he is free to continue his political career, as happened with Dominique de Villepin, who was involved in the Clearstream trial for two years, had to give up the running for the post of State President and watch from the sidelines as his Gaulist Party Colleague, namely Sarcozy, was left in the running. In the end he was found not guilty and picked up his political career where he had left off, so that’s how they do things in other Countries, believe it or not!
If a Minister or a politician is under investigation in other countries, it’s the politics and the ministry that take a back seat. Here in Italy, instead, it is the legal process that takes a back seat, that’s the difference!

"Scorning Schifani is not a crime "
Now let’s leave this issue of Fini’s main and secondary issues and go onto the matter of the third most senior member of State because something amazing happened in Turin on Saturday, where a bunch of youngsters went, off their own bat, not sent by anyone, not paid by anyone and not encouraged by anyone, simply notified by word of mouth on Facebook and the other social networks, some fifty of them went to demonstrate against Renato Schifani, arrogantly invited to take part in the Democratic Party’s National Festival and to appear on the podium with poor Piero Fassino, who can no longer get even one thing right, not even by sheer accident! Heaven alone knows what possessed the Democratic Party to invite Schifani, what with everything that is going on at the moment, but what we do know is that the Palermo Anti-Mafia Prosecution is currently investigating allegations regarding Schifani, as made by Spatuzza, other turncoats like Campanella and certain other individuals as well. These include people like a man by the name of Costa who claimed, during the course of his original trial in which he was convicted of money laundering, that Schifani was his boss, that he paid him a salary at the time. The Palermo Prosecutors is considering charging the Senate President with mafia collusion. As we said last week already, the Senate President has stated that he wants to be questioned and he even issued an statement, but given that all the newspapers, without exception, failed to report it, other than the investigative report by “L’Espresso” and “Il Fatto Quotidiano”, which printed an article on these investigations, we have to ask why, when the Senate President said “I want to be questioned”, they all censored Schifani’s announcement? Well, because otherwise they would have had to reveal the reasons why this man was suddenly and officially asking to be questioned, after all, why on earth would the Senate President want to be questioned by the anti-mafia prosecutors when we don’t even know what it is all about? For millions of Italians, let’s say the vast majority of Italians, those that don’t read “L’Espresso” and “Il Fatto Quodiano” and that don’t watch Passaparola, Schifani is like the Lily of the Valley, as pure as the driven snow and absolutely clean and shiny bright, so they wouldn’t understand why, suddenly, like a bolt from the blue, he decides to issue an official statement asking to be questioned by the Palermo Anti-mafia Prosecutors and if the newspapers had made any mention of this, they would have had to reveal what led up to this, which we had already revealed in “Il Fatto Quotidiano” and Lirio Abbate in “L’Espresso”. So they simply chose to say nothing about his statement, but why? Well, because otherwise their readers would have asked why they never revealed the fact that Schifani was being investigated. Fortunately there are a number of youngsters that do actually read “L’Espresso” and “Il Fatto Quotidiano” and indeed the demonstration took place with a number of the demonstrators brandishing copies of “Il Fatto Quotidiano” and “L’Espresso” and, as soon as the Democratic Party’s security agents and the policemen saw these, they immediately decided to keep them away from the public area. Imagine that! There were few enough people as it was, then they had to make it worse by keeping out these newspaper brandishing demonstrators as well. Obviously these Democratic Party guys wanted to keep everything for themselves. We don’t know on what grounds they kept these demonstrators out, also because these illegal abuses of power have become a daily event, whereby the forces of law and order are forced to use excessive force and to beat, shove and keep the citizens away from the politicians, even thug there are no laws entitling them to do such things. On the contrary, it is in fact illegal for anyone to prevent any citizen from attending any public debate in a public place, and it’s not like these guys were on Democratic Party premises where the Democratic Party is free to admit or deny access to anyone they wish. They were in a town square and, as far as I’m aware, the Democratic Party guys have not yet purchased Piazza Castello, also because they have no reason to! This was a public space, public ground, so why were the people prevented from coming in? Why was a selection being made between people who looked like demonstrators and those wearing supporters’ sashes? So the first issue is why were these people shoved around when all they wanted to do was merely to voice their disapproval? Why were they evicted? What were they doing wrong? What crime is being committed when someone merely shouts out to the Senate President, demanding that he explain his links with Tom, Dick or Harry? Please answer now! Now you gentlemen of the Democratic Party must please explain what on earth possessed you to invite such a person to your festival? This is not an episode of “Porta a Porta”, where everyone is welcome? It’s your party!
