We are so busy talking about the economy that we have forgotten democracy. Perhaps from a technical point of view, the Monti government is not a coup d’état, but that is what it is basically. It was Napolitano that elected it having been pressured by the EU to avoid an economic catastrophe denied by all the parties and the institutions until last summer. Where the hell were they before? Out picking daisies?
The former Berlusconi government and Parliament itself are not expressions of democracy but offspring of the party-ocracy. A distortion of the will of the people. Napolitano obstinately defends the parties from “anti-politics” and from direct democracy. We have an unconstitutional Parliament of convicted criminals and people with no ability who wouldn’t even find a job as dishwashers, “appointed” by five party secretaries. It has failed and it’s still there telling us what to do. Italy’s obscure illness is the party-ocracy that since the time after the last war, step by step has reduced any space for democratic confrontation and has taken control of the State. Piero Calamandrei, a father of the constitution, said at the beginning of the 1950s: “Calling deputies and senators “representatives of the people” no longer means today what was meant by this term in other times: rather one should call them employees of their party. The parties have been transformed from free associations of volunteer-believers, into armies organised with a top level staff of Commissioned officers and Non-commissioned officers in permanent active service. The election depends on the choice of candidates and that is done not by the voters, but by party functionaries. And the candidates, rather than having personal merit in specific professional competences are chosen for their attitude to becoming good functionaries of their party in Parliament." Since then, the situation has got worse. democracy is denied and there is no important decision relating to the citizen that is taken not by him but by the parties that allow themselves every licence thanks to the servile and ignoble journalists. With the results of the referendum, such as those on party financing and nuclear, they clean their backsides. The popular initiative laws like the “Clean up Parliament” one, are ignored. And all that happens with total silence from the Constitutional Court. What’s needed is for “direct democracy tools” to be inserted into the Constitution: the proposing referendum with no quorum, the obligation to vote within 60 days on popular initiative laws with open voting and the direct election of candidates. The next Vday will be for the introduction of direct democracy in Italy. They will never give up (but is it in their interests?). Neither will we. See you in parliament unless they do an electoral law that prevents that. “Calling deputies and senators “representatives of the people” no longer means today what was meant by this term in other times: rather one should call them employees of their party.

The banks are no longer granting loans to businesses, notwithstanding the fact that they have secured a 50 billion Euro European Union loan. The businesses in question are often facing a stark choice, namely, to shut down or to approach the loan sharks, i.e. the criminals for a loan. The Mafia groups are sitting with a little annual war chest of more than 100 billion, so they are certainly able to satisfy any need, except that shortly thereafter they take over the businesses in question. What we’re doing is saving the banks and handing over the businesses to the Mafia groups. The paradox is that this is going on while down in the South many businessmen are refusing to pay for protection and are therefore risking their lives. The banking system will land up being the victim of its own policies and the Mafia will own the entire Country.

Financial journalist and writer Filippo Astone's Passaparola

The Cosa Nostra and globalization
Good day to you all. My name is Filippo Astone, financial journalist and author of investigative books and I spend my time dealing with business, finance and Italian Capitalism. Italian financial journalism tends to either hustle, sanctifying business and capitalism, or immediately write them off as a dead loss. I, however, have always tried to point out their complexity and I think that the same counts for my latest offering, entitled “Senza Padrini: Resistere alle Mafie Fa Guadagnare” (literally “Without Godfathers: Resisting the Mafia pays dividends”). I took a look at this movement of Sicilian businessmen who are standing up against the Mafia, not for reasons of ethics, principles or heroism, but simply because the Mafia groups are hampering economic development and are therefore harming their respective companies. I have intertwined this story with the destructive economic impact that the Mafia groups have had on Italy. Currently everyone is talking about the financial crisis, yet they conveniently forget that one of the main causes of our decline and our impoverishment has been the so-called Mafia economy. Following the massacres, the Cosa Nostra is in decline and today the Calabrian ‘Ndragheta is the most important of all the Mafia groups. After the 1993 massacres and the Falcone and Borsellino murders, the authorities applied some pretty major investigative and repressive pressure and, at the same time, the international drug traders dropped the Cosa Nostra and began hooking up with ‘Ndragheta instead. The Columbians no longer did business with the Sicilians but turned instead to the Calabrians. If the truth be told, this kind of entrepreneurship that is independent of the protection rackets and free of the Mafia has always existed. Few people know, for example, that there is a small mechanical engineering hub in Caltanissetta that even manages to export its products. The one who began this revolution, together with Ivan Lo Bello, is Antonello Montante, who runs a company called MSA (Mediterranean Shock Absorbers), a company that manufactures special shock absorbers and exports some 70% of what it produces. The shock absorbers used on the “Freccia Rossa” (literally Red Arrow) trains are manufactured by MSA and they therefore don’t need any favours from the politicians or reliance on territorial connections. The new climate created by the decline of the Cosa Nostra and the greater opportunities provided by globalization have benefited these kinds of businesses, which would otherwise have had to remain in the shadows. To this we must add the characters of the individuals who finally realised that it was possible for them to rebel, and the straw that broke the camel’s back was the fact that a mafia boss who had concentrated the bulk of his power in the Sicilian branch of Confindustria is now sitting in jail. That individual goes by the name of Pietro Di Vincenzo and he was a major Sicilian construction mogul, as well as being the President of the Caltanissetta branch of Confindustria and President of the Sicilian Construction Federation. The rebellion against the Mafia began in Caltanissetta as a rebellion against Di Vincenzo himself, instigated by a group of young businessmen who wanted one of their members at the head of the local branch of Confindustria but were being hampered by the Mafia. Then, at the same time, there was also the petrochemical hub at Gela, which also happens to be one of ENI’s biggest plants and which had pretty much become an all-you-can-eat buffet for the mafia-run businesses. We mustn’t forget that Gela was one of the biggest Mafia hot-spots in the entire universe. It is no longer so after this rebellion because, in 2007, Engineer Rispoli, the son of a magistrate, came in as the new head of the Gela petrochemical hub whose turnover amounted to quite a few billion Euro. The latter decided to no longer give the business to the Mafia companies, to introduce certain controls on suppliers and to ensure that everything became legal. In the Province of Caltanissetta, of which Gela is a part, Eni controls some 40% of the votes. They introduced a legalisation policy which required all ENI supplier companies to comply with certain rules and so all the crooked and Cosa Nostra suppliers were weeded out, also thanks to the fact that Gela’s legendary Mayor at that time was Rosario Crocetta, who backed these changes because Di Vincenzo was not only a Mafia boss and a construction mogul, but as a construction entrepreneur he also controlled the Sicilian desalination plants. What was happening was that Gela did not have enough water notwithstanding the fact that the town had invested millions of Euro in desalination plants, money that had been paid over to Di Vincenzo and so, for this reason Crocetta decided to oppose Di Vincenzo.

The entrepreneurs take to the Web to save themselves
Montante, Lo Bello, Venturi and Catanzaro were living under constant escort at the time but, as expected, there was obviously a reaction so these entrepreneurs adopted a strategy to take to the Web. Libero Grassi was killed because he was isolated and therefore, by hitting him, the problem would be solved. There are so many of them that even if one of them were to be killed, the network would carry on. Then, in any event, there is the additional benefit of the repressive pressure being applied, which has become extremely heavy indeed. Currently Sicily has a heavy concentration of the best magistrates and the best law and order officers and now, whenever a particularly talented policeman is identified, he is invariably sent down to Sicily. On the one hand this is a good thing, however, on the other hand it could also be a bad thing since perhaps it implies that the less well-trained and less talented people are being left up in the North so, given that the Mafia groups are busy invading the North (for example Asti Province) they are finding it easier to get established there. Up North, people find it culturally more difficult to admit the pervasiveness of the Mafia economy, so much so, in fact, that the directive issued by Confindustria Mezzogiorno (literally the Southern Chapter of Confindustria), chaired by Cristiana Coppola, which makes it obligatory to expel or suspend anyone found to be colluding with the Mafia and was made compulsory for all the southern branches of Confindustria, was instead made voluntary for the northern branches of Confindustria and, to date, only the Assolombarda and Imperia branches have complied. The Veneto and Piedmont branches of Confindustria have no intention whatsoever of complying with a provision that would be relatively simple to comply with if the truth be told. The reason for this is totally cultural in that there is a total refusal to admit that this problem is indeed occurring. This refusal to admit to uncomfortable or negative realities due to factors such as strength of character or morals is the root of many ills. For example, the companies... the Mafia groups (above all the ‘Ndragheta) somehow manage to worm their way into struggling companies because they simply take them over, initially by lending them money. However, any businessman who accepts these loans actually refuses to face reality, namely that he should rather be taking the company books to Court and, instead, he chooses to resort to accepting this so-called help that will inevitably lead to his own demise. There are even some dramatic cases where businessmen have initially let these mafia guys in so that they could borrow money from them in order to keep their struggling businesses afloat, only to later find that their companies have been taken away from them and they were then obliged to act as Mafia agents, quiet little northern businessmen who have now let their companies go and have become mere bookkeepers, accountants and proxies for the Mafia. Mafia terminals, now that’s the right term.

