The PDL and the PDminusL have met up to avoid the “electoral shattering” and to bring “bipolarism” to fulfilment. Basically to have just two parties in Parliament. It’s the supersedence of the “Porcellum”: the "Merdellum”. Berlusconi and Bersani want to raise the bar, perhaps to 8%, cutting out smaller parties and the MoVimento 5 Stelle {5 Star MoVement}. There’s the risk that 50 to 60% of the voters including those that won’t go to vote because of the nausea, thus most of the country, have no representatives in Parliament The certified end of democracy. From Mussolini’s “Only Party” to the P2’s “ Two Twin Parties”. These individuals who have destroyed the Nation and who talk too much of “electoral shattering” have shattered my balls. What “shattering” are they talking about? In Parliament two coalitions have been elected: PDL and Lega, and PDminusL and IdV, and the UDC of cuffarian electoral memory. Two plus one. What arithmetic are La Russa and Violante going on about? The appeal for the discussion table came from Berlusconi, the most disqualified politician in the entire globe. The PDminusL immediately replied like the most willing of the “escorts”. When it has to give it, it never draws back. To exclude the country from representation to propose once more the same faces in Parliament that have shelved it, and to prevent campaign groups from coming in is a serious action that can bring unpredictable consequences especially with the development of the crisis.
We have understood for some time that this lot don’t want to go away. For them, democracy is an optional. They are not subject to the laws nor to the orders of the public prosecutor's offices when there is a request to have access to the current account of the party, as happened for la Margherita and Lusi yesterday in the Senate. I insist that the accounts of the parties should be available online with the evidence for each individual transaction. I insist that the money not spent for the reimbursement of election expenses should be returned to the State. A part of this money is even coming from my taxes. The press presents headlines about election agreements with great pomp, as though it were a victory and not a defeat for democracy. There are days when I wonder why on earth I’m doing this. Sometimes I don’t know how to answer. I look at myself in the mirror, a bit older and a bit more befuddled. Today however, I have no doubts. The response is anger. 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.

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 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.

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!

...

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.

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.

Italian bureaucracy doesn’t kill, but it can drive you mad. Ask the local Town Hall for a construction permit. Pay. Collect the construction permit. Pay. Construct. You are about to move into your house and the Province notices that the Town Hall made a mistake. The house has to be demolished. And so that you’re not missing out on anything, the Prosecutors Office enters your name in the register of those under investigation. So you learn from being Italian. All this happened in Dolcedo, in the Province of Imperia. Beppe Grillo

Interview with Paola Borsellino, an Arpal inspector

A mortgage to get your house destroyed
Greetings to the friends of Beppe Grillo’s blog. I’m Paola Borsellino and we are here in Dolcedo in the Province of Imperia. Dolcedo is a tiny town with about 1400 inhabitants in the hills above Imperia, 7 Km from the sea and I and another 70 citizens are finding ourselves living this Kafkaesque story as we bought homes or we are having homes built either as our main residence or as a second home, given the splendid position where we are. After a few years when our homes were practically finished, we found in our hands a useless piece of paper, because first the Province of Imperia, then the town of Dolcedo made out that the construction permit that had been issued by the town of Dolcedo was illegitimate and now we find ourselves with demolition orders, and we are lost in the middle of decisions from the TAR administrative court, criminal denunciations and appeals with the Council of State. As you can see we are in a zone that is pretty much untouched, where there are olive trees and very little urbanization, this land all comes within the agricultural zone. An agricultural zone means that the Region specifies that there are buildings with a sparsely scattered character. For us, this sparsely scattered character meant that we had to respect the limits laid down in the offical planning schedule for the town. We put in requests to the Town Hall asking if we could build with the characteristics that were dictated to us by the Town Hall. We got permission to construct from the Town Hall. We did the building of our homes and only after a few years we were told that there was a mistake. That these homes could not have been built. For us, this is an anomaly, because according to us, all the Province of Imperia falls within the E3 zone, the agricultural zone, and it has constructions that are similar to ours. In fact, they are often more densely packed. The distances required by the Town Hall, have been respected. A State cannot take away a home from someone who has built it while respecting the rules given and then change the rules once the game has been played. How can you have trust in a State that considers its own documents to be pieces of waste paper that can be torn to pieces from one day to another!
The State tells you: “We have made a mistake”

...

We look at each other suspiciously. That non-European that gets paid under the table and takes work away from an Italian. The grocer that is stealing from us on price (but how much does ham cost?) and certainly, he’s not paying taxes. The barman who doesn’t give you your change. The gypsies who are carrying diseases. The old folk who don’t want to die and who create queues in the Post Office, in the bank, at the doctor’s. It’s them that have created the public debt. And the state employees that are useless and pass their time in the bar or on Facebook? A plague. An army of 4 million good-for-nothings! And the tax dodgers? You recognise them from the designer suit and the SUV. Bastards! If they were to pay all their taxes they would go around in a Panda and with their jacket turned inside out like any old laid off person. And the corruptors? No one is refused a kickback, even because everyone asks you for one. The organised criminal has become endemic. You find him at every corner of the street ready for the robbery. The middle class guy obviously is disgusting. Even Gaber said so "I borghesi son tutti dei porci..."{the middle class are all pigs}. He has always only thought about his own business. He has become a wretch. The middle class has to disappear. The small scale entrepreneur is shit. If he commits suicide, he’ll have had good reason to do so. The unemployed person has no wish to work otherwise he’d be spoilt for choice. The young women who go around on their own after nine o’clock at night and are raped were asking for it. The doctors are never there when they’re needed and it’s their fault if our cousin died in hospital. The next door neighbour is the stuntman for the crazy folk in "Criminal Minds". When you hear him coming up the stairs, close the door with a double turn of the key. The other people in the condominium mess up the stairs with cigarette ends or dog shit and they don ’t recycle their waste. The meanest bastards don’t even pay the communal expenses. The electricians, the dentists, the plumbers, the carpenters and all the freelance workers dodge taxes, they don’t pay and you pay. You pay. The lobbies impose their will. The taxi-drivers are more powerful than the ECB and the IMF. The taxi-metre is preventing the balancing of the budget. Social hatred is the preferred tool of the politicians. The more we hate each other, the more they feel secure. It’s the old technique of “divide and rule”. The politicians that have brought the country to the economic catastrophe are slipping away and to hide themselves better each day they are creating new social targets. THE TAX DODGERS, THE LOBBIES, THE CORRUPTERS, THE FREELANCE WORKERS, THE PUBLIC EMPLOYEES, THE NON-EUROPEANS. The parties have eaten and drunk up until now and are continuing to do so with public financing and annuities, but they want to leave the bill for the others to pay. That’s not on. First let them explain to the Nation what’s happened to the 1900 billion euro of debt built up in our name, and what benefits we’ve had from it and what benefits they’ve had. What’s needed is a public Nuremburg trial of the political class with a kick up the backside instead of the gallows. They will never give up (but is it in their interests?). Neither will we.

”Citizen Monti,
You have a relative legitimacy to hold the position as President of the Council. You were appointed by the “spread”, not by the Italians. You have the great good fortune to be following on from the worst government of the last 150 years, made possible by an unconstitutional electoral law. It’s impossible to do worse than that. It would seem that you have a free hand. You can decide (almost) everything. The parties are at rock bottom, pure wallpaper. Elections cannot be held to avoid a default that is almost certain and because, with this electoral law, without preferences and a change of faces in Parliament after a maximum number of legislatures, it would change nothing. It is said that you have a great responsibility, that you are the final possibility to save the country. I don’t think that it is right to place this enormous burden on you. You, on your own, or even with a team of professors and of technical people, can do very little without the support of the general public. The honeymoon that you are experiencing, due to the “liberation from Berlusconi” rather than to yourself, could reveal itself to be very short. Your success will be determined by your actions and by the consensus that these actions have in the real country, the country of the movements and the associations, and certainly not that of the parties, that are by now a simulacrum of democracy. Thus, allow me, also for the people that are following me, that by now from a numerical viewpoint, are the fifth or the sixth electoral force, to give you a few suggestions. The first is to respect the will of the people that expresses the wish to abandon nuclear, for public water or to avoid the useless destruction of the Val di Susa. The second is straight away to give examples of cuts to useless costs before any tax on the first home, on the patrimony, or increase in sales tax. The Italian people have the highest taxes in Europe and at the same time, enormous tax evasion. It means that it’s always the same people that pay and it’s possible that only on their shoulders will fall the burden of the so-called "risanamento" {recovery}. You are lucky in two ways. The first, as I have written, is that you are following on from a wretch. The second is that you have wide margins for manoeuvring. Wherever you glance you could operate savings and cuts at zero cost. Cut the provinces, the electoral financing, the public financing of publishing. Put a stop to the great useless public works like the TAV, “la Gronda” in Genoa, the Expo in Milan. You know better than I do that they are of no use. The economy is not developed with cement. Bring back the motorway concessions under state management, it is right that if there is a gain of billions of euro, that it remains with the State and that it is not destined for Benetton and associates. You studied with the Jesuits, but, staying on the topic of religious orders, you should renew yourself along the lines of the Franciscans. Peel off your relations with the world that appointed you and turn directly to the Italian people. If you cannot do that, I advise you to leave the position. To repeat the same errors and the vileness of the politicians that preceded you would not do you honour. I’m asking for a meeting so that I can tell you about the M5S programme. I hope for a positive response. Greetings” Beppe Grillo

The spread has substituted the body of the electorate. The “coup de spread” in place of the old “coup d'état”. No loss of blood, no demonstration in the streets, no “hot Autumn”. The spread instead of the Spritz. A hundred more points between the Italian bond and the German one and the game is over. No one is weeping for Berlusconi, but we all should be weeping for democracy. If Parliament is made up of people appointed by a few party secretaries, professor Monti was elected by the spread. If the markets were to change their minds about him, if he were to show himself to be too tender with tax payers, it would be enough to have another “coup de spread” to set off terror among the Italians. And voilà: another technical guy that can’t get any more technical would be swearing in with Napolitano. That’s to say, a guy like Amato. The liquidator, appointed by the markets is the President of the Council, this is where this wretched nation has got to. It was necessary to avoid repercussions for the French banks that hold a quarter of our public debt, and the performance of the euro, and thus German exports.
We have done our bit for putting our head on the block of international finance. Of the 1,900 billion of debt, about a half has been placed abroad, from Great Britain to China. And it’s enough for the next sales of 200 billion bonds to be deserted to make the country collapse. We cannot devalue the lira. We cannot at a European level print new money, like the United States did when it had gone bankrupt big-time in August when they raised the maxim limit on their public debt by 2,400 billion dollars. What’s left for us? Sell off the silverware to honour our debts. To the pawn shop, we’ll take the property of the state, the shares of the few big companies that are still left, like Eni, part of our personal property, the cuts to social services. It’s true that we have sinned, but the punishment should be useful for something. Instead it’s almost certain that not only will we leave the euro, but that the euro itself will not hold up in the next few years. By now that is what’s being written by the best international minds on the economy. And then what? Right now the mantra that is most in use is “Monti is the only alternative” accompanied by “We cannot exit from the euro”. There is always an alternative, a “plan B”. We have to consider the exit from the euro as a possibility. To lose everything after a policy of weeping and blood with a devalued lira doesn’t seem like a great objective to me.

Elections right now, with this electoral law, would be a calamity. Monti has not been elected by anyone. He’s been appointed by Napolitano. Parliament in turn, has not been elected by anyone. It is the offspring of an unconstitutional electoral law. Parliament has been appointed by the party secretaries. Napolitano was elected by both chambers that were elected by no one. Thus Napolitano was appointed by people who were appointed. This is the situation that can only be modified by a new electoral law. The proposed popular law "Parlamento Pulito" {Clean up Parliament} is still languishing, after more than four years, in the Committee for Constitutional Affairs, and it would be enough to apply it before the elections to clean out the Lower House and the Senate. No one is talking about it. No party wants it.
Elections with a period of at least four months of non-government before the voting is equivalent to declaring the default. Anyone who wants elections knows that, but they don’t care. A list of appointees and a handful of armchairs is worth more than anything. They are ensuring the political survival of the decomposing parties that we have to “democratically” keep for another five years. For what it’s worth, I’ll write an open letter to Monti and I’ll propose that we meet up to ask him to place on the agenda the electoral reform signed by 350,000 citizens and the proposals for cuts at zero cost that came out of the blog survey.
Anyone shouting for elections is like the captain of a ship who when confronted with an iceberg, escapes in the lifeboats. It’s not practicable. It would ditch the most vulnerable classes. The spread with the Bund would shoot up to 1,000 and the interest on State bonds would be equal to that in Greece. So much worse for the citizens, so much better for the parties. Argentina would seem like a walk in the park. Monti is not the solution, someone to accept while holding your nose, as Montanelli said of the Christian Democrats. He’s the offspring of his environment, friend of bankers, one who frequents the “salotti buoni” {circles of the elite}. A liberist who has been standing watching the economic collapse without ever having too much exposure against the System. The only alternative to Monti, in a Country where the elections are obviously anti-democratic, is the revolution. But Italy today does not have the awareness, or the strength, to put that into being. The System has to be demolished from within. They will never give up (but is it in their interests?). Neither will we.

We focus on our finger and we don’t see the moon. Monti is the finger and the moon is the Third Republic. The world that is to come does not belong to Napolitano, to Letta or to Monti because of age and thinking. The new generations will reconstruct the country or they will destroy it definitively. The current political class is a pure optical effect, like when the light of a lamp stays for a long time in the pupil of your eye. We have to take off our glasses and look at reality with new eyes. An Italy that no longer has its old reference points will give rise to uncertainties, feelings of disorientation, fear, but also great opportunities for change. In recent years, we as a people, have been living not, as is commonly said, above our possibilities, but below our possibilities. We are so used to degradation that we take it as read, as ineluctable. If we don’t believe in ourselves why should others believe in us? One of the most seriously damaging effects of the short twenty year berlusconian period has been the expulsion of the capable and honest ones from the institutions, from the big companies, from the media, from the banks, from any sector that could disturb the “manovratori” {manoeuvrers}. What’s needed is a disinfestation at every level of those who colluded, of the incapable ones, of the dead hand of the parties. From the town halls to the parliament. Now is the time of those who clean up. There’s a dark sensation of "Every man for himself!" with a race for bricks and mortar where you can hide your savings and the uncertainties of the future. Instead we should bless this crisis. Without it, nothing would have changed. From the false necklaces and sparkling jewels that have kept us company in recent years, nothing could have been born; from the default a flower can be brought forth.
The collapse of the euro is a blessing; it will destroy the party-ocracy. The leaders are a mountain of shit; the parties are dead. To understand that, the Italians need a shock and it’s coming. We are entering a new world that, if we want, we can reconstruct from the foundations, as has happened at other moments in history. We are used to "In order to reach dawn there's no other way than night" (*) and the night is about to end. What the new day will be like, just depends on us. No one can count themselves out or say “Anyway nothing changes in this country”. This is the mentality of servants. You start! Each one counts for one, but those who don’t participate, count for nothing. The “Programma del M5S” {programme of the M5S} is the son of the future. They will never give up (but is it in their interests?). Neither will we.

(*) Kahlil Gibran

Il Cavalier Silvio Berlusconi has been received at the Quirinale Palace by the stand in for Umberto II, the last king of Italy. The scene and the manner and portrayal is exactly the same as in 1934, when at Villa Savoia, Victor Emmanuel III told “il Cavalier Benito Mussolini” that he was sacked. In both cases, the successor is chosen by the regnant. Then it was Badoglio, now it’s Monti. The fall of fascism came about because of a world war that was lost. The fall of Berlusconism because of an economic disaster at a European level. At that time the liquidators were the angloamericans, today the Germans and the French. The spread above 500 points has kicked out these caricatures of governors, of ministers and ministresses, not the Opposition. If it were up to the PDminusL, this government would have gone on forever.
A phantom is going around Europe, that of the collapse of the euro. The detonator is Italy and its public debt that have to be put under protection before it’s too late. But it’s already too late … Meanwhile, however, just as when a company goes bust, the creditors want to recover the maximum possible before the Italian default. The Monti Government will reduce the international exposure of our debt. The patrimonial tax is already a done deed, together with the introduction of ICI on the first house and the slashing of the number of public employees.
Berlusconi is an old zombie. He was already politically dead in 2008. He was resurrected by Waterloo Veltroni and the Oppositions, for three years that seemed to last so long, they protected him in an interminable number of confidence votes and by gifting him deputies with open hands, from Calearo to Razzi, not to mention Scilipoti. The Second Republic is coming to an end. Overall It has made us look back with longing to the First. The parties have taken charge of the State and they have fed off it. Anyone who shouts “Elections, elections!” doesn’t know what they are talking about, or perhaps they are just thinking of an armchair. The date of the elections has already been decided in Washington, Paris and London and in all probability it’ll be in 2013. Since the end of the Second World War we have been a Country with limited liberty with American bases that defend the whole peninsular. Now we have been put under house arrest. Economic policy is no longer up to us, but to the IMF and the ECB. We receive letters from the EU that are equivalent to orders, ultimatums. Mussolini, on leaving the audience with the king, was loaded into an ambulance. He was told it was for his own protection. In reality the vehicle was full of Carabinieri who arrested him. Yesterday evening, there was no ambulance in front of the Quirinale Palace and nor were there Carabinieri. Pity. It would have been a worthy and appropriate exit. They will never give up (but is it in their interests?). Neither will we.

Will the black bloc save the Second Republic? The media and the parties are trying. Italy seems to be at the mercy of organised “black bloc” that are running about in the cities, breaking shop windows and setting cars alight. People are afraid. They have to be afraid. Special laws are being prepared. Maroni will put them forward in Parliament with the support, perhaps with even a precious consultation with the Opposition. The movements are to placed “offside” by any means. The useful idiots for such operations are always to be found. The economic crisis that is overwhelming the country has suddenly disappeared. The parties, the ones responsible, have become virgins anew thanks to a demo of 200,000 people without a security detail worthy of the name. Who authorised it? A procession supported by the Centre Left controlled at a distance by the totally unprepared security forces of Zanna Bianca Maroni, left to themselves. An ending that was to be expected and perhaps desired.
Who are the black bloc? Just the name instils fear. Black as night. They evoke new fascisms. Perfect for a marketing operation and to frighten the old folk. Rome’s violent ones are not an alien body, they are people, young lads who are exasperated and who will pay for their actions. But they don’t come from Mars and unless there is a radical about turn in politics their number is destined to increase. Anyone who no longer has hope, a job, a home, is a danger to the System. Forbidding demonstrations, preventive arrests, raids in community centres will become routine.
The demonization of movements is happening. “La Repubblica” headlines a disturbing article by Carlo Bonini and Giuliano Foschini "The black bloc reveal war plans. We have been trained in Greece." An interview with a young man, identified just with the initial “F.", who reveals the existence of groups of black bloc with military training in Greece, to create panic in Italy. The dialogue ends with these exchanges:
Repubblica "You are talking like a military man"
F. "I’m talking like one who is at war."
R. "What war are you talking about?"
F. "It’s not one I’ve declared. It’s them that have declared it. "
R. "Them. Who are they?"
F. "I’m not discussing politics with a couple of journalists "
R. "And who do you discuss politics with, given that you are in politics?"
F. "I’m more than happy to talk politics with my companions of the Val di Susa"
R. "Have you been in Val di Susa?"
F. "I was there in July"
R. "To make war"
F. "Yes. And I can tell you something. It hasn’t finished"
The Prosecutor of the Republic with the appropriate jurisdiction (I believe it’ll be the one in Rome) will have to verify the identity of this mysterious "F.". The journalists have to prove that his statements are founded. The article connects terrorist groups with the legitimate protests of the people of the Val di Susa against a project of public works that is devastating for the territory, that will cost 22 billion euro paid from our taxes, that will end in twenty years to transport a constantly diminishing quantity of merchandise. The current trains that transit in Val di Susa are only 50/60% full. The anarchic insurrectionists in Val di Susa are students, agriculturalists, elderly people, priests and mayors. When can we expect the police raid, dear “Ingegnere”?

The paint that covers and transforms everything is ready. The Carnival disguises have been taken out of the wardrobe. The floats are processing through the streets. Everything has to change so that nothing changes. The puppet masters have been getting ready for some time. The “popolo viola” has taken flesh in Gianfranco Mascia who comes out of the party offices with his loud hailer walking towards Montecitorio. The entrepreneurs that depend on the State are protesting against the State that has maintained them for decades at our expense with concessions and financing. Aligned journalists, the residue from L'Unità that has always lived off public contributions, like Padellaro and Colombo, are the new journalism that is advancing. The Church now wants clear air with the swallows around the bell towers, this is after they have pocketed ICI (property tax) and tolerated the wars in Afghanistan and in Libya, where Italy is the aggressor country. The “vescovoni” {big bishops} will save us, it is shouting out, from beneath their skirts, the united opposition, from Casini to Vendola. The newspapers and the investigative weeklies are only concerned with selling more copies. How? With Berlusconi! A relic that a serious opposition would swept away in 24 hours, has become an economic insurance for the publishers, better than the Youporn site. “Tira più di un pelo di f.” {It’s more attractive than a single hair from …} , it increases the circulation of the printed press and online viewings.
Four years ago, this blog announced our economic default and met the silence of the media. It wasn’t difficult to say so, it was enough to be free. Now it has become the problem of the day, but only because we are sinking into the abyss. The advertising for companies like ENI and Banca Intesa is bankrolling the online editions of the hardcore newspapers that while they are getting in the money, are attacking the System with the strength of a straw dog. I’m talking to people. In private, they tell me I’m right, that I have all their support, but basically only a few, almost no one is saying so openly. "Grillo, vai Grillo. Prendi i guantoni sul ring. Gira l'Italia con un pullmino. Noi tifiamo per te". {Go Grillo, Go! Grab the boxing gloves. Tour round Italy in a mini-bus. We are backing you.} The lads and lasses of MoVimento 5 Stelle {5 Star MoVement}, and of the MeetUps are fantastic. They are the new guerrillas in a world that wants to suck them back inside the quick sands of indifference and of plotting (It’s so sweet to give in). Who is making them do this, if it’s not their conscience, the conscience that is totally absent from this Nation? I am under investigation by the Turin Prosecutors Office for having broken the seals of a mountain hut, that in reality I have never broken. I went into a house with the door open where some NO-TAV people were present. Is it a serious crime for the Prosecutors to be investigating? The politicians are the most obscene. They want to abolish the Provinces and they put up candidates for the provincial elections. They pocket billions in financing, but they are asking for sacrifices from the poor devils. They are cutting pensions while they are pocketing the annuities that have matured for them after only one term of office. However, in Parliament they harangue you on morality so much that they make your arteries tremble. If you meet up with one of them, remind him that he is a shameless kept man. Priests, politicians, industrialists, journalists, economists, bankers, how many are living within the magic and putrid circle of impunity and belonging? Two million, three million, ten ? They will never give up (but is it in their interests?). Neither will we.