The demonstration was precisely all about these facts that the demonstrators were aware of but that few others in that paid audience knew about, that audience whose members were there merely to applaud and that probably don’t read anything at all and were, therefore, totally unaware of anything, including the members of the Democratic Party Politburo, to the extent that when these youngsters began demonstrating, poor Fassino was visibly surprised and was heard asking what, if anything, Schifani had to do with the issue of the Mafia! What does he have to do with this issue? Have you been out of the Country for some time, or have you perhaps been living on another planet altogether, maybe on Mars, for the past few years? Did you go into hibernation and you’ve just now woken up? Don’t you know who is President of the Senate at the moment? Aren’t you aware that your Party chose to abstain from voting? Aren’t you aware that your Party applauded Schifani when he was elected? Aren’t you aware that, for the first time in Republican history, your Party didn’t nominate anyone to oppose Schifani? Aren’t you aware that your Party group leader, Anna Finocchiaro, went up and kissed him publicly? Have you forgotten that this very same Schifani was the man that insulted you from morning to night while he was Forza Italia’s group leader in the Senate, and that he even went so far as to insult ninety-year-old lifetime honorary senators simply because they chose to exercise their right to vote? Have you forgotten that Schifani proposed a constitutional law that would have removed the lifetime honorary senators’ right to vote because they weren’t voting the way he wanted them to? Have you forgotten how he vented his spleen against the centre-left throughout all of his years spent in the Senate before he began to camouflage himself as an unquestionable father of the homeland? These guys have forgotten all of this! Either they are becoming senile or I certainly don’t know where they’ve been living all this time, or what they’ve been reading, or better still, we know exactly what they’ve been reading, namely those newspapers that don’t mention these things, only to discover, one day, that there is a demonstration going on, at which point they say “Oh my goodness!”, and realise that they have to hide certain things and, given that they cannot hide the demonstration, instead they hide the reasons behind the demonstration. What’s very interesting is that one of our regular customers, namely Pierluigi Battista, made a very cutting comment, not against Schifani, God forbid, but against Schifani’s detractors, and then without ever mentioning the word Mafia and without ever reminding the audience why these people went down to the square to demonstrate and demand an explanation from the gentleman in question. He preferred to simply tell a fairy story, in other words, that these 50 people left their homes merely to prevent Schifani from talking.
Who the hell is interested in preventing Schifani from talking, except for the fact that he is a guy who talks continuously from morning to night, is always appearing on television and being interviewed by the newspapers, so how could you ever hope to shut this Senate President up? If anything, it is this Country’s citizens that are being prevented from talking and the only opportunity they get is when some or other VIP appears in a town square, followed by a whole entourage of television cameras, then, perhaps, a citizen man slip in , but that is the only time when a citizen can have his say, but why? Well, because he/she can no longer even have his/her say when they time comes to vote, given that nobody actually voted Schifani into office and he was simply appointed by Berlusconi for reasons that are becoming increasingly clear as the investigations progress and more statements are made by the justice collaborators who, in my opinion, are absolutely reliable, believable and so forth.