The Mafia chooses local politics
The crisis is extremely beneficial to the criminals because, as it is, these Mafia businesses distort the markets and ensure that the market rewards the worst performers since the Mafia business has the competitive advantage represented by privileged relations with the politicians, the threat of physical force and easy access to money. In an economy that is in crisis, the worst performer with these advantages has a much better chance of weathering the crisis. Not only that, but as the number of companies in difficulty or with a lack of access to capital increases, so the Mafia groups have more companies to which they can offer easy credit. Companies that are apparently healthy but are in fact controller by the Mafia have more cash available than other companies that are perhaps being sold off by the banks that have shut off their lifelines, so the Mafia-controlled companies find it easier to weather the storms.
At this moment in time, besides National politics where they are also active because of their need to influence the major investment decisions and judicial policies, the Mafia groups are even more interested in gaining power at the local level. The Mafia groups’ core business depends strongly on local politics. The movement on the ground, which is where their main strength lies, really needs local politics. They need the construction contracts, and now there is a new line of business in which the Mafia groups are very strong, namely wind power, which requires permits from politicians and is really becoming big business. The minute any piece of farming land is equipped with wind power generators or solar panels, it’s value suddenly increases tremendously, hence the need for these political contacts. The risk is that this federalism that is being vaunted as the solution to all our problems may indeed become a reality as a kind of Mafia-style federalism.
I would like to mention the names of a number of these entrepreneurs who are members of this network that is so tightly meshed that it is impossible to break the bonds. In addition to Antonello Montante and Ivan Lo Bello, there are also Ivo Blandin in Messina, Davide Durante in Trapani, who has had the courage to make 30 suspensions in an area where Matteo Messina Denaro, Giuseppe Albanese in Palermo, Domenico Bonaccorsi in Catania, Rosario Marù, who is Montante’s deputy in Gela, and Giuseppe Catanzaro, who is President of Confindustria in Agrigento and state witness in one of the more dangerous legal inquests against a Mafia boss who was threatening him. As entrepreneur and President of the Agrigento businessmen, Catanzaro headed up the turnaround and engineered some 37 suspensions and expulsions. Pippo Callipo, the man behind the Calippo Tuna brand and special commissioner for Confindustria in Reggio Calabria, has managed to make more than 30 suspensions and expulsions and then there is Alberto Meomartini who, as head of the only large Confindustria branch in the North, insisted on complying with the protocol that includes the expulsion of anyone found to be colluding with the Mafia.

The opinion polls show the MoVimento 5 Stelle (M5S) {5 Star MoVement} to be experiencing strong growth, above 7%. A poisonous solution for the System that would be FINISHED with the entrance to Parliament in 2013 of 40 citizens not subject to the power games. If the M5S gets 7%, the fear makes it 90. For the parties and the media, this forecast has had the effect of an electric shock. The politicians and the lobbies, no longer able to ignore an unpredictable phenomenon, that is uncontrollable and absent from the P2’s programme, have moved to the defamation stage. To the search for the minimum detail, to phrases extrapolated from the blog and reinterpreted. To the hunt for the “grillini” {Grillo-followers) that feel that they are no longer “grillini”. The newspapers and the TV channels know their job as shit machines perfectly well. Feltri compared to Boffo was an amateur. The left wing newspapers excel in this particularly well. Progressivists know really well how to do their jobs as badmouthers using the backsides of the others and placing themselves on a pedestal..
The shit machine that has as its leading lights some of the most famous cartoonists, hacks from La Repubblica and from l’Unità but also to various extent from all the other newspapers, has acted in unison. The objective, that’s not even hidden, is to separate Grillo from public opinion and to get the “bravi ragazzi” {good lads} of the M5S to come back within the enclosure of the progressivists, a rationale of the PDminusL blessed by Napolitano, but also by Fini’s new “destra rosè” {rose-coloured Right wing} that has shared the thalamus (in relation to Ruby) with Berlusconi for twenty years.
In the space of a few weeks I have been labelled first an "evasore” {tax-dodger} and a "terrorist” for a statement about Equitalia that’s almost trite: "If Equitalia has become a target we need to understand the reasons as well as condemning the violence”. Then I’ve been attacked for the presence of a porn star in the M5S list for the forthcoming local elections in La Spezia (false news ... shame) by those who have nostalgia for bunga bunga, then marked as a racist for having written that automatic citizenship for foreigners born in Italy is today an object of distraction that is useful only for the parties in getting votes. Oh - and on that point, who wrote the "Bossi- Fini” law? Was it perhaps Fini himself? Really him? I really have nothing against citizenship for immigrants, but the methods and the time frames have to be thought out at a European level. Why is it that the parties in Brussels haven’t discussed this instead of the play-acting, the honorary citizenships, the election-oriented banquets? It’s better to have the usual PDminusL dramatisations with banquets and hugs. "E' il potere dei più buoni” {It’s the power of those who are the most goodie-goodie} come as Gaber sang “I’m thinking of the new types of poverty that have high visibility”. The latest “porcata” {filthy thing}: the Tav in Val di Susa, a shocking act of destruction both economically and environmentally but above all of democracy. For mentioning “geometric power” I find I’m one of the red brigades. You won‘t stop me and above all you won’t stop the citizens. Meanwhile continue writing bullshit. It’s the only thing a servant can do.

The ECB has made available 498 billion euro to European banks at 1% for three years. At the end of February another mega loan of 400 billion is coming up at the same conditions. The declared aim is noble: to get the economy to take off again with financing to the companies. The money is obviously ours, paid by the increase in inflation and the removal of facilities provided by the State to the real economy. I’d say in passing that the banking system is basically parasitical and without a productive fabric, it wouldn’t exist. At least the bankers could play at Monopoly with Monti and Draghi using pretend banknotes.
898 billion euro is a colossal sum. The small and medium enterprises should thus take kangaroo-sized leaps. Their financial woes are finally over. And go off to the banks for an overdraft, a temporary loan, a tiny bit of financing, to pay Equitalila, to be at least able to pay out the thirteenth month a month late. I seem to be able to see them, sole traders, company bosses, owners of small companies, joyful like an Italian on an outing, running to the clerks at Unicredit, IntesaSanPaolo, Monte dei Paschi di Siena, that together have withdrawn about 35 billion from the ECB in January, to see the usual genteel refusal with the usual unctuous regretful smile. The banks are obviously hanging on to (our) money. Did anyone have doubts about that? The banks will invest the money in State bonds, that will pay out 6 to 7% and to cover up the investments they made by mistake that have left them with no liquidity.

...

An operation of geometric power has taken place in Italy. The Police made 26 arrests across all the territory of our nation. The hour marked by our destiny (the arrests took place at about 5:00 am in the homes of the criminals) rang out in the skies of our Fatherland. 15 people have been notified of their obligation to stay home. Three community centres were searched. The restoration of the rule of law took place in Val Susa, as well as Asti, Biella, Cremona, Milano, Turin, Trento, Palermo, Rome, Padua, Genoa, Pistoia, Macerata, Bergamo, Parma and Modena. Even in France with an international arrest. The GDP is exultant. The red and white cooperatives are exultant. Bersani and Fassino are exultant. Monti and Passera are exultant together with the banks and the Confindustria. The 'ndrangheta is exultant. The Italians and the public debt a bit less. The TAV for the transport of goods will cost us 22 billion euro for the creation of a useless tunnel along a route that has seen a constant reduction in traffic for decades. I am a person of the Val di Susa! It’ll be difficult!

Interview with Alberto Perino, leader of the No Tav Movement

“What’s happened today is not a surprise because since before Christmas we’ve been expecting this “blitz”. This blitz has been carried out for two specific reasons: 1) to give Italy an incorrect message, but intentionally incorrect so as to make people believe that the No Tav Movement is no longer a Movement of the people, but a Movement that has been polluted by a load of antagonists from all over Italy. It’s not by chance that they have arrested two people from the valley and all the others from all over Italy. But above all, this message has been delivered here today to give a really strong signal to all those who are trying to raise their heads against the Monti government and against the “porcate di Monti” {Monti’s filthy stuff}, to say: “Dear ladies and gentlemen stay calm, tranquil. Allow yourselves to be sheared in absolute silence, because anyone who allows themselves to raise an objection will be thrown into prison.” This is the signal because given that the No Tav Movement was a visible movement in the Italian panorama and it was seen by many people as a beacon of resistance and of liberty, by attacking the No Tav Movement they want to send back to their lair all those that are trying to lift up their heads once more against this dreadful government!
In the valley they have arrested a town councillor held in really high esteem throughout the valley. He’s accused of having used a crutch to resist the police. At that time he had a leg out of use. The police were clearing the area against the shields of the police who had come to clear the “la Maddalena di Piemonte” on 27 June 2011 and the other one is a barber from Bussoleno who didn’t participate in the demonstration on 3 July and that was the same zone where there was Beppe Grillo and where they gassed us all, including Beppe!

...

In South America since the time of the Conquistador, a name completely inappropriate for those responsible for the greatest genocide in History, only the faces and the methods have changed. Instead of the butchers Pizarro and Cortés, their place has been taken by the multinationals that have the weapons of money and the expropriation blessed by the authorities of the location. A journalist together with an indigenous leader, tells us the story of the Ixil region of Guatemala, of the Mayan people and Enel Green Power’s neocolonialism. . 31% of this company belongs to the Italians. Enel is us!
PS: If Enel wants to respond to the witness of the Mayan people, its response will be published on the blog.

Interview with Concepción Santay Gómez, Mayor of Ixil di San Juan Cotzal

”Dear Beppe,
Unfortunately the militarisation of a territory, the local community not listened to, the absence of information and the presence of a political scene that forgets the general good and only knows how to carry out the dictates of the big companies is not something that relates only to the Val di Susa. In Guatemala, in the indigenous region of Ixil, the usual silent tragedy is taking place. Enel Green Power, the Enel company for the development and the management of renewables, has almost finished the Palo Viejo hydroelectric plant.
The water from the river Cotzal and three of its tributaries has been channelled and is already filling up the enormous basin that will allow the generating station to produce 370 million kilowatt hours. All OK up to this point. Green energy. 280,000 tons of CO2 saved and the “made in Italy” that makes us famous throughout the world. But for the Mayan community of that region it’s not going well at all. On paper, Enel is impregnable. It has obtained the permits. The project is good and in its documents it talks of the corporate social responsibility, but the modus operandi is still today of the colonial model.
Five hundred years ago a handful of Spaniards managed to cancel out a millennial civilisation using the strategy of division. Nothing has changed. Enel came into Cotzal without consulting the ancestral communities that have been living in those territories for 2,500 years and that historically feel they are the masters of the rivers and the mountains. It came in silently, strong in the authorisation obtained from the old mayor Josè Perez Chen and the Guatemala government. They probably hoped that those ignorant Mayans would never have got organised and anyway that they would be content to get a few chickens and a few sacks of corn. That didn’t happen and today, thanks to the work of the indigenous mayors, there’s a grouping of 28 of the 36 communities involved in Palo Viejo. They want to be heard. They want to participate in the decision-making processes and in the sharing out of the gains.
But the “l'energia che ti ascolta” {energy that listens to you} turns a deaf ear. About a year ago, the local population, worn down by the lack of response from Enel, decided to block the passage of machinery. In response to their non-violent action the Guatemalan State sent hundreds of soldiers in riot gear, three helicopters and a bunch of machine guns placed in the school of San Felipe Chenla, the most belligerent village. For the population, it was as though they had returned to the years of armed conflict when the State stained itself with the 114 massacres in the area of Ixil. The rural leaders have been threatened and accused of terrorism. For Enel it’s inconceivable to slow down the work but it’s not to make pacts with criminals.