The citizens’ austerity package on the State’s cuts and savings has produced loads of ideas, and 20 of the most common ones are published and can be voted for using the following multiple choice form. The classification is available online in real time. Shortly there’ll be a downloadable summary document with the savings associated with each individual point of the package. They will never give up (but is it in their interests?). Neither will we.

View the results

PS The survey has been closed at 2:30 pm on 21 September 2011.

If the mountain doesn’t go to Mohamed, Mohamed goes to the mountain. If Schifani ignores 350,000 citizens, 350,000 citizens have to go to Schifani.
The President of the Senate doesn’t supply any response on the insertion of the “Cleanup Parliament” law on the Senate’s agenda. Even after the “Cozza Day” {Mussel Day} demonstration he has not felt the tiniest need to make a declaration. He acts like a mussel in a barrel. It is thus necessary to launch the operation: "Svegliati_Schifani" {Wake Up Schifani}. It’s simple. Every citizen who meets the reticent Schifani has to go up to him and ask him to discuss the law for the popular initiative “Cleanup Parliament”. If necessary, leave him a memory-jogger with the three proposals: no one with criminal convictions in parliament, a maximum of two terms of office, direct election of candidates. Take a souvenir photo or a quick video of your meeting to inform the person in the second highest position in the State and publish it on Flickr or on YouTube with the tag: "Svegliati_Schifani". The blog will do a never-ending photo and film gallery of the results. The technique of the rubber mussel operated by Schifani can see the collapse of the request for the popular law at the end of this legislature. Before 2013 however he will have to give a personal explanation to all the Italians who meet him on the street or who bump into him on holiday. Schifani needs to be informed wherever he happens to be within earshot.
There are two ways to cause the failure of “Cleanup Parliament”. The first is to not talk about it or to denigrate it by spouting off super-bullshit as has been done by the beneficiary of the parliamentary annuity Uòlter Veltroni : 'As regards Beppe Grillo’s anti-political demonstration, “Cozza Day” {Mussel Day}, last Saturday: «When I hear it said that the solution being shouted about is that of closing down Parliament it brings to mind the last speech given from that high backed chair by Giacomo Matteotti to defend the liberty and the democracy of the country.»' No one wants to close down Parliament, we just want to clean it up. The second way is to launch a referendum of mass distraction to capture the protest of the citizens like the abolition of the “Porcellum” on the part of those who, like Prodi and Parisi, were in government for two years without saying a word against the current election law. The cancellation of the “Porcellum” would leave things as they are. The convicts would continue to sip coffee in the cafeteria at Montecitorio and without the limit of two terms of office the mussels, and in particular the party secretaries, would stay eternally in Parliament. I notice in the air there’s the song of the “uccello padulo” {flying prick} of the patrimonial and of new sacrifices. In principle, I’m not against it, but only if the political class that has brought Italy to the brink of collapse, takes itself out of circulation. It’s rotten blood in the veins and the arteries of the country.
"Svegliati_Schifani" coming soon to all the screens of the Internet!

Great Britain has had an enormous influence on Italian history, on the economy of our country and on the internal political happenings, at least starting from the Risorgimento {Unification of Italy}. It’s possible to say that the really close dependency relationship of Italy on Great Britain started with the creation of the Unified State in 1861 and with the “l'Impresa dei Mille” {Expedition of the Thousand} it naturally started a year earlier. The idea of a Unified State had internal roots, but the project got a boost when the English understood that with the opening of the Suez Canal, planned by the French, Italy would become a really strategically important location and thus getting hold of our country, controlling it politically, and often even militarily, would have guaranteed for the English the control of the commercial routes from the Mediterranean to the Far East. Thus Great Britain gave an extra push to accelerate the project of the unification of Italy, by financing and by supporting the Garibaldi enterprise in all ways.
Giovanni Fasanella

Interview with Giovanni Fasanella, journalist and co-author of "Il golpe inglese" {The English Coup}:

150 years of qualified Unity
From the creation of the Unified State onwards, England has always had a fundamental role in our internal political affairs and in all the crucial moments of Italian history. This was the case when Mussolini and Fascism took power, thanks also to English Conservatives; it even had this role during the twenty years of Fascism and it was controlling and influencing the choices on one side, that side of the regime that was the most anglophile; it had this role with the fall of Mussolini,

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Enrico Mattei and Aldo Moro
According to the British doctrine, worked out by Churchill already in the final phase of the Second World War and formalised straight away after that, there were three things that Italy could absolutely not do. The first: have or construct a political system that was thoroughly democratic, that is the alternation of a Majority and an Opposition in government, because of the presence of a Communist Party that was the strongest in the Western world; the second was to think autonomously about security policy; and the third thing, the most important thing that Italy could not do, according to Churchill’s doctrine, was to have an autonomous foreign policy based on Italy’s own interests.

...

But is there anyone of sane mind that really thinks that with 19 million pensioners and 4 million public sector employees we can do it? Every year, to keep them going, another 100 billion in public debt is shovelled into the engine of “Locomotive Italy”, as though it were coal. The locomotive is going slower and slower, making heavy weather of it, with uphill stretches that by now are even more impossible. That money corresponds to extra annual interest of at least 5 billion. Paid by the tax-payers who are becoming fewer and fewer. Companies are closing down and there are 4 million people unemployed. The interest rate on our public debt is going up and the amount due in interest can only go up. If all goes well, in 2011, we will pay 100 billion in interest. Italy has no chance of getting by with this dead weight.
The number of public employees equals the population of Ireland and we are “toing and froing” with the provinces. They all have to be closed down. What further discussion is needed? Pensions have to be reviewed as a whole system. It doesn’t make sense that there are double and triple pensions. One is more than enough. Existing pensions need to be paid out according to how much you have paid in. If you’ve paid in this much, then that is how much you will receive (exactly the opposite of the parliamentary pensions) and anyway pensions have to have an absolute maximum that cannot be breached. 3,000 euro to me seems fair and then a minimum for those who don’t have enough to live on. Managers, who have earned millions of euro in their lives, don’t need a pension of 10 to 20 thousand euro a month, like the annual salary of an office worker.
It’s not possible to divide Italy into two according to pensions, with the strategy of “Those who have paid in, have paid in. Those who have received, have received.” It’s dangerous. The young people, but also many in their forties and fifties, will never retire and have a pension. Via various sorts of taxes, why do they have to pay for a pension for Mastella, or Amato or a regional councillor from Lombardy or Sicily? This doesn’t make sense. Pension reform has to start with those who are already getting a pension, without continually raising the pension age based on the ludicrous excuse of life expectancy. I couldn’t care less about the statistics. After 35 years of contributions I have the right to rest. A labourer won’t retire until he’s 70 years old. He’ll die before that.
Young people have nothing left to lose. They’ve no work, no pension, no social services, no hope for a better future. In the austerity package, no one wasted a word on them. Watch out for their anger. When the new generations understand that today it will be them above all paying for the crisis and that in future they will inherit the public debt, no type of mediation will be possible anymore. The way the wind is blowing, is getting worse and worse.

To avoid the economic catastrophe and to start off again, three things have to be done: change the election law, a government of public health for the time needed to let the tempest pass and new elections. A new election law is already available, it has been there for 4 years, it’s "Parlamento Pulito" {Clean Up Parliament}, the popular initiative proposal that sets out the direct election of candidates, a maximum of two mandates, and no one who has been definitively convicted eligible for election. It has to be discussed as soon as possible in the Senate and then in the Lower House. No Party has rushed forward to put it on the agenda. Schifani has disappeared. Napolitano is asleep. In recent days we have witnessed the umpteenth clown-show for the dumb people. On 11 July a few parliamentarians of the PD, IDV, and Sel have laid before the Court of Cassation the referendum proposal to abolish the current election law. Now they will set up summer stalls to collect at least 500,000 signatures. It will be a carnival-type triumph of an Opposition whose members have all been “appointed” (without anyone having to lift a finger) in the last two elections: in 2006 and 2008. Realpolitik for the simpletons in order to keep their armchairs.
The signatures for a new Italy have already been collected. There are 350,000. They have been lying there for nearly five years, solely the responsibility of the parties, in the cellars of the Senate. They should be discussed now, not after the holidays. For most Italians, the holidays are by now just a mirage, while the parliamentarians have a month of rest and close down parliament until September. Meanwhile the country goes up in flames in the Stock Exchanges of the whole world. But are they not ashamed? Something has to be done. We owe it to ourselves. When the parliamentarians come back to Parliament in their Bermuda shorts, on Saturday 10 September 2011, I will be in front of Parliament to ask for the “Clean Up Parliament” law to be discussed immediately in a public session and as the first person to sign, I have the duty and the obligation to explain it. I will stay in front of Montecitorio for as long as it takes. I expect to be joined by the 350,000 Italians who signed on 8 September 2007 to restore democracy to the whole country.
The second Republic is dead and the Italians do not want to perish tied to its cadaver. Crikey, give me a sign of participation. Don’t let me bludgeon away on my own. They will never give up (but is it in their interests?). Neither will we.

I believe that every nation, at a certain point in their history has the right to legitimate defence. And this point in Italy has been amply exceeded. The scoundrels who sit in Parliament, let not one of them feel excluded, in particularly on the benches of the Opposition, are unauthorised, illegitimate, without any authority. The electoral law, wanted by ALL parties (the demonstration of this is that in the two years of the Prodi government they were careful not to abolish it) is unconstitutional. It does not make it possible to have the direct nomination of the candidate. Anyone can understand this and so why has the Constitutional Court not intervened, is not intervening? Who controls the Constitutional Court? Parliament only represents the interests of the parties and the lobbies that control the country and that have reduced it to rubble. We are entering a cone-shaped shadow like the one in the “Seicento”, when we became a non-entity at an international level for two centuries, of "Franza o Spagna purché se magna". For this disaster that has been in the offing for some time, there is no one that has the minimum of dignity to ask the country for pardon, not the government mummies, a catwalk of individuals who would have made Lombroso happy, not the incapable, incompetent, colluding members of the Opposition, reduced to straw dogs. Happy supporters of the Fiscal Shield, the TAV, water carriers of the Majority with periodical decanting of deputies.
The Constitution forbids fascism, secessionists, covert freemasonry operating as the anti-state. And we have in government, the fascists, secessionists and P2-ists. And the President of the Republic says nothing. He signs, signs, signs. Morpheus a good 86 years old, the age for throwing titbits to the pigeons and the park bench, should be our lifebelt. Thus it’s preferable to throw yourself into the shark-infested waters of the open sea during a storm. You’ve got a better chance of getting saved. Napolitano entered Parliament in 1953. 1953! That’s almost sixty years of continuous and effective contribution to the current situation. A commitment that is almost super-human.
We are in a blind alley. Anyone who has witnessed the parliamentary farce with the reassuring government and the flimsy Opposition, has understood that another 8 September is about to happen. When that will be, no longer depends on us. The occupation of the country will happen on an economic level not a military one. The American bases are already here. The country’s finance laws from now on will be decided in Brussels. Economic, industrial, and social policies will be approved by the EU. A new people of slaves. Before being put in chains or crucified like Spartacus, and his gladiators, these slaves will react. New elections with this law and with this President of the Republic would be of no use. The political class has done a scientific desk-planned job of eliminating all possible ways of changing things democratically, but by doing that it has condemned itself. The Bible says: "Fear the anger of the meek for they shall give back to you everything that they have suffered". I repeat the invitation to the politicians: get out while there’s time.

In the beginning was the Word, then came the Lie with the aspect of Truth. In the modern Italian language inspired by the Newspeak of Ingsoc, the totalitarian ideology of the world of Orwell’s “1984”, the words indicate the opposite of their original meaning. Anyone who was a follower of Ingsoc had to believe in three laws: “Ignorance is strength”, “War is peace” and “Freedom is slavery”. The same that regulate the Italian Neodemocracy. Who better than a Gasparri or a Calderoli is a living expression of the ignorance in power? We are in a peace mission in Libya and in Afghanistan and we are free to work up until death.
From 1984: “The greatest difficulty facing the compilers of the Newspeak Dictionary was not to invent new words, but, having invented them, to make sure what they meant: to make sure, that is to say, what ranges of words they cancelled by their existence.” One example is the word “incinerator” substituted by the word “thermovaloriser”. After that an incinerator no longer incinerates, but it creates energy. The word “thermovaloriser” repeated for years by small and big brothers of information has eliminated the production of dioxin and pollution. Another word is “election financing” transformed into “reimbursement”. Financing in the form of a grant, in fact, it can be denied, it can produce disdain, while a reimbursement is due. “Countless other words such as honour, justice, morality, internationalism, democracy, science, and religion had simply ceased to exist.”
The Italian Newspeak has already eliminated words like justice, democracy, moral and honour. Anyone who still insists on pronouncing them no longer manages to connect them to reality. They are abstractions. They belong to a world that is fabulous and disappeared, like that of Atlantis. The Italian Newspeak is not conceived to develop thinking, cognitive capacity, but to reduce it. “What distinguishes Newspeak was the fact that every year, instead of getting bigger, its lexicon got smaller. Every reduction was considered to be a success because the more the possibility of choice got smaller, the fewer were the temptations to start thinking.” It cannot be denied that the number of words that we are using gets smaller year after year. We contract them. More frequently we use the language of gestures, and on the way, we lose concepts and pieces of culture, of History. The "stock phrases" that we are always pronouncing makes us feel comfortable together with the interlocutors who nod in agreement and are reassured. We recognise each other as equals. “The intention was to make speech, .. as nearly as possible independent of consciousness.” The unknowing slave, among all the slaves, is the one most loved by the democracies.

David Wojnarowicz, Buffalo Falling

Nature is averse to the void. Italy is attracted to it. Politics, the economy, society are voids that we insist on filling with nothingness. Our solution for the void that is besieging us, that devours the everyday spaces, is always another void. Following one sham, an equal sham always follows. For each problem, no remedy. We are navigating by sight. But we can no longer see the horizon nor the Pole Star. We are in default, with a crippled Tremorti, the umpteenth Minister unaware of favours received. A government of shady characters and film extras led by an old corruptor and in command of the nation. Mayors and cabinet members are endlessly ending up in prison. Arrests have become routine. The Opposition is a half way house between a larva and a parasite. An “empty” to be thrown away.
Two concomitant events are waiting for us. The first is Italy’s self-evident financial collapse. The second is the collapse of the current parties. By the end of the year we should sell 200 billion in State bonds at interest rates that are getting ever higher. If we don’t manage to do that, we’ll have broken the bank. It won’t be a Greek tragedy, but an Italian-style comedy. The sudden search for guilty ones by the very people who are guilty. The high and detailed warnings from Napolitano. The whining from the Confindustria. The appeals to Europe from the main editorialists and at the end of the tunnel, the white flag, perhaps our true national symbol. The ones who are mainly responsible, the triad, PDL, PDminusL and Lega will collapse as happened in 1992 for the DC and the PSI. Many of their key figures will be hosted by the prisons of the land; others will take refuge abroad emulating Bottino Craxi.
You can feel a new Tangentopoli in the air. The arrests in Turin, Parma and Voghera can be consolidated in a popular revolt. Observing the tranquil people of Parma calling for the head of their mayor and using their bare fists to tackle the riot police, should make a shiver go down many people’s backs. Italy can transform itself into an enormous area of White Bloc. Regular citizens who insist on honesty from the administrators and from the institutions at any cost, with any personal risk.
The political void of the 1990s was filled with “Trasformismo”. The DC divided itself into two: DC of the Left and DC of the Right and it survived happily. The PSI signed up under the banner of Forza Italia. The PCI limited itself to changing its name. Today “Trasformismo” is no longer possible. In politics, voids are often filled by the man of Providence. By a scoundrel who claims thaumaturgical powers. The Italian has always been fascinated by them, like a rabbit by a serpent with little bells. As soon as possible, the President of the Republic must charge a man extraneous to the parties to form a new government. He must do this with the only objective of avoiding the worst, otherwise we are going to have another 8 September. But perhaps even this will not be enough. They will never give up (but is it in their interests?). Neither will we.

Organised crime has become the State. It can with ease insert its men into the institutions or influence the voters. It moves packets of votes and the parties are hungry for votes. Without votes they would not exist. The North of Italy is undergoing (has already undergone?) the same process as in the South of the country. Liguria, Lombardy, and Piedmont have become the land of the ‘ndrangheta just like Calabria.

Interview with Christian Abbondanza of ”Casa della legalità” {The House of the Rule of Law}

Citizens against organised crime
I’m Christian Abbondanza of “Casa della legalità”, an voluntary organisation of civil commitment that operates without public financing but simply thanks to contributions from simple citizens, small donations, and regular payments. For years it has been carrying on work to stand up to the mafias, to widespread illegality, to crimes against the environment, to the crookedness of the public administration. We operate in various regions in the North and the South, by means of initiatives throughout the land, using the Internet and the website www.casadellalegalita.org, where we publish information and we deal with information at 360 degrees, providing full names and addresses. Above all, we operate by collecting notifications from the citizens who are still afraid to make an official complaint and by guaranteeing anonymity we ensure that the denunciations arrive at the appropriate authorities. We carry out investigations and we promote them. We carry them out to get every type of useful bit of information, not to have a “scoop” but to provide this to the investigative branches of the State and of the magistracy. With this activity, in the last few years, we have given a significant contribution to certain operations of aggression against the possessions of the groupings of the 'ndrangheta and of Cosa Nostra; and for the adoption of restrictive measures imposed on certain members of those groupings. In other cases we have shortened by years and years, the time needed to have an outcome for some investigations, proceedings and judicial activities, from the South to the North of this country. In other cases we have contributed, to say the least, in ripping up that cloak of opportunistic silence that is destroying the North more than the South and in particular Liguria.
In the last few weeks, some protection for myself has been put in place because I’m considered to be a “susceptible objective”, because those groupings of the 'ndrangheta that over the years we have done most about identifying in their relationships with the Public Administration, with the world of politics, with its business dealings, believe that for them I am “the problem” in Liguria … But if I and the “Casa della Legalità” are a problem for them, we are very happy to be that and in fact we promise, we give our word of honour that we will do everything we can to be their definitive problem in Liguria and elsewhere.

Liguria colonised by the 'ndrangheta
OK. Liguria that by now has been colonised by the 'ndrangheta and even before that by Cosa Nostra, has become a territory where the 'ndrangheta manages to influence the vote and to influence the choices of the public administrations … And it’s not a political matter, it relates to both the Right and the Left. The 'ndrangheta like Cosa Nostra has no political colour. We have collected incontrovertible evidence in the form of videos, photos, documents,

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The parties are involved
And it doesn’t mean that it’s a one-sided issue. And it doesn’t mean that it’s an issue raised because the administration in Bordighera, Vallecrosia and Ventimiglia is Centre Right, friends of Scajola. A few days ago we presented a 242 page report requested by the Access Committee of the town of Andora, led by the Centre Left, prepared by the friends of Claudio Burlando.

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The blog has interviewed Eric Hobsbawm, one of the greatest living historians with a Marxist training. The interview took place on his 94th birthday for the launch of his latest book called "Come cambiare il mondo. perché riscoprire l'eredità del marxismo" {How to Change the World - Why rediscover the inheritance of Marxism}. Hobsbawm looks at the possibility of a shift towards the Right in the next few years in Europe for reasons that are connected to the economic depression and the search for safety and a stagnation of the EU, appesantita by getting continuously bigger and bigger and by the lack of a common political vision. Furthermore, the campaign groups are developing more in the areas where there is a higher percentage of young people, thus is North Africa and in the developing countries. But, above all, Hobsbawm who is keen to point out that he is a historian and not a futurologist, tells us what Marxism has become today and what its effects are.

Interview with Eric Hobsbawm

Marxism today:
Eric Hobsbawm: I'm Eric Hobsbawm. I'm a very old historian. As it so happens you are telephoning me on my 94th birthday. I have been writing mostly on the history of social movements and on the general history of Europe and the world in the 19th and 20th centuries. I think all my books are available in Italian and some have been quite successful.
Blog: The first question is relative to your book. Marxism is considered a post ideological phenomena, could you explain the reason why and which will be the consequences of this change?
Eric Hobsbawm: I don't actually use the word "post ideological phenomenon" for Marxism, but it is true that Marxism has ceased at the moment to be system of belief associated with large, mass political movements anywhere in Europe, I think, although there's still some small movements of this kind. So to that extent there's been a major change in the political role of Marxism in politics in Europe. There are still some parts of the world in which this is not the case, for instance Latin America.The consequence of this change, I think, is that we can concentrate much more on the permanent achievements of Marxism. These would be, I think, the following: Marx introduced something which was regarded as novel and is still not sufficiently realized, namely the belief that the present economic system is not permanent or destined to be permanent, but is a phase in historical development which is come into being and which will go out of existence and turn into something else in the course of time, that's important. Secondly, I think Marx concentrated on the analysis of the specific modus operandi, the way in which the system operated and developed. In particular on the curious, discontinuous way in which the system grew, developed contradictions, which then produced major crises. The major advantage of the analysis of Marxism is that it sees capitalism as a system which periodically generates its own internal contradictions which leads to periodic crises of different kinds and these crises have to be overcome by a basic transformation or lesser modification system. It is this discontinuity, this assumption that capitalism operates not as a system tending to stabilize itself, but to be constantly unstable and eventually, therefore, to require major transformation. That is the main element that survives in Marxism. The third element that I think is the relic of what you might call the ideological phenomena, Marxism is based, for most Marxists, on a profound sense of the social injustice of social inequality and the difference between the poor and the rich and powerful. Finally, I think perhaps we should also add an element which Marx would probably not have recognized, but it was there, namely a utopian element. The belief that somehow or other the new society which would come into being would be a better and more human society than the one in which we live at the moment. OK?