Battista and the “Corriere della Serva”
Just listen to what this funny man has to say: “Whether right-wing or left-wing, the professional heckler and racket-maker believes he is in the right and is battling against an enemy that has to be silenced, a symbol of evil, and is a populist to the nth degree. The real public is absent! – says Battista, a notorious group and crowd-pleaser. Are you aware that every time he goes anywhere they have to barricade off the streets because there are these hordes of fans trying to reach him in order to hug him – the professional intimidators - just imagine, these 50 youngsters against those huge groups of officers, armed to the teeth, armoured cars and all … - the populist abuser, the arrogant ones, to gag, to intimidate, to besiege, pure arrogance, preventative objectors, heckling to prevent someone from talking, arrogant, underhand, fanatical, it’s becoming fashionable, a lousy anti-liberal and anti-democratic attitude, hard, well organised minorities – but organised by whom exactly? – those that create mayhem against Dell’Utri and Schifani want to take away anyone’s right to freedom of speech – they should take another look at Art.21 of the constitution, let them remember how the freedom of expression was taken away from those that dared to oppose Schifani, that’s really amazing, it was like a circus. Let them stop shutting others up just to make themselves feel righteous and stronger, but they must not do so in our name - as much as Battista may like to think so, these demonstrators were certainly not there representing him, just in case someone may think that Battisti had sent these people to demonstrate against Schifani, he says: not in my name, I had nothing to do with it, but who on earth would have thought that that was the case in any event!
Obviously, having seen the video clips, everyone knows that they were not there to shut Schifani up, but merely to let him know that we are aware of exactly what’s going on, there may be very few of us, but we know what kind of person he is, we know exactly who his friends, clients and collaborators are and precisely who his friends, clients and collaborators in Sicily are, we know that the Anti-Mafia Prosecutors are busy investigating the allegations made against Schifani by certain mafia mobsters, we know, we brandish these newspapers, we have read all about it so you have to explain. That is what the demonstration was all about and we hoped that this demonstration would force the video cameras to finally reveal a story that neither “La Repubblica” nor the “Corriere della Sera”, to name but two of the most widely read newspapers in this Country, even bothered to mention and so, that evening, the people that watched the Tg1, Tg2, etc. saw for the first time these strange figures demonstrating against a prominent statesman that they knew nothing about because they had never seen any of the previous episodes. Yet is it important to have these demonstrations because by sheer number of demonstrations the newspapers and television channels can be obliged to reveal that there are indeed people that won’t stand for it and, perhaps then, people will begin to get curious and ask themselves what those youngsters were trying to tell us all. What could have driven them to leave their homes on a Saturday afternoon to demonstrate instead of going out to have some weekend fun? They landed up being beaten, because whenever this kind of thing happens the demonstrators invariably get beaten! The story is being told as if it was an organised bus trip, with these guys’ fares paid for by someone else, and these guys took a beating to tell this man the truth, then they hear Fassino calling them hooligans and Giubilei, the half-bust from the TG3 channel calling them fascists, that from a man who doesn’t even know what it means to be a real journalist or a moderator. It happens to me quite often because I often go a give talks in various places but I don’t have an armoured car to travel in, nor do I have any armed bodyguards or secret service agents to keep any demonstrators at bay. So it sometimes happens that someone starts shouting and demonstrating, but I let them have their say. I ask them, what’s the matter? Tell me what the problem is, that’s how I respond. That’s how you go about defusing a demonstration that is unfounded or are put on specifically to prevent someone talking. Have you ever come across a politician that opens the door to questions once he had completed his address? Anyone prepared to field questions from those who disagree with him, and then to answer those questions? They only way these politicians know how to deal with objectors is to send in the General Investigations and Special Operations Unit to physically remove them, identify them and keep them away from future events, like we do with violent fans at a football match.

This is a great moment
Hooligans and fascists, this coming from a man who pretends to be a journalist, this Giubilei fellow calling members of the public fascists? How dare he? Just who the hell does he think he is? Fascists, intimidatory ruckus, so the Head of State issued one of his usual warnings, even though it was some time that he had not issued any of these warnings. It reminds me of Pertini, a man who was truly a State President of note and personally, when I think of a State President, the names that spring to mind are Pertini, Scalfaro and last but not least, Einaudi. But what would Pertini have said about this intimidatory ruckus?
There was freedom to heckle when politics was still a serious matter, in the early days, back when, notwithstanding all their flaws, the political parties still had millions of people behind them, millions of real voters, millions of registered members that included eminent members of society, yet there was the freedom to heckle and the heckling was accepted in a sportsmanlike manner. Freedom to heckle in a free Country, as Pertini used to say.