...

Alessandro Di Battista

I get cold shivers down my back. I look at Rigor Montis, Frignero, Passera and the wax faces of the various ministers and I see bookkeepers, tax collectors, bankruptcy adjusters, STRANGERS. Who invited them? Who voted for them? They remind me of the 1980s advertising campaign by Johnson with the dark mannered, serious and precise cleaner, signora Luisa who turns up at your door with the motto "Comincia presto, finisce presto e di solito non pulisce il water” {starts early, finishes early and usually doesn’t clean the WC} because she used the active foam of “Magic Water”. The Magic Monti government is doing the cleaning in our home without bothering about who is living in this house. It’s not bothered about the social classes. Pensioners, truck drivers, taxi drivers, laid off workers, small-time entrepreneurs - it’s as though they didn’t exist, as though they had never lived in Italy. The ministers are not part of the social fabric. They have not been elected. They don’t have to answer to anyone. They don’t have discussions with their counterparts. They carry out their mandate. They seem like disdainful aliens on an inspection visit. Indifferent to everything except the banks. Guests who have become masters, who after three months start to smell tremendously and who never clean the WC. What worries me is the total definitive loss of democracy and the acceptance of this loss by the Italians as though it were inevitable, obvious, taken for granted. As though democracy were an optional. In the 1970s “esproprio proletario” {proletariat expropriation} was fashionable. One went into a supermarket and did the shopping without paying. That was how it was. Today we are witnessing banking expropriation: a removal of the rights of the citizens, from article 18 to the fund for laid off workers, carried out in broad day light with bureaucratic rigidity by grey persons, in jacket and tie, to save the banks and the euro. I look at them and I don’t see humanity but the fixed and undecipherable look of sharks. The country is going up in flames, but for them it is just a task to be finished off as soon as possible. Magic Monti the activefoam that keeps the WC smelling nice.

"If ever there were to be a revolution in Italy, it would start out from the South. While in the northern regions the crisis will undoubtedly lead to a drop in living standards and lots of poverty, the South will be condemned to a life of misery and emigration. The Pitchfork Movement has not simply come out of nowhere, but from the realisation that the State has failed and from a determination not to go the same way as Greece where children are being abandoned at school by parents who are simply unable to feed them any longer. Pino Aprile, a student of southern movements and author of a book entitled "Terroni" explains the origins of the Pitchfork Movement and the potential for the flames to spread throughout the rest of Italy." Beppe Grillo

Author and journalist Pino Aprile’s Passaparola.

Producing without any guarantees
Hello there to all the friends of Beppe Grillo’s Blog. My name is Pino Aprile and I am a journalist and author. I deal mainly with what is happening to Southern Italy and why the South currently seems to be harbouring a lot of resentment and indeed, let’s go as far as using certain words that may sound somewhat exaggerated, inexplicable anger. One example of this is the Pitchfork Movement. There is this instant revolt, involving tens of thousands of people down in Sicily, that has effectively blocked Sicily, is busy spreading to the other southern regions of the continent and we don’t know that it will stop there. Our immediate reaction has been to ask “But who are the politicians or the movements that are behind these people? Surely the Mafia is busy making its move, infiltrating, etc.”, which is a somewhat consolatory and reassuring way of explaining what is going on. I met a number of the Pitchfork Movement’s leaders about a year and a half ago and I was so taken aback at what they told me about their situation that I decided there and then to include it as a chapter in my last book, entitled “Giù al Sud” (Literally Down in the South) . But what exactly did they tell me? What is happening down in the South involves many different groups, types and classes of people, indeed all sorts of people, although the ones I was talking to at the time were produce and livestock farmers. What happened was that these farmers had modernised their businesses by investing more money and thereby keeping people employed and ensuring that produce and livestock would be produced, quite rightly so, in accordance with the Central Government and Regional Administrations’ health and tax regulations, but what happened then? They were producing with all those wonderful guarantees, but when their products got to market, with all those additional costs, they still had to compete and obviously they could not compete against similar products produced in areas where there are no such Regional and Government regulations.
For example, the “ciliegino” (Cherry tomatoes) that are produced down in Sicily subject to three-thousand different guarantees are marketed at the same price as the Cherry tomatoes grown in Egypt where a farmer’s daily labour cost is around two Euro. Quite clearly, under such circumstances our producers are dead in the water because their revenues don’t even cover their production costs. As a result, they have accumulated a huge amount of debt, particularly with the Receiver of Revenue, the Department of Welfare and Pensions and with the State. Instead of addressing the problem and resolving it in conjunction with the producers, the Government simply presented the producers with a bill to be paid. However, the producers did not have the wherewithal to pay these bills, so the Department of Welfare and Pensions simply sold the debt on to debt collection agencies for around 10% of the actual value of the outstanding debt and so the producers, in other words the debtors, said “If you had told us that you would accept a mere 10% of what we owed you, then perhaps we would also have found some way to pay you”. At that point the new debt holders simply declared the companies in default and so they were put up for auction and sold off to the highest bidder. They were telling me that over the past three years, some 50-thousand of the 200-thousand companies in Sicily landed up like this, and then we are surprised when their anger explodes in this way?

The education system reform that conveniently forgot about Quasimodo
Having gathered various views from all sorts of people around me, although I cannot draft an entire encyclopaedia I can at least try to tell you about some very different ones amongst them. There is an awful lot of dissatisfaction regarding our schools at the moment, but particularly regarding the schools down in the South. What never made the news headlines at the time was that the then inauspicious Minister of Public Education, Minister Gelmini cut around half a billion Euro from the budget destined for the upliftment of the poorer schools of the South and then proceeded to share the money out throughout the Country and then, as if that weren’t enough, Gelmini also proceeded to make a number of extremely disparaging statements about the students and the teachers in the South. According to her, all the teachers in the South were in dire need of supplementary training courses, each and every last one of them. That’s rich, coming from a woman who took an extra three years to complete her degree! But then, for example, the Ministry that she managed issued an edict, the subject guidelines for Italian literature courses for secondary schools, in other words, how the literature of the 1900’s is to be taught, which listed the names of the approved Italian authors, poets and writers. All good and well, however, not a single one of these approved authors, poets and writers were southerners, in other words, according to the Ministry of Public Education, throughout the 20th Century, a very prolific Century at that, there was not a single poet or writer from the South who was worthy of being read by Italian students, not even a Nobel Prize winner such as Quasimodo, now that’s total madness! Now I don’t mean to sound racist in any way but what I am about to say is purely meant as an example. Just imagine what would happen if the situation were reversed and a Minister of Public Education from Palermo, a Sicilian in other words, in providing guidelines for how the literature of the 1900’s should be taught, were to eliminate all the names of writers from the North from the list of approved writers, so no more Saba, no more Ungaretti and no more Pasolini, now that would equally be total madness! The best thing to do would be to call in the men with the white coats and ask them to “Please go and pick up the minister and take him/her somewhere where he/she can rest in peace!”.
Now, changing the topic completely, In Messina they told me that there are still two ongoing legal disputes regarding property confiscated from survivors of the 1908 earthquake, Italy really is a truly strange Country indeed! At that point I decided that I really wanted to find out what the hell happened after the Messina earthquake. The people of Messina know what happened and although they don’t speak about it very much, inside it’s eating away at them as they would say in Bolzano, but why? Well, in 1908 there was an earthquake. The town was destroyed, 2/3 of the town’s population was killed and what do you think was the first thing that the Italian Government did at the time? They tabled a proposal, which was subsequently voted on in Parliament, that the town of Messina be bombed, this is no joke! Never mind the fact that there were still survivors buried under the rubble at the time, they were seriously proposing to bomb the town of Messina right off the face of the earth, forever, and thus split the Palermo and Catania Provinces. Giolitti, who was hoping to stand for election in Messina, foiled their plans. Fortunately the proposal was subsequently defeated and 10-thousand “Bersaglieri” troops arrived in Messina with orders to shoot any looters and suspected looters, so they began to shoot the survivors.
Meanwhile, the very ones who were supposed to ensure law and order, in other words the soldiers, managed to get a post office put up right on the pier, reserved exclusively for them and prohibited to the survivors. So, while there was no way for any of the survivors to contact say an uncle in Florence to ask that blankets be sent down to them, only the soldiers could use that post office to send between 80 and 100 parcels a day to family members back home, containing jewellery and money stolen from the dead and the survivors. There are documents relating to this racism that are enough to make one’s hair stand on end! Added to this growing resentment the Lega’s insults depicting Neapolitans as “rats to be exterminated”, Romans as “pigs” and southerners in general as “Mediterranean scum” that are being resuscitated, so now all the ill-feeling is once again resurfacing and adding up. So, on the one hand there are the protests of the produce farmers and livestock farmers and on the other hand the fuse-lighting flame, all that tinder that has lit the fires, which are now spreading. That’s what’s happening down in the South. No one is listening to the people of the South. They have tried in every way they know how to make themselves heard and understood, but to no avail!