Is Europe moving towards the Right?
Blog: Second question. In Northern Africa and some European countries as Spain, Greece, and Ireland, some youth movements born online and having used nets, example Twitter and Facebook, are approaching politics. These movements are demanding more involvement and a radical change in social choices. Meanwhile, however, Spain is shifting to the right, Denmark has closed Schengen borders in Hungary and Finland and even in France with Marie Le Pen, ultra right wing nationalistic parties arising. Isn't this a contradiction?
Eric Hobsbawm: I don't think so. I think these are different phenomena. I think we have, in most Western countries today, youth occupies a position of being a politically active minority, largely because of the way in which education is constructed. For instance, students have been, for centuries, an activist element. At the same time, these educated youth are also more familiar with modern technology of information which has transformed transnational agitation and transnational political mobilization. However, there is a difference between these youth movements, educated youth movements in the Western countries where on the whole youth is a minority phenomenon, and similar youth movements in countries like the Islamic countries and elsewhere in which the majority of the population is below the age of 25 or 30. Therefore, youth movements are politically far more massive and capable of making an impact on the politics. There, I think, the impact does in Western and Eastern countries. The additional impact in radicalizing youth movements is that youth today in this period of economic crisis is disproportionately subject to unemployment and, therefore, disproportionately discontented. Now where that will shift to, we don't know. On the whole, the movements of these educated youth are, politically speaking, not on the right. But by themselves, they are not capable of determining the shape of the national politics and future. We shall, I think, see this in the Arab countries in the next two months. They start off major revolutions, but they do not necessarily determine the general direction in which they go. These directions of course will depend on the country and the region. They will obviously be very much more different in Islamic countries than they are in Europe or, for that matter, North America. It is true, however, that of course in Europe and probably in North America there has been a shift to the right in politics. But that I think takes us perhaps to the next question.
Blog: Yes, the next question is about the economic crisis that we have had since 2008. The one we had in '29, '33, it strengthened and brought fascism to power. Do you foresee any risk of the crisis running now as what happened in '28, '29, '33?
Eric Hobsbawm: Well, there's no doubt that the crisis, the economic crisis since 2008, has definitely led to a shift to the right in Europe. I think at present only about four countries in Europe, in the European Union, are under a center or center left government. Some of these are likely to lose. Spain is likely to go right as well. That I think is true. I don't think this means that there will be a danger of fascism as in the 1930s. The danger of fascism in the 1930s was largely a function of the conversion to fascism of one single country at the turn, decisively, politically decisive country, namely Germany under Hitler. There is no sign of anything like this happening today. None of the important countries are likely, it seems to me, to switch in a major direction like that. Even in the United States where the danger of a right wing movement is strong, it doesn't follow that it will win. Nor indeed do the ultra right wing parties and movements in European countries. Though they are strong, they have so far always remained a strong minority without much chance of becoming a majority. But I think it is very likely that in the next few years most European countries will be run by right wing governments of one kind or another. Remember that the long term effects of the economic crisis in the 1930s were that Europe on the whole turned Democratic and left in a way that it had previously not done. But it took some time to do. So there is a risk, but I don't think that the risk is similar to the one in the 1930s. The risk is rather that not enough will be done to deal with the basic problems, which the capitalism of the past 40 years has thrown up, and which the revival of interest in Marxism has emphasized.

Europe is immobile
Blog: which is your opinion on EU and on its outcome for so far? Will the EU consolidate to get back to a simple gathering of the states?
Eric Hobsbawm: I think the hope of turning the EU into something more than an alliance of states and a free trade area will have to be given up. It will not go much further than it has gone so far, but I don't think it can be destroyed. I think what has been established, a degree of free trade, a degree much more important of a common jurisprudence and common law will remain. The main weakness I think of the EU, the reason for its failure has been, it seems to me, the conflict between the economic and social basis of the EU. Which was that of trying to eliminate war between France and Germany and unifying the economically developing parts and rich parts of Europe. That was one aim, which was achieved. It was then mixed up with a political aim associated with the Cold War and the development since the end of the Cold War, namely the aim to extend the borders of Europe to the entire continent and even beyond. In doing so, it has divided Europe into parts, which are no longer easily coordinated. Both economically, the great crises are very likely in the new acquisitions to the European Union since the 1970s in Greece, in Portugal, in Ireland, for instance. Even politically, the differences between the former Communist states and the former non Communist states of Europe, all these I think have weakened the capacity of Europe to develop further. Whether Europe will be able to maintain itself the way it is, I don't know. But I don't believe that it will go out of existence and I think that we should still live in a more coordinated Europe than we have done since, well, World War II. But if I may say so, you are asking me questions as an historian about the future. Unfortunately, historians are no better at predicting the future than anybody else, so these forecasts cannot be based on any special qualifications that I have for looking into the future.

This morning I voted. The polling clerk was my next door neighbour. He said to me “Who are you?” I gave him my identity card and after looking carefully at my face he said: “Please go to booth number one”. It was perfect. In the booth I had four orgasms. I shouted out “Yes, Yesss, Yessss, Yessssssss!” while I was placing a cross on the voting papers. The presiding officer wanted to denounce me for sexual outrage, but you could see that he too, was a survivor of four referendum copulations and he put up with it. The ladies who were present blushed; some looked at their companions with new admiration, with eyes illuminated by a new malicious democratic light. There was the atmosphere of the first time, when you go to an appointment with a young lass who incredibly has actually accepted to go out with you. It’s been years since I enjoyed the moment so much. Going to the local school was a religious act. I was dressed as I would be at Mass for a baptism, or a wedding, arm in arm with my wife and holding the hand of my youngest son.
The best of Italy has voted or will vote today or will do so tomorrow. How many of us will there be? Anyway we will keep count whatever idea we have, whatever our social situation, whatever our age. We will keep count and we will know how many tens of millions of brothers and sisters we have. How many of us are willing to change the party-ocracy and its puppet masters of the Confindustria and the banks. Money. The referenda could be translated into a single choice “Your money or your life”. The Italians that vote want life, happiness, a future for their offspring as citizens and not as modern slaves. At Santa Margherita just two steps from my house, the young industrialists have proposed taking the pension age to 70 years old. Why not 80 or 90? How many manual workers will get to be 70 years old?
The parties have put the silencer on the referendum. They tried everything including the non-grouping-together with the local elections with 10 deputies from the PDminusL and two from the IdV who were absent and one Radical who voted against. Bersani explained that Fassino was in Turin for the festival of the Unification of Italy. It only needed one vote and the quorum would have been achieved. Today and tomorrow, each person counts for one. But those who don’t vote cannot believe that they are absolved. As Faber said “However much you believe you are absolved, you are always involved”. Vote and get others to vote right up to the last minute on Monday. They will never give up (but is it in their interests?). Neither will we.

Beppe Grillo’s intervention at the latest episode of Annozero on 9 June 2011:

The RAI is finished
Interviewer -How has this academic year gone? Can you give an opinion about it?
Beppe Grillo- First of all I’d like to say thanks for the hospitality that you are showing me. I would like to do an interview that is based on calmness, with no shouting as I am against this style of politics that is yelling. Enough! It has to stop. First of all I’d like to thank everyone listening right now to this broadcast.

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The metastasis of the private water companies
Interviewer - These are the attempts of the Centre-Right …
Beppe Grillo- Centre-Right and Centre-Left! Look you know the parties are not all the same, neither on the right or on the left because for water if we go and look, the Centre-Left is more relevant than the Centre-Right, talking of the PD.

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The citizens in the companies managing public resources
Interviewer-Renzi talks about your honesty and he says: Grillo is not trustworthy, he’s not coherent …
Beppe Grillo- I’m not a Mayor, I’m a comic, I’m not trustworthy! I’m not at all trustworthy, I’m the most dishonest person in the world, OK? You don’t have to vote for me. I’m not a candidate. I earn my money with my work. I pay taxes. With these taxes we are paying the salaries of these Florentine little idiots,

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The mess-ups of the parties
Interviewer -Thus you are convinced that this referendum has political weight, no? Will it have political weight? So why is it that right now, Di Pietro has said: we need to downgrade the political meaning …. Beppe Grillo- This is the biggest democratic movement, Di Pietro has done a referendum on water that then got smashed by the Court of Cassation because they wanted to keep 7% of investments, he was on the other side, then he came to his senses

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Politics without money
Interviewer -But what’s the constructive stage?
Beppe Grillo- The constructive stage is to give the management of policy and of public resources to the citizens, not to the political parties. This is the big change. I don’t want to talk about this lot. You always bring them out for me because you don’t even organically have the words to talk about a new politics.

The quorum is a theft of democracy. A constitutional way of screwing the citizen. The gates of the palace have to stay shut. It’s unacceptable that those who hold public office are inviting people to not go and vote. They should be denounced. Around the place there are only posters for YES. Those for NO are absent. Those who want nuclear and want to take possession of public water to make money out of it cannot invite people to vote NO. If they were to do that they would be shooting themselves in the balls. In fact, there would be a greater possibility of getting a “quorum”. Thus they prefer to use the contemptible tactic of staying silent, of putting the voters off the track by even providing them with false data through the State TV programmes like Tg1 and Tg2. They know that public opinion has already been decided, that the YES voters will be in a majority with or without a quorum and so they are aiming at the desertion of the polling stations. Italy is a dictatorship with just two glimmers of democracy. Two small lamps that are ever feebler for participation: the popular law proposal and the referendum. The former is just smoke in your eyes, you can gather 350,000 signatures for a new election law, as for Clean Parliament, and Schifani can use them to clean his arse and no one can object. In the next few days it’ll be the second anniversary of my being heard by the commission for constitutional affairs to present the law … The referendum, when it overcomes the barrier of the disinformation during the collection of the signatures and the judgement of the Constitutional Court and it was finally inserted into the calendar, it then became a loaded pistol against the party-ocracy that immediately started an obscene dance to weaken it. The first step was to avoid any grouping together with local, national or European elections. The second step was to choose a date in the summer for the vote. The third was to avoid talking about it or to invite people to stay home or go to the seaside, as Formigoni has done and as Craxi did in his time. It is by now evident that democracy and party-ocracy are irreconcilable. When the former exists, the latter cannot exist and vice versa. Democracy is for the Italian parties like light is for the vampires, they cannot tolerate it. This is why the MoVimento 5 Stelle {5 Star MoVement} will try to bring in the referendum that is both abrogative and propositional without a quorum (anyone who doesn’t vote counts for zero), as given in its Programme.

On 12 and 13 June vote and bring with you your friends and relatives to vote in the referenda. FOUR YESes against nuclear, for water in public hands and for anyone to be equal before the law.

The massive pan is on the boil. The gas is on. There are guests for dinner. They should be bringing the food with them (as ever), salami and pork sausages, salmon and parmesan cheese, but they arrive empty-handed. The parties welcome them as though they were guests, but they came on their own without telling anyone. Someone has a carrot and a few onions to give flavour to the water. The newcomers are hungry, they have an atavistic hunger for democracy. The parties treat them like saviours. The citizens who have invited themselves and the parties, are, have to be, a new, inseparable, monolithic demonstration of democracy. That’s what the secretaries on the Left, Right and Centre say! It must be true if no one says it’s not. No party has lost. Almost all have won with the candidates of the others, often against the candidates of the others, but what does it matter ….. “Scurdammoce 'o passato.”
The party secretaries and their lackeys, the journalists, feel like marvellous surfers on the wave of change, a wave used to rise even higher, to travel with a favourable wind. Anyway the table is already set, the usual dining table at which the citizens act as waiters and eat up the left-overs. The dishes, however are desolately empty, there’s such hunger. Someone makes a proposal; perhaps it’s Veltroni, a great idea, to sacrifice the fattened calf for the return of the prodigal sons to the common house of party-ocracy. There’s not even a glimpse of a fattened calf, but there’s no lack of big fat beef cattle. The big pan was bubbling away for them all along, and they didn’t know it, and the big fat beef cattle are there, seated with their forks in their hands, the various people like Bersani e Letta, Fassino, Fini and Casini, Vendola and Cicchitto. A separate saucepan is reserved for Borghezio. The cannibals of party-ocracy offer no discounts. They’ve been on a diet for decades. Not even the bones of the parties will be left. The wind of change is blowing ever stronger and it cannot be contained. It started blowing in Greece, then in North Africa, now in Spain, tomorrow in Italy. Direct democracy will not tolerate the intermediation of the parties. It will not delegate its own future to the papier-mâché TV leaders. To good-for-nothings that elect themselves as representatives for money or for visibility. In the new world, each one counts for one. The cannibals are hungry. They will never give up (but is it in their interests?). Neither will we.

The System has won. The one that makes you come out into the street because it’s you that’s won, but in the end it’s always the system that wins. It transforms the voters into fans content that finally it’s the Left that’s won or alternatively it’s the Right that’s won. Someone said of the PDminusL that “It’s easy to win with the candidates of the others”. OK, but who are the others? Pisapia, who is De Benedetti’s lawyer and the bearer of the PDminusL’s membership card number ONE (that has for the Swiss engineer the same magical effects as Uncle Scrooge’s mythical coin), Fassino a deputy in Rome and the mayor of Turin who wants the militarisation of the Val di Susa? Vendola who builds incinerators together with Ms Marcegaglia, has earmarked 120 million euro of public money from the region of Apulia to Don Verzé’s San Raffaele foundation; Don Verzé the spiritual father of Berlusconi and he is keeping the management of water in private hands? The system has liquidated Berlusconi and it has to present new faces so as not to be swept away. If they’re old, they pass them off as new. If they are new, the phagocytes with party membership cards and representational roles. If Pisapia at least puts a stop to the monstrous construction of EXPO 2015 together with that of City Life, closes down the incinerators, cuts the salaries of the town cabinet members by 75%, I will change my mind. Do you think he will do that?
On reading the newspapers it seems that the 5 Star MoVement has been deleted from politics, swept away by the new that is coming in. It’s the PDminusL that’s won, the same one that guaranteed for Berlusconi “a life that is never late”, that has allowed in the Fiscal Shield, that voted for the Great Pardon, that did not make it possible to group together the local elections and the referendum (one vote would have been enough, but absences included 10 PDminusL people, including Fassino, and 2 IDV, do you think it was just by chance?),that gifted three public national frequencies to Berlusconi asking in exchange just one per cent of the turnover, that did not do a law on the conflict of interests when it was in government and did not even modify Calderoli’s “legge porcata” {filthy law}.
The Confindustria is looking for new ways of maintaining its parasites. It woke up after Fukushima, when it understood that the cake of about 30 billion for nuclear power stations was vanishing, before that it was expecting the juicy bone and was keeping quiet. The Confindustria, together with the parties, will do everything possible to cause the failure of the referenda that would take away from it the management of water for ever. No one is talking about the referenda any more. Everyone’s out in the street celebrating. Everything changes so that nothing changes. They will never give up (but is it in their interests?). Neither will we.

The astrologists are more important than the opinion poll people, they grasp the truth more intuitively. Nicola Piepoli is the "doyen" of the political clairvoyants, a half way point between a male Cumaean Sibyl and the Oracle of Arcore. Just a few days before the local elections, he thus blasted away the foolish ambitions of the MoVimento 5 Stelle {5 Star MoVement} in Milan: “It’ll be intangible, it’s worth little more than one per cent.” Mr big Piepoli had no doubt about the lack of success for the MoVement, he’s so sure of this with the comfort coming from his lifetime’s work of political-astrological studies. The day after, the opinion poll people (but who pays them?) were transformed into columnists. They go on TV to explain why their analysis was right even though the numbers were wrong. The extraordinary thing is that they are invited. What is even more extraordinary is that no one sends them away with a kick up the backside. In fact, the more fantastic their statements, the more they gain in authority.
The opinion poll is the first electoral weapon of mass persuasion. If most people don’t vote for a certain party it’s useless to vote for them. It would be a dispersed vote, a useless one. The theory of the “useful vote” is born here. The opinion poll deletes you and the voter, as a reflex, no longer takes you into consideration. The vote is useful, only if it goes to the PDL or the PDminusL, the biggest ones, the coalition. The 5 Star Movement was not present in most opinion polls or it was inserted in the category of the “others”. A methodical job in which the newsagents of the Left and of the Right worked ceaselessly omitting the name "MoVimento 5 Stelle" and substituting it with "grillini" to disorientate the voter. The same ones that have insulted us for months with the most derogatory terms are now asking us to make a choice: “Either on this side or on that side”. They are politely requested not to keep on. The choice is not between one party and another. Twenty years of sharing things between the parties have not yet opened the eyes of many people. The 5 Star MoVement is anti-system. It is fighting for the disappearance of the parties that have transformed democracy into party-ocracy. The citizen has to make himself the State and the parties have to pack their bags. The parties have taken in a billion euro of public financing. That’s the water in which they live. Take the water away from them and the fish, who can be divided into piranhas and sharks, will disappear. Above and beyond.

”In the street , it’s happened a few times that I hear a couple of people chatting:
- “THIS EVENING there’s Beppe GRILLO in the square…”
and more than once, the response was
- “Who? Ah Beppe Grillo, the comic? It’s such a long time that he’s not been seen…”
And inevitably I wondered: “How many people are there that don’t know about the battles that Beppe and the Movement have been carrying out for a number of years?
It’s really true. The PARTIES occupy all the spaces. And IT’S FOR THIS REASON THAT THEY HAVE FOUGHT TO GET THIS FILTH OF BIPOLARISM and still more THE ELIMINIATION OF THE PREFERENCE VOTE. And ever with the logic of the party THERE’S ONE PERSON WHO DECIDES FOR THE OTHERS. The same person that places the director of the RAI. The same person that manages the appointment of various presidents, positions that are overpaid and so coveted. They have the control of the media. And in a country that has famously “got older” the INTERNET is something that doesn’t compete with the TV. This is why the commitment has to be TWICE AS MUCH. It’s not right to leave people in the hands of the TRADITIONAL means of communication.” Mario Amabile


In Italy there are two worlds. Two parallel universes. In the first, people who get their information from the TV and the newspapers. In the second, those that get their information on the Internet. The first are full of certainty; the second have doubts, and for this reason are always checking up with different sources of information. The inhabitants of the two worlds live in the same physical reality, but they perceive it in a different way. The world of the traditional media is openly at war with the other world. Instead of missiles, it uses silences, omissions, falsities, public financing, laws, money from the lobbies. The first world is strong and seems indestructible. It’s an “across the board” world from RAI to Mediaset, from the Gruppo Editoriale L'Espresso to the RCS MediaGroup and it has the same objective. To protect the System, to maintain the status quo, to prevent the inhabitants of the first world from transferring into the second. The soldiers of the first world, (but the right word for them is "mercenaries”), make some incursions into the second world, but they are jeered at with hundreds of comments and emails and they have to retreat. Some of them never get over this experience. The two worlds, even though they seem to be impermeable to each other, and with no communication between them, are seeing an ever increasing number of inhabitants who are moving to the second world. Like grains of sand in an egg timer. Slowly but constantly. The “tripods” of the first world are reacting with impatience in a disorganised way. Their lies are more frequent, irascible and boorish, but even less plausible. Between the first world and the second world, the distance is getting bigger. The “tripods” will end up in the crevice that they have constructed In fact; it’s not possible to go against reality for very long.

In the election competition the minor parties often don’t participate and they “give support” to the candidate of one of the two poles. It’s called “realpolitik". Basically the minor party does a deal with the PDL or the PDminusL, two regional councillors, four town councillors, a cabinet member. They decide not to present any candidate or to just pretend to do so, so that those votes flow into the others at the ballot. In practice, it’s the splitting up of the goods of the citizen voter without his knowing anything.
In Turin, just as an example, there’s Fassino who’s running (but where is he running to poor soul?) with the support of all the regular Centre Left parties who have thus not presented their own lists, but they already have their councillors in the “Sala Rossa” {location of the city council meetings in Turin}. The minor party can even support one pole or the other without bother. Ms Bresso was supported as a candidate for the Region of Piedmont by Casini’s UDC party. The price of renunciation to an independent list is the allocation of a conspicuous number of councillors to those who play the game. The minor party is not interested in the percentage of votes that they’ll get, but the number of armchairs that they negotiate beforehand. It’s the "captive" model as opposed to the free market. A "captive” company has only one company to which it issues invoices. If the client changes their procedures or if they have a crisis, the "captive" company goes bust. That’s happened to hundreds of companies that worked for Fiat or Telecom. The "realpolitik" to sell your arse for a third party keeps you out of the realm of the free market, of the judgment of the citizens, you win even if you lose; you have no barrier to overcome to get into the council. The "captive" companies are not interested in competition, the improvement of their product, the voters, the respect for the programme; they live for their single client. The "captive" parties have got Bersani and Berlusconi as clients. Some are faithful to a single pole, others like the Radicals, wander around, so as to raise the stakes. For the "captive" parties there’s no entrepreneurial risk. They don’t invest in the citizens or in respect for the programme, but only in those that they call “ally”. But in fact it’s an alms-giver that keeps them alive. A great life. The negotiating power of the "captive" parties diminishes over time together with their votes (after a bit the voter prefers to vote for the original) up until the moment that they disappear. In that case, the survivors, usually the top brass, join the major party and they enjoy the fruits of the "realpolitik". They will never give up (but is it in their interests?). Neither will we.