When Giovanni Leone was heckled, he didn’t start shouting or anything … he just made a lewd sign with his hand, thereby completely defusing when compared to these empty cans that now get irate, demand that the cops be called in. He simply showed that Neapolitan gesture. How many times were Berlinguer or Almirante heckled, yet no one ever remembers seeing any unpleasant petulance. Not like now where, if you dare heckle, the finger is raised and the cops are called in.
What makes this a great moment is precisely the fact that people are once again heckling. That’s great. Untouchable sacred cows, monuments unto themselves, standing on their pedestals. Gianni Letta who goes to the forgiveness festival in L’Aquila and is treated to a chorus of whistles from the people affected by the earthquake, finally, some justice after all! Shedding his wax-museum mask that he has worn since the beginning of time, he goes to Venice to represent Italian Cinema and, yet more whistles and those puppets of the film exhibition issue a statement. What the hell! No one ever accused you lot of having heckled Letta, the public heckled him! Statements to deny the truth, Fantozzi with the velvet tongue, scenes reminiscent of the end of an empire!
Does anyone still remember the episode where Attorney Ghedini was forced to take shelter in a library? There too there were whistles and people calling out his name. A wonderful image, as long as the heckling is limited to whistles, because whistling is our last remaining, non-violent way of ex pressing our displeasure and I sincerely hope that in the coming months there will be many more such episodes of public heckling at events where the television cameras cannot avoid recording the events, even if they then censor the reasons behind the heckling, but that is the way to get the message through to the public that this regime is reaching the end of the line, just like all jokes inevitably do, namely with a good belly-laugh. That’s why we have to do what these youngsters are very good at, namely finding ever more creative, funny and elegant ways to show our disapproval without getting nasty, committing violent acts or resorting to insults. The best way to take them down is to use humour, make faces, Totò’s raspberries. They must be smothered by the raspberries so that they never get to tell the people that terrorism is knocking at our door and, if they do, they will inevitably make even greater laughing stocks of themselves, because if someone blows a raspberry at you and you respond by saying that the Red Brigades are coming, people will start laughing even louder than they are at the moment!
In my opinion, this is the secret. Bring them down with a smile on your face. A good laugh will bury them all. This is such an important moment in time precisely because the political agenda is now being drafted in the town squares and, therefore, by the people that are present in the town squares and use the best language. Like Beppe Grillo’s clever idea of the Woodstock event to be held on the 26th, never getting stuck on the previous event, but always looking for something new. I hope that the event being organised by Paolo Flores and the “Popolo Viola” for the 2nd October will be a great success. We here at the “Il Fatto Quotidiano” are busy organising our own 3-day event to mark the first anniversary of the establishment of our newspaper, scheduled to take place this coming weekend, namely Friday, Saturday and Sunday at the Parco della Versiliana theatre and the literary Coffee bar in Pietrasanta. Attending will be, inter alia, Salvatore Borsellino, Lirio Abbate, Judge Scarpinato, Massimo Fini, Paolo Flores, Don Gallo, Corrado Guzzanti, author Antonio Tabucchi, Vauro, Dario Vergassola, Vincino, Oliviero Bea, Furio Colombo and all the journalists of “Il Fatto Quotidiano” who will take turns presiding over the various sessions, some of which will be satirical and others informative, as well as the discussion groups. On Sunday morning we will be holding a discussion on corruption because we will be presenting our proposed anti-corruption law in “Il Fatto Quotidiano” this coming week and we will see whether there is a sufficient majority in Parliament with Fabio Granata of the Fini group, Antonio Di Pietro, Renzi of the Democratic Party and Claudio Fava of “Sinistra e Libertà” to table such an anti-corruption law to recover the huge amounts of bribe money.

Obviously you are all invited to attend. This September is a month with some pretty full weekends, what with Versiliana this weekend and then Saturday and Sunday two weeks from now25/26 if I’m not mistaken, the Woodstock event in Cesena with Beppe Grillo and loads of musicians whose names you will find on the blog, so, spread the word!