Italians, get to know each other and stand united
Whenever Italy’s cheese producers are facing a crisis, the Government invariably uses the money destined for the South to bail out the parmesan producers and when there is no money left to bail out the Sardinian Pecorino producers because the available money was spent where it wasn’t needed, they then proceed to have the Sardinian Pecorino producers truncheoned and the Sardinians heads beaten in, and you see this difference everywhere.
When more Cipe funds become available, they proceed to introduce a totally unnecessary new high-speed railway link between Genoa and Milan while at the same time cancelling all the direct South-North train connections. Here in Italy these days, in 2012, it takes longer to travel up from the South than it did back in 1900 and there are 1000 kilometres of railway line less than what there were around 70 years ago. Shall we sit down and discuss this calmly and rationally? Otherwise what happens? What happens is that I carry on hearing that by writing about these things I am stirring things up, but since when? A book is like a finger pointing at the moon, so watch the moon and not the finger. I was born in February and my father was not a carpenter. I am merely a journalist who is trying to point out to the least attentive part of the Country that we are making a whole horde of mistakes. If these mistakes keep on building up, the people won’t be able to take it anymore and something very bad is going to happen, something very bad indeed, and it is going to be bad for everyone. No one should think that they are going to be able to save themselves somehow, or simply because they have somehow managed to clamber out onto the rocks and are now kicking those who are still in the sea.
In the words of Don Milani, politics is all about "Sortirne insieme", in other words getting out of trouble together, otherwise no one gets out of it. The time has come for Italy ….. after having promised the South 20 million rifles, after having promised the South that the rats would be exterminated and all that other garbage, thereby allowing the government ministers to say these things and still remain in their posts, after having allowed the then Minister of Finance to take the funds destined for underutilised areas and spend them elsewhere. The l’Aquila earthquake cost the Country 4.5 billion and that 4.5 billion was taken entirely from the South. To be precise, 85% of those funds should, by law, have been used in the South and the remaining 15% in the North. Well, those funds used for the l’Aquila earthquake were taken away from the poorest 1/3 of Italy while only 15% was taken from the wealthiest 2/3 of Italy. This notwithstanding, Borgezio had the gall to insult the people of l’Aquila as if they were the football at the tip of the boot of Italy, as if he had personally contributed even a single Euro.
The title of this editorial is “passate parola” or spread the word and I think that there is no better way than word of mouth to inform people every time we notice some sort of discrimination, irrespective of whom is being discriminated against because, in any event, someone who discriminates always starts out by discriminating against someone in particular and then, bit by bit, he/she invariably moves on to others and in this way they end up making the Country ungovernable and set one Italian against another. If the truth be told, the Italians are far more united than what it may seem, although they know little or nothing about other Italians. Just ask a Sicilian what he knows about the Venetians. Venice was the longest lived republic in the history of man, yet all we find in the school history books are about ten lines between Marco Polo and the white flag flapping on the bridge. Equally, how much do the Venetians know about the Sicilians?

For the creditors, the value of a public bond is considered to be intangible. If the State that has contracted the debt doesn’t pay, well - let it go to hell. It ends up in default. In principle, the value of a BOT is no different from that of any share of a company quoted on the Stock Exchange. Anyone who buys shares in Fiat or ENI knows that it can go up or down. He doesn’t ask for the intervention of the IMF or the ECB. It’s part of the game. The economy of a State is based on many variables, a GDP that can get bigger or smaller, a budget deficit or surplus, and unpredictable factors, like natural disasters or wars that can bring it to its knees. Anyone who buys the shares accepts the risks. The same should apply for those that buy BOT. If Formigoni, for example, has bought millions of euro’s worth of Greek bonds that today are worth 60% less, the responsibility is his, not the Greeks. (But why is the Region of Lombardy investing in shares? Does the Court of Accounts know how to respond?)
Anyone who buys public debt takes on the risk of its devaluation. With this rule, the risk would fall mainly on the buyer, and in particular on the banks that have hundreds of billions of euros of debts, to whom one could cynically say “No one forced you” or metaphorically “it’s your own f..king business!". This approach would reduce the use of debts to keep the economies of sick States on their feet. The public bond auctions would be practically semi-deserted. And it would be a benefit for the planet that is raving about “growth” without limits supported by endless debt. In 2012, 11,000 billion in public bonds will fall due in the world. Who will buy them?
A wife, tired of seeing her husband turning over and over in his bed for a debt owed to the neighbour, opens the window and shouts “Giovanni, my husband doesn’t have the money and he’ll never have it!” And then to her spouse: “OK, now the problem is his!” In the French novel "“La Guerre des boutons" {War of the Buttons}, two gangs of lads steal buttons from each other as trophies of war. The one with the most buttons is the winner. The final battle is won by the lads who decide to fight naked. A debt can be cancelled or restructured. The responsibility also lies with the buyer. They will never give up (but is it in their interests?). Neither will we. See you in parliament unless they do an electoral law that prevents that.

The companies are dying. The Nation’s heart is coming to a standstill. The one that pumps blood and income to the country. The State owes the companies 70 billion euro. Money that means life or death to thousands of companies and families thrown into the street. The gravediggers Monti&Passera instead of cardiac massage, have prepared the lethal injection for them: the BOT treasury bonds. They will pay off the state’s debt using the public debt. It’s like paying the restaurant bill with “figurine Panini” (with all due respect to the glorious album), to exchange “a number two” for “poo”. In turn, the companies will be able to pay their employees with a small quantity of BOT and they will then be able to pay the rent, the petrol station, the gas and electricity bills with a few public bonds. They are taking us for a ride in such a big way that it seems to be a story taken from Mickey Mouse, but not for the journalists aligned with the “with-no-ifs-and-buts” System. Listen to this from today’s La Repubblica: “Among the very latest new ideas is even the possibility that the substantial public debt that the Public Authorities have with the companies - about 70 billion euro - is paid out in State shares - to give a breath of air to the companies strangled by the ‘credit crunch’.” I propose that as from now, the financing to the newspapers is paid in BOT, in that way they will stop writing bullshit. And not just that. Even the financing to the parties to be paid in BOT and also the salary of the parliamentarians, of the regional councillors and the Ministers, right up to Napolitano himself. Why stop here? All the annuities of the senators and deputies, starting with those of Amato and Veltroni passing by those for Scalfari, are to be honoured in BOT and every payment request from Equitalia is in the future to be paid out in BOT. Do I have a debt with you? I’ll give you another debt! Anyone who is in liquidity asphyxia and in exchange receives credit with the State can only sell, but the BOT are worth less than their nominal value, even 20-25%. Debt has substituted cash. We are transforming ourselves into a country of beggars. I’ll pay the electrician with the debt that I have with the plumber. They will never give up (but is it in their interests?). Neither will we.

In a democracy the results of a referendum have to be respected. The will of the people is sovereign. If that’s not the case, then there’s no democracy. Let the government make that declaration openly, then the citizens will know how to sort themselves out. The Italians have said NO to nuclear (for the SECOND time) and NO to the privatisation of water. If Monti reckons he can ignore the will of the voters it’s best that he goes straight back to “la Bocconi” university. If the French, Veolia and Suez, want our water by blackmailing us with the 500 billion Italian State bonds purchased by the French, the only possible response is that of Cambronne: “MERDE!”.

Father Alex Zanotelli defends the referendum from the government attacks:
”First of all I marvelled, I was amazed by the fact that a whole series of Under-secretaries and Ministers have happily been talking about privatising water, that is going against the referendum. In particular, I was struck by the statement of Polillo, the Under-secretary of the Economy who said that the referendum was a “mezzo imbroglio” {kind of mix-up}. But is it possible for 27 million people to be taken for a ride like this by an Under-secretary that should simply bow to the verdict of the Italian people? Thus I am really worried and then when I saw that the Government gave these declarations by Ministers etc., I can cite Clini, like the declarations of Catricalà, like so many other declarations, I’ve used the one by Polillo that is the most emblematic. But what has had the biggest impression on me is to see that a few days ago a decree started to circulate. It’s a decree that is likely to be approved, the decree that is the second phase of the Monti government’s "Cresci Italia" {Grow Italy} programme in which at article 20 there’s practically the prohibition on special companies from managing services like water and other things, which is the contrary of everything the referendum said. So how can a government like Monti’s go against the popular will of 27 million people? This truly injures me as a citizen and it gets me even more angry because then I understand that the Monti Government is going in accordance with the logic of the market and of the banks. I understand that the banks and the world of finance are very interested in water because in 30 years we will no longer have oil. The central problem will no longer be oil but water. With the overheating of the planet we will have ever fewer water sources, thus it will become the great blue gold. This is why they want to get their hands on water and thus I can understand the enormous pressure on the Monti government coming from Europe, from the water multinationals Veolia and Suez and everyone in the world of finance to tear up the referendum. Europe is afraid of contagion from the referendum on water. This is why a reaction is needed. I’m happy that, I already saw today that the government is starting to waiver on this issue and I truly hope that the parties vote against this article 20 and save the referendum. It’s the least that we can ask!”

In recent years Casale Monferrato has been struck down by a plague that compares so well with the Medioeval ones, from smallpox to the bubonic plague.
Up till now, 1,700 people have died because of Eternit. Each year there are an additional 50 to 60 funerals. The death factory has been closed down, but agricultural areas and zones within the town have still to be made safe. Obviously those in charge of the factory are at large. They knew what was happening and they would like to buy the silence of the administration with two euro. Perhaps they will succeed. It’s the usual disgusting stuff. The usual Italy. But when will we manage to say enough, enough, ENOUGH?

What people from Casale Monferrato are saying
1700 deaths from asbestos
Good day. We are in Casale Monferrato. I am Luca Dainese and I’m part of the MoVimento Cinque Stelle {Five Star MoVement}. We are in Via Oggero. Here there were some Eternit warehouses. Now they have been partially demolished and the demolition of these warehouses is the symbol of the battle against asbestos. As has been established by the Prosecuting Magistrate Guariniello, 1700 people have died from this blight and so many others will die in the years to come. ...

Citizens and institutions have to be united
My name is Bruno Pesce. I am the coordinator of the association of the families of the victims of asbestos, coordinator of the asbestos group. Right now in this phase we are engaged with the Turin trial against two defendants, the last two owners of the multinational company Eternit...

After 30 years the extermination continues
My name is Massimiliano Francia and I work for il Giornale di Casale Monferrato {local newspaper} and I have been following the trial from the preliminary phases up until the technical conclusion in that the verdict has not yet been issued and the date established is 13 February. The trial has as defendants the Swiss man Stephan Schmidheiny and the Belgian Jean Louis De Cartier de Marchienne who is of the Belgian nobility. They are accused of ...

18 million does not buy dignity
Oddone Mario, former trader, because by now a pensioner, socialist, former mayor of Casale in the 1980s and currently a politician, not a professional one, but a passionate one. We have intervened as a group. I represent a civic list that is clearly of socialist extraction, “Uniti per Casale” that has had four terms of office in the town council, ...
The Serial Killer
My name is Giuliana Busto, the sister of Piercarlo, a young man who died of pleural mesothelioma at the age of 33. He had never set foot in the factory. No one in our family had ever had anything to do with the factory. When he died we immediately started to get active to ensure that this death was not useless.

...

Costa Concordia is the metaphor for Italy. A whale come to a standstill on the rocks. First the captain caused the problem, then he denied it and then he fled. Like “Piè Veloce Berlusconi” {fast-footed Berlusconi}. The captain insisted on giving instructions from the shore, while his feet were dry, while his lieutenants stayed on board (conversation). Exactly like the parties with the Monti government. The ship has an Italian name, but the owner is American ... like our country. The American owner is called Carnival, just like the management of our public finances. The crew was made up of those from outside Europe, crikey, just like those that are working in Italy. Carnival’s share price collapsed on the Stock Exchange, just like our public bonds To save the savable, the crew mutinied while the ship was keeled over on her side. Well, this has not yet happened here on solid ground. On the Concordia, the crew was able to rebel only because of the absence of security forces to beat them up on the orders of the captain, as in Val di Susa. The name Concordia refers to the unity between the nations of Europe. In fact, its thirteen decks have the names of European states, including Greece, Italy, Great Britain, Portugal, France, Germany, a reassurance while the euro is deflating and the Germans would rather cut off an arm rather than finance Italy and Greece. The alarm was raised late, once the ship had keeled over. Exactly the same as the Italian economic catastrophe, to Tremorti and the “crisis that has happened in the past” Help arrived from private vessels. There weren’t enough lifeboats. The life-jackets were fought over by the passengers and the decks in a state of chaos. It seems like an ordinary Italian day. The disaster didn’t happen because of natural causes but from inattention. A rule for Italy. Concordia went down because it came close to the island to "fare un omaggio” {send a greeting} with its horn blasting out to friends and authorities on Giglio unknown to them. Just like for Scajola and Malinconico! At its launch, the champagne bottle thrown against its side, bounced off. The disaster happened on Friday 13th. If we were superstitious we would be running away.

Gaber used to say that he never felt like an Italian ("I don’t feel like an Italian, but fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately I am one ") however, thinking about it, he could have been far worse off. Ten years have passed and I, unlike Gaber, increasingly feel more Italian and also that things could not have been any worse." Beppe Grillo

Alessandro Bergonzoni's
passaparola

The first revolution is a revelation
Hello to all the friends of Beppe Grillo’s blog. I am pleased and honoured to be amongst you.
You may be an actor, an author or an artist, but when you have finished your shows, your books, your exhibitions and your performances, what’s next? We have to start in the schools, although it is already way too late to start in the schools, it’s too late to start in the secondary schools and it’s far too late to start in the universities. We have to go to the primary schools, but it is already too late to start in the primary schools so we must start in the crèches, although even in the crèches it is already too late, so we have to start at conception, saying: listen, in order to be able to tell a “tale”, a story rather than a dogma because no dogma is preferable. At this historical or anti-historical moment, as the case may be, it is no longer possible to be happy merely doing one’s job and we now have to start doing other people’s jobs. We have to go to places where we are not wanted and not expected although I haven’t invented anything and there are others here who did it all before me and did it far better than me. We have to start going into the prisons and the hospitals, not only into the streets, and I must add that this is what interests me more than anything else. Since it’s not sufficient to do one’s own job, we have to start taking to the inner streets. I know that perhaps this audience at least partly agrees with what I’m saying, but the first revolution is indeed a revelation, namely to see how much I’m changing and then I take to the streets and start a revolution. However, first you have to figure out how responsible you are for an inner change, which I will call the gross internal change or gross internal product. We have very short landing strips and concepts such as economics, death, life, illness and racism are jumbo-concepts since Jumbos are extremely large aircraft that contain large numbers of passengers-ideas. In order to land, these concepts require huge landing strips. In order to land, a Jumbo needs numerous kilometres, but we have short landing strips, indeed extremely short landing strips for vertical landings only. We have to begin with an expansion that will then enable us to go out and revolutionise, and this devolution has already begun. You know more about this than I do since you are here listening and watching this blog. The artists narrate, they don’t compel nor educate, even though the idea of being able to tell a story in the background should be even stronger and more energetic. I would very much like to see the beginnings of a change, that every day and every minute of every day we start saying ….. because we are in fact voting every second and every minute of every day, when we look at a handicapped person, when we use water, when we waste stuff, when we curse something or someone, when we say “Poor bugger” to someone who has a tumour, we are voting, we are in the polling booth, so it is a continuous referendum all day long. I believe that inside ourselves, whether it be artistically, anthropologically or philosophically, we should not be afraid of these words.

Living deceased personalities
Inside of me I have my own internal Parliament, an internal government that has to create a culture every day and not leave this entirely to those who represent me, in other words some or other politician. Politics come later and it is very important indeed. Society also comes later, as does community spirit, and absurdly even ethics come later. First comes an internal revolution, a major change. Inside of you you have to have a mass of organs that vote, that choose an executive, the ones that then lead to growth, a kind of expansion, and that is what growth is all about, namely, no longer accepting being small, being short or being limited, no longer being happy with merely imitating, or parodying. I’m even telling the artist: "You must start changing your codes, changing your terminology and your rules, but internally. You have to start writing differently, you have to start looking elsewhere without forgetting "… This does not mean fleeing, not by any means, indeed it is like exploring a cave because it comes from within. The mafia problem is indeed a political problem, by all means, but as I have said before and now repeat without presumption, the mafia problem is also a problem of soul. When I talk of soul, I don’t mean religion, I mean an internal condition that, unless it changes, you cannot expect anything. So, go to the crèches and tell them how we can have a new kind of politician 30 years from now, a new kind of magistrate 30 years from now, a new kind of patient 30 years from now, a new kind of doctor 30 years from now or a new kind of teacher 30 years from now, that’s where you have to start working right now!
It is a form of mental prevention, a concept of hard work and great investment. The future generations get very little so that’s where you have to get to work to instil a different outlook. We’re lacking poets. Let me make a rhetorical statement. What I’m talking about is something poetic. In addition to a sense of justice and honesty, a managing director must also have a sense of poetry. If you are a well-rounded man, you will know instinctively what is right, what is wrong and what is illegal, and this knowledge comes from an internal mechanism that is not only the result of culture and anthropology, but also of additional growth. It is no longer possible to go on certain programmes and talk about ethics. We have realised this since they began stealing our savings, since they began robbing us and stealing our neurons. Intelligence and conscience is something else that has been stolen. This is another partly internal concept and it is from here that everything begins. Then, when we have changed, then we can take to the streets. I think it was Gandhi, whom I would like to greet right now because I believe he too is listening to us now, who said that there are live people who are already dead and dead people who are still alive.
It was important to mention these things in the wrong places, but what are these wrong places? All of them, after all, where can you do so? Where can you do so within the family? Where can you do so within the schools? In the hospitals. You shouldn’t only talk about illness when it affects you, you shouldn’t only talk about the abuse of women if you yourself are a woman or if you have a daughter and you shouldn’t only talk about road safety or Saturday night vehicle accident deaths if you have young children, although you must in any event. I’m tired of people only talking about cases of medical malpractice because they have experienced it first-hand. I should personally be doing something to address the problem. That’s what internalisation is all about. I should be identifying with the problem, participating and getting into it. These are not just words because words that are not backed by actions are merely like the points o fan iceberg so there must be revelation and then revolution, not acceptance!

Act internally
We want to forget the slogans. Young people need to dream more. Young people don’t dream, they merely desire things, want things, it foolish ambition. What I’m talking about are needs and necessities laced with some lack of reality. It may seem to be a lack of reality but in fact it is not, it is merely a case of knowing and expecting more of reality. I can no longer appear on a programme with the same old routines and use the same old words, the same old ways of interpreting things and thus addressing the issues satirically or parodistically, I simply have to change. We have to recreate re-creation, we have to create, invent something new and that’s what I expert of a student or a child in the crèche who starts examining a body, perhaps even a body without arms, who starts looking at the skin, the colours, the habits and the person’s way of being, starting with a judgement of that individual, and who begins to realise that there is not only one type of religion, one type of medicine, one type of body, one type of woman, but that he/she needs to expand their view. These are huge landing strips and huge concepts and that’s why I say that, given the prison scandals and the healthcare scandals, I cannot continue to think only about what is happening to me and when it is happening. I have already been affected by each and every one of the healthcare scandals and each and every one of the prison scandals even though I may not have personally borne the brunt of those scandals. By now we have realised that if a tree falls in the Amazon, we will soon feel the effects here. Metaphorically speaking, someone might say “But are there really trees that are that tall?" That has nothing to do with it. It’s a concept that states that energy is transferred and even though you may be sitting far away, you are nevertheless very close to whatever is going on so you mustn’t only talk about the news because the germ of Kronac is the real killer, so let me say it again and again, ad nauseum, to the point that I’m sick of saying it. The fact is that we constantly talk about communication, but the real issue is knowledge, not the manner in which we communicate. I don’t care how we speak in public or whether we use more or fewer conjunctives, what I want to see is some sort of meaning in what is being said, some sort of idea, some sort of depth, some meat on the bone, a kind of anti-vegetarian thought process!
At this point this is not a hope because I have no hope whatsoever. They say that hope is the last to die, but I couldn’t be bothered about who or what is the last to die. What I want to know is who will be the first to be re-born. Every day I see the last one to die. The television set must remain off. You can watch it but don’t ever turn it on! I’ve said it millions of times. At this point we have to follow a different path. The problem lies in the small things, the things that seem innocuous and simple, but the little things are not innocuous, they are very serious indeed, and also criminal, so one must first act internally. This is not a waste of time. Reveal, tell and talk about it and thanks for your landing strip, which from here looks plenty long enough anyway!

Sisyphus pushed a boulder up a steep hill. At the top of the hill it rolled back down and Sisyphus continued toiling into eternity. Many Italians feel like Sisyphus. They are the most obstinate ones, those that continue to use their heads to think. Every day, they push their own boulder, big or small. They live their lives divided between anger (that internal mixture that every day insists on change and justice) and the frustration to find themselves back at the start with Santanchè in the early evening. They don't understand and they don't adjust. The response “It's always been like that!” makes their blood boil and ruins long-standing friendships. And then I think of Pertini, of the long years of prison during triumphant fascism. I think of his refusal to ask for pardon. Who would then have bet on the collapse of the faint-hearted Savoy monarchy and of fascism? Who would have believed that a prisoner would become the President of the Republic?

Sisyphus is a modern hero. He represents all those that fight for “that last inch” mentioned by Al Pacino in the film “Any Given Sunday” in his speech to the team:
”I don't know what to say really. Three minutes 'til the biggest battle of our professional lives. It all comes down to today. Now either we heal as a team, or we're gonna crumble. Inch by inch, play by play, till we're finished. We're in hell right now, gentlemen. Believe me. And we can stay here, get the shit kicked out of us, or we can fight our way back into the light. We can climb out of hell. One inch at a time. Now I can't do it for you. I'm too old. I look around, I see these young faces, and I think... I mean I've made every wrong choice a middle-aged man can make. I, uh...I pissed away all my money, believe it or not. I chased off anyone who's ever loved me, and lately, I can't even stand the face I see in the mirror. You know when you get old in life, things get taken from you. That's part of life. But you only learn that when you start losing stuff. You find out life's this game of inches. And so is football. Because in either game, life or football, the margin for error is so small. I mean... one half a step too late or too early and you don't quite make it. One half second too slow too fast, you don't quite catch it. The inches we need are everywhere around us. They are in every break of the game, every minute, every second. On this team, we fight for that inch. On this team, we tear ourselves and everyone else around us to pieces for that inch. We claw with our fingernails for that inch. Because we know when we add up all those inches, that's gonna make the fucking difference between winning and losing! Between living and dying! I'll tell you this - in any fight, it's the guy who's willing to die who's gonna win that inch. And I know if I'm going to have any life anymore, it's because I'm still willing to fight and die for that inch. Because that's what living is! The 6 inches in front of your face... Now I can't make you do it. You've got to look at the guy next to you, look into his eyes. Now I think you're gonna see a guy who will go that inch with you. You're gonna see a guy who will sacrifice himself for this team, because he knows when it comes down to it, you're gonna do the same for him. That's a team, gentlemen. And either we heal, now, as a team, or we will die, as individuals. That's football, guys. That's all it is. Now, what are you going to do?” They will never give up (but is it in their interests?). Neither will we. See you in Parliament.

Bomb, or no bomb, we'll get to Tehran. The Iranian nuclear scientist Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan has been killed by a bomb connected to his car. He’s not the first. The hunting season for Iranian nuclear scientists started in 2007 when another two scientists were hit. One died and the other was seriously injured. Who will it have been? A mullah or western secret services? Or perhaps they bomb themselves? The silence of the West is more than embarassing. It’s a demonstration of guilt.
The winds of war arriving from the Persian Gulf are getting ever stronger. What’s happening is the economic strangling of Iran by means of the embargo. The United States have brought in sanctions for the financial institutions that trade in Iranian oil. A measure that should reduce exports by 250,000 barrels a day, particularly to East Asian countries. In January, Brussels will approve the EU’s embargo with the cutting of imports by half a million barrels a day. From February, Iran will no longer be able to export about 750,000 barrels of crude oil to the USA and its allies (or servants). The others remain. Turkey imports 51% of its needs from Tehran and is not even considering the embargo. China is the prime importer with 22% of Iranian oil, equal to 540,000 barrels a day.
China can happily absorb the unsold amount and intertwine its economic development to Iran’s destiny. All the signs indicate that it will do that. In that case the embargo will be shown to be an unloaded gun. It’ll be necessary to prevent the transit of Chinese oil tankers in the Gulf of Hormuz. Strangle China after Iran. Italy cannot follow the United States and NATO in this mad race towards war. The Italian economy depends on Iranian oil. After China we are the second largest importer with 13% and ENI has credits with Iran of two billion dollars. We need to start thinking about ourselves and our future. Washington is far away, further away than the moon, but it’s Obama who’s in charge at Palazzo Chigi.

The popular laws are not being discussed. The results of the referendums are ignored (like the ones for nuclear and public financing of parties). Parliamentarians are “appointed” by the party secretaries. The relationship between the citizen and the State has gone back to that of feudal times. Not to the laws, but to the petitions, the caprice of the Master, of a Boss(ol)i or of an Azzurro Caltagirone. They are them and we are fuck all in this papier-mâché democracy. It could even happen for the referendum about water after hearing Catricalà's words on liberalisation: “We are thinking of doing modifications that don’t go against the referendum results but we don’t want it to be an expedient.” The final frontier of antidemocracy is to deny the right to a referendum for economic reasons as has happened in Piedmont for the one on hunting. They will never give up (but is it in their interests?). Neither will we. See you in Parliament!

“Hunting is becomng the symbol of the distorted way that Italy and the political scene are handling democracy. 1987 saw the collection of more than 60 thousand signatures for the referendum on hunting in Piedmont to limit and regulate hunting activities. The questions asked citizens whether they were in favour of regulating hunting activities:
a) protection for 25 wild species that today can be hunted (17 species of birds and 8 species of mammals).
b) prohibition of hunting on land covered by snow.
c) abolition of the dispensations on the limits for each game-bag for the private game hunting companies
d) prohibition of hunting on a Sunday.
In 1988 instead of calling a referendum, the Centre-left council and majority party eliminated the law on which the referendum was about to overturn certain points. This started off a sequence of litigation lasting 24 years and involving 9 judicial decisions at different levels. In the end, with the verdict number 1896 -29-12-2010 given by Turin’s Appeal Court, the right to a referendum has been granted. But the Lega-led Council seems to have a strong connection with the hunting lobbies and is doing everything it can to liberalise hunting in the direction that is in opposition to the referendum. Thus, while we are in the Commission to analyse 6 draft laws presented by the councillors, with a sleight of hand that is legislativamente and politically “subversive” in relation to the Regulations and the prerogatives of the Council, cabinet member Saccathetto presented an amendment that repeats what happened in 1988: totally repeal l.r. 70 of 1996, the framework law relating to hunting, thus causing the collapse of all the laws proposed by the councillors, in the majority or in the minority, including the very referendum that has been awaited for so long and that in accordance with the Court’s verdict, should be taking place in the spring.
Vignale (PDL), the President of the Commission and cabinet member Sacchetto (Lega), with Cota’s input, have stated that the cost of a referendum (about 20 million euro) is too high and as it is operating a temporary budget, the Region would not have the resources. We replied that thus in 2015 we would not be able to have the regional elections given that they have a cost. Can the exercise of democracy be limited by the presumed lack of money (that is however available for advertising campaigns about the TAV)? According to us, no. For the Centre- Left and the Centre-Right, yes.” Davide Bono and Fabrizio Biolè - regional councillors MoVimento 5 Stelle Piemonte {5 Star MoVement Piedmont}

P.S. The opinion poll will close at 2:00 pm on 13 January 2012. Look at the results.

The undersecretary for publishing in the office of the President of the Council, professor Carlo Malinconico was a guest in a super deluxe hotel. Unknown to the person involved, the bill was paid by Francesco Piscicelli, the entrepreneur involved in the investigation into the contracts assigned after the earthquake in Abruzzo and who laughed after the catastrophe. Malinconico, formerly the president of the FIEG and general secretary of the office of the President of the Council with Romano Prodi, said that he has “never given favours to the people involved” and that he got to know “only now that Piscicelli had paid of his own initiative and for reasons unknown to me, some of my stays in the hotel complex”. The hotel "Pellicano" in Porto Ercole is one of the most beautiful in the area of Argentario. It’s not just beautiful, it’s fantastic! You arrive, you stay there and then the bill is paid by someone else, usually Piscicelli. Unwittingly, obviously. Try it out. The hotelier Roberto Sciò and the construction man Piscicelli, without telling Malinconico, had organised for him to stay, trusting that he would forget to pay. And that actually happened. In a telephone conversation, Sciò said to Piscicelli “You’ve really adopted the professor ...”
Malinconico resigned, to the applause for his “institutional sensibility” and declarations about the integrity of the person.
In nomen omen {the clue is in the name}: “Malinconia {melancholy} is a sort of fundamental sadness, at times unwitting, that leads a person to live passively, without taking initiatives, adapting to external happenings while convinced that they don’t relate to him.”
Malinconico is the same guy that called for a “Mini tax for those that surf, as a transtional measure to give a breath of oxygen to the publishing sector. It’ll cost as much as a cup of coffee a month.” A genius! Both him and the one that chose him.

“The potato is anarchical and the bean is a bomber. The carrot has always been a non-conventional weapon. The tomato and the artichoke are insurrectionists. The pepper is a communist. The kitchen garden is the final slap in the face of Power. The kitchen garden is subversive!” Beppe Grillo

“When we encourage people to cultivate some of their food we are encouraging them to take power into their own hands. Power over their diet, power over their health and power over their wallet. I think that this is truly subversive because we are saying to take that power away from someone else, from other social beings that currently have power over food and health.” Roger Doiron

Presentation by Roger Doiron, the founder of "Kitchen Gardeners International" a non-profit network made up of 20,000 people in 100 countries.

Cultivate a subversive kitchen garden

...

"Where is Italy headed? This question does not only regard the economic situation but the very nature of Italy as a Country. The winds blowing through Europe are increasingly redolent of racism and the extreme right wing, from Hungary through to the movements of eastern and northern Europe. Amongst the possible outcomes, we cannot exclude the possibility of a powerful swing towards right wing nationalism that could result in a dictatorship and lead to a definite downfall of our Country. David Bidussa places a mirror before us in which we see ourselves much as France was back in the 30s. Perhaps history never repeats itself exactly, however it often appears to be disturbingly similar." Beppe Grillo

Historian and author David Bidussa’s passaparola,

Racism, a way of life
First of all I would like to say hello to all the friends of Beppe Grillo’s blog. My name is David Bidussa and I am a student of the History of ideas, which may seem to be a rather strange discipline. In the old days it would have been called the History of political doctrines, but now it is known as the social history of ideas. Certain people were quick to shout racism when just last December certain things happened that were certainly bloody, violent, undoubtedly discriminatory and that displayed some decidedly racist undertones. Many people spoke of racism while others took offence at the use of this term. Certain other people claimed that our legislation makes no provision for any form of ethnic, religious or cultural division and that it is therefore improper to speak of racism since during the last century racism was merely an episode or a passing phenomenon in the history of Europe and even in the history of this somewhat tainted Country of ours.
There are two ways of remembering things: an event sticks in my mind, I memorise it and should the same thing with the very same features occur again, it means that it is the same thing. Otherwise, I pick up some pieces, I think about them and reflect on them because not all phenomena are precisely the same. I tend to go for the latter option, the one that picks up a number of pieces and attempts to put them together somehow so as to make some sense of them. However, in order to put the pieces together, we have to have some sort of memory and not allow ourselves to be afraid that, if we use certain words, then those words immediately relate to certain images that are fixed in our minds. The word “racism” should not necessarily immediately evoke memories of extermination camps, voyages and forced transportation of people. It should not necessarily imply images of people being uprooted from certain places. Racism can mean many things. It was an ideology and in some cases a way of life, long before it became a political theory. I will try to list some factors that created a cultural condition of racist conviction, rather than a racist ideology in a certain European Country many years ago. A country that had high levels of unemployment, where there was a strong feeling that the country’s economic crisis had caused it to become second-rate, that there was no future for the younger generations and that the middle class was being totally penalised as regards its social and political relevance and, above all, where it was felt that the legislation penalised the middle class with regard to economic and political decision making. A Country in which regional independence was extremely strong, movements were strictly controller, there was little internal op position and the concept of community was based on blood bonds. A Country in which, at that time of economic crisis, many members of the extreme left crossed the floor to the extreme right and the thoughts of many members of the extreme right turned to violence.
A Country in which the feeling was that there was no other way but to forcibly take back the Country that seemed to be at the service of immigrants who were deemed to be foreigners and invaders and where the locals had become second-class citizens. Now let’s try to work out what country that was. It wasn’t Nazi Germany, nor was it fascist Italy. It was a Country with a free Parliament, political parties that battled each other in Parliament, where there was the right to strike and freedom of the press: this was France back in the 1930s. A Country that had its own literature, theatre and a great history of art, literature and culture. Racism does not necessarily occur because it is legislated or because there is a particular ideology. Racism is born when there is extreme hardship that is simply ignored, where politics doesn’t intervene and just lets things run their course, where public anger is somehow exploited and, above all, when a downward spiral begins and no one bothers to stop and reflect and everything seems to just happen automatically. Well, in some ways I believe that this is a snapshot of the situation in our Country today. The question is “How did it end in France in the 30s?”. It ended with a military collapse preceded by a cultural and social collapse. A belief that there was no future, and this is an issue that is very close to home here in Italy today. We are not obliged to follow the same route as that taken 70 years ago, but we should be aware that racist is not merely a product of ideology. It is not a conviction that comes about by reading books or the widespread distribution of newspapers. It is a feeling of having been excluded from History and knowing that we were part of that History once upon a time, that we were somebody and that we once had a role to play in that History!

A Country seeking protection
When we read in the newspapers that, suddenly, certain people are coming out of their houses and getting the feeling that there is no room for them either in the present or the future, and a feeling that they have to take back something they have lost, then we have to believe that we are not living in a Country that has entirely lost its senses but rather one that is at risk, indeed seriously at risk, one that can and will pick itself up again if it can somehow experience not only an economic recovery but also a recovery of pride rather than a mere material recovery. The France of the 1930s was living with its eyes looking back. There was a feeling that its past was glorious, that its present was uncertain and its future was terrible and, above all, there was a belief that there would be no tomorrow! Today we stand a chance if we are able to reflect on the way we are and avoid dismissing it as some sort of deviance, of madness, of wickedness, lack of control or uncontrolled emotions. Each and every one of us sometimes does something rash, often a generous act, not because we expect to get something in return, but simply because it is part of our human nature. We can either obviously be totally intolerant of someone’s presence or we can be welcoming, of course … it depends on many factors and on whether we are able to analyse a situation without always having to be right, but asking ourselves why we are in the situation we are, why we have failed economically, why we don’t have a cultural, scientific and technical status in keeping with the Country’s status, like 50 years ago, why we don’t have an education system that works, why we no longer have a healthcare system that works and why our society has declined, well ..... it’s not only a question of resources. Often it’s a question of being there, of knowing that that thing that you are part of affects you and you are responsible for building it. For a long time we have shied away from this. We have had the feeling that it had nothing to do with us, something that we never thought about in our daily lives, something that was given to us once and was no longer an issue. Now it has once again become an issue and it has led us to ask ourselves why and wherefore we continue to stay together!
Let’s try to draw up a list of factors that differentiate a Country in crisis from one that is growing. A Country in crisis is one where unemployment levels are high, young people see no future for themselves, the Country remembers its past success and now instead faces the problem of slow growth. A Country whose political class is not working for the Country but rather for its own benefit rather than that of the citizens is a Country that no longer feels the need to live communally within a single territory but rather to need to get away because it does not feel protected, because it feels more protected by a neighbour than by a vision of nationhood. A Country that is experiencing a crisis of values, in which the distinction or difference between the left wing and the right wing are very far apart and technicians are viewed as aliens working towards a purpose that we don’t understand and that is not, in any event, at my service. A Country that, when it experiences all these conditions at the same time, becomes afraid, discouraged, in search of someone to provide comfort, so it is not an adult, it is a child Country, a Country that is seeking protection.
This is a factor that usually doesn’t lead to development and an increase in the level of political democracy, but rather to a search for an authoritarian control system because this will provide a certain level of certainty and safety so that people don’t have to worry about what is going to happen! Perhaps all these issues are affecting us. At some time in the History of Europe they affected another Country that is very close to us. They never had any racist legislation in the beginning, but they did later. They never had nor practiced discrimination in the beginning, indeed they had a large number of foreign residents and immigrants who were tolerated somewhat grudgingly. This was France, a Country that we have always held up as the epitome of liberty and that was never racist or bloodthirsty. In our minds it was other European Countries that were racist! This is something that we should really think about! So, spread the word!

The Italian is easy to govern. It’s enough to feed him a social category each day and his hunger is sated. It’s the strategy of non-attention . You shout out “Look at the flying donkey!” and he sticks his nose in the air. Monti has rightly said that it is the tax-dodgers who are putting their hands into the pockets of the Italians. However he hasn’t explained who has generated the public debt of 1,900 billion euro and what that money has been used for. Tell us Monti! Let him tell us who has put their hands into Italy’s wealth to maintain the party-ocracy and the lobbies and let him also explain where he has been in these long twenty years of silence. What’s needed is a public trial for this riff-raff that has ruined Italy. “Rigor Montis” has not considered it worthwhile to remember the 98 billion euro of presumed gap in tax payments from the slot machine concessionaries. And he hasn’t even mentioned why the taxpayers have been burdened with a billion euro given to the parties in spite of the referendum, and he hasn’t mentioned the total tax dogers given an amnesty with the Fiscal Shield of 5%. Who are these gentlemen? The honest taxpayers would like to know. They have the right to know. OUT WITH THEIR NAMES!
The great manoevres on the ski slopes and in Cortina’s bars are the flying donkey. As though for example it wouldn’t be enough to do a computer-matching of data about taxpayers with those who own a SUV without transforming the financiers into Yeti. But who do you want to take for a ride? The game is blatant. Place the social categories one against the other. The rich against the poor. The young against the pensioners. The unemployed against the state employees. And while the Italians are looking at the clouds, the entrepreneurs and the manual workers are committing suicide. What’s been the use of the money paid in to INPS? What’s happened to the contributions of the Italians that’ll never have a pension? Covering up Fiat’s losses through the fund for laid off workers? The Italian dupe has to forget the politicians, the parties, their thieving (I remember that the people with definitive criminal convictions are STILL in Parliament getting big salaries), the corruption, the mafia that is controlling half the country, the fish that smells starting from its head. And no one is talking about the banks. They are lilies of the field and do not have the responsibility for the collapse, for tens of thousands of investors who are ruined. It’s better to get your teeth into the hotel keeper or the bar tender. The concessionaries of public goods like Benetton for the motorways, are on the other hand, praised and fattened up with New Year increases to the detriment of those who work. The state concessions, all the concessions, have to go back to being managed by the State, to producing profits for Italian citizens who have paid over and above in decades of taxes. They shouldn’t be gifted to private companies. But like Alice, Monti doesn’t know this.
Ehi! “Look at the flying donkey”. Don’t disturb those doing manoevres. And keep the receipt when you leave the bar and the receipt for the car tax of ten years ago and be sure to keep your hands in your pockets!

Download and print out the flyer “VIETATO L'INGRESSO AI POLITICI” {No entry to politicians}

Black or white, left or right, PDL or PDminusL. Tertium non datur. You have to be either here or there. There are no other places to go. Freedom lies in the possibility to remove yourself from this choice, but we have no choice. You are classified. Communist or anticommunist. Racist or non-racist. Fascist or non-fascist. It’s the triumph of the forked conformism. The same snake’s tongue split in half. However you choose, the System classifies you. It labels you. It cancels you out. It’s a two-dimensional world that has the same substance as nothing. The “no global” are, have to be, anarchical insurrectionists, “nimby”s, ne'er-do-wells. The Left is always progressive even with Bersani’s face, the Right is conservative, with any face. The world goes round and you stay still in this induced mental paralysis. But instead you can jump a level. It depends on you. Tertium datur, even quartum, even quintum! Think of the most dangerous action for the System. Do it. Do it now. Think. If to state that it’s necessary to understand the origins of violence, apart from condemning it, it’s revolutionary, as happened with Equitalia, thus this dual Country, this country that’s binary, 0 or 1, is on its knees, terrorised that the Italains can leave the enclosure where they have been shut in. Outside there’s the unknown. The train lines are safer. But on horseback you can leap to the side, change direction, no engine driver decides for you where you are going. Safety is the drug of the mind. The opiate that offers you the “tertium non datur” is so simple, tranquil, relaxing. You can choose between two non-choices. Form a relationship with the flock. Turn round in the same direction. There’s no red pill and blue pill. There are always two pills, both grey but different shades of grey. There’s only one choice. The old folk in command of this Nation, Napolitano and Monti, are pure chloroform, anaesthetising. Spread or default? I want infinity. They will never give up (but is it in their interests?). Neither will we. See you in Parliament!

Download and print out the flyer “VIETATO L'INGRESSO AI POLITICI” {No entry to politicians}

An Italy without oil would come to a halt. The top five countries that we import it from are Saudi Arabia, Azerbaijan, Iran, Libya and Russia. Italy was Libya’s main partner. Now since the war with Gaddafi (today one of his former Ministers is President ...) it counts like the two of spades. The commercial influence in the area has shifted to Washington and Paris. With Libya we behaved no differently from in the world wars. We bombed a country with which we had a peace treaty. Turncoat as a vocation. Now it’s Iran’s turn. It’s a country from which Italy imports 13% of its crude oil each year and one with which ENI has always traded well. At the Farnesina Palace a few days before Christmas, while they were merrily sorting out how to take the maximum amount of cash from pensioners, there was a meeting with the presence of, among others, representatives from the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain and Italy (there was also an EU civil servant as window dressing) to discuss sanctions on Iran. A joke. Representatives of the European countries discussing with the EU that represents them. In foreign policy, the EU should have a single voice. Basically sanctions against Iran mean an embargo. There’s no further purchase of their oil so that they cannot invest the profits in rearmament. Italy, even though it is agreeing to this, has invoked the “pregresso” : credits it has with Iran that would allow it to import crude oil even during the embargo. Touché! Iran has not been pleased with the sanctions that would strangle its economy and it has threatened to close the Straits of Hormuz, which sees the transit of 17 million barrels a day, that’s 20% of the oil traded in the world and just to be safe, it has been testing its long range missiles. The United States has responded by sending the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis. The Pentagon explained that “It’s a matter of movements that take place regularly to guarantee the stability of the region”. If the Straits of Hormuz were to be blocked even for a short wh, the price per barrel would shoot up to 150 dollars (the average for 2011 was 100). The Americans stabiise the countries where there’s the presence of their interests. The planet is theirs. Whereas, the EU, like a fixed star, just stays and watches. China and Russia have declared that they cannot tolerate an intervention by the United States against Iran. Hormuz like Gdańsk? Italy doesn’t have to worry. It has no foreign policy but it is claiming “crediti pregressi”.

Download and print out the flyer “VIETATO L'INGRESSO AI POLITICI” {No entry to politicians}

”I’d been back a few hours. I saw him for the first time. He was tall, handsome, strong and smelling of oil and sheet metal.
For years I’ve seen him get up at 4 in the morning, get on his bicycle and disappear into Turin’s fog, going towards the Factory.
I’ve seen him fall asleep on the settee, worn out by hours of work and alienated by the production of thousands of pieces, all the same, imposed by the system of piece work.
I’ve seen him happily spend his spare time with his wife and children.
I’ve seen him suffering when he told me his salary was not enough to have me go to university.
I’ve seen him humiliated when they offered him a rise of 100 lire for each hour of work.
I’ve seen him distraught, when at the age of 53, the factory manager told him he was too old for their needs.
I’ve seen managers and industrialists ask for the working age to be raised higher and higher. I’ve seen economists calling for the globalisation of money, but forgetting the globalisation of rights. I’ve seen newspaper editors stating that manual workers no longer exist. I’ve seen politicians asking manual workers to make sacrifices for the good of the country. I’ve seen trade unionists saying that modernity calls for turning back.
But I gasped for air when on 26 July 2010, in the Turin paper "La Stampa” I read the editorial by Professor Mario Deaglio . According to the professor, the “rights of the workers” become “non-monetrary components ofremuneration”, and the “difesa del posto di lavoro” {defending jobs} had to be substituted with a volatile “guarantee of the opportunity for the chance to work”. But above all, the worker, whose wages were by now pared down to the minimum, no longer needed “free time in which to spend his wages”, But he only had to think about satisfying the main requests from the other side (a theory repeated by Professor Deaglio on Radio 24 between 5:30 pm and 6:00 pm on Tuesday 27 July 2010). .... Just think that a man of culture, even with all the arguments he’s capable of producing, can get to the moment of saying that a manual worker’s free time has no value, because it is not correlated to money, took my breath away. I got into my car, built by the manual workers of Mirafiori in Turin. I rushed home to my parents. I saw him for the umpteenth time. He was bent, his labyrinthitis, caused by millions of press operations, made him shaky. He was weak because of his heart disease. He was my father, a manual worker in the press shop for 35 years, where he had sacrificed everything, apart from his free time spent with his family. That was free. He smelled of dignity.”Luca Mazzucco recommendation by anib roma

Download and print out the flyer “VIETATO L'INGRESSO AI POLITICI” {No entry to politicians}

With no ifs and buts. The bipartisan political condemnation has no room for debate. There’s never any doubt or questioning. If Mussolini was ALWAYS right, the politicians are even more so. “With no ifs and buts” is a new verbal trench, the new battle front along the Piave river. Have a go at a discussion in the face of a statement by a Big Gun or a landowning guy decked out with a final “no ifs and buts”. Impossible. You are already guilty of armed insurrection with no ifs and buts. The thinking of the “no ifs and buts” people obviously makes no provision for any ifs and buts. It’s a single thought that gives of its best when it is accompanied by indignation. A solitary neuron that needs solace. The gasparization of politics has run its course. By now Gasparri seems to be the most intelligent one in the group.
“Italy is a great country and it will manage to get out of the crisis” (with no ifs and buts), “The Great Public Works are necessary” (with no ifs and buts), “We have to stay in Afghanistan” (with no ifs and buts), “The Italian Constitution is the best possible one” (with no ifs and buts). The “if” is a subversive and the “but” is a delinquent. The dogma is the only possible reasoning in that it accepts no reasoning at all, with no ifs and buts. The Inquisition is the inspiration of the “with no ifs and buts” people. Today Giordano Bruno would be given life imprisonment and he would commit suicide in prison. With no ifs and buts. The “with no ifs and buts” person can suddenly change his mind with no ifs and buts, and after the kick up the bum from the referendum, from a pro-nuclearist to an anti-nuclearist or, for the economic crisis, transform himself from one who protects the total tax-dodgers, with the Fiiscal Shield, into the Sherriff of Nottingham. You can recognise the “with no ifs and buts” person from the lack of backbone, and as he always crawls with no ifs and buts. As a child he took his cod liver oil without protesting. He always wrote the essay that was pleasing to his teacher and he wanted to become a politician.

Download and print out the flyer “VIETATO L'INGRESSO AI POLITICI” {No entry to politiicans}

Down there in the North, there’s “omertà”, and collusion with the criminal organisations. Many politicians and industrialists are arm in arm with the ‘ndrangheta. It’s worse than in the South where for some time now, there’s been the formation of antibodies to the mafia counter-power. A Sicilian or a guy from Calabria arriving in Milan would no longer find fog “che non si vede” {that cannot be seen} as Totò and Peppino found - but “pizzo” and “lupara bianca” {mafia killing}. Beppe Grillo

Passaparola with Gianni Barbacetto, jourrnalist and writer

Cleaner politics
Dear friends of Beppe Grillo’s blog. Greetings to all of you. I’m Gianni Barbacetto, a jourrnalist with “Il Fatto Quotidiano”. 2012 will be an important one for the choices that can be made and not made to stand up to organised crime that has by now settled in significantly in Milan and the regions of the North. It’ll be a crucial year for understanding where we’ll end up. By now we cannot just talk of infiltration by the mafia in the North, as has been done for some time. There’s an organised political-entrepreneurial-criminal system that has taken root even in the regions of the north and it has made Milan one of the capitals of the ‘ndrangheta. OK, this year we have to decide what to do: either we leave things to keep going as they have been doing in the last few years and make a gift to the mafia organisations of a slice of political and entrepreneurial power that is getting ever bigger in the north, or if we can manage it, reverse this trend so as to block this criminal occupation of the north. By now, the ‘ndrangheta her e in Milan and in Lombardy, has its politicians, its local councillors at the town level, at the provincial level and at the regional level. By now here, certain sectors of the business world, for example parts of the construction industry, the world of night, the after-dark localities, the discotheques, the restaurants, the bars, have been colonised, really heavily occupied by mafia organsations. OK, there are some positive signals of a break in accepting this situation. Up until yesterday the politicians, the mayors, those that do politics and that command and direct political choices here in the north, especially in Milan, were denying the existence of the problem: “La mafia a Milano non c’è;” {the mafia does not exist in Milan}.

...



Download and print out the flyer “VIETATO L'INGRESSO AI POLITICI” {No entry to politiicans}

If you have a go at saying “Politicians are thieving”, the response is “Not all of them”. If you point out that car drivers don’t respect pedestrian crossings (and someone kills a pedestrian), the response is “Not all of them”. If you explain that Napolitano signed Berlusconi’s shameful laws, from the Lodo Alfano to the Fiscal Shield, the response is “Not all of them”, in this case you make a big effort to remember what he did not sign, there must be one .... If you state that the jounalists financed with public money are on the payroll of the parties and the lobbies, the response is always “Not all of them”. If you say that you never see a local police officer when you need one, “Not all of them”. Anyone who replies “Not all of them”, never names names. They don’t tell you what the exceptions are. They give you a smile that explains and doesn’t explain and they look at you as though to say “You’re truly a shitty populist! One that tars everyone with the same brush!”. You stand there, bewildered, and you cannot find a word to say in return. But then you have another go and say “Those living near to incinerators are dying of cancer”, and you already know that the other wil respond “Not all of them” and you wish him the most lethal pathology that you can think of. You start again with “In Northern Italy the mafia has inflitrated the public bodies”, and you are certain they will say “Not all of them” citing Ms Moratti who was astonished about the existence of the 'ndrangheta (do they really exist?). The “not-all-of-them-ist” would even deny the existence of a metastasis that has spread to all the organs of the body by clinging on to the only healthy cell remaining. If you keep going on about “The socialists were stealing”, he’ll respond “Not all of them”. You are astounded, but you don’t give up and you spit out: “In Parliament there are mafia-guys - the Lega-people are turncoats - Italian local authorities have debts of billions of euro”. He, unrelenting, comes back with “Not all of them” Certainly not all of them, but certainly the majority of them. It’s impossible that all are. In fact, it’s a law of nature, if everyone were a thief, there’d no longer be any honest person to steal from. If everyone were a mafia-guy, who would they get the “pizzo” from? He who responds “Not all of them” is an old mole, a peeping tom, the lookaout during a robbery. The more they fuck him up, the happier he is.

Download and print out the flyer “VIETATO L'INGRESSO AI POLITICI” {No entry to politiicans}