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5 February 2012

Time travellers

Every so often we need to play. Today’s game is to change Italy’s past. To go back in time and get a slaughter to fail, delay a meeting, prevent a murder, get a law approved - or not approved. Not just the important events, even situations that are apparently insignificant, but are such that they can cause a “butterfly effect” as discussed in Ray Bradbury’s story “A Sound of Thunder”. That idea that tiny changes in the past can produce great effects in our present. There is just so much choice.
On Sunday 19 July 1992 hiring a breakdown van in Palermo and shifting the car to via D’Amelio, in front of the building where Paolo Borsellino’s mother lived. Antonio Caponnetto said: “Twenty days before the attack, Paolo had asked the Questura to arrange for the removal of vehicles in the area in front of his mother’s home. But the request was not put into action. Even today I’m waiting to find out the name of the civil servant responsible for Paolo’s safety.” Perhaps Borsellino would have become the President of the Republic instead of Napolitano. A dream! On 16 March 1978 going through the Monte Mario neighbourhood in Rome, to the home of Aldo Moro and obliging his body guards to make a deviation to avoid via Fani. Italy would thus not have been handed over to Andreotti-the-guy-subject-to-the Statute-of-Limitations, companion of mafia-guys and protector of Sindona, who on that very day presented his new government to Parliament. If Craxi had not fled, there would not have been Berlusconi and twenty years of berlusconi-ism and anti berlusconi-ism, while the country was collapsing one day at a time. Between the two, the choice is complicated, like it is between a stroke and a heart attack, but Craxi has not been with us for years and his disciple is alive and kicking and will remain among us for who knows how much longer. It would be possible to try to see the effect it has. On 17 February 1992 stopping the entrepreneur Luca Magni at the entrance to the “Pio Albergo Trivulzio” in Milan while he was carrying the envelope to Mario Chiesa (who was caught red-handed while he was trying to get rid of the bank notes down the toilet). “Mani Pulite” {the criminal investigation whose code name translates to “Clean Hands”} would never have existed. Craxi or Berlusconi? This is the dilemma. In the Autumn of 1998, kidnapping Prodi and hiding him in a hole in the mountainous plateau of La Sila to prevent the entrance into the Euro. On 27 October 1962 in Catania obliging the pilot, di Mattei, to inspect the “Morane-Saulnier MS-760 Paris” aircraft that then exploded during flight because of a bomb. We would have kicked out the “Seven Sisters” for the “Dog with 6 legs” (logo of the Italian energy company - ENI} and perhaps the History of the Middle East would have been better.
What would you change as a time traveller?

Postato da Beppe Grillo alle 08:25 PM in Wailing Wall