*** This evening, Sunday 8 May, watch the live streaming from Trieste starting at 7:00pm (Italian time). Click here. ***

Beppe Grillo’s interview on Annozero Thursday 28 April 2011.

Democracy or Party-ocracy
Interviewer - Berlusconi has confessed, the moratorium has just been a way of blocking the referendum.
Beppe Grillo -I’m sorry, enough of this sort of thing, enough of Berlusconi, the referendum – here, it’s not a problem … you are always making a mistake with the approach, it is no longer a problem about nuclear, the referendum, what has the referendum become? Today you can shift it, you can block it. We just have to do a referendum, as in 1946 with the Republic or the Monarchy. Today we have to decide between Democracy and Party-ocracy. Either that lot of people that you have sitting there, either them or us, either over there or over here, that’s it!

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The citizen in the institutions
Interviewer - Berlusconi has confessed, the moratorium has been a way of blocking the referendum.
Beppe Grillo -Even the children knew that, we all realized that. Here the issue is to understand what it means to do a referendum. In this country, by now it’s as though we do them, we don’t do them, we shift them, we direct them, we take them away, we too have done referenda about the financing of the parties. Where did they land up? They have changed things with reimbursing expenses for these people that you have in the studio today each one shares, each party, they have already shared out a billion Euro.

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Il MoVimento 5 Stelle {5 Star MoVement}
Interviewer - You got to 5% - you are starting …
Beppe Grillo -I’m not interested – 5 or 4 or 3 – they are percentages of mortality, it doesn’t mean anything 5 or 4 or 3 means that either you the citizens you lift up that flabby arse that you have there and even you in the studio that they are using as a choreography, but don’t you feel ashamed every so often? Don’t you feel something inside you when you hear the words spoken by Lupi, the daughter of Fantozzi who is saying things, don’t you feel something happening inside that makes you get up and throw a shoe or something? But doesn’t that happen? Get revenge for us! If we have to have a referendum, we’ll do it like this: We are either subjects or citizens!”

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Nuclear is dead The 5 Star MoVement was born on the Internet. I am not eligible to be a candidate. I have tried to put people together, normal people that are fed up of these things, to get them to think about projects concerning water, how to build a building. I don’t have to make a power station. It’s useless talking about nuclear. We have to do a national and European strategic plan. We don’t have a strategy. Referendum, what referendum? Are we going to go along with Germany and with renewables or with France and with nuclear?

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Outlawed politicians
Are you talking about laws? There’s a national law that says a politician cannot be a candidate more than twice, OK? What do they do with these laws? At a regional level they don’t “assimilate”; they don’t “assimilate” the national law and then one, “Forminchione” of Lombardy, are you listening to me? He does 4 legislatures. Why can he do it? Because Errani of the PD in Emilia Romagna has done 3. It’s illegal. The governor of Lombardy and the governor of Emilia Romagna are illegal. They have invented something that says: “We haven’t received this law”?

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Information is under control
Interviewer - If people don’t go to vote it is a problem for the people who don’t go and vote …
Beppe Grillo -They don’t go to vote because they don’t have the information, you don’t have the information about what it means to privatise, about what it means to make public, what is a public law company, what water is, how we need to pay for it. This Left wing that now is praising itself for being against the privatisation of water, I’ll show you, I’ll show you the various Left wing leaders that were talking about Veolia,

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Here are the dates and the cities of my electoral tour. Follow the tour on FB. Updates in the next few days. Where I can’t be present I’ll connect via Skype.
Friday 29/4 Cirié (h.18.30), Pinerolo (h.21); Saturday 30/4 Alpignano-Pianezza (h.11), Trofarello (h.14), Turin (h.17), San Mauro (h.21); Sunday 1/5 Chivasso (h.14.30), Novara (h.17,00), Domodossola (h. 21); Monday 2/5 Cagliari (h.19); Tuesday 3/5 Olgiate Comasco (h.12), Varese (h.19), Busto Arsizio (h. 21); Wednesday 4/5 Milano (h.19), Vimercate (h.21); Thursday 5/5 Desio (h.19), San Giuliano Milanese (h.21); Friday 6/5 Rottofreno (h.17), Salsomaggiore Terme (h.19), Sala Baganza (h.21); Saturday 7/5 Cento (h.11.30), Bologna (h.15), Rovigo (h.19); Sunday 8/5 Cartura (h.11), Abano Terme (h.12), Oderzo (h.15), Trieste (h.19); Monday 9/5 Vigonovo e Campolongo (h.11.30), Chioggia (h.18), Adria (h.21); Tuesday 10/5 Codigoro (h.12), Ravenna (h.18), Cesenatico (h.20.30), Rimini (h.21,30); Wednesday 11/5 S. Benedetto del Tronto (h.13), Vasto (h.15,30), Nardò (h.21,30); Thuesday 12/5 Grottaglie (h.13), Cosenza (h.17.30), Napoli (h.21.30); Friday 13/5 Latina (h.11.30), Pomezia (h.13), Grosseto (h.17.30), Siena (h.20), Arezzo (h.22).

Democracy in Italy doesn’t exist. There’s room for doubt that it ever existed, but at least there was a time when appearances were upheld. A few referenda were respected, like the ones on divorce and abortion. A few trials against people like Andreotti and Craxi, the former convicted for mafia and “timed out”, the latter convicted and then becoming a fugitive. The citizens voted for a candidate and they believed that with their choice they were influencing the outcomes for the country. The parties were numerous and therefore difficult to control. Gelli advocated having just two parties, the one the mirror image of the other, with agreements between the two. It’s written in black on white in his “Piano di Rinascita Democratica” {Plan for Democratic Rebirth}. It’s what has come to pass with the PDL and the PDminusL, in apparent disagreement on everything, but in agreement on the public financing of parties, on the TAV, nuclear power stations, parliamentary immunity, financing to the newspapers, on the Fiscal Shield, the conflict of interests, the privatisation of water, and NATURALLY on the current electoral law that obliges you to vote with an X for a hot shit or for one a bit tepid.
The national elections are unconstitutional; Calderoli’s “legge porcata” {filthy law} is unconstitutional, but no party has lifted a finger to change it. The will of 359,000 Italians who have signed for a Clean Parliament is ignored. Perhaps we need a Day of Anger even in Italy to get Schifani and the party leaders to shift their arses?
The PDL and the PDminusL apparently have a weak point: the regional and local elections in the big cities where it’s possible to vote for the candidate. How can you control the vote without changing the law? Simple. You make an agreement under the table. A region for you, a region for me. A strong candidate against a weak candidate. Emilia Romagna to the PDminusL, Lombardy to the PDL. Both Errani and Formigoni are outlaws for having gone over the two consecutive terms of office, but neither of the two main parties has uttered a whisper. In order to make the PDminusL candidate win in Turin they put forward Buttiglione as a candidate (and not even cardinal Bertone would have voted for him) against Chiamparino and today a guy called Coppola against Fassino who MUST win. It’s an exchange vote, region by region, town by town. In theory they are decisive elections. If the PDminusL had wanted to win in Milan against Ms Moratti, they wouldn’t have presented as candidates at the Primaries the lawyer “Pisapia-portalovia” (Pisapia-take-him-away) and Boeri, the architect who worked with Ligresti.
The parties have shared out Italy, apart from perhaps the towns with fewer than 5,000 inhabitants. A further piece of evidence was the ferocious reaction of the PDminusL against the MoVimento 5 Stelle {5 Star MoVement} after the failure of Bresso to get elected in Piedmont where the throw-away candidate Cota actually won. Cacciari couldn’t stop himself: “It was a shock, especially in Piedmont – and to whom do we have to say thanks for this masterpiece? To those dick-head “grillini” … I would set fire to them, they are wretches. Do they realise what they have done? We know what we have done. We have ruined your game of mess-ups. The party is over dear “pdieliini e pidimenoellini” {PDL and PDminusL guys}. You’ll have to get used to it. They will never give up (but is it in their interests?). Neither will we.

I can feel a harsh, insidious, strong wind that’s blowing in Europe. It’s arriving from all directions of the compass. Breezes, puffs of wind that at first seem innocuous, at the most they ruffled your hair, are transforming into a possible storm. Nationalisms are coming back with the strength of a time that seemed to be buried in history. In France the National Front’s Marine Le Pen is a favourite in the Presidential elections. The “bonapartist” Sarkozy, the man who first bombs you and then wishes you “good night” is considered by the French to be too Left wing. In the first round he is predicted to get just 19% compared to Le Pen’s 25%. Le Pen, if she is elected, will hold a referendum for leaving the EU. In Finland, the “True Finns", an Extreme right-wing, anti-Europe and xenophobic party has gained 20.4% of the vote. Its leader Timo Soini has declared that it will not support any financial help for European States in difficulty, like Greece and Portugal. In Canton Ticino the winner is Giuliano Bignasca, the parallel character to Boss(ol)i (and that’s a hard task). His "Lega dei Ticinesi" has become the top party. Bignasca immediately announced measures to reduce the number of Italians who cross the border every day to work in Switzerland. In Hungary a new Constitution has been approved. Its inspiration is “God, Fatherland and Family”. A Constitutional coup d’état by the conservative Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Amnesty International has denounced the ultra-nationalists Constitution because “it violates the International and European regulations on Human Rights”.
The effects of the 1929 crisis had the peak of their effects in 1933, four years later. For the year 2008, the same thing should happen, and in 2012 after the banks, the States could go bust. When States go bust, the most obvious solution is dictatorship. In 1933 (a coincidence?) Adolf Hitler became Prime Minister in German as a result of regular elections. History perhaps never repeats itself in the same way, but certainly in a similar way. The fear of the economic crisis and of immigration (that didn’t exist in the 1930s) are making Europe list towards an angry mosaic of nationalisms. Who will stop it? Heil Europa!

The P2 was an undercover Masonic lodge. Today we have an uncovered Masonic government. The P2-ists of yesteryear have made progress in their careers. The President of the Council, membership number 1816, and the PDL’s spokesperson in the Lower House, Fabrizio Cicchitto (membership number 2232) use facts to explain to us Gelli’s “Piano di Rinascita Democratica” {Plan of Democratic Rebirth}. Gelli, the Grand Master, convicted and sentenced to 10 years for aggravated slander for terrorism and disturbing the evidence in the investigations relating to the Bologna massacre (85 deaths and 200 injured people), plays the part of the old wise man on TV and he complains because he is not officially recognised as having the copyright of the Government’s programme, of that of the Justice system and of the election law as well as the control of TV networks. In another country they would have been convicted of high treason. In our country they have reached the top of the institutions.
In 1981, when the list of the P2 members was discovered by the judges Gherardo Colombo and Giuliano Turone, it was understood that the History of Italy, born in the Resistance, democratic and republican , was a cover for a group of adventurers (bankers, generals, politicians, journalists, and magistrates) that had control of the nation. A “cupola” to make “Cosa Nostra” seem insignificant. Only 972 out of 2,400 P2-ists were identified. Tina Alselmi was chosen as President of the Parliamentary Commission by Nilde Iotti, who was then President of the Lower House. She carried out her role with conscience and courage. And for this reason, her political career was destroyed. She would have been a great President of the Republic.
Tina Alselmi believed that the names that came to light were the “small fry”, that the others, a thousand of them, never identified, were more important. But what is more important than a General, or the director of a newspaper, unless it’s a President of the Council or one of his Ministers or the head of a big company? Today things have come full circle. The citizens are excluded from the institutions with the “legge elettorale porcata” {filthy electoral law} shaped in accordance with the P2 thinking, the TV stations are the government’s megaphone, the justice system is about to be put in a cage. The P2 reigns. Where do you have to go to sign up?

Interview with Anna Vinci
Anna Vinci –How did I meet Tina Alselmi and how did I come to write this book? it’s a long story of love and of great respect and of great love for her, of reciprocal esteem , a meeting a few years ago renewed by a TV interview, and after that the first book came into being and then these secret notes.

Tina Alselmi’s secret notes about the P2
Blog – Has the P2 achieved its objectives?
Anna Vinci – I have lived with these notes of Anselmi’s for more than a year, a year and a half, and I think that certainly the commission led by Alselmi, the bi-Chamber Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry on the P2 Masonic Lodge from 1981 to 1984 in some way interrupted Gelli’s project, the P2-ist project and make it grow weary. This doesn’t mean to say that that’s the end of the risks.

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The language of the P2
Blog – What is the language of the P2?
Anna Vinci –One of the first things that struck me is this slovenly way of being. The P2 project is finished - it’s not finished. Certainly in the use of language it is at the best levels because it is really the contempt for words. The word that is a way of communicating, of relating to others. We see it every day. Someone says one thing one day and the following day something else. When there was the fact of the apartment, that Minister Scajola said “ah – but I didn’t know anything. They gave it to me as a gift.”

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When they threw coins at Craxi at the Hotel Raphael, there were Italians there. Today challenging La Russa in the square there are Parties camouflaged as campaign groups. In 1992, in parliament, there were deputies and senators elected by the citizens, today only squalid characters “appointed” by the party secretaries.
The leaders of my balls, after the verbal clashes in the chamber go off to have “gnocchi alla romana” in the restaurant behind Montecitorio and they swap parliamentarians like in an album of “Panini figurines”. Indignation at so much per kilo, or perhaps it would be better to say per vote, distorts the faces of Franceschini and Bersani, representatives of a party that for 15 years has “saved” all Berlusconi’s laws. Fassino where the heck were you when there was the voting for joining together the local elections and the referendum on the nuclear issue? And D'Alema and Ms Melandri when it was possible to bring down the government with the vote on the Fiscal Shield. The former, with the air of one who can allow himself to take you for a ride declared: “I hadn’t understood that it was important”, the latter was on a reward trip to Madrid. In Italy there is not a government party and an opposition one, but a single party, as in the times of fascism. They swap around for giving a helping hand to the lobby for nuclear, for water in private hands, for incinerators and the “ad partitum" laws like the one on the Great Pardon that saved public administrators of all the parties from going to prison.
The name “Berlusconi” is banned from this blog. Today I am naming him for the last time and anyone who wants to discuss him has available to them all the online newspapers that don’t know how to talk of anything else, to increase their traffic or as an electoral calculation. They pull at my coat tails to make alliances with this fellow or that one. My response is simple: anyone who wants to can go with this fellow or that one but don’t break my balls. I have objectives, described in the Programme of the 5 Star MoVement, and God willing, I would like to achieve them. Alliances are a compromise between different objectives, and of these, as we have seen in recent years, not even one is achieved, apart from the occupation of armchairs. The objectives will be achieved by the citizens of the Val di Susa, the campaign groups for the public management of water, the group “no Dal Molin”, not by the parties that are nothing other than business groupings.
This website is deberlusconi-ised. Just by saying that, I feel lighter. To keep the elephant alive it’s necessary to keep on talking about it, to make it the centre of the universe. Once the elephant has been deleted, at the same time there’s the enchantment and even the collateral shit that is produced by a continuous rhythm. They will never give up (but is it in their interests?). Neither will we.

The Italian Parliament is worse than the Fukushima reactors. Nuclear is neither of the Right nor of the Left. It’s big business for everyone. Assailed by the radiation coming from Japan, re-awakened like a new-born Paul of Tarsus on the road to the atom, the PDminusL is in training to create the dark antinuclear face in front of the mirror and in front of the voters. The important thing to do is to bark, then in the back of the shop they get together and have an agreement between the red and the white cooperatives and with Lunardi, with the TAV of Chiamparino and Fassino, with the construction of the biggest American military base in Europe at Vicenza, with the blessing of Bersani, with the incinerators and obviously, with nuclear power stations.
The nuclear clock stopped on 11 Mach 2011, but the Italian nuclearist never stop, true zombies of the political scene. In the Lower House, the vote on the bringing together of the local elections and the referendum ended with 276 against and 275 in favour. A result that is OK for everyone. The government, because the motion was not passed, the Opposition (?) because it has given evidence that it still is in existence and it has been able to express its anger and indignation with the Bindi/Franceschini duo. The latter said: “It’s unacceptable and incomprehensible … It hasn’t been a matter of any old “no” given that on election day there would have been voting all together on the legitimate impediment, on nuclear and on water. I intend to summon the office of the presidency.” The Referenda promoted by the campaign groups for water and by the IDV that anyway the PDminusL had never wanted to happen, nor have they supported.
The blame for the failure to bring everything together that would have saved the Italian people 350 million and would have made it possible to have a quorum, has been laid at the feet of the wretch Marco Beltrandi, a Radical and a member of the PDminusL, pay one, get two. His mental confusion comes through the words he uses to justify his vote: “I voted in a different way from the PD because I am against the quorum and because I think that the election day is a subterfuge for getting round the law.” So basically he voted “no” to say “yes”, but he wanted to say “perhaps”. To be put in hospital. The finger pointed at the scapegoat (someone has to be sacrificed) has made something pass into the backgrounds: the absence of 10 PDminusL deputies (*), 8 deputies from FLI and 2 from IdV. Where were they, these gentlemen paid by the Italians? They, together with those who voted in favour, are responsible before the Nation, if the quorum is not reached. For the construction of nuclear power stations in Piedmont, Sardinia, and Campania. For the future of our children. There is no justification for their absence.
A part of Japan no longer exists. Perhaps no one will be able to go back and live within a radius of at least 80 kilometres around Fukushima, an enormous stretch of land, that now is as though it were on Mars and even Tokyo, with its 15 million inhabitants fleeing, is at risk of contamination. Get Italy fired up on 12 and 13 June and “Turn off nuclear”!
(*) Fassino was in Turin for a ceremony to remember 150 years since the Unification of Italy, authorised by the party.

I think the time has come to start a discussion about the meaning of elected positions. All of them, without exception. From a Deputy in Parliament to a regional councillor. Anyone who is elected has to do the job that he was elected to do. He has to perform his role FULL TIME until the end of the term of office. If a law is missing, then it has to be brought in. This goes for the deputy, the senator, the governor, the town councillor and the euro-parliamentarian. If you put yourself forward as a candidate to be a euro-parliamentarian like de Magistris you cannot put yourself forward as a candidate to be the mayor of Naples. If you have been elected (which is one way of putting it) as a deputy like Fassino, you cannot put yourself forward as a candidate to be mayor of Turin. If you are a regional councillor you cannot become a deputy in parliament, perhaps to not end up in prison. It’s a massive way of taking the voters for a ride. A game of armchairs that has nothing to do with the will expressed by the citizens. If I elect you to be a parliamentarian, that’s what you have to do. No one authorises you to abandon your place of work as an extremely well paid employee. When your term of office finishes, then you can offer yourself as a candidate. Before that, you have to carry out the work assigned to you keeping people informed on the details of the objectives achieved. Politicians are newbie Tarzans, they swing from branch to branch, from one position to another. They don’t have a job to do but a “position” that they can dispose of at their pleasure without answering to anyone.
A similar discussion can be done for institutional positions. Anyone who becomes a Minister has to resign from every job in the party. A Minister is “super partes” and answers to the Nation. He is either a Minister or the leader of a party. And this is valid even for the President of the Lower House. The Ministries have become separate party headquarters in Rome. Places where the key party figures meet up , discuss election strategy, a souk of votes with the relevant consultants going round the corridors. They could put up the banner of the Minister’s party on the roof and nothing would change. A party secretary as Minister? If the Minister (and party secretary) Boss(ol)i has to put forward a law, to whom does he answer? To the Lega or to Italy?
There are two/three thousand people in Parliament, the regions, provinces, towns and the EU who do their own thing. They pass from one position to another, they answer to their own personal logic or that of the party and not that of the State. “Today here, tomorrow there, I go and I live like that, without a member, tomorrow where I will be, here and there, I love liberty and no one will ever take it away from me", as Patty Pravo sang. Now’s the time to take this liberty away from her, this liberty that no one has ever given her. They will never give up (but is it in their interests?). Neither will we.

I have nothing against Vendola, it’s simply that I’m not keen on being taken for a ride (unfortunately it won’t be the last time… ). Before the 2010 regional elections Vendola asked for the support of the 5 Star MoVement (that was not presenting itself in Apulia) in a video. He telephoned me. He made precise promises on the public management of water. After almost a year, the management of water is still in private hands, managed by an SpA {company with shareholders}. The excuses are at rock bottom and with his use of language between the priestly and the baroque and at times super-lying, Nichi denies in order to admit and admits in order to deny. Whereas Prodi dropped off to sleep with his muttering that got transformed into wheezing, Nichi rocks you gently, he hypnotises you with his nothing-like sweetness. He can say anything he wants and come out of it alive like a salamander: “Berlusconi is a genial individual …. he really has some astonishing streaks, a ‘self made man’ who manages to construct a whole epic of the national cultural life … He’s a prototype of the new man who has known how to impose himself on the Italian scene. We have made a tragic error: to demonise the character and have little understanding of the cultural mechanism of reproducing consensus.” He can create incinerators together with Ms Marcegaglia, today three of them and tomorrow who knows. He can compare his Region to the virtuous California while the percentage of RECYCLED WASTE in Apulia for the whole of 2010 is at 15.3% in Campania for example, at a regional level, it’s more than 25% with 160 towns that recycle more than 50%. He can devote 120 million euro of the Apulia Region’s public money to the ‘San Raffaele Mediterraneo’ foundation that has as its member Don Luigi Maria Verzé, none other than Berlusconi’s spiritual father. There are three types of person. Those that do actions and say nothing. Those that do actions and say so. Those that speak and mind their own business. Vendola belongs to the third category. They will never give up (but is it in their interests?). Neither will we.

Press release from the ‘Forum Italiano dei Movimenti per l'Acqua’ {Italian Forum for Water Campaigns} and ‘Comitato Pugliese per l'Acqua Bene Comune’ {Apulia Campaign Group for Water as a Common Good}

”During the broadcast of the programme ‘Annozero’ on Thursday 10 February, the President of the Region, Nichi Vendola, affirmed that he brought back into public hands the water system for Apulia round about the 30th or 40th day of his new term of office. The Apulia Group of “Acqua Bene Comune” feels the duty to respond. President Vendola has certainly “done a law”, but that law is not yet in operation, and it has not yet been approved by the Regional Council. Thus the water system in Apulia is not yet back in public hands, and what has been presented by Vendola is up until now, a draft law.
Leaving aside other details, we have to add that in his declarations President Vendola has among other things, referred to the “pagelle” {school reports} of Federutility, without explaining what this organisation is and thus without pointing out that this is not indeed “super partes”, it is not indeed interested in the return of the water system to public hands and in fact, it is supporting the existing state of things. Attached is the letter that the ‘Forum Italiano dei Movimenti per l'Acqua’ and ‘il Comitato Pugliese per l'Acqua Bene Comune’ have written to Nichi Vendola.” Comitato Pugliese "Acqua Bene Comune" and Forum Italiano dei Movimenti.
Letter to Vendola

P.S. Meetings for the creation of 5 Star Civic Lists have been organised in the following towns:
Abano Terme, Anzio, Arezzo, Arquata Scrivia, Arzergrande, Chivasso, Crotone, Este, Figline Valdarno, Montignoso, Montefiascone, Nettuno, Ospedaletto Euganeo, Rocca Priora, Sennori, Vasto, Vimercate

Suggest a meeting in your own town.

What’s left for us? It’s important to respond to this question to understand where we are, and how to start off again. To know what weapons the citizen still has available in this pseudo-democracy. Let’s go forward by elimination. We no longer have a vote. We cannot express a preference for the election of a member of parliament. Thus parliament is a gonner. If the Upper and Lower Houses are removed from the popular will then so is the position of the President of the Republic, elected by the two Chambers united together, and appointed by the leaders of the individual parties. Thus we have also played our trump cards for Napolitano together with the Presidents of the Lower and Upper Houses.
The referenda, when they are accepted by the Court of Cassation, are timetabled for the holiday season, so the quorum isn’t achieved, as happened for the referendum on the electoral law. In the miraculous case of getting the signatures, the quorum achieved and the will of the people prevails, the parties take no notice. There’s no lack of examples, like the victorious referenda for the abolition of public funding to the parties or against nuclear in Italy, completely ignored. The parties rake in a billion euro and building work is starting on five power stations.
If signatures are collected for a popular initiative law, they are entombed in the cellars of the Senate. 350,000 certified signatures for the “Clean up Parliament” law have been waiting since December 2007 with no hope of being taken into consideration. What tools does a citizen have with no vote, without parliamentary and institutional representation, without the referenda and the popular laws? He is separated from democracy but still in the same house. A house of which he no longer has the keys. The reaction is the fragmentation in a thousand locations with seven demonstrations a week, thousands of proposals in which at least, there is the illusion of counting something, or otherwise, the indifference of those 40% of the Italians that no longer vote for anything, who no longer believe in anything. In either case, protest or oblivion, the power of the few remains unaltered.
The first reform is to restore to the citizens the control of the country that has been taken away from him. We find ourselves fighting with sticks against those that have a bazooka, and it is us who are the owners of the house. The keys have to be given back to us. The first step is the discussion in the Senate of the “Clean up Parliament” proposal to give the voters the right to choose their own candidate and to send the political professionals away to do some work, the ones who have served more than two mandates. The second is to have available referenda that can propose things and don’t need a quorum. Anyone who doesn’t go and vote counts for zero. The third is the direct election of the President of the Republic who has to respond to the Country and not to the parties. The fourth is the elimination of public financing of the parties. The fifth is having financial cover for every expenditure of the State. One step at a time. On the first one I would like Schifani to establish as soon as possible, a date for the discussion in the Senate of the “Clean up Parliament” proposal as he promised more than a year ago. 350,000 citizens cannot be ignored (and taken for a ride) any longer. They will never give up (but is it in their interests?). Neither will we.

P.S. Meetings for the creation of 5 Star Civic Lists have been organised in the following towns:
Abano Terme, Alatri, Anzio, Arezzo, Arquata Scrivia, Chioggia-Sottomarina, Chivasso, Codogno, Este, Modugno, Nardò, Nerviano, Nettuno, Policoro, Rocca Priora, Salsomaggiore, Vigonovo
Suggest a meeting in your own town .

I was struck by Gad Lerner’s response to the psycho-dwarf who was describing the qualities of Nicole Minetti: “And this allows her [Minetti – editor] to skip time spent with the ‘mess tin’ in the ranks of politics?” In this phrase he has embraced the difference between participative politics and professional politics, long-term, a job that is learned. Among the thousand things (an encyclopaedia on judicial things) that he could have responded to a guy (“the one of the night”) who goes from one broadcast to another to harass the TV viewers, Lerner chose the superiority of politics in relation to the common citizen.
What ‘mess tin’ was Lerner talking about? The rules of democracy have all gone up in the air. The citizen has been excluded from any democratic process. Deputies and senators are appointed; Parliament is a self-referential system that is accountable to no one. Referenda and popular laws are like the little coloured stones that were gifted to the indigenous people, shiny, but worthless. There is no route but that of self representation, of entering into the institutions, and making oneself the spokesperson for other citizens. If a person, moved by the civic spirit were to decide to do that, and many people have done that, they should perhaps sign up to the local section of the party, start to lick the arse of some ‘capataz’ {minor leader}, or seek out the company of those who “know what politics is all about”? So here you are … “what is politics all about?” unless it is the active participation of the citizens, any citizen, of every social background, from the housewife who is mother of three children to the workman working for the rubbish collection. Why can a bus driver not become the Mayor of Milan or the President of the Labour Commission? What service in the ranks does he have to undergo? His whole life is already an apprenticeship. The apprenticeship is the “nonnismo” {bullying of new recruits} of politics. Parliament must get filled up with citizens and expel the professional politicians.
There is great confusion under the sky of politics. In twenty years there has been the confusion of politics with news provision, with the magistracy, with entrepreneurship that have acted as substitutes to a total emptiness. Politics is the measure of everything, from which the other things come. The citizen is politics, the will of the people is politics, the needs of the citizens translated into simple and clear laws by other citizens is politics, a news system paid for by the citizens who are readers and not from taxes and advertising by the lobbies is politics, a justice system that functions is politics. Everything starts with the citizen and everything comes back to the citizen. The State is the citizen and the citizen is the State.

P.S. Meetings for the creation of 5 Star Civic Lists have been organised in the following towns:
Alatri, Cagliari, Campolongo Maggiore,Canino, Capoterra,Capua,Cavarzere,Chioggia-Sottomarina,Chivasso,Ciriè,Civitavecchia,Codogno,Fuscaldo,Genzano di Roma,Grezzana, Marino, Marotta-Mondolfo, Mores, Nardò, Nerviano, Pessano con Bornago, Pioltello, Policoro, Quarto D'Altino, Rocca Albegna, Rocca di Papa, Rocca Priora, Roma, Roseto degli Abruzzi, Salsomaggiore, Sala Baganza,Savona, Statte, Sora, Varese, Viadana, Vigonovo
Suggest a meeting in your own town.

It’s easy to say bad things about the Lega Nord, too easy. It was born from a split. It has fallen back on federalism, then it has become the pillar of a centralism, with the help of truncheon blows, not seen since Mussolini‘s times. It hated Rome and it has attached himself to Rome’s breast like (and even more so) any old Mastella. It was against the mafia and it has allied itself with Dell'Utri (Berlusconi is only a stuntman). It has thundered against the “terùn” (people of the South of Italy) and now Lombardy is a stronghold of the 'ndrangheta and witnesses giving evidence to the justice system are kidnapped in the middle of Milan and dissolved in acid. It was in favour of cutting taxes and we have the highest taxes in Europe. The only federal tax, “ICI” that ended up in the coffers of the local authorities, was abolished by “Tremorti”, the trusted accountant of the “senatùr” {Umberto Bossi}. It yearned for the return of the Celtic origins, with cows, milk, fields of wheat and massive Viking horns on worn on the head, but animal husbandry and agriculture are disappearing together with the land that is being “cementified” thanks to the building licenses handed out by the Mayors belonging to the Lega Nord. In comparison, Casini is a man who keeps his word and Scilipoti is a person of crystal clear coherence and Veltroni a military leader. In the face of so many lies that will inevitably end with a chain reaction of collapses the Lega Nord seems stronger than ever. In reality its votes, in absolute terms, are going down election after election. The real consensus is falling, but its political weight, given the weakness of the PDL, is increasing. It’s like a fever that attacks the organism when it gets weak, and Italy is getting ever weaker. Even a sub-virus of “varesotto” {chicken pox, or an inhabitant of Varese?} would be enough to send it to bed. The Lega Nord will not last. “Dura minga.” It cannot last.

Interview with Leonardo Facco, author of "Umberto Magno" {Umberto the Great}

Lega Nord: chatter and badge
”My name is Leonardo Facco, the author of "Umberto Magno", the true story of the Emperor of the Po Valley, an unauthorised biography of Umberto Bossi. It’s a book that came about to shine a light given that it seems to me that there are lots of big black holes in the knowledge of the general public about the Lega Nord.

...


What’s the future of the Lega Nord?
Anyway today since Umberto Bossi’s illness, the Lega is led by people who have gathered round him and there are two people in particular, namely his second wife, Manuela Marrone and the person that everyone without exception in those circles, refers to as the “badante” {carer}, Rosy Mauro, the Vice-president of the Senate. And today it’s around this tiny court that they are trying to make use of Umberto Bossi as an image to demonstrate that he is still the leader.

...

P.S. Meetings for the creation of 5 Star Lists have been organised in the following towns:
Canino, Capoterra, Carmagnola, Cassino, Cavarzere, Chioggia, Ciriè, Civitavecchia, Corigliano Scalo, Crotone, Desio, Fuscaldo, Grottaglie, Isola Della Scala, Marino, Nogara, Noventa Padovana, Pessano con Bornago, Pioltello, Rocca di Papa, Roseto degli Abruzzi, Siena, Sennori, Terracina, Viadana
Suggest a meeting in your own town. .

The Italian State has become a great big “suk” of "capitalism fulfilled". A Market-State with a hyphen. What was public has been privatised, from the banks, energy, telecommunications, and whatever couldn’t be privatised has been gifted to the multinationals and private individuals in the form of concessions, from water to the motorways, from Veolia to Benetton. The relationship between the citizen and the State has been transformed into a relationship between the citizen and the Market. A market that paradoxically has available to it, the goods that the citizen was the owner of. I don’t know whether you realise it, but we are paying for structures and services that have already been paid for by our fathers and our grandparents. The motorways should be free, they were built kilometre after kilometre by decades of taxes.
From 01 January the motorway tolls go up and in reality that’s a “pizzo” {extortion by the mafia}. It’s immoral that the concessionaires pocket billions of euro that should go to the State. Using debts, Telecom italia was sold by D'Alema and destroyed financially, put in the position of not being able to make investments, but it has anyway distributed billions and billions of dividends and paid hundreds of millions of euro in “stock options” to ragged-arsed entrepreneurs. How much richer have the people like Buora, Colaninno, Tronchetti and Gnutti become? These fortunes (because it’s a matter of colossal sums) should have been paid to the State coffers. Telecom Italia belonged to the Italians. Privatising it has made us all poorer. The assets of the State are not “available” to the parties to be used as “pocket money” for their own motives. The State belongs to us including everything that it contains and if something has popped out of the box, it has to go back in. The battle for public water is sacred and it should be extended to every fundamental resource, from energy, to the Telecom backbone. The famous phrase from the wretched Fassino, “We have a bank!”, the banking foundations with which the parties control the banks (starting with Unicredit), the Lega’s Credieuronord and the satellite banks of the PDL are the demonstration that we are not governed by statesmen nor by administrators of condominiums, but by people that don’t understand the difference between the Italian Republic and an Institution of Private Credit.
In the last fifty years the only public thing that has increased has been the public debt. The parties have spent without asking permission and without having cover. They have spent 1,850 billion for useless works that have assigned fabulous salaries to themselves, they have created superstructure like the provinces for their mates. The parties have robbed us of what was ours and they have got us into debt (in fact it will be us who pay the debt) to create electoral financing. Homer’s Proci in comparison were philanthropists. Just as shit attracts flies, our money attracts politicians. This is why shit, and thus money has to be eliminated. The salaries of the politicians, of the Regions, of Parliament, have to be brought into line with those of the average worker. Financing to the parties has to be abolished and primary services have to be nationalised and returned to their legitimate owners. They will never give up (but is it in their interests?). Neither will we.

In the general political and economic collapse, the 150th anniversary of the Unification of Italy in 2011 has disappeared from the agenda. No one is talking about it anymore. It seems like a “last year’s event”, an old magazine forgotten at the barber’s. The event has not yet been celebrated, and yet it seems to have disappeared into the past. It could be that the institutions are ashamed and are hoping that the creation of the unified state goes by in silence, that it slides away out of the calendar. Anyway the Italians, if they think about the institutions, they have a vomit reflex and an unstoppable wish to emigrate. To see themselves identified with Italy is a provocation, and an instigation to secession.
Instead, the year 2011 is an opportunity, a unique occasion to experience the History of Italy, not the history of the trio Cavour-Garibaldi- Victor Emmanuel II with Mazzini as the spare wheel and bogus plebiscites that gave legitimacy to the Savoys, but the History of the killings in the South, of the occupations in the north, of the cannons of the rulers against the unarmed peasants who were protesting about the law on milling, about the forced migration of millions of people from Veneto and from the South to the Americas, the only remaining possibility to avoid dying of hunger. The year 2011, can be dedicated to the History of the annexation of the ancient peoples of Italy by the Savoys, of the plundering of the coffers of the occupied States, by the House of Bourbon to the Pontifical State Capital needed by the Kingdom of Sardinia, well known for being ragged-arsed, so as not to declare bankruptcy, to the hundreds of thousands of patriots called “brigands” gunned down by Cialdini with their heads chopped off, photographed and exhibited in the newspapers of the time. Even The Soviet Union at the time of Khrushchev managed to raise the issue of the lies of Stalinism, in Italy, people still delude themselves with the ideas of the Risorgimento and the cry of pain taken up by Victor Emmanuel II. The mafias are the fruit of the occupation of the South, at first they were a physiological phenomenon, with the Savoys they became they became a way of managing power. Garibaldi said: “Here we make Italy or we die” To truly make Italy it’s necessary to start again from its roots and thus “Here we undo Italy or we die.”
The squares of Italy are full of memorial stones celebrating the three wars of independence, the world wars, and some are even celebrating the colonial wars and the civil war of 1945/46. For 150 years we have been at war, even with ourselves, to affirm an identity that we don’t have. We are like Peter Pan’s Never Never Land: “And to think about it – what madness/ it’s a fairy story, it’s just fantasy/ and whoever is wise, whoever is mature knows that/it cannot exist in reality!”, a State that doesn’t exist, considered to be like a source of fodder or kept at a distance with diffidence. A geographic expression that plays host to the three most powerful criminal organisations on the planet, indifferent to forty years of slaughter in which the State was an accomplice or was absent, with hundreds of dead including judges, journalists, politicians, public administrators. A place that is falling to pieces where many Regions can’t wait for a liberating "Break the connections" so as to return to being the Republic of Venice with its thousand years of History, the Republic of Genoa, the State of the Two Sicilies, a legitimate State invaded by force, or annexed to France with part of the Aosta Valley or to Austria with the South Tyrol. These are not hypotheses, but the raw reality. It is necessary to review our past and to forget the “glorious” Risorgimento to remain together in a federation of States, similar to those of pre-Unification days, each with its own History and its own autonomy.

Milan has seen the Primaries of the PDminusL. The rain was there and the voters weren’t there, just 90,000 people, the equivalent of a neighbourhood in the semi-suburbs. The contest was between 4 gentlemen whose common denominator was having white hair and a rich past. The one who lost was the Ligresti architect, Stefano Boeri, a candidate for the Left (certainly coherent and linear), the Left of cement and safe nuclear, but also of EXPO 2015 and the City Life skyscrapers. The urns were also to be seen in the hairdresser's called Coupe de Cheveux in via Correnti 19, between a blast of sun and a rebellious curl, where a sixteen-year-old voted for the first time. But these are details.
The SHOCKING thing was that the people of Milan were just able to vote for faces, not for the programme. Primaries of the faces. Artificial elections for little leaders. The programme needs to be presented and explained to citizens in the most minute details, giving the reasoning and the advantages. The voter has to be able to vote on the programme, not the face, and to be able to control how it is put into effect by means of the Internet. There’s no sense in presenting posters with faces of people of the same grouping if then the programme is the same with imperceptible Byzantine differences (if there are any at all). Anyone who is voting at the Primaries is voting for a slogan, the photo of a gentleman or a lady, usually the best one in their whole life, a publicity advert. Is this democracy? The citizen is treated like inert material, a person without a brain. Let the parties do the Primaries at home. Let them ask their members to vote for the current people like Franceschini or Bersani and not waste the money and the advertising spaces to take the Italians for a ride. We cannot decide what a politician has to do. The politician is our employee, but we are given the chance to choose from a selection of names belonging to people who will do exactly the same things, decided by the party or by the logic of who they belong to, as for the incinerators.
The 5 Star MoVement will not hold Primaries on the names of “candidate leaders” in its lists for the towns and the regions. The spokesperson for the list will be chosen from within the list. If more than one list is presented in a single town or in a region, only then will there be online voting among the people of that town or that region. It’s the programme that is elected, not a leader who doesn’t exist. When the Italians finally understand, it will always be too late. The Primaries are a superficial operation, an operation of “faces”.

Iceland is a charming country where with a referendum they have decided that the taxes of the citizens cannot be used to save the banks. And where, thanks to Birgitta Jonsdottir, they have brought in a law that protects the freedom of information on the Internet. In Iceland it will not be possible to stop the spread of public interest documents on the Internet, nor will it be possible to make known the author or to punish the author. Birgitta is also collaborating with Wikileaks, the site that has published the atrocities in Iraq. Her grass roots movement is very similar to the 5 Star MoVement. Each person counts for one and each person has to play his part. Birgitta was at 5 Star Woodstock.

Interview with the Iceland Member of Parliament, Birgitta Jonsdottir

Change is now The 21st Century will be the century of the common people, the century of you, of us. The ideologies of the old school of politics, media, monetary systems, corporations and all known structures are in a state of transformation. They are crumbling. Now is the time for fundamental change on all levels. We have to seize this moment, because this is the moment. It is rare that generations and so many individuals get such an opportunity to transform the world as we know it. The big question is, how do we transform it? Let's start by turning the pyramid of power upside down. It is obvious that we are running out of planet. Many people have lost the vital connection to our environment. Most of humanity don't comprehend cause and effect of lack of sustainability anymore. And many of us feel lost, displaced and lonely. All the structures we thought would take care of us, be it systems, ideologies, religion, politics or institutions are failing, big time. To follow my intuition as a politician makes a lot more sense to me than the rivalry and manipulations of left or right ideology. The right and wrong ideology of the old world has simply outgrown itself. No longer do we have strong parliaments with direct link between the general public and decision makers. We have so called professional politicians that are far removed from the reality most of us live in. Parties and politicians are often in an unhealthy marriage with corporations. And corruption is thriving in the political arena all over the world. Many governments and politicians talk about transparency. Yet the process of politics and laws is shrouded in secrecy. When everything collapsed in Iceland in 2008, I sensed that within this crisis was to be found an incredible opportunity for change. Because of that I have created a political movement, called the movement like this one, in February 2009. Its chief agenda was to bring forth democratic reform such as people being able to call for national referendum and sever the ties between corporations and politics. In order for profound change to be possible, those of us inside parliament have to behave like activists by changing the traditions and revealing the unwritten rules of power. We are creating a haven for freedom of information in Iceland. Information will set you free and thus it should be free to access by everyone. We went on a quest to find all the best possible laws from around the world that ensure freedom of expression, information and speech. By basing our laws on legislation that has already proven to be strong enough to withstand attacks from those that want us to live in a world with less flow of information about the darker side of politics, international corporations, war and oppression. Information doesn't have any borders anymore. We live in a world where the superpowers want to put global censorship laws on the Internet. We have to be a step ahead of them. I joined WikiLeaks because I feel it is so incredibly important that there is a place in our world where whistleblowers and sources can feel safe to drop important documents that governments and corporations want to hide from us. I encourage you to go to WikiLeaks.org and look at the treasure-trove of information you can find there. The Icelandic Modern Media Initiative will make it possible for investigative journalists from around the world to publish their stories if they are under threat to be placed under gag orders in their own countries. Everyone should have free access to information. In our world there should be no gag orders, no prior restrictions, IMMI will provide a shield against that. We should have a haven for those that are willing to risk their lives to blog or write news about things in their own world. Even if we might not be able to save them from the risks they take, we should at least make sure that their stories will not be taken down from the Internet, no matter what. My hope is that IMMI will transform into the International Modern Meet Initiative because every day, the freedoms we want to protect with it, are eroding at an alarming rate. Here in Italy, you are witnessing the end of the freedom of media, with a new set of laws. Fight it! There is no copyright on any music now. Without freedom of information, you don't really have democracy, but dictatorship with many heads. The 21st century will be the age of us, the common people. Where we will understand that, in order to live in the reality we dream of, we have to participate, and help co-create that reality. So, I strongly encourage you to join this incredible movement that [inaudible 6:34] has co-created. Run for office. Be part of this opportunity of change. If I could become an MP in Iceland, anyone can become a Member of Parliament. So, here is your first task, once you're in office. If there is something we have to make sure stays under the guardianship of nations, not corporations, then it is the following: water companies, energy companies, social welfare, education, and health systems. We have made everything so complex and grand. Perhaps it is time to return to more simple ways, more self-sustainable ways. We can do that by learning from each other, by helping each other, locally and globally. And remembering that we, as individuals, can change the world. And now, it is time to step forward, take on that challenge, and be the change maker. Don't expect others to do it. Your time has arrived, to make the difference. So, a year and a half ago, I was temporarily unemployed, single parent, with a simple goal of figuring out how I, as an individual, could help create a sustainable future for the next generations. Needless to say, no one really believed I could be where I am today. Yet, it is not a Cinderella story, but a story I co-created with my society. Most people have seen that left and right politics don't have any meaning anymore. To create political movement, based on common agenda of pressing issues of basic human rights and democratic reform, is so important right now. In order for the common people like us to co-create our society, we have to have the democratic tools to do that. People need to get into Parliament to change the laws, so we all can have the power that is rightfully ours, to impact our society, and apply real pressure on those in power to work for us, not the elite. My political movement's chief aim has been to inspire ordinary people to take on political responsibilities. We don't want people with political training. We don't want professional politicians, and we, above everything else, don't want to be a political party. And remember, no matter what they will tell you, power corrupts, and disconnects people from the reality other citizens live in. We created the movement in Iceland eight weeks before elections. We had no money. No one knew us. Yet, we got more than seven percent of the vote at the general election in 2009. I hope to see the same sort of numbers for your movement in the 2010 elections. One of the reasons why it is so important for groups to get representatives into places of power is, that it is a lot easier to get media attention on our causes. It is healthy to be able to confront, to talk with ministers or other MP's about important issues, without delay. What might seem impossible now, might be quite possible tomorrow. Because, we are experience very rapid changes, on all levels. So, I encourage you to start to make the blueprint for the future you want to live in. Be passionate about your cause. And, I encourage you to believe that everything is possible. Today's failings might turn into tomorrow's successes. It's true. But, the most important part, if you have a chance to work within the belly of the beast, is not to become like them. But to listen to your heart, to listen to your intuition, and to be impeccable with your words. And finally, not care at all, if you lose the place of power. So thank you. Thank you, all the people of the movement in Italy. I know I am experience a truly historical moment, here with you, today. And thank you. Thank you all, who dared to be a part of this massive movement of transformation of politics.

Today I am slightly irritated. It happens. I don’t give a damn about the politicians. They keep on asking me questions about what I think about Schifani or Chiamparino, about Fini or Bossi. I want to give a definitive and cumulative response even for the future: “I don’t give a “cazzzo” (with an additional “z” added to reinforce the thought) about any politician.”
Politicians must not exist. But what job is it? Politics has to exist as “a service to civil life”, citizens for a time-limited period who devote themselves to their country. The daily papers have become gossip. Casini is omnipresent. Fini is the new man and the psycho-dwarf and Bersani and D'Alema. Basta {enough}. This lot are responsible for the destruction of the country. For thirty years they have been living on public salaries and they have not yet removed themselves on their own. And they are talking to us about solutions, about European strategies, about programmatic alliances? They haven’t even managed to get the minimum services to function. Services like the Post Office, Schools, the Justice System the Tax Authorities and Health. The other day, the schools started again. The news service on TG1, the TV news service that is the State sewer, showed a High School in Rome. The footpaths were invaded by cars, the walls and even the doors of the school were completely covered in muck and no one was ashamed. What education! What example are we giving our young people? How can today’s edition of “la Repubblica” devote from page1 to page 9 to the corpses of politics, from “Fini incompatible with his position” to “Those Monday evening dinners in Arcore” to “Poker of alternatives like that it’s possible to break the Porcellum {piggy} law” with learned references to Calderoli, D'Alema and Casini and ONLY on page 10, the assassination of a respectable person, mayor Angelo Vassallo? What shit information are you giving your readers, dear journalists, doormats of the politics of reference? In Italy, nothing works and everything costs more, from water to motorways to the Post. If you are travelling, you get blocked every half an hour by road works. If you connect to the internet, you have time to die.
Enough of this political class! With these polluting names. They have got every Italian into debt with 30,000 euro, destroyed industry that could have guaranteed a future to the new generations, from Olivetti, to Telecom, to Italtel. They have destroyed the territory, handed over four regions to the mafias as well as a lot of the rest of Italy. And they come and give us lessons? And they have to come and ask me what I think of a coalition government Right-Centre-Left or of elections with an unconstitutional law that doesn’t allow me to choose the candidate? If the New Right saves Italy or if the coalition of “de noantri” {us lot} will liberate us from the psycho-dwarf? The citizen has to take possession of politics, of his life and this mass of incapables, nourished at the public hay-rack, let them exit by the door so as not to find they have to jump out of the window. BASTA! They will never give up (but is it in their interests?). Neither will we.

”Gattopardismo” indicates the change of everything so that nothing changes. The writer Tomasi di Lampedusa coined the idea with reference to the Sicilian barons, who were suddenly Garibaldi-followers and Savoy-supporters after having been firm supporters of the Bourbons, basically unchangeable in managing their interests. 150 years later, “gattopardismo” has become the normal practice of government and opposition, the one penetrated by the other. In fact the Opposition is born by means of continual parthenogenesis of those who govern the country.
The Berlusconi government of the first five year period after 2000 included Fini and Casini, to whom we owe the active participation in all the filthy laws, from the electoral law to the Schifani law (the ancestor of the Lodo Alfano). Today, Casini and Fini suddenly are representing the Opposition, with a piked dive with double twist, they have become the alternative. The powers that are supporting them are the same that have had banquets and that will have banquets with Berlusconi. In this way, there is the demonstration of the evangelical miracle of the multiplication of the Government to the Opposition. Instead of fish, deputies. At the next elections, it’ll be possible to vote for the big list that’s “unico e bino” {unique and double}. On the one side, Berlusconi and Bossi, on the other side Casini, Fini and Bersani (D’Alema’s spokesperson). The current election law rewards the coalitions and so as not to end up like Bertinotti and carve out for themselves some zone of power, even marginal, it’s probable that many parties and tiny parties will “go to Canossa”, for the good of the country of course!
It’s a game in which the bank always wins and the Italians always lose. A bit of puppet theatre with academic insults in which the word used most frequently among them (used by citizens) is: "Vergogna”, {shame} but in which no one is ever ashamed of receiving public financing, of earning the right to a pension after two and a half years, of privatising the essential services and public property, of creating the TAV {high speed train line} and the “Dal Molin” American base, the biggest base in Europe. Or to tolerate Dell’Utri in parliament (comforted by Casini as president of the Lower House since the time of his first conviction for being close to the mafia) and Cuffaro and taking the Italians to the point of exasperation. Or of being seated in the benches of the Lower or Upper House “appointed” by their party bosses and not by the voters given the absence of direct voting for candidates. The parties are all the same. They are in reality all the same job lot of government with the same objectives.
Bersani declared this with a slip of the tongue, between the privatisation of water and the inauguration of an incinerator: “We are parties of the government, temporarily in Opposition”. The same is true for the Lega and for Fini. They too are government parties that every so often are in Opposition. It’s the gang bang of the leopards.

Yesterday I was walking along the beach among the people. Some recognised me and asked me a question that is the same as ever: “What will happen to Italy? How will we come through? What’s to be done?” Sometimes a dialogue got started, a conversation and slowly but surely other people started to listen. It seemed like being on a soap box at Hyde Park corner in London, where anyone can stand up on a box and spout at the passers-by. I was in the sand dunes rather than in a public park. The diagnosis of Italy’s ills was almost always the one shared: the occupation of the State by the parties, the decline of education, of research, the deindustrialisation, the loss of moral values, the ramshackle organisation we are living in slowly running aground on a sandbank of indifference. A few shouted out: "Forza Grillo!", "Sei l'unica speranza rimasta, Grillo!" {Go for it Grillo! “You are the only hope left, Grillo!”} The more I listened to them the more I got worried. I had the uncomfortable sensation of an “Armiamoci e parti” {Let’s get armed and you go!} (me on my own)” And I started to ask them how they would have changed things. The responses were always in the conditional: “I would do, I would say, I would plan ….” When I asked why it was not “You are doing, you are saying, you are planning now” and a passage to the present indicative, the faces changed their expression, the eyes becoming more hazy and what emerged was a slight irritation, as though to tell me off for having committed a discourtesy. The wife of a hospital doctor explained that her husband cannot put himself against the system. They would destroy him. A state employee said the same thing, as did a sales assistant in a big shop and a local police officer. They don’t want to run the risk of losing the little (or the lot) that they have. And this nails them to the wall like a pin and a butterfly. I understand them. But as long as the majority of the Italians think like that, there will not be radical change. Individual responsibility stops in front of one’s own well-being. But without individual responsibility, without the courage to make a denunciation, to stand up to be counted, there is not a plan for society. The Italians hear the noise of the rushing water, they know they are in a boat full of holes, but until they fall down the rapids, many will stay there watching.
Leo Longanesi said that the Italians run to help the winner, but with what we can expect, social and economic default, there will be no winners, only losers. Who will we rush to help?
A prisoner inside this thought, I looked at the sea, towards Corsica, and I don’t know why, I thought of Newton, who has nothing to do with Italy’s future: "to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me". Our future is still all to be written.
They will never give up (but is it in their interests?). Neither will we.

They invited me to a public meeting with Berlusconi. I refused. I’m not happy to talk about the past, of advertising holograms of politics. After that I thought about it. I saw the usual headlines in the newspapers, the usual declarations of politicians pro and contra Berlusconi with not a scrap of idea about the future, about programmes, about analyses of problems. In the streets against Berlusconi. Let’s boycott Berlusconi, Berlusconi in prison. Berlusconi out of the government. Let Napolitano (the very person) intervene against Berlusconi. And then slowly but surely, every aspect of the sick society, from education, to research, to the environment, to pensions, blamed on a little 74-year old tarred man. I kept on thinking how long this puppet theatre has been going on for and who is winning in the “Great Berlusconian Alibi” in which we are living, obviously, apart from Berlusconi. The ones who are winning are the professionals of “antiberlusconism”. Politicians without an iota of an idea apart from that of being in Opposition against Berlusconi, who are nourished by the ones who are fighting. Without Berlusconi, they wouldn’t even exist. Many journalists, especially the ones that publish their books under Berlusconi’s “mondadorian” banner and who receive a salary even thanks to the public financing generously supplied by the Berlusconi government. The “beautiful-water philosophers” who in the past held Craxi in high esteem, who create one front after another to fight Berlusconism.
The parties, the media and the political proposal (always that: the banishing of the devil) are by now reduced to Berlusconi. His double, his clone with an opposite sign, exists as long as he exists. Berlusconi is the effect and not the cause of the crisis in which we are living, an all-round crisis: moral, social, ethical, economic, belonging to the nation. It’s easier to blame the crisis on a single person and it’s also more worthwhile in terms of elected positions and the wallet of the individual.
The antiberlusconian industry is cross-eyed by nature, it can clearly see the filthy stuff done by Berlusconi, but, for example, it doesn’t remember about De Benedetti and the destruction of Olivetti, one of his companies, and of the regional councils of the Opposition of which whole chunks were in prison. It attacks whoever it wants for the conflict of interests, but it considers it right and fitting that Scalfari, who has made it his battle horse to have a furious battle with no fear against the psycho-dwarf, is writing for a Berlusconi company and with the sales of his stuff (he too sells a bit) he is contributing to the wealth of the President of the Council. Political life has been reduced to factions, to “Guelfi and Ghibellini” who go together to the restaurant in the evening or who make courtesy telephone calls to each other. In the TV debates, the parts are assigned beforehand, berlusconians usually on the right and antiberlusconians on the left. The debate always has the same outcome: nothing.
With me or against me. On the Left or on the Right. No one accepts the responsibility of having made a mistake, of a proposal that was not made or that was forgotten, of a law that was a mistake. Berlusconi will pass and with him the full-time antiberlusconians. They will never give up (but is it in their interests?). Neither will we.

Politics and the economy are one on top of the other. The one does not exist without the other. Economics depends on politics and politics on economics. It can happen that one triumphs over the other but always in a condition of symbiosis, of reciprocal benefit. Politics is itself economics, one of the most important industries of the country with tens of billions of turnover a year. Money is useful for doing politics and politics is useful for developing the economy of the concessions to Benetton, to the bankers of Geronzi, Fiorani, and Consorte and to the constructors of Caltagirone, Ligresti. Economic politics can aspire to the position of the President of the Council and get it, as happened with Berlusconi, firms holding a concession of the State for the TV frequencies paying 1% of turnover.
Parliament is an economic objective, a social point of arrival, there are no poor parliamentarians. However there are some parliamentarians who have become rich, or at least well off. Politics is a business. Money is its fuel, the oxygen that keeps it alive. In order to prosper, the parties need headquarters (paid for by public financing) , newspapers (paid for by public financing), structures throughout the territory completely similar to a company with bosses and their lieutenants (paid for by public financing) employees under their orders in parliament, in the regions, in the provinces, in the towns (paid for from taxes). The elections are a great devourer of investments, those who can afford it, win, as happened with Mortizia Moratti, who became Mayor thanks to the millions of euro of her oil-baron husband.
The difference between politics and the economy is ever more subtle. The privatisation of the public goods, the matter of the social State, of the pact that connects a community, of mutual assistance, is considered progressive, a sign of efficiency that always translates into profit for someone. The State, that the Constitution says is based on work, is instead based on capital, whoever possesses it, and whoever manages it, makes the State. Politics is a career. Anyone who enters it never leaves it. They believe themselves to be responsible for the good of society, but in the best case they have obtained a position of great media importance and a top class salary. The separation of the career has to start from this marriage of politics and the economy.
The most important result for the 5 Star MoVement is to have obtained half a million votes at 0.8 cents a vote and to have refused public financing of one million seven hundred thousand going under the name of “reimbursement of election expenses”. The Internet makes possible a new politics separated from economic interests, the politics of ideas and of transparency at zero cost for the citizens. The parties are at a crossroads but they cannot take either of the two routes. If they separate themselves from economic interests, from the “stuff”, they will die like a Siamese twin with two heads. If they don’t separate themselves from economic interests, they will be cancelled out by the voters. They will never give up (but is it in their interests?). Neither will we.

I hate the Left
I hate the Left of the cantors of ideological nothingness,
of the moralists, of the intellectuals, of the philosophers
always busy giving lessons.
I hate the Left of the negotiations under the table
of the mess-ups, of the silences, of the voting in Parliament for the Great Pardon
and the absences in Parliament for the Fiscal Shield.
I hate the Left that has transformed the Opposition into a caricature
the self-referential Left that tolerates no one that is to their Left and has dialogue with mafia people and P2-ists.
I hate the obtuseness and the cunning of the Left
the detachment from the workmen, from the “precarious” workers,
the haughtiness of its journalists, masters of the sole thought.
I hate the Left that has forgotten workmen, the “precarious” workers and the unemployed,
the Left of the Trades Unions that have disappeared, of the incinerators and of privatized water,
of safe nuclear and of parliamentarians that earn a pension after two and a half years.
I hate the Left of the party treasurers that are raking in hundreds of millions in reimbursement of election expenses
and that organise party festivals all year round.
I hate the Left that Is no longer Communist, nor Socialist, that puts forward as candidates De Luca in Campania and Carra in Parliament and that sings the praises of Tronchetti and Marchionne.
I hate the Left that attacks Berlusconi in public, the one who has gifted them TVs, riches, impunity and who has never done a law on the conflict of interests,
the Left that asks 10 questions on Naomi and on D'Addario for a whole summer
and that for 15 years has not asked a single question on the brains behind the death of Borsellino.
I hate the Left that has forgotten Pasolini, Berlinguer, Pertini and that wants to rehabilitate Craxi, the Left that if you are not on the Left you are on the Right and if you are on the Left you have to do a coalition with the “progressives”.
I hate the Left that gets its nourishment from Berlusconi-ism and anti-Berlusconi-ism in order to survive,
the Left that never discusses programmes
but talks about people, adversaries, equilibriums, armchairs, voting percentages, and candidates.
I hate the Left of the TAV, of the American Base at Dal Molin and its cement cooperatives,
the Left of “work, work, work!” of Fassino and his wife kept in Parliament by generations of Italians.
I hate the Left of the Regional Councils in prison for bribes, of Campania transformed into a rubbish tip by Bassolino,
of Chiamparino’s " waste-to-energy plants", of the conceit of the party functionaries.
I hate the Left of the terribly bad “Richelieu” that put together coalitions and alliances in the shadows.
I hate the Left who, so as not to lose votes, suffocate the Movements of the citizens in its rational and reformist enclosure
where sacred cows with white beards are grazing, and if it doesn’t succeed, they invent bogus stuff so as to occupy a political space.
I hate the Left, as I hate the Right, for their ability to take oxygen from ideas, for the division of citizens in factions, armed one against the other with the politicians acting as referees,
for the destruction of just the idea of a future.

Fini’s resignation from the position of president of the Lower House is a litmus test. If he has to leave his institutional role because he represents a party and plays a full-time active role in politics, then the discussion has to be extended to all our employees who hold an elected public office in the interests of the citizens.
Article 67 of the Constitution:
”Members of parliament represent the nation; they are free from imperative mandate.” is very clear. Whoever is elected responds to the citizens, not to his party. A Minister of the Republic, a President of the Council, must act in the interests of the Italian Republic and thus, must resign from the positions of office within the party. In Italy, however, we have serving Presidents and Ministers in a permanent election campaign, in the public meetings and on public TV. All of that is exploiting the ministerial position and with the copious use of public money. Ministries, for those who still don’t know, are abusive seats of the parties. The Minister holds meetings of the party or of a party faction in the offices of the Ministry, he can appoint party members as consultants to the Ministry, he can transform the Ministry into a permanent cafeteria and almost always, if he himself is not the party secretary, he takes orders from the party for every decision he makes. Do you call this democracy? It’s just a caricature of democracy. Our employees (… as the constitution say, this lot should be accountable to us) have occupied the State, they are members of business committees and of mutual aid societies that they have called “parties” and to whom they show obedience. These parties, with this form, without exception, like the fascist party, must be abolished. Anyone who goes in and participates, even in good faith, even without wanting to, is no longer participating in democracy.
There’s another article of the Constitution that has to be learned by heart, article 51: “Anyone elected to public office is entitled to the time necessary for the fulfilment of the respective duties while keeping his or her job.” OK, where do our employees find the time needed to carry out their duties? Absenteeism in Parliament is the norm, anyone who doesn’t present themselves to the Lower or Upper House without reasons of “Force majeure” must be made to resign. The parliamentarians continue to do the jobs that they were doing before: lawyer, actor, administrator, even in this case they must resign. Parliamentarians spend their time issuing press releases, giving interviews, appearing on TV, writing books, so as to gain visibility. They weren’t elected for this. They were elected to work. They are public employees and they have to behave as such, not like “leaderini da strapazzo” {little leaders under strain}, “oracles of the small screen”, “journalist beggars”.
The power to the people has been transformed into “power to the parties”. Democracy has turned upside down. It’s time for change and to return our employees to the nothing that they came from and to which they know they belong. To do that it is enough for each citizen to count for one and that he makes sure his rights are respected. They will never give up (but is it in their interests?). Neither will we.

The summer soap opera of the Government and the Opposition is taking up all the space on the News. Name after name, old and new groupings. Interviews with ectoplasms and corpses like Rutelli extracted from the sarcophaguses. The fuse of the economy has been lit, but no one is looking after it. The companies are fleeing abroad chasing the brains. Unemployment is expecting the final blow in the next few months when the fund for laid off workers dries up. The usual things have already been said … before the leap into the dark. OK, but how deep is the jump? Without a doubt we are moving at breakneck speed towards the abyss, we haven’t yet discovered how many bones will be broken when we land up on the ground.
Going to the elections now is pure folly. Anyone wanting them is not clear about 3 things: the first is that the Country is in “pre default” and cannot allow itself to have a 6 month period of election stalling without going up in the air. The second is that the current election law is just a wind-up for the citizens (and all the parties are careful not to interfere with it): it doesn’t allow direct voting for the candidates and the parliamentarians would be once more elected at the complete discretion of the party bosses. The third is that Berlusconi would win again, thanks to the total control of the TV stations and the haziness of the opposition of the PDminusL.
Early elections are a “cupio dissolvi” {I want to die} that would bring benefits to some minor parties and would tip Italy into chaos. A solution to wade through the slime in which we are immersed is a technical government lasting long enough to (as far as possible) to get control of the public debt that is exploding in the midst of general silence, to give back to the voters the possibility to choose a candidate, to eliminate election expenses for the parties (thus respecting the referendum) and to enact a law on the conflict of interests that will eliminate the roots of the Berlusconi problem. Is it possible? It seems simple to say it and it would also be simple to do if we didn’t have a Parliament of irresponsible people, of foot-lickers and of social climbers. In the Autumn, the economy will deliver the shock to the System, certainly not chum Fini who for fifteen years has supported the psycho dwarf and now is taking on the “extra-virgin” attitude. However it ends up, these parties, these faces, belong to the album of memories, the only ones who don’t know this are themselves and the journalists. The 5 Star MoVement does not appear in what these dregs of the information system call “political agenda”. I would like to remind everyone that the 5 Star MoVement exists, that it collected half a million votes in 5 Regions using its own funding: 0.8 euro a vote was the cost of the Regional elections. The 5 Star MoVement refused the 1,700,000 euro of funding to the parties (camouflaged as election expenses) while the parties are pocketing A BILION EURO. The 5 Star MoVement will present itself at the national elections, whether or not they are now or in 2013 and in the town council elections in 2011 that relate to many of the provincial capitals like Milan, Turin, Bologna and Genoa. The choice of candidates will take place online by means of the members’ portal (*).
They will never give up (but is it in their interests?). Neither will we.


(*) it’s coming – be patient.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The 5 Star MoVement keeps its promises and it has presented a petition to send home Formigoni. Our lawyers have checked that Formigoni in Lombardy and Errani in Emilia Romagna are still ineligible in spite of the decree that went through Parliament on 15 April. The duo PDL-PDminusL has gone over the limit of two consecutive terms of office. Formigoni and Errani could not have been elected. The law is really clear. Article 2, comma f says: “it is established that there is the non-immediate re-eligibility at the end of the second consecutive term of office of the President of the regional Junta elected by universal and direct suffrage, on the basis of the current regional regulations relating to this matter.” The emeritus president of the Constitutional Court, Valerio Onida confirmed this in an interview. In the next few weeks there will be a hearing at the Milan Tribunal to discuss the eligibility of Formigoni. The blog will follow this. The silence of ALL the parties on the umpteenth violation of the law and the indifference relating to the voters is the proof that for them the elections are simply a matter of sharing out the seats and reimbursement of elections expenses.

”On 20 May 2010, the 5 Star MoVement presented a petition against Roberto Formigoni. The petition was laid before the civil section of the Milan Tribunal and asks for the end of the appointment of Roberto Formigoni as President of the region of Lombardy as he has been elected for the fourth consecutive time in clear violation of law 165/2004 that sets out the ineligibility of anyone who has already had two elected terms of office. After the elections, they tried to put through an “interpretive law”, the umpteenth “interpretive law”, to add that its efficacy is not retroactive.
They inserted an amendment into the law converting the save-the-list decree, but it was thrown out by Parliament, a sudden feeling of pride, perhaps a sense of shame, not simple political games within the Majority. After that, on 15 April, the law converting the save-the-list decree without that amendment was passed, thus there is no measure in existence that can save Formigoni and Errani.
Yes, because even Vasco Errani in Emilia Romagna is ineligible for the same reasons, and this is why the PD has remained silent, has slept during the whole of this election campaign. The law is clear: anyone who has had two terms of office is ineligible, and it is thus applicable.
For anyone who objects that to apply that regulation, the Region should have passed its own regional election law to assimilate it, we respond that there is a clear conflict of interests (which by now is normal in this country), the President of the Junta who should promulgate this law is the very same person who would suffer the declaration of ineligibility.
Paradoxically, but perhaps not too paradoxically, if this law were never promulgated in the region of Lombardy, Formigoni could put himself forward as a candidate for the whole of his life, thus willingly eluding a precise state prohibition.
The Milan Tribunal will fix a hearing and at that hearing we will all be there to remind people that Formigoni is illegitimately occupying the position of President of the Region.
Soon we will present the same petition in Emilia Romagna. They will never give up. Neither will we.” Vito Crimi, 5 Star MoVement Lombardy

It’s just one of those days when you wake up and it feels like you’re living in a dictatorship. It’s just a feeling, but it’s nonetheless disturbing. It may even be false, but it seems as true as the vision of a little man holding an entire nation by the balls, with the help of the friends that he slipped in kind of here, there and everywhere and can therefore bend to his will or blackmail whenever he wishes. Then you get another feeling, a persistent one that won’t disappear, when you think about a political opposition that has turned into a whore and no longer even knows the meaning of the word resistance. One that gives everything away for nothing, much like the young ladies used to do once upon a time at Porta Romana. One that gets pleasure from giving, and opposing anything is not in its nature. This concerns you even more when you watch Enrico Letta, who is unmistakably his uncle’s nephew, sprouting forth on the television, or that human relic, Uòlter Veltroni, begging the daily newspapers for an interview (and unfortunately they sometimes grant him one) so that he can roar like a mouse, “Topo Gigio” to be precise (an Italian cartoon mouse - Ed.). You find yourself spending too many hours re-living other times, like the two decades of fascist rule to be precise, a vision that you can’t seem to get out of your head no matter how hard you try. A people with no rights, not even the right to vote for their preferred candidate, or to see Parliament debating a popular law like the "Clean Parliament" bill, or to be able to vote in a referendum like the one on freedom of information that has been rejected by Carnevale, the trial killer. It’s may just be one of those days, but the problem is that it starts all over again the very next day. So you decide to take back the 350,000 signatures that you left in the basement of the Senate. And that is precisely what I’m going to do. Those signatures don’t deserve to be abandoned to the whims of some or other Schifani. A man who is too busy attending the Inter- Bayern cup final game, at our expense, to discuss a popular proposed bill. Those signatures, put down by law-abiding citizens who have had a guts full of these politicians of ours, cannot simply be left to rot in some basement at Palazzo Madama. The more you think about it, the more it pisses you off. The boxes full of signed forms have been lying there since December 2007, since the day I personally handed them over to Marini. Almost thirty months ago now. Today, those requests seem almost naive. Direct voting, a maximum of two terms and no convicted criminals in Parliament. Two years have gone by and every day has been one of those days in which the politicians have continued to not give a damn about the Country’s citizens. Days on which all you are hearing are words that seem to come from beyond the tomb of democracy. Not words, in fact, but bullshit, insults against reason, common decency, words that are simply unbelievable, like: "Europe has been living beyond its means ", spoken by people that have been living well beyond OUR means and our patience for the past twenty years. It’s totally unreal, but it appears to be authentic, real and tangible. Italy is asleep, perhaps dreaming about its lost soul. But the economy will soon come along and open the Country’s eyes.

A fish always starts to stink from the head down and in our case, Parliament is the head. Deputies and Senators don’t serve their Country, but rather their master, their benefactor. Italy is a vassallistic-democratic system. All the Deputies and the Senators have been appointed by the party bosses. The individuals that actually control Parliament, and therefore the Country, can be counted on the fingers of one hand. The Pdl and the Pdwithoutanel have essentially established a parliamentary dictatorship. Certainly none of the Deputies or the Senators are likely to request an immediate review of this election law that prevents the citizens from directly electing their preferred candidates. Certainly none of them resign out of shame. None of the institutions are about to intervene, least of all Morpheus Napolitano. Yet with the current electoral law still in place, fresh political elections would be absolutely useless. Little more than a rip-off and a waste of public funds. It makes no sense whatsoever to go and vote with an unconstitutional law in place (just in passing, why hasn’t our Divine Constitutional Court not said anything?). At the end of a legislature, it would be far simpler and better for Casini, Berlusconi, Bersani and the others to get together in chambers, decide who whose names will appear on the party lists and then simply inform the people. The net result would be precisely the same and at least then they wouldn’t have to inconvenience tens of millions of Italians. We’ve gone back to the days of the vassals and serfs, just like in the Middle Ages. "Vassallage was a type of individual relationship that was established in a vassal-beneficiary system. It was essentially a private "contract" between two people, a vassal and a master: during a “homage” ceremony, the former would declare himself to be the latter’s “homo" and, as such, would benefit from the master’s protection in return for his loyalty and service to his master". The feudal system granted immunity, the privilege of not being subject to the control of public authority as long as he/she remained within the confines of the feudal seignory." The Italian vassallistic-democratic system is precisely the same, including the privilege of parliamentary immunity. But today perhaps it has got even worse. Although I have no way to prove it, I suspect that the modern "contract" between the vassal and the "homo" for the al location of a parliamentary seat may well be financial in nature. A million Euro or some other serious amount of money in Exchange for a guaranteed place in Parliament. It wouldn’t be at all surprising, nor improbable for that matter. Those that hold the seats could sell them or auction them off to the highest bidder. A parliamentary seat is a tangible asset, worth hundreds of thousands of Euro a year, a guaranteed pension, high visibility and all sorts of additional benefits. It has to be one of the best investments ever, far better than any fund or Government bond. There must be many people who would be willing to pay the price. Our Parliament has become an economic re source that should be turned into an Election Lottery. The prize would be a five-year stay at Palazzo Madama or Montecitorio. First prize would be the post of Prime Minister. In this way, the State coffers would be much better off, as would our democracy.

photo courtesy of Album di Calca

A small businessman set himself alight in Oderzo, out of sheer desperation. He was the twentieth in the recent chain of suicides in the Veneto Region. A woman died of exsanguination in Naples because she was selling her blood just to stay alive. Just a few short years (months? days?) ago, if we happened to read about events such as these, we would only have paid scant attention because it was the kind of thing that could only have happened in some faraway Country. In places like Bangladesh, Cambodia or Bolivia. Or perhaps in that period just after the War ended. Distant horrors that happened in other places and in different times. Today they have somehow become everyday events here in Italy. Things that just happen. Things like this. This unquestioning acceptance of social decay has crept up on us, one step at a time. The Italians have become like rabbits hypnotised by a serpent, by a fear of what the future may hold in store. They remain totally immobile, waiting for the inevitable to happen. The Country has turned into a game of Monopoly played with weighted dice. For a citizen of this Country, the inevitable is a stay in Prison, the payment of inheritance Tax or the curse of something going wrong. The political parties have helped themselves to our public services, our electricity company, our stations, the drinking water providers and every last bit of available land suitable for construction. Bersani lives in one of those modest little houses of Vicolo Corto and Vicolo Lungo. All the rest of them belong to Mr. Anemone and to the Government. Berlusconi owns the whole of “Parco della Vittoria” and “Viale dei Giardini”, as well as the better known Villa in Arcore and Palazzo Grazioli. Any unfortunate player who happens to land on any piece of real estate will merely increase his load of debt. In order to play, every Italian must get into debt with the State to the tune of 30,000 Euro at the time of his/her birth. All those different, multicoloured banknotes are shared out equally at the start at the start of the game, but within two or three throws of the dice they all inevitably land up in the pockets of the Italian monopolies. The bank always wins and the bank dictates the entire game. For some time now, Italy has no longer been founded on hard work, but on capital. It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there. The concepts of the welfare State and solidarity have become swearwords, which are even capable of arousing hatred. You can only play Italian Monopoly if you have an income, a job, some savings, or if you still have some money. Without it, you are nothing, mere meat to be charred or blood to be sold. The State is dead in our Old Country Monopoly game. Is this supposed to be a Welfare State or not?

A phantom politician is the spirit of a dead person that doesn’t realise he has died and continues to roam around the places where he once lived. Just like haunted houses are inhabited by the ghosts of those that have passed on, the Italian State is inhabited by the ghosts of former politicians. The spirits that haunt houses reveal their presence via apparitions, noises, moving objects and through mediums, who are people that are able to communicate with the world beyond. The politician that has passed on uses the media to spread their ectoplasm through the ether. Messrs. Fede, Floris and Minzolini pluck the voices and the faces of Berlusconi, Lupi, D'Alema, Fini, Bersani, Casini and Gasparri out of the confused magma and project them into the reality perceived by the Italians as mere holograms of a world that has long since ceased to exist. Reality and perceived reality overlap, they merge and become one in the minds of the Italians. Many believe that Berlusconi really exists and that he is governing this Country, and that Bersani and Fini are providing opposition. The Italians are psychologically weak, their will has been undermined. And so we see millions of defenceless people being possessed by the spirits of the most evil politicians. These millions of people recognise the politicians’ faces on the election posters and keep on re-electing them, election after election. In some exceptional cases, the ghosts of the dead politicians induce a total lack of willpower in certain people, who then exhibit a desire to serve them. These are cases of total possession, a true union of the living and the dead, as revealed by the words of lethargic individuals like Bondi or Scajola in the televised séances . This possession by the spirits of the dead can sometimes be strong enough to invoke the presence of demons, as clearly demonstrated in the case of La Russa. Just as a medium has to go into a trance in order to be able to communicate with the dead, so the media has to put the Italians into a trance in order to create the illusion that these ghost politicians are indeed alive. A condition that is imperceptible to those who are feeling the effects, but that is patently clear to anyone observing Italy from the abroad, but that doesn’t understand the causes and underestimates the risk of contagion. The Italians are a nation that believes in the existence of ghosts, just like children believe in the existence of the bogey-man. The television has turned this nation into a bunch of zombies, reduced them to a catatonic state and, in this regard, it is similar to the drugs used by the Haitian witchdoctors. When we were still children and we heard, or thought that we heard horrible noises coming from the wardrobe and we saw, or thought that we saw terrible shadows getting larger and coming toward us, we had one of two choices, namely, either to ignore them or to hide under the bedclothes. There are no spirits in our rooms these days, other than ourselves that is. In order to make sure, all we have to do is to switch on the light and switch off the television.

2011 is fast approaching and with it the celebration of the Unity of Italy. The blog continues its search for historical truth with an interview held with Arrigo Petacco, author of "Il regno del Sud" (The Kingdom of the South). One thing is certain, namely that everything we were taught and that our children are being taught in school is false. We are living in a historical never-never land called the “Risorgimento” without ever having risen the first time around and we are about to enter into another new era, that of Padania, something that has never before existed. As they say, the important thing is to believe it.

A.Petacco: "Cavour, Garibaldi and Mazzini are acknowledged as being the fathers of the Homeland but, if the truth be told, they hated each other, all of them hated each other with a passion. Cavour played Garibaldi, he exploited him, and Garibaldi defended himself. Mazzini was hated by both of them, however, the history books insist on having them side by side because, when all is said and done, all three of them contributed towards national unity."
Blog: "It is believed that the Unity of Italy is the fruit of the ideas of the “Risorgimento”, yet it was actually entirely the result of a plot cooked up in a health spa?"
A. Petacco: "There are plots everywhere. In actual fact, no one really wanted the unity of Italy. At the time, they were all federalists at heart, including Cavour. Indeed, Cavour was definitely a federalist and Mazzini was the only one that really wanted national unity, which Cavour labelled as “tomfoolery” because he didn’t believe in it. After all, he thought in French, spoke French and had never travelled further south than Florence. But he dreamt of an Italy consisting of three States, a Northern State (see the Savoias), which he claimed would be the wealthiest in Europe, a Central State, a Franco-Italian combination, and he also wanted to retain the Kingdom of the Bourbons. He did everything possible to save the Kingdom of the Bourbons. Unfortunately, Francesco II, the one they nicknamed “Franceschiello”, who was a great fellow but was only twenty years old, didn’t get the picture, the deal that Cavour had offered him, and refused. He refused, putting the fate of his kingdom on the line.

A series of plots
Blog: "Why was General Garibaldi’s expedition set up at a certain point?
A. Petacco: "Well, the expedition was a surprise because no one wanted it. Cavour didn’t want it and even tried to send in the Carabinieri. He wanted to send in the Carabinieri to halt the expedition because he knew that by invading Sicily he would be violating his pact with Napoleon III to create a federal Italy. There was actually a whole series of plots because King Victor Emmanuel II, who wanted to enlarge his kingdom instead, secretly told Garibaldi to go ahead while officially ordering him to stop. Garibaldi disobeyed the king’s orders and invaded Sicily. This was incredible because everyone thought, indeed Cavour thought: “They will meet the same fate as Pisacane”, in other words, they would be pitchforked by the farmers as happened before elsewhere. Instead, by some miracle, these thousand men, of whom only 18 were native Sicilians while the remainder were all northerners from the Bergamo area, were almost all grandfathers of the current members of the Lega and they were the ones that went down and conquered Sicily and the entire Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. So he conquered a kingdom and handed it over to King Victor Emmanuel II, saying: “I give you the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies”. Then he went off to Caprera because he was an honest man, somewhat naïve perhaps, and was convinced that he had created a united Italy, and indeed he had because, without him, Italy would never have been united.
Blog: "The people hailed him as a hero and a liberator, but the question I have to ask myself, a reality call if you will: what propaganda machine was set up at the time to spread Garibaldi’s message?
A. Petacco: "Well, the propaganda at the time was very refined and extremely subtle, because 90 percent of the population was out of reach and because 90 percent of the population was illiterate, they didn’t really give a damn about national unity, so the population did not participate. There were no labourers or farmers amongst the thousand men than went to Sicily, they were all lawyers, doctors, mainly lawyers and students, let’s say all members of the ruling Middle class."
Blog: "Who was it that took up arms "
A. Petacco: "Those that took up arms were the middle class, on behalf of their king. The general population did not take and was indeed sympathetic to Bakunin che voleva l’anarchia."
Blog, who was preaching anarchy."
Blog: "In other words, the Italy that we know today is in fact the result of contrivance rather than a natural process?"
A. Petacco: "Absolutely not. I don’t know that it was entirely a natural process but, on the other hand, as Franceschiello was wont to say, they call it Risorgimento (Resurgence), but in order to resurge, you have to have surged in the first place, while Italy has never really existed. Poor Franceschiello used to say that “My kingdom has been here for centuries, but since Roman times there has never been a united Italy”. It was therefore somewhat paradoxical to call it Risorgimento”, but the word had a certain attraction."
Blog: "Shall we say that, if he were alive today, Cavour would not claim this united Italy?"
A. Petacco: "No, it’s a pity that Cavour died accidentally at age 50, just two months after national unity, it was said at the time that it was his punishment from God. The Kingdom was proclaimed in March 1861 and he died in May, so he didn’t actually get to see the united Italy, but he did have some very different plans than those that were later implemented. At that stage Italy was united and he too had become a unificationist by necessity, however, he wanted to create a number of large autonomous regions with large autonomous localities. Instead, the King and his successors chose to centralise, or rather “piedmontise” the whole of Italy and immediately after the proclamation of the kingdom, all of the Piedmont laws were made fully applicable both in Lombardy and in Sicily, including military service, milling taxes and, above all, things that were not particularly palatable, so much so that in the south, ….."
Blog: "Shall we just say that they were not perceived as being particularly good for the purposes of creating order?
A. Petacco: "But then there was a rebellion, and what was labelled as banditry was actually the actions of partisans, not bandits. These were partisans that occasionally acted like bandits, as often happens in war, however, they were mainly former Bourbon soldiers that had been abandoned by their former generals who had sought refuge. They had fought, they had fought for five years and for five years they had kept some 120-thousand men of the Piedmontese army busy. So these were not merely common chicken thieves, no, this was something very serious.

The federalist Italy and Cavour’s dream
Blog: "Now let’s move on to modern times. Italian politics witnessed the eruption of a phenomenon that had previously been just that, merely a phenomenon, but that has now become an organised regional political party known as the Lega Nord. Today the newspapers talk about a northern bank, northern industry, northern workers and differentiated taxation. Are these merely a throwback to those earlier ideals?
A. Petacco: "No, no, that has nothing to do with it. The truth is that, in essence, these two Italies were never really united and they remain two separate Italies: the Lombardy farmer is different from the Sicilian farmer. They have different mentalities, different traditions, different habits and then there is also a kind of racism – if we can call it that – that we have never quite been able to completely eradicate, also because the south does not always set a good example."
Blog: "The plans for a federalist Italy, in your opinion, are these merely a resurgence of Cavour’s ideals?"
A. Petacco: "Yes. He tended to see things more in a political light than any other, but in the book, I seem to remember that there was a note regarding what he wanted. Each region, he called them large regional airports, namely three or four regions that he wanted to call the Kingdom centrally controlled by the police and the army, with the rest delegated to local authorities, so our world would have looked very different indeed. The South, instead, was not merely an abandoned country as the history of the Risorgenza would have us believe. Naples had a railway system before Turin did. In Naples, they were building the first large steamships well before Genoa did. The Kingdom of Naples already had steel factories, iron, cast iron and they were already building steel bridges! They already had a significant potential industrial system going. The northerners took everything. A man called Bastogi from Livorno came along and created a railway monopoly and essentially the north prevented the growth of the south and so, that is what happened. In a meeting with the young industrialists of Naples, Tremonti himself stated that: “Well, after all is said and done, we are truly indebted to you and you deserve to be compensated”. Tremonti himself said this so, obviously these things really did happen."
Blog: "Certain people might classify this as the Lega Nord ideology, but instead I hear you using very different terms."
A. Petacco: "Lega Nord ideology you say?! You’re crazy! I sympathise because at the moment, I have to admit that where they are governing, the politicians are different. I have had the opportunity to meet some of them and I must say, they seem to feel that they are better than everyone else and they tend to look down on you. When you ask them a question and they look down their noses at you, like D’Alema for example, who is essentially thinking: “Let’s hear what bullshit this guy wants to tell me!” You can see it! While these people are just like you, that is what makes them likeable, but unfortunately they too will get worse. I don’t believe in perfection and as soon as they manage get their hands on power, corruption will undoubtedly follow. Corruption follows democracy and wherever there is democracy, there is also corruption because politicians need votes and they are prepared to do anything to get those votes. Instead, in a dictatorship, no votes are needed so there is less corruption because there is less of everything, except for pitchforks, hangings and deaths by firing squad. So perhaps it’s better for us to keep these thieves! I don’t know if I am making myself clear."

Blog: "Is the Kingdom of the North a very real risk or is there merely a possibility that it could materialise?"
A. Petacco: "If things continue as they are, it could become a very real possibility."
Blog: "Can you picture an Italy that splits up? Is this a possibility in your opinion? We have a very rigid Constitution that contains some very specific restrictions ….. "
A. Petacco: "I cannot see this happening, but what I do see is that federalism will undoubtedly increase the existing gap between certain regions and others and between the north and the south."
Blog: "History is written by the victors. Do you also have a very noble vision of revisionism? I ask because the things that are written in this book are very different from what we find in the school books."
A. Petacco: "The fact is that there is one inescapable rule in life, namely that whenever war breaks out, the first casualty is always the truth, because the truth is bothersome and if you wish to demonise the enemy, you also have to tell some lies about him. Once the war has ended, these lies told by the losers are inevitably revealed for what they are, while those of the victors become history. Furthermore, it is not easy to chip away these untruths that have become history. Even my books attract some interest, however, it will remain extremely difficult to erase certain untruths. Let me give you an example: if you care to remember the first War of Independence (1848), when Piedmont very courageously declared war on Austria, Naples and the Vatican came to its aid and took sides in the early days of the war. Also, a number of Neapolitan and Pontifical military units fought in Lombardy.
At Curtatone and Montanara, a historical event occurred that went down in history. The schoolbooks tell us that the university students of Pisa stopped the Austrians that were about to outflank the army of Carlo Alberto. In reality, it was not the university students of Pisa. The students of Pisa were indeed there, but they ran away at the first sign of gunfire and all that remained was a Neapolitan battalion under the command of a Neapolitan colonel, who held fast and managed to repel the Austrians. This is an historical fact and indeed the Austrian Army’s war diaries in Vienna also mention the name and number of the commander in question. When the first War of Independence ended and Naples had meanwhile retreated, the Pope and the Piedmontese historians that were writing about the war faced some embarrassment and thought: “Oh dear, the only true and noble act was performed by a Neapolitan. There’s no way that we can give credit to the Neapolitans, it will be a disgrace for us!” So they invented the story that the Pisa students had not only gloriously stopped the Austrians, but also that their commander was Giuseppe Montanelli. They even managed to arrange that the peak of the university hats be cut in half, something they didn’t deserve.
This is the story that I told to my friend Indro Montanelli, a descendant of the aforesaid commander. I told him that: “Look Indro, this is the truth” and he answered: “Oh, I know that, but I can’t exactly get upset with my grandfather!” and then proceeded to confirm the affair of the Pisa students in his history book. Get it? That is the way history works! "

The photo of the VIP Box at the Lazio-Roma match last Sunday can seem innocent, much ado about nothing, instead it’s the demonstration of the existence of a virus that attacks politicians. A disease that even infects the newly-elected ones and that in fact establishes two social classes in Italy: the VIPs and all the others. For the Derby in the Box of the Olympic Authorities, 242 places managed by the host team and by CONI, the people seated in the light blue extra-large armchairs were the new masters of the ‘Bel Paese’, that for them is the true ‘Paese di Bengodi’ {wonderland}. They are VIPs who have won the ticket of the Italian Lottery, dark blue cars, a pension after two and a half years in the legislature, free absenteeism in the Italian Parliament and in the European one, double and triple jobs, double salary, immunity from the laws, luxury flights. Between a buffet and a soft drink, the VIPs applauded the players on the field and showed their superiority as tribunes of the people, of the common people, like in Caesar’s time. Among the many: Renata Polverini, Paolo Bonaiuti, Clemente Mastella, Maurizio Gasparri, Francesco Rutelli, the directors of the RAI and the RAI Board member Soderini, Fabrizio Cicchitto, Giulio Napolitano, son of the President of the Republic. When they meet up, they recognise each other, they sniff each other like dogs in the park. They do things. They see people. “Friendly and informal environment, colleagues are relaxed” (words of the VIP Gasparri).
Symbols are important. A Box full of public employees who pose as the masters is the proof of our minority-status. The master is the servant and the one who should be serving has become an arrogant “parvenu”. Millions without work. Dozens of suicides of unemployed people in despair and a country in economic and moral ruin don’t disturb the VIPs. They are “relaxed”. They have no clocking-in card that needs pinging , no work obligations, no one checking up on them. They can, with an elegant metaphor, “fare il cazzo che gli pare” {do any fucking thing they like} and receive a fabulous salary. They love posing as statesmen, establishing new alliances, indicating unknown horizons. The only thing they don’t do is work, carrying out the task for which they were elected. An activity that is too plebeian. They don’t mix with the plebs. I think that the time has come for the settling of accounts, with courtesy, without violence of any kind. It’s not possible to continue making believe that nothing has happened. We will start with us. If we meet one of our employees on the street with their body guards, or stopped at the traffic lights with their dark blue car and driver or at the entrance to an important match or at a “first night” at La Scala, or in a TV studio or in any other place other than Parliament where they should be working … in that case, let us very courteously remind them of their duties in relation to the ones that pay them their salary with the deductions for their taxes. Do a video recording of the conversation, that I hope will be cordial, publish it on YouTube with the tag: "Educa il nostro dipendente" {educate our employee} and send a notification to the blog. In the future I will issue democratic fatwas by means of videos to a few employees who are examples of the category. They will never give up (but is it in their interests?). Neither will we.

Yesterday, 15 April 2010, we crossed the Rubicon of legality. Alea iacta est. The main role player was not Julius Caesar but, more modestly, the Pdl-Pdwithoutanel duo, which has been attempting to destroy democracy in Italy for almost twenty years and, by the way, doing a pretty good job of it. The river in question was not the Rubicon, but the Italian Parliament, the Cloaca Maxima of Italian politics. The Chamber approved the “Save Errani-Formigoni” law with 435 votes in favour, 21 against and 41 abstentions. The pair, well seasoned over numerous legislatures as Premiers of the Emilia-Romagna and Lombardy Regions are safe for the time being. Until yesterday, . the law that prevented anyone from standing for more than two consecutive terms effectively prevented them from standing for re-election. Now, thanks to the ad-hoc decree, Errani and Formigoni have been re-virginised and they have been given a new electoral hymen. The law approved by the Deputies is in itself undeniable proof of the fact that Errani and Formigoni were not eligible for election. This is a post dated law designed to legitimise behaviour that was previously illegal. The “Save the Election List” decree effectively set a precedent for all future do-it-yourself postdated laws. Have you not paid your taxes? No problem, all you do is get together in the lounge with members of your family and you draft a little post-dated decree containing a tax shield. Have you been fired together with other temporary workers? All you do is call a meeting to approve a law ordering immediate reinstatement. Are you unable to pay your water, electricity and gas bills? All you do is draft a little post-dated law granting yourself a 100% reduction and send it off to Equitalia with postage to be paid by the addressee. Calderoli should simply burn both the Civil Code and the Penal Code. They are absolutely useless. Any law can be changed after the crime has been committed. It is merely the simplification of democracy, an entry into a new world in which everyone does whatever the hell they like thanks to post-dated legal provisions. The “Save Errani and Formigoni” law is yet to be approved by the Senate, but this is a mere formality. The Senators are obedient people. Then Napolitano still has to sign it into law, but this too is a mere formality. However, the decree is unconstitutional and I am committed to bringing it down. Meanwhile, for as long as the decree is in force, everyone will be free to make their own post-dated little laws and little decrees. Not even the gods can change the past, yet our politicians succeed in doing so without any problems, just as they are confidently screwing with our future. The corruptor becomes Prime Minister, the Mafia member a hero and Errani and Formigoni Regional Premiers. Are you disgusted by what is going on? Is the law standing in the way of your ambition to become a highwayman, thief, mafia don or extortionist? This is now all in the past. Thanks to the post-dated laws you will feel like a new man and, perhaps, once you grow up, you could even become a Deputy.

Today in Milan, four hundred mayors of 400 towns in Lombardy went out into the street to protest against the “patto di stabilità” {stability pact} imposed by the government. This measure for cutting public spending rewards the squanderer and punishes the good administrators, and especially those in Lombardy. “Mortizia Moratti” didn’t join the mayors. How could she have done? The Milan accounts are strictly related to the Catania accounts. The thirty-year swap signed in 2005 has already given rise to a capital loss of about 300 million euro. The mayors of Lombardy are calling for fiscal federalism so as to be able to administer the resources of their territory suitably. Lega-the-thief, the mayor does not forgive.

The Blog interviewed the mayors:
The stability pact is throttling the towns
Blog – Can you explain briefly what the stability pact is and what is the proposal of the ANCI (Associazione Nazionale Comuni Italiani) {National Association of Italian Towns}?
Mayor – The stability pact should be of use to the public administration to reduce the public debt. How it has been put into practice now it’s not good for the towns that is the towns that have the possibility to spend. I’ll give you an example. Our town is Castelleone in the province of Cremona, it has a budget surplus of 2,760,000 euro but it cannot spend 100 thousand Euro to put asphalt on the roads! And these are the contradictions of the stability pact. The stability pact should be applied to those towns that haven’t balanced their books. Those yes need to rein in and reduce the public debt. However, those towns that have balanced their books should be allowed to spend the money they have.
A town that’s doing the right thing from an accounting viewpoint cannot spend the money available, that is the money of the citizens, the money of the town of Castelleone. This is not transfer money from the State. This is the contradiction of the stability pact.
Blog – So what is the proposal of the ANCI?
Mayor – The ANCI’s proposal is to allow the towns to spend the budget surplus , to spend their own resources that they have available. The problem is national, with the stability pact it’s national. The towns of Lombardy and those of the North are those with the biggest problems because as they haven’t done the spending before, as they haven’t got themselves into debt before, now they are having difficulty in ensuring there are the services and the investments in their own towns.
We are asking to be able to spend our citizens’ money on the work that our citizens are asking for.
Blog – And why is this not possible?
Mayor – It’s not possible because otherwise we would be going outside the stability pact. The stability pact is a balance between expenditure and revenue in a town and consequently if we don’t have the possibility to identify a route that allows us to satisfy the needs of our citizens in a town because our towns are absolutely “virtuous” in the meaning that they have not spent beyond their budget, we are simply asking to be able to make investments and for us also to have those opportunities that other mayors have, obviously not in the North of Italy. The typical example is Rome, because especially the small and medium sized towns because I represent a town of 20 thousand. There are some towns round about us that even have money that is deposited and staying still and blocked. They can’t spend the money because otherwise they would be going outside the stability pact.
It works like that, with the stability pact it works that the income, or anyway the economic resources that the town has in its treasury for a part they can be used by the town, for another part it is instead used by the State to pay off the debt with the European Community. Thus for example, if they have a hundred in the coffers, the State says look you can use 40. I’ll take 60 to pay off the debt with the European Community.

...

Once upon a time, there was Imperial Rome. Augustus, Vespasian, Marcus Aurelius, emperors by divine right who ruled until death. Then came the Dark Ages, the Middle Ages, the French Revolution, the Russian one, the twenty years of Mussolini and parliamentary democracy. Today, after a couple of millennium of history and of political evolution, we have arrived at the life-serving Governors by party-right. It’s a matter of individuals who, for reasons unknown to the citizens, but known to the party secretaries, manage a region for 15 to 20 years even though that is forbidden by Italian law. Article 2 of the State law 165/2004 prevents a President of a Region from putting himself forward as a candidate after two consecutive terms of office: “expectation of the non-immediate re-eligibility at the end of the second consecutive mandate of the President of the Regional Junta elected by direct universal suffrage, on the basis of related regional regulations”. The emeritus president of the Constitutional Court, Valerio Onida reaffirmed this in an interview. The spirit of the law is simple: anyone who gets comfortable on an armchair for too long, manages it like a centre of power. This gives rise to a necessary change. Formigoni is getting near having reigned for 20 years, Errani for 15 years. A bipartisan agreement between Bersani (D'Alema’s spokesperson) and Berlusconi. One Region for you, one for me. The candidates proposed by the PDL and the PDminusL as adversaries to the Eternal Governors are ‘sparring partners’, put up for the sake of appearances. Penati in Lombardy and thing-a-me-bob (I swear I don’t even remember his name) in Emilia Romagna were throw-away containers. Lombardy and Emilia Romagna were used as exchange merchandise between the PDL and the PDminusL without giving a toss for the law and for respect of the citizens. The whole thing was carried out with the most complete pre-election “omertà”: “I’ll stay silent about an out-of-date-governor if you keep silent on mine.” Before the elections I wrote that I would appeal if the duo erraniformigoni got elected. The law is equal for everyone, apart from for the PDL and the PDminusL. United in a mess-up.

A journey round Italy in a camper van. Walter drives during the night. Filippo gets the coffee ready. He also does the shopping when we stop next morning in a new village, a new city. He stores everything in the van’s fridge. We eat while we’re travelling, on the little table. On the motorway they reckon we are nomads. Walter keeps to the speed limits. He goes gently. Everyone overtakes us. We never stop. Sleeping in a camper van for a month and when you arrive you get out into a square, shake hands, and listen to the people. Smile, go onto the stage with the second hand sound system, dragged out of someone’s cellar, and you shout so that everyone can hear you. A Genoa-style election campaign without asking for money from the State. With a new court case at each meeting. The 5 star MoVement doesn’t want election contributions. In each Region we have spent 10 to 15 thousand euro, collected with spontaneous donations. This money has to stay in the community. It’s all beautiful. Very beautiful. The best experience of my life. In the camper van there’s the smell of true men. Every so often we allow ourselves a hotel room for a shower. I leave Matera and the next morning I find I’m in Andria and in Torremaggiore. I’m in Bussoleno at 2 o’clock in the afternoon, at 5 pm I’m in Novara, at 9 o’clock in the evening I’m in Verbania. I drop into the camper’s bunk bed and I wake up at 4 am in Veneto. I appear in Padua and then in Treviso. Some think it’s a stand-in, that there are many “Beppe Grillos” doing the election circuit. Others think I have Don Giovanni Bosco’s gift of ubiquity. It’s a long march of democracy, a “Giro d'Italia” of the future. By an enchantment, wherever you arrive, the squares fill up, in spite of the silent omertà of the media. A mysterious spreading of the word that reaches the people. Beautiful people. Youngsters. Older people. All genuine. Tremendous. I happened to go out of the van’s door thinking I was in Piacenza, but in fact I was in Voghera. On the stage with me there were “the others”, young men and women who are ingenuous, have clean records, excited, not used to speaking in public, with clean faces. They are the hope of this country. They have ideas and not ideologies. I supply the face but they supply all the rest. Blood, lungs, courage. They have collected tens of thousands of authenticated signatures on the streets during this infinite winter of snow and ice. To the indifference of many. Give them a possibility. Give yourselves a possibility. In the camper van I’m writing the blog articles, reading the comments, thinking. Walter every so often is playing the guitar, when he’s not driving. Filippo is reading, always reading. But what is he reading? One day I will find out. Today I’ll be in Mirandola, Ferrara, Cesena. Then tomorrow in Naples’ piazza Dante. On Sunday I’m going back home to Nervi. Who knows if I’ll find my family still there? They will never give up (but is it in their interests?). Neither will we.

Money is the most potent poison ever created by man. More contagious than the plague, more corrosive than hydrochloric acid and more devastating than syphilis. There is no such thing as enough money. Money attracts money. Political funding is the antithesis of politics itself. By osmosis, politics becomes money, the Town councils become Pty. Ltd. companies and the political parties become business committees. The biggest lie ever perpetrated is that it takes pots of money to do politics. This is the so-called cost of politics. Anyone wanting to become a politician must pay their own way and if they need any donations then they should have to ask the citizens. If they get elected, they must be fairly remunerated for the social function that they will be expected to perform and, if they currently have another job, their place must be kept for them. No special privileges, no dual employment, no Ghedinis who get paid by the citizens to represent them in Parliament as well as by Berlusconi to act as his personal Attorney, no full pensions after two and a half years and no official vehicles. Money corrupts social life and dashes any chance of true representation. An infernal mechanism (who was it that said that money is the spawn of the devil?) whereby elections are won by net worth. The wealthiest man in the Country becomes Prime Minister, one of Milan's wealthiest women becomes Mayor of Milan and behind Casini stands Caltagirone. Money has become the be-all and end-all of politics. The corruption that is fast filling the Italian jails in a totally bipartisan manner with Councillors, from Prosperini through to Frisullo, is the result of this type of political model. The concession holders that become politicians simply to protect their State concessions should not be allowed to do so. They must choose to be one or the other, either concession holder or politician. State concession holders that fund political parties, such as Benetton and their motorway concessions, should not be permitted to do so. There should be no such thing as State funding for political parties and no reimbursement of election expenses. The “MoVimento 5 Stelle” is campaigning without any public funding and is running on a shoestring. I travel around in a camper van, not in some chauffeur-driven government vehicle. I am merely a citizen amongst fellow citizens. I do politics. I and the other guys of the “MoVimento” do politics. We don't want any election contributions, let the citizens' money rather remain in the coffers of the Municipalities, the Regional Administrations and the State. “The cost of politics” must be replaced with some other term, perhaps “the pleasure of politics” or “the duty of politics” or even “the rights of politics”. Everyone is equal, irrespective of social standing. I want to see a mother of a single-income family with four children become mayor of a town. She would most certainly know how to run a Town council. A Prime Minister who is an artisan, a teacher or an electrician, not some two-bit corruptor. My concern is the cost of the State, not the cost of the political parties or the cost of politics. The “MoVimento 5 Stelle” has no treasurer because it has no coffers. Any voluntary donations that may be requested from citizens will be used for very specific purposes. These donations will not come to me but to the association or to the regions that requests these funds. The citizens will decide on a case-by-case basis whether or not to contribute. They may never give up (is it in their interests?), but neither will we.

« - Here are your names... Mr. Brown, Mr. White, Mr. Blonde, Mr. Blue, Mr. Orange, and Mr. Pink.
- Why am I Mr. Pink?
- Because, you're a faggot, alright?!
- Why can't we pick our own colors?
- No way, no way. Tried it once, doesn't work. You got four guys all fighting over who's gonna be Mr. Black»
(Joe Cabot to Mr. Pink in the film: " Reservoir Dogs " by Quentin Tarantino)
The hyenas are about to devour each other. There’s no lack of signals. It’s the final act of the plundering of the country. The resources are in ever shorter supply, but the appetite has gone up. The hyenas have reproduced and got fatter for years in the absence of an Opposition, like in a massive game park. Mr Black is no longer able to control Mr. Pink, nor Mr. Green who said: “We are fed up to the back teeth with a Region that doesn’t manage to take off. Lombardy is in crisis. There’s no work. It has no project. With us, anyone who is caught stealing is immediately sent away” … (is transferred to the allies, like Pier Gianni Prosperini)).
The hyenas sense the presence of carrion or of fresh blood at hundreds of metres and they observe the flight of the vultures to identify the carcasses of dead animals. And while waiting for Mr Black’s carcass, they are getting ready. Mr Brown is creating a new clan: “Generazione Italia. Mr. White and Mr. Blue are creating il Partito del Sud”. For a long time, Mr. Pink has been flying round in wide circles, he is better than Nostradamus for the scent of carrion, like every former Christian Democrat he sees them at least five years in advance. Mr. Pink sends out his screeching: “The mixture of Berlusconi’s Lega-populism, the older he gets, the more his defects get nasty”. Mr Orange has foreseen everything with his declaration: "Mr. Black and Mr. Blue reference points for the mafia". The twitchiness for the remains of the biggest party of the last 150 years makes everyone jumpy. Tiny “misters” are growing up and beating each other up. Mr. Black’s bouncer minimises: “They will have been half hits”, nothing when compared to castor oil and batons. The hyenas have formidable teeth and jaws and a stomach that digests everything, apart from the horns and the little hairs, and those are left for the Italians together with the biggest Public Debt in the EU. Once the country has been digested they’ll tear each other to pieces.

The citizen is excluded from any choice. Democracy is not putting a cross on the symbol of a coalition every five years. Democracy is participation. In theory, it also exists in Italy. The referendum is a form of participation, as are the popular initiative laws. Both, however, only at a nominal level. The signatures end up in the basements of the Senate and they stay there forever. The referenda are boycotted or their outcome is even ignored, as in the case of nuclear.
The Soviet Constitution was, on paper, the best in the world. Its application however depended on the wish of Stalin and of the gerontocracy that followed him. Power to the people and the people in the gulags. Italy is a modern gulag, with voiceless inhabitants, without rights. A pressure cooker with (on top of the lid) a class of people exploiting it down to the ground, down to the last clod of earth, of tree, of river, of air, of energy. In Italy what is taking place in a very obvious way is a new class war. On the one hand there’s the class of citizens, on the other hand the "spaghetti power", where everything is intertwined: the concessionaires of the Confindustria, the public contractors, a part of the clergy, the Freemasons, the parties, organised crime, the wayward services of the State, the banking system, information. It’s an orgy. If you pull on just a single strand of spaghetti, you disturb a ball of wool that cannot be untangled, a Gordian knot.
The citizen has only one possibility, to put on his helmet, to make himself the State and to retake his life with concrete direct actions, without the politicians as intermediaries. We are people, not merchandise. Let’s start with what belongs to us from birth, with water.
1. Water is the principal source of life and it belongs to everyone
2. Water is a human and social right
3. Water cannot be the source of profit
In the Statute of your towns get the following text inserted: "In observance of the law, the ownership of the infrastructure and the network of the integrated water network is public and inalienable. The city is committed to guaranteeing that the management of the integrated water system is carried out exclusively by bodies that are entirely public.".
The town council can do this at the request of the citizens in a spontaneous way or by means of a popular initiative resolution as happened in Turin with the initiative of the Public Water Committee that collected 12,000 signatures
They will never give up (but is it in their interests?). Neither will we.

According to Maroni, the interpretative decree “does not introduce any modification of legal regulations”, but it gives “a correct interpretation” to the regulations. Who decides on the correct interpretation? He and his chums in the government! Napolitano is more uncertain, in fact for him, the decree “has not presented evident defects of unconstitutionality”. If announced by Morpheus a non-evident defect of unconstitutionality means definite unconstitutionality. For his tiniest doubt on the topic, with him there’s no doubt at all.
Napolitano has deigned to respond on the Quirinale website, to two citizens representing millions who have insulted him. A text that is between tragic and exhilarating:
“Dear signor Magni, dear signora Varenna, I read your letters with great attention, and through you I would like to respond with a sincere consideration for all the opinions of the many citizens who have written to me in the last few hours. The problem to be resolved was, in the last few days, the issue of guaranteeing that everyone can go to vote in the regional elections all over with the full participation of all the different political groupings. It was not tenable that because of errors in the presentation of the list as revealed by the appropriate officials that went to the Milan Appeal Court, the candidate for the position of President and the list of the biggest political party in the government could not take part in the biggest region of Italy. Two sets of interests or “assets” were at play, both deserving protection: the respect of the regulations and the procedures laid down in the law and the right of the citizens to choose with their vote between alternatives programmes and sets of people. It cannot be denied that it’s a matter of "assets" that are equally precious in our democratic State based on the rule of law (....)".
Age plays nasty jokes. The law and the rights of citizens are the same thing. Morpheus affirms that the rights of citizens (only the PDL citizens) are more important than the “procedures laid down in the law”. But he should know that in a democracy, without the certainty of the application of the laws, the citizens lose every right. Crikey, Napo, at least the ABC!
The Italian Constitution is written in such a simple and clear way that even he would understand it. Article 72 says: “Every bill submitted to one of the Houses is, in accordance with its Rules, considered by a Committee and then by the House itself, which approves it section by section and with a final vote.
The Rules establish shortened procedures for draft legislation that has been declared urgent.
They may also establish in which cases and in what manner the consideration and approval of bills is deferred to Committees, including Standing Committees, composed so as to reflect the proportion of the Parliamentary Groups. Even in such cases, until the moment of its final approval, the bill may be referred back to the House, if the Government or one-tenth of the members of the House or one-fifth of the Committee request that it be debated and voted on by the House itself or that it be submitted to the House for final approval, with only explanations of vote. The Rules establish the ways in which the proceedings of Committees are made public. The regular procedure for consideration and direct approval by the House is always followed in the case of bills on constitutional and electoral matters, enabling legislation, the ratification